Letters to a Sister

From

Rose Macaulay

Edited By
Constance Babington Smith

Preface

Introduction

Letters

Appendix:
Venice Besieged

Genealogy

Bibliography

Most of the letters which Rose Macaulay wrote to her sister Jean were preserved, so at the time of Dame Rose's death in 1958 Miss Macaulay possessed a large accumulation. She reread all of them, destroyed quite a number, eliminated parts of others, and then invited me to edit the remainder for publication.

The series now published covers a period of thirty-two years, beginning in 1926 when Rose Macaulay was forty-five. It represents her side of the correspondence only, for after her death, in accordance with her wishes, Miss Macaulay destroyed all the personal letters in her flat. As this included all those which had been kept of the series written to Dame Rose by Miss Macaulay herself, no question of publishing both sides of the correspondence has arisen.

In editing the letters I have made more extensive cuts than in those from Dame Rose to Father Johnson (published as
Letters to a Friend
and
Last Letters to a Friend)
because the originals contain many references to ephemeral matters such as the weather, arrangements for meetings, passing ailments, and family comings and goings. This editing policy may, however, give a false impression of brusqueness, and I would like to emphasize that the manner in which certain of these trivialities are discussed shows a touching solicitude—for example there are repeated warnings against overwork. In addition to the passages just mentioned, I have omitted only those which are repetitious or which might cause embarrassment to living persons.

Many of the letters are not fully dated, but I have been able to establish the dates, nearly all to the day, from information
in the letters themselves. Some of the originals are typed but many are handwritten, and in these I have expanded most of the contractions. I have also corrected occasional typing errors and mis-spellings, and punctuation which might be misleading. In general, however, I have not amended incorrectly written quotations etc., nor have I rectified slips of grammar when the meaning is clear. I have indicated the occasional cases where there is no signature.

The Introduction to this book is intended to give as much background as is needed for an understanding of the letters. More detailed accounts of Rose Macaulay's life have been given in the Introductions to the two volumes of her letters to Father Johnson.

The surviving fragments of
Venice Besieged,
the novel Dame Rose was writing just before she died, are published in this book as an Appendix. They consist of a complete first chapter, the beginning of a second, and some rough notes which give indications of the shape the book might have taken. The first chapter exists in two separate versions, one handwritten and the other typed. The latter is published as it stands, except that where Dame Rose had been experimenting with different Christian names for some of the characters I have adjusted occasional discrepancies, using the names which recur most often in her latest corrections. (It is clear she had also been considering various different titles for the book itself;
Venice Besieged
was apparently her most recent favourite.) The rough notes are a medley of transcriptions, random ideas, and scraps of dialogue. A certain amount of rearrangement was imperative, and I have also omitted a few of the jottings which appear to be no more than reminders.

Throughout the work of editing I have received constant encouragement and assistance from Miss Jean Macaulay. I have turned to her continually with every sort of problem, and her keenness, good sense, and good humour have been an inspiration as well as a unique help. To her, and to certain of Dame
Rose's dearest friends, who have also given unwavering support to the project of publishing the letters, I am inexpressibly grateful.

I am much indebted to Miss Dorothea Conybeare for help in tracking down information for various footnotes; to Professor Bruce Dickins, whose interest in the problems of my editing has been a great encouragement; and also to Mr A. F. Scholfield, who has most kindly helped me in numerous ways. Many others, too, have taken special trouble in replying to my enquiries (chiefly in connection with footnotes) and I would like to express my thanks to all of them, particularly the following: Miss Doreen Berry, Mrs R. Cavenagh, Rev. Mother Clare, D.S.S. C.S.A., Mr Peter Fleming, Miss L. Joan Gray, Rev. Gerard Irvine, Rev. Hugh Johnston, Mr David Ley, Rev. Canon Fenton Morley, Mr F. A. Richardson, Mrs Paul Roubiczek, Rev. W. G. Sinclair Snow, Rev. Canon Charles Smyth, Miss Lucy Sutherland, Rev. E. K. Taylor, Rev. Cyril Tomkinson, Mr David Trevor, Prof. H. Trevor-Roper, Rt Rev. R. P. Wilson, and Miss Ruth Young. I would also like to acknowledge the kind permission given by Professor C. S. Lewis to quote from his letter concerning
Till We Have Faces.

For expert assistance in deciphering the handwritten letters I am very grateful to Miss M. F. McKnight. My thanks are also due to the Cambridge University Librarian for permission to make researches at the Library, and I would like to add a special mention of the unfailing courtesy and co-operation of the staff of the Periodicals Department.

Finally, as regards the illustrations in this book, I gratefully acknowledge the permission of Mr Cecil Beaton to reproduce his photograph of Dame Rose, that of Mr Victor Glasstone to reproduce his of Miss Jean Macaulay and that of Topix Picture Service to reproduce their picture of Dame Rose typing.

