A Book of Secrets
Page 26
Vuilleumier, Giorgio
Warhol, Andy
Wellesley, Dorothy; her ‘Zany’
Wellesley, Gerald (seventh Duke of Wellington)
Wertmüller, Lina
West, Rebecca
Whistler, James McNeill
The Baronet and the Butterfly
Whistler, Laurence
Williamson, Hedworth
Wolfe, Humbert
Woolf, Virginia; as Alexa Harrowby Quince in Broderie Anglaise; letters to Vita Orlando
Yorkshire Club
Yorkshire Gazette
Yorkshire Herald
Yorkshire Post
Zweig, Stefan: in Rodin’s studio
Notes
1 In memory of his wife, Ernest donated £3,000 to the building of a new Church of England home for waifs and strays in Hollin Road, Far Headingley. It is now part of the Weetwood Primary School. The Beckett coat of arms is above the entrance and there are three foundation stones with the initials of Luie’s three children, Lucille, Muriel and Ralph.
2 He was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in the First World War and died at the end of the Second World War in London.
3 Ernest had at first offered the mansion house with its 264-acre estate for £240,000. He was opposed by the ratepayers who issued a pamphlet exposing the ‘scandal’ of such an exorbitant price. The matter became the subject of an acrimonious debate, and Ernest appealed to Winston Churchill (recently appointed President of the Board of Trade) to help him get Government Board approval (‘I leave it to you, dear Winston, to do what you think best’). Churchill succeeded, helped by Ernest’s last-minute gift of forty acres to be used as a public park. ‘I am glad it is all right,’ he wrote to Churchill, ‘ … A friend in need is a friend indeed.’ Today, Beckett Park is open to the public and covers ninety-two acres.
4 Though Ernest was often described as a generous patron of the arts, it is difficult to find pictures that he owned in public collections. In 1913 he gave a naval picture in oils called The Wooden Walls of England to Leeds Training College. It was, he said, by a Yorkshire artist, but was unable to recall his name (though he did remember he had paid £1,600 for it). A picture with this name, painted in 1891 by John William Buxton Knight (of ships in Plymouth Harbour) was presented to the Tate Gallery in 1931. In 1896 Ernest donated a bust of Napoleon by Joseph Gott (after Canova) to the Leeds Art Gallery; towards the end of the twentieth century the gallery bought a male nude by Rodin, The Age of Bronze, in the form of a cast that had originally been owned by the Beckett family.
5 See Postscript, page 243.
6 There are examples of Rodin’s busts of Eve Fairfax at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (La Nature), the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Johannesburg Art Gallery in South Africa, the Galleria Communale d’Arte in Rome, and several versions at the Musée Rodin in Paris.
7 See A History of the Books, pp. 233 – 241.
8 But in 2009 Maggie’s novel The Red Queen was published in Italy, translated by Tiziana.
9 After Violet’s death, Philippe Jullian’s life went into a decline. Some eight months later, his home caught fire destroying many of his possessions including his pictures. He grew increasingly dependent on his Moroccan servant and companion Hamoud who helped him settle into an apartment in Paris. On 23 September 1977, Hamoud was stabbed to death by a stranger and, five days later, the police found Philippe Jullian’s body hanging from a hook inside the front door of his new apartment.
A BOOK OF SECRETS. Copyright © 2010 by Michael Holroyd.
Postscript copyright © 2012 by Michael Holroyd.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
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The publisher gratefully acknowledges permission to quote from the letters and works of Violet Trefusis from Tiziana Masucci.
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The postscript to the 2012 edition was previously published, in a slightly different form, in The Guardian (London).
Originially published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus
First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
eISBN 9781429969215
First eBook Edition : June 2012
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition as follows: Holroyd, Michael.
A book of secrets : illegitimate daughters, absent fathers / Michael Holroyd.—1st American ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-374-11558-6
1. Women—Biography. 2. Gifted women—Biography. 3. Daughters—Biography. 4. Illegitimate children—Biography. 5. Absentee fathers—Biography. 6. Unmarried mothers—Biography. 7. Mistresses—Biography. 8. Fathers and daughters. I. Title.
CT3203.H73 2011
306.874’2—dc22
2011003839
Picador ISBN 978-1-250-00766-7
First Picador Edition: August 2012