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

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.

Etiquette Wednesday -- Constance Spry

I do, one day, aspire to dress like this while doing my needlework! Today's etiquette tips come form Constance Spry, who virtually invented floristry as a profession. Hostess was Spry's last book, finished in rough form a few days before she died.

There is a short preface by the Countess of Home. Yes, there really is a "Countess of Home", Elizabeth Home, not to be confused with Elizabeth Home, who in the late 1700's, was known affectionately as "The Queen of Hell". The earlier Elizabeth Home built a house in Marylebone that was called "Home House" which is now a private club/bar. But I digress...The Countess of Home wrote this about Hostess,

"Mrs. Spry could never have anticipated all the pitfalls into which lesser mortals could fall, but with typical imagination she invited questions from succeeding generations of Winkfield girls, and so her advice ranges over being a good listener and making original tablecloths for a yacht to the ladylike eating of artichokes, and somehow her meticulous attention to detail is never dictatorial."

"Winkfield girls" is a reference to a Winkfield Place a school that Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume ran for many years. The school featured a yearlong course on how to cook, how to sew ones own clothes, and how to run a house. Including entertaining in the "homey" part of the house.

As Mrs. Spry tells us:

"The near disappearance of the professional cook and the advent of the cook-hostess has done much to change the face of entertaining in England. For example, the cuisine in the type of home in which the cooking was at one time left to people of mediocre attainments and limited imagination has changed greatly for the good."

For those who may be of "mediocre attainments" or who have never been seated at any event more formal than a buffet, the is a lovely drawing of a simple table setting.


I must say that I do love a book with a drawing of a table setting. Even though for years now, it is simply, fork to the left, knife to the right, I just love these diagrams. Speaking of the drawing in Hostess, they were done by none other than the wonderful Lesley Blanch, of whom I have written before.


My favorite drawing in the book is above and it shows everything an overnight guest might need. Notice the gun in the nightstand drawer. Ah, Lesley!

In her section on overnight guest, Mrs. Spry recounts her own visit to a rather formal house where...

"...the chatelaine...was known to be a real dragon...I asked about a convenient time for a morning bath, somehow indicating that I was thinking in terms of the bathroom, whereupon she glanced stonily at me and said: 'Your bath will be brought up to your room." And then in an aside all too clearly audible, she added: "Ladies do not use the bathroom.'"

The bathroom is one of my favorite rooms! In addition to Mrs. Spry's hostess tips, Rosemary Hume added a section of timely recipes since one no longer has those tedious kitchen folk to produce their uninspired fare. Head over to Cookbook Of The Day for the "cookbook" portion of Hostess.