by David Lodge
Alone in London, Ann Veronica was taken up by a fervent suffragette and promiscuous dabbler in ‘advanced’ thought called Miss Miniver, who introduced her to a number of different groups – Fabians, Tolstoyans, proponents of Dress Reform and Food Reform, as well as the suffragettes themselves – but when Miss Miniver asserted that advanced people tended to ‘generalise’ love, Ann Veronica shocked her by asking if she didn’t want the love of a man.
Miss Miniver looked over her glasses at her friend almost balefully. ‘No!’she said at last, with something in her voice that reminded Ann Veronica of a sprung tennis racket. ‘I have never yet met a man whose intellect I could respect.’
‘But if you had?’
‘I can’t imagine it,’ said Miss Miniver. ‘And think, think’ – her voice sank – ‘of the horrible coarseness!’
‘What coarseness?’ said Ann Veronica.
‘My dear Vee!’ Her voice became very low. ‘Don’t you know?’
‘Oh! I know. But don’t we all rather humbug about the coarseness? All we women, I mean. We pretend bodies are ugly. Really they are the most beautiful things in the world.’
‘No,’ cried Miss Miniver almost vehemently. ‘You are wrong! I did not think you thought such things. Bodies, bodies! Horrible things! We are souls. Love lives on a higher plane.’
This conversation marked the end of Miss Miniver’s influence over Ann Veronica. She found that falling in love with Capes consisted in part of a powerful physical attraction to him. As he sat at the microscope, ‘she became aware of the modelling of his ear, of the muscles of his neck and the textures of the hair that came off his brow, the soft minute curve of the eyelid that she could see just beyond his brow’, and this in turn made her aware of her own beauty and desirability when she undressed and looked at herself in the mirror.
That was about as far as he had got with the story by the end of August, but he had the rest of it well mapped out: Ann Veronica was to throw herself into the militant suffragette movement, get herself arrested and imprisoned, and come to the conclusion that she did not really belong among the martyred women because they hated men and she didn’t. She would be obliged to humble herself to her father in order to escape the toils of Rammage, but in the end triumphantly assert her independence by overcoming the scruples of Capes and running away with him. He had very clearly in his mind a scene in which he would say bluntly, ‘What is it you want?’ and she would answer ‘You!’ And then they would travel to the Swiss mountains, his favourite location for the evocation of happiness, and enjoy an idyllic, unlicensed honeymoon. On the 15th of September he whetted Macmillan’s appetite to see the novel by writing to him that it was ‘the best love story I have ever done’.
The next day he finally resigned from the Fabian. Describing it through the eyes of Ann Veronica (attending a big meeting of the Society at Essex Hall, she ‘was struck by the oddest mixture of things which were personal and petty with an idealist devotion that was fine beyond dispute’) had confirmed his belief that he would never be able to work within it without frustration and friction. At the back of his mind too was a sense that his relationship with Amber would be more easily and comfortably concealed if he were no longer attending Fabian meetings and mixing in Fabian circles. He wrote to Pease to say that he was resigning from the Executive and the Society and would continue only as a subscriber, receiving information about events and publications. He gave as his principal reason the Society’s refusal to incorporate endowment of motherhood into the Basis, but also deplored its repudiation of the principle of compensation for owners of private property and capital, which he believed was essential for the orderly advance of socialism in Britain. The opportunity to convert the British middle classes to socialism, he wrote, ‘found us divided in theory and undecided in action, and it is to other media and other methods that we must now look for the spread and elaboration of those collectivist ideas which all of us have at heart’. His resignation was accepted with alacrity and a sigh of relief emanating from Clement’s Inn that was almost audible in Sandgate. It might have been received with less joy if the Old Gang had known that he was already sketching out the plan of another new novel, about a man who became disillusioned with Fabianism and sought to transform society by forming an elite of powerful but dedicated leaders like the Samurai of A Modern Utopia. By the end of the month he had finished Ann Veronica in a furious burst of creative energy and sent it off to Macmillan.
In mid-October Macmillan wrote: ‘I am sorry to say that after very careful consideration, we do not see our way to undertake the publication of Ann Veronica. I could give you the reasons, but as I know you resent literary criticism from a publisher – I refrain from doing so.’ He was sure that the reasons were not literary-critical, and to elicit them replied meekly that he would be really glad to have Macmillan’s criticisms and was sure they would be illuminating. Macmillan admitted a few days later that ‘it seems to me a very well written book and there is a great deal in it that is attractive, but the plot develops on lines that would be exceedingly distasteful to the public which buys books published by this firm’. This reaction was not wholly unexpected – the novel was bound to be controversial, and Macmillan was a cautious and conservative man by temperament – but he had hoped that the spirited sincerity of the heroine and the absence of inflammatory descriptions of physical passion would have overcome the publisher’s doubts.
