Sydney and Violet

by Stephen Klaidman

  On September 14, 1922, thirty-four days before his death, Proust wrote to Sydney. It was the last letter he sent to him that has survived. But on October 3 Sydney wrote in passing to Max Beerbohm that he had received a letter from Proust that morning. Sydney, who was deeply concerned about Proust’s failing health, told Beerbohm Proust’s handwriting seemed distressingly feeble. He apologized in his letter to Beerbohm for not having sent him Swann’s Way as promised and said he would send him the Scott Moncrieff translation immediately and that he was eager to have his opinion of it. And if Beerbohm shared the Schiffs’ love for the book, Sydney added, it would give him great satisfaction to be able to tell Proust. But there was no time to waste.

  Proust’s September 14 letter to Sydney was also distressing, in this case for its lack of warmth and its testiness, both reflecting Proust’s rapidly declining health and the desperate urgency he felt to finish correcting his novel. He told Sydney he was ill again, possibly because a broken fireplace was leaking carbon dioxide into his room and asphyxiating him, which was unlikely because the fireplaces at 44 rue Hamelin smoked so badly they were never used. “Whatever the cause,” Proust wrote, “the effect is a despair worse than death. I am obliged to work under these conditions without a day of respite.” He said he didn’t like to complain, but Sydney in his last letter had asked [more or less begged] for a response, although just a few lines. Proust then flatly rejected Sydney’s suggestion that the English title of Swann’s Way be changed to In the Manner of Swann or In the Fashion of Swann, as Sydney had suggested. And after describing some commercial transactions involving the sale of his manuscripts he called Sydney “a torturer” for “demanding” a letter from him. He concluded with “My respectful admiration to the angel Violet” and signed himself Marcel Proust, with no word of respect or affection for Sydney. It turned out, though, that he was not quite done. He added a postscript.

  “Read the praise—setting aside the absurdity of its exaggeration—for me by Léon Daudet in L’Action Française. We do not agree politically, which adds to its merit.” Proust then called Sydney “odious” (the same word Katherine Mansfield once used to describe the Schiffs) for not having answered various questions he had asked in previous letters, and in what appeared to be a way of telling Sydney that he was far from the first to appreciate Proust’s talent, he wrote: “When I was twenty years old Antoine Bibesco already had said to me, ‘Little Marcel, you are the most (but it is too flattering, I cannot finish the sentence).’ ” Proust then said that in his next letter he would respond to a comment Sydney had made about his friend Sir Philip Sassoon, adding that “it will perhaps be a long time because I have a crazy amount of work to do—unless death comes for me first.”

  Sydney’s last letter to Proust was written exactly a month later. But in it he referred to two unanswered letters he had written since receiving Proust’s letter of September 14. The tone of Proust’s last letter had upset him greatly, but there was no indication in his reply that he sensed Proust would actually die within weeks. He wrote to Proust that he was profoundly saddened by his letter, felt separated from him, and no longer knew how much Proust liked [or perhaps he meant loved] him. He wallowed a bit more in the depression Proust’s letter had caused him before shifting almost seamlessly to a more mundane matter, namely the reception of the English translation of Proust’s novel. He wrote that the reviews were more or less banal and not very intelligent, which didn’t seem to surprise him. But he was so irritated by the favorable impression Scott Moncrieff’s translation was making on the English reviewers that he wrote: “Each time I read the effusive praise for your translator I feel like vomiting.” Then he told Proust he was in the midst of correcting the proofs of Prince Hempseed and needed to know as soon as possible whether Proust objected to the book being dedicated to him.

  Sydney then wrote what would be his last words to his dear Marcel, the only person in the world other than Violet he had loved and admired unconditionally: “I have thought many times of going to Paris for two days just to see you for a moment. You have no idea how I have spent these last days—with what despair. A letter from you would have been for me the prayer my lips would not let escape, the tears my eyes did not want to release. But it didn’t come and I don’t know if you are better or worse, if you think of me or not, if I must continue to say to myself: he is there, he is there, or if, like all the rest except one he has disappeared into thin air and the earth is naked. I send you all my affection, Your Sydney.”

  Proust died four days later on Saturday, November 18, at fifty-one. It seems unlikely that he read Sydney’s last letter. On December 12 his niece Suzy wrote to Violet that before he died her uncle had asked that the waistcoat he wore the last time he was with the Schiffs be given to Sydney.

  CHAPTER 9

  A FALLING-OUT

  No record survives of the emotional impact Proust’s death had on Sydney and Violet, but their letters leave no doubt of the profound attachment they felt for him and the extent to which his presence dominated their lives. During the few years they knew him they continued working on Sydney’s multivolume novel, visiting friends, giving lunches, dinners, and game-playing parties, and traveling to their country houses in England and the south of France. But in retrospect all these things seem peripheral to their love affair with the great French novelist. No one knows how they mourned him, but Sydney did all he could to promote In Search of Lost Time and to keep Proust’s memory vividly alive in England. He helped Eliot get a selection for the Criterion. He wrote a short story for the Criterion based on Céleste Albaret’s devoted service to Proust. He published an essay in a volume titled Marcel Proust: An English Tribute. When Scott Moncrieff died Sydney translated Time Regained, the final volume of Proust’s novel. And when Prince Hempseed, the third volume of his own autobiographical novel, was published several months later he dedicated it “To the memory of my beloved friend, Marcel Proust.”

