The letter killeth

Martin Stannard

'Don't lounge about the office, lad,' the editors say, 'sit up and insult an artist.'

[Evelyn Waugh on intrusive journalism].

Lies are like fleas hopping from here to there, sucking the blood of the intellect.' Thus Dame Muriel Spark, introducing her autobiography, Curriculum Vitae. She was, she said, setting the record straight, draw- ing only on objective evidence. There is a great deal about her family history. Her father is described as Jewish, her mother and maternal grandmother as the children of Jewish fathers and Gentile mothers. Recently the veracity of this account appeared to collapse with the 'revelation' that her parents had married in a synagogue. When she refused to comment, journalists feasted on her silence. But the suggestion that she had concealed her Jewish origins was defamatory. Finding herself accused of 'denial', of a form of anti-Semitism, and of misrepresentation in her autobiography, she had to respond. The fleas were hopping.

It all began innocently enough. Dr Bryan Cheyette, an academic, addressed the Edinburgh Jewish Literary Society on 3 March. Ironically, his subject was Spark's intense engagement with her Jewish back- ground, and he described her, as she described herself, as 'half Jewish'. Afterwards, some members of the Hebrew Congregation buttonholed him. Did he realise that she was, in fact, a full Jew? Her son, Robin, an active member of that con- gregation, possessed a copy of his grand- parents' ketubah, or marriage certificate. This stated that Bernard and Sarah Camberg (Dame Muriel's parents) were married at the East London Synagogue on 1 February, 1911. The Jewish Chronicle, on learning this, shifted a harmless literary `middle' to the front page. As this paper has a policy of never using the term `half Jewish' (it doesn't recognise such a state), it couldn't report Cheyette's terms with absolute accuracy. Nevertheless, the item made a splash: 'Discovered: A Lost Chap- ter in Le'chaim of Miss Jean Brodie'.

Flea number one had already leapt. This was no `discovery'. Muriel and her brother, Philip, had always known of their parents' synagogue marriage and had made no secret of it. Flea number two, however, was wonderfully gorged with the blood of mis- Information. The following weekend, the Sunday Telegraph's 'Mandrake' column attributed this disclosure of potential hypocrisy entirely to poor Cheyette. Letters of correction flew in. No apology emerged. Instead, Mandrake pursued his quarry fur- ther, rehearsing a corrected version of his earlier gibberish with 'There I would have been happy to leave it except . . . ' . The Chief Rabbi's office, he said, had found Bernard and Sarah's 'formal Jewish mar- riage contract'. No such union would have been permitted unless both parties had been verifiably Jewish. "It's conceivable that somebody could have bribed an offi- cial and that they got married under false pretences," adds the spokesman.'

With the implication of 'false pretences' reiterated, the story now appeared to have mileage. The Scotsman, the Observer, the Daily Mail, and the Sunday Times all ran articles and generated an increasingly heat- ed correspondence. The Sunday Times piece was (unintentionally) the funniest. Allan Brown booked into a Florentine hotel, 50 miles from Dame Muriel, and set off to interview her. Unfortunately he had forgotten to seek an invitation. Penelope Jardine, Spark's secretary and companion (it's her house), greeted him politely. (Brown described her as 'a white-haired woman in an artisan's smock'. She is not white-haired. She possesses no such gar- ment. She had been painting a room and was spattered.) Could he see Dame Muriel? No. Was she indisposed? No, she was busy. Could she, perhaps, spare a moment to talk about Robin? No. (By this stage, the papers were concentrating on the 'feud' between Spark and her son, to whom proof of the matrilineal line was crucial if he were not to be discredited as an Ortho- dox Jew.) Brown and his photographer retired to Florence.

From there, they made two more uninvited, and equally unsuccessful, visits. Jardine faxed a courteous letter, but he continued to press his case. Other papers, he said, were presenting Dame Muriel as disingenuous and autocratic. A cabal of Jewish journalists was trying to colonise her and her writing. It was a malicious pincer movement aimed at her probity. The Sunday Times would offer a platform for her rebuttal.

Muriel couldn't take this sort of thing seriously. She was, she replied, 80, her son nearly 60. It seemed incredible that the Jewish community might expel Robin if his mother's line were not 'pure'. She had sug- gested that Robin take a DNA test to settle the matter. She would do so, too — so long as he paid. If Robin had an identity prob- lem as a result of his Uezzell genes, this was beyond her control. She had nothing to prove. Let him try to prove his case.

