The Lost Girls

by D. J. Taylor

  For Janetta and Kenneth’s life together, Sinclair-Loutit, Very Little Luggage, pp. 131–2, and Janetta’s unpublished memoir. The trip to the Plaistow printing office is described by Janetta and in Paul Willetts, Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia (revised edition, Stockport, 2005), p. 98. For Orwell’s ‘As I Please’ column, see George Orwell, The Complete Works Volume XVIII: Smothered Under Journalism: 1946, edited by Peter Davison (1998), pp. 509–512. ‘I went to Islington’, Janetta to the author. For Frances Partridge’s account of the ‘lovely visit’, A Pacifist’s War, p. 149; on Jan Woolley’s return to England, pp. 131, 133, 142, and Janetta’s unpublished memoir.

  On Rollo’s death and its aftermath, Partridge, A Pacifist’s War, pp. 155–6; on Jan’s death, p. 159, and Janetta’s unpublished memoir. ‘Rollo you will get over’, Cyril Connolly, undated letter to Janetta [Parladé]. ‘Rather off-hand way’, Partridge, A Pacifist’s War, p. 164. ‘A nice elegant birth certificate’, Sinclair-Loutit, Very Little Luggage, p. 134; on their life in London 1942–3 and the encounter with Lucian Freud, pp. 132–4, 143–4 and 154–5; for Janetta’s ‘admirable mastery of the small things’, p. 134. Janetta on Connolly’s jeering attitude, unpublished memoir. The three Sinclair-Loutit quotes that follow are from Very Little Luggage, pp. 134–5.

  ‘A perverse reversal of all our priorities’, Sinclair-Loutit, Very Little Luggage, p. 138. Janetta’s reaction is recorded in her unpublished memoir. ‘Janetta and family are here’ and following, Partridge, A Pacifist’s War, p. 182. On the Partridges’ ‘pacifist anathema’ and Sinclair-Loutit’s arrival in Newquay, Sinclair-Loutit, Very Little Luggage, p. 141. The letter sent to Janetta shortly before his embarkation is undated [Parladé].

  For life in Cairo, Sinclair-Loutit’s relations with Topolski and his letters home, Very Little Luggage, pp. 165 and 173. ‘I can feel your warmth + kindness’, letter to Janetta, 18 August 1944 [Parladé]. On Janetta’s visit to Ham Spray in early September, Partridge, A Pacifist’s War, p. 195; ‘Thought a good deal about the passing of youth’, p. 199.

  ‘I am afraid that by now’, undated letter from Diana Witherby; the second letter was probably sent in early 1945; ‘Oh darling Wolfers’, undated letter, sent at the end of September; Sonia’s letter about Arthur Calder-Marshall is undated, as are Diana’s remarks about the ‘old boy’ finding a way [all Parladé]. For the Christmas spent at Ham Spray, Partridge, A Pacifist’s War, p. 205. Janetta, letter to Sonia dated 10 January 1945 [Orwell Archive].

  ‘Things have looked up quite a bit here’, letter of 15 January 1945; ‘Dear Wolfers . . . I am determined’, letter of 1 March 1945 [both Parladé]. On Frances Partridge’s opposition, Sinclair-Loutit, Very Little Luggage, p. 186; for the circumstances of his leave, p. 186. ‘I no longer loved him’, Janetta, unpublished memoir. Janetta’s letter to Frances Partridge about the VE Night celebrations is quoted in Partridge, A Pacifist’s War, p. 214. For Frances’s impression of Sussex Place, Partridge, Everything to Lose. Evelyn Waugh’s letter to Patrick Balfour is reproduced in Courtauld, As I Was Going to St Ives, p. 114. Janetta writes about the origin of ‘Mrs Bluefeet’ in her unpublished memoir. Matthew Connolly’s remarks are reproduced in Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 136. For Janetta’s seeing ‘no solution’ of her difficulties and the arrival of Robert Kee, Partridge, Everything to Lose, pp. 19 and 20; ‘Kenneth is suggesting’, p. 22.

