Book Read Free

Sybille Bedford

Page 47

by Selina Hastings


  “convincingly alive”: Daily Telegraph 24.10.58.

  “You have made it sound so exciting”: Patrick Devlin to SB 13.11.58 SB archive HRC.

  “jumping with joy”: Evelyn Gendel to SB, 16.4.58 SB archive HRC.

  “A brilliant account”: Eugene Rostow to Robert Gottlieb Simon & Schuster publicity leaflet.

  “is the book of my heart”: Dorothy Parker Esquire April 1959.

  “I had to go back some way”: Pleasures and Landscapes p. 105.

  “quiet, clean as whistles”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 20.6.58 SB archive HRC.

  “We’ve had two dips each”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 31.8.58 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.

  “Eda will never decide anything”: Martha Gellhorn to SB 7.7.56 SB archive HRC.

  “deeply alien and disturbing”: SB to Allanah Harper 9.7.58 SB archive HRC.

  “I am so pleased they are here”: SB diaries 7.9.58 SB archive HRC.

  “the hog slumber of Portugal”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 23.10.58 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.

  “a German and lower-middle-class”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 9.10.58 SB archive HRC.

  “All Portuguese towns are pretty”: Pleasures and Landscapes p. 106.

  “agreeable, fresh, plentiful”: ibid. p. 110.

  “placid, kindly, patient”: ibid. p. 112.

  “the Riviera rich”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 23.10.58 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.

  “expatriate jabber”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 24.6.59 SB archive HRC.

  “You swing from her regularly”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 29.6.59 SB archive HRC.

  “when all festivities are over”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 2.1.59 SB archive HRC.

  “I’m fed up with being M’s poor relation”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 20.2.59 SB archive HRC.

  “very comfortable, above all entirely quiet”: SB to James Stern 28.8.59 James Stern archive British Library.

  “twelve people”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 3.4.59 SB archive HRC.

  “I came back quivering with indignation”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 24.5.59 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.

  “Tomatoes growing nicely”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 13.6.59 SB archive HRC.

  “A basket with 3 dozen young peas”: SB diaries 2.7.59 SB archive HRC.

  “I ran for a saucer of milk”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 24.6.59 SB archive HRC.

  “The material I am finding”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 31.10.59 SB archive HRC.

  “My Austrian…[and] Swiss court experiences”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 8.11.59 SB archive HRC.

  “by the fairness of their law courts”: In Conversation with Naim Attalah p. 9.

  “Bavaria is the part of Germany”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 28.11.59 SB archive HRC.

  “Paris grates more than ever”: SB to Evelyn Gendel. 6.12.59 SB archive HRC.

  “Bad atmosphere in house”: SB diaries 6.12.59 SB archive HRC.

  “Esther boit beaucoup”: Katzi Nielsen to SB 13.7.58 SB archive HRC.

  “Ivre tous les soirs”: Katzi Nielsen to SB 15.1.59 SB archive HRC.

  “devient très difficile”: Katzi Nielsen to SB 6.5.59 SB archive HRC.

  “Personne peut vivre”: Katzi Nielsen to SB 24.1.58 SB archive HRC.

  “Je suis très déprimée”: Katzi Nielsen to SB 20.3.59 SB archive HRC.

  “Esther’s nearly fatal illness”: Janet Flanner to SB, 8.6.59 SB archive HRC.

  “Gino et moi”: Katzi Nielsen to SB 1.9.59 SB archive HRC.

  “he is cold”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 29.7.60 SB archive HRC.

  “We’d like to help”: Robert Gottlieb to SB 5.2.60 SB archive HRC.

  “I liked her very much”: author’s interview with Robert Gottlieb 13.6.11.

  “an American brashness”: Evelyn Gendel to SB, 23.8.59 SB archive HRC.

  “very fond of pleasure and comfort”: Tortoise and Turtle by Evelyn Gendel (Macdonald and Jane’s, 1965).

  “T&T is your book”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 14.1.60 SB archive HRC.

  “I never loved a dedication more”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 23.8.60 SB archive HRC.

  “I love it”: Robert Gottlieb to SB 7.9.60 SB archive HRC.

  “it seemed informed by moderation”: The Faces of Justice p. 125.

  “powerful and original intelligence”: Sunday Telegraph 21.5.61.

  “A new book by Sybille Bedford”: Pittsburgh Press 2.9.61.

  “German Jewish banker’s daughter”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 27.5.60 SB archive HRC.

