Pamela Colman Smith

caridwen

Pamela Colman Smith post 1910

This conversation with Stuart Kaplan was posted in the talking tarot section.
http://www.lightworks.com/MonthlyAspectarian/1999/June/699-02.htm

I was wondering how a member of the Golden Dawn could die in an unmarked paupers' grave when she was part of a fraternity who surely looked after each other. I thought the Golden Dawn was like the Free Masons and they networked and helped each other out yet she dies destitute, her body thrown on top of someone else's and no one knows exactly where she is now. Does anyone know if she fell out with the Golden Dawn a la Crowley or did they just conveniently forget about her?

Does anyone have any more information on her life apart from this:

She was born in Middlesex, England in 1878 and lived in London, New York and also in Kingston, Jamaica. She is the one that actually did the Rider-Waite illustrations; she did them for Rider and Company in 1909. It became very interesting that her deck was the first that ever had full images on the pip cards, being the one to ten, the four suits, Swords, Wands, Cups and Coins. She had joined the Golden Dawn [an English occult fraternity], she had worked with Arthur Edward Waite [a writer of the occult]. Alfred Stieglitz selected her art as the first non-photographic work to be shown at the gallery called 291 on Madison Avenue. In 1907 he showed her work. She became friendly with him and before Georgia O'Keefe died, I wrote to her and got permission to reproduce the letter that Pamela Colman Smith sent Alfred Stieglitz in 1909 or 1910 telling him that she had just done a big job of 78 illustrations for very little money. That was the Rider-Waite Tarot deck...

Originally, people thought that Arthur Edward Waite had influenced her greatly to do the deck -- but a woman by the name of Gertrude Moakley, who died last year, was a New York librarian in 1938 who researched and found out that the Sola Busca Tarot cards which were done in the fifteenth century, had some of the pip cards as full illustrations. There are nine or ten of the cards from the Sola Busca deck that Pamela Colman Smith actually redid in her deck. So obviously, she had gone to either the British Museum or the British Library, researched and found that deck, and when she did her own illustrations, she drew heavily on those. It wasn't so much Arthur Edward Waite or the Golden Dawn; I think it was more Pamela Colman Smith and her own intuition that did the deck.

Unfortunately, she died dead broke in 1951 without any assets. No one could pay for her burial so she was put into a pauper's grave in Cornwall, England. When I went there ten years ago to try to find her gravesite -- we were going to erect a tombstone -- we were told that if you were destitute, your grave was actually put on top of another person's grave and after twenty-five years there was no way to find out where she was actually buried....

She worked with Ellen Terry doing theatrical costume design and theatrical stage design, but she was really very alone in life, never married -- she suffered from a lot of emotional and physical problems.

eta does anyone have a decent biography?
 

Lee

Hi caridwen,

I believe I recall reading (I'm not sure where -- maybe on a website and/or the book that comes with the Commemorative set) that a few years after her work on the deck, she left her Golden Dawn activities and became a devout Catholic. I think one of her endeavors was that she owned a house where visiting church dignitaries could stay. So it would seem natural that she would be estranged from her former GD acquaintances.

Apparently, while she was well-liked for her personality and well-respected for her talent, she didn't have a very good business sense, and this was at least partly the cause of her fall into poverty.

She lived for several years until her death with a female companion, although the exact nature of their relationship is unknown.

ETA: There's some info here.
 

caridwen

Hi caridwen,

I believe I recall reading (I'm not sure where -- maybe on a website and/or the book that comes with the Commemorative set) that a few years after her work on the deck, she left her Golden Dawn activities and became a devout Catholic. I think one of her endeavors was that she owned a house where visiting church dignitaries could stay. So it would seem natural that she would be estranged from her former GD acquaintances.

Apparently, while she was well-liked for her personality and well-respected for her talent, she didn't have a very good business sense, and this was at least partly the cause of her fall into poverty.

She lived for several years until her death with a female companion, although the exact nature of their relationship is unknown.

ETA: There's some info here.

Thank you, the article as amazingly informative on her artwork and inspiration. I did not realise that she drew unconsciously whilst listening to music.

However it seems was though the last 35 years of her life are obscure. For someone who once hung out with Ellen Terry and WB Yeats she seems to have dropped off the edge of the world. There is no artwork, I think that is the main concern I have. You would think that even if she had turned her back on commercial art, she would still be producing something. It does not say in the article that she lived with a woman nor does it say how she survived, was she working? I imagine her parents left legacies surely, if they both came from well off families. However it does say that her dad was artistic and therefore not great with business. Maybe they both squandered what they had.
 

roppo

PCS opened a shop for selling her works and prints in her house at Cornwall around 1927. "No one comes" or something to that effect she wrote to her friend. (info from the letters now housed in Ellen Terry Museum).

I believe Ms Melinda Boyd Parsons will publish her PCS biography in near future (so I hope) which will shed much light upon the forgotten days of our artist.
 

