The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me Read Online Free Page B

fool can act not only as a way of attracting attention, but of subverting paternalistic authority; a symptom of pessimism as well as playfulness.11 There remained a side of Gerald throughout his life that refused to be seen to take anything seriously; even his music was filled with jokes and parody, as though he could not risk appearing to try too hard and then be confronted with rejection. His love of disguises and fancy dress might also be linked to a fear of being himself – so much easier to put on another face and make people laugh. According to one friend, Gerald claimed to have dressed up as a wizard when he was young, so as to enthral other children. ‘Robed, masked and bewigged’, he burnt incense, rang bells and claimed as his familiar a huge white Belgian hare enthroned on a hassock.12
    Gerald’s friend Osbert Sitwell suggested that he was ‘addicted to wit or humour as less gifted individuals are victims to drink or drugs’.13 This implies that joking became a significant weapon against despair, tedium and frustration. It also hints that this trait was not always a positive element in his relations with others; some thought Gerald’s teasing could stray into the realm of unkindness.
    Julia was a more reliable presence in Gerald’s early years, though he hardly appreciated her maternal skills when he wrote about her later. After her death, he accused her of being humourless, narrow-minded, conventional and, like so many in her family and social class, obsessed with country sports. There was shooting and fishing, but foxhunting was her principal interest. She was an excellent horsewoman and Gerald claims that he ‘never ventured to dispute the point of view that to ride well was the main object of life’. The boy tried to live up to his mother’s ambitions, but to no avail. ‘I grew to dislike riding more and more, but the ideal of “manliness” was constantly held up to me, and manfully I persevered.’ He wondered why it was unmanly to cling to the pommel of the saddle when that was obviously helpful, or why it was manly to kill a rook or a rabbit but unmanly to hurt a dog.14
    Like many creative people who come from dull or uninspiring families, Gerald was bemused by the banality of his own background. ‘My ancestors, for several generations back, appear to have been country squires or business men with recreations of an exclusively sporting nature; although, of course, it is quite possible that there may have been among them a few artistic ladies who painted in watercolours, visited Italy or played on the harp.’ Gerald felt himself to be the black sheep among his cousins and friends, living in fear and dread of humiliation because he could not ride well. While he was able to find refuge and inspiration in painting, literature and music, these were activities that counted for little among uncultured country grandees. He implies that he sprang, mysteriously creative, like Dionysus from Zeus’s thigh and he attempted in later life to distance himself from his forebears – an irony for someone who inherited a title. He mentions a story of some long-gone gypsy blood in the family, hinting that these irregular genes might have surfaced in him. Indeed, others later noted his un-English appearance, with sallow skin and luminous black eyes; ‘more Continental’ or Jewish, some suggested.15 Siegfried Sassoon described him to Virginia Woolf in 1924 as ‘a Kilburn Jew’, and she agreed – a strange indication of their snobbish anti-Semitism and a peculiarly inappropriate term to use when both knew he was nothing of the kind.16
    The sense of being different makes a good story, but the truth about Gerald’s family relations may be more hazy. Julia’s diaries and letters show that while she was indeed a tough, critical woman who was more at home in the stables than the salon, she also painted and encouraged her son to do so. She and Gerald would set off on their bicycles armed with watercolour sets, and