Beryl Bainbridge
Page 60
54 Letter from Les Carr, c. April 1949.
55 Les Carr exercise book, BL MS 83765.
56 Entry for May 1949. 1949–53 Journal. BL MS 83818.
57 Letter from Les Carr, c. 8 June 1949.
58 This and subsequent quote, entry for 7 June. 1949–53 Journal. BL MS 83818.
59 Letter from Harry Franz, 6 June 1949.
60 Entry dated 16 June 1949 but probably an error for 11 or 12 June. BL MS 83818.
61 Entry for 16 June 1949. 1949–53 Journal. BL MS 83818.
62 Entry for 20 June 1949. 1949–53 Journal. BL MS 83818.
63 Letter from Les Carr, c. 16 June 1949.
64 Entry for 7 June 1949. 1949–53 Journal. BL MS 83818.
CHAPTER 7
1 ‘Fragments 1951–53’. BL MS 83745.
2 Not 1895 as is often stated.
3 See Liverpool Echo, 19 November 1945. Beryl’s assertion that Carpenter started as a barmaid at the theatre is purely fanciful.
4 Beryl herself often claimed to have started at the Playhouse at the age of fifteen, though this was not the case.
5 The only ASMs to be credited in the programmes during the period Beryl was at the Playhouse were Vivian Lloyd, who started just before her, and Monica Bell, who joined the company a year after.
6 Letter from Jacques Delebassée, 30 August 1949. ‘Je crois que tu es contente de danser au “Playhouse”? . . . Je pense que vous devez être jolie avec votre costume bleu et rouge. Veux-tu m’envoyer une photographie ou tu es habillée avec les pantalons rouges et la blouse bleue.’
7 English Journey, Duckworth, 1984, p. 88. According to Hugh Paddick, who worked at the Playhouse in 1951, St John Barry used a hairbrush rather than a newspaper. Paddick found the incident amusing and whenever he passed his lodgings in Beryl’s company would quip, ‘Do pop up for a bit of the back of the hairbrush if you fancy a change.’ Recounted by Nick Green, email to author, 7 March 2013.
8 Entry misdated ‘3 or 4 September’. In fact, the play opened on 6 September, but Beryl wrote up the diary a short time after the actual events, hence the error in dating. 1949–53 Journal. BL MS 83818.
9 Diary entry dated November 1949. 1949–53 Journal. BL MS 83818.
10 Entry for 16 June 1949. 1949–53 Journal. BL MS 83818.
11 English Journey, Duckworth, 1984, pp. 89–90.
12 Quoted in letter from Harry Franz, 16 August 1949. BL MS 83729.
13 Letter from Harry Franz, 16 August 1949. BL MS 83729.
14 Letter from Harry Franz, 6 October 1949.
15 Letter from Annette Moore, 19 October 1949.
16 News Chronicle, 28 November 1949.
17 The Stage, 1 December 1949.
18 Liverpool Daily Post, 1 December 1949.
19 The Stage, November 1949.
20 Express, 30 November 1949.
21 Entry for June 1950. 1949–53 Journal. BL MS 83818.
22 Review by HWR, Liverpool Echo, 29 March 1950.
23 Of the thirty-six productions that ran while Beryl was at the Playhouse, she appeared onstage in only half of them, the rest of the time being spent in understudying and other backstage duties.
24 Entry for June 1950. 1949–53 Journal. BL MS 83818.
25 Letter from Hugh Goldie, 7 June 1950.
26 Letter from Hugh Goldie, 25 September 1950.
27 Ibid.
28 Letter from Hugh Goldie, 18 January 1952.
29 Letter from Hugh Goldie, 25 September 1950.
30 This and subsequent quote, Ken Ratcliffe, interview with author, 26 October 2012.
31 Ken Ratcliffe, email to author, 9 December 2012.
32 Ken Ratcliffe, interview with author, 26 October 2012.
33 Ibid.
34 Review by SJ, Liverpool Daily Post, 25 October 1950.
35 Letter from Eric Colledge, 25 September 1952.
36 Liverpool Echo, 13 September 1950.
37 Liverpool Daily Post, 13 September 1950.
CHAPTER 8
1 ‘A treatise on justification’, in ‘Fragments 1951–53’. BL MS 83745.
2 Ibid.
3 Liverpool Evening Express, 23 April 1954.
4 Although Elizabeth, as a widow, was free to marry, Harold, being still legally married to Nora at the time of their affair, wasn’t. To mitigate the appearance of living in sin Elizabeth changed her name officially to Hinchcliffe Davies in September 1939, making it seem as if she and Harold were already man and wife.
