When I got to know Sofia Coppola over her film Marie Antoinette, based on my biography, we had an interesting talk about the Queen’s relationship with the philandering Count Fersen; did she not mind his numerous other conquests? We worked out a theory that, where Byronic figures are concerned, those who would today more coarsely be called love-rats, every woman manages to believe she will be the one. In short, he presents an exciting challenge which is also a rite of passage, except that the poor Queen, unlike me, never got to profit from the experience. One day I realized that, although Michael was always totally sincere in his protestations at the time, in real life I would never be the single dedicatee. The choice was mine to accept it or not, and after a while, gracefully I hope, sensibly I know, I decided to do so no longer. Our relationship was over.
It was Michael himself who selected the right word for the various incidents in his adventurous life. The subtitle of The Reluctant Legionnaire was “An Escapade.” When I saw it on the printed page, I wondered whether those years of his prime which Michael had spent perforce inactive in his prison camp—four years in his early twenties—had not left him permanently and understandably inclined towards enjoyable “escapades” of one sort or another, whenever one was presented to him.
For more conventional entertainment in the Fifties, an evening at the theatre was the outing of choice. In my new jeune-fille-about-town life, I worked out the perfect formula for preferring a new date to one already agreed. It involved the blessed orange telegram. “For reasons too boring to tell you,” ran my message, “I am unable to go out with you tonight.” No one ever questioned me on this, fearful no doubt of the long-drawn-out and deadly boring answer. But one date I never chucked was the theatre. My diary reveals frequent visits to the West End (tickets always paid for by the man), but more important, we would find ourselves just down the King’s Road from the exciting new Royal Court Theatre.
I saw all the early productions, beginning with the first: Angus Wilson’s The Mulberry Bush. I went on to Nigel Dennis’s Cards of Identity, the dramatic version of the novel which Weidenfeld & Nicolson had recently published. Then, in July, I was invited to a new play which had taken the theatrical world by storm, quite a serious storm it seemed. The play was Look Back in Anger. My escort was a journalist called Henry Fairlie, married but, according to his version, separated from his wife. I cannot pretend that I instantly appreciated the seminal importance of what I was seeing, the work of that thrilling new menace on the block: the Angry Young Man. Instead, I felt vaguely bored by the sight of Alison Porter at the ironing-board which opened the play, considered so shocking by some: for me it was rather too like Basement Days in Cheyne Gardens. At the end I was positively embarrassed by the dialogue between Jimmy and Alison centring on a game about bears and squirrels. I mentioned the fact to Henry, for want of anything more intelligent to say.
“Ah, Antonia,” he replied sentimentally, “one day you will find that every marriage has its bears and squirrels.” Looking at Henry Fairlie, evidently still in some way the happily married man, this was an image which I did not want to contemplate further.
I did not get to know John Osborne for many years, and in another life. By this time, like the rest of the world, I had learnt to appreciate his plays. Angus Wilson on the other hand was a man I already revered, for his novels and short stories which engrossed me one by one as they appeared. Hemlock and After, published in 1952, with its wicked procuress Mrs. Curry, alarmed my father but I noticed that he read it to the end, where other novels fell by the wayside; moreover he was curiously fond of discussing it. I also loved Angus personally for his truly charitable character, salted with the sly wit which was his trademark. One of my editorial tasks was to check out possible volumes for the so-called Illustrated Novel Library. These would then be presented anew with pictures by distinguished contemporary artists. An example would be Pot-Bouille by Zola, published in English as Restless House, with illustrations by Philip Gough and an introduction by Angus, who acted as adviser on the series.
In the early days of my life at Weidenfeld, Angus Wilson was often to be found presiding at the central desk of the British Library Reading Room, then encased within the depths of the British Museum. My heart would leap up when, as I entered, I spied his youthful, slightly flushed face and thatch of silver hair above his favoured bow tie. Then I knew that my work of investigation would be done in a trice, just a few minutes’ precious conversation with Angus was worth all the research I could do in days. At the same time, I did become painlessly accustomed to the Round Reading Room, familiar with its practices, again helped by Angus: knowledge which was to prove extraordinarily useful once I turned to do research there on my own account.
My editorial experiences during the three years I worked at Weidenfeld were with only one exception extremely enjoyable. The exception was the occasion when I was asked to go to Feliks Topolski’s studio, somewhere beneath the arches of Waterloo Bridge, and help him in some way with his writings. The Polish-born artist, then in his late forties, had had an intricate life, including wartime experiences as an official artist; altogether he was a fascinating man. The trouble was that he wanted help with more than his writings and seemed to take it for granted that this was on offer when Miss Pakenham of Weidenfeld turned up. He even suggested, half humorously, that this had been promised by George or at least requested in advance by him, Topolski (I found the latter believable but not the former). Certainly his studio was full of couches should one feel a need to lie down. I definitely did not feel that need.
It must be said that Topolski took the rejection with equanimity. But it is interesting to note that I was not particularly outraged, let alone traumatized by the incident. This does not mean that it was pleasant—very much the reverse. It was simply a reflection of the times, the Fifties, when sexual harassment in the workplace was not a concept that I ever heard mentioned, let alone commonly discussed. If you were young and female, without in any conceivable way liking such advances, you probably took them for granted.
