Jamie was taken aback on first sight of the plane, as he was accustomed to something more solid looking. Instead he was confronted with ‘a brown low-winged monoplane, apparently made entirely of wood, with enormous wings, a naked engine sticking out in front, ridiculously small propeller and wheels, and a dash-board covered with German words’.13 He thought it resembled a broody hen, and could not believe it was safe. They named it ‘Pocahontas’. Bunny told Constance about his ‘mad purchase’, reassuring her that it was safe because it was slow.
Jamie was impressed when Bunny made his first cross-country flight, landing in a field near Hilton Hall. The journey was only fifteen miles along a main road, but Jamie declared it worthy of Bleriot. On one flight Bunny heard the terrible sound of the engine cutting out and, though he landed safely, his legs shook badly afterwards. This experience did not deter him from flying over to visit friends for lunch, where he found eager audiences at both ends of the journey.
In August he flew to Ham Spray, completing the hundred mile trip from Cambridge in one-and-a-quarter hours. There he swam in the pool, had lunch with Frances and Ralph and stayed for tea, before flying to Tilton, near Charleston, the home of Maynard Keynes and Lydia Lopokova. As he passed over the farms where he had laboured during the war, he melodramatically reflected that the outcast of 1917 was now ‘floating over them in his own aeroplane’.14 Swooping down to land, Bunny caused Roger Fry, driving along with Duncan beside him, to crash into a gatepost. Fourteen-year-old Angelica Bell rushed towards Bunny, throwing her arms around him, enthusiastically kissing him on the lips. Bunny looked every part the dashing aviator in sheepskin bomber-jacket, leather flying gauntlets, a close-fitting leather helmet and aviation goggles. He occasionally took Ray up, but flying was largely a solitary activity, albeit for social ends. It was another means of keeping Ray and family separate from Bloomsbury.
In the months since his portrait photograph in April, Bunny and Barbara-Ker-Seymer’s acquaintanceship had taken a significant turn. So much so, that in September Bunny declared love. Barbara, or ‘Bar’ as she was known, came from a wealthy family, although her father had gambled away his fortune. She had studied at both the Chelsea College of Art and the Slade, and at this stage in her career was a pioneering avant-garde photographer. Bar was attractive, short-haired with a rather boyish flat-chested figure, and renowned for her sharp-tongue. ‘Though she was in some ways diffident and lacking in self-confidence, no-one would have guessed it from her offhand manner.’15 That summer of 1933 she was involved in a love affair with Goronwy Rees, at the time a leader writer with the Manchester Guardian. She also enjoyed a short love affair with Ralph Partridge that year.
Bunny was happy to take things casually and was anyway preoccupied with concern for Frankie Birrell, who had been operated on to remove a brain tumour. Bunny also worried about the Nonesuch Press, as by July 1933 it was in debt to the bank. In November, Francis Meynell negotiated a merger with Desmond Harmsworth Ltd, a private press. Unfortunately this led to the dismissal of Mrs Stephens, and it was Bunny, disgusted at her treatment, who obtained her a position as secretary to Maynard Keynes, though he regretted the waste of her knowledge and experience in publishing. Thereafter Bunny continued to attend board meetings, but his role in the business was much reduced.
