Lucian Freud, Girl in bed, 1952.

Lady Caroline Maureen Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood (July 16, 1931 – February 14, 1996) was a writer and artist's muse, and the eldest child of Basil Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava and the brewery heiress Maureen Guinness. Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH (born 8 December 1922) is a British painter and printmaker. ... Year 1952 (MCMLII) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 197th day of the year (198th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1931 (MCMXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1931 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 45th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full 1996 Gregorian calendar). ... Basil Sheridan Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava DL (April 6, 1909 - March 25, 1945) was a Conservative politician and soldier and was the eldest child and only son of the 3rd Marquess of Dufferin and Ava. ...

A well-known figure in the literary world through her journalism and her novels, Caroline Blackwood was equally well-known for her high-profile marriages, first to the artist Lucian Freud, then to the composer Israel Citkowitz and finally to the poet Robert Lowell, who described her as "a mermaid who dines upon the bones of her winded lovers". Her novels are known for their wit and intelligence, and one in particular is scathingly autobiographical in describing her unhappy childhood. Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH (born 8 December 1922) is a British painter and printmaker. ... Robert Lowell (March 1, 1917–September 12, 1977), born Robert Traill Spence Lowell, IV, was a highly regarded mid-twentieth-century American poet. ...

She was born at 4 Hans Crescent in Knightsbridge, her parents' London house, and was, she admitted, "scantily educated" at Rockport School in County Down, at Brilliantmont in Lausanne, and at Downham in Essex. After a finishing school in Oxford she was presented as a debutante in 1949 at a ball held at Londonderry House. Plump, ungainly and lacking in confidence as a teenager, she soon blossomed into a captivating blonde beauty with startlingly large blue eyes. Knightsbridge is a street and district spanning the City of Westminster and theRoyal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London notable for its eclectic mix of rich, famous, and international residents including several billionaires Roman Abramovich, oligarchs from Russia, China and India, international businessman Lord Marshall of Knightsbridge, trend setters Charles... This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ... Statistics Province: Ulster County Town: Downpatrick Area: 2,448 km² Population (est. ... Lausanne (pronounced ) is a city in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, situated on the shores of Lake Geneva (French: Lac Léman), and facing Évian-les-Bains (France) and with the Jura mountains to its north. ... Downham is a district spanning the boundary between the London Borough of Lewisham and the London Borough of Bromley. ... For other meanings of Essex, see Essex (disambiguation). ... This article is about the city of Oxford in England. ... A debutante (or deb) (from the French débutante, female beginner) is a young lady from an aristocratic or upper class family who has reached the age of maturity, and as a new adult, is introduced to society at a formal presentation known as her debut or coming out. Originally...

Career

Blackwood’s first job was with Hulton Press as a secretary, but she was soon given small reporting jobs by Claud Cockburn. Ann Fleming, the wife of "James Bond" author Ian Fleming, introduced Caroline to Lucian Freud, and the two eloped to Paris in 1952. In Paris she met Picasso (and reportedly refused to wash for three days after he drew on her hands and nails), and after their marriage on December 9, 1953 she became a striking figure in London's bohemian circles; the Gargoyle Club and Colony Room replaced Belgravia drawing rooms as her haunts. She sat for several of Freud's finest portraits, including Girl In Bed, which testifies to her alluring beauty. She was impressed by the ruthless vision of Freud and Francis Bacon and her later fiction was a literary version of their view of humanity. Edward George Hulton (1869-1925) was a British newspaper publisher and Thoroughbred racehorse owner. ... Francis Claud Cockburn (pronounced ) (1904-1981) was a renowned radical British journalist, who was controversial for his communist and stalinist sympathies. ... 007 redirects here. ... This article is about the author. ... Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH (born 8 December 1922) is a British painter and printmaker. ... This article is about the capital of France. ... A young Pablo Picasso Pablo Picasso, formally Pablo Ruiz Picasso, (October 25, 1881 - April 8, 1973) was one of the recognized masters of 20th century art. ... Belgravia is a district in the City of Westminster in London, to the south-west of Buckingham Palace. ... Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) was an Irish figurative painter. ...