  But by the spring of 1923, however deeply they felt the loss of Proust, the Schiffs had moved on to what was in effect the next stage of their lives. They began working, together as usual, on Tony, which was intended to be the third volume in A True Story but was not included in any of the three published versions of the work. They entertained their friends frequently at 18 Cambridge Square and at a country house they bought at Lye Green, Chesham, in Buckinghamshire near London instead of the one they previously had occupied at Eastbourne on the southern coast. The change of vacation houses came as an unpleasant surprise to the Eliots, who had rented a cottage near Eastbourne especially to be near the Schiffs, but it didn’t seem to cause a rift. In fact Sydney became more involved with the Criterion than at any time since he brought Eliot and Lady Rothermere together. And as Vivienne’s health, both physical and mental, declined, her attachment to Violet, who could be comforting and compassionate when she sensed the need and cared for the person, grew even closer.

  Eliot complained to both Schiffs that he was totally worn down by his work at the bank and by putting out the magazine and caring for Vivienne, all of which left him no time for poetry or serious criticism. Undoubtedly counting on Sydney’s sympathy and possibly hoping for more, perhaps in the form of financial support or at least an idea or two about how to improve his situation, Eliot sent him a drawn-out sigh of a letter on March 12. “Ever since I saw you last,” he wrote, “I have been in a state of worry to the point of paralysis.… I must now either give up the Criterion … or I must give up the bank and find some work that I can fit in with the Criterion.” He wrote that he had been offered the literary editorship of another journal, apparently with the help of Virginia Woolf, but it paid only half of what he was making at the bank and was too insecure. He was considering the offer nonetheless and was forced to turn down a dinner invitation from the Schiffs because he needed to be available to meet the owners of the journal at their convenience. He said, however, that he would come after dinner and was looking forward to seeing John Middleton Murry, who was also invite
d.

  There is no indication Sydney responded to Eliot’s plaintive missive, but two weeks later Eliot wrote to tell Sydney he had decided to stay at the bank. Meanwhile, Violet wrote to Eliot inviting him and Vivienne to lunch to meet Max Beerbohm, who was the author of the charming Oxford-based novel Zuleika Dobson and an uproariously funny essay called “A Defense of Cosmetics,” also known as “The Pervasion of Rouge.” Beerbohm, who would be knighted in 1939 for his contribution to art and letters, was also a brilliant caricaturist. He and his wife, Florence, an American actress, who were living in Rapallo when World War II broke out, would accept the Schiffs’ invitation to stay in a cottage on their property at Abinger in Surrey during the war.

  Eliot wrote back that he would have “liked very much to meet Beerbohm” but begged off partly because of Vivienne’s health—among other things she was having a bad reaction to colonic irrigation—and their general weariness. “Sunday is now our one day of real rest,” Eliot wrote. “We shut ourselves up and don’t have our servant come … you will understand that we are just keeping alive and no more … but I do want to see you both soon.” The letter is signed, “With love from both, Tom.”

  The tone and content of Eliot’s letters to the Schiffs and theirs to him certainly suggested intimacy. But how sincere was he when he wrote “love” and what if anything did he expect from the Schiffs besides friendship? The handful of scholars and writers who have paid more than passing attention to the Schiffs, such as Eliot’s biographer Lyndall Gordon and Richard Davenport-Hines, have reached different conclusions about their relationships with Eliot and, of course, Proust. In Proust’s case, for example, Davenport-Hines saw the Schiffs as little more than fawning acolytes. My reading of the letters suggests a relationship that while petulant and irritating at times was much warmer and more substantive. As far as Eliot was concerned, I see no evidence that Sydney had anything more than a marginal influence, if that, on Eliot’s poetry or criticism. He was supportive, made profitable introductions, and helped Eliot solicit work for the Criterion, all useful forms of assistance, none of which, however, supports Gordon’s opinion that Sydney became Eliot’s mentor.

  There were rough patches in the Eliot-Schiff relationship, usually owing to Sydney’s petulance or lack of tact and Eliot’s touchiness. As for the use of the phrase “with love,” I think it was sincere. Although Eliot was quite capable when the situation required it of holding his nose and behaving graciously toward someone he disliked but found useful, it would have been out of character for him to use the word “love” without meaning it.

  The Schiffs’ admiration for Eliot as a poet, critic, and all-around man of letters was enshrined when Sydney told Proust he considered Eliot and Lewis the only writers in England worthy of inclusion in his intellectual realm. Coming from him there could be no higher praise. The existing evidence also suggests Eliot held Sydney and Violet in considerable intellectual esteem. Eliot admired much of what Sydney had done in reviving Art and Letters. Both Eliot and Vivienne commented seriously—often positively, but not always—on Sydney’s novels. Eliot published fiction and translations by Sydney in the Criterion. When he was soliciting a short story from Rebecca West, among the Criterion fiction writers he cited to attract her interest were Virginia Woolf, Luigi Pirandello, and Stephen Hudson. And Eliot once said the Schiffs were among the very few persons in London with whom one could have a real conversation.

