Lives in Writing
Page 22
The problem baffled me, and blocked the progress of my novel for some time, until I suddenly saw the answer. Because the Blands had dancing when they entertained large parties at Well Hall, Briggs had assumed that ‘our dance’ in Rosamund’s letter referred to such an occasion, but it was much more likely that it referred to a dance organised by the Fabian Nursery to which Jane and H.G. had been invited as members of the Executive. Rosamund was Secretary of the Nursery and would naturally refer to it as ‘our dance’ in her letter. I deduced that Jane had received from Rosamund a Nursery flyer advertising the lectures and an invitation to the dance, and that Jane had written to her asking if she could attend the lectures but saying that she and H.G. wouldn’t be able to attend the dance. Rosamund says in her letter that her sister Iris is staying with the family at Well Hall, convalescing from a difficult childbirth, and that she herself intends to go and stay with Iris for two months when she returns home. It seems very improbable that Edith and Hubert would host a dance at such a juncture, and Briggs had to speculate, without any evidence, that Rosamund changed her plans to stay with Iris, in order to place the ‘dirty weekend’ escapade between the writing of the letter and the commencement of Wells’s affair with Amber in the late spring of that year.
Because the archive of the Fabian Nursery held at the London School of Economics doesn’t begin until 1910 it is impossible to verify that they held a dance on 20 March 1908, but Patricia Pugh’s history of the Fabian Society, Educate, Agitate, Organize, confirmed that the Nursery did indeed organise dances in their early years, which was good enough for me. I felt free to place the Paddington episode in the early summer of 1907, a much more plausible date for several other reasons. Rosamund’s letter to Jane nearly a year later has exactly the wistful tone of someone who would like to heal a breach with a former friend, regretting the missed opportunity ‘of talking to you a little bit’.
Of course I could have ignored Julia Briggs’s dating of the Paddington incident when I first encountered it, and placed it earlier in time – very few readers would have challenged me. But that would have been to break the rule I set myself: to respect the known facts. When the different documentary sources I consulted gave conflicting versions of the same event I favoured the one that seemed most plausible to me as a novelist. In the Postscript to his autobiography, Wells describes his third visit to Russia, undertaken primarily to interview Stalin, in 1934. He asked Moura, who had lived independently in Europe since she parted company with Gorky in 1928, but was now in a steady relationship with H.G., to accompany him. She refused, saying she dared not return to Russia for fear of being arrested, and that she had to visit her children in Estonia, where they arranged to meet on his return journey. He took his son Gip with him to Russia as companion instead of her. Visiting Gorky in his dacha outside Moscow Wells was stunned to discover that Moura, unknown to him and contrary to her own accounts of her movements, had stayed with Gorky three times in the past year, most recently only a week before his own visit. Wells felt betrayed and described vividly how he was plunged into paroxysms of jealous rage. He set off alone for Tallinn, Estonia, determined to confront Moura with her deception.
In H.G.Wells: Aspects of a Life Anthony West asserts, naming Gip as his source, that Wells and his son deduced between them that Moura must be a spy working for Russian intelligence, that she had been planted on him at the very beginning of their relationship in 1920 and had been reporting on him ever since. According to this account, when Wells accused Moura of this in Tallinn she admitted it, but told him that it was the only way she survived the revolution and that ‘as a biologist he had to know that survival was the first law of life’. In Anthony West’s opinion, although Wells patched up their relationship he never recovered from the disillusionment, and it was the underlying reason for the misanthropy of his last years.
