The Captive Reader

Oh, this book.  When I saw Simon’s review of The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell, 1938-1978 edited by Michael Steinman I was intrigued.  I had never read anything by either Warner or Maxwell but I find it difficult to refuse any book of correspondence between well-educated, interesting people.  When I picked this up though, I had no idea just how deeply I would fall in love with it, with Warner, with Maxwell, and with their warm, affectionate relationship.

The letters begin in the late 1930s, when Maxwell takes over from Katharine S. White as Warner’s editor at The New Yorker.  Over the first decade or so, their letters slowly shift from strictly professional to something more friendly as they come to know one another better through the editing process and by reading one another’s works.  By the end of the 1940s, they are firm friends, sharing small personal details with one another, enough so that Maxwell feels comfortable in sending food and writing paper to his favourite author whose access to those items was restricted by rationing in England.  The early letters are full of mutual flattery, gracious thanks for whatever service one has done the other, and light-hearted quips, as in one of Maxwell’s cheerful notes:

I’m glad you think I am a good editor even though a still small voice tells me that there is no such thing for writers of quality and that they should be left strictly to their own devices.  I’m glad also that life in England is not as Spartan as the papers would lead us to believe.  I would have been perfectly miserable in Sparta, and I can’t help suspecting that the Spartans were also.  Otherwise they would have left the Athenians alone.  (13 June 1947)

But in the 1950s their letters deepen in understanding and sympathy, giving way to the lavishness of the title.  They become deeply entangled in one another’s work and domestic lives, with no detail too small, no thought too fleeting to be written down for the benefit of the other.  Seeing it evolve from a work relationship to a friendship to a deep love between not only them but also their families (encompassing Warner’s partner Valentine and Maxwell’s wife Emmy, and, later, Maxwell’s daughters Kate and Brookie) is incredibly moving.  I came to love them both and to love, more than anything, their love for one another.

They have such a deep respect for one another’s intelligence and work but, at the same time, there’s a wonderful sense of rivalry about some things between them.  Both gleefully share random facts they’ve come across, either in their extensive reading or in the course of daily life, in an almost child-like competition to amuse or amaze the other.  It’s very sweet.  Warner comes up with some particularly odd and wonderful tidbits:

The other day I said to a clergyman I met that though I always read in my bath, as all sensible people do, I disliked the moment when one has to decide whether to wash one’s hands or go on reading and respecting the binding.  He said that if I were to content myself with the burial and baptismal service, this problem would be overcome, as both of them are issued by some Church of England publishing house with waterproof bindings.  Did you know this? (11 April 1951)

Twenty-five years later, Maxwell is still trying to find something that will astonish her, but is now wise enough to recognize the futility of his task.  In his letter to her, you can see the intellectual curiosity that they shared, letting them glory over the most random bits of trivia, but, more than anything, you can see his touching affection and deep respect for Warner:

You remember the woman in Isak Dinesen’s story who sailed the seas looking for the perfect blue?  In somewhat the same way I search for an interesting fact for you that you do not already know.  When I find one that looks likely (viz: in Grove last night that as a small child Mozart had an ear so delicate and susceptible that he fainted away at the sound of a trumpet) and then shake my head; a musical fact that you are not conversant with? most unlikely.  And about Mozart, more unlikely still.  But someday I shall astonish you, as you astonish me every time I get a letter from you. (23 March 1977)

Maxwell’s letters tend to focus more of events – assassinations, elections, protests – things that no doubt would be of particular interest to students of American history.  And his perspective and experiences are fascinating but Warner counters with glimpses of domestic life (written in her Elizabeth Gaskell moods, she jokes) and writes such perfect vignettes that they become both more interesting and more enjoyable to read than Maxwell’s experiences of world events.  Maxwell shares plenty of his own trivial details, in his own wonderful style, but I loved Warner’s.  I was perfectly delighted by this simple story, and I don’t even like cats:

