Curriculum Vitae

by Muriel Spark

  But Stanford’s writings about me, with their cheap overtones, did him more harm than good. His book on the ’forties raised a volley of protests from other people whom he had described wrongly. I was too busy to raise my voice at the time. I said nothing then. I have said it now, this being the place.

  To return to the ’fifties: emerging from the Poetry Society I had found to my surprise that my name had become known and that I was fairly popular with the press, on account of my editorial taste. But I had not yet earned a literary reputation by my own writing. And reputation apart I had a love of writing which was becoming an imperative in my life. With an idea developing in my head, a pen in my hand and a notebook open before me I was in bliss.

  To keep myself going I had a part-time job in the very lively offices of European Affairs. This was a magazine for and about Eastern Europe and its exiles. It was run by Elma Dangerfield, a clever English society woman, and Monty Radulovitch, a Montenegrin journalist who had written a book on Tito. Our offices were often full of members of shadow cabinets and vociferous exiles from Poland, Rumania, Russia, huddled always in their overcoats.

  I would have involved myself far more in this exotic enterprise had I not vowed to give my main attention to my literary work. I was with European Affairs full time for a while, and then I had to explain that I could only do three days a week. Monty Radulovitch accepted this offer although Elma Dangerfield, his partner, was against it. She was a creature of the ’thirties, petite, with a short, tight, head-hugging coiffure and short, tight, body-hugging dresses. I kept an ear out for her voice and her terms of expression, as I always do with people. Monty’s way of speech was a treasure-house to me. I was not yet writing stories and novels, but I was working towards the narrative art, and saved up Voices’ in my memory-file. The phrase of Monty’s that I remember most was the warning: ‘Elma, you regret thees, you regret thees, Elma, all your life.’ So it was when Elma wanted to refuse my offer of three days’ work a week. ‘Elma, you regret thees.’ Elma gave in and I stayed. I always had a soft spot for Monty, and in later years when he was on his own and had to put his thoughts into good English I would type out his letters and press-releases on a friendly basis.

  I was now living at No. 1, Vicarage Gate, a short way up Kensington Church Street from Kensington High Street. The name of this rooming house was Eras House. I had a small single-bed room, a gas ring and a wash basin. This is largely the scene of my novel Loitering With Intent. Not far away was St Mary Abbot’s church and extended churchyard which has now long since been made over as a playground. But in those days of the early ’fifties the old Victorian graves were still standing, overgrown with weeds, with the names and strange dedicatory epitaphs still visible. I used to take my sandwich lunch there on fine days, when I had my days off, and write my poems. Always, now, on my desk, was the book I was writing.

  My first project with Derek Stanford was to edit a book on Wordsworth to mark the centenary of his death in 1850. Derek had published a book of poems and one of criticism, but I was new to the publishing of books. We found a sympathetic publisher in André Deutsch, then of Allan Wingate, who impressed me very much by his intelligence and courtesy. He went out of his way for us as if we were world-famous authors intead of small-time beginners. In fact André Deutsch, my first publisher, was one of the nicest I have ever met.

  The book was divided into two parts: Derek took care of the nineteenth-century critics from whom he published extracts while I wrote to the younger critics to get essays from them. The earlier part of the twentieth century I covered in my introduction. The book also had a joint introduction by us both. I remember deciding at that stage that if I were to edit or write any more joint productions in prose with anybody we would each have to contribute our separate part. Word by word composition was agonizing to me. Derek’s prose was flamboyant and convoluted; mine, simple. Apart from that reservation, when I look now at Tribute to Wordsworth as we called it, I feel genuinely that it was an excellent handbook for students. Derek’s section was by far the richer, for most of the nineteenth-century essays he reprinted were out of copyright, whereas the contemporary writers had to be paid by the publisher’s modest budget. Derek and I earned twenty-five pounds each for this book. My gross literary earnings for 1949 totalled one hundred and twenty-nine pounds, five shillings. This included payment for the Wordsworth book and some reviews and poems in various magazines. My part-time job made up the meagre rest.