  For Sinclair-Loutit’s realisation that ‘something is the matter’, Partridge, Everything to Lose, pp. 27–8; on the visit to Sussex Place and the ‘useless, awful letter’, p. 31. The end of the relationship is described in Partridge, Everything to Lose, pp. 38–41, and Sinclair-Loutit, Very Little Luggage, pp. 216–19, from which all quotations are taken. Nancy Mitford’s description of ‘the final Bluefeet parting’ is in Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, edited by Charlotte Mosley (1996), p. 23.

  Interlude: Anna

  For Anna’s life and quotes, Jeremy Reed, A Stranger on Earth: The Life and Work of Anna Kavan (2006). The letter to Connolly from Torquay is in the Connolly Collection, University of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

  7. Cairo Nights: Barbara 1943–4

  For accounts of Barbara’s trip to the Middle East, see Skelton, Tears, pp. 52–9, and Barbara Skelton, A Young Girl’s Touch (1956), pp. 61–91. Quennell’s letter was sent on 22 July 1943 [Skelton].

  On Cairo in the autumn of 1943, Artemis Cooper, Cairo in the War: 1939–1945 (1989), passim. ‘Such a country’, quoted in Cooper, Cairo in the War, p. 79; ‘The war is non-existent’, p. 250. PC Boot’s letter is reproduced in Skelton, Tears, p. 61. ‘Your letter – posted at Sierra Leone – has arrived’, letter from Quennell dated 19 August 1943; ‘Use it or not as you’re inclined’ and subsequent quotation, letter dated 3 September 1943 [both Skelton]. For Barbara’s life in Cairo, and ‘a very long time since I heard from you’, letter dated 1 December 1943, Skelton, Tears, pp. 59–65. PC Boot’s letter from Topolski’s studio, 27 November 1943 [Skelton].

  ‘My darling Skeltie’, letter from Quennell dated 29 January 1944 [Skelton]. Topolski remembers his visit in Fourteen Letters. ‘We were told we all had to sleep’, Skelton, Tears, p. 64. For details of Farouk’s palace, Skelton, A Young Girl’s Touch, pp. 122–3.

  ‘Did I tell you that little Lys’, letter from Quennell dated 24 May 1944; ‘I was delighted’, letter from Quennell dated 20 June 1944 [both Skelton]. ‘Did it mean Farouk’, Topolski, Fourteen Letters. For the ‘hostile atmosphere’, Skelton, A Young Girl’s Touch, p. 172. The two Sinclair-Loutit letters to Janetta are dated 17 and 27 August 1944 [Parladé]. Barbara describes her departure from Cairo in Skelton, Tears, pp. 65–6. ‘I was in a sensitive position,’ William Stadiem, Too Rich: The High Life and Tragic Death of King Farouk (1991), p. 79. Interviewed by Stadiem sometime in the late 1980s, Barbara provided a frank account of her relationship with Farouk, in which she remembered that, though emphatically ‘her type’, he was ‘really more woman than man’. Their sexual encounters, she recalled, ‘gave me no pleasure whatever’. For some reason most of these reminiscences were removed from the UK edition of her book, published a year later.

  Interlude: Joan

  Simon Fenwick, Joan: The Remarkable Life of Joan Leigh Fermor (2017), for the life of Joan and quotes. For Driberg’s account of the American trip of 1937, Fenwick, Joan, pp. 8–9. Lees-Milne quote taken from Michael Bloch, James Lees-Milne: The Life (2009), p. 81. ‘I can’t complain’, Fenwick, Joan, pp. 138–9.

  8. Ways and Means: Lost Girl Style

  For Quennell on Barbara’s dress styles, The Wanton Chase, p. 41. Topolski remembers Janetta’s ‘overhanging’ hair in Fourteen Letters. Evelyn Waugh’s fictional account of the Horizon staff can be found in his Unconditional Surrender (new edition, Harmondsworth, 1964), p. 40. On Lost Girl physique, Spender, New Selected Journals; p. 586, Woodrow Wyatt, Confessions of an Optimist (1985), pp. 89–90. For Barbara and the vial of ‘Soir de Paris’, Skelton, Tears, p. 53. On Janetta’s ‘new look’, Mitford and Waugh, Letters, p. 97. Frances Partridge quotes, Everything to Lose, pp. 91 and 135.

