JEAN RHYS’S QUARTET: A RE-INSCRIPTION OF FORD’S THE GOOD SOLDIER

Elizabeth O’Connor

Jean Rhys’s relationship with – both textually and in real life – was a highly fraught affair, clouded by multiple com- peting fictional accounts, silence, and the passage of time. Concrete, verifiable facts are few: Ford and Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams Lenglet first met in 1924 after he was shown a copy of the manuscript version of the novel she later reworked as Voyage in the Dark (1934).1 Intrigued by this work, Ford published her short story ‘Vienne’ in the last issue of the transatlantic review in December 1924 and bestowed on her the professional name Jean Rhys.2 Although her slight story appears to have produced little comment, in retrospect Rhys can be seen as one of Ford’s most important ‘discoveries’ during his editorship, comparable to that of D. H. Lawrence in the English Review. Otherwise, as Ford readily admitted, his last journal did not uncover unknown writers so much as provide a home for authors such as Hemingway, H. D., Joyce, Pound, and , who were published in little magazines but often excluded from more mainstream literary journals. After the demise of the transatlantic review, Ford continued his involvement with Rhys by contributing a lengthy preface to her short story collection The Left Bank (1927), securing her a job translating Francis Carco’s novel Perversité (1928), and helping her obtain a contract for her first novel, Quartet (1928).3 Significantly, the novel’s plot bears a close resemblance to her affair with Ford. Their ‘entang- lement’ – how Ford chose to refer to the relationship4 – is believed to have started after Ford and his common law wife, the Australian painter Stella Bowen, invited Rhys to live with them following the imprisonment of her husband, the Dutch poet and journalist Jean Lenglet, on currency fraud charges and a passport violation. Angered by Rhys’s account of the affair in Quartet, Ford wrote his own fictionalized response, When the Wicked Man (1931), which depicts the Rhys character, Lola Porter, as an alcoholic, nympho- maniac harridan. Lenglet also aired his side of the story in three 130 ELIZABETH O’CONNOR slightly different fictionalized retellings all published under the pseudonym Edouard de Nève. The first, Barred (1932), was translated and extensively reworked by Rhys.5 The Dutch version, In de Strik (1932), follows essentially the same text as Barred with a few silent emendations by Lenglet, but the French version, Sous les Verrous (1933), reverts to Lenglet’s original unedited text. Not to be outdone, Bowen put forth her own account of the affair in her memoir Drawn from Life (1941). Although she does not refer to Rhys by name, Bowen’s rather brief account of the affair has long been granted primacy by critics largely because it is the only one purporting to be based on fact. However, as Sue Thomas points out, Bowen’s account is also marked by her personal bias.6 Ultimately, as Anne Simpson notes, the need for all four participants to revisit the affair suggests that the texts are ‘necessary fictions’ in which each author might painstakingly shape and reshape the actual events in order to cast themselves in the best light.7 Outside the confines of fiction, Rhys was notoriously silent on her relationship with Ford. Although near the end of her life she admitted to her editor Diana Athill that she started Quartet, ‘because she was very angry with Ford and wanted to pay him back’, the statements she intended for publication are quite positive and are consistent with what is known of Ford’s mentorship to a host of novice writers of both sexes.8 As she wrote to Sondra Stang, ‘I learnt a good deal from him and can’t think of anyone who has quite taken his place’ (Presence 214). In interviews Rhys highlighted Ford’s role in her development as a writer and stressed that he taught her the importance of clarity and concision by ‘insisting’ that she read French writers such as Anatole France, Maupassant, Flaubert, and Colette; he also instructed her to translate passages verging on the verbose into French and to delete anything that looks ‘utterly silly’.9 Looking back on her relationship with Ford near the end of her life, Rhys, in her unpublished essay ‘Leaving School’, recounts Ford’s ‘programme’ to train her as a writer when she lived with him and Bowen. She writes:

So began several months of writing short stories and having them torn to pieces or praised for reasons I did not understand. ‘Don’t be so glib. Don’t do this. Do that. Or Don’t take the slightest notice of what I say or what anybody says if you are certain in yourself.’10