Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [12]
30 July
The next morning was even worse. More from Vivien. But the gossip-writers, in revenge at missing the scoop given by Vivien to one of their number, gathered all their venom into one pen. I went totally white. Sat on the bed. Tried to keep it from Harold. He noticed ‘the strange absence’ of the most venomous paper and found it. Forced myself to write my weekly review for the Evening Standard (I had been chief non-fiction reviewer for several years). I sat in Diana’s garden in my long flowered cotton ‘writing-dress’ and a red hat against the intense heat. For a moment I just wanted not to BE: not to take any action to that effect but perhaps ‘to cease upon the midnight with no pain’. But as Beckett would have said at the end of Harold’s favourite Molloy: ‘It was not midnight …’ Harold came out into the garden and took my hand.
It is interesting, rereading this many years later, to wonder what would have happened to us in today’s very different climate regarding privacy. After all, we were not celebrities in the modern sense. At the time two things saved me from collapse. The first was a still-surviving robust common sense: ‘This is absurd. We are not Héloïse and Abelard nor even members of the royal family paid by the state. We’re not running for office and never have. We’re not trying to lead people in a new religion. We’re a couple of middle-aged writers who have gone of their own free will to live together.’ The other, of course, was Harold’s love for me coupled with my love for him.
But of course such an experience of public printed prurience could not fail to have a profound effect on me. For one thing, I took myself in hand and swore an oath never to read hostile gossip or satire about myself and Harold if I could avoid it; my logic was: ‘I can’t stop them writing it because this is a free country. But equally they can’t force me to read it. It’s my right to ignore it. I’ll read any hostile review of my work, grit my teeth and bear it, because that’s fair comment, however unpleasant. But not nasty gossip.’ Over the years, I derived wry amusement from the sugary indignation of those who had read these things and were eager to sympathize: ‘Oh, how awful! How could they? I mean really …’ Me, with equal sweetness: ‘I’m afraid I haven’t read it. I never do. But do tell me about it, if it will make you feel better.’
Finally of course you realize, if you have any sense of proportion, such things are very small sub specie aeternitatis or indeed more immediately in the scale of world concerns.
A little while later I happened to read the autobiography of Agatha Christie where she wrote of her persecution after she mysteriously ‘disappeared’ to Harrogate. She described how she had been the fox and they were the hounds. Yes, I too knew that feeling. For years afterwards, I would involuntarily shiver at the sight of a crowd of reporters and photographers jostling round a door – any door. It never quite went away until thirty years later, there was a joyous crowd of press warmly greeted by Harold, jostling around our house. But that is to anticipate.
There was one immediate effect on our relationship. It was difficult to avoid the conclusion that it was Vivien in ‘Medea’ mood with her colourful denunciations who had touched off the frenzy and allowed the press free rein to print where they might otherwise have hesitated, given the laws of libel. But then, like many people who seek vengeance, she herself ended up by being the final sufferer. Harold sent her a letter of one sentence: ‘Do not try to talk to me except through my lawyer.’ She had achieved the total break which was the last thing she wanted. She had turned all his chivalry and pity away from herself towards me. Although formal relations were restored after a while, as they needed to be, I could see that he never felt the same way about her again.
11 August
Scotland. I visit my dear friends Gerald Ogilvy-Laing, the sculptor, and Galina at Kinkell and we fall into each other’s arms. ‘We were so concerned for you.’ They worried