Agatha Christie_A Biography

by Janet Morgan

  Agatha was astonished. Then, and for some weeks, she produced all the arguments against such a marriage: Max was fifteen years younger, he was a Catholic, and so on. Max insisted. In any case, as Agatha admitted in her letters to him, the real reason for her hesitation was fear: ‘I’m an awful coward and dreadfully afraid of being hurt.’ Her Autobiography reveals this when she writes of the way in which this ‘easy happy relationship’ had imperceptibly overtaken them: ‘If I had considered Max as a possible husband when I first met him, then I should have been on my guard.’

  Agatha did not take as long to accept Max’s proposal as it seems from her Autobiography, which describes her changes of mind, to-ings and fro-ings, and innumerable conversations with Rosalind, Punkie and James, and the Woolleys. As always, when she is recalling the most important moments in her life, Agatha’s chronology goes haywire. It is impossible to establish exactly when she finally succumbed to Max’s gentle pressure, since few of the flurry of letters she sent him have any sort of date and none of the postmarked envelopes has survived. But one letter dated with more than the day of the week was written on May 21st. It was not only a perfectly confident and passionate letter to the man she was about to marry but it also dismissed her earlier doubts. Max had asked whether Agatha would mind spending her future with someone whose profession was ‘digging up the dead’; she replied, ‘I adore corpses and stiffs.’ As for the religious difference, she wrote: ‘I can be converted on my deathbed and die an R.C.… where shall we be buried?’ As it turned out, because the Catholic Church would not recognise his marriage, Max, infuriated, left his faith.

  It is true that James and Punkie warned Agatha to be prudent, her sister being particularly vehement. When Max took Agatha to a summer ball to meet some of his Oxford friends and she realised that he and her nephew Jack had been contemporaries at New College, stunned, she began to argue again that she was too old to marry him. Punkie’s opposition was particularly upsetting when Max was not there to sustain Agatha with his calm, reasonable logic. ‘I always have a kind of panic after you’ve gone,’ she wrote. ‘When you’re there I feel everything is all right – I feel just quiet and safe and happy – dear Max – I’ve felt that with you almost from the beginning. And then a wave of reality comes over me and I say to myself “Idiot – haven’t you any sense? What would you say to someone else who was doing this?” I felt so secure in my distrust of life and people – you mustn’t be angry with me, Max – I am really very slow indeed and it takes me a long time to take a thing in – I’ve got to adjust myself to an idea I’ve never ever considered.…’ Their decision not to marry until September, she added, did ‘give one time to be sure’. But she was sure enough to promise Max that she would practise ‘being tidy tomorrow and punctual the day after’, if he would reciprocate; ‘are you always going to catch trains by that narrow margin all through our married life?!’

  To avoid the attention of the press, which so terrified Agatha, they kept their engagement a secret. There is an echo of the small girl who disliked parting with information in Agatha’s letter to Max about ‘secret happenings’. ‘I think,’ she wrote, ‘one has that instinct – to hide it … probably it’s a wise instinct – the spectacle of other people’s happiness doesn’t seem able to be borne with equanimity – too many potential Iagos about! Possibly Desdemona and Othello had looked glooey in public so that everyone could have said (with satisfaction) “Not turning out well – poor things – but what can one expect?”’

  Rosalind, whom Agatha had consulted in a roundabout way, knew their secret at the beginning of August. ‘Darling Max,’ Agatha announced, ‘Rosie has GUESSED. She will give her consent if you send her by return 2 dozen toffee lollipops from Selfridges (none others genuine).’ Agatha thought Rosalind had received the news as ‘a huge joke’ but Max was more serious, glad that Rosalind had taken it in her stride. When Agatha suggested that he bring a small present for Rosalind, possibly a book, ‘on the DAY’, it was Max who thought of finding her a brooch, to commemorate the marriage and help her feel part of it.

