“I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.” Happy Birthday, Rebecca West

It is hard to talk about her without referencing the generations of writers she inspired, all of whom admit their debt to her. Robert Kaplan is the most open about it (his Balkan Ghosts, which launched his career, has him following Rebecca West’s footsteps through Yugoslavia, using her masterpiece Black Lamb and Grey Falcon as his travel guide. Christopher Hitchens, too, acknowledges a debt to her (he wrote the foreword to a new edition of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.) And the list goes on.

Rebecca West was a journalist, novelist, Suffragist, Socialist, as well as later critic of Socialism and the pacifist Left, as well as author of one of the most important books of the 20th century, the aforementioned Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. She wrote essays, op-ed columns, reportage (she covered the Nuremberg Trials, as well as the treason trials wracking England from end to end in the 50s and 60s, including the Profumo affair). She kept up a voluminous and very entertaining correspondence.

Her family of origin was wealthy, the ancestral tree was wealthy, but for many reasons the family had lost that wealth by the time West was born. She grew up in an atmosphere of faded grandeur. Her parents let their children run wild. West went to school, kind of, but she was mostly self-directed. She spent her time un-managed, unmonitored. Her parents didn’t impose limitations. She grew up in almost a fairy-tale childhood where she did whatever the hell she wanted to do. Total independence. While that may have made life tougher for her later (to be taken seriously as a political writer who also happened to be female was no small task), it gave her her clear-sighted unmistakable voice. She was unafraid of declaiming her own opinions. Even more difficult, she was unafraid of HAVING her own opinions. It sounds like that would be the easiest part, but it was NOT in the 1920s/30s/40s, when groupthink was extreme. Because of her self-directed (mostly) education, she had no respect for “the literary canon” just for being “the canon”. One of her writing idols was Mark Twain, a similar autodidact. As an early teenager, she was already writing fiery articulate op-ed columns for feminist/suffragette magazines. You read those pieces, and you cannot believe it’s come from the pen of a 14-year-old girl.

CUT TO: 1937 and 1938. Terrible years. She traveled through what is now “the former” Yugoslavia with her husband. Not only could she sense the cataclysm that was to come in WWII but she also predicted the breakup of Yugoslavia some 50 years later, and the genocidal campaigns of people like Slobodan Milosevic. Nobody who read her book would be at all shocked that Serbia would rise in such a monstrous way (and West was pro-Serb). Retrospect makes prophets of us all: there are many who said, “I saw it coming …”

Yes: but could you have seen it coming in 1938?

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She was on the side of the individual. This separated her from her contemporaries, especially in the 1930s, when the worldwide collapse of the economy made Socialist ideas extremely attractive, ideas which put the Group above the Individual. She was a radical and a feminist, but she had a healthy suspicion of any group, and/or groupthink (the latter follows the former). She had a healthy distrust of systems and ideology. West saw what group-identity-politics could wrought, in places like Yugoslavia, and also in places like Germany. This was not a popular stance to take at the time (and, uhm, now), and West is often mistaken for a reactionary by contemporary people who have an inability to understand context. Being called a “reactionary” is often the accusation thrown towards someone who refuses to “play well with others”, who never drank the Kool-Aid in the first place.

Watch how groups – Right or Left, it doesn’t matter – shun apostates. A dramatic word, but it applies, showing the religious nature of adherence to strict ideology. Ideology requires Orthodoxy. If you deviate from the “scripture”, you are banished to outer darkness. George Orwell discovered this. So did Rebecca West, and for similar reasons. She went through it with every group with which she was aligned, including the suffragettes. She was not afraid to “call out” her dismay at the anti-sex hysteria which took over the suffragette movement (as she saw it anyway). Let’s focus on political power, not all this sex stuff, which should be up to the individual to figure out. By breaking rank (as it was perceived), she was then labeled “not one of us.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Her book A Train of Powder is made up of four very long essays having to do with trials West covered as a journalist. At the Nuremberg Trials, she sat in the press box for months on end, and observed: the zaniness of it, the behavior of the “defendants”, and she thought hard on what all of this would actually mean. She makes insightful observations that rang uneasily in the minds of her contemporaries, who were still under the sway of the glorious revolution going on in Russia, something she did not fall prey to or embrace. For example, she notes that the international judges each read different parts of the accusations against each defendant. West writes:

It turned out that the Russian was reading the part of the judgment that condemned the Germans for their deportations: for taking men and women away from their homes and sending them to distant camps, where they worked as slave labour in conditions of great discomfort, and were often unable to communicate with their families. There was here a certain irony, and a certain warning.