Lee

Here is some info from Stuart Kaplan's book about PCS in the Commemorative set:

"Pamela also suffered because some people apparently took advantage of her lack of business sense. Further, it was likely she was discriminated against both because she was a woman and because of her exotic features described by others variously as Oriental, Negro or mixed. [...] Throughout her career she was burdened by financial stress; her art brought her some renown, but never enough commissions and sales. [...] Shortly after the war, one of Pamela's uncles died, leaving an inheritance that enabled Pamela to lease Parc Garland, a house within the seaside resort and artist's colony called The Lizard. She also bought another property which she rented out as a vacation home for Catholic clergymen. This business, like her previous enterprises, brought her no profit and she may have been financially ruined by an unreliable employee. Sometime during her residence at Parc Garland, Mrs. Nora Lake moved in with her and the two remained companions until Smith's death. [...] Smith was a devout convert to the Roman Catholic faith. [...] She did volunteer work at Our Lady of the Lizard church where she became a sacristan. [...] Smith continued her efforts to write and illustrate books for possible publication. Smith's various businesses eventually failed: the publishing venture, the shops, the home for priests, freelance artwork, and the literary magazine. Her artistic career was never a reliable source of income, in spite of her many contacts in Europe and America, and the praise of several important art magazines. [...] Pamela never ceased to believe in her abilities or the worthiness of her art. Her personal effects contain many scraps of paper covered with drawings and doodles [...] Smith was always busy with pencil and sketchbook. [...] Smith's will [...] left her entire estate 'to my friend Nora Lake.' [...] Pamela's last wish, expressed in her will, could not be carried out, as there was nothing left [after paying creditors] for Nora Lake, her loyal friend. [...] Though Pamela was active as an artist to the end of her life, her work, so highly praised in the early years in England, had long fallen into obscurity by the time she died."

It's very sad that she was unsuccessful and lonely in her latter years. However I think we can take some comfort from the fact that she had companionship from her friend Nora, and that apparently she always expressed herself creatively, even if only for herself.
 

Debra

If she had a long-time companion in Nora Lake, I wonder why in her old age she's always described as "lonely."
 

gregory

She is in an unmarked grave because she wanted to be, I believe. (Many are; almost every Quaker I know, for instance, prefers no stone of any kind.) The site is kind of known - on Cornwall, I believe; there is a post here somewhere by - I think - Lillie, who located it with on-line research.

It was - and in some places still is - very common in the UK for people to be buried on top of others after a "decent interval". I well recall our grave digger (my father was a vicar) saying it was like digging in a bloody rabbit pie, one damp Saturday afternoon....

I think an awful lot of this is modern mythology. Though she didn't get the success she deserved.
 

Lee

If she had a long-time companion in Nora Lake, I wonder why in her old age she's always described as "lonely."
I think she was lonely in that she missed the interaction with and attention from intellectually and creatively stimulating people which she had enjoyed as a young woman. She had gotten a lot of attention for her artwork and from her performance art, but fashions passed her by and we can imagine that she must have felt passed over and ignored, which seems to be borne out by her statement that she "didn't like people anymore."

ETA: We can speculate, but we really don't know what was going on in her mind. Between her companion and her church, she may have been relatively content. We know she had money troubles (the sale of her estate only paid a quarter of her bills), and we know she didn't have the celebrity and success that she enjoyed in her youth, but beyond that, it's just speculation as to how happy/unhappy or lonely/not lonely she was.
 

Teheuti

I was wondering how a member of the Golden Dawn could die in an unmarked paupers' grave when she was part of a fraternity who surely looked after each other. I thought the Golden Dawn was like the Free Masons and they networked and helped each other out
The original GD fractured and split into several different groups—each of which kept a low profile and no, they weren't a fraternal organization like the Freemasons—with permanent lodge building and charities that were supported. I believe their only permanent temple building was in New Zealand, with Felkins' off-shoot. Most of the GD groups died out during one or the other of the World Wars, with only a few people holding onto papers and regalia.

As someone mentioned, Pixie left the GD and most of her friends to become a staunch Catholic. she had belonged to Waite's splinter group, which fell apart, and she didn't join his later Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. He died before her and had probably not been in touch with her for decades.

Melinda Parsons told me that Nora Lake had been her housekeeper (with Lake's husband as handyman/groundskeeper) when she kept the retreat for priests. After Lake's husband died and after Pixie sold off the retreat and moved, Nora appears to have continued on with her—two elderly women who were comfortable living with each other.
 

Bhavana

If she had a long-time companion in Nora Lake, I wonder why in her old age she's always described as "lonely."

Very true, I have wondered this myself. And besides, many artists enjoy solitude. I don't like or benefit from hordes of people around me, and in fact, prefer to be alone. Maybe she was happy that way. She may have had financial difficulties, but having money is not the key to a fulfilling life. I wonder if there are any writings by her, journals or letters, saying that she was unhappy or lonely in her later years - or if it is just assumed because she was unmarried and lacking in financial security?