A House in St John's Wood
Page 42
8. ‘My situation is worse’: ‘Three Letters’, Encounter, vol. 15, no. 2, Aug 1960, pp. 3–6.
9. ‘a small gathering’: NSJ, pp. 267–79.
10. ‘I thought it would be a good idea’: 4 Feb 1960, SSUJ.
11. Stephen deduced that Driberg: Tom Driberg (1905–76), Labour politician and journalist, was an old friend of Burgess, of whom he wrote a memoir, Guy Burgess: A Portrait with Background (1956). See also Francis Wheen, Tom Driberg, Chatto & Windus, 1990, pp. 316–18.
12. ‘My days are all poisoned’: CI, unpublished diary, 3 Jan 1936, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
13. I wrote him a bitter letter: MS to SS, 17 June 1983, SS to MS, n.d., CMS.
14. ‘Any voyage away from England’: 1994, CMS.
15. ‘if it was not conducted’: 31 March 1960, in SS, Journals 1939–1983, ed. John Goldsmith, Faber & Faber, 1985, pp. 216–19, and NSJ, p. 280.
16. ‘The exchanges of culture’: Friday 20 April 1956, in Philip Williams (ed.), The Diary of Hugh Gaitskell 1945–1956, Jonathan Cape, 1983, p. 500.
Twenty: Over-privileged?
1. ‘It revealed to me something’: SS to RP, 6 March 1962, Duke.
2. ‘simply by presenting pictures’: SS to IB, 11 July 1932, IB Archive, Bod.
3. ‘not the words and the lines’: WWW, p. 65.
4. ‘True poetry is the external truth’: 2 Oct 1980, NSJ, p. 564.
Twenty-one: Might just as well be married
1. ‘Matthew and his girl keep on turning up’: SS to RP, 26 Sept 1961, Duke.
2. ‘as a man of letters’: IB to SS, 17 Nov. 1966, IB Archive, Wolfson College, Oxford. Thanks to Henry Hardy for bringing this to my attention.
3. ‘I want you to consider’: SS to MS, 22 May 1966, CMS. The address on the letter is approximate and I think Dad half hoped it wouldn’t arrive.
Twenty-two: A nice little niche
1. ‘Suddenly I realised that I wanted’: 3 Dec 1962, NSJ, p. 324.
2. ‘It might be quite good for them’: SS to AMG, 22 Jan 1963, CMS.
3. ‘We strongly suspected’: Trilling, We Must March My Darlings, p. 60.
4. the end of the story: JE to MS, 23 May 2012.
5. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll ring up Allen’: Sidney Hook, Out of Step, New York, Harper & Row, 1987, p. 425.
6. ‘but none of us’: Trilling, We Must March My Darlings, p. 61.
7. The Alexandria Quartet: Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet, consisting of four interconnected novels, Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea, was published between 1957 and 1960.
8. ‘a platform in which American points of view’: 14 July 1954, SSUJ.
Twenty-four: Killing the women we love
1. ‘The magic of that day’: NS unpublished diary, 2 Feb 1985, SSAB.
2. ‘Now what I would like’: SS to Nikos, 23 July 1965, CDP.
3. ‘When you are relating a dream’: SS to Nikos, 20 Sept 1965, CDP.
4. ‘I must try and think about that day’: SS to Nikos, 5 and 16 Sept 1965, CDP.
5. ‘During the night I was trying to explain’: SS to Nikos, 20 Sept 1965, CDP.
6. ‘You always relate everything’: SS to Nikos, 14 Sept 1965, CDP.
7. Dad’s book on Botticelli: SS, Botticelli, Faber Gallery, 1945.
8. His book on Florence: Gaetano Salvemini, Magnati e popolani in Firenze dal 1280 al 1295, Florence, Carnesecchi, 1899.
9. ‘Oxford is anti-creative’: SS to MS, 3 Dec 1965, CMS.
10. ‘Maybe you will be able’: ibid.
11. ‘When Matthew writes’: SS to MS, 22 Aug 1966, CMS.
12. ‘Even if you don’t feel things’: SS to MS, 20 Sept 1966, CMS.
13. ‘enraged Natasha so much’: SS to Nikos, 15 Sept 1966, CDP.
Twenty-five: Your father will survive
1. ‘I must not think that this meant’: Plante, Becoming a Londoner, p. 5.
