Rebecca West: A Modern Sibyl

by Carl Rollyson

A stunning portrait of an extraordinary author.

It begins with a portrait that attempts to evoke the living person in all her dimensions.

It concludes with an interview with one of her favourite secretaries, Elizabeth Leyshon, who eluded him in the 1990s but provided new insights into her employer’s character for this book.

As early as 1917, she understood where the world was headed and realised that the revolution in Russia held out false hope.

Because she took this view as a socialist, those on the left scorned her as an apostate, whereas she understood that Communism would result in a disaster for the British left.

Rollyson portrays West’s most intimate aspects as depicted by those who were close to her.

Her relationship with H.G. Wells, a married man, underlined a large part of her life, particularly with the birth of their son, Anthony.

Anthony, having been born out of wedlock, was unable to refer to his parents as a normal child would.

Growing up, this anomaly triggered the onset of a series of frictional outbursts, some so severe, that West’s reputation was put on the line.

The mother and son relationship between herself and Anthony then went on to underpin much of West’s later life.

West formed a friendship with Henry Andrews, a banker, with whom she spent many hours discussing the situation she found herself in.

She later married Henry and they stayed together until his death. Suffering from various ailments did not stop West from writing.

Whether in hospital or almost at her own death bed, she carried on writing.

Rebecca West: A Modern Sibyl provides a refreshing, engaging and spirited account of one of the world’s major writers.

Carl Rollyson is a writer whose biographies include Beautiful Exile: The Life of Martha Gellhorn, Lillian Hellman: Her Life and Legend and Marie Curie: Honesty in Science. A well-known scholar of biography, he has also published Reading Biography, Essays in Biography, Lives of the Novelists, and British Biography: A Reader .

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, Politics, British Literature

494 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 14, 1996

About the author

Carl Rollyson, Professor of Journalism at Baruch College, The City University of New York, has published more than forty books ranging in subject matter from biographies of Marilyn Monroe, Lillian Hellman, Martha Gellhorn, Norman Mailer, Rebecca West, Susan Sontag, and Jill Craigie to studies of American culture, genealogy, children’s biography, film, and literary criticism. He has authored more than 500 articles on American and European literature and history. His work has been reviewed in newspapers such as The New York Times and the London Sunday Telegraph and in journals such as American Literature and the Dictionary of Literary Biography. For four years (2003-2007) he wrote a weekly column, "On Biography," for The New York Sun and was President of the Rebecca West Society (2003-2007). His play, THAT WOMAN: REBECCA WEST REMEMBERS, has been produced at Theatresource in New York City. Rollyson is currently researching a biography of Amy Lowell (awarded a "We the People" NEH grant). "Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews, a biography of Dana Andrews is forthcoming in September from University Press of Mississippi. His biography, "American Isis: The Life and Death of Sylvia Plath" will be published in February 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of her death. His reviews of biography appear regularly in The Wall Street Journal, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Raleigh News & Observer, The Kansas City Star, and The New Criterion. He is currently advisory editor for the Hollywood Legends series published by the University Press of Mississippi. He welcomes queries from those interested in contributing to the series. Read his column, "Biographology," that appears every two weeks at bibliobuffet.com

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Rebecca West: A Modern Sibyl” (2017 edition) is a brilliantly crafted biographical masterpiece by Carl Rollyson. A gifted prolific award winning author of over 40 books featuring essay, literary criticism, and the lives of notable people including Marilyn Monroe, Susan Sontag, Martha Gellhorn, Sylvia Plath, Norman Mailer, William Faulkner—and so many others. Rollyson earned his PhD at the University of Toronto.

Born Cicely Isabel Fairfield aka Dame Rebecca West- “RW”-(1892-1983), RW was recognized for reportage and journalism, her fiction and non-fiction writing, essays, book reviews, and numerous articles in a multitude of notable publications. RW wrote and traveled abroad extensively nearly all her life. Among the most prestigious awards she received was The Women’s Press Club Award (1948) presented by President Harry Truman. In 1959 she received her honorary title at a luncheon from the Queen and Princess Margaret.
“She was a monster, but monsters can be loveable.” - Noel Davis (friend) - Those who loved RW easily appreciated her fun, generous, free spirited nature. People adored her! According to her editors, she had a gift of putting others at ease, with a quick brilliant mind and sense of humor. With a penchant for drama, acting was her first love, and she adopted her stage name. There was an impulsive, volatile side to her temperament and RW was capable of explosive angry outbursts that sometimes scared others. “There would never be another like her.” H.G. Wells (1866-1946).

