Sybille’s parents, Lisa and Max, on their wedding day in Berlin, 1910
Sybille as a small child playing with her dolls
Sybille with her half-sister, Katzi
Sybille and her mother, Lisa, surrounded by Lisa’s beloved dogs on the beach at Sanary in the south of France
Nori Marchesani, Sybille’s stepfather and loyal ally
Sybille walking on the beach with her good friend Pierre Mimerel, 1929
Renée Kisling, “a great handsome monster” and wife of the artist Moïse Kisling, who acted as both lover and guardian to Sybille
Sybille during her visit to Berlin with the Huxleys in 1932
Sybille gazing adoringly at her idol, Jacqueline Mimerel
Preparing drinks under the eyes of a much-impressed Sylvester Gates
Sybille and her friend Eva Herrmann, the artist and caricaturist, in 1932 while living together at Sainte-Trinide
Aldous Huxley and Sybille engrossed in conversation with the literary critic Raymond Mortimer
Sybille and English writer and memoirist Allanah Harper in Normandy with Allanah’s adored dog, Poodly
Sybille spending the summer with Allanah in Edgartown, Massachusetts, 1941
The highly literate and extremely voluble historian and academic Esther Murphy
Maria and Aldous Huxley in California, 1940s
One of Annie Davis’s love letters to Sybille—her “most delicious white pig”—from 1943
Katzi and Sybille in Austria in 1949, their first encounter since the beginning of the Second World War
Bob Gottlieb, the legendary editor who launched Sybille in America
Sybille watering plants on her roof-garden in Rome
Sybille reading in the bath in Rome, with her signature visor worn to protect her eyes, 1950
Evelyn Gendel, who first met Sybille while both were living in Rome and who became her lover and devoted friend, in 1952
Katzi “clattering about” in high spirits while living with Esther Murphy in Paris, 1955
Sybille queueing at Eastbourne Magistrates’ Court before the Bodkin Adams trial in 1957
Martha Gellhorn who, in Sybille’s words, “radiated vitality, certainty, total courage”
Eda Lord, “a wounded bird,” always equipped with coffee and cigarettes
Sybille deep in conversation with Tania Stern; Tania and her husband, Jimmy, were generous friends of Sybille’s.
Sybille happily settled at Old Church Street, 1980s
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am immensely grateful to the many people who have helped me during the writing of this biography. I would like to express my particular thanks to Aliette Martin, Sybille Bedford’s literary executor, who allowed me free access to Sybille’s diaries and correspondence, and whose memories of her friendship with Sybille were invaluable. I owe a great deal, too, to Lisa Cohen, Manfred Flügge, Sally Gordon-Mark, and to Gräfin Adelheid von der Schulenburg. I would like to give my most sincere thanks to Clara Farmer at Chatto & Windus in London, to Shelley Wanger at Knopf in New York and to my agent, Zoë Waldie. I would also like to thank Patrick Howard for his superb research, and David Milner for his remarkably perceptive copy-editing.
I would like to give grateful thanks to Julie Kavanagh and Professor R. F. Foster for their invaluable criticism and advice.
I also owe sincere thanks to the following for their contributions to this book: Elizabeth Archer, Michael Arditti, Luciana Arrighi, Paul Bailey, Anne Balfour-Fraser, Andrew Barrow, Josef Bauer, Jennifer Beattie, Penelope Bennett, Baronin Mercedes Marschall von Bieberstein, Michael Bloch, Desmond Browne QC, Peter Brugger, Elsie Burch-Donald, John Byrne, Carla Carlisle, Artemis Cooper, David Cossart, Robin Dalton, Gilpatrick Devlin, Graf Christoph Douglas, Betsy Drake, Charles Duff, Baron Wilfried von Engelhardt, Sir Anthony Evans, Antoinette Faller, Jamie Fergusson, Sue Fox, Anne Gainsford, Elizabeth Garver, Oliver Gates, Rick Gekoski, Milton Gendel, Robert Gottlieb, Marie-Thérèse Grange, Thomas Grant QC, Thomas Gruber, Diana Halle, Nicholas Haslam, Phyllis J. Hatfield, John Hatt, Jeanne Henny, Leonhard Horowski, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Jenny Hughes, Mark Hussey, Tony Huston, John F. Jungclaussen, John Kasmin, Paul Levy, Simon Loftus, Sarah Lutyens, Jenny MacKilligin, Patricia Maguire, Philip Mansel, Alexander Matthews, Tom Miller, Julian Mitchell, Caroline Moorehead, Sir John Nutting QC, Bruce Palling, Hubert Picarda, Markie Robson-Scott, Barnaby Rogerson, John Röhl, Felicity Rubinstein, Joan Schenkar, Baron Andreas von Schoenebeck, Ian Scott, Julian Stern, Baron Berthold von Stohrer, Karl von Stohrer, Solveig and Humphrey Stone, Gina Thomas, Kit van Tulleken, Hugo Vickers, Edmund Weeger, Peter Heinrich von Wessenberg, Brenda Wineapple.
