An Autobiography Read online

  Occasionally we would try Thackeray for a change. We got through Vanity Fair all right, but we stuck on The Newcombes–‘We ought to like it,’ said my mother, ‘everyone says it is his best.’ My sister’s favourite had been Esmond, but that too we found diffuse and difficult; indeed I have never been able to appreciate Thackeray as I should.

  For my own reading, the works of Alexandre Dumas in French now entranced me. The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and best of all, The Count of Monte Christo. My favourite was the first volume, Le Château d’If, but although the other five volumes occasionally had me slightly bewildered the whole colourful pageant of the story was entrancing. I also had a romatic attachment to Maurice Hewlett: The Forest Lovers, The Queen’s Quair, and Richard Yea-and-Nay. Very good historical novels they are, too.

  Occasionally my mother would have a sudden idea. I remember one day when I was picking up suitable windfalls from the apple-tree, she arrived like a whirlwind from the house. ‘Quickly,’ she said, ‘we are going to Exeter.’

  ‘Going to Exeter,’ I said surprised. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Sir Henry Irving is playing there, in Becket. He may not live much longer, and you must see him. A great actor. We’ve just time to catch the train. I have booked a room at the hotel.’

  We duly went to Exeter, and it was indeed a wonderful performance of Becket which I have never forgotten.

  The theatre had never stopped being a regular part of my life. When staying at Ealing, Grannie used to take me to the theatre at least once a week, sometimes twice. We went to all the musical comedies, and she used to buy me the score afterwards. Those scores–how I enjoyed playing them! At Ealing, the piano was in the drawing-room, and so fortunately I did not annoy anyone by playing several hours on end.

  The drawing-room at Ealing was a wonderful period piece. There was practically no room in it to move about. It had a rather splendid thick Turkey carpet on the floor, and every type of brocaded chair; each one of them uncomfortable. It had two, if not three, marquetry china cabinets, a large central candelabra, standard oil lamps, quantities of small whatnots, occasional tables, and French Empire furniture. The light from the window was blocked by a conservatory, a prestige symbol that was a must, as in all self-respecting Victorian houses. It was a very cold room; the fire was only lit there if we had a party; and nobody as a rule went into it except myself. I would light the brackets on the piano, adjust the music-stool, breathe heavily on my fingers, and start off with The Country Girl or Our Miss Gibbs. Sometimes I allotted roles to ‘the girls’, sometimes I was myself singing them, a new and unknown star.

  Taking my scores to Ashfield, I used to play them in the evenings in the school-room, (also an icy cold room in winter). I played and I sang. Mother often used to go to bed early, after a light supper, about eight o’clock. After she had had about two and a half hours of me thumping a piano overhead, and singing at the top of my voice, she could bear it no longer, and used to take a long pole, which served for pushing the windows up and down, and rap frantically on the ceiling with it. Regret-fully I would abandon my piano.

  I also invented an operetta of my own called Marjorie. I did not compose it exactly, but I sang snatches of it experimentally in the garden. I had some vague idea that I might really be able to write and compose music one day. I got as far as the libretto, and there I stuck. I can’t remember the whole story now, but it was all slightly tragic, I think. A handsome young man with a glorious tenor voice loved desperately a girl called Marjorie, who equally naturally did not love him in return. In the end he married another girl, but on the day after his wedding a letter arrived from Marjorie in a far country saying that she was dying and had at last realised that she loved him. He left his bride and rushed to her forthwith. She was not quite dead when he arrived–alive enough at any rate to raise herself on one elbow and sing a splendid dying love song. The bride’s father arrived to wreak vengeance for his deserted daughter, but was so affected by the lovers’ grief that he joined his baritone to their voices, and one of the most famous trios ever written concluded the opera.