  “Both the M[uir]s are so uncompromisingly”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 8.9.57 SB archive HRC.

  “Toni is much the better of the two”: Evelyn Gendel to SB, 1.11.55 SB archive HRC.

  “he would become imperious”: Christopher and His Kind 1929–1939 by Christopher Isherwood (Eyre Methuen, 1977) p. 185.

  “We had huge Scotch tea”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 21.1.59 SB archive HRC.

  “v. v. bright and well brought-up”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 23.8.60 SB archive HRC.

  “Dear Sybille,” she wrote: Markie Robson-Scott to SB, 12.1.61 SB archive HRC.

  “Instant, unalloyed, deep joy”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 1.10.60 SB archive HRC.

  “NOW LISTEN TO ME”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 8.10.60 SB archive HRC.

  “You do not often scold me”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 7.10.60 SB archive HRC.

  “seemingly a man with little taste for fiction”: The Trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover p. 7.

  “embarrassing to watch”: ibid. p. 30.

  “unemotional, cool, undramatic”: ibid. p. 15.

  “He had never in his life”: ibid. p. 58.

  “I felt so desperately strongly about it”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 25.11.60 SB archive HRC.

  “you are ours”: Robert Gottlieb to SB 10.3.61 SB archive HRC.

  “wet, grey, cold, dreary”: SB to Solita Solano 4.2.61 Janet Flanner & Solita Solano archive, Library of Congress, Washington.

  “Dawdle time away whining”: SB diaries 24.1.61 SB archive HRC.

  “masterpiece, tour de force”: Manchester Guardian 23.6.61.

  “is an amazing achievement”: James Stern to SB 22.2.61 SB archive HRC.

  “I feel so much older”: SB to Allanah Harper 19.4.61 SB archive HRC.

  “intact, incredible”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 17.4.61 SB archive HRC.

  “a grade B acquaintance”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 14.5.61 SB archive HRC.

  “She worries me”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 24.4.61 SB archive HRC.

  “You’re a good friend”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 25.12.60 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.

  “Well,” Aldous replied:Aldous Huxley Vol. 2 p. 282.

  “Only then, with no sense of urgency”: ibid.

  “It was a curious and rather moving evening”: SB to Allanah Harper 26.6.61 SB archive HRC.

  “how good it was to meet again”: Aldous Huxley to SB 3.7.61 SB archive HRC.

  “Eva writes that he did not suffer”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 9.12.63 SB archive HRC.

  “the greatest moral influence on my life”: International Herald Tribune 17.4.89.

  “Aldous’s unfailing goodwill”: Aldous Huxley 1894–1963: A Memorial Volume p. 143.

  “no counter lift in the evening”: SB to Solita Solano 5.11.61 Janet Flanner & Solita Solano papers, Library of Congress, Washington.

  “I have now finished my novel”: SB to James Stern 8.4.62 James Stern archive British Library.

  “my one attempt at fiction”: A Favourite of the Gods p. ix.

  “down to the village”: ibid. p. 257.

  “was a New Englander with a Harvard link”: ibid. p. xv.

  “Lyre-horned oxen”: ibid. p. 28.

  “I do think you are inclined”: James Stern to SB 12.1.62 SB archive HRC.


  “technical perfection”: Allanah Harper to Cyril Connolly 5.2.62 Cyril Connolly archive McFarlin Library, Tulsa.

  “Sibbie my hero”: Martha Gellhorn to SB 12.11.63 SB archive HRC.

  “in itself the power”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 2.6.62 SB archive HRC.

  “The book is wonderful”: Robert Gottlieb to SB 6.12.62 SB archive HRC.

  “an exceedingly good novel”: Spectator 11.1.63.

  “while capable of subtleties”: The Times 10.1.63.

  “the design vanishes into a flashy stream”: New Statesman 11.1.63.

  “Miss Bedford is often too consciously literary”: New York Review of Books 1.6.63.

  “[that] drags and sags”: New York Times 8.4.63.

  “It has been tremendously advertised”: Nancy Mitford to Evelyn Waugh 23.12.62 The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh p. 470.

  “Lovely first chapter”: Evelyn Waugh to Nancy Mitford ibid. p. 471.

  “I am very sick and sunk”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 5.1.63 SB archive HRC.

  “I feel poisoned by these reviews”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 28.1.63 SB archive HRC.

  “loud-mouthed and hostile”: SB to James Stern 19.1.63 James Stern archive British Library.

