It was in 1939 that Jean returned from South Africa. She had worked herself to a standstill at the Jane Furse Memorial Hospital in the Transvaal, and eventually had to come home on doctor’s orders. She then took an appointment as a District Nurse at Romford, on the Essex side of London (in company with her lifelong friend, Nancy Willetts, a fellow-nurse from Birmingham). This meant that Rose and Jean were now only fifteen miles apart, and Rose was soon going every week to see Jean on her day off. Both set great store by these meetings though at the time they were often a strain for Jean. She had always taken Rose’s lapse from the Church deeply to heart. It was never mentioned, but against this background of silence Jean’s feelings were painfully vulnerable to the shafts of ridicule which Rose often aimed at the ideals of Christianity. Jean believes that Rose was quite unaware of the pain she caused, but it was none the less acute, and sometimes after Rose had left to return to London she would give way to tears. She was far too busy to brood, however, and when the time came for Rose’s next visit she was as eager as ever for their usual talk.
And there was much to talk about, much to share, as week by week the daily life of both became enmeshed in the machinery of war. Long before war actually began, Rose had made up her mind that in the event of the evacuation of women and children from London, she herself was not going to be banished from home. According to Jean it was largely this that led ‘Emily Macaulay’ to volunteer as a part-time driver with the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service. ‘Emilie’ was the first of Rose’s two baptismal names, and she made use of ‘Emily’ when she did not want to be recognized, though of course everyone at the Ambulance Station soon knew who she was. Anyway, it was delightful that driving about in her faithful Morris was now important war work. War was utterly abhorrent to Rose, but when it came—especially when the bombing came—she met its impact with her usual capacity to find enjoyment in almost everything. And in spite of it all she was still getting a little writing done; seeing dear friends—Gilbert Murray, Harold Nicolson, Victor Gollancz; relishing the game of trying to find out, despite propaganda and censorship, what was really happening in the war. Every week she sent on to Jean the King-Hall news-letter, as well as any cuttings that had interested her—usually with a few tart comments.
All in all, the surge of events during the first eighteen months of the war brought more stimulation than distress to Rose. But enjoyment fled away after the Spring of 1941, when she was gradually overwhelmed by a rising tide of personal sorrows and disasters. Illness and death came to one after another of those she loved; first of all her sister Margaret died of cancer. There had always been a close affinity between Rose and Margaret, and her death, though not unexpected, was a severe shock. Then when Rose was away in Hampshire making arrangements for the sale of Margaret’s house and furniture, her flat in Marylebone was bombed. Before this she had never realized how much she cared for her belongings. When she found them gone she was more grief-stricken than she could ever have imagined. Yet in her sorrow she discovered anew the kindness of her friends, who hastened to her support with every kind of gift, including books to replace some of those she had lost; the destruction of her library had caused her an agony of grief.
She found a new flat in Hinde Street, off Manchester Square (her home for the rest of her life) but after settling there she collapsed into illness, and early in 1942 had to give up her ambulance work. It was then that she first began to depend on Jean, who, with her friend Nancy Willetts, nursed her through several illnesses.
Before the war ended, and during the years just after it, the sunshine of Portugal and Spain restored her natural eagerness for life and work, though spiritually she was still wandering lost among ruins, like Barbary in The World my Wilderness. Then in 1950, the year when that novel was published, she received from America the letter which was to initiate her return to faith. It was an appreciation of her historical novel They Were Defeated from her one-time confessor Hamilton Johnson of the Cowley Fathers.
When Rose first started corresponding with Father Johnson she did not say anything about it to Jean. Not until she was well established as a regular worshipper at Grosvenor Chapel did she mention the fact, quite casually, and Jean tactfully accepted it without much comment. Thenceforward the barriers of reserve fell gradually away, and their mutual love became ever more understanding and strong.