2. ‘I suddenly realized the reason’: SS to Nikos, 16 Sept 1965, CDP.
3. ‘to keep Natasha alerted to his sexuality’: Plante, Becoming a Londoner, p. 40.
4. ‘I had managed to design the walk’: NS, An English Garden in Provence, Harvill Press, 1999, pp. 63–5.
5. ‘I wish that when I was your age’: Plante, Becoming a Londoner, p. 52.
6. ‘Natasha is hysterical on the subject of Lasky’: SS to Nikos, 26 May 1967, CDP.
7. ‘I am not going to have anything more to do with the liberals’: Lyndon Johnson to Richard Goodwin, 22 June 1965, in Richard N. Goodwin, Remembering America, Boston, MA, Little, Brown, 1988, p. 392.
8. ‘The effect was electrifying’: SS to MS, 30 March 1967, CMS.
9. King was involved: for the Cecil King plot against Wilson, see Peter Wright, Spycatcher, Viking, 1987, p. 369. Wright describes King casually as ‘a longtime agent of ours’.
10. ‘The trouble with this Encounter row’: SS to Nikos, 14 April 1967, CDP.
11. ‘So I did, dear boy’: Sutherland, Stephen Spender, p. 451.
12. ‘The whole story’: David Plante to MS, e-mail of 15 Oct 2013.
13. ‘You and I may think he has been a little naïf’: WHA to NS, 26 May [1967], Berg Collection, NYPL.
14. articles were written: see (among others) Max Kozloff, ‘American Painting during the Cold War’, Artforum, May 1973; Eva Cockcroft, ‘Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War’, Artforum, June 1974; and Serge Guibault, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1985. I’ve also tried to connect the Trotsky left-wingers in New York and the eventual CIA in my book on Gorky, From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
15. ‘Your father is still famous’: Jennifer Josselson to MS, 24 May 2012.
16. paid a fat sum: NS unpublished diary for 1985, n.d., p. 4, SSAB.
Twenty-six: Romantic friendships before all
1. ‘it makes no difference to S’: NS unpublished diary, Saturday 2 Feb 1985, SSAB.
2. ‘S always thinks in terms of himself’: ibid., Sunday [5 May] 1985, SSAB.
3. ‘S would always put everything else’: ibid., Wednesday 8 May 1985, SSAB.
4. ‘The truth is, if one is not loved’: ibid., Thursday 14 Feb 1985, SSAB.
5. they’d never felt criminal: Plante, Becoming a Londoner, p. 73.
6. ‘No … but he was very fond of you’: David Plante, e-mail to MS, 3 July 2014.
7. ‘You’ve asked me before’: for a biography of Gorky that includes many of Mougouch’s stories, see my From a High Place.
8. his love letters had been copied: for the controversy over the Gorky letters, see Nick Dante Vaccaro, ‘Gorky’s Debt to Gaudier-Brzeska’, Art Journal, vol. 23, Fall 1963, pp. 33–4.
9. ‘It just seems to me that somehow’: this comes from an undated fragment in my diary of the time. I can’t vouch for its accuracy but it sounds like her.
10. ‘I do not believe that writing or any other activity’: 23 April 1995, NSJ, p. 747.
11. ‘Stephen, sentimental’: Plante, Becoming a Londoner, p. 159.
Twenty-seven: The right to speak
1. His reply was emotional and confused: Jennifer Josselson to MS, 26 May 2012.
2. Following the letter: for Index on Censorship etc., see Sutherland, Stephen Spender, p. 457.
3. there were frequent and recurring difficulties with the State Department: I am grateful to my cousin Philip Spender, who worked for Index, for emphasizing this point.
4. a photo of one man shooting another: this famous photo was taken by Eddie Adams on 1 February 1968.
5. ‘I am beginning to feel’: SS to Nikos, n.d. [early May 1967], DPC.
Twenty-eight: Guileless and yet obsessed
1. he wrote a ‘diary’ poem about it: the poem on the birth of Saskia was first published in SS, Journals 1939–1983, p. 271. For our Italian life, see MS, Within Tuscany, Viking/Penguin, 1992.
2. ‘This last sentence of his’: MS diary, 3 July 1975.
