Duff Twysden | |
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 Ernest Hemingway (left), withHarold Loeb,Duff Twysden (in hat),Hadley Richardson,Donald Ogden Stewart (obscured), and Pat Guthrie (far right) at a café inPamplona, Spain, July 1925. Twysden, Loeb, Guthrie and Stewart inspired the characters Brett Ashley, Robert Cohn, Mike Campbell and Bill Gorton inThe Sun Also Rises. |
Mary Duff Stirling Smurthwaite, Lady Twysden (22 May 1891 – 27 June 1938)[1] was a British socialite best known for being the model forBrett Ashley inErnest Hemingway's 1926 novelThe Sun Also Rises.[2]
She was the eldest child of Baynes Wright Smurthwaite by his wife Charlotte Lilias Stirling.[3] On 4 January 1914 her engagement to John Churchill Craigie, son ofPearl Richards Craigie, was announced,[4] but her first marriage was toEdward Luttrell Grimston Byrom, son of Edward Byrom DL of Culver, Devon andKersal Cell, Lancashire, who served asHigh Sheriff of Devon in 1888, by his wife Florence Maria, daughter and co-heiress of Marmaduke Jerard Grimston, of Grimston Garth andKilnwick.[5] Luttrell Byrom petitioned for divorce in 1915 citing one G. Henderson as aco-respondent.[6] Her second marriage was at Edinburgh on 26 January 1917, toSir Roger Thomas Twysden, a naval officer.[7] He had succeeded astenth Baronet on 1 May 1911,[8] so Duff became known asLady Twysden. Their son Anthony, later eleventh Baronet, was born on 11 March 1918.[1]
Sir Roger and Lady Twysden were divorced in 1926.[1] Duff Twysden eventually married artist Clinton King.[9] She died in Santa Fe, New Mexico oftuberculosis when she was forty-seven.[10]
Twysden was famous for adopting a boyish, androgynous fashion style, with a bobbed haircut and workingmen's clothes, before this was fashionable. She was also sexually adventurous without apology at a time when this was scandalous.
In the 1988 miniseriesHemingway, starringStacy Keach, Duff Twysden was played byFiona Fullerton.[11]
