40. Rivals: Drama and Book Reviews by Cheryl S.
It is amazing how satisfying it is for a performer to encounter really good new dance material and to rediscover that deep pleasure – my own -- in Sandy’s new Joan of Arc suite, which he is setting on me in our isolated apartments here in Ebersdorf Tower. Both Isabella Belladonna in France and our Albertine in situ are jealous of yours truly as the co-creator of the new Visions, a dance with a Joan the Maid role to the music of Franz Liszt (“Consolations”). In my opinion the two women are both a little mature to evoke a young peasant girl, whereas I am just right. But, whatever! Luckily, Zoom allows Sandy to demonstrate the material on screen and, reciprocally, to watch my interpretation and to correct and amplify. We have sufficient floor space in our separate apartments to permit a range of movement. So far, really good results, I think! An authentic new dance feels so great, both for your body and for your mind – and that’s what we need now that the pandemic has us homebound. A new category: the Zoom Ballet!
Just last week Louise suggested that I read Samuel Beckett for some ideas for new choreographies of my own. This reminded me of the HSPA project that involved our end-of-term project, realizing Beckett’s Quad. How I hated those cowls! And Louise then hinted that I should look at a video performance of The Lover by Harold Pinter, freely available on the internet in the form of a 1963 television version directed by Joan Kemp-Welch, with Vivien Merchant and Alan Badel in the lead roles. (The script has subsequently been adapted and produced as a one-act stage drama.) I suspect that Louise’s own marital situation reflects some of the issues about the erotic side of marriage that Pinter analyzes. As we all know, Louise Ebersdorf lives quite apart from her spouse. Now that oil prices have plummeted, perhaps she will hear from him directly?
The Lover allows us to observe the erotic games of a married couple, Sarah and Richard, who live comfortably just outside London, Richard commuting to the City during the day and Sarah shopping and keeping house. Except now the marriage requires a degree of playful imaginative elaboration in order to keep the erotic home-fires burning. I must now warn the reader that I am going to give away plot details that she or he may want to encounter on a first viewing of the teleplay. (Spoiler Alert.) Initially, it appears that what we are observing is an “open” marriage, with the wife allowed to receive a lover, Max, for afternoon trysts. Richard confirms that he too has a lover, a “whore”, for his sometime diversion. Both parties initially seem content with the efficiency of this arrangement.
But then one afternoon when Richard is at work, the wife’s lover, Max, arrives, and he turns out to be Richard pretending to be his wife’s afternoon lover, with Sarah’s full cooperation in their subsequent dramatic inventions. To add to the spice, “Max” even pretends to rescue Sarah from the unwanted attentions of yet another male in an imaginary park. Having earned her gratitude, “Max” then turns on Sarah, reminding her that he has a wife and children at home and that Sarah has become physically unappealing, too “thin”. All this mutual invention presumably serves as an opportunity for titillation for our husband and wife. But Pinter has a further twist up his sleeve. Richard comes home one evening and forbids Sarah to see “Max” at their home in the future. How Sarah manages to counter this threat for more theatrical fun and games I will leave to your own imagination – or to your look at The Lover on YouTube.
Since the role-playing between husband and wife can become complex and even initially confusing, Pinter reminds his audience of the reality principle by having a milkman appear and offer some “cream” to Sarah. Pinter also makes use of bongo drums along with “tea-time” and “whisper-time” rituals that involve a threat of physical force and even a touch of fetishism. The audience is witness to the extremes of fantasy this marriage must employ in order to refresh the couple’s ardors.
I discussed the drama with Pippa, and she recommended that I read a text on psychology that might have influenced Pinter. She showed me an essay by Freud entitled “A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men” from 1910, which held that males may sometimes require a third, “injured party” to inspire or increase erotic desire. In other words, knowing that a woman has another man in her life can add further reason for him to love her passionately. Pippa also pointed out that the neo-Freudian Jacques Lacan wrote that the need for a rival may be basic in erotic passion, and that the syndrome begins in infancy when the helpless male learns that the father is taking the mother’s attention away from him. The infant comes to need the mother’s attention all the more. Thus, an early form of desire, the son’s mother-love, already requires an “injured party”.
