“the L-shaped inner facade”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 20.1.52 SB archive HRC.
“We are going to have [a] marvel for dinner”: ibid.
“Je mange du cochon”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 23.1.52 SB archive HRC.
“Tu peux être insupportable”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 14.2.52 SB archive HRC.
“Katzi well and easy”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 21.1.52 SB archive HRC.
“Yesterday,” Sybille reported: SB to Evelyn Gendel 22.1.52 SB archive HRC.
“This afternoon, he changed the ribbon”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 19.1.52 SB archive HRC.
“He was ravenous”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 9.2.52 SB archive HRC.
“They are yourself”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 24.1.52 SB archive HRC.
“I think of my Dear constantly”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 21.1.52 SB archive HRC.
“I cannot really love my lovers”: SB to Allanah Harper 31.12.51 SB archive HRC.
“I do feel”: SB to Allanah Harper 27.6.52 SB archive HRC.
“Yes he realised that he will have to work”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 12.2.52 SB archive HRC.
“It is gone”: SB to Allanah Harper 30.6.52 SB archive HRC.
“Please,” Evelyn begged her: Evelyn Gendel to SB 30.1.52 SB archive HRC.
“Don’t make a nonsense”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 31.1.52 SB archive HRC.
“even for an English publisher”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 6.2.52 SB archive HRC.
“a tricky old bird”: Leopold Loewenstein to Allanah Harper 6.1.52 SB archive HRC.
“I had been warned”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 10.2.52 SB archive HRC.
“something that gives a hint”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 11.2.52 SB archive HRC.
“has written a travel book”: Martha Gellhorn to William Walton 17.11.52 The Letters of Martha Gellhorn selected and ed. by Caroline Moorehead (Chatto & Windus, 2006) p. 232.
“when the door flung open”: SB to Allanah Harper 5.3.53 SB archive HRC.
“There doesn’t seem to be any water”: A Visit to Don Otavio p. 108.
“ ‘I have not the slightest desire’ ”: ibid. p. 95.
“weak and hysterical”: SB to Allanah Harper 28.5.49 HRC SB archive.
“was an immediate critical success”: SB interview Paris Review no. 126 p. 240.
“Great Rabbit, A thousand thanks”: Allanah Harper to SB 19.2.53 SB archive HRC.
“Without you,” Sybille told her: SB to Allanah Harper 5.3.53 SB archive HRC.
“his eyes were too bad”: Allanah Harper to SB 19.2.53 SB archive HRC.
“first class”: Allanah Harper to SB 26.5.55 SB archive HRC.
“brilliant, quite an extraordinary performance”: Raymond Mortimer to Allanah Harper 18.2.53 SB archive HRC.
“This book can be recommended”: Sunday Times 1.3.53.
“Absorbing…Its account of the lake”: Daily Mail.
“is one of those rare books”: Cass Canfield to SB 23.6.53 SB archive HRC.
“They did very badly indeed”: SB to Toni Muir 7.7.53 SB archive HRC.
“A delightful, unclassifiable”: New Yorker.
“one of the travel books of the year”: New York Times 2.7.54.
“something new in travel”: Washington Star 17.1.54.
“Maintenant il ne reste”: SB to Allanah Harper 9.8.52 SB archive HRC.
EIGHT: “THAT OGRE, THE SNAIL NOVEL”
“The impulses behind writing”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 29.10.61 SB archive HRC.
“the bad baronessa”: Quicksands p. 21.
“her boredom with the text”: ibid. p. 134.
“arrival showed how much”: SB to Allanah Harper 9.8 52 SB archive HRC.
“has become my bosom companion”: The Letters of Martha Gellhorn p. 232.
“This letting me in on your work”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 3.1.53 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“Sybille dear…I take everything”: Martha Gellhorn to SB The Letters of Martha Gellhorn p. 233.
“There is nothing I do not know”: Martha Gellhorn to William Walton ibid. p. 193.
“All windows closed”: SB to Allanah Harper 3.11.52 SB archive HRC.
“Do you realise that not a chapter”: Martha Gellhorn to SB 2.4.53 SB archive HRC.