This essay was written in 1946. It was unpopular, at that time, to criticize Russia and many decided to stick their heads in the sand, to avoid uncomfortable truths. To make an omelette, you have to break eggs, right? Many took the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s at face value, but there were many more who refused to believe (including Rebecca West’s former lover and father of her child, H.G. Wells, who declared Stalin an “honest” man after meeting him. Wells eventually backtracked his idiotic statement but it was too late. He had been used by Stalin as the “idiot” that he was.). To suggest that things were less-than-perfect in Socialist Russia was to be a traitor to the Cause. (You can see why Warren Beatty was so excited that he got Rebecca West to be one of the “witnesses” in Reds. She had a grounds-eye view of that whole inter-Left fight in the 1920s, 1930s. She wasn’t in the front row, watching. She was on the stage.)

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Rebecca West on the right, one of the “witnesses” in “Reds.”

In 1981, 90-year-old Rebecca West was interviewed by The Paris Review. Cataracts had ruined her eyes, she was arthritic. But her mind was sharp and she was still working, writing book reviews, keeping up to date on things. She can be biting in her criticism, especially of other writers.

The interviewer asks her if she does many drafts of her writing. She replies, “I fiddle away a lot at them. Particularly if it’s a fairly elaborate thing. I’ve never been able to do just one draft. That seems a wonderful thing. Do you know anyone who can?” The interviewer says, “I think D.H. Lawrence did” and Rebecca replies, “You could often tell.”

She speaks in the interview about her break with the suffragette movement:

“I admired them enormously, but all that business about venereal disease, which was supposed to be round every corner, seemed to me excessive. I wasn’t in a position to judge, but it did seem a bit silly.”

Here are some excerpts from the interview, including her famous theory that “women are idiots and men are lunatics”.

On losing her hearing:

“From an early age – but it was not detected for many, many years – I’ve had difficulty about hearing. Finally, I lost my hearing almost entirely in this ear, I got pneumonia in it, which I think is rather chic.”

On Women=idiots/Men=lunatics

“[Women] are idiots and men are lunatics. It’s a perfectly good division. The Greek root of idiot means “private person”; men “see the world as if by moonlight, which shows the outlines of every object but not the details indicative of their nature”. It seems to me in any assembly where you get people, who are male and female, in a crisis, the women are apt to get up and, with a big wave of the hand, say, It’s all very well talking about the defenses of the country, but there are thirty-six thousand houses in whatever (wherever they’re living) that have no bathrooms. Surely, it’s more important to have clean children for the future. Silly stuff, when the enemy’s at the gate. But men are just as silly. Even when there are no enemies at the gate, they won’t attend to the bathrooms, because they say defense is more important. It’s mental deficiency in both cases.”

On Mark Twain:

“Well, I longed, when I was young, to write as well as Mark Twain. It’s beautiful stuff and I always liked him. If I wanted to write anything that attacked anybody, I used to have a look at his attack on Christian Science, which is beautifully written. He was a man of very great shrewdness. The earliest article on the Nazis, on Nazism, a sort of first foretaste, a prophetic view of the war, was an article by Mark Twain in Harper’s in, I should think, the nineties. He went to listen to the Parliament in Vienna and he describes an awful row and what the point of view of Luger, the Lord Mayor, was, and the man called George Schwartz, I think, who started the first Nazi paper, and what it must all lead to. It’s beautifully done. It’s the very first notice that I’ve ever found of the Austrian Nazi Party, that started it all.”

On fascism:

“I just saw violence [before the First World War]. There was the race thing and sacred Germanism and all that, but the enemy before the First World War you can’t really compare with fascism. It was the imperialism of Germany and the supremacy of the army, but that isn’t exactly fascism. I think you could say, there was more fascism, but of an intellectualized kind, in France. The crux of the Dreyfus case was that it didn’t matter whether Dreyfus was guilty or not, you mustn’t spoil the image of the army. That was more or less fascist.”

