Sybille Bedford

by Selina Hastings

  Despite her feelings of antipathy towards Portugal, Sybille was nonetheless determined to write about it, delivering an article for Vogue which appeared in January the following year. In “Notes on a Journey in Portugal,” Sybille gives little overt expression of her antipathy, concentrating instead on the beauty of the countryside and especially of the architecture—“All Portuguese towns are pretty; some are very pretty; a few are exquisite.” She discusses the wine, is politely dismissive of the food—“agreeable, fresh, plentiful and uninspiring”—describes the difficulty of learning the language, and portrays the people as “placid, kindly, patient, slow.” Her lack of engagement is discreetly downplayed, although few readers can have been encouraged by her account to visit such an apparently dreary country.

  Sybille and Eda finally returned to London at the end of the year, having first spent several weeks with Allanah at Les Bastides. Having recently been received into the Roman Catholic Church, Allanah was calm and cheerful, clearly happy with her new love, Charley Delmas, and Charley’s world of “the Riviera rich.” It was not, however, a world in which Sybille felt at home. Allanah “makes us feel very dingy and literary and unwanted,” she complained to Martha. “She took us to one of her friend’s houses the other night but explained before that it was only a dinner for writers, and would not be the same food as a dinner for fellow rich, which made me absolutely furious.” To Evelyn, Sybille described at length her irritation with Allanah’s silly “expatriate jabber,” and the tediousness of her wealthy friends. But Evelyn, who had heard all this before, was reassuring. “You swing from her regularly, ever since I’ve known you. And then again, come the times of sympathy, and the affinity is there, mysteriously warm as ever.”

  Once back in London Sybille found she had a similar problem with Martha, who now appeared to regard her as on a lower social level than the Matthewses’ other friends. Shortly before Christmas Martha had telephoned to suggest that “when all festivities are over we must meet and have a nice walk round empty Belgrave Square,” a proposal that held little appeal for Sybille. “This does not take into account that I too like festivities, a friend’s warm house,” she complained. “I’m fed up with being M’s poor relation…[with] M’s way of fitting one in between her engagements…Seldom a drink, never ‘a hot meal,’ it is not my conception of enjoying the company of friends.”

  Fortunately for Sybille’s peace of mind she soon found somewhere to live well outside Martha’s orbit. Conveniently close to London, Little Wynters, a cottage in the hamlet of Hastingwood, near Harlow in Essex, was “very comfortable, above all entirely quiet. 1¼ mile off the main road, no neighbours, no traffic; garden ending in fields…a glasshouse for sitting in the sun.” The cottage was part of a property belonging to Air Chief Marshal Sir Thomas Pike and his wife, who warmly welcomed Sybille and Eda on their arrival, inviting them on their first evening to their house for drinks. As Sybille entered the drawing room her heart sank. There were “twelve people, sherry glasses and the neighbourhood to meet us. All majors and vicars, and ladies in tweeds, all military…I got my ‘I’m afraid I am an RC’ in, after having been told to join the Women’s Institute.” Nonetheless, the Pikes were friendly and helpful, and once the two women had settled in, to Sybille’s relief, left them largely undisturbed.

  Both she and Eda were much in need of tranquillity, both hard at work, Eda on a novel, Sybille on a second book about the law. Although it had been agreed with Collins that The Best We Can Do should be followed by a novel, she was now so absorbed in her study of jurisdiction that Mark Bonham Carter had agreed to accept another book on the subject first. This second project was of considerably wider scope, examining legal systems in England, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France. Now while in Essex Sybille began her research, driving across the county to attend local courts in Chipping Ongar, Dunmow, Chelmsford and Saffron Walden. Fascinated by the experience, she was also shocked by much of what she observed. “I came back quivering with indignation,” she told Martha. “Avaricious farmers on the bench, wicked Tory old ladies, retired military chaps…Most of the judges fiends.” When she tried to begin writing, Sybille found herself struggling, sitting for days at her desk, “doing typing exercises and playing patience. Sick with disgust, discouragement, heaviness.” Suddenly, however, the paralysis lifted and she found herself working “like blazes” for up to six and seven hours a day.

