Bloomsbury's Outsider (30 page)

With Bar approaching centre stage, Bunny was increasingly tied in with her activities, which often revolved around drinking with her artist friends. In his midweek jaunts with Bar, Bunny found himself swept along by tides of alcohol, and although he was hardly abstemious, he had not previously spent long hours propping up cocktail bars. As over-indulgence increased Bunny's tendency to bad temper, their relationship soon became punctuated by drunken nocturnal rows.

Stephen Tomlin was very much part of this drinking culture, and now separated from Julia Strachey, was back in London. He was manic depressive and turned to alcohol in his black moods. In the past he had been able to dissimulate, to pretend to be the
life and soul of any party. Julia Strachey had ‘puzzled greatly as to how people could be so taken in by what one of the few who comprehended him had described as “the inspired charade of normality” that Tommy managed to assume'.
²
Now his friends began to worry, and for Bunny, those wild times with Tommy in London were tinged with anxiety.

In the spring Bunny flew down to Ipsden in south Oxfordshire, to visit Rosamond Lehmann and her husband Wogan Phillips. Part of the attraction was that Bar was there for the weekend, together with their mutual friend, the artist John Banting. After lunch everyone wanted a ride in the Klemm, and with only one passenger seat Bunny had to take each up individually. He was consequently late leaving, returning to Cambridge in the dark as the plane had no lights. He arrived back terribly late, causing the ground crew grave concern. Ray had gone to meet him at the aerodrome, but had given up waiting and gone home terrified that he had crashed. It was their thirteenth wedding anniversary.

Bunny wrote to tell Bar that he was ‘more in love with you than I was a year ago & I was crazy about you then'.
³
He appreciated her independence; she was not looking for a husband, did not seem prone to that devil, jealousy, and was content for Bunny to slot into her life on his terms and at his appointed times. The relationship seemed to suit her as much as it did him, so much so that their mid-week assignations expanded into two or three evenings together. ‘Darling', Bunny wrote, ‘you were angelic on Thursday & on Wednesday & on Tuesday. I love you a lot.'
⁴

In early May 1934 Bunny took Ray and his father to stay in a cottage in Yorkshire. The plan was that Ray and Edward would leave together after about ten days and Bunny would stay on. Bunny's side-plan was that Bar would join him after they had left. In the event, Bunny found himself caught between the pincers of both Ray's and Bar's anger. He had offended Bar at their last meeting. Having gone to bed with her, he left late in the evening, but instead of returning to Endsleigh Street, he went on to a party at Tommy's prior invitation. Bar thought Bunny had been secretive about the party and that he preferred to spend the night carousing with Tommy rather than lingering with her. It had not occurred to Bunny that Bar would believe he had deceived her, and he assured her that his actions had saved him ‘from the impossible feeling of going into Ray's presence, surcharged with emotion which I could not, & cannot hide & cannot refer to'. He explained that normally he would construct a temporal divide between Bar and Ray by walking ‘round & round Gordon Square after dashing back in a taxi […] trying to make myself think of something else & not you'.
⁵

Ray was annoyed because she was sick of Bunny coming back to Endsleigh Street at all hours of the night, where he would find her awake and silent. She was also worried about her health. She had been reassured after another recent scare, but such recurrent alarms took their toll. In consequence throughout her time in Yorkshire, Ray was on edge, and Bunny wondered whether it had been a good idea to take Edward with them. It meant they did not have that salve of being completely alone together, that opportunity to re-connect. Some months later Ray wrote to Edward to say she felt sorry she had been in Swaledale with him
and Bunny. ‘I was extremely unhappy then & ought not to have come & I am afraid you thought me sulky.'
⁶