On being a woman:

“No [advantages in being a woman] whatsoever. You could have a good time as a woman, but you’d have a much better time as a man. If in the course of some process, people turn up a card with a man’s name on it and then a card with a woman’s, they feel much softer toward the man, even though he might be a convicted criminal. They’d treat the man’s card with greater tenderness.”

On Tolstoy:

“I’m a heretic about Tolstoy. I really don’t see War and Peace as a great novel because it seems constantly to be trying to prove that nobody who was in the war knew what was going on. Well, I don’t know whoever thought they would – that if you put somebody down in the wildest sort of mess they understand what’s happening.”

On T.S. Eliot:

“Goodness! TS Eliot, whom I didn’t like a bit? He was a poseur. He was married to this woman who was very pretty. My husband and I were asked to see them, and my husband roamed around the flat and there were endless photographs of TS Eliot and bits of his poetry done in embroidery by pious American ladies, and only one picture of his wife, and that was when she was getting married. Henry pointed it out to me and said, I don’t think I like that man.”

On writing books:

“I write books to find out about things. I wrote Saint Augustine because, believe it or not, there was no complete life in English at that time.”

On Virginia Woolf and English literature:

“It’s an absurd error to put modern English literature in the curriculum. You should read contemporary literature for pleasure or not read it at all. You shouldn’t be taught to monkey with it. It’s ghastly to think of all the little girls who are taught to read To the Lighthouse. It’s not really substantial food for the young because there’s such a strong feeling that Virginia Woolf was doing a set piece and it didn’t really matter very much. She was putting on an act. Shakespeare didn’t put on an act. But Orlando is a lovely original splash, a beautiful piece of fancy. Leonard Woolf had a tiresome mind. When you read his books about Malaya, and then the books of the cadets who went out there, he’s so petty, and they have such an enthusiasm and such tolerance for the murderous habits of the natives. But he was certainly good to Virginia. I couldn’t forgive Vanessa Bell for her awful muddy decorations and those awful pictures of Charlotte Bronte. And I hated Duncan Grant’s pictures too. The best thing that was ever said about Bloomsbury was said by a lovely butler of mine. At dinner one evening, they began to talk of Faulkner’s book in which someone uses a corncob for the purposes of rape. They were being terribly subtle, and doing this and that gesture over the table. The butler came into my son Anthony’s room and asked, Do you know where they keep the Faulkners? It seems they’re very saucy. Virginia Woolf’s criticism was much better than criticism others were writing then.”

On why she chose to write about Yugoslavia:

“I wanted to write a book on Finland, which is a wonderful case of a small nation with empires here and there, so I learned Finnish and I read a Finnish novel. It was all about people riding bicycles. But then, when I went to Yugoslavia, I saw it was much more exciting with Austria and Russia and Turkey, and so I wrote that. I really did enjoy it terribly, loved it.”

On Tom Stoppard and Shaw:

“I find Tom Stoppard just as amusing as I ever found Shaw. Very amusing, both as a playwright and as himself. But I’m not now an admirer of Shaw. It was a poor mind, I think. I liked his wife so much better. He was conceited, but in an odd way. Usually, you know, it’s people shouting to keep their spirits up, but he really did think he was better than most people.”

On Yeats:

“[Yeats] wasnt a bit impressive and he wasn’t my sort of person at all. He boomed at you like a foghorn. He was there one time when Philip Guedalla and two or three of us were all very young, and were talking nonsense about murderers in Shakespeare and wehther a third murderer ever became a first murderer by working hard or were they, sort of, hereditary slots? Were they like Japanese specialists and one did one kind of murder, another did another? It was really awfully funny. Philip was very funny to be with. Then we started talking about something on the Western Isles but Yeats wouldn’t join in, until we fussed around and were nice to him. But we were all wrong; what he liked was solemnity and, if you were big enough, heavy enough, and strong enough, he loved you. He loved great big women. He would have been mad about Vanessa Redgrave.”

On arousing hostility in others:

“I’ve aroused hostility in an extraordinary lot of people. I’ve never known why. I don’t think I’m formidable.”