In the early 1960s Caroline Blackwood began contributing to Encounter, the London Magazine, and other periodicals on subjects such as beatniks, Ulster sectarianism, women's lib theatre and New York free schools. Although these articles were elegant, minutely observed and sometimes wickedly funny, they had, according to Christopher Isherwood, a persistent flaw: "She is only capable of thinking negatively. Confronted by a phenomenon, she asks herself: what is wrong with it?" During the mid-1960s she had an affair with Bob Silvers, the founder and co-editor of the New York Review of Books and although her marriage to Israel Citkowitz was over, he continued to live near her and served as a nanny-duenna until his death. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... The London Magazine is a historied publication of arts, literature, and miscellaneous interests. ... Beatnik can refer to two different things: A member of the Beat Generation An esoteric programming language This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Christopher Isherwood (left) and W.H. Auden (right), photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1939 Christopher Isherwood (prior to 1946 Christopher William Bradshaw-Isherwood) (August 26, 1904 – January 4, 1986), Anglo-American novelist, was born in the ancestral seat of his family, Wybersley Hall, High Lane, in the north west of... The New York Review of Books (or NYRB) is a biweekly magazine on literature, culture, and current affairs published in New York which takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity. ...

Her third husband Robert Lowell was a crucial influence on her talents as a novelist. He encouraged her to write her first book, For All That I Found There (1973), which was named after an Ulster Protestant marching song and formed a coruscating memoir of her daughter’s treatment in a burns unit. Blackwood’s first novel The Stepdaughter (1976) appeared three years later to much acclaim, and is a concise and gripping monologue by a rich, self-pitying woman deserted by her husband in a plush New York apartment and tormented by her fat stepdaughter. It won the David Higham Prize for best first novel. Great Granny Webster (1977) was her second novel and was partly based on her own miserable childhood, and depicted an austere and loveless old woman’s destructive impact on her daughter and granddaughter and was short-listed for the Booker Prize. The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, also known as the Man Booker Prize, or simply the Man Booker, is one of the worlds most important literary prizes, and awarded each year for the best original novel written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland in...

In 1980 she wrote The Last of the Duchess, a study of the relations between the Duchess of Windsor and her cunning lawyer, Maître Suzanne Blum, that was not able to be published until after Blum’s death in 1995. Her third novel The Fate of Mary Rose (1981) describes the effect on a Kent village of the rape and torture of a ten year-old girl named Maureen and is narrated by a selfish historian whose obsessions destroy his domestic life. After this came a collection of five short stories, Good Night Sweet Ladies (1983) followed by her final novel, Corrigan (1984), which was the least successful and depicts the effects on a depressed widow of a charming, energetic but sinister cripple who erupts into her life. Wallis, Duchess of Windsor and the Duke of Windsor on their wedding day Bessie Wallis Warfield, more widely known as Wallis Simpson and later The Duchess of Windsor (June 19, 1896–April 24, 1986) was the wife of Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII of the...

Blackwood’s later books were based on interviews and vignettes, including On The Perimeter (1984) which focused her attentions on the women’s peace encampment at the Greenham Common air base in Berkshire, and In The Pink (1987) which was a reflective, ghoulish book looking at the hunting and the hunt saboteur fraternities and exposed the many obsessive personalities of both fox-hunters and animal rights activists. Greenham Common in 2005. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