  As spring moved into summer, both she and Eda took pleasure in tending their garden, an acre of lawn with a few fine trees as well as a large bed for fruit and vegetables. In the early evenings after the day’s work was done, the pair spent an energetic couple of hours digging and weeding, chopping logs, gathering strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, lettuces, peas and beans. “Tomatoes growing nicely, little yellow flowers,” Sybille reported to Evelyn in June. “The strawberries are ripening, fought over one by one between the birds and me. I cover them with The Times.” By the following month the first crops had ripened. “A basket with 3 dozen young peas, a dozen mangetouts, 6 fava, 2 small lettuces…dinner of odds and ends: the vegetable done in 2 mins, 1 min, 30 seconds respectively—all freshest green on same dish; gnocchi di olio…Followed by the year’s harvest of raspberries picked by Eda.” Sybille was charmed one day to see a baby hedgehog slowly crossing the lawn. “I ran for a saucer of milk which they are said to like…Put it down; hedgehog came straight away, dipped in its nose and little hands and very slowly drank up the milk, it took ten minutes; then, so heavy that it could just waddle, it made off to its woods.”

  In July the two women left to spend a fortnight by Lake Constance, as Sybille had been commissioned to write an article about the region for Holiday magazine. Returning to Little Wynters at the end of the month, they departed again in October for Switzerland, Germany and Austria, where Sybille was to spend several weeks examining the legal systems of the three countries. “The material I am finding fascinates me,” she told Evelyn. “My Austrian…[and] Swiss court experiences are hallucinating, all as different as can be. The Swiss helpful, but so slow. Their idea of fun (lustig) is for me to be at their office at 7.45 a.m.” Her experience in Germany was rather more complicated, although on the whole she was pleasantly surprised “by the fairness of their law courts. It reflected the new spirit of the Germans.” Nonetheless there were some extraordinary differences. “Bavaria is the part of Germany where…murderers are quickly hanged, instead of soft Germany without—now—capital punishment. The authorities have become squeamish about taking life, the populace apparently not.” Towards the end of the year the two women arrived for three weeks in Paris, where Sybille completed her research, witnessing a number of cases at the magnificent Palais de Justice on the Île de la Cité.

  Interestingly, Sybille gives far less space to the French courts in her book than to those in Germany and Switzerland, but then, as she complained to Evelyn, she continued to find Paris repugnant. “Paris grates more than ever: a vast garage; insolently expensive.” She was not happy, either, with the situation at the rue de Lille, noting in her diary, “Bad atmosphere in house…E[sther] cross.”

  Esther’s irascibility was a recent development, a consequence of her currently fragile state of health. Six months previously her condition had begun seriously to decline; she refused to go out or to see friends, retreating for days at a time into an alcoholic stupor, a cause of increasing anxiety to Katzi. It worried her that Esther, gaunt and grey-haired, often stayed in her room for most of the day, supposedly working on a new book, a life of Madame de Maintenon, but in fact doing little except lying on her bed in a heavy wool dressing gown, smoking and drinking; she was skeletally thin, ate almost nothing, and was clearly in a state of severe depression. “Esther boit beaucoup,” Katzi had told Sybille. “Ivre tous les soirs…devient très difficile et capricieuse…fument sans arrêt” (“Esther drinks a lot…drunk every evening…becomes very difficult and capricious…smokes non-stop”). She was frequently incontinent, t
oo, not only in bed at night but often when sitting in an armchair in the drawing room, not troubling to get up and leave the room. “Personne peut vivre avec Esther,” Katzi complained, “elle est folle—et sale” (“Nobody can live with Esther, she is crazy—and dirty”).

  Further adding to their difficulties was the fact that Esther was in a precarious position financially as payments of her share of the dividends from Mark Cross were increasingly delayed, obliging her to rely on gifts from her brother Gerald and sister-in-law Noël Murphy, and at times to beg for loans from her friends, Sybille among them. The strain on Katzi was growing almost unbearable, as she wanted her sister to understand. Sybille had had such luck in life, always able to do exactly as she pleased, whereas Katzi was locked into this intolerable existence from which there seemed no escape. “Je suis très déprimée…Et pour une fois je n’ai plus de courage du tout!” (“I am very depressed…And for once I have no courage at all!”).

