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Sybille Bedford

Page 44

by Selina Hastings


  “beautiful Germanness”: Clive Bell to Virginia Woolf 6.3.28 Virginia Woolf King’s/PP/CHA, King’s College, Cambridge.

  “Pourquoi pas de ne répondre”: Lisa Marchesani to Clive Bell 14.3.28 King’s/PP/CHA, King’s College, Cambridge.

  “got hold of everything”: Jigsaw p. 101.

  “And so began”: ibid.

  “whose horizons embraced France”: ibid. p. 168.

  “I was hooked for life”: Quicksands p. 238.

  “Everything captivated”: Jigsaw p. 101.

  “From May to October”: ibid. p. 149.

  “ ‘Have I changed?’ ”: ibid. p. 90.

  “salt water, rock pools”: ibid. p. 92.

  “had tried to laugh”: ibid. p. 106.

  “a mother and her daughter”: ibid. p. 150.

  “[I did have] a slight stammer”: ibid. p. 116.

  “great handsome monster”: A Compass Error p. 36.

  “[with] large prominent blue eyes”: Jigsaw p. 153.

  “[and] a smile”: Compass Error p. 36.

  “would go out on the dawn sea”: Jigsaw p. 190.

  “Si on est ami”: ibid. p. 157.

  “in a manner compounded”: Compass Error p. 47.

  “The screen was bad”: Jigsaw p. 117.

  “They were slim”: ibid.

  “I was car-mad”: Quicksands p. 43.

  “I snatched at the chance”: ibid. p. 41.

  “je suis fier”: Pierre Mimerel to SB 2.12.58 SB archive HRC.

  “daily life was animated”: Quicksands p. 71.

  “her springboard was triviality”: Jigsaw p. 319.

  “In the mornings I would hang about”: ibid. p. 216.

  “I knew I was being teased”: ibid. p. 212.

  “I still see him”: ibid. p. 164.

  “Without being really selfish”: ibid. p. 165.

  “serving—in different ranks”: ibid.

  “He touched my shoulder”: ibid. p. 118.

  “We all danced”: ibid. p. 200.

  “Levantine pirates”: ibid.

  “We got out of our clothes”: ibid. p. 205.

  “[He] was very sure of himself”: ibid. p. 208.

  “There ensued, at once”: ibid. p. 206.

  “ochre-washed, one-storeyed”: ibid. p. 147.

  “ ‘May I tell you something?’ ”: ibid. p. 211.

  “jumped onto the running board”: ibid. p. 231.

  “Arrived at Les Cyprès”: ibid. p. 232.

  “As I walked back”: ibid. p. 234.

  “You are not afflicted”: ibid. p. 235.

  “j’ai beaucoup de regrets”: Jacqueline Mimerel to SB 6.3.71 SB archive HRC.

  “Tu n’as, je crois”: Jacqueline Mimerel to SB 15.0.77 SB archive HRC.

  “In terms of pain”: SB diaries 16.4.81 SB archive HRC.

  FOUR: THE DELIGHTS AND DANGERS OF SANARY-SUR-MER

  “[I had] come to feel”: Jigsaw p. 167.

  “She was too beautiful”: Desert Island Discs BBC radio 10.7.98.

  “gaunt as a starving horse”: Jigsaw p. 197.

  “wonderful feeling”: ibid. p. 272.

  “You had better learn”: ibid.

  “I was not prepared”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 1 p. 232.

  “sitting on a red-tiled floor”: Quicksands p. 249.

  “going on with what she had been saying”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 1 p. 234.

  “The Huxleys took me on”: Desert Island Discs BBC radio 10.7.98.

  “culture-saturated purr”: “With Aldous Huxley” by Robert Craft Encounter November 1965.

  “seemed to stretch for miles”: Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual by Nicholas Murray (Abacus,, 2003) p. 92.

  “into an inaccessible inner shell”: Quicksands p. 288.

  “Nature has erected”: Robert Nicholls to Henry Head 28.2.30 Robert Nicholls archive HRC.

  “offering gossip, pouring out our troubles”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 1 p. 230.

  “was very outspoken”: ibid. p. 238.

  “était toujours heureuse”: “Mémoires de Suzanne Nicolas” Archives et Musée de la Littérature, Bibliothéque Royale de Bruxelles.

  “the hilarious Huxley picnics”: Jigsaw p. 277.

  “We were ignorant of all”: Quicksands p. 258.

  “Eating your dinner with your fingers”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 1 p. 262.

  “He was nice to me”: review by SB of Cyril Connolly: Journal & Memoir by David Pryce-Jones Vogue August 1983.