“She has the most astounding qualities”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 31.3.53 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“Her heart and mind are so good”: Evelyn Gendel diaries SB archive HRC.
“Oh his pot-roast”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 23.8.53 SB archive HRC.
“My sister is an amoral nitwit”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 31.3.53 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“A soft voice called Sybille”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 27.3.53 SB archive HRC.
“Eda was very affectionate”: SB to Allanah Harper 17.4.53 SB archive HRC.
“They don’t care for me”: Evelyn Gendel diaries 13.10.53 SB archive HRC.
“Says: ‘why don’t you go out?’ ”: Evelyn Gendel diaries 25.11.53 SB archive HRC.
“I am so surprised”: Evelyn Gendel diaries 2.12.53 SB archive HRC.
“Felt free, and also, more independent”: Evelyn Gendel diaries 28.11.53 SB archive HRC.
“trapped in my recluse life here”: SB to Toni Muir 23.5.53 SB archive HRC.
“I still cannot bear a Germanic country”: SB to Allanah Harper 26.4.53 SB archive HRC.
“I am rather looking forward to it”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 22.7.53 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“past the vineyards”: Quicksands p. 5.
“clean, honest, stolid”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 9.8.53 SB archive HRC.
“one is automatically taken”: ibid.
“The Germans talk about my slow descent”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 10.8.53 SB archive HRC.
“smelling the moss, hay”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 11.8.53 SB archive HRC.
“A resurgence of health”: SB to Toni Muir 5.9.53 SB archive HRC.
“M said isn’t it ‘rather fun’ ”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 25.8.53 SB archive HRC.
“It made me feel odd”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 26.8.53 SB archive HRC.
Sybille’s “beloved,” she had reported: Martha Gellhorn to William Walton 16.7.49 The Letters of Martha Gellhorn p. 193.
“and explain and be nice”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 26.8.53 SB archive HRC.
“Let’s shove”: Pleasures & Landscapes p. 85.
“Oddly enough M and I ate superbly”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 29.8.53 SB archive HRC.
“the most expensive, and I think the best”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 4.9.53 SB archive HRC.
“It was pitch-dark”: Pleasures & Landscapes p. 80.
“in black coat, silk tie”: Pleasures & Landscapes p. 72.
“I don’t like living in Rome any more”: SB to Toni Muir 22.9.53 SB archive HRC.
“horrible, plebeian, ugly”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 29.10.61 SB archive HRC.
“a monstrous agglomeration”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 1.2.57 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“mindless, mechanical”: SB to Allanah Harper 23.9.53 SB archive HRC.
“philistine and difficult”: All We Know p. 286.
“a murderous mood”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 23.1.54 SB archive HRC.
“Sandy burst in at 8.45”: ibid.
“He LOVE him-y”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 25.1.54 SB archive HRC.
“instinctive conspirators against K”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 28.1.54 SB archive HRC.
“[I] must say how I thank you”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 7.3.54 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“All is joy and ease”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 8.6.54 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“There was a sleekness”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 2 p. 169.
“en beauté, animated, gay”:
ibid. p. 171.
“like a violinist’s hand on his keys”: ibid.
“the forbidding esoteric therapist”: ibid. p. 172.
“There was a scent of honeysuckle”: ibid.
“To me,” she had told Laura: This Timeless Moment: A Personal View of Aldous Huxley by Laura Archera Huxley (Chatto & Windus, 1969) p. 9.
“Of course he knew”: Huxley in Hollywood by David King Dunaway (Bloomsbury, 1990) p. 309.
“was a kind of consecration”: Aldous Huxley Vol. 2 p. 406.
“Afterwards I went with them”: ibid. p. 174.
“No orthodox analyst or doctor”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 23.11.54 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“tremendous experience”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 11.9.54 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“Bastides quite the wrong place”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 9.8.54 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“[I am] stuck, in writing”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 11.9.54 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“has always been a disaster”: Martha Gellhorn to SB 27.8.55 SB archive HRC.
“monotonous, strenuous”: SB to Allanah Harper 21.10.54 SB archive HRC.
“with an anti-aircraft balloon”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 6.11.54 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“that ogre, the snail novel”: ibid.
“the novel seems to me”: Martha Gellhorn to SB 21.1.53 SB archive HRC.
