All We Know: Three Lives (43 page)

and
…heterosexual”: Gavin Arthur,
The Circle of Sex
(New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1966), 19.

completely heterogenic…not”
: Ibid., 111.

“female heterogenic category”
: Ibid., 27.

“many business women…elements”
: Ibid., 83.

“10 O’ Clock…Type”
: Ibid., vi, 97–98.

“my brilliant second wife”
: Ibid., 147.

instances of the…“Courtesan”
: Ibid., 68.

“a selfish Nine…it”
: Ibid., 92.

“As Mrs. Arthur…adventuress”
: Chester Arthur to EM, July  21, 1947, AFP.

“I realized that…greatly”
: Chester Arthur to Morse Erskine, “Part III,” May 1950, AFP.

“What a pair…collide”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, September 14, 1961, SBP.

“in a crummy…Hemingway”
: Alan Watts, “Introduction,” in Arthur,
The Circle of Sex
, 8.

TOO LATE OR TOO SOON

“a strange girl…men”
: Lloyd Morris,
This Circle of Fles
h (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1932), 52, 50, 52–53. See also Max Ewing’s
Going Somewhere
(New York: Knopf, 1933).

“Miss Bodicea Hangover…failing”
: Max Ewing, “Thamar Tooting: Concerning Her Eccentricities and How She Achieved a Peculiar Success à Rebours—A Record of two New York Nights Entertainments as Ronald Firbank might have written it,”
Inlander
(June 1930): 33–8, 37.

“A very melodramatic…importance”
: Max Ewing to parents, n.d. [postmarked April 1, 1929], MEP.

“is one of…invent”
: Martha Gelhorn to Sybille Bedford, April 11, 1953, SBP.

“The wonderful thing…mouth”
: Sybille Bedford to author, telephone conversation, September 10, 2005.

“She
was
like that”
: Sybille Bedford to author, interview, London, June 30, 2001.

“free to indulge…anti-fascist”
: Sybille Bedford,
Quicksands: A Memoir
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 2005), 39.

“the
Partisan Review…
milieu”
: Sybille Bedford to author, telephone interview, February 21, 2005.

“I have never…this”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, n.d., SBP.

“elation, at the…existence”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, Wednesday, n.d. [1945?].

“that lost town…careful”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, March 1, 1945, SBP.

“supernaturally erudite”
: Bedford,
Quicksands
, 13.

Guilty about sitting out
: “I never felt at peace with the war,” Sybille told a reporter at the end of her life, “but of course I felt we had to win this war, and so as a matter of conscience I felt I should have had to take the risks.” Allison Hoffman, “Woman of Letters, Woman of the World,”
The Forward
, May 19, 2006.

“goodness of heart, her lovingness”
: Sybille Bedford to author, conversation, London, January 16, 2002. Sybille saw people as animals and called Esther “Horse.” Esther signed many of her letters to Sybille with this name. She decided that Sybille was a version of the small hopping creature known as the Kangaroo Rat, and addressed her in correspondence thus.

“the mind of…nature”
: Sybille Bedford to author, conversation, London, October 17, 2000.

“She just swept…‘highballs’”
: Sybille Bedford to author, interview, London, March 29, 2000.

“no aptitude whatsoever”
: Bedford,
Quicksands
, 64.

“I thought I…work”
: Sybille Bedford to author, conversation, London, June 25, 2001.

“writer manqué”
: Sybille Bedford to author, telephone interview, February 21, 2005.

“much too much…books”
: Sybille Bedford,
A Visit to Don Otavio: A Traveller’s Tale from Mexico
(London: Picador, 1997 [1953]), 36.

“She hated to…‘life’”
: Sybille Bedford to author, interview, London, March 29, 2000.

“eloquent on the…prostration”
: Bedford,
Don Otavio
, 229.

“‘I will not’…
Commons”
: Ibid., 105.

“In my native…Niagara”
: Ibid., 293.

“I laugh when…learned”
: Sybille Bedford to author, conversation, June 25, 2001.

“stalked past it…Hebrides”
: Bedford,
Don Otavio
, 303.

“In the spaces…Troy”
: Ibid., 61.

“became governess to…marchioness”
: Ibid., 11.