  On Barbara’s ‘flat, monotonous drawl’, Wishart, High Diver, p. 149. ‘Madly dangerous’, Janetta, diary entry, January 1941 [Parladé]. ‘Desperately depressed/dejected’, Barbara, diary entries of 23 January 1941 and 26 January 1945 [Skelton]. ‘A touch of commonness’, Wishart, High Diver, p. 149. Angela remembers the evening in 1942 in Bolter’s Grand-daughter, p. 127. ‘It isn’t his trying to rape me’, Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, p. 52. Sonia’s letter to Theodore Roethke is quoted in Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 156. ‘Thank you very much for having us to stay’, undated letter from Barbara to Lady Violet Powell, early 1950s [Powell].

  For the atmosphere of the Jamboree, Quennell, The Wanton Chase, p. 25. On the Gargoyle Club during the war, Michael Luke, David Tennant and the Gargoyle Years (1991), passim; the roll-call of ‘Members and Frequenters’ includes Barbara, Janetta, Glur, Topolski, Anthony and Violet Powell, Ralph
and Frances Partridge, Orwell, Connolly and Spender, pp. 84–5. The photograph of Glur talking to Lady Julia Mount is reproduced in Ferdinand Mount, Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes (2008), p. 57. Anna Kavan’s letter to Ian Hamilton describing the weekend at Tickerage was sent on 24 February 1944 (Auckland).

  Barbara describes the Chelsea party in Skelton, A Young Girl’s Touch, pp. 40–5. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t written’, Sonia, letter to William Coldstream, 17 September 1940 [Tate]. For Penelope Fitzgerald’s career during the early part of the war, see her novel Human Voices (1980) and Hermione Lee, Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life (2013), ch. 4. ‘People don’t realise’ and ‘People behaved very differently’, Janetta to the author. On Mary Wesley’s wartime exploits, Mary Wesley and Eric Siepmann, ‘Darling Poll’: The Letters of Mary Wesley and Eric Siepmann: 1944–1967, edited by Patrick Marnham (2017), passim. For Frances Partridge on Janetta’s view of contemporary morality, A Pacifist’s War, p. 196.

  ‘Whenever things were hard’, see Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, p. 64. ‘I just saw her as a man with breasts’, Naim Attallah, Of a Certain Age (London, 1992), p. 283. Janetta’s remark about Barbara and Sonia’s lives going ‘as they wanted them to’ was made to the author. ‘They felt you had to have a man’, Sarah Gibb to the author. ‘I absolutely agree with what you say about name & marriage’, Diana Witherby, undated letter to Janetta, early 1945 [Parladé].

  For Brian Howard’s suggestion of marriage, see Marie-Jaqueline Lancaster, Brian Howard: Portrait of a Failure (2005), p. 251. Waugh remembers the Horizon circle in a letter to Connolly from 29 October 1961, Waugh, Letters, p. 578. On Sonia’s fondness for using French words in conversation, Wyatt, Confessions of an Optimist, p. 89. ‘My mother’s circle’, Nicky Loutit, New Year’s Day Is Black (Norwich, 2016), unpaginated. For Waugh on Connolly and the ‘Communist young ladies’, Mitford and Waugh, Letters, p. 14. Frances Partridge quote from A Pacifist’s War, p. 149. The account of Lys ‘twittering dutifully’ is taken from a letter from Quennell to Barbara, 15 November 1944 [Skelton]. ‘He was very sweet with Lys’, Skelton, Tears, p. 40. ‘Lys is very pretty’, Partridge, Everything to Lose, p. 50. Jeremy Lewis writes about Barbara’s ‘outsider’ status in ‘Battling with Barbara’, Grub Street Irregular: Scenes from Literary Life (2008), p. 185. For the weekend with the Campbells, Frances Partridge, Everything to Lose, p. 191. For Barbara’s account, Skelton, Tears, pp. 181–3.

