Terrorised and Enchanted

Henrietta met a lot of kindred spirits in Soho who’d also had difficult childhoods. They knew that life wasn’t going to give them anything so they’d have to grab what they could with both hands. Perhaps it was this approach to life that made the French pub so loved by artists, writers, actors and musicians. When Hen first met Francis Bacon there they seemed to have an immediate rapport. She was overwhelmed by his disarming charm and cherubic features, his shiny rouged cheeks and pouting lips. His bleached blonde hair and lithe figure belied his age and, like many, she found Francis’ feminine features at odds with the violence inherent in his paintings.

Along with the baby-faced Francis, other regulars included John Deakin, the rubber-faced fashion photographer for Vogue, whose scruffy, hungover appearance seemed incompatible with his glamorous subject matter, and Britain’s first celebrity television interviewer, Daniel Farson, a sadomasochist with a penchant for wearing ladies’ lingerie. It was Daniel Farson who told me that Picasso and Francis Bacon stood apart from all the other painters in the twentieth century because they never let fashion encroach on their art and both were exceptional in their selfish single- mindedness. As for Henrietta, Daniel thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen: ‘wildly attractive, fussing over her cigarette, with an arrogant upturned nose.’ He said she could stop people dead in their tracks and make them turn around, others were shocked by her unique mixture of caustic wit and beauty. As her friend, the pop star Marianne Faithfull, put it:

Henrietta was one of the great beauties of the 1950s – the epitome of that bohemian life that’s now gone. Her reckless intensity of spirit magnetically attracted people to her. Hen had friends from the gutter to the aristocracy whom she both terrorised and enchanted.

But we must remember that at this point in the early 1950s Henrietta and Francis Bacon were almost completely unknown. According to another friend and former model, Diana Melly:

Back then, Henrietta wasn’t really known for anything apart from being outspoken and part of the bohemian scene ... what was it about Henrietta that attracted so many artists to paint her? Well, she had incredibly striking features – almost too striking to be beautiful. There was nothing soft about her features at all. They were incredibly strong like her personality. People did talk about her in Soho as a beauty, formidably attractive and witty – she was very much part of the bohemian gang.

Henrietta became part of a new generation that fundamentally altered the character of bohemia into something brasher, drunker and more risqué, as the easy, convivial amiability of old bohemia gave way to the professional jealousy and infighting of the 1950s. At its core was a group of individuals who met at noon each day at the ‘Deep End’ of the French, and collectively formed the Monster Club. In Soho, one didn’t call someone a Monster just because they were annoying. Monsters don’t just behave badly; in fact their success is mostly due to their enormous charm. Along with Francis Bacon, John Deakin and Daniel Farson, Henrietta graduated to the exclusive Monster Club too. The label ‘Monster’ was an accolade and you had to fulfil some basic requirements before you could qualify. You didn’t call someone a Monster at random. A Monster was pretty special; they had to appear to be totally selfish and egocentric, only interested in their own importance and often plotting for their own gain. Monsters were completely unscrupulous, lacking in any modesty or restraint. They were often noisy, shouting down people cleverer than themselves. Eating and drinking with abandon, Monsters ignored the rules of good behaviour but were often refreshingly funny and made surprisingly good company. According to Marianne:

Hen inhabited a sort of enchanted space where the oddest, most unlikely things happened. She was the perfect muse for Francis Bacon ... she travelled on her own loopy groove, avoiding the straight world entirely.