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Chasing Lost Time

Page 38

by Jean Findlay


  19. Song of Roland, dedication

  20. Peter France, ‘Scott Moncrieff’s First Translation’, Translation and Literature 21 (2012), pp. 364–82.

  21. To Susan Owen, 11.2.21. EFL, Oxford

  22. The Whittlebot family first appeared in London Calling, 1923. Chelsea Buns, the spoof poetry book, was published in 1925; it included Noël Coward’s ‘Contours’:

  23. Written by Francis Beaumont, this is a seventeenth-century satire on chivalric romance, the burning pestle itself used as a heraldic symbol implying sexual bravado on the one hand and syphilis on the other.

  24. The Times, 25.11.19

  25. NW, 5.12.19

  26. NW, 28.11.19

  27. NW, 5.12.19

  28. TLS, 11.12.19

  29. Chanson de Roland, line 1610

  30. From Rendall to CKSM, 25.11.19. FC

  31. Peter France, Literature and Translation, Oct 2012

  32. Roland, ix

  33. To H. Pyatt, 30.12.19. M&L, 148

  34. Beowulf, Widsith, Finnsburgh, Waldere, Deor, trans. CKSM, 8.

  35. London Mercury, Sept. 1920

  36. The Times, 28.10.20

  37. CKSM to VBH, July 1922. HRC

  38. CKSM to VBH, 31.7.22. HRC

  39. M&L, 145

  40. The Times, 5.7.20

  41. JMSM, Diary, 14.7.20

  42. CKSM to Anna SM, 14.7.20 . Letter courtesy of John Scott Moncrieff

  43. From Charterland Agent to JMSM, 15.7.20, copied into diary 25.8.20

  44. Conversations with J. K. Scott Moncrieff 2008–2011.

  45. CKSM to Anna Scott Moncrieff, 14.7.20. Letter courtesy of John Scott Moncrieff

  46. Conversation with David’s widow, Anne Scott Moncrieff, 2008

  47. Gosse to CKSM, 18.9.21. M&L, 150

  48. Ibid.

  49. NW, 28.10.20

  50. NW, 11.02.1921

  Chapter 12: Translating Proust

  1. Dedication to Eva Cooper in Swann’s Way

  2. Proust paid for the costs of the first volume, published in 1913; it was successful, then war intervened. The publisher Grasset went into Military Service after the second volume and in 1919 Gallimard took up the rest.

  3. Aldington, 88

  4. Gale, 259

  5. Hoare, Coward, 40

  6. Dedicatory poem to EJC in Swann’s Way, dated Michaelmas 1921

  7. Gale, 256

  8. Huxley, Those Barren Leaves, 14, 15

  9. Gale, 262

  10. Gale, 256

  11. Translation and Literature, vol. 13, no. 1 (Spring 2004), pp. 124–30

  12. Peter France, ‘The Serva Padrona’, Art in Translation, vol. 2, no. 2, July 2010, pp. 119–30 (12)

  13. This lecture, ‘The World as India’, reprinted in Sontag, At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches (New York, 2007).

