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Jump to navigationJump to searchA Book of Secrets, Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers by Michael Holroyd (view source)
Revision as of 13:35, 21 January 2012
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Picture the crowded atelier of the renowned sculptor, Rodin or perhaps the dimly lit corridor's of Lord Grimthorpe's mansion. Perhaps you might prefer to frequent the brightly lit splendour of the balconies of the coastal villa at Cimbrione Cimbrone above the magnificent Gulf of Salerno. The inhabitants of such places led their tangled lives, sometimes enduring painful losses or by contrast, energetically inspired to passionate love affairs. In these stimulating environments we catch glimpses of the famous, like E.M.Forster, Virginia Woolf, sometimes accompanied by her close confidante, Vita Sackville West and then there was that tempestuous iconoclast, D.H.Lawrence. Many such lives were inspired by both landscape and lust, fashioned by each other's creative energies and endowed with artistic talents of all kinds. Here we learn of talents and beauty that inspires artistic endeavour, like the many charms of Eve Fairfax. She, who after brief affairs was gradually forced into a stoic suspension which she recorded with thoughts from her friends in the pages of annotated diaries which became ''A Book of Secrets''.
The Becketts were Yorkshire bankers and MPs who over several generations owned a series of estates and Gothic brickwork mansions. Ernest William, the second Lord Grimthorpe, was sent to Eton and by nature appears to have been, as Holroyd ironically remarks, a schoolboy that in some ways never quite grew up, though he did arrive at Trinity College, Cambridge in May 1875. Much about him is surrounded in mystery but his prowess with women soon became almost notorious soon after he reached London, a fact recorded by the writer George Moore describing him as 'London's greatest lover'. Ernest was to take the tours customary for young gentlemen around Europe on which he pursued in succession Eve Fairfax who was briefly his fiancée and then met his wife, Luie, a rich American whose story forms an intriguing digression, in Rome. After her most unfortunate death in childbirth, Ernest Beckett was to end up in the arms of Alice Keppel who was to embark upon a dalliance, as is well known, with the Prince of Wales. Besides these, there was a voluptuous Spanish American lady in Rome whom Ernest conveniently installed in Bayswater.
