My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyIt is difficult to remember after this lapse of time where I first met the gay Americanfriends of this period, before, during or after this first tour of America in the spring of1926. Some of them were well known at that time, others became famous at a muchlater date. The Barrymores for years played a considerable part in our life, but theymust have been friends before the American tour, because I remember them stayingwith us at our little village of different cottages at Ifold in Sussex, which we calledour country house when we were first married. Most of my memories of them were inParis rather than in America. John and Blanche Barrymore were our friends; theirsister Ethel and brother Lionel we knew only slightly. John and Blanche werecertainly a scintillating couple, as beautiful as they were brilliant in their veryindividual fashions. I still maintain that he played Hamlet better than any other actor Ihave seen. No one has ever gazed so sardonically at the blood-stained fingers as theywere slowly raised one by one after the duel scene. No one has ever spoken better thetragic, ineffable peace of the last line 'the rest is silence'. It is sad that drink and theexhausting diversity of his love affairs eventually reduced this fine actor andagreeable companion to a parody of his previous distinction in his last performances.His mind, too, might have been good if he had ever given it a chance.The dark, flashing Hungarian beauty of his wife Blanche was a fitting background toher extraordinary qualities. She had reigned briefly in the orthodox society of NewYork before running away with John, and soon returned to sparkle in a world of morediversity in two continents. Their relationship was affectionate but hectic, becausethey clashed at many points. I once said to them: 'You both have the same occupationin life, each doing what you want and trying to stop the other doing the same thing:you both win on the first point but both flop on the second'. More trouble came whenshe also insisted on playing Hamlet; I did not see her performance, but understood theobject was not quite achieved of improving on John's. She liked the role of romanticyoung men, playing I'Aiglon on the stage and writing poems about Greek boysrunning through the woods of Versailles; a conjunction which seemed to her quitenatural. She was an amateur in art, but an artist in life, combining Central Europe andAmerica at their most vital, wittiest and best. She died as she lived, putting on atremendous show. I only know the details at second-hand, but understand theyincluded a lying-in-state with continuous playing of Wagner's music. Theseoutstanding American women attend to everything; another of our friends requestedno flowers at her funeral, because she had arranged their sumptuous display herself inadvance and did not want the colour scheme spoilt.America at this point touched the more colourful and romantic periods of Europeanhistory, when some people still had the courage to be flamboyant. Blanche Barrymorewould have felt at home with some of the men and women of the Renaissance,perhaps, in their less extreme moments, even with the Borgias; in some moods shemight even have been equal to their extremities. Yet very rich Americans have usuallyshown eccentricity rather than artistry in life. William Randolph Hearst, for instance,had an enormous property in California where his guests lived in various luxuriousestablishments often miles apart. We never got beyond being entertained by Mrs.Hearst in New York and Paris in a very different society. But the accounts of his lifeat that time often prompted in me the thought that a paradise of mind and body mighthave been created if any of these magnates had had a modicum of the taste andcapacity for life displayed by Frederick the Great when, in his spare moments, heassembled Voltaire and the elite of Europe at Sans Souci; or of Shah Jehan in the fort166 of 424