Lord Berners

{{short description|British composer, novelist, painter, and aesthete (1883-1950)}}

File:Rex Whistler - Gerald Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners 1924.jpg, 1929]]

Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners[http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?search=ss&sText=berners&LinkID=mp00397 Gerald Tyrwhitt-Wilson at the National Portrait Gallery] (18 September 1883{{spaced ndash}}19 April 1950), also known as Gerald Tyrwhitt, was a British composer, novelist, painter, and aesthete. He was also known as Lord Berners.

Biography

=Early life and education=

Berners was born in Apley Hall, Stockton, Shropshire, in 1883, as Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt,The surname became Tyrwhitt-Wilson by royal licence in 1919, after he had acceded to the Berners barony and baronetcy (Amory, ch. VI) son of The Honorable Hugh Tyrwhitt (1856–1907) and his wife Julia (1861–1931), daughter of William Orme Foster, Apley's owner.{{cite book|title=The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 59|year=2004|publisher=Oxford University Press|page=540|isbn=0-19-861409-8}}Article by Mark Amory, who wrongly titles Foster as 'Sir' though he was neither knighted nor a baronet. His father, a Royal Navy officer,{{Sfnp| Jones |2003 |p=1}} was rarely home. He was raised by a grandmother who was extremely religious and self-righteous, and a mother with little intellect and many prejudices. His mother, who was the daughter of a rich ironmaster, and had a strong interest in fox hunting,{{cite journal |last= Furbank |first= P.N. |title= Lord Fitzcricket |url= http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n10/pn-furbank/lord-fitzcricket| date= 21 May 1998|journal= London Review of Books |location=London| volume=20 | issue= 10| page= 32|url-access=subscription | access-date= 28 January 2016 }} ignored his musical interests and instead focused on developing his masculinity, a trait Berners found to be inherently unnatural. Berners later wrote, "My father was worldly, cynical, intolerant of any kind of inferiority, reserved and self-possessed. My mother was unworldly, naïve, impulsive and undecided, and in my father's presence she was always at her worst".{{Sfnp| Berners |1942|loc=Chapter 'My Parents'}}

Berners was educated at Cheam School and Eton College, then studied in France and Germany while attempting to pass the entry examination for the Foreign Office. He twice failed the examination but instead served as an honorary attache in Constantinople from 1909 to 1911 and then at Rome until after succeeding to his peerage in 1918.

=Adult life=

In 1918, Berners became the 14th holder of the Berners Barony, after inheriting the title, property, and money from an uncle.{{cite news |last= Cecil |first= Mirabel |title= My mad gay grandfather and me|url= http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/10/the-mad-boy-lord-berner-my-grandmother-and-me-by-sofka-zinovieff-review/| date= 18 October 2014|work= The Spectator | access-date= 28 January 2016 }}{{Sfnp| Jones |2003 |p=2}} His inheritance included Faringdon House, in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, which he initially gave to his mother and her second husband; on their deaths in 1931 he moved into the house himself.{{cite news |last= Seymour |first= Miranda |title= 'The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me', by Sofka Zinovieff|url= https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/books/review/the-mad-boy-lord-berners-my-grandmother-and-me-by-sofka-zinovieff.html| date= 24 April 2015| newspaper= The New York Times |location= New York| access-date= 28 January 2016 }} In 1932, Berners fell in love with Robert Heber-Percy, 28 years his junior, who became his companion and moved into Faringdon House.{{cite news |last1=Cecil |first1= Mirabel |title= My mad gay grandfather and me |url= https://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/10/the-mad-boy-lord-berner-my-grandmother-and-me-by-sofka-zinovieff-review/|access-date=12 November 2017|work=The Spectator|date=18 October 2014}} Unexpectedly, Heber-Percy married a 21-year-old woman, Jennifer Fry, who had a baby nine months later. For a short time, she and the baby lived at Faringdon House with Heber-Percy and Berners.{{cite news|last1=Cooke|first1=Rachel|title=The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me review – a family saga with all the trimmings|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/19/the-mad-boy-lord-berners-review-sofka-zinovieff-robert-heber-percy-victoria|access-date=12 November 2017|work=The Guardian|date=19 October 2014}}

As well as being a talented musician, Berners was a skilled artist and writer. He appears in many books and biographies of the period, notably portrayed as Lord Merlin in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love.{{cite news |last=Birch |first=Dinah |date=11 October 2014 |title=Composer, novelist, poet, painter and hedonistic host – the real Lord Merlin and his glamorous, desperate world |url= https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/10/mad-boy-lord-berners-my-grandmother-and-me-sofka-zinovieff-review| newspaper= The Guardian|location=London| access-date= 28 January 2016 }} He was a friend of the Mitford family and close to Diana Guinness, although Berners was politically apathetic and was deeply dismayed by the outbreak of the Second World War.{{cite book|title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 59|page=542}}

