Tim Behrens, the author, was a graduate of the Slade School of Art in the fifties and knew Lucien Freud and other artists and poets linked to the fast fading era of Fitzrovia. In the mid 1960's his younger brother Justin, at sixteen years of age and still cramming for his 'A' levels, became involved with a mysterious (married) blonde called Ursula (ten years his senior) and the book is about their life together and inevitably, their death.
The book tries its best to lay bare their relationship, but the couple remain enigmas throughout. There is an awful lot of speculation and 'phone a friend' kind of opinion kicked around. Justin and Ursula lived abroad mostly and travelled to obscure places. The sort of places in the Middle East and Africa which now are so war torn or completely closed off to foreigners, it just wouldn't be feasible to contemplate travelling there, unless you were part of a UN aid convoy or similar. They created their own elevated version of a hippy trail--and it included renting a rather nice third floor bolthole in the Trastevere district of Rome for a few months of cultural respite after driving down dust tracks in remote tribal regions. Behrens wrote the book as a tribute to his late brother, but it is Ursula who emerges as the dominant personality or star. Somehow it is her we want to know more about.
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| My pencil portrait of Ursula from a photograph |
Ursula is a mystery because her back story has never really been verified and she may have liked it that way. We are also told she had a joke spy's accent. Hungarian by birth (though her maiden name is never revealed) she came to the West a few months after the uprising in October 1956. Her escape on foot that winter to Austria, aged about 18, with a young acolyte in tow (who changed his mind and decided to return home) does sound highly romantic, this is ramped up by the fact that she had no passport or travel documents, only a slim volume of TS Eliot's 'The Wasteland' in her coat pocket. This so impressed the First Secretary at the British Embassy in Vienna that he practically granted her refugee status on the spot (if we are to believe the legend.) She may have been shot at by border guards as well--but there is also another version. In Brian Sewell's recent memoir he states that her escape almost ended in failure, namely if it hadn't been for an obscure shambling accomplice called George, who scooped her up from the snow (where she'd been nicked by a bullet, presumably) and hauled her over the line, this extraordinary love story might not have blossomed at all.
In Sewell's opinion, George, Ursula's rescuer, was rather 'uncouth' and her complete opposite, but they both 'came knocking' on the door of the Courtauld Institute of Art together, so one wonders at the connection between them. Ursula is a sure fire hit with her blonde beauty, well-read sophistication and cultural savvy and charms everyone (except Sewell of course.) There is a student whip-round in support of the refugees and the odd couple are accommodated at the august institute, no exams necessary. George later fades from the narrative, the only other mention is a flood at his lodgings after his bath overflows, which puts one in mind of another refugee of the period, Paddington Bear.
According to Behrens, Ursula becomes Anthony Blunt's star pupil but ends up by disappointing him. He badly wanted her to become an academic, but she chose art dealing instead--a business that requires a hawker's flair, encouraging clients to overlook a ropey provenance and make them believe they have acquired something of inestimable value. Ursula's first husband states 'she could have been a great Byzantinist'. Sewell rubbishes this idea of Ursula being a favourite of Blunt (perhaps jealousy?) Anyway, one gets the impression she had a sharp tongue and gave the waspish one a taste of his own medicine.
Ursula marries a mature fellow student, Kenelm Digby-Jones, who already has a foot in the door at Sotheby's. She becomes a close confidant of Bruce Chatwin. One wonders if she got round to reading 'In Patagonia' fifteen years down the line, when her only outlet was her writing? There is no mention. They go dancing together at some boite on the Left Bank in Paris, Chatwin wearing a live snake accessory. Ursula is popular and has many friends and also lovers. Another close friend called Max gives her a special gift, a lethal dose of barbiturates, expensively wrapped, which she carries around in her handbag. Max's chic flat, which is described like something from a sixties Lambert and Butler advertisement, soon comes in useful. Needless to say her new hubby is kept out of the loop. One would like to know more about Ursula during this 'party' period because once she meets up with her fate (so to speak) there is a sense that doors are softly, but firmly closing, one by one.
