OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 19/08/17, SPi PO T AITS F OM LIFE Dictionary: NOSD 0003156228.INDD 1 8/19/2017 3:17:11 AM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 19/08/17, SPi Dictionary: NOSD 0003156228.INDD 2 8/19/2017 3:17:11 AM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 19/08/17, SPi PO"T"AITS F"OM LIFE #$%&'()*+ ,$-&.)*+* /(% 01+$2)$3'/456 JE OME BOYD MAUNSELL 1 Dictionary: NOSD 0003156228.INDD 3 8/19/2017 3:17:11 AM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 19/08/17, SPi 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, $89 :%4, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Jerome Boyd Maunsell 9>?@ The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 9>?@ Impression: ? All rights reserved. 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Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the ights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press ?Q@ Madison Avenue, New York, NY ?>>?:, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 9>?RQVVW:V ISBN QR@–>–?Q–@R@QX:–Q Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc Dictionary: NOSD 0003156228.INDD 4 8/19/2017 3:17:11 AM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 19/08/17, SPi For my mother and father Dictionary: NOSD 0003156228.INDD 5 8/19/2017 3:17:11 AM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 19/08/17, SPi Dictionary: NOSD 0003156228.INDD 6 8/19/2017 3:17:11 AM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 19/08/17, SPi Contents List of illustrations ix Introduction ? ?. The secret of my life: Joseph Conrad ?? 9. A straight dive into the past: Henry James XR X. For facts a most profound contempt: Ford Madox Ford :X V. The life apart: Edith Wharton QW W. Alive and kicking: H. G. Wells ?9? :. You are never yourself to yourself: Gertrude Stein ?VR R. My life being so di\cult a one to live: Wyndham Lewis ?@? Epilogue 9>Q Notes 9?R Acknowledgments 9W? Select bibliography 9WX Index 9:Q Dictionary: NOSD 0003156228.INDD 7 8/19/2017 3:17:11 AM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 19/08/17, SPi Dictionary: NOSD 0003156228.INDD 8 8/19/2017 3:17:11 AM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 19/08/17, SPi List of illustrations Chapter " Joseph Conrad by H. G. Wells and Jane Wells, c.?Q>>–?Q>W. ?> Frank Wells, H. G. Wells: A Pictorial Biography , London: Jupiter, ?QRR, p. X:. eproduced with permission from United Agents LLP. Chapter # Henry James in pro]le, c.?Q?> by Theodate Pope. X: Archives, Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT, USA. Chapter $ Ford Madox Ford, c.late ?Q9>s. :9 Ford Madox Ford collection, #V:>W. Division of are and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. Chapter % Edith Wharton, c.?QX:. QV Edith Wharton Collection, Beinecke are Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. eproduced in Cynthia Gri\n Wol`, A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton , Oxford University Press, ?QRR, p. XX@, and published with permission of the estate of Edith Wharton and the Watkins/Loomis Agency. Chapter & H. G. Wells photographing Ethel Merman in New York on January ?V, ?QX:. ?9> Keystone-France/Getty Images. Chapter ' Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, W, rue Christine, ?QVW by Cecil Beaton. ?V: © The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s. Chapter ( Wyndham Lewis and Gladys Anne Hoskins on the Empress of Britain, September ?QXQ. ?@> Wyndham Lewis collection, #V:?9. Division of are and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. Dictionary: NOSD 0003156228.INDD 9 8/19/2017 3:17:11 AM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 19/08/17, SPi Dictionary: NOSD 0003156228.INDD 10 8/19/2017 3:17:11 AM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 18/08/17, SPi Introduction There is no such thing as a true portrait. They are all delusions and I never saw any two alike. " Nathaniel Hawthorne n his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (#$$%, #$&'), IGiorgio Vasari brie*y tells the story of how the young Francesco Mazzola, also known as Parmigianino, created his Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (#$+-–/), to take with him from his home town of Parma to 0ome at the outset of his life as an artist. This small image in oil on poplar wood, of the artist in the act of portraying himself, was begun by the painter, Vasari tells us, “in order to investigate the subtleties of art.” 2 Seeing the “bizarre e1ects” produced by a convex barber’s mirror when he tried to draw his re*ection, Parmigianino “had a ball of wood made by a turner [. .] the same size and shape as the mirror.” 3 Once his unusual canvas was made, “he set to work to counterfeit on it with supreme art all that he saw in the glass, and particu- larly his own self, which he did with such lifelike reality as could not be imagined or believed.” 4 The resulting painting was an eerie, sphinx-like work which questions the very art of portraiture, and especially of self- portraiture, while looking mysteriously out at us as if it knows some answers that it doesn’t want to tell. At the rounded base of the glass, the artist’s hand—busy at work, we infer, creating the painting—is stretched hugely out of shape, and is almost larger than his head. 0eaching out towards us, it also blocks our view, as if to remind us that however faithful his image might seem, the artist controls exactly what he lets us see. Other, more searching thoughts might come to us, still caught in the stare of this painting. By making a direct copy of the mirror, the image demon- strates, in what seem to be undeniable terms, how much all portraiture rests Dictionary: NOSD 0003156229.INDD 1 8/18/2017 5:22:28 AM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 18/08/17, SPi + 789:9;<:= >98? @<>C on artiDce, and illusion—and going further, that the same might be said of the self. The room behind the artist seems to curve and bend around him, and yet he maintains his perfect poise, in the act of making. Watching him, you almost expect him to carry on painting: for the hand to move and add another deft stroke to the image. The painting exists in a stilled and endless present, although it is almost Dve hundred years old, and its riddles remain unresolved. In his long poem about the painting, “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” (#KL-–/), the American poet John Ashbery reaches for the ways that the portrait strains at the edges of the visible, marveling at how “the time of day or the density of the light / Adhering to the face keeps it / Lively and intact in a recurring wave / Of arrival.” 5 For Ashbery, the picture shows the artist trying to depict nothing less than the fact That the soul is a captive, treated humanely, kept In suspension, unable to advance much farther Than your look as it intercepts the picture. [. .] It must move As little as possible. This is what the portrait says. 6 In the pages that follow, I will be looking at self-portraiture in writing, rather than painting, during the Drst half of the twentieth century. There are obvious di1erences between visual and literary portraiture; yet the often hidden artiDciality behind even the most accurate depiction of a life—so wryly exposed by Parmigianino’s self-portrait—should serve us well as a playful warning note. The seemingly lifelike nature of portraiture in litera- ture and in painting makes it appear less artful than it is. This is even more the case in literary portraiture, where any life depicted has to be represented in language. Words can sometimes reveal more than a visual portrait. And yet, in words or images, likenesses are mere likenesses, and the truth of a life, if there is such a thing, remains just out of reach. Literary portraiture o1ers us achingly close simulacra: lives frozen, reconDgured, remade. “A biography cannot imitate life,” as Henry James’s biographer Leon Edel writes. “It rearranges its material; it tells a *owing continuous story—something our lives never were.” 7 Autobiography is an impossibility, never quite catching its subject. Gertrude Stein saw it in terms of a detective story, with the fatal hint that it might even kill its subject, substituting it for someone else. But it is an impossibility with almost endless potential. There are multiple versions of the Dictionary: NOSD 0003156229.INDD 2 8/18/2017 5:22:28 AM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 18/08/17, SPi `{:98|}~:<8{ - telling of any one life, just as the forms of life-writing are multiple—including autobiographies, biographies, diaries, letters, and memoirs, to name only a few of these forms. Every instance of autobiography is as unique as the life it relates.