Nerina Shute
Encyclopedia
Nerina Shute was an English writer and journalist, described by the Sunday Times as the amazingly colourful, brilliant and bisexual film critic".
, Northumberland
. Her father, Cameron Shute, was the ne'er-do-well son of a general, Sir Charles Shute, who had fought at Balaclava and was MP for Brighton from 1874 to 1880.
Her racy mother, née Amy Bertha ("Renie") Pepper Stavely, was of a well-to-do family with its seat at Woldhurstlea, near Crawley
, West Sussex and was the author of a rip-roaring Edwardian novel The Unconscious Bigamist. She was sedulous in not sleeping with her lovers: she married six of them. The second of these husbands was Nerina’s father. After a childhood overshadowed by her parents’ fast living in London and then Hollywood, in the course of which she sold her first story to McClure’s Magazine at 16, for $150, she returned to England. There, living in Devon
, she soon became as discontented as she had been in America.
She arrived in London in 1928. While staying at the hostel which later inspired Muriel Spark
, she took a post at the Times Book Club. Soon she graduated to Film Weekly, where she was told: “You have a very impertinent pen” after calling Madeleine Carroll
a “ruthless Madonna”. Fearing the worst, she was startled to get a rise and requests for more of the same; she provided it, with sparkling dismissals of the “It” set of the day. For all her bravura, though, she was vexed by “it”, by the “sheer awkwardness,” she wrote, “of being a modern girl and, at the same time, a virgin”.
She contemplated marriage to a man called Charles, a doctor who had been struck off for performing an abortion, but thought better of it and promptly missed him while the capital buzzed. Of London’s lesbians she noted: “They lied, cheated and had hysterics . . . the code of homosexuality
might be all right in theory but the people who practised it were intolerable.”
All this would form a part of the novel, Another Man’s Poison, which she had written in the evenings and at weekends. Palpably autobiographical, it tells of young Melis Gordon whose wild mother leaves a naval husband for Hollywood lovers. With descriptions of American schoolgirl life, its heroine even writes a prizewinning story before being recalled to an England of dull Devon and wild, flirtatious London. It appeared in 1931.
If unduly long, and without the vim of her journalism, Shute’s book showed that the world depicted with more economy in Evelyn Waugh
’s Vile Bodies
was no fantasy. Rebecca West
declared: “Miss Shute writes, not so much badly as barbarously, as if she had never read anything but a magazine, never seen a picture but a moving one, never heard any music except at restaurants. Yet she is full of talent.”
This was priceless publicity, or something close to it, for the Sunday Graphic hired her at ten guineas a week over the heading “the girl with the barbarous touch” — some compensation for her novel’s getting her cut from the will of a family friend.
Among Shute’s many friends were Alfred Hitchcock
, Anna Neagle
and Herbert Wilcox
. Later on, Lord Beaverbrook, the proprietor of the Daily Express, summoned her to meet him at his home. After a brief interview, he gave her a five-pound note, a job at the Express and invited her to ride horses with him the next week. But that was the only time they met, and she shortly lost the job at the Express.
She moved to Liverpool
for six months to live with Charles, but six months was all that she could take. She dropped him and returned to London.
. A boon companion for more than two years was John Betjeman
, who was at that time the film critic for the Standard.
The Referee job ended in 1935, but that summer became a reporter with the Dispatch. Within days, just as Betjeman would later that month be fired from the Standard for not toiling to Southampton
for an actress’s arrival, Shute had refused to go and give a female view of a Home Counties train crash at which, it turned out, 11 people had died. All was not lost: H.G. Wells agreed to an interview, and her account — “his walk resembles that of a young woman hurrying into a hat shop” — merited the front page. This led to work for Radio Normandy, sponsored by a soap-flake company, which prompted Max Factor
to take her on as a publicist. She was, she said, “changed by make-up, peroxide and expensive tailored suits into a modern person who caught the eye” — though one who declared, privately, “what Goebbels
does for Germany, I do for Max Factor.”
. Despite his being on the ugly side and of a clubbish, anti-Modernist hue, she married him in 1936.
After two years of bored housewifery, she left him and when it was formed in mid-1939, began training in the WAAF
. She soon resigned and learnt to drive an ambulance.
Visiting her mother in Rottingdean
, Sussex
, she met two women: “Andy” Sharpe and, somewhat older, Helen Mayo, respectively a gynaecologist and one of the first female dental surgeons. Nerina enjoyed an affair with Helen and moved into the pair’s house in August 1939. After war broke out, she joined a North London ambulance team.
A year after the outbreak of war she met the broadcaster Howard Marshall
. As famous in his day as his friend Richard Dimbleby
, he had sent his family abroad, and he and Shute conducted a passionate affair. When his wife returned the lovers agreed to separate for three months, but managed only two, then married.
