In the early 1990s, when she was in her early seventies, Muriel Spark started to write again to her closest childhood friend Frances Cowell (née Niven). Her letters are warm, supportive, affectionate, free of the edge often perceptible in her professional letters. However, she repeatedly expresses the following sentiment: “I do envy you your wonderful family” (January 12, 2001). And she is clear this starts with a husband – while being equally clear on how she has failed in that field. “I do assure you, Frances, that I have been a bad picker in life so far as men are concerned. They generally have resented the success of a woman” (June 1, 1991).
When she writes this, Spark has, I am sure, one man principally in mind: her companion, lover and chief correspondent of the late 1940s and 1950s, Derek Stanford. In her autobiography, Curriculum Vitae (1992), she claims that all she writes there is verifiable. Yet where Stanford is concerned, the evidence does not support her claim, for in her unflattering portrait of him she seriously underplays his importance in her life, stating, for example, that her letters to him, which he unscrupulously sold to a dealer in the early 1960s, “were about seventy in number”, where in fact there are at least 179. These letters constitute the most significant key to Spark’s life and work from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, as she moved from being a little-known poet scrabbling to make a living and support her child in postwar London to an internationally renowned author of seven popular and critically acclaimed novels.
Over the course of roughly fourteen years, Spark’s relations with Stanford went from interest to enchantment, doubt, disenchantment, resentment and finally opprobrium, when she learnt that he had sold her letters. The question likely to occur to anyone reading her letters is: what exactly did she see in him? One clear answer is that he might have become a father figure for her child, Robin (whose father was institutionalized for much of his life). But the Spark of her early thirties was also very different from the hyper-confident, glamorous Dame Muriel of her later years. When the author met Stanford in the late 1940s, she was assured of her own talent, but far from sure how to direct it. She was trying to make her way in a world of bullish, bullying, occasionally rapacious men, mostly mediocre and largely pretentious in their literary endeavours. It was in the company of such men, at the Poetry Society, that she met Stanford. She was at the tail end of a love affair with the poet and editor Howard Sergeant, who had managed to combine being both married and intensely jealous.
In working on Spark’s letters, I have come to believe that Stanford, who had his peccadilloes but was no monster, presented Spark with the limited degree of engagement and commitment that suited her needs at the time, and this despite her protestations that she wanted more from him (including marriage). This was an era of transformations for Spark, who turned from poetry to writing mostly prose; who converted to Catholicism; who (at almost the same time) suffered a serious mental breakdown; and who subsequently turned herself into the highly accomplished novelist we know today. Stanford was hypochondriac, neurotic and remote, continuing throughout their affair to have his permanent address at his parents’ home in Hounslow. Yet his remoteness corresponded, I suspect, to some fundamental existential solitude that Spark herself had always felt. He knew he could not be a father to her son, as he knew she was out of his literary league; his self-serving strategy was to capitalize on the affair by writing the first Spark biography, and to sell his lover’s letters.
By the time Spark wrote what was practically her final letter to him, wishing him well in hospital, she looked on Stanford with, at best, condescension. (Spark’s biographer Martin Stannard views this letter as a killer blow: “The letter says two things simultaneously: ‘Get well soon’ and ‘Get lost’”.) She may indeed have felt later that she was “a bad picker in life so far as men are concerned”. But my impression is that she chose the men she needed for the time and the occasion, their very inadequacies ensuring that they would never get in the way of her true vocation – to be a writer, an artist, in the fullest sense a poeta, by which term she is identified on her tombstone in Tuscany.
To Derek Stanford, Hounslow, Middlesex, 20 April 1949
My dear Derek,
Have had a God Almighty row with Howard. He had such a lot coming to him & something went “snap” inside me, as they say, and I rather let him have it.
This time, I’m not sorry. I don’t feel terribly upset and I don’t want to revive the affair. One way and another, Howard’s obsession for me wasn’t a bit like love. He was beginning to resent any man telephoning me for any reason. I’m sure this wasn’t good for him, and certainly not for me. And then there was this bloody nonsense about shooting up to Blackpool & expecting to find me sitting at home pining & wailing, on his return.
Howard resented a lot that happened whilst I edited Poetry Review. I think I was unaware of this at the time, and took it for granted that he would help me, out of sheer goodwill. But I don’t think he expected me to exploit his assistance – the contacts he gave me etc. – in the way I did. On the other hand I helped him, but only incidentally, for I really think, as I thought then, that he is a good writer.
What a mix up it is! On the whole, it is good we have had this row, for it does finalise things. I was beginning to behave in an unnatural way when I was with Howard. Also I thought the “Don’t tell Lionel” theme a bit overdone. (I hope Lionel makes him happy.)
I suppose my fault has been selfishness. Howard needs a woman who will dedicate her life to him. I can’t do this for two reasons 1) I have to earn a living for my son and 2) when I am not earning a living I want to write; and I am not prepared to submerge either of these activities.
Oh dear, what a lot I’ve written. I have to clarify things and to whom could I tell them, but to you, my dearest friend?
Howard said, (but more crudely,) that I am too self-opiniated. Is this so? If it is true, you must tell me, dear Derek. – I should never resent your telling me my faults, you would be so courteous always.
Please come soon to see me. I don’t want to encroach on your spare time, but if you can come, and won’t feel bored, please do.
With love,
Muriel
To Derek Stanford, Hounslow, Middlesex, 20 May 1949
My dearest Derek,
To-day my chief has not arrived. He won’t be coming in until this afternoon. I am trying to write a poem but the poem will not come because when I should have written it, I denied it. The reason I denied it was because when I wanted to write it there was work to do. So it goes on. It makes me angry to think of the poems lost in this way. They might have been bad poems, but for every dozen bad poems or so, there is a good one, and now the good ones may never come.
