Falling in Love with Everyone: Lessing’s Letters to Smithie at the Keep, University of Sussex
2021; Wiley; Volume: 63; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/criq.12593
ISSN1467-8705
Autores Tópico(s)Irish and British Studies
Resumo‘I do like you Smithie, because I can always say what I like to you.’11 Lessing to Smith, 22 June 1945, Doris Lessing Papers, The Keep, Sussex, Reference SxMs62/2/1 Letters 11-20 c18/4/45-19/7/45. They had been in a loose group of about twenty, all vaguely left-wing, vaguely literary, all having affairs with each other in every kind of sexual combination … It was the early part of the war; they were waiting to be called up; it was clear in retrospect that they were deliberately creating a mood of irresponsibility as a sort of social protest and sex was part of it.22 Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (Flamingo Modern Classic, 1993), 86. References henceforth included in text as GN. Paul, shut into the officers’ mess with men who for the most part he considered morons, missed serious conversation, though of course he would never have said so; and I daresay the reason he attached himself to us in the first place was because we offered it. Another reason was that he was in love with me. But then we were all, at various times, in love with each other. It was, as Paul would explain, ‘obligatory in the times we live in to be in love with as many people as possible.’ (GN 88) Dear Smithie, If the heart of a comrade still beats even faintly in your breast please sit down and compose a list of about 30 or fifty questions of an educational nature for the party next Sat. Both G. [Lessing’s husband, Gottfried] and I too busy … Please try not to be too high brow … Remember to adjust yourself to the provinces. Yours in haste, Tigger44 Lessing to Smith, Wednesday Aug 44. The Keep, Sussex, SxMs62/2/1-11 Letters 1-10 6/1 Lessing signs herself Tigger on her letters until she leaves Rhodesia in 1949. Her friends at the time refer to her by that nickname.55 Tigger’s origin is from A.A. Milne. Lessing’s relationship to her nickname becomes more and more ambivalent: ‘I remained Tigger until I left Rhodesia, for nothing would stop friends and comrades using it. Nicknames are potent ways of cutting people down to size. I was Tigger Tayler, Tigger Wisdom, then Tigger Lessing, the last fitting me even less than the others. Also Comrade Tigger. This personality was expected to be brash, jokey, clumsy, and always ready to be a good sport, that is to laugh at herself, apologize, clown, confess inability. An extrovert’ (Doris Lessing, Under My Skin, Volume One of my Autobiography, to 1949 (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994) 89). In this first letter we can already hear Lessing’s characteristic quasi-flirtatious, teasing tone, taunting the musically knowledgeable Smithie for being ‘highbrow’, setting him up as a representative of the empire’s Oxbridge-based centre versus her own provincial periphery in Southern Rhodesia, where Lessing was destined to remain for the next five years, dreaming of London. Already in this first letter we can see the meanings of the word ‘party’ starting to blur: you cannot always tell whether Lessing is talking about the Communist party or an event with alcohol and music. In another letter from August 1944, Lessing insists that Smithie must accompany her to a subcommittee meeting of the Left Club: ‘Furthermore, you can’t be drunk’, she writes. A poem she writes for him from this initial period speaks to the flavour of these early days: Now in Cambridge one loves four, or two or three, Depending on one’s whim, or jeu d’esprit. And Left Wing intellectuals always find In Immorality an aid to Mind (In England) but on tropic shores Monogamy is safer, though it bores. Lessing claims this poem ‘shows all the signs of being better than Pope at the moment’.66 Lessing to Smith, Wednesday Aug 44. The Keep, Sussex, SxMs62/2/1-11 The correspondence with Smithie is rich, and exuberant, even when the personal and political events Lessing experiences are distressing (such as her father’s illness and eventual death). Documenting subjects as diverse as her writing and rewriting practices, the Soviet Union and Communist party politics, her exasperation with monogamy, race and racism in Rhodesia, her frustration at having to work as a typist, her feelings on discovering she is pregnant, her father’s protracted illness and death, her voracious appetite for reading (Hopkins to Proust to Joyce to always, a lot of Woolf), her opinions on film from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp to the Marx Brothers and beyond, Lessing’s letters of the mid to late 40s are extraordinary, fierce, and often hilarious, even, or especially when the emotional circumstances they describe are painful. They are also inevitably moving. Reading them, I was overwhelmed by admiration for Lessing in her 20s going through a series of turbulent personal and political events, while maintaining a fierce commitment to writing and a sceptical willingness to be entertained by herself and the world around her. Since it’s better to let her speak for herself through some extracts from the letters, I’ll use this essay primarily to point toward some recurrent themes in the archive. First some background details to frame the correspondence. The first letter was written in August 1944 and the final one on May 25, 1993. All the letters in the Sussex collection are from Lessing to Smithie (although we do