During her stay at ‘24’ in 1935, Jean Untermeyer did Sylvia an unimaginably good turn. In the course of conversation Sylvia described ‘some absurd thing which had happened in the village and she [Jean] said, “You really ought to write that for the New Yorker.” ’84 The idea of the New Yorker taking any such thing, written by her, seemed to Sylvia so unlikely that she made a bet with Jean that the magazine would reject her. Later in the year, she submitted ‘My Mother Won the War’ and the New Yorker accepted it, publishing the story on 30 May 1936, the first of over a hundred and fifty stories to appear in its pages over the next forty years. Apart from the distinction of being admitted to the New Yorker ‘club’, the subsequent widening of her following in America and the fact that, by having a market, she had a motive to develop her talent as a short-story writer, Sylvia’s association with the magazine made her financially secure (once the effect had taken hold) for the rest of her life. She used to refer to the New Yorker as ‘my gentleman friend’ and, remembering the bet with Jean Untermeyer, once said, ‘I had to forfeit the five pounds. But on the whole, it was a good bargain.’85
Unfortunately, Valentine never found herself such a golden goose and remained a very low earner from her writing. The disparity in their incomes, which grew yearly, was not of any importance to Sylvia, though it troubled Valentine deeply. Her instinct was to provide for and cherish Sylvia, and her conscience and pride were against being constantly supported, being a ‘parasite’. Sylvia disclaiming this made no difference to her feelings.
1935 was, on the whole, a good year for Valentine. Party business kept her occupied and she seemed at last to be getting the better of her drink problem, marking ‘D.D.’ against 126 days. She was working hard and seriously at her book, called ‘Country Conditions’, taking herself and it off for days at a time to Rats Barn, over the downs from ‘24’. Her method in ‘Country Conditions’ was expository rather than discursive, and akin to the method of her poems, expressive, lyrical. Her political commitment and the example of like-minded contemporary poets (Auden, most inevitably and strongly) was such, though, that she felt it desirable to adjust the method of her poems to serve better the purpose of the time. The issues were what mattered, not some increment in a personal poetic development. The urge to justify her politics, convert and answer her own class was strong and resulted in poems such as ‘Communist Poem, 1935’. It is interesting to note how the explanatory style of this poem was adopted by, rather than assimilated into, the ‘core’ of her own voice, just as literary influences in her earlier days – of Dickinson, Thomas, Lawrence, Hopkins – had been taken up, and as easily put by.
“What must we do, in a country lost already,
Where already the mills stop, already the factories
Wither inside themselves, kernels smalling in shells,
(‘Fewer hands – fewer hands’) and all the ploughed lands
Put down to grass, to bungalows, to graveyards already.
What’s in a word? Comrade, while still our country
Seems solid around us, rotting – but still our country.
Comrade is rude, uncouth; bandied among youths
Idle and sick perhaps, wandering with other chaps,
Standing around in what is still our country.”
Answer them: Over the low hills and the pastures
Come no more cattle, over the land no more herdsmen;
Nothing against the sky now, no stains show
Of smoke. We’re done. Only a few work on,
Against time now working to end your time.
Answer: Because the end is coming sooner
Than you allowed for, hail the end as salvation.
Watch how the plough wounds, hear the unlovely sounds
Of syrens wring the air; how everything
Labours again, cries out, and again breeds life.
Here is our life, say: Where the dismembered country
Lies, a dead foeman rises a living comrade.
Here where our day begins and your day dims
We part – announce it. And then with lightened heart
Watch life swing round, complete the revolution.86
There is very little special pleading in this poem. The doom-laden view of England was not peculiar to Communists, nor to Valentine in particular, but a widely-held recognition of the crisis which the whole capitalist world was experiencing. Everyone was affected by the decayed state of the economy. In the political polarisation which followed, Valentine – the ex-Young Conservative – went far to the left, with many of the intellectuals of the day. It was a natural step, presenting itself, in the words of the title of a book which had influenced her, as The Only Way Out. Sylvia’s standpoint was not quite the same: it was not so purely humanitarian, further to the Left, ideologically severer and, on account of her greater age, she had a different historical perspective. Sylvia’s long poem ‘Red Front’, read as a declamation in Battersea late in 1935 and again in Whitechapel in 1936 (Sylvia was not able to attend), with its worker-memorable chorus in common time, harks back to the Great War, the war promoted as the one to end wars, and takes an overview of the whole period, using the image of ‘the saddest wine that ever was pressed in France’ for the war’s legacy:
Who would have thought the blood of our friends would taste so thin?
