The raw material of the romance

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

NECESSARY SECRETS: THE JOURNALS OF ELIZABETH SMART edited by Alice van Wart

Grafton, £14.99, pp. 305

Some writers are condemned to be remembered by one book, which may be unkind but isn't usually unfair. In the case of Elizabeth Smart it was not even unfair. Gifted as she was, her literary output was for one reason and another exiguous, and she will always be associated with, as her great friend Jeff Bernard might say, just the one: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. She did publish another book in her lifetime, The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals; both have been reissued by Grafton at £3.99 each.

By Grand Central Station was published in a small edition in 1945 and in effect went underground, not so much forgotten as unknown in the first place except to a band of enthusiasts. Liz Smart herself was well known to a large circle. She was Canadian, born in 1913, and born rich. She was brought to London to study music, and returned to stay there, to travel in Europe, 'north Africa and even Australia, and slowly feel her way towards becoming a writer. From 1933 to 1940 she kept a journal, now published as Necessary Sec- rets, which covers those travels.

In 1939 she conceived a literary passion for Mr George Barker, a poet, whom she had not then met. She left for America, where she spent some time in Hollywood with her lover Jean Varda, this following an idyll a trois in Acapulco with the artists Wolfgang and Alice Paalen (by now Liz Smart was given to romantic polygons of such baroque complexity as Dame Barbara Cartland herself would blush to use as plots, even without the sex). At last, in Monterey in July 1940, she met Barker himself and his wife Jessica, having man- aged to extricate them from Japan. Events took their course and Liz and George set off more than once (the first time abortive- ly) to drive from California to the east coast. The rest, one might say, is literary history. This journey — that grand passion — was the inspiration of By Grand Central. Station, and Necessary Secrets is by way of being the raw material for the finished book.

The lovers returned to England; 'they lived happily ever after' might be a little misleading, but in the end Liz had four children by Mr Barker, settled in the country, worked in advertising and jour- nalism, played in Soho, and finally went back to East Anglia where she did live happily until her death five years ago.

To tell the truth, though I loved Liz Smart I never got on as well with her 'masterpiece of poetic prose', as Miss Brigid Brophy calls it in terms which perhaps explain why not: 'rhapsody . . . lament . . . tragic, pagan erotic ros- ary'. Parts of it are so keyed-up and lush as almost to make one sympathise with Liz's mother, a staid Ottawa hostess, who bought up and destroyed all copies of the book in Canada, though on moral rather than literary grounds. Like that book, Necessary Secrets is vigorously and excited- ly (not to say over-) written, the garden of the thoughts of a gifted and enchanting girl, highly intelligent as well as highly sexed.

The journal is acutely self-conscious and un-self-assured, especially in its early

stages: have finished my 20 years a- growing. I am no longer visibly adolescent. I may now start a-blossoming.' Even when Liz Smart had progressed beyond writing like that, there is a good deal which would scarcely be interesting if we did not know the author's subsequent work, and perhaps not even then. At the least, it is a delightful reminiscence of an age when the rich could live and travel in style and remain happily oblivious of current as opposed to carnal affairs.

Although Liz had a sense of humour, there aren't many laughs in the text. For that we have to turn to the wondrous commentary by Miss Alice Van Wart of the University of Alberta. The two women knew one another on campus, just like Shade and Kinbote:

During her stay at the University of Alberta, I met Elizabeth Smart when she was given an office next to my own. It was a curious twist since I had long admired By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept and the year before had begun critical work on it as the first work of fiction to break with English- Canadian tradition of realism.

(What this phrase means is not immediate- ly clear: the traditions in both English and Canadian fiction, or in Anglo-Canadian fiction? Is there no Canadian Firbank? No, come to think of it, perhaps not.) Anyway, apart from linking chapter prefaces, Miss Van Wart gives us a section of endnotes worthy of Kinbote. Only a churl would complain that they are almost impossible to follow in relation to the text on which they comment, that an index would have been more useful, and that Miss Van Wart sometimes seems out of her depth. In the very first section we are told that Katherine Goodson, the piano teacher with whom Liz studied in London, 'real- ised that, although talented, Smart was not serious about becoming a concert pianist; she sent her for lessons with a struggling pianist, Clifford Curzon', which phrasing gives an inadequate sense of the respective importance of Miss Goodson and Curzon (`struggling' is untrue anyway; this must have been not long after Curzon had received the legacy which enabled him to study with Schnabel).

To say that the notes cannot be read in relation to the text may miss the point. They should be read on their own, as with Pale Fire itself. On one page we have this poetic sequence:

A statue based on J. M. Barrie's character Peter Pan.

A statue of Queen Victoria, in Kensington Gardens.

Kensington Palace.

J. M. Barrie was one of Smart's favourite authors.

Miss Van Wart practises a kind of sonata form, counterposing two subjects — the blindingly obvious and the weirdly obscure — which a few pages later reaches a crescendo.

She is referring to poets.

Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets. Emily is a euphemism for menstruation picked up at Hatfield High School for Girls. Dragomens, interpreters or guides for travellers.

Mussolini, the Italian fascist dictator.

Oh, that Mussolini . . .

The book is a tribute to Liz Smart and a tribute of a different sort to the anal fanaticism of the Eng Lit industry; either way worth every penny of its price.

`If you go down to the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise.'