often get a strong sense of what Smithie says since she often is responding to something he said, and arguing with him.) In his introduction to the archive, Smithie claims that the collection contains every letter or card that Lessing sent him apart from one letter he left in a phone box in Capetown.77 Leonard Smith, An Introduction to Doris Lessing’s Letters to ‘Smithie’ Doris Lessing Collection, The Keep, Sussex. The bulk of the letters, and the most compelling, chart Lessing’s life from shortly before Smithie left Rhodesia until Lessing finally acquires visas for herself and her son, Peter, and they move to London in 1949. Most of the letters are typewritten, composed while snatching time away from her various typewriting jobs. (In one letter she talks of writing with baby Peter on her lap, and there’s evidence of him banging on the keys (25 March [1947])88 Lessing to Smith, 25th March [1947]. The Keep, Sussex, Folder SxMs62/2/64-73. A few letters are written in longhand; the letters also include some unpublished (as well as later published) poetry. A small number of the letters she types using carbon paper and addressing all three friends at once (Smithie, Coll and John). The letters fall off drastically in bulk from 1949 after an apparent rupture with Smithie. To contextualise this: Lessing writes in 1948, as she’s nearing the end of her time in Rhodesia, about the possibility of actually moving in with Smithie in Cambridge or London when she gets to England. This did not happen; in a letter of 11 November [1948], she tells him she’s decided to find a flat share with a woman in London instead. ‘It would be lovely to go away with you, in peace, somewhere. But don’t lets rush in to living together,’ she writes on 18 April 1949, right after her arrival in England, suggesting that she can’t face living with a man right away, and soon after she arrives in England, the letters cease for a while.99 Lessing to Smith, 18th (April?) 1949. The Keep, Sussex, Folder SxMs62/2/124-133. When they pick up again in the early 1950s, they are much shorter, with a tone that is more casual and more distant, and their correspondence is sparse and sporadic through the 60s and 70s with a final one in the 90s. But the letters from 1944 through 1947–48 are voluminous, frequent, affectionate, argumentative and gossipy. … the other day had a letter from someone saying they were going to write a biographical thing about me. This upset me: for one thing, it made me feel as if I were dead, and as far as I am concerned I haven’t started to write yet. For another, this person said, did I write letters that he could see. Now please don’t think I’m conceited, because I really am not being – if by any chance you are a letter keeper, and you have my letters tied up with pink tape somewhere, please dear Smithie, burn the bloody things ….1010 Lessing to Smith, 5.12.54 The Keep, Sussex Folder SxMs62/2/134-143; Letters 131-140 7.11.54-13.12.64. ‘… please dear Smithie, remember my attitude to personal letters … I hold the view that personal letters are personal, and not to be made public – ….’1111 Lessing to Smith, 21st June 1973, The Keep, Sussex, Folder SxMs62/2/144-158. I dont think I will ever write anything that is any good. There are always too many other things going on. But it was sweet of you to offer to take the non-existent book home to England, and when-if- I do ever write one I’ll send it to you and you can find a market for it. Smithie do you think that any of the poems I wrote are any good? I must say I doubt that I’ll make a poet, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t be a poem writer.1313 Lessing to Smith, 6th January 1946, p. 3, The Keep, Sussex, Folder SxMs62/2/23-32. trouble is that the novel varies from mood to mood. How the hell do people like Tolstoy who take ten years to write a book keep it in the same tone from beginning to end? They cant possibly be the same people at the end as they were in the beginning when they started?1414 Lessing to Smith, ‘About 18th April.’ [45] The Keep, Sussex, Folder SxMs62/2/1 6/2 c18/4/45-19/7/45. Darling Smithie, if you happen to see a copy of John Donne … and Hopkins, please send them to me, and I will remit by return of post. Have never read anything of theirs except in anthologies, which is unsatisfactory.1515 Lessing to Smith, 12 March 1945, The Keep, Sussex, Folder SxMs62/2/1-11 Letters 1-10 6/1. Lessing frequently expresses her opinions about what she is reading to Smithie, often in a running commentary. There is a critique of D.H. Lawrence that runs over several letters and an ongoing infatuation with Woolf, especially To the Lighthouse. On 14 December 1947, she writes that she has finally sent off her novel to a South African publisher, and she is reading Nietzsche. According to her, Lawrence is half Nietzsche and half Blake. ‘The Blake half is wonderful, not so the Neichze. (Cant be bothered to look up the spelling now)’.1717 Lessing to Smith, 14th Dec [1947]. The Keep, Sussex, Folder SxMs62/2/84-93 Letters 81-90 But I think communists should understand that works of art are so precious (the most precious thing mankind produces) that if an artist chooses to sit down in the middle of the revolution to write a witty essay on the folly of revolution, for the sheer joy of paradox, he should be encouraged to do so … And they should understand that the creation of works of art are so hazardous, difficult and obscure, that there should be no fetters whatsoever on their artists.1919 Lessing to