On the Donatists:

“I like to think about people like the Donatists, who were really suffering agonies of one kind and another because the Roman Empire was splitting up and it was especially uncomfortable to be in Roman Africa. But they didn’t know anything about economics, and did know about theology. Theology had taught them that if you suffered, it was usualy because you’d offended God – so they invented an offense against God, which was that unworthy priests were celebrating the Sacraments. So that satisfied them and then they went round the country, looting and getting the food and the property they wanted because they said that they were punishing heretics. I think it’s wonderful that in the past people overlooked things that now seem to us quite obvious, and thought they were doing things for the reasons they weren’t, and tried to remedy them by actions. Perhaps there’s some simple thing we’ll think of someday, which will make us much happier.”

Rebecca-West

She’s funny. She’s smart. She’s a little bit scary.

Here are some excerpts from her correspondence. I pulled out stuff I found funny, or well-written, or memorable. Every letter, though, is filled with gems.

Letter to sister Letitia Fairfield, 1909, describing a riot at the polls in Whitley, and a battle between the feminists and the Liberal women (the Liberal party was anti-suffrage for women). Rebecca is just a teenager here.

The Liberal women are ghastly! They stood on the other side of the gate and shouted insults at us the whole time. I had five large Liberal ladies bearing down on me calling me a hooligan and a silly fool and other pretty names. One Liberal man tried to shake me and hurt me, much to their delight; but the police man settled all that. However, our Suffragette, Mrs Brown of New Castle, was knocked down and tramped on by a member of the Woman’s Liberal Federation. They tried to make me stop shouting, “Keep the Liberal out” but of course it was no good. I kept on from 10 till 8! Of course I got my meals all right. Everybody was very nice except the Liberal women – who have a repertoire of vituperation that I cannot believe to be equalled anywhere. They looked exactly like comic postcard Suffragettes. The police were quite all right, so I was always safe. The police warned me not to get up to hear the poll unless I was with plenty of friends, as the women would scratch my eyes out! I knew Kenwick was in. Shortt is a most attractive man, and was followed about by bevies of adoring damsels. He lost a good many workmen’s votes on account of a motor he sent round the town – full of his children, with a huge placard, “Vote for Daddy!” They couldn’t stand that. A great number of working men voted for woman’s Suffrage – spoiled their papers or voted Socialist. In most cases, I am told. I haven’t seen an analysis of the votes yet, as I didn’t go up. I was agreeably impressed with Miss Mattel. She’s a dear old soul in spite of the hair.

Letter to Ford Madox Ford, 1912:

I am remembering your dinnerparty with passion in this dreadful place – I concentrate on it in the middle of lectures on the Decentralisation of Labour till I feel a little happier. It is curious about Miss Sinclair’s sealed air. Don’t you think that ever so many distinguished women with degrees and things have that shut effect? Perhaps it is an effect of the Puritanism of women. Most men have so much more to repent that they must be amusing to justify their existence.

Letter to Dora Marsden and Grace Jardine. Nov. 1912:

The Discussion Circle is quaint. That dandy of cranks, D’Aubergne, is always jumping up demanding that we should all be kind to illegitimate children, as if we all made a habit of seeking out illegitimate infants and insulting them.

From a heartbreaking letter to H.G. Wells, March 1913:

I haven’t anything to give you. You have only a passion for excitement and for comfort. You don’t want any more excitement and I don’t give people comfort. I never nurse them except when they’re very ill. I carry this to excess. On reflection I can imagine that the occasion on which my mother found me most helpful to live with was when I helped her out of a burning house.

Letter to Sylvia Lund, autumn 1915:

I moved from there to another riverside inn which would have been delightful had not the landlord and his daughter escaped out of a Conrad novel. The father was an apish man with a monosyllabic manner who had come from South Africa, his daughter was beautiful and passionate – that is, she used to wander about the hotel caressing her opulent figure, which is what I have always suspected Conrad heroines of doing. And at night they used to have fierce sharp monosyllabic quarrels. One evening I was standing on the verandah when a voice suddenly came out of the dusk. I quote the remark with diffidence, but it does really seem to me to be one of the most marvellous remarks ever made. “If it were not for the great love of God in my heart I would strangle the damn bitch.”

Letter to Sylvia Lund, 1916:

It’s good to be conceited – I don’t mind a bit.