  Before long Esther’s condition grew sufficiently alarming for her to be taken to hospital, where she was diagnosed with epilepsy, a disorder, she was told, almost certainly activated by a lifetime’s heavy drinking and smoking. She was prescribed barbiturates and forbidden both alcohol and cigarettes, a veto that was to be largely ignored. The immediate improvement, however, was dramatic, as Janet Flanner reported. “Esther’s nearly fatal illness—& it was that—was like a gigantic purge that wiped out all her habits of exaggeration, mental & physical. She [talks] only nearly all the time, not entirely all, & with a moderation that is touching, brilliant in a new way because devoid of glitter.” With Esther rapidly recovering, Katzi at last was able to take a much-needed holiday, spending three weeks with her beloved Gino on Capri. “Gino et moi—nous nous aimons vraiment” (“Gino and I—we truly love each other”), she wrote cheerfully to Sybille.

  At the beginning of 1960, back in England and with her research completed, Sybille was able to concentrate on her writing. As before, there was greater enthusiasm for the project in New York than in London. Mark Bonham Carter, disappointed at the postponement of the promised novel, had shown little interest in the book, languidly enquiring after its progress over lunch one day, but “he is cold (at least to me) not interested in writing; and not I think terribly in publishing.” Bob Gottlieb, on the other hand, could hardly restrain his excitement, promising that Simon & Schuster would do everything they could to assist their author. “I know Sybille’s had extraordinary expenses in preparing for this book,” he told Evelyn. “We’d like to help, and we propose to pay her an exceptionally large advance, and to pay it before the manuscript is ready, to help her bear these expenses. If you agree, we’ll give her $2,000, payable April 15 1960.”

  His generous offer was passed on to Sybille by Evelyn. Now amicably divorced from Milton, Evelyn lived with her parents, commuting daily from their apartment in the East Village to Simon & Schuster’s office on 5th Avenue. She and Bob worked well together. “I liked her very much, [and] she liked me,” Bob recalled, describing Evelyn as small and lively, “extremely not pretty…[but] active and quick and funny. Evelyn was very capable…[although] she had a minor position…[and] didn’t have that much to do…Evelyn was useful, she was a useful person.” Evelyn for her part liked and admired Bob, enjoyed watching him move restlessly about the office, polishing his spectacles, pushing back the heavy lock of dark hair that flopped across his forehead. Despite “an American brashness, let alone the way he wears his hair…he’s in many ways endearing…[and] with all his commercial grasp, he has, he really does, the taste for real writing.”

  Without a great deal of pressure at work, Evelyn had been able at last to finish the children’s book she had begun writing while living in Rome. Tortoise and Turtle, with drawings by Hilary Knight, the illustrator of the famous Eloise books, is a charming tale of the close friendship between the dignified, knowledgeable Tortoise and the far more light-hearted Turtle. For those in the know, Tortoise was instantly recognisable as Sybille, Turtle as Evelyn, the names they most frequently used in their correspondence with each other. Tortoise is “very fond of pleasure and comfort, and also of learning,” Turtle “quite young, with a happy nature and a great deal of curiosity.” Tortoise eats with concentration and discernment, his meals always exquisitely ordered. “Turtle liked to munch back and forth, changing the tastes. Tortoise did not.” The story follows the planning of a party, to which one by one they invite their various animal friends, Turtle at every stage looking to Tortoise for instruction and definition. “ ‘Entertain,’ said Turtle, ‘what is that?’ ‘Party,’ said Tortoise. ‘Party is to go out,’ said Turtle. Tortoise said, ‘Entertain is to come here.’ ”

  Published by Simon & Schuster, the book was dedicated to Sybille, although initially Evelyn had had trouble deciding on the exact wording. “As you know very well,” she told Sybille, “T&T is your book. & I am now asking a delicate question—just how shall one put it…‘For G[reat]B[east] and T[ortoise] and Little Billy and S[ybille]. With my love…To the Baroness Billy. To the Bossy Little Baroness.’ ”

  In the end it was decided to list mostly by initial all the names by which Sybille in private was known to Evelyn: “For GB and T, Billy and S.” “I never loved a dedication more: it is like a red carpet unfurling for one to step on,” Sybille told her appreciatively.