  At the end of August Agatha and Rosalind went with Carlo and her sister Mary to Broadford in Skye, where the banns could be called. In such an out-of-the-way place the press might fail to notice – and there were other attractions too. In Carlo and Mary, Agatha had two friends who thoroughly supported her decision and with whom Rosalind also felt safe. A month spent far away, on an island, living quietly and simply in the clear summer air, gave Agatha an important interval between her old life and her new. In some ways Skye was like the world in which she had first met Max, an ancient, empty place, removed from everyday life. At the same time it allowed her to withdraw from him, as if this period of seclusion, shared only with her daughter and two women, cleansed and refreshed her before her wedding. Not that she was totally removed from Max; they wrote to each other daily. Agatha’s letters were reflective and still slightly anxious, Max’s firm and encouraging. It is as if he were the older one, as he reported on his work and his arrangements for their passports. He assured Agatha that it was only to be expected that she should feel nervous before their ‘great enterprise’ and promised that she need not fear his being ‘too highbrow’, though he had already started giving her demanding reading lists. Nor would he curb her freedom; she might see herself as a faithful dog, likely to be taken off on adventures, but she would not be ‘a dog on a lead’. Max and Agatha also seemed to have arrived already at a sensible understanding regarding money. Agatha earned far more than Max (and owned two houses, with a flat about to be added). The arrangement appears to have been that they should not be shy of discussing how their joint income should be disbursed nor of regarding some expenditure as more appropriate for one than the other. Thus Max wrote to Agatha that she should let him know ‘the Registrar’s fees because it’s right that I should pay for all that’.

  By the end of August they were ready. Max had a white blazer made for their honeymoon in Venice, to be followed by five weeks on the Dalmatian coast. He was due at Ur in October and at this point still hoped Agatha would be able to come with him as far as Baghdad. Katharine Woolley had not been as outraged at the news of Max and Agatha’s intentions as they had at first feared. After much deliberation, Agatha had written to Katharine, who had only observed that Max ought to be obliged to wait two years at least, ‘a good long apprenticeship’. ‘It’s no good,’ Agatha wrote to Max, ‘I shall never have the proper K-like Olympian attitude to the male sex.…’ Katharine had obviously realised by late August that Max and Agatha were determined not to wait and that she had lost her acolyte, for Max happily reported that she had set out to buy an electric massage machine.

  The wedding took place in St Columba’s Church in Edinburgh on September 11th. Rosalind remained there with Carlo at the Roxburghe Hotel; Max and Agatha, with her new passport (for which Agatha had slightly decreased her age), set off to Italy, equipped, as Max had instructed, with rugs, pillows and a hot-water bottle.

  The account of their honeymoon in Max’s Memoirs occupies four paragraphs and in Agatha’s Autobiography four pages. Max’s description is circumspect, Agatha’s more racy, full of chat about meals and strange people. She was always a more impressionistic writer than Max, less exact but more vivid and immediate. The difference was also revealed by their handwriting, as their joint diary shows. Max’s words are neatly incised, small and even, written with a fine-nibbed fountain pen, whereas Agatha’s swoop over the page in huge flourishes, often barely legible, the ink fading where she rushes on, forgetting to press. Max’s sentences are complete; Agatha’s substitute dashes for verbs, and are punctuated by exclamations, stressed with capitals and underlining. Max conveys facts, Agatha moods.

  They travelled first to Venice. Max noted buildings and the light; he was especially pleased when ‘an archaeological Ange’ noticed the carving of a cross in an ancient plaque. Agatha was more down to earth: ‘Sad descent from romance – bitten by bugs – my special kind – in train!!!’ She par
ticularly liked their visit to the Lido: ‘Amusing conversation of a lady (tri-lingual) who had lost her wardrobe in an overturned gondola. “Mais, c’est la fin de saison!”’ On they went to Split (Max: ‘Al fresco meals under the shadow of Diocletian’s Peristyle’; Agatha: ‘Definite beginning of positive nausea owing to a surfeit of Venetian Gothic! The cheese there is dear!… A really good bathing place. Intrusion of two shy whites amongst mahogany Yugo Slavs.’) Max was now teaching Agatha the Greek alphabet; she persuaded him to bathe in the sea at every opportunity. At Dubrovnik they bathed by day and by night. (Agatha: ‘Oh! The bathing!!… Did torch betray our guilty secret?’) They managed to shake off other English visitors and, by taking first a ferry and then hiring a car, drove to the old capital of Montenegro in the mountains and then to Kotor to catch their boat to Greece, the unpronounceable Sbrin.