Letter to Sylvia Lund, 1917, written during air raids:

Talking of these nasty foreigners I cannot agree with you about Tolstoy. I wish I could. Twice have I read War and Peace and found nothing but stuffed Tolstoys, and such lots and lots of them. And plainly Anna Karenina was written simply to convince Tolstoy that there was nothing in this expensive and troublesome business of adultery and oh Gawd, oh Gawd, Kitty! And about Resurrection I cannot speak, but only yawn. And those short stories seem to me as fatuous as the fables of La Fontaine. But Dostoevsky –! The serenity of The Brothers Karamazov, the mental power of The Possessed, the art of The Raw Youth! Isn’t it awful to think that nothing can ever decide this dispute?

Letter to Sylvia Lund, 1917: West sold a novel, and spent the check on “the most expensive hat I have ever bought in my life.”

The hat was a direct consequence of the Italian disaster. All these war horrors instead of making me ascetic make me turn furiously to sensuous delights. Such a pleasure to think that if all the world’s gone wrong that hat at least is right. And after [and during] the air raids I don’t pray or speculate on the World State but drench myself in scent and eat chocolates. Perhaps it’s only a reaction against an unusually abstinent life – I’ve never had any amusing trimmings to life – but I think there is an impulse to reassure oneself that life’s worth living by simple pleasures.

Letter to Sylvia Lund, July 28, 1918

The National News is an amiable newspaper & I refuse to speak ill of it any more. After all we don’t know its temptations and perhaps it had no mother.

West

Letter to novelist Louis Golding, 1922:

My family vampires me. There seems no way out save the suicide’s noose. As an alternative I have been learning to ride. This process is extremely perilous because my dramatic instinct makes me look and behave as if I could ride magnificently the minute I put on my riding kit. I force myself to tell the people at any new stables I go to that I can’t ride but in spite of myself I do this in such accents that they don’t believe me and put me on the bloodiest of all their blood hunters. The result of this was that when I went to Exmoor I was bolted with for three miles – but there again my damned dramatic instinct told – for I looked as if I was enjoying it so convincingly that some people who saw me insisted on me following the stagehounds next day because it was over specially dangerous country that they knew I could tackle. (Black terror it was, black terror.) Some day I will stray into the foxhunting country and that will be the death of me. They’ll make me the Master of the Pytchley on sight and I will break my neck over the first gate.

Letter to S.K. Ratcliffe, March 21, 1923

I have tried to leave H.G. innumerable times, but never without his following me and asking me to come back. I have as a matter of fact left him in the moment but I am dreading another attempt to get me to come back. It is also as I have a steady monogamous nature and would have been the most wifely wife on earth extremely difficult not to take on the job again. My one hope therefore of getting and keeping clear is to get to America! Therefore this news does depress me. I would be glad if you would tell me all about it. I have a book (about 30,000 words) in my head, Second Thoughts on Feminism which I could write – if I keep free – in 2,000 word articles – which would make it plain where I stood and how unlikely it was that I should preach anything too revolutionary.

Letter to sister Winifred Macleod, Nov. 3, 1923

I went back from Springfield with two notabilities – a “Mayflower” woman – the trouble is Mayflower doesn’t mean a thing except that your ancestors like to take their Bible reading seriously; it doesn’t give you any breed at all. I don’t suppose democratic pioneering does for an aristocratic type – you have to have the element of leadership.

Letter to sister Winifred Macleod, Nov. 3, 1923

The journey from Philadelphia here (I am finishing this letter in Chicago) took eighteen hours – The first six followed alongside the Susquehanna and Julietta Rivers. Nothing in the world could convey the wistful beauty of American river scenery – the serenity of the wooded heights – wave-like in their skyline – the beauty of the wide shallow waters. I was adopted in the train by a charming old Texan, who called me “Ma’am,” paid me old-fashioned compliments (“If I may ask, Ma’am, how is it that such a charming lady as yourself have escaped matrimony?”) insisted on treating me to all my meals, and escorted me to my hotel here. The amount of attention one gets from men here would turn one’s head if one didn’t look round at the sallow hags of American women and realise that the standard is very different from Europe !