Their union, which had been joyful as wartime subterfuge, proved fraught in the candour of peace. She found refuge in writing, with a novel about Fanny Burney
, Georgian Lady (1958), followed by Poet Pursued (about Shelley
, 1951) and Victorian Love Story (on Rossetti
, 1954). Shute’s marriage was not helped by losing a baby and the marriage ended after she confessed to him, during a row on New Year's Eve, 1953, that she was having an affair with their French maid.
After a brief return to London, to work for Andy Sharpe, and alarmed, in her turn, by goings-on among the young Chelsea set, Shute returned after her mother died to live with her latest stepfather, Noel, in Sussex. Much the same age, they were attracted by the Beatles on television; London beckoned, and they moved to a flat in Cadogan Place, off the King's Road
. Some assumed that Noel was either her husband, brother or lover, but in fact the household was completed by the celebrated ballroom dancer Phyllis Haylor, with whom Shute had been immediately smitten, and who was a part of her life for 22 years, until her death in 1981.
In 1989, Shute was introduced by a friend to the artist Jocelyn Williams who became her lover and, as Shute's long life neared its end, her devoted carer.
to which they had moved in 1979, was always happy to look back chortlingly at so long and colourful a life.
She also wrote two volumes on London’s villages and a study of the Spencer family’s royal connections, but her four volumes of memoirs are her most imaginative production: in revealing more each time, she had to drop as many good stories as she included. With the publication of Passionate Friendships in 1992, she was finally able to be open about her own bisexuality
. “For many years I have managed to keep my secrets to myself,” she wrote, “protecting the men and women I have loved. Now all my loved ones are dead and no longer vulnerable. No one is left who might be hurt or damaged by these confessions unless it is myself.”
Early life
Shute was born in PrudhoePrudhoe
Prudhoe is a medium sized town just south of the River Tyne, in the southern part of the county of Northumberland, England about west of the city of Newcastle upon Tyne. The town is sited on a steep, north-facing hill in the Tyne valley and nearby settlements include Ovingham, Ovington, Wylam,...
, Northumberland
Northumberland
Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...
. Her father, Cameron Shute, was the ne'er-do-well son of a general, Sir Charles Shute, who had fought at Balaclava and was MP for Brighton from 1874 to 1880.
Her racy mother, née Amy Bertha ("Renie") Pepper Stavely, was of a well-to-do family with its seat at Woldhurstlea, near Crawley
Crawley
Crawley is a town and local government district with Borough status in West Sussex, England. It is south of Charing Cross, north of Brighton and Hove, and northeast of the county town of Chichester, covers an area of and had a population of 99,744 at the time of the 2001 Census.The area has...
, West Sussex and was the author of a rip-roaring Edwardian novel The Unconscious Bigamist. She was sedulous in not sleeping with her lovers: she married six of them. The second of these husbands was Nerina’s father. After a childhood overshadowed by her parents’ fast living in London and then Hollywood, in the course of which she sold her first story to McClure’s Magazine at 16, for $150, she returned to England. There, living in Devon
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
, she soon became as discontented as she had been in America.
She arrived in London in 1928. While staying at the hostel which later inspired Muriel Spark
Muriel Spark
Dame Muriel Spark, DBE was an award-winning Scottish novelist. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Early life:...
, she took a post at the Times Book Club. Soon she graduated to Film Weekly, where she was told: “You have a very impertinent pen” after calling Madeleine Carroll
Madeleine Carroll
Edith Madeleine Carroll was an English actress, popular in the 1930s and 1940s.-Early life:Carroll was born at 32 Herbert Street in West Bromwich, England. She graduated from the University of Birmingham, England with a B.A. degree...
a “ruthless Madonna”. Fearing the worst, she was startled to get a rise and requests for more of the same; she provided it, with sparkling dismissals of the “It” set of the day. For all her bravura, though, she was vexed by “it”, by the “sheer awkwardness,” she wrote, “of being a modern girl and, at the same time, a virgin”.
She contemplated marriage to a man called Charles, a doctor who had been struck off for performing an abortion, but thought better of it and promptly missed him while the capital buzzed. Of London’s lesbians she noted: “They lied, cheated and had hysterics . . . the code of homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
might be all right in theory but the people who practised it were intolerable.”
All this would form a part of the novel, Another Man’s Poison, which she had written in the evenings and at weekends. Palpably autobiographical, it tells of young Melis Gordon whose wild mother leaves a naval husband for Hollywood lovers. With descriptions of American schoolgirl life, its heroine even writes a prizewinning story before being recalled to an England of dull Devon and wild, flirtatious London. It appeared in 1931.
