I had actually picked up a book by Bernice Rubens, Madame Sousatzka, a while back meaning to read it, and thinking that I would do an On This Day... piece to commemorate her birthday on July 28th. I had all sorts that I wanted to write about Bernice Rubens because shortly before she died, in October 2004, I had been fortunate enough to be in a book group talking about one of her books (Nine Lives) and with Bernice Rubens in attendance, at Ways With Words at Dartington. This was back in the days when they did those sort of events, sadly they have stopped them now, but they were wonderful opportunities to meet and talk with the authors about their books and Bernice was sensational. I had cheekily lugged along my entire Bernice Rubens collection and she gamely agreed to sign every single one, giving me a running commentary about them as she did so.
Anyway, full of enthusiam, I settled down in the deckchair to read Madame Sousatzka...and sadly, though I gave it a good 100 pages, I had chosen the wrong one, I just couldn't get on with it at all. The story, about a young piano protege who goes to Madame S for lessons never really took off in my imagination and I skimmed through to the end. It was made into a film which perhaps I'll watch instead. Anyway, I was sorely disappointed to have to abandon that little celebratory blog post which, by way of a diversion and much-shortened, you now have mixed in with Vita Sackville-West, because All Passion Spent happened to be in the basket of necessities that I had carted out to the deckchair with me...so I started that instead.
Vita has been one of my many virtual gardening companions this summer. I have dipped into plenty of her books and imagined her restoring Sissinghurst as I laboured on with our little plot. The discovery and purchase of Sissinghurst coincided with the writing and publication of All Passion Spent by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press in 1931. Sadly no letters from Vita to Virginia survive from this period which is a real shame because I would love to have read their two-way exchanges about the book, though one from Virginia to Vita reveals that 4000 copies had been sold prior to publication, so clearly a much-anticipated book.
The story revolves around the eighty-eight-year old and recently widowed Lady Slane, invisible in the shadows of the vast penumbra created by her husband, the ex-Viceroy of India and subsequently Prime Minister. Lady Slane has been the impeccable consort, the gracious but self-effacing hostess as well as mother to their six children. Assuming that the burden of care will now fall on their shoulders, the children and their various spouses start to plan the what-will-happen-next, bickering amongst themselves about inheritance and who is best placed to take on the care. The subject is batted from one to the next, because surely their mother will never cope alone. However none of them have bargained for the previously invisible Lady Slane taking matters into her own hands and renting a house for herself in Hampstead...
'But mother, you haven't been to Hampstead.' This was intolerable, Carrie had known all her mother's movements day by day for the past fifteen years at least, and she revolted against the suggestion that her mother had visited Hampstead without her knowledge. Such a hint of independence was an outrage, almost a manifesto.
When her life of sacrifice becomes her own again, Vita Sackville-West returns Lady Slane's identity, and Deborah reflects back on her life, whilst slowly planning and moving into her new home. Amid themes of home and independence all awash with her childrens' suspicions, envy and jealousy, Lady Slane, effectively 'sent to Coventry' by her family, keeps in touch with the lives of her grandchildren via a press cuttings agency. I hadn't known much about the existence of such things, but this sort of early 20th century Facebook gave Lady Slane all the information she wanted, and about the people she cared for most.
Vita Sackville- West (and was I the only person not to know that she was actually called Victoria?) paints a beautiful canvas in this book, sometimes the brush strokes are sweeping and ascerbic,
'It was assumed that she trembled for joy in his presence, languished in his absence, existed solely (but humbly) for the furtherance of his ambitions, and thought him the most remarkable man alive, as she herself was the most favoured of women, a belief in which everybody was fondly prepared to indulge her. Such was the unanimity of these assumptions that she was almost persuaded into believing them.'
Yet sometimes strokes of such sensitive delicacy that I stopped in my reading tracks, as when Lady Slane tries to bring back the memory and vision of her younger self...
'The old woman looked closer; she saw the tender flesh, the fragile curves, the deep and glistening eyes, the untried mouth, the ringless hands; and, loving the girl that she had been, she tried to catch some tone of her voice, but the girl remained silent, walking as though behind a wall of glass. She was alone. That meditative solitude seemed part of her very essence.'
The contrasts in writing style and mood create light and shade around the life of a woman who has pursued marriage as the only employment open to her, and found herself surrounded by that host of assumptions. Now perfectly at peace with herself, content and settled in her final years, I felt that satisfying sense of real consolation for a fictional character as I read.
What a faultless little book this is so where to next with my reading of Vita...
And also with my reading of Bernice Rubens, she seems so rarely heard of these days, how sad if such a vibrant writer were to be forgotten....
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