Although Wells was 46 years old when he invited RW to his home after her critical review of his novel Marriage (1912) claiming he was “the old maid among novelists”. Wells, already divorced and remarried, was a notorious womanizer. The spunky flamboyant RW totally thrilled and captivated him, he talked to her non-stop for 5 hours. Later, as he readily accepted the role as her mentor and lover, she became his muse. The themes in their novels were often a reflection of their relationship—which lasted over 3 decades, until his death. Wells fathered RW only son: Anthony Panther West Fairfield (1914-87).

Anthony seemed to suffer life-long emotional distress over his relationship with his mother and his parent’s inability to have a truthful discussion with him regarding their complex and confusing relationship. Anthony’s classmates taunted/ridiculed him, the servants/others whispered about his “bastard” status. Like his famous wealthy parents, Anthony would become a successful author: with “Heritage” (1955), also a biography of his father, and many other titles.
RW felt compromised with Anthony writing about their personal life. Rollyson expertly revealed both sides of the conflict, without taking sides. This wasn't the case with Vita Sackville West, who admonished RW over her apparent obsession of “malice” towards her son. When RW married the kindly childless banker Henry Maxwell Andrews (m.1930-68), Anthony was suspicious, mistrustful, (as he was with his mother) and resisted his step-father’s genuine concern and love for him.
Enjoying tremendous success with her first American tour, RW embraced the modern times of liberated feminism with gusto, she naturally had legions of fans/admirers and numerous lovers. When she covered the Nuremburg Crime Trials, RW was distracted by an affair, though she would feel the sting of betrayal discovering her husband’s secrets after his death.

As a visionary, with so much world travel, RW understood imperialism in world history. The Russian Revolution hadn’t influenced modern or future society. RW relished her honor to proclaim Communism a “Dud” (especially in relation to British socialism). This had a tremendous negative impact on her literary career-- she was harshly criticized and viewed as intolerant for her public rebuke of the “great experiment.”
Tact and diplomacy were hardly her strong points. RW objected to censorship, also literature that had no moral fiber or redeeming value. In the 1962 Edinburgh Festival she bashed Henry Miller as an “odious old phoney”-- William Burroughs “lizard like”--and Norman Mailer as an “idiot gorilla.” Of the festival she reported: “an indescribable orgy of bad taste, vulgarity, and bad criticism.”

It was necessary for Rollyson to get multiple versions of the same story; and he had the full cooperation of RW numerous family members and friends. David Ogilvy, a cousin, who knew RW for over 50 years believed her to be “an incorrigible liar”. Anthony once labeled her a “fabulist” her correspondence bearing little resemblance to the truth or reality. RW thoroughly enjoyed embellishing her stories for listeners and readers alike, it certainly made them more interesting! In the memoir genre, this is often referred to as creative non-fiction, recognized as “truth” according to the author. In this extensive 491 page biography, Rollyson stuck to the facts, yet was unable to fit all of his material into this astonishing unforgettable read! ~ With thanks and appreciation to The Odyssey/Endeavour Press Ltd. via NetGalley for the DRC for the purpose of review.

[Nigeyb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rebecca West published her first article in 1911, when she was 18, and her last in 1982, when she was nearly 90. In between, she wrote numerous stories, novels and non-fiction books, and hundreds of essays and reviews.

In the final paragraph of this book’s introduction Carl Rollyson sums up Rebecca West’s lively personality...

HG Wells said there would never be another person like her. He was speaking of the person. Frank Swinnerton said there would be another like her. He was speaking of the critic. She was enormous fun. Powell adored her. She was dangerous. She scared people. Both her humour and her anger were explosive. As her niece Alison has said, if she were to return, it would have to be as a firework.

That paragraph, whilst quoting other people, illustrates the extent to which Carl Rollyson appears to be in thrall to Rebecca West. His enthusiasm means this biography is exhaustive and definitive. It was too long and detailed for my needs.

As mentioned, Rebecca West was prolific and she also lead a full and interesting life - not least her affair with the promiscuous HG Wells which produced an illegitimate son, Anthony. Anthony West was 9 before Rebecca confirmed that she and Wells were actually his parents. Previously she’d told him they were his Aunt and Uncle. His unusual upbringing resulted in a highly dysfunctional relationship with his mother which dominated both of their lives.

I was weary of this biography well before the end, which says more about my level of interest than the quality of this detailed look at the life and work of Rebecca West. That said, I have not yet read anything by Rebecca West, and this biography has inspired me to try some of her work.

Rebecca West was a remarkable woman, and this biography does her justice.

