Man and Superman: Proud to be related to Saville - Pride Month photo story by OTN trustee Lucy Berry

Lucy Berry is a performance poet, playwright, hymn writer and minister in the United Reformed Church. She has published two books of poetry and a Lent course.

I was born in June 1957. That was the year that the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution in Great Britain published the Wolfenden Report, a study containing recommendations for laws governing sexual behaviour.

This report led, ten years later, to the partial decriminalisation of sexual expression between men over 21 in England and Wales.

I grew up in a tiny family, where, if one could not accept and enjoy difference, one was sunk, and different and unremarked expressions of sexuality and love existed in the wider family.

My mother’s father died when my mother was only three. From that time on, the significant male figure in her life was my grandmother’s cousin, Esmé Percy, or ‘Saville’, as the family called him.

Esmé Percy, born 8/8/1887, died 17/06/1957

Esmé’s mother Henriette

Esmé as a boy

Esmé as an altar server at church

Esmé at school

Esmé as a young man

Esmé as a soldier

Esmé with his mother

Esmé with his dogs

Esmé in later life, with a glass eye, and one of his dogs.

Esmé’s memorial in Kensington Gardens, London

Saville junior with mum Lucy Berry today

As I grew up, both my grandmother and my mother used to talk about Saville continually. He was a lovely man, well-read, witty and kind; an actor. They were saddened that I had never met him; he died the week I was born. I think I was probably in my teens before anyone mentioned his orientation. No one thought to; everyone took it for granted that he attached romantically to men.

Esmé’s mother Henriette was an actress and singer at a time when this wasn’t at all ‘respectable’. There are wonderful pictures of her, one of which I have included in the gallery here. Esme’s father was a married man called Mr Saville. Henriette took the name Percy in her private life, and Esmé was called ‘Saville’ by all the family.

Saville was a close friend of the playwright George Bernard Shaw. Shaw had him in mind as he wrote his drama Man and Superman, and Saville was the first to play that role. He knew many famous people, including Noel Coward, John Gielgud, and Ellen Terry, and we have anecdotes in the family about them all.

We have lots of pictures of him; and lots of his old theatre programmes. Letters too, by famous people of the day, expressing appreciation for his work. He looked quite dashing, from an early age, and was never encouraged to be anything that he wasn’t. Esmé’s mother, on being asked how he was, would usually say: ‘His most recent young man is more ghastly than the last’ - but in a giggly, fond way.

Late pictures of Saville show that he had a glass eye. A favourite Spaniel bit him, but he was never angry about it. There is a little statue of a dog, in the midst of a drinking fountain, which is his memorial from his friends. It stands near to one of the two High Street entrances to Kensington Gardens in London W8. His mother’s dogs are buried in the pet graveyard on the north of the same park.

When my son was born he was christened Saville, in honour of Esmé Percy. Not because he was a great actor - which I’m sure he was - but because he stood in as a father-figure for my mum after her dad died. I wish I had met him and known him.

Things have changed since 1957, although not enough. Sometimes I wonder whether, if Saville had lived in this generation, his life would have been very different. Perhaps. Perhaps not; he was always loved and accepted in his family and in his profession.