Introduction

In the memorable words of his life-long friend, William Gerhardi, Hugh Kingsmill

Kingsmill was born in Bloomsbury, the second son of the founder of Lunn’s Tours, the pioneering travel agency and ski-holiday company which, in March 1922, would invite KM and her cousin Elizabeth von Arnim to stay at one of their mountain resorts in Switzerland and give a series of lectures as part of their arts and health-promoting summer programme. The invitation was declined.

Kingsmill would not appear to have masterminded the invitation, and, as the early adoption of his middle name in preference to ‘Lunn’ suggests, tended to evolve outside his family’s more illustrious, wealthier and Methodist–philanthropist circles. Preferring the ‘lesser’ path was almost a leitmotif throughout his life. After a promising early start at Harrow and an exhibition to New College, Oxford, he gave up his studies and registered anew, much more happily and more successfully, at Trinity College, Dublin. It was in the early 1910s, at the beginning of the Rhythm era, that Kingsmill crossed paths with JMM and KM. Frank Harris had quickly lionised him, as he did a number of young writers and artists, particularly if they had private means, and they would all congregate at Dan Rider’s bookshop. They remained on warm terms after the major fall-out with Harris, and when Kingsmill enlisted in the war as a cyclist in early 1915, he tried, and almost managed, to incite JMM to follow suit. Their ways then parted; Kingsmill received a commission in 1916, but hardly had he arrived in France than he was captured and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner in Germany.