The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me

by Sofka Zinovieff

  One of the aesthetes who had been at Oxford in the 1920s with Nancy’s brother Tom, Hamish had been sent down for his behaviour. Foppish, frivolous and dedicated to drink, he was pinned to the page as Albert Gates in Nancy’s first novel, Highland Fling, where he is depicted as wearing crêpe de Chine shirts, taffeta wraps and tartan trousers, while trailing wafts of gardenia perfume. He calls his friends ‘Darling’, quaffs sidecars at the Ritz and is enamoured of the Victorian era in the fashionably semi-ironic manner of the times. ‘Albert disliked women, his views on the sex coinciding with those of Weininger – he regarded them as stupid and unprincipled; but certain ones that he had met in Paris made up for this by a sort of worldly wisdom which amused him, and a talent for clothes, food and maquillage which commanded his real and ungrudging admiration.’

  Hamish was friends with Gerald and Robert, and he introduced Jennifer to many people who were racy, clever and determined to keep things fun. ‘Hamish was a little king in that world depicted by Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh,’ remembered Francis Wyndham.260 Their language and expressions defined them almost as much as the invitations to their parties: ‘Darling, how divine’ and ‘I could-dern’t care less.’261 And they liked to use the word ‘Miss’ in a camp or ridiculous way: ‘Where’s Miss Taxi? She’s late.’ Or ‘I just can’t get on with Miss Proust.’262 Never mind if it was all a bit light-hearted and giddy – anything to be amused. Hamish may have found Jennifer amusing in certain similar ways to Nancy. Both had an intelligent wit and dressed with elegance. Yet their astuteness apparently deserted them when it came to getting involved with Hamish. Nancy once admitted, ‘Hamish said to me in tones of the deepest satisfaction “You haven’t known a single happy moment since we met, have you.”’ She even made light of an attempt to kill herself: ‘I tried to commit suicide by gas, it is a lovely sensation just like taking anaesthetic so I shan’t be sorry any more for schoolmistresses who are found dead in that way.’263 And ultimately, Jennifer would probably have agreed with Nancy’s comments in a letter to her brother, Tom. ‘How is one to find the perfect young man, either they seem to be half-witted, or half-baked, or absolute sinks of vice or else actively dirty . . . All very difficult.’264

  If Jennifer felt doomed to be a misfit and a failure in the eyes of Sir Geoffrey and Lady Fry, she threw herself even deeper into the hedonistic circles of her new friends that she knew would not please them. In addition to Hamish, there was another unsuitable man called Peter, whose surname remains unknown.

  I had made friends and was also attracted to an amusing young man, also homosexual, who wanted to marry me for my expectations. My father disapproved and feared that Peter knew they shared the same inclinations. He tried to break up our friendship but I followed him to New York, where I received short shrift, as he had got into café society, where I felt I was a fish out of water. I stayed with a friend of my mother’s who knew little of the Harlem nights, the clubs and the wild dancing and drinking, though no harm came to me. I lied to her, and said I was going to stay with a respectable couple in Jamaica, but set off with Peter and his raffish friends and generous keeper, on a tour of the islands, then by boat to British Guyana, train to Guatemala, by car through the forests and lakelands and another train to Mexico City.

  Photographs from this time show Jennifer tanned and gorgeous, beaming for the camera, arm-in-arm with her fellow travellers. She got drunk on tequila, hardly noticed an earthquake that up-ended the table in a bar, and acquired a pet squirrel that drowned in the lavatory. When a handsome Mexican serenaded her with a guitar under her window, she let him in and took off her clothes, only to find that ‘Peter opened my bedroom door and sent him packing and we moved on the next day. He was yet another governess, but more successful as I never made love with the Mexican.’ Meanwhile, Sir Geoffrey was sending telegrams to every port they visited, demanding that his errant daughter come home. Eventually she left, travelling alone by boat and returning ‘to an icy welcome’.

