The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me (18 page)

Despite Gerald’s declared dedication to frivolity and social life, there was a lurking doubt that made him mock, tease and sometimes hurt the people he cared for. Evelyn Waugh viewed Gerald’s milieu as fundamentally flawed, marked by a sort of original sin. ‘The friends of Berners were so agreeable, so loyal, so charming, but they were aboriginally corrupt. Their tiny relative advantages of intelligence, taste, good looks, and good manners … were quite insignificant.’210 Gerald himself did not articulate this, but his pitiless satires on the sorts of people he surrounded himself with reflect a layer of doubt. Even the companionship of the Mad Boy, with his inspiringly bad behaviour and refusal to toe the line, could not get rid of the darkness that lay at Gerald’s core.

* The same age as Robert, and gay, Rattigan wrote Flare Path, based on his experiences as a rear-gunner in the RAF, and would become celebrated for The Winslow Boy and The Browning Version.

OBERT CLAIMED THAT THE TOWER on the hill overlooking Faringdon was built for him by Gerald as a twenty-first birthday present. Although his flippant follow-up was usually ‘I’d have preferred a horse,’ there was a gleeful pride in showing off the gargantuan gift. And perhaps there was an idea of constructing a 100-foot folly as a phallic tribute to the Mad Boy around the time of Robert’s formal coming-of-age. It would have been not long after the two men met in 1932 – maybe some kind of ludicrous honeymoon fantasy? Various people are unconvinced. Some suggest that Lord Berners wanted to provide employment for local builders who were having a hard time during the Depression, or that it was celebrating George V’s jubilee. Others have seen it, more convincingly, as a flight of fancy – the last great folly to be built in England. By its very nature it should have no purpose, though celebrating forbidden love is hardly functional.

Predictably, the authorities were unhappy with the idea of this pointless eyesore that would poke up above the treetops on what was already known as Folly Hill, its name possibly deriving from the French ‘feuilles’, ‘leaves’. The place was a ‘well-known landmark of historical interest’ and the site of an old fort. There was a running argument with curmudgeonly neighbours, and the Rural District Council rejected Lord Berners’s plans in 1934: ‘High Words over Lord Berners’s Tower’, reported the Oxford Mail. This was followed by a Ministry of Health inquiry, and ultimately compromise, with an agreement to stop the tower going too high above the trees.

Gerald had chosen as architect Lord Gerald ‘Gerry’ Wellesley, the future 7th Duke of Wellington. He had been a colleague at the British Embassy in Rome during the First World War and the two men remained friends; in the 1920s, Gerry had returned to stay with Gerald in Rome along with their mutual friend Harold Nicolson, and the two men’s wives, Dorothy ‘Dottie’ Wellesley and Vita Sackville-West, had had an affair. It is unknown to what degree Vita played a part in the break-up of the Wellesleys’ marriage, but while her romantic interest quickly moved on, Dottie (a poet) remained devoted to Vita, waiting to collect her from the station in her Rolls after a trip abroad and feeding her champagne. It was Dottie Wellesley who first discovered the ruined Sissinghurst Castle that became the Nicolsons’ celebrated home.211 In the 1920s, Vita and Dottie had gone together to stay at Faringdon, something Harold Nicolson approved of at the time as it kept his wife away from Violet Trefusis, her great and scandalous love (who had previously been engaged to Gerry). All of this kept the gossips busy, what with the titles and the imposing, literary Englishwomen behaving more like the French.

Gerry Wellesley’s plans for the tower were somewhat plainer than the folly Nancy Mitford describes in The Pursuit of Love – a confection of marble and semi-precious stones with a gold angel on the summit that blew a trumpet every evening at the hour of Lord Merlin’s birth. In reality, it was built of red brick and was proceeding squarely upwards when apparently Gerald returned from a trip abroad and was appalled to find that the style was austere Classical rather than the Gothic he had desired. Known by some as ‘the Iron Duchess’,212 John Betjeman joked that Wellesley was the only modern architect with a style named after him – the ‘Gerry-built style’. Everyone’s honour was saved when Gerry conceded the final section to something fancier, adding a pinnacled, crown-like viewing platform at the 140-foot summit and, below that, an airy belvedere room with arched windows. Gerald hoped to have a grand piano up there, but presumably the narrow wooden staircase that snaked up the interior walls prevented that. A notice was put up stating: ‘MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC COMMITTING SUICIDE FROM THIS TOWER DO SO AT THEIR OWN RISK.’ Both building and creator shared the characteristics of charm and gaiety tempered by undertones of gloom. Solidly impressive yet light and witty, traditional yet rebellious, generous-spirited yet private, Lord Berners and his Folly had much in common.

