Max Beerbohm - Personal Life

Personal Life

Beerbohm married the actress Florence Kahn in 1910. There has been speculation that he was a non-active homosexual (Malcolm Muggeridge, who much disliked him, imputed homosexuality to him), that his marriage was never consummated, that he was a "natural celibate" or even just asexual. David Cecil wrote that, "though he showed no moral disapproval of homosexuality, was not disposed to it himself; on the contrary he looked upon it as a great misfortune to be avoided if possible." Cecil quotes a letter from Beerbohm to Oscar Wilde's friend Robert Ross in which he asks Ross to keep Reggie Turner from the clutches of Lord Alfred Douglas, "I really think Reg is at a rather crucial point of his career — and should hate to see him fall an entire victim to the love that dare not tell its name." The fact is that not much is known of Beerbohm's private life.

Evelyn Waugh also speculated that Beerbohm had made a mariage blanc with Florence Kahn, but added: "Beerbohm remarked of Ruskin that it was surprising he should marry, without knowing he was impotent." Waugh also observed, "the question is of little importance in an artist of Beerbohm's quality."

There was also some speculation during his lifetime that Beerbohm was Jewish. Muggeridge assumed that Beerbohm's Jewishness was certain. Beerbohm responded by saying that, disappointingly for him, he was not. However, both of his wives were German Jews. When asked by George Bernard Shaw if he had any Jewish ancestors, Beerbohm replied: "That my talent is rather like Jewish talent I admit readily... But, being in fact a Gentile, I am, in a small way, rather remarkable, and wish to remain so." In his poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberley Ezra Pound, a neighbour in Rapallo, caricatured Beerbohm as "Brennbaum", a Jewish artist.

He was knighted by George VI in 1939; it was thought that this token of esteem had been delayed by his mockery in 1911 of the king's parents, about whom he had written a satiric verse. In 1942 the Maximilian Society was created in Beerbohm's honour, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. Formed by a London drama critic, it was made up of 70 distinguished members, and planned to add one more member on each of Beerbohm's successive birthdays. In their first meeting a banquet was held to pay homage to the great man, and he was presented with seventy bottles of wine.

He died at the Villa Chiara, a private hospital in Rapallo, Italy aged 83, shortly after marrying his former secretary and companion, Elisabeth Jungmann.

Beerbohm was cremated in Genoa and his ashes were interred in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, London on 29 June 1956.