Hilly Kilmarnock, 81, first wife of the philandering novelist Sir Kingsley Amis
Hoodoo
Hilly Kilmarnock, who died on June 24 aged 81, was the first wife of the
novelist Sir Kingsley Amis; their son Martin also became a
hugely-successful author.
Published: 6:06PM BST 08 Jul 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/7880033/Hilly-Kilmarnock.html
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01675/hilly-amis_1675495c.jpg
Hilly Amis, as she then was, with Kingsley and their children at their
Swansea home in 1956
For a lifelong philanderer, Kingsley Amis exhibited remarkably uxorious
feelings for Hilly, describing her in the course of their 17-year
marriage as the only woman he could bear being married to, and
dismissing all others as too boring.
Yet the union was stormy from the start, and effectively ended in the
summer of 1963 when Amis refused to break off his affair with the
novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, who later became his second wife. Hilly
Amis subsequently remarried twice, and in 1981, following the break-up
of Amis's marriage to Jane Howard, she and her third husband, who became
Lord Kilmarnock, invited Amis to live with them, first at a house in
Kentish Town, north London, and later at a bigger one in Primrose Hill.
The arrangement was that Hilly and her husband ran the house while Amis
continued to work (he wrote his last seven novels under their roof) and
paid most of the bills. In his memoir Experience (2001) Martin Amis
wrote movingly of how his mother cared for his cantankerous father in
his final illness: "You reminded [him] of love, Mum: you were the peach."
Hilly drew many comparisons between Amis father and son, not least their
exploits with women, and even noticed that the two began to look
increasingly alike. Kingsley's affairs began shortly after the birth of
their first child (named after his lifelong friend, the poet Philip
Larkin), and eventually extended to most of the women in their social
circle. Once, at a dinner party hosted by the couple, Kingsley
disappeared with each of the women at the table one by one.
The couple met in Oxford just after the war: she was working as an
artist's model and Kingsley was reading English at St John's College
(his studies had been interrupted by service with the Second Army HQ
Signals). A pretty, witty, vivacious 17-year-old blonde, she left a note
of her telephone number at the porter's lodge. In July 1946 she invited
him to meet her family at their home near Oxford, and in September went
on holiday with him to France. After their marriage in 1946 the couple
rented a one-bedroomed flat in north Oxford before moving to a cottage
in the village of Eynsham; later they moved in with Hilly's parents.
In 1949, when Amis was appointed an English lecturer at the University
College of Swansea, Hilly and their two young sons joined him in a pokey
ground-floor flat in the nearby village of Sketty, accommodation that
was not only too cramped but also suffused with what Amis described to
Larkin as a "hrbl smll f rs" (a horrible smell of arse). To supplement
Amis's modest salary, Hilly took part-time work washing up in a
fish-and-chip café in the Mumbles.
Their money worries were alleviated in 1951 when Hilly inherited a
legacy from her mother that allowed them to buy a house in the Uplands
area of Swansea. "Hilly's money is here," reported Kingsley Amis, "and
we will drink it luxuriously." In the meantime, she had agreed to
Larkin's request that she pose in saucy photographs for his benefit –
"corset-and-black-stocking or holding-up-a-towel stuff", according to
Amis, who approved the idea.
Although Hilly had no literary inclinations, she could, as one of Amis's
biographers noted, "drink beer and swear", and was unintimidated by her
husband's daunting reputation. In 1953, when she was given his debut
novel Lucky Jim to read, she considered it completely unpublishable: "I
thought, no one's going to want to read this."
They celebrated the novel's publication with an expensive dinner in
Swansea where the Welsh waiter, ordered to bring a bottle of Veuve
Clicquot, whispered to Amis: "Can you afford it, boy?"
Hilary Ann Bardwell, known as Hilly, was born on July 21 1928 at
Kingston upon Thames, the youngest daughter of an official in the
Ministry of Agriculture. She repeatedly ran away from Bedales school,
and when she was 15 became a trainee kennel-maid, later enrolling at the
Ruskin School of Art in Oxford.
Kingsley's eye roved in all directions, even early in the marriage, and
Hilly entertained boyfriends of her own. In 1956 she announced that she
was in love with the married journalist Henry Fairlie. "Even if you
wanted Hilly twenty times more than I do," Amis wrote to Fairlie, "that
would not make me any more inclined to let her go." The affair fizzled
out within a year.
When Hilly discovered an incriminating letter from Elizabeth Jane Howard
in his jacket pocket, Kingsley announced he was off to Spain with his
inamorata for a three-week holiday, adding that he had no intention of
leaving Hilly and the children and declaring that he planned to move the
family to Majorca. Infuriated, Hilly fled the house and stayed with
friends as the marriage finally broke up.
