Two affable ghosts
Frances Partridge
CLEVER HEARTS: DESMOND AND MOLLY MACCARTHY — A BIOGRAPHY by Hugh and Mirabel Cecil Gollancz, £18.95, pp. 320 Faced with a large pile of highly in- teresting material, the authors of Clever Hearts have had the original idea of turning it into a double biography, wherein two characters are given equal importance without bias. Their first problem must have been a technical one — how to deal with two trees sprouting from different soils before their trunks are grafted together and continue as one. In Molly MacCarthy's case the Cecils have been able to rely on her Nineteenth Century Childhood, a mini- ature masterpiece which is not so well known as it ought to be. We are at once refreshed by the sparkle of her special talent when she tells us about 'sweet heavenly Lynton', where 'as I lie down in my bed, with the murmur of the sea in my ears, I am happy as a little caterpillar on a fresh green leaf . Next we are at Eton, with her father sitting correcting Latin verses 'in his quiet, comfortable study, with his white hair and a look of being half a mediaeval saint and half a country squire', and her famously eccentric mother rising 'like a fish out of a river of doubt to catch small flies of certainty'. The evoc- ation of growing up in the most famous of public schools to the musical background of 'stiff chilblainy scales' is perfect.
Desmond's life story began as it was to go on; that of a popular if rather lazy boy both at prep school and Eton, a great talker and reader, the adored only child of parents who expected much of him and fussed over his health. As his oldest friend said of him, 'he travelled first class through life on a second-class ticket'; in other words he usually took to his environment like a duck to water.
It was at Cambridge that he was first really dented by its impact. Work was hard and serious in those days, argument a passion, sexual awareness retarded and drink less indulged in than now. G. E. Moore's philosophy had set a high value on friendship, and Desmond was fortunate in making that great man his friend for life.
Others were the founders of 'Old Bloomsbury' — Woolf, Strachey and Bell. There were reading-parties and the Apos- tles (a secret society that is beginning to look a little tatty in the fluorescent lighting of subsequent biographies, even if its members didn't deserve being referred to by Desmond as 'those miserable muffs'). He opted early for a writer's career, aiming at a major novel to compare with Henry James or Tolstoy; but his father's death, responsibility for his tiresome old mother, and perennial shortage of money drove him into journalism. His interest in books and plays, a brilliant way with words, and his own charm and lovableness, brought him the backing of such men as Hilaire Belloc and J. L. Hammond, and were to stand him in good stead for the rest of his life. He liked taking Molly Warren- Cornish to the theatre sometimes. 'I en- joyed Molly a good deal more than the play', he commented after Candida; but gladly as Molly responded to his courtship she found engagement a deeply disturbing experience. 'I like best the people who can feel troubled about their own hearts', Desmond wrote in his most sympathetic vein, 'they are the only hearts I love'. They were married in 1906, and soon afterwards Molly wrote to her mother-in-law, 'Des- mond is simply an angel and we are angelically happy'.
Time passed, children were born, and Molly was left too much alone in the country. Money was shorter than ever, but Desmond always hoped something would 'Why didn't you tell me it was a white-tie-and-toupee affair?' turn up, as so it did — in the unexpected shape of Roger Fry, asking him to help with the 1911 Post-Impressionist Exhibi- tion. In the same year he was made drama critic of the New Statesman, (to be fol- lowed by his 'Affable Hawk' pages) — a year when his reputation as a literary journalist began steadily soaring, to hold its own until its climax in a knighthood.
Long before this the scene had changed to a house in Chelsea, where the struggle to keep within their income was only one element of the MacCarthys' life. There was plenty of 'good talk', as Desmond loved to call it, with visitors as lively as Clive Bell and as eminent as Henry James, and plenty of laughter too. (Desmond rumbling and chuckling with boyish delight and Molly silently convulsed while the tears ran down her cheeks).
And something else was happening: the two tree-trunks grafted together were beginning to spread their branches in different directions in search of different atmospheres. Desmond was delighting in the stimulation he found at the dinner- tables of the rich and famous, from which Molly was debarred by increasing deaf- ness. Had it been otherwise, with her wit and originality she would have held her own in any company. As it was she was 'making great friends with Virginia', drift- ing into Bloomsbury (didn't she give them their nickname and create the Memoir Club?), or enjoying trite-A-tetes with Otto- line and young Philip Ritchie. In quiet intervals between 'tonsils and adenoids, colds and tempers, boots and lessons' she tossed off reams of brilliantly original, witty and violently underlined letters, and worked at a novel and her memoirs.
Naturally there were flirtations and even love-affairs, but whereas Desmond was hardly subject to jealousy, in Molly it was a furious passion, and Desmond's one serious infidelity — coming late in life but lasting long — caused her deep unhappi- ness. The Cecils have treated emotional crises and painful letters with unblinking detachment. Moreover, starting with the decision to describe a couple, they have gone further and shown us their hero and heroine advancing through life surrounded by a dense procession of friends as varied as the crowd in an Italian fresco, yet standing out as individuals. I knew and loved them both, but I find it hard to imagine what astral traces they will leave on the night sky of the future.
'Desmond was the most gifted of us all', wrote Virginia Woolf, herself the most brilliant of critics, 'as tender and vague as ever', 'talking so enchantingly'. He was like his friend Max Beerbohm in seeming virtually to set his words to music as he spoke. Many will say that Molly was more creative; but though I believe that creativ- ity must be rated above criticism, there are surely some writers able to excel in both.
The selection of photographs is delight- ful.
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