Letter to H.G. Wells (her pet name for him was “Cat” and “Jaguar”, among other things):

I’ve been shepherding Emma Goldman who is a very sensible body. She has a lot of very interesting facts about the treatment of intellectuals. Shaw won’t see her, and the Daily Herald and Labor Party people are rude to her before she begins to speak. Clever, flexible Jaguar that has always kept himself out of these fossilising party influences.

Letter to Max Beaverbrook, autumn 1924

The Express published today a story about Emma Goldman in which your (not inappropriately) rabbit-witted subordinates laid stress on her anarchist record, and mentioned casually that she had returned from Russia disillusioned with the Bolshevists. The effect of that article was distinctly unfavourable to Emma Goldman. Now, not only is Emma Goldman worth six of you (or three of me) but she is the most powerful Anti-Bolsh eyewitness I have yet encountered. Her effect as an Anti-Bolsh speaker ought to be tremendous. (Some of us are getting up a Queen’s Hall meeting for her.) I know that your interest in politics is restricted to personal gossip, but you might try to understand and sympathise with people who are interested in deeper issues. If you attack her as an anarchist she (being as pigheaded as a mule) will probably get defiant and declare that she still is an anarchist and queer her own and the Anti-Bolsh pitch. Therefore it would be seemly and consistent with its own politics if the Daily Express and the Evening Standard refrained from attacking Emma.

Letter to John Gunther, France, summer 1926

I have been having a real old-fashioned nervous breakdown, and it hasn’t seemed to me that it mattered where anybody was as all people on this globe seemed equally miserable anywhere. This nervous breakdown earned its keep, I think, because I am now so tough that I could keep my head up and see where I collapsed and why, and I have found out something useful. My breakdown was due to Lettie. And it was due to the fact that she hasn’t a thought about me that goes more than two centimetres below the surface which isn’t dislike and shame. She wishes I didn’t exist. She thinks I look awful. She thinks my career is a despicable failure… She is constantly embarrassed by my conversation and my manner. She treats Anthony as if he were the most appalling freak because he is mine. She actually has delusions about him. She alleged to me quite solemnly just before she left that he was so dark that of course it would be a handicap to him all through his life because people would think he had coloured blood in him. She is nearly crazy with an elder sister desire to call her little sister down. And that is a force that all my life has been depressing and annoying me. I am perfectly sure that is that and nothing in the way of a morbid neurosis which makes me dread going back to England. It isn’t, as my family has always conspired to make me believe and as H.G. in his sadism loved to tell me, that I am a neurotic who cannot stand up to life, but that I am healthy and I have been preyed on by neurotics till they have bled me nearly white.

Letter to John Gunther, Dec. 1926

I oddly don’t want to tell you who my lover is. Not one soul knows of it. He is a Californian, and a banker, and a terrific gambler, and he is so illiterate that he reads poetry and remembers it and gets a kick out of words, and he is broke one day and a millionaire the next, and he has been in love with me for three years without knowing me. I don’t know if it’ll last.

Letter to John Gunther, fall, 1927

This flat has a lovely view, but a bathroom that only a virgin could tolerate.

Letter to Sylvia Lund, August 31, 1929

I must confess I love France more and more – though what an insane people! We have neighbors in the next villa who glower at us and insult us in every way to such a degree that in England would make one go to the nearest police station to report the presence of lunatics.

Letter to Bertrand Russell, Sept. 1929

[H.G.’s] behaviour seems to me insane. I am aware from my knowledge of him that he has a violent anti-sex complex like Tolstoy’s – You punish the female who evokes your lust. But it seems to me to be reaching demented extremes. I hear from the lady with whom he lives at present (whom is quite mad) that he frequently hits her and gives her black eyes, and so on, which is surely not done in our set. (This was not cited as evidence of cruelty, but as evidence that they were living a rich and satisfying life.)

Letter to Irita Van Doren, autumn, 1929

I found I could write of nothing but my sick loathing for every blighter writing except James Joyce whom I think a pretentious nitwit but who has guts, guts of the moonlight, beautiful guts, as Lewis Carroll nearly wrote.