  I also had a feeling that I might like to write a novel called Agnes. I remember even less of that. It had four sisters in it: Queenie, the eldest, golden-haired and beautiful, and then some twins, dark and handsome, finally Agnes, who was plain, shy and (of course) in poor health, lying patiently on a sofa. There must have been more story than this, but it has all gone now. All I can remember is that Agnes’s true worth was recognised at last by some splendid man with a black moustache whom she had loved secretly for many years.

  The next of my mother’s sudden ideas was that perhaps, after all, I wasn’t being educated enough, and that I had better have a little schooling. There was a girls’ school in Torquay kept by someone called Miss Guyer, and my mother made an arrangement that I should go there two days a week and study certain subjects. I think one was arithmetic, and there was also grammar and composition. I enjoyed arithmetic, as always, and may even have begun algebra there. Grammar I could not understand in the least: I could not see why certain things were called prepositions or what verbs were supposed to do, and the whole thing was a foreign language to me. I used to plunge happily into composition, but not with real success. The criticism was always the same: my compositions were too fanciful. I was severely criticised for not keeping to the subject. I remember–‘Autumn’–in particular. I started off well, with golden and brown leaves, but suddenly, somehow or other, a pig got into it–I think it was possibly rooting up acorns in the forest. Anyway, I got interested in the pig, forgot all about autumn, and the composition ended with the riotous adventures of Curlytail the Pig and a terrific Beechnut Party he gave his friends.

  I can picture one teacher there–I can’t recall her name. She was short and spare, and I remember her eager jutting chin. Quite unexpectedly one day (in the middle, I think, of an arithmetic lesson) she suddenly launched forth on a speech on life and religion. ‘All of you,’ she said, ‘every one of you–will pass through a time when you will face despair. If you never face despair, you will never have faced, or become, a Christian, or known a Christian life. To be a Christian you must face and accept the life that Christ faced and lived; you must enjoy things as he enjoyed things; be as happy as he was at the marriage at Cana, know the peace and happiness that it means to be in harmony with God and with God’s will. But you must also know, as he did, what it means to be alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, to feel that all your friends have forsaken you, that those you love and trust have turned away from you, and that God Himself has forsaken you. Hold on then to the belief that that is not the end. If you love, you will suffer, and if you do not love, you do not know the meaning of a Christian life.’

  She then returned to the problems of compound interest with her usual vigour, but it is odd that those few words, more than any sermon I have ever heard, remained with me, and years later they were to come back to me and give me hope at a time when despair had me in its grip. She was a dynamic figure, and also, I think, a fine teacher; I wish I could have been taught by her longer.

  Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had continued with my education. I should, I suppose, have progressed, and I think I should have been entirely caught up in mathematics–a subject which has always fascinated me. If so, my life, would certainly have been very different. I should have been a third or fourth-rate mathematician and gone through life quite happily. I should probably not have written any books. Mathematics and music would have been enough to satisfy me. They would have engaged my attention, and shut out the world of imagination.

  On reflection, though, I think that you are what you are going to be. You indulge in the fantasies of, ‘If so-and-so had happened, I should have done so-and-so’, or, ‘If I had married So-and-so, I suppose I should have had a totally different life.’ Somehow or other, though, you would always find your way to your own pattern, because I am sure you are following a pattern: your pattern of your life. You can
embellish your pattern, or you can scamp it, but it is your pattern and so long as you are following it you will know harmony, and a mind at ease with itself.

  I don’t suppose I was at Miss Guyer’s more than a year and a half; after that my mother had another idea. With her usual suddenness she explained that I was now going to Paris. She would let Ashfield for the winter, we would go to Paris; I might perhaps start at the same pension at which my sister had been, and see how I liked it.

  Everything went according to plan; mother’s arrangements always did. She carried them out with the utmost efficiency, and bent everyone to her will. An excellent let was obtained for the house; mother and I packed all our trunks (I don’t know that there were quite so many round-topped monsters as there had been when we went to the South of France, but there were still a goodly number), and in next to no time we were settled in the Hotel d’lena, in the Avenue d’Iéna in Paris.

