Edith Olivier at the Persephone Post

The Persephone Post is a great blog run by the Persephone Press in London. We have mentioned them before in our post on Daisy Ashford. At Cookbook Of The Day we have posted about several of their cookery books including; Good Food on the Aga, Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekyll, and They Can't Ration These.

The blog features a picture an a blurb about it. Quite simple but always thought provoking. They very often feature something near and dear to the hearts and minds of Lucindaville.

This painting of Edith Olivier is one of them. Not only is it Edith Olivier but it was painted by Rex Whistler. And in the painting Edith Olivier is surrounded by books and we love images of women reading!

Enjoy.

Rex Whistler

Rex Whistler, Cecil Beaton, Georgia Sitwell, William Walton, Stephen
Tennant, Teresa Jungman, and Zita Jungman. Photographed by Cecil Beaton.

Andrew Graham-Dixon set the stage in his Sunday Telegraph review of the 2006 Rex Whistler exhibition at the Brighton Museum.

"October 1927 Cecil Beaton contrived a photograph of “the bright young things”, as they styled themselves, to which he gave the laconic title On The Bridge, Wilsford. Seven young men and women pose for the camera, all dressed up, in ruffs and frills, patterned silk waistcoats and faux-rustic breeches, as courtly versions of the shepherds and shepherdesses of Arcadia. Beaton himself is there, along with Georgia Sitwell, Zita and “Baby” Jungman, Stephen Tennant, the composer William Walton and the painter-illustrator Rex Whistler. Soon afterwards Osbert Sitwell took the whole group to visit Lytton Strachey at nearby Ham Spray. In characteristically acerbic fashion, Strachey pronounced them “perfectly divine … strange creatures with just a few feathers where brains ought to be.”

Zita Jungman, William Walton, Cecil Beaton, Stephen Tennant, Georgia
Sitwell, Teresa Jungman, and Rex Whistler. Photographed by Cecil Beaton.

Rex Whistler by Cecil Beaton

Rex Whistler showed a knack for art as a child. At age 8, he produced this silhouette of his brother, Laurence, aged 2.

Finding the Royal Academy too stifling, he moved to the Slade School and came into his own. Unlike many of his generation, Whistler was never taken by the burgeoning avant-garde. He preferred the Arcadian landscapes of England. He took great pride in providing the art that adorned the jackets of many of his friends works including Cecil Beaton, Edith Olivier, Beverley Nichols and Laurence Whistler.

Rex Whistler is believed to be the model for Charles Ryder in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. He made many attempts at purging his underlying homosexual tendencies including losing his virginity to none other than Tallulah Bankhead.

A nude of Lady Caroline Paget

The great "love" of his life was Lady Caroline Paget. He met her at the home of Edith Olivier. Olivier wanted Rex to settle down into a stable relationship. Edith's candidate was actress Jill Furse who was mad for Rex. The feeling was not mutual. (In the kind of serendipity we love at Lucindaville, Jill Furse went on to marry or "settle" as some would say, for Rex's brother, Laurence. Jill died in childbirth and within a few years, Laurence married Jill's sister, Theresa. But I digress...)

Rex Whistler's masterpiece is considered to be the 60 foot mural at Plas Newydd, the house of Lady Caroline's father, the Marquess of Anglesey. Plas Newydd is the largest repository of Whistler's paintings and drawings. It also houses the proof editions of his famous illustrations for Gulliver's Travels.


Unlucky in love, Whistler joined the war effort. He was commissioned into the Welsh Guards as a Lieutenant.

Self-Portrait in Uniform, 1940

During his stay in Brighton, before his embarkation to France for the invasion of Normandy, he painted a cartoon now known as Allegory: HRH The Prince Regent Awakening the Spirit of Brighton. The painting depicts the Prince Regent, naked except for a blue ribbon of the Garter and the badge of the Order resting on his backside. He is kneeling before a sleeping figure with a pink sash emblazoned Brighthelmstone.

Allegory: HRH The Prince Regent Awakening the Spirit of Brighton

Forty-three days later, Rex Whistler died. It was his first day in action. He was 39.



Many years later his brother wrote a biography of Rex Whistler, The Laughter and the Urn.

More Edith

Edith Olivier at 54

There was a lot of response to the Edith Olivier post. Again, I can't believe that I never posted about Olivier before. I also failed to mentions some obvious or perhaps I should say, pertinent facts about Edith. The great thing about blogging is that you may leave something out, but your readers always remember. And we are all better for our collective knowledge.

Home Before Dark pointed out that "Olivier" was not only Edith's family name, but one she shared with her distant cousin Larry. A quirky detail I left out but HBD caught: "Edith Olivier was distantly related to the actor Laurence Olivier. I think Edith’s uncle Henry was Sir Laurence’s grandfather. "

Just the type of weirdness I love and left out! Shame on me.


Edith Hope who has a wonderful blog wrote to point me toward her recent post on lunching at the Tate Gallery and visiting "Epicurania" a world created in a 1927 trompe-l'oeil mural by Rex Whistler. The mural was a collaboration with Edith Olivier depicting the story of seven people on an "Expedition in Search of Rare Meats." The Tate, Olivier, Whistler and Rare Meats, what could be more fun!

