I have been reading Diana Athill. What a woman! Born into the English upper classes, with a noticeably patrician, or Oxbridge accent all her life, she is honest about their strengths and weaknesses. Her family had an unshakeable self-belief in their own importance, unrelated to any actual history achievement – no great intellectual, academic or artistic contributions to British life. No major success in the world of commerce or politics. But they had a strong sense of being in charge and on the right side. And they gave her a strong sense of security, of being loved and of her place in the world; which she needed as she was buffeted about on her life’s course.
Her subject is really herself, and if she is honest about her family, she is ruthless in her portrayal of herself, shining an unforgiving light on her own strengths and weaknesses. Andrea Ashworth describes her as, a remarkably honest anatomist of human psychology. And so she is. She takes us through her childhood and university years in Yesterday Morning. Through falling in love, and bitter disappointment when her engagement ends in Instead of a Letter, her fifty years in publishing in Stet and finally her thoughts on aging and facing death in Somewhere Towards The End
The amazing thing is that apart from Instead of a Letter which she wrote in her forties, and which she claims saved her from a sad and lonely life, these books have all been written in her eighties. Which gives her great pleasure. She is unflinching in the gaze she turns on herself; about her feelings, motivations, weaknesses and all of her relationships. She writes movingly about childhood and her feelings towards her mother, father and grandmother; about her family home and the people who worked there and unspoken assumptions about class and position. She writes about the awakening of sexual interest, stealthily reading her grandfather’s bawdy ballads! About going to Oxford and not making the most of her opportunities there.
All of this reminds me of the lives of upper class girls that Molly Keane, who Diana later nurtured as a publisher, writes about. Aimless, waiting to get married. Expected to fit a certain mould. A snobbishbworld where looking the part and having the right sort of manners, knowing how to behave according to a set of arcane, unspoken laws mattered. Diana is not unkind, but her clarity is ruthless in exposing this world of priveilege. As she says, her family didn’t know any women of her class who worked for a living. It is amazing she got to Oxford. She only did so, having missed out on a scholarship through indolence, due to the generosity of an Aunt.
She then writes, movingly of the experience of being rejected, in the harsh terminology of the time, jilted, in Instead of a Letter. Describing the effect this had on her self esteem, and willingness to be open to loving again. Amazingly, for the time, and for a woman from her background, she writes honestly about promiscuity and her failure to pursue meaningful relationships. She is more honest about her sexual life and feelings about sex than any other author I have read. Including much younger writers coming after the sexual revolution.
She writes about finding a role for herself in publishing in Stet and is generous to Andre Deutsch who comes across as a bit of a bastard really, although she would not, I think, intend that. And there are lovely cameos of the writers she worked with: Jean Rhys, VS Naipaul, Brian Moore. She is interesting on the future of publishing in a nice little postcript. Positive. And she keeps having interesting things to say about writers and novels in her last book, Somewhere Towards The End written when she was 89. She doesn’t like Martin Amiss’ and his crowd – not afraid to venture an opinion our Diana.
So in this month, when we have seen the death of another independent minded, open-hearted woman who lived to a great age, Margaret Whitlam, let’s honour the contribution of our matriarchs. Buy The Selected Memoirs of Diana Athill and enjoy reflections from One who lived not wisely but too well.
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