  Mother was laden with letters of introduction and the addresses of various pensionnats and schools, teachers and advisers of all kinds. She had things sorted out before long. She heard that Madge’s pensionnat had changed its character and gone downhill as the years passed–Mademoiselle T. herself had either given up or was about to give up–so my mother merely said we could try it for a bit, and see. This attitude towards schooling would hardly be approved of nowadays, but to my mother trying a school was exactly like trying a new restaurant. If you looked inside you couldn’t tell what it was like; you must try it, and if you didn’t like it the sooner you moved from it the better. Of course then you had not to bother with G. C. E. School Certificate, O levels, A levels and serious thoughts for the future.

  I started at Mademoiselle T.’s, and stayed there for about two months, until the end of the term. I was fifteen. My sister had distinguished herself on arriving, when she was dared by some other girl to jump out of a window. She had immediately done so–and arrived slap in the middle of a tea-table round which Mademoiselle T. and distinguished parents were sitting. ‘What hoydens these English girls are!’ exclaimed Mademoiselle T. in high displeasure. The girls who had egged her on were maliciously pleased, but they admired her for her feat.

  My entry was not at all sensational. I was merely a quiet mouse. By the third day I was in misery with homesickness. In the last four or five years I had been so closely attached to my mother, hardly ever leaving her, that it was not unnatural that the first time I really went away from home I should feel homesick. The curious thing was that I didn’t know what was the matter with me. I just didn’t want to eat. Every time I thought of my mother, tears came into my eyes and ran down my cheeks. I remember looking at a blouse which mother had made–extremely badly–with her own fingers, and the fact that it was made badly, that it did not fit, that the tucks were uneven, made me cry all the more. I managed to conceal these feelings from the outside world, and only wept at night into my pillow. When my mother came to fetch me the following Sunday I greeted her as usual, but when we got back to the hotel I burst into tears and flung my arms round her neck. I am glad to say that at least I did not ask her to take me away; I knew quite well that I had to stop there. Besides, having seen mother I felt that I wasn’t going to be homesick any more; I knew what was the matter with me.

  I had no recurrence of homesickness. Indeed, I now enjoyed my days at Mademoiselle T.’s very much. There were French girls, American girls, and a good many Spanish and Italian girls–not many English. I liked the company of the American girls especially. They had a breezy interesting way of talking and reminded me of my Cauterets friend, Marguerite Prestley.

  I can’t remember much about the work side of things–I don’t think it can have been very interesting. In history we seemed to be doing the period of the Fronde, which I knew pretty well from the reading of historical novels; and in geography I have been mystified for life by learning the provinces of France as they were in the time of the Fronde rather than as they are now. We also learnt the names of the months as they were during the French Revolution. My faults in French dictation horrified the mistress in charge so much she could hardly believe it. ‘Vraiment, c’est impossible’, she said. ‘Vous, qui parlez si bien le francais, vous avez fait vingt-cinq fautes en dictee, vingt-cinq!’

  Nobody else had made more than five. I was quite an interesting phenomenon by reason of my failure. I suppose it was natural enough under the circumstances, since I had known French entirely by talking it. I spoke it colloquially but, of course, entirely by ear, and the words été and était sounded exactly the same to me: I spelt it one way or the other purely by chance, hoping I might have hit upon the right one. In some French subjects, literature, recitation, and so on, I was in the top class; as regards French grammar and spelling I was practically in the bottom class. It made it difficult for my poor teachers–and I suppose shaming for me–except that I can’t feel that I really cared.

  I was taught the piano by an elderly lady called Madame Legrand. She had been there for a great many years. Her favourite method of teaching the piano was to play a quatre mains with her pupil. She was insistent on pupils being taught to read music. I was not bad at reading music, but playing it with Madame Legrand was something of an ordeal. We both sat on the bench-like music seat and, as Madame Legrand was extremely well-covered, she took up the greater part of it and elbowed me away from the middle of the piano. She played with great vigour, using her elbows, which stuck out slightly a-kimbo, the result being that the unfortunate person who was playing the other two hands had to play with one elbow stuck tightly to her side.