West’s version of the episode was repeated by John Gray in his book, The Immortalisation Commission, which was published not long before A Man of Parts, and serialised in the Guardian Review (8 January 2011). Without Gray’s end-note reference in his book, readers of that piece would have assumed that it came from Wells’s Postscript, mentioned by Gray. It does not. Wells gives a very detailed account there of his showdown with Moura in Tallinn – it is the only dialogue scene in my novel hardly a word of which I had to invent – and at no point in it, or anywhere else, does he accuse Moura of being a spy, only of being ‘a liar and cheat’. Anthony West’s book is a mine of information but he is not always reliable, and in this instance I have followed Wells’s account. If Anthony’s version were true, why would Wells give a false one in a work to be published after he and Moura were dead? I find it hard to believe – and I would have found it hard to render in my novel – that he received Moura’s frank admission in 1934 that she was a Russian spy who had all along exploited him out of self-interested motives, but that nevertheless he soon resumed a sexual relationship with her, begged her to marry him, and maintained that she was one of the few women he truly loved. Also her daughter Tania recalled in her memoir, A Little of All These, that Moura asked her in June 1936 to tell H.G. that she had been taken ill in Paris when in fact she had gone to Moscow to visit the terminally ill Gorky. Moura would surely not have bothered with this deception if two years earlier she had confessed to being a regular visitor to the USSR in the pay of OGPU.
It would be surprising if Wells, knowing something of Moura’s life in revolutionary Russia, never suspected that she had been compromised into acting as an agent for Russian intelligence, but I took the view that he suppressed or was in denial of this as a possible explanation of her attachment to him, and in my novel it only surfaces towards the very end of his life. Admittedly, in this position it helps to make my narrative novel-shaped. Early in 1946, ill and confined to bed, he is troubled by doubts about Moura’s past. Is she, as Anthony believes, a spy? Has she been reporting on him to Russian intelligence ever since they first met? He resolves to challenge her when she next visits him, and then changes his mind because he cannot face the consequence should she admit that it is true – the end of their friendship. When she next visits him, bringing a bunch of daffodils which she arranges in a vase, to his horror he hears himself saying without premeditation, ‘“Are you a spy, Moura?”’ After a long pause, she replies:
‘Aigee . . . That is a silly question. Shall I tell you why? Because if you ask that question of someone and she is not a spy she will say “No.” But if she is a spy she will also say “No”. So there is no point in asking that question.’
‘No, of course not,’ he says. ‘Forget I ever asked it.’
‘I have forgotten it already,’ she says, with a smile, and removes the newspaper from the chair next to his bed to sit down beside him. ‘Would you like me to read you something from the Times?’
‘Yes, please,’ he says. ‘Read me the obituaries.’
We know that Moura visited Wells in his last illness, and that she read to him from newspapers, but this dialogue is all imagined. I make no apology for that because I think the scene reflects the ambiguities of the relationship between these two people without pretending to resolve them. And for me it made an aesthetically satisfying ending to the last scene in the novel in which H.G. appears as a living person.
* * *
1 In judging Wells it is worth noting that these and similar sentiments did not offend the leading lights of the Fabian Society, such as George Bernard Shaw and Beatrice and Sidney Webb. On the contrary, reading Anticipations made them eager to recruit Wells to the society. A belief in eugenics as a solution to social problems was ‘politically correct’ in progressive circles in the early twentieth century.
INDEX
The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.
