Sybille Bedford

by Selina Hastings

  Another significant friendship formed during this period was with a young film producer, Anne Balfour-Fraser. Anne and Sybille had first met at Little Wynters, where Anne had arrived for dinner one evening with her lover, Elizabeth (“Betts”) Montagu, daughter of the Earl of Sandwich. Betts, whom Sybille had originally encountered through a shared fascination with the trial of Bodkin Adams, was a novelist, clever, acutely observant and with an ironic sense of humour. She was also a heavy drinker, and during the drive from London had insisted on stopping at a number of country pubs, with the result that the two of them arrived not only long after they were expected but with Anne tipsy and Betts extremely drunk. “Sybille was furious,” Anne recalled, “as the meal (roast lamb) was late and ruined.”

  Sybille next encountered Anne while staying with Allanah in France, as she and Betts owned a house only a short distance from Les Bastides. Like Betts, Anne was well-born: her grandfather was the Earl of Balfour, brother of the Conservative prime minister, Arthur Balfour, while her great-grandfather was the famous novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Intensely musical and highly intelligent, Anne had won a first at Cambridge before studying singing in London and Milan, afterwards becoming a successful documentary film producer. She had been married to a distinguished general, Sir David Fraser, by whom she had a daughter, but the couple had divorced after only a few years. Sybille was immediately attracted by Anne, with her handsome face and thick wavy brown hair, but her proposal of lovemaking was politely declined.

  Despite this potential embarrassment, the two became close friends, Anne never failing to provide generous support, both emotional and material. As Sybille wrote to Evelyn, “I am devoted to Anne who is plump and gay and loves rich food and has three helpings when asked out, and sets a fine table herself. Above all she has a first-rate mind.” On a number of occasions when Sybille and Eda had nowhere to stay in London, Anne lent them her “peach of a house” in Pimlico. And when in the south of France, they were frequently invited to the villa Anne shared with Betts at Valbonne. After a party there one Boxing Day night, Sybille wrote, “it was so beautiful…so magical…Anne singing Purcell and Italian arias accompanying herself on the clavichord—she has a fabulous sensuous voice, Milan trained—and the candlelight and the handsome honest English faces, all the upper-class boys and girls of the Balfours and Montagu families on hols. It was like something out of Trollope, only finer.”

  As before, Sybille found Les Bastides an almost ideal place in which to write, a much loved and familiar haven. There were of course the usual irritations, Allanah’s bossiness (her disapproval of Sybille wearing trousers to dinner parties, of Eda’s mannish haircut), and now there was her adored new dog, Bumbo, a wholly undisciplined boxer puppy, fast developing into as tiresome a member of the household as the previous generations of poodles. Nonetheless Sybille remained grateful to Allanah, especially as she was currently hard at work on a number of magazine articles, her anxiety increasing as each deadline approached. She was also suffering from the old problem with her eyes, of an extreme sensitivity to sunlight, obliging her to remain indoors during the day, wearing her green-lined tennis visor and with all the windows shuttered. While under such pressure she inevitably relied on Eda to cope with all domestic duties.

  The previous year, 1963, had seen the publication of Eda’s second novel, A Matter of Choosing, as before based on her own experiences, this time as a young woman at Stanford and later in New York. Although it had attracted little attention, she had already begun on a third work of fiction, and like Sybille had looked forward to a peaceful period at Les Bastides; but this proved impossible. For some time Eda had been suffering from an almost paralysing depression, had grown very thin, living largely off cigarettes and coffee; more and more she was finding it difficult to cope with Sybille’s anxieties as well as with her own. When Sybille was under pressure, Eda said, it was “like living with a caged tiger,” and because of the demands of her deadlines, it was Eda who was responsible for all the daily chores. “I’ve been nurse, housekeeper, errand boy, and the huge garden S wanted for her healthful exercise was tied round my neck with heavy chains. It didn’t rain once all summer…I had to water by hand with a watering can…every evening without fail…Sybille at work like a beaver, and I…I sit staring at old chapters I haven’t touched for a long time.” Sybille was aware of Eda’s dark moods but felt unable to help. “One could not ask. If I asked there was no answer. That wretchedness was neither admitted, nor discussed; it was concealed.”

