Why Not Say What Happened?

As you know, we at Lucindaville are fond of bold, brazen, and fascinating women. While they make great subjects to read about, the sad truth is many of them were abysmal mothers. One of our favorites is that dangerous muse Caroline Blackwood. Recently, her daughter, Ivana Lowell, wrote her memoir entitled Why Not Say What Happened? What happened was extreme wealth, extreme neglect, sexual abuse, bohemian stepparents, disfigurement, questions of paternity, art, literature, birth, death and Miramax.

For someone who loves biographies, these "memoirs of spurned children" are often tough to read. There is little doubt that a child raised by and alcoholic mother and Robert Lowell as a stepfather might grow up to be a big old alcoholic herself. It's impossible to "name drop" when your family has ties to the Guinness and Tree clans or when your mother was married to Lucien Freud and Robert Lowell and bedded Walker Evans.

No matter how charmed one's life may be or may seem to others, watching your mother die a rather inelegant death is ameliorated by no amount of privilege. Finding out after she dies that your father is not your father adds salt to the wound. In all this tumult, Lowell, draws on her humor which remains in tact.

""They fuck you up, your mum and dad," Philip Larkin wrote. Yes, of course they do; everyone knows that. But it would help to know who your parents are so you can blame the right ones for the fuck up."

One might assume that if she had not kept a modicum of humor, Lowell might well be dead. The fact that she is still with us, is reason enough to read memoir.


Like her mother, Ivana Lowell wrote a cookbook. Check out Cookbook Of The Day for recipes and a juicy Miramax story.

Dangerous Muse

Girl In Bed Caroline Blackwood by Lucian Freud

I have a lot of books and one book leads to another. At Cookbook Of The Day, I was going to feature Darling, You Shouldn’t Have Gone To So Much Trouble, by Caroline Blackwood. Before I could write about it, I searched for my copy of Caroline Blackwood’s biography Dangerous Muse, by Nancy Schoenberger.


I searched for days and couldn’t find it and finally, it showed up. I read about the cookbook, and I continued reading, then I went back to the beginning and started re-reading all over again. Then I re-read Great Granny Webster and then I re-read Robert Lowell’s The Dolphin, about his break up with Elizabeth Hardwick and his relationship with Caroline. Then I moved on to In The Pink, Caroline’s book on fox-hunting. By now weeks have passed and the cookbook is still sitting on my desk.

So after all this, Darling, You Shouldn’t Have Gone To So Much Trouble is on Cookbook Of The Day and here are some highlights of all my reading.

The biography of Caroline Gordon was entitled Dangerous Muse because she was just that.
She was muse to three husbands:

Lucian Freud by Clifford Coffin

Lucian Freud – famous painter

Israel Citkowitz – famous composer

Robert Lowell

Robert Lowell – famous writer

Then, in no particular order, she was muse to several lovers:

Caroline Blackwood by Walker Evans

Walker Evans – famous photographer

Andrew Harvey – famous classics scholar

Cyril Connolly – famous critic

Ivan Moffat – famous producer

Many people believed that Evans was the father of her daughter, Ivana but it was actually, Moffat. Connolly tried valiantly to woo Caroline to no avail, and though he was married twice, Connolly was most probably gay. Andrew Harvey was definitely gay, but he was more than willing to have sex with Caroline.

While I am fond of Blackwood’s fiction, her prose really shines. My favorite of Blackwood’s books is her exploration of hunting, In the Pink. She looks at both sides of the fox hunting debate with humor and history.

“The rich are different, claimed Scott Fitzgerald, and if he had moved in English fox-hunting circles he might have had to say that the rich who fox-hunt are different from those who don’t.”

Of the vegan, anti-cruelty, bloke who refused to help an abandoned fox cub she writes:

“He was prepared to kill a huntsman because he hated the huntsman cruelty to foxes, but the following morning he was going to that the fox-cub out of his stable and send it off to almost certain perdition.”

On the Duchess who continued to ride side-saddle:

"Hunting in the 1930’s, the duchess of Marlborough could choose her saddle, and she accepted the responsibility if the love of the costume that went with it brought her unnecessary pain and unpleasantness.”

If you have never read Caroline Blackwood, give her a try. Or you could read Dangerous Muse, but be prepared to be enthralled and watch as your nightstand fills with additional reading.