Sylvia Townsend Warner

by Claire Harman

  On 12 January 1931, they drove from Lavenham to spend the night in London, where Sylvia had tickets for a Schnabel concert at the Queen’s Hall. On their way to 113, Sylvia said very simply and decisively that she wanted no one but Valentine. It was a statement of complete trust, and their subsequent love-making was exceptionally happy. The next morning Valentine said that it had been a marriage-night. ‘For my part, why not?’ wrote Sylvia, many years later. ‘I loved, I increasingly honoured, and if being bewitched into compliance is obedience, I obeyed. As for fidelity, it seemed as natural as the circulation of my blood, and no more meritorious.’19 From then on they were committed to each other, and kept 12 January as a wedding anniversary, the most solemn of the many festive days of their private year; Valentine’s Day, birthdays, the anniversary of seeing Miss Green’s cottage, moving in, becoming lovers – all marked by delightful small gifts, for they were both remarkably talented at choosing presents.

  Sylvia was neither writing nor attempting to write much. In 1930 the limited edition of Elinor Barley had been published by the Cresset Press and Sylvia had finished her long narrative poem Opus 7, begun in 1929. ‘Early One Morning’ had languished and been put by. Later she re-made part of it into a short story. When Opus 7 and A Moral Ending – three stories in a limited edition with an introduction by Theodore Powys – were published early in 1931, Sylvia had no major project in hand. For the first time in months she was doing a little of the music editing she was obliged to finish for the Oxford University Press, but besides that, and a little ‘vile’ poetry, there was nothing.

  Because of the smallness of Miss Green’s cottage, Sylvia and Valentine would retire severally to Florrie Legg’s to work, later renting the tiny dissenting chapel from Mr Goult, the carrier, for the same purpose. He used it to store parcels in. Valentine was very concerned by her own lack of output in the months since she had moved in with Sylvia. She couldn’t understand why being happy seemed to inhibit her from writing poetry when her uncomfortable affair with Dorothy Warren had had the opposite effect. Gloomily she concluded, in the manner of much of the bargaining that went on in her childhood, that she might be driven to leave Sylvia, her only happiness, if she were to write ‘properly’, and her reverence for poetry was such that this became a real dilemma. Sylvia was in a difficult position as regards Valentine’s poems. She had been polite and encouraging rather than enthusiastic when she had read Valentine’s poems in 1929, calling them ‘pleasing minor verse’.20 Of course, once she was in love with Valentine and knew more about her poetry, and how important it was to her happiness, enthusiasm was the least she felt or showed. The poems meant infinitely much more to her, especially since all the newer ones were about their love. She began to perceive Valentine’s way of writing – lyrical, short and loose-formed – as superior to her own, purer and more difficult. She also saw that it would not, as it stood, make Valentine into what she wanted to be, a published, widely-read poet. In her diary Sylvia wrote, ‘if I can teach her the necessity for being a charlatan, that conjuror’s trick which Housman has so perfectly, I shall have done something. It is, perhaps, the peck of dust we must all eat before we die, but eat it we must to show we are alive.’

  As the months went by at Chaldon, Sylvia and Valentine’s lives ‘joined up imperceptibly, all along their lengths’,21 although adjustments could sometimes be difficult. Their first and possibly worst row had at its root the absolute difference which existed between them over matters of domestic economy. Sylvia was used to efficiency in housekeeping and would not throw away half a tomato, enjoying thrift as it should be enjoyed – as a vice. Valentine, on the other hand, had been conditioned to despise such behaviour as indicative of poverty, and thought that Sylvia demeaned herself with housewifely fidgetings, when in fact she was exercising her ingenuity. Sylvia made efforts to suppress her worst excesses, but the habit was so ingrained and so sensible that she could not lose it altogether and she resigned herself to cultivating extravagance alongside it, which she mastered very quickly and well. Valentine’s insistence on ‘the best’ or nothing at all intrigued her as part of a discriminating character: even before they were lovers and Sylvia had suggested that they could buy certain tools for Miss Green’s from Woolworth’s, she noticed a shudder of disapproval pass across Valentine’s face. There were differences, too, over music; differences in response. ‘I became rather tiresome and absorbed,’ Sylvia wrote apologetically, noting how, when listening to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony on the radio, Valentine had left the room abruptly. A few weeks after this, when the Matthew Passion was being broadcast, ‘I sat listening and she sat staring.’ There were a number of concerts in London Valentine had to stare through that first winter, as Sylvia had bought her usual season tickets, but it was the last time she bought them. Concerts and operas, so much a part of her former life, became rare occurrences, for she could not enjoy going often without Valentine, and Valentine preferred not to go. Also, as their life together was centred in Chaldon, it was impractical to think of regular excursions to the capital. This was not because Valentine did not appreciate music, but because she could not appreciate it, in her ‘layman’s’ way, in front of Sylvia, just as she never played the piano or violin in front of Sylvia, though she had learned both those instruments. So, though their lives may have joined up along their lengths, and remained so joined, their breadths remained oddly differing and unknown and, like all wise lovers, they left a little strangeness between them, a little privacy. Sylvia felt a responsibility not to spoil what she had found in Valentine, ‘to house, and yet not to tame, this wild solitary heart, so fierce even in its diffidence. And I, lumbering, so I seem to myself, after, clogged with all this cargo of years and tolerance and mind’s dust.’