I would like to express thanks to the following libraries and archives: the British Library; the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin; the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, University of Boston; the Archive Centre, King’s College, Cambridge; Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique; Special Collections, University of Oregon; the Library of Congress, Washington; the McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa; the Firestone Library, Princeton University; the M. F. K. Fisher Trust, the Schlesinger Library, Harvard University; the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts; Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles; Special Collections, University of Reading.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
* * *
All photos and images, unless otherwise stated, are used by kind permission of the Sybille Bedford Estate.
1.Sybille’s parents Elisabeth (“Lisa”) Bernhardt and Maximilian von Schoenebeck on their wedding day, April 1910
2.Sybille in childhood
3.Sybille with her half-sister, Katzi
4.Sybille with her mother, Lisa, Sanary, France
5.Nori Marchesani
6.Sybille and Pierre Mimerel, 1929
7.Renée Kisling
8.Sybille, Berlin, 1932
9.Sybille and Jacqueline Mimerel
10.Sybille and Sylvester Gates, Sainte-Trinide, France, 1930s
11.Sybille and Eva Herrmann, Sainte-Trinide, France, 1932
12.Sybille, Raymond Mortimer and Aldous Huxley, 1932
13.Sybille, Allanah Harper and Poodly, France
14.Sybille and Poodly, Edgartown, USA, 1941
15.Esther Murphy
16.Maria and Aldous Huxley, California, USA, 1948
17.A love letter to Sybille from Annie Davis, 1943
18.Sybille and Katzi, Austria, 1949, courtesy of Andreas von Schoenebeck
19.Robert Gottlieb © Waring Abbott
20.Sybille watering plants, Rome, 1952
21.Sybille reading in the bath, Rome, 1950
22.Evelyn Gendel, Rome, 1952
23.Katzi, Paris, 1955
24.Sybille Bedford at the Bodkin Adams trial, Eastbourne, 14 January 1957 © TopFoto
25.Martha Gellhorn, May 1946, USA © FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images
26.Eda Lord
27.Sybille and Tania Stern
28.Sybille at Old Church Street, London, 1980s, courtesy of Jenny MacKilligin
* * *
Every effort has been made by the publishers to trace the holders of copyright. Any inadvertent omissions of acknowledgement or permission can be rectified in future editions.
NOTES
ABBREVIATIONS
HRC: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin
HGARC: Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University Editions of books by Sybille Bedford:
A Visit to Don Otavio: A Mexican Odyssey (Eland Books 2002)
A Legacy (Counterpoint 2001)
A Compass Error (Counterpoint 1968)
The Best We Can Do (Penguin 1989)
The Faces of Justice: A Traveller’s Report (Simon & Schuster 1966)
Pleasures and Landscapes: A Traveller’s Tales from Europe (Daunt Books 2014)
As It Was: Pleasures, Landscapes and Justice (Sinclair-Stevenson 1990)
Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education (Eland 2005)
Aldous Huxley Vols 1 & 2 (Chatto & Windus 1973, 1974)
The Trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Daunt Books 2016)
Quicksands (Hamish Hamilton 2005)
PREFACE
“I wish I’d written more books”: In Conversation with Naim Attallah (Quartet,, 1998) p. 11.
“I think as far as writing was concerned”: Desert Island Discs BBC radio 10.7.98.
“My mother wanted to be a writer”: ibid.
“a vicious cult”: Daily Mail 1.11.24.
“I will not choose a Lesbian agent”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 13.4.53 SB archive HRC.
“[I’m] always putting off everything”: SB to Allanah Harper 9.7.58 Allanah Harper archive HRC.
“the English language is”: Desert Island Discs BBC radio 10.7.98.
ONE: LISA AND “LE BEAU MAX”
“and the smell of seasons”: A Legacy p. 33.
“an innocent eccentric”: SB to James Stern 1.4.75 James Stern archive British Library.
“Un Espion Allemande en Correctionnelle”: La Presse 22.12.1894.
“Your letter has distressed me”: SB to Paul Zander 2.6.98 private collection.
“We leafed through”: ibid.
“a tide of big money”: A Legacy p. 13.
“had no interests, tastes or thoughts”: ibid. p. 10.
“wrote a searing leader”: Jigsaw p. 21.
“a muckraker who writes with heavy irony”: Maximilian Harden: Censor Germaniae by Harry F. Young (Martinus Nijhoff,, 1959) p. 2.
“Sie sicht so schlau aus”: Anna Bernhardt to SB 25.3.36 SB archive HRC.
TWO: BARONIN BILLI
“We lived inside a museum”: Jigsaw p. 30.
“What was best about it”: Quicksands p. 55.
“We are the only two blue-eyed blondes”: Anna Bernhardt to SB 27.5.35 SB archive HRC.
“gave me love”: Quicksands p. 86.
“I never had any maternal love”: Oldie August 1997.
“My father could not stand”: Jigsaw p. 14.
“cover of eccentricity”: ibid. p. 54.
“female and north German”: Quicksands p. 59.
“I was in some kind of a narrow space”: Jigsaw p. 11.
