Biography of Doris Emerson Chapman 1903-1990
In 1903 Doris Emerson Chapman was born.
On 02 Jun 1913 [her future husband] Alexander Keiller (age 23) and Florence Marianne Phil-Morris (age 30) were married.
After 1918 [her future husband] Alexander Keiller (age 28) and Florence Marianne Phil-Morris (age 35) were divorced.
On 29 Feb 1924 [her future husband] Alexander Keiller (age 34) and Veronica Mildred Liddell (age 24) were married.
In 1929 Doris Emerson Chapman (age 26) exhibited two paintings with the East London Group in their first show. One of the paintings was priced by Lefevre at 17 guineas,
An Innkeepers Diary. Doris Chapman (age 27)
A most pretty and remarkable tall girl, Doris Emerson Chapman, with hips up to her armpits, upon which she rests her hand, walking or standing, was brought here to lunch by one of the odd Pete Brown family, where she paints curved-backed shire horses, in face herself rather horse. Her theory is that children needn't be told by their parents what is right and wrong, because they know it themselves instinctively, 'I knew perfectly well when I was being mean or loathsome long before my parents told me. All a child wants is sympathy.' Let her at once drop the shire horse and start a rare and happy stud of her own.
Diary of Virginia Woolf. Friday 27 May 1932. Last night at Adrian's evening. Zuckerman on apes. Doris Chapman (age 29) sitting on the floor.9 I afraid of Eddy coming in—I wrote him a sharp, but well earned, letter. Adrian so curiously reminiscent—will talk of his school of Greece of the past as if nothing had happened in between: a queer psychological fact in him—this dwelling on the past, when there's his present & his future all round him: D.C. to wit, & Karin coming in late, predacious, struggling, never amenable or comforting as poor woman no doubt she knows: deaf, twisted, gnarled, short, stockish—baffled, still she comes. Dick Strachey. All these cold elements of a party not mingling. L. & I talk with some effort. Duncan wanders off. Nessa gone to Tarzan.10 We meet James & Alix in the door. Come & dine says James with the desire strong in him I think to keep hold of Lytton. Monkeys can discriminate between light & dark: dogs cant. Tarzan is made largely of human apes. People have libraries of wild beast 'shots' let out on hire.
Note 9. Solly Zuckerman (b. 1904 in S. Africa), zoologist and from 1928-32 Demonstrator in Anatomy at University College, London, had just published The Social Life of Monkeys and Apes. Doris Chapman, with whom Adrian had fallen in love, was a painter currently showing her work at the Wertheim Gallery.
Note 10. Richard (Dick) Strachey (1902-76), writer, elder son of Lytton's brother Ralph. The 'screen sensation' Tartan the Ape Man, with Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan, was showing at the Empire Leicester Square.
Diary of Virginia Woolf. Monday 13 Jun 1932. Back from a good week end at Rodmell—a week end of no talking, sinking at once into deep safe book reading; & then sleep: clear transparent; with the may tree like a breaking wave outside; & all the garden green tunnels, mounds of green: & then to wake into the hot still day, & never a person to be seen, never an interruption: the place to ourselves: the long hours. To celebrate the occasion I bought a little desk & L. a beehive, & we drove to the Lay; & I did my best not to see the cement sheds. The bees swarmed. Sitting after lunch we heard them outside; & on Sunday there they were again hanging in a quivering shiny brown black purse to Mrs Thompsett's tombstone. We leapt about in the long grass of the graves, Percy all dressed up in mackintosh, & netted hat. Bees shoot whizz, like arrows of desire: fierce, sexual; weave cats cradles in the air; each whizzing from a string; the whole air full of vibration: of beauty, of this burning arrowy desire; & speed: I still think the quivering shifting bee bpg the most sexual & sensual symbol. So home, through vapours, tunnels, caverns of green: with pink & yellow glass mounds in gardens— rhododendrons. To Nessa's. Adrian has told Karin that he must separate She demurs. They are to start separate houses, he says, in the autumn.
Last week was such a scrimmage: oh so many people: among them Doris [Chapman] (age 29) & Adrian: she like a dogfish: that circular slit of a mouth in a pale flesh: & an ugly rayed dress: but said by Nessa to be nice. Why the bees should swarm round her, I cant say. Now Vita rings up: may she & Harold dine tonight: then Ethel: I look ahead to my fortnights week end.
Diary of Virginia Woolf. Friday 08 Jul 1932. And so I fainted, at the Ivy: & had to be led out by Clive. A curious sensation. Feeling it come on; sitting still & fading out: then Clive by my side & a woman with salts. And the odd liberation of emotion in the cab with Clive; & the absolute delight of dark & bed: after that stony rattling & heat & Frankie shouting; & things being churned up, removed.
I write this on a blazing morning, because L. is instructing Miss C[ashin]. how to arrange the books: so that I cant correct articles. "Every- where I look everything is hopeless.... Either the Northern Saga ought not to be here at all—or it ought to be in the other room.... (John is ill: publishing day yesterday; Harold drivelling snapping, when I hoped for 'serious criticism'—why go on hoping?) the whole of thats going over—Here are 3 things of Nature has no tune ofwh. we dont sell a copy a year..."4
Oh dear, I've twenty minutes to use; & cant 'correct' any more. What a fling I shall have into fiction & freedom when this is off! At once, an American comes to ask me to consider writing articles for some huge figure. And (hushed be this said) I sent Nessa a cheque for £100 last night: & Leonard gave his mother £50, & Philip [his youngest brother] £50. These are among the solid good things, I think: Nessa's £100 will buy her some release from worry, I hope: Clive saying they must spend £600 a year less. Roger to have his operation, said to be slight, tomorrow. Adrian fretted to death—almost to fainting in the street—must anyhow stumble in to Nessa's & ask for water & spend the evening—by the vagaries of his Doris (age 29). This is what Francis foretold: a girl of dubious morality, & to me like a codfish in her person. And there are fleas at M[onks].H[ouse].: to which we go; & black beetles here, & said to be mice also.
Note 4. The books referred to are The Northern Saga (1929) by E. E. Kellett and Nature Has No Tvne (1929) by Sylva Norman (HP Checklist nos. 198, 203). Harold Nicolson's review of V W 's and Hugh Walpole's Letters... appeared in the NS&N on 9 July 1932.
1934. Doris Emerson Chapman (age 31). Drawing of the artist's future husband [her future husband] Alexander Keiller (age 44).
In 1934 [her future husband] Alexander Keiller (age 44) and Veronica Mildred Liddell (age 34) were divorced.
1937. Doris Emerson Chapman (age 34). “West Kennet Long Barrow [Map]. Age 35. Height 5.7.”
1937. Doris Emerson Chapman (age 34). “Bronze Age Interment. Barrow 20, Susan Gibb’s Walk, Rushmore Park. Adult male, Height 5.4.5”.
On 16 Nov 1938 Alexander Keiller (age 48) and Doris Emerson Chapman (age 35) were married.
In 1951 Alexander Keiller (age 61) and Doris Emerson Chapman (age 48) were divorced.
In or after 1951 [her former husband] Alexander Keiller (age 61) and Gabrielle Muriel Ritchie (age 42) were married. His fourth marriage; her third.
On 29 Oct 1955 [her former husband] Alexander Keiller (age 65) died.
In 1990 Doris Emerson Chapman (age 87) died.
1937.