  At that period the phenomenon of two women living together or sharing a hotel bedroom was assumed to be innocuous and respectable, even when one of the women was dressed like a man. The war had left many spinsters little choice in that matter, and to find ladies living as companions was a commonplace. Ostensibly, Sylvia and Valentine were such a pair, for though the oil man had caught them embracing, they did not make a habit of behaving like lovers in front of other people; on the contrary, they maintained very proper married manners in public. Those who knew Valentine, however, were perfectly able to guess what their relations were, and one by one the penny dropped among Sylvia’s friends too. Many, while not disapproving of lesbianism as such, found it hard to continue the same sort of friendship as before because Sylvia-in-love was such a distant, preoccupied figure compared with the Universal Aunt of former years. Oliver Warner did not grudge Sylvia her happiness, but took a strong dislike to Valentine and referred to her (not in Sylvia’s presence) as ‘the white slug’.22 Buck, a worldly and unshockable man, had given them his blessing. So too had Theodore Powys, not in words but in his unbroken friendship – unlike Violet, who went through a period of snubbing Miss Green’s once she was satisfied what was going on there. Charles Prentice did not, apparently, realise anything for some time. Purefoy and Arthur Machen thought no ill of them for several years, only opining that Valentine might be improved by a little make-up, but were deeply shocked when they found out that Sylvia and Valentine were lovers. Purefoy could not have ‘cut’ Sylvia for the world, but they were never so close again. On the other hand, it is said23 that Vera Raymond, also shocked, tried to intervene and wrote Sylvia a letter pointing out what a terrible mistake it was and why couldn’t she see sense, and so forth. Sylvia, incensed with Vera for doing this, and with Harold too for condoning it, wrote back in an equally forthright way and her seven-year friendship with Vera ended abruptly in acrimony.

  Nora Eiloart had met Valentine during the summer of 1930, when Ronald was in Chaldon helping with the cottage. With her quick and critical eye she immediately formed an unfavourable impression of the masculine young woman, who for her part thought Nora ‘a rather lovely woman’.24 Sylvia was not in love then, but later it must have been fairly clear to Nora, even at a di
stance, that there was more to all this gadding up and down to Norfolk and inseparability than a convenient house-sharing scheme. Sylvia knew that she would have to go to Little Zeal in the summer for a month or so as usual, and intended to tell Nora and Ronald outright how things stood, but events overtook her when, on 23 March, a week before the Easter of 1931, she received a telegram in Chaldon – ‘Ronald dead’.

  When Sylvia arrived at Little Zeal the next afternoon, she heard how it happened. Ronald had complained of a dull ache under his collar bone in the morning, but went out to continue work on a small garden studio he was making for Nora. At tea-time she went out to find him and saw his feet sticking out from round the corner of the building. He was dead, of angina, aged forty-two. Already there was talk of an inquest (though it was deemed unnecessary in the end) and arrangements for the funeral were under way, and in the long day which had elapsed since finding Ronald dead, Nora had become ominously brisk and self-controlled. After an initial collapse onto Sylvia there were no more tears.