  With a certain natural craftiness I managed nearly always to play the bass side of the duet. Madame Legrand was led into this the more easily because she so enjoyed her own performance, and naturally the treble gave her a far better chance of pouring her soul into the music. Sometimes for quite a long time, owing to the vigour of her playing and her absorbtion in it, she failed to realise that I had lost my place in the bass. Sooner or later I hesitated over a bar, got one behind, tried to catch up, not sure where I was, and then tried to play such notes as would accord with what Madame Legrand was playing. Since, however, we were reading music I could not always anticipate this intelligently. Suddenly, as the hideous cacophany we were making dawned upon her, she would stop, raise her hands in the air and exclaim: ‘Mais qu’est-ce que vous jouez là, petite? Que c’est horrible!’ I couldn’t have agreed with her more–horrible it was. We would then start again at the beginning. Of course, if I was playing the treble my lack of coordination was noticed at once. However, as a whole, we got on well. Madame Legrand puffed and snorted a great deal the whole time she played. Her bosom rose and fell, groans sometimes came from her; it was alarming but fascinating. She also smelt rather high, which was not so fascinating.

  There was to be a concert at the end of the term, and I was scheduled to play two pieces, one the third movement from the Sonata Pathetique of Beethoven, and the other a piece called Serenade d’Aragona, or something like that. I took a scunner to the Serenade d’Aragona straight away. I found extraordinary difficulty in playing it–I don’t know why; it was certainly much easier than the Beethoven. Though my playing of the Beethoven came on well, the Serenade d’Aragona continued to be a very poor performance. I practised it ardently, but I seemed to make myself even more nervous. I woke up at night, thinking I was playing, and all sorts of things would happen. The notes of the piano would stick, or I would find I was playing an organ instead of the piano, or I was late in arriving, or the concert had taken place the night before…It all seems so silly when one remembers it.

  Two days before the concert I had such high fever that they sent for my mother. The doctor could find no cause for it. However, he gave it as his view that it would be much better if I did not play at the concert, and if I were removed from the school for two or three days until the concert was over. I cannot tell you of my thankfulness, though at the same time I had the feeling of somebody who has failed at something they had been determined to ac
complish.

  I remember now that at an arithmetic exam at Miss Guyer’s school I had come out bottom, though I had been top of the class all the week previously. Somehow, when I read the questions at the exam my mind shut up and I was unable to think. There are people who can pass exams, often high up, after being almost bottom in class; there are people who can perform in public much better than they perform in private; and there are people who are just the opposite. I was one of the latter. It is obvious that I chose the right career. The most blessed thing about being an author is that you do it in private and in your own time. It can worry you, bother you, give you a headache; you can go nearly mad trying to arrange your plot in the way it should go and you know it could go; but–you do not have to stand up and make a fool of yourself in public.

  I returned to the pensionnat with great relief and in good spirits. Immediately I tried to see if I could now play the Serenade d’Aragona. I certainly played it better than I had ever done before, but the performance was still poor. I went on learning the rest of the Beethoven sonata with Madame Legrand, who, though disappointed in me as a pupil who might have done her credit, was still kind and encouraging and said I had a proper sense of music.

  The two winters and one summer that I spent in Paris were some of the happiest days I have ever known. All sorts of delightful things happened all the time. Some American friends of my grandfather whose daughter sang in Grand Opera lived there. I went to hear her as Marguerite in Faust. At the pensionnat, they did not take girls to hear Faust–the subject was not supposed to be ‘convenable’ for ‘les jeunes filles’. I think people tended to be rather optimistic over the easy corruption of les jeunes filles; you would have to have far more knowledge than jeunes filles did in those days to know anything improper was going on at Marguerite’s window. I never understood in Paris why Marguerite was suddenly in her prison. Had she, I wondered, stolen the jewellery? Certainly pregnancy and the death of the child never even occurred to me.