The rejection was disappointing, but it did not shake his faith in the book, and the disappointment did not last for long. On the very same day he received a letter from Stanley Unwin, who had just joined the firm of his uncle J. Fisher Unwin, and was, as he said, ‘disposed to speculate in futures’. Did Mr Wells have any plans for a new book not yet under contract to a publisher? Mr Wells did, and wrote back by return: ‘Very well, what will you give for all rights (serial and book) American, British & colonial of the version in English of a novel by me which I have in hand, more or less at the present time. It is to be called Ann Veronica. It is to be the love story of an energetic modern girl who goes suffragetting & quarrels with her parents. It can be delivered in a state fit for negotiation before the end of this year …’ He went on to boast of the excellent sales of his other recent publications, the splash he expected the forthcoming The War in the Air to make, and concluded: ‘Put up a firm offer of £1500 payable Oct. 1st 1909 & Ann Veronica is yours. We will eliminate the agent.’ He always enjoyed getting involved in the financial bargaining aspect of authorship (it was perhaps the only trace of the successful life in trade that his mother had hoped for him), and he took satisfaction in the subtle manipulation of verbal tense by means of which he concealed from Unwin the fact that the novel was in fact finished and had already been rejected by another publisher. He did not feel guilty of serious deception; after all, it could do with some more work. His self-advocacy was swiftly rewarded with a contract that satisfied all his stipulations.
That fortuitous approach from Fisher Unwin and its sequel was the last piece of unalloyed good luck that he enjoyed for some considerable time, both professionally and privately – not counting the acquisition shortly afterwards of a treasure of a governess for the boys, which was not entirely due to luck anyway, but also to Jane’s judgment when she interviewed Miss Mathilde Meyer in London among several other candidates. Now aged seven and five respectively, Gip and Frank were too old to be left in the charge of the nursemaid Jessie, and needed a more regular educational regime than he and Jane could provide in the intervals of their busy lives, but neither of them was in a hurry to expose their sons to the vagaries of English private schooling. They also shared a common belief that the boys should be encouraged to learn foreign languages from an early age, when the ability to do so was at its optimum. Miss Meyer, who was Swiss, and spoke French and German fluently as well as English, was ideally qualified for this task. She had had no idea that the Mrs Wells who had offered her the position was the wife of the famous author until she presented herself at Spade Hou
se and was shown into a room lined with his books and framed photographs of himself, while the maid went to fetch Jane from the garden. Miss Meyer had been teaching at a dull school for girls in Bognor up till then and never entirely lost an air of wonder at her good fortune in joining their household. This made for easy relations between employer and employee, as did the fact that the governess, though unexceptionable in appearance, was entirely lacking in sex appeal as far as he himself was concerned. Under the stimulus of her instruction the boys made such rapid progress in the two new languages that to her great concern they began to combine them into a macaronic dialect of their own, but when he suggested that she spoke to them exclusively in French or German in alternate weeks the problem disappeared.
Meanwhile the English Review project began to unravel as Hueffer revealed himself to be a hopeless businessman, who did not keep proper accounts, did not answer letters promptly, lost manuscripts, and reneged on promises. Fortunately he perceived the extent of this incompetence in time to pull out of co-editing and investing in the venture, but he had contracted to give Hueffer the serial rights in Tono-Bungay for a consideration of twenty per cent of the magazine’s profits in the relevant period. It became evident that it was unlikely to make any profit whatsoever under Hueffer’s editorship, and could only be published at all with the help of loans from his rich friends. Delays to the launch of the English Review meant delaying publication of Tono-Bungay to ensure that at least the first instalment of the serial would precede the book, and eventually the publication of the latter had to be postponed till the New Year. These frustrations hung like an inauspicious cloud over the prospects of a novel on which he had staked his claim to be taken seriously as a literary novelist of the first rank, and they were all the more acute because Arnold Bennett at last produced a real masterpiece that autumn, The Old Wives’ Tale.
There had always been an element of competition in their friendship – both being immensely popular writers of fairly humble social origins, they were continually bracketed together and compared by critics – a rivalry which they managed to keep amicable by cheerful criticism of each other’s work tempered with praise that was not always sincere. But in this case he had no criticism to make, and his praise was genuine. ‘It is the best book I have seen this year – and there have been one or two very good books,’ he wrote to Bennett, ‘and I am certain that it will secure you the respect of all the distinguished critics who are now consuming gripewater and suchlike, if you never write another line. It is all at such a high level that one does not know where to begin commending … But the knowledge, the detail, the spirit! From first to last it never fails.’ Bennett replied in his more economical and somewhat opaque epistolary style: ‘What am I to say in reply to your remarks? Considerable emotion caused in this breast thereby! Also no doubt a certain emotion in yours, as you cannot write such letters often!’ Which was true, and it had cost him some effort in the suppression of envy to do so. He did not regard The War in the Air, which came out in the same month, as one of the very good books published that year, or expect Bennett to identify it as such. The novel did what he had hoped and expected of it: it sold well, was favourably reviewed in the popular papers and somewhat patronisingly by the quality press. Tono-Bungay was the book he would put in the scales against The Old Wives’ Tale, and he deeply regretted ever letting the bumbling Hueffer anywhere near it.