  Sylvia was taken upstairs to see Ronald’s body. His hands were folded idly and to Sylvia he looked very beautiful, sharing the ‘secret’ look she had seen on her father’s face. There was plenty to remind her of that other death, from Nora’s assumption that she would sleep with her to Sylvia’s inhibiting conviction that she was no comfort to her mother. Sylvia began to feel her own loss, too, for she had been very fond of Ronald, and esteemed his qualities as having earned her father’s admiration. She also began to see how completely he had been responsible for the good relations between her mother and herself since the marriage and how, now he was dead, things were falling back quickly into the old antagonisms. Nora, then aged sixty-four, had determined to stay on at Little Zeal with the dogs and the garden, and though she did not like Sylvia any better than before, would now require longer and more frequent filial attentions from her. After all, Sylvia had no ties – it would be no skin off her nose.

  Sylvia’s half-formed plan of telling her mother about her marriage was put by, as Nora was in no state to attend to such news, but the strain of being separated from Valentine so abruptly and for such a long time – it was expected that Sylvia would be in Devon for two weeks – seemed unbearable. As it turned out, they were apart only eight days, but between them wrote thirty long and impassioned love-letters. Flowers and telegrams, schemings for clandestine meetings, visits to the post office in South Brent, all this must have produced an unseemly excitability in Sylvia. With arrangements for the funeral still going on and the vicar and Nora somewhat at cross purposes, Sylvia could not restrain herself from trying to bring the conversation round to Chaldon and the possibility of Nora visiting – perhaps that very weekend? – suggesting that Miss Ackland might be able to teach the gardener to drive, as Nora would be stuck with a driver-less car, and other wildly impractical suggestions, all turning on the presence of Valentine, her virtues and capabilities. Even through the fog of bereavement, Nora was onto this in a flash and when one of Sylvia’s schemes bore fruit and Ruth Ackland, on a pretext of condolence, came to tea at Little Zeal – driven there, of course, by Valentine – Nora wasted no time in sounding out her opinion of their daughters’ ‘sudden and intense friendship’.25 Ruth thought she fended this off cleverly by being bland and unforthcoming on the subject, saying only how ‘nice’ – a favourite word – it was for the two young women. But Nora need only have looked at Sylvia when she came back into the room, her face dishevelled from a snatched embrace in the kitchen, to have her question answered much more comprehensively. Nora, putting the situation together for herself, stole a march on Sylvia, who was never able to make the proud announcement she had planned. Ruth, whom she disliked on sight, and Valentine, whom she now despised, became prime targets for Nora’s scorn and sarcasm.

  Valentine drove Sylvia back to Chaldon on Good Friday, a day earlier than expected because Uncle Bertie had arrived providentially at Little Zeal. Miss Green’s cottage was filled with flowers, but Valentine seemed exhausted and distraught: ‘it almost broke my heart to think how lonely she had been, and tormented with every fear,’ Sylvia wrote in her diary. One thing was clear – they would avoid another such separation at all costs.

  In May, they went to Winterton for Valentine’s birthday, when a shower of presents one to the other cheered Ruth out of a money gloom. On the same occasion, Sylvia was taken to meet John Craske, a man of pure Norfolk fishing stock who had been forced to leave the sea due to lingering ill health and an abcess on the brain, which had left him subject to comas and stupefaction. In his long invalidism he had begun to paint, and when Valentine first visited him in 1927 – hearing that he made model boats – she found his cottage full of remarkable seascapes painted on any and every surface. The watercolour of The James Edward she bought that day for thirty shillings, ‘the utmost money I dared spend’,26 was Craske’s first sale. Dorothy Warren saw the picture in London and wanted to know more about the artist, suggesting that if Valentine could go on her behalf with a blank cheque and buy as many pictures as possible, they could stage a Craske show at the Warren Galleries. Valentine, whose sense of a fair price put her at an instant disadvantage in all business transactions, cashed the cheque for twenty or twenty-five pounds and gave the money to the Craskes in return for a great many pictures. When she told Dorothy Warren what she had paid for them, ‘for one moment I saw a look of incredulity on her face’27 – hardly surprising, since Dorothy had previously offered ten pounds for a single picture and sold several subsequently at a comfortable profit. The pictures were shown in 1929 and attracted good notices. Craske was hailed as a Primitive, though Sylvia was to write later that ‘if Craske is to be put into a category, he must be placed with the Intuitives – a companion to John Clare.’28 By 1931, Dorothy Warren was planning a further exhibition to include some of the needlework pictures Craske had begun to make in the late twenties, pictures which particularly appealed to Sylvia on her first visit to the red-brick cottage in East Dereham: ‘The room was filled with Craske’s work, pictures in wool, silk, paint, – even the ornaments painted with ships and lighthouses,’29 and she bought several works.