Returning to London in January 1964, she took in lodgers and for a time
worked at the zoo in Battersea Park. Her marriage to Amis was formally
dissolved in 1965, and she moved to Wivenhoe in Essex.
In 1967 she married Shackleton Bailey, fellow and bursar of Gonville and
Caius College, Cambridge, and the following year accompanied him to the
United States when he took a professorship in Latin at the University of
Michigan. At Ann Arbor she opened a fish and chip shop called Lucky Jim's.
But in 1970, during a family holiday in southern Spain, she decided not
to return to America and remained in the ancient fortified town of
Ronda, forming a relationship with the writer Alastair Boyd, who was
running a language school there.
The couple moved to Seville, where Hilly joined the International School
as matron, and where her daughter Sally enrolled as a pupil.
Returning to Ronda with Boyd, she ran a bar and took in paying guests,
and in 1972 gave birth to a son, James (known as Jaime) Boyd. In 1977
she divorced Shackleton Bailey, married Boyd and returned to London.
When Boyd became Chief of Clan Boyd and seventh Baron Kilmarnock, she
became Lady Kilmarnock.
Hilly Kilmarnock's daughter by Kingsley Amis, Sally, predeceased her,
and she is survived by her two sons by Amis and a third son by Alastair
Boyd. Sir Kingsley Amis died in 1995, and Alastair Kilmarnock in 2009.
--
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Hoodoo
Unpretentious muse and matriarch to the unruly Amis family
Zachary Leader
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 8 July 2010 17.52 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/08/hilary-kilmarnock-obituary
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/7/8/1278607422753/Kingsley-Amis-005.jpg
Kilmarnock with her first husband, Kingsley Amis, and children Philip,
Sally, front, and Martin in 1961 Photograph: Daily Mail/Rex Features
Hilary Kilmarnock, known as Hilly, who has died aged 81, came to public
attention as the wife of Kingsley Amis and the mother of Martin Amis.
She was funny, open, unpretentious, pretty, and liked by everyone who
met her. Though her life was not always easy or orderly, she managed it
bravely and originally.
After the break-up of her marriage to Kingsley, with whom she had three
children, she married two more times: disastrously, to the Cambridge
classics don DR Shackleton Bailey; then happily, to Alastair Boyd, the
seventh Baron Kilmarnock, with whom she had a son. When Kingsley's
second marriage, to the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, collapsed, his
sons, Philip and Martin, suggested that he live with the Kilmarnocks,
who had little money. To the amazement of all concerned, the arrangement
worked. It was Hilly, Martin has suggested, who nursed his father back
to creative health. And it was Hilly, with Ali Kilmarnock, who looked
after him in his final illness.
She was born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, the youngest of five
children of Leonard Bardwell, a civil servant in the Ministry of
Agriculture, and Margery Clark, his wife and first cousin. Hilly was
educated at Bedales school in Hampshire, where she was badly bullied; at
Dr Williams' school for girls in north Wales, from which she ran away;
and at the Beltane school in Wiltshire, where she lasted only a year.
She claimed to be perfectly happy at school, once the bullying stopped
and as long as she was not made to work.
In 1946, after a series of odd jobs (as trainee kennel-maid, stable girl
and helper in wartime day nurseries), she went to study drawing at the
Ruskin art school in Oxford. At 17, she met and fell in love with
Kingsley Amis, a 24-year-old St John's College undergraduate. Though
"absolutely dippy" about him, she knew from the start what she was
getting into. He was attracted to her, she could tell, but "I could also
tell that he would go for anyone". He was clever, energetic, "the one
who made everyone laugh", but also "brilliantly selfish", and he was
full of fears – unable, for example, to walk home alone at night after
their dates.
She and Kingsley married on 21 January 1948, and their first child,
Philip, named after Kingsley's best friend, the poet Philip Larkin, was
born that August. A second son, Martin, was born a year later, and a
daughter, Sally, in 1954. In 1949 Kingsley was appointed lecturer in
English at the University College of Swansea, and for two years, before
Hilly received a small legacy from her mother's estate, the family lived
in happy but chaotic poverty. They took in lodgers, and at one point
Hilly worked five nights a week washing up in the cafe of a local
cinema, returning to Kingsley each night with a bag of leftovers for
supper. "We were perfectly happy. We saw the funny side of it."
