Caroline Blackwood
Encyclopedia
Lady Caroline Maureen Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood (16 July 1931 – 14 February 1996) was a writer and artist's muse, and the eldest child of the 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 into an Anglo-Irish
aristocratic
family from Ulster
at 4 Hans Crescent in Knightsbridge
, her parents' London
home. She 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.
Caroline’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 Lady 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 her and Freud's marriage on 9 December 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, Lady 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 Robert Silvers, the founder and co-editor of The New York Review of Books, although her daughter Ivana's biological father turned out to be another boyfriend, Ivan Moffat
. Her marriage to Israel Citkowitz was over, though Citkowitz 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), the title of which is a line from the Percy French song 'The Mountains of Mourne', 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.
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. On 15 August 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 28 September 1971, and after obtaining divorces from their respective spouses, Blackwood and Lowell were married on 21 October 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.
To avoid tax, Blackwood left England in 1977 and went to live in an apartment at the great Georgian mansion of Castletown House
, County Kildare
, Ireland
, which was owned by her cousin Desmond Guinness
. Ten years later in 1987 she returned to the United States, settling in a large, comfortable house in Sag Harbor, Long Island
, where, although her powers were greatly depleted by alcoholism, she continued to write, including two vivid memoirs of Princess Margaret and Francis Bacon
, published in the New York Review of Books in 1992.
During her final illness she never lost her dark, macabre humour. On her deathbed Anna Haycraft
brought her some holy water from Lourdes
which was accidentally spilled on her bed sheets. “I might have caught my death,” she muttered.
Blackwood died on 14 February 1996 from cancer at The Mayfair Hotel on Park Avenue
in New York aged 64. She was survived by her two younger daughters Eugenia (b. 1963), who is married to the actor Julian Sands
, and Ivana (b. 1966), her son Sheridan, her sister Lady Perdita Blackwood and her mother, who died two years later, aged 91.
Basil Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava
Basil Sheridan Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava DL , styled Earl of Ava until 1918, was a Conservative politician and soldier.-Early life and family:...
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
Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time...
, then to the composer Israel Citkowitz and finally to the poet Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
, 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 into an Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until...
aristocratic
Aristocracy (class)
The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...
family from Ulster
Ulster
Ulster is one of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the north of the island. In ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial...
at 4 Hans Crescent in Knightsbridge
Knightsbridge
Knightsbridge is a road which gives its name to an exclusive district lying to the west of central London. The road runs along the south side of Hyde Park, west from Hyde Park Corner, spanning the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea...
, her parents' London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
home. She was, she admitted, "scantily educated" at Rockport School
Rockport School
Rockport School is an independent mixed ability school for boys and girls from 3 years to 16 years.Situated on the shore of Belfast Lough in Craigavad, a village in County Down, Northern Ireland between Belfast and Bangor....
in County Down
County Down
-Cities:*Belfast *Newry -Large towns:*Dundonald*Newtownards*Bangor-Medium towns:...
, at Brilliantmont in Lausanne
Lausanne
Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...
, and at Downham
Downham
Downham is a district located in south-east London, occupying much of the boundary between the London Borough of Lewisham and the London Borough of Bromley; it is the name of an electoral ward covering much of the area on the Lewisham side...
in Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
. After a finishing school in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
she was presented as a debutante
Debutante
A débutante is a young lady from an aristocratic or upper class family who has reached the age of maturity, and as a new adult, is introduced to society at a formal "début" presentation. It should not be confused with a Debs...
in 1949 at a ball held at Londonderry House
Londonderry House
Londonderry House was an aristocratic townhouse situated on Park Lane in the Mayfair district of London, England.The house was the home to the Irish, titled family called the Stewarts who are better known as the Marquesses of Londonderry....
. Plump, ungainly and lacking in confidence as a teenager, she soon blossomed into a captivating blonde beauty with startlingly large blue eyes.
Career
LadyLady
The word lady is a polite term for a woman, specifically the female equivalent to, or spouse of, a lord or gentleman, and in many contexts a term for any adult woman...
Caroline’s first job was with Hulton Press as a secretary, but she was soon given small reporting jobs by Claud Cockburn
Claud Cockburn
Francis Claud Cockburn was a British journalist. He was well known proponent of communism. His saying, "believe nothing until it has been officially denied" is widely quoted in journalistic studies.He was the second cousin of novelist Evelyn Waugh....
. Ann Fleming, the wife of "James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
" author Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
, introduced Lady Caroline to Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time...