  Sylvia and Valentine spent a couple of weeks in London on their way back to Chaldon, and Dorothy Warren made the Craske business an excuse to see Valentine alone. On one of these evenings, Sylvia dined with Bea, who was as delightful as ever, though carried further and further into her husband Mark’s career at the BBC, where he was soon to become Principal Conductor. Two nights later, Valentine was again with Dorothy and Sylvia had Percy Buck to dine at the neglected Warnerium flat. At lunch Buck had met Einstein, who said of his own theories, ‘When it has been discovered if they are correct – for myself I do not know – one of two things will happen. If I am right, the Germans will say I was a German, the French, that I was a Jew. If I am wrong, the Germans will say I was a Jew, and the French, he was a German.’30 Teague played the piano for her – something he always avoided doing before – and they had an argument about Isaiah, ‘and it was all very peaceful and pleasant’. When he had gone, she went up to talk to the Warners and was not too concerned where Valentine had got to until the phone rang at two in the morning and Valentine, in a weak voice, asked her to come round to Queensborough Studios. ‘The room was all upheaved, rugs scratched up, scars on the wooden floor, ink spilt, furniture awry. Valentine herself very flushed and breathless and black-eyed, walking up and down and staring from the window.’ Dorothy (and her dog) had attacked Valentine when she came back to see the Craskes, knocked her down, tried to strangle her with a tie, threatened to knock her face in with a kettle, hit her on the face with her fist and knocked her head against the floor repeatedly. Valentine escaped by going limp, only to have Dorothy try to throw her out of the window. All this was followed by abuse, recriminations, threats of suicide, an attempt to tear up Valentine’s poems and tears. Dorothy had stormed out, only to come back a little later with a calm sweet smile to say, ‘You see, when I am angry I am always violent.’31
Sylvia was furious when she heard all this and swore vengeance on ‘that woman’, but Valentine would not have it, for the same reason she refused to hit back at Dorothy – it wasn’t honourable.

  They went back to Chaldon relieved to be alone together for a while, but fending off visitors proved difficult since Gamel Woolsey and Gerald Brenan, two young writers who irritated Sylvia, were in the village, Alyse Gregory was unhappy, Betty Muntz was in love with Valentine and Katie Powys had developed an obsessive passion for Sylvia. One visitor they always welcomed was Granny Moxon, an ageing countrywoman who lived in the thatched cottage next to The Sailors Return, and as such was their nearest neighbour. She had cropped white hair under her battered hat, a gypsyish, weather-browned skin, a laugh ‘exactly like a woodpecker’s cry’ and the endearing habit, in times of great stress, of dropping on her knees and praying to herself. ‘Granny’ had befriended Valentine when she first came to Chaldon, recognising in the young woman not only a true love of the country and the skill to learn its ways, but a lonely, proud nature like her own. Valentine came to think of her as the mother she would like to have had, almost literally an ‘earth-mother’. It was Granny who taught Valentine to dig, lit the first fire at Miss Green’s and constantly reassured Valentine ‘Thee’m be all right’.

  Valentine needed such reassurance. The summer of 1931 ran her into gloom again, for no obvious reason: ‘We walked up the hill and along the violet path looking for snakes. I was still a little touchy, still under my cloud. What are these clouds? I believe drink – or else no poetry for some time, or else a deep inferiority-complex. All three, I expect. A bad, devilish trinity.’32 Sylvia was writing poems, correcting the proofs of Theodore’s novel, Unclay, cooking, sewing, gardening, loving. Valentine saw herself sinking further and further into a disadvantage, not only as a writer, but financially, for she disliked her dependence on Ruth’s allowance of £300 per annum and Sylvia’s patronage. An evening spent at her accounts showed her to be six pounds in debt, but as usual this only depressed her and egged her on to spend more. The day after the account-book, when Sylvia had left for a weekend in Devon, Valentine bought herself a pair of crocodile shoes in Weymouth and the following for Sylvia: