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biography Russian-born, though of Polish descent, and unhappily married, she found in Liszt a spiritual and intellectual soul mate (the extent of their sexual relationship remains a mystery). She devoted herself passionately to his schemes to elevate Weimar’s orchestra and opera, as well as his personal aspiration to compose ‘the music of the future’ – a concept based on the evocation of literary or artistic sources in a piece of symphonic music that resulted in some of his windiest creations. Despite the adulterous irregularity of their union, Franz and Carolyne ensured their lavishly appointed house in Weimar became a favourite destination of the European intelligentsia. George Eliot was among its visitors and wrote a witty essay on her impressions. Yet not surprisingly, Liszt soon found the ambience a trifle suffocating, coming to believe that he had lost his independence. Professionally, he was dogged by administration and petty intrigues, while Carolyne’s mission to save him from his worse personal tendencies, alcohol included, became increasingly heavy-handed. Battles over his children (whom at one point he did not set eyes on for seven years) and a protracted legal struggle to annul Carolyne’s marriage and release her fortune also ground him down. One almost sympathises with his desire to sneak off in search of solace in wine and women elsewhere. In the 1860s, burned out again, he withdrew from both Weimar and Carolyne, who adopted spiritualism in Rome and became a positively batty recluse, churning out tomes on abstruse theological subjects. Liszt turned sharply to Catholicism, entering a tonsured minor order that made him an abbé and conveniently allowed him to wear a fetching soutane without requiring vows of celibacy. He took to writing grandiose oratorios, including Christus and Via Crucis, their scores heavily freighted with Victorian pieties. More appealing today is his late piano music, in which the harmonies float free of tonality in ways that anticipate the modernism of Debussy and Schoenberg. Yet although the likes of Vladimir Horowitz and Alfred Brendel among others have championed his music, posterity continues to rank Liszt just below Chopin and Schumann in the canon. A certain amount of waffle and vapour masquerading as sublimity leaves one with the impression that much of his music is irritatingly pretentious, if not bogus. Liszt died in 1886, aged seventy-four. He spent the final years of his life in Bayreuth, ensnared by his tensely knotted relationship with his daughter Cosima and her second husband, Richard Wagner, who simultaneously despised and exploited him. Liszt drank his way though the stress of it all, sustaining himself by giving selfregarding masterclasses that brought him the homage and adulation that were his other addictions. Hilmes is clearly mesmerised by the ghastliness of Cosima, a biography of whom he has also written, but Liszt’s bottomless vanity seems only barely preferable to her ruthless hypocrisy or Wagner’s naked opportunism. Forget the music and one is left with a sorry tale of extremely unpleasant people. To order this book from our partner bookshop, Heywood Hill, see page 19. THE UNIVERSITYOFBUCKINGHAM UniversityoftheYearforTeachingQuality Master’s in Philosophy AND ITS USES TODAY PROFESSOR ROGER SCRUTON FBA October 2016 – September 2017 A one-year, London-based programme of ten evening seminars and individual research led by Professor Roger Scruton, offering examples of contemporary thinking about the perennial questions, and including lectures by internationally acclaimed philosophers. Speakers will include: Professor Jane Heal FBA, St John’s College, University of Cambridge Professor Robert Grant, University of Glasgow Professor Sebastian Gardner, University College London Professor Simon Blackburn, Trinity College, University of Cambridge Each seminar takes place in the congenial surroundings of a London club (in Pall Mall, SW1), and is followed by a dinner during which participants can engage in discussion with the speaker. The topics to be considered include consciousness, emotion, justice, art, God, culture and ‘faking it’, nature and the environment. Students pursue their research, under the guidance of their supervisors, on a philosophical topic of their choice. Examination is by a dissertation of around 20,000 words. Scholarships and bursaries are available. Course enquiries and applications: Ms Claire Prendergast T: 01280 820204 E:claire.prendergast@buckingham.ac.uk THE UNIVERSITY OF BUCKINGHAM LONDON PROGRAMMES Literary Review | june 2016 12
page 15
biography hugo vickers The Ambassador’s Daughter Kick: The True Story of Kick Kennedy, JFK’s Forgotten Sister and the Heir to Chatsworth By Paula Byrne (William Collins 342pp £20) It is almost impossible to fathom the minds of publishers. Why another book on Kick Kennedy? In 1984 Alastair Forbes, he of the long sentences, reviewed a biography of her by Lynne McTaggart and suggested that Kick merited no more than perhaps a long article. Since then, she has featured prominently in Laurence Leamer’s The Kennedy Women and Amanda Smith’s Hostage to Fortune. Paula Byrne’s book arrived for review under strict embargo, but simultaneously Barbara Leaming has published her own life of Kick Kennedy (based on extensive interviews, possibly undertaken when researching other Kennedy books). Clearly in this dismal time for Establishment biographies, linking the Kennedy name to the dukes of Devonshire and the wider Cavendish family appeals to publishers seeking to capitalise on the Downton Abbey effect. Throw in some scandal and tragedy, and off you go. Kathleen Kennedy, known as Kick, was a fun-loving girl, the favourite sister of Jack and close to her elder brother Joe. We know about the parents – the successful and philandering father, Joe, American ambassador to Britain from 1938 to 1940 and a supporter of appeasement, and the matriarch, Rose, with her ferocious Catholic beliefs. In London Kick inspired love in the Marquess of Hartington (known as Billy), though when the family moved back to America on the eve of the Second World War, she enjoyed other beaux and he became engaged to someone else. However, Kick returned to Britain in 1943 and they married the following year. A few weeks after their wedding Billy fell to a sniper’s bullet while fighting in Belgium. It was not long before Kick became an increasingly merry widow, eventually taking up with a rich playboy, Earl Fitzwilliam, alongside whom she died in a plane crash in 1948, Fitzwilliam having persuaded the pilot to take off despite protests that they would be flying through a massive thunderstorm. Having already read all this in McTaggart’s book, I have to confess that I found little new here, despite Byrne’s research in the Kennedy archives. I had already been profoundly shocked by the botched lobotomy performed on Kick’s brain-damaged sister, Rosemary. The only time Byrne completely engaged my sympathy was in the shenanigans around Kick’s marriage to Billy. The young couple endured agonies from both sides: Rose must surely have been rare among ambitious American mothers in valuing her Catholicism over the prospect of her daughter becoming an English duchess; the Cavendishes, despite greatly liking Kick, had no intention of allowing the heir to the dukedom to be brought up a Catholic. They insisted, successfully, that the children of the marriage should be raised as Anglicans, though Kick remained a Catholic. When Billy was killed in 1944, Kick was allowed by the Catholic Church to take communion again since she was no longer living in a state of sin. When she more or less eloped with Fitzwilliam and both were killed, did a part of Rose believe that God had resolved matters satisfactorily with the early deaths of Billy, Kick and Fitzwilliam? I hope I am wrong. I suspect the general reader will probably have no idea who people like Sally Norton and Pat Wilson were, and Byrne does not enlighten us about them, even though there is an entire chapter entitled ‘Billy and Sally’. While Kick was in America from 1939 to 1943, Billy took up with Sally Norton. I was shocked to read that when she and Billy went one night to the Café de Paris nightclub and found it bombed, she callously suggested that they move on to dance elsewhere. We might have been told that Sally was the daughter of Jean Norton, mistress of Lord Beaverbrook, and a goddaughter of Lord Mountbatten (all of whom are mentioned in this book). Billy and Sally became engaged in 1941. In 1942 Nancy Astor wrote to Kick, imploring her to come over to Britain and Kick: diving in marry Billy. It would have been interesting to know how this ended – Sally married Nancy Astor’s son. Pat Wilson, the mistress of Kick’s elder brother Joe and a crucial figure in Kick’s life during the fateful summer of 1944, is also much mentioned here. Again, Byrne might have told us about the extraordinary series of losses she suffered in a short space of time. Joe was killed in action on 12 August 1944, while Pat’s cuckolded husband, Robin Filmer-Wilson, died in Italy on 14 August. Then, of course, Billy was killed on 9 September. Pat was another victim of Rose’s meanness. She wrote her a heartfelt letter of sympathy, to be rewarded only with a dismissive cable from Joe senior. I have established that Pat (now Laycock) is still alive, aged about 102. The book is largely a chronological narrative, punctuated with occasional notes along the lines of ‘She was moving on.’ Byrne does not even stretch to the odd aside, along the lines of Leamer’s arch remark that when, years later, the Chappaquiddick tragedy occurred, for once it was not a Kennedy that died. A new work on Kick ought to add significantly to our knowledge of her and our wider understanding of the Kennedys. After finishing Kick, I was left with the feeling that McTaggart’s book had filled the slot adequately despite certain shortcomings. To order this book from our partner bookshop, Heywood Hill, see page 19. june 2016 | Literary Review 13