5 From information supplied by Belinda Davies, 2013.
6 Austin Davies, journal entry for 18 January 1952.
7 Ken Ratcliffe, interview with author, 26 October 2012.
8 ‘Fragments 1951–53’. BL MS 83745.
9 ‘Going spare in no man’s land’, Evening Standard, 5 November 1987.
10 Austin Davies, journal entry for 21 January 1952.
11 ‘Fragments 1951–53’. BL MS 83745.
12 Letter from Austin Davies, c. 23 August 1951.
13 Ibid.
14 Letter from Austin Davies, c. 27 August 1951.
15 Ibid.
16 Letter from Austin Davies, 10 September 1951.
17 This and subsequent quote, letter from Austin Davies, 3 September 1951.
18 Letter from Austin Davies, 18 September 1951.
19 Letter from Austin Davies, 27 September 1951.
20 Austin Davies, journal entry for 18 January 1952.
21 Letter from Austin Davies, 30 September 1951.
22 Letter from Austin Davies, 4–5 October 1951.
23 Austin Davies, journal entry for 21 January 1952.
24 Ken Ratcliffe, interview with author, 26 October 2012.
25 Austin Davies, journal entry for 21 January 1952.
26 Ibid.
27 Beryl’s Last Year, directed by Charlie Russell, BBC, 2005.
28 Letter from Hugh Goldie, 7 June 1950.
29 Liverpool Daily Post, 10 October 1951.
30 Letter from Ken Ratcliffe, 15 January 1952.
31 Written on a programme belonging to Ken Ratcliffe, dated 20 January 1952.
32 Letter from Ken Ratcliffe, 31 January 1952.
33 Austin Davies, journal entry for 1 March 1952.
34 Letter from Ken Ratcliffe, 3 February 1952.
35 Ibid.
36 Letter from Ken Ratcliffe, 2 February 1952.
CHAPTER 9
1 ‘A treatise on justification’, in ‘Fragments 1951–53’. BL MS 83745.
2 Despite Beryl’s repeated assertions in later life that she ‘ran away to London’ when she was sixteen (see Forever England, Duckworth, 1987, p. 11), this was not true. The facts of the issue have been made more confusing by journalists frequently mixing up Beryl’s misleading account of leaving home for London when she was nineteen with a supposedly earlier attempt to run away from home to Liverpool. Although there are no references to this in her letters or diaries, and no direct evidence to support the story, Beryl claimed to have run away from home when she was fifteen, renting a room in Abercrombie Square until her father came a few days later and forcibly took her back (see ‘Going spare in no man’s land’, Evening Standard, 5 November 1987). A piece in ‘Fragments’, entitled ‘Falkner Square’, refers to the narrator staying in a room there during the Festival of Britain in 1951, when Beryl was eighteen, and it is possible this is a reference to her first abortive attempt to leave home. There may also be a connection here to her anecdote about renting a room at the Aber House Hotel in Falkner Street when she thought her mother was going to leave her father: the similarities between Falkner Square and Falkner Street, and Aber House and Abercrombie, may signify an imperfect recollection of names or a mixing up of events in later memoirs.
3 ‘Fragments 1951–53’. BL MS 83745.
4 Ibid.
5 Although some pieces have been given titles and some bear dates of composition, most have been dated retrospectively and not entirely accurately.
6 Letter from Austin Davies, c. 26 March 1952.
7
Austin Davies, journal entry for 1 March 1952.
8 Letter from Austin Davies, 15 February 1952. BL MS 83730A.
9 Ibid.
10 Letter from Dorothy Green, 2 March 1952.
11 Letter from Lynda South, c. 29 February 1952.
12 Letter from Lynda South, c. 4 March 1952.
13 Austin Davies, journal entry for 1 March 1952.
14 Austin Davies, journal entry for 23 March 1952.
15 Letter from Austin Davies, 20 March 1952.
16 Letter from Austin Davies, 26 March 1952.
17 See obituary in the Daily Telegraph, 15 January 2003. In a newspaper article of 1974, Beryl later claimed she had been sacked by the manager after she refused to appear in a dirty film. In fact she left because she was offered an acting job. This is another example of Beryl’s unthinking tendency to publish anything that came into her head. She was no doubt unaware that Rive was still alive in 1974 and that the things she made up for her articles and passed off as true were actually libellous.
18 ‘Fragments 1951–53’. BL MS 83745.
