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Authors: Muriel Spark
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I could get enough money from a publisher there was no possibility of that.
And here comes a further point. My job at Sir Quentin’s held my curiosity. What went on there could very well have continued to influence my Warrender Chase but it didn’t. Rather, it was not until I had finished writing the book in January 1950 that I got some light on what Sir Quentin was up to.
It was the end of January 1950 that I began to notice a deterioration in all the members of the Association.
I had been down with ‘flu and away from work for two weeks. Just after the New Year Dottie had fallen ill with ‘flu and I had spent most of my evenings with her in her flat, feeling fatalistically that I would catch her ‘flu. I’m not sure that I didn’t want to. During those first weeks of January when I went to Dottie’s every night with the bits of shopping and things that she needed, Leslie often came round. He was no longer living with Dottie, having moved in with his poet. But something about the ‘flu made Dottie very much more relaxed. She was less of the English Rose. She refrained from telling Leslie that she was praying for him. It is true she had some relics of her childhood, a teddy-bear, some dolls and a gollywog in bed with her, all lying along Leslie’s side of the bed. She had always draped these toys on top of her bed, along the counterpane. I knew that they had got on Leslie’s nerves but now that she was ill I suppose he felt indulgent, for he sometimes brought her flowers. There were no recriminations between us and we merrily skated on thick ice, while I privately wondered what I had ever seen in Leslie, he seemed so to have lost his good looks, at least in a virile sense. However, we were happy.
Dottie even managed to laugh at some of my stories about Sir Quentin although at heart she was taking that Autobiographical Association very seriously.
Now that it was my turn to be ill I lay in bed all day with my high temperature, writing and writing my Warrender Chase. This ‘flu was a wonderful opportunity to get the book finished. I worked till my hand was tired and until Dottie showed up at six in the evening with a vacuum flask of soup or some rashers of bacon which she fried on my gas ring, cutting them up kindly into little bits for me to swallow for my health’s sake. She had got thinner from her own ‘flu and wisps of her hair fell down from its handsome upward twist so that she looked less English Rose for the time being. She had been to Sir Quentin’s to give a helping hand in my absence.
‘Dottie,’ I said, ‘you simply mustn’t take that man seriously.’.
‘Beryl Tims is in love with him,’ she said.
‘Oh, God,’ I said.
I had just that day been writing the chapter in my Warrender Chase where the letters of my character Charlotte prove that she was so far gone in love with him that she was willing to pervert her own sound instincts, or rather forget that she had those instincts, in order to win Warrender’s approval and retain a little of his attention. My character Charlotte, my fictional English Rose, was later considered to be one of my more shocking portrayals. What did I care? I conceived her in those feverish days and nights of my bout of ‘flu, which touched on pleurisy, and I never regretted the creation of Charlotte. I wasn’t writing poetry and prose so that the reader would think me a nice person, but in order that my sets of words should convey ideas of truth and wonder, as indeed they did to myself as I was composing them. I see no reason to keep silent about my enjoyment of the sound of my own voice as I work. I am sparing no relevant facts.
Now I treated the story of Warrender Chase with a light and heartless hand, as is my way when I have to give a perfectly serious account of things. No matter what is described it seems to me a sort of hypocrisy for a writer to pretend to be undergoing tragic experiences when obviously one is sitting in relative comfort with a pen
And here comes a further point. My job at Sir Quentin’s held my curiosity. What went on there could very well have continued to influence my Warrender Chase but it didn’t. Rather, it was not until I had finished writing the book in January 1950 that I got some light on what Sir Quentin was up to.
It was the end of January 1950 that I began to notice a deterioration in all the members of the Association.
I had been down with ‘flu and away from work for two weeks. Just after the New Year Dottie had fallen ill with ‘flu and I had spent most of my evenings with her in her flat, feeling fatalistically that I would catch her ‘flu. I’m not sure that I didn’t want to. During those first weeks of January when I went to Dottie’s every night with the bits of shopping and things that she needed, Leslie often came round. He was no longer living with Dottie, having moved in with his poet. But something about the ‘flu made Dottie very much more relaxed. She was less of the English Rose. She refrained from telling Leslie that she was praying for him. It is true she had some relics of her childhood, a teddy-bear, some dolls and a gollywog in bed with her, all lying along Leslie’s side of the bed. She had always draped these toys on top of her bed, along the counterpane. I knew that they had got on Leslie’s nerves but now that she was ill I suppose he felt indulgent, for he sometimes brought her flowers. There were no recriminations between us and we merrily skated on thick ice, while I privately wondered what I had ever seen in Leslie, he seemed so to have lost his good looks, at least in a virile sense. However, we were happy.
Dottie even managed to laugh at some of my stories about Sir Quentin although at heart she was taking that Autobiographical Association very seriously.
Now that it was my turn to be ill I lay in bed all day with my high temperature, writing and writing my Warrender Chase. This ‘flu was a wonderful opportunity to get the book finished. I worked till my hand was tired and until Dottie showed up at six in the evening with a vacuum flask of soup or some rashers of bacon which she fried on my gas ring, cutting them up kindly into little bits for me to swallow for my health’s sake. She had got thinner from her own ‘flu and wisps of her hair fell down from its handsome upward twist so that she looked less English Rose for the time being. She had been to Sir Quentin’s to give a helping hand in my absence.
‘Dottie,’ I said, ‘you simply mustn’t take that man seriously.’.
‘Beryl Tims is in love with him,’ she said.
‘Oh, God,’ I said.
I had just that day been writing the chapter in my Warrender Chase where the letters of my character Charlotte prove that she was so far gone in love with him that she was willing to pervert her own sound instincts, or rather forget that she had those instincts, in order to win Warrender’s approval and retain a little of his attention. My character Charlotte, my fictional English Rose, was later considered to be one of my more shocking portrayals. What did I care? I conceived her in those feverish days and nights of my bout of ‘flu, which touched on pleurisy, and I never regretted the creation of Charlotte. I wasn’t writing poetry and prose so that the reader would think me a nice person, but in order that my sets of words should convey ideas of truth and wonder, as indeed they did to myself as I was composing them. I see no reason to keep silent about my enjoyment of the sound of my own voice as I work. I am sparing no relevant facts.
Now I treated the story of Warrender Chase with a light and heartless hand, as is my way when I have to give a perfectly serious account of things. No matter what is described it seems to me a sort of hypocrisy for a writer to pretend to be undergoing tragic experiences when obviously one is sitting in relative comfort with a pen
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