by Muriel Spark
Sandy gave me the name of a good restaurant in Leith, and recommended some brands of whisky to take home, for which I’m grateful. I don’t regret it, I never regret anything like that. But I hope to do another portrait some time. I would like to be in the National Portrait Gallery in England as well.
[1999]
Italian Days
In those days, the late 1960s, I had a play on the West End of London and also on Broadway, and, although this was very acceptable for my working life, it drew a great deal of attention upon myself and I was looking for a place to live where I was comparatively unknown so that I could pursue my art in peace. I had been to Italy twice, once in the early 1960s to receive the Italia Prize for the radio dramatisation of my novel The Ballad of Peckham Rye at Verona and the second time I spent some days in Rome on my return from the Holy Land where I had gone to gather information for my novel The Mandelbaum Gate.
As I was a Catholic, I was attracted by the evidence of the early Christian church in Rome, mixed with the history of the Roman Empire up to the Renaissance. I could walk in the streets feeling that I was living in the fifth century or the fifteenth century as the case might be. I also felt that I could manage the Italian language having studied Latin. I can now read Italian very well, but my spoken Italian is not good.
I met a great many people when I came to Rome; mostly, at first, they were visiting writers and I soon found myself in an artistic environment. However I got to know many Italians, not only writers like Alberto Moravia, Alberto Arbasino and Luigi Barzini, but also the people in the shops with whom I became very friendly: hairdressers, dressmakers and electricians. I was particularly attracted by Italian fashions at that time, so much more creative than the English and American styles and more informal than the French. I had a season ticket to the opera and I used to go every year on the second night, where I would meet the director Visconti, always surrounded by his little court. Visconti, by the way, was very keen to make a film of my book The Driver’s Seat and had arranged for it to be especially translated for him by Masolino Cecchi d’Amico, who did it beautifully. Visconti was on the point of discussing this film, I believe in the Raffaello Hotel, when he took ill and died. It was a great loss to the whole world of the cinema.
The Driver’s Seat, under the translated title Identikit, was ultimately made by Giuseppe Patroni-Griffi with Elizabeth Taylor. I think Patroni-Griffi had difficulty in coaxing Elizabeth Taylor down to the street from her hotel room when he was ready to film but he managed the proceedings very professionally.
In Rome I met many people with whom I have formed a lifetime’s friendship. And others, acquaintances like the Doria family or that Alessandro Torlonia who was married to an Infanta of Spain, I was many times in their houses, but more fun was the other Torlonia, the Duchessa Gioia of whose house in the Via Coronari I have so many happy memories. I often used to go to Nemi near Rome to visit the remains of Diana’s temple, which was the basis of a book I was writing called The Takeover.
My Roman days ended at about the time of the Moro tragedy. I had met Aldo Moro and found him very charming. He had just come from my home town, Edinburgh, and had picked up an amusing Scottish tune from the Duke of Hamilton, with whom he had stayed. I think the death of Moro had a terrible effect upon everybody. It was a dreadful summer.
My friend Penelope had a house in Tuscany and invited me to stay with her to finish my book The Takeover. I moved in for a few weeks and have remained ever since. At first I was accepted with a certain reserve, but as my friend worked hard on her land it was quite obvious that we were two working women, so I think that we gained some respect from our neighbours. Certainly we soon made some very good friends. The Tuscans are very reliable, less demonstrative than the Romans, but, of course, I am talking of a rustic society as opposed to an urban people. I have always been able to work quietly in this part of the world. It is known that I am a writer and I was very touched last Easter when the priest asked me to address a few words to the congregation. It gave me great pleasure to thank them for the kindness they had shown me over these nearly thirty years.
A great many foreigners come to settle in Italy. I think the reason is that the Italians are very relaxing people to be with. They talk continually about ‘stress’, but in fact there is very little stress compared with other countries. And besides, there is a built-in court of appeal in every Italian that helps to bridge gaps of formality and class. There is also the factor that Italy is a very beautiful country to live in. I do know that there are pockets of foreign nationals who form self-contained colonies, but I don’t belong to any of those. It would be contrary to my nature as a writer to restrict myself only, for instance, to English-speaking people – and what a bore it would be. I do love a good ethnic and national mixture. I like my country better when I visit it than when I stay in it. I quite enjoy going to London for visits and to Edinburgh, my native city, but I would not wish to live there again. Without its empire, Britain is insular and that is a plain geographical fact.
I think that the Italians have changed at exactly the same pace and in exactly the same style as in any other civilised country. I don’t see that the Italians have fundamentally changed. It is only that they have washing-machines now and they didn’t have before and I think this is the same everywhere. There is a greater moral permissiveness, not only in Italy but elsewhere in western civilisation.
It was my reading of a great writer, Cardinal John Henry Newman, that first attracted me to the Catholic Church and on reflection it seemed the most rational and practical of all religions. I was never able to believe nothing. I am a believer by nature. I would rather believe everything than nothing. I am a Catholic writer in the same sense that I can be called an English writer so far as I write in English and I think in terms of the Catholic Faith. I am not in agreement with all of the church doctrine. In fact I feel myself free to differ on subjects such as birth control and divorce.