  Under Gottlieb’s supervision, Evelyn had edited the American edition of The Trial of Dr. Adams, and was now to do the same for The Faces of Justice: A Traveller’s Report. When in July the finished version finally arrived in the office, Bob was beside himself with enthusiasm. “I love it. I am crazy about it,” he told Sybille. And indeed, The Faces of Justice is another remarkable achievement on Sybille’s part.

  As in The Best We Can Do, she writes with exceptional clarity and grace, here conveying the complex workings of the courts of law in England, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France. Mainly in magistrates’ courts, or their equivalent, the cases she witnesses are frequently trivial, minor thefts, drunkenness, traffic offences, a young man accused of siphoning petrol from a car, another of smuggling in thirty-five cigarettes over the legal limit of 200. Many of the convicted are given small fines or suspended sentences. However, there are several serious cases resulting in heavy sentencing, one of the most disturbing instances in England, where a married man with children, despite pleas for leniency from his family, is condemned to years in prison for a homosexual offence. In Germany, by contrast, a Dr. Brach, found guilty of shooting dead a man who had repeatedly exposed himself to the doctor’s young daughter, is given a deferred sentence of only four months. While describing this latter case, Sybille remarks how impressed she was by the judge’s manner: “it seemed informed by moderation, good sense and a respect for other people’s feelings. I should perhaps say that it was a performance of high human quality and that a German court of law was the last place where I should have dreamt to encounter it.”

  Beginning her tour in England, Sybille travels to Karlsruhe and Munich in Germany, spends a brief period in Austria, then continues on to Switzerland and France. With an elegant lucidity she explains the legal system of each country, describing in compelling detail the setting, the persons involved, the scenes witnessed not only in court but also backstage, where, unusually, she is allowed to talk freely to judges, magistrates and clerks. On one memorable occasion during the trial of Dr. Brach, she joins a small group, including both judge and accused, who go to the local park where the murder took place. Here as elsewhere she shows a remarkable ability, not only to make clear what is unfolding in court, but also the reasoning behind the judgements and the characters themselves. It is a difficult challenge and Sybille meets it triumphantly.

  The Faces of Justice was published in May 1961, dedicated to her old friend Janet Flanner, who had herself covered a number of famous cases, her law reporting much admired by Sybille. To Sybille’s relief, the book was well received on both sides of the Atlantic. In Br
itain the most appreciative critique was from Rebecca West, who praised the author’s “powerful and original intelligence…The interviews with officials in this book show that they were swept off their feet into candour, as conventional people sometimes are, by a person unconventional but rather grand and of integrity as indisputable as their own. This is a gay, humane, animated book…[which] also tackles its serious subject seriously.” Most gratifying of all was a review in the Pittsburgh Press by Michael Musmanno, a distinguished judge who early in his career had been involved in the notorious Sacco–Vanzetti case and later had presided at the Nuremberg trials. “A new book by Sybille Bedford should be proclaimed by silver trumpets, for she is a mistress of English prose,” Musmanno wrote. “Crisp, informative, reassuring…it is the most delightful court book I have read in many years.”

  As always when working on a book, Sybille had interspersed periods of intense concentration with time spent visiting her friends. Among them were Jimmy and Tania Stern, who had recently left New York to settle in England, buying a handsome manor house in Wiltshire, which over the years both Sybille and Eda came to know well. Another figure from the past was Constantine FitzGibbon, last encountered in Rome and now living for a brief period near Sybille and Eda in the country. He and his wife had recently divorced, and Constantine was about to marry again; his fiancée, Marion Gutmann, was delightful, Sybille reported to Evelyn. “German Jewish banker’s daughter…family comes from Baden.” A friendship dating further back still was with the Muir sisters, Toni and Kate, who had played such an important part in Sybille’s early years in London. Kate had never properly recovered from her lover’s, the judge’s, suicide, and it was Toni who ran their lives and with whom Sybille had kept most closely in touch. Yet fond though she was, they also irritated her. “Both the M[uir]s are so uncompromisingly, innocently, non-U,” she complained to Evelyn. “Toni is much the better of the two…Toni is difficult but still alive, Katie is solid stone dead.”