  This was a little cargo boat, with a thoughtful captain and excellent chef. After the first stop Max and Agatha were the only passengers and at every port they wandered off until the ship hooted. They were radiantly happy. ‘Glorious walks through olive woods,’ Max wrote. ‘Feeling of Theocritus and that Ange was my Amaryllis.’ Agatha recorded it as ‘one of those rare moments of happiness – very still and exquisite – a kind of quivering inner light – the SBRIN HOOTS – but only for fun apparently’.

  Max, who had planned the journey as a surprise for Agatha, had arranged at its end a visit to the places each had missed the previous year, Delphi for Agatha and the Temple of Bassae for himself. Their first day in Greece was misery: ‘Patras,’ Agatha wrote. ‘A low hole!… Noxious insects fed on Ange’s legs – Too trusting alas! We have not used Chrysanthemum Powder at the moment when most needed.’ She had what she described as ‘a hair wash out à la Grecque (very queer and plastered down!)’ Max recorded: ‘My moustache shaved and Ange wanted it back … constantly saying that I looked different.’ The next day was agonising. Agatha wondered if her legs, swollen, despite ‘a healing primitive bathe in the Alphaeus’, would go into skiing trousers, but she and Max survived the trip in a flea-ridden bus to Olympia. Max’s final diary entry has a scholarly fling. (Agatha hopefully left alternate pages blank but he wrote no more, perhaps feeling that this humdrum record was too flippant for Greek temples.) ‘One can identify almost every building,’ he wrote raptly, ‘thanks to that indefatigable pedant Pausanias and to the persevering Curtius who disencumbered Olympia from the thick belt of sand deposited by the wayward Alphaeus in medieval times.’ Agatha was in her own way as lyrical: ‘Now at last one understands the meaning of a Sacred Grove.…’ They spent the afternoon there on the hill reading The Testament of Beauty, before hobbling home in the moonlight.

  The next day was a worse test – a fourteen-hour mule trek to Andritsena, up and down ravines, fording a river (Agatha: ‘this appeared to be dangerous from the point of view of the guides to whom ravines – where we blanch – are a matter of course. Rain then began …’). On and on, and up and up stony paths. ‘Acute feeling of misery and indeed regret that I had ever married Max – He’s too young for me!! Arrived nearer dead than alive – Max ministered to me so well that I am glad I married him after all. But he mustn’t do it again!!’ Bassae, Tripolis, Nauplia, Epidaurus – Agatha delighted by temples but most particularly by the bathing – and at last they came to Athens, which ‘felt very queer. We no longer seem the same people. A suite à deux lits with bath makes us feel all shy and civilised. Gone are the happy lunatics of the last fortnight …’ Letters were waiting – with Max’s luggage for Ur and Agatha’s for the journey home – and this time their correspondence was reassuring. But disaster soon struck, as Agatha told in almost the last entry in the diary: ‘Joyful eating of Crevettes and Langoustes … Retribution for Crevettes and Langoustes.’ To the doctor’s inquiry – ‘Mangez-vous jamais du poisson, Madame?’, Agatha, who adored fish – especially crustaceans, felt the only reply was ‘Best described by dots.…’

  They could not establish exactly which fishy meal had poisoned her but she was very ill indeed. Max was obliged to leave, having been firmly instructed by Woolley to meet him and Katharine in Baghdad by October 15th. Just before the marriage it had been made plain to Agatha that wives were regarded as an encumbrance at Ur and Leonard, prompted, Agatha was sure, by Katharine, had even attempted to suggest that she should not accompany Max as far as Baghdad: ‘The Trustees would think it odd.’ Though Agatha and Max had already arranged to part in Athens, Agatha did not say so, emphasising to Woolley that where she chose to travel with her husband was nothing to do with the dig. Her point was taken but Leonard had stressed that Max must arrive punctually in Baghdad to receive instructions on his first duty of the season – supervising the building of various extensions to the expedition house. Now, with Agatha still extremely weak, Max was reluctant to leave. Agatha insisted, since she knew that if he tarried Katharine would ascribe the blame to her. This was, with luck, the last season Max would spend with Woolley. When he learnt that there was room for only one woman at Ur, he had decided to look elsewhere, so that Agatha could be with him and he could acquire new experience. Dr Campbell Thompson had already sounded him out about coming to Nineveh and, though nothing was settled yet, this seemed the answer. Knowing this was the last six months for which they would have to be apart, Agatha urged Max to keep his promise to Woolley.

