AMERICAN FRIENDS
At some time he did acquire the habit of a nightly glass of Marsala. This he enjoyed to the last. Any other form of drinking he considered a luxury, though he was not unappreciative of an occasional bottle of wine. He did not smoke. He had no very advanced appreciation of the pleasures of the table. His favourite meal was cold roast beef. An influential art dealer and prospective buyer once found him in his London studio, at three o’clock in the afternoon, eating sardines off a newspaper. When Rackham cheerfully described the encounter to his wife, Mrs Rackham was horrified. Rackham believed, incidentally, in the virtues of newspaper for all sorts of uses – as blotting-paper, as wrapping, for keeping warm in bed, for filing (his correspondence, notes, etc., were neatly collected in folded copies of The Times, labelled in chalk on the outside), for drying out damp shoes, as a tablecloth. …
Perhaps the indulgence that pleased him most was to travel abroad, very simply, walking or cycling with a man friend, always with a sketch-book in his pocket. He spent several sketching holidays in Italy, and almost (but not quite) became a Roman Catholic after one visit to Assisi.
The simplicity of his life helped Rackham to keep remarkably fit for his age. To the younger members of the Daleham Lawn Tennis Club, St John’s Wood – where Rackham used to play in the early nineteen-twenties – he naturally appeared quite an old man. But his energy amazed them. Mr George E. Heath remembers it:
‘He would come to the club looking rather wizened and very like one of his own dwarf drawings, and would play tennis – he was an average club player – for about three hours without stopping. After about six sets, he would leave with only the briefest of farewells to any of the other members. He took, as far as I can remember, practically no part in the club’s social activities, but was always extremely popular, and greatly admired for his fantastic energy and enthusiasm.’116
