Rebecca West

Dame Cicily Isabel Fairfield (21 December 1892 – 15 March 1983), known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books for ''The Times'', the '' New York Herald Tribune'', ''The Sunday Telegraph'' and ''The New Republic'', and she was a correspondent for '' The Bookman''. Her major works include '' Black Lamb and Grey Falcon'' (1941), on the history and culture of Yugoslavia; ''A Train of Powder'' (1955), her coverage of the Nuremberg trials, published originally in ''The New Yorker''; ''The Meaning of Treason'' (first published as a magazine article in 1945 and then expanded to the book in 1947), later ''The New Meaning of Treason'' (1964), a study of the trial of the British fascist William Joyce and others; '' The Return of the Soldier'' (1918), a modernist World War I novel; and the "Aubrey trilogy" of autobiographical novels, ''The Fountain Overflows'' (1956), ''This Real Night'' (published posthumously in 1984), and ''Cousin Rosamund'' (1985). ''Time'' called her "indisputably the world's number one woman writer" in 1947. She was made CBE in 1949, and DBE in 1959; in each case, the citation reads: "writer and literary critic". She took the pseudonym "Rebecca West" from the rebellious young heroine in ''Rosmersholm'' by Henrik Ibsen. She was a recipient of the Benson Medal.

Biography

Rebecca West was born Cicily Isabel Fairfield in 1892 in London, England, and grew up in a home full of intellectual stimulation, political debate, lively company, books and music. Her mother, Isabella, a Scotswoman, was an accomplished pianist but did not pursue a musical career after her marriage to Charles Fairfield. The Anglo-Irish Charles had been a Confederate stretcher-bearer at the siege of Richmond in the US Civil War,
and had returned to the UK to become a journalist of considerable reputation but financial incompetence. He deserted his family when Cicily was eight years old. He never rejoined them, and died impoverished and alone in a boarding house in Liverpool in 1906, when Cicily was 14. The rest of the family moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, where Cicily was educated at George Watson's Ladies College. She had to leave school in 1907 due to a bout of tuberculosis. She chose not to return after recovering from the illness, later describing her schooling at Watson's as akin to a "prison".

West had two older sisters. Letitia ("Lettie"), who was the best educated of the three, became one of the first fully qualified female doctors in Britain, as well as a barrister at the Inns of Court. Winifred ("Winnie"), the middle sister, married Norman Macleod, Principal Assistant Secretary in the Admiralty, and eventually director general of Greenwich Hospital. Winnie's two children, Alison and Norman, became closely involved in Rebecca's life as she got older; Alison Macleod would achieve a literary career of her own. West trained as an actress in London, taking the name "Rebecca West" from the rebellious young heroine in ''Rosmersholm'' by Henrik Ibsen. She and Lettie became involved in the women's suffrage movement, participating in street protests. Meanwhile, West worked as a journalist for the feminist weekly ''Freewoman'' and the '' Clarion'', drumming up support for the suffragette cause.

Affairs and motherhood

In September 1912, West accused the famously libertine writer H. G. Wells in 1978. The last work published in her lifetime was ''1900'' (1982). ''1900'' explored the last year of Queen Victoria's long reign, which was a watershed in many cultural and political respects.

At the same time, West worked on sequels to her autobiographically inspired novel ''The Fountain Overflows'' (1957); although she had written the equivalent of two more novels for the planned trilogy, she was never satisfied with the sequels and did not publish them. She also tinkered at great length with an autobiography, without coming to closure, and started scores of stories without finishing them. Much of her work from the late phase of her life was published posthumously, including ''Family Memories'' (1987), ''This Real Night'' (1984), ''Cousin Rosamund'' (1985), ''The Only Poet'' (1992), and ''Survivors in Mexico'' (2003). Unfinished works from her early period, notably ''Sunflower'' (1986) and ''The Sentinel'' (2001) were also published after her death, so that her ''oeuvre'' was augmented by about one third by posthumous publications.