  By the late 1930s, Jennifer was an elegant, cultivated young woman. Her hair was styled, her clothes were chic, and she had a strong sense of how to create beauty around her. Like many of her aesthete friends, she had picked up on the kitsch appeal of Victoriana, and dug around in antique shops for what were still the unfashionable relics of her grandparents’ generation: decorated boxes, vases in the shape of hands, and dainty bracelets and rings studded with seed pearls and turquoise. But she was also something of a dandy – a category that might primarily apply to men, but that included a few women such as Nancy Mitford, Edith Sitwell or Nancy Cunard. Jennifer’s interests went further than a narcissistic dedication to style, but she was developing something of a reputation: ‘Where would it get her, all of this running around with queers?’ Certainly not the right sort of husband, murmured the older, more experienced society types.265

  Life was not unpleasant; there were certainly thrills, even if they were within the tightly drawn boundaries of Jennifer’s particular world. While she still lived with her parents in Sloane House and at Oare, she was increasingly independent, if necessarily reliant on her father for financial support. Her parents may have sensed that their daughter understood about their more shameful secrets and they were unable to exert much pressure on her to conform. There were parties, weekends away, and trips to the South of France or Majorca, where she sported a daring two-piece swimming suit. She continued to read voraciously and to attend the ballet whenever she could – she was a great fan of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.

  Many years after the first generation of Bright Young Things, Jennifer was taking on their mantle, drinking late into the night at the Cavendish, where Gerald had entertained the original Russian Ballet and where Cyril Connolly was still gossiping with the irrepressible owner, Rosa Lewis, just as he had when he came down from Oxford in the 1920s. By 1937, Jennifer was included on one of Cyril Connolly’s many and frequently changing lists of significant friends, which also included the Betjemans, ‘Wiz’ (W. H. Auden), ‘Pierre’ (Peter Watson, who would fund Horizon magazine) and the writer Peter Quennell. Although many of the names left the lists over the years, Jennifer’s remained: Cyril adored her for the rest of his life, and their amitié amoureuse sustained them both. Thirteen years older than Jennifer, Cyril was already a successful literary critic – a romantic cynic, a melancholic wit and a chubby, snub-nosed dandy who almost made a profession of depicting himself as a failure. It is easy to understand his attraction to Jennifer on physical grounds; years later he wrote to her recalling ‘the brown-gold evening dress you had in the War and those lovely hands and tiny feet’.266 Continuing the colour scheme that he adored, he also eulogised her voice, that some found ‘actress-y’ or affected; Cyril said it was ‘like a brown sunny stream with a smell of pine needles as one finds in the Lande’.

  But their friendship went much further than Cyril’s romantic admiration. Both wanted the shifting excitements of nightclubs and parties and the indulgent giggling and gossiping of intimate friendship combined with periods of retreat into reading and solitary introspection. They loved luxury and beautiful things while abhorring snobbery, and had as strong a depressive streak as a sense of fun. ‘If Jennifer had been an actress,’ said Cyril’s daughter, Cressida Connolly, ‘she’d have been a light comedienne – with the intelligence to carry it. A funny person with a tragic side; melancholy but loving life.’267

  Cyril had been at Oxford with the group of men who already formed a distinguished generation of writers, and who mythologised their student years: Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Anthony Powell, Henry Yorke (who wrote as ‘Henry Green’) and Robert Byron. He was confident enough to produce the highly influential and original Enemies of Promise, but he claimed he couldn’t fit into ‘smart Bohemia’ and that he hated ‘the metallic voguey London’, even though many of his friends belonged to these milieux.268 Like Jennifer, Cyril was at ease with homosexuals; both he and Jennifer were often spotted at the Gargoyle Club or the Café Royal, drinking cocktails with B
rian Howard, Cyril’s notorious Oxford contemporary. The ‘Brightest of the Bright Young Things’ in the 1920s, Howard was later thought by some to be de trop, and overly drunk. His early literary promise was never fulfilled and W. H. Auden called him ‘the most desperately unhappy person I have ever known’. But Howard was marvellously witty and clever, if mannered, and Waugh scarcely disguised him as the outré Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited. He dressed impeccably and wafted about in a cloud of delicious perfume, applied from a small bottle he kept in his pocket, given by the celebrated perfumer Mary Chess – his American aunt.

  Cyril was already friends with Gerald; their circles overlapped extensively and their shared interests were not only in the arts. Cyril had a similar predilection for unusual pets, favouring lemurs (which he’d allow in his bed and take around in his jacket), a ferret, and once (bought with wedding-present money), a racoon. Like Gerald, Cyril saw himself with a critical eye: each felt he had not used his artistic talents to the full extent, being too fond of the art of living – particularly the high life. Each admitted to being overly concerned with his food to the detriment of his figure, and each could veer swiftly between gloom and gaiety. Like Gerald, Cyril loved travel and spoke several European languages, but he was not an intellectual snob.

