Manly Pursuits
William Henry Grenfell, 1st Baron Desborough (1855-1945)
Champion Punter on the Thames
c. 1896, a variant of the photographic portrait reproduced in
Men, Women And Things, Memories of The Duke of Portland
London: Faber & Faber, 1937
Sometimes everything converges. Last weekend's trip to LACMA for the American Stories exhibition led to my thinking about Thomas Eakins and his work, "The Wrestlers" which led to musing on favorite painters which led to a very nice message from Brian Paul Clamp at Clamp Art Gallery in New York, which represents Mark Beard/ (painting as Bruce Sargeant) whose painting of "Two Wrestlers" to name but one made me think about athletics in general, not just the strictly American variety. And from there it was not a very great leap to the Duke of Portland's good friend the renowned athlete Willy Grenfell, who was raised to the peerage in 1905 as 1st Baron Desborough and who enjoyed sports of all kinds not to mention the great outdoors in general (while on a hunting trip in the American Rocky Mountains he once spent two days and two nights wandering lost before being rescued by a solitary trapper and taken back to his party) and who happened to swim the mighty Niagara at the foot of the Falls not once but twice and in so doing could be said to have 'bridged the gap' so to speak and to stretch a metaphor from yesterday's post to today's, an American landscape crossed by a British subject.
I have been reading and thoroughly enjoying Ettie, The Intimate Life and Dauntless Spirit of Lady Desborough, by Richard Davenport-Hines (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008) which I had picked up in large part because Ettie and Willy Grenfell were such very good friends of the Duke and Duchess of Portland, and because both couples were part of that important socio-political circle referred to as the Souls, which included among others Mary, Lady Elcho, one of the famous Wyndham Sisters to whom you have often heard me refer. As for Ettie's husband I do not believe I had truly appreciated Lord Desborough's physical prowess until I returned to the Duke of Portland's memoirs which I always keep close at hand and reread the account of his daring exploits.
As for Ettie, Lady Desborough, as you might imagine I will have much to say about her in subsequent posts at which time I will also include extensive references to the houses in which she grew up and lived and entertained, some of which are lamentably lost or altered beyond recognition or nowadays put to new uses. That is all for another time, however. When Willy told the Duke of Portland about his swimming the Niagara the second time, Portland asked if Ettie had been very proud of him. "Proud?" Willy answered --
"'No, not at all! She pretended to be terribly angry with me, and demanded to know why I had tried to make her a widow, though she was glad Providence had thwarted my nefarious design!' I [the Duke] asked him whether the feat was very difficult. He said that, for a really strong swimmer, it was not, provided his head was cool and that he kept his legs as near to the surface as possible, to avoid the pull of the under-current. 'The second time I did it,' he added; 'just for a minute or two, I really did think something might go wrong.' [Portland, p. 73, with photograph of The Niagara Falls opposite p. 79]
So you see, manly pursuits are not always fun and games.
"'No, not at all! She pretended to be terribly angry with me, and demanded to know why I had tried to make her a widow, though she was glad Providence had thwarted my nefarious design!' I [the Duke] asked him whether the feat was very difficult. He said that, for a really strong swimmer, it was not, provided his head was cool and that he kept his legs as near to the surface as possible, to avoid the pull of the under-current. 'The second time I did it,' he added; 'just for a minute or two, I really did think something might go wrong.' [Portland, p. 73, with photograph of The Niagara Falls opposite p. 79]
So you see, manly pursuits are not always fun and games.
Sigh; this is obviously a man who knew his way around a medicine ball.
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