My experience of working for Baroness Moura Budberg was the exact opposite, absorbing and eye-opening by turns; I looked forward to every single day when I would find myself offered gin and concentrated National Health orange juice (the sort intended to be diluted for babies) in her large, grand, run-down flat near the Albert Hall. Allegedly I was there to edit her translation of a biography of Albert Einstein by Antonina Vallentin; but George made it clear that the whole project was intended more to help the wonderful Moura financially than extend the international sales of Vallentin. Certainly Baroness Budberg herself was wonderful, beginning with her appearance; at first when you entered the huge room, you saw a fairly large old lady, grey hair in a bun, wearing some kind of unmemorable print dress, glass in hand and probably cigarette too (certainly her voice was memorably low and husky). Gradually as she talked, the beautiful broad planes of her Slavic face, with its high cheekbones and deep-set eyes, began to mesmerize you; the old lady dissolved in front of your gaze and you saw the woman who in her prime had captivated, among many others, Maxim Gorky and H. G. Wells. All this was to say nothing of a career that included a spell in the Lubyanka prison and charges of spying for both England and the Soviet Union. It was an intricate story worthy of John le Carré, although in the Fifties she was sometimes known more pedestrianly as the Mata Hari of Russia.
Moura Budberg was interested in many things. Unfortunately it did not appear that Vallentin’s biography was included among them. In vain I tried to bring the conversation round to what I thought I was supposed to be doing. It was hopeless. She continued to sip her gin-and-orange and changed the subject. In the end I decided recklessly to join her in the gin-and-orange and have a good time. After that, I wrote most of the translation myself, without an enormous amount of reference to the original, owing to the need for haste. Years later I was on a radio panel with the novelist and scientist C. P. Snow; each member of the panel choosing a favourite book in paperback. To my am
azement, he chose the Vallentin biography of Einstein (I chose Nostromo to impress and then had to read it). Afterwards I ventured the question which had been plaguing me while I listened to the great man’s eloquent disquisition on the virtues of the book.
“Lord Snow, did you read the book in the French original or in English?” He paused as though trying to remember and then said in a friendly manner: “I believe I read it in English.” A feeling of guilt stole over me, replaced almost immediately by wicked pride.
I did have one experience of being the official editor-translator of a French book while I worked for George. This was for the memoirs of Christian Dior. In this case I paid all the sedulous attention to the text which could have been expected and was honoured by the commission; had not the arrival of the New Look been one of the defining moments of my teenage fashion life? But I was led by this experience to the inescapable conclusion that I was not really cut out to be a translator, lacking the true vision of the double art. Again and again I caught myself writing the story in my own words, drifting away from the original, in short acting as I had done with Vallentin, as a biographer not a translator. Then of course there was the moment when I presented myself at Maison Dior in Paris with the words: “Moi, je suis le phantôme de Monsieur Dior,” under the impression that this was the French for ghostwriter. (It wasn’t: the word was nègre.) The absolute wilful incomprehension of the highly superior staff who greeted me may also have convinced me that I was not in the right place.
After that there was the murky incident which centred on the possible removal of a swear word from The Adventures of Augie March which had been brought to us by Sonia through her friendship with the author Saul Bellow. English printers did not in those days take kindly to this sort of thing, and the whole relationship of publishers, printers and authors to so-called obscenity was very jittery. There were other instances of publishers being asked to remove the offending expletive: this was several years before George’s bold and successful stand in publishing Lolita. Detailed line-editing was never my strong suit; this is the one disadvantage to being a quick reader which I must reluctantly admit. I have never been quite sure what the resolution of this situation was—did the author object?—nor whether I let any of the frisky little words through; I never liked to ask what happened in the end for fear of stirring up trouble (for myself, not Saul Bellow).
Nevertheless the episode, guiltily if dimly remembered, remained on my conscience. Finding myself a fellow judge with Saul Bellow on the Booker Prize in the early Seventies, I muttered something expiatory about it. We were in a taxi together, travelling back from the building in the City where the judging had taken place: he was heading for the Ritz, I to Notting Hill Gate. Bellow just gazed at me as though assessing something. After a moment he said: “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a very handsome woman?” Admiring Bellow in every way, I was deeply excited by this unexpected development. At the same time I was thrown into confusion. What was the correct reply? How to sound modest—“I’ve never heard such a nice thing before”—yet encouraging—“As a matter of fact I’m a tremendous fan of yours”? But while I was working it out, Bellow had fallen fast asleep and remained asleep for the rest of the journey until I woke him to drop him off at the Ritz.
It will be clear from this that taking the rough with the smooth, not very rough, often very smooth, I look back on my three years as a jeune fille in publishing—the only job as such that I was ever to hold—with great affection. For one thing, I discovered that working hard, when I chose to do it, as opposed to lazing about (my frequent occupation at Oxford) was thoroughly enjoyable, even compulsive. It also became apparent to me later that working in a publishing office, although it came about as a result of a chance encounter, was first-class preparation for the work I really wanted to do, that is write. For one thing I emerged into the world of writing believing that publishers were not unknown, faceless persons crouching behind filing cabinets with rejection slips between their teeth, but my friends. This was an excellent, optimistic attitude, since like most such it has a self-fulfilling element. That casual moment when George Weidenfeld turned to his dinner partner and asked her advice about a new employee, represented one of the felicitous turning points of my early life.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I AM GOING TO MARRY YOU!
