The Rare and the Beautiful: The Lives of the Garmans, by Cressida Connolly

Here’s a book with so many brazen characters in it I barely know where to start. The Rare and the Beautiful gives an insight into the lives of one infamous family. Mary, Kathleen, Douglas, Helen, Sylvia, Rosalind, Mavin, Ruth and Lorna. The nine siblings who together comprised the Garman family.

Several adjectives are used to describe them; ‘amoral’, ‘sadistic’ and ‘manipulative’ being but a few. The women of the family, especially Mary, Kathleen and Lorna, are particularly wild. I am, therefore, going to concentrate on these three. The more brazen the better here on WomenBetweenThePages. Mary, who married and had children, but nonetheless enjoyed lesbian flings, not least with her own brother’s wife; Kathleen, who enjoyed a longing running affair with a married man which resulted in a gun wound, four children and a ladyship; and Lorna, who is rumoured to have indulged in incest before seducing her husband aged just 14, topping this by having a child with another man then selflessly passing said man to her niece.

Mary, the eldest, escaped the family home, along with Kathleen, when they were 21 and 17 respectively. They fled to London right on the cusp of the flapping 20s, arriving there penniless in 1919.

Always rebellious, Mary and Kathleen had already defied their parents by taking to regularly drinking and smoking before making the decision to live in self imposed poverty in Bloomsbury, a stark contrast to the privileged lifestyle their upbringing had accustomed them to.

When Mary was twenty six she married Ignatius Royston Dunnachie Campbell, better known as the poet Roy Campbell. But settling down was not for her. Roy did try valiantly to quash her free spirit, even dangling her from a window from her ankles in an attempt to instil a bit of wifely obedience (something Mary didn’t seem to mind), but a hot blooded Garman she would remain.

In 1927 the Campbells’ paths crossed with that of Vita Sackville-West. Best remembered for her affair with Virginia Woolf, Vita proved irresistible to Mary, and the two embarked upon a passionate affair. When Roy found out, he was initially reluctantly accepting before flying into a rage about it. Roy demanded the affair be stopped. Mary promptly took not a blind bit of notice and continued sleeping with Vita whilst she and Roy continued living on Vita’s land.

Mary’s marriage to Roy produced two children; Tess and Anna. In what appears to be a family trait, Mary and Roy are described as negligent parents. Several times Cressida Connolly, author of this book, talks about how the two girls were left to wander free and fend for themselves. As their daughter Anna put it 'we were never told how to sit at a table... or how important it was to change our knickers every so often.'

The Garman siblings’ attitude towards their assorted offspring leads, or at least contributes, to a tragic outcome for many of the younger generation. Depression, anorexia and schizophrenia all make themselves known, more of which will be discussed soon.

Mary’s accomplice during her formative years was Kathleen. Like Mary, Kathleen found love with a man whose talents lay in the arts. Kathleen, arguably the most infamous of the Garman sisters, became embroiled in a long running affair with Jacob Epstein, the renowned sculptor. Jacob himself was involved in a somewhat laissez faire marriage, with his wife content for him to bring back beautiful women who would model for him and then sleep with him.

Mrs Epstein even raised two children Epstein had fathered with these models. However, her relaxed attitude did not extend to Kathleen. Mrs Epstein was bitterly jealous of her husband’s relationship with Kathleen, correctly believing it transcended his usual admiration for a beautiful woman. Mrs Epstein knew her husband was in love, and in a fit of completely understandable annoyance, invited Kathleen to the house she shared with Jacob.

Twenty two year old Kathleen, nothing if not brave, accepted the invitation, bringing along her brother Douglas as back up. He was needed when suddenly Mrs Epstein produced a pearl handled pistol, told Kathleen she was going to shoot her, and proceeded to fire a bullet through Kathleen’s shoulder. Panic stricken, Mrs Epstein fled, leaving Kathleen to struggle outside for help.

Apparently viewing this episode as a trifle inconvenient, rather than as a worrying attempt to end her life, Kathleen continued to see Jacob, eventually bearing him three children; Theo, Kitty and Esther. Decades later, Mrs Epstein passes away and the newly knighted Jacob finally marries Kathleen, making her the respectable Lady Epstein.

Here in the lives of the three young Epsteins the tragedy of the Garman siblings’ children once again makes itself apparent. Theo is diagnosed with schizophrenia and eventually dies aged just thirty of a heart attack. However, rumours still persist about there being poison found in Theo’s food…

Esther, devastated by her brother’s death, is pushed over the edge when she meets a man named Mike Rutherston. Mike falls in love with Esther and proposes to her. Esther turns him down, and, distraught by this rejection, Mike puts his head an oven, turns the gas on, and kills himself. Esther then visits France and Italy in an attempt by her friends to cheer her up but, upon return to England, she attempts to kill herself. She is found in time, hospitalised and saved. Once released from hospital, Kathleen, perhaps rather misguidedly, decides to give her some space and independence and installs Esther into her own flat. Esther once again attempts to kill herself, and this time she succeeds.

Kitty, the only child of Kathleen’s not to die young, married artist Lucien Freud, grandson of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Kitty was not the first Garman female Lucien had fallen in love with. The complex sexual relations of the Garman family drops into the younger generation here: Lucien had already enjoyed a lustful relationship with Kitty’s aunt, Lorna.

Lucien is not the only lover of Lorna’s who went on to marry one of her nieces. The poet, novelist, and screenwriter Laurie Lee had a long running relationship with Lorna. Utterly captivated by her, the two embarked upon a passionate, jealous, concupiscent relationship. They two even had a child together, who was raised as Lorna’s husband’s child.

After his relationship with Lorna came to an end, Laurie married Lorna’s sister Helen’s daughter, Kathy Polge. Ironically, Laurie’s child with Kathy was born on the same day as his grandchild with Lorna. It is strange that Lorna did not seem to mind Lucien and Laurie’s relationships with her nieces. She is spoken of as being very possessive of her men, writing to Laurie that she wished him to grow older as quickly as possible so no other women would be attracted to him.

Glamourous, charming and fascinating, Lorna is described as the most strikingly beautiful of the sisters. The youngest of the nine, it is suggested early on in the book that she, sister Ruth and brother Mavin were involved in an incestuous ménage a trois. Although this is denied by the family, Connolly writes that this is not due to taboo or any moral scruples, but rather that there being three of them prevented pairing. Their own mother admitted to Lorna that even she was apprehensive about their relationship. With a fondness for horseback riding in the dead of night, and a penchant for stripping naked and swimming wherever and whenever the mood took her, Lorna was utterly devoid of self consciousness and completely defiant of societal expectations.

All the sisters were.

They wore their hair long and straight instead of in the rigid up do popular at the time. They dressed in capes and cloaks, cutting startlingly different figures from the norm.

Even the men of the family are brazen. They oldest brother, Douglas, rejects his inheritance by settling on an ‘ungentlemanly’ career path and joining the communist party. His love life becomes inexorably linked with Mary’s when his sisters begins a relationship with his wife, continuing the trend of criss-crossing family relationships.

So, there we have it. Immoral, negligent, seductive and repulsive, the Garman sisters’ sordid world is spread out over 261 fast paced pages. Connolly seamlessly fast forwards and rewinds the decades, bringing the Garmans back to life in all their glory. In return for their lack of care of those around them, they were rewarded by having everyone fall in love with them due to their great lust for life.

Some parts of their story are fascinating; others bewildering, some parts sickening, but I doubt the sisters would have cared. They lived completely unconcerned with what anyone thought of them, be it their children, friends, parents or husbands. And it is that attitude rather than their personalities that leaves behind a trail of admiration at the sheer brazenness of it all.