DIANA TRILLING
29
the United States in recent decades, particularly in the sphere which we
in our country now refer to as "cultural politics," that area of our po–
litical discourse which bears most directly upon ideas and principles and
upon the moral life of the nation, never failed to astonish me.
At the time we met the Reeses, almost twenty years had elapsed since
the publication of Lionel's novel,
The Middle oj the Journey ,
yet
Goronwy had this document of American cultural politics at his finger–
tips. He spoke of Lionel's book as if it had been published only yester–
day. He was especially interested in the character of Gifford Maxim. At
home , it was generally known of Lionel's novel that Maxim was based
upon Whittaker Chambers, Lionel's college acquaintance who had now
become famous in the trials that followed his charge that Alger Hiss, an
official in the American State Department, had, like Chambers himself,
been a Soviet agent. The real-life source of Lionel's fictional character
made, I felt, an odd topic for such a reiteration of interest on
Goronwy's part, yet Goronwy was apparently magnetized by it. Again
and again, he returned to questioning Lionel: How well had he known
Chambers? In college? After college? When had he first discovered that
Chambers was a Soviet spy and how had this information come to him?
Had Lionel liked Chambers? Had he trusted him? What did he know of
Chambers's life before joining the Communist Party? After he left the
Party? Did Lionel feel tl:Iat Chambers had been treated fairly by the
American intellectual community? It was soon clear that the importance
which Lionel's novel had for Rees had little to do with its merit as a
work of fiction and all to do with Rees's interest in the original of this
one of its characters.
Throughout these interrogations, it was only Chambers of whom
Goronwy inquired, never Hiss with whom Chambers's name was now so
inexorably linked. There were now of course a number of people in
England, as in America, who believed that Hiss was innocent of the
accusation which Chambers had brought against him, but Goronwy was
not among them. Implicit in all his references to Chambers was the
opinion - it was ours as well - that Chambers had been telling the truth
when he accused Hiss as he did and that Hiss had spied for the Soviet
Union. It was not debate about Hiss's guilt or innocence which moved
Rees to question Lionel. On this point his mind was settled. What he
sought from Lionel was personal information about Chambers, of a kind
which was not contained in Lionel's book.
As I reconstruct these conversations in the light of the present-day
charge against Goronwy, that he, too, like the members of the
Cambridge group, Burgess and Philby and the rest, spied for the Soviet