Relationship with her son

West's relationship with her son, Anthony West, was not a happy one. The rancor between them came to a head when Anthony, himself a gifted writer, his father's biographer (''H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life'' 984, and a novelist, published ''Heritage'' (1955), a fictionalized autobiography. West never forgave her son for depicting in ''Heritage'' the relationship between an illegitimate son and his two world-famous, unmarried parents, and for portraying the mother in unflattering terms. The depiction of West's alter ego in ''Heritage'' as a deceitful, unloving actress (West had trained as an actress in her youth) and poor caregiver so wounded West that she broke off relations with her son and threatened to sue any publisher who would bring out ''Heritage'' in England. She successfully suppressed an English edition of the novel, which was only published there after her death, in 1984. Although there were temporary rapprochements between her and Anthony, a state of alienation persisted between them, causing West grief until her dying hour. She fretted about her son's absence from her deathbed, but when asked whether he should be sent for, answered: "perhaps not, if he hates me so much."

Death

West suffered from failing eyesight and high blood pressure in the late 1970s, and became increasingly frail. Her last months were mostly spent in bed, at times delirious and other times lucid; she complained that she was dying too slowly. She died on 15 March 1983, and is buried at Brookwood Cemetery, Woking.

Upon hearing of her death, William Shawn, then editor in chief of ''The New Yorker'', said:

Rebecca West was one of the giants and will have a lasting place in English literature. No one in this century wrote more dazzling prose, or had more wit, or looked at the intricacies of human character and the ways of the world more intelligently.

She is honoured with a blue plaque at Hope Park Square, Edinburgh, her childhood home which also provided the setting for her novel ''The Judge''.

Politics

West grew up in a home filled with discussions of world affairs. Her father was a journalist who often involved himself in controversial issues. He brought home Russian revolutionaries and other political activists, and their debates helped to form West's sensibility, which took shape in novels such as ''The Birds Fall Down'', set in pre-revolution Russia. But the crucial event that moulded West's politics was the Dreyfus affair. The impressionable Rebecca learned early on just how powerful was the will to persecute minorities and to subject individuals to unreasonable suspicion based on flimsy evidence and mass frenzy. West had a keen understanding of the psychology of politics, how movements and causes could sustain themselves on the profound need to believe or disbelieve in a core of values—even in contradiction of reality.

It would seem that her father's ironic, sceptical temper so penetrated her sensibility that she could not regard any body of ideas as other than a starting point for argument. Although she was a militant feminist and active suffragette, and published a perceptive and admiring profile of Emmeline Pankhurst, West also criticised the tactics of Pankhurst's daughter, Christabel, and the sometimes doctrinaire aspects of the Pankhursts' Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).

The first major test of West's political outlook was the Bolshevik Revolution. Many on the left saw it as the beginning of a new, better world, and the end of the crimes of capitalism. West regarded herself as a member of the left, having attended Fabian socialist summer schools as a girl. Yet to West, both the Revolution and the revolutionaries were suspect. Even before the Bolsheviks took power in October 1917, West expressed her doubts that events in Russia could serve as a model for socialists in Britain or anywhere else.

West paid a heavy price for her cool reaction to the Russian Revolution; her positions increasingly isolated her. When Emma Goldman visited Britain in 1924 after seeing Bolshevik violence firsthand, West was exasperated that British intellectuals ignored Goldman's testimony and her warning against Bolshevik tyranny.

For all her censures of communism, however, West was hardly an uncritical supporter of Western democracies. Thus in 1919–1920, she excoriated the US government for deporting Goldman and for the infamous Palmer Raids. She was also appalled at the failure of Western democracies to come to the aid of Republican Spain, and she gave money to the Republican cause.

A staunch anti-fascist, West attacked both the Conservative governments of her own country for appeasing Adolf Hitler and her colleagues on the left for their pacifism. Neither side, in her view, understood the evil Nazism posed. Unlike many on the left, she also distrusted Joseph Stalin. To West, Stalin had a criminal mentality that communism facilitated. She was outraged when the Allies switched their loyalties as to Yugoslav resistance movements by deciding in 1943 to start backing the Communist-led Partisans led by Tito in Yugoslavia, thus abandoning their support of Draža Mihailović's Chetniks, whom she considered the legitimate Yugoslav resistance. She expressed her feelings and opinions on the Allies' switch in Yugoslavia by writing the satirical short story titled "Madame Sara's Magic Crystal", but decided not to publish it upon discussion with Orme Sargent, Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office. Writing in her diary, West mentioned that Sargent had persuaded her that "the recognition of Tito was made by reason of British military necessities, and for no other reason." Following Sargent's claim, she described her decision not to publish the story as an expression of "personal willingness to sacrifice myself to the needs of my country." After the war, West's anti-Communism hardened as she saw Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and other Eastern and Central European states succumb to Soviet domination.

In 1951 she provided a critical review of Alistair Cooke

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