Lady Caroline Blackwood
Is anyone else a fan of this lovely, talented, recently deceased Lady?
Lady Caroline Maureen Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood (
July 16,
1931 –
February 14,
1996) was a writer and artist's muse, and the eldest child of
Basil Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava and the brewery heiress Maureen Guinness.
A well-known figure in the literary world through her journalism and her novels, Caroline Blackwood was equally well-known for her high-profile marriages, first to the artist
Lucian Freud, then to the composer Israel Citkowitz and finally to the poet
Robert Lowell, who described her as "a mermaid who dines upon the bones of her winded lovers". Her novels are known for their wit and intelligence, and one in particular is scathingly autobiographical in describing her unhappy childhood.
She was born at 4 Hans Crescent in
Knightsbridge, her parents'
London house, and was, she admitted, "scantily educated" at
Rockport School in
County Down, at Brilliantmont in
Lausanne, and at
Downham in
Essex. After a finishing school in
Oxford she was presented as a
debutante in 1949 at a ball held at Londonderry House. Plump, ungainly and lacking in confidence as a teenager, she soon blossomed into a captivating blonde beauty with startlingly large blue eyes.
[edit] Career
Blackwood’s first job was with
Hulton Press as a secretary, but she was soon given small reporting jobs by
Claud Cockburn. Ann Fleming, the wife of "
James Bond" author
Ian Fleming, introduced Caroline to
Lucian Freud, and the two eloped to
Paris in 1952. In Paris she met
Picasso (and reportedly refused to wash for three days after he drew on her hands and nails), and after their marriage on December 9, 1953 she became a striking figure in London's bohemian circles; the Gargoyle Club and Colony Room replaced
Belgravia drawing rooms as her haunts. She sat for several of Freud's finest portraits, including
Girl In Bed, which testifies to her alluring beauty. She was impressed by the ruthless vision of Freud and
Francis Bacon and her later fiction was a literary version of their view of humanity.
In the early 1960s Caroline Blackwood began contributing to
Encounter, the
London Magazine, and other periodicals on subjects such as
beatniks, Ulster sectarianism, women's lib theatre and New York free schools. Although these articles were elegant, minutely observed and sometimes wickedly funny, they had, according to
Christopher Isherwood, a persistent flaw: "She is only capable of thinking negatively. Confronted by a phenomenon, she asks herself: what is wrong with it?" During the mid-1960s she had an affair with Bob Silvers, the founder and co-editor of the
New York Review of Books and although her marriage to Israel Citkowitz was over, he continued to live near her and served as a nanny-duenna until his death.
Her third husband Robert Lowell was a crucial influence on her talents as a novelist. He encouraged her to write her first book,
For All That I Found There (1973), which was named after an Ulster Protestant marching song and formed a coruscating memoir of her daughter’s treatment in a burns unit. Blackwood’s first novel
The Stepdaughter (1976) appeared three years later to much acclaim, and is a concise and gripping monologue by a rich, self-pitying woman deserted by her husband in a plush New York apartment and tormented by her fat stepdaughter. It won the David Higham Prize for best first novel.
Great Granny Webster followed in 1977 and was partly derived on her own miserable childhood, and depicted an austere and loveless old woman’s destructive impact on her daughter and granddaughter. It was short-listed for the
Booker Prize.
In 1980 came
The Last of the Duchess, a study of the relations between the
Duchess of Windsor and her cunning lawyer, Maître Suzanne Blum; it could not be published until after Blum’s death in 1995. Her third novel
The Fate of Mary Rose (1981) describes the effect on a Kent village of the rape and torture of a ten year-old girl named Maureen and is narrated by a selfish historian whose obsessions destroy his domestic life. After this came a collection of five short stories,
Good Night Sweet Ladies (1983) followed by her final novel,
Corrigan (1984), which was the least successful and depicts the effects on a depressed widow of a charming, energetic but sinister cripple who erupts into her life.
Blackwood’s later books were based on interviews and vignettes, including
On The Perimeter (1984) which focused her attentions on the women’s peace encampment at the
Greenham Common air base in
Berkshire, and
In The Pink (1987) which was a reflective, ghoulish book looking at the hunting and the hunt saboteur fraternities and exposed the many obsessive personalities of both fox-hunters and animal rights activists.
[edit] Personal Life and Family
Her marriage to Lucian Freud disintegrated soon after they tied the knot and in 1957 Blackwood moved to
New York where she studied acting at the Stella Adler School. She also went to
Hollywood and appeared in several films. Her marriage to Freud was finally dissolved in
Mexico in 1958. Meeting her in that year, Isherwood noted that "Caroline was round eyed as usual, either dumb or scared". On
August 15,
1959 she married the pianist Israel Citkowitz (1909-1974), a man who would have been the same age as her father. They had three daughters, although a deathbed admission revealed that the screenwriter
Ivan Moffat was the father of her youngest daughter, Ivana.
Blackwood returned to live in London in 1970 and that April began a relationship with the
manic-depressive poet Robert Lowell. Lowell was at the time a visiting professor at
All Souls College,
Oxford. Their son, Sheridan, was born on
September 28,
1971, and after obtaining divorces from their respective spouses, Blackwood and Lowell were married on
October 21,
1972. They lived in London and Milgate in
Kent. The sequence of poems in Lowell's
The Dolphin (1973) provides a disrupted narrative of his involvement with Blackwood and the birth of their son. She was distressed and confused in her reactions to Lowell's manic episodes, and felt useless during his attacks and afraid of their effect on her children. Her anxieties, alcohol-related illnesses, and late-night tirades exacerbated his condition. Lowell died clutching one of Freud’s portraits of Blackwood in the back seat of a New York cab, on his way back to his second wife,
Elizabeth Hardwick. This heartache was followed a year later by the death of her daughter Natalya from a drug overdose at the age of 18.
Indeed. I believe they're what one might call the lower upper class. But to be honest, I didn't see it as dodgy or as a misuse - I just sort of went along with it. Then again I didn't know much different. I just assumed it went on everywhere but I'm glad to hear it isn't as widespread as I was led to believe.
Very sad that he lost his fight with cancer. The centre is superb, with many an idea to be taken home. Truly a pioneer.