Allain, Marie-Françoise 4n, 16
Althusser, Louis 125, 130
&nb
sp; Amis, Kingsley 22–49, 167, 172
Amis, Martin 25, 26, 27, 29–30, 32, 33, 37, 38, 39, 40, 44
Amis, Philip 32, 38, 40
Amis, Sally 33, 37
Aristotle 137
Arnold, Gaynor 238
Auden, W.H. 86
Aymé, Marcel 220, 221–2
Bainbridge, Beryl 51
Bakhtin, Mikhail 188
Banville, John 19
Bardwell, Hilary (Hilly) 31–2, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 43
Barnes, Julian 118
Barthes, Roland 125, 145, 192
Bates, Alan 122
Bayley, John 129
Beckett, Samuel 46, 115
Beevor, Antony 233, 234, 235, 238, 242
Bennett, Alan 77–94, 249
Bergonzi, Bernard 154
Bigsby, Christopher 181, 182
Björk, Anita 7, 8
Blackmur, R.P. 35
Blair, Tony 195, 204
Blake, George 114
Bland, Edith see Nesbit, Edith
Bland, Hubert 223, 227, 242–4, 245, 246, 249, 250, 251, 252
Bland, Rosamund 227, 232, 244–5, 249–53
Bloom, Harold 163
Boorman, George 68
Boorman, Ivy 68, 69, 70
Boorman, John 66–76
Bourke, Sean 114
Bradbury, Dominic 166
Bradbury, Elizabeth 166, 170, 173, 174, 178, 191
Bradbury, Malcolm 165–93
Bradbury, Matthew 174, 179
Bradford, Richard 48–9
Brennan, Maeve 34
Briggs, Julia 224, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 250, 251–2, 253
Bright, Laurence 129
Brockbank, Philip 162
Brontë sisters 202–3, 204
Brookner, Anita 186
Budberg, Baroness Moura 227–8, 232, 253, 254–6
Burroughs, William 156
Bush, George W. 144
Byatt, A.S. 224–5
Cage, John 156
Camberg, Bernard (‘Barney’) 54, 55
Camberg, Sarah (‘Cissy’) 54, 55
Cecil, Lord David 33
Charles, Prince 129, 196
Chase, Richard 202, 203, 204
Cloetta, Jacques 10
Cloetta, Yvonne 4–5, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 18
Coetzee, J.M. 186
Cohen, Paula Marantz 237
Columbus, Christopher 215
Compton-Burnett, Ivy 51, 58
Conquest, Robert 38, 48
Conrad, Joseph 7, 50, 51, 148, 157, 237
Cornwell, John 17, 18
Coward, Noel 11
Cromwell, Thomas 233, 241
Culler, Jonathan 126
Dalai Lama 102, 105
Daniel, Yuli 14
Davis, Anne 83–4, 85
Dawkins, Richard 147, 148–9, 150–1, 206
de la Mare, Walter 105
de Man, Paul 126
Dennett, Daniel 206
Deresiewicz, William 142n
Derrida, Jacques 125, 133, 138, 141, 163
Descartes, René 190
Diana, Princess of Wales 194–209
Dickens, Charles 238
Dickey, James 73–4
Diderot, Denis 189–91
Du Maurier, George 189, 224
Duchamp, Marcel 156
Duckett, Jim 169, 177
Duran, Fr Leopoldo 18
Eagleton, Terry 125–52
Eliot, T.S. 2–3, 23, 60, 67, 98, 109
Ellis, Alice Thomas 51
Empson, William 136
Euripides 148
Fayed, Dodi 199, 203, 205
Forster, E.M. 164
Foucault, Michel 125, 128
Fowles, John 189
Freud, Sigmund 125, 237
Frey, James 236, 237
Fry, Stephen 114, 115
Frye, Northrop 163
Fukuyama, Francis 143
Fussell, Betty 36
Gaitskell, Hugh 16
Galileo 215
Games, Alexander 82, 84
George VI, King 233
Gibson, Alfred 238
Glendinning, Victoria 218
Glenville, Peter 12
Gorbachev, Mikhail 15
Gorky, Maxim 227, 253, 255
Graves, Robert 11, 37
Gray, Beryl 119–20
Gray, John 254
Gray, Piers 113
Gray, Simon 107–24, 236
Gray, Victoria 108, 119–20, 123
Green, Henry 164
Greene, Graham 1–21, 51, 52, 60, 61, 95–106, 175
Greene, Vivien 7, 8
Hall, H. John 217, 218
Hamilton, Ian 110, 122
Harrison, John 169, 177