So you will understand I am sad to-day, and suffering from loss of memory, in a way. I mean that the images won’t come, not that I don’t remember what a table a chair or a telephone is. – Sometimes everything has another meaning than its apparent one, but today it is forgotten.
This is 10 a.m. At 11 a.m. I will ring Colin. At 10.30 I’ll ring Mrs Henderson and tell her I can’t come for the weekend as she wants me to. Then I shall try to read Wrey Gardiner’s book, not thoroughly but here and there. In fact, this morning I shall do everything I can think of except that which I am paid to do. So far I have read the Times Lit. Sup. and, as I said, tried to write the poem. I wish I had brought some poems with me to type. I am sucking a piece of cotton wool which I sometimes do for comfort.
Dear Derek, I am so full of the sense of being a slave. I can see years of slavery ahead of me. || Howard has just telephoned and has nothing much to say. || It will be nothing but an oblique journey while I want to travel as the crow flies. Everyone else who wants to write feels the same, I suppose. I wish you would ring me but you will this afternoon.
One thing makes me happy. That is your friendship. You make my despair recognisable to me, which before was vague. This is a good thing because when I turn on it in rage I know in what direction to lash out. I have too often committed that characteristic crime of the female, which is to vent the results of frustration on those things and people which are not the source of frustration. I love to hear you speaking to me and to have your encouragement. What I wonder is if I can offer you any solace. My halting conversation must be irritating to you, because unlike you, I often open my mouth & say things which I haven’t properly compiled. You help me to think more clearly, but how do I help you? With other men I have felt that what I can’t offer in one way I can in another. I mean, that where my mind has failed to seduce, my body could do so. With you, I know that you have feelings for the body similar to yet different from my own, the difference being the differences in our sexes. So that when we lie together it is a happy thing because we are equal. When we exchange ideas, I fall short of you.
But you must know that I need you and love to be with you, and no doubt it is all much more complex than I can imagine. Howard always thought I was promiscuous and had always to be parading before a male audience. Actually, he was wrong, but he was deceived by my expression of a need to compensate for my other shortcomings. I think, somehow you understand this; at least you have made me understand it.
I am talking on and on in this letter, just like Wrey in his book.
Dear Derek, come and see me again soon. It gives me a wonderful sense of hope and release to think we may share things and be conspirators.
With love,
Muriel
To Derek Stanford, Hounslow, Middlesex, 11 July 1949
My darling Derek,
I can’t begin my day’s work until I tell you how greatly I love you. It is a feeling that increases as I know you better and I am very jealous to preserve my love for you.
How delightful this past weekend has been! I feel enriched in so many ways and can’t imagine that you feel reciprocated. But if my love, affection and enjoyment of your company, please you, I feel happy and released from the bitterness you know I have suffered in the past year. When I told you that I am happier now than ever before, I meant not only that I have found the way in which I can best live, but also, that you are identified with fulfilment for me. For you know, had it not been for your insistence and encouragement I should not have been able even to begin the work which is making me so happy. From now on, whenever I have to do work I dislike – as no doubt will be necessary from time to time – it will seem temporary and irrelevant so long as you are allied to my cause.
I am your well-wisher and your intimate too, and although you don’t need encouragement I will give you it nevertheless.
Forgive the naiveté of this letter. I am just awake and, you know, I always wake to innocence – which renders my words sincere if not distinguished.
My love to my dear Derek,
Muriel
To Derek Stanford, Hounslow, Middlesex, 6 June 1953
Dearest Sulker,This is not a moan or a plea or a protest but a declaration of bumf.
1) You say we should not think of each other as lovers. Right.
2) You say we should think of each other as friends. You say this with a long face which seems to mean “only as friends” i.e. not “exclusively” but “merely”, i.e. you seem to think we have been reduced to the meagrest possible resource of human relationships.
3) You must have taken leave of your senses because
4) The best part of our relationship is our friendship. As lovers we were all right on the sexual side but hopeless on the intercommunication side of lovers’ minds. In some respects of course we have got worse in this way, as we are both changing our minds.
5) Our friendship is not just the bit of salvage from the wreck. It is the best part of the ship. The rudder has gone overboard if you’ll excuse my metaphor and so has the mast if you follow. But as the ship is anyhow in harbour what use is there pretending we haven’t a meeting ground?
You are supposed to be the one that prizes friendship. Well you will bloodywell have to put up with mine as I am your friend
Muriel
To Derek Stanford, Hounslow, Middlesex, 2 March 1959
Dear Derek
Thanks for note. I believe they are very good at the Middlesex, so Robin will not be seeing his “present” for a long time yet. But it was a nice thought.
If it is gall stones they are taking out get them to keep them for you in a jam jar, as many people do. It is a moot point whether such stones & appendices & suchlike are counted as part of one’s natural body at the Resurrection. For instance, what has happened to my appendix since it has been removed & will I rise again entire without it? There is also the question of first teeth & the extracted second teeth. Do we rise again with two sets? So hang on to your stones, in case. Also warn them against removing any other fittings whilst the mood is on them. Best of luck, anyhow.
from
Muriel
Letter 1 courtesy of Washington University in St Louis, University Libraries, Special Collections; letters 2-5 courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas at Austin; quotations from letters to Frances Cowell, courtesy of the National Library of Scotland.
Dan Gunn is the editor of The Letters of Muriel Spark: Volume 1 – 1944–1963
The post Get well soon, and get lost appeared first on TLS.