“sounds like Anthony Powell to me”: Martha Gellhorn to SB 30.7.55 SB archive HRC.
“certainly established in George’s mind”: Martha Gellhorn to SB 30.6.56 SB archive HRC.
“It will not, of course, be everybody’s meat”: Elaine Greene to SB 7.4.55 SB archive HRC.
“no fait accompli has ever distressed me more”: Elaine Greene to SB 9.9.57 SB archive HRC.
“a pretty, blowsy, reddish blonde”: Remembering My Good Friends by George Weidenfeld (HarperCollins, 1995) p. 240.
“which I find delightful”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 6.11.54 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“he rather loves working the raffia”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 15.11.55 SB archive HRC.
“Yes—Evelyn Gengel”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 5.8.55 SB archive HRC.
“never went anywhere”: A Legacy p. 11.
“old, landed, agreeably off”: ibid. p. 31.
“must have stayed in me suspended in amber”: Sunday Telegraph 7.5.89.
“The sources of A Legacy”: Quicksands p. 29.
“one of the most ruthless”: A Legacy p. 286.
“Much of what was allowed to happen”: ibid. p. x.
“admirablement écrit”: Katzi Nielsen to SB 30.12.55 SB archive HRC.
“You did not think?”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 24.2.57 SB archive HRC.
“was in an awful mood”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 7.3.56 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“Some of Miss Bedford’s creations”: The Times 5.4.56.
“critics on the Third Programme”: SB to Allanah Harper 25.5.56 SB archive HRC.
“My dear Mrs. Bedford”: Nancy Mitford to SB 20.3.56 SB archive HRC.
“I am hugely grateful to you”: Evelyn Waugh to Nancy Mitford 22.3.56 The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh ed. Charlotte Mosley (Hodder & Stoughton, 1996) p. 387.
“The real Mrs. Bedford”: Nancy Mitford to Evelyn Waugh 25.3.56 The Letters of Nancy Mitford: Love from Nancy ed. Charlotte Mosley (Hodder & Stoughton, 1993) p. 351.
“A novel has just appeared”: Spectator 13.4.56.
“the daughter relates things”: Evelyn Waugh to Nancy Mitford 22.3.56 The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh p. 387.
“Nothing that has been said”: A Legacy p. xvii.
“It’s the one thing I hang on to”: In Conversation with Naim Attallah p. 7.
“original, witty, entertaining”: London Magazine June 1956.
“a writer of extraordinary power”: Encounter June 1956.
“fell madly in love”: author’s interview with Robert Gottlieb 13.6.11.
“We did everything”: ibid.
“Cosmopolitan, ironic, penetrating”: Janet Flanner New Yorker April 1957.
“a highly unlikely success”: Avid Reader: A Life by Robert Gottlieb (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016) p. 48.
“We are simply delighted”: Robert Gottlieb to SB 25.2.57 SB archive HRC.
“Everything changes”: SB diaries 15.1.56 SB archive HRC.
“A held-in day of pacing”: SB diaries 16.1.56–21.3.56 SB archive HRC.
“a wounded bird”: author’s interview with Robert Gottlieb 13.6.11.
“makes me feel as though”: Eda Lord to SB 25.2.56 SB archive HRC.
“I’m irritated bored and caged”: SB diaries 26.3.56 SB archive HRC.
“Ev[elyn] for din. Irritable”: SB diaries 4.4.56 SB archive HRC.
“First day to ourselves”: SB diaries 22.3.56 SB archive HRC.
“I go out quickly”: SB diaries 27.4.56 SB archive HRC.
“Dear Mrs. Bedford, Thank you so much”: Ivy Compton-Burnett to SB Secrets of a Woman’s Heart: the Later Life of Ivy Compton-Burnett 1920–1969 by Hilary Spurling (Hodder & Stoughton, 1984) p. 218.
“struggled into a skirt”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 26.8.56 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“I opened manfully”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 21.8.56 SB archive HRC.
“black kid-gloves kept on”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 26.8.56 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“Conversation languished”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 21.8.56 SB archive HRC.