Interestingly, in The Lover, Sarah is driven to talk “baby-talk” to her partner in order to convince Richard-Max to return to her arms ultimately. And Richard seems to need the competition of his invention “Max” in order to reembrace Sarah (now identified as his “whore”) at final curtain. Not exactly a reassuring vision of married life. But then Pinter is a comic writer, and his stern humor is sometimes as comfortless as Samuel Beckett’s. I must say I was impressed by Vivien Merchant’s performance as Sarah in the teleplay. She herself was married to Harold Pinter at the time of the broadcast and went on to distinguish herself in the female role of Pinter’s 1964 The Homecoming, which I assume he also wrote for her. Merchant was eventually divorced from Pinter. I couldn’t help but notice how much smoking of cigarettes and drinking of alcohol take place during the The Lover. Pinter makes the evidence of British addictions almost musical in their dramatic employment. Sadly, I believe Merchant died an early death from alcoholism.
Since dear Louise made her recommendations, I have to consider whether or not a series of improvised erotic fantasies could make a ballet. Sounds like Antony Tudor. Or (gulp) Kenneth MacMillan.
Pippa also gave me D.J. Taylor’s wonderful new book The Lost Girls: Love and Literature in Wartime London (New York and London, Pegasus Books), and I have been reading it with great delight. It is the story of the young women who worked on the British magazine Horizon under the editorship of Cyril Connolly from 1939 to the end of the 1940s. We all know how in London and New York the publishing industries would not exist without a ready supply of young females who work as secretaries and editorial assistants. (Their families, husbands and lovers offer them the financial support that this industry cannot manage through adequate salaries. Such subvention of the literary arts is the rule on both sides of the Atlantic.) Here is the story of how one literary journal galvanized a group of young professional women around its editor, Connolly.
I am always interested in stories of how our twentieth-century sisters adapted to life in the big city, especially the professional women of the 1930s and 1940s. How did they balance office and amatory life, work and play? How did they deal with the men of that period? American movies, especially Hollywood romantic comedies, tell us something of that generation’s challenges. Now in Taylor’s book we see how their British cousins fared.
In a sense, Horizon replaced T.S. Eliot’s The Criterion as an authoritative publication on arts and ideas for the duration of the Second World War, finishing its influential publication run in 1949. Connolly was famed for his biting wit and educated intelligence. (Among his books, I have read only The Unquiet Grave, and indeed it is impressive in its world-weary, highly literate humor.) Connolly loved food, women, and travel, the latter appetite introducing him to the literary worlds of Europe and the U.S., including those writing talents he would draw upon for contributions to Horizon. His first wife, Jean Blakewell, was a socialite able to support financially their frequent travels and entertaining. (She also had to accommodate her husband’s interest in those other women.) Connolly was physically unattractive, but his high-life addictions and his wit brought many young candidates to his door, especially upon the appearance of Horizon.
Taylor deals principally with four of these “lost girls”: Lys Dunlap, Barbara Skelton, Sonia Brownell, and Janetta Woolley. There are at least five other women who make cameo appearances in Taylor’s chronicle, but the four I have named represented a formidable quartet of bright, good-looking females let loose on literary London. After his separation from his first wife, Connolly needed a maternal figure to manage his office and his life, and Lys Dunlap served for nine years in that capacity, moving in with him in his flat in 1941. Barbara Skelton was a feline Schiaparelli model, and she served as a glamorous cypher cadet during the War in Egypt. She eventually married Connolly in 1950 (divorcing him in 1956). Sonia Brownell (yes, that Sonia) became Horizon’s editorial secretary and in such capacity is famous for a rejection letter she sent to Theodore Roethke: “It seemed to us that your poetry was in a way very American in that it just lacked that inspiration, inevitability or quintessence of writing or feeling that distinguishes good poetry from verse.” Connolly was eager to marry Sonia at several points, but she always escaped him in her search for a great literary or philosophical figure as her companion in life. And Janetta Woolley, Connolly’s beautiful “muse” from age seventeen, worked at his journal from 1942, briefly co-renting digs with “Skeltie” and then moving in with Connolly and Lys by V.E. day. You begin to see the possibilities for combinations and re-combinations in the editor’s erotic life? All of his women were aware of the amatory roundelay. Most of the broken hearts in Taylor’s book are the quartet’s male admirers. The lost women here described were made of stern stuff.