  Cyril also became friends with Robert, doubtless admiring him for the attributes that he himself lacked, such as physical daring and impressive looks. On one of Cyril’s lists for ‘A sexy party’, he included Robert alongside Jean Harlow and Joan Crawford. It appears that Jennifer shared his opinion. In her photograph album from this period, there are several photographs of Robert. Smooth-skinned and shirtless on a daisy-sprinkled lawn, he looks moody and sexy, his luxuriant dark hair slightly wet from a swim, a stray lock naughtily curled in the middle of his forehead. Next to him in the album is Jennifer in a summer frock, sprawled on what looks like the same grass. She is peeping out mysteriously from behind her hair that tumbles over her face. They both look relaxed and very attractive – as if they have secrets. Jennifer took him to the Wyndhams’ at Parliament Piece, and there are pictures of him with Prim, who accompanied Jennifer on her first visit to Faringdon.

  JENNIFER’S RECORD OF HER STAY AT FARINGDON IN 1938. ROBERT MANAGES TO TAKE ALL THE INNOCENCE OUT OF EATING GRAPES

  One page in the album is titled ‘Faringdon House, Berks. June 27th 1938’ – the first time Jennifer stayed there unaccompanied. There are a couple of photographs of the house, and one of the Mad Boy in a greenhouse. He is straining his body upwards so he can eat grapes straight off the vine without using his hands – a wickedly provocative, Dionysian pose for Jennifer, who was presumably the photographer and who remembered the exact date of that weekend. Did they have some kind of fling? Probably – though there is no hard evidence apart from the expressions on their faces and the fact that both were sexual buccaneers whose bodies were their boats.

  A PAGE FROM JENNIFER’S ALBUM, SHOWING ROBERT AND HER IN SULTRY MOOD

  Robert would surely have taken Jennifer to the stables to meet his adored horse Passing Fancy, which he had ridden in the Grand National. The racer was a beautiful animal, and so swift that Robert tended to find himself alone and ahead with the hounds when out hunting with the Old Berks. Robert’s tall, thin groom, Fred Shury, lived over the stables with his short, plump wife. Shury claimed the animal was so intelligent that it ‘nearly talks to you’, coming up to him and trying to say, ‘Where’s the apples?’269

  Of course, life was about to change irrevocably. The following year was 1939, and much of what was taken for granted would soon look like elements of a lost, distant civilisation.

  * John Heygate, BBC News editor and later novelist, 1903-76.

  CHAPTER TEN

  In the City of the Dreaming Dons

  HE SUMMER OF 1939 SHONE with a halcyon light,’ recalled Daphne Fielding. People were giving more parties than ever, fearing they might be the last. ‘The atmosphere was tense and feverish, no one dared to pause and the music went round and around.’270 You could get dizzy, wrote another young party-goer, watching them ‘all swivelling round, powder, rouge, & tulle, & crepe – the black cloth, the red carnations, the pearl & onyx studs, the smell of expensive hair oil & Chanel numéro cinq’.271 Hitler’s tanks had entered Prague in March, Neville Chamberlain was making desperate attempts to avert war, and in July Mosley held a huge rally at Earls Court, trying to whip up anger: ‘A million Britons shall not die in your Jews’ quarrel.’ Mosley’s wild-eyed ranting was making his fanaticism clearer than ever.

  At Faringdon, all the old friends were still turning up for the indulgent, piquant weekends they had come to expect. Doubtless they ‘howled with laughter’ (as the Mitfords often put it) over reports of Cecil Beaton’s latest project, My Royal Past – a spoof memoir of a Baroness von Bülop that parodied the reminiscences of European royals. The book would be published at the end of the year and contained photographs of numerous old friends who had gathered for elaborate photographic sessions, dressing up in belle époque costumes as the Baroness and her ghastly titled relations. Gerald appeared as King Boris, with fake beard and pompously swathed in ermine, Michael Duff as a ramrod-straight military man with a sash, epaulettes and medals, and Frederick Ashton posed in convincingly aristocratic dowager drag.

