Letters to a Sister

by Constance Babington Smith

  Letters

  to A Sister

  From

  Rose Macaulay

  Edited By

  Constance Babington Smith

  Contents

  Preface

  Introduction

  Letters

  Appendix: Venice Besieged

  Genealogy

  Bibliography

  Preface

  Most of the letters which Rose Macaulay wrote to her sister Jean were preserved, so at the time of Dame Rose’s death in 1958 Miss Macaulay possessed a large accumulation. She reread all of them, destroyed quite a number, eliminated parts of others, and then invited me to edit the remainder for publication.

  The series now published covers a period of thirty-two years, beginning in 1926 when Rose Macaulay was forty-five. It represents her side of the correspondence only, for after her death, in accordance with her wishes, Miss Macaulay destroyed all the personal letters in her flat. As this included all those which had been kept of the series written to Dame Rose by Miss Macaulay herself, no question of publishing both sides of the correspondence has arisen.

  In editing the letters I have made more extensive cuts than in those from Dame Rose to Father Johnson (published as Letters to a Friend and Last Letters to a Friend) because the originals contain many references to ephemeral matters such as the weather, arrangements for meetings, passing ailments, and family comings and goings. This editing policy may, however, give a false impression of brusqueness, and I would like to emphasize that the manner in which certain of these trivialities are discussed shows a touching solicitude—for example there are repeated warnings against overwork. In addition to the passages just mentioned, I have omitted only those which are repetitious or which might cause embarrassment to living persons.

  Many of the letters are not fully dated, but I have been able to establish the dates, nearly all to the day, from information in the letters themselves. Some of the originals are typed but many are handwritten, and in these I have expanded most of the contractions. I have also corrected occasional typing errors and mis-spellings, and punctuation which might be misleading. In general, however, I have not amended incorrectly written quotations etc., nor have I rectified slips of grammar when the meaning is clear. I have indicated the occasional cases where there is no signature.

  The Introduction to this book is intended to give as much background as is needed for an understanding of the letters. More detailed accounts of Rose Macaulay’s life have been given in the Introductions to the two volumes of her letters to Father Johnson.

  The surviving fragments of Venice Besieged, the novel Dame Rose was writing just before she died, are published in this book as an Appendix. They consist of a complete first chapter, the beginning of a second, and some rough notes which give indications of the shape the book might have taken. The first chapter exists in two separate versions, one handwritten and the other typed. The latter is published as it stands, except that where Dame Rose had been experimenting with different Christian names for some of the characters I have adjusted occasional discrepancies, using the names which recur most often in her latest corrections. (It is clear she had also been considering various different titles for the book itself; Venice Besieged was apparently her most recent favourite.) The rough notes are a medley of transcriptions, random ideas, and scraps of dialogue. A certain amount of rearrangement was imperative, and I have also omitted a few of the jottings which appear to be no more than reminders.

  Throughout the work of editing I have received constant encouragement and assistance from Miss Jean Macaulay. I have turned to her continually with every sort of problem, and her keenness, good sense, and good humour have been an inspiration as well as a unique help. To her, and to certain of Dame Rose’s dearest friends, who have also given unwavering support to the project of publishing the letters, I am inexpressibly grateful.

  I am much indebted to Miss Dorothea Conybeare for help in tracking down information for various footnotes; to Professor Bruce Dickins, whose interest in the problems of my editing has been a great encouragement; and also to Mr A. F. Scholfield, who has most kindly helped me in numerous ways. Many others, too, have taken special trouble in replying to my enquiries (chiefly in connection with footnotes) and I would like to express my thanks to all of them, particularly the following: Miss Doreen Berry, Mrs R. Cavenagh, Rev. Mother Clare, D.S.S. C.S.A., Mr Peter Fleming, Miss L. Joan Gray, Rev. Gerard Irvine, Rev. Hugh Johnston, Mr David Ley, Rev. Canon Fenton Morley, Mr F. A. Richardson, Mrs Paul Roubiczek, Rev. W. G. Sinclair Snow, Rev. Canon Charles Smyth, Miss Lucy Sutherland, Rev. E. K. Taylor, Rev. Cyril Tomkinson, Mr David Trevor, Prof. H. Trevor-Roper, Rt Rev. R. P. Wilson, and Miss Ruth Young. I would also like to acknowledge the kind permission given by Professor C. S. Lewis to quote from his letter concerning Till We Have Faces.