19 Letter from Lynda South, c. 8 March 1952. Written on a page torn out of an old diary dated 26 April 1950.
20 Letter from Lynda South, 4 April 1952. Written on a page torn out of an old diary dated 21 June 1950.
21 Letter from Lynda South, c. 2 April 1952. BL MS 83730A. Written on a page torn out of an old diary dated 15 June 1950.
22 In an article for the Evening Standard, Beryl once claimed that while she didn’t approve of abortion she’d had a ‘back-street’ one ‘in the days when to become pregnant before marriage was considered a mortal sin’. However, there is no external evidence to support this. See ‘Picking up the pieces of life’, Evening Standard, 28 April 1988.
23 Letter to Austin Davies, copied in journal entry for 30 March 1952.
24 Austin Davies, journal entry for 30 March 1952.
25 Letter from Austin Davies, c. 2 April 1952.
26 In an Evening Standard article published on 4 August 1988, Beryl made a very veiled allusion to the incident, but typically the version she gives here is deliberately misleading. The sexual assault is not mentioned at all, and she says that the man had slipped a ‘Mickey Finn’ into her coffee before knocking one of her teeth out. She also goes on to say that she reported the incident to the police, but that she gave them a false name and address as she was ‘under age’ at the time – though in reality she was nineteen. The fact that the ‘fictionalized’ account of the assault in The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress almost exactly matches the details given in her letter to Austin, which she had not seen since she wrote it fifty years before, shows she was aware that the account in the Evening Standard wasn’t accurate.
27 The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress, Little, Brown, 2011, p. 14.
28 Diary entry, 27 May 1953. BL MS 83819.
29 Austin Davies, journal entry for 1 January 1953.
30 ‘Beryl’s perils’, interview with Lynn Barber, Observer, 19 August 2001.
31 ‘Beryl Bainbridge talks to Yolanta May’, New Review, December 1976.
32 Letter from Lynda South, 1 April 1952. BL MS 83730A.
33 Austin Davies, journal entry for 18 January 1952.
34 Austin Davies, journal entry for 15 February 1952.
35 Austin Davies, journal entry for 1 March 1952.
36 The painting, completed in March, features in a list of works in his journal.
37 ‘Fragments 1951–53’. BL MS 83745.
38 Austin Davies, journal entry for 14 April 1952.
39 Letter from Dorothy Green, 21 May 1952.
40 ‘Fragments 1951–53’. BL MS 83745.
41 Letter from Lynda South, 16 May 1952.
42 Letter from Ken Ratcliffe, 18 May 1952.
43 Letter from Gareth Bogarde, 12 June 1952.
44 Letter from Dorothy Green, 11 June 1952.
45 Letter from Lynda South, 21 June 1952.
46 Frances Jordan, ‘Studied atoms in sixth grade now ponders four scholarships’, Sunday Courier, 10 June 1945.
47 Frohlich’s intelligence was, if anything, even more abstruse than Fanchon’s, and he became hugely influential in the developing fields of theoretical particle physics and quantum mechanics.
48 Austin Davies, journal entry for 14 April 1952.
49 Ibid.
CHAPTER 10
1 Forever England, Duckworth, 1987, p. 119.
2 Dundee Courier, 26 March 1946.
3 After giving up acting in the mid-1960s, Davis became a casting director. See obituary in the Daily Telegraph, 9 December 2002.
4 Paul Bailey, interview with author, 19 May 2015.
5 He later changed his name to Marc Bellomey.
6 Draft version of A Weekend with Claud. BL MS 83796.
7 Beryl would later use this scenario in An Awfully Big Adventure, where she makes her alter ego, Stella, fall in love with the director Meredith Potter, not realizing that he is gay. This is another example of the way Beryl would change and adapt her experiences and those of others for dramatic effect, and shows why it is unwise to assume a one-to-one relation between events in her novels and those of her life.
8 Maggie Dickie, interview with author, 9 October 2013.
9 Something that may have contributed to Beryl’s feelings of ‘guilt’ and ‘sin’ was a recent incident concerning Lyn, whom she’d met in London prior to coming to Dundee. Shortly afterwards Lyn wrote to explain what had caused ‘the awkwardness between us’ at the time – her overpowering feeling of Beryl’s beauty. She told her she had just wanted to sit and watch her, to study the things she loved about her – her mouth, her neckline, her hips, the clumsy-graceful gestures of her hands, the dimples in her cheeks. Lyn had drawn a portrait of Beryl in her art class, and her teacher was so struck by it he’d asked who it was. Lyn, nonplussed, went through possible answers in her mind – ‘The most beautiful girl in the world? The girl I love? The heart of my heart?’ – before replying, ‘My friend’ (letter from Lynda South, c. July 1952). It was probably in response to this effusive letter that Beryl cautioned Lyn ‘it is not ever for us to lie together in such love’ (extract from letter to Lynda South dated 1952 in ‘Fragments 1951–53’. BL MS 83745).