  “spinsterish and in his little brown way”: Devoid of Shyness by Alan Pryce-Jones (Stone Trough Books,, 2015) p. 181.

  “I disliked this very superior”: Minding My Own Business by Percy Muir (Chatto & Windus,, 1956) p. 53.

  “It was bad enough”: ibid. p. 54.

  “a formidable lady”: Aldous Huxley to Ottoline Morell 18.12.30, Aldous Huxley archive HRC.

  “Never shall I forget the sight”: Aldous Huxley 1894–1963: A Memorial Volume ed. Julian Huxley (Chatto & Windus,, 1965) p. 142.

  “A number of disagreeable”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 1 p. 261.

  “Sanary,” Aldous wrote: Letters of Aldous Huxley, ed. Grover Smith (Chatto & Windus,, 1969) p. 365.

  “a very strange man indeed”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 1 p. 261.

  “A young German girl”: The Strange World of Willie Seabrook by Marjorie Worthington (Harcourt,, 1966) p. 160.

  “hearty, sense of humour”: Margery Worthington diary University of Oregon Special Archives.

  “Ilsa von Stembeck, a young German girl”: Come, My Coach! by Marjorie Worthington (Knopf,, 1935) p. 18.

  “her sun prince”: Quicksands p. 226.

  “the audience alight”: Jigsaw p. 289.

  “the staggery walk”: ibid. p. 283.

  “to find yet another pharmacy”: Quicksands p. 265.

  “There was no intention”: ibid. p. 266.

  “I did feel pity”: ibid. p. 265.

  “was brutal”: ibid. 269.

  “etched with a tragic”: Jigsaw p. 192.

  “I doubt that Aldous”: Eva Herrmann to SB 21.7.56 SB archive HRC.

  “He would have grudged the time”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 1 p. 295.

  “In a subtle way”: ibid. p. 140.

  “It was a measure”: ibid. p. 295.

  “her feminine appearance”: On the Way to Myself by Charlotte Wolff (Methuen,, 1969) p. 73.

  “I recall delicious softness”: Maria Huxley to SB 15.1.45 SB archive HRC.

  “graceful indolence”: Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley (Flamingo,, 1994) p. 290.

  “The first half of the flight”: ibid. p. 113.

  “with a lovely, secret Etruscan face”: A Visit to Don Otavio (Eland, 2002) p. 84.

  “Our friendship is for life”: Chronology Aliette Martin archive.

  “I kissed her hand”: Quicksands p. 283.

  “a life enhancer”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 1 p. 258.

  “gay and giggly”: ibid.

  “Swarmed upon by actual living Germans”: Quicksands p. 287.

  “Rather a dismal crew”: ibid. p. 288.

  “Swarms of literary Germans”: Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual by Nicholas Murray p. 260.

  “one behaved with dignity”: Quicksands p. 288.

  “Maria remained distant”: ibid. p. 289.

  “One evening we went to have a look”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 1 p. 255.

  “It was a mixed up and foreboding time”: Quicksands p. 274.

  “I found bureaucracy”: ibid.

  “My German beginnings”: Jigsaw p. 81.

  “I never felt I had the Germa
n identity”: Oldie August 1997 p. 28.

  “eine deutsche Halbjüdin”: Mein Zwanzigstes Jahrhundert by Ludwig Marcuse (Paul List Verlag, 1960) p. 198.

  “much as I was inclined to admire”: Jigsaw p. 246.

  “So much siesta”: SB diaries 26.2.77 SB archive HRC.

  “la journée passé vite”: SB diaries 13.7.32 SB archive HRC.

  “a horrid house”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 19.8.53 SB archive HRC.

  “Anger that ill becomes our kind”: New Bats in Old Belfries: Some Loose Tiles by Maurice Bowra (Robert Dugdale, 2005) p. 65.

  “Yes. I had one very serious attachment”: Independent on Sunday 23.5.04.

  “a gregarious and gossipy world”: The Turning Point by Klaus Mann (Oswald Wolff, 1984) p. 214.

  “A galaxy indeed”: Quicksands p. 279.

  “ich finde in diesem Kulturgebiet”: Tagebücher 1933–1934 by Thomas Mann (S. Fischer, 1977) p. 81.

  “I find everything in this cultural milieu”: Thomas Mann Diaries 1918–1939 selection by Hermann Kesten, translated by Richard and Clara Watson (Henry N. Abrams, 1982) p. 59.

  “poor Tommy”: Paris Review no. 126 p. 237.

  “a sporadic camaraderie”: Quicksands p. 291.

