During the Interwar years South Devon enjoyed the patronage
of two American heiresses: Dorothy Elmhirst (née Whitney) and Peggy
Guggenheim. The historic estates they
inhabited became sites of experimentation, creativity and subversion. The
larger and famous project was Dartington Hall. Less well-known
is activity that took place over two consecutive summers at Hayford Hall on
Dartmoor.
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| Dorothy Whitney |
Dorothy Payne Whitney Straight Elmhirst (1887–1968)
was born in Washington DC and at 17 inherited a fortune following the death of
her businessman and philanthropist father, William C. Whitney. Over her life
time Dorothy was a pioneer in progressive education and benefactor of the arts,
feminist, and pacifist causes as well as social and labour reform. She lent
financial support to alternative education and scholarly research at Cornell
University, where she met her second husband Leonard Elmhirst. Leonard was inspired
by a long association with Rabindranath Tagore's Shantiniketan,
where Tagore was trying to introduce a radical curricula and rural
reconstruction into a tribal community. Dorothy and Leonard set out on a
similar goal for the depressed agricultural economy in rural England by
resurrecting the derelict 14th century Dartington Estate as a site for the
arts, experimental land management, rural skills and crafts and education.
Dartington of the 1920s and ‘30s is described as a blend of influences: Ascona,
Bloomsbury, Summerhill, the Bauhaus and Jung, plus Owen and Ruskin without the
egalitarian socialism but with the Indian influences of Tagore and Narayan
V.Tilak relating to community and spirituality.
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| Dartington Hall in state of dilapidation when the Elmhirsts moved there in 1925, DHT Archives |
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| Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst at Dartington Hall, 1967 DHT Archives |
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| Peggy Guggenheim by Man Ray, 1924 |
Eight miles from Dartington on Buckfastleigh
Moor is Hayford Hall. Under the patronage of Peggy Guggenheim the Hall inspired
modernist experiments of a more anarchic nature. Peggy (1898-1979) inherited
part of the Guggenheim fortune aged 21 but was keen to differentiate herself
from her socialite circles from a young age. At 22 she found a job at an
avant-garde bookshop, The Sunwise Turn on 44th Street and began her love-affair
with bohemian art, spending most of the following two decades in Paris. During
the summers of 1932 and 1933 Guggenheim rented Hayford Hall and hosted a
literary salon with her British partner John Holms; Djuna Barnes, who wrote her
masterpiece Nightwood at Hayford; Antonia White, British author best
known for her convent novel Frost in May; and Emily Coleman, whose novel
The Shutter of Snow was based on her own experiences of madness and
institutionalization. A collection of essays about the two summers was
published in 2005 entitled Hayford Hall: Hangovers, Erotics, and Modernist
Aesthetics. Editors of the collection, Podnieks and Chait suggest that a
specifically female kind of lived modernism emerged at Hayford Hall. They argue
that the writers ‘challenged the sexual, textual, and spiritual mores of the
day, both in life and on the page’.
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| Hayford hall, Dartmoor
I discovered this part of Hayford Hall's history
when my horse started living at the next-door farm. I was drawn to estate because
of the interplay between exposure and enclosure as Moor mingles with shaded
tracks and bluebell woods. Similarly, Hayford Hall: Hangovers... points
to a sense of the tamed and the intractable as one of the attractions
of the estate to Guggenheim and Holms*. Coleman described
Hayford as 'a dream place, a lovely, heavenly poetic garden, a
Paradise, far from nowhere, deep in the trees beneath the moor'. However, the landscape delivered tragedy
as well as played muse. Whilst pony riding on Dartmoor Holms fell and fractured
his wrist. Despite being reset in Totnes, the bones failed to realign and the
following year he was advised to have corrective surgery. Holms, a heavy
drinker died whilst under anaesthetic. Peggy described him as the
great love of her life from whose death she never fully recovered.
Seventy years on, the legacy of the modernist
enterprises in South Devon is mottled. On the surface, the scope and scale of
the experiments can hardly be compared: one a wildish playground for a small
literati; the other an established arts destination on a 1200acre estate.
Today, however, Dartington Hall estate is more up-market business park than
radical enclave. Since the Elmhirsts died the Trust has been addled by scandal
and management troubles. Bit by bit, it has been argued, the art has been
taken out of Dartington. Protestors at the close of Dartington College of Arts
in 2010 made the case when they removed the letters "a-r-t" from
local Dartington road signs. Dartington Hall School declined after a drunken student fell to her death from a boarding house window, and
pictures of the head master were found in a porn magazine. The school closed in
1987 and the Foxhole building will soon be an old people's home entitled 'The
Abundant Life Project'. In the recent budget cuts, the summer music school lost
its entire £600,000 grant from the Arts Council. The cottage industries:
Dartington Glass, Tweed Mill and Pottery closed or moved and now trades a
pricey shopping centre. Perhaps most symbolic of the Trust’s departure
from its original mandate is the sale of its art collection. In the 2010, 12
paintings by Tagore sold for £1.4 million at Sotheby’s, and key works by Ben
Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Alfred Wallis will soon
go under the hammer. By contrast, the legacy of the art and lived experiences
at Hayford Hall has only recently started to receive critical treatment. In
particular, the one completed piece, Nightwood is considered a powerful and complex work, and
one central to the wider project of reassessing ‘minor modernists’.
I cannot find documentary evidence that Guggenheim
and Elmhirst corroborated during their time in Devon in the early
‘30s. However, it is hard to imagine that the millionaire daughters of
two influential American families/foundations were unaware of each other’s
presence in a quiet corner of England. Under the patronage of two visionary
women, South Devon's natural and built environments gave rise to
experiments in art and living that are yet to be fully appreciated.
*Recently Hayford Hall has come under
renewed scrutiny for providing inspiration for Conan-Doyle’s Baskerville
Hall (corrected as being Brook Manor a few miles down the road). Owners of Hayford Hall have played on such speculation by erecting a pair of
Great Danes at their gateway, which on close inspection prove to be tombstones
to pets.
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