On the Wilder Shores of Love: A Bohemian Life

Lesley Blanch about 100. Photo: Sveeva VIGEVENO/GAMMA

Lesley Blanch is the reason I no longer read much traditional fiction. 

If you were a writer and tried, even tried, to write a fictional account of Blanch's life, a competent editor would tell you that no one would believe it. It is a story too convoluted and rambling, a life both wildly independent and alarmingly sexy, and spanning nearly 103 years. Edit. Edit. Edit.

That was Lesley Blanch. We know of her 103 years (actually she was a month shy of 103) from the numerous books she wrote, a biography here and there, and interviews, but her life still had several large gaps. On the Wilder Shores of Love: A Bohemian Life is a collection of writing that helps to fill in those gaps. Gathered by Blanch's goddaughter, Georgia de Chamberet, we now have a better understanding of Blanch. When the publicist offered me a copy of the book, I jumped at the chance to expand my Blanch collection. When it arrived, it sat on my desk forever. I didn't want to read for I knew that once I had, that sense of anticipation at new revelations would be over. I couldn't wait any longer.

She began life in the English country side in the Edwardian era. It was a very conventional life.  Until a family friend, known as "The Traveller" came into Blanch's life. Though Blanch had always been secretive of his identity, he was Theodore Komisarjevsky, a Russian theatre director and designer. Under the guise of showing her around Paris, a 17 year-old Blanch was escorted and seduced by "The Traveller." Their encounters gave Blanch a flair for the dramatic and a serious case of wanderlust.

She decided to become and artist and attend the famous Slade school at a time she describes as, "post Carrington and Spencer and before the impudent gaiety and colour brought by Rex Whistler or Oliver Messel."

The most amazing revelation in On the Wilder Shores of Love: A Bohemian Life is her writing about her marriage to Romain Gary. She married Gary in 1945 and their marriage was "open" long before there was such a thing. Blanch traveled on her own and Gary indulged in other women. Together they were a golden couple. In 1954, Blanch's The Wilder Shores of Love about four nineteenth-century women travellers was a huge hit and Gary's novel The Roots of Heaven won the Goncourt. The couple became a fixture in Hollywood, hobnobbing with every one from Aldous Huxley to Sophia Loren.

One person Blanch should have, in hind site, kept off the guest list was Jean Seberg. Gary became besotted by Seberg and married her in 1962, weeks after his divorce from Blanch was finalized. Blanch took the divorce in stride and traveled extensively, through Afghanistan,the Sahara, Oman, Outer Mongolia, and Egypt. They continued to have what Blanch described as an amitié téléphonique.

In 1994 Lesley Blanch's house burn to the ground. She lost everything, including her library of travel books as well as her rare collection of Russian and Middle Eastern volumes. For days she sifted through the rubble. She had about given up when she sifted one more corner of ash. There she found two photographs that Romain Gray had entrusted to her years before: one of him as a child and the other of his mother.  Blanch wrote, "They were soul survivors of the disaster....Romain was once more demanding the spotlight."

One could go on and on, suffice to say, if you have never read Lesley Blanch, do. If you are a fan, add On the Wilder Shores of Love: A Bohemian Life to your collection.

Lesley Blanch

I pulled Lesley Blanch's two cookbooks to post at Cookbook Of The Day. It sent me spiraling down the Lesley Blanch rabbit hole and before I could stop myself, I was days behind in everything. I have a friend who has a litmus test for the ultimate of cool. She believes that if you know who Isabelle Eberhardt is, then you are cool.

Isabelle Eberhardt

Well, Lesley Blanch wrote the book on Isabelle Eberhardt and Isabel Burton, Aimee Dubucq de Rivery, and Jane Digby. The Wilder Shores of Love, published in 1954, told the story of four European women in the nineteenth century, who traded their comfortable life in the West to search of adventure and romance in the Middle East. It was a search said Blanch, "for the wilder shores of love." The book remains in print to this day.


Blanch attributed her stoic perseverance to her mother who always told her, " just get up and get on with it."
And get on with it she did. She wanted to be a painter so she enrolled at The Slade School where Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington and many other notables studied. In the late 30's and early 40's she was the features editor at British Vogue. She rarely spoke of her first or second marriage. In 1945, she married French novelist and diplomat Romain Gary. The diplomatic couple traveled the world to the Balkans, Turkey, North Africa, Mexico and ended up in Hollywood -- which would be the end for them. In Hollywood, Gary met and fell in love with Jean Seberg.

Lesley Blanch by Henry Clarke

In the course of her life she would hobnob with Gary Cooper, Cecil Beaton, Aldous Huxley, George Cukor, David Selznick, Sophia Loren, Laurence Olivier, Charles Boyer, Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, André Malraux, Nancy Mitford, Jessica Mitford, the Shahbanou of Iran, the Duchess of Windsor, Igor Stravinsky and Rebecca West, to name a few. It is said that Marianne Faithfull was inspired by Blanch's writing and used her famous title for one of her songs.

In 1994 her house burned to the ground, taking with it a lifetime of acquisitions from around the world. As a book collector who fears fire I can only lament the lost of hundred of rare and one-of-a-kind volumes, not to mention her own art work. Fortunately the cats survived. In true fashion, she rebuilt and hearing her mother in her head she just got up and got on with it.

Lesley Blanch wrote a dozen books including two cookbooks, both featured at Cookbook Of The Day:

Round The World in 80 Dishes.

From Wilder Shores.

When asked what fueled her wanderlust she replied, “I wanted to be moving towards color.”

Lesley Blanch at 100

In May, 2007, one month before she turned 103, Lesley Blanch died.

Our society loves to glorify teenagers but if there was ever a woman to glorify and have as a role model, it would have to be Lesley Blanch. No one did more with their mother's advice than Blanch. On those truly horrible days, I think of her, gorgeous and independent at 102 and I " just get up and get on with it."


Wilder Shores of Love -- Marianne Faithfull

New York Times Obituary