ivory bill
07-24-2007, 07:00 PM
I listened to an interview on NPR with a woman who has recently completed a biography celebrating the life of Nancy Cunard, heiress of the Cunard passenger liner family and slut-extraordinaire. So, I googled her name and read further. Here is a brief and interesting bio of the woman done in the form of a dialog:
http://www.art-is-life.com/dialogues2.htm
http://www.art-is-life.com/images/art/CUNARD3_3inch.jpg
Cunard with lover, Henry Crowder
Nancy Cunard
"Voodoo Lounge Lizard"
by Scot Ryersson and Michael Yaccarino
Nancy Cunard was born in London on March 10, 1896 to British Baronet Sir Bache Cunard and Maud Alice Burke, American doyenne of London high society. Her paternal great grandfather was founder of the steamship company of the same name, from which flowed the family’s immense wealth. Years later, the Cunard Line would merge with White Star, the latter owners of the ill-fated Titanic. This tangential connection to our subject packs not a little poetic punch. For in a career both madcap and monstrous, Nancy set a crash course straight to the bottom. There were no survivors.
Michael Orlando Yaccarino: Poor little bitch girl.
Scot D. Ryersson: I beg your pardon?
MOY: Nancy Cunard.
SDR: Agreed. Her mum was known as ‘Emerald.’
MOY: And Nancy was quite a gem herself.
SDR: Rather more like the Hope Diamond I should think.
MOY: The Georgian jewel box mansion, known as Nevile Holt in Leicestershire, was Nancy’s childhood home.
SDR: And it was there that Emerald allowed her to stay up late at grownup soirées, so she might curtsey before the day’s most prominent painters, writers, musicians, and politicians.
MOY: As a result, by fourteen she had developed a taste for literature, and a rose-colored attachment to bohemian subculture. That’s also around the time of the wreck of the Cunard marriage…
SDR: …after which Nancy was shipped off to private academies in London, Germany and Paris, where she became fast friends with the fashionable Diana Manners, offbeat writers Ezra Pound and Osbert Sitwell, and rakish painter Augustus John.
MOY: Nancy must have been introduced to a choice habit or two by that crew.
SDR: She and her cronies dubbed themselves the “Corrupt Coterie.” And in gritty Left Bank cafés, they could be heard arguing politics and poetry until the wee hours.
MOY: So Nancy must have shocked this subversive clique when, returning to London in 1916, she married the very respectable…
SDR: …and very boring Sydney Fairbairn, a military officer who had seen his share of action at Gallipoli…
MOY: …and apparently a lot less with his young and increasingly uncontrollable wife. Frequent marital skirmishes lead to their divorce twenty months later.
SDR: Blowing a spiteful kiss to Emerald, Nancy sailed back to the City of Lights, freedom in tow.
MOY: In liberated post World War I Paris, she took an interest in the Communist Party, and expanded her repertoire of mind-altering substances.
SDR: The first, one of Nancy’s many causes…
MOY: …and the latter, not the last of her vices. She also became a darling of the Dada and Modernist movements.
SDR: Man Ray and Cecil Beaton snapped Nancy’s photo; while Kokoschka and Brancusi painted and sculpted her wickedly original persona.
MOY: “Original”? Absolutely bizarre by any standard.
SDR: She crowned her reedy shape with a face slathered with white greasepaint and applied powdered rouge with a rabbit’s foot.
MOY: Wouldn’t Georgette Klinger just die? And you can imagine that ghostly visage floating above a figure bound in severely tailored suits cut for a man.
SDR: And lest you forget Nancy’s signature ivory and Bakelite bangle bracelets.
MOY: Dozens of them…
SDR: …running from wrist to elbow on both arms.
MOY: So in such a state of radical couture, how did she manage to run that ancient newspaper-printing machine?
SDR: Nancy had some help–Henry Crowder, the Black American jazz pianist…
MOY: That’s right! The Ladies Who Lunch must have had a field day with that item at the Savoy.
SDR: When gossip of the scandalous liaison reached the seriously uninformed Emerald, through a reporter no less, her only reaction was: “Do you mean to say that my daughter actually knows a Negro?” Mother and daughter didn’t speak for years.
MOY: Hadn’t Nancy first met Crowder in some smoky Montmartre nightclub?
SDR: Yes, in 1928. He moved into her Readville farmhouse, on the outskirts of Paris, where she had jumpstarted the Hours Press to privately print the work of likeminded literary renegades. Ezra Pound, Louis Aragon, Samuel Beckett…
MOY: …Nancy may have published their work and shared an artistic passion for defying convention, but the emerging harpy she was transforming into was enough to intimate them all.
SDR: At least at first, Crowder’s innate gentleness had a soothing effect on her…
MOY: …as long as Nancy wasn’t refilling the gin glass.
SDR: But the attraction of Paris, with its innumerable watering holes, was just too much for her. It was during Nancy’s habitual benders that she became physically violent with Crowder.