  In October 1964, the two of them left France, driving across the border to Italy, to Alba for the truffle season. On this expedition they were accompanied by Katzi, now living with Gino in Nice. After Esther’s death, Katzi had sold the apartment in the rue de Lille for a sum sufficient to provide her with an adequate income for life; unfortunately, Katzi had quickly spent the lot and was now in urgent need of support. Gino, currently working as a night porter at a hotel, earned very little, and as Sybille explained to Noël Murphy, Esther’s sister-in-law, it was essential that Katzi find employment. “Katzi can work…her age (don’t ever tell her I told you: or let prospective employers know it) will be 68 this summer. Her health is reasonably good, thank God, but she is not as strong…as she used to be.” Noël held out little hope of Katzi finding a job, but in memory of Esther provided her instead with a small annuity.

  After Italy, Sybille and Eda went on to London as Sybille, contracted to write an article on the House of Lords, was keen to attend the opening of Parliament at the beginning of November. Here again, while Sybille immersed herself in her subject, spending long afternoons in Westminster, Eda was left to cope with the domestic duties, driving about town collecting possessions stored with various friends, “sorting, packing, rearranging…then nose-to-grindstone when Sybille needed secretarial work done.” After returning to France in December, their nomadic existence continued. As well as frequent visits to England, there were several weeks spent in Tuscany staying with Kenneth Macpherson, who had moved from Rome to a large and beautiful house near Siena; and in the late spring of 1965 the two women motored to Yugoslavia, as Sybille was to write about the country for an American travel magazine. “Yugoslavia was very exhausting,” she reported to Martha. “So splendid, unique, visually; such a wretched place otherwise. Glad to be out of it.”

  On a different level altogether was a commission Sybille undertook for the Saturday Evening Post to cover what would become known as “the Auschwitz trial.” The trial of twenty-two former guards at the Auschwitz concentration camp was to take place in Frankfurt and expected to last for six months. In the event the process continued for over one and a half years, the court during this time convening for only three days a week, as “anything more would have been unendurable.” Sybille was present for the first week of the proceedings, in December 1963, and again for the final five days in August 1965. Inevitably she found the experience traumatic. “It filled me with a sick loathing,” she said afterwards. “I tried so hard not to put Germans in a different category…I wish I could convey the utter misery of the trial.”

  For her own version of the process, Sybille relied mainly on reports in the German press, most specifically on the detailed accounts in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. As in all Sybille’s court reporting, her observation is acute, her tone calm and lucid, despite, in this case, the horrifying content of much of the testimony. The trial, she explains, is “the first large-scale case of its kind tried by Germans, before a German judge and jury; the charges were murder and collective murder.” As one by one the defendants are called for questioning, the same charges are made again and again. “Some killed by injecting disinfectant into human hearts, others by making people stand in freezing water, others operated the poison gas.” As each of the accused takes his turn, the answers come almost by rote, denying guilt, unaware of what was going on. “What did you think these camps were for?” the judge asks one of the guards. “Protective camps. W
here enemies of the Reich were being re-educated…I wanted to liberate the Reich from the Jews.” As day after day the trial continues, Sybille notes the courtesy with which these “nightmarish figures” are treated. “Each one was asked if he would like a chair; all were given the Herr before their name; all were treated with detached politeness.”

  The summing-up began on 7 May 1965, and continued until 19 August, “a hot, grey, leaden morning.” By this stage the chief judge, Dr. Hans Hofmeyer, was obviously under considerable stress, and at the end of his summing-up, “he said in a voice no longer quite audible or controlled that for nearly two years the bench had been under an almost unbearable emotional strain…Then the judge pulled himself up and icily addressed the convicted men. It was his duty, he said to inform them of their right to appeal. All but one have done so.”