Would so soon lose body, would even before them greyed –
Had time kept troth – discolour, dwindle and pine
Into a shallow cider tanged with tin?
Who could forecast this malady of the vine,
Or guess that a draught so heady in its beginning
Should peter out into verjuice, and a bouquet
Of metal and decay? –
And that we who toasted them then should sit here dumb,
Unjoyed and yet athirst, and yet dreading the jolted cask, dismayed
To stir in the stumbling echo the rolling of tumbrils, the sullen footfall of a drum?87
To the cynic, this might present itself as Sylvia’s attempt to co-opt the war-dead into the Party rank and file, but she was not time-serving here. The alarming passage about the war which appears in the middle of her otherwise ‘light’ narrative poem, Opus 7, is just as bitter, if not more so. She did not suddenly pick up these observations with her Party card, but they fell into place in the context of her politics, and if she had been flippant before about the antics of politicians of all parties (and she had), it was due to a residual faith in The System, that old vintage: ‘but it was madness we quaffed’.
The practical application of Sylvia’s and Valentine’s politics to life in Chaldon sometimes proved difficult. They had hoped to organise a Chaldon Women’s March on the Weld estate office in April to complain about the condition of houses in the village, but the West Chaldon women were in no state to be organised, since they were all at each other’s throats over the goings-on of a local seductress (called, implausibly, Blanche Rocket). Sylvia, who had found eight dead rats in the well, went alone to challenge the Welds with a glass of their contaminated water, though the upshot of this protest is unknown. The general election of 14 November 1935 provided better opportunities for Sylvia and Valentine to raise the political awareness of the village: they canvassed support for the Labour candidate, organised Labour meetings in the village hall (the former Sunday School) which were chaired by a labourer, and drove to electoral meetings all over the area. Sylvia discovered in herself a talent for heckling: ‘I found that of all things I loved making rude remarks at the top of my voice and that the top of my voice was gratifyingly loud and nasty.’88 When Sylvia was not heckling, Valentine was tooting a hand-horn at appropriate moments. On polling day itself, which was wet and blustery, the MG came into its own and Valentine clocked up 102 miles taking villagers, one at a time, to the polling station where Sylvia waited from ten in the morning till the polls closed at nine, ‘entertaining them or being entertained’.89 The Conservative got in, of course, but Sylvia and Valentine felt the moral victory was
theirs.
In January 1936, Sylvia finished the novel she had been writing since 1932, Summer Will Show. It was a much longer book than any of her previous novels and completely different in tone, pace and purpose. The story, set in 1848, is that of a young English landowning gentlewoman, Sophia Willoughby, who, having lost her two children by smallpox, decides to seek out her estranged husband Frederick, a sentimental, malleable man living extravagantly in Paris. It is her husband’s mistress, though, with whom Sophia throws in her lot, an ageing Jewish demi-mondaine called Minna Lemuel, whose dramatic character dominates the book. The events of the two revolutions of 1848 in Paris unfold around the growing intimacy between these two women; and Sophia, at first completely removed from the revolutionary cause, gradually perceives its importance and gives herself over to it. The biographical parallels are obvious: Minna and Sophia are to a great extent Sylvia and Valentine; Sophia’s modulation from aristocrat to revolutionary Communist both a depiction of Valentine’s own conversion and a parable for the Thirties. But the book is not properly a propaganda effort. It was started long before Sylvia espoused Communism. Because she did not discard the early part, the political message of the book is not completely integrated in the way one would expect of a novel written primarily to promote the Party. Though Sylvia hoped it to be a salvo, it was not widely recognised as such when the book was published late in 1936. It is the narrative, taut and ruthless, which arrests one’s attention.
