DIANA TRILLING
27
the attempt to entice Rees into his spy ring. If someone as respectable
and respected as Blunt could spy for the Soviet Union, why should
Goronwy hesitate?
Blunt is not identified as this co-conspirator in Goronwy's memoir;
no name is supplied for Burgess's partner in spying. Apparently, even as
late as 1972, when
A Chapter of Accidents
was published, Goronwy was
still intent upon keeping his old promise not to reveal Blunt's part in
the Cambridge spy ring. (Actually, however, he had broken this vow al–
most immediately he had made it by repeating Burgess's revelation to
Rosamond Lehmann, who was then his lover.) But obviously Rees had
other reason than the honoring of an old promise for not publicly di–
vulging what Burgess had told him about Blunt. Except for Burgess's
word, he had no evidence with which to support an accusation of trea–
son against Blunt and to make the charge without proof would put him
at gravest legal and social risk. In the close to forty years since Burgess's
mention of Blunt's name as a member of the Cambridge group, Blunt's
public eminence had rocketed: he was not only a world-renowned his–
torian of art but he was now Keeper of the Queen's Pictures and an inti–
mate of the Palace. Not until Margie had died and Goronwy was him–
self approaching death would he make public mention of what he had
for so long privately known about Blunt. In 1977, recounting what was
presumed to be his "whole story" to a British journalist, Andrew Boyle,
Goronwy finally made his public accusation of Blunt. Boyle, as it hap–
pened, was already on Blunt's trail as a spy.
Today, what is probably most significant for us about
A Chapter of
Accidents
is the absence of all suggestion that Goronwy himself, in this
period of his involvement with Burgess, also spied for the Soviet Union,
whether in response to Burgess's invitation or on his own or other ini–
tiative. In fact, in nothing which Goronwy ever wrote does he offer the
slightest hint that he was himself a Comintern agent. He readily ac–
knowledges in his memoir that through most of the Thirties he was a
Marxist and a Communist sympathizer, but he gives no indication that
his revolutionary involvement ever went beyond that of a fellow-traveler
- spying was never his own occupation, only the occupation of others.
He firmly declares that with the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in the
late summer of 1939, he became permanently disaffected with
Communism. This no one has of course questioned.
In his youthful travels on the Continent, the grim actuality of
Nazism had been lastingly impressed upon Goronwy and he never wa–
vered in his hatred and fear of fascism. He was more than commonly
alert to the threat to England which was posed by Chamberlain's ap-
