page_title: Henrietta Bingham
section_title: 1924 in England
hierarchical_section_title: Henrietta Bingham / 1924 in England
caption_attribution_description: English: Henrietta Bingham; Stephen Tomlin possibly by Dora Carrington vintage snapshot print, mid 1920s 3 1/8 in. x 2 in. (78 mm x 52 mm) image size Purchased, 1979 NPG Ax131210
context_page_description: Henrietta Bingham was a wealthy American journalist, newspaper executive and horse breeder. When she was twelve, she was present when her mother was killed in a road accident which traumatized the whole family. She subsequently developed a very close relationship with her father who took a long time to recognize her lesbianism although eventually he became reconciled to her sexuality. In the 1920s she became an anglophile flapper and she associated with the Bloomsbury Group. In 1935 she purchased and ran a Kentucky estate for breeding thoroughbred racehorses. Her 1954 marriage, after a succession of partners, men and women, was unsuccessful.
context_section_description: In June 1924 the Binghams returned in England and Henrietta again become strongly involved with Bloomsbury social life. When Tomlin took her to Tidmarsh Mill she provocatively started to initiate an affair with Carrington. Kirstein was due to arrive in Britain and on the day before (and the day after her father had departed) Henrietta spent the whole afternoon with Carrington which, Carrington said, "no one knew of but us" referring to "ecstasy ... and no feelings of shame afterwards". Henrietta was her first and only female lover although Carrington found many women attractive to the point of having feelings of love or lust for them. Carrington wrote to her close friend Gerald Brenan, that she "killed my desires for les jeunes garçons pretty completely". While Bingham and Tomlin remained a couple, on one occasion she spent the night with Carrington 
  at the ménage à trois' new house Ham Spray. In due course, Carrington wrote to Brenan "of certain sensations and wish to God [she] was here so I could repeat them".
  Henrietta's family arrived to take a holiday in Scotland and while on the grouse moors her father told her they would be returning early to London for him to get married for the third time, to Aleen Hilliard (née Muldoon) – Henrietta vomited for five hours on hearing the news. Back in London, Dr. Jones wrote to his wife "General frightful crises with Binghamesque scenes" – she irrationally thought her father's marriage was to punish her. Carrington, Tomlin and Kirstein were all in despair over being repeatedly attracted and rejected by Bingham. After Kirstein and Bingham had returned to America Kirstein fell in love with Harry Curtiss, a dashing and successful businessman, who she described as "a very male Henrietta", and they married in 1926 after his divorce. Kirstein and Bingham remained lifetime friends. For Christmas Henrietta departed to the French Riviera with two girlfriends where she was photographed out walking in men's clothes, arm in arm with her two partners.
caption: Bingham and Tomlin at Ham Spray, 1924, photograph by Carrington
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "ACD Systems Digital Imaging", "Image DateTime": "2018:02:02 19:16:11", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "174", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF SubSecTime": "288", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "557", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "800", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "240"}