Justin's father, Michael Behrens, is a rich businessman, one-time co-owner of the fabled Ionian Bank, an art enthusiast/collector and something of a philanderer (judging by Elizabeth Jane Howard's memoir.) He purchases some antique cupboards from Ursula's husband and they become friends and the couple are invited to visit his impressive 18th century house by the Thames. Justin, like any sixteen year old, hasn't decided what to do and he's a bit of a dare devil and not terribly academic. Justin and Ursula's first meeting is written up as an example of coup de foudre. Ursula then tries her best to brush him off, but the young man is persistent. She sensibly goes abroad with her husband on some art dealing trip, but Justin is on her trail and it seems, nothing will put him off.
Eventually, she caves in--Justin has won. Perhaps the idea is just too irresistible. Anyway, this is the sixties when it was the thing to 'drop out' and 'do your thing'. Perhaps Ursula had become tired of the narrow art dealing world and the limitations of her marriage, which did seem rather like a business arrangement. Justin offered her something different. A romantic elopement is another kind of escape. First stop is Egypt and a love nest in Thebes with a view of the Colossi of Memnon over the garden wall. Eventually cushioned by a modest trust fund provided by Justin's father, they set off on their travels.
Tim Behrens' book then launches into a list of all the exotic places listed in Ursula's journals. She is very much in charge of the itinerary. In a way, one longs for the name of Basingstoke to appear between Isfahan, Benares, Hyderabad, Goa, Adjanta, Peshawar and Herat etc. It all sounds like some exclusively tailored Kuoni style trip tacked onto a hippy grand tour and these remote places mean little to most people. It also seems to be getting to Ursula, she wakes up in the middle of the night in Chunar, India, thinking she's in Burgundy, alas not Basingstoke--because of the distinct rustle of fallen leaves. There is also a mention of a house in Burgundy which must be a reference to her first marriage, so I wonder if this is also the rustle of regret?
There are quotes from her diaries about snake charmers, pathetic street orphans and stray animals inter-cut with her own death wish musings such as 'I wouldn't mind drowning here' or 'five more years would do me very well'. One wonders if she's bored. Classic authors (like Tolstoy) are read en route and mod cons are always out of reach. Justin seems to do all the grunt work, most of the driving and dealing with the petty logistics of their extended ramble. There is one telling incident, in Mexico or Puerto Angel to be precise, on the Pacific coast, when he falls from a very tall palm tree, in his eagerness to pluck a coconut for her. They buy some land on a remote headland in Greece (Nysi) and build a house. At the same time the flat in Rome is acquired and they attend evening concerts in the nearby churches--it's all starting to sound a bit like a retirement plan.
Children, a family--is not part of this plan--they are the perfect couple-the two halves of a whole--one. Both of them experienced solitary, vaguely unhappy childhoods. Ursula's father is described as both domineering and remote while Justin's sounds like some benevolent tyrant ruling the roost. Both Justin and Ursula were sent away to school at an early age.
They both write, but neither of them get round to having anything published. Behrens quotes extensively from Justin's works (a mix of fiction and memoir) but we just get a scant outline of Ursula's offerings. After her death, Justin pens a lengthy paean to her. It bears the title of 'Style--which makes one think 'style over substance', unfortunately. There is an unfinished novel of Ursula's entitled 'The Monument' which is set in the Sudan and may be some kind of m/m re-working of the themes in Ruth Prawler Jhabvala's 'Heat and Dust' (Ursula praises this book in her journals, but Behrens is somewhat lazy at not realising the connection.) After Ursula's death, Justin gets the idea of sending the manuscript of 'Style' to Graham Greene and the elderly author is kind and gives it a lot of praise, commending some of Ursula's short stories, included in the text. It seems an unusual work, and probably rambles an awful lot and to date has not been published.