The relationship between Sophia and Minna Lemuel is the backbone of the narrative, and Minna’s influence all-pervading. Minna is one of Sylvia’s most charming creations, observed at length and with remarkable attention to gesture and tone of voice, the actress tricks that make her at once ‘the world’s wiliest baggage’ and a genuine innocent, ‘completely humble and sincere’. Part II of the novel plunges straight into Minna’s dramatic narrative of her escape from the pogrom in Lithuania, and here Sylvia achieves an important coup; having said that Minna is a spell-binder, she makes her one. The narrative, with its complete change of pace and tone, pushes the reader into the Parisian drawing-room along with Sophia. One is, for its duration, more of a listener than a reader.
Summer Will Show is an unillusioned book, a quality remarkable in a political novel. Idealists and exploiters of ideals are viewed in the same clear light. There is no sentimentalising or romanticising of the cause Sophia espouses, indeed she never does anything so definite as espouse it, and is not ever completely accepted by the people she chooses to help. There is no revolutionary halo around the part she has to play, nor round her – the reader is not spared her slightly acid feelings of having been snubbed by the real revolutionaries. This is part of what makes Summer Will Show a really remarkable historical novel. The ordinariness of historical events, even revolutions, is conveyed intact; there is not a breath of quaintness or ‘period feel’ to the writing. As in her later novels, there is a complete identification with the period chosen, a contemporary feel which goes far beyond the scope of historical accuracy to a sense of historical actuality.
At the same time that Sylvia was finishing her novel, Valentine was completing Country Conditions. She was writing poems as frequently as ever, and in addition sending in ‘reportage’ to the Daily Worker and New Masses on a regular basis. She was a fervent writer to the papers at this date and would send off letters of protest or warning sometimes to as many as eight newspapers simultaneously. In one short article for the Daily Worker, she reminded readers of a book published in 1934, Germany Unmasked by Robert Dell, and pointed out how Dell’s predictions of inevitable European war seemed to be coming true, and in a note in a separate edition of the Worker she advised comrades to tune to Athlone 531m. after the BBC news and compare the broadcasts. No Mosleyite meeting or unseemly state fraternisations went unprotested by her, and often the letters to the local papers carried the signatures of the Chaldon Powyses as well, and, of course, Sylvia’s. All was vigilance and urgency. Valentine felt it was her duty as one who saw what was happening to alert those who, as yet, had not seen.
It was in the News of the World in March 1936 that Valentine read how a Lancashire cotton worker, George Brennand, had walked the 300 miles from Blackburn to Dorset in search of a job and, having collapsed outside Dorchester, had been taken to the County Infirmary. She was so moved by this story that she went to visit Brennand in hospital and there heard that he was about to be discharged. He had nowhere to go, so, on an impulse of pity, Valentine offered to put him up at 24 West Chaldon. This turned out to be one of her less satisfying acts of comradeship. Brennand was at the house for a week, during which time Sylvia thought she would certainly lose her temper, for he was a boastful, over-talkative man, given to singing ‘Abide With Me’ in a loud voice for no particular reason. In an article in the News of the World that week, under the heading ‘Poetess’s Kindly Act’, ‘Miss K. Ackland, the poetess’ told the paper ‘We are trying to find him work’,90 which she did conscientiously, writing letters of introduction for him and driving about after jobs. These efforts did not bear fruit, though, and Brennand cheerfully went back to his sister’s house in Lancashire.