10 Beryl would later joke that it was the ‘hellfire and brimstone’ (interview with Shusha Guppy, Paris Review no. 157, 2000) aspect of Catholicism that attracted her, and that she became disaffected with the Catholic Church after the liberalizing effects of Vatican II: ‘No more Latin or sin or confession or penance. There’s no longer any point to it’ (interview with Laurie Taylor, The New Humanist, vol. 119, 2004). But this caricaturing of her motives is another way in which she sought to direct attention away from the real traumas that had affected her. Her sense of herself as sinful and impure was deeply felt, and at the time she looked to the Church for a cure. It was the failure of Catholicism to stop these feelings of self-disgust – not the liberalizing aspects of Vatican II – that led to her declining interest in and eventual abandonment of the tenets of Catholicism.
11 Beryl didn’t tell her she had a problematic relationship with her parents. After she returned to Liverpool, Sister Mary Antony wrote to say she must be glad to have ‘a little quiet time’ to herself, enjoying ‘the peace and comfort of “Home”’. Letter from Sister Mary Antony, 22 October 1952.
12 ‘Fragments 1951–53’. BL MS 83745.
13 Ibid.
14 Dundee Courier, 4 October 1952.
15 The tram system in Dundee was replaced by buses in 1956.
16 Forever England, Duckworth, 1987, p. 118.
17 Letter from Gerald Cross, c. 16 February 1953.
18 Extract from letter to Lynda South dated 1952 in ‘Fragments 1951–53’. BL MS 83745.
19 Austin Davies, journal entry for 10 November 1952.
20 ‘Fragments 1951–53’. BL MS 83745.
21 Letter from Dorothy Green, 2 November 1952.
22 Austin Davies, journal entry for 10 November 1952.
&n
bsp; 23 Letter from Dorothy Green, 6 November 1952.
24 This and subsequent quote, Tom Davies, ‘Alice in Wonderland: a writer’s retreat’, The Times, 18 August 1990.
25 Letter from Dorothy Green, mid-November 1952.
26 Austin Davies, journal entry for 19 November 1952.
27 Review in unidentified newspaper, October 1952.
28 Review in unidentified newspaper, November 1952.
CHAPTER 11
1 Diary entry, 10 January 1953. BL MS 83818.
2 This and subsequent quotations, Austin Davies, journal entry for 27 December 1952.
3 Austin Davies, journal entry for 1 January 1953.
4 Diary entry, 1 January 1953. BL MS 83819.
5 Austin Davies, journal entry for 1 January 1953.
6 These and subsequent quotes, letter from Austin Davies, 15 January 1953. BL MS 83730A.
7 Letter from Austin Davies, 19 January 1953.
8 Letter from Austin Davies, 22 January 1953.
9 Diary entry, 23 January 1953. BL MS 83818.
10 Letter from Austin Davies, 6 February 1953.
11 Letter from Austin Davies, c. 8 March 1953.
12 Diary entry, 14 February 1953, BL MS 83818.
13 Diary entry, 6 March 1953, BL MS 83818.
14 Diary entry, 27 May 1953, BL MS 83818.
15 Letter from Austin Davies, 11 February 1953.
16 Letter from Austin Davies, 14 February 1953.
17 Letter from Gerald Cross, c. 16 February 1953. Archive and BL MS 83730A.
18 This and subsequent quote: letter from Austin Davies, 18 February 1953.
CHAPTER 12
1 ‘A treatise on justification’, in ‘Fragments 1951–53’. BL MS 83745.
2 Review in unidentified newspaper, 17 March 1953.
3 Review in unidentified newspaper, c. 23 March 1953.
4 Salisbury Times, c. 23 March 1953.
5 Letter from Austin Davies, 20 March 1953.
6 Letter from Austin Davies, c. 13 March 1953.
7 Letter from Austin Davies, 20 March 1953.
8 Letter from Austin Davies, 26 March 1953.
9 Diary entries, 4, 5, 6, 7 April 1953. BL MS 83818.