  For expert assistance in deciphering the handwritten letters I am very grateful to Miss M. F. McKnight. My thanks are also due to the Cambridge University Librarian for permission to make researches at the Library, and I would like to add a special mention of the unfailing courtesy and co-operation of the staff of the Periodicals Department.

  Finally, as regards the illustrations in this book, I gratefully acknowledge the permission of Mr Cecil Beaton to reproduce his photograph of Dame Rose, that of Mr Victor Glasstone to reproduce his of Miss Jean Macaulay and that of Topix Picture Service to reproduce their picture of Dame Rose typing.

  Constance Babington Smith

  Cambridge, 1963

  Introduction

  There were many different sides to Rose Macaulay. Her gift for being all things to all people made her much beloved, but she could be elusively reticent, and most of her friends knew her only in the setting which was also theirs. Few realized, for example, how lovingly she cherished family ties; even remote cousinships were delightfully compelling bonds to her. Filial loyalty, concentrated towards her adored father, had always been a fundamental of her life, and her affection for brothers and sisters counted for almost as much. During childhood they had been inseparable playfellows, and although, as they grew older, their lives led them far apart they remained a closely united family. So it is not surprising that as time went on, and one after another of them died, Rose’s relationship with her remaining sister Jean became increasingly intimate and fond.

  She had always enjoyed corresponding with ‘Jeanie’, who on her side delighted to hear Rose’s latest news, also her candid running commentary on books, broadcasts, sermons, politics, and topical questions of religion and ethics. Jean’s lively sense of humour and energetic, logical mind made her a stimulating correspondent; their exchanges were like fast rallies between a couple of well-matched tennis players. At the same time Jean’s innate simplicity of character—she was much more matter-of-fact and less sophisticated than Rose—provided an excellent complement to her sister’s adventurous intellect, imagination, and wit.

  Their correspondence flowed steadily on throughout their lives, irrespective of where they happened to be, nor did it diminish when they were meeting more often—rather it increased in volume, as shown by the letters in this book, which were written during three successive periods, each involving somewhat different circumstances. Between 1926 and 1939, when Jean’s work as a nurse kept her out of easy reach of London, letters were their chief means of communication. Then during the war and after it, the time that brought Rose into a wilderness of sorrow, illness, and distress, they met often but wrote constantly as well. Lastly, during the 1950’s, when Rose’s return to the Anglican Church, after a lapse of thirty years, had removed an unspoken barrier between herself and Jean, they wrote more profusely than ever; this in addition to weekly talks and many interminable chats by te
lephone.

  The letters between the sisters naturally take for granted the whole family background, with its Evangelical traditions of service, its churchgoing and family prayers and Bible-reading, its learning and scholarship, its Liberal politics, its life in country parishes and University towns. Also taken for granted, of course, are the characters of the immediate family circle, especially of all the brothers and sisters. Jean was the nearest to Rose in age, so near that they sometimes called one another ‘Twin’, for they had been born within the same twelve months. But as children their companionship had been subsidiary to that of ‘the five’, as the elder Macaulays called themselves, in the days when they played together on the beach at Varazze, the fishing village near Genoa which was their home for nearly seven years. The childhood of the Macaulay boys and girls was an idyllic one, with freedom and sunshine instead of the restrictions of Victorian England that would have been their lot if their mother’s doctor had not insisted that she should live in a warm climate. For a time Rose and Jean, with their elder sister Margaret, went to an Italian convent school, but this was not a great success. The nuns frowned on ‘the little heretics’ at prayer-time, and they were nicknamed ‘Long Legs’ by the other children because their skirts were considered too short. Margaret, ‘the quick-tempered one’, Jean, ‘the stubborn one’, and Rose, ‘the good one’, much preferred their mother’s inspiring Sunday-school lessons and their father’s reading aloud from Herodotus and the English classics.