  14. Peter France, ‘The Serva Padrona’, Art in Translation, vol. 2, no. 2, July 2010, pp. 119–30 (12)

  15. To Whitworth, 5.5.22. Chatto Archive

  16. To Whitworth, undated (Feb. 1922). CA

  17. Letters to Conal O’Riordan, Boston Public Library. Gale, 266

  18. To Prentice, 14.9.22. CA

  19. Gale, 270

  20. The Times, 21.9.22

  21. CKSM to Prentice, 26.9.22. CA

  22. To VBH, Aug. 1922. HRC

  23. Ibid.

  24. Proust to CKSM, 10.10.22. NLS. Translation by Jean Findlay. Proust’s letter read:

  Monsieur,

  J’ai été très flatté et touché de la peine que vous avez prise de traduire mon Swann. Le miracle est que je puisse vous en remercier. Je suis on effet si gravement malade (pas contagieusement) que je ne puis répondre à personne, et en tous cas vous êtes le seul de mes traducteurs en diverses langues, à qui j’ai écrit, peut être en voyant le beau talent avec lequel vous avez fait cette traduction (je n’ai pas encore tout lu, mais songez que je ne quitte pas mon lit, ne prends aucune nourriture, etc.) J’aurais bien une ou deux critiques à vous faire. Par example À la recherche du temps perdu ne peut nullement dire cela. Les vers que vous ajoutez, la dédicace à vos amis, ne remplacent pas l’amphibologie voulue de Temps perdu qui se retrouve à la fin de l’ouvrage, Le Temps retrouvé. Quant à Swann’s Way cela peut signifier Du côté de chez Swann, mais tout aussi bien ‘la maniére de Swann’. En ajoutant to vous auriez tout sauvé. Je vous demande pardon de vous écrire en français mais mon anglais serait si pitoyable que personne ne le comprendrait. ‘Comment,’ me diriez-vous, ‘vous savez à peine – du moins actuellement – un mot ou deux d’anglais, et vous permettez délivrer certains critiques – inspirés de beaucoup d’éloges sur mon traduction!’

  Présentez je vous prie à vos editeurs mes compliments pour la façon remarquable dont ils ont fait traduire Swann et croyez je vous prie à mes sentiments les plus sincères.

  25. Painter, Marcel Proust, 668

  26. To Prentice, 27.11.22. CA

  27. TLS, 18.1.23

  28. Chatto Archive, 8.12.22

  29. Joseph Conrad, Collected Letters, vol. 7, 623

  30. Pasternak, 165–66

  31. CKSM to Prentice, undated (Dec 1922).CA

  32. Woolf diaries, Jan. 1923

  33. TLS, 4.1.23

  34. To Roger Fry, 6.5.22

  35. Berg Collection, NYPL

  36. E. A. Macarthur, ‘Following Swann’s Way: To the Lighthouse’, Comparative Literature 2004, 56(4): 331–336

  37. Tribute, 26

  38. Tribute, 67

  39. Tribute, 126

  40. T. S. Eliot, Feb. 1923, Collected Letters

  41. The Criterion, April and July 1926

  42. Ibid.

  43. Charles Baudelaire, ‘Lesbos’, Fleurs du Mal, 1857

  44. CKSM to VBH, 26.4.23. HRC, Austin Texas

  45. Ibid.

  46. London Mercury, 26.3.23

  47. To Marsh, 20.3.23. Berg

  48. To Marsh, 22.3.23. Berg

  49. To Marsh, 25.4.23. Berg

  50. According to Harry Ricketts, Marsh was a latent but not active homosexual. The nearest he came to physical contact was to ask a young man if he might take off his shoe or boot (Sassoon and his hunting boots come to mind) as erotic stimulation. However, Charles was no longer a young god in that department and one suspects that his deformed foot and iron calliper had less aesthetic appeal.

  51. To Marsh, undated. Berg

  52. Aubrey Beardsley lived on Praed Street.

  53. Prentice, 4.5.23

  54. To Marsh, 19.7.23. Berg

  55. Ibid.

  56. CKSM to VBH, dated ‘Mary Magdalen V(?) &M.’ (22 July) 1923. HRC

  57. To Marsh, 2.8.23. Berg

  58. To Marsh, 7.8.23. Berg

  59. Ibid.

  60. To Marsh, undated, but obviously from Germany, summer 1923. The writing is crushed all around the edge of the letter, every margin is used and crammed with Proust references and queries.

  61. To Marsh, undated. Berg

  Chapter 13: Writer and Spy in Fascist Italy

  1. Dansey went on to become Assistant Chief of the Secret Intelligence Services from 1939 for the duration of the Second World War.

  2. Jeffery, 154, 314

  3. Mussolini, 1921, quoted in Massimilio Fiore, Anglo Italian Relations in the Middle East.

  4. Documents on British Foreign Policy, HMSO vol. XXIV, 11

  5. Boyle Somerville, post-war review, 1919, quoted in Jeffrey, 63

  6. His War Office file states that files 1, 4, 5, 7 and 8 were removed and destroyed in 1932. The rest of the file relates to his wound and his pension.