Harrison, Tony 17
Hartman, Geoffrey 126
Hazzard, Shirley 4, 5–6, 12
Hensher, Philip 118
Hitchens, Christopher 147, 148, 149
Hoatson, Alice 227, 244
Hoggart, Richard 162, 172–3, 180
Holloway, John 154
Homer 66, 234
Hopkins, Gerard Manley 208
Hough, Graham 162
Howard, Elizabeth Jane 30, 37–9, 43, 44
Hunt, Violet 227
Hussein, Saddam 93
Iyer, Hiroko 104, 105
Iyer, Pico 95–106, 95n
Iyer, Raghavan N. 100, 105
Jackson, Peter 73
Jacobs, Eric 26, 43
Jacques, Martin 204
James, Alice 237
James, Henry ix–x, 39, 50, 51, 138, 168, 189, 214, 223, 224, 230, 231, 232–3, 237, 249
James, Oliver 203
James, William 102, 237
Jameson, Frederic 126
Jardine, Penelope 63
Johnson, Barbara 126
Jones, Monica 46, 47, 48
Joseph, Michael 33
Joyce, James 23, 51, 66, 127, 128, 157, 186, 235
Kael, Pauline 75
Kafka, Franz 157
Kennedy, John F. 61, 170
Kermode, Frank 52, 61, 64, 127, 128, 135, 153–64
Kierkegaard, Søren 122, 140
Kilmarnock, Alastair 39
Kingsley, Charles 28
Lacan, Jacques 125
Larkin, Philip 23, 25, 27, 28, 29–30, 31, 32, 33–5, 43, 46, 47–9, 119, 168, 172
Lawrence, D.H. 156, 162, 164
Leader, Zachary 22–3, 26–7, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37
Leavis, F.R. 37, 109, 138, 163
Lentricchia, Frank 128
Lessing, Doris 58
Lévi-Strauss, Claude 125
Lodge, Mary 166, 173, 174, 175, 178, 195
Lodge, Stephen 174, 175
Lundkvist, Arthur 19
MacCabe, Colin 127, 128
Macherey, Pierre 130
Madox Ford, Ford 50
Malory, Thomas 67
Mantel, Hilary 51, 233, 241–2
Marvin, Lee 72, 73
Marx, Karl/Marxism 31, 125, 128, 130, 137–8, 140, 204
Matthews, Ronald 9
Mayall, Rik 114
McCabe, Herbert 129–30, 140–1, 150
McDonnell, Vincent 19, 20
McEwan, Ian 181, 192–3
McGuire, Fr John 70–1
McKellen, Ian 83
Mehta, Nandini Nanak 100
Mensonge, Henri 188
Meyer, Michael 8
Miller, J. Hillis 126
Moore, Brian 192
Mullen, Richard 212
Murdoch, Iris 31
Murdoch, Rupert 91, 187
Nabokov, Vladimir 20, 171
Nesbit, Edith (married name: Edith Bland) 223, 224, 225, 227, 231, 242–4, 245, 246, 247, 249, 251, 252
Nichols, Peter 72
Niven, Frances 55
Nowottny, Winifred 153
Ockrent, Mike 197
Orwell, George 226
Ozick, Cynthia 237
Paul, Henri 205
Philby, Kim 14, 15
Pinochet, General 15
Pinter, Harold 111, 112, 120, 122, 122n
Plato 226
Pound, Ezra 23
Powys, John Cooper 67
Pugh, Patricia 252
Reeves, Amber 227, 232, 251, 252
Richards, I.A. 135, 138
Richardson, Dorothy 227
Richardson, Samuel 235
Roe, Thomas 11–12, 13
Rosenthal, Tom 184, 185, 188
Rushdie, Salman 185
Said, Edward 126
Saussure, Ferdinand de 125
Schiff, Stephen 83
Scott, Sir Walter 56, 235
Shakespeare, William 35, 130, 153, 162, 164, 217, 234
Sharpe, Tom 189
Shaw, George Bernard 229n, 250
Sherrin, Ned 177
Sherry, Norman 1–2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14–18, 19, 20–1, 104
Shields, David 235–7
Sinyavsky, Andrei 14
Skidelsky, William 233, 234, 235
Snowdon, Lord 12
Spacks, Barry 170
Spark, Muriel 50–65, 164
Spark, Philip 55
Spark, Robin 58, 64
Spark, Sydney Oswald ‘Ossie’ 57–8
Spencer, Earl 197, 201–2, 205
Spencer, Professor Terence 165, 180
Spivak, Gayatri 126
Stanford, Derek 53, 59, 60
Stannard, Martin 51, 52–3, 54, 55, 57, 60–1, 62, 63, 64