“stark lugubrious flat”: SB’s review of Hilary Spurling’s two-volume biography of Ivy Compton-Burnett Guardian 7.6.84.
“I shall miss her very much indeed”: SB to Allanah Harper 2.8.56 SB archive HRC.
“Her conduct to me”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 26.8.56 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“I cannot imagine London”: Evelyn Gendel to SB 15.8.56 SB archive HRC.
“in terms of fulfilment”: SB diaries 16.4.81 SB archive HRC.
NINE: “HEAVEN BLESS YOU, MRS. BEDFORD”
“She exuded vitality”: Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me: Journals and Stories 1933–1941 by M. F. K. Fisher (Pantheon, 1995) p. 119.
“veiled in smoke”: The Blue Train by Lawrence Powell (Capra Press, 1977) p. 61.
“as fat as a mountain”: Eda Lord to James Stern 21.10.60 Stern archive British Library.
“fat…with compact hips”: Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me p. 114.
“You were so occupied”: Eda Lord to SB 18.11.55 SB archive HRC.
“with unrelenting effort”: Quicksands p. 358.
“I am so happy, on air”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 9.2.57 SB archive HRC.
“an extravagantly painful process”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 3.10.56 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“The car is reparable”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 16.10.56 SB archive HRC.
“I want you to worry about nothing”: Esther Murphy to SB, 22.10.56 SB archive HRC.
“so beastly to Eda”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 13.1.57 SB archive HRC.
“Things are loving now”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 13.1.57 SB archive HRC.
“Gino malgré son caractère extrêmement difficile”: Katzi Nielsen to SB 18.3.57 SB archive HRC.
“that is neither here nor there”: SB to Noël Murphy 12.1.67 SB archive HRC.
“Eda and I never seem”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 13.1.57 SB archive HRC.
“Paris stupefies me”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 1.2.57 Martha Gellhorn Archive HGARC.
“Yesterday I went to see my translator”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 13.1.57 SB archive HRC.
“new, clean, and warm”: ibid.
“everything it was not expected to be”: SB to Martha Gellhorn 23.2.57 Martha Gellho
rn Archive HGARC.
“the oldest private bank in England”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 24.2.57 SB archive HRC.
“I think I have that sense”: ibid.
“so charming, so good”: SB diaries 19.6.56 SB archive HRC.
“the German witch doctor”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 9.2.52 SB archive HRC.
“return to London”: Hindsight by Charlotte Wolff (Quartet, 1980) p. 208.
“continued, unabated racketeering”: SB to Toni Muir 15.7.52 SB archive HRC.
“drunk and ill”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 2.9.55 SB archive HRC.
“He was very sweet”: SB to James Stern 27.12.85 Stern archive British Library.
“is a broken man”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 20.5.57 SB archive HRC.
“I feel that I have made fausse route”: ibid.
“The most unlikely people”: ibid.
“Going to law courts is a good education”: Paris Review no. 126 p. 241.
“the face of a very old woman”: Vogue October 1956.
“Bluebeard of the time”: Quicksands p. 357.
“whiny and kind”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 3.5.57 SB archive HRC.
“George just phoned me”: Elaine Greene to SB 9.9.57 SB archive HRC.
“He said yes how much”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 19.5.57 SB archive HRC.
“Also they wish to buy”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 13.6.57 SB archive HRC.
“Two muffled individuals”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 20.3.57 SB archive HRC.
“a position which, if far from ideal”: The Best We Can Do p. vii.
“It is completely fascinating”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 20.3.57 SB archive HRC.
“the murder trial of the century”: The Times 11.6.85.
“to give an accurate and detailed coverage”: The Best We Can Do p. vi.
“I’ve not had such a feeling”: SB to Evelyn Gendel 7.3.57 SB archive HRC.
“I had often wanted to put down a trial”: SB to William J. Curran 3.9.59 SB archive HRC.
“police vans and press vans”: The Best We Can Do p. 14.
“behind his fine hand”: ibid. p. 80.
“rolled up sluggishly”: ibid. p. 169.
“spherical, adipose”: ibid. p. 13.
“You sit to answer one limited question”: ibid. p. 217.
“settle themselves, consciously, in the box”: ibid. p. 220.
Sybille Bedford Page 46