A POSTCARD DOCTORED BY GERALD

The Folly had its grand opening on Robert’s twenty-fourth birthday, 5 November 1935. Gerald was the maestro, laying on a marvellous party, with fireworks shooting like comets and exploding above the looming dark outline of the tower. The Express reported that Lord Berners’s guests were invited to ‘bring effigies of their enemies for the bonfire. No guest may bring more than six effigies.’ Gerald claimed to have always been more interested in settings rather than their inhabitants, but he liked to bring people to admire his creations, whether they were musical, artistic or architectural. A natural host and master of ceremonies, he himself opined that ‘humanity may be roughly divided into hosts and guests. A psychologist has explained the types as representing two kinds of will, the will to power and the will to subjection.’213 And although he was not obviously dominating, it was through giving and exhibiting that he established his influence. Yet Gerald could also identify with the vulnerable. His 1930 ballet, Luna Park, is set in a fairground, where the showman displays a one-legged ballerina, a man with six arms and a three-legged juggler. The performers all turn out to be fakes, and eventually escape their master as normal people.

It is possible that some sort of rift occurred between Gerald and Robert that November. On the last day of the month, the Mad Boy signed himself into the visitors’ book, giving his address as Hodnet Hall and writing in the ‘Profession’ column ‘unwanted’. And yet, only one week before this, Gerald had contacted his London solicitor to confirm that he wished to leave his entire estate to Robert in his will. According to a letter from Winter & Co., Gerald had already made Robert the heir to his freehold and leasehold properties. This would now be extended to cover absolutely everything apart from a few annuities and legacies to faithful servants. Gerald also added another new clause: ‘I desire that I shall be buried at the base of the Tower which I have lately caused to be erected on the site known as Faringdon Folly.’ The two men had only been together a few, tumultuous years, but Gerald was making it clear to Robert that he was no plaything to be discarded, but the love of his life who would inherit as though he were his son or his spouse.

GERALD’S PAINTING OF THE FOLLY FOR THE SHELL GUIDE POSTER, COMMISSIONED BY JOHN BETJEMAN

The Folly became immensely popular; it was opened to the public on certain days and became a local landmark. When John Betjeman published his influential Shell Guides to the English countryside, he also commissioned some of Britain’s best artists and designers to produce posters. They included Rex Whistler, Eric Ravilious, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Paul Nash. Lord Berners’s contribution was a rolling Berkshire idyll, with his Folly protruding proudly from the circular tree canopy on Folly Hill.

Salvador Dalí must have been thrilled by the Folly when he came to stay with his wife Gala in the summer of 1936. Gerald had met them in Paris with Winnie de Polignac and was intrigued enough by the rising surrealist star to invite him to Faringdon. Though Gerald might have sensed that, like him, Dalí was sexually anxious and even timid, he probably did not know about the increasingly famous artist’s obsession with towers. Intense insecurity about the size of his penis and in particular a terror of the ‘lion’s jaws’ of female genitalia, had led Dalí to take a compulsive refuge in masturbation – a recurring theme in his paintings. According to Dalí’s biographer, his onanistic fantasies were usually connected to towers, with a preference for church belfries that reminded him of his adolescent frenzies. It was often by fantasising the exact position of the three belfries of Sant Pere, his baptismal church, that he could achieve an orgasm.214 One can only imagine the effect on Dalí as he climbed to the top of Lord Berners’s impressive brick erection and, gazing out over four or five verdant English counties, pictured the extraordinary ejaculation of fireworks that had taken place there only months earlier.

It was still years before Dalí would start churning out the cliches of surrealism for American commercials, when his soft watches and lobsters would become old hat. In the mid-1930s he was at the height of his creative powers and on the cusp of great fame. Though plagued by strange phobias (locusts terrified him) and preeningly unpredictable, he was certainly entertaining, which never stopped being high on the list of requirements for guests at Faringdon. Gala, Dalí’s Russian wife, was a decade older than him, though her slim, supple body and flirtatiousness belied her forty-two years. She was as sexually uninhibited as he was awkward, and while she was probably his first female lover, he was certainly neither the first nor the last of her male conquests. Like her husband, she was obsessed with physical beauty and couldn’t bear ugliness. Always ready to fling her clothes off and jump into bed with someone handsome enough, Gala must surely have taken a shine to the Mad Boy. Some years later, when Robert acquired a daughter, she was given the middle name Gala. Though many would agree ‘that to know her was to loathe her’, Gala was undeniably powerful, elegant and impressive.215 Penelope Betjeman recalled having dinner with the Dalís at Faringdon, and noted how attractive Gala was. As to Dalí himself, ‘I remember sitting next to him at dinner. He liked to shock you, and never stopped talking about fur-lined wombs!’216

Robert remembered the Dalís coming to stay for several months ‘solidly’217 – they returned again in 1938, and also had a long stay at the house in Rome. But he claimed to have been very fond of the crazy pair. Dalí gave him a beautiful ink drawing of a horse and rider, dedicated ‘A Robert Heber-Percy, son ami Salvador Dalí’. The muscular horse is filled with coloured starbursts, while the naked bareback rider’s red scarf flies in the wind, both creatures clearly expressions of sexual energy and freedom.

SALVADOR DALÍ’S DRAWING DEDICATED TO ROBERT, 1938

Gerald undoubtedly recognised another successful self-publicist, who loved annoying the bourgeoisie and whose partner caused consternation. ‘When I paint, the sea roars. The others splash about in the bath,’ was Dalí’s opinion of his place in the world. In the visitors’ book, the Spaniard wrote his profession as ‘artiste, peintre et philosophe’, while Gala put ‘sans profession’. In comparison, Gerald’s attempts to startle the neighbours look quite gentle. But as he admitted of his fictional alter ego, Lord Fitzcricket, ‘He was astute enough to realise that, in Anglo-Saxon countries, art is more highly appreciated if accompanied by a certain measure of eccentric publicity.’ Dalí clearly put his own myth-making and success above all else, and in this he was encouraged by Gala, who was ruthlessly ambitious, especially when it came to financial arrangements. Dalí’s hard-heartedness stands in stark contrast to Gerald’s milder approach to creativity and his differing style of life. These divergences are nowhere more apparent than in the two men’s treatment of animals. Gerald took a genuine interest in animals, with a characteristically English concern for their welfare, and was fascinated by their beauty and exoticism; he once left in the middle of one of his London lunch parties to visit the zoo with the leopard-loving Marchesa Casati.218 Dalí, on the other hand, would daub frogs and octopuses with ink to see what drawings they produced and throw cats in the pool for fun.219 When asked his favourite animal, he replied, ‘Fillet of sole.’

Though man and wife, Salvador and Gala made just as unlikely a couple as Gerald and Robert. But there were various common meeting points, including the emphasis on beauty and the love of the unexpected. Gerald was intrigued enough by the unpredictable spins of the psyche in Dalí’s art to dedicate his poem ‘Surrealist Landscape’ to him. Although you can’t help feeling he’s teasing (especially in the last line), it is marvellously evocative of the insane juxtapositions and beauty of Dalí’s paintings:

On the pale yellow sands

Where the Unicorn stands

And the Eggs are preparing for Tea

Sing Thirty

Sing Forty

Sing Three.

On the pale yellow sands

There’s a pair of Clasped Hands

And an eyeball entangled with string.

(Sing Forty

Sing Fifty

Sing Three.)

And a Bicycle Seat

And a Plate of Raw Meat

And a Thing that is hardly a Thing.

On the pale yellow sands

There stands

A Commode

That has nothing to do with the case.

Sing Eighty

Sing Ninety

Sing Three.

On the pale yellow sands

There’s a Dorian Mode

And a Temple all covered with Lace

And a Gothic Erection of Urgent Demands

On the patience of You and of Me.

If Gerald was just the sort of rich aristocratic type that Dalí liked to cultivate, their mutual friend Edward James proved an even more fruitful contact. Sexually ambivalent and emotionally unstable, James had inherited a fortune and was the godson of Edward VII, who some said was his father. He had, like Gerald, been a diplomat in Rome, where he sped about in an open-top Alfa Romeo. He was asked to leave for muddling up the dispatches, although he had also caused a minor scandal after he protested to Mussolini about the plight of the depressed eagles and mangy wolves that were kept caged on the Capitoline Hill. Displayed as symbols of the Eternal City, they kept on dying and the English animal-lover was outraged by their cramped conditions.