MOY: The poor man must have learned quickly how to dodge those flying bracelets.
SDR: But not always successfully. Author Janet Flanner ran into Crowder after one of Nancy’s abusive rages. His face was battered so badly, the author asked if he had been in a car accident.
MOY: And Crowder’s reply?
SDR: “No, ma’am, just bracelet work.”
MOY: Amazing that this was the woman who, in 1934, organized the publication of Negro–a History of the Black struggle in America.
SDR: Nancy also championed the humane treatment of Spanish Civil War refugees entering France, a not very popular position in Paris at that moment.
MOY: Over time, she lost interest in these and others multiple allegiances.
SDR: So one cannot help but wonder if Ms. Cunard was more enamored of inciting controversy than bringing about genuine social change.
MOY: Her next calculated move neatly answers that question–she tangoed her way back to London with Crowder on her arm.
SDR: Emerald was not amused, nor was genteel society willing to accept the unorthodox couple.
MOY: Hardly. The cold shoulder Nancy received sent her off on pointless excursions to South America, the Caribbean, and Tunisia.
SDR: And Crowder?
MOY: Another Cunard casualty. He seems to have disappeared without a trace, once Nancy had no need of him. Nice lady wasn’t she?
SDR: You wouldn’t want to ask that of maid service of the countless hotels where she resided during this final nomadic phase.
MOY: Fond of using cakes of soap and oranges to smash mirrors and windows…
SDR: …and of literally beating her head against walls until it bled. Nancy couldn’t pay for the damage, since her remaining funds were spent on drink and handouts to the indigent, when the fancy took her. In 1960, she was institutionalized for a few months.
MOY: But not before becoming a living Dada exhibit. Once, with a cigarette inserted in each nostril, Nancy exited a café whilst pummeling passing dogs with tomatoes.
SDR: Or while aboard a train when the conductor requested her ticket, she complied by eating it on the spot.
MOY: Charming. And when she ended up in court for disorderly conduct, Nancy flung her shoes at the presiding magistrate.
SDR: After a few more miserable years as a hellish houseguest to her remaining friends, a physically, mentally, and financially ravaged Nancy was found unconscious in a Parisian gutter.
MOY: On March 14, 1965, she expired a few days after her sixty-ninth birthday. The body was returned to England for cremation, the ashes sent back to the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris.
SDR: Urn Number 9016, to be exact.
MOY: And on certain moonlit nights, gravediggers there swear they can hear a defiant wailing.
SDR: And dare I ask what it says?
MOY: “Does anyone around here know how to making a bloody decent martini?”
http://www.art-is-life.com/dialogues2.htm
http://www.art-is-life.com/images/art/CUNARD3_3inch.jpg
Cunard with lover, Henry Crowder
Nancy Cunard
"Voodoo Lounge Lizard"
by Scot Ryersson and Michael Yaccarino
Nancy Cunard was born in London on March 10, 1896 to British Baronet Sir Bache Cunard and Maud Alice Burke, American doyenne of London high society. Her paternal great grandfather was founder of the steamship company of the same name, from which flowed the family’s immense wealth. Years later, the Cunard Line would merge with White Star, the latter owners of the ill-fated Titanic. This tangential connection to our subject packs not a little poetic punch. For in a career both madcap and monstrous, Nancy set a crash course straight to the bottom. There were no survivors.
Michael Orlando Yaccarino: Poor little bitch girl.
Scot D. Ryersson: I beg your pardon?
MOY: Nancy Cunard.
SDR: Agreed. Her mum was known as ‘Emerald.’
MOY: And Nancy was quite a gem herself.
SDR: Rather more like the Hope Diamond I should think.
MOY: The Georgian jewel box mansion, known as Nevile Holt in Leicestershire, was Nancy’s childhood home.
SDR: And it was there that Emerald allowed her to stay up late at grownup soirées, so she might curtsey before the day’s most prominent painters, writers, musicians, and politicians.
MOY: As a result, by fourteen she had developed a taste for literature, and a rose-colored attachment to bohemian subculture. That’s also around the time of the wreck of the Cunard marriage…
SDR: …after which Nancy was shipped off to private academies in London, Germany and Paris, where she became fast friends with the fashionable Diana Manners, offbeat writers Ezra Pound and Osbert Sitwell, and rakish painter Augustus John.
MOY: Nancy must have been introduced to a choice habit or two by that crew.
SDR: She and her cronies dubbed themselves the “Corrupt Coterie.” And in gritty Left Bank cafés, they could be heard arguing politics and poetry until the wee hours.
MOY: So Nancy must have shocked this subversive clique when, returning to London in 1916, she married the very respectable…
SDR: …and very boring Sydney Fairbairn, a military officer who had seen his share of action at Gallipoli…
MOY: …and apparently a lot less with his young and increasingly uncontrollable wife. Frequent marital skirmishes lead to their divorce twenty months later.