Tim Behrens takes Ursula's novel title for his own book and gives us heavily edited excerpts from the couple's manuscripts and diaries. Everything they write has a coded 'roman a clef' air to it and loaded with autobiographical significance. They cannot escape from themselves. Everything they do is imbued with the old fashioned spirit of the dilletante. Ursula reads, sunbathes and swims a lot, while Justin submits poetry to 'The London Magazine'. The poems are rejected and he is told by his brother to give it another go, but Justin just dismisses the whole literary scene as being too trivial and not worth the bother. Shortly after Ursula's death, the volcanic rock on which she used to sunbathe (in Greece) breaks up and disappears under the waves like some mini Atlantis.
One wonders if Ursula cared about her writing enough to want to see it in print. She keeps a journal right up to the bitter end, when she is contemplating suicide in Nyala (Western Darfur)-- pitiless thorn country. She is living alone--in the sort of dwelling that isn't quite a primitive hut, but probably as far removed in the imagination from the old house in Burgundy she dreamed about all those years ago. She has split from Justin and has been pursuing a relationship, or rather--she has made herself sexually available to a local chief of police, called Ali.
It seems she has decided on her fate. She feels too old at 42 and some sort of nihilistic sex/death scenario will be her final creative act. Justin has been pushed away. Perhaps she feels guilty about not ever wanting children or perhaps this younger man was both her lover/life-partner and child and she does not want him drawn into her death. Justin has become a handsome, self-possessed man in his early thirties with everything to look forward to, while her looks (and prospects) are deteriorating fast. She has become weary of life, troubled by niggling back pain from an old injury. This situation is too un-stylish for words and death is the only solution. This part of the story and Justin's reaction to her suicide etc, make grim reading. It is also the best-written section of the book. One can't help but think that Justin was collateral damage, somehow. Anyway, I'd urge anyone to read the book for themselves and come to their own conclusion. It is a very honest, moving account and took a lot of guts to write.
On the back cover of the paperback edition of 'The Monument' there is a quote from 'The London Review of Books' which states that the book is 'a cult in the making'. This piqued my curiosity, so I tracked down the original review in the magazine archive. It is written by Karl Miller, the editor of the magazine and starts off by trashing the bohemian pretensions of the monied Chelsea set in the late fifties and early sixties and presumably, though his preamble is difficult to follow--he thinks Justin and Ursula are in some way by-products of this particular set. After reading the book, I don't think they were members of any set except one uniquely their own, barred to all others, but there you go.
Mr Miller seems very taken with Ursula, though some of his comments about her journal entries are rather mocking and insouciant in tone. One wonders what he would have made of her if he'd met her in person. Perhaps despite his misgivings, he may have been charmed like the fathers of some her fellow students at the Courtauld. According to Behrens she was a gifted conversationalist and a good listener. One wonders if, given the opportunity, she might have made a decent talking head on a late night cultural night slot on BBC2, or perhaps the accent might have hampered her, one will never know--because in her day if you didn't sound like Joan Bakewell, it probably wasn't on.
In his book, Behrens mentions his aunt, the distinguished historian CBA Behrens, commenting in a letter, that Ursula was 'straight out of Lermontov' a reference to Pechorin in 'A Hero of Our Time'. Karl Miller is much taken with this idea and picks up and runs with it--or rather, it is an excuse for a very prolonged ramble on the subject of the superfluous hero and you feel that Ursula is gradually slipping away from us. Ursula never mentioned Lermontov at all, which is curious, as she seems to have read an awful lot of Russian novels.* Sometimes it is dangerous to assume a living person is a character from a novel. I once suggested a friend was exactly like Dorothea in 'Middlemarch'. My friend had never read the book but still didn't speak to me for days, as she felt I was being presumptuous, which I probably was--but I was young.
