A eccentric's dalliance with the great Dali

We all love them: Great British Eccentrics. And they didn’t come any more off-beat, unconventional or amiably crackpot than the man whose acclaimed biography was entitled The Last Eccentric… Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners.

A fellow of undoubted wit, charm and no little talent, aligned to a laudable love for the ludicrous, Lord Berners was one of those lucky oddballs who was rich enough (stinking, as it happened) to indulge his bizarre and extravagant urges to the max.

He had a pet giraffe who he was prone to inviting into the drawing room for tea, he dyed pigeons vibrant colours of the rainbow, and he erected absurd signs at his palatial house bearing slogans such as: “Don’t Throw Stones at this Notice” and “Mangling Done Here.”

Staged in an “exuberant, raffish social saloon” at his grand manorial home in Faringdon, 12 miles from Swindon, Berners’ infamously lavish dinner parties and weekends of tomfoolery were described by guests as a “perpetual April Fool’s Day.“

There he served blue food to complement the customary high jinx to a coterie of bohemian buddies and fashionable friends that included surrealist painter Salvador Dali, war poet Siegfried Sassoon, authors HG Wells, Evelyn Waugh and Aldous Huxley, high society photographer Cecil Beaton, composer Igor Stravinsky and future Poet Laureate John Betjeman.

His nonconformist attitude ranged from a seriously strange dress sense – green knitted skull cap, yellow bow-tie – to his off-the-wall artistry as an avant garde composer of orchestral pieces, ditties, operas and ballet scores. He was also a poet and a writer of whimsical, gently satirical works.

On one occasion he invited Mote, an elegant white horse belonging to Betjeman’s wife Penelope, into his elaborately decorated drawing room so that he could execute a portrait of the sleek nag.

But Lord Berners’ greatest folly was, in fact, a folly – the fabulous, architecturally outrageous Folly Tower, the last major folly ever built in Britain which he erected out of sheer mischief at the summit of Faringdon Hill – now known as Folly Hill.

Travelling from Swindon to Oxford on the A420 you can’t help but notice and admire its ornate upper echelons poking imperiously through the trees on top of the hill like a misplaced backdrop from Game of Thrones.

He built the 104ft tower – now acknowledged as one of Britain’s most important follies - because the locals didn’t want him to. They were dead against it. But the joke, as he liked to admit in later life, badly backfired because they all loved it, and – 65 years after Lord Berners’ death – they still do.

“Folly Tower is our most important landmark,” said Faringdon tourism officer Beth Davis.

“People visit Faringdon to see the tower and go up it. We have a lot of events there too, such as a special Halloween night.”

Lord Berners’ legacy, she added, was immense and there exist today groups dedicated to his life, works, and idiosyncratic behaviour including FAB (Faringdon Appreciation of Berners) and the Pink Pigeons Trust which aspires to maintain the spirit of the “frivolously silly” toff.

Born at Apley Hall, Shropshire in 1883, Gerald Tyrwhitt displayed alarming eccentricities at an early age. Hearing that you could teach a dog to swim by throwing it into water, young Gerald unceremoniously hurled his mother’s pampered pooch out of a first floor window to teach it to fly.

The shaken hound by and large escaped unharmed and Gerald was soundly thrashed. His penchant for booby trapping the family pile came to an end when he was packed off to boarding school aged nine.

Young Tyrwhitt’s parents hoped his masculinity would emerge in such rigorously controlled surroundings. Exploring his homosexuality, Gerald’s first relationship ended in disaster when he threw-up over his teenage beau.

Departing Eton, he plunged into a cauldron of arts and culture, becoming a skilled artist and writer and an often controversial composer whose works provoked vitriol and admiration in equal measure.

His pal Stravinsky described him as the finest British composer of his generation. A bit of a Champagne Charlie was our Gerald. And indeed he wrote a jolly song for the 1944 film Champagne Charlie entitled Come On Algernon.

It has been written that Berners’ “scattered contribution to the arts were all rooted in his lifelong defiance of late Victorian earnestness.”

Inheriting piles of wealth on becoming the 14th Baron Berners he acquired historic Faringdon House in 1930 where his many stunts included driving around in a pig’s head mask to scare the locals.

Over the years London’s arty and elite eagerly sought invitations to his “must attend” soirees.

Typically, he once ran down the drive after a departing guest bellowing “I must show you my cock” while brandishing a ceramic cockerel.

Berners flamboyantly resided at Faringdon House until his death at 67 in April, 1950, whereupon the estate passed to his long-time companion Robert ‘Mad Boy’ Heber Percy.

The epitaph on his gravestone concludes, with characteristic flippancy: “Praise the Lord! He seldom was bored.”

Who but Dali would stroll into town in a diving suit?

SALVADOR Dali is strolling through the streets of Faringdon. Actually, that’s a lie. Salvador Dali is lumbering, wheezing and spluttering through the streets of Faringdon.

Why is the man who became the world’s most celebrated surrealist lumbering, wheezing and spluttering through this charming market town?

Firstly, because he is buddies with loopy Lord Berners, who resides at the town’s most elegant abode, Faringdon House.

And secondly, because Berners has challenged the eminent artist to walk into town in a deep sea diver’s suit - a task akin to sallying forth on a summer’s day in a full set of armour.

For a man of notoriously grandiose behaviour, Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marqués de Dalí de Pubol found the dare simply irresistible.

It is 1936 and days earlier Dali and his host at Faringdon House had agreed it would be both a hoot and appropriate for him to address London’s first exhibition of Surrealist Art wearing a deep sea diver’s outfit.

Arranging to hire the suit for his chum, Berners was asked down the phone how far did Mr Dali wish to descend? To the depths of his subconscious, the peer replied.

The voice responded: “Oh, in that case he’d better have a special helmet.”

Having tramped across Faringdon square in his cumbersome new kit, Dali duly addressed the exhibition similarly attired – only to be swiftly extricated after slowly suffocating.

Last year Tim Shutter’s fine sculpture Dali Diver was unveiled in Faringdon to celebrate the era “when the glitterati of the art, music and literature worlds would descend on Faringdon in their droves.”

'Useless' tower that's still going strong

AMBLING upon Faringdon Hill one day in the early 1930s, Lord Berners casually remarked: “This hill needs a tower.”

Wild rumours suddenly flew around Faringdon: their historic hill which Cromwell fortified during the Civil War was to be despoiled.

Intrigued and amused at such fierce opposition, Berners did what any self-respecting peer of the realm would do… he stuck two fingers up at the masses and built the damn thing.

“The great point of the tower is that it will be entirely useless,” he enjoyed telling anyone who cared to listen.

Having obtained planning permission with the proviso that it could only be 3ft higher than surrounding trees, he commissioned esteemed architect Lord Wellesley to get cracking.

Knowing Wellesley loathed gothic architecture, Berners insisted with his usual sense of mischief that the structure should be entirely gothic.

When he returned from a holiday abroad he found that Wellesley had defiantly erected it in an austere classical style.

With just 10ft to go, Berners irately ordered the architect to finish it in gothic, hence the curious mixture of styles.

Naturally, he erected a sign outside saying: “Members of the public committing suicide from this tower do so at their own risk.”

The Folly Tower is open the first and third Sundays of the month until October, 11am-5pm. Admission: Adults £2, 11-16 years 50p, under 11s free. Further information: www.faringdonfolly.org.uk