A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers

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More About This Book

Overview

On a hill above the Italian village of Ravello sits the Villa Cimbrone, a place of fantasy and make-believe. The characters who move through Michael Holroyd’s new book are destined never to meet, yet the Villa Cimbrone and one man unite them all.

This elegiac work is about the quest of unearthing and recounting the stories of women always on the periphery of the respectable world—-from Alice Keppel, the mistress of both the second Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales; to Eve Fairfax, a muse of Auguste Rodin; to the novelist Violet Trefusis, the lover of Vita Sackville-West.

Also on the margins is the elusive biographer, who on occasion turns an appraising eye upon himself as part of his investigations in the maze of biography.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Master raconteur and biographer of Bernard Shaw and Lytton Strachey, the always elegant Holroyd is at the top of his game in the final installment of a trilogy (after Basil Street Blues and Mosaic)—sadly for the world of publishing, he says it is his swan song. In this dizzying group biography, relating to the significant women in the 60-year lifespan of Ernest Beckett (who died in 1917), second Lord Grimthorpe, Holroyd explores not only the well-known life of Violet Trefusis, the novelist and notorious lover of Vita Sackville-West, but also Alice Keppel, with whom Grimthorpe sired the illegitimate Trefusis; and Eve Fairfax, muse to Auguste Rodin, as well as Grimthorpe’s onetime fiancée (she lived to almost 107 without marrying). Much of the book is also devoted to the delicious ins and outs of the biographer’s art, in which Holroyd has few peers. Getting together with Gore Vidal in the novelist’s Italian aerie (which was built for one of Grimthorpe’s legitimate children) is just one of the highlights of guilty-pleasure name-dropping. Holroyd writes like an angel and memorably draws the rivulets of these fluid lives together. 8 pages of b&w illus. (Aug.)
Library Journal
Award-winning biographer Holroyd takes on an interesting task here: he starts with the Villa Cimbrone, located in the hills above Ravello, Italy, and then profiles the intriguing people who have passed through its halls, e.g., Rodin muse Eve Fairfax and Vita Sackville-West's lover, Violet Trefusis. Absorbing for the smart set.
More Reviews (4) Fewer Reviews
Library Journal
In his preface Holroyd calls this the "third and final volume in a series that began with Basil Street Blues." That book was a memoir of his youth; this one is more biographical and labyrinthine. Eminent biographer Holroyd (Lytton Strachey: The New Biography) inserts himself into the book as he describes his investigative path in exploring the life of Ernest Beckett, second Baron Grimthorpe, and the women (wife, mistresses, daughters) in Beckett's life, centering on the Villa Cimbrone in Italy. Readers familiar with Edwardian England will recognize and learn more about Alice Keppel, mistress of the future Edward VII, and her daughter Violet Keppel Trefusis, among others. Eventually, Holroyd meets and travels with Beckett's granddaughter to the villa. VERDICT The book is best for the reader well studied in this era and its learning; it has untranslated French and Latin phrases scattered throughout. Fans of the exploits of the early 20th-century British nobility and literary aristocracy will enjoy this gently entertaining history. The lack of source notes will make it hard, however, to trace the documents from which Holroyd quotes.—Megan Hodge, Randolph-Macon Coll. Lib., Ashland, VA
Kirkus Reviews

An elegiac work of literary archaeology by the knighted British biographer of Bernard Shaw and Lytton Strachey.

As the third volume of his memoirs—afterBasil Street Blues (2000) andMosaic (2004)—which similarly offer an intriguing mix of biography and autobiography ("I seek invisibility behind the subjects I am trying to bring alive on the page"), Holroyd (A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, and Their Remarkable Families, 2009, etc.) focuses here on the lives of two Bloomsbury-era women who were linked to the same man. Visits to the literary mecca Villa Cimbrone in Ravello, Italy, put the author on the track of a former owner of the house, an English dilettante, ex-banker, widower and Edwardian patron of the arts, Ernest Beckett turned Lord Grimthorpe, who commissioned a bust in 1901 from Rodin of Beckett's fiancée, Eve Fairfax, only to jilt her soon after. Left with the bill, Evenonetheless charmed the great, now-aged French sculptor, and over the next eight years their friendship flowered. The bust eventually sold (with his permission) in order to help support this intelligent, cultured woman who would remain unmarried and of scant independent means. Holroyd was able to locate Eve's precious diary, which he calls her book of secrets, in which she accumulated autographs, photos of dear friends, scraps of poems and memories that record what she believed was a "useful" life. The other main protagonist is the legendary literary sprite, novelist and muse Violet Trefusis, Beckett's illegitimate daughter. Holroyd delved into the novels and life of Trefusis, delineating her torrid, life-transforming affair with Vita Sackville-West, and he quotes amply from their correspondence for a lively, satisfying adventure. Literary enthusiasts will delight in this lovely narrative for its own sake.