I believe, as Cardinal Newman claimed, that it is impossible to write a novel that does not contain evil if one is writing about human beings and their destiny. Evil is absolutely necessary for dramatic presentation. A novel without evil would be like the white of an egg without the yolk – insipid.
[2003]
The David Cohen British Literature Prize, 1997
Your warm endorsement of this most important prize has made me very happy. The stated purpose of the award – ‘For a lifetime’s achievement’ – is one that appeals greatly to me, for I have indeed dedicated a lifetime to the art of letters and to perfecting it to the utmost of my talents and capacities.
In fact, it is exactly seventy years ago that, at the age of nine, I set forth upon my literary life. My first work, a poem, was an intended improvement on Robert Browning’s ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’. My elders and teachers were somewhat intrigued by this ruthless re-writing of the ‘Piper Pied’ as I called him (so as to rhyme with ‘he cried’). And so, where angels feared to tread I continued to rush in with my improvements on many such examples of English literature, available in plenty as they were in the Edinburgh Public Libraries.
Eventually I settled down to producing original work of my own – poems and stories – and have been at it ever since, with the result that I stand here this evening to thank you from the bottom of my heart for this great honour, the British Literature: David Cohen Award.
A few years ago I was called to Aberdeen University to receive an honorary degree. It was conferred on me by the then Chancellor, Sir Kenneth Alexander. After the ceremony he asked me, ‘Do you remember Miss Kissock?’ With a little thought I did indeed remember kindly Miss Kissock, our first infant teacher at Gillespie’s school, Edinburgh. Sir Kenneth, about my age, had shared those warm experiences with me when we were little more than toddlers – the play-boxes and the coloured plasticine. And here he was in his glittering robes and there was I in my scarlet gown. What does one do with the best part of a lifetime? I thought of the lines of Robert Louis Stevenson:
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Honoured and old and all gaily apparelled,
Here we shall meet and remember the past.
(from ‘Keepsake Mill’)
I feel fortunate in having been born in a rich century for literature. It is the century that produced the gate-crashing Waste Land of T.S. Eliot, the spellbinding A la Recherche du Temps Perdu of Marcel Proust. It is a century that stretches from Chekhov, Pirandello and Sciascia to García Márquez; from E.M. Forster, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf and Graham Greene to Milan Kundera, Iris Murdoch, Saul Bellow and John Updike. We have had critics of art and literature, indispensable to civilisation – scholars of brilliance and wit, such as Lytton Strachey, Herbert Read, Allen Tate, Lionel Trilling, and onward to Frank Kermode and Gabriel Josipovici, the more to enrich our powers of appreciation and discernment. The list is a long and dazzling one.
As for the novel itself, often as it is pronounced dead I am convinced that it is very much alive. So long as experiments in prose continue, so does novelty of thought, so do invention and imagination.
The twentieth century, in fact, has been buoyed up with an abundance of literary talent and originality – pressed down and flowing over. To be a writer in such an atmosphere of achievement has been, to me, a fulfilling and fully rewarding activity. To have been able to contribute to such a great tradition is in itself a high privilege.
What turn will literature take in the century to come? – Drama? Poetry? – a lot depends on the pathways opened by communicative technology. Let’s hope it will be as inspiring in the field of creative writing as was, for example, the development of printing methods in the West in the fifteenth century.
One thing I am persuaded of: the world of communications has to be fed by travel. Nothing can be done without it. Marcel Proust wrote: ‘the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeking with new eyes’. This is an ultimate truth, never to be overlooked. But it has surely to be qualified by the likelihood that ‘new eyes’ are very greatly stimulated by new faces, new sights and sounds. To me, travel is the life-blood of literature. We have to find at first hand how other people live and die, what they say, how they smell, how they are made. I recommend travel to young authors.
And also to authors not so young. So far, you have been too polite to ask me how I intend to use the handsome prize-money that goes with the British Literature Award. I can say right away that I intend it for my travels, starting with a lovely, new, suitable motor car, which I hope will bear me in and out of our famous tunnel with ever more ease and pleasure.
Thank you again, and again.
[1997]
PART III
LITERATURE
Who are you to say what’s good for my mind?
Robinson
It is my first aim always to give pleasure. That is not to say that a book cannot make the reader think in a melancholy way or in a thoughtful way. Even tears can bring pleasure.
Il Messaggero, Rome
How to Write a Letter
In the middle of a house-move I came across many books I didn’t know I had, among them pamphlets that I had picked up for their curiosity value as long as twenty years ago, and tucked out of sight among the overpowering hardbacks. Busy as I was, now, in the turmoil, I couldn’t resist sitting down among the packing-cases to read How to Write a Good Letter: A Complete Guide to the Correct Manner of Letter Writing by John Barter, F.S.Sc., Revised and Enlarged by Gilbert Foyle (London, W. & G. Foyle, 135 Charing Cross Road, W.C., 1912).