Justin and Ursula's carefully crafted and considered lifestyle kind of sets itself up for parody and Mr Miller cannot resist. At one point he calls them 'Morecombe and Wise' which seems a bit broad. Anyway, I will give the full context for that quote on the back cover, which was surgically excised as a snippet of critical praise by Cardinal:
'Waiting in the wings is a book by him about Ursula, entitled Style, which, according to Graham Greene, who was sent the manuscript, might be edited for publication. There may be a cult in the making--and one could imagine a film by Antonioni, whose scriptwriter, Mark Peploe was much intrigued by J. Behrens in his last days.'
So this 'cult in the making' is not exactly Behrens' book per se, but Justin's work, the mysterious manuscript kept under wraps, badly in need of editing. Karl Miller also vents some frustration at the way Behren's own account is written, saying it is like being shown a series of snaps from a family photo album.
'The Monument' is not illustrated (though I hasten to add I have never laid eyes on the hard-back version.) The cover of the Cardinal paperback has an illustrator's interpretation of a Rodin sculpture--a naked man kneeling before a naked woman, kissing her breast--a nicely judged example of high art with a dash of the sensual. Behrens describes Ursula's appearance and character in a very abstract, painterly way ('a heraldic animal or an Afghan hound' saying she also has the attributes of a clown, namely 'the compulsion to amuse while inwardly crumbling away with a generalised and inherited melancholy'.) Of course, the long blonde hair, which merges with the collar of her equally blonde mink coat, is the first thing to be mentioned, along with her huge pale blue eyes and pointy little teeth. Karl Miller seems to have inveigled or scrounged a photograph of Ursula from somewhere. I'm not sure whether it was taken by Justin--(he took many portrait studies of Ursula which his brother describes as vaguely enervating and somewhat depressing images.)
The black and white photo does not accompany the article but is slapped on the cover of the May 9th issue of the LRB. So Ursula is top trumps, you could say. I have sketched a copy (see above). I have tried to capture her vaguely amused expression, but it is difficult to get exactly right. In my pencil version she appears more ethereal and remote, while in the photo there is a fleeting glimpse of something more down to earth, an appreciation of the quirks and absurdities of life--did she always take herself so seriously? One wonders.
She is gazing to her right, almost over her shoulder, as if her attention has been caught by something. There is an awful lot of white in those wide eyes and it was tricky to get the correct shading. It reminds me of a glance from some 17th century painting, perhaps by Georges de la Tour, entitled 'The Girl and the Card Sharp' but that painting probably doesn't exist. Her neck looks pretty solid, by the way and I did wonder if it was the first thing to go, when she was worrying about her looks. I took care to render the silky blonde hair and I can clearly see the haughty 'Afghan hound' image.
I kind of wanted to write about Ursula in a fiction piece--use her as a prototype of sorts. Then I realised I already had, in a story entitled 'Kensington Gore', about a classy lady vampire (the 'v' word is never mentioned) with a designer shoe fixation, who goes about her business with an air of existential ennui. Funnily enough, in his memoir, Brian Sewell tries to sum up Ursula and fails somewhat, labelling her a vampire in a throwaway kind of way (a convenient stereotype, no doubt.) Perhaps he noticed those pointy little teeth also--but one suspects he couldn't resist just being rude. Ursula does come across as a throwback who might have been happier living in a different age. I recently submitted my story to 'The London Magazine' so that's a nice twist of fate.
I don't know what to make of Justin and Ursula as a couple, except as some pure exhalation of the sixties zeitgeist minus the drugs. Perhaps they saw themselves as uber-hippies, the epitome of 'the beautiful people' many wanted to be. Ursula's (understandably disgruntled) first husband tells Behrens in the book that 'they didn't really do anything, so why bother to write about them?' Justin and Ursula would probably lose points today for their childless existence and lack of a proper job, no doubt. The only legacy is a plethora of notes, journals and manuscripts, still awaiting editing. Tim Behrens' book is the phoenix rising from the ashes, unfolding the story of an idyll that cannot last. 'Et in Arcadia Ego.'
'London, November 1973. Nureyev's Nutcracker is Tolstoian. Every possible subconscious motive is cleverly exploited. Very impressive the way he hobbles, the way his face moves and is transformed by movement.'
