4 JUNE 1983, Page 28

A life of contrasts

Richard Shone

Lydia Lopokova Edited by Milo Keynes (Weidenfeld £15)

rrhis book brings vividly to my mind

memories of an extraordinarily original and enchanting human being 'whose every word', as E. M. Forster wrote, 'should be recorded.' Through the evocative pens of Milo Keynes and his contributors, and the extracts from her letters given here, a good deal of that memorability has been caught — so much so, it is difficult to know where my own memory ends and others' take over. In a sense this hardly matters, for Lydia Lopokova was so much of a piece that no one could claim a 'private' Lydia, given to them alone. Underlining this is the consistency of the portrait which emerges in this book, written by nearly 20 people, most of whom were commissioned to discuss various aspects of the dancer's life — from Imperial Russia, through her marriage to Keynes, to the last, almost reclusive years at Tilton in Sussex.

The thing to do, Duncan Grant told me, was to give her as little notice as possible. This gave her less opportunity to cancel. And so, an hour after a telephone call, we found ourselves at 3.30 p.m. in the hall of Tilton House, hung with coats and stacked, along one side, with rusting tins of fruit (Lady Keynes's excessive measures against wartime rationing). She was nowhere to be seen or heard. We entered the ugly sitting- room and waited, looking at the paintings by Cezanne, Seurat, Picasso and Braque which hung high on its walls. The tiny, wrapped-up figure in red boots (it was August), which I had seen in the fields the day before, with the brown, apple fade and brisk walk of, I assumed, a local country- woman, eventually appeared round the

door. Under one arm was a large box of Players untipped cigarettes, a copy of Eliot's Collected Poems and a crumpled Times; in the other hand a bottle of Lieb- fraumilch. A moderate amount of neighbourly small change between Grant and Lopokova was swiftly overtaken by a plunge into the Russian ballet. This was the usual pattern. It was the cause of mild ir- ritation in some old friends who had heard it so often before. But that afternoon she had an ideal audience — Duncan Grant, whom she loved and who had known many of the characters involved; and myself, 16 at the time, swept off my ears and to whom all the talk was new.

Duncan egged her on, the bottle was emptied and Lopokova's slight initial displeasure at our intrusion ended with a pack of wicked stories, ringing with that observed truth which was an essential ingre- dient of their teller's character. Scenes were realised with two gestures, the unexpected word was exactly chosen, a movement for- ward made to touch Duncan's knee when neither could speak for laughter, and all wrapped in her formidable Russian accent. 'So', she said, 'all the chambermaids were rushing down the corridors of the Hotel Savoy with warm towels and hot water. It was big Serge's night with Nijinsky.' She clapped her hands with delight. 'He's not too young to 'ear me tell this?' she said to Duncan. 'Oh! No,' I said, riveted. 'Please go on.' She did. Then there were stories of Picasso and the corps de ballet (to the credit of neither) and the performance when the ropes of pearls worn (I think) by Sokolova in Les Biches broke during the Rag Mazurka, scattering the stage; dancers fell. `It was like Hamlet's end'.

I saw her several times after this and always had to pinch myself to confirm the

reality of her enchantment. Part of the fun, of course, was the incongruity of this still intensely Russian presence in the Sussex Downs, this mixture of Chekhov and lunch at the White Hart, Lewes or an Eastbourne hotel. And adding to it, the fascination that here was the widow of one of the great men of the century. One or two writers hardly go beyond this aspect of Lopokova and though the image is valid up to a point, it makes for little more than an impression of some peculiar creature existing solely for their pleasure, the last representative of some unruly species. Henrietta Couper, in a moving and humorous essay, manages to suggest both the vividness of her presence and the pathos of her situation. Lopokova's husband (`Maynai') rarely

entered the conversation. She had been desolated by his death (in 1946), mourned him for ten years and then 'forgot about him'. She never read Roy Harrod s biography of him and was immune to thesis-writers and biographers, though always generous in loaning the pictures for exhibitions (`Borrow anything you want' They don't belong to me'.) There was little to remind one of the economist — unoneni ed books from American universities, an u

the tins of fruit.

In the last years of her life (she died in 1981), Lopokova rarely left the Tilton neighbourhood and her visits to the Lou- don ballet had long since ceased. One of the best things in this book is the full trill paid to her role in the establishment She permanent ballet company in England• gave the kind of advice only possible fro, someone educated in the stern traditions or the Imperial School of St Petersburtgil tempered by enormous experience onhe sides of the Atlantic. And her love of "" theatre and dancing immeastirahilnY broadened Keynes's vision of a society which the arts would be central. Ninette de Valois, Dolin and Ashton all offer af,f_en, tionate testimony to this and Austin g°°,_1;a wsoinfed,sisdceuvsosetison Keynes's immense debt to 111 ,ways Lopokova and Bloomsbury has all ads been a thorny subject and Quentin Beh ,y dresses himself to it in a rather unhaf,'Cs long letter to the editor. Until Lopoln-he appearance in Keynes's life just after his First War, Grant and Vanessa Bell were va, closest London friends. After Lopok°and an established pattern was broken dif, Quentin Bell gives a fair account of the e see ficult situation that ensued. I can quite that she might have been maddentIlog did something not always seen by those 'ND were not live in close proximity to her or nut relations paying occasional visits. But Vanessa Bell's supposed dislike of he:sans been ridiculously exaggerated. The re,hirig, for this partial rift have more to do, ".,"drid with Keynes's growing success in the '",,,11,5 of affairs and politics and Vanessa, ''t as own precarious personal situation. -If:tdrit Keynes appeared as a reliable and avuPtayen rock, quite swiftly this support was .„„iv- rn17eaway. And there were perhaps other ue ings, particularly on the apparent l'``

in Keynes's sexual orientation which mar- riage to Lopokova implied. The topic is avoided in this book and we shall probably have to wait for Robert Skidelsky's forth- coming life of Keynes to read a sensible discussion.

There is no film of Lopokova in action in her greatest roles — with Massine in the Can-Can of La Boutique Fantasque, as Mariuccia in The Good-Humoured Ladies or as the The Doll in Petrushka. (Paintings and photographs, however, are liberally supplied). It is on such books as this that we must count for their word portraits and the contemporary press reports. She represented a kind of perfection of grace and high spirits, a combination of gaiety and sincerity that, according to the evidence, has never been surpassed, extend- ing the dance both technically and emo- tionally. She was not suited by physique or temperament to the great classic roles of the Imperial ballet; on the other hand, she could sometimes play too much to the gallery in the comic ones assigned to her. In between, she was peerless. It says much about their subject that many of the authors here manage to convey something of her infec- tious humour, her mercurial use of the English language, the bite of her progress through a life of astonishing contrasts.