When Bunny invited T.E. Lawrence to Hilton for a flight in Pocahontas, Lawrence suggested that instead Bunny should fly down to Southampton for a trip in an air-sea rescue boat, which Lawrence was then testing. On 10 June Bunny arrived at Lawrence's lodgings. Initially he feared the visit had been a mistake, observing ‘something celibate, clerical almost, and pedantic' about Lawrence. When Lawrence proceeded to talk about Southampton's medieval fortifications, Bunny felt that he might have been a scoutmaster. But as soon as they climbed into the seaplane the ‘scoutmaster vanished and there was a red-faced weatherbeaten tough mechanic in his place'.
⁷
As they cruised out through Southampton Water, Lawrence realised something was wrong with an engine and, instructing Bunny to take the helm, proceeded to rip open a floor board, and stand on his head to investigate the bilges. According to Bunny, ‘it was then that I first fully realised how wise he had been to enlist in the ranks of the RAF. He had done a great deal for it, but it had done a great deal for him by giving him the ease and intimacy which comes from doing work with other men.' Lawrence's death following a motor-cycle accident eleven months later, in May 1935, prompted an entire ‘Books' page, in which Bunny began his appreciation by describing his day with Lawrence on Southampton Water. It was Lawrence the writer whom Bunny wrote about, declaring his death ‘a tragedy for English literature'.
⁸

Tied to the
New Statesman
, Bunny feared he was losing his
identity as a novelist, or at least that he was losing sight of it. Initially he had enjoyed his job and the status it conferred, but he was not a natural administrator and the unvarying day-to-day, week-by-week routine seemed relentless and became dull. In June he received a letter from Prentice setting out terms for another three-year book deal, with a fixed annual salary of £300 ahead of royalties like a joined-up advance, similar to that he had enjoyed in the early 1920s. It was a generous offer. Presumably Bunny was testing the water for an alternative income to his
New Statesman
salary.

On 16 July the Endsleigh Street experiment ended. It had lasted just over a year and a half, and from Ray's point of view had not been a success. She had endeavoured to take control in insisting they live together in London. It was supposed to have kept Bunny close, but even in London his will to live life on his terms prevailed: he had cloistered Ray through his own absence with another woman. With no London base, Bunny opted to lodge with Bar. This was not ideal for either of them. She had never been exclusive, and at this time was involved with both Stephen Tomlin and Rosamond Lehmann's husband, Wogan Phillips. Bunny had discovered Bar with Wogan, and the worse for alcohol, let rip his temper. A few days later he wrote to her: ‘I have thought a good deal about you & me', ‘the last week seems so horrible that I can't bear it or face a repetition'.
⁹
And then, magnanimously reasonable, he suggested that Bar and Wogan should go away together. Both reactions were typical. Bunny always claimed to be immune from jealousy, but he was only immune at a distance where he could consider his reactions dispassionately.

When Bar blamed Bunny for keeping her in London all summer waiting for him, he retorted that he disliked her hurt, sacrificial and scolding tone. He was beginning to feel claustrophobic, that Bar was making too many demands, expecting him to offer more than he could give. ‘I feel sure', Bunny said, ‘that my staying with [you] every week as a habit is a mistake: it puts us both in a false position & spoils both love & friendship. It's a sort of make believe marriage with the bad features of marriage rather than the good.'
¹⁰

‘My relations with Barbara', he explained to Ray, ‘which grew out of her falling in love with me & offering me gaiety & light heart – are now false.' To what extent he felt the need to review his relationship with Bar in the light of her other love affairs is uncertain, but it was typical of Bunny to turn to Ray just at the moment of retrenchment. ‘I beg you', he wrote, ‘to bear with me; to remember how much I do love you & not to drive me away when we might come together.' Once more he asked Ray to be patient, to accept his love. He told her, just as so often before, that he would not hurt her if he could help it.

Bunny believed the strength of his love for Ray should enable her to remain fixed at the centre of his universe, to withstand his taking off to explore satellites in the knowledge that he would return. He always did return, but Ray could only endure so much. Since Bunny had moved in with Norah, and latterly with Bar, Ray's reserves of trust were seriously depleted. If he was capable of leaving for short spells, would he, one day, leave permanently? Ray had, anyway, heard it all before. ‘I suppose', she said to Bunny, ‘we will go on together as before only with less respect for one another – a little less love & a good deal less trust.'
She put up a brave but resigned defence, telling Bunny that the last year had crushed her, that his indifference was terrible to her. ‘I've never defended myself for being jealous. But I will say this now. Almost anyone would be in my place.' Ray saw through him, because she was familiar with the pattern: ‘A short time ago you said you wanted her [Barbara] always for half your life […]. It seems to me that you wanted a dream & there's no hope of making the best of what's real.'
¹¹

