fn172 Norman Douglas (1868–1952), writer and hedonist who made little secret of his predilection for boys, lived in Capri. His best-known novel, South Wind, was published in 1917. Alone, a travel book, had just come out.
The Erosion of Happiness: 1924–1932
fn1 Ham Spray had been advertised in Country Life.
fn2 Deo volente (God willing).
fn3 The Lawrences were on a visit to England from New Mexico, where their attempts to set up an artistic commune with Brett and other friends had been a failure. They returned later in 1924 to try again. Lawrence had become openly hostile to his former Bloomsbury circle, their open homosexuality and their preoccupation with ‘their little swarming selves’.
fn4 Carrington had inherited some capital from her father and an old family friend from India.
fn5 See the introduction to Part 1.
fn6 Gerald was protesting about her elusive and inconsistent behaviour. He was also becoming aware of her feelings for Henrietta Bingham, back in England for the summer season.
fn7 Frances and Gerald were becoming good and lasting friends. They did not have an affair.
fn8 Stephen Tomlin [1901–37], known as Tommy, was a sculptor who did portrait busts of Lytton and Virginia Woolf, among others. Bisexual himself, he was having an affair with Henrietta, whom he wanted to marry; she refused. He later had brief affairs with both Lytton and Carrington, and was, unsurprisingly, disliked by both Ralph and Gerald.
fn9 Philip Ritchie (1899–1927) was a young Oxford graduate with whom Lytton was falling in love.
fn10 Gerald had gone to stay with Helen Anrep (1885–1965) in Kent to tutor her children.
fn11 Frances was going to Italy with her brother Tom, Harry Norton’s sister Jane, who also worked in Birrell and Garnett’s bookshop, and an admirer, Colin McKenzie, who was keen to woo her away from Ralph.
fn12 George Rylands (1902–99), known as Dadie, academic and theatre director, was the latest handsome young King’s graduate to capture Lytton’s attention.
fn13 Henry Lamb (1883–1960) was a successful painter, especially of portraits, who had studied under Augustus John and joined his circle. After an affair with Dorelia he remained devoted to her. Ottoline Morrell and Lytton had both been in love with him.
fn14 P. N. was Philip Nichols, a young diplomat who was Ralph’s only serious rival for Frances.
fn15 The Cranium Club met over dinner at a Soho restaurant, to bring friends together across disciplines and foster good conversation. Lytton was a member; Ralph and Gerald were not. The club still meets and now includes women.
fn16 Olive was their new cook-housekeeper.
fn17 Noel’s fiancée was the beautiful Slade student Catherine Alexander.
fn18 Darsie Japp (1883–1973) was a painter friend of the Johns family.
fn19 Mary Pickford (1892–1979) had been married to Douglas Fairbanks (1883–1939) since 1920. Both were at the height of their film-star fame. Margot Asquith (1864–1945) was the outspoken wife of H. H. Asquith, the former prime minister. Sybil, Lady Colefax (1874–1950), was a leading hostess and interior decorator.
fn20 Roger Senhouse (1899–1970), later a distinguished publisher and translator, was Lytton’s new love.
fn21 Probably a reference to giving up sex with Ralph.
fn22 T. F. Powys (1884–1939), writer, whose short-story collection The Left Leg had been published by Chatto & Windus in 1923.
fn23 Lytton had given Carrington a white pony called Belle.
fn24 Major Huth was their farmer neighbour.
fn25 Arnold Bennett (1867–1931), the leading realist writer of his day, had just published Lord Raingo, a thinly disguised portrait of his friend and patron Lord Beaverbrook (1879–1964).
fn26 One of her nicknames for Gerald, who admired Defoe.
fn27 Carrington had fallen from her horse while riding with Henry Lamb in Richmond Park.
fn28 John Banting (1902–72), a young painter drawn to surrealism.
fn29 John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), fashionable American portrait painter.
fn30 Tommy and Julia had been living together in Paris.