“side of the…’39?”
: Ibid., 226.

“My father voted…woman.”
: Ibid., 213–14.

“‘I am an…around’”
: Ibid., 156.

“‘Don Otavio,’ said…‘in 1770’”
: Ibid., 146.

“swinging a small…France”
: Ibid., 133–34.

“staged” a “mad farewell party”
: Sybille Bedford to Margaret Marshall, May 28, 1957, SBP.

“She came, she…plate”
: Bedford,
Quicksands
, 99.

“part jubilant…traumatic”
: Ibid., 13.

“infatuated with her…me”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, Friday, June 3 [1949], SBP.

“the twenty years…hour”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, June 2, 1949, SBP.

“I have played…revived”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, Friday, June 3 [1949], SBP.

“clouds of talk…somehow”
: Sybille Bedford to Toni Muir, July 20, 1949, SBP.

“I love you…soon”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, n.d. [circa March 1950], SBP.

person
”: Noel Murphy to Gerald Murphy, January 26, 1958, GSMP.

“Next to my…known”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, Monday n.d. [May 1, 1957], SBP.

“table…now?”
: Allanah Harper to Sybille Bedford, October 13 [1950], SBP.

THE SUBLIME GOVERNESS

“Sometime during the”
: All of the following citations are from the drafts of Esther Murphy’s Madame de Maintenon book, ms. and typescript, GSMP.

“With respect to…themself”
: She is citing La Beaumelle’s
Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Madame de Maintenon, et à celle du siecle passé
(
History of Madame de Maintenon and Her Time
).

she asked and…apartments
: Sybille Bedford recalled these arrangements. Mitford’s Pompadour book appeared in 1953. Mitford’s correspondence may suggest that she and Esther did not become friends until 1955.

“The writing is…considerably”
: EM to Chester Arthur, January 19, 1943, AFP.

“‘My God, how’…that”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, May 25 [1949], SBP.

“As Madame de…mankind”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, November 22, 1949, SBP.

“that ex-Huguenot…of”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, Sunday, n.d. [1950], SBP.

“many relics…world”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, November 17 [1950], SBP.

“monarchy incarnate”
: Murphy, Maintenon drafts, GSMP.

“Nearly all the…believed”
: Murphy, Maintenon drafts, GSMP. In the epigraph, Esther is quoting a conversation between Maintenon and her companion-secretary, Mademoiselle d’Aumale, recorded in the latter’s
Souvenirs sur Madame de Maintenon
.

“determined” that Esther…“self”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, March 19 [1955], SBP.

“it would not…depressing”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, postcard, March 3, n.d., SBP.

“fragment…Brace”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, n.d. [circa late March 1959], SBP.

“The book is…whole”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, July [1956], SBP.

“But the figure…Dear!”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, August 3, 1956, SBP. The idea that character is a “will-o’-the-wisp” (as Virginia Woolf puts it in the essay “Character in Fiction”) that cannot be pinned down is one of the canons of modernist thinking about representation.

“I am so…curiosity”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, January 5, 1959, SBP.

“Madame de M…. ‘poison’”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, Thursday n.d. [February 1959], SBP.

“I am glad…‘being’”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, May 3, 1962, SBP.

“She, stigmatized as…wars”
: Maud Cruttwell,
Madame de Maintenon
(London: Unwin, 1930), xvii.

“step[s] on a…places”
: A.J.A. Symons,
The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography
(New York: New York Review Books, 2001 [1934]), 3.

“biography alone has…show”
: A.J.A. Symons, “Tradition in Biography,” in
Tradition and Experiment in Present-day Literature: Addresses Delivered at the City Literary Institute
(Oxford University Press, 1929; reprinted by Haskell House, New York, 1966), 149–50.

“absorbed…continually”
: Julian Symons, “Introduction,” A.J.A. Symons,
Essays and Biographies
, ed. Julian Symons (London: Cassell, 1969), vi.

“showed an imbalance…success”
: Ibid., viii.

“He never really…biography”
: Ibid., ix.

“thirty  pages of…prose”
: Sybille Bedford to author, interview, London, March 29, 2000.

