Portrait of Richard Wyndham

Lewis’s inability to turn artistic or literary merit into monetary success was a life-long problem. Captain Richard Wyndham was a wealthy Anglo-Irish peer and amateur painter who championed the artist and in December 1923 financed a stipend of £16 a month, along with Wadsworth and several others. With hindsight, this sum was pitched at a figure that satisfied no-one. Lewis no doubt thought that the wealthy contributors could afford more than a couple of pounds each per month, but wasn’t in a position to refuse the offer. The contributors thought that they were being benevolent and that Lewis should be very grateful. The precise mechanics of the fund’s distribution soon rankled with Lewis and the scheme created an atmosphere of mistrust and acrimony. Lewis found an outlet for his displeasure in his 1930 novel The Apes of God. In which Richard Wyndham (‘Dick Whittingdon’) found himself viciously satirised. He reacted by offering for sale two of Lewis’s paintings in The Times personal column. In order to show his disdain, Wyndham advertised them by size rather than description.