The sky was a sulphurous yellow, a strong wind caused the leaves to eddy and rain threatened as I searched Brompton Cemetery for a grave. The Friends office, where I might have been guided to it, was closed and I thought I’d take a final look round this Gothic location at the risk of being soaked.
I came upon a woman kneeling at a stone marking the grave of Sioux Chief, Long Wolf, who died in London in 1892 while taking part in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. A Gothic scene indeed but I was interested to see where he had been buried. He was disinterred in 1997 and his body returned to the plains of South Dakota. I was resigned to failure but when my new friend asked whose grave I sought she knew it and showed it to me.
Now we must turn the clock back to 1571 where Sebastiano Venier is a commander in the Venetian fleet at the Battle of Lepanto. His family were one of the oldest grand Venetian dynasties and he went on to be Doge. In the mid 18th century his descendants commissioned the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal. You certainly know it although you may not recognise the name. Today it is home to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
You may well ask why it looks like a bungalow and nobody knows for sure; there are lots of theories which need not detain us today. Suffice to say that it fell into disrepair until it was bought by a succession of three larger than life châtelaines in the 20th century. Life, Love and Art in Venice by Judith Mackrell tells their stories. The first is Luisa Casati, next a beautiful blonde who started out as a shopgirl in Streatham. She became mistress to a succession of rich men finally becoming Lady Castlerosse. Her lesbian lover made her a present of the palazzo much as the Princesse Edmond de Polignac did in France for Alvilde Lees-Milne. Finally and most famously it was bought by Peggy Guggenheim.
Luisa Casati was born in Milan in 1881. In 1900, she married Camillo, Marchese Casati Stampa di Soncino and they had a daughter, Cristina, who married Viscount Hastings, later the 16th Earl of Huntingdon. ( Digression: the 17th Earl is the former race-horse trainer, William Hastings-Bass.)
Luisa’s marriage was short-lived and henceforth she devoted herself to being an extravagant and eccentric hostess, appearing at parties with cheetahs on a leash or wearing live snakes as decoration. She sponsored the Ballets Russes and was painted and photographed by simply everyone including Man Ray and Cecil Beaton.
By 1930 her chickens, the feathers of which often adorned her outfits, had come home to roost. She went bankrupt owing $25 million and was reduced to living in a one bedroom flat in Beaufort Gardens until she died of a stroke in 1957. What a silly girl but what an inspiration to fashion designers still; Tom Ford, John Galliano, Karl Lagerfeld and Alexander McQueen have all paid tribute to her influence.
Her grave in Brompton Cemetery is still a place of pilgrimage. It is a simple Venetian urn with her name mis-spelt as Louisa in the inscription. When I was shown it there were two newly placed pictures resting on it.
Hair splitting time.
A Venetian Urn splays out at the top. A traditional Greek urn however is an ash container. Hence the origin of the word for urn, the Greek word uro “to burn”.
Yada, yada…..
I thought it was rather apt and charming to describe it as a Venetian urn and now my ignorance is exposed. Keep up the good work.
Sadly I never met “Uncle” Jack although, from reading his biography The Red Earl by his daughter Selina Hastings, the interest in his life is entirely to do with the people he associated with rather than the earl himself. He was a great disappointment to his father Warner (MFH to Ormond and East Galway hunts) who opposed his marriage to Christina. He must have had some talent as an artist as Diego Rivera took him on as his assistant for the murals in both San Francisco and Chicago. Meanwhile Christina plotted revolution with Frida Kahlo. The only example of his work on public view that I am aware of is “The Worker of the Future” in the Karl Marx Memorial Library Clerkenwell. Well worth a visit when combined with the eateries of St John Street. He went on to have a much more tranquil second marriage to the authoress Margaret Lane (one for BB to rediscover?).