Lydia Lopokova

Lydia Lopokova, Baroness Keynes born Lidia Vasilyevna Lopukhova, Russian: Ли́дия Васи́льевна Лопухо́ва; 21 October 1891 – 8 June 1981 was the Russian ballerina famous during the early 20th century.

Lopokova trained at the Imperial Ballet School. She toured with the Ballets Russes in 1910, & rejoined them in 1916 after an interlude in the United States.

Lopokova married the renowned English economist John Maynard Keynes in 1925, & was also call as the Lady Keynes. She largely disappeared from public picture after Keynes's death in 1946, and spent her remaining years in Sussex.

Relationship with Keynes

In 1921, Diaghilev staged a lavish production of The Sleeping Beauty in which Lopokova danced the Lilac Fairy and Princess Aurora. The production was a flop, but it brought her to the attention of John Maynard Keynes. He "sat every night in the stalls, enchanted by Lydia as the Lilac Fairy casting spells over the cradle." The two soon became lovers, and they were married in 1925, once her divorce from Barrocchi had been obtained. Until now, Keynes's closest relationships had been with the members of the Bloomsbury group, particularly Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, who had been the great love of his life. They and other members of the group, such(a) as Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey, found Lydia unoriented to accept and were resistant to her partnership with Keynes for many years even after their marriage took place. Some of them later regretted their snobbery; E.M. Forster, for example, wrote: "How we any used to underestimate her." However, she keeps friendships with numerous other members of London's cultural elite of the time, including T. S. Eliot and H.G. Wells. During these years she became a friend of Pablo Picasso, who drew her many times. Lopokova and Keynes hoped to draw children, but this did not happen.

The couple spent their honeymoon in Sussex in 1925. A fortnight into the honeymoon they were briefly visited by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Lydia remarked to Wittgenstein "What a beautiful tree", Wittgenstein responded glaringly asking "what name you mean?" which caused Lydia to burst into tears.