  “I never knew anybody”: SB to Allanah Harper 28.5.49 SB archive HRC.

  “like M. de Charlus”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 1 p. 277.

  “making the round”: ibid.

  “What struck the Huxleys”: ibid.

  “Je n’ai jamais lu”: German Writers in French Exile 1933—1940 by Martin Mauthner (Valentine Mitchell, 2007) p. 167.

  “long, sometimes”: Jigsaw p. 325.

  “not a Giorgione any longer”: ibid. p. 339.

  “with quick resource”: ibid. p. 333.

  “When [Nori] came in”: ibid. p. 334.

  “Hennaed to an impossible orange”: Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley p. 285.

  “I hadn’t known that AH”: Anna Bernhardt to SB 3.10.36 SB archive HRC.

  “the kind of sailors’ clothes I liked”: Quicksands p. 271.

  “à deux under the night sky”: Jigsaw p. 342.

  “with perhaps worse to follow”: Quicksands p. 271.

  “an exhilarating and happy time”: ibid. p. 308.

  “evenings of ease”: ibid.

  “Lisa is the hole”: Anna Bernhardt to SB 26.2.34 SB archive HRC.

  “Look after her”: Quicksands p. 273.

  “juvenile in concept”: ibid. p. 305.

  “Huxley’s vor ein paar Monaten”: Die Sammlung 1934 (Rogner und Bernhard) pp. 486, 488.

  “I merely wanted”: Quicksands p. 304.

  “That money…the capital”: ibid. p. 306.

  FIVE: SAILING INTO THE UNKNOWN

  “I prefer Berlin”: Anna Bernhardt to SB 16.9.36 SB archive HRC.

  “Lisa n’a jamais supporté”: Anna Bernhardt to Maria Huxley 11.11.35 SB archive HRC.

  “I am worried and out of sorts”: SB to Toni Muir 7.8.34 SB archive HRC.

  “If this statement is agreed”: Anna Bernhardt to SB 3.8.34 SB archive HRC.

  “I thought of Lisa”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 26.2.55 Aliette Martin.

  “The last I saw of my mother”: Quicksands 275.

  “Don’t tell lies”: ibid. p. 86.

  “My sister, ferociously disgusted”: ibid. p. 275.

  “[I] could not love her”: ibid. p. 313.

  “inner withdrawal”: SB to Allanah Harper 10.11.89 Allanah Harper archive HRC.

  “If she was against”: Quicksands p. 313.

  “a ruthless social butterfly”: ibid. p. 312.

  “Pierre never looked back”: ibid. p. 90.

  “Il m’a forcé à prendre”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 7.9.55 SB archive HRC.

  “To my astonishment”: Jigsaw p. 314.

  “I became for her”: Quicksands p. 317.

  “ta mère est une morphiniste”: Jigsaw p. 318.

  “He is so intelligent”: SB to Toni Muir 22.8.34 SB archive HRC.

  “un personnage fascinant”: “Mémoires de Suzanne Nicolas” Archives et Musée de la Littérature, Bibliothèque Royale de Bruxelles.

  “eine grosser Snob”: Mein Zwanzigstes Jahrhundert by Ludwig Marcuse (Paul List Verlag, 1960) p. 197.

  “We had a picnic party”: SB to Toni Muir 7.8.34 SB archive HRC.

  “Doris Grey, a pretty American girl”: Come, My Coach! by Marjorie Worthington p. 18.

  “I am really working at present”: SB to Toni Muir 31.10.34 SB archive HRC.

  “Ernstlich…don’t you know”: SB to Toni Muir 7.8.34 ibid.

  “a nice marriage”: Anna Bernhardt to SB 30.7.34 ibid.

  “Albany was both rather wonderful”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 1 p. 290.

  “I sit before my hostile typewriter”: SB to Allanah Harper 9.7.58 Allanah Harper archive HRC.

  “Auguri, we shouted”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 1 p. 287.

  “Lisa looks frightfully old”: Anna Bernhardt to SB 27.5.35 SB archive HRC.

  “she is awfully fat”: ibid. 30.6.35.

  “I can’t get along with her!”: ibid. 30.4.35.

  “The Court has decided against him”: ibid. 30.6.35.

  “is a white lamb”: ibid. 22.7.35.

  “the locals were prolific”: Quicksands p. 322.

  “We must get one of our bugger friends”: ibid. p. 324.

  “German friend”: Aldous Huxley to Sebastian Sprott 22.8.35 Walter John Herbert Sprott papers GBR/0272/PP/WJHS King’s College, Cambridge.

  “on the handsome side”: Quicksands p. 327.