Meanwhile at Endsleigh Street, Bunny and Ray were finding Dorothy Edwards a strain. Dorothy had always been poor, and although Bunny and Ray were not rich, they could afford wine and decent food. Gradually Dorothy came to resent them, feeling they represented the bourgeoisie, able to enjoy luxuries. Bunny began to be irritated by her frenzied typing, and found her proximity almost intolerable, ‘disliking quite irrationally the traces which she left of her presence, particularly in the bathroom’.16 Finding it difficult to write, Dorothy turned her resentment onto her hosts. As the summer progressed she was more often resentful than friendly. In October, desperate to escape, Bunny and Ray decided to go north. Dorothy then wrote to Bunny, apologising for being disagreeable. ‘You came to my rescue’, she said, ‘when I was feeling as though I was looking over the edge of the world.’17
To his surprise, Bunny enjoyed his work at the New Statesman. He always liked embarking on new schemes and his guaranteed salary was a bonus. But eleven months into the job, Bunny made a silly error. On 11 November he published a short piece of work by a fourteen-year-old girl. It began ‘Dinner was ready’, and resulted in a deluge of indignant Letters to The Editor. ‘The paragraph headed “A Dinner” is an impudent piece of plagiarism’, wrote (Mrs) Margaret Chapman18; ‘Is it not strange that Miss Jacqueline Stiven and Mrs Virginia Woolf should have sat down to a dinner identical in composition’, asked another piqued reader.19 Henry G. Strauss of Chelsea demanded ‘Why is the extract from Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” […] signed “Jacqueline Stiven (aetat 14)”?’20
Bunny had well and truly shot himself in the foot. Of all writers, he should have recognised Virginia’s Woolf’s work, particularly as only a few weeks previously he had written in eloquent and fulsome praise of Flush, a review which contained an affectionate tribute to Virginia’s friendship with Lytton Strachey. It ended with Bunny quoting the final lines, where the spaniel dies. Recognising the similarity of Virginia’s death-scene to Lytton’s rendition of Queen Victoria’s death, Bunny concluded that Flush was: ‘The first animal to become an Eminent Victorian.’21
Virginia wrote to thank him for his generous review, adding ‘what a good critic you are’.22 She was less impressed when she discovered his blunder although she wasn’t particularly bothered. Bunny rushed round to Tavistock Square to apologise and in the New Statesman referred to making ‘a proper fool of myself’, explaining that the passage had been sent to him ‘in good faith by a lady who mistook a piece of school dictation for an original composition’. In mitigation he said that although he was disappointed not to have discovered a young Jane Austen he nevertheless consoled himself with the reflection that he spotted Virginia Woolf’s literary merit. He suggested that some other ‘fiendish little girl’ might want to try to catch him out with a passage from Lady into Fox, ‘But it is so easy to have me on toast that it is hardly worth the trouble’.23
Having returned to Hilton for Christmas 1933, it was there in January that Bunny received the news that Dorothy Edwards had been hit by a train and killed. She had gone to Wales in December, telling Bunny and Ray that she was leaving the London flat and would not return. Bunny thought she seemed strained and she was evidently struggling with her writing. The inquest announced the usual verdict of “Suicide during temporary insanity”. Dorothy left a note stating: ‘I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted kindness and friendship, and even love, without gratitude and given nothing in return.’24 These sentiments chillingly echoed those she had expressed to Bunny on at least two occasions.
Although shocked to learn of Dorothy’s suicide, Bunny thought it somehow characteristic. Strangely, he and Ray had been discussing her only the day before, when Bunny told Ray he feared Dorothy was mad. Somehow the Press heard of Bunny’s friendship with Dorothy, and a Sunday Express reporter drove as far as nearby St Ives on the way to see Bunny, but had the presence of mind to telephone before turning up on the doorstep. “I’m sorry to butt in on your privacy” he started, only to receive Bunny’s terse: “You won’t”.25 Bunny consoled himself that in one of their last conversations he had told Dorothy how much he believed in her genius as a writer.
Later that January he had such a horrible row with Ray that he felt compelled to note it in his pocket diary. Despite their living together in London, and despite their weekends at Hilton, they had drifted apart. Bunny still kept his friends to himself. Although they entertained at Hilton, Ray was not satisfied with these crumbs from the table. In London she was lonely. This was largely because Bunny now had a semi-regular mid-week engagement to spend the evening, and inevitably part of the night, with Barbara Ker-Seymer, at her flat on
the King’s Road.
Chapter Nineteen
‘The extremes among animals who over-specialise, like the sabre-toothed tiger, tend to die out while the present still holds a place for that gentlemanly compromise, the domestic cat, which can lap up its cream or go off and support itself by hunting in the woods wherever it likes.’1
With Bar approaching centre stage, Bunny was increasingly tied in with her activities, which often revolved around drinking with her artist friends. In his midweek jaunts with Bar, Bunny found himself swept along by tides of alcohol, and although he was hardly abstemious, he had not previously spent long hours propping up cocktail bars. As over-indulgence increased Bunny’s tendency to bad temper, their relationship soon became punctuated by drunken nocturnal rows.