3. American art
was the invention: the earliest evidence I’ve been able to trace regarding an awareness that American art must take a lead after the war comes from a lost circular issued by the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, quoted in the New York Times, 22 May 1942. See MS, From a High Place, p. 264.
4. ‘He appealed to me across Arthur’s cocktail glass’: MS diary, 19 Nov 1975.
INDEX
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Abbott, Right Reverend Eric, Dean of Westminster 248
Abstract Expressionism 354
Ackerly, Joe 33
Addams, Charles 394
Aix-en-Provence 289, 293
Albergo Gardensana, Lake Garda 111–14
Algérie Française 231
Allied Control Commission 79
Alpert, Ann 312
Ambler, Eric 156
America, Americans 95–100, 139, 221–2, 345–6, 354
American Abstract Expressionist movement 354
American Committee for Cultural Freedom (ACCF) 107–8, 128, 143–4, 286
American Communist Party 95–6
American Federation of Labor 108
Amsterdam 375
Apollo Society 75–6
Aragon, Louis 85, 340
Aron, Raymond 127
Artists’ Congress 87
Ashcroft, Peggy 75, 172, 193, 256, 257, 260, 291
Asquith, Conrad 288
Astor, Barbara McNeill 206, 269
Astor, David 205
Astor, Georgina 206
Astor, Jane 206
Astor, Michael 194, 205–7, 229, 268–9
Athens 258, 308
Auden, W. H.
appears as a character in Spender’s first novel 20
at Oxford University 14
attitude towards sex 16, 17, 18, 19
awarded the King’s Medal for Poetry 48–9, 245
begins to withdraw into himself 302–3
character and description 8–9, 13, 253–4
co-writes libretto for The Rake’s Progress 301–2, 390
comment on not finishing a book 295
comments on communism 47–8
comments on a poem by Matthew 302
comments on Spender’s Marston poems 14–15, 327
and defection of Burgess and Maclean 115
falls in love with Gerhart Meyer 18–19
friendship with Spender 14–16
friendship with the Spender family 9–10
gives a speech in Sweden 388–9
keeps an interesting diary 18–19
leaves England before the War 52–4, 154–5
lovers of 17, 33
meets Louis MacNeice at Loudoun Road 301
as a member of the Establishment 245
moves to Berlin 18
opinion on paying for commissioned articles 143–4
and patriotism 244
poem alluding to Natasha 141
poem set for English exam taken by Natasha 322
as a poet 255
possible reasons for not returning to England 54
praised by the Evening Standard 372
relationship with Kallman 301–2
teaches Matthew about adjectives 7–8
tells Stephen he will outlive them all 303
translations of Brecht apparently lost by Spender 238
travels to China with Isherwood 48–9
views Spender’s lack of worldliness with scepticism 392
visits Matthew and Maro in Italy 387–9
writes affectionate but critical letter on World within World 110–11
writes Tolkienish poems with Matthew 8
Commonplace Book 253
Auerbach, Frank 258, 270
Australian Committee for Cultural Freedom 140
Ayer, A. J. ‘Freddie’
attends Berlin meeting of CCF 105–6
brief fling with Inez Pearn 40
coaches Matthew in interview technique 282
given a knighthood 245
numerous affairs 314
and the story of ‘Don’t rock the boat’ 106
supports Litvinov 377–8
tries to read Don Quixote 295
Bachardy, Don 180, 181, 197, 199
Bacon, Francis 78, 133, 270, 341
Man on a Bicycle 319
Baddeley, Simon 243–4
Baltimore, Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron 264
Ban the Bomb protests 247–8
Barber, Samuel 97, 152, 172
Barcelona 26, 27, 96
Bardsey Island 8, 133–6
Basaldella, Afro 354
Baudelaire, Charles 235
Bayley, John 282
BBC 77, 142, 146, 350
Bell, Julian 56
Belov, Sergei 352
Belsen 81–2
Berlin 19, 21, 24–7, 27, 98, 105–6, 327
Adonis Bar 18
Hitler’s Chancellery 82
Berlin, Isaiah
correspondence with Spender 255
given a knighthood 245
jokes that Spender will marry Inez 38
low view of Yevtushenko 276