Personal Life and Family

Her marriage to Lucian Freud disintegrated soon after they tied the knot and in 1957 Blackwood moved to New York where she studied acting at the Stella Adler School. She also went to Hollywood and appeared in several films. Her marriage to Freud was finally dissolved in Mexico in 1958. Meeting her in that year, Isherwood noted that "Caroline was round eyed as usual, either dumb or scared". On August 15, 1959 she married the pianist Israel Citkowitz (1909-1974), a man who would have been the same age as her father. They had three daughters, although a deathbed admission revealed that the screenwriter Ivan Moffat was the father of her youngest daughter, Ivana. This article is about the state. ... ... is the 227th day of the year (228th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Blackwood returned to live in London in 1970 and that April began a relationship with the manic-depressive poet Robert Lowell. Lowell was at the time a visiting professor at All Souls College, Oxford. Their son, Sheridan, was born on September 28, 1971, and after obtaining divorces from their respective spouses, Blackwood and Lowell were married on October 21, 1972. They lived in London and Milgate in Kent. The sequence of poems in Lowell's The Dolphin (1973) provides a disrupted narrative of his involvement with Blackwood and the birth of their son. She was distressed and confused in her reactions to Lowell's manic episodes, and felt useless during his attacks and afraid of their effect on her children. Her anxieties, alcohol-related illnesses, and late-night tirades exacerbated his condition. Lowell died clutching one of Freud’s portraits of Blackwood in the back seat of a New York cab, on his way back to his second wife, Elizabeth Hardwick. This heartache was followed a year later by the death of her daughter Natalya from a drug overdose at the age of 18. For other uses, see Bipolar. ... All Souls College (in full: The College of All Souls of the Faithful Departed, of Oxford) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. ... This article is about the city of Oxford in England. ... is the 271st day of the year (272nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1971 (MCMLXXI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the 1971 Gregorian calendar, known as the year of cyclohexanol. ... is the 294th day of the year (295th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see Kent (disambiguation). ... Elizabeth Hardwick (July 27, 1916) is an American literary critic, novelist, and short-story writer. ...

To avoid the punitive taxation levied by the government of the day, Blackwood left England in 1977 and went to live in an apartment at the great Georgian mansion of Castletown House, County Kildare, which was owned by her cousin Desmond Guinness. Ten years later in 1987 she returned to the United States, settling in a large, comfortable house in Sag Harbor, Long Island where, although her powers were greatly depleted by alcoholism, she continued to write, including two vivid memoirs of Princess Margaret and Francis Bacon, published in the New York Review of Books in 1992. Castletown House, Irelands finest Palladian country house, is an imposing building built in 1722 for William Connolly, the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. ... Statistics Province: Leinster County Town: Naas Code: KE Area: 1,693 km² Population (2006) 186,075 Website: www. ... Desmond Guinness is an Irish author on Georgian art and architecture and a radical conservationist. ... Sag Harbor is a village located in Suffolk County, New York, shared by the towns of East Hampton and Southampton. ... This article is about the island in New York State. ... HRH The Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon Her Royal Highness The Princess Margaret (Margaret Rose Armstrong-Jones, née Windsor; (August 21, 1930—February 9, 2002) was a member of the British Royal Family, the second eldest daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and sister of the current British... For other persons named Francis Bacon, see Francis Bacon (disambiguation). ... The New York Review of Books (or NYRB) is a biweekly magazine on literature, culture, and current affairs published in New York which takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity. ...

During her final illness Blackwood never lost her dark, macabre humour. On her deathbed Anna Haycraft brought her some holy water from Lourdes which was accidentally spilled on her bed sheets. “I might have caught my death,” she muttered. Anna Haycraft was the real name of the British writer who wrote as Alice Thomas Ellis (September 9, 1932 – March 8, 2005). ... This article is about the French pilgrimage location. ...

Caroline Blackwood died on February 14, 1996 from cancer at the Mayfair Hotel on Park Avenue in New York aged 64. She was survived by her two younger daughters Eugenia (b. 1963), who is married to the actor Julian Sands, and Ivana (b. 1966), her son Sheridan, her sister Lady Perdita Blackwood and her mother, who died two years later, aged 91. is the 45th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full 1996 Gregorian calendar). ... Park Avenue in the Upper East Side (2004) Park Avenue runs north and south between Madison Avenue and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan in New York City. ... Julian Sands (born January 15, 1958) is a British actor. ...

References

• The above is abridged and edited from Richard Davenport-Hines' entry on Caroline Blackwood in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.