The Lost Girls Read online

  Orwell’s letter of 12 April 1947 from Jura is reproduced in George Orwell, The Complete Works: Volume XIX: It Is What I Think: 1947–1948, edited by Peter Davison (1998), pp. 122–4. The friend who thought her an ‘uneasy partner’ was Sinclair-Loutit, Very Little Luggage, p. 144. ‘As she may have told you’, George Orwell, The Complete Works: Volume XX: Our Job Is to Make Life Worth Living: 1949–50, edited by Peter Davison (1998), pp. 116–17; letter to David Astor, pp. 147–8. ‘You must learn to make dumplings’, Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, p. 96. ‘Sonia lives only a few minutes away’, Orwell, The Complete Works: Volume XX, p. 165; the Star’s report, pp. 169–70; letter to Richard Rees, pp. 168–9.

  For the reactions of Orwell’s friends to his marriage, see D. J. Taylor, Orwell: The Life (2003), p. 413. Powell recalls his first meeting with Sonia in John Saumarez Smith and Jonathan Kooperstein (eds), The Acceptance of Absurdity: Anthony Powell and Robert Vanderbilt: Letters 1952–1956 (2011), p. 45. ‘Somehow she snuggled up’, Wyatt, Confessions of an Optimist, p. 90. Copies of letters from Peter Watson to Waldemar Hansen and from Hansen to John Myers kindly supplied by Michael Shelden. Janetta’s reflections are taken from her unpublished memoir. Connolly’s letter to Evelyn Waugh is quoted in Fisher, Cyril Connolly, p. 285. ‘I felt sorry for him’ and ‘She loved it’, Janetta to the author. ‘Gross mismatch’, Sinclair-Loutit, Very Little Luggage, p. 144. Koestler’s letter is reproduced in Orwell, The Complete Works: Volume XX, p. 329.

  Most of the quotations relating to the last months of Orwell’s life, his marriage to Sonia and his death are taken from Taylor, Orwell, pp. 414–18. Janetta’s memories of the wedding ceremony are taken from her unpublished memoir [Parladé]. For Frances Partridge’s comments, Everything to Lose, pp. 96 and 98. ‘Poor George has had a relapse’, Lys, letter to Connolly dated 10 November 1949 [Connolly]. Peter Watson’s letter of condolence, dated 29 January 1950 [Orwell Archive].

  Interlude: Sonia’s Things

  All the artefacts referred to here are in the Orwell Archive.

  11. The Destructive Element: Barbara, Connolly and Others 1944–51

  Topolski reflects on his relationship with Barbara in Luke, David Tennant, pp. 184–6. For Barbara’s travels in 1944–5, Skelton, Tears, pp. 69–74. ‘Turned out’, diary, 2 July 1945 [Skelton]. Topolski’s letter c/o John Davenport is dated 9 January 1946; ‘Your Sydney St abode’, letter from Gerda Treat, dated 24 February 1946 [both Skelton].

  ‘Went to the cottage alone’, diary, 26 January 1945; the quotations that follow are taken from diary entries of 7 February, 30 April, 3 May, 4 May, 2 November and 25 February 1946 [all Skelton]. Letter from Poppet John, 15 September 1947 [Skelton]

  The two letters from John Sutro are dated 18 July 1949 and September 1948; Gerda Treat refers to Barbara’s illness in a letter of 8 August 1948; for the remark about her doctor ‘professing sterility’, diary entry of 4 May 1945 [all Skelton]. On her relationship with Pierre Savaigo and his eviction from Queen Street, Skelton, Tears, pp. 77–80. Robin Dalton recalls her encounter with Barbara in One Leg Over, p. 80. For the North African trip, diary entries, May 1949 [Skelton].

  ‘Cyril was bored with Lys’, Skelton, Tears, p. 81. For the visit to Sussex Place, the ‘deflating quips’ and the allotting of marks to Connolly’s women friends, Skelton, Tears, pp. 82–3. For the weekends in Kent, and ‘Talk of our living together’, Skelton, Tears, pp. 84–5 and 88. ‘B. is certainly unhappy’, letter to Hamish Hamilton of 24 November 1950, quoted in Fisher, Cyril Connolly, p. 296. Barbara’s account of the journey to France to visit Farouk, Skelton, Tears, 90–3. ‘Don’t do anything in a hurry’, Lys, undated letter, late 1950 [Connolly]. For the wedding, Skelton, Tears, pp. 94–5. Evelyn Waugh’s letter to Nancy Mitford, dated December 1950, is reproduced in Mitford and Waugh, Letters, p. 207. On the aftermath, Skelton, Tears, pp. 95–6.

