The world in the afternoon
Frances Partridge
ROSAMOND LEHMANN'S ALBUM with an introduction and postscript by Rosamond Lehmann
Chatto & Windus, f8.95
Everyone who entertains visitors for weekends knows how eagerly many of them, as if drawn by a magnet, make for the shelf containing the family photograph albums. Comfortably settling themselves in a sofa, they proceed to spend hours turning the pages devoted to friends and relations, thus becoming poor company and conver- sationalists except for an occasional 'Who is that?' or 'Goodness! X isn't looking his best here, is he?', while impatiently whisk- ing through alpine valleys and Italian piazzas. The advent of easy colour photo- graphy means more views and more plea- sure for the camera-owner, but less for the album addict, who will be all the more delighted by this revival of the black-and- white era and its human interest.
The selection of illustrations for Rosa- mond Lehmann's Album has been made by her grandson, Roland Philipps, who shuns the title-page but makes two other appear- ances that give some idea of his personal- ity. One is a poem he wrote at the age of seven, inevitably recalling Stevie Smith by its moving beginning:
Help me And me.
Me too. .
The ship has sunk help me please.
The second is a cheerful picture of him as a small child whose expression plainly shows that he has as much sense of humour as his grandmother. He is to be congratulated on the variety and interest of the subjects he has chosen, so putting together a pictorial biography of Rosamond Lehmann and her friends that can hold its own with Lady Ottoline's and Vanessa Bell's Albums. (Michael Joseph, 1976, and Norman & Hobhouse, 1981.) After the diet of horrors given us by the media, with their pictures of crashed aero- planes and earthquakes, and descriptions of the brutalisation of 'toddlers' as the poor things are now officially called, it is a relief to be reminded of happier times, and of laughter, picnics and bathing parties. There are 'toddlers' here too, of course, but ones that have been cherished and are thriving, and I was amused to notice the likeness of the face of one of them to that of my friend Rosamond today. The child really is mother to the woman.
Rosamond Lehmann has prefaced the book with some favourite and significant quotations, as well as writing her own introduction, in which she describes her album as 'a light-hearted affair'. Indeed it is, but it is also a record of love in all its aspects — love of parents and siblings, friends, husbands, children and grand- children, accented and enhanced by her touching and amusing 'captions' as she calls them. 'At times a sudden spurt of memory has flung up a voice, a gesture, speaking directly to me,' she writes, and she sometimes assesses a character bril- liantly in a few concise but accurate lines. Describing her own early writings she speaks of the 'malaise' attached to her first creative impulses, adding that she feels it no longer. She can never be accused of malice. A vein of modesty unusual in someone whose life has been 'in one sense exceptionally fortunate' appears in her attributing her talent to the genes of her forbears, and also to the fact that she tells us that The Swan in the Evening is the only one of her books she wants to be remem- bered by, 'because it contains an account of a direct experience of reality.' She is referring, of course, to the terrible tragedy of her daughter's death in the full bloom of youth. The psychic element can obviously not be criticised by those who do not share its premises, of whom I am one, but her friends must be glad that the very pain she suffered led her to 'vast unshakable con- solation'.
The album begins with portraits of her handsome parents and their four children. Schooldays and Girton follow, and here I found the Rosamond I first met, since we overlapped for two years at Cambridge. I have a clear memory of seeing her swirling round in a waltz at a May Week ball with her neck gracefully bent and a rosy blush on her cheeks — a disarming characteristic noticed by Stephen Spender.
After Cambridge came her first mar- riage, and the resounding success of Dusty Answer in 1927: she was launched on a tide of triumphs. This, her first novel, was made Book of the Month in America, and was enthusiastically received as Poussiere in France. The best critics acclaimed it. Alfred Noyes wrote: 'It is the kind of book that might have been written by Keats if Keats had been a young novelist of today.' Fan letters poured in; one of them con- tained an amusing photograph, here repro- duced, of a wildly dancing young woman `melted by love and sun'. There are por- traits of many brilliant friends such as Auden and Isherwood, George Rylands, Carrington and a particularly benign Lyt- ton Strachey, Lindbergh, David Garnett, T. S. Eliot, Rose Macaulay and the Woolfs, Henry Lamb (who painted Rosa- mond's portrait), her second husband Wogan Philipps and their two children. In fact more space is given to friends and family than to herself. Best among the friends is an excellently composed picture of Duncan Grant and Violet Hammersley, subtly conveying the charm of them both, while the magnificent portrait of Rosa- mond on page 51 (taken I wonder by whom?) justifies Stephen Spender's verdict that she 'was one of the most beautiful women of her generation'. There are plen- ty of anecdotes too. I particularly liked the one about Guy Burgess, who had 'hoped to seduce the gardener's handsome son'. (`Oh Rosie, can't I?' he implored in vain.) In the postscript the theme of The Sea-Grape Tree returns, and Rosamond Lehmann gives a synopsis of the sequel which is carried in her mind but — so she says — will never be written. However, the book ends on a note of serenity: she appears to have come to terms with un- happiness, and when she writes 'I seem to live partly out of time', many of her generation will understand what she means, and that it is something to be thankful for.
The pictures are skilfully laid out on the page, and this delightful picture-book does not, like so many others, crush one with its physical weight. Two corrections must be made. It is Francis Birrell and not Roger Senhouse whom we see with Eddy Sackville-West, and the portrait of Eddy's cousin Vita should be identified and figure in the index.
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