If unduly long, and without the vim of her journalism, Shute’s book showed that the world depicted with more economy in Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
’s Vile Bodies
Vile Bodies
Vile Bodies is a 1930 novel by Evelyn Waugh satirising the Bright Young People: decadent young London society between World War I and World War II.-Title:The title comes from the Epistle to the Philippians 3:21...
was no fantasy. Rebecca West
Rebecca West
Cicely Isabel Fairfield , known by her pen name Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, DBE was an English author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. A prolific, protean author who wrote in many genres, West was committed to feminist and liberal principles and was one of the foremost public...
declared: “Miss Shute writes, not so much badly as barbarously, as if she had never read anything but a magazine, never seen a picture but a moving one, never heard any music except at restaurants. Yet she is full of talent.”
This was priceless publicity, or something close to it, for the Sunday Graphic hired her at ten guineas a week over the heading “the girl with the barbarous touch” — some compensation for her novel’s getting her cut from the will of a family friend.
Among Shute’s many friends were Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
, Anna Neagle
Anna Neagle
Forming a professional alliance with Wilcox, Neagle played her first starring film role in the musical Goodnight Vienna , again with Jack Buchanan. With this film Neagle became an overnight favourite...
and Herbert Wilcox
Herbert Wilcox
Herbert Sydney Wilcox was a British film producer and director.-Early life:Wilcox's mother was from County Cork, Ireland, but he was born in Norwood and attended school in Brighton...
. Later on, Lord Beaverbrook, the proprietor of the Daily Express, summoned her to meet him at his home. After a brief interview, he gave her a five-pound note, a job at the Express and invited her to ride horses with him the next week. But that was the only time they met, and she shortly lost the job at the Express.
She moved to Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
for six months to live with Charles, but six months was all that she could take. She dropped him and returned to London.
Film critic
She got a job with the Sunday Referee, which made her film critic. Suddenly, she was in a world of morning shows, lunches of cocktails and caviar at the SavoySavoy Hotel
The Savoy Hotel is a hotel located on the Strand, in the City of Westminster in central London. Built by impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan operas, the hotel opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by...
. A boon companion for more than two years was John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
, who was at that time the film critic for the Standard.
The Referee job ended in 1935, but that summer became a reporter with the Dispatch. Within days, just as Betjeman would later that month be fired from the Standard for not toiling to Southampton
Southampton
Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...
for an actress’s arrival, Shute had refused to go and give a female view of a Home Counties train crash at which, it turned out, 11 people had died. All was not lost: H.G. Wells agreed to an interview, and her account — “his walk resembles that of a young woman hurrying into a hat shop” — merited the front page. This led to work for Radio Normandy, sponsored by a soap-flake company, which prompted Max Factor
Max Factor
Max Factor & Company is a cosmetics company, founded during 1909 by Maksymilian Faktorowicz , Max Factor, a Polish-Jewish cosmetician. Max Factor & Company was a related, two-family, multi-generational international cosmetics company before its sale in 1973 for $500 million dollars...
to take her on as a publicist. She was, she said, “changed by make-up, peroxide and expensive tailored suits into a modern person who caught the eye” — though one who declared, privately, “what Goebbels
Goebbels
Goebbels, alternatively Göbbels, is a common surname in the western areas of Germany. It is probably derived from the Old Low German word gibbler, meaning brewer...
does for Germany, I do for Max Factor.”
Relationships
She had a mystery female lover, Josephine, and several flirtations with men during the 1930s. Then she met a journalist, James Wentworth DayJames Wentworth Day
James Wentworth Day was a British writer and occasional broadcaster, firmly of the Agrarian Right school and essentially a High Tory. He lived for most of his life in East Anglia, an area which would always be his first love; he had a particular interest in wildfowling, and at one stage owned...
. Despite his being on the ugly side and of a clubbish, anti-Modernist hue, she married him in 1936.
After two years of bored housewifery, she left him and when it was formed in mid-1939, began training in the WAAF
Women's Auxiliary Air Force
The Women's Auxiliary Air Force , whose members were invariably referred to as Waafs , was the female auxiliary of the Royal Air Force during World War II, established in 1939. At its peak strength, in 1943, WAAF numbers exceeded 180,000, with over 2,000 women enlisting per week.A Women's Royal Air...
. She soon resigned and learnt to drive an ambulance.
Visiting her mother in Rottingdean
Rottingdean
Rottingdean is a coastal village next to the town of Brighton and technically within the city of Brighton and Hove, in East Sussex, on the south coast of England...
, Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
, she met two women: “Andy” Sharpe and, somewhat older, Helen Mayo, respectively a gynaecologist and one of the first female dental surgeons. Nerina enjoyed an affair with Helen and moved into the pair’s house in August 1939. After war broke out, she joined a North London ambulance team.
A year after the outbreak of war she met the broadcaster Howard Marshall
Howard Marshall (broadcaster)
Howard Percival Marshall achieved distinction in several fields, but is best remembered as a pioneering commentator for live broadcasts of state occasions and sporting events — in particular cricket Test matches — for BBC radio during the 1930s.He went to Oriel College, Oxford, winning a rugby...
. As famous in his day as his friend Richard Dimbleby
Richard Dimbleby
Richard Dimbleby CBE was an English journalist and broadcaster widely acknowledged as one of the greatest figures in British broadcasting history.-Early life:...
, he had sent his family abroad, and he and Shute conducted a passionate affair. When his wife returned the lovers agreed to separate for three months, but managed only two, then married.
Their union, which had been joyful as wartime subterfuge, proved fraught in the candour of peace. She found refuge in writing, with a novel about Fanny Burney
Fanny Burney
Frances Burney , also known as Fanny Burney and, after her marriage, as Madame d’Arblay, was an English novelist, diarist and playwright. She was born in Lynn Regis, now King’s Lynn, England, on 13 June 1752, to musical historian Dr Charles Burney and Mrs Esther Sleepe Burney...
, Georgian Lady (1958), followed by Poet Pursued (about Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
, 1951) and Victorian Love Story (on Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
, 1954). Shute’s marriage was not helped by losing a baby and the marriage ended after she confessed to him, during a row on New Year's Eve, 1953, that she was having an affair with their French maid.
After a brief return to London, to work for Andy Sharpe, and alarmed, in her turn, by goings-on among the young Chelsea set, Shute returned after her mother died to live with her latest stepfather, Noel, in Sussex. Much the same age, they were attracted by the Beatles on television; London beckoned, and they moved to a flat in Cadogan Place, off the King's Road
King's Road
King's Road is a street in Chelsea, London, England.King's Road or Kings Road may also refer to:* King's Road * King's Road * King's Road * King's Road...
. Some assumed that Noel was either her husband, brother or lover, but in fact the household was completed by the celebrated ballroom dancer Phyllis Haylor, with whom Shute had been immediately smitten, and who was a part of her life for 22 years, until her death in 1981.
In 1989, Shute was introduced by a friend to the artist Jocelyn Williams who became her lover and, as Shute's long life neared its end, her devoted carer.
Later life
Despite missing Marshall, she had achieved serenity and, as if in gratitude, helped at a hostel for unmarried mothers (girls with “syncopated moralities”, she said) and later gave much time to the Samaritans. She did not become pompous or censorious but, living in PutneyPutney
Putney is a district in south-west London, England, located in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is situated south-west of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....
to which they had moved in 1979, was always happy to look back chortlingly at so long and colourful a life.
She also wrote two volumes on London’s villages and a study of the Spencer family’s royal connections, but her four volumes of memoirs are her most imaginative production: in revealing more each time, she had to drop as many good stories as she included. With the publication of Passionate Friendships in 1992, she was finally able to be open about her own bisexuality
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
. “For many years I have managed to keep my secrets to myself,” she wrote, “protecting the men and women I have loved. Now all my loved ones are dead and no longer vulnerable. No one is left who might be hurt or damaged by these confessions unless it is myself.”
Books
- Another Man’s Poison (1931) a novel
- Poet Pursued (1951) about ShelleyPercy Bysshe ShelleyPercy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
- Victorian Love Story (1954) about RossettiDante Gabriel RossettiDante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
- Come Into The Sunlight (1957) a memoir of her mother
- Georgian Lady (1958) about Fanny BurneyFanny BurneyFrances Burney , also known as Fanny Burney and, after her marriage, as Madame d’Arblay, was an English novelist, diarist and playwright. She was born in Lynn Regis, now King’s Lynn, England, on 13 June 1752, to musical historian Dr Charles Burney and Mrs Esther Sleepe Burney...
- The Escapist Generations (1973) My London Story
- Passionate Friendships (1992) a memoir
External links
- Times obituary
- Guardian obituary
- SheppertonShepperton StudiosShepperton Studios is a film studio in Shepperton, Surrey, England with a history dating back to 1931 since when many notable films have been made there...
Babylon: The Lost Worlds of British Cinema (2005) by Matthew SweetMatthew Sweet (writer)Matthew Sweet is a British writer, journalist, and BBC broadcaster. He holds a doctorate from Oxford University on the sensation fiction of the 19th century, Wilkie Collins in particular...
, "Faber and FaberFaber and FaberFaber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...
" ISBN 0571212972