Stephen Tomlin was very much part of this drinking culture, and now separated from Julia Strachey, was back in London. He was manic depressive and turned to alcohol in his black moods. In the past he had been able to dissimulate, to pretend to be the life and soul of any party. Julia Strachey had ‘puzzled greatly as to how people could be so taken in by what one of the few who comprehended him had described as “the inspired charade of normality” that Tommy managed to assume’.2 Now his friends began to worry, and for Bunny, those wild times with Tommy in London were tinged with anxiety.
In the spring Bunny flew down to Ipsden in south Oxfordshire, to visit Rosamond Lehmann and her husband Wogan Phillips. Part of the attraction was that Bar was there for the weekend, together with their mutual friend, the artist John Banting. After lunch everyone wanted a ride in the Klemm, and with only one passenger seat Bunny had to take each up individually. He was consequently late leaving, returning to Cambridge in the dark as the plane had no lights. He arrived back terribly late, causing the ground crew grave concern. Ray had gone to meet him at the aerodrome, but had given up waiting and gone home terrified that he had crashed. It was their thirteenth wedding anniversary.
Bunny wrote to tell Bar that he was ‘more in love with you than I was a year ago & I was crazy about you then’.3 He appreciated her independence; she was not looking for a husband, did not seem prone to that devil, jealousy, and was content for Bunny to slot into her life on his terms and at his appointed times. The relationship seemed to suit her as much as it did him, so much so that their mid-week assignations expanded into two or three evenings together. ‘Darling’, Bunny wrote, ‘you were angelic on Thursday & on Wednesday & on Tuesday. I love you a lot.’4
In early May 1934 Bunny took Ray and his father to stay in a cottage in Yorkshire. The plan was that Ray and Edward would leave together after about ten days and Bunny would stay on. Bunny’s side-plan was that Bar would join him after they had left. In the event, Bunny found himself caught between the pincers of both Ray’s and Bar’s anger. He had offended Bar at their last meeting. Having gone to bed with her, he left late in the evening, but instead of returning to Endsleigh Street, he went on to a party at Tommy’s prior invitation. Bar thought Bunny had been secretive about the party and that he preferred to spend the night carousing with Tommy rather than lingering with her. It had not occurred to Bunny that Bar would believe he had deceived her, and he assured her that his actions had saved him ‘from the impossible feeling of going into Ray’s presence, surcharged with emotion which I could not, & cannot hide & cannot refer to’. He explained that normally he would construct a temporal divide between Bar and Ray by walking ‘round & round Gordon Square after dashing back in a taxi […] trying to make myself think of something else & not you’.5
Ray was annoyed because she was sick of Bunny coming back to Endsleigh Street at all hours of the night, where he would find her awake and silent. She was also worried about her health. She had been reassured after another recent scare, but such recurrent alarms took their toll. In consequence throughout her time in Yorkshire, Ray was on edge, and Bunny wondered whether it had been a good idea to take Edward with them. It meant they did not have that salve of being completely alone together, that opportunity to re-connect. Some months later Ray wrote to Edward to say she felt sorry she had been in Swaledale with him and Bunny. ‘I was extremely unhappy then & ought not to have come & I am afraid you thought me sulky.’6
When Bunny invited T.E. Lawrence to Hilton for a flight in Pocahontas, Lawrence suggested that instead Bunny should fly down to Southampton for a trip in an air-sea rescue boat, which Lawrence was then testing. On 10 June Bunny arrived at Lawrence’s lodgings. Initially he feared the visit had been a mistake, observing ‘something celibate, clerical almost, and pedantic’ about Lawrence. When Lawrence proceeded to talk about Southampton’s medieval fortifications, Bunny felt that he might have been a scoutmaster. But as soon as they climbed into the seaplane the ‘scoutmaster vanished and there was a red-faced weatherbeaten tough mechanic in his place’.7 As they cruised out through Southampton Water, Lawrence realised something was wrong with an engine and, instructing Bunny to take the helm, proceeded to rip open a floor board, and stand on his head to investigate the bilges. According to Bunny, ‘it was then that I first fully realised how wise he had been to enlist in the ranks of the RAF. He had done a great deal for it, but it had done a great deal for him by giving him the ease and intimacy which comes from doing work with other men.’ Lawrence’s death following a motor-cycle accident eleven months later, in May 1935, prompted an entire ‘Books’ page, in which Bunny began his appreciation by describing his day with Lawrence on Southampton Water. It was Lawrence the writer whom Bunny wrote about, declaring his death ‘a tragedy for English literature’.8
Tied to the New Statesman, Bunny feared he was losing his identity as a novelist, or at least that he was losing sight of it. Initially he had enjoyed his job and the status it conferred, but he was not a natural administrator and the unvarying day-to-day, week-by-week routine seemed relentless and became dull. In June he received a letter from Prentice setting out terms for another three-year book deal, with a fixed annual salary of £300 ahead of royalties like a joined-up advance, similar to that he had enjoyed in the early 1920s. It was a generous offer. Presumably Bunny was testing the water for an alternative income to his New Statesman salary.
