The Lost Girls

by D. J. Taylor

  Introduction: An Evening in Bedford Square

  ‘For the undamaged survivors’, see Robin Dalton, One Leg Over: Having Fun – Mostly – in Peace and War (Melbourne, 2017), p. 28.

  1. The Wanton Chase

  The first of the three letters from Peter Quennell to Barbara is undated; the second was sent on 25 October 1941 and the third on 1 January 1943 [Skelton]. For Quennell on the ‘Lost Girls’, see The Wanton Chase: An Autobiography from 1939 (1980), pp. 71–2. Hilary Spurling’s description of Horizon’s female staff is taken from The Girl from the Fiction Department: A Portrait of Sonia Orwell (2002), pp. 50–1.

  On the beauty of individual Lost Girls, Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, p. 27; Michael Wishart, High Diver (1977), p. 149. Frances Partridge, quoted in Anne Chisholm, Frances Partridge: The Biography (2009), p. 187. The friend who saw Sonia gambolling round Connolly was Violet Powell, Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, p. 61. For the advice given to Angela by her mother, Angela Culme-Seymour, Bolter’s Grand-daughter (Oxford, 2001), p. 13. ‘What one did’, Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy to the author. Janetta’s comment on her first wedding is recorded in Frances Partridge, A Pacifist’s War (1978), p. 90. ‘I like things to be difficult’, Quennell, The Wanton Chase, p. 34.

  For the historical background to the rise of the Lost Girl, see Linda Simon, Lost Girls: The Invention of the Flapper (2017). W. N. P. Barbellion quote from The Journal of a Disappointed Man (new edition, 2017), p. 25. Anthony Powell remembers Vivienne Haigh-Wood in Journals 1982–1986 (1995), p. 230. On Violet Pakenham’s early life, Hilary Spurling, Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time (2017), pp. 180–4. For the Bright Young People, D. J. Taylor, Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918–1940 (2007).

  Julian Maclaren-Ross’s description of Connolly at Lansdowne Terrace appears in Memoirs of the Forties (new edition, Harmondsworth, 1985), pp. 55–80. On Connolly generally, see David Pryce-Jones (ed.), Cyril Connolly: Journal and Memoir (1983), Michael Shelden, Friends of Promise: Cyril Connolly and the World of Horizon (1989), Clive Fisher, Cyril Connolly: A Nostalgic Life (1995) and Jeremy Lewis, Cyril Connolly: A Life (1997). For Spender’s mixed feelings, Stephen Spender, New Selected Journals, edited by Lara Feigel, John Sutherland and Natasha Spender (2012), pp. 740–1. ‘Quick under the fat’, Alan Pryce-Jones, Devoid of Shyness: From the Journals 1926–1939 (York, 2015), p. 194.

  On Connolly’s relations with women, Diana Witherby’s memory of his cruelty is taken from Spender, New Selected Journals, p. 385. Her undated letter to Janetta was probably sent in the early part of 1945 [Parladé]. ‘I shall never believe in women again’, quoted in Fisher, Cyril Connolly, p. 208. Quennell’s recollections can be found in The Wanton Chase, p. 22. ‘Most lovely company’, Janetta to the author. Anna Kavan’s memories are taken from two letters to her lover Ian Hamilton, dated 8 April 1943 and 2 December 1943, now in the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Auckland. For his ‘enjoyment’ of romantic complications, Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 147. Spender’s memory of the flight to Brussels, New Selected Journals, p. 165.

  ‘Is that the tug’, quoted in Anthony Powell, To Keep the Ball Rolling: The Memoirs of Anthony Powell: Volume I: Infants of the Spring (1976), p. 120. For the conversation with Lord Jessel, Sarah Gibb to the author. On Connolly’s pre-Horizon career, see Fisher, Cyril Connolly, and Lewis, Cyril Connolly, passim. ‘About the only novel-reviewer in England who does not make me sick’, Orwell, review of The Rock Pool, New English Weekly (23 July 1936), reprinted in George Orwell, The Complete Works: Volume X: A Kind of Compulsion: 1903–1936, edited by Peter Davison (1998), pp. 491–3. Auden’s praise for Enemies of Promise is quoted in Fisher, Cyril Connolly, p. 171. The letter to Jean about Diana from July 1939 is quoted in Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 27.

