DIANA TRILLING
25
As I think of this strange trio, Bowen, Lehmann and the youthful
Goronwy, my mind returns to silly, noisy Pamela de Bayou, who never
achieved the worthy place in English life accorded to these other cele–
brated women. John Costello, historian of Soviet espionage in Britain,
apparently never thought to interview Fred Warburg's wife about her
possible acquaintance among the English spies, but we can feel fairly cer–
tain that, if he had, she would never have been tempted, like Rosamond
Lehmann, to denounce Rees as a liar. She was not moved, like Bowen,
to avenge herself upon her former lover and leave us so reductive a por–
trait of him. Pamela might say whatever came into her foolish head
about anyone or anything but never, so far as I know, did she speak at
all of
Goro~wy. O~
his behalf she practiced an unaccustomed discretion.
Once their affair had ended, she maintained an amiable acquaintanceship
with her old lover. Hers was a living heart.
There is nothing of this, nothing of Pamela Warburg or Elizabeth
Bowen, no mention of Rosamond Lehmann, though the path of her life
certainly at many points crossed that of Guy Burgess, in Goronwy's
A
Chapter
oj
Accidents .
His memoir is not so much a backward glance over
the whole range of his personal and professional experience as a careful
recreation of his central drama, his relationship with Burgess. What
usually most engages us in autobiography are its opening pages where the
author returns to his early years and shares· with us his first knowledge of
the universe into which he was so fatedly delivered, but though
Goronwy's volume deals in adequate detail with his boyhood in Wales
and his undergraduate years at Oxford, these are not the heart of the
autobiographical matter.
The purpose of
A Chapter oj Accidents
is obvious: it provides Rees
with the opportunity to tell his side of the famous Aberystwyth story,
beginning with the history of his friendship with Burgess and culminating
in his exposure of his friend's activity as a Communist agent. As it works
out, the early sections of the book constitute a kind of character refer–
ence for the man who made so disastrous a choice as Goronwy's at
Aberystwyth. They assure the reader that this person whom the world
has accused of lies and disloyalty is by birth and upbringing well-certified
for honor and good faith .
Goronwy and Burgess first met in Oxford as guests of Felix
Frankfurter, the future Supreme Court Justice who at the time }'Vas an
American visiting professor at the University. That the two brilliant
young men were at once drawn to each other cannot surprise us.