  7. Mackenzie, quoted in Jeffrey, 242, 243. Mackenzie was prosecuted under the official secrets act for revealing in Greek Memories that passport control was part of SIS.

  8. To Marsh, 20.9.23. Berg

  9. To Marsh, undated. Berg

  10. London Mercury, Sept. 1923

  11. To Marsh, 25.4.23. Berg

  12. Saturday Review, Sept. 1923

  13. Samuel Johnson quoted
in Boswell's Life of Johnson. The conversation took place on 20 September 1777.

  14. To Prentice, 22.10.23. CA

  15. Ibid.

  16. M&L, 151

  17. To Prentice, 22.10.23. CA

  18. CKSM to Millard, 30.10.23. HRC

  19. Ibid.

  20. West, MI6, 34

  21. In 1928 Giuseppe Orioli was the first publisher in English of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which could not be published openly in England until 1960.

  22. Orioli, Adventures of a Bookseller, 228

  23. La Pietra was left by Acton to New York University.

  24. Acton, 365

  25. Byrne, A Genius for Living, 320

  26. Byrne, 321

  27. To Prentice, 4.11.23. CA

  28. To Chapman, 8.12.23. WU

  29. To Prentice, 10.4.24. CA

  30. Ibid.

  31. To Chapman, undated (Dec. 1924). WU

  32. From Chapman, 25.11.24. WU

  33. Holland, 120

  34. To Chapman, 14.11.23. WU

  35. To Chapman, 29.11.23. WU

  36. JMSM, Diary, 2.1.24. FC

  37. JMSM, Diary, 9.1.24. FC

  38. Edited by Rupert Hart-Davis.

  39. To Prentice, 29.1.24. CA

  40. JMSM, Diary, 13.1.24. FC

  41. To Prentice, 12.12.23. CA

  42. To Prentice, 29.1.24. CA

  43. Ibid.

  44. To Prentice, 26.2.24. CA. Ronald Firbank (1886–1926) wrote camp, witty novels, full of homosexual innuendo. He was also a Roman Catholic convert and lived in Rome.

  45. To Prentice, 3.10.24. CA

  46. To Prentice, 5.11.25. CA

  47. To Prentice, 10.3.24. CA

  48. To Prentice, 22.10.24. CA

  49. To Prentice, 29.1.24. CA

  50. To Prentice, 17.4.24. CA

  51. To Prentice, 12.6.24. CA

  52. Ibid.

  53. To Prentice, April 1924. CA

  54. To Prentice, 4.6.24. CA

  55. CKSM to VBH, 22.6.24. HRC

  56. To Prentice, 9.7.24. CA

  57. To Prentice, 26.5.24. CA

  58. Lesley Scott Moncrieff remembers conversations with Mackenzie in 1963.

  59. To Prentice, 26.5.24. CA

  60. To Prentice, 22.8.24. CA

  61. CKSM to VBH, 14.7.24. HRC

  62. To Prentice, 29.7.24. CA

  63. Fiore, 24

  64. CKSM to VBH, 4.8.24. HRC

  65. CKSM to VBH, 4.8.24. HRC

  66. To Prentice, 1.10.24. CA

  67. To Prentice, 9.10.24. CA

  68. Fiore, 18

  69. To VBH, 21.11.24

  70. To Prentice, 21.11.24. CA

  71. To VBH, 28.11.24. HRC

  Chapter 14 Discovering Pirandello

  1. To Prentice, 22.10.24

  2. To Marsh, 28.11.24. Berg

  3. To Marsh, 18.12.24. Berg

  4. To Marsh, 28.11.24. Berg

  5. The jotter is in the NLS

  6. To Marsh, 16.12.24. Berg

  7. To Prentice, 17.12.24. CA

  8. ‘I am alone, I am widowed, and the night falls on me.’