  “He was in the room within seconds”: ibid. p. 329.

  “So you have been living”: ibid.

  “It was stamped with a Deportation Order”: ibid. p. 333.

  “Some hours later”: ibid. p. 335.

  “half a dozen showgirls”: ibid. p. 337.

  “came up to me”: ibid.

  “musty brown paper”: ibid. p. 306.

  “they returned it”: ibid. p. 339.

  “national shame”: SB diaries 1.6.85 SB archive HRC.

  “I never felt I had the German identity”: Oldie August 1997 p. 28.

  “I felt nothing very much”: Jigsaw p. 89.

  “The thing about Paris for me”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 4.4.53 Martha Gellhorn archive HGARC.

  “was invariably polite”: review by SB of The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier translated by Richard McDougall New York Review of Books 5.8.76.

  “It was a bad, empty novel”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 1 p. 326.

  “I had read too much”: Quicksands p. 7.

  “rightly so but to my desolation”: Jigsaw p. 314.

  “quite pointless to stay”: Aldous Huxley by Nicholas Murray p. 301.

  “an insufferable Jew”: Anna Bernhardt to SB 1.1.36 SB archive HRC.

  “I had a row”: ibid. 14.12.35.

  “Today my room is so cold”: ibid. 25.4.36.

  “Tomorrow week is Xmas Eve”: ibid. 14.12.35.

  “it will take a long time”: ibid. 9.6.36.

  “Your mother is now immensely pitoyable”: ibid. 20.12.36.

  “immensely sorry about our poor Lisa”: ibid. 7.2.37.

  “She taught me everything”: Oldie August 1997.

  “When the bell rang”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 1 p. 341.

  “The idea was”: Quicksands p. 314.

  “The fee for a private lesson”: ibid. p. 315.

  “Maria Huxley once asked me”: Hindsight by Charlotte Wolff (Quartet, 1980), p. 157.

  “two people affected in different ways”: ibid.

  “With humble gratitude”: Brian Howard to SB, and Eva Herr
mann undated 1937 SB archive HRC.

  “where one could dance”: Quicksands p. 343.

  “Within seconds a general fight”: ibid. p. 345.

  “We, Brian, Eddy”: ibid. p. 346.

  “German haute culture”: ibid. p. 347.

  “in a tight drainpipe trouser suit”: ibid.

  “anxious to show”: Eva Herrmann to SB 21.7.56 SB archive HRC.

  “It makes me rather nervous”: Brian Howard: Portrait of a Failure ed. Marie-Jacqueline Lancaster (Anthony Blond, 1968).

  “Brian was wrong”: The Turning Point p. 309.

  “[Je veux] que la maison”: Maria Huxley to Jeanne Neveux 27.5.38 Nys-Huxley archive Bibliothèque Royale de Bruxelles.

  “You probably know”: Maria Huxley to Eddy Sackville-West 30.6.38 SB archive HRC.

  “volunteer work for a group”: Quicksands p. 350.

  “Je vais parler à des amis”: Maria Huxley to Jeanne Neveux 5.10.38 Nys-Huxley archive Bibliothèque Royale de Bruxelles.

  “well read and amusing”: Cecil Beaton by Hugo Vickers (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985) p. 58.

  “at some quiescent hour”: Quicksands p. 260.

  “très grasse mais contente”: Maria Huxley to Jeanne Neveux 1.7.39 Nys-Huxley archive Bibliothèque Royale de Bruxelles.

  “Je suis vraiment plutôt découragée”: Maria Huxley to Jeanne Neveux 27.3.39 Nys-Huxley archive Bibliothèque Royale de Bruxelles.

  “We had deep snow then”: Eda Lord to Jimmy & Tania Stern 7.1.40 James Stern archive British Library.

  “aimerait venir ici”: Maria Huxley to Jeanne Neveux 30.10.39 Nys-Huxley archive Bibliothèque Royale de Bruxelles.

  “where Allanah and I”: SB to Toni Muir 9.9.49 SB archive HRC.

  SIX: “A NEW EXOTIC OPULENT WORLD”

  “the streets sunlit”: Quicksands p. 353.

  “on a much larger scale”: The Turning Point p. 256.

  “The Master was standing on the doorstep”: Quicksands p. 291.

  “the endless flat roads”: ibid. p. 290.

  “the sweating hot-furred”: ibid.

  “You can’t appreciate the South”: Herald Tribune 8.8.61.

  “went straight to his master”: Quicksands p. 290.

  “a dentist’s suburban villa”: chronology by SB Aliette Martin archive.

 

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