As they reached their seventies, the death of their sister Eleanor in India meant that they were the only survivors of the last generation of Macaulays. When July and August came round each year, bringing the birthdays which they observed as faithfully as when they were children, they were recurrently reminded that there was no younger generation to carry on this branch of the family; that they and their brothers and sisters, in failing to marry and produce offspring, seemed to have failed in a joint responsibility. But it was comforting to Rose, and also to Jean, to be able to discuss old age, as it advanced, with a sister who was not only loving but had courage and a sense of humour. Jean’s many infirmities, including failing sight and hearing, forced her more and more to accept the role of an old woman. Rose, fully active till the end, never thought of herself as aged, and in spirit she never was.
The last thing in the world that either of them would have sought after was public recognition, but when Jean, after her retirement in 1956, was awarded the M.B.E. for her exceptional service as a District Nurse, Rose was naturally delighted, and accompanied her to Buckingham Palace for the investiture. Jean believes that this may have helped Rose to make up her mind to accept the D.B.E. when it was offered to her two years later. She recalls that in the past Rose had declined a C.B.E., because she felt she would thereby be under an obligation to conform to conventional standards in her work. In 1958 no such scruples held her back, and she became Dame Rose Macaulay, slightly to her own embarrassment and to the joy of her numerous friends.
During Rose’s last years many treasured friendships developed for her, especially among fellow Anglicans, and in her letters to Jean she wrote with affection of John Betjeman, Trevor Huddleston, Gerard Irvine, and Susan Lister, as well as the clergy at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, and at Grosvenor Chapel, the two churches she attended regularly. Often too, during those years, she liked to discuss with Jean her latest thinking on religious matters. Paradoxically—since high-church ritual appealed to her so strongly—she became a champion of Intercommunion, and made a point of taking part in the worship of various Nonconformist churches. Towards the end of her life, as these letters show, she was also becoming rather more tolerant towards Roman Catholicism. She even went so far as to write to Jean, on a gay holiday postcard, that if she were an atheist she would feel strongly tempted to join the Roman Church, ‘but not in England; it would have to be in Italy, and preferably Venice’. Rose’s holidays still drew her irresistibly to ‘dear abroad’—to Cyprus and the Middle East, to Turkey, to Venice, to the Aegean Islands and the Black Sea. But she now also enjoyed staying quietly with friends in the country, often with Raymond Mortimer in Dorset, or visiting the Isle of Wight with Jean and Nancy Willetts.
These final years of Rose’s life brought radiant fulfilment to her in many ways. Her spiritual ‘exile’ and the torments of remorse and contrition were left behind, and in profound thankfulness for the Christian life with its ‘new dimension’, as she called it, she longed to share with others her blessed experience of forgiveness. In this frame of mind she wrote The Towers of Trebizond. Its resounding success caused her intense joy. Many greeted it as the best novel she had ever written, while perceptive readers prized its deeper meaning.
But its message was in some ways cryptic, and much of its light relief invited misinterpretation. Among Rose’s closest friends were several who delighted in Trebizond, but found its end unsatisfying, and they urged her to write a sequel. Yes, she would write again of the conflict of good and evil in the human heart. There would be a different set of characters but again the story would begin in England and then move southwards, this time to her belove
d Venice. Perhaps it was Rose’s mermaid blood, like that of Ellen Green—the willowy heroine of And No Mans Wit—which inevitably made her such an ardent Venice-lover. Her first enchantment had been as a little girl in 1892, when she was taken there for a visit with her sisters Jean and Margaret. Staying in Venice more than sixty years later was still ‘like living in some lovely poem’. Rose was on the crest of the wave of Trebizond’s success when her new novel began to take shape in her mind. When she died, in October 1958, only one chapter of Venice Besieged had been written, but there was also a notebook of rough jottings. How tantalizing! Yes, but a challenge to the imagination that the finished ‘Venice-book’ could never have been.