  9. To Marsh, 16.12.24. Berg

  10. To Marsh, 26.12.24. Berg

  11. To Prentice. CA

  12. To Marsh, 26.12.24. Berg

  13. To Prentice, June 1925. CA

  14. To Prentice, 25.1.25. CA

  15. To Chapman, 21.1.25. WU

  16. To Prentice, 9.1.24. CA

  17. To Chapman, 11.2.25. WU

  18. Ibid.

  19. Letters of A&H, Intro, x

  20. Letters of A&H, Intro, xviii

  21. To Prentice, 8.3.25. CA

  22. Shoot! Trans. CKSM, 1926

  23. To VBH, 9.4.25. HRC

  24. Ibid.

  25. To VBH, 14.4.25. HRC

  26. To VBH, 30.5.25. HRC

  27. To VBH, 18.6.25. HRC

  28. To VBH, 29.6.25. HRC

  29. To Prentice, 8.6.25. CA

  30. ‘There was a young woman of Modena, Whose priest put the fear of God in her, They found in her c---, The results of his s----, And the button-hook with which he’d been proddin’ her.’ (28.12.25. HRC) ‘There was an old girl from Judea, Who gave her pet goat gonorrhea. She said that is one, Up the carpenter’s son, Why she said that I’ve no idea.’ (To VBH, 18.6.25. HRC)

  31. To Prentice, 2.6.25. CA

  32. Waugh diaries, 1.7.25

  33. Waugh, A Little Learning, 229

  34. To Prentice, 12.6.25. CA

  35. To Prentice, 9.9.25. CA

  36. To VBH, 29.7.25. HRC

  37. Ibid.

  38. To VBH, 16.7.25. HRC

  39. To VBH, 8.8.25. HRC

  40. To VBH, 17.8.25. HRC

  41. Ibid.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Quoted back to VBH, 27.12.25. HRC

  44. To VBH, 4.9.25. HRC

  45. Ibid.

  46. Fiore, 18

  47. To Chapman, 7.8.25. WU

  48. After her finishing, Dorothy married well and continued her god-father’s legacy of educating nieces and nephews. I was one of these fortunate relations.

  49. To Chapman, 25.9.25. WU

  50. Prentice to CKSM. Gale, 389

  51. To Prentice, 15.10.25. CA

  52. To VBH, 7.2.26. HRC

  53. To Prentice, 8.12.25. CA

  54. Charles got a little black leather passport calling him The Times Special Correspondent in Tuscany for his services on this mission.

  55. M&L, 162

  56. To Prentice, Jan. 1926. CA

  57. From Seltzer, 10.12.25. Copy in CA

  58. From Seltzer, 18.12.25. Copy in CA

  59. To Seltzer, 18.1.26. CA

  60. Schiff had written a novel based on his and his wife’s relationship with Proust in which the main protagonists were the Kurts: Richard, Myrtle and I (1926)

  61. To Prentice, 5.2.26. CA

  62. To VBH, 7.2.26. HRC

  63. To VBH, 5.2.26 HRC

  64. To Prentice, 9–10.3.26. CA

  65. Ibid.

  66. Ibid.

  67. To VBH, 15.3.26. HRC

  68. To Prentice, 6.3.19. CA

  69. To Prentice, 26.3.26. CA

  70. To Prentice, 26.3.26. CA

  71. To Prentice, 23.3.26. CA

  72. To VBH, 30.1.26. HRC

  73. CKSM in The Times, 26.5.26

  74. Ibid.

  75. See Frances Stonor Saunders, The Woman who Shot Mussolini (London, 2010).

  76. The Times, 26.5.26

  77. To VBH, 22.4.26. HRC

  78. Sitwell, All at Sea, 30

  79. Ibid., 23

  80. Ibid., 26

  81. To Prentice, 7.7.26. CA

  82. To Prentice, 17.8.26. CA

  83. Ibid.

  84. Another copy is in the English Faculty Library at Oxford among the Wilfred Owen papers and is published in Jon Stallworthy’s biography of Owen, where the given date (1918) is not correct. The photograph was taken in 1913.

