Ralph Brewster

Ralph H. Brewster (1905-1951), grandson of Ethel Smyth's friend H. B. Brewster and of the German sculptor Adolf Hildebrand. Woolf has to give tea to Brewster; she describes him as having "curious teeth; gooseberry coloured staring eyes; and an air of nervous instability. Large hands, hanging: only just neat enough to have tea. A sudden amused kindling in the gooseberry eyes; & the profuse storytelling of those who have lived with savages [...]" (323 Diary 1931-35). Link to Sackville-West? "The narrator is Ralph Brewster, a musically talented exotic, skilled photographer, and, as Jonathan Keates neatly describes him in his foreword, "someone whose gift was for embracing the pleasures and possibilities of the immediate moment." (form intro to new edition of 6,000 Beards). Brewster ead classics at King's College, Cambridge; went to California, became involved with film world in Berlin; considered becoming a conductor, dabbled in astrology, returned to archaeololgy; edited a magazine called Worl Music (in Vienna, in English). As well as 6,000 Beards, Brewster wrote The Island of Zeus and Wrong Passport. He died of heart failure in 1950. (Cosmopolite's Journey: Episodes from a Lofe by Harry Brewster, London: Radcliffe Press, 1998. [brother]).