Obituary of James Laver, CBE, FRSA, FRSAL

James Laver (1899– 1975) was a poet, novelist, dramatist, biographer and art historian whose main discipline was the psychology of taste, especially of fashion in costume. He joined the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1922 as an Assistant Keeper in the Department of Engraving, Illustration and Design, becoming Keeper in 1938. When a collection of the Art of the Theatre was begun in the 1930s, Laver was put in charge and stage design became one of his special interests.

From The Times, 4 June 1975

A polymath of formidable virtuosity
Mr James Laver CBE, FRSA, FRSAL, who died yesterday at the age of 76, was one of those formidable polymaths who, by applying a versatility of talent to several subjects, give each of them a new dimension. He had a mind so alive, so apt to dance vivaciously from one topic to any other which seemed germane, that critics were tempted to dismiss him as merely a polished stylist. Certainly his work as poet, novelist, dramatist, biographer and art historian was never on the most profound level, but the understanding of other classes and countries that his dynamic dilettantism gave him was of great value in the discipline he made his own: the psychology of taste, especially of fashion in costume.

For him, the hemline was a seismograph in which he saw the rise and waning of civilisations. He read omens in overcoats, portents in petticoats, sermons in stoles. He delimited erogenous zones with the ruthless nicety of a Versailles diplomatist. His thesis was that 'fashion is never arbitrary. It has its roots in the unconscious, the Collective Unconscious if you will, and the hopes and fears of a whole society are reflected in the cut of a dress'.

Laver was born in Liverpool on March 14, 1899, the son of a printer.

At 12 he won a scholarship to the Liverpool Institute. A member of one of the great Liverpool ship owning families saw promise in him and gave him £1,000 to go to Oxford. He was accepted by New College as a Commoner, Matriculating in 1917, he was immediately afterwards gazetted in the King's Own (Royal Lancaster) Regiment. As he did not arrive in France until two days before the Armistice, he saw no fighting ('I am probably the only soldier in the First World War', he later wrote, ' to have received a medal for every day of active service').

At Oxford there were aesthetes and hearties and Laver tended to side with the latter, although he horrified his rowing friends in 1923 by winning the Newdigate prize for a poem on Cervantes.

In 1922 he was appointed an Assistant Keeper in the Department of Engraving, Illustration and Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he was to remain for 37 years. Martin Hardie was then Keeper, a position Laver succeeded to in 1938. The other young officials included Herbert Reed, William King and Leigh Ashton. One of his most interesting assignments was organising an exhibition of Samuel Palmer's works owned by his irascible son, A H Palmer. Laver established the states of all the Palmer etchings which are still known as 'L.58 state 3' or whatever it may be.

Meanwhile, writing in the evenings, he kept up a prolific literary output. His studies of living artists, 'Portraits in Oil and Vinegar' (1925) which began with a spurious Sainte-Beuve epigraph mischievously invented by Laver himself, was generally well received, although slated by Clive Bell in 'The Athenaeum'.

But he sprang into real prominence in 1927 with the publication by the Nonesuch Press of his poem 'A Stitch in Time'. It was a frank pastiche of 'The Rape of the Lock' transposed into modern times.

Desmond MacCarthy and other critics praised it exorbitantly and the 'Financial Times' spoke admiringly of the bullish qualities of a publication which rose in price in two weeks from 3s 9d to £1 15s. Saucy, satirical, slightly scandalous, the poem made Laver's name and gave him the entree into the popular press. There was a sequel in 1929, 'Love's Progress' and in 1933 the two were published together as 'Ladies' Mistakes'. All of these volumes are now collectors' pieces.

Perhaps by reaction to his Puritan upbringing, Laver developed a passion for the theatre. He arrived at the Victoria and Albert Museum at a fortunate moment. The International Theatre Exhibition had been transferred there from Amsterdam and was shown in his department. It contained work by all the leading Continental and English designers. The Museum bought a large number of designs and models, including Edward Gordon Craig's and it was decided to make these the nucleus of a collection of the Art of the Theatre. Laver was put in charge and stage design became one of his special interests.

He also did some amateur production and translated several plays from the French and German, notably Klabund's 'The Circle of Chalk'. A play for children 'The House that Went to Sea', was produced at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1936. But Laver's biggest stage success was the dramatization of his novel, 'Nymph Errant', which ran during the 1933-34 season.

'Nymph Errant', which appeared in 1932, was the longest and best of Laver's novels. It related the adventures of a Lancashire girl travelling across Europe, who eventually finds herself in a Turkish harem. Sir Charles Cochran had it turned into a musical with lyrics by Cole Porter and Gertrude Lawrence as the leading lady.

Laver began to feel he was leading a double life. As he put it himself, 'To my colleagues at South Kensington I had become a cigar-smoking, Savoy-supping, enviable but slightly disreputable character, hobnobbing with chorus girls and hanging round stage doors. To Gertrude Lawrence and her friends I was something 'in a museum', engaged in mysterious and apparently useless activities quite outside their comprehension; a character out of 'The Old Curiosity Shop', hardly fit to be let out alone.'

But Laver seemed to be able to manage the two lives very well. There was nothing amateurish in his contributions to art history. 'French Painting and the Nineteenth Century' (1937) was a judicial assessment with a new psychological approach. 'Adventures in Monochrome' (1941) surveyed the popular graphic arts. Two works of 1930, 'A Complete Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry points of Arthur Briscoe' and 'A History of British and American Etching' showed how entirely seriously he took the subjects that he was paid by the State to know about. His admirable pioneer book on the French painter, James Tissot, was published in 1935.

Laver's interest in the history and psychology of costume began through his wanting to date paintings by the costumes. It was now that he began to develop the theories for which he will be best remembered - about the so-called 'cycles' of fashion, the relationship between dress design and the other applied arts and the economic and social factors controlling the evolution of taste. He published several important books on these topics.

Just before the Second World War, Laver was concerned in the removing and packing away of the Victoria and Albert Museum's treasures; part of one wall had to be pulled down to get out the Raphael Cartoons. Three days after the outbreak of war he was installed in the Treasury where his reputation was that of an unorthodox official. He was then invited by Sir Robert Kindersley to become a national lecturer on the National Savings Committee. He talked to Irish labourers on muddy airfields, to miners in the pithead baths, to men puddling steel and girls filling detonators. In the course of his valuable war work he became slightly alarmed at the power he was experiencing as a demagogue. 'The trouble about all public speaking', he later wrote, 'is that one begins to evoke emotions one no longer feels - and that might almost be the definition of a prostitute.'

Laver's mind remained one of darting intelligence. It was absolutely typical of him to decide that on his long train journeys up and down the country he would 'read all the books in the London Library under the rubric 'Occultism' '. He became an expert in this field and wrote a book on the 16th century prophet Nostradamus.

In his 1963 autobiography, 'Museum Piece' (of which 'The Times Literary Supplement' unkindly remarked that it reminded one of the man who came to tea and stayed for a month) Laver interrupted his cosy recollections to wonder whether, with all his varied and sprightly achievements, he was not after all a failure. 'Instead of proceeding in however pedestrian a fashion, along the highways of literature, I had been diverted into the bypaths of expertise'. He was a natural dilettante. But he was no fribble. His works on fashion will stand as minor classics; and he must also be credited with the valuable service of cross-pollination between subjects which is the dilettante's special office and virtue.

In 1928 Laver married the actress Veronica Turleigh (Bridge Veronica Turley); a son and a daughter were born of the marriage. His wife died in 1971.

Reproduced with kind permission of The Times
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