LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.15 27
At what point did you realize Henrietta was
more than the "mess" and "embarrassment"
your father described?
"Henrietta started tapping me on my shoulder
from the time my daughter was born — we
named her for her great-great-aunt — and as
word got around about this new Henrietta,
who came along 30 years after the death of
the earlier one, people came to me with stories
I'd never heard and tokens I began calling
'Henriettiana.' It was intriguing, but for almost
a decade I brushed aside any idea of pursuing
her as a subject; in my 20s I had decided that
far too much had been written about the
Binghams of Louisville. Moreover, my family's
vague portrait of her as not really serious, as a
problematic lightweight, was hard to dispel.
"I changed my mind after receiving a grant
to visit the archives at Smith College, her alma
mater. I went through the papers of Henrietta's
freshman English professor and lover, Mina
Kirstein Curtiss. Tucked in the back of an
old diary was an out-of-sequence entry from
1924 in which Kirstein wrote, 'Te keenness
and directness of [Henrietta's] mind carve out
infallible opinions. By her alone could any of
my decisions be infuenced.' Soon after that, I
put together a book proposal."
Opposite page: Henrietta Bingham (second from left,
seated beside actress and lover Beatrix Lehmann) in
Scotland in 1927. Above: a more formal and reserved
Bingham, circa 1923.
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