Berners was notorious for his eccentricity,{{Sfnp|Amory |1999}} dyeing pigeons at his house in Faringdon in vibrant colours and at one point entertaining Penelope Betjeman's horse Moti to tea. The interior of the house was enlivened with joke books and notices, such as "Mangling Done Here". Patrick Leigh Fermor, who stayed as a guest, recalled:

{{blockquote|

"No dogs admitted" at the top of the stairs and "Prepare to meet thy God" painted inside a wardrobe. When people complimented him on his delicious peaches he would say "Yes, they are ham-fed". And he used to put Woolworth pearl necklaces round his dogs' necks [Berners had a dalmatian, Heber-Percy the retriever, Pansy Lamb] and when a guest, rather perturbed, ran up saying "Fido has lost his necklace", G said, "Oh dear, I'll have to get another out of the safe."{{Sfnp|Amory |1999}}

}}

Other visitors to Faringdon included Igor Stravinsky, Salvador Dalí, H. G. Wells, and Tom Driberg.{{cite news |last= Cooke |first= Rachel |title= The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me review – a family saga with all the trimmings |url= https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/19/the-mad-boy-lord-berners-review-sofka-zinovieff-robert-heber-percy-victoria| date= 19 October 2014|newspaper= The Observer |location=London| access-date= 28 January 2016 }}

His Rolls-Royce automobile contained a small clavichord keyboard which could be stored beneath the front seat. Near his house he had a 100-foot viewing tower, Faringdon Folly, constructed as a birthday present in 1935 for Heber-Percy, a notice at the entrance reading: "Members of the Public committing suicide from this tower do so at their own risk".{{cite web |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/3289304/Cultured-country-house.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130502004333/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/3289304/Cultured-country-house.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=2 May 2013 |title=Cultured country house |last = Wilkes |first = Roger |publisher=Telegraph.co.uk |access-date=2 July 2013}} Berners also drove around his estate wearing a pig's-head mask to frighten the locals.{{cite news |last=Thompson |first= Damian |date=20 September 2008 |title=Review: Lord Berners by Peter Dickinson |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews/3560962/Review-Lord-Berners-by-Peter-Dickinson.html |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph |location=London |access-date=14 October 2014}}

He was subject throughout his life to periods of depression which became more pronounced during the Second World War, when he had a nervous breakdown. He lived in lodgings for a period in Oxford where his friend Maurice Bowra got him a job cataloguing books. Following the production of his last ballet Les Sirènes (1946) he lost his eyesight.

=Death and epitaph=

He died in 1950 aged 66 at Faringdon House, bequeathing his estate to Robert Heber-Percy, who lived there until his own death in 1987.{{Sfnp| Zinovieff |2014}} His ashes are buried in the lawn near the house.{{Cite web|url=http://www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/node/7644|title=Oops – we can't find that page}}

Berners wrote his own epitaph, which appears on his gravestone:

:Here lies Lord Berners

:One of the learners

:His great love of learning

:May earn him a burning

:But, Praise the Lord!

:He seldom was bored.

Music

Berners' early music, written during his period at the British embassy in Rome during World War I, was avant-garde in style. These are mostly songs (in English, French and German) and piano pieces, many written using his original name, Gerald Tyrwhitt. Later pieces were composed in a more accessible style, such as the Trois morceaux, Fantaisie espagnole (1919), Fugue in C minor (1924), and several ballets, including The Triumph of Neptune (1926) (based on a story by Sacheverell Sitwell) and Luna Park, commissioned for a C. B. Cochran London revue in 1930.[https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/61/Luna-Park--Gerald-Hugh-Tyrwhitt-Wilson/ Luna Park, Chester Music] His final three ballets, A Wedding Bouquet, Cupid and Psyche and Les Sirènes, were all written in collaboration with his friends Frederick Ashton (as choreographer) and Constant Lambert (as music director).

Berners was also friendly with William Walton. Walton dedicated Belshazzar's Feast to Berners, and Lambert arranged a Caprice péruvien for orchestra, from Lord Berners' opera Le carrosse du St Sacrement. There are also scores for two films: The Halfway House (1943) and Nicholas Nickleby (1947), for which Ealing's music director, Ernest Irving, provided the orchestrations.Lane, Philip. [https://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=8.555223&catNum=555223&filetype=About%20this%20Recording&language=English# Notes to Naxos CD 8.555223] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211004154334/https://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=8.555223&catNum=555223&filetype=About%20this%20Recording&language=English |date=4 October 2021 }} (2021)

Berners himself once said that he would have been a better composer if he had accepted fewer lunch invitations. However, English composer Gavin Bryars, quoted in Peter Dickinson's biography of Berners, disagrees saying: "If he had spent more time on his music he could have become a duller composer". Dinah Birch, reviewing The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me, a biography of Berners written by Robert's granddaughter, Sofka Zinovieff, concurs saying: "Had he committed himself to composition as his life's work, perhaps his legacy would have been more substantial. But his music might have been less innovative, for its amateur quality — 'amateur in the best sense', as Stravinsky insisted – is inseparable from its distinctive flair".