  2. ‘The Little Girl Who Makes Everyone’s Heart Beat Faster’

  For Spender’s reflections on Janetta in the 1930s, see New Selected Journals, pp. 587–8. David Garnett’s account of meeting her in 1945 is recorded in Frances Partridge, Everything to Lose: Diaries 1945–1960 (1985), p. 14. Gerald Brenan quote taken from Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, Gerald Brenan: The Interior Castle (1992), p. 297. Topolski’s memories of her are included in his Fourteen Letters (1988), unpaginated. For Patrick Leigh Fermor’s account, see Adam Sisman (ed.), More Dashing: Further Letters of Patrick Leigh Fermor (2018), pp. 281–2. On her appearance in old age, Sarah Gibb to the author. For Barbara’s attempts to ‘appear more naked’, Wishart, High Diver, p. 149.

  On the Woolley family background, Simon Courtauld, As I Was Going to St Ives: A Life of Derek Jackson (2007), pp. 111–12, Angela Culme-Seymour, Bolter’s Grand-daughter, passim, G. H. Woolley, Sometimes a Soldier (1963). ‘Young, good-looking and unsophisticated’, Culme-Seymour, Bolter’s Grand-daughter, p. 5. ‘I knew my mother had taken out an insurance policy’, Janetta to the author. For Frances and Ralph Partridge’s meeting with Jan and her children in Spain, Chisholm, Frances Partridge, p. 167.

  For the Nationalist assault on Málaga, see Gathorne-Hardy, Gerald Brenan, pp. 303–4; The Times (19, 20, 22, 25 and 27 May 1936). ‘My mother was apparently a sort of relation of the Governor’, Janetta to the author. On Frances’s ‘quasi-parental love’, Chisholm, Frances Partridge, p. 170. Gerald Brenan quote, Gathorne-Hardy, Gerald Brenan, p. 317. Anne Chisholm provides a detailed account of the ski-ing trip to the French Alps, Frances Partridge, pp. 177–9.

  Accounts of the summer 1939 excursion to France can be found in Lewis, Cyril Connolly, pp. 318–20, and Fisher, Cyril Connolly, pp. 176–7. Jean Connolly’s letter is quoted in Fisher, Cyril Connolly, p. 176. For Waugh’s view of The Unquiet Grave, see Evelyn Waugh, The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, edited by Michael Davie (1976). Janetta’s recollections are taken from an unpublished memoir [Parladé]. Quennell remembers the holiday trip with Connolly and Janetta in The Wanton Chase, pp. 11–12. ‘An extremely nice relationship’, Janetta to the author. The details of Janetta’s relationship with Hugh Slater are taken from her unpublished memoir. ‘I’m so glad yr with Hugh’, letter from Jan Woolley, September 1939 [Parladé].

  For Peter Watson, see Adrian Clark and Jeremy Dronfield, Queer Saint: The Cultured Life of Peter Watson, Who Shook Twentieth Century Art and Shocked High Society (2015). The Spender quote is from New Selected Journals, p. 224. ‘Really wonderful’, Janetta to the author. On the beginnings of Horizon, Shelden, Friends of Promise, passim. ‘Talking for hours’, Janetta to the author.

  3. When the Going was Good: Lys, Connolly and Horizon 1939–45

  ‘Freud’ is included in Gavin Ewart, Collected Poems (1991), pp. 427–8. ‘He still seems to be on my trail’, Lys, undated letter to Connolly, probably from late 1940 [Connolly]. The ancestry of the Dunlap family can be traced via http://www.mydunlap.net. For details of Lys’s early life, see Shelden, Friends of Promise, pp. 69–71.