  My next literary work written in 1950 was entirely my own, a full-length study of Mary Shelley which I published in 1951 with a small publisher, Pen-in-Hand (later Tower Bridge Publications). To get myself started on this big task I gave up my part-time job, although I sometimes continued to write articles for European Affairs on a free-lance basis. H.K. Grant, the former Librarian of the Poetry Society, helped me a great deal, in a spirit of pure devotion (for he wanted no reward) by looking up and copying information that I needed from the British Museum, or acquiring the necessary books from local free libraries. Child of Light was my title for this book (which more recently I have revised under the title Mary Shelley). Writing against time for economic reasons and at the same time trying to be scrupulously accurate was not easy. I often sat up writing far into the night. A poet-friend, Iris Birtwistle, had generously given me a typewriter but I used this only for the final draft (which had to be done by day so as not to disturb the other tenants of the rooming-house). That year, 1950, my gross literary earnings were one hundred and thirty-four pounds, three shillings and threepence, but by the time my book was published in 1951 I had taken another part-time job with a public relations man, Pearson Horder. My job was actually to write speeches for industrialists based on very few data, sometimes merely the contents of the firm’s hand-out brochures. I remember one of my speeches about manager-employee relationships being particularly successful. How did I manage it? I really don’t know. I think I must have parodied everything I had dimly heard or read on the subject, racked around in my imagination, and then thrown in a bit of existential philosophy to make it sound impressive. How I wish I had a copy of that speech now! I can’t even remember which industrialist was to deliver the speech. I recall a Mr Colston of Hoover Washing Machines as one of Horder’s clients, but whether that particular speech was intended for him or for another, I can’t now say.

  The public relations job really wore my heart away. I would look out of the window and think of Paul Verlaine’s lines from prison:

  Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit,

  Si bleu, si calme!

  and long for the hours to pass so that I could walk home through the park.

  But my Child of Light had some favourable reviews. I had already gone to see Alan Pryce-Jones who was then editor of the Times Literary Supplement. To my great pleasure he commissioned me to write a middle page on Mary Shelley, which appeared before publication. I remember Derek Stanford was rather taken aback by this, and rather too immediately wrote off to Alan Pryce-Jones asking for work for himself without success. I felt rather embarrassed about this, but Derek had generally, with my permission, used my address when writing to publishers about his own affairs as well as about our joint productions. We sometimes translated or wrote poems together, each doing a different verse. An address in Kensington was much better for Derek, especially in those days, than one in Hounslow where he lived.

  P.H. Newby, head of the Third Programme at the BBC, next commissioned me to give a talk on Mary Shelley. I was rapidly becoming better known. I edited, with Derek, a selection of Mary Shelley’s letters. The introduction, this time, was done in the form of dialogue, I writing my paragraph and Derek replying in his own words. It was a much better system.

  Sometimes, on free days, I would go for a walk in the country with Derek. St Albans was our favourite spot. It was near to London and I remembered so well the woods and lanes of my childhood holidays in Hertfordshire.

  That year, 1951, I continued to write a flow of articles and poems, and I go
t together my first book of poetry, The Fanfarlo and Other Verse, which was published in 1952 by Erica Marx. Erica, a dear friend, was the owner of the Hand and Flower Press. She was fairly well off and her series of poetry books was financed entirely out of her own pocket. She published good poets, mainly at a loss. (She was amused to note that she actually made a profit, much later when I had an established name, out of my Fanfarlo.)

  Wrey Gardiner, who was a director of Grey Walls Press, now commissioned me to edit a selection of Emily Brontë’s poems in their famous Crown Classics series. I did this, but had to wait for a long, long time for my money.