Pour Niou [their Siamese cat] has just had his first affair of the heart, and of course it was a tragedy.  As a rule he flies from strange men, cursing under his breath, and keeping very low to the ground.  Yesterday an electrician came; a grave mackintoshed man, but to Niou all that was romantic and lovely.  He gazed at him, he rubbed against him, he lay in an ecstasy on the tool-bag.  The electrician felt much the same, and gave him little washers to play with.  He said he would have to come again today to finish off properly.  Niou who understands everything awaited him in a dreamy transport and practising his best and most amorous squint.  The electrician came, Niou was waiting for him, and he rushed into the garden and disappeared.

He’ll get over it in time; but just now he’s dreadfully downcast.  (12 February 1952)

The letters during and following Valentine’s final illness really show what a close, familial relationship Warner and Maxwell had, that she could share the intimate, heart-breaking details of bereavement with him so unselfconsciously.  “One thinks one has foreseen every detail of heart-break.  I hadn’t,” Warner admits when writing to tell the Maxwells of Valentine’s death.  A month later, staying with old friends, the enormity of her loss is still overwhelming her when least expected and it is to Maxwell that she turns, trying to deal with her emotions by pouring them out to him:

With a heart as normal as a stone I went to spend this last weekend with friends in Berkshire because they wanted to change my air.  Their telephone rang.  It was a telephone on which Valentine had often rung me.  With an idiot intensity I thought, she will never telephone me again.  And for a moment the whole of my grief was comprised in that deprivation.  There is no armour against irrationality. (16 December 1969)

The letters during various illnesses or during the last decade of Warner’s life, after Valentine’s death, are full of questions about the other’s health, ideas for treatments, and, increasingly, the desire that they were neighbours so that the one could always be on hand to visit and nurse the other.  Separated by an ocean, most years the letters were the only way they had of keeping in touch and wonderful though they are, they don’t fulfill the longing both Warner and Maxwell had for the comfort of one another’s company.  How beautifully and how honestly they can communicate with one another after years of friendship, as in one of Warner’s letters to Maxwell in her last months:

I wish you could come in, and make a fuss of me.  It is one of the ironies of old age – that one longs to be made a fuss of, when one has built up a reputation that one doesn’t care for fuss.  I am grown very old, dear William.  I hobble about on two baddish legs, and cling to anything within reach.  And I have grown so small, I scarcely know myself.  And so slow.  But really I should congratulate myself that my wits are still about me.  When my mother was my age, she was senile.  And I am not that, and I can still see to read, & hear to talk; and if the weather were not so biting & blighting I might not feel so like a dead leaf… (17 February 1978)

As a record of aging and loss, Warner’s letters in those final years are magnificent.  Frustrated, tired, and resigned, she has lost some of her wonderful energy and confidence but retained her intelligence and humour.  I love her best as an old woman, free of pride, betrayed by her body, longing to see William and Emmy one last time.

Both authors make frequent mention of books: what they’re reading, writing or reviewing.  Usually when I come across pages-worth of book mentions, I keep a detailed list, getting almost as much joy out of that as out of the book itself.  This reading experience was remarkable because I didn’t note down any titles; I was so focused on this book that I couldn’t spare a thought for any other.  It consumed me and surely this is the greatest proof of that.

The book is very intimate and I felt quite awed at being allowed to read such personal letters and witness the evolution of such a tender, honest relationship as existed between Warner and Maxwell (who I am desperately fighting the urge to call Sylvia and William as I write this, having grown so used to their first names).  I came to love and feel for them both and felt bereft when the letters finished in 1978 with Warner’s death.  Strangely, I don’t feel any particular need to read any of their short stories or novels.  I loved both of their writing styles but my interest is in them as people, not as authors.  Their personalities filtered through fiction would seem a sad, pathetic replacement for their real selves as revealed in these letters.

I honestly have no idea how any other book I read this year will manage to surpass the experience I had reading this.  It is exquisite and so, so precious.