3/5

[Jo Walton]

I once said that I'd like to read a biography of St Jerome that wasn't a hagiography. That may be impossible, but I wouldn't have thought it would be so impossible for West. And yet the world seems to be made up of people who have never heard of her and people who worship her uncritically and for whom she could do no wrong. I wish Anne de Courcy would write a biography of her.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't believe how long it took me to finish this book. It was very good, but extremely detailed. Everything she ever wrote was discussed. Seemingly every detail of her horrible relationship with her son was analyzed. I started out thinking Rebecca was a fascinating character and one who I would have liked to have known. As she grew older however, she seemed to become odder and more paranoid, and I realized that while I enjoy her writing, I wouldn't want to know her. As a person, she was truly awful to her son and not very appreciative of her husband or some of her other family members. As a writer, she had an incredible mind and far-ranging interests. I'm looking forward to reading Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (her masterpiece on Yugoslavia), The Meaning of Treason (with its coverage of Lord HawHaw), and The Birds Fall Down. Very glad to have read this.

[Historygirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rebecca West: A Modern Sibyl provides a strong sense of what Rebecca was like as a person, and she wasn’t always very nice. Her witty style of conversation could scald people. Her strongly held literary and political beliefs led to intellectual battles. She succumbed to paranoia on occasion. Her relationship with her son is a fascinating disaster. Yet she made friends who lasted for thirty or forty years.
Rollyson covers her writing well by clarifying the links between her fiction, long nonfiction and regular reviewing and commentary. As a Professor of Journalism he is sensitive to her achievements. She had a very long career publishing her first article in her teens and the last in her 80s with two major posthumous books edited by others.
Her political views are covered clearly without getting too deep in the weeds of faction fighting. Basically her politics in every decade drove her fellow intellectuals insane, and it’s very interesting to discover why.
The flaws in the book are it’s editing and lack of full footnotes. One of her sisters dies twice in two different chapters. Although the footnotes would have increased the complexity and length of what was apparently published as an e-book, they are necessary for a full scholarly presentation.
Unforgettable and compulsive reading about Dame Rebecca overall, this book paints a definitive portrait.

[Val · Rating 1 out of 5]

Initial thoughts:
Rebecca West was a perceptive, incisive and feared literary critic from her late teens until her old age. She deserves similar insightful literary criticism of her own work, not a few one-line quotes like those found on back covers. If Carl Rollyson does not feel competent to do it himself, then he should quote the reviews of the time at greater length.
Why does he keep calling her a suffragette, when she disagreed with their exclusivity and thought they had high-jacked an essentially working-class movement? She was a suffragist and a feminist; she believed in votes for everyone and campaigned on that basis, not votes for a few upper-class ladies however much they suffered to get them.
He also says, far too often, that almost anything H. G. Wells wrote about Amber Reeves could equally have been applied to Rebecca West, as if the two young women were generic clones rather than individuals. This is insulting to both women and to H. G., who was interested in their minds as much as their bodies.

Later thoughts:
Much of the rest of the book seems to be about battles between Rebecca and her son with H. G., but I'm bored now and giving up.

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the best biographies I have read so far this year . Carl Rollyson did a tremendously wonderful piece of writing and research in the study of our fabulous Rebecca West . I knew nothing of her until I began to tread of her and then I found she touched lives all over the world . She was a completely mystifying woman . I found the charisma of Rebecca taking over me as I kept reading about her amazing boldness and acceptability with people. She was tolerated because she shocked so many in my opinion by the outpouring of some of her most sensitive statements in public .

I will add more to this later ... So much more to come !

[Dave Appleby · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a biography of the journalist and novelist Rebecca West. It's one of those biographies that seeks to chronicle every aspect of the subject's life, and it is a literary biography that carefully describes each book she wrote. As a fellow novelist, what really interests me about a writer is not whom they have sex with or where they lived but about how they worked, what they saw as 'good' and 'bad' writing, their literary influences, and how (and why) their art matured as they grew older. This book manages this to a certain extent (more than many others) but I was a little overwhelmed by all the rest of the stories. Though some were fun.

My overall impression of Cicely Fairfield who named herself 'Rebecca West' after a feisty Ibsen heroine is that I wouldn't have liked her very much. She was likened by her niece to a firework: great fun but rather dangerous. This was a woman who took no hostages. She had forthright opinions and was able to express them in pithy and often unforgettable prose but I doubt she was ever very charitable. She believed (and I suspect she took pleasure in the notion) that she rendered some of her lovers impotent. Her relationship with her son (whom she packed off to boarding school when he was three) showed minimal understanding, little kindness and a lot of mutual anger. And yet this is the woman who wrote The Return of the Soldier, a novel that has compassion at its very heart (though not, perhaps, for Kitty).

