Read Online The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me by Sofka Zinovieff - Free Book Online
Authors: Sofka Zinovieff
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wave your hat when they marched by’.58 There was a Fiat, a Lancia and then a specially designed Rolls-Royce – a ‘false cabriolet’ with a top that could be lifted off and folded back if the weather was fine.59 The car also had a space made under the front seats for a portable Dolmetsch clavichord (with no legs and decorated with flowers and butterflies), which Gerald took around with him and played when he stopped. This gave rise to one of the more lasting legends of his eccentricity – that Lord Berners kept and even played a piano in his car – but the reality was a clever way of keeping a small keyboard close at hand for composing and playing. Certain friends claimed that Gerald wore a hideous white mask made by Oliver Messel in the car, but his chauffeur denied it, admitting only that his employer donned a different hat when going through a town. Driving home from Rome, Gerald would allow up to two weeks for the journey, taking in the coast road past Genoa and Monte Carlo, and stopping to dine at appealing restaurants or to visit friends. In Paris, Gerald usually stayed at the Ritz, where Crack remembered delicious meals at a long table in a special courier’s room.60
WILLIAM CRACK DRIVING THE ROLLS-ROYCE
After staying with Gerald in Rome and then accompanying him on the long trip home, Rex Whistler wrote about outdoor painting sessions on the way, and ‘a divine bathe in the river – with William the chauffeur!’61 The attractive young artist was still in his early twenties but was making a name for himself with his beautifully delicate paintings and murals; his recent trompe l’œil mural in the Tate Gallery’s restaurant had been a grand success, and Whistler’s subsequent tent-like decorations for Sir Philip Sassoon’s extravagant house in Kent, Port Lympne, include Gerald as a solitary child waiting by his coroneted trunk for a paddle-steamer, with Faringdon House in the distance. In 1929, he painted Gerald busy on a small canvas in the drawing room at Faringdon. Dressed in buttoned-up white shirt and striped tie, the balding, bespectacled Gerald has the awkwardness and careful deliberation of a bank manager at his first art class. Without his masks, hats and costumes and without the chance to speak or play music, he looks dull and rather gloomy.
During the stops for painting, Crack would unpack an easel, paintbox, camp chair and green-lined parasol for his employer. Once, when motoring in England, Crack was screwing together the easel as Gerald politely approached the ancient owner of an ancient cottage, who was tending his hollyhocks. ‘Sir,’ he enquired, ‘have you any objection to my painting your cottage?’ The old boy looked at Gerald with a suspicious eye, and said, ‘Well, if I want me cottage painted I paint it myself and anyway it’s barely six months done.’62
In London, Gerald lived in rooms or a shared house with other bachelors. There are some who wonder whether he might have been involved with one of his few close friends, Gerald Agar-Robartes (Viscount Clifden from 1930), though there is no solid evidence. Eventually he bought himself a more substantial townhouse in Belgravia – 3 Halkin Street – which became his London base until the Second World War. He made trips to the country to his mother and stepfather at Faringdon, visited Salzburg and Munich for their music festivals, and frequently went to Paris, where he met the members of Les Six (including Poulenc and Milhaud), composers who, like him, were influenced by the light, witty style of Satie. It was in this milieu that Gerald encountered the extraordinary musical patron Princess de Polignac. Born in America, Winnaretta (or ‘Winnie’, as her friends called her) was heiress to the Singer sewing-machine fortune and was known at the turn of the century as one of the ‘Paris Lesbos’, having affairs with many women, married and unmarried. Her husband was more interested in men and their manage blanc was based on
WILLIAM CRACK DRIVING THE ROLLS-ROYCE
After staying with Gerald in Rome and then accompanying him on the long trip home, Rex Whistler wrote about outdoor painting sessions on the way, and ‘a divine bathe in the river – with William the chauffeur!’61 The attractive young artist was still in his early twenties but was making a name for himself with his beautifully delicate paintings and murals; his recent trompe l’œil mural in the Tate Gallery’s restaurant had been a grand success, and Whistler’s subsequent tent-like decorations for Sir Philip Sassoon’s extravagant house in Kent, Port Lympne, include Gerald as a solitary child waiting by his coroneted trunk for a paddle-steamer, with Faringdon House in the distance. In 1929, he painted Gerald busy on a small canvas in the drawing room at Faringdon. Dressed in buttoned-up white shirt and striped tie, the balding, bespectacled Gerald has the awkwardness and careful deliberation of a bank manager at his first art class. Without his masks, hats and costumes and without the chance to speak or play music, he looks dull and rather gloomy.
During the stops for painting, Crack would unpack an easel, paintbox, camp chair and green-lined parasol for his employer. Once, when motoring in England, Crack was screwing together the easel as Gerald politely approached the ancient owner of an ancient cottage, who was tending his hollyhocks. ‘Sir,’ he enquired, ‘have you any objection to my painting your cottage?’ The old boy looked at Gerald with a suspicious eye, and said, ‘Well, if I want me cottage painted I paint it myself and anyway it’s barely six months done.’62
In London, Gerald lived in rooms or a shared house with other bachelors. There are some who wonder whether he might have been involved with one of his few close friends, Gerald Agar-Robartes (Viscount Clifden from 1930), though there is no solid evidence. Eventually he bought himself a more substantial townhouse in Belgravia – 3 Halkin Street – which became his London base until the Second World War. He made trips to the country to his mother and stepfather at Faringdon, visited Salzburg and Munich for their music festivals, and frequently went to Paris, where he met the members of Les Six (including Poulenc and Milhaud), composers who, like him, were influenced by the light, witty style of Satie. It was in this milieu that Gerald encountered the extraordinary musical patron Princess de Polignac. Born in America, Winnaretta (or ‘Winnie’, as her friends called her) was heiress to the Singer sewing-machine fortune and was known at the turn of the century as one of the ‘Paris Lesbos’, having affairs with many women, married and unmarried. Her husband was more interested in men and their manage blanc was based on
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