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Keynes's Early Romantic and Sexual Relationships

Autor:   •  March 17, 2011  •  Essay  •  690 Words (3 Pages)  •  2,458 Views

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Keynes's early romantic and sexual relationships were almost exclusively with men.[8] Attitudes in the Bloomsbury Group, in which Keynes was avidly involved, were relaxed about homosexuality. One of his great loves was the artist Duncan Grant, whom he met in 1908; he was also involved with the writer Lytton Strachey.[8] Keynes was open about his homosexual affairs, and between 1901 to 1915, kept separate diaries in which he tabulated his many homosexual encounters.[9]

In 1921 he fell "very much in love" with Lydia Lopokova, a well-known Russian ballerina, and one of the stars of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. They married in 1925[8][10]. Their union was by all accounts happy,[107] though childless. Lydia became pregnant in 1927 but miscarried. For the first years of the courtship, Keynes maintained an affair with a younger man, Sebastian Sprott, in tandem with Lopokova, but eventually chose Lopokova exclusively, on marrying her.[108][109] Among Keynes' Bloomsbury friends, Lopokova was, at least initially, subjected to criticism for her manners, mode of conversation and supposedly humble social origins - the latter of the ostensible causes being particularly noted in the letters of Vanessa and Clive Bell, and Virginia Woolf.[110][111] In her novel Mrs Dalloway (1925), Woolf bases the character of Rezia Warren Smith on Lopokova.[112] E.M. Forster would later write in contrition: "How we all used to underestimate her".[110]

Lydia Lopokova, Keynes's wife from 1925, whom he called "my bubbling brook of surprises".

Keynes was a successful investor, building up a substantial private fortune. He was nearly wiped out following the Stock Market Crash of 1929, which he failed to foresee, but he soon recouped his fortune. At Keynes' death, in 1946, his worth stood just short of £500,000 – equivalent to about £11 million ($16.5 million) in 2009. The sum had been amassed despite lavish support for various causes and his personal ethics which made him reluctant to sell on a falling market as he believed if too many did that it could deepen a slump.

Keynes built up a significant collection of fine art, including works by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Amadeo

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