Smith, 7 Oct [1947], The Keep, Sussex, Folder SxMs62/2/74-83 Letters 71-80 … adjusted myself to a view that there is no future for any of us … It will be a question of mankind surviving on any terms at all. When everyone is assured of three square meals a day and a roof over their heads art will flower again and perhaps more wonderfully than anything we have known.2121 Lessing to Smith, 7 Oct [1947], The Keep, Sussex, Folder SxMs62/2/74-83 Letters 71-80. I supposed this is the point where I should break my devastating piece of news, so hold your breath, stop your eyes, & turn the page— I am going to have a baby. Space for recovery.2222 Lessing to Smith Feb 2, 1946, The Keep, Sussex, Folder: SxMs 62/2/33-42 Oh hell hell hell hell hell Smithie! Never mind. I could weep. Do I weep? No! I lie in the dark & consider life with a certain astonishment … Do you think that we will ever see each other again. Of course. I shall come to Britain with Catherine, & in a cottage by the sea we will discuss the upbringing of children. I have been a violent feminist for over a week, a state of mind I disapprove of.2323 Lessing to Smith Feb 2, 1946, The Keep, Sussex, Folder: SxMs 62/2/33-42. ‘Catherine’ is the name she uses for her unborn child who will eventually become Peter. … expect to go back into an orgy of writing. I dont think G will like it. No he wont. But I cant help it Smithie. Never mind about the novel, and to hell with it. After all, I’m only 27, or is it 26? 27, I think, and I’ve been married twice and produced three kids, so I can’t be expected, not being a genius to have done all this and also learnt my craft, and if only things wouldnt keep happening to me all the time, but never mind- soon I insist on writing and nothing else.2424 Lessing to Smith, 17 May 46 Box 436, Cape Town, The Keep, Sussex, Folder SxMs 62/2/33-42. I want to have this baby, and then to come down here by myself. I was not made for matrimony. I am selfish, an egotist, polygamous, amoral, irresponsible, unbalanced, and utterly not a good member of society (And I hate to think what they would do to me in the S.U., but fortunately I dont have to make a test of it at the moment) and I want to keep myself in a job, and my kid, and write, and be happy and of course a party member, and have a lover without any of the things in marriage that drive me quite crazy. Am I going to do this? I dont know …2525 Lessing to Smith, 17 May 46 Box 436, Cape Town, The Keep, Sussex, Folder SxMs 62/2/33-42 On 6 June 1946, she even sends Smithie a line drawing of her pregnant body. ‘Here is a picture of me now, as you can see.’2626 Lessing to Smith, 6 June 46, The Keep, Sussex, Folder SxMs 62/2/33-42. There is a sense perhaps of reminding him that she is also, amongst so many other desires for herself, and for the future, a woman who is about to have a baby. Another drawn out, complex emotional drama of this period is her father’s protracted final illness and death. To gauge the strength of her relationship with Smithie, she writes to Smithie on the day he dies Monday, 29 September 1947: ‘Dear Christ Smithie I wish I could take a sledge hammer and smash up this world.’2727 Lessing to Smith, Monday, 29 September 1947, The Keep, Sussex, SxMs62/2/74-83 Letters 71-80. Throughout the letters leading up to his death, she charts her keen immediate sense of her father’s life and its unhappiness and her mother’s life and its unhappiness. She returns to her parents in her final combination counterfactual novella/memoir, Alfred and Emily, from 2008, in which she imagines a different life for both of them, one in which they never met and she was never born.2828 Doris Lessing, Alfred and Emily (London: Fourth Estate, 2008) In these letters, you see her working through this material about them with a raw immediacy, her father’s death looming. These stories appear at other points in her autobiographical writings as well, but the archive testifies to her strong connection to Smithie and their group in the dates of the letters. She writes to Smithie both on the day her father dies and on her birthday in 1947. ‘Well Smithie darling here it is my birthday and I am 28.’ She writes that she is rereading Proust and thinking of him.2929 Lessing to Smith, 22 October [1947], The Keep, Sussex, Folder SxMs62/2/84-93 Letters 81-90. … But this is also nonsense, Smithie, because you know perfectly well, that by and large we are much more truthful than most people, and much more alive and much less subject to superstitions of various sorts, and what makes us unpleasant is only that we have the courage to admit the desire that everyone has and tries to cover up.3030 Lessing to Smith, 29 June 1945, The Keep, Sussex, Folder SxMs62/2/1 6/2 c18/4/45-19/7/45 From this correspondence, one comes away with a vivid sense of the aliveness and the truthfulness that characterizes Lessing’s writing throughout her career; the courage to cut through hypocrisy and shine a fascinated, and often amused, light on her own desires is especially keen in these early letters, addressed to a comrade/lover/editor/intellectual interlocutor and valued friend. I fell under the spell of Lessing’s distinctive voice in this correspondence; Lessing’s way of addressing Smithie winds between cranky and flirtatious, brutally honest, sometimes vulnerable, often amused. I can only look forward to the ways in which this correspondence will contribute to thinking through Lessing’s amazingly diverse body of work.
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