  Max left, to the astonishment of Agatha’s doctor. ‘Had Monsieur gone for many days?’ Agatha described him as asking, in her first letter to Max. ‘I said for 5 months. He asked if I was staying here all that time – evidently regarding ladies as like chessmen – only to be moved from square to square without their own volition!’ Two days later she tottered onto the train for London. Max, meanwhile, had arrived in Baghdad to find the Woolleys were not expected for another week. Furious, he took the foreman, Hamoudi, straight to Ur, hired a hundred workmen and ordered them to complete the buildings as quickly as possible to his own specification. The living-room was spacious, with a fireplace modelled on the one at Cresswell Place, and a chimney like that in the room he and Agatha had in Venice. Katharine’s bathroom he made as cramped as possible. It had to be torn down and rebuilt – that was Max’s revenge. Agatha’s wrath burned slower and more lambent. She waited until 1935 to make a literary joke of Max’s – albeit unwilling – defection; it can be found in Death in the Clouds, where a young archaeologist tells the story of an Englishman, ‘who left his wife and went on so as to be “on duty” in time. And both he and his wife thought that quite natural; they thought him noble, unselfish. But the doctor, who was not English, thought him a barbarian.’

  Once home, Agatha too had to start work. Though she still felt fragile and Max was not there to cheer her up, she was hopeful and serene. ‘Do you know, Max,’ she wrote from the Paddington Hotel, ‘it is the first time for several years that I have arrived in England without a feeling of sick misery – I always had it – as though I’d escaped from things by going abroad to sunshine – and then came back to them – to memories shadowed and all the things I wanted to forget. But this time – no – Just “Oh, London rainy as usual – but rather a nice funny old place.”’ Max had, she realised, lifted from her shoulders ‘so much that I didn’t even know was there’. She could feel the wounds healing over: ‘They are still there – and very little would open them again – but they will heal once more.’

  15

  ‘… corpses and stiffs’

  Writing books is more difficult than writing letters and settling to writing books even harder when there is every excuse to correspond with a distant husband. Agatha was quick at thinking of enticing titles and complicated plots, but that did not make it any easier to sit down at her typewriter and begin what she thought of as the ‘chore’ of starting a book. She was not short of other occupations. She and Max had now acquired another house, made out of 47 and 48 Campden Street and, since it was nearer the Underground line for the British Museum and had a roof garden Agatha liked, she intended to let Cresswell Place. Her
letters to Max in the late autumn and winter of 1930 are full of details of purchases at sales – ‘a walnut chest all oyster shell’, a Worcester tea service – which gave her quite as much fun as her father had enjoyed on his daily expeditions in Torquay.

  There was also a spell of anxiety over Rosalind’s dog, who had developed a growth in his shoulder. Agatha poured out her despair in a long letter to Max; even he, she felt, would never really understand how deeply attached she was to Peter: ‘You’ve never been through a really bad time with nothing but a dog to hold on to.’ Max seems to have learned to become fond of Agatha’s dogs because they were hers and part of the household, but he did not share that sympathy for animals which some people have from their earliest childhood and which it is difficult for others to fully comprehend. Agatha had always regarded her birds and animals as close friends, each with a character as individual as that of human beings. Her picture of her childhood in the Autobiography and the fictional accounts based upon it in some of ‘Mary Westmacott’s’ novels speak at length of the nature and doings of the goldfinch and the dogs, their companionship and the woe caused by their – usually temporary – disappearance. Agatha’s closeness to her animals was not due simply to the fact that she spent a great deal of time alone with them, playing with them, talking to them, looking after them, regarding them as an intrinsic part of her life – as people do when there are few, or no, other contemporaries about – but also because in important ways she identified with them. Animals knew things, though they did not speak; they felt pain and affection, though they could not express it in words.