Sybille Bedford

Bedford spent the 1950s, 60s and 70s
living in France, Italy, Britain and Portugal, and during this period
had a twenty-year relationship with the American female novelist Eda
Lord 

This is the eighty-second post in a series highlighting the best gay and
lesbian authors from the 20th century (with a few before and after that
period) who have recorded in fiction, and nonfiction, the history of
gay people telling what life is, and was, during an important time of
history.

Sybille
Bedford, OBE (16 March 1911 – 17 February 2006) was a German-born
English writer. Many of her works are partly autobiographical. Julia
Neuberger proclaimed her "the finest woman writer of the 20th century"
while Bruce Chatwin saw her as "one of the most dazzling practitioners
of modern English proseEarly life

She
was born as Freiin Sybille Aleid Elsa von Schoenebeck in Charlottenburg
on the noble outskirts of Berlin to Baron Maximilian Josef von
Schoenebeck (1853-1925), a German aristocrat, retired lieutenant colonel
and art collector, and his Anglo-German-Jewish wife, Elizabeth Bernard
(born 1888-died 19??). Sybille was raised in the Roman Catholic faith of
her father at Schloss Feldkirch in Baden. She had a half sister, by her
father's first marriage, Maximiliane Henriette von Schoenebeck (later
Nielsen, aka Jacko or Catsy). Her parents divorced in 1918, and she
remained with her father, under somewhat impoverished circumstances,
where she was home schooled. He died in 1925, when she was 14 years old
and Sybille went to live in Italy with her mother and stepfather, an
Italian architectural student. During these years she studied in
England, lodging in Hampstead.

In the early 1920s, Sybille often traveled between England and Italy.
With the rise of fascism in Italy, though, her mother and stepfather
settled in Sanary-sur-Mer, a small fishing village in the south of
France. Sybille herself settled there as a teenager, living near Aldous
Huxley, with whom she became friends. Bedford interacted with and was
influenced by many of the German writers who settled in the area during
that time, including Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht. During this time,
her mother became addicted to morphine prescribed by a local doctor, and
became increasingly dysfunctional.

In
1933, Sybille published an article critical of the Nazi regime in Die
Sammlung, the literary magazine of Klaus Mann, the son of Thomas Mann.
When her Jewish ancestry  was subsequently discovered by the Nazis, her
German bank accounts were frozen. At this time it was difficult for her
to renew her German passport, and staying in Italy without a valid
passport or source of income carried the risk of being deported to
Germany. Maria Huxley came with a solution in 1935. Maria is known to
have said, on occasion who should marry Sybille "We need to get one of
our bugger friends". Sybille entered a marriage of convenience with an
English Army officer, Walter "Terry" Bedford, (who had been an
ex-boyfriend of a former man-servant of W.H Auden's) whom she described
as a friend's "bugger butler", and obtained a British passport. The
marriage ended shortly thereafter, but Sybille took her husband's
surname, publishing all of her later work as Sybille Bedford.

With
assistance from Aldous Huxley and his wife Maria, Bedford left France
for America in advance of the German invasion of 1940. She followed the
Huxleys to California and spent the rest of World War II in America.

Career as a writer

After
the war, Bedford spent a year traveling in Mexico. Her experiences on
that trip would form the basis of her first published book, a travelogue
entitled The Sudden View: a Mexican Journey, which was published in
1953. Bedford spent the remainder of the 1940s living in France and
Italy. During this time she had a love affair with an American woman,
Evelyn W. Gendel, who left her husband for Bedford and became a writer
and editor herself.[ In the 1950s she became Martha Gellhorn's
confidante.[

A Legacy, Bedford's second book and first novel, was
published in 1956 and was described by Francis King as "one of the
great books of the 20th century". Though ostensibly a work of fiction,
it was somewhat autobiographical - it presents a stylized version of her
father's life, as well as some of the author's early childhood, in
Germany. That novel was a success, and enabled Bedford to continue
writing. In her lifetime, she published three more novels as well as
numerous works of non-fiction. As a writer of non-fiction, Bedford was
best known as a travel writer and as a legal reporter.

In 1979
she settled in Chelsea in London. In 1981 she was appointed OBE. She
worked for PEN, was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in
1994 became a Companion of Literature. Bedford's final work was
Quicksands, a memoir published in 2005.

Works

The Sudden View: a Mexican Journey - 1953 - (republished as A Visit to Don Otavio: a Traveller's Tale from Mexico, a travelogue)
A
Legacy: A Novel - 1956 - her first novel, a work inspired by the early
life of the author's father, which focuses on the brutality and
anti-Semitism in the cadet schools of the German officer class.
The Best We Can Do: (The Trial of Dr Adams) - 1958 - an account of the murder trial of suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams
The
Faces of Justice: A Traveller's report - 1961 - a description of the
legal systems of England, Germany, Switzerland, and France.
A Favourite of the Gods - 1963 - a novel about an American heiress who marries a Roman Prince
A Compass Error - 1968 - a sequel to the above, describing the love affairs of the granddaughter of that work's protagonist
Aldous Huxley: A biography - 1973 - the standard, authorized biography of Huxley
Jigsaw:
An Unsentimental Education - 1989 - a sort of followup to A Legacy,
this novel was inspired by the author's experiences living in Italy and
France with her mother
As It Was: Pleasures, Landscapes and Justice -
1990 - a collection of magazine pieces on various trials, including the
censorship of Lady Chatterley's Lover, the trial of Jack Ruby, and the
Auschwitz trial, as well as pieces on food and travel.
Pleasures and
Landscapes: A Traveller's Tales from Europe - a reissue of the above,
removing the legal writings, and including two additional travel essays.
Quicksands: A Memoir - 2005 - A memoir of the author's life, from her childhood in Berlin to her experiences in postwar Europe.