Berners was the subject of BBC Radio 3's Composer of the Week programmes in December 2014.{{cite web | title= Radio 3 Composer of the Week |url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02ns5xh| author=| website= BBC Online |date= 5 December 2014| access-date= 26 January 2016}}

Literature

Berners wrote four autobiographical works and some novels, mostly of a humorous nature. All were published and some went into translations. His autobiographies First Childhood (1934), A Distant Prospect (1945), The Château de Résenlieu (published posthumously){{Sfnp|Jones| 2003| p=3}} and Dresden are both witty and affectionate.{{according to whom| date= January 2016}}

Berners obtained some notoriety for his roman à clef The Girls of Radcliff Hall (punning on the name of the famous lesbian writer), initially published privately under the pseudonym "Adela Quebec",{{sfnm |Amory |1999| Jones |2003 |2pp= 9,101,143| Lyon Clark |2001|3p=143}} in which he depicts himself and his circle of friends, such as Cecil Beaton and Oliver Messel, as members of a girls' school. This frivolous satire, which was privately published and distributed, had a modish success in the 1930s. The original edition is rare; rumour has it that Beaton was responsible for gathering most of the already scarce copies of the book and destroying them.{{Sfnp| Tamagne |2005|p=124}} However, the book was reprinted in 2000 with the help of Dorothy Lygon.{{cite web|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1362599/Lady-Dorothy-Heber-Percy.html|title=Lady Dorothy Heber Percy|date=17 November 2001|access-date=24 September 2017|via=www.telegraph.co.uk}}

His other novels, including Romance of a Nose, Count Omega and The Camel are a mixture of whimsy and gentle satire.

Bibliography

File:Blason des 13e et 14e barons Berners.svg

=Fiction=

1936 – The Camel
1937 – The Girls of Radcliff Hall
1941 – Far From the Madding War
1941 – Count Omega
1941 – Percy Wallingford and Mr. Pidger
1941 – The Romance of a Nose

[See Collected Tales and Fantasies, New York, 1999]

=Non-fiction=

1934 – First Childhood
1945 – A Distant Prospect
2000 - The Chateau de Resenlieu
2008 - Dresden

Legacy

In January 2016, he was played by actor Christopher Godwin in episode 3 of the BBC Radio 4 drama What England Owes.{{cite web | title= Radio 4 Afternoon Drama: What England Owes| url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b036kscx| author=| website= BBC Online | access-date= 26 January 2016}}

Sources

{{cite book |last= Amory |first= Mark |title= Lord Berners: The Last Eccentric |date= 3 June 1999 |publisher= Pimlico |isbn= 978-0712665780 |edition= New |url-access= registration |url= https://archive.org/details/lordbernerslaste00amor }}
{{cite book | last= Berners | first= Lord Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson | title= First Childhood |publisher= Constable & Co Ltd |date=1942| asin= B002S9ZE5C }}
{{cite book | author-last1= Dickinson | author-first1= Peter | author-link1= Peter Dickinson (musician)| title= Lord Berners: Composer, Writer, Painter |date=18 September 2008| publisher= Boydell Press | isbn=978-1843833925| edition = Annotated}}
{{cite book |last= Jones |first= Bryony |title= The Music of Lord Berners (1883–1950): The Versatile Peer |date=2 January 2003 |publisher= Ashgate Publishing Ltd| edition= Illustrated| isbn=978-0754608523 }}
{{cite book |last= Lyon Clark |first= Beverly |title= Regendering the school story: Sassy sissies and tattling tomboys |date=11 January 2001| publisher= Routledge| isbn=978-0415928915}}
{{cite book |last= Tamagne |first= Florence | title= History of Homosexuality in Europe Between the Wars, Vol. I & II Combined |date=1 November 2005 |publisher= Algora Publishing | isbn=978-0875863566}}
{{cite book |last= Zinovieff |first= Sofka |author-link= Sofka Zinovieff |title= The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother And Me |date=16 October 2014 |publisher= Jonathan Cape| isbn=978-0224096591}}

References

{{succession box | before=Raymond Robert Tyrwhitt-Wilson | title=Baron Berners | after=Vera Ruby Williams | years=1918–1950}}

External links

{{FadedPage|id=Berners, Lord (Gerald Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners)|name=Lord Berners|author=yes}}
[http://oxonblueplaques.org.uk/plaques/berners.html Oxfordshire Blue Plaque to Lord Berners] erected on Faringdon Folly on 6 April 2013.
[https://gregorioprieto.org/obras/lord-bernerds/ Portrait of Lord Beners] painted by Spanish painter Gregorio Prieto.

Category:1883 births

Category:1950 deaths

Category:19th-century English LGBTQ people

Category:20th-century British classical composers

Category:20th-century British male musicians

Category:20th-century English composers

Category:20th-century English LGBTQ people

Category:20th-century English male writers

Category:20th-century English nobility

Category:20th-century English novelists

Category:Ballets Russes composers

Category:British ballet composers