What fascinated me is how the women of his harem appeared to Connolly, perhaps because I had been encountering those ideas of Freud and Lacan on the uses of amatory rivalry: the enhancement of the beloved in the lover’s eyes through competition. Who were the men (injured “third parties” all) who may have recommended the lost girls to Connolly, however unconscious all of the participants may have been of the psychological dynamic and such erotic referrals? Understand, D. J. Taylor does not address this question directly in his book. Often, he tries to justify the women’s interest in Connolly, beyond his obvious influence and their repeated claim that he was never boring to be around. (Insufferable, perhaps, but not boring.) Therefore, when I read The Lost Girls, I kept score on the range of possible “injured parties” in Connolly’s eyes, behind the surface intrigues. It’s what I do -- scorekeeping. Taylor provides the evidence. I merely add it up.
Lys Dunlap was recommended to Connolly by Peter Quennell (perhaps the authorial source of the term “lost girls” and eventually famed for his scholarship on -- and editing of -- Lord Byron’s letters). Lys had been married to an actor, Ian Lubbock and had inspired the interests of the poet Gavin Ewart and the young painter Lucian Freud. Here were four of Connolly’s “rivals”. And this was the woman who for ten years organized Connolly’s life. Her ready references may have made an impression.
Peter Quennell also pursued Barbara Skelton for a time. (Taylor’s book suggests that everyone pursued Skeltie.) But the main masculine rival in this case had to have been King Farouk of Egypt, who became infatuated with Barbara during her cypherette duties in Cairo. Barbara eventually “told all” in her eloquent memoirs, but the legend of her connection with royalty left its mark. At one later point, Connolly the journalist encouraged Barbara to try to interview her former boyfriend. The attempt failed. But she married Connolly, her editor. You see how my line of enquiry produces certain results.
Sonia, of course, was in the market for a great male mind from the beginning. The list of candidates included the artist William Coldstream, the poet Stephen Spender, the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty, and of course George Orwell, whom she married on his deathbed and whose legend she upheld throughout the rest of her life. Another pence drops.
Even while in her teens, lovely Janetta had her abject admirers: the writer Gerald Brenan, Stephen Spender (yes, in line again), and the leftist Hugh Slater who had an early connection with Orwell. Janetta married Slater. There was also Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit, a doctor and leftist Spanish Civil War veteran, whose infatuation with Janetta resulted in her conceiving his child, born in 1942. Janetta’s career was watched over by Frances Partridge and her husband, a recommendation of its own. By 1944, Janetta was working on Horizon and typing The Unquiet Grave.
I am not suggesting that my theory of rivalrous influences upon the many amatory vulnerabilities of Cyril Connolly was the main contributor to his very busy private life. But perhaps there was a place where the persistent ambitions of his female employees met with his appetite for female beauty, intelligence, and some experience. Maybe it was all in the literary mix. Taylor’s book allows you to see just what a messy, funny and febrile matrix could be found in a certain editorial office in London town.
The Lost Girls ends with a long cast of characters brought up to date in their post-1950 lives. And with a final interview that Taylor conducted with a touching Janetta when in her nineties. She confirms that Connolly had his fascination: “He wasn’t a bore in any way. . . . I think I was awfully lucky in knowing an awful lot of people that weren’t bores. . . . I mean, they were fascinating, really, on the whole, the people I saw.”
Taylor’s book makes good on her summary. His research gives us fascinating people. These girls were not so lost.
Back to Visions. Sandy and I now have something to share and look forward to every day we work on our dance. There was a moment when my infatuation with Master Raro involved my awareness that Sandy might be a rival for the Master’s affections. But I’m all over that now, and my choreographer and I compete for Joan the Maid as our muse. No real rivalry there. Divine collaboration.
C.S.
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