Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners (18 September 188319 April 1950), also known as Gerald Tyrwhitt, was a British composer, novelist, painter, and aesthete. He was also known as Lord Berners.

Biography

Early life and education

Berners was born in

Apley Hall Apley Hall is an English Gothic Revival house located in the parish of Stockton near Bridgnorth, Shropshire. The building was completed in 1811 with adjoining property of of private parkland beside the River Severn. It was once home to the Whit ...

Stockton Stockton may refer to: Places Australia * Stockton, New South Wales * Stockton, Queensland, a locality in the Cassowary Coast Region New Zealand *Stockton, New Zealand United Kingdom *Stockton, Cheshire *Stockton, Norfolk *Stockton, Chirbu ...

, Shropshire, in 1883, as Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt, son of The Honorable Hugh Tyrwhitt (1856–1907) and his wife Julia (1861–1931), daughter of William Orme Foster, Apley's owner. His father, a Royal Navy officer, was rarely home. He was brought up by a grandmother who was extremely religious and self-righteous, and a mother who had little intellect and many prejudices. His mother, who was the daughter of a rich ironmaster, and who with a strong interest in

fox hunting Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase and, if caught, the killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds. A group of unarmed followers, led by a "master of foxhounds" (or "master of ho ...

, ignored his musical interests and instead focused on developing his masculinity, a trait Berners found to be inherently unnatural. Berners later wrote, "My father was worldly, cynical, intolerant of any kind of inferiority, reserved and self-possessed. My mother was unworldly, naïve, impulsive and undecided, and in my father's presence she was always at her worst".

Adult life

In 1918, Berners became the 14th holder of the Berners Barony, after inheriting the title, property, and money from an uncle. His inheritance included Faringdon House, in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, which he initially gave to his mother and her second husband; on their deaths in 1931 he moved into the house himself. In 1932, Berners fell in love with

Robert Heber-Percy Robert Vernon Heber-Percy (5 November 1911 – 29 October 1987), known for much of his life as "the Mad Boy", was "an English eccentric in the grand tradition". Early life Heber-Percy was born in 1911, the fourth and youngest son of Algernon Hu ...

, 28 years his junior, who became his companion and moved into Faringdon House. Unexpectedly, Heber-Percy married a 21-year-old woman, Jennifer Fry, who had a baby nine months later. For a short time, she and the baby lived at Faringdon House with Heber-Percy and Berners. As well as being a talented musician, Berners was a skilled artist and writer. He appears in many books and biographies of the period, notably portrayed as Lord Merlin in Nancy Mitford's '' The Pursuit of Love''. He was a friend of the Mitford family and close to

Diana Guinness Diana, Lady Mosley (''née'' Freeman-Mitford; 17 June 191011 August 2003) was one of the Mitford sisters. In 1929 she married Bryan Walter Guinness, heir to the barony of Moyne, with whom she was part of the Bright Young Things social group o ...

. Berners was notorious for his eccentricity, dyeing pigeons at his house in Faringdon in vibrant colours and at one point entertaining Penelope Betjeman's horse Moti to tea. There were paper flowers in the garden and the interior of the house was adorned with joke books and joke notices, such as "Mangling Done Here". As a visitor, Patrick Leigh Fermor, recalled: Other visitors to Faringdon included

Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...

, Salvador Dalí, H. G. Wells, and Tom Driberg. His Rolls-Royce automobile contained a small clavichord keyboard which could be stored beneath the front seat. Near his house he had a 100-foot viewing tower,

Faringdon Folly Faringdon is a historic market town in the Vale of White Horse, Oxfordshire, England, south-west of Oxford, north-west of Wantage and east-north-east of Swindon. It extends to the River Thames in the north; the highest ground is on the Ridg ...

, constructed as a birthday present in 1935 for Heber-Percy, a notice at the entrance reading: "Members of the Public committing suicide from this tower do so at their own risk". Berners also drove around his estate wearing a pig's-head mask to frighten the locals. He was subject throughout his life to periods of depression which became more pronounced during the Second World War, and following the production of his last ballet ''Les Sirènes'' he lost his eyesight.

Death and epitaph

He died in 1950 aged 66 at Faringdon House, bequeathing his estate to Robert Heber-Percy, who lived there until his own death in 1987. His ashes are buried in the lawn near the house. Berners wrote his own epitaph, which appears on his gravestone: :Here lies Lord Berners :One of the learners :His great love of learning :May earn him a burning :But, Praise the Lord! :He seldom was bored.

Music

Berners' early music, written during his period at the British embassy in Rome during World War I, was avant-garde in style. These are mostly songs (in English, French and German) and piano pieces, many written using his original name, Gerald Tyrwhitt. Later pieces were composed in a more accessible style, such as the ''Trois morceaux'', ''Fantaisie espagnole'' (1919), ''Fugue in C minor'' (1924), and several ballets, including ''The Triumph of Neptune'' (1926) (based on a story by Sacheverell Sitwell) and ''Luna Park'', commissioned for a

C. B. Cochran Sir Charles Blake Cochran (25 September 1872 31 January 1951), generally known as C. B. Cochran, was an English theatrical manager and impresario. He produced some of the most successful musical revues, musicals and plays of the 1920s and 193 ...