“It was midnight. In the mighty stronghold of Camelot a great king lay dying. Uther Pendragon had said nothing to his knights for many hours.” These stirring words opened my first published work, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, in 1954 when I was twenty-two. My brother Thomas did not realize that this was a sacred passage (because it represented The Beginning) and elected to tease me about it. In a rage I decided to start all my future books in similar dramatic fashion. I was after all keeping the rule laid down by the great Alexandre Dumas: open with action, dying being in its own way a form of action, especially if it affects a kingdom. This resolve persisted when I was writing Mary Queen of Scots. The father of the future Queen makes an appearance in the first paragraph: “The King of this divided country, James V, having led his people to defeat, lay dying with his face to the wall…” And so on. After this I more or less gave up. Cromwell began with a birth not a death—although I must admit that there was a slight regression with The Gunpowder Plot which starts perfectly appropriately: “In Richmond Palace, the old Queen [Elizabeth I] who had ruled England for over forty years lay dying beyond all hope of recovery.”
It was as a result of working in Cork Street that the opportunity of putting my long-held dreams of writing to the test—and actually be published—presented itself in an unexpected form. We were summoned to George’s office for that annual moment of Weidenfeld exhilaration when the plans for this year’s Heirloom Library were announced. This was a project for producing out-of-copyright children’s classics in cheap attractive editions, freshly illustrated, and selling them in Marks & Spencer. The series had originally been suggested to George by Israel Sieff, uncle of his first wife Jane, who ran Marks & Spencer with Simon Marks. Not only was it an excellent money-spinner—out of copyright meant no royalties were payable—but it had become something of a lifeline in the finances of Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Thus George’s return from the annual meeting, at which possible choices were discussed, with the final decision coming from Marks & Spencer, was eagerly awaited.
We all listened. The classics listed were conventional enough. Then George mentioned King Arthur. I saw my chance to shine, having hitherto managed to say nothing at all.
“Oh, George,” I said pityingly. “We can’t possibly do Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. No child today could possibly understand it. It was written in the fifteenth century. Obviously T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone is in copyright…”
George hardly missed a beat. “Then we need our own modern version.” He beamed at me. “You, my dear Antonia, will write it.”
So I did, my research limited to the Everyman edition of Malory swiped from Bernhurst, but my spirits high. That was just as well, since this work was to be extra to my office life (I was paid one hundred pounds flat fee) and had to be done in the late evening or early morning. Originally, there was some talk of a few afternoons off, in view of the urgency of delivery. But then one supposedly dedicated afternoon I was seen leaving the Academy Cinema in Oxford Street by George and Sonia Orwell in a passing taxi; I was with Michael Alexander. George vaguely and Sonia violently disapproved of Michael. So it was back to evening work. Some very late evenings, as I began to enjoy London life in nightclubs more or less with anyone who would take me. The early mornings on the other hand reminded me of my Oxford ordeals, those dawn swottings and rapid regurgitations (the finished text was wanted immediately). All of this, like execution, concentrated the mind wonderfully. I began to write more and more freely, begging Malory’s pardon. I also developed that economical one-line style which I liked to think children would appreciate.
So arrows whistled, steeds galloped with knights i
n armour on top of them, lances thwacked against shields and were in their turn thwacked back, flags fluttered on the top of lances and larger flags on the top of turrets, falcons flew, hawks—what did hawks do? They hovered of course, and every now and then they swooped down in a hideous hawk-like manner. Down to the flags or the turrets or the knights or the steeds…Ladies in their litters were more sedentary, except for the wicked Morgan Le Fay who with her magic arts was out to get the young Arthur. Then there were six black-clad queens who carried Arthur’s moribund body away so that the book concluded as it had begun, with a dying King. I ended solemnly: “Today, over a thousand years later, we feel proud to remember that King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are part of our national heritage.”
No one at Marks & Spencer complained about the text, supposing it was read, and rather pedestrian illustrations were added. There were of course no reviews: it was not that kind of enterprise. The public did or did not vote with its purse and bought it in the stores. King Arthur evidently sold well—the contract for an Heirloom Library book was for 50,000 copies, rising to 100,000—because it was reprinted the next year. Furthermore the popular young author (my description) followed it up with Robin Hood. Here the inspiration was my early hero Sir Walter Scott and Ivanhoe. Then there was the second film I saw as a child in Oxford, The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn (like everyone else of my generation Snow White was the first film I ever saw, and like most of the children in the audience, with my additional fear of the dark to inspire me, I tried to get under the seat when the wicked witch appeared). This time the illustrations by Geoffrey Whittam were lively and colourful; one day King Arthur also got its pictorial due when the book was reissued with pictures full of fantasy by my twelve-year-old daughter Rebecca.