Purportedly Holroyd's "last book," this is an elegant literary study by a seasoned biographer and wonderfully engaging writer.

Dwight Garner
Mr. Holroyd is an impeccable writer and researcher, a man whose books are packed with intricate detail yet retain a buoyancy. They are aerodynamic; they run as silently as gliders…[A Book of Secrets] is a richly marbled meditation not only on the lives of several remarkable women but also on the art of biography itself.
—The New York Times
Toni Bentley
From the first page A Book of Secrets casts the spell of a time long gone, of loves endured and lost, expectations dashed on the rocks of reality, of inner desires forever stilled, casting their shadows into history. It is written with the kind of elegance, ease and simplicity possible only from a master craftsman who has flown far beyond any learning curve and is relishing his free fall. He carries us as if on a magic carpet from one character to the next, and one time period to the next, with consummate grace. Holroyd is a kind of Fred Astaire on the page, his many steps becoming one grand, profound design.
—The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780374115586
  • Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • Publication date: 8/2/2011
  • Pages: 272
  • Sales rank: 86,200
  • Product dimensions: 5.60 (w) x 8.54 (h) x 0.92 (d)

Meet the Author

Michael Holroyd is the author of acclaimed biographies of George Bernard Shaw, the painter Augustus John, Lytton Strachey, and Ellen Terry and Henry Irving, as well as two memoirs, Basil Street Blues and Mosaic. Knighted for his services to literature, he is the president emeritus of the Royal Society of Literature and the only nonfiction writer to have been awarded the David Cohen British Prize for Literature. His previous book, A Strange Eventful History, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography in 2009. He lives in London with his wife, the novelist Margaret Drabble.

Read an Excerpt

Book of Secrets, A

PART I

Acknowledgements

I am particularly grateful to my two dedicatees, Tiziana Masucci and Catherine Till, who guided me so sympathetically and with such perseverance during the long, interrupted quest that grew into this book.

Others who have helped me include Vivien Allen, Lucy Beckett, the late Sir Martyn Beckett, Michael Berry, Mary Rose Blacker, Simon Blow, Virginia Charteris, Judy Collingwood, Douglas Croft, Peter Dench, Charles Dodsworth, Paul Evans, the late Fiona Fairfax, James Fergusson, the Rev. Sir Timothy Forbes-Adams, Ken Giggal, Victoria Glendinning, the late Christopher Grimthorpe, Marion J. Hare, Felicity Harrison, Marjorie Harrison, Frances Holt, David Hughes, the late Lady Serena James, Judith Landry, Helen Langdon, Rupert Lycett-Green, Adam Nicolson, the late Nigel Nicolson, Suzanne O'Farrell, Roger Packham, John Phillips, the late Georgina Ratcliffe, David S. Rymer, Harvey Sachs, Anne Sidamon-Eristoff, the late Sir Reresby Sitwell, Diana Souhami, Alexander and Serena Sparks, Jean Strouse, Hugo Vickers, Gore Vidal, Giorgio Vuilleumier, Jane Wellesley, Ursula and David Westbury.

I am also indebted to the following libraries, galleries and institutions: Eton College Library (archivist Penelope Hatfield), Fairfax House(Peter Brown), Johannesburg Art Gallery (Jillian Carman, Eleanor Lorimer and Thembinkosi Mabaso), Leeds Metropolitan Library (Professor Lori Beckett), The Retreat at York (chief executive Derek Thomson), Tate Library and Archive, Millbank (Lisa Cole, Gallery Records Assistant Curator, and John Langdon), City of York Library Service (local studies librarian Amanda Howard) and the Victoria and Albert Museum (Marjorie Trusted, deputy custodian, sculpture department, and Linda Lloyd-Jones).

I would like to thank Caradoc King and Robert Lescher, my British and American literary agents, for having steered the text so tenderly towards publication. The book has benefited from the enterprise of my publisher Clara Farmer and the scrutiny of my editor Juliet Brooke at Chatto & Windus; also from the attention and encouragement of Jonathan Galassi and Courtney Hodell at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I am grateful to the eagle-eyed copy-editor Ilsa Yardley for saving me from various humiliations, and for the work of my jacket designer Nayon Cho.

Finally I thank Margaret, my wife, for her patience and incredulous encouragement.

Copyright © 2010 by Michael Holroyd

Customer Reviews

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Sort by: Showing all of 6 Customer Reviews

  • Posted August 6, 2011

    Book

    This is a very good book i think

    1 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted August 15, 2011

    Not what I expected

    Disappointed.....hard to recommend

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