A trail of family secrets

Britain's foremost biographer now leaves us with an unusual final volume about people who were not household names or even especially remarkable.They are linked by the fact that they were deserted or lost their footing in society. "It's a book about what the Victorians called damaged goods," he says. We meet in his west London home, which he shares with the Sheffield-born novelist Margaret Drabble, his wife of 27 years. The first-floor sitting room is populated by comfortable sofas, paintings and of course books, shelves and shelves of them.

He rose to fame with his second book in 1966, a biography of Lytton Strachey, the writer of Eminent Victorians, which discussed the homosexuality of Strachey and his circle, the Bloomsbury set, which included people like Virginia Woolf, EM Forster and the economist John Maynard Keynes. The book appeared when homosexuality was still a crime and bringing it into the open had unexpected repercussions. Holroyd was accused of giving comfort to Soviet Russia by revealing that Keynes, architect of post-war capitalism, was gay.

Nevertheless, the Yorkshire Post named it as their book of the year, an award which seems to have got the ball rolling for its author. He has since been garlanded with prizes and in 1989 was awarded the CBE for services to literature. He is known as a ferocious researcher, driven by a need to uncover any scrap of information that will help to build the definitive picture of his subject. Among the landmarks have been George Bernard Shaw (four volumes), Augustus John, and actors Henry Irving and Helen Terry. One has tended to begat the next. "A significant minor character in a book I have written will catch my attention – so for example Augustus John was in Lytton Strachey's biography." He says his characters have taught him everything he wanted to know.

An only child, he was brought up by aunts and grandmothers after the divorce of his parents and like many only children, books became his closest friends. His thoughts about becoming a writer were formed early on. He was sent to Eton but thereafter was self-taught (he did not go to university although he now has any number of honorary degrees).

But he prefers to call himself "a storyteller" and "a comic writer, writing tragedies". There's certainly plenty of the latter in the new book begun two-and-a-half years ago but 40 years in the making. On a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1970 he was intrigued by a bust by Rodin which came to captivate him. "I hadn't realised how much a portrait bust can change, depending on the light, on

the angle from which it is seen, even on one's own mood. But there was a poignancy to her."

He discovered the sitter was Eve Fairfax, a Yorkshire heiress who was the daughter of Thomas Ferdinand Fairfax of Bilborough Hall near York. The bust had been commissioned by Eve's fiance, Ernest Beckett (later second Baron Grimthorpe). Eve had travelled to Paris to sit for Rodin and she subsequently corresponded with him for 13 years. But the bust was never paid for and the engagement was broken off. Eve eventually went into a decline. She ended her days as a destitute spinster at The Retreat, a Quaker home for the mentally-ill in York, her fees paid by Lord Grimthorpe, the Duke of Wellington and Lord Linlithgow.

Whether Eve was mentally ill is in doubt. The Retreat offered a safe haven for a woman who had no home of her own and had relied on the hospitality of others. In an interview with The Star newspaper shortly before she went into The Retreat, Eve was asked if she had any regrets. "Yes, only one, and that is I never married. I was very popular in my time and had many offers. Maybe, if I had married, I would be better off today."

Maybe there was something in Rodin's portrayal of her that spoke of her destiny and caught Holroyd's imagination. "Eve lost her legitimate place in society because she didn't marry," he says.

Ernest, on the other hand, being a man and therefore unscathed by the shame of a broken engagement, went on to marry an American heiress, Lucy Tracy Lee, or Luie, as she was known. Luie was to die after bearing him a son and heir (as well as two daughters). Before his son was born, Ernest had switched his attention to an 18-year-old, Josephine Cornelia Brink, "a voluptuous... girl from South Africa whom everyone called Jos".

Ernest also fathered a son, Lancelot, and a daughter, Violet, with Mrs Alice Keppel, the mistress of the Prince of Wales and great-grandmother of the present Duchess of Cornwall. Both children were illegitimate. It was the story of Violet Keppel (later Violet Trefusis) which next turned Holroyd's head because she had a connection with Eve Fairfax. He discovered it in Italy, at Ernest's flamboyant home, Villa Cimbrone, at Ravello. History had not treated Violet Trefusis kindly. She is best known for her love affair with Vita Sackville-West and was shown in a very poor light in Portrait of a Marriage, an intimate book by Nigel Nicolson, son of Vita Sackville-West, which drew on his mother's personal diaries.

Holroyd, however, portrays Violet rather sympathetically. Her end was as tragic as Eve's. "Arriving at the Villa dell'Ombrellino at the end of 1971... she retired to her bedroom (once her mother's bedroom), her Faberge animals and jade statuettes round the walls – and starved to death on 1 March 1972." Eve Fairfax's story brought Holroyd back to Yorkshire, to the land of his ancestors for which he has an abiding affection. The family came from Barkisland, near Halifax, and he is descended from John Baker Holroyd, the Earl of Sheffield. Perhaps too the fact that his first book was celebrated here when it was taking flak from other sides is another reason for his warm feelings. His journey of discovery brought him into contact with Catherine Till, sister of a schoolfriend, Rupert Lycett Green. Her personal interest in his investigation was clear when she confided her own remarkable story.

Catherine, like Eve, spent her very early years at Bilbrough Manor. Her father, David Lycett Green, bought it after his marriage to Catherine's mother, Angela, a woman, as her daughter was to discover later who had had a long love affair with Ernest's son, Ralph Grimthorpe – the child of the relationship with Luie, the American heiress. During a car journey around Yorkshire, Catherine Till revealed to Michael Holroyd that her father was Ralph Beckett, third Lord Grimthorpe and not David Lycett Green, as stated on her birth certificate. At her home in York, Catherine tells me her mother had never spoken to her about the facts of her parentage. "My mother married Raph Beckett in 1945 after divorcing David Lycett Green when I was nine. It's unproven that I am in fact Ralph's daughter, but I have been told that it is certain that I was Ralph's daughter. Ralph's son Christie (Christopher, 4th Baron Grimthorpe) says 'Of course you are!'"

Catherine accompanied Michael Holroyd on his quest to Villa Cimbrone, Ernest's Italian home. Here she found a letter from Ralph to Angela saying that Catherine is the most beautiful baby he has ever seen.

Michael and Catherine become contemporary characters in the unfolding mystery. By having them dip in and out in this way, Holroyd displays his unconventional approach to biography. In many ways he is considered to have re-invented the genre by experimenting with theme and chronology.

But times are much changed since he began. Not only is homosexuality now out in the open, so too it seems is everyone's private life. "When I wrote the biography of Lytton Strachey, things were very different. People then rushed through the open door, as it were, and now and now nothing is secret."

Michael Holroyd, now 75 and battling with illness, has dominated the field of biography for half a century and in his hands it has been changed for good.

A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers, Chatto & Windus 16.99. To order your copy ring our order line 01748 821122 Mon –Sat 9am -5pm . Or by post please send cheque postal order plus 2.75 postage to Yorkshire Books Ltd , 1 Castle Hill ,Richmond DL10 4QP .

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