, and the two eloped to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
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 her and Freud's marriage on 9 December 1953 she became a striking figure in London's bohemian circles; the Gargoyle Club and Colony Room replaced Belgravia
Belgravia
Belgravia is a district of central London in the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Noted for its immensely expensive residential properties, it is one of the wealthiest districts in the world...
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
Francis Bacon (painter)
Francis Bacon , was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, austere, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. Bacon's painterly but abstract figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds...
and her later fiction was a literary version of their view of humanity.
In the early 1960s, Lady Caroline Blackwood began contributing to Encounter
Encounter (magazine)
Encounter was a literary magazine, founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and early neoconservative author Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1991...
, The London Magazine
London Magazine
The London Magazine is a historied publication of arts, literature and miscellaneous interests. Its history ranges nearly three centuries and several reincarnations, publishing the likes of William Wordsworth, William S...
, and other periodicals on subjects such as beatniks, Ulster
Ulster
Ulster is one of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the north of the island. In ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial...
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
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
, 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 Robert Silvers, the founder and co-editor of The New York Review of Books, although her daughter Ivana's biological father turned out to be another boyfriend, Ivan Moffat
Ivan Moffat
Ivan Moffat was a British screenwriter and associate producer who, with Fred Guiol, was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for adapting Edna Ferber's novel Giant into the film Giant....
. Her marriage to Israel Citkowitz was over, though Citkowitz 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), the title of which is a line from the Percy French song 'The Mountains of Mourne', 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
Berkshire
Berkshire is a historic county in the South of England. It is also often referred to as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of the royal residence of Windsor Castle in the county; this usage, which dates to the 19th century at least, was recognised by the Queen in 1957, and...
, 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.
Personal Life and Family
Lady Caroline's marriage to Lucian Freud disintegrated soon after they tied the knot and in 1957 Blackwood moved to New YorkNew York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
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
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
in 1958. On 15 August 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
Ivan Moffat
Ivan Moffat was a British screenwriter and associate producer who, with Fred Guiol, was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for adapting Edna Ferber's novel Giant into the film Giant....
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
Bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder or bipolar affective disorder, historically known as manic–depressive disorder, is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood with or without one or...
poet Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
. Lowell was at the time a visiting professor at All Souls College, Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
. Their son, Sheridan, was born on 28 September 1971, and after obtaining divorces from their respective spouses, Blackwood and Lowell were married on 21 October 1972. They lived in London and Milgate in Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
. 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.
To avoid tax, Blackwood left England in 1977 and went to live in an apartment at the great Georgian mansion of Castletown House
Castletown House
Castletown House, Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland's is a Palladian country house built in 1722 for William Conolly, the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. It formed the centrepiece of a estate...
, County Kildare
County Kildare
County Kildare is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Mid-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Kildare. Kildare County Council is the local authority for the county...
, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, which was owned by her cousin Desmond Guinness
Desmond Guinness
Hon. Desmond Guinness is an Irish author on Georgian art and architecture and a conservationist.He was the second son of the author and brewer Bryan Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne and Diana Mitford...
. Ten years later in 1987 she returned to the United States, settling in a large, comfortable house in Sag Harbor, Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, where, although her powers were greatly depleted by alcoholism, she continued to write, including two vivid memoirs of Princess Margaret and Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
, published in the New York Review of Books in 1992.
During her final illness she never lost her dark, macabre humour. On her deathbed Anna Haycraft
Anna Haycraft
Anna Haycraft was a British writer and essayist who wrote under the nom de plume Alice Thomas Ellis...
brought her some holy water from Lourdes
Lourdes
Lourdes is a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in south-western France.Lourdes is a small market town lying in the foothills of the Pyrenees, famous for the Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes occurred in 1858 to Bernadette Soubirous...
which was accidentally spilled on her bed sheets. “I might have caught my death,” she muttered.
Blackwood died on 14 February 1996 from cancer at The Mayfair Hotel on Park Avenue
Park Avenue (Manhattan)
Park Avenue is a wide boulevard that carries north and southbound traffic in New York City borough of Manhattan. Through most of its length, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenue to the east....
in New York aged 64. She was survived by her two younger daughters Eugenia (b. 1963), who is married to the actor Julian Sands
Julian Sands
Julian M. Sands is an English actor, known for his roles in the Best Picture nominee The Killing Fields, the cult film Warlock, A Room with a View, Arachnophobia, Vatel, the television series 24 and as Jor-El in the television series Smallville.-Career:Sands began his film career appearing in...
, and Ivana (b. 1966), her son Sheridan, her sister Lady Perdita Blackwood and her mother, who died two years later, aged 91.