  That year, I started writing my book on the works of John Masefield. I had now moved to 65 Old Brompton Road, to a furnished room in the flat of Mr and Mrs Andipatin, a fine couple from Mauritius. From there I had written the previous winter to Masefield and was asked to come and see him at Burcote Brook, near Oxford. I went on a freezing day, Wednesday, 6 December 1950. It was a thrilling visit, to a poet I much admired. I was now moving, myself, from lyric poetry to narrative verse. This was the start of my move in literature towards the short story and then the novel. I took a passionate interest in Arthur Hugh Clough’s novel in verse Amours de Voyage, about which I am still enthusiastic. And I felt that Masefield’s stories in verse, Reynard the Fox and Dauber, were shamefully neglected. I have recently revised and republished my book, John Masefield. In the new introduction is a long portion of my journal entry describing my visit, his marvellous conversation, and especially his personal reminiscences of Swinburne. Although I found his house rather cold – we each had a small paraffin stove by our chair at lunch – and there was no alcoholic drink, it was one of the happiest days of my life. I remember well the euphoria of the white, frozen landscape around the house. It was on this occasion that Masefield spoke those words that I was to remember later: ‘All experience is good for an artist.’

  On the way to the station after lunch I dived into a pub next to Blackwell’s in Broad Street and put back a double rum.

  I spent 1951 writing my book on John Masefield. I had a new part-time survival-job at Falcon Press where I was secretary to a charming retired major, Walter Meade. Much of this environment goes into my novel, A Far Cry from Kensington. Walter wrote very good poetry. He had written the screenplay of Scott of the Antarctic. He had been sent into the firm by the owner’s father, Reginald Baker, who was an Ealing Studio tycoon. But even Baker’s money could not eventually save his son Peter, a reckless spender and forger, from an over-harsh seven-year prison sentence. In the period of my work at Falcon Press, however, Peter was still flourishing.

  In that year 1951 came the first real turning-point in my career. In November The Observer announced a short-story competition on the subject of Christmas. The first prize was two hundred and fifty pounds, quite a fortune in those days, with various secondary prizes.

  The rules were that the story should be not more than three thousand words, and the entry should be anonymous. The story was to be accompanied by an envelope signed by a pseudonym on the outside, the real name inside.

  I put aside my work on Masefield and wrote ‘The Seraph and the Zambesi’ on foolscap paper, straight off. Now I had to type it but I found I had no typing paper. I scrounged some from the owner of an art shop nearby in South Kensington, typed it out, put my pseudonym ‘Aquarius’ on the envelope and my name and address inside, and mailed it all off to The Observer that afternoon.

  I used to keep a notebook which I called my ‘Despatch Book’. This is still among my papers. On the right side of the page I wrote the name of the journal to which I submitted my work as I wrote it. On the left I wrote against it, when the fate of the submitted piece was known, either the words ‘accepted’ or ‘returned’ – more often than not the latter. I see on one page that I sent a poem called ‘The Messengers’ to the Times Literary Supplement on 28 October (returned); and on the same day a poem ‘The Nativity’ to Time and Tide (returned). On 29 October I sent a poem ‘Hymn to Apollo’ to The Listener (returned). On 1 November I sent a parody verse-play The Cocktail’s Not for Drinking to Adelphi (returned), and on 1 November a poem ‘The Conversation of the Angels’ (returned). On 5 November I recorded ‘The Observer Short Story Comp., The Seraph, the Zambesi, and the Fanfarlo.’ This time my comment on the left-hand side of the page is ‘Got it’. For, near Christmas, I had a phone call from Philip Toynbee of The Observer. My story had won first place out of six thousand seven hundred entries. ‘We thought it was written by a man until we opened the envelope,’ said Philip. I don’t know if I was supposed to be flattered by that.

  The story was published on the following Sunday. I had by now met and liked the Observer editor and staff. The editor, David Astor, Philip Toynbee and Terence Kilmartin had been the judges. Just after midnight on the Sunday of publication, David Astor himself brought the paper to me. It was thrilling to have the newspaper delivered by the editor.

  Derek Stanford had not been keen on my wasting my time on story-writing, but now to make him happy I gave him fifty pounds for Christmas. My son, who to my parents’ satisfaction had decided to be a Jew, also got fifty pounds to pay for a party for his bar mitzvah. I bought myself a blue velvet dress for six pounds and a complete set of Proust’s A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.

  I took Derek to introduce him to some Observer editors at their local pub. This wasn’t a great success. Philip Toynbee wore a detachable dog-collar. (Philip claimed that he had found it agreeable during the war, as a young officer, to get into a first-class carriage on a train, wearing his clerical collar, and lecture colonels and generals about their morals.) Derek, on this occasion, said to Philip, ‘I did not know you had taken orders, Mr Toynbee.’ Whereupon Philip took off his collar and drank his beer in a long draught. He definitely did not take to Derek who had begun to display ever more eighteenth-century affectations.