  ‘What you don’t realise’, Skelton, Tears, p. 97. ‘I feel very badly’, quoted in Fisher, Cyril Connolly, p. 296. For the Christmas and New Year of 1950–1, Skelton, Tears, pp. 98–9. ‘I cheer myself up’, Lys, undated letter, late 1950 [Connolly]. Joan’s letter is quoted in Fenwick, Joan, p. 203. ‘Had a sleepless night’, Skelton, Tears, p. 103. ‘He is in great trouble’, Evelyn Waugh to Nancy Mitford, 8 April 1951, Mitford and Waugh, Letters, p. 221.

  Interlude: Parents and Daughters

  Geoffrey Woolley’s letters to Janetta are in the Parladé collection. On the inscribed copy of Winnie the Pooh, Nicky Loutit to the author. For Jeremy Lewis’s memory of meeting Barbara’s sister, see ‘Battling with Barbara’ in Grub Street Irregular, pp. 182–5.

  12. The Invisible Worm: Cyril and the Women

  ‘They are grateful for the gifts’, undated letter from Diana, early 1940s; ‘Thank you again, dearest Cyril’, undated letter from Sonia on Horizon notepaper, probably written in 1946–7; ‘I am very glad you liked the review’, undated letter from Diana, early 1940s [all Connolly].

  ‘Have a lovely wonderful time’, Sonia; ‘I suggest we have a kind of upstairs sit-down buffet’, Lys, postcard dated 14 January 1947; ‘Harris has just had your message’, Lys, letter dated 11 January 1944; ‘Why don’t you try Mr Neal for fibrositis?’, undated letter sent from 9 Paultons Square, early 1951(?) [all Connolly]. Further quotes in the remainder of the chapter from Lys and Diana’s letters are from undated correspondence in the Connolly collection.

  ‘It is quite understandable that you should prefer Jean’s assets’, undated letter from Diana, early 1940s; ‘It is unreasonable’, undated letter sent from 18 Percy Street, sometime in 1950; ‘I now see that I set myself an impossible task’, undated letter from Lys, 1950; ‘It is wrong of you’, undated letter from Lys sent from Paultons Square [all Connolly].

  ‘I do think it’s very important whom you marry’, undated letter on Horizon notepaper, 1950; ‘I will always fall short’, undated letter from Diana, early 1940s; ‘You must not forget that I tried really hard’, undated letter sent from Orthez, probably in April 1950; ‘I know I shall never find anybody else like you again’, letter sent from 18 Percy Street; ‘I have no wish for revenge’; ‘It is because I am convinced’; ‘You are the only person’, undated letter from Orthez [all Connolly].

  13. Projections: The Lost Girls in Fiction

  Barbara Skelton, undated letters to Anthony Powell [Powell]. Powell writes about the identification of Barbara with Pamela Flitton in Journals 1987–1989 (1996), pp. 44 and 50, and Journals 1990–1992 (1997), p. 219. For details of the writing of A Room in Chelsea Square, see Gregory Woods, introduction to the 2014 reissue. The letter of 29 October 1961 in which Evelyn Waugh claims to be ‘greatly annoyed’ about comparisons between Horizon and Survival is reproduced in Waugh, Letters, p. 578.

  For Waugh’s comments on The Ruthless Innocent, see Mitford and Waugh, Letters, pp. 94 and 196.

  On Barbara’s conviction that she ‘is’ Pamela, Powell, Journals 1987–1989, p. 50.

  Hilary Spurling writes about Sonia’s influence on Julia in Nineteen Eighty-Four in The Girl from the Fiction Department, passim; for her comments on Orwell’s determination to ‘take her as his model’, p. 67; on the Horizon review of Peyrefitte’s Les amitiés particulières, pp. 67–9. Orwell’s letter to George Woodcock can be found in Orwell, The Complete Works: Volume XVIII, p. 373. The review of Harold Laski’s Faith, Reason and Civilisation, rejected by the Manchester Evenings News, is included in George Orwell, The Complete Works: Volume XVI: I Have Tried to Tell the Truth: 1943–1944, edited by Peter Davison (1998), pp. 122–4.

  Interlude: Barbara’s Style

  ‘As with so many female writers’, Powell, Journals 1987–1989, p. 216. For the libel proceedings against A Love Match, Daily Mail (29 October 1971). Waugh’s comments were made in a Sunday Telegraph review of Nancy Mitford’s The Water Beetle (1962), reprinted in Evelyn Waugh, The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, edited by Donat Gallagher (Harmondsworth, 1986), pp. 600–1.

  14. Afterwards

&nbs
p; Peter Watson, letter to Lys, 26 April 1950, kindly supplied to the author by Michael Shelden. Lys’s letter to Sonia, dated 2 April 1950 is in the Orwell Archive, as is Peter’s letter, ‘Cyril asked me’, his letter to Sonia dated 4 May 1950 (‘she will spend so much money’). ‘Lys has been adopted’, Evelyn Waugh to Nancy Mitford, 10 April 1951, Mitford and Waugh, Letters, p. 221. The Connolly letter from 1953 is quoted in Shelden, ‘Broken Reel’.

  Waugh writes about the ‘very happy day in London’ to Nancy Mitford, Mitford and Waugh, Letters, p. 336. For Spender on the Kochs’ visit to London, New Selected Journals, pp. 296–7. Michael Shelden’s visit to Lys in 1984 and their subsequent contacts, ‘Broken Reel’, passim.

  Frances Partridge’s account of the Kees’ visit to Ham Spray can be found in Everything to Lose, p. 115. For Derek Jackson, Courtauld, As I Was Going to St Ives. See also ‘Derek Jackson: Off the Radar’, Ferdinand Mount’s London Review of Books review, reprinted in his English Voices: Lives, Landscapes, Laments (2016), pp. 70–8. On Jackson’s near-lynching, David Pryce-Jones to the author. ‘She hoped never to return to married life’, Partridge, Everything to Lose, p. 124; subsequent quotations, pp. 133, 135, 136. For Janetta’s desertion by Jackson, Courtauld, As I Was Going to St Ives, pp. 130–1.

  Janetta’s affair with Koestler is described in Michael Scammell, Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual (2009), pp. 421–3. For Nicky’s re-encounter with Jackson, Loutit, New Year’s Day Is Black. Frances Partridge on her first meetings with Jaime Parladé, Everything to Lose, pp. 272 and 275. On Janetta’s marriage and her later life, see Paul Levy’s Independent obituary (4 July 2018). James Lees-Milne records his impressions of Alcuzcuz in Ceaseless Turmoil, Diaries 1988–1992 (2004), pp. 192–3.

  For Orwell’s funeral, Taylor, Orwell, pp. 7–9. On Sonia’s later life and Ivy Compton-Burnett’s comment, Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, passim. Frances Partridge’s account of the evening in 1965 is in Other People: Diaries 1963–1966 (1993), p. 186. Sonia’s letter to Janetta outlining her financial and other problems is dated 2 November 1979; Janetta’s reflections on Sonia’s death are taken from a diary entry of 12 December 1980 [both Parladé].

  ‘His Animal has been sacked from the zoo’, Evelyn Waugh to Nancy Mitford, Mitford and Waugh, Letters, p. 336. ‘People literally hiding in cupboards in hotels’, Janetta to the author. ‘The situation is getting more insoluble’, Skelton, Tears, p. 213. Connolly’s letter from Saint-Tropez is in the Orwell Archive. ‘One glance’ and subsequent quotations, Wishart, High Diver, pp. 149–50. For the encounter on Bob Silvers’s yacht, Alan Bennett to the author. On the visit to Warhol’s studio, Skelton, Tears, p. 325; ‘It was not for love’, p. 328; ‘I cannot recall the menu’, p. 360. For Barbara’s later years, Lewis, ‘Battling with Barbara’, in Grub Street Irregular, pp. 164–99.

  Angela describes her later life in Bolter’s Grand-daughter, passim. See also Courtauld, As I Was Going to St Ives. For Glur, Sarah Gibb to the author and Daily Telegraph obituary (20 February 2000). For Joan Leigh Fermor, see Fenwick, Joan. ‘Cyril exaggeratedly well-mannered’, Skelton, Tears, pp. 126–7. On Anna Kavan, Reed, A Stranger on Earth. Evelyn Waugh’s letter to Diana Mosley, Waugh, Letters, p. 639.

  For Quennell at the hairdresser’s, Anthony Powell, Journals 1990–1992 (1997), p. 133. Topolski’s later career is described in Fourteen Letters. Evelyn Waugh’s Tablet review of Spender’s autobiography can be found in Waugh, The Essays, pp. 394–8. For Spender’s later life, see Sutherland, Stephen Spender. On Sinclair-Loutit, Very Little Luggage, passim. For Brian Howard, Lancaster, Brian Howard. Julian Maclaren-Ross, Willetts, Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia. Barbara describes her final meeting with Farouk in Skelton, Tears, pp. 203–6. On Peter Watson’s last years, Clark and Dronfield, Queer Saint. Connolly’s tribute is reproduced in Skelton, Tears, p. 218. The extract from Howard’s letter is in Lancaster, Brian Howard, p. 546.

  Spender’s diary for December 1951, quoted in Fisher, Cyril Connolly, p. 299. The quotations following are from Lewis, Cyril Connolly, pp. 487, 492, 495 and 500.

  Finale: The Last Lost Girl

  All Connolly quotes taken from undated letters, probably written between 1944 and 1945, (private collection).

  A Selection of Lost Girl Literature

  Patrick Balfour, Ruthless Innocent (1950).

  Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart (1938).

  Gavin Ewart, ‘Freud’, in Collected Poems (1991).

  Julian Maclaren-Ross, ‘Five Finger Exercise’, in Julian Maclaren-Ross, Selected Short Stories, edited by Paul Willetts (Stockport, 2004).

  Nancy Mitford, The Blessing (1951).

  Michael Nelson, A Room in Chelsea Square (1958).

  George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

  Anthony Powell, The Military Philosophers (1968).

  Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room (1971).

  Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings (1973).

  Barbara Skelton, A Young Girl’s Touch (1956).

  Barbara Skelton, Born Losers (1965).

  Barbara Skelton, A Love Match (1969).

  Barbara Skelton, Tears Before Bedtime (1987).

  Barbara Skelton, Weep No More (1989).

  Evelyn Waugh, Men at Arms (1952).

  Evelyn Waugh, Officers and Gentlemen (1955).

  Evelyn Waugh, Unconditional Surrender (1961).

  Diana Witherby, Collected Poems (1973).

  Acknowledgements

  I owe a particular debt of gratitude to the various copyright holders who allowed me to reproduce previously unpublished material. Cyril Connolly’s letters are reproduced with the kind permission of Rogers, Coleridge & White and Mrs Deirdre Levi. I should like to thank Nicky Loutit, who kindly allowed me to print extracts from letters sent by her father, the late Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit; Georgie Kee, who allowed me to print extracts from the diaries and letters of her mother, the late Janetta Parladé, and her grandfather, the late G. H. Woolley; the Orwell Estate, in the person of Bill Hamilton of A. M. Heath Ltd, who performed a similar service with regard to material held in the Orwell Archive at University College London and at the Tate; Mrs Sarah Gibb, who generously permitted me to quote from letters written by her father, the late Peter Quennell; Cressida Connolly for allowing me to examine Barbara’s diaries and Professor Michael Shelden for allowing me to make use of letters from the late Waldemar Hansen. Peter Watson’s letters are reproduced with the kind permission of his family. For permission to reproduce part of a letter from Angela Culme-Seymour to Janetta, I am grateful to Jonny Culme-Seymour. Extracts from Anna Kavan’s letters are reproduced with the kind permission of David Higham Associates.

  I should also like to thank several professional colleagues with specialist knowledge of the period for their unstinting help. Pride of place must go to Barbara Skelton’s hospitable biographer Graham Page, who generously supplied me with copies of Barbara’s letters from Peter Quennell, Feliks Topolski and other friends. Professor Michael Shelden was a mine of information and supplied me with several valuable pieces of material to which I would not otherwise have had access. I should also like to thank Dr Victoria Walker for sharing details of her research into the life of Anna Kavan.

  Among those directly connected to the Lost Girls or their circle, I should like to thank Janetta’s daughters, Nicky Loutit and Georgie Kee, for allowing me to consult their mother’s papers and contributing recollections of her, and Sarah Gibb for supplying details about her mother, Glur Dyson Taylor. Cressida Connolly was an indefatigable source of information and encouragement.

  Among the institutions where I undertook research, I should like to thank Gill Furlong and her successor Sarah Aitchison of the Special Collections department at University College London, the staff of Tate Archive and Kathryn McKee of the Special Collections Archