Selina Hastings - Sybille Bedford: A Life

I wish Id written more books and spent less time being in love, Sybille Bedford said once in an interview. Its very difficult doing both at the same time. Certainly, from adolescence until well into old age, there was rarely a period when Sybille was not in love, some of her relationships long-lasting and profound, others little more than temporary infatuations. With one exception her affairs were with women, her remarkable talent for friendship ensuring that she always remained on good terms with her lovers, as is clear from the enormous volume of correspondence which fortunately still survives. Over many decades Sybille wrote hundreds of letters detailing not only her affairs but also her travels, her domestic life, her passion for good food and wine, the people she knew, the houses she lived in, andcruciallythe enervating struggles she experienced with her work. For her ambition had always been to write.

In her twenties, and under the influence of her friend and mentor Aldous Huxley, whose fiction in those early days she uncritically admired, she completed three novels, none of which was ever published. I think as far as writing was concerned, she was later to say, Aldous was rather a hindrance because I admired him as a writerand I wanted to write like him, which of course didnt work at all. Indeed it was not until 1956, when Sybille was in her forties, that a novel of hers first appeared. A Legacy was widely acclaimed on both sides of the AtlanticEvelyn Waugh was among many who enthusiastically praised itand from then on her position as a distinguished member of the literary profession was established.

Sybille grew up in Germany during the early years of the twentieth century, her childhood both intellectually inspirational and at the same time emotionally deprived. The most influential figure in her life was her mother, who while regarding her with benign indifference also provided much of the motivation for Sybilles later career as a writer. Elisabeth (Lisa) Bernhardt, clever, beautiful and irrepressibly self-centred, was widely read in English, French and German; convinced that she was possessed of a remarkable literary talent, she intended one day to produce a work that would win her acclaim throughout the cultural salons of Europe. Although such a masterpiece never materialised, nonetheless it was Lisa who from Sybilles earliest years encouraged her to read, and inspired in her the immutable desire to become a writer. Years later, Sybille said of her, My mother wanted to be a writer. Like me she suffered from sloth and distractionsbut I grew up in such an atmosphere of books and writers that it was like a vocation.

Throughout Sybilles long life there were indeed numerous distractions, her often turbulent private life, her acute interest in so many aspects of the world around her, frequently preventing her from concentrating on her work. From earliest childhood into old age she was constantly on the move, uprooting over the years from one location to another, from Germany to France, England, Italy and the United States. Restless and energetic, she was full of curiosity and loved to explore, writing articles about her travels in Portugal and Switzerland, Denmark and Yugoslavia, Italy and France, as well as an enchantingly idiosyncratic book about the months she spent in Mexico immediately after the war. In her early years, she was adventurous and brave, enjoying long journeys driving alone across Europe, but as time passed and the insecurities implanted in childhood began to surface, she grew increasingly apprehensive and afraid. In later life Sybille made sure she never travelled without a companion, habitually suffering from acute anxiety, terrified that the train would be late, the taxi fail to arrive, the plane fall from the sky.

In both Europe and America, Sybille was to become part of an extensive network of writers and intellectuals, most of them women, many lesbian like herself, who decade after decade recorded in their copious correspondence the details of their daily lives, their affairs with each other, the jealous scenes, betrayals and passionate infatuations. Many, like Sybille, were married, and although on the whole discreet when in the wider world, unlike their male counterparts they had little reason to conceal their predilections. While in Britain for most of the twentieth century male homosexual practice was illegal, women were free to do as they pleased, and despite the occasional moral outburstEdgar Wallace in the Daily Mail referring to lesbianism as a vicious cult, the Sunday Express demanding the suppression of Radclyffe Halls novel, The Well of Lonelinessthe subject attracted little interest in society as a whole.

Sybille, nonetheless, had a strong desire for discretion, a profound reluctance, except when with her inner circle, to reveal the nature of her private life. When at one point she was offered an introduction to a distinguished literary agent in Paris, a woman who lived with an English girlfriend, she instantly turned it down. I will not choose a Lesbian agent. I cant bear this girlery and cliquerie. Ones tastes are private. Its bad enough (in some ways) to be oneself. When in her seventies she was asked to address the Oxford University Gay Society, a large NO was scrawled across the invitation. Interestingly, although she had numerous infatuations and affairs, the first as a young girl, the last when in her nineties, in only one of her novels does she write of a physical relationship between women.