340
PARTISAN REVIEW
She had many "difficulties" in life-illness was a persistent one-and
they are all catalogued in the letters. First, there were the family stresses.
Her older sister, Letitia, a physician, apparently ruled the family with an
iron fist once West's father deserted them. The psychological terror she
wielded seems to have drifted in from an Ivy Compton-Burnett novel
and it eventually drove West
to
have a nervous breakdown discussed in
a letter
to
writer John Gunther, a friend and benevolent lover.
As for Wells, West was always deeply divided about him. She would
say repeatedly that he had ruined her life and yet at the time of his death
she could write that though he was a devil and had starved her, he was
also "an inexhaustible source of love and friendship to me for thirty–
four years. . .
.I
was the one person he cared
to
see to the end, I feel des–
olate because he has gone." She also makes it clear elsewhere that she
had to extract herself from him if she was
to
survive as a writer and
to
properly raise their son.
Anthony was clearly a trial for his mother from the get-go, but one
wonders just how understanding a parent West was. Anthony accuses
her of being negligent, she pouts and hollers and accuses him of being
ungrateful-and worse. Still, it could not have been a pleasant situation
for either of them-a single woman with a child struggling
to
survive
economically in Britain at that time.
Her marriage to Henry Andrews, an international banker, would
appear
to
have been a strange one, even by eccentric British standards.
The relationship was devoid of sex, if these letters can be believed, but
after Andrews's death a truly shocked and befuddled West discovered
he'd been romping around with any woman that would have him.
Add
to
this the disappointments meted out by a string of uncaring
lovers, harsh critics of her works, misguided biographers, and misin–
formed Wells scholars, and one has a mass of carping-and an abun–
dance of fascinating information and opinion.
What seems most surprising is that someone so repeatedly undone by
illness and the bullying of others could have found the time
to
write so
much and often so masterfully.
The letters, then, while providing lots of pleasure, are also invaluable
tools to understanding West's career and personality. But younger read–
ers should be forewarned that Scott, in her annotations, is not the best
of guides. One example will have
to
suffice. She calls Israel's Six-Day
War of
I967
the "three-day" war. But these kinds of things are minor
distractions amid a rich brew.
Robert Leiter