London revue in 1930.''Luna Park'', Chester Music
/ref> His final three ballets, ''A Wedding Bouquet'', ''Cupid and Psyche'' and ''Les Sirènes'', were all written in collaboration with his friends

Frederick Ashton Sir Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton (17 September 190418 August 1988) was a British ballet dancer and choreographer. He also worked as a director and choreographer in opera, film and revue. Determined to be a dancer despite the oppositi ...

(as choreographer) and Constant Lambert (as music director). Berners was also friendly with William Walton. Walton dedicated '' Belshazzar's Feast'' to Berners, and Lambert arranged a ''Caprice péruvien'' for orchestra, from Lord Berners' opera ''Le carrosse du St Sacrement''. There are also scores for two films: '' The Halfway House'' (1943) and '' Nicholas Nickleby'' (1947), for which Ealing’s music director, Ernest Irving, provided the orchestrations.Lane, Philip
Notes to Naxos CD 8.555223
(2021) Berners himself once said that he would have been a better composer if he had accepted fewer lunch invitations. But English composer Gavin Bryars, quoted in Peter Dickinson’s biography of Berners, disagrees saying: "If he had spent more time on his music he could have become a duller composer". Dinah Birch, reviewing ''The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me'', a biography of Berners written by Robert's granddaughter, Sofka Zinovieff, concurs saying: "Had he committed himself to composition as his life's work, perhaps his legacy would have been more substantial. But his music might have been less innovative, for its amateur quality — 'amateur in the best sense', as

Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...

insisted — is inseparable from its distinctive flair". Berners was the subject of BBC Radio 3's Composer of the Week programmes in December 2014.

Literature

Berners wrote four autobiographical works and some novels, mostly of a humorous nature. All were published and some went into translations. His autobiographies ''First Childhood'' (1934), ''A Distant Prospect'' (1945), ''The Château de Résenlieu'' (published posthumously) and ''Dresden'' are both witty and affectionate. Berners obtained some notoriety for his roman à clef ''

The Girls of Radcliff Hall ''The Girls of Radcliff Hall'' is a ''roman à clef'' novel in the form of a lesbian girls' school story written in the 1930s by the British composer and bon-vivant Gerald Berners, the 14th Lord Berners, under the pseudonym "Adela Quebec", publ ...

'' (punning on the name of the famous lesbian writer), initially published privately under the pseudonym "Adela Quebec", in which he depicts himself and his circle of friends, such as Cecil Beaton and Oliver Messel, as members of a girls' school. This frivolous satire, which was privately published and distributed, had a modish success in the 1930s. The original edition is rare; rumour has it that Beaton was responsible for gathering most of the already scarce copies of the book and destroying them. However, the book was reprinted in 2000 with the help of

Dorothy Lygon Lady Dorothy Lygon (briefly Mrs Robert Heber-Percy, Heber-Percy; 22 February 1912 – 13 November 2001) was an English socialite, and one of the Bright Young Things. She served as a Flight Officer in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force during WWII, ...

. His other novels, including ''Romance of a Nose'', ''Count Omega'' and ''The Camel'' are a mixture of whimsy and gentle satire.

Bibliography

Fiction

* 1936 – ''The Camel'' * 1937 – ''The Girls of Radcliff Hall'' * 1941 – ''Far From the Madding War'' * 1941 – ''Count Omega'' * 1941 – ''Percy Wallingford and Mr. Pidger'' * 1941 – ''The Romance of a Nose'' ee Collected Tales and Fantasies, New York, 1999

Non-fiction

* 1934 – ''First Childhood'' * 1945 – ''A Distant Prospect'' * 2000 - ''The Chateau de Resenlieu'' * 2008 - ''Dresden''

Legacy

In January 2016, he was played by actor Christopher Godwin in episode 3 of the BBC Radio 4 drama ''What England Owes''.

Sources

* * * * * * *

References

External links

*
Oxfordshire Blue Plaque to Lord Berners
erected on Faringdon Folly on 6 April 2013. {{DEFAULTSORT:Berners, Gerald Tyrwhitt, 14th Baron 1883 births 1950 deaths 19th-century LGBT people 20th-century LGBT people 20th-century classical composers English classical composers English opera composers Male opera composers English male classical composers British ballet composers English film score composers English male film score composers People educated at Eton College People from Faringdon LGBT classical composers LGBT film score composers English autobiographers English gay writers LGBT classical musicians LGBT peers Literary peers Musicians who were peers English LGBT novelists English male novelists 20th-century English novelists 20th-century English composers LGBT politicians from England 20th-century English male writers English male non-fiction writers 20th-century British male musicians 14 20th-century English nobility