In the complete first chapter, which begins with a road accident near Stonehenge on a midsummer night, one gets to know the characters. The notes take them on to Venice, and show the wealth of scholarship and fantasy and wit Rose would have interwoven with the ingenuities of the plot. How would it all have ended? These fragments do not provide a definite answer, though there is just a hint that eventually catastrophe and chaos would have been superseded by redeeming love. Unavoidably one is left with many unanswered questions, but with a unique glimpse behind the scenes at the process of Rose Macaulay’s art.
CONSTANCE BABINGTON SMITH
1926–1936
In the train
Easter Day [4 April], 1926
Dearest Jeanie,
... I am en route for Petersfield,1 going by train to Godalming, and bicycling the last 20 miles from there. It is lovely country from there, and a perfect day, so it should be a nice ride, especially as I have left lots of time to loiter and explore by the way….
I went to Grosvenor Chapel on Good Friday, where Mr Underhill2 gave quite good addresses, very practical. He seems a good man, on the whole, I think; I’d never heard him before….
Another advantage of the wireless, according to an article I read yesterday by the Editor of the Church Times, is that it is saving family life from boredom and irritation. No longer, he said, does the husband have to sit in the evenings and listen to inanities from his wife about the neighbour’s baby or the servants; he and she can now both sit in silence, with the phones on their ears. I quite agree…. I’m not sure if you meant that wireless or work was the most splendid invention that has ever been, you put it ambiguously. If you meant work, I don’t agree (I’m not sure about wireless, either, though I love to have it—but it’s a better idea than work, anyhow!). Of course it all depends on the work. There is dull, and interesting work. Mr Underhill was saying on Friday that the dullest lives he had ever seen were those of working mothers, always at some dull household chore from morning till night, and scarcely ever getting out, and never going away. He worked in a poor parish for 25 years, so knows about it. I’m sure they wouldn’t agree with you about work being a good invention. I read a rather interesting novel the other day, by a friend of mine, called The Question Mark.3 It is about the world some thousands of years hence, when everything gets done by machinery, so no necessary work is left to do. Consequently work is only done by the intelligent and highly educated, and the others, the ‘normals’, concentrate on sport, sensation, and sex interest, and get generally demoralised. This person agrees with you, apparently….
Very much love.
R.M.
[2,] St Andrew’s Mansions,4 Dorset St, W.1
18 April, [1926]
Dearest Jeanie,
... I am glad you have got a member into the Have-Not League.5 Is she the only one besides you? I’m sorry you can’t get any of your own family to join: I feel we ought, but also that we shan’t. When the moment comes to decide whether to go a walking tour in the Pyrenees (or whatever our form of luxury may be at the moment) or to give the money away, I feel I always decide on the selfish side. It is very bad; I feel rather like St Augustine, that perhaps I shall be better when it matters less, at some future date, perhaps when I am too old to go about etc.
This day last year was our first day at Soller, I believe—I mean the day after the first night. Do you remember how exquisite it was, waking to the sound of bells, and going out on the terrace with the wistaria to the lavatory (tho’ perhaps the less said of the lavatory itself the better) and coming down to coffee and ensaimada,6 then going out into the town. I forget if we climbed the Puig Mayor that day or another, but everything we did was lovely. Possibly we drove to Miramar….
Much love.
R.M.
Thursday [22 April, 1926]
Dearest Jeanie,
... I still am rather fevered and coldish—hope not flueish. ... I stay in, and listen to the wireless. Those horrid Australians7 were speaking this afternoon, about what a ‘pure’ and noble game cricket is. They didn’t say how or why it was purer than football, hockey, tennis or golf. Cricketers are conceited.
Then I heard the Archbishop of Canterbury8 at some meeting Eleanor is at9—less offensive but equally dull. At least, as a Christian, he knows that it’s not true that ‘Britishers always play the game, in life as well [as] on the field’. I wonder if people who say that ever read the papers, and see what Britishers do in the way of fraud and wickedness. But of course I don’t really know what ‘playing the game’ means. Much love.