SDR: Blowing a spiteful kiss to Emerald, Nancy sailed back to the City of Lights, freedom in tow.
MOY: In liberated post World War I Paris, she took an interest in the Communist Party, and expanded her repertoire of mind-altering substances.
SDR: The first, one of Nancy’s many causes…
MOY: …and the latter, not the last of her vices. She also became a darling of the Dada and Modernist movements.
SDR: Man Ray and Cecil Beaton snapped Nancy’s photo; while Kokoschka and Brancusi painted and sculpted her wickedly original persona.
MOY: “Original”? Absolutely bizarre by any standard.
SDR: She crowned her reedy shape with a face slathered with white greasepaint and applied powdered rouge with a rabbit’s foot.
MOY: Wouldn’t Georgette Klinger just die? And you can imagine that ghostly visage floating above a figure bound in severely tailored suits cut for a man.
SDR: And lest you forget Nancy’s signature ivory and Bakelite bangle bracelets.
MOY: Dozens of them…
SDR: …running from wrist to elbow on both arms.
MOY: So in such a state of radical couture, how did she manage to run that ancient newspaper-printing machine?
SDR: Nancy had some help–Henry Crowder, the Black American jazz pianist…
MOY: That’s right! The Ladies Who Lunch must have had a field day with that item at the Savoy.
SDR: When gossip of the scandalous liaison reached the seriously uninformed Emerald, through a reporter no less, her only reaction was: “Do you mean to say that my daughter actually knows a Negro?” Mother and daughter didn’t speak for years.
MOY: Hadn’t Nancy first met Crowder in some smoky Montmartre nightclub?
SDR: Yes, in 1928. He moved into her Readville farmhouse, on the outskirts of Paris, where she had jumpstarted the Hours Press to privately print the work of likeminded literary renegades. Ezra Pound, Louis Aragon, Samuel Beckett…
MOY: …Nancy may have published their work and shared an artistic passion for defying convention, but the emerging harpy she was transforming into was enough to intimate them all.
SDR: At least at first, Crowder’s innate gentleness had a soothing effect on her…
MOY: …as long as Nancy wasn’t refilling the gin glass.
SDR: But the attraction of Paris, with its innumerable watering holes, was just too much for her. It was during Nancy’s habitual benders that she became physically violent with Crowder.
MOY: The poor man must have learned quickly how to dodge those flying bracelets.
SDR: But not always successfully. Author Janet Flanner ran into Crowder after one of Nancy’s abusive rages. His face was battered so badly, the author asked if he had been in a car accident.
MOY: And Crowder’s reply?
SDR: “No, ma’am, just bracelet work.”
MOY: Amazing that this was the woman who, in 1934, organized the publication of Negro–a History of the Black struggle in America.
SDR: Nancy also championed the humane treatment of Spanish Civil War refugees entering France, a not very popular position in Paris at that moment.
MOY: Over time, she lost interest in these and others multiple allegiances.
SDR: So one cannot help but wonder if Ms. Cunard was more enamored of inciting controversy than bringing about genuine social change.
MOY: Her next calculated move neatly answers that question–she tangoed her way back to London with Crowder on her arm.
SDR: Emerald was not amused, nor was genteel society willing to accept the unorthodox couple.
MOY: Hardly. The cold shoulder Nancy received sent her off on pointless excursions to South America, the Caribbean, and Tunisia.
SDR: And Crowder?
MOY: Another Cunard casualty. He seems to have disappeared without a trace, once Nancy had no need of him. Nice lady wasn’t she?
SDR: You wouldn’t want to ask that of maid service of the countless hotels where she resided during this final nomadic phase.
MOY: Fond of using cakes of soap and oranges to smash mirrors and windows…
SDR: …and of literally beating her head against walls until it bled. Nancy couldn’t pay for the damage, since her remaining funds were spent on drink and handouts to the indigent, when the fancy took her. In 1960, she was institutionalized for a few months.
MOY: But not before becoming a living Dada exhibit. Once, with a cigarette inserted in each nostril, Nancy exited a café whilst pummeling passing dogs with tomatoes.
SDR: Or while aboard a train when the conductor requested her ticket, she complied by eating it on the spot.
MOY: Charming. And when she ended up in court for disorderly conduct, Nancy flung her shoes at the presiding magistrate.
SDR: After a few more miserable years as a hellish houseguest to her remaining friends, a physically, mentally, and financially ravaged Nancy was found unconscious in a Parisian gutter.
MOY: On March 14, 1965, she expired a few days after her sixty-ninth birthday. The body was returned to England for cremation, the ashes sent back to the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris.
SDR: Urn Number 9016, to be exact.
MOY: And on certain moonlit nights, gravediggers there swear they can hear a defiant wailing.
SDR: And dare I ask what it says?
MOY: “Does anyone around here know how to making a bloody decent martini?”