  Interlude: On Not Being Boring

  Richard Pares, quoted in Richard Ollard, A Man of Contradictions: A Life of A. L. Rowse (1999), p. 71. ‘The only thing that concerned him’, Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, Half an Arch: a Memoir (2004), p. 244. Laura Waugh, quoted in Martin Stannard, Evelyn Waugh: No Abiding City: 1939–1966 (1992), p. 478.

  9. Sussex Place: Connolly, Lys, Janetta and Others 1945–9

  For life at Sussex Place, see Shelden, Friends of Promise, Lewis, Cyril Connolly, Fisher, Cyril Connolly, passim. The Evelyn Waugh quote is taken from his Diaries, p. 681. ‘I don’t think we can possibly publish it as it stands’, letter to Alan Pryce-Jones dated 30 September 1946 [Yale]. For Connolly on the trip to Paris, Fisher, Cyril Connolly, p. 257. Of the three Watson letters to Cecil Beaton quoted here, the first and third are undated; the second was sent on 13 October 1945 [Beaton].

  ‘I really can’t bear being away from you for so long’, quoted in Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 138; ‘Did not ask you to divorce me’, p. 147. Watson’s letter to Beaton is dated 7 April 1946 [Beaton]. ‘Have you heard about’, Mitford and Waugh, Letters, p. 29. For Frances Partridge on Janetta and Robert Kee, Everything to Lose, p. 48. ‘Cyril was the king’ and three subsequent quotes, Loutit, New Year’s Day Is Black. Janetta’s remarks about Robert Kee no longer resenting the idea of Nicky’s existence are taken from her unpublished memoir. ‘Seventy years later’, Nicky Loutit to the author. ‘I simply couldn’t bear’, Loutit, New Year’s Day Is Black. ‘It is clear from her letters’, Partridge, Everything to Lose, p. 128.

  For the Ham Spray visit of July 1946, Partridge, Everything to Lose, p. 53, and Loutit, New Year’s Day Is Black. ‘We should have been very happy’, Janetta, unpublished memoir. Topolski remembers his affair with Janetta in Fourteen Letters. Details of Janetta’s affair with the sailor are taken from her unpublished memoir. ‘It’s a long time’, Partridge, Everything to Lose, p. 70; for the Kee wedding and the subsequent descriptions of Connolly and Lys, pp. 64, 75 and 78. ‘I am told he is now at work’, Waugh and Cooper, Mr Wu and Mrs Stitch, p. 130. ‘S Boots Connolly has fled the country’, Mitford and Waugh, Letters, p. 62. ‘When he travelled’, letters from Lys dated 22 and 27 November 1946 [Connolly]. The following Mitford quotes are from Mitford and Waugh, Letters, pp. 72 and 75.

  ‘I see Cyril’s boom fading’, Waugh, Diaries, p. 694. For Cass Canfield’s report on Connolly’s plans, Shelden, Friends of Promise, pp. 173–4. Lys’s letter to the sanatorium at Tring is undated [Connolly]. ‘Cyril has had an apoplectic seizure’, Mitford and Waugh, Letters, p. 89. The letter about wishing to get Lys as a cook was sent to John Betjeman, Waugh, Letters, p. 270. ‘Awful about Smarty’s stroke’, Mitford and Waugh, Letters, p. 91. ‘But for you I would have no eyes’, quoted in Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 193. On the move to Bedford Square, Lys, letter to Michael Shelden, 8 November 1984, kindly supplied by the recipient. Sonia’s letter about the ‘sad and bedraggled sparrow’, sent to Waldemar Hansen on 27 December 1948, is quoted in Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 206. For Lys and the wedding ring, Fisher, Cyril Connolly, p. 280.