  By the middle of 1923, however, even though the Eliots and Schiffs did not live far apart, their close personal relationship had turned into an epistolary one. This was mainly because of Vivienne’s health and Eliot’s workload. There is a sense of regret, even guilt, in Eliot’s frequent and often histrionic letters explaining why they were mostly inaccessible to the Schiffs. Eliot wrote to Sydney at one point that “when we do get to the country we shall simply have to bury ourselves completely in order to save our lives, otherwise we could die with less effort in London.” He told them that Vivienne’s doctor, “who never exaggerates,” had warned her that if she didn’t take care of herself she would “certainly die [emphasis Eliot’s].” Was the prognosis really that dire? Perhaps, but while the modernists in general and Eliot in particular prided themselves on embodying the spirit of classicism, with which they infused their work, their manner of expressing private concerns was often melodramatic.

  Eliot nonetheless ended his letter in a way that suggested Vivienne might be getting reasonably good medical advice for the times, that his own understanding of medicine was fairly advanced, and that he was passing on information about Vivienne’s condition because he thought Sydney was sophisticated enough to understand it. “I know that you are one of the exceptional people who are intelligently interested in health and disease, medicine and hygiene,” he wrote. “Nearly everybody is ignorant of everything but measles, appendicitis and ‘nerves’ as they call them. Nobody has ever heard of malnutrition—the root and core of Vivienne’s illness—of which colitis is only a symptom.”

  Eliot’s description of colitis as a symptom of malnutrition was the accepted theory of the day, but we now know that there are various kinds of colitis, each of which has a different cause, none of them malnutrition. Medical minutiae were a preoccupation of the modernists and infused their correspondence. But Violet’s empathy was especially strong because she often suffered from similar if less acute symptoms than Vivienne. It was a bond that provided comfort to both Eliots.

  After a couple of months during which no letters were exchanged, Eliot wrote again to Sydney in mid-July to solicit a story or sketch for the Criterion. He said he had delayed writing only because he knew how hard Sydney was working, but now that Prince Hempseed was finished he was eager for a contribution and even had something specific in mind. “I think that you could do a very amusing satirical sketch of present times and manners; you know the sort of thing I mean. Yours is a very satirical and observant mind and you might write some very caustic sketches of the sort of people who are typical of our time. This is a sort of thing that the Criterion needs. Can you do something for us now?”

  What Eliot seemed to be asking for was a slicing and dicing of Bayswater, Bloomsbury, and Garsington, possibly with a lighter touch than Lewis’s. It suggests Eliot believed Sydney could be both funny and scathing. There are hints in his fiction and evidence in his letters of the latter, but none anywhere of the former. On the other hand modernist satire is remarkably short on what most people would recognize as humor today. In a brief postscript Eliot apologized to Sydney for the tone of his letter, which he apparently thought was too businesslike and which he attributed to the difficulties of dictating to a new secretary. To correct his perceived breach of etiquette, he wrote rather cloyingly: “I could have said simply that Vol. II must have something from you! There are only half a dozen writers of fiction and I depend on you.” Sydney fulfilled Eliot’s request for a contribution, but not with the caustic put-down of modernism’s finest that Eliot had in mind. What he eventually submitted in February 1924 was Celeste.

  Sydney and Violet worked at an unusually fast pace during the summer and fall of 1923. Before the end of the year Tony was finished and they had sent a manuscript copy to the Eliots. Although Tony was initially conceived as part of the series that would eventually be published as A True Story, it represented a significant departure from the preceding volumes because it was not told in the voice of Richard Kurt (i.e., Sydney), but rather in the voice of Richard’s brother Tony (Ernest in real life). The point was to portray Richard critically in a way that would have been impossible in his own voice. Using a character based on his brother provided the necessary distance. The extent to which Tony resembled Ernest is impossible to say because almost nothing is known about Ernest except that he met his end in the same way Tony did.

  Vivienne’s response to the book was ambivalent in that she limited her praise to a relatively short section at the end and a single characterization. “What has struck me most forcibly in the book,” she wrote,
“is an extraordinary change of key in the writing.… it seems to me you have achieved a most moving and serious piece of work, an important document in the history of that period and a fine piece of character work. I think ‘the Rock’ is very cleverly done, and with such economy.” In a separate letter Eliot wrote that he thought “the Rock is extremely real and alive.” The “Rock” is portrayed as hard-hearted, but with a preference for Richard over Tony and with pro-German sentiments during World War I. There is no evidence for or against this characterization, but if the real Rock, Sydney’s uncle Ernest, had been pro-German he would hardly have been exceptional among his class in the Britain of 1914 to 1918, although very likely in a minority among his Jewish coreligionists.