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| West's World: The Extraordinary Life of Dame Rebecca West by Lorna Gibb – review | West's World: The Extraordinary Life of Dame Rebecca West by Lorna Gibb – review |
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| Rebecca West is a major figure in 20th-century literature. Her prose is instantly recognisable, with its long, coolly balanced sentences and its precise, startling imagery. And there are places and people that will now always be seen through her eyes: Yugoslavia, on the brink of war; the Nazi high command in the Nuremberg dock. West was a key player in three generations of literary life, and she was loved and hated by many of the most powerful men of her day. According to HG Wells, who took her virginity and fathered her child: "I had never met anything like her before, and I doubt if there was anything like her before." | Rebecca West is a major figure in 20th-century literature. Her prose is instantly recognisable, with its long, coolly balanced sentences and its precise, startling imagery. And there are places and people that will now always be seen through her eyes: Yugoslavia, on the brink of war; the Nazi high command in the Nuremberg dock. West was a key player in three generations of literary life, and she was loved and hated by many of the most powerful men of her day. According to HG Wells, who took her virginity and fathered her child: "I had never met anything like her before, and I doubt if there was anything like her before." |
| Born Cicely Fairfield in 1892, West borrowed her name, aged 20, from a character in Ibsen's Rosmerholm. "Live, work, act," says Ibsen's heroine, "don't sit here and brood." By the time of her 21st birthday, West was famous for her savage reviews and her dark, troubled eyes. She was also pregnant. Anxious to avoid scandal, Wells hid West away in Southend. "Jaguar" now visited his "Panther" whenever he could, although once the baby arrived Wells was irritated that West had less time to mother him. | Born Cicely Fairfield in 1892, West borrowed her name, aged 20, from a character in Ibsen's Rosmerholm. "Live, work, act," says Ibsen's heroine, "don't sit here and brood." By the time of her 21st birthday, West was famous for her savage reviews and her dark, troubled eyes. She was also pregnant. Anxious to avoid scandal, Wells hid West away in Southend. "Jaguar" now visited his "Panther" whenever he could, although once the baby arrived Wells was irritated that West had less time to mother him. |
| The West-Wells relationship progressed in stops and starts for 10 years in which West flourished as a writer, but felt thwarted as a woman. Afterwards, there was a series of abortive liaisons which, bizarrely, often seem to have left the men impotent (Charlie Chaplin and Max Beaverbrook among them). West's position as an unmarried mother was difficult, so, in 1930, she was pleased to marry Henry Andrews, a banker desperate to look after her. | The West-Wells relationship progressed in stops and starts for 10 years in which West flourished as a writer, but felt thwarted as a woman. Afterwards, there was a series of abortive liaisons which, bizarrely, often seem to have left the men impotent (Charlie Chaplin and Max Beaverbrook among them). West's position as an unmarried mother was difficult, so, in 1930, she was pleased to marry Henry Andrews, a banker desperate to look after her. |
| "My husband can do everything that I can, better than I can," West once said, somewhat wishfully. The marriage gave West confidence as a public figure. | "My husband can do everything that I can, better than I can," West once said, somewhat wishfully. The marriage gave West confidence as a public figure. |
| She produced the novelistic journalism and travel writing she is best remembered for today and fought fascism and then communism. But Andrews turned out to be neither as strong nor as adoring as West had hoped. After seven years he stopped wanting marital sex and West saw this as one of the central tragedies of her life. | She produced the novelistic journalism and travel writing she is best remembered for today and fought fascism and then communism. But Andrews turned out to be neither as strong nor as adoring as West had hoped. After seven years he stopped wanting marital sex and West saw this as one of the central tragedies of her life. |
| West's story has been told twice already by two masterful biographers. Victoria Glendinning's brief life from 1987 is a portrait of a friend. It makes no claims to be comprehensive, but is consistently insightful, alive to West's emotional contradictions. Carl Rollyson's 1996 life is authoritatively comprehensive. Rollyson is a punchy storyteller and is very good on the autobiographical content of West's novels, though he has a tendency to read her emotional life a little schematically (admittedly, a tendency West herself shared). | West's story has been told twice already by two masterful biographers. Victoria Glendinning's brief life from 1987 is a portrait of a friend. It makes no claims to be comprehensive, but is consistently insightful, alive to West's emotional contradictions. Carl Rollyson's 1996 life is authoritatively comprehensive. Rollyson is a punchy storyteller and is very good on the autobiographical content of West's novels, though he has a tendency to read her emotional life a little schematically (admittedly, a tendency West herself shared). |
