Read Online The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me by Sofka Zinovieff - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Sofka Zinovieff
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their love of music and the arts. Though the prince died in 1901, the princess developed the salon they had created together and which supported and performed the music of contemporary composers; Debussy, Fauré and Ravel had premieres of their works there.
Gerald met Winnaretta in 1923, the year she fell in love with Violet Trefusis, with whom she remained involved for the next decade. The daughter of Alice Keppel (Edward VII’s mistress), Violet’s marriage to the diplomat Denys Trefusis had been brief and unsuccessful, and she was notorious for her recent and scandalous liaison with Vita Sackville-West. Violet was twenty-nine and Winnie fifty-eight, but the attractive, amusing younger woman was fascinated by the older woman’s intelligence, humour and her ‘rocky profile … her face more like a landscape than a face’. She felt like a willow to Winnie’s oak.63 If some found Violet annoying for her fickle nature and gossipy ways, she was also fun and full of life. Virginia Woolf found her hugely seductive – as did many others: ‘What a voice – lisping, faltering, what warmth, suppleness, and in her way – it’s not mine … how lovely, like a squirrel among buck hares …’64 And if Winnie could be daunting and formidable, she was also passionate and generous.
Gerald became close to both Winnie and Violet, and saw them at the princess’s palazzo in Venice, where there was ‘mad and constant music-making’ and visits from Stravinsky, Cole Porter, Arthur Rubinstein and Diaghilev.65 The tall American-born French princess and the short cosmopolitan English lord had more in common than might have been initially apparent and their interest in one another and in music developed into a lifelong friendship. Both were eccentric outsiders who managed to be at the centre of things, and though they were gay at a time when this was not widely acceptable, they were socially desirable because of their titles and their wealth. Above all, their love of music was the centre of their lives. There is an argument that music can be considered a conduit for ambiguous feelings that are ‘different, irrational, unaccountable’, and that it can provide the ‘perfect field for the display of emotion’ for those who have difficulty in expressing it or for whom there is disapproval.66 Although this is speculative, it is an interesting theory that makes some sense in both cases.
If Gerald did not openly declare himself as homosexual and did not leave any evidence behind of relationships with men at this stage in his life, he did have many friends whose sexual preferences were more obviously expressed. Diaghilev was a significant lodestar for numerous men of similar inclinations – a powerful, successful artist who didn’t hide his attraction to and liaisons with men. Another overtly gay friend was the young painter Christopher (‘Kit’) Wood, who had sat at the feet of Picasso in Paris and who took advice and opium from Cocteau. Gerald bought one of Wood’s paintings, and saw him again in Rome, where they enjoyed ‘painting trips … picnics, parties and dinners’ and met frequently with Igor Stravinsky and the Marchesa Casati.67 Kit Wood’s pale good looks, his sexually ambiguous style (he also got involved with women), his polio-induced limp and his fierce dedication to his painting made him hugely attractive to many people, including Gerald. ‘He was a painter who was at the same time naive and sophisticated. He saw directly with the eyes of a primitive and had that primitive sense of pure colour and elimination of the unnecessary,’ wrote their mutual friend, the painter Francis Rose.68 When Gerald wrote ‘a fantastic ballet in one act’, Luna Park – set in the freaks pavilion of a fairground and choreographed once more by Balanchine – it was Wood who designed the scenery and costumes for the show. The ballet was performed in 1930, the year the twenty-nine-year-old Wood, after a frenzied summer of painting and
Gerald met Winnaretta in 1923, the year she fell in love with Violet Trefusis, with whom she remained involved for the next decade. The daughter of Alice Keppel (Edward VII’s mistress), Violet’s marriage to the diplomat Denys Trefusis had been brief and unsuccessful, and she was notorious for her recent and scandalous liaison with Vita Sackville-West. Violet was twenty-nine and Winnie fifty-eight, but the attractive, amusing younger woman was fascinated by the older woman’s intelligence, humour and her ‘rocky profile … her face more like a landscape than a face’. She felt like a willow to Winnie’s oak.63 If some found Violet annoying for her fickle nature and gossipy ways, she was also fun and full of life. Virginia Woolf found her hugely seductive – as did many others: ‘What a voice – lisping, faltering, what warmth, suppleness, and in her way – it’s not mine … how lovely, like a squirrel among buck hares …’64 And if Winnie could be daunting and formidable, she was also passionate and generous.
Gerald became close to both Winnie and Violet, and saw them at the princess’s palazzo in Venice, where there was ‘mad and constant music-making’ and visits from Stravinsky, Cole Porter, Arthur Rubinstein and Diaghilev.65 The tall American-born French princess and the short cosmopolitan English lord had more in common than might have been initially apparent and their interest in one another and in music developed into a lifelong friendship. Both were eccentric outsiders who managed to be at the centre of things, and though they were gay at a time when this was not widely acceptable, they were socially desirable because of their titles and their wealth. Above all, their love of music was the centre of their lives. There is an argument that music can be considered a conduit for ambiguous feelings that are ‘different, irrational, unaccountable’, and that it can provide the ‘perfect field for the display of emotion’ for those who have difficulty in expressing it or for whom there is disapproval.66 Although this is speculative, it is an interesting theory that makes some sense in both cases.
If Gerald did not openly declare himself as homosexual and did not leave any evidence behind of relationships with men at this stage in his life, he did have many friends whose sexual preferences were more obviously expressed. Diaghilev was a significant lodestar for numerous men of similar inclinations – a powerful, successful artist who didn’t hide his attraction to and liaisons with men. Another overtly gay friend was the young painter Christopher (‘Kit’) Wood, who had sat at the feet of Picasso in Paris and who took advice and opium from Cocteau. Gerald bought one of Wood’s paintings, and saw him again in Rome, where they enjoyed ‘painting trips … picnics, parties and dinners’ and met frequently with Igor Stravinsky and the Marchesa Casati.67 Kit Wood’s pale good looks, his sexually ambiguous style (he also got involved with women), his polio-induced limp and his fierce dedication to his painting made him hugely attractive to many people, including Gerald. ‘He was a painter who was at the same time naive and sophisticated. He saw directly with the eyes of a primitive and had that primitive sense of pure colour and elimination of the unnecessary,’ wrote their mutual friend, the painter Francis Rose.68 When Gerald wrote ‘a fantastic ballet in one act’, Luna Park – set in the freaks pavilion of a fairground and choreographed once more by Balanchine – it was Wood who designed the scenery and costumes for the show. The ballet was performed in 1930, the year the twenty-nine-year-old Wood, after a frenzied summer of painting and
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