Tomboy Grudge

Letters

Vol. 14 No. 5 · 12 March 1992

From Janet Adam Smith

In her review of Jane Emery’s biography of Rose Macaulay (LRB, 27 February), Claire Harman quotes David Wright’s description of Rose – a ‘mélange of toughness, independence, enterprise, courage and good humour’ – but thinks it ‘reads like an uncorroborated report’. I am happy to corroborate it, and to add to these qualities Rose’s capacity for enjoyment, even in hard times, and for passing it on to others. In Claire Harman’s depiction of ‘a dowdy woman’, ‘a pale companion’, ‘a game old lady’, I don’t for a moment recognise the Rose Macaulay whom I knew in the Fifties – as a contributor to the New Statesman when I was literary editor, as a member of the London Library Committee, as a fellow guest at parties where she always looked distinguished, always drank orange juice, always seemed to be the liveliest talker, and where nobody thought of her as an old lady. As for Claire Harman’s view that her books ‘cry out not to be taken too seriously’, I suggest that she look again at The World My Wilderness, where the bombed ruins round St Paul’s reflect the moral wilderness of the world just after the war. And is every bad driver to be labelled ‘a psychopath behind the wheel’?

Janet Adam Smith
London W11