THE GRAVE’S INTERCOM

“sitting in triumph…her”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, n.d., [postmarked May 6, 1950], SBP.

“some research…fruitful”
: EM to Gerald Murphy, July 29, 1952, GSMP.

“work goes well this month”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, Tuesday, n.d. [July 1956], SBP.

“Esther still believes…does”
: Wilson,
The Fifties
, 377.

“In the 10…‘now’”
: Hodgson, “Sublime Governess.”

“I am sorry…illness”
: EM to Gerald Murphy, September 9 [1949], GSMP.

“that monument to the inessential”
: Gerald Murphy to Archibald MacLeish, February 8, 1943, quoted in Vaill,
Everybody Was So Young
, 319.

“so changed, gay…people”
: Sybille Bedford to Allanah Harper, December 30, 1951, SBP.

By the late 1950s
: “I have sold Allied Chemical stock & helped Esther momentarily,” wrote Noel. “I fear it [is] not sufficient & will be lost. However, you & I knew this would happen but $80,000 in 5 years is quick work.” Noel Murphy to Sybille Bedford, n.d. 1957, SBP.

“blackmailing letters”
: Noel Murphy to Gerald Murphy, n.d., GSMP.

“She
should
go…case”
: Noel Murphy to Gerald Murphy, n.d. [postmarked December 17, 1957], GSMP.

sent more…publisher”
: Noel Murphy to Gerald Murphy, n.d., GSMP.

“magnificent as far…secretive”
: Noel Murphy to Gerald Murphy, n.d., GSMP. Gerald hurt Esther and Noel by not contacting them on one of his postwar trips to Europe. In the summer of 1950, Esther wrote to Sybille that she had changed her travel plans to see him: “I loved having him here [in Paris] and we had a wonderful time and came to a new basis in our relationship. I hated to see him go.” EM to Sybille Bedford, July 10, [1950], SBP.

“a strange spiritual…lethargy”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, February 13, 1953, SBP.

“a tail spin”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, May 5, [1950?], SBP.

“an attack of…enjoyable”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, November 16, 1953, SBP.

“I am rigidly…darling”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, January 5 [1959], SBP.

“‘dishonoured and made’…indolence”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, March 19, 1955, SBP.

“skeleton thin, &…sheets”
: Noel Murphy to Gerald Murphy, n.d. [circa December 1959], GSMP.

“probably a pre-disposition…alone”
: Noel Murphy to Gerald Murphy, July 26, 1960, GSMP. Around this time, Alice De Lamar recalled that Esther had had the DTs in the 1920s—possible, or perhaps that episode (like the “wrongly diagnosed” cerebral hemorrhage Chester reported in 1935) was an epileptic seizure. Janet Flanner reported that “Esther’s nearly fatal illness—& it was that—was like a gigantic purge that wiped out all her habits of exaggeration, mental & physical. She phones to me freely, is pathetically tender to Noel, reaches for her hand at the dinner table to squeeze it, talking only nearly all the time, not entirely all, & with a moderation that is touching, brilliant in a new way because devoid of glitter.” Janet Flanner to Sybille Bedford, June 8, n.d., SBP.

“Her scrambled eggs…plate”
: Sybille Bedford to author, conversation, London, June 25, 2001.

“Two things about…purpose”
: Wilson,
The Fifties
, 376–77.

“inertia and cowardice”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, n.d. [1949], SBP.

“situation that no…was!”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, February 13, 1953, SBP.

“I have been…live”
: EM to Chester Arthur, June 17, 1943, AFP.

“at home with…singularity”
: Wilson, “The Author at Sixty,” 44.

“She is perhaps…self-pity”
: Wilson,
The Fifties
, 254.

“she would launch…McCarthy”
: Hodgson, “Sublime Governess.”

“Dulles thinks Communism…all”
: EM to Edmund Wilson, September 25, 1958, EWP.

“I can’t tell…her”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, September 30, 1949, SBP.

“very few satisfactions…help”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, n.d. [postmarked September 1954], SBP.

“I fear that…judgment”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, Monday, n.d. [circa April 1958], SBP.

“my learned friend…Arthur”
: Charlotte Mosley, ed.,
The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waug
h (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1996), 367.