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biography

Russian-born, though of Polish descent, and unhappily married, she found in Liszt a spiritual and intellectual soul mate (the extent of their sexual relationship remains a mystery). She devoted herself passionately to his schemes to elevate Weimar’s orchestra and opera, as well as his personal aspiration to compose ‘the music of the future’ – a concept based on the evocation of literary or artistic sources in a piece of symphonic music that resulted in some of his windiest creations.

Despite the adulterous irregularity of their union, Franz and Carolyne ensured their lavishly appointed house in Weimar became a favourite destination of the European intelligentsia. George Eliot was among its visitors and wrote a witty essay on her impressions. Yet not surprisingly, Liszt soon found the ambience a trifle suffocating, coming to believe that he had lost his independence. Professionally, he was dogged by administration and petty intrigues, while Carolyne’s mission to save him from his worse personal tendencies, alcohol included, became increasingly heavy-handed. Battles over his children (whom at one point he did not set eyes on for seven years) and a protracted legal struggle to annul Carolyne’s marriage and release her fortune also ground him down. One almost sympathises with his desire to sneak off in search of solace in wine and women elsewhere.

In the 1860s, burned out again, he withdrew from both Weimar and Carolyne, who adopted spiritualism in Rome and became a positively batty recluse, churning out tomes on abstruse theological subjects. Liszt turned sharply to Catholicism, entering a tonsured minor order that made him an abbé and conveniently allowed him to wear a fetching soutane without requiring vows of celibacy. He took to writing grandiose oratorios, including Christus and Via Crucis, their scores heavily freighted with Victorian pieties. More appealing today is his late piano music, in which the harmonies float free of tonality in ways that anticipate the modernism of Debussy and Schoenberg. Yet although the likes of Vladimir Horowitz and Alfred Brendel among others have championed his music, posterity continues to rank Liszt just below Chopin and Schumann in the canon. A certain amount of waffle and vapour masquerading as sublimity leaves one with the impression that much of his music is irritatingly pretentious, if not bogus.

Liszt died in 1886, aged seventy-four. He spent the final years of his life in Bayreuth, ensnared by his tensely knotted relationship with his daughter Cosima and her second husband, Richard Wagner, who simultaneously despised and exploited him. Liszt drank his way though the stress of it all, sustaining himself by giving selfregarding masterclasses that brought him the homage and adulation that were his other addictions. Hilmes is clearly mesmerised by the ghastliness of Cosima, a biography of whom he has also written, but Liszt’s bottomless vanity seems only barely preferable to her ruthless hypocrisy or Wagner’s naked opportunism. Forget the music and one is left with a sorry tale of extremely unpleasant people. To order this book from our partner bookshop, Heywood Hill, see page 19.

THE UNIVERSITYOFBUCKINGHAM

UniversityoftheYearforTeachingQuality

Master’s in Philosophy

AND ITS USES TODAY PROFESSOR ROGER SCRUTON FBA

October 2016 – September 2017 A one-year, London-based programme of ten evening seminars and individual research led by Professor Roger Scruton, offering examples of contemporary thinking about the perennial questions, and including lectures by internationally acclaimed philosophers. Speakers will include: Professor Jane Heal FBA, St John’s College, University of Cambridge Professor Robert Grant, University of Glasgow Professor Sebastian Gardner, University College London Professor Simon Blackburn, Trinity College, University of Cambridge Each seminar takes place in the congenial surroundings of a London club (in Pall

Mall, SW1), and is followed by a dinner during which participants can engage in discussion with the speaker. The topics to be considered include consciousness, emotion, justice, art, God, culture and ‘faking it’, nature and the environment. Students pursue their research, under the guidance of their supervisors, on a philosophical topic of their choice. Examination is by a dissertation of around 20,000 words. Scholarships and bursaries are available. Course enquiries and applications: Ms Claire Prendergast T: 01280 820204 E:claire.prendergast@buckingham.ac.uk

THE UNIVERSITY OF BUCKINGHAM

LONDON PROGRAMMES

Literary Review | june 2016 12

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