  Sybille worked for over six months on her article, “The Worst that Ever Happened.” After reading the ninety typewritten pages her editor at the Post, David Lyle, told her that he found the piece both powerful and compelling. It was, however, far too long and there were some significant changes to be made. In her response Sybille remained polite yet resolute: yes, she would agree to a few cuts, but most certainly not to any rewriting. “In my entire writing life,” she told Lyle, “I have never had anything approaching this degree of, let us call it, editorial collaborations…Even LIFE MAGAZINE…emerges as a relative respecter of writers’ words…not once did they query or touch my beginnings, ends, opinions, withheld opinions, presentation of opinions.” She would of course understand if he declined to publish, but there was no question of making the alterations he demanded. The correspondence between them continued for some time, but in the end Lyle backed down, even raising her fee from $3,500 to $5,000, “because the published length will be substantially greater than had been foreseen.”

  “Relieved,” Sybille told Evelyn when the matter was finally settled. “I feel drained; it’s gone on too long. I’m not a bulldozer. And yet, and yet: one does feel strongly about writing. And there is this new thing of interfering with writers which is taking on truly frightening dimensions…Have we forgotten that it is writers, original writers not hirelings, who change and make and breathe life into language, not the editors with their levelling tools who limp behind?” Her resolve was rewarded when the following year her article was chosen by the Overseas Press Club of America as the “Best Magazine Reporting from Abroad during 1966.”

  The Auschwitz trial had been a horrendous experience, and Sybille was relieved to have it behind her. Now she felt ready to take a new direction, to start on a work of fiction, a sequel to her previous novel, A Favourite of the Gods. It was to be “a story about people and events belonging to a daylit world…free (within the, always tricky, human condition) to shape their own achievements and misfortunes.” Before she began work, however, terms had to be settled for a contract she had been offered to write the life of Aldous Huxley.

  Since Aldous’s death the Huxley family had been intensely focused on the search for a suitable biographer. Several writers had been proposed, among them V. S. Pritchett, Alan Pryce-Jones, Cyril Connolly and Lionel Trilling; Pritchett had been their first choice, but when approached he had turned the offer down. It was Aldous’s ex-daughter-in-law, Ellen, who then put forward Sybille’s name, suggesting her to Cass Canfield at Harper’s, who would be commissioning the book. But Canfield had not been keen. “Bedford is of course a brilliant writer,” he told her, “but, so far as I know, has not written a biography so I am not too much carried away by this suggestion.” At almost the same time, while Sybille was in New York after the Ruby trial, in 1964, she and Aldous’s brother, Julian, had dined together, after which Julian decided the book should be offered to Sybille. Canfield was easily persuaded to change his mind, and immediately telephoned Bob Gottlieb to arrange the transfer of his author from Simon & Schuster to Harper’s.

  It was at this point, according to Evelyn, that “Bob hit the ceiling,” making it very clear to Canfield that such a proposal was entirely unacceptable. After a number of lengthy conversations, however, the two men finally agreed terms for a joint publication, after which Bob contacted Chatto & Windus, publishers of Aldous’s work in Britain, which, in association with William Collins, was to bring out the book in London. It was only then that a formal offer was made to Sybille—who, to everyone’s surprise, turned it down. The book would take at least two years to write, the research involve dozens of interviews and extensive travel; but more important, as she explained to Evelyn, she believed she was simply not capable of it, “don’t think up to it, good enough. Apart from fact never having done a biography. I meant not good enough intellectually, humanly. Not advanced. Not ready…So I have decided No.”

  Shortly afterwards, she changed her mind. In a letter to Ian Parsons at Chatto, Sybille explained that “Aldous’s influence on myself, on my whole life, has been immense; so perhaps after all it might be the right thing to do. I think now that, in my own way, I could make a good job of it, and I would like to do it.” She had after all the advantage of having known Aldous well, and if not perhaps a commercial enterprise, his biography would be “something of the first importance within the literary world.” The more she thought about it, the more enthused she became. “Do you realise,” she asked Bob, “that it just could be—with God’s grace—a very good book?”

  Before signing the contract, however, Sybille was determined to make her conditions clear. First she wanted to write her novel, which might take up to two years. Then it must be understood that “the use and organisation and writing of the book is my own…No nagging…no showing of sample chapters, no hurrying. When the thing is finished, DV [Deo volente, i.e. God willing], I shall be open to suggestions, corrections, but it is up to me whether I will act on them or not…I am not going to be a tame biographer.” As well, her publishers must agree to provide assistance in the search for material and pay for the transcription of all handwritten letters; travel expenses must be covered and some form of secretarial assistance provided. Finally, as she explained to Bob, she expected to be paid a substantial advance, “something commensurate with the kind of book you expect, your costs, my standing as a writer.”