One characteristic which is shared, I imagine, with many novelists, is that “Rebecca could not tell a story without exaggerating, or as some would have it, lying.” (Rebecca West: a Portrait)

Her childhood was the classic late Victorian one of genteel poverty. Her father abandoned the family when she was eight or nine and died when she was thirteen after which her mother typed theses for a living but managed to put three girls through school (though Rebecca was clearly a challenging student) although they subsisted on a “dreary diet of bread and butter, porridge and eggs and milk.”

Politically she was a suffragette and a very early feminist. But her iconoclastic approach meant that she was often regarded as a rather renegade socialist. She believed from its start that the Soviet Union would prove authoritarian and she considered pacificism naive. “Do you believe that you are going to abolish Cancer if you get 100,000 people to sign a pledge that they do not intend to have Cancer?” (Ch 18) Neither view endeared her to the comrades.

She is perhaps best known for her affair with the much older H G Wells which resulted (on the day that Britain joined the First World War) in an illegitimate son who later became the novelist Anthony West. Although HG was a notorious adulterer (at the funeral of one of his mistresses, "Rebecca is supposed to have turned to [another of his mistresses] Odette and remarked, ‘Well, I guess we can all move one up’.”), she seems to have made much of the running and they seemed to have been in love for ten years, even though he never left his wife. She also had affairs with, among many others, Max Beaverbrook and Charlie Chaplin. In her eighties she responded to Warren Beatty asking her about her sex life by telling him: "I have some time free on Thursday afternoons."

Her husband was an (apparently financially incompetent) banker who had numerous affairs and was, in later life, a really bad driver.

She travelled in pre-WW2 Yugoslavia; perhaps her best book is a thinly fictionalised account of her travels there. During WW2 she hosted Yugoslav exiles and refugees at her farmhouse. Following that war she covered the Nuremberg trials and wrote a book analysing the nature of treason when covering the controversial trial of Law Haw Haw.

In later life she repeatedly fell out with her son and other members of her family, and with her friends, and with her staff. Given that she was born in the nineteenth century, it was wonderful to discover that she enjoyed watching Star Trek and that she had to be evacuated because she lived next door to the Iranian Embassy when it was occupied by terrorists. She was born before powered air flight, before commercial radio broadcasts and before television. Some lives experience so much change.

There was much to enjoy in this biography but there was too much detail. I didn't need to hear about every visit she made to her son and his family. I would have preferred a better focused, broader brush approach.

[Clarice Stasz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having finished her autobiographical novels, The Foutain Overflows and This Real Night, I was curious about West's full life. I'd know about her child, Anthony, with H. G. Wells, as well as her lifelong battle with her "horrible child." I had read some of her journalism as well. Rollyson fills in numerous details, the result of comprehensive research into archives and interviews. He did perhaps too much research, if that can be possible. More specifically, he tracks West's life without a clear point of view. The result is a chronology, filled in with bits from her diaries and the interviews. Whatever someone told him is included, when a careful biographer would first evaluate the quote--its value in the larger story.

It does not help that West was an overpowering personality, driving people away as much as she attracted them. That strength enabled her to be fearless and driven as a journalist. Her analysis avoided popular views, which added to the brilliance of her political and historical writings. Unfortunately, she saw any criticism from a near-paranoid view, that, for example, Communists were infiltrating other literary commentators, and even her family. Or maybe not. Because Rollyson avoids a point of view, I can't be certain of the West he presents. His evidence reveals a very contradictory personality, yet he offers little clarification for her schizoid aspects. The events, the opinions, are there, the understanding absent.

Particularly troublesome is the ongoing theme of West's battle with her son. He presents each side almost as laying the evidence on a scale to balance both. It is a nasty drama, but surely the sympathy lies with the less powerful figure, the son forced to offer his childhood to the world as a bastard, his mother presented to others as his aunt. Rollyson hedges on each side. Worse, the focus on this relationship casts West's real significance as a journalist and historian into shadow. The same goes for all the asides regarding her attitudes toward one sister and her feuds with friends. West was not an easy person, yet that is what dominates the reading. I had to push ahead despite feeling disgusted by the evidence he reveals. What impressed me were her words from her journalism, the astute mind, the prescient view of history.

I did not need to know every trip she made, where she stayed, and who was there-the bane of encyclopedic biographers. It showoffs the thoroughness of his notes, but every note does not go into a biography. These make for dull passages as well.

