Irrepressible

April 6, 2015
In lovely prose, historian Bingham (Mordecai: An Early American Family) draws readers behind the veil of silence surrounding her great-aunt Henrietta, who was part of a wealthy, politically influential Kentucky family. Henrietta was very young when her mother died, and navigated a difficult, nearly incestuous relationship with her narcissistic father. She met her first love, the composition professor Mina Kerstein, at Smith College in the early 1920s. They subsequently spent time in England, where Mina, intellectually intrigued by their mutual sexual desires, arranged for their psychoanalysis with a Freudian doctor. Bingham is at her best when describing Henrietta’s conflicted feelings about her sexuality as she drifted into acquaintance with the Bloomsbury literary crowd and had affairs with both men and women, including artist Dora Carrington and future producer/actor John Houseman. But Henrietta comes across as less interesting than the company she kept, a minor character overshadowed by the much larger personalities and events of the 20th century. Though the story is weighed down by the minutiae of Henrietta’s life and fails to offer much insight on her era, it succeeds as a psychological study of an unusual woman. Illus.

Starred review from March 15, 2015
A colorful portrait of a daring woman.F. Scott Fitzgerald never invented a Jazz-Age seductress as bold, brash, and devastating as Henrietta Bingham (1901-1968), the author's great-aunt. A biographer and historian, Bingham (Mordecai: An Early American Family, 2003, etc.) discovered a cache of love letters sent to Henrietta by two ardent suitors. One was John Houseman, not yet a noted director and producer. Most of Henrietta's lovers, though, were women: Mina Kirstein (sister of ballet impresario Lincoln and lover of Clive Bell), who had been her teacher at Smith College; Bloomsbury artist Dora Carrington, who experienced "ecstasy" in Henrietta's arms; Wimbledon tennis champion Helen Jacobs, with whom Henrietta had an affair lasting several years; actress Beatrix Lehmann, sister of novelist Rosamund and Hogarth Press editor John; and many others. Henrietta was, apparently, irresistible; she "could beguile brilliant and creative people," the author notes, but her affairs, which "began passionately...rarely held her attention....With one lover after another Henrietta acted skittish and immature, ambivalent and distant." Her behavior was likely shaped by her relationship with her wealthy and powerful father, emotionally, but not physically incestuous, characterized by "mutual obsession and dependency." He repeatedly offered her careers that would have ensconced her in her native Kentucky, and she repeatedly refused. Yet when he was made Franklin Roosevelt's ambassador to England, Henrietta reveled in aristocratic life and often served as his hostess. The "seductiveness and ambivalence" Henrietta felt toward her father contributed to a lifetime of neuroses, which she sought to alleviate through treatment with Freudian psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, who became her mentor and confidant and who freely shared details of Henrietta with Mina, also his analysand. As she aged, Henrietta succumbed to drink and assorted pharmaceuticals, suffering more than a dozen breakdowns in the decades before her death. Throughout, the author ably illuminates the character of her great-aunt, who "took freedom as far as she could." Deeply researched, Bingham's engrossing biography brings her glamorous, tormented ancestor vividly to life.

April 15, 2015

Bingham (Mordecai) had long wondered about her great-aunt, the peripatetic Kentuckian Henrietta Bingham (1901-68), a mysterious figure whom her grandmother had called an "invert." Upon finding a trunk of letters to Henrietta in her family's attic, the author set out to uncover the story of a troubled individual whose charm obsessed both women and men. Henrietta witnessed many tragedies in her childhood, including the death of her mother in a horrific accident. Her father, Robert, a publisher and later an ambassador to England, was accused of murdering his second wife. Robert's intense need for Henrietta's presence always pulled her back to Kentucky after periods in New York and London, where she hobnobbed with and seduced many members of the Bloomsbury Group. Independently wealthy, she flitted among lovers and jazz clubs until rumors of her lesbianism forced her to attempt a quiet life as a horse breeder. Friends and family distanced themselves as Henrietta eventually succumbed to alcoholism and mental illness. VERDICT A fascinating glimpse into Southern LGBT history and another angle on the exploits of the Bloomsbury Group.--Kate Stewart, American Folklife Ctr., Washington, DC

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2015
Wealthy and privileged Henrietta Bingham could have accepted the helm of a publishing empire in Louisville, Kentucky, offered by her obsessive father. Instead, she carried on the scandalous life of an F. Scott Fitzgerald character, including alcoholism, drug addiction, and lesbian love affairs. But she was also as unforgettably mesmerizing to her lovers, male and female, as she was willfully overlooked by her scandalized family, as author Bingham discovered of the long-hidden life of her great-aunt. Bingham draws on a trove of material to offer a compelling portrait of a woman who defied social conventions, heartily embracing the Jazz Age and becoming one of the few Americans accepted in London's Bloomsbury set as well as an early subject of a psychoanalytic attempt to treat homosexuality. Henrietta tempted royalty, socialites, and athletic champions in a life of audacity and self-destructive impulses rooted in a traumatic childhood. With rich detail, historian Bingham renders a portrait of an unforgettable woman long buried in her family history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)