At the time I picked up this treasure, I was reminded of Max Beerbohm’s essay of 1910, ‘How Shall I Word It?’, he having come across a complete letter-writing manual at a railway bookstall; I feel it was rather more old-fashioned than mine. In Max’s booklet a young man writes to ‘Father of Girl he wishes to Marry’. In mine, the young man may alternatively write to the girl herself, but not, be it noted, addressing her by her first name.
The ever-incomparable Max, in his essay, was led on to compose some ‘model’ letters of his own, such as Letter from Poor Man to Obtain Money from Rich One and Letter to Thank Author for Inscribed Copy of Book, each with its Beerbohmesque sardonic twist.
In my case, my novelist’s imagination takes over. For example, ‘Leslie Dale of 328 Brondesbury Road, Kilburn N.W.’ writes the following Proposal of Marriage.
5th April 1907
Dear Miss Hall
As I take my pen in my hand, I am wondering if you will think this letter rather premature, but the gist of the matter is that you and you alone are the one ideal woman in all the world for me. My mind is in a chaos as to whether your sentiments are the same concerning myself, and I cannot rest until you send me your answer to this question. Are you willing to share my lot?
…I will try my utmost to do all that is in my power to make your life happy and free from care, that there may never occur one moment of regret in taking the step I wish. You are to me my guiding star. Now please tell me whether you are going to make me the happiest or most miserable man on earth. Do as your heart dictates.
Awaiting with impatience your reply.
Yours hopefully,
Leslie Dale.
It does not take a great deal of novelist’s imagination to conceive that Miss Hall is mightily thrilled by this fairly passionless missive, and loses no time to take it along to show her bosom friend, Miss Bellamy. She finds the latter lady, however, in a state of acute palpitation, having herself just received a Proposal of Marriage from her admirer, Herbert Clark. With trembling hands the girls exchange letters, only to find, on perusal, exactly the same wording, their suitors having both had recourse to the model letter in Messrs. Foyles’ popular publication. Naturally, they decline their respective proposals. An example of the most dignified wording for that occasion is ready to hand in the manual:
I am truly sorry if my letter causes you pain, but through circumstances over which I have no control, I am obliged to decline the great honour you offer me…
We do have a Reply of a Gentleman in Explanation of his Conduct, but it does not apply to Miss Hall’s young man:
26 Albert Square,
London, N.W.
13th August, 1907.
My own Darling,
For so I must still address you, has cruelty entered into your tender nature, or has some designing wretch imposed on your credulity? My Dear, I am neither false nor perjured. My sole reason for walking with Miss Brown was that I had been on a visit to her brother, who you know is my Solicitor. And was it any harm to take a walk in the fields along with him and his sister? Surely no; in you are centred all my hopes of happiness; my affections never so much as wander from the dear object of my love. Do not entertain for a moment these groundless jealousies against one who loves you in a manner superior to the whole of your sex; let me beg of you an answer by return, as I will be most miserable until I hear from you.
Yours, for ever,
Herbert.
In an aside, our Gentleman is warned never to write ‘My Dearest Katie’, lest the loved one be moved to reply ‘Am I to understand that you have other Katies?’
Although the Love and Matrimony section is crowned by a charming letter from Napoleon to Josephine, 1796, other headings are well represented. There are business letters such as that concerning ‘the machinery that you made for our grinding department twelve months ago’ which makes one go into a dream of wonder over grinding departments. There are specimen letters ‘Requesting Payment of an Account’, and a ‘Reply to an Advertisement for a Governess’, which are the soul of tact and good breeding.
We are a long way from the twelfth-century father of epistolary rhetoric Boncompagno da Signa, and further still from that immortal letter-writer, Paul of Tarsus. We are in the more modest daily lives of our great-grandfathers, grandfathers or even our fathers as the case may be. Our handbook has something for everybody, the stationer, the railway company; and if you should chance to be the Queen of England at a loss how to frame a letter to the President of the
United States, this is what you write:
Buckingham Palace,
22nd June 1860.
My good Friend,
I have been much gratified at the feelings which prompted you to write to me, inviting the Prince of Wales to come to Washington. He intends to return from Canada through the United States, and it will give him great pleasure to have an opportunity of testifying to you in person that these feelings are fully reciprocated by him. He will thus be able, at the same time, to remark the respect which he entertains for the Chief Magistrate of a great and friendly State and kindred nation.
The Prince of Wales will drop all Royal State on leaving my dominions, and travel under the name of Lord Renfrew, as he has done when travelling on the Continent of Europe.
The Prince Consort wishes to be kindly remembered to you.
I remain ever, your good friend
Victoria R.
[1990]
Our Dearest Emma
Emma Hamilton’s rapid progress from scullery maid to wife of the British Ambassador at the Court of Naples, and thence to everlasting notoriety as Nelson’s mistress, is transformed by Miss Prole into a tale which might have been more pertinently named ‘Forever Emma’.
Her one true love, we are told, was Charles Greville, a worthless pervert who later sold her to his uncle, Sir William Hamilton; and Miss Prole is hard put to it to prove Emma’s fidelity to his image, throughout her voluptuous career. Greville, in fact, seems to have been no less deceived than the reader will be.
