The creation of an Englishman
Frances Partridge
PENCIL ME IN: A MEMOIR OF STANLEY OLSON by Phyllis Hatfield Deutsch, £14.99, pp, 225 L Aself-made man' is an epithet with various meanings, one of which fits Stanley Olson, the biographer of John Singer Sargent, like a glove, for he disliked and rejected his own background to such a degree that he set about deliberately creating a new persona according to his own developing youthful values — the square American peg was determined to fit himself into a round English hole. In Pencil Me In his childhood friend, Phyllis Hat- field, gives an affectionate and accurate description of how this operation was carried out, more effectively and bringing greater happiness to the patient than many a sex-change. Olson finished his education in England, rapidly acquired friends, wrote and published two biographies and was working on the third (of Rebecca West) when the thunderbolt of an unexpected stroke at the age of 39 put an end to his career, and after three painful years strug- gling back to life, a repetition of it killed him.
I know of no one among his large English circle who had the faintest idea of the significant facts regarding his origins, as they are here simply and sympathetically remembered by Phyllis Hatfield. His grand- father was a penniless Jewish emigrant from Russia, who settled in Akron, Ohio, and whose sons (Stanley's father and uncle), after a humble beginning in the radio business, made a considerable fortune in electronics. The Freudians might have pointed to a second environmental factor in that Stanley was a very premature baby, who spent his first two months in an incubator while his parents took their doctor's advice — to give him up as a hopeless case in fact — and 'take a trip' to California; but the infant showed his vitali- ty by surviving. The family had brains but little culture; they made the cruel mistake of having Stanley educated at a military academy notorious for its savage tough- ness; he once told me that he had made his first but not his last suicide attempt while there. Afterwards, at Boston University, he won the interest of his English professor, who recommended him to Holloway College, London, as 'being of unusual promise'. (I was touched to meet her years later visiting him in hospital during his tragic period of near speechlessness).
What sort of young man had he become by the time he left for England? He had already taken to music and literature in a big way, particularly Henry James, Wagner and Virginia Woolf; indeed, it was in search of information about the latter for his PHD that he came briskly trotting up my stairs one day in 1969, and a friendship began which lasted until he died. James always remained his favourite author, and perhaps his model. His friends tended to be kept in compartments; among them were such writers as William Gerhardie, Sybille Bed- ford, Michael Holroyd, Angelica Garnett, Rebecca West, Robert Kee and Victoria Glendinning, as well as painters, musicians and addicts of cookery and gardening.
It was symptomatic that the Devonshires persuaded him to try his hand (most unsuc- cessfully) at fishing, and he made friends in every shop he dealt with. Pencil Me In gives a fascinating account of how the amazing transformation was achieved and the American boy became, to all intents and purposes, a rather old-fashioned but cultured Englishman, with no trace of his original accent or vocabulary. He fostered all his rapidly expanding tastes with the same care that he gave the mostly white- flowered plants that flourished in the yard of his small London flat. Quality was every- thing, and he could be counted on to know where the best coffee, wine, shirts and shoes, cocker-spaniels and linen sheets could be got, spending money (his father's) like water, not only on his own stylish liv- ing, but on the presents he so loved giving, for he was unusually sensitive to others, and as easily moved to tears by the troubles I think we've got a leadership problem.' of his taxi-driver as by the beauties of Parsi- fat. Phyllis Hatfield doesn't spare us details of his foibles, and what some of his best friends knew as 'the spoilt brat syndrome'.
However, Stanley's determination to become a writer was not sacrificed to his social activities. His first (commissioned) biography was doomed to failure by the dullness of his subject, the American poet- ess, Elinor Wylie. The second, John Singer Sargent, was widely reviewed; Terence de Vere White called it 'an eccentrically bril- liant performance', while John Fenton of The Times thought it should receive a prize. The calamity which interrupted his third book also revealed a new feature of his character — the outstanding courage with which he fought in vain to get back the priceless gift of words — speech, reading and writing. His friends will be deeply grateful to Phyllis Hatfield for her moving memoir.
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