The Bolter
by Frances Osborne
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Book Summary Information
Author: Frances OsborneEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deckle Edge
Published: 2009-06-02
ISBN: 0307270149
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of The Bolter
Book Review: Lady Idina Sackville's Exciting and Sad Life
Summary: 5 Stars
"You don't want to be known as `the Bolter's granddaughter'," warned Frances Osborne's mother. Osborne was the Bolter's great-granddaughter, and the mother was worried about how people might have spoken about herself. The thirteen-year-old Osborne had come across a photograph of the ravishing Lady Idina Sackville, and wanted to know more, for the existence of the scandalous Idina was a dark family secret. "My mother was right to be cautious: Idina and her blackened reputation glistened before me. In an age of wicked women she had pushed the boundaries of behavior to extremes." And thus Osborne was set on years of research, looking into family troves of diaries and letters, as well as society newspaper stories, and conducting interviews of those who knew Idina. Now in _The Bolter_ (Knopf), she has given a biography of the highly-spirited, sad woman whom she never knew. It is sort of a family biographical exorcism, but the book stands well on its own, as a portrait of Idina as well as of the heady times which were her heyday. There is mischievous fun here, and great sadness as well, and the charming and flawed Idina could not have gotten a more sympathetic evaluation.
In 1913, Idina made what has to be considered a conventional marriage to Euan Wallace, a cavalry officer and a millionaire heir. They were blissfully rich, and at least initially were blissful in other ways. "Idina completed her introduction to sex: an activity for which she discovered she had a talent, but which she clearly found so intensely enjoyable that it rapidly became impossible for her to resist any opportunity for it." She was quickly pregnant, and bore Wallace two sons. The couple were busy with a social life in London, and building a mansion in Ayrshire. Then came World War I, and Wallace fought right through it. He did come home on leave, and the reunions were good, except that Idina was ill and could not keep up with Euan's socializing. He fell for another woman, and she determined she would not stand for that sort of abandonment without taking her own lovers. When she fell for Charles Gordon, Euan confronted her, insisting that she had to give up the affair or to divorce. She bolted with Gordon, and in so doing, abandoned her young sons, with whom she would have no contact until they were adults. Gordon was her introduction to British East Africa, later Kenya, where she would live on and off for the rest of her life. Her third marriage was to a sexual equal, Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, who was eight years her junior. Both of them enjoyed having a variety of sexual partners and needed the variety. People who came to parties at their plantation could not just come for an evening; it was a trek to get there, so the gatherings went on for days. Guests could expect to find pajamas and a bottle of whiskey ready on their pillows on arrival. Joss, a teetotaler, filled everyone else's glass and Idina served as the mistress of ceremonies which included games of chance to determine who would bed whom for a particular night. Idina bore Joss her third and final child, a daughter, but he became devoted to another woman and the marriage ended. There were fourth and fifth marriages, and divorces. Idina was to have many other trials. She met both her sons when they were young men. She was charming to them, and they were generous toward her, and she was grateful. Euan died in 1940 of cancer, only 48 years old, and though they had not had contact in decades, she felt the loss. Both the sons with whom she had begun to share affection died during the Second World War. Josslyn Hay was murdered under scandalous circumstances. A reconciliation with the daughter who had been raised by an aunt was cut short by Idina's own death. She died of cancer at age 62, a portrait of Euan at her bedside.
In addition to giving a full picture of Idina's life, Osborne has skillfully described such things as the protocol of Edwardian England, British colonialism in Africa, the accepted standards for adultery, and the grounds for divorce. Idina became memorialized in fiction; she was the model for The Bolter in the novels of Nancy Mitford, and was the model for Iris Storm in Michael Arlen's novel _The Green Hat_. The real Bolter, Osborne shows, had a provocative, exuberant, and eventually sad life that defies imagination. It is good to have this heartfelt biography of the original, a woman who dreamed of a better life and worked to make it happen, and sadly failed. "Whenever she reinvented her life with a new husband," Osborne pointedly writes, "she believed that, this time round, she could make it happen. Yet that better life remained frustratingly out of reach."
Summary of The Bolter
She was irresistible. She inspired fiction, fantasy, legend, and art.Some say she was ?the Bolter? of Nancy Mitford?s novel The Pursuit of Love. She ?played? Iris Storm in Michael Arlen?s celebrated novel about fashionable London?s lost generation, The Green Hat, and Greta Garbo played her in A Woman of Affairs, the movie made from Arlen?s book. She was painted by Orpen; photographed by Beaton; she was the model for Molyneaux?s slinky wraparound dresses that became the look fo the age?the Jazz Age.
Though not conventionally beautiful (she had a ?shot-away chin?), Idina Sackville dazzled men and women alike, and made a habit of marrying whenever she fell in love?five husbands in all and lovers without number.
Hers was the age of bolters, and Idina was the most celebrated of them all.
Her father was the eighth Earl De La Warr. In a society that valued the antiquity of families and their money, hers was as old as a British family could be (eight hundred years earlier they had followed William the Conqueror from Normandy and been given enough land to live on forever . . . another ancestor, Lord De La Warr, rescued the starving Jamestown colonists in 1610, became governor of Virginia, and gave his name to the state of Delaware). Her mother?s money came from ?trade?; Idina?s maternal grandfather had employed more men (85,000) than the British army and built one third of the world?s railroads.
Idina?s first husband was a dazzling cavalry officer, one of the youngest, richest, and best-looking of the available bachelors, with ?two million in cash.? They had a seven-story pied-à-terre on Connaught Place overlooking Marble Arch and Hyde Park, as well as three estates in Scotland. Idina had everything in place for a magnificent life, until the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand caused the newlyweds? world?the world they?d assumed would last forever?to collapse in less than a year.
Like Mitford?s Bolter, young Idina Sackville left her husband and children. But in truth it was her husband who wrecked their marriage, making Idina more a boltee than a bolter. Soon she found a lover of her own?the first of many?and plunged into a Jazz Age haze of morphine. She became a full-blown flapper, driving about London in her Hispano-Suiza, and pusing the boundaries of behavior to the breaking point. British society amy have adored eccentrics whose differences celebrated the values they cherished, but it did not embrace those who upset the order of things. And in 1918, just after the Armistice was signed, Idina Sackville bolted from her life in England and, setting out with her second husband, headed for Mombasa, in search of new adventure.
Frances Osborne deftly tells the tale of her great-grandmother using Idina?s never-before-seen letters; the diaries of Idina?s first husband, Euan Wallace; and stories from family members. Osborne follows Idina from the champagne breakfasts and thé dansants of lost-generation England to the foothills of Kenya?s Aberdare moutnains and the wild abandon of her role in Kenya?s disintegration postwar upper-class life. A parade of lovers, a murdered husband, chaos everywhere?as her madcap world of excess darkened and crumbled around her.
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