  George Macaulay, a dedicated academic, was worshipped by Rose, though she came to realize that he was not, in worldly terms, a success. It was from him she first acquired a respect for sound scholarship; she also shared with him an attitude which was a haunting burden. Sensitive and conscientious, with a strong tendency towards depression, he had always been convinced that he was destined for Hell, a belief which in turn seeped into the imaginations of his three elder daughters. In the mind of Rose’s mother, on the other hand, there had never been any such terrors. Grace Macaulay believed that Heaven could and should be anticipated with joyful confidence. Born a Conybeare, she was gifted with originality and imagination along with a flair for story-telling; she also possessed a quick intuition which swayed her towards unbalanced enthusiasms and prejudices. She had been spoilt as a child and also as an attractive young wife threatened by tuberculosis. Accustomed to having her own way without question, she treated her children according to whim. As her daughter Jean has put it, ‘You never knew whether to expect kindness or a scolding.’

  When the family returned to England in 1894 the three Macaulay girls, then in their teens, attended the Oxford High School. Paralysed by shyness they clung together and did not make any friends. Their gauche misery continued after leaving school, aggravated by the puritanical ideas of their mother. Jean, after attending one dance at the invitation of her brother Aulay, resolved never to go to another and never did. Her decision to abstain from alcohol also dates from about this time.

  There were two Macaulay boys, Aulay and Will, both of them younger than Rose and Jean. Aulay was mathematically inclined and joined the Royal Engineers, later serving in India, where he died tragically in 1909, murdered by thieves on the North-West Frontier. Will, who as a curly-headed little boy had so closely resembled Rose that the two of them could deceive their parents by dressing up in one another’s clothes, was quite different in temperament from the others. Placid, optimistic, and lowbrow, he studied at an agricultural college and then emigrated to Canada and settled happily on a farm in Alberta.

  The bond of affection between these five—Margaret, Rose, Jean, Aulay, and Will—stood for all that Rose valued most in family life. The other two Macaulay children, Eleanor and little Gertrude (who died as a small child in Italy) were much younger and were never regarded as equals by the elder ones.

  As Rose and Jean grew up their paths diverged entirely. Rose, thanks to the generosity of her well-to-do Macaulay godfather, Uncle Regi, went up to Oxford, where she blossomed at Somerville, and for the first time made friends outside the family. Soon afterwards she published her first novel, and thenceforward her activities centred more and more on London.

  Jean too had longed for a University education, but this would have been beyond the family’s means, and at twenty-three she left home to become a nurse. For the next thirty-four years, until just before the second world war, her work more or less cut her off from the family. She did, however, share with Rose in one or two holidays abroad, and there were occasional family reunions. These took place first at Great Shelford outside Cambridge, where their father held a University Lectureship in English for some years before his death in 1915; then, for the ten years their mother survived him, at Beaconsfield; and finally with their sister Margaret in Hampshire. Jean’s vocation as a nurse bound her to a life of service, both in England and abroad, which demanded every scrap of her time and energy. (The main work of her career was in District Nursing—she was one of the pioneers—though she also served with the French Army during the 1914-18 war.) But however exhausted, she made a point of writing regularly to her ‘Darling Twin’. Not only affection prompted her; through Rose she could keep in touch with the interests of which she was starved in her non-stop professional life.