  Somewhat taken aback, Bob discussed the matter with Canfield, and between them they agreed to offer the sum of $10,000, which, with $5,600 coming from Chatto and Collins, would make a total of over $15,000. From the publishers’ perspective this was a generous offer, although Sybille confessed herself disappointed, as she told Bob, that she was not to be allowed what she considered “an appropriate living wage.” What upset her more, however, was the refusal on the part of all four publishers to cover her costs. “This really does distress me,” she complained, that “the writer, the author, is made to pay for the expenses of the book.” Surely Bob must understand how unjust it was that writers “have to accept their financially inferior status, and to live, uncertainly, on something no editor or publisher would accept.” Bob was sympathetic but there was nothing further he could do. “You say there must be something odd about the publishing business, and there certainly is: it’s economics. Here we sit, flushed with influence and status, and bringing in less money and profit than the meanest button factory.” At this point accepting defeat, Sybille signed the contract and put the problems behind her, setting down to work on her novel.

  Begun in the spring of 1967, A Compass Error was finished in under a year, on 1 February 1968. A sequel to Sybille’s previous novel, A Favourite of the Gods, the story is focused on seventeen-year-old Flavia, who at the end of A Favourite had settled with her mother, Constanza, in the south of France. Now Constanza is living in an unknown location in Spain with her French lover, whom she hopes to marry after he has obtained a divorce. Only Flavia knows where they are, a secret it is vital to keep if the divorce is not to be made public, which would ruin the reputation of both. Flavia, meanwhile, is living alone in the small French port, working hard for he
r Oxford entrance examination, ambitious for an academic career in the future; clever and independent, she enjoys her solitary life, dining every evening in one of the restaurants beside the port, choosing her dishes with care, concentrating intently on the wine list.

  One evening she is invited to join a neighbouring table, and it is here that she meets Therese, wife of a well-known painter. A handsome woman, outspoken and fiercely energetic, Therese soon becomes a maternal figure to Flavia as well as an occasional lover: as Therese makes clear, “it doesn’t really matter very much which of one’s friends one goes to bed with.” Shortly after her first night with Therese, Flavia encounters Andrée, a cold, cynical, manipulative beauty, with whom Flavia becomes helplessly infatuated. Before long Andrée completely dominates Flavia, alternately spoiling and tormenting her; it is not until some way into their relationship, however, that she reveals she is the wife of the man Constanza is hoping to marry. Determined to sabotage the divorce, Andrée by tricking Flavia succeeds in finding details of the couple’s location; the theft devastates Flavia when she discovers it, knowing it will ruin her mother’s chance of marriage.

  As might be expected, the picture Sybille draws of the harbour town is similar in every detail to Sanary, just as most of the characters owe their origins to the people she knew while living there. Therese, “the great handsome monster…[with] a smile of serene, archaic sweetness,” is an accurate portrayal of Renée Kisling, while the wicked, fascinating Andrée bears an incontestable similarity, as Sybille later admitted, to her first great love, Jacqueline Mimerel. Yet, just as in A Favourite, the character of Flavia remains somewhat wooden and two-dimensional, formidably well read, full of literary theory and philosophy, but somehow unconvincing as a seventeen-year-old girl.

  But for many, the most serious flaw, as a number of critics pointed out, was the author’s decision to relate substantial sections of the story already told in A Favourite of the Gods. For readers unfamiliar with the earlier novel, such large quantities of information were difficult to absorb, while many of those who knew the story were exasperated at having it rolled out again and at such interminable length. Mr. James, for instance, a minor character from A Favourite, writes a letter of many pages charting the end of the life of Constanza’s father in Rome. But the longest passage by far is that spoken by Flavia herself, who, during her first night in bed with Therese, decides to narrate in relentless detail almost her entire family history, in a section that is over fifty-two pages long, nearly a quarter of the entire book. When Flavia finally turns to her companion after coming to the end, she finds Therese “peacefully lying asleep.”