as possible contributor to Stephen’s proposed magazine 127
supports Litvinov 377–8
uncertain of his future career choice 22
Blundell’s School, Tiverton (Devon) 71
Blunt, Anthony 242–3
Bolshevism 81
Bondy, François 149
Bonham-Carter, Charlotte 78
Bonn University 83
Book Week 344
Booth, Charles 59–60, 206
Booth, Margaret 59–60, 206
Botticelli, Sandro 330
Braden, Tom 350
Brecht, Bertolt 238
Breton, André 366
British Committee for Cultural Freedom 350
British Council 85, 140, 244, 245, 246, 350
British Intelligence 105, 117, 142, 235–6
Broadwater, Boden 348
Brodsky, Joseph 165
Bruern Abbey, Oxfordshire 194, 205–8, 228, 268
Budberg, Moura 375
Burgess, Guy 114–16, 117–18, 132, 240–2, 350, 378
Busby, Mrs 60
Butler, R. A. 230, 241
Buttinger, Muriel Gardiner 34–5, 74, 172, 239–40, 327
Byron, Lord George 272
Cahiers d’Art 265, 271
Calas, Elene 396
Calas, Nico 396–7
California 177–85, 223
Camkin, Denis 38
Cape Cod 348
Castelli, Leo 394
Cavafy, Constantine P. 340
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, Don Quixote 295
Cézanne, Paul 289
Chandler, Pearl Eugenie ‘Cissy’ 145, 156, 170–1, 178, 180, 181, 184
Chandler, Raymond
as an alcoholic 145–7, 158–9, 168–9, 174, 180, 211, 225
character and description 145
comments on Lizzie and Matthew 169
comments on Stephen and his homosexuality 183–4
death of 178, 224–5
holidays with Natasha in Italy and Tangiers 156–7
invites Natasha to stay with him in America 173–4, 177–85
letters assembled for publication 394
lives near Natasha and Stephen 159
opinion of Spender’s writing 169–70
relationship with Natasha 145–8, 155–61, 189–92, 208–11, 319, 395
returns to America 156, 161
skirmishes with Spender over money 157–9, 160, 161
table manners 217–18
wants to interview Lucky Luciano 208
wishes to leave his copyright to Natasha 169
as a writer 160–1
writes passionate letters to Natasha 3, 169, 170–1, 174, 184–5, 190–1, 209–10, 224–5
> Chania, Crete 257–61, 278–9
Chaplin, Charlie 161, 366
Château Noir, Aix-en-Provence 289
Chatsworth House, Derbyshire 216
China 48–9, 298
Chinese Communist Party 298
Churchill, Winston 80, 241
CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) 105, 107–8, 150, 222, 236, 285–7, 299, 343–6, 347, 348–9, 350–5
Cicellis, Kay 148
Cincinnati 126–7
Civil Rights 128
Clark, Kenneth 76, 379
Clay, General Lucius 105, 346
Clean Air Act (1956) 172
Clemen, Harald 230
Clemen, Wolfgang 230
Cocteau, Jean 235
Coghill, Nevill 63
Cold War 99, 107–8, 163–5, 242, 276
Coldstream, William ‘Bill’ 54, 248, 249, 266, 277
Columbia University, New York 285
Combined Cadet Force 247–8
communism, communists 24, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44–5, 47–8, 77, 86, 87–8, 96–7, 99–101, 107, 126–7, 139, 143, 164–5, 229, 237, 242, 334, 344
Communist Party of Great Britain 41–2, 77, 126
Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) 105–10, 127–8, 139–40, 148–51, 211, 222, 229–30, 238, 285, 343, 345, 347, 350, 355
Connolly, Cyril
as an editor 51–2
banking remark 152
character and description 51, 152
comments on Auden and Isherwood leaving England 52–3
and defection of Burgess and Maclean 116
has doubts concerning World within World 111
has lunch with Natasha at Horizon 56
moves to Devon 71
talks to Moura Budberg at Matthew’s wedding 375
threatens to swat Matthew like a fly 152–3
views Spender’s lack of worldliness with scepticism 392
Enemies of Promise 252
The Rock Pool 51
Cornford, John 56, 240
Cornwall 69
Corso, Gregory 278
Craxton, John ‘Cracky’ 74, 257–8, 270, 278
Crete 257, 279, 308–9
Criterion magazine 86
Crosland, Tony 236–7
Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) 276, 279–80
Cunningham (schoolboy) 154–5
Curtius, Ernst Robert 350
admires Spender as a writer 23
character and description 23