Craig Raine

As Lucian Freud’s fame increases his indiscretions multiply

Volume II of William Feaver’s biography is as compulsively readable as ever – and it becomes clear why Freud finally withdrew his authorisation

Lucian Freud in 2010. Credit: Getty Images

Staying with Peregrine Eliot (later 10th Earl of St Germans) at Port Eliot in Cornwall, Lucian Freud remembered that the Eliots ‘ate off solid silver plate, even shepherd’s pie’. In 1968, Freud was having an affair with Perry’s wife Jacquetta. According to her, it was an addiction: ‘Completely hooked, a dreadful drug…’ After two turbulent years, she decided to have a baby by Lucian, ideally to be born on his birthday. Her husband agreed to bring up the child as his own, provided the matter was not mentioned again. The laissez-aller attitude is partly accounted for (though not by William Feaver) by the 1960s, and the way the young aristocracy embraced the hippy-trippy counter-culture. Jacquetta mentions smoking an opium spliff in Paris with Freud. Her analogy — ‘a dreadful drug’ — is indicative. As is her misspelling of ‘pethidine’ (an opioid painkiller administered in childbirth) as ‘pethadone’ — on the analogy of methadone. The son, Freddy, is now a qualified whirling dervish, practising at Hebden Bridge. Is there perhaps a (tie-dyed, kohl-eyed, henna, joss-stick, Pakistani black) pattern here?

The older aristocracy was equally unconventional. When Freud painted Mary Rose, Lord Beaumont’s wife, her conversation was racy. She disclosed that she had had an affair with Clement Freud. He asked how his brother was in the sack. ‘Punctual’ was her laconic, devastating verdict. Andrew, Duke of Devonshire, the subject of one of Freud’s greatest portraits, fell out bitterly with Freud — because Lucian had dumped Debo, his wife: ‘Andrew liked whores. When a newspaper revealed that he had been involved with a prostitute, the Duke said how lucky he was to be able to afford such treats.’

The aristocracy is different from you and me. Freud’s other brother Stephen was ‘conventional to the point of eccentricity. Golf!

Nearly all these revelations were transcribed from tapes and daily phone conversations with Freud — for what, it was agreed between biographer and subject, would be the first funny book about art.

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