  TEN: “THE TREMENDOUS TRIALS OF OUR TIME”

  “I love the look of it”: SB to Solita Solano 15.7.62 Janet Flanner & Solita Solano papers, Library of Congress, Washington.

  “We buy our food at Elsinore”: SB to Charlotte Wolff 20.7.62 SB archive HRC.

  “She weighs 35 kilo”: SB to Allanah Harper 15.7.62 SB archive HRC.

  “very conscious she was”: ibid.

  “haute literature in a rather vieux jeux way”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 8.7.62 SB archive HRC.

  “horrible, plebeian, ugly”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 29.10.61 SB archive HRC.

  “I don’t like it”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 10.12.62 SB archive HRC.

  “Esther…toujours très distante”: Katzi Nielsen to SB, 23.10.62 SB archive HRC.

  “Elle m’a accusé de chose”: Katzi Nielsen to SB, 27.8.62 SB archive HRC.

  “ces angoisses perpétuelles”: Katzi Nielsen to SB 28.4.62 SB archive HRC.

  “I am afraid the situation”: Esther Murphy to SB, 26.8.62 SB archive HRC.

  “a kind of monster”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 28.4.62 SB archive HRC.

  “one of the stupidest women”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 4.4.62 SB archive HRC.

  “Oh dear I shall miss her”: Nancy Mitford to Evelyn Waugh 28.11.62 The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh p. 467.

  “Esther was a large sandy person”: Nancy Mitford to Evelyn Waugh 3.12.62 The Letters of Nancy Mitford p. 342.

  “ta grande générosité envers moi”: Katzi Nielsen to SB 5.3.63 SB archive HRC.

  “returned in a state of collapse”: Eda Lord to Tania Stern 6.12.62 James Stern archive British Library.

  “What’s the use of being brilliant”: All We Know p. 134.

  “The view from every window”: Eda Lord to Tania Stern 27.5.63 James Stern archive British Library.

  “ravishing and no noise”: SB to Laura Huxley 21.2.63 Aldous & Laura Huxley archive University of California, Los Angeles.

  “thirty-five miles from Venice”: SB to James Stern 23.2.63 James Stern archive British Library.

  “the inside of a meat grinder”: SB to Solita Solano 5.6.63 Janet Flanner & Solita Solano papers, Library of Congress, Washington.

  “large motor coaches”: SB to Elaine Robson-Scott 8.5.63 SB archive HRC.

  “Below our bedroom windows”: SB to Solita Solano 26.5.63 Janet Flanner & Solita Solano papers, Library of Congress, Washington.

  “we find ourselves again making beds”: Eda Lord to Tania Stern 27.5.63 James Stern archive British Library.

  “She’s a kitten”: SB to Elaine Robson-Scott ?.6.63 SB archive HRC.

  “no possibility of coming and going”: Eda Lord to Barbara Gamow 23.10.63 George & Barbara Gamow archive Library of Congress, Washington.

  “Allanah is being so very very sweet”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 7.7.63 SB archive HRC.

  “terribly. I love her more than anyone”: Evelyn Gendel to SB, 11.7.73 ibid.

  “shutters closed from dawn to sinking sun”: A Compass Error introduction.

  “a true cave”: SB Harper’s & Queen October 1982.

  “This place is bliss”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 15.8.63 Martha Gellhorn archive HGARC.

  “bare, clean and spacious”: SB to James & Tania Stern 15.10.63 James Stern archive British Library.

  “No noise except cicadas”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 15.8.63 Martha Gellhorn archive HGARC.

  “devastatingly sexually attractive”: unpublished typescript SB archive HRC.

  “Not only the mean little voice”: ibid.

  “festively decked out”: ibid.

  “His presence came as a shock”: ibid.

  “a kind of flat gloom”: ibid.

  “what that sentence would have been”: ibid.

  “a case of judicial murder”: Observer 30.4.89.

  “strange, doomed business”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 31.7.63 SB archive HRC.

  “Tortiss Tortiss Tortiss”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 14.12.63 SB archive HRC.

  “Darling listen”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 27.12.63 SB archive HRC.

  “rushed off feet”: SB to Allanah Harper 7.2.64 SB archive HRC.

  “the most hideous town I have ever seen”: SB to Allanah Harper 15.2.64 SB archive HRC.

  “2 TV sets & 4 telephones”: SB to Charlotte Wolff 23.2.64 SB archive HRC.

  “Last night at dinner”: SB to Allanah Harper 15.2.64 SB archive HRC.

