Your Affectionate Son in St Dominic Eric Gill T.S.D.

Extract

Thus did Eric Gill sign his letters to Bede Jarrett, the English Dominican Provincial between the wars. I hope to show that he was saying something true about himself.

But it is presumptuous of me to write about him, and especially here in New Blackfriars, which is a development of the Black- friars in which he first published so many of his essays. Blackfriars has also given us many personal witnesses to Eric Gill’s character and shape of mind — David Jones, John O’Connor, Walter Shew- ring, Desmond Chute and a number of others. So there is an element of the absurd in my appearing here. I have tried to get rid of the absurdity in so far as I am able by assembling some of the available evidence about Mr Gill, and especially of course from his Autobiography.

Since the publication last November of Dr Yorke’s book, the name of Gill has frequently appeared in all sorts of places. There have been several exhibitions of his work. There has been a sale at Sothebys. He has become someone talked about in the art world. I wonder what E. G. would have thought about that. When I read some of the reviews of Eric Gill, Man of Flesh and Spirit I wondered whether the Gill they portrayed was in fact recognisably the same as the Gill described by those who knew him, or indeed as Dr Yorke recognised him.

The Times reviewer wrote that ‘it is certainly true that the literature relating to Gill has up to now been mainly superior hagiography. And Gill’s confreres have most noticeably played down the eroticism’ (3 December 1981).