Your loving R.M.
2, St Andrew’s Mansions, Dorset St, W.1
3 May, [1926]
Dearest Jeanie,
… The strike is over my head, and I don’t think anything sensible about it, except that it seems inevitable now.10 A man I know11 who was one of the recent Coal Commission spent ½ an hour a few nights ago explaining the position to me, and if I were to try and pass what he said on to you it would take many sheets of paper. It would take less time to tell you what Mr Trowles, my char’s husband, thinks, as the thoughts of the poor & simple are shorter than those who know more of the subject. He doesn’t see why the miners who are only pushing trucks and ponies about above ground should get so much more than other working men as they do, though he thinks that those of them (a small proportion) who go down into what Mrs Trowles calls ‘the bowels of the earth’ should not have any reduction of wages or increase of hours. The proposal, isn’t it, is to lower wages to only 20% above prewar level, instead of 33⅓% as it now is. But I forget if this means purchasing power or actual coinage—so little do I know of the subject, even after Sir William Beveridge’s exposition.
But I must say I do object on principle to general strikes to settle questions concerning a particular industry.
I suppose the chief thing about the mining question is, where is the money to come from? At present coal isn’t paying its way at all, but [is] being worked at a loss, until the new improvements can be carried out. I don’t think it would be a good thing to continue the subsidy, it’s such a heavy burden on tax-payers. I wish the Union would consent to the 8-hour day, which would, they say, make all the difference to production. But they seem firm on the 7 hours...
Much love.
E.R.M.
p.s. What do you do with mawkish female admirers who vent their passion by leaving you expensive flowers and begging you to have meals etc. with them? I get them through my books, and they are becoming (one in particular) a problem. I don’t like being rude, yet it bores me to see her, and I haven’t time either. Yet, as she says, I must have lunch somewhere, and can she join me at it. I think I must pretend to have gone abroad or something. She asks if she may become, if possible, one of my friends. What do I say? She mayn’t, but I must convey this politely if possible. So far I’ve not answered the letter. She called to see me, with lilies of the valley, and I went out to lunch to get rid of her, and she had it with me. Writing books is a terrible magnet for such as her. They are so very boring, as a rule. I suppose no-one who wasn’t would force their way into people’s lives like that. Now that she has seen me, she is worse than ever. Do you have them too, or is everyone you know too busy? I’m really too busy myself, but one’s own busyness doesn’t deter people. Anyhow I have enough friends alread
y, and I do resent people thinking they can become friends merely by pushing their way in. As a matter of fact I select my friends with great care, and only have those who please me a great deal. There must be a way out of these problems, I wish I could hit on it. I must ask other novelists what they do.
2, St Andrew’s Mansions, Dorset St, W.1
17 May, [1926]
Dearest Jeanie,
… I wish I understood more about the strike … I mean, the miners’ strike—I do understand the other,12 I think, and don’t approve at all. The men didn’t want to come out a bit, so everyone says, but they had to obey their Unions or get into trouble with them, which they can’t afford. To make it more palatable, the Union leaders spread the quite untrue report that the lowering of miners’ wages was a prelude to an attack on other wages. I saw this in a leaflet that was being sold. The question was raised in Parliament, and [J. H.] Thomas didn’t attempt to deny that it had been a fabrication for propaganda purposes. I do dislike that man. I heard him in the House the other day, and thought him very cheap and insincere and unfair.
According to Mr Trowles (my char’s husband) the story was widely believed, but even with it he said he knew very few working men who wanted to come out. It was obviously wrong of the Unions to tell them to, as most of them broke contracts to do so. It would have been thought very wrong if employers had broken their contracts with their men by sacking them without due notice for no fault of theirs, just because they disapproved of the way some other men in another trade were behaving, and this was just as mean, I think, and quite as illegal. Also very silly, of course, as it could do no good.
Letters to a Sister Page 2