In 1954, with the publication of Kingsley's first novel, Lucky Jim,
everything changed. "I was thrilled, absolutely overjoyed," Hilly
recalled, "I couldn't believe it was happening." Now came money and
fame. Kingsley was invited to teach in the US, at Princeton University,
where the family moved for the academic year 1958-59. Two years later,
Peterhouse, Cambridge, elected Kingsley as the college's first fellow in
English. At Princeton and Cambridge, both Hilly and Kingsley were much
sought after, being lively, witty, glamorous and wild. Kingsley had been
casually unfaithful throughout his marriage. Hilly, too, took lovers.
While at Cambridge, though, Kingsley fell deeply in love with Elizabeth
Jane Howard and was unwilling to give her up.
Now began the lowest period in Hilly's life. Kingsley failed to follow
her to Majorca, where they had rented a house for the year, and she fell
into a deep depression. She and the children returned to London, moving
into a house on Fulham Road. She got part-time jobs (one at the
Battersea Park zoo) and was miserable, unable to cope with Philip and
Martin, who were bunking off school, or to keep the house in order. In
July 1965, a month after the divorce from Kingsley was finalised, she
moved with Sally to Wivenhoe in Essex, "El Vino's by the sea". The boys
moved in with their father and Howard.
It was in Wivenhoe that Hilly took up seriously with Shackleton Bailey,
as improbable a successor to Kingsley as imaginable (among other
reasons, because she was purportedly the first woman he had ever
kissed). They married in November 1967 and a year later moved to Ann
Arbor, Michigan, where he was professor of Latin at the university.
There, Hilly opened a successful fish and chip shop called Lucky Jim's
and had many friends and admirers. Her spirits had recovered, but the
marriage was doomed.
Hilly's third husband, Ali Boyd, was charming, considerate and possessed
of perfect manners ("I wasn't used to that," said Hilly, speaking of
both her previous husbands). He ran a language school in Ronda, in
Andalusia, Spain. When the language school encountered difficulties, he
and Hilly opened a bar in the basement of his house. The bar, too, ran
into trouble and they were forced to sell the house and move to the
countryside, in the plains just below the city. Here Hilly could keep
animals, a lifelong passion, and their son, Jaime, born in 1972, could
grow up in rural freedom.
In 1975, Ali inherited his title, and decided to return to London, to
sit in the Lords. Hilly and Jaime joined him in 1977, the year she and
Ali married (Shackleton Bailey having finally granted her a divorce).
But money was tight and Hilly, now Lady Kilmarnock, took up a series of
small jobs, including a spell running a roadside hot-dog van.
It was at this point that they agreed on the plan to move in with
Kingsley. The Kilmarnocks would take care of meals and domestic chores,
Kingsley would pay the bills. A cramped house was found in Kentish Town,
north London, then a larger one in Primrose Hill. The arrangement was
not without difficulties and tensions, especially for Hilly, who not
only had to do most of the cooking and cleaning, and manage Kingsley's
medications, but would sit with him in the evenings, away from son and
husband.
Kingsley was fully aware of the debt he owed Hilly at this stage of his
life, dedicating Stanley and the Women (1980) to her, and partly drawing
on her as a model for Rhiannon Weaver in The Old Devils (1984), perhaps
the most attractive of his heroines. His Memoirs (1991) conclude with a
poem "To H.", the last stanza of which contains a loving portrait of
Hilly at 17, tinged with regret.
After Kingsley's death in 1995, the Kilmarnocks moved back to their
house in Spain. Ali wrote and painted and Hilly tended her dogs and
horses. Jaime lived with them for a while, and Philip had long lived
nearby in Ronda. Neither Hilly nor Ali were in good health in their last
years. Hilly suffered from emphysema and had difficulty walking, after
an accident with one of her horses. Sally's death in November 2000,
following a long battle with alcoholism and depression, had also to be
borne. When Ali died in 2009, Jaime and his fiancee, a nurse, moved back
to the house to take care of Hilly. Martin continued to help with
expenses and improvements to the little house, and he and his children
visited several times a year.
Hilly is survived by her three sons.
• Hilary Ann Kilmarnock, literary muse and helpmate, born 21 July 1928;
died 24 June 2010
hyfler/rosner
> Hilary Kilmarnock obituary
>
> Unpretentious muse and matriarch to the unruly Amis family
>
Oy, what a family. Here's a fun recap of the life and death of
daughter Sally. True, it's the Daily Mail, but those quotes from Mum
are priceless.
Robert Catt
> Oy, what a family. Here's a fun recap of the life and death of
> daughter Sally. True, it's the Daily Mail, but those quotes from Mum
> are priceless.
Sir Kingsley may have been a philanderer but he could write great
comedy..."Lucky Jim" for example.