Desmond Chute

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Infobox artist Desmond Macready Chute (1895–1962) was an English poet and artist, who became a Catholic priest in 1927.

Early life

He was born in Bristol, the son of James Macready Chute (1856–1912) and his wife Abigail Philomena Henessy (1855–1931). His father ran the Prince's Theatre, Bristol, the family business.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> His mother was the second daughter of Joseph Henessy of Richmond Terrace, Clifton, Bristol, a cattle-dealer: the Henessy family were Irish Catholics, Liberal in politics.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Abigail Chute was on good terms with Grace Mary Welch of Cheltenham, mother of Werburg Welch who later became a close friend of Desmond.<ref>Template:Cite ODNB</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Chute was educated from 1906 at Downside School, where he was taught by the classicist Nevile Hunter Watts.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> He went on in 1912 to the Slade School of Art in London.<ref name="Shewring28">Template:Cite journal</ref> In 1913 he exhibited some paintings, and in 1914 he had a show of portraits at the New English Art Club.<ref name="Sewell1">Template:Cite book</ref> His mother had taken over the Bristol theatre on his father's death in 1912, and on the outbreak of war in 1914 Chute returned to Bristol to support her.<ref name="MacCarthy136">Template:Cite book</ref> Brocard Sewell concludes that he was exempt from military service during World War I.<ref name="Sewell1"/>

Chute was a close friend of Stanley Spencer, from 1915, and the period when Spencer was a medical orderly at the Beaufort War Hospital in the Bristol area.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> During the war years and into the 1920s he was encouraging Spencer to become a Catholic convert.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In a letter of 1928 to Richard Carline, Spencer alluded to a passage in Confessions, a work given to him in 1916 by Chute, as a religious influence.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Ditchling and the Third Order of Saint Dominic

Template:Further In 1918 Chute encountered Eric Gill at work in Westminster Cathedral.<ref name="MacCarthy136"/> The contact resulted in Chute's participation in the craft community at Ditchling, Sussex. It had grown up over the previous decade around Gill and others. Chute became a close colleague, assistant and "beloved brother" of Gill.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Gill completed his work on the Stations of the Cross in the cathedral, and it was consecrated on Good Friday 1918.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> He had been exempted from conscription while he was engaged on the task. He was called up in September of that year, to a Royal Air Force camp at Blandford. He left Chute in charge at Ditchling, and he oversaw Gill's household and workshop.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> He worked under Gill of a set of Stations of the Cross, for John O'Connor at St Cuthbert's Church in Bradford.<ref name="Shewring28"/> He published poetry in The Game, the community's magazine. His mother was a principal patron of the Guild in its early days.

In 1920 Gill and his wife Mary, Chute, Hilary Pepler and Herbert Shove became Tertiaries, joining the lay Third Order of Saint Dominic.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Chute was already a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis.<ref name="GillAuto">Template:Cite book</ref> Chute, Gill and Pepler went on to found The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Influential in this further step was Vincent McNabb OP. Gill knew him already, having met McNabb at the Edinburgh house of André Raffalovich.<ref name="GillAuto"/> McNabb provided an economic theory and pointed to the works of Thomas Aquinas.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Pepler's St. Dominic's Press published works by McNabb and other Catholic writers, illustrated by Chute, Philip Hagreen and other Ditchling artists.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Some years later the ruralist views of McNabb found expression in Distributism.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

David Jones arrived in Ditchling in 1921, as an assistant to Gill. Chute befriended him, and taught him wood carving.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> That year, Chute started to study for the Catholic priesthood, in Fribourg at the Albertinum, the international Dominican priory there.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He put the Bristolian Douglas Cleverdon in touch with Gill in the mid-1920s.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Priest in Italy

Chute's studies to become a priest were interrupted by bouts of tuberculosis. He was ordained priest on 25 September 1927, at Downside School. He then moved for his health to Rapallo, Italy.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

There Chute knew Ezra Pound, Olga Rudge, and the Tigullian Circle musical society they promoted.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Sewell2">Template:Cite book</ref> He also knew Max Beerbohm.<ref name="Sewell2"/> He had English visitors, including at Christmas 1936 the Gills, and Christopher Dawson and his wife.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> He did work for the Apostleship of the Sea at Genoa, which had papal recognition.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Chute tutored Mary de Rachewiltz, Pound's daughter with Olga Rudge. This was during the period 1941 to 1943, and Mary gave an account of him in her memoirs:

Thin and very tall, a long, pale face, with lots of hair and a beard (dyed red), melodramatically stretched out on couches with layers of capes and blankets and three kinds of curtains at the windows that had to be drawn at the least change of light outside, a series of eyeglasses and eyeshades and reading lamps. His health was poor, his eyesight very delicate.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Another account, by the physician Pietro Berri:

...the figure of a priest, tall, but of a wan complexion, with a beard at one time golden, but gradually streaked with grey, always sporting dark glasses for the greater protection of his sight, or an eyeshade ...<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Chute supported Mary and her mother when Pound was arrested and deported by the US army. In the last year of World War II, Chute himself was deported from Rapallo and held prisoner.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He was interned at Bobbio, where he worked in a hospital.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Chute's radio play Poets in Paradise was broadcast by the BBC in 1955.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Death and legacy

Chute died and was buried in Rapallo. According to his wishes, his grave carried the inscription Pulvis attamen sacerdos (dust yet a priest).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> A memorial designed by Eric Gill stands in Canford Cemetery, Westbury-on-Trym, near Bristol. Some of his papers are held in the Eric Gill Collection at Chichester, and others by his relation, David Charles Manners.

External links

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• Biography of Chute on Guild website