Constance Babington Smith

Cambridge, 1963

There were many different sides to Rose Macaulay. Her gift for being all things to all people made her much beloved, but she could be elusively reticent, and most of her friends knew her only in the setting which was also theirs. Few realized, for example, how lovingly she cherished family ties; even remote cousinships were delightfully compelling bonds to her. Filial loyalty, concentrated towards her adored father, had always been a fundamental of her life, and her affection for brothers and sisters counted for almost as much. During childhood they had been inseparable playfellows, and although, as they grew older, their lives led them far apart they remained a closely united family. So it is not surprising that as time went on, and one after another of them died, Rose's relationship with her remaining sister Jean became increasingly intimate and fond.

She had always enjoyed corresponding with ‘Jeanie', who on her side delighted to hear Rose's latest news, also her candid running commentary on books, broadcasts, sermons, politics, and topical questions of religion and ethics. Jean's lively sense of humour and energetic, logical mind made her a stimulating correspondent; their exchanges were like fast rallies between a couple of well-matched tennis players. At the same time Jean's innate simplicity of character—she was much more matter-of-fact and less sophisticated than Rose—provided an excellent complement to her sister's adventurous intellect, imagination, and wit.

Their correspondence flowed steadily on throughout their lives, irrespective of where they happened to be, nor did it diminish when they were meeting more often—rather it increased in volume, as shown by the letters in this book,
which were written during three successive periods, each involving somewhat different circumstances. Between 1926 and 1939, when Jean's work as a nurse kept her out of easy reach of London, letters were their chief means of communication. Then during the war and after it, the time that brought Rose into a wilderness of sorrow, illness, and distress, they met often but wrote constantly as well. Lastly, during the 1950's, when Rose's return to the Anglican Church, after a lapse of thirty years, had removed an unspoken barrier between herself and Jean, they wrote more profusely than ever; this in addition to weekly talks and many interminable chats by telephone.

The letters between the sisters naturally take for granted the whole family background, with its Evangelical traditions of service, its churchgoing and family prayers and Bible-reading, its learning and scholarship, its Liberal politics, its life in country parishes and University towns. Also taken for granted, of course, are the characters of the immediate family circle, especially of all the brothers and sisters. Jean was the nearest to Rose in age, so near that they sometimes called one another ‘Twin', for they had been born within the same twelve months. But as children their companionship had been subsidiary to that of ‘the five', as the elder Macaulays called themselves, in the days when they played together on the beach at Varazze, the fishing village near Genoa which was their home for nearly seven years. The childhood of the Macaulay boys and girls was an idyllic one, with freedom and sunshine instead of the restrictions of Victorian England that would have been their lot if their mother's doctor had not insisted that she should live in a warm climate. For a time Rose and Jean, with their elder sister Margaret, went to an Italian convent school, but this was not a great success. The nuns frowned on ‘the little heretics' at prayer-time, and they were nicknamed ‘Long Legs' by the other children because their skirts were considered too short. Margaret, ‘the quick-tempered
one', Jean, ‘the stubborn one', and Rose, ‘the good one', much preferred their mother's inspiring Sunday-school lessons and their father's reading aloud from Herodotus and the English classics.

George Macaulay, a dedicated academic, was worshipped by Rose, though she came to realize that he was not, in worldly terms, a success. It was from him she first acquired a respect for sound scholarship; she also shared with him an attitude which was a haunting burden. Sensitive and conscientious, with a strong tendency towards depression, he had always been convinced that he was destined for Hell, a belief which in turn seeped into the imaginations of his three elder daughters. In the mind of Rose's mother, on the other hand, there had never been any such terrors. Grace Macaulay believed that Heaven could and should be anticipated with joyful confidence. Born a Conybeare, she was gifted with originality and imagination along with a flair for story-telling; she also possessed a quick intuition which swayed her towards unbalanced enthusiasms and prejudices. She had been spoilt as a child and also as an attractive young wife threatened by tuberculosis. Accustomed to having her own way without question, she treated her children according to whim. As her daughter Jean has put it, ‘You never knew whether to expect kindness or a scolding.'

When the family returned to England in 1894 the three Macaulay girls, then in their teens, attended the Oxford High School. Paralysed by shyness they clung together and did not make any friends. Their gauche misery continued after leaving school, aggravated by the puritanical ideas of their mother. Jean, after attending one dance at the invitation of her brother Aulay, resolved never to go to another and never did. Her decision to abstain from alcohol also dates from about this time.

There were two Macaulay boys, Aulay and Will, both of them younger than Rose and Jean. Aulay was mathematically
inclined and joined the Royal Engineers, later serving in India, where he died tragically in 1909, murdered by thieves on the North-West Frontier. Will, who as a curly-headed little boy had so closely resembled Rose that the two of them could deceive their parents by dressing up in one another's clothes, was quite different in temperament from the others. Placid, optimistic, and lowbrow, he studied at an agricultural college and then emigrated to Canada and settled happily on a farm in Alberta.

The bond of affection between these five—Margaret, Rose, Jean, Aulay, and Will—stood for all that Rose valued most in family life. The other two Macaulay children, Eleanor and little Gertrude (who died as a small child in Italy) were much younger and were never regarded as equals by the elder ones.