I was not obvious enough in my post. While Edith Olivier was closely connected to the "Bright Young Things" of Britain's 1930's, she was a bit older than that group whose exploits occurred largely in London. As I pointed out in my somewhat rambling post on Ashcombe, it would seem that much of the BYT's came to Wilton.

Cecil Beaton in the bathroom at Ashcombe

The young Rex Whistler became Edith Olivier protégé.

Handmade "monogrammed" envelope from Rex Whistler to Olivier

It was Olivier who first found Ashcombe for Cecil Beaton. She was a kind of den mother to this passionate and artistic bunch that came to Wilton for their weekends. The guests who came and went are a cavalcade of characters from Harold Acton to Elinor Wylie with a sprinkling of Guinness, Sitwell and Huxley thrown in for good measure. Penelope Middelboe, Edith's great great niece, edited selections from Edith's journals.


The cover features a painting of Edith by Rex Whistler. The journal entries are a fascinating counterpoint to books written during this period. As I said, most of the books about Britain in the 1930 are based in the cities, but Olivier remained in the country. While she was entertaining Oliver Messel and Stephen Tennant she was active in Women's Institute. The journals offer incite into the English countryside juxtaposed against a who's who of the artists that became household names.

Before I got any comments on Edith, I realized I had posted on Ashcombe, who's jacket was done by Rex Whistler and then on Olivier. I thought my next post should really be about Rex Whistler. And maybe it will.

Edith Olivier

Edith Olivier, Sigfried Sassoon, Mrs. Sassoon

Recently when I posted about Ashcombe, I was sure that I had previously posted about the delightful Edith Olivier. When I checked, I realized that my planned post about her never got posted. (I think about blogging a lot, but sometimes my thoughts don't actually make it to the blog.) So without further ado...

Edith Olivier (far right) standing next to Ottoline Morell

Edith Olivier was a minor British novelist who first novel was a tale of a neurotic spinster who is haunted by an imaginary child who becomes less and less imaginary. The Love-Child was published in 1927 when Olivier was 55. One of 10 children, Olivier was born in Wilton, Wiltshire. It was this country setting that influenced Olivier's most compelling works of non-fiction. For many years, Olivier served as the mayor of Wilton.

Edith in her mayoral duties

While in her 50's she met and befriended a then a 19-year-old Rex Whistler. She was a confidant and hostess and her house became a refuge for many artists and writers in the 1930's, including Siegfried Sassoon, Osbert Sitwell, and Cecil Beaton.

My favorite Edith Olivier book is Country Moods and Tenses. The book features a lovely Rex Whistler cover (as does Cecil Beaton's Ashcombe.) Olivier takes the five grammatical moods: Infinitive, Imperative, Indicative, Subjunctive and Conditional and uses them as divisions to revel the different aspects of country life. There is a beauty in her innate understanding of the sense of place in which she lives and lived her entire life. There is also a kind of disconnect as her circle of friends are very much products of the city but it is the soil of Wiltshire that is in her blood. The scholarly take of Edith Olivier is one of missed potential. Her early success at Oxford and her privileged upbringing and ambition led many to feel that her late start at writing and relative poverty were signs of failure. I disagree.

Love-Child was reprinted as a Virago Modern Classic with an introduction by Hermione Lee and is well worth a read.

Ashcombe: Cecil & Madonna

I miss Cottage Living. Not because Madonna was ever featured. Because it featured cottages with an average size of 500 to 1500 square feet. My subscription was replaced with Architectural Digest where the average bathroom was 500 to 1500 square feet. Don't get me wrong, I love big old designer monographs. However, if you can spend 13 million for a house, pay for the upkeep and drop another 5 million to decorate it, then I think it should look pretty good. In fact, I think it should look great.

Which is exactly what Madonna did. And I think, from what I have seen, that it looks pretty good.

Of course now, Guy Richie has it and he is re-decorating again. Still...

But before Madonna, Cecil Beaton took the reins of Ashcombe. He leased Ashcombe in 1930 for £50 a year.
Beaton took it over when there was no electricity, wild brush and disrepair. Beaton transformed the property with the help of his friends, artists and writers like ...


Edith Olivier (above) and Rex Whistler, Oliver Messel, Marchea Casarti, Ruth Gordon, and Ottoline Morrell to name a few. They gardened, painted, set urns on the roof, transformed the stables into studios, bedrooms into circuses, made films and partied with reckless abandon.

Beaton in the circus room

But they didn't spend millions to decorate, they used their imagination (and the imagination of friends) and I am sure hey spent a good bit of money for the time, but still, it was a personal space. A glorious space.


Cecil Beaton failed to heed the words of his father when he was told not to expend time and money on a house he didn't own. Father knows best. After more than a decade at Ashcombe, Cecil Beaton had to leave. He wrote an amazing love letter to the property in his book Ashcombe: The Story of a Fifteen Year Lease. The owners were not amused and were forever sending out the hounds on trespassers who wanted to see Ashcombe.



I wish there was more published about decorating in the spirit but not the size of Ashcombe. I want more small spaces transformed not by money, but by the ingenuity of the owner. Perhaps I just want to picnic with Cecil Beaton. I definitely want Cottage Living back!