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January 02, 2008
Lois Gordon, '60
The only child of an English baronet and heir to the Cunard shipping fortune, Nancy Cunard abandoned the world of a celebrated socialite to pursue a lifelong battle against social injustice as a wartime journalist, humanitarian aid worker, and civil rights champion. Her involvement with the civil rights movement led her to be ridiculed and rejected by both family and friends. Throughout her life, she was plagued by insecurities and suffered a series of breakdowns, struggling with a sense of guilt in response to her mother's constant criticism of her as "worthless" and the sexual promiscuity she initiated as a response to the carnage of World War I. Her friend William Carlos Williams called her an "ascetic voluptuary," providing soldiers a talisman against likely maiming or death.
AAUM: What was Nancy's childhood like?
Gordon: Although she was born into great privilege, her mother made it clear that having a child was "the lowest thing" that could happen to a woman. Nancy, who was highly intelligent and sensitive, was raised by 40 servants and strict, punitive tutors. She spent an isolated childhood either reading and writing or observing her unfaithful mother entertain lovers during weekend parties. She was forever confused by the strict rules she was forced to obey while no one else followed any rules.
How was her life event-filled?
She was an iconic figure of the 1920s—the Cunard heiress who was both very beautiful and who set the fashion styles. Reporters followed her everywhere to describe her short cropped hair, dark eye makeup, long beads and short skirts. She also participated in the art circles that defined Modernism, and many called her the "Gioconda of the Age," while "lovely enough to seduce a saint." Her lovers—and all wrote extensively about her in their work—included Ezra Pound, Aldous Huxley, Louis Aragon, Tristan Tzara and the Nobel Prize winners T.S. Eliot, Pablo Neruda and Samuel Beckett. She also was sculpted many times by Brancusi, photographed by Man Ray and Cecil Beaton, and painted by Kokoshka, Wyndham Lewis and numerous others.
But didn't she want to be more than that?
Yes—to be a poet, and she did publish excellent poetry. But it was "reviewed" in terms of her wardrobe or rebellion against her class and its expectations. So she started the very successful Hours Press, publishing the first work of Samuel Beckett and Pound's "XXX Cantos." Then, on vacation in Venice, she met a black jazz pianist from America, Henry Crowder, and began a long love affair with him. This was the beginning of her education into American racism and it precipitated a lifetime commitment to social causes.
After an enormous amount of research and travel, she published "Negro" in 1934. This was an 855-page compendium of the history and achievement of Africans throughout the world. Her mother disinherited her, and they never spoke again. Her second greatest cause was the Spanish Civil War, when she reported for the Manchester Guardian from the fronts. After Franco's victory, Nancy was one of very few reporters to remain in Spain, and she described—and this is now entering the history books—France's complicity with Franco in opening concentration camps for the Spanish Republicans, camps later used by Vichy collaborationists during World War II. She reported the torture she witnessed and worked both to smuggle prisoners to her home in France and to find them refuge in Central and South America. She was jailed many times but continued her underground activities against Franco.
It sounds like you really came to admire Nancy.
I grew to love Nancy. The more I learned about her, the more I admired her. The book was truly a labor of love. I am convinced that she is one of the most remarkable women who ever lived. She gave so much, and I want her to gain the recognition she deserves.
The author: Lois Gordon, distinguished professor of English at Fairleigh Dickinson University, is internationally known for her work in drama and American culture. She is the author of the first book in the United States on Harold Pinter, and her most recent books include "Pinter at 70," "The World of Samuel Beckett, 1906-1946," "Reading Godot" and "American Chronicle: Year by Year Through the Twentieth Century," a classic reference on American culture.
Posted by tobiaslw at January 2, 2008 01:16 PM