  Connolly’s undated letters to Sonia from the Villa Mauresque are in the Orwell Archive. For the trip to France with Joan Rayner, see Fenwick, Joan, pp. 166–9. Connolly’s letter to his mother about his inability to leave Lys is quoted in Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 201. ‘I may stay at Sussex Place’, quoted in Fenwick, Joan, p. 178. Brian Howard’s letter about the visit to Sussex Place is in the Orwell Archive.

  Connolly’s letter accusing Lys of ‘playing about’ with his desertion complex is quoted in Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 214. The Evelyn Waugh letter can be found in Mitford and Waugh, Letters, p. 131. Watson, ‘A rather terrible showdown’, quoted in Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 216. Clive Fisher discusses the attempts to sell Horizon or appoint a new editor in the autumn of 1949 in Cyril Connolly, p. 285. Watson, ‘the most dishonest series of reasons’, quoted in Clark and Dronfield, Queer Saint, p. 278. The Connolly quote about the closure of the Horizon office is taken from the introduction to Cyril Connolly, Ideas and Places (London, 1953). ‘Please forgive me for going away’, undated letter from Lys [Connolly]. For Nancy’s letter of 9 June 1947 (‘I love Lys’), Mitford and Waugh, Letters, p. 132. On Nicky Loutit’s visits to Connolly’s room, Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 215.

  Interlude: Office Life

  Janetta’s recollections of Horizon are taken from her unpublished memoir. Maclaren-Ross, ‘the folder with my stories’, Memoirs of the Forties, p. 64. For Natasha Litvin’s memory of Lansdowne Terrace, see Sutherland, Stephen Spender, pp. 275–6. Anna Kavan, postcard to Peter Davies, 27 December 1943 (private collection). Lys Lubbock quotes taken from Shelden, ‘Broken Reel’. Angus Wilson, quoted in Fisher, Cyril Connolly, p. 279. Anna Kavan, letter to Ian Hamilton, 24 February 1944 (Auckland). Evelyn Waugh letter to Nancy Mitford, Mitford and Waugh, Letters, p. 149.

  10. The Man in the Hospital Bed: Sonia 1945–50

  For Sinclair-Loutit’s account of his last meeting with Sonia, Very Little Luggage, p. 144. She ‘couldn’t not have come across him’, Celia Paget to the author. Sonia’s memory of her first meeting with Orwell is quoted in Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 159. Michael Sayers to the author. Tosco Fyvel remembers the domestic arrangements at Canonbury Square in George Orwell: A Personal Memoir (1982), pp. 147–8. ‘Cabbage and unwashed nappies’, quoted in Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 160. Orwell’s letter to Anne Popham is included in Orwell, The Complete Works: Volume XVIII, p. 153.

  ‘Fuck the war’, Co
nnolly, undated letter to Janetta [Parladé]. ‘I was rather sad to hear you’re coming back so soon’, quoted in Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 161. ‘Established poets would send in stuff’, Francis Wyndham to the author. The two undated Connolly letters from 1946 and 1948 are both in the Orwell Archive. ‘No news from Cyril’, Peter Watson, letter to Sonia, 9 February 1947, and the letters sent from Jamaica and Sicily, the second dated 21 August 1947 [all Orwell Archive]. Of the following quotations, the first is from the letter dated 21 August 1947, the second from another letter sent on the same day, and the third from a letter sent on 24 August 1947 [all Orwell Archive].

  ‘Is your stocking size 9½?’, undated letter from Peter Watson [Orwell Archive]. For Sonia and Hansen’s friendship and Hansen’s letter to John Myers, dated 1 July 1947, see Clark and Dronfied, Queer Saint, passim.

  For Sonia’s romantic life in the mid-1940s, Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, p. 65; the suggestion that Lucian Freud was the father of her unborn child was made by Lys [information supplied by Michael Shelden]; on her involvement with Merleau-Ponty, pp. 73–91. The letter beginning ‘Dear Sonia Brownell’ is in the Orwell Archive. ‘I never longed for anything’, quoted in Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, p. 84. ‘I terribly want to write to you this evening’ [Orwell Archive]. ‘If you’re madly in love’, quoted in Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, p. 81. The telegram sent on 23 December 1947 is in the Orwell Archive.