Iris Tree (1897–1968)

Iris Tree was born into a prominent theatrical and literary family. Her parents were the actors Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Lady Maud Tree. Her sisters Felicity Tree and Viola Tree became actresses. Her aunt Constance Beerbohm and her uncles Julius Beerbohm and Max Beerbohm were writers. She grew up immersed in London's cultural and scene and became known as a bohemian and wit. With her friend Nancy Cunard, she became a member of the artistic circle known as the "Corrupt Coterie." She studied at the Slade School of Art and was much sought-after as an artists' model and muse: she was painted by Augustus John, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, and Roger Fry, sculpted by Jacob Epstein, photographed by Man Ray, and inspired characters in several novels. Her most famous feature was her bobbed hair. She contributed poems to the 1917 anthology Wheels; her published collections were Poems (1920) and The Traveller and other Poems (1927). She married first Edwin Curtis Moffat, an American painter and photographer; Ivan Moffat, the screenwriter, was their son. Her second marriage was to Friedrich Ledebur, an Austrian former army officer with whom she had another son. Living in the USA in the 1930s and 40s, she helped organize the first Ojai Theater Festival, at which she performed Lady Macbeth, and renewed her friendships with Aldous and Maria Huxley, Charlie Chaplin, and Greta Garbo. In the 1950s, she returned to England, published more poems, and wrote a play, Strangers' Wharf, that was performed at the New Lindsey Theatre in London. Many of her unpublished manuscripts, which included articles, poems, an unfinished novel, and a memoir, were lost when her car was stolen. See also The Rainbow Picnic: A Portrait of Iris Tree (1974) by Daphne Vivian Fielding.