  On Horizon’s founding, Shelden, Friends of Promise, pp. 37–41. ‘I am editing a paper’, letter to Alan Pryce-Jones [Yale]. ‘The blackout is really formidable’, Waugh, Diaries, p. 446. ‘This Haunted House’, letter to Alan Pryce-Jones [Yale]. For the magazine’s debut and reception, D. J. Taylor, The Prose Factory: Literary Life in England Since 1918 (2016), pp. 208–9. Watson’s letter about Orwell and ‘Boys’ Weeklies’, quoted in Fisher, Cyril Connolly, p. 194. Waugh’s letter to Connolly, dated 29 September 1961, is included in Evelyn Waugh, The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, edited by Mark Amory (1980), p. 578.

  For Frances Partridge’s ‘resentment’ and Julia Strachey’s complaint about the ‘High Priest of Smarty Literature’, Partridge, Everything to Lose, pp. 136 and 82. Powell writes about Connolly’s unsuitability for ‘smart’ life in Journals 1982–1986, p. 200. On the incident involving the dead duck, Duff Hart-Davis, Peter Fleming: A Biography (1974), p. 320.

  The account of Diana’s editorial work on Horizon is taken from Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 51, as is Jean’s letter about the cottage in the country. ‘
It is beginning to sink in’, quoted in Fisher, Cyril Connolly, p. 201. ‘Darling, darling heart’, quoted in Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 53; details of the stay at Thurlestone Sands, pp. 54–5. ‘On the 16th the lease is up’ and ‘Our office has been bombed’, undated letters from Watson to Cecil Beaton [Beaton].

  For the lunch party at Lansdowne Terrace, see John Sutherland, Stephen Spender: The Authorised Biography (2004), p. 275. ‘Ian has been shouting & screaming at me all morning’, Lys, undated letter to Connolly, late 1940 [Connolly]. ‘I have the Paget twins’ house’, letter of 11 March 1941 to Alan Pryce-Jones [Yale]. Details of the move to Drayton Gardens are taken from a letter from Lys to Michael Shelden, 8 November 1984, kindly supplied by the recipient. ‘People say she is dull’, quoted in Anthony Powell, Journals 1987–1989 (1996), pp. 217–18. ‘As soon as Cyril decided he wanted something’, Michael Shelden, ‘Broken Reel: Lys Lubbock and Cyril Connolly’, London Magazine (June/July 1993), pp. 33–43. On the ménage at Drayton Gardens, Quennell, The Wanton Chase, p. 21; Lys, letter to Michael Shelden, ‘Broken Reel’.

  For Waugh on Connolly’s lunch parties, see the letter to Laura Waugh of 19 September 1943, Waugh, Letters, p. 169, and the letter to Lady Dorothy Lygon of 23 March 1944, p. 182.

  The two Quennell letters – to Barbara – are dated, respectively 4 September 1943 and 20 May 1944 [Skelton]. Diana’s letter to her brother about the flat in Bedford Square is quoted in Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 95. For Lys on Connolly’s contentment while working on The Unquiet Grave, undated letter on Horizon notepaper, probably written towards the end of 1950 [Connolly]. Quennell’s letter to Barbara about ‘SECRET WEAPON WEEK’ is dated 20 June 1944 [Skelton]. His description of Connolly and Lys taking refuge in their shelter was sent on 22 July 1944 [Skelton].

  Waugh’s comments about The Unquiet Grave, Waugh, Diaries, p. 608. For Lady Diana Cooper’s remarks on Connolly’s visit to Paris, Evelyn Waugh and Diana Cooper, Mr Wu and Mrs Stitch: The Letters of Evelyn Waugh and Diana Cooper, edited by Artemis Cooper (1991), p. 116. ‘It is not the Paris we knew’, quoted in Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 122. Diana’s comments on his letter to Lys are in an undated letter to Janetta [Parladé]. Quennell writes about Connolly’s boredom in a letter to Barbara, 15 November 1944 [Skelton].

  Interlude: Mapping the Forties Scene

  For the responses to Virginia Woolf’s WEA lecture, Adrian Wright, John Lehmann: A Pagan Adventure (1998), pp. 102–4. Q. D. Leavis, ‘The Background of 20th Century Letters’, Scrutiny, no. 8 (1939), pp. 72–7. Julian Symons, quoted in Martin Green, Children of the Sun: A Narrative of ‘Decadence’ in England After 1918 (1976), p. 342.