  Rose’s world was indeed a contrast to Jean’s. In 1926, the year when the first of the letters in this book was written, and her fifteenth novel, Crewe Train, was published, she was already well established as a literary celebrity. Almost every year she was writing a new novel, portraying with detached amusement the vagaries of contemporary society. Meanwhile her controversial articles in the daily press and her witty broadcasts helped to keep her well in the public eye. London was her home, and each summer she travelled abroad, usually gravitating towards the Mediterranean, though she made one trip to America with her sister Margaret. Surrounded by friends she was not tied to any one set, and she revelled in a kaleidoscopic life which she believed in enjoying to the full, as testified in her Personal Pleasures. By now she was no longer pratiquante, but church topics never ceased to fascinate her, and ‘sitting under’ a good preacher gave her as much pleasure as ever; ‘Anglo-agnostic’ was how she later described the ambivalent state of her religious feelings at this time. She worked extremely hard at her writing, and her relaxations were strenuous too: swimming, long country walks, bicycle rides—she thought nothing of pedalling twenty miles. But she had a tendency to faint, and in the ’20s her doctor advised her to have her heart checked. Rose, with much amusement, reported the depressing findings to Jean, and then continued to live her usual active life. By nature she was exceptionally strong, with a spirit that dominated her body.

  Rose and Jean shared many of the same tastes, notably a great love of books. For fun they would compile rival lists of their first hundred favourites, then embark on interminable debates as to the pros and cons. ‘Listening in’ was an intriguing new hobby for both of them, which later became an established habit; they took enormous pleasure in listening to the same programmes and discussing them by letter afterwards. Both always followed the front-page news of the day: murders, scandals, everything. Political events, too, provided endless food for discussion, and Rose was often able to pass on titbits of news and opinion, from her vantage point among those in the know. Thus Jean, alias Nurse Macaulay, bicycling hurriedly from patient to patient, could ponder on what Sir William Beveridge had told Rose about the crisis in the Coal Industry, or smile to herself at the secret knowledge of what the New Statesman was going to say next week. Pacifism, the League of Nations, Abyssinia, the psychology of Hitler, the Cliveden set, the leakage of Budget secrets—Rose had plenty to say about all of them. And personalities like Chesterton, Shaw, and Wells, who would otherwise have been mere names to Jean, became real people in the light of Rose’s outspoken comments. Perhaps, however, the most satisfying of all the pleasures which Jean and Rose loved sharing together were their arguments over the rights and wrongs of ethical problems. Generations of Conybeares before them had
doted on just such battles of wits. Their to-and-fro had all the warmth and seriousness of a fray at a debating society, often with one of them spontaneously playing the part of devil’s advocate. If a popular daily posed the question ‘Should one tell a lie to shield a murderer?’ Rose and Jean were as happy as terriers after a rabbit. What matter which came off victorious? The whole point was in the chase itself.

  There were other enthusiasms, too, to Jean all-important, though less so to Rose, who nevertheless took a sisterly interest in them. One was a strong loyalty to missionary work, a loyalty which in three cases actually shaped the lives of Rose’s sisters. Margaret had become a Deaconess in 1913, devoting herself to parish work in the East End of London; Eleanor became a missionary in India with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel; to Jean the greatest fulfilment of her life was the few years’ work she did in South Africa as a missionary nurse just before the second world war. Rose herself, after the shock of her brother Aulay’s death, had also volunteered as a missionary. But this rash offer was declined and she never repeated it.

  Charitable giving was another activity that was very close to Jean’s heart—a good deal closer than to Rose’s. Both sisters made regular donations to Charities as a matter of course, but their attitudes towards money were different. In childhood they had both been accustomed to a standard of living that was frugal by necessity; their father’s income could barely meet the expenses of educating a large family. Rose had been rescued from this financial struggle first by her rich godfather and then also by her own earnings. And although there was always a certain Spartan independence about her she valued comfort, especially warmth, and liked being surrounded by a mass of belongings. Jean, on the contrary, had plunged into a life of real austerity in her chosen work among the poor, and gave herself enthusiastically to the practice of self-denial. With a minimum of possessions (books were almost her only indulgence) she habitually gave away much of her inadequate income. In the 1930’s she also began to organize a campaign for ‘planned giving’ to Charities, which she named the League of Stewards. With Rose’s help this project was brought to the attention of Canon ‘Dick’ Sheppard in 1936 and he was keen to help in launching it. But before there was time for this Jean was given the opportunity of working in South Africa; when she returned Sheppard was dead. Then the war came and the project was dropped. Jean’s inspiration was twenty years too soon: the Christian Stewardship campaigns which are now the fashion are based on exactly the same idea.