Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham by Emily Bingham (review)

Emily Bingham is both lucky and skilled. She found a treasure trove of documents from an odd great-aunt in an attic and fleshed them out with extensive archival research to create a dishy romp through time. Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham traces the life of a beautiful southern heiress. Henrietta Bingham’s father, Robert Worth Bingham, was an ambitious and high-strung politician whose wealthy wife died in a car accident that scarred the entire family. Henrietta spent the rest of her life struggling with the loss of her mother and the increased expectations of her demanding father. At Smith College, Henrietta fell in love with her English professor, Mina Stein Kirstein. The pair went to London, underwent psychoanalysis with a student of Freud, and wrestled with Freud’s directive to leave behind what was considered the immature love of women for more mature heterosexual relationships. During their stay in England, they fell in with the literary Bloomsbury circle where violet-blue-eyed Henrietta seduced multiple artists, both male and female. Here author Emily Bingham expertly weaves in the love letters from her family’s attic trunk with impressive research from other collections to show the tangled web of passion and heartbreak in this experimental circle.

In 1932 Robert Bingham helped carry Kentucky in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s bid for the White House and, in return, was appointed United States ambassador to the United Kingdom. Henrietta joined her father in London and hosted events for respectable diplomats. By all accounts she had a magnetism that made her memorable. After meeting Henrietta at a dinner, the Prince of Wales “asked her for an invitation to the embassy” and made multiple appearances there (p. 221). Her father’s wealth and political clout gave her some insulation from conventional morality.

For a few years, Henrietta had a fabulous run. She transgressively hosted a party for black jazz singers, inspired sculpture and sketches from British artists, had a scandalous affair with the American actress Hope Williams (whose lesbian chic reportedly inspired Katharine Hepburn), had a long-term romance with John Houseman, took up foxhunting, kept a domestic cottage with the women’s Wimbledon champion, and generally was a star among the artistic and social set of London and New York. In the rebellious decade of the 1920s and even into the 1930s, Henrietta’s life as a wealthy, gay woman seemed a fantastic adventure.

But it did not last. Ultimately bowing to family pressure, Henrietta moved to Kentucky where the social climate was less accepting. Forced further into the closet and unable to create a lasting romantic partnership, Henrietta faced increasing struggles with depression and substance abuse. Ultimately, the sexually adventurous flapper aged into a suicidal alcoholic—a sobering reminder that progress is not a steady arc.

Emily Bingham reveals the astonishing life of her great-aunt with considerable finesse and gentle warmth. The author weaves together multiple strands from the people in Henrietta’s orbit and deftly places them within the wider context of politics, of intellectual trends, and of sexual mores. Henrietta Bingham’s remarkable story is new, but nothing within it changes the field. However, history is a wide ecosystem; just as there is a place for field-changing declarations, there is certainly a place for engaging narratives that capture the imagination. Like the charming, seductive Henrietta Bingham herself, books like Irrepressible do important work by luring in readers and making them fall in love with history.