Rollyson similarly flits through the quality of her fiction. He overdetermines the polots to be based in West's childhood. The two novels I just finished, based on her childhood, get scant mention. So her place as a fiction writer does not get the level of attention required. Even more curious is his neglect of the theme of feminism, difficult to imagine for any study of a 20th century woman. (West was clearly split in beliefs and behaviors.) He never accounts for her living like an aristocrat while arguing for Socialism. The real meat of her life, the divisions he notes, remain puzzling.

Rollyson refers to being an "objective" biography. But objectivity does not mean lack of perspective. It concerns the handling of evidence toward a perspective, not avoidance of conclusions.

[J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rebecca West was the pen name of British author Dame Cicely Isabel Fairfield. She has one child, Anthony West, with fellow writer H.G. Wells. This well written chronological biography described her life as a mother, author, literary critic, and book reviewer. Although there are very few footnotes, additional sources are provided in the epilogue, acknowledgment, and extensive bibliography.

I was randomly chosen through a Shelf Awareness Giveaway to receive this book free from the publisher. Although encouraged, I was under no obligation to write a review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Book

If you enjoy learning about writers you will enjoy this book on Rebecca West. She is a fascinating woman who has written many amazing books.

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

As one of the originators of the nonfiction novel, Rebecca West deserved a biography that was more novelesque, or, if not that, one that was interpretive enough to make sense of her life or exhaustive enough to allow readers to draw their own conclusions. As it is, this bio offers a good basic chronology, but it makes West herself come across as a vicious, thin-skinned, judgmental, vituperative harpy.

The only interpersonal relationship that Rollyson analyzes in depth is West's with her son Anthony (which is treated with balance and sensitivity): it's not clear why she hated most of her family, or why her nephew Norman MacLeod received the bulk of her fortune. Her loathing for her niece Alison seems caused simply by Alison's unwillingness to devote time to her appearance. Is Rollyson's account biased, incomplete, or inaccurate? If not, how does West's incredible malice toward others gel with what the book jacket calls her lifelong "campaign against tyranny, prejudice, and cant"? Rollyson doesn't do more than take a few very brief and unsatisfying stabs at an explanation.

This biography also shows West's feminist principles in a negative light by failing to explore their ideological grounds while quoting with relish West's many assertions of men's stupidity and the insurmountable dislike that men and women have for each other, often written after a relationship went sour. West certainly--as Rollyston points out-- "rejected a programmatic feminism," but there is no excuse for neglecting a famous feminist's ideology--however complex--in favor of post-breakup anecdotes. Rollyston could have left out a harangue or two and told us what West thought.

This bio is readable and informative yet incomplete and unsatisfying. No biographer lacks an interpretive angle: some data is selected and some rejected according to a program, and Rollyston's program almost seems to be "show West in the most unfavorable light." Hey, that's fair. Maybe West WAS an especially venomous woman. But other literary biographers, say, Lyndall Gordon or Richard Ellmann, will come out and state their interpretive paradigms, allowing the reader to evaluate their arguments throughout the biography; others, like R. F. Foster, will give the reader such an encyclopedia of information that she's in a position to draw her own conclusion without having to spend six months in an archive. That's the kind of treatment deserved by "The woman of the century," a woman who remembered the death of Queen Victoria, wrote the first WWI novel by a woman, reported on the Nuremberg trials, watched Star Trek, and outlived John Lennon.

[Sariah · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting biography, Rollyson does an excellent job describing West’s work and its importance to literature, journalism, and politics. He also does a thorough job analyzing West’s relationships with her son Anthony, and her lover H.G. Wells. He does a less thorough job, however, when it comes to her extended family; providing only an outline of West’s mother and two sisters. At times the author is simply name dropping; he mentions West’s dislike of T.S. Eliot (going so far as to call him her “nemesis”) but does not provide any reason for the hostility—was it personal, or artistic? He does mention that Eliot and West once disagreed over what wine to drink at dinner but that hardly puts someone into the “nemesis” category. Overall, this is a good biography of but not a great one.

[Sepehr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed, lengthy and comprehensive biography. Only criticisms would be the excessive use of the word 'penchant', often referring to Britain as England and too much on Anthony West.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book received from NetGalley.

This is another reprint for Endeavour Press. I enjoyed reading about this writer but I didn't get a lot out of the book. While I have heard of Rebecca West I have never read anything of hers or was super interested in her before. I think once I read one of her books I will enjoy the biography more.