Letter to George Bullett, Dec. 11, 1930

I am so glad you quoted and approved the passage about Lady Chatterley’s Lover, because I think it was such a great and endearing effort of Lawrence’s mind, and I am very conscious of how it wasn’t honoured by the world in the horrible reviews I am getting of this book – not that I attach any great importance to it as far as my own literary powers are concerned, because I write it as my monthly letter to the American Bookman and it was entirely Secker’s idea to reprint it. What I hate is the sniggering about Lawrence and the actual candid joy in his death which is expressed in review after review – particularly in the illustrated weeklies and the provincial papers. The tone is savage and indecent. There is a kind of lewd hysteria about it – which declares itself more unpleasantly still in the personal letters, most of them anonymous, that I am receiving. [Lawrence] was right – he was and is hated. And that he was hated by vile people makes one revere him more – but the frightful vitality of their vileness, and the amount of it, makes one despair – if it wasn’t for such pleasant reviews as your own.

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Here are some excerpts from Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West, the first being about the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 (the entire section is a masterpiece).


June 28, 1914: Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie setting out in their motorcade in Sarajevo that fateful morning.

This [June 28th] was a day of some personal significance to him [Franz Ferdinand]. On that date in 1900 he had gone to the Hofburg in the presence of the Emperor and the whole court, and all holders of office, and had, in choking tones, taken the oath to renounce the royal rights of his unborn children. But it was also a day of immense significance for the South Slav people. It is the feast-day of St. Vitus, who is one of those saints who are lucky to find a place in the Christian calendar, since they started life as pagan deities; he was originally a Vidd, a Finnish-Ugric deity. It is also the anniversary of the battle of Kossovo, where, five centuries before, the Serbs had lost their empire to the Turk. It had been a day of holy mourning for the Serbian people within the Serbian kingdom and the Austrian Empire, when they had confronted their disgrace and vowed to redeem it, until the year 1912, when Serbia’s victory over the Turks at Kumanovo wiped it out. But, since 1913 had still been a time of war, the St. Vitus’s Day of 1914 was the first anniversary which might have been celebrated by the Serbs in joy and pride. Franz Ferdinand must have been well aware that he was known as an enemy of Serbia. He must have known that if he went to Bosnia and conducted maneuvres on the Serbian frontier just before St. Vitus’s Day and on the actual anniversary paid a state visit to Sarajevo, he would be understood to be mocking the South Slav world, to be telling them that though the Serbs might have freed themseves from the Turks there were still many Slavs under the Austrian’s yoke.

To pay that visit was an act so suicidal that one fumbles the pages of the history books to find if there is not some explanation of his going, if he was not subject to some compulsion. But if ever a man went anywhere of his own free will, Franz Ferdinand went to Sarajevo.

There’s a reason other journalists bow down before Rebecca West.

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Rebecca West and Ingrid Bergman

She, with all her flaws and faults, helps make the 20th century comprehensible.

To paraphrase W.B. Yeats’ translation of Jonathan Swift’s epitaph: “Imitate her if you dare.”

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Reading List

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21 Responses to “I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.” Happy Birthday, Rebecca West

  1. Melissa Sutherland says:

    Oh, my. Haven’t thought about her in years. Didn’t even realize how much I missed reading her stuff. Am amazed at how undated her stuff seems to be! And the “bits” you picked were brilliant, right to the point. I guess I’m always a little surprised at how well read you are. My bad. Merry Christmas.

  2. Melissa Sutherland says:

    Sheila, I “mis” spoke. I’m not surprised by how well read you are. I’m surprised by how often I FORGET how well read you are. There, now that feels better. Merry Christmas.

  3. sheila says:

    Melissa – Merry Christmas to you too!

    Yes: her stuff doesn’t date at all, unlike some of the other contemporary commentators in her day – who may have been fine writers but didn’t have her fine mind.

    God, I wish she was still alive. I’d love to track her down and get her in a room for an interview.

  4. Cara Ellison says:

    That picture of her alone is “formidable”; I find it fascinating that she doesn’t think she is formidable. It might be one area her context is limited. I think I need to read some of her stuff – she is exactly the kind of woman I need to read about right now.

  5. sheila says:

    Cara – she is a daunting intellect and her books are unbelievable. She wrote novels, too – which I haven’t read – but have heard are wonderful. She could do ANYTHING.