What Brown and the rest of the press did not know was that there had been a previ- ous debate between mother and son in which her patience and generosity had been tested to the limit by his bureaucratic hostility. As she continued to insist that her mother and grandmother were not fully Jewish, he had informed her in 1981, he would break off contact. But, she explained, what she was saying was the sim- ple truth. As a child, she, her brother Philip and her parents had attended the syna- gogue only rarely; her father always worked on Saturdays; ham, bacon and pork were eaten at home; Muriel was not exempted from a Presbyterian religious education, nor did her parents wish her to be. Philip recalled that a seven-branched candelabra stood alongside a crucifix on the mantel- piece. There was a general, eclectic belief in 'the Almighty' but little more. It was an open-minded household. Robin wasn't there. Muriel and Philip were. And both were understandably irritated when Robin tried to reconstruct their cultural history. (During the Seventies he had been bug erecting Jewish gravestones over the remains of her parents and grandmother.) Unable to secure his interview, Brown flew home faced with justifying his expens- es, and with nothing new to say. Not that that deterred him. The result produced a veritable cloud of fleas. 'Will the Real Muriel Spark Stand Up?' ran the headline. 'Allan Brown tracks her to Tuscany to get the real story.' Ingenious for someone refused entry. Above the article sits a faked photograph of her apparently posing for him in front of her home. Several para- graphs of largely invented local colour are spiced with his chat with Jardine and an account of Spark's flashing past at the wheel of a green Fiat. (It wasn't her.) Then he quotes from her fax to him and rehears- es the debate from other papers. Dame Muriel had written to the Sunday Telegraph stating that her mother's maiden name was never 'Uezzell Hyams' as record- ed on the marriage authorisation paper. It was plain 'Uezzell'. Brown contacted the Chief Rabbi's Office: Hyams, [the Office] says, was the maiden name of Muriel Spark's grandmother. By the time Sarah [Muriel's mother] married sparks father, however, her own parents' marriage was in trouble and she adopted the na.tne Uezzell Hyams in deference to both parties.

Spark says the ketubah is 'not true'. Yet her mother is Sarah Uezzell Hyams also on bar civil marriage certificate.

On her parents' ketubah, Brown adds, 'the occupation of her maternal grandfather is given as "traveller". Tills touches on a rumour long attached to Spark, that she has gypsy ancestry.' To oar- roborate this, he telephoned the National Gypsy Council who told him that in 1911 'traveller' was 'an accepted euphemise for 'tinker, hawker or peddler.' Lastly, he rang Professor David Daiches: A friend of Spark during her Edinburgh days, he recalled his father, Rabbi Salis Daicbes, talking of Spark's mother and her conversion to Judaism, a process in which his father w.aa involved. 'They couldn't have gone ahead with the wedding if she hadn't,' says Daiches. 'Muriel Spark should make no mistake, she is fully Jewish.'

This was Brown's only apparent scoop. It was certainly news to Dame Muriel and to her brother. Brown fails to notice that Daiches and the Jewish authorities can't both be right since they are arguing from contradictory positions. (Spark's mother either was, or was not, born a Jew, and she wouldn't have needed conversion if she Was.) Nevertheless, Daiches's conversion story was astonishing. What was the truth of the matter?

I rang Daiches to check. Yes, he said, he had a distinct memory of his father's men- honing conversion. Or rather, of his moth- er's mentioning her husband's being called to the Cambergs' flat in Bruntsfield Place to Perform some ritual connected with con- version. Before the marriage? Probably; Perhaps shortly afterwards to regularise it. ut the Cambergs, I pointed out, weren't living in Bruntsfield Place when first mar- ried. They lived in Vievvforth where Philip was born. Oh. . . And when did Salis Daiches become Rabbi? February 1919. But the Cambergs were married in Febru- ary 1911. Oh. . . And did Daiches's father Perform this conversion? He had, Daiches Said, nothing whatever to do with it. It was Just a story his mother told. This is rather different from Brown's account. Talking to Daiches honestly conceded that he must have been mistaken but insisted that his memory was that Muriel's mother was not born a Jew. Muriel is quite right. Her mother was born 'Sarah Elizabeth Maud Uezzell', daughter of Tom Uezzell and Adelaide ilyams. Sarah's name was not `Uezzell Hyams' and the explanation for the change on the marriage certificate is guesswork. To call Tom 'Uezzell Hyams' is error or falsification. Hyams was never one of his family names. On what authority does the Chief Rabbi's office state that Tom and Adelaide's marriage was 'in trouble'? .111rune. They have no records of this or of we thorough checks which should have been made to certify Sarah's lineage. Adelaide died before Robin was born. The Only Jiving witnesses to the state of her marnage are Roger Uezzell, Spark and her brother. Were they contacted? No. All the evidence at my disposal suggests that it was an odd but ultimately contented relation- s* They were separated only by Tom's death in 1927. And did the Daiches family know the _Cambergs at all well? No. Was David patches 'a friend of Spark during her Edin- burgh days'? No. True, her maternal grand- father is cited as 'traveller', but does this suggest wt as the gypsy origins? Hardly. 'Traveller' usual designation for 'commercial raveller'. This man, Adelaide's father, was Poor East End Jew according to family lore. It was quite normal for such folk to travel the country selling whatever they could, . Did Dame Muriel say the ketubah was not true'? No, she said that it calls her mother 'Uezzell-Hyams' and that this was `not true'. It isn't insofar as this was not her maiden name.