  My story caused quite a stir.

  Not long after this, in January 1952, Tony Strachan, who was to become a lifelong friend, came to join us at Falcon Press. Tony was already a novelist. Walter Meade interviewed Tony, and when he had gone said, ‘What a nice young man.’ Tony got a job with us. He reminisces how ‘the only real pro in the firm, Alex Fulcher, the traveller,’ greeted him: ‘“What the hell do you want to come and work here for? Baker’s a madman.”’ Fulcher offered Tony seven pounds a week. ‘Peter Baker came in and said, “I was thinking of more like six pounds ten.”’ Tony also reminds me about the bad-debts sheriff’s officer or bailiff who was ‘so constantly in attendance that when he died there was some confusion as to whether or not he was a member of the staff, who clubbed together to buy him a wreath.’

  ‘No one’, writes Tony Strachan, ‘has ever been as poor as you were in those days. I mean someone of education, culture and background. You told Billie [Tony’s wife] that you had one dress, and your shoes had holes in them.’

  This was true. I was getting tired of it. I also had very little to eat. Those were days of rationing, tighter even than during the war. If one didn’t eat the whole of the allotted rations one was in trouble. In 1952 to 1953 a single person was allowed one and a half ounces of cheese, four ounces of bacon, two eggs and eight ounces of butter per week (there was a special coronation issue of four ounces of butter in May 1953). Butcher’s meat was rationed by price, limited to one shilling and ninepence per week in 1953. This was, in fact, the basis of a fairly balanced minimum diet. But living alone, as I did, I neglected to take these basics. I didn’t care enough. Derek, whose ration book was naturally registered at home together with those of his parents and whose rations were collected by them, used to visit me about twice a week and of course automatically share my meagre rations. I don’t imagine for a moment that he thought of rations or of food. In all the great mass of letters he wrote to me he never mentioned food. Neither did I, but the fact remains that I was thoroughly undernourished. When I went to Edinburgh for The Observer to cover the Edinburgh Festival in 1953 I felt thoroughly ill, and
hardly knew what I was doing.

  Tony Strachan had always begged me to give up working on literary criticism and biographies. I was now editing a book of the Brontë letters which in fact I think was successful. I made it deliberately read like a story. Jointly with Derek I planned a book on Emily Brontë. I was responsible for the biographical section, he, the critical. This essay on Emily Brontë is, I believe, my most closely reasoned piece of non-fictional prose. But Tony was right. He positively nagged me about the waste of my talent, and in fact, only a few years later, it was Tony Strachan who persuaded Macmillan and their editor, Alan Maclean, to commission a novel from me.

  One day in 1953, a lunch was given at the Ritz for writers on the Shelleys by the famous Shelley collector Carl H. Pforzheimer and his wife. As the author of a book on Mary Shelley I was invited. It was 24 July 1953. There I had red caviare for the first time in my life. The party included a number of Shelley scholars, notably the poets Cecil Day Lewis and Edmund Blunden. Day Lewis was enchanted by the two very pretty young Pforzheimer granddaughters who were on their way to do the Grand Tour of Europe with their grandparents. Mr Pforzheimer made an interesting speech, followed by Cecil Day Lewis and then by Edmund Blunden. I recall talking to a man on my right and exchanging addresses with him – I took my little diary out of my bag, then put it back again. I also remember—but only after nearly forty years – that as I put my handbag down on the floor on my left side, Edmund Blunden, sitting on my left, fished into it and took my notebook out. I thought this was a bit of foolery and was too champagned-up to really notice. Only recently, checking on the date of that lovely Pforzheimer lunch, I came across an entry written by another hand than mine underneath the date 24 July 1953 and my own note ‘Pforzheimer Shelley lunch’. The words are: ‘This is a reminder that you were at this lunch and endured a speech by E. Blunden. Please come to Charing X Sta. on 4 Aug at 6 p.m.’