fn31 F. L. Lucas (1894–1967), known as Peter, was an English don at King’s College, Cambridge. He was an expert on Webster, a poet and novelist, and married to the writer E. B. C. Jones, known as Topsy. It was an open marriage; she was in love with Dadie Rylands, while he was to have a brief affair with Carrington.
fn32 Lytton was writing on Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex.
fn33 Julia had been having an affair with the painter Wogan Philipps, who was married to the aspiring novelist Rosamond Lehmann.
fn34 The Johns had moved to Fryern House at Fordingbridge in Hampshire, within reach of Ham Spray.
fn35 Steven Runciman (1903–2000), historian, was then a young fellow of Trinity, Cambridge.
fn36 Norman Douglas’s most recent novel was In the Beginning, published in 1927.
fn37 Kathleen Dillon is unknown. Dorothy Varda (1900–48) was married to the dancer and painter Jean Varda (1893–1971).
fn38 On her trip with Lytton they had called on the Johns at their house at Cassis, near Marseilles.
fn39 Zadig, a novel by Voltaire about a Babylonian philosopher, first published in 1747.
fn40 Rudolf Stulik (?–1938) was the Viennese owner and proprietor of the Eiffel Tower restaurant in Percy Street, the favourite haunt of writers and artists including Augustus John.
fn41 Francis Macnamara (1886–1946) was an Irish poet and a keen sailor. His second wife, Edie, was Dorelia John’s sister.
fn42 Vivien and Poppet’s nickname for Ralph.
fn43 Garrow Tomlin, Tommy’s brother. Their father, Lord Tomlin (1867–1935), a Judge, had just been made a peer.
fn44 Sir James Dunn (1874–1956) was a Canadian millionaire industrialist and art collector.
fn45 Sir Charles Blake Cochran (1872–1951) produced a series of popular musicals and revues.
fn46 T. W. (Tommy) Earp (1895–1958) was an art critic, Fanny Fletcher an art student who designed wallpaper.
fn47 Desmond and Molly MacCarthy’s children, Rachel and Michael.
fn48 T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935), Lawrence of Arabia, author of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, published in 1927, had adopted the pseudonym T. E. Shaw in 1923 and joined the RAF.
fn49 Francis Macnamara (1886–1946) was an Irish poet and a keen sailor.
fn50 Rosamond Lehmann had just given birth to her first child, Hugo Philipps.
fn51 The party was for the head of Lytton sculpted by Stephen Tomlin.
fn52 George Moore (1852–1943), the Irish novelist, published Celibates in 1895.
fn53 Virginia Woolf’s landmark essay, A Room of One’s Own, was published in October 1929.
fn54 Lolly Willowes, a novel about a witch by Sylvia Townsend Warner, was published in 1926.
fn55 George Robey (1869–1954) was a leading music-hall actor and singer, as were Marie and Rosie Lloyd.
fn56 When Beakus fell ill with jaundice, Carrington nursed him at Ham Spray.
fn57 Brian Howard (1905–58) was fashionable and flamboyant. Sandy was his current boyfriend.
fn58 Paul Cross and Angus Wilson (not the writer) lived nearby and were known as the Tidcombe Boys.
fn59 Vita Sackville-West’s latest book Sissinghurst, about her new family home, had just been published.
fn60 Poppet was engaged to Derek Jackson (1906–1982), a millionaire scientist and amateur jockey.
fn61 Bryan Guinness, 2nd Baron (1905–1992) had a large fortune from the brewing dynasty. A poet novelist and patron of the arts, he married Diana Mitford, the third of the notorious sisters, in 1929.
fn62 At the General Election held on October 27, the National Government led by Ramsay MacDonald won a landslide victory.
fn63 The Hogarth Press was going to publish Julia Strachey’s first novel, Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, and had asked Carrington to design the cover.
fn64 Garrow Tomlin had
been killed in a flying accident.
fn65 Mrs Violet Hammersley (1877–1962) was an old friend of the Mitford family.
fn66 Tomlin, who was bisexual, had taken up with a youth always known simply as H.
fn67 Samuel Rogers (1763–1855), poet and friend of more famous poets. He recorded their conversations, and Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers was published in 1903.
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