‘You know', Bunny replied, ‘however much I have wounded you & been cruel to you, that I do love you more than anyone in the world. You know that though your dumbness exasperates me, that I love you permanently. I do love you & beg you to live with me now & to give me a little while to leave Barbara without hurting her too much.' ‘I am', he added, ‘a bloody messer up of my own & other lives.' In the depths of this letter, surrounded by a thicket of words of love, Bunny inserted his usual terms and conditions: ‘I don't think I could ever be faithful to you for very long. I can't bear to feel bound.'
¹²

In early November Bunny went to see Frankie who had been ill for some time. His head was badly swollen and when Bunny saw him, he remained asleep. On 2 December Raymond Mortimer wrote with bad news. After another exploratory operation it seemed certain Frankie had another brain tumour. ‘Yesterday', Raymond said, ‘there was barely anything left of the Francis we know. He is not afraid of death, but he is afraid of watching himself grow steadily worse.'
¹³
Bunny planned to visit
Frankie again, but a few days before the proposed visit, he received a letter from Maynard telling him that Frankie had only a couple of days to live. Maynard advised against visiting, as Frankie had been unconscious for over a week. ‘Dear Bunny', Maynard ended his letter, ‘I know how devoted you were to him, and he to you.'
¹⁴
Touchingly, Bunny placed this letter in his 1914–15 journal, where Frankie graced so many of the pages. Frankie died on 2 January 1935. ‘All his life', Bunny wrote, ‘he had sought next to nothing for himself, done all he could to help others and to be kind.'
¹⁵

For Bunny, Frankie was fixed in those carefree days of early adulthood when the two young men thought they could achieve anything. They had been bound together at the Caroline Club, in France among the Quakers and in their bookshop. Despite the imbalance of their love, they had been and remained devoted friends. Frankie's death seemed the end of an era. Bunny was nearly forty-three; he no longer felt that the future outweighed the past and he began to see himself as middle-aged. Although otherwise physically fit, he had recently suffered recurrent bouts of sciatica. Twelve-year-old Richard had improvised a verse: ‘Aching back, / Knees crack, /With rheumatism & the gout / The old people can't go out.'
¹⁶
Bunny assumed he was the subject. His shock of hair remained as thick as ever, but now it began to turn white.

Disgruntled with his personal life, Bunny was dissatisfied with the
New Statesman
. He felt unable to write, and craved the space in which to begin a new book. He discussed the situation with
Maynard. Always generous where Bunny was concerned, Maynard agreed to support his request for three months' leave. Consequently, at the end of December 1935 Bunny was temporarily free, his friend Raymond Mortimer taking over his work. Nevertheless, Bunny felt gloomy and irritable, unable to do anything. As Ray told Edward, ‘When he wants to write & can't it is like a great weight crushing us all'.
¹⁷

Bunny did not feel entirely comfortable as a literary critic because he considered criticism inferior to imaginative writing. When William Golding, an aspiring young writer, approached Bunny for guidance about a literary career, he was told that reviewing was not a good job.
¹⁸
In this respect, Bunny did himself few favours where Kingsley Martin was concerned, particularly when he paraded his negative views on the ‘Books in General' page with such generalisations as: ‘It is for those deficient in aesthetic sense that the critics really write'
¹⁹
and ‘The literary critic, in my opinion, is a not very valuable parasite'.
²⁰

The main problem was that Bunny and Kingsley Martin had never hit it off. Despite mutual friends, Bunny avoided him socially, even though in 1934 Martin had moved into a flat above the Nonesuch offices. Bunny recognised that Martin thought him arrogant, while, in turn, Bunny told Constance that the political tone of the
New Statesman
‘is one which I
execrate
: the superior nose out of joint air'.
²¹
Martin's antipathy to Bunny
may also have had something to do with Maynard supporting Bunny as the candidate for the literary editorship while Martin wanted Raymond Mortimer for the post. He may also have disliked what he thought to be Bunny's mercenary attitude towards the job. Martin considered his writers should be proud to write for the
New Statesman
and that financial recompense should not be their motivation.