“a dangerous folly”: ibid. p. 13.
“One day”: ibid.
“soldiers on the platforms”: ibid.
“sunk in upholstery”: ibid. p. 89.
“lived contentedly in a luxurious cocoon”: A Legacy p. 10.
“swaddled in stuffs”: ibid. p. 13.
“Everyone spoke freely”: Jigsaw p. 14.
“he held himself aloof”: ibid. p. 29.
“the rather dismal public park”: ibid. p. 16.
“I would stand before”: ibid.
“warm, generous, pleasure-loving”: ibid. p. 22.
“Men were attracted to them”: Quicksands p. 88.
“a very small, very wrinkled”: A Visit to Don Otavio p. 157.
“You cried: ‘Katzi is gone’ ”: Anna Bernhardt to SB, 6.8.36 SB archive HRC.
“Here the sailors with their banners”: Quicksands p. 153.
“contents undisturbed”: ibid.
“[My mother] did not suffer”: Jigsaw p. 22.
“[the] truth is that I have never grown up”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 20.5.57 SB archive HRC.
“My father hadn’t thought”: Quicksands p. 156.
“gently dictatorial”: ibid.
“[I was] entranced”: ibid. p. 161.
“Surprise and approval”: ibid. p. 158.
“They swarmed around me”: ibid. p. 159.
“hard to read for me”: ibid. p. 163.
“I can never read your writing”: Martha Gellhorn to SB 19.12.63 SB archive HRC.
“Your handwriting is calculated”: Sylvester Gates to SB 22.3.69 SB archive HRC.
“It just came to an end”: Quicksands p. 162.
“a youngish man in a town suit”: Jigsaw p. 32.
“getting on a farmhorse”: ibid.
“a shy, stiff peasant”: Quicksands p. 172.
“execrable”: ibid. p. 166.
“treated me (affectionately)”: ibid. p. 165.
“To her I was both an underservant”: ibid. p. 172.
“Overnight,” Sybille wrote: ibid. p. 167.
“The scale of its catastrophic course”: ibid. p. 170.
“We turned ourselves”: ibid. p. 168.
“One evening in May”: Jigsaw p. 39.
“I made my first Communion”: ibid. p. 45.
“I did not like what I was being made to hear”: Quicksands p. 155.
“One could never tell”: A Legacy p. 37.
“My father loved me”: Desert Island Discs BBC radio 10.7.98.
“I sniff mine”: Jigsaw p. 27.
“I then proceeded to walk”: ibid. p. 23.
“My father did not reproach me”: Quicksands p. 178.
“the most stimulating period”: ibid.
“not the quality of the affection”: ibid. p. 183.
“How could you have done this”: ibid. p. 187.
“hard-working days”: ibid.
“My strange, defeated, formal father”: ibid. p. 193.
THREE: FROM ICY ENGLAND TO THE WARMTH OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
“[I] experienced a state of sheer joy”: Quicksands p. 194.
“Needless to say”: ibid. p. 195.
“Waiters, young and old”: ibid.
“They knew perfectly well”: Sunday Times 13.11.94.
“not unduly disconcerted”: Quicksands p. 197.
“I was never quite clear”: Jigsaw p. 56.
“ ‘Billi—can you understand’ ”: ibid. p. 58.
“It was as if some ice”: ibid. p. 54.
“Our compartment door opened”: Quicksands p. 200.
“we ate the food”: ibid. p. 209.
“[I was] given a bag”: ibid. p. 212.
“parlourmaids, icy bedrooms”: Jigsaw p. 358.
“four punctual sit-down meals”: ibid. p. 215.
“a light-hearted, self-deprecatory woman”: ibid.
“Being taught, learning”: ibid. p. 221.
“My attachment to England”: ibid. p. 81.
“raised a curtain”: Quicksands p. 223.
“They had not belonged”: ibid. p. 241.
“almost from one week”: ibid. p. 240.
“by the time we got to the station”: Desert Island Discs BBC radio 10.7.98.
“a hot, ill-stuck-together bungalow”: Quicksands p. 244.
“The accommodating tolerance”: Jigsaw p. 89.
“The great constant was the climate”: ibid. p. 149.
“was very well educated”: Oldie August 1997.
“never relentless, quite interruptible”: Jigsaw p. 57.
“gently, dearly, protectively”: Quicksands p. 271.
“She would smile sweetly”: ibid. p. 228.
“Funny kind of girl”: Jigsaw p. 95.
“My mother had a knack”: ibid. p. 71.
“and [Nori] was immensely handy”: Quicksands p. 229.
“a disaster of
lifelong consequences”: ibid. p. 90.
“I carried the case”: Jigsaw p. 69.
“[springing] up to offer a light”: Quicksands p. 234.
“il faut m’aider”: Lisa Marchesani to Clive Bell 17.1.28 King’s/PP/CHA, King’s College, Cambridge.
“the Don Juan of Bloomsbury”: The Diary of Virginia Woolf (Hogarth Press) 23.7.27 Vol. 3 p. 149.
Sybille Bedford Page 43