  FREDERICK ASHTON, ROBERT, MAIMIE, CONSTANT LAMBERT, GERALD, VSEVOLODE, ‘PRINCE OF RUSSIA’, AT FARINGDON, EASTER 1939

  In April, Gerald’s ballet Cupid and Psyche was premiered at Sadler’s Wells, with musical direction by an increasingly drunken and unwell Constant Lambert, and choreography by Ashton. The original myth was turned into a frivolous, sometimes farcical performance that divided audiences: Juno was a pantomime dame, Venus ‘a rather shop-soiled floozy’, and Jupiter gave Fascist salutes and strutted with goose-steps – more chilling than amusing given the political climate in Europe.272 The production was generally judged a failure – the audience booed and the whole thing felt more like a private joke than a fully fledged creation. In these worrying times, ‘the cult of frivolity had backfired’; Cupid and Psyche folded after only three performances.273

  Not long after this theatrical flop, Maimie Lygon got married to Prince Vsevolode, a nephew of the last Tsar who had fled Russia after the revolution and ended up in England, where he attended Eton and Oxford. Although ‘Vsev’ was penniless and could not compete with Maimie on looks, his background added to his glamour and Maimie was happy to become Princess Romanovsky-Pavlovsky, though some thought it sounded like a stage name.274 Maimie’s old friend Evelyn Waugh disliked the ‘intolerable Russian’, but he was generally welcomed into her social circle, though he drank as much as she did and didn’t make her happy. The couple stayed at Faringdon several times during 1939, including a couple of weeks after their wedding, where they posed for photographs and signed the visitors’ book as ‘Vsevolode, Prince of Russia’ and ‘Mary Pavlovsky’.

  One August weekend, the sole guest was Gerald de Gaury, a forty-two-year-old explorer, orientalist and diplomat. Suave and scholarly, he had fought at Gallipoli, been wounded several times, and awarded the Military Cross. During his extensive travels in Arabia, he not only learned fluent Arabic, but came to deeply love the people and the region, which he photographed, painted and later wrote about in several books. The British government sent him to Kuwait as political agent in the 1930s, and he was a special emissary to King Ibn Sa’ud, who liked him and allowed him to stay in the royal household. With conflict looming, the War Office had just appointed de Gaury to manage intelligence and counter-intelligence in Arabia. Petroleum had been discovered there the previous year and the British were keen to keep things sweet with the King.

  It seems likely it was over this August weekend that de Gaury decided to take the Mad Boy with him to the Arabian peninsula. The former soldier knew what was coming and Robert would surely have feared that his call-up papers might arrive at any time, as they would for nearly all the male staff at Faringdon. De Gaury must have told Gerald and Rob
ert about the romance of the desert: fine horses, hunting gazelles with falcons, and the legendary, warm-hearted generosity of the King, who had forty-five sons. ‘He gives away motor-cars as European royalties used to give tie-pins and Negro servants as they gave boxes of cigars. Gold daggers and watches are frequently sent to visitors at their departure. The kiswa, a camel-hair cloak, head-kerchief, and gown, or set of clothes, is sent to every guest leaving the Court.’275 Robert was probably intrigued by the prospect of an exotic journey; if he had already experienced the gift of a motor-car from Peter Watson, he certainly had not been given a Negro servant or ventured into the wilderness. De Gaury’s motive in taking such a notoriously unpredictable companion on a delicate intelligence mission is less obvious. Still, the experienced traveller knew how much the Arabs valued good looks (‘they are more readily affected by human beauty of face and form than are Europeans, who add other qualities to the list when making up the sum of appeal in fellow beings’), and de Gaury was far from immune to the charms of male youth and beauty himself.276 Add to this the Arabian appreciation of good breeding, courage and manliness, and the Mad Boy began to look like a useful weapon in the spy’s armoury.

  F ROBERT WAS PREPARING for a Boy’s Own adventure, Gerald felt himself on the brink of an abyss that would end everything worthwhile and beautiful about his life. He had been planning a trip to Rome, but that was obviously now impossible. Faringdon would have to be closed up; without staff to run the place and without his Mad Boy, it would not be feasible to stay there. The warnings of what this conflict could bring were horrifying. Bombs would soon be raining down on England and a generation of young men who had been too late for the First World War would now be annihilated. Although Gerald had lived a protected and privileged life far from trenches, bloodshed and grieving, he knew enough about the devastation wrought by one world war to be appalled by the prospect of another.