So what is the truth regarding Muriel's origins? The Jewish authorities have no proof other than a ketubah and an authori- sation certificate containing names which do not correspond with Sarah and Tom's birth certificates. Their argument is simple and dogmatic: a non-Jew could not have married in a synagogue. Yet Adelaide's ori- gins are thus far untraceable, even by the Chief Rabbi's office. Talking of her Jewish ancestry, she had said that this came from her father rather than her mother. She, like Spark, accepted her Jewish roots and con- sidered herself a 'gentile Jewess'. Certainly she was regarded as a Christian by her neighbours and relatives. Her husband's family are buried in the cemetery of Wat- ford parish church — and she would have been, too, had she not died in her son-in- law's Edinburgh flat.

Dame Muriel's attitude to all this is uncomplicated. She doesn't give a damn whether she was or was not born 'Jewish' in the eyes of the Jews. What she does care about is the imputation of concealment. Her family life in Edinburgh was not Jewish in any orthodox sense of steadfastly practis- ing the religion. To suggest otherwise is to attempt to appropriate her lived experience — to which her mother's abundant letters (now in the National Library of Scotland) bear solid witness. The Cambergs celebrat- ed Christmas and Easter. Muriel's father's family was Jewish, Tom Uezzell's Christian. Both had got married for love to women supposedly 'tainted' with other faiths. Muriel admired that — and she is not to be browbeaten by the Edinburgh Jewish com- munity's desire to protect Robin.

Daiches's statement — `Muriel Spark should make no mistake, she is fully Jew- ish' — she regards as an insolent intrusion. Strangers are trying to rewrite a chunk of her life, and naturally she won't be re- written. Even if it were to emerge as a 'fact' 'I need time to drink' according to Talmudic law that she 'was Jewish', this would remain at odds with the authenticity of her recollection. It is a ques- tion of property and propriety. She will not be disinherited of her mixed-race back- ground, for it was this which coloured her childhood. Like Graham Greene, she owes no easy loyalty, is constitutionally an artist.

One of her distinguishing (and distin- guished) characteristics is a life-long oppo- sition to racism. Growing up on the fringes of a Jewish community was a significant influence on this sensitivity. Far from trying to disguise her Jewish origins, she has actively sought them out. She was closer to her father than to her mother. She has written copiously, and sympathetically, about Jews. During 1961 she attended the Eichmann trial and The Mandelbaum Gate was the product of her intense experience in Israel. Her letters from this period are quite specific: she wanted to visit the Holy Land to 'feel' her origins, Christian as well as Jewish. But she never felt at home in the Jewish community. She never felt at home anywhere until she entered the Catholic Church in 1954. And when she did so, nei- ther of her parents raised the slightest objection. Indeed, her mother was delight- ed by the autobiographical story, 'The Gen- tile Jewesses', when Muriel read it on BBC radio in 1963. Even Robin wrote to say that he had enjoyed it in the New Yorker 'very much'.

It suddenly occurred to me during this furore that there was a living witness to Muriel's account in Curriculum Vitae whom the press had totally ignored: her brother. When I rang him, he corroborated every- thing she had written on the subject. He wrote to the Sunday Times 'to certify on behalf of my sister that our mother. . . was never of the Jewish faith, to the best of my knowledge, either before or after marriage to my father . . . I say all this under oath and penalty of perjury.' What could be plainer? Is Philip 'in denial', too? Is it not much more likely that brother and sister testify to the truth, that their mother mar- ried in a synagogue to please her husband, and that 'a way was found' to allow this to happen? Impossible, say the Jewish author- ities. But they also say that 40,000 weddings took place between 1876 and 1940 at the East London Synagogue under a cheap marriages scheme, and that many of the families were immigrants with little or no documentation. Adelaide might well have been the child of immigrants. No birth cer- tificate has yet been found for her. Is it inconceivable that, among this huge crowd, her daughter could have slipped through the net?

In short, no. This story began with a certificate. It also ends with one. I have just discovered the record of Adelaide's marriage to Tom: 3 January 1886. Where? St Bartholomew's Parish Church, Bethnal Green. Banns were called. There could, surely, be no clearer evidence that she was a practising Christian.