  4. ‘Skeltie darling . . .’

  Barbara’s exploits in the last week of 1941 are recounted in Barbara Skelton, Tears Before Bedtime (1987), pp. 40–1. References from this, and its successor Weep No More (1989), are taken from the joint edition of 1993 with continuous pagination. For her early life, see Tears, pp. 1–13. ‘Her attachments being multifarious and multiple’, Topolski, Fourteen Letters. Michael Wishart remembers her ‘tantalising quality’ in High Diver, p. 149. On her pre-war trip to India, Skelton, Tears, pp. 14–19. For Quennell on ‘the story of the young man who stowed away’, The Wanton Chase, p. 35; ‘temporary resting places’, p. 38.

  Barbara remembers her early wartime life in Tears, pp. 25–8. For her state of mind in early 1941, diary entries of 6 January, 23 January, 25 January and 14 February [Skelton]. Topolski’s account of their relationship appears in Fourteen Letters. For Quennell’s memory of their first meeting and the description of Barbara’s appearance, The Wanton Chase, p. 20. Barbara on Quennell’s ‘Byronic attitudes’, Skelton, Tears, p. 31; ‘What a messy existence!’, p. 34. ‘Gloomy gloomy’, diary entry of 7 November 1941; ‘ridiculous events of last night’, undated letter from Quennell [Skelton]. ‘What an insufferably suspicious nature!’, Skelton, Tears, p. 38.

  ‘It’s glamorous to be left-wing these days’, Skelton, Tears, p. 35. ‘I’m sorry, I confused you with my friend’, Topolski, Fourteen Letters. For Quennell’s memory of her walking shirtless through the corn, The Wanton Chase, p. 38; on her knack of distinguishing her lovers’ weaknesses, p. 41. Both quotations following taken from letters in the Skelton collection. ‘My darling Skeltie’, letter of 2 May 1942, and subsequent Quennell letters [all Skelton]; ‘Found half a Hovis’, Skelton, Tears, p. 46. Quennell letter sent on 1 January 1943 [Skelton].

  ‘That girl he’s got up there’, Janetta to the author. On her meetings with Connolly on the stairs, 20 January 1943 [Skelton]. For Barbara’s stay with Topolski and her decision to leave him, diary, 7 January 1943 [Skelton]. For the reunion with Quennell, The Wanton Chase, pp. 32–3; ‘Telephonings and more telephonings’, p. 39. ‘For the 100th time’, letter dated 14 May 1943 [Skelton]. ‘Is baby pleased to see Peter?’, Skelton, Tears, p. 51.

  Interlude: Glur

  Most of the detail is taken from the Daily Telegraph obituary (20 February 2000) and a conversation with Sarah Gibb. See also Peregrine Worsthorne, Tricks of Memory: An Autobiography (1993). The two Quennell letters are dated 2 May 1942 and 25 January 1944 [Skelton], to the second of which the note that ‘Glurky has got her Absolute’ is appended.

  5. Struggling to Go Beyond Herself: Sonia 1918–45

  A copy of Sonia’s letter to Spender about the proposed ‘Young English Painters’ number of Horizon is in the Orwell Archive. For Spender’s view of Sonia, New Selected Journals, p. 586. ‘Innate rebarbative ways’, Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit, Very Little Luggage (privately printed, 2017), p. 144.

  An account of Sonia’s early life can be found in Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, passim. The references to her ‘Jesuitical’ upbringing are taken from a review of Roger Peyrefitte’s Les amitiés particulières, which appeared in the July 1946 edition of Horizon. ‘Work was her substitute for faith’, Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, p. 15. For the Neuchatel tragedy, The Times (23 May 1936). The letter describing the Brownell family Christmas was sent to Janetta on 1 January 1945 [Parladé].