  “I had five mortal weeks at Dallas”: SB to Tom Matthews 14.4.64 T.S. Matthews archive Princeton University Library.

  “lying back in his chair”: “The Trial of Jack Ruby for the Murder of Lee Harvey Oswald” As It Was: Pleasures, Landscapes and Justice p. 200.

  “bumbles about the scene”: ibid. p. 172.

  “with a kind of dead-chicken stare”: ibid. p. 199.

  “overflowing with humanity”: ibid. p. 211.

  “the long-discarded forensic art”: ibid. p. 214.

  “I did sixteen thousand words”: SB to Allanah Harper 5.4.64 SB archive HRC.

  “The summary of the testimony”: Salt Lake Telegram 25.3.64.

  “feted everywhere”: SB to the Sterns 2.5.64 James Stern archive British Library.

  “has put on some weight”: SB to Robson-Scotts 14.4.64 SB archive HRC.

  “I only know there’s red wine”: author’s interview with Robert Gottlieb 13.6.11.

  “with the help of Manhattan’s finest butcher”: Avid Reader: A Life by Robert Gottlieb p. 48.

  “We had a good time together”: author’s interview with Robert Gottlieb 13.6.11.

  “I miss you so much”: Evelyn Gendel to SB, 15.4.64 SB archive HRC.

  “I’m deeply, intrinsically attached”: Paris Review no. 126 p. 246.

  “I admired her so”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 3.7.65 SB archive HRC.

  “absolute, pure, nameless”: Martha Gellhorn: A Life by Caroline Moorehead (Chatto & Windus, 2003) p. 393.

  “the plain fact is I should never have married”: Martha Gellhorn to SB 30.7.55 SB archive HRC.

  “One was very sad for M”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 28.9.63 SB archive HRC.

  “The bliss of no housework”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 14.4.63 SB archive HRC.

  “I love Billy Hughes”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 19.8.61 SB archive HRC.

  “Sybille was obsessed with legal process”: author’s interview with Jenny Hughes 15.4.15.

  “she was a very difficult person”: ibid.

  “Sybille was furious”: author’s intervie
w with Anne Balfour-Fraser 3.6.10.

  “I am devoted to Anne”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 31.10.63 SB archive HRC.

  “it was so beautiful…so magical”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 10.12.64 SB archive HRC.

  “like living with a caged tiger”: Eda Lord to Barbara Gamow 15.10.64 Gamow archive, Library of Congress, Washington.

  “One could not ask”: A Compass Error Introduction.

  “Katzi can work”: SB to Noël Murphy 12.1.67 SB archive HRC.

  “sorting, packing, rearranging”: Eda Lord to Barbara Gamow 11.12.64 Gamow archive, Library of Congress, Washington.

  “Yugoslavia was very exhausting”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 11.6.65 Martha Gellhorn archive HGARC.

  “anything more would have been unendurable”: As It Was p. 230.

  “It filled me with a sick loathing”: SB to Robert Gottlieb 5.3.65 SB archive HRC.

  “the first large-scale case of its kind”: As It Was p. 218.

  “Some killed by injecting disinfectant”: ibid. p. 225.

  “What did you think these camps were for?”: ibid. p. 221.

  “Each one was asked”: ibid. p. 225.

  “a hot, grey, leaden morning”: ibid. p. 257.

  “he said in a voice no longer quite audible”: ibid. p. 259.

  “In my entire writing life”: SB to David Lyle 6.9.66 SB archive HRC.

  “Relieved,” Sybille told Evelyn: SB to Evelyn Gendel 6.9.66 SB archive HRC.

  “a story about people and events”: A Compass Error Introduction.

  “Bedford is of course a brilliant writer”: Cass Canfield to Ian Parsons 20.12.63 Chatto & Windus archive University of Reading, Special Collections.

  “Bob hit the ceiling”: Evelyn Gendel to SB, 20.5.64 SB archive HRC.

  “don’t think up to it”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 30.5.64 SB archive HRC.

  “Aldous’s influence on myself”: SB to Ian Parsons 12.8.64 Chatto & Windus archive University of Reading, Special Collections.

  “something of the first importance”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 30.5.64 SB archive HRC.

  “Do you realise”: SB to Robert Gottlieb 5.3.65 SB archive HRC.

  “the use and organisation and writing”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 14.11.64 SB archive HRC.

  “I am not going to be a tame biographer”: SB to Robert Gottlieb 5.3.65 SB archive HRC.

 

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