| Administrative History | A rare group of material from the launch of the Cabaret Theatre Club, at the Cave of the Golden Calf, London's quintessential avant-garde artistic nightclub, decorated with artwork by some of the most important artists of the new century. The nightclub was located at 9 Heddon Street W1, off Regent Street. It was the brainchild of Frida Strindberg (1872-1943), the divorced second wife of the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg (1849-1912) and opened on 26 June 1912. Strindberg was an Austrian who had inherited a large fortune at an early age, and worked variously as a translator, journalist and author; she was described by the journalist Ashley Gibson, who met her shortly before the club opened, as 'an amazingly masterful, intelligent, and in her way fascinating Austrian ... She already gave proofs of a mesmeric faculty for getting people to do things for her and showed a rare discrimination in her choice of accomplices. Instinct led her without fail to select the young men who mattered or were going to'. Much more famously she was described by Augustus John, with whom she was infatuated, as 'the walking hell-bitch of the Western World'.
Strindberg chose Spencer Gore to organise the club's decorative scheme, which was intended to reflect and contribute to its intended avant-garde status. The spirit of the times demanded a manifesto, and the club's promotional brochure, issued in April 1912, includes the constitution (the board included Arnold Bennett, Arthur Machen and Lord Dunsany) an extended statement of its goals ('Our aims have the simplicity of a need'), with a programme for their first week, 'the character of which can be best suggested by the names of some of the authors and composers under whose banners we range ourselves: - Abercrombie, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, John Davidson, Walter Delamare [sic], Arthur Machen, T. Sturge Moore, Ezra Pound, August Strindberg, Frank Wedekind, Yeats; Granville Bantock, Delius, Holbrooke, Raoul Lapara, Ernest Moret, Florence Schmitt, Dalhousie Young'. The sentiments expressed are all admirable: 'We want a place given up to gaiety, to a gaiety stimulating thought ? that does not have to count with midnight ... We do not want to Continentalise, we only want to do away, to some degree, with the distinction that the word 'Continental' implies, and with the necessity of crossing the Channel to laugh freely, and to sit up after nursery hours ... [to] create a surrounding which, if it has no other merit, will at least endeavour to limit emigration.' Strindberg added, in the same brochure, that the club's 'decoration will be entirely and exclusively the work of leading young British artists?. Gore was the coordinator, and commissioned others of his circle to contribute works. The project took up much of his time during this period, and it appears also to have sapped his emotional strength, for he suffered constant pressure and unnecessary interference from his patron. He involved Charles Ginner, who painted three large wall decorations as well as designing two posters for the club in distemper. Wyndham Lewis was a friend of Strindberg, and it may have been through him that Gore gained the commission. Lewis painted a drop curtain depicting raw meat for the stage, and he also hired out his now lost painting Kermesse which hung on the stairs down to the club. Epstein carved coloured and decorated columns and capitals, most likely pursuing a sexual theme, while Eric Gill was commissioned to make a phallic-looking statue of a Golden Calf for the foyer. He also designed the sign outside, a relief version of the calf sculpture flanked by flaccid penises.
The name of the club was intended to convey a message of primitive abandon through its reference to the Biblical story of the Israelites who, while Moses was absent, indulged in orgiastic, idolatrous celebrations before a golden calf (Exodus 32: 1-6). The brochure for the club reinforces this bacchanalian agenda: 'Our aims have the simplicity of a need. We want a place given up to gaiety, to a gaiety stimulating thought rather than crushing it. We want a gaiety that does not have to count with midnight. We want surroundings, which after the reality of daily life, reveal the reality of the unreal.'
That the club had a popular image of sexual freedom is testified by its citation in a sensational divorce trial in July 1914, and description as an unsuitable place for a respectable married woman to visit. The club was a venue for drinking, eating and, most notably, watching an extremely varied programme of performances. The opening night performances included songs by the Norwegian singer Bokken Larsson, a description of the club by a mythical 'Cook's Man', piano jests by Mr. Dalhousie Young, cabaret songs by M. Rienzi and M. Percy, two barefoot dances by Miss Margaret Morris, Indian musicians and much else. The club mixed the avant-garde with more obscure or arcane material from the past in its bills. A performance of Pergolese's La Serva Padrona attracted a long review in the Times which, as well as drawing attention to the 'Futurist paintings', praised the Club's 'catholicity of outlook'. The club was viewed as a distinctly continental phenomenon by the Times which, while sceptical of its success, praised its creativity.
The club had been a great critical and popular success, but by 1914 it was in financial difficulties and Strindberg seems never to have paid the artists involved the fees they had been promised. In the same year Strindberg closed the club and sailed to the United States, leaving behind her a wake of creditors, and apparently taking many of the decorations, including Gore's murals.
Ironically, these few pieces of printed ephemera (and a small handful of other similar items) are the only survivors of the venture, since almost all the art work produced for it is now lost, and most of it was only modestly recorded at the time or known only in preliminary sketches, including Spencer Gore's, Deer-Hunting mural in the Cave of the Golden Calf; now in Tate's collection (T00446). |