    And yes, it’s interesting that she would not perceive herself as formidable. She had a pretty tempestuous personal life and a dreadful relationship with her son once he was an adult – and felt completely helpless to do anything about it. Her collected letters are really interesting.

  6. Kate says:

    Fascinating Sheila! As someone whose liberal leftie husband recoiled and walked away quickly when I asked for a Republican primary ballot (Ron Paul makes SENSE to me) I find I need just this inspiration as another vote nears.

  7. Kate says:

    Have you read The Fountain Overflows—actually the whole trilogy is amazing (This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamond are books two and three)? I liked the first the best, for several reasons. It is funny and charming, but also contains a tragic streak that nearly tears the reader apart. Beautiful writing!

    Kate

  8. sheila says:

    Kate – I really must, I haven’t read them – thank you for the recommendation!

  9. Nondisposable Johnny says:

    Definitely adding her to my reading list…Always had her on the “some day” list, but that description of Fat Herman in the dock alone makes me want to read everything else she wrote….

  10. sheila says:

    NJ – she’s a powerhouse! I would recommend Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, although you might hate me forever because it is 1000 pages long.

    But A Train of Powder is magnificent – (about the Nuremberg Trial) as well as her book on the treason trials in England throughout the 20th century: The Meaning of Treason.

    You’re in for a treat!!

    • Nondisposable Johnny says:

      Hah…I’m a HUGE Tolstoy fan. 1,000 pages don’t intimidate me none!

      Anyway if the samples in your post are any way typical, I’ll probably only wish it was longer…As I used to tell people, War and Peace is a LOT shorter than many 200 hundred page novels I’ve read!

  11. mutecypher says:

    For some reason – perhaps due to Amazon’s roll out of their Kindle Unlimited service – some of her novels are available for free on the Kindle version, The Return of the Soldier and The Judge. I picked up her book on Henry James (also free on the kindle version). I need some help in appreciating him and I suspect she will provide insight.

    Those comments about D.H. Lawrence, and Yeats + Vanessa Redgrave get me every time.

    • sheila says:

      The Vanessa Redgrave comment is so great!

      She was pretty brutal about Henry James, actually. She practically destroys him at the same time that she tries to appreciate him.

      • sheila says:

        Similar to her throwaway comment on Joyce – she calls him a “pretentious nitwit” but then goes INSANE for him by the end of the sentence. I love the way her mind worked.

  12. mutecypher says:

    Re: Henry James

    Oh, well maybe she’ll help me understand why he’s such a struggle for me. I have my theory (too much telling, not enough room for imagination), but we’ll see.

  13. mutecypher says:

    I’m making my way through The Portrait of a Lady now, and finding that I’m enjoying it more than when I’ve attempted it in the past. Jessa Crispin’s “Spolia” issue on him got me in the mood to try again. I’d only finished The Turn of the Screw and The Golden Bowl before.

  14. mutecypher says:

    Perhaps it’s that lunatic thing, I only want to see the outlines!

    • sheila says:

      Ha!! Please, for the sake of all us female “idiots” back home, don’t start some bloody war. Thanks very much.

      Jessa’s passion for him has definitely been a motivating factor. The recent conversations on Book Slut about film adaptations of Henry James’ stuff has been incredible!

      I re-read What Maisie Knew before I reviewed the film – and it is a harrowing description totally from a child’s point of view of what it is like to have two narcissists as parents. The child doesn’t know what narcissists are – and doesn’t know her parents are awful – all she knows is what they say to her and what they do. How James manages to create this incredibly terrifying mood of total-loss-of-innocence from the point of view of an 8 year old girl … Now THAT was impressive to me.

  15. Melissa Sutherland says:

    Sheila, I smiled when I re-read my comments to you from 2011. I realize I’ve never told you about meeting her. I was 14 and we were spending part of the summer in England. My father’s brother, soon to be a retired general, had been at Nuremberg and knew her. Well, of course, he made us look her up. We spent an afternoon, or at least part of it, with her. I’d read some of her stuff by then, but was suddenly shy. She did not suffer fools (even young ones), and began asking me questions I had to answer. I ended up falling madly in love with her. I think she must have been in her mid-sixties by then. Maybe it’s time to read her again? I love your pieces on her. Merry Christmas.

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