On 16 July the Endsleigh Street experiment ended. It had lasted just over a year and a half, and from Ray’s point of view had not been a success. She had endeavoured to take control in insisting they live together in London. It was supposed to have kept Bunny close, but even in London his will to live life on his terms prevailed: he had cloistered Ray through his own absence with another woman. With no London base, Bunny opted to lodge with Bar. This was not ideal for either of them. She had never been exclusive, and at this time was involved with both Stephen Tomlin and Rosamond Lehmann’s husband, Wogan Phillips. Bunny had discovered Bar with Wogan, and the worse for alcohol, let rip his temper. A few days later he wrote to her: ‘I have thought a good deal about you & me’, ‘the last week seems so horrible that I can’t bear it or face a repetition’.9 And then, magnanimously reasonable, he suggested that Bar and Wogan should go away together. Both reactions were typical. Bunny always claimed to be immune from jealousy, but he was only immune at a distance where he could consider his reactions dispassionately.
When Bar blamed Bunny for keeping her in London all summer waiting for him, he retorted that he disliked her hurt, sacrificial and scolding tone. He was beginning to feel claustrophobic, that Bar was making too many demands, expecting him to offer more than he could give. ‘I feel sure’, Bunny said, ‘that my staying with [you] every week as a habit is a mistake: it puts us both in a false position & spoils both love & friendship. It’s a sort of make believe marriage with the bad features of marriage rather than the good.’10
‘My relations with Barbara’, he explained to Ray, ‘which grew out of her falling in love with me & offering me gaiety & light heart – are now false.’ To what extent he felt the need to review his relationship with Bar in the light of her other love affairs is uncertain, but it was typical of Bunny to turn to Ray just at the
moment of retrenchment. ‘I beg you’, he wrote, ‘to bear with me; to remember how much I do love you & not to drive me away when we might come together.’ Once more he asked Ray to be patient, to accept his love. He told her, just as so often before, that he would not hurt her if he could help it.
Bunny believed the strength of his love for Ray should enable her to remain fixed at the centre of his universe, to withstand his taking off to explore satellites in the knowledge that he would return. He always did return, but Ray could only endure so much. Since Bunny had moved in with Norah, and latterly with Bar, Ray’s reserves of trust were seriously depleted. If he was capable of leaving for short spells, would he, one day, leave permanently? Ray had, anyway, heard it all before. ‘I suppose’, she said to Bunny, ‘we will go on together as before only with less respect for one another – a little less love & a good deal less trust.’ She put up a brave but resigned defence, telling Bunny that the last year had crushed her, that his indifference was terrible to her. ‘I’ve never defended myself for being jealous. But I will say this now. Almost anyone would be in my place.’ Ray saw through him, because she was familiar with the pattern: ‘A short time ago you said you wanted her [Barbara] always for half your life […]. It seems to me that you wanted a dream & there’s no hope of making the best of what’s real.’11
‘You know’, Bunny replied, ‘however much I have wounded you & been cruel to you, that I do love you more than anyone in the world. You know that though your dumbness exasperates me, that I love you permanently. I do love you & beg you to live with me now & to give me a little while to leave Barbara without hurting her too much.’ ‘I am’, he added, ‘a bloody messer up of my own & other lives.’ In the depths of this letter, surrounded by a thicket of words of love, Bunny inserted his usual terms and conditions: ‘I don’t think I could ever be faithful to you for very long. I can’t bear to feel bound.’12
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