East Chaldon received further coverage in the press when the News Chronicle – presumably prompted by someone in the village – published a short article called ‘Seven Authors in Search of Peace’, lamenting the plight of those who ‘strove to write their perfect book’ while ‘thousands of trippers’ jostled past their front doors on the way to Lulworth Cove, a beauty spot about four miles from Chaldon. The seven ‘Chaldon’ authors were Theodore, Llewelyn, John Cowper and Katie Powys, Alyse Gregory, Valentine and Sylvia and, as in a fairy tale, their years of peace and inspiration also numbered seven. ‘Then came the Tourist, and for two years T.F. Powys has not written a line.’ Author-spotters had, apparently, parked outside Beth Car to catch a glimpse of Theo and, in Violet’s words to the reporter, ‘thrown their banana-skins into our garden. It is terrible, and it is getting worse.’ Theodore took a more metaphysical view: ‘I have a queer dislike of humanity […] My brothers are like that too. We have a love for the individual, but a dislike of humanity. I don’t suppose it is fair of me to object to visitors. To the village woman every strange face provides a new interest, every car distracts attention from the monotony of home routine.’91 In another paper, covering the same story under the title ‘Powysland’, Theo added, ‘When we see a motorist we hope, in our queer way, that he might be a burglar, but he is usually nothing more interesting than an honest gentleman.’92 Sylvia’s only contribution to the article was to appeal to the reporter not to reveal the whereabouts of her cottage.
What was much more on the minds of Sylvia and Valentine that summer was the situation in Spain, the growing urgency of which acted as a catalyst on so many people’s politics, propelling significant numbers of Sylvia’s and Valentine’s contemporaries into the Communist Party and the International Brigades. At last, there was an issue so clear and so fundamental to democracy and human rights – the defence of a legally elected government against a rebellious right-wing military – that no right-minded person could ignore it. The support it engendered in this country for socialist ideals and the subsequent swelling of Party ranks must have been very satisfying to the two women, justifying their own efforts over the preceding year to awaken the populace to the dangers of Fascism, and raising them from crank status to the status of prophetesses. The Party was more acceptable than ever before in 1936, financially strong and almost popular, and Sylvia’s and Valentine’s positions in it were strong too, for they had proved amply their loyalty and readiness to take on inglorious, necessary jobs. Within eighteen months of joining the Party, they had become its leading local members. Sylvia was sent to Brussels for three days in September 1936 as a member of the British delegation to an International Peace Congress, organised by the Party, and was to be sent out again, this time to Paris, on unspecified ‘Party business’ the following year. In June 1936 she was elected secretary of the Dorset Peace C
ouncil, a job involving an enormous amount of paper work, which she undertook efficiently and willingly. They were also founder members of the local Readers’ and Writers’ Group affiliated to the Left Book Club and were doggedly committed money-raisers for the Party, Valentine especially taking pride in each small contribution and noting them all down. They began soliciting money for Harry Pollitt’s Spanish Fund very soon after the attempted coup in July which triggered off the Spanish Civil War.
At the beginning of the war, Valentine longed to join the miliciana, the women combatants on the Government side, and some cryptic entries in her diary in August – ‘called to London’, ‘saw Harry’, ‘waiting’, ‘hopeful’ – suggest she came near to realising some such ambition. Beth Valentine and Sylvia were willing and free to go to Spain at a moment’s notice, but the Party did not take them up on their offer to be first-aid volunteers. On 16 September, though, they had a telegram from Tom Wintringham in Barcelona, calling them up, as it were, to work with a Red Cross unit there. Wintringham had joined the International Brigade at the start of the war and his wife Kitty had gone with him to Spain to work with the first-aid groups. Wintringham was later the commander of the British Battalion in Spain, fell foul of the Communist Party and was expelled for the sort of independent action of which his contacting Sylvia and Valentine is a minor example.
Sylvia and Valentine set sail from Southampton on 18 September and arrived in Barcelona eight days later, having been turned back twice at Port Bou before they succeeded in crossing into Spain, an effect of the British Government’s policy of nonintervention. They were met by Wintringham, who took them round the hospital where their unit was based. The work was clerical as much as medical, and lasted only three weeks, but in that time Sylvia developed a passion for Spain to match her passion for politics, seeing embodied in the spirit of Republican Spain the principles she held most dear:
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