In his discontent he turned to the two women in his life for different kinds of solace: with Jane he could complain about Hueffer’s delinquencies confident that she understood all the factors involved – finance, publicity, sales, critical reception – and identified sympathetically with his anxieties, while with Amber, who had little experience of or interest in the processes of publishing, he could find relief and release in occasional bouts of passionate lovemaking. That continued to be wonderful, but the post-coital peace it brought was transient, and could not disguise the evidence of Amber’s casual conversation that she was not making much progress with her research. She was registered at the L.S.E as a postgraduate student, but this was a solitary existence very different from the one she had enjoyed at Cambridge, with its full programme of lectures and tutorials, its abundance of extracurricular activities, the watchful pastoral care of the Newnham academic staff, and the constant stimulus and support of her peers. She lived at home and worked either there, alone in the big chilly Kensington house, while her parents and siblings were out pursuing their various vocations, or in the Round Reading Room of the British Museum, intimidated rather than inspired by the book-lined walls and galleries supporting the great dome, by the huge leather-bound volumes of the Catalogue, heavy as paving stones, ranged in concentric circles at the hub of the floor, and by the industry of the scholars who occupied the desks around her, reading intently and taking notes busily as if they knew what they were doing. She had been allocated a supervisor – not Wallas, but Professor L.T. Hobhouse, a distinguished man recently elected to the first chair of sociology at the L.S.E., but he did not really take to her project, and gave her little help in carrying it out. He told her to produce a draft outline and specimen chapter for him to comment on, but she seemed unable to buckle down to this assignment and get it done.
Instead the main focus of interest in her life was their affair, and she couldn’t keep the secret to herself. He understood her desire to confide in her mother and agreed that she should do so, trusting that Maud’s theoretical belief in female autonomy would extend to her own daughter, who was now twenty-one and legally as well as morally a free agent. According to Amber, Maud was shaken by the revelation, and fearful of the possible consequences, but reluctantly accepted their relationship as a fait accompli and helped to conceal it from Pember Reeves, hoping no doubt that it would eventually end without his ever knowing anything about it. In truth, it would have been difficult to avoid arousing Reeves’s suspicions without Maud’s co-operation in covering Amber’s tracks, though she was unwilling to admit that she knew anything about the matter. On the rare occasions when they were in the same company Maud was politely friendly to him but carefully avoided any opportunity for private confidences, and Jane had the same experience. ‘Not that I was seeking a tête-à-tête,’ Jane said to him as they came away from such a party. ‘In fact I was rather afraid that she would cut me – as most mothers would in the circumstances. But she just smiled vaguely and chattered aimlessly until someone else came up.’ He had a theory that Maud was treating her daughter’s affair and its ramifications rather as Christian Scientists treated illness and its symptoms, as unreal illusions which would go away if you ignored them.
His first intimation that Amber had taken others into her confidence came from Sydney Olivier, who was home from Jamaica on leave in December. They met for lunch at the Reform, and Sydney startled him by asking him quite early in their conversation, in a casual familiar tone, ‘And how is Amber?’
‘Amber Reeves? She’s well, I believe,’ he faltered. ‘Why do you ask?’
Olivier smiled sardonically above his bowl of oxtail soup. ‘I understand you are very close to her at present.’
‘Who told you that?’ he said, busying himself with his potted shrimps.
‘My daughter Marjery, who was told by Amber herself.’
‘Ah,’ he said, concealing his dismay as best he could. ‘That was very indiscreet of Amber. I trust Marjery has respected her confidence.’
‘It’s a bit late for that, I’m afraid, Wells,’ Olivier said. ‘Marjery is not the only one Amber has confided in. Even the dons know. The whole college is agog with speculation about your affair.’
‘Damn!’ he said quietly, and glanced at the neighbouring tables to see if anyone had overheard Sydney’s remarks. He had been aware that Amber was making trips to see her old friends at Cambridge from time to time between their trysts in Eccleston Square, and evidently she had been unable to resist boasting to them about her thrilling affair.
Olivier finished his soup and wiped his neatly trimm
ed beard and moustache with a napkin. ‘I thought something might be up when I saw you walk into Ben Keeling’s rooms with Amber last May, looking like the cat that has eaten the cream,’ he said. ‘As the father of four daughters I should deeply disapprove – and I do! But my baser self feels a certain admiration for your success with beautiful and gifted young women half your age. How do you do it?’
‘I’d like you to know, Olivier,’ he said earnestly, ‘that this is no casual seduction. We are deeply in love. Jane knows all about it—’
Olivier’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Jane knows? And she doesn’t mind?’
‘She and Amber get on famously together. We are acting out in personal relations what other so-called “advanced” people profess to believe in but are too timid to practise.’
Olivier shook his head. ‘Well I wish you luck, Wells. But I don’t think you can start a sexual revolution single-handed.’ He paused before adding drily, ‘If “hand” is the applicable word in this context.’