  85. Gale, from conversations with R. Haynes.

  86. To father, 1.1.27. FC

  Chapter 15: A Death and Eviction

  1. To Prentice, 8.1.27. CA

  2. To mother, 4.1.27. FC

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid.

  5. To Prentice, 4.2.27. CA

  6. To mother, 8.1.27. FC

  7. Ibid.

  8. To mother, 10.1.27. FC

  9. Ibid.

  10. Ibid.

  11. To mother, 23.1.27. FC

  12. Anna Scott Moncrieff to Prentice, Jan. 1927. CA

  13. To mother, 25.1.27. FC

  14. Ibid.

  15. To Prentice, 25.1.27. CA

  16. To mother, 27.1.27. FC

  17. For example the epigraph to Chapter 18 quotes a French motto attributed to Schiller, which Charles rendered in English and attributed correctly to Pope.

  18. TLS, 18.3.26

  19. Aldington in Intro, xii

  20. Appendix to Memoirs, 224

  21. Paradis de Moncrif, The A
dventures of Zeloïde and Amanzarifdine, trans. CKSM, ed. Richard Aldington, Introduction by CKSM, p.xxiii

  22. To Prentice, 21.3.27. CA

  23. To Prentice, 4.5.27. CA

  24. To Prentice, 27.5.27. CA

  25. To VBH, 17.2.27. HRC

  26. ‘There was a young lady of Stroud, Whose head was unbloody but bowed, She said “I’m not ducking, My head I’m just sucking, the c---- of the boys in the crowd.”’ To VBH, 3.6.27. HRC

  27. To VBH, 3.6.27. HRC

  28. To Prentice, 27.5.27. CA

  29. To Prentice, 27.3.27. CA

  30. To Prentice, 15.5.27. CA

  31. To Charles Boni, 17.6.27. Copy in FC

  32. To Prentice, 13.6.27. CA

  33. To VBH, 3.6.27. HRC

  34. To Prentice, 2.6.27. CA

  35. To Prentice, 6.7.27. CA

  36. To VBH, 3.6.27. HRC

  37. To Prentice, 28.7.27. CA

  38. From Macrae, 26.8.27. CA

  39. To Macrae, 5.9.27. CA

  40. To VBH, 14.9.27. HRC

  41. To Prentice, 7.10.27. CA

  42. Ibid.

  43. Ibid.

  44. To mother, 5.10.27. M&L, 172

  45. To Prentice, 14.10.27. CA

  46. To VBH, 24.10.27. HRC

  47. Letters of D. H. Lawrence 14.11.27

  48. To Aldington, 18.11.27. Letters of DHL

  49. To Brown, 6.1.28. Letters of DHL

  50. To Eliot, Jan. 1930. FF

  51. To Orioli, 11.11.29. Letters of DHL

  52. To Orioli, 27.11.29. Letters of DHL

  Chapter 16: Rome

  1. To mother, 29.10.28. FC

  2. To Oriana, 28.3.28. Gale, 452. Sir Denison Ross (1871–1940), Orientalist, was said to know 49 languages and speak 30. During the First World War he worked in military intelligence at the War Office. Later he became the first director of the School of Oriental and African Studies.

  3. New Statesman, 16.6.28

  4. Jeffrey, 739

  5. To mother, Oct. 1928. FC

  6. Gale, 438

  7. Pirandello to Abba, 5.7.28. Ortolani, 18

  8. To Mrs Pearson, 29.3.28. M&L, 178

  9. To Prentice, 27.2.27. CA

  10. To Prentice, 5.10.28. CA

  11. To Prentice, 24.9.28. CA

  12. To Prentice, 1.10.28. CA

  13. To Mrs Pearson, 15.2.29. M&L, 186

  14. To mother, 20.1.27. FC

  15. Piers Gaveston (1284–1312) was the favourite of Edward II, and possibly his lover.

  16. To Marsh, 28.9.28. Berg

  17. To Schuster, 5.11.28. Copy in FC

  18. To Schuster, 19.6.29. Copy in FC

  19. Forster to Sprott, 15.9.28. King’s College Archive

 

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