‘He placed Himself in the Order of Signs’

Dr Mary A. Coghill remembers David Jones (1895-1974) painter, poet and World War I veteran

A Latin Mass will be said for the repose of the soul of David Jones at 4pm on 13 October 2018 in the Lady Chapel at Westminster Cathedral. The Mass will be said by Father John Scott. All are welcome to attend. This is the regular monthly Latin Mass Society Mass and the dedication to David Jones is with their kind permission.

David Jones was always interested in the pictorial arts and he became a prolific and well known artist. He attended Camberwell Art School before volunteering for the First World War. The photo is of David Jones as a young man just before he went to France. It is copyright of the Trustees of the David Jones Estate and is reproduced here with their kind permission. He served in the Royal Welch Fusiliers and was wounded more than once.

It was while he was in the trenches that he witnessed a Catholic Mass being said in a barn, with bales of straw as the altar, and this began his eventual conversion to Catholicism. After the war he completed his studies at the Westminster School of Art and often attended Mass at Westminster Cathedral nearby. Monsignor John O'Connor instructed David Jones and received him into the Catholic Church in 1921 (he also received G.K. Chesterton into the Catholic Church in 1922).

David Jones in 1914: he tried a monastic lifestyle at Capel-y-ffin in South Wales and then with the Benedictines on Caldey Island

It is hard to do justice to a life that was a pilgrimage of the artist’s search to express art and sacrament. His early biblical themed woodcuts and etchings are apparently simple but express a committed religious expression.

His faith was interpreted through profound reading and lengthy discussions concerning his faith and art. He lived for a time with Eric Gill and The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic at Ditchling, Sussex. He then tried a more monastic lifestyle at Capel-y-ffin in South Wales and then with the Benedictines on Caldey Island.

His health broke down and with the encouragement of friends he began to write about his wartime experiences in what became the book length poem: In Parenthesis (Faber, 1937). He finished this book while in Sidmouth, Devon at The Fort Hotel, financially supported by friends. The poignancy of this book over-rides the difficulty with the text.

His later poem The Anathemata (Faber, 1952) is a highly complex work which could only be written after David Jones had left his war-time experiences behind. It is a poem which, as its title indicates, contains a layering of sacred fragments as an interpretation of his life and faith. He provides a booklist in the Preface which includes: Jacques Maritain Art and Scholasticism, Sheed and Ward, 1932 and Maurice de la Taille, S.J. Mystery of Faith (originally Mysterium Fidelis, 1915) 1941, Sheed and Ward. De la Taille’s explication of the Eucharist at The Last Supper and the final Passion of Christ perhaps informed David Jones’ own interpretation of the sacrifice of the soldiers in the First World War. It is from the 1934 edition of de la Taille’s work that the quotation in the title of this article comes: ‘He placed Himself in the Order of Signs’.

David Jones wrote about his own life and art in his book Epoch and Artist (Faber, 1959). This is a collection of essays and of particular interest is his essay entitled: ‘Art and Sacrament’, written in 1953 (pp143-179). In this essay he wrote: ‘the Tree of the Cross presupposes the other Tree, and stretches back to the ‘ “truly necessary sin of Adam” .’

Trees as the subject in Jones’ paintings often contained the religious imagery in a natural form. David Jones was a very sociable person. He was often visited by friends and frequently travelled to stay with a number of them. His health was often poor and he was afflicted with persistent insomnia. He read widely, spending many hours in his room without the need for other stimulus.

After some years of living in bedrooms at a number of hotels, his health deteriorated and he went to stay at The Calvary Nursing Home in Harrow. This was run by the sisters of The Company of Mary. The home was closed in 1975. It is with the kind permission of the Order that the photo of the chapel at this home, where David Jones heard Mass, is shown for the first time.

The Calvary Nursing Home at Harrow