In most bedrooms, pride of place is given to the bed, but in Alexa's it was so small and shy you positively had to look for it. It seemed to be apologising for itself. All those laboured flowers, that monkish bed, that parsimonious light, appeared to he waiting for something. What? A vision, an angel visit?
If you haven't noticed, I've become quite infatuated with Violet Trefusis in the past couple of months. All because I happened across a copy of Echo a while back, and then found a library that had her rarest book, Tandem. After that, I was lost in infatuation. On our recent trip to New York, I found time to read these two, the first of which is undoubtedly Violet's best-known work, being as it is a sort of roman à clef about the triangular relationship of Violet, her one-time lover Vita Sackville-West, and Vita's subsequent lover Virginia Woolf.
Although I had never really thought about it, I found myself surprised by the fact, noted in the introduction by Vita's biographer Victoria Glendenning, that although Broderie Anglaise was published in France (et en français) in 1935, it is quite likely that neither Virginia nor Vita ever knew of its existence. It wasn't translated into English until much later, and to some extent Violet's fame, always smaller than Vita's and (particularly) Virginia's, only really seems to have grown in later years when a wider public learned of the scandalous attempt made, circa 1920, by her and Vita to run away from their husbands. It's quite striking to think that even Vita, who lived into the 1960s, never came to learn of the book--through friends if not from Violet herself (who probably wished to shield herself from any resulting kerfuffle).
The novel focuses on Alexa Harrowby Quince, a brilliantly successful English novelist who pours her passions into her work and has none left for real life:
"I use up all my vital force in my books. There's nothing left over for life," she suggested, with the famous touching smile which was so admired in the literary world but which John found exasperating because it was to be seen in all her photographs.
Alexa is in love with the aristocratic John, Lord Shorne, who is rather a scoundrel and thoroughly enslaved to his domineering, temperamental (bordering on insanity) mother, Lady Shorne. Alexa also believes John to be haunted by memories of the "one that got away", Anne Lindell, who effectively stood John up at the altar years before. As the novel opens, Alexa has received a letter from Anne, asking to pay her a visit, said visit providing the tension of the story.
When you know who these characters "really" are, it's all quite irresistible, catty fun. Poor Virginia is presented as emotionally and sexually stunted:
"Even though I've known what love is," she went on painfully, "I'll always be an old maid. Yes, I shall. It's not a question of virginity--nothing so simple. It's an attitude, a routine that my mind can't throw off."
But interestingly, it is Vita and (particularly) her mother who come out of Violet's fantasy retelling of reality the worst. The scene in which Lady Shorne coerces Alexa into helping her with an inventory of her jewellery is unforgettable, and it's just as well poor Lady Sackville never knew of her portrayal here:
I've sent John to
London, to make sure we're not disturbed. Sit there, my dear, facing me. I've
put everything on at once--to be certain nothing's left out. Everything has to
go down on the list, everything-even this little turquoise scarab. Come, now.
Here's a pencil."
Alexa was hypnotised. Such will-power emanated from this strange old goddess, it never occurred to her to resist. She took the pencil with a trembling hand. It was only three in the afternoon but the curtains were already drawn and the chandelier lit. The little room was stiflingly hot. Alexa, bent over her task, felt as if she were sinking into a nightmare. How could she escape? There was no hope of their being interrupted. More attention was paid to Lady Shome's orders than to John's. Alexa felt as oppressed as if she were shut up with a corpse--and a corpse could not have been more unmoving.
Of course, Anne's character is portrayed with more than a little of Violet's characteristic narcissism, particularly in the ways in which Alexa assumes that she is the superior and more seductive woman. But I do love that Violet was able to mock herself in Alexa's disappointment upon meeting her:
Alexa made the surprising discovery that she would have preferred Anne to have been beautiful, wily, irresistible--in short, the "vamp" she had expected. It was intolerable that John's life could have been ruined for five years by this plump woman with mocking little eyes and an evident passion for chocolate eclairs (the only thing Alexa had not got wrong). She felt as if her artistic imagination had been insulted, and naturally blamed John, the source of her delusion. She felt intuitively that he would have given Anne an equally flattering portrait of her, out of conceit and vainglory.
As I said, it's all quite fascinating with the knowledge of who's who, though as a novel (rather than a roman à clef) it might actually be one of Violet's least entertaining efforts. I suspect that Violet was far too close to it's characters, emotionally, to pull it off with her usual humorous flair. There are some rather excruciatingly soppy descriptions of love, reminiscent of Violet's early, overwrought letters to Vita, which suggest that Violet was a lot to handle. One wonders if Violet was really far better at romantic fantasy than she was at the realities of love.
But as a work of gossipy vengeance, Broderie Anglaise is about as delectable as it could possibly be.
I turned from Broderie to Violet's final work, written nearly four decades later during the last year of her life. From Dusk to Dawn was reportedly taken up to distract her from the pain of her final illness. It features the eccentric and increasingly impoverished aristocratic residents of Castle Doom, described as "near the industrial town of Bilchester in Wiltshire". A bunch of ne'er-do-wells indeed, engaged in various romantic entanglements and maneuverings for power. Lady Aurora, the eldest, "too grand ever to have married", feels cheated that she will not inherit Castle Doom (shades of Vita yet again). Tristram, known as "Husky", the hereditary lord of Castle Doom, is still grieving his wife Timidity. Then there are three younger sisters: Ferocity, with "second sight and a tendency to witchcraft", Publicity, who resembles a horse, and Duplicity, a brilliant nudist pianist.
The plot, to the extent there is one, has to do with Aurora's attempts to rule over Doom, and her sale of various family treasures to finance it, while Peregrine is focused on his equations and Husky is (shall we say) exploring his sexuality, first with the gardener's son and then whooping it up in Capri. This is not to mention a long digression following Publicity's husband's rather naughty exploits in Poland during the war. It's all accompanied by some rather charming illustrations by Violet's friend Philippe Jullian, himself an author and biographer, who would collaborate with her on several works and also co-author her own biography a few years after her death.
As a novel, it's impossible to deny that From Dusk to Dawn is a bit of a mess: meandering and random, eccentric to say the very least, sometimes difficult to differentiate the many characters, and not all of the humor works. It couldn't possibly be called a successful work of art.
And yet, if you are able to accept all of that (a fairly large ask, no doubt) and just settle in for a ridiculous, flamboyant ride, there is still plenty of charm and entertainment to be had, and there's a fascination in the simply very ODD fantasy world that Violet created from her suffering and her preparations to shuffle off her mortal coil. That she was able to laugh and frolic in such a way at such a time is touching, even if it's not eloquent.
I haven't read either of these two and they look fascinating. The second one's illustrations are so 1970s!
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