First Childhood - Softcover

Berners, Lord Gerald Hugh Tyrwitt-Wilson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 188598331X ISBN 13: 9781885983312

Publisher: Turtle Point Press / Helen Marx Books, 2000

Synopsis

"Quietly remarkable autobiography alive with unforgotten terrors, unforgiven indignities"...Alan Hollingsworth

About this title

About the Author

Lord Berners (1883-1950) was a composer, novelist, painter, memoirist, conspicuous aesthete and the real life character on whom Nancy Mitford based Lord Merlin in The Pursuit of Love. This versatile peer has been called the English Satie. His ballets have been choreographed by Balanchine and Ashton.

Reviews

In the 1930s, the English composer Lord Berners wrote two memoirs: First Childhood, which covers his earliest memories and his years in prep school, and A Distant Prospect, about his years at Eton. While the former could conceivably be read alone, the second could not, and they should be considered as a whole. Berners had a sharp eye, which manifests in many beautiful descriptions, even of relatively banal subjects like the math master's voice ("the same milk-and-water voice upon which a University twang lay like a thin layer of vinegar"). As one might expect of "the English Satie," Berners also had a sharp wit, which is best when tempered by self-deprecation, as when he describes his attempt to mount a puppet Rhinegold at home only to have his novel steam device dissolve the tails of his Rhine maidens, or when blunted by genuine affection, as in the often hilarious descriptions of his familyAhe describes his aristocratic grandmother as looking like "Savonarola masquerading as Betsy Trotwood." But unmoderated, his critical edge can become simply mean, as in his descriptions of a Jewish schoolmate and a tomboyish neighbor. Aside from his usually appealing humor, these books also serve as an interesting record of a minimally closeted gay man on the much discussed eroticism of English boarding schools and the Victorian determination to breed "manliness" through ardent devotion to sport. As a whole, this is a picture of a time and a class with all of its virtues and failings.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this memoir of his earliest youth, first published in 1934 in Great Britain, Lord Berners captures the devilish enchantment and perilous anxieties of an upper-class schoolboy, living at home with Mum, and perched on the brink of adolescence and also at the outer limit of the Victorian age. Berners (1883 - 1950), sometimes called the ``English Satie,'' eventually enjoyed a glamorous life as a composer, style-setter, homosexual, art-lover, and well-heeled host. But here he plants himself firmly in the ``dreadful plainness''of England as it lunged forward into the1890s. Dismal at sport in a world which exalted it, and precociously drawn to the arts (perish the thought!), he was sent off to boarding school at the age of six. He recounts his traumas and yearnings there in humorous and honest detail, casting himself much like ``Blake's little figure . . . stretching out its ladder to the moon.'' The unspoken strains of adolescence also vie for young Berners - s attention. At last his dangerous attraction for Longworth (and his first awareness of homosexual longing) is halted in a boyish escapade involving stolen cigarettes and moonlight bathing the school rooftop. Then summer intervenes with its athletic outings, picnics, and family intrigues. Lord Berners reflects on those fortunately - pre-Freudian, pre-Havelock Ellis generations.'' His spirit of candor and his literary panache combine to recreate a now-vanished youth, as well as the innocence of a larger bygone age. Out of the ``squalid dustbin of school life,'' Berners has extricated the stuff of romance. Though his privileged upbringing has often been bashed elsewhere, now it comes in for a well-earned share of nostalgic magic. So close one eye, squint politely, and read the words of Berners as the starry prelude to a life not yet lived. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Turtle Point Press / Helen Marx Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 188598331X
• ISBN 13: 9781885983312
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 233