| If there remains a need for a third life, then it is not for a cradle-to-grave biography. What's fascinating about West is her blending of private and public – of the personal with the political – in her life and writing. The themes of the life and of the books are intertwined, so a new biography could disentangle and examine any particular set of strands. For example, there is a book to be written that uses West's life and writing to ask what sex is, for the sensual woman, and how this can relate to politics. West once praised DH Lawrence for doing justice to the seriousness of life; for laying "sex and those base words for it on the salver of his art". This is how she lived and how she wrote. By shamelessly mothering an illegitimate child, West inadvertently became one of the first women to broadcast the female need for sex. Later, in the face of frequent rejection, she insisted that women could love and desire as fiercely as men, scorning the men who quaked before her strength. A biographer could explore female sexuality during the period when it was shaped; when it first became possible for sex to be the prime force in the life of an eminent, thinking woman. | If there remains a need for a third life, then it is not for a cradle-to-grave biography. What's fascinating about West is her blending of private and public – of the personal with the political – in her life and writing. The themes of the life and of the books are intertwined, so a new biography could disentangle and examine any particular set of strands. For example, there is a book to be written that uses West's life and writing to ask what sex is, for the sensual woman, and how this can relate to politics. West once praised DH Lawrence for doing justice to the seriousness of life; for laying "sex and those base words for it on the salver of his art". This is how she lived and how she wrote. By shamelessly mothering an illegitimate child, West inadvertently became one of the first women to broadcast the female need for sex. Later, in the face of frequent rejection, she insisted that women could love and desire as fiercely as men, scorning the men who quaked before her strength. A biographer could explore female sexuality during the period when it was shaped; when it first became possible for sex to be the prime force in the life of an eminent, thinking woman. |
| Unfortunately, Gibb does not seem to have considered which aspects of West's life remain uncharted before writing West's World. Reading Gibb's book, it appears that it falls to her to document West's 90 years month by month. The fact that she attempts to do this in such a slim book means that any discussion of either West's work or her inner life is necessarily more cursory than it is in Rollyson's book, belying West's World's claim to be "the definitive biography". | Unfortunately, Gibb does not seem to have considered which aspects of West's life remain uncharted before writing West's World. Reading Gibb's book, it appears that it falls to her to document West's 90 years month by month. The fact that she attempts to do this in such a slim book means that any discussion of either West's work or her inner life is necessarily more cursory than it is in Rollyson's book, belying West's World's claim to be "the definitive biography". |
| Even within these constraints, Gibb makes odd choices about what to include. We learn more about West's son's school reports than we do about the results of her own psychoanalysis, even though she recorded the analysis (and the "Father Violation Memory" it revealed) at length. West once said that she wrote her novels to find out what she felt, not to display what she knew. This is a gift for the biographer, but there is almost no analysis here of the truths revealed in West's many autobiographical novels. Gibb is good on the portrayal of Yugoslavia in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, but, although she acknowledges it as partly a depiction of West's marriage, she does not analyse the kind of marriage depicted. | Even within these constraints, Gibb makes odd choices about what to include. We learn more about West's son's school reports than we do about the results of her own psychoanalysis, even though she recorded the analysis (and the "Father Violation Memory" it revealed) at length. West once said that she wrote her novels to find out what she felt, not to display what she knew. This is a gift for the biographer, but there is almost no analysis here of the truths revealed in West's many autobiographical novels. Gibb is good on the portrayal of Yugoslavia in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, but, although she acknowledges it as partly a depiction of West's marriage, she does not analyse the kind of marriage depicted. |
| This is disappointing enough, but Gibb's account is also marred by an obtrusive style, with most sentences bursting with cliched adjectives. Wells is "charming", with "piercing blue eyes", and West is too often "young" and "passionate"; voices are "mellifluous" and rain is "torrential". The laziness of the prose is shown up by the originality of West's own writing. According to West, men utter platitudes to please "the bats at the back of his soul"; on first appearances Henry Andrews is a "dull giraffe". | This is disappointing enough, but Gibb's account is also marred by an obtrusive style, with most sentences bursting with cliched adjectives. Wells is "charming", with "piercing blue eyes", and West is too often "young" and "passionate"; voices are "mellifluous" and rain is "torrential". The laziness of the prose is shown up by the originality of West's own writing. According to West, men utter platitudes to please "the bats at the back of his soul"; on first appearances Henry Andrews is a "dull giraffe". |
| In the preface to her book, Gibb describes watching a short film about West in the British Library. West disappears, leaving behind an empty garden "and more importantly, her words, millions upon millions of them, the only things that might help me conjure her again". If only Gibb had made more use of West's words in attempting to conjure her world. | In the preface to her book, Gibb describes watching a short film about West in the British Library. West disappears, leaving behind an empty garden "and more importantly, her words, millions upon millions of them, the only things that might help me conjure her again". If only Gibb had made more use of West's words in attempting to conjure her world. |
| Lara Feigel's The Love-charm of Bombs is published by Bloomsbury. | Lara Feigel's The Love-charm of Bombs is published by Bloomsbury. |
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