A Distant Prospect - Softcover

Berners, Lord Gerald Hugh Tyrwitt-Wilson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1885983328 ISBN 13: 9781885983329

Publisher: Turtle Point Press / Helen Marx Books, 2000

Synopsis

A witty, poignant account of Eton, early adolescence, awakining to the spell of Wagner.

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 this sequel to First Childhood (see p. 1246), Lord Berners looks back on his years at Eton with enough distance to forgive the indignities and recall the terrors with honesty and humor. He begins and ends by exploring the twin adolescent mysteries of sex and schooling, as if therein lay the key to the world. Given Lord Berners's later life, as chronicled in Mark Amory - s Lord Berners: the Last Eccentric (1998), his time at Eton contains all the richness of a chrysalis - and then some. According to Berners, he owes to his few interrupted school years his full adult awakening. And so, in this slim volume, he charts his boyhood trials in one of England's most exalted institutions, attacking the cruel insensitivity of his teachers and his rejection by peers for being what society deemed as a disaster - an aesthete, incompetent at sports, obsessed with boys, and enchanted by Wagner. Yet out of his struggle, Berners discovered that intellect can ``flash and sparkle and agreeably illuminate.'' To this realization he clung (and clings) with brio. He longs for the transcendent brilliance of Marston, a friend whose social standing his family would never accept, and later for the classic beauty and style of Deniston. He is generous in his descriptions of tutors and icons of his social class. And as his blind devotion to his mother subsides, he revels freely in opera and succumbs to reveries about the way women dress. (Meanwhile, the rest of the boys scuttle off to the smoking room to review the day - s events in sport.) Lord Berners is clearly seduced by artistic luxury and enchanted by title. Yet when at last he leaves Eton, he - s no longer the shy boy bettered by girls on horseback. He - s is a master of subtlety, a snake charmer who never lets us peer into the troubling depths of his basket. The two volumes of memoir are marvelous together. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Turtle Point Press / Helen Marx Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1885983328
• ISBN 13: 9781885983329
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176