by David Plante
Germaine works for her money.
music
I take Jean to Harrods record department to buy some records for the long dreary winter in Devon. She buys an Ella Fitzgerald record, Chopin’s Marche funèbre (“Do you think it might be a little morbid in Devon?”), and South American rumbas and tangos (“They’ll soothe me”). She has no general knowledge of music.
Sonia does not listen to music unless a friend is singing, playing, conducting.
At my flat, Germaine picks up a book of madrigals, and, with nothing better to do, sings madrigal after madrigal.
N
news
Though she reads the newspapers and watches the reports on television, the news seems to make no sense to Jean—that is, she cannot recount the news she has just read or seen and heard—until one incident inflames her, and the incident becomes the news of all the world.
Sonia and Germaine know what is going on in the world. Though Sonia does not imagine there is anything that can be done for the world, Germaine does.
P
painting
Jean has no knowledge of painting. She may like a painting because it is a cheerful yellow.
Through her painter friends, Sonia has a small, precious collection: Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon—
After dinner one evening a woman writer invited for the first time admires a little painting over Sonia’s desk. Sonia says, “That’s of me, by William Coldstream.” She takes it off the wall and hands it to the writer. “I can’t,” the writer says. “Yes, yes, you must,” Sonia says; “I don’t like having pictures of myself around.” The writer gently takes the painting in her hands.
I arrive at Sonia’s for tea. Other people are there and they, gathered around a table, are examining, on the fly leaf of a large book about Picasso, a pencil drawing in red, yellow, blue by Picasso which is made of the words À SONIA. “We’ve had enough of that,” Sonia says, and slams the book shut.
She repeats what her painter friends say about painters and exhibitions.
Germaine has published a reference book on women painters.
parties
Jean loves going to parties. She sits quietly in the centre and people lean towards her and talk. For periods no one speaks to her, and she stares out.
In London, Sonia gives big parties, sometimes for people she considers of high distinction: Papandreou, Lacan. She does not appear to like these parties.
Though she may say she doesn’t want to go, Germaine goes to parties.
She says, “Maybe I’ll meet the man of my dreams,” and laughs.
At parties, she has a group, mostly women, listening to her.
photographs
There are very few surviving early photographs of Jean. She does not take to being photographed, and wants to see the proofs to choose the one or two she thinks best; she asks that the others be destroyed.
Sonia does not like to keep photographs of anyone, least of all herself.
There is a famous photograph of Germaine in the nude.
possessions
Two or three times Sonia’s house is broken into while she is away. Whatever jewellery she has is stolen, and the silver, and a vase. This is a matter of course.
Germaine often gives her possessions away.
Jean is always losing things.
poverty
Jean knows what it is to be poor. She was once tempted to steal a collar which she could not afford from a Woolworth’s.
Sonia understands that one might not be able to buy a suit, or shoes, or a winter coat.
Germaine often gives money to people so they can buy what she knows they can’t afford.
publicity
Though she will not agree to being interviewed, Jean is enthusiastic about posing in designer clothes for the fashion section of the Sunday Times. In the black and white photographs, she appears dry, drawn, overly made up; she is unsmiling.
Sonia never refers to the use of her name in newspapers and magazines, not even to condemn the use.
Germaine says to me, “I don’t care what you write about me. I can’t care. So much has been written about me, and all of it is, as I’m sure what you’ve written is, wrong.”
R
reading others’ books
When you give one of your books, just published, to Jean, she looks at you sadly, as if you have just put some small, pathetic, dead pet into her hands, and she commiserates over its death.
Sonia, on receiving a new book from you, sends a lovely note to thank you; she never again mentions the book, though you’re sure she has read it and passed on it a very severe judgement.
You give Germaine a copy of your book and say, “I don’t want to know what you think of it,” and she says, “Very well.” You see it on her bedroom floor, among magazines and pantihose.
S
salvation
For Jean, it occurs, like fate, if it occurs at all, and it hardly matters what one does or doesn’t do.
For Sonia, there is no salvation, not for anyone.
For Germaine, it is an act of will.
sex
If Jean is shy about sex, she is not anxious about it.
She has no vocabulary for it.
She tells me this (I’m not sure what the date of the incident is): “The only friend I made in France asked me to stay with her in the country for a weekend. To my real amazement her husband walked into my bedroom at night and obviously intended to get into bed with me. I mumbled something, How could I do it in Peggy’s house? He took great offence at this and all the rest of my visit he was as rude as he could be. However, he drove me back to London, and after we had driven a little way he began to sing Our Miss Gibbs. Of course I knew it by heart, and we sang all the way to London, and parted friends.”
Sex is not terribly important.
Sonia often hints at past affairs. As she is, she herself says, a snob, the lovers were outstanding men, a painter, a writer, a philosopher. She refers often to the Israeli general.
She does not, I imagine, want anyone to say, “Sonia is fucked up because she’s sexually unfulfilled.” If sex is not, or never really was, important to her privately—or if she is and always was frightened of it—she suffers the importance she imagines the world gives it, the world of either sexual fulfilment or else neurosis. She could not bear anyone thinking she is sexually neurotic.
She says to me about a woman writer, “What she needs is a good lay.”
“Sex,” Germaine says to me, “is ninety per cent in the mind.”
society
I ask a friend, thinking he would know, if the expression “going out into society” means anything today. His long face drawn longer as he thinks, he says, finally, “No,” then thinks more and says, “Well, going to Sonia’s.”
Sonia instructs one on how to accept an invitation from an embassy.
She knows all about formal etiquette.
Jean does not, I think, belong to any “society.”
Germaine does not seem to care about “society.” In New York, at a party given for her to celebrate the success of The Female Eunuch, where people crowd about her to try to meet her, she spends the entire evening speaking to an Italian, and leaves saying to the hostess, simply, Thank you.
V
vocabulary
Germaine’s vocabulary is vast. In describing a woman’s illness, she uses the technical terms for all the parts of the body and their functions, as well as all the medical terms for the treatment. She would, in discussing drilling for oil or making bread or growing peonies, know all the technical terms.
In a conversation with Sonia, I notice she uses, over and over, what I imagine is a new word for her: “A man’s putative writing . . .” “His putative moustache . . .”
Jean’s vocabulary is small.
W
women
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The memoir of Jean Rhys originally a
ppeared, in somewhat different form, in The Paris Review.
Thanks are due to the executors of the Estate of Jean Rhys for permission to quote from her unpublished papers. A portion of a letter from Sonia Orwell to the author is quoted by permission of the Estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell.