  On her relations with Konovalov and Vinaver, Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, pp. 21–8. For the Euston Road School, see Bruce Laughton, The Euston Road School: A Study in Objective Painting (Aldershot, 1986). ‘Euston Road painting’, Martin Gayford, Modernists & Mavericks: Bacon, Freud, Hockney & the London Painters (2018), p. 50. ‘With a round Renoir face’, Spender, New Selected Journals, p. 586. ‘The Euston Road Venus’, Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, pp. 32–3.

  ‘You can’t think how lovely it was’ and the two following quotations are taken from a letter to William Coldstream of 18 November 1939 [Tate]. ‘It was lovely at Liverpool Street’, letter of 9 December 1939 [Tate]. The following quotations describing her weekend with ‘Stephen, Humphrey and Cuthbert’, the tea-party with Spender, her concern for Coldstream’s welfare, her anxieties about his life in Dover and the work of the Mobile First Aid Unit are taken from undated letters in the Tate Archive.

  ‘Last night the big raid on London’, ‘I had rather a gay weekend’, quotations from letters of 31 August 1940 and 17 September 1940; Connolly’s possible visit to the country with Diana, letter of 20 September 1940; ‘I read detective stories all day long’, letter of 30 September 1940; the letters mentioning the prospect of a part-time job at Horizon and the account of the All Clear going off are all undated [all Tate].

  For the suggestion that Sonia’s life in 1942 was ‘still concentrated on Coldstream’, Sinclair-Loutit, Very Little Luggage, p. 144. On her time working for Lehmann, Wright, John Lehmann, p. 141. The Horizon helper who remembered her ‘sitting at Cyril’s feet’ was Liza Mann, see Fisher, Cyril Connolly, p. 218. ‘No one could enter more enthusiastically’, Spender, quoted in Fisher, Cyril Connolly, p. 218.

  Both the letters describing Connolly’s home life were sent to Janetta and are undated [Parladé]. Michael Shelden discusses the significance of ‘Happy Deathbeds’ in Friends of Promise,
p. 77. ‘A freshness of complexion and a Renoir-ish buxom mien’, Sinclair-Loutit, Very Little Luggage, p. 144. Connolly’s postcard from Cornwall is in the Orwell Archive, as is the letter dated 13 April 1944 asking Sonia to add a paragraph to The Unquiet Grave. Sonia’s opinion of ‘Palinurus’ is expressed in an undated letter to Janetta [Parladé].

  Interlude: Angela

  The principal source for Angela’s career is her autobiography, Bolter’s Grand-daughter. James Lees-Milne quotes are from his Fourteen Friends (1996), pp. 112–14. ‘A wonderfully beautiful girl’, Courtauld, As I Was Going to St Ives, p. 127; ‘They sleep together’, p. 127. Angela’s letter to Janetta, dated 18 July 1944, is in the Parladé collection, as is the letter to Janetta from her father dated 17 February 1945.

  6. Blinding Impulsions: Janetta 1940–5

  Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit remembers meeting Janetta for the first time in Very Little Luggage, pp. 129–30. ‘You came to London, you lived with Sinclair-Loutit’, Diana Witherby, undated letter to Janetta, early 1945 [Parladé]. Details of Janetta’s relationship with Hugh Slater in the first year of the war are taken from her unpublished memoir. Orwell’s New Statesman and Nation review of Home Guard For Victory! can be found in George Orwell, The Complete Works: Volume XII: A Patriot After All: 1940–1941, edited by Peter Davison (1998), pp. 317–19; the Horizon review and the Home Guard lecture notes, pp. 439–41 and 329–40.

  The date of Janetta’s marriage is inscribed on the inside front cover of her 1941 diary, from which each of the following quotations is taken, except ‘not an easy man to talk to’, which is extracted from her unpublished memoir. For Frances’s account of her relationship with Hugh Slater, Partridge, A Pacifist’s War, pp. 63, 90; on Rollo, pp. 65 and 68. ‘Someone of whom I am fonder of and more closely linked’, Chisholm, Frances Partridge, p. 187. The closing stages of Janetta’s relationship with Slater are described in her unpublished memoir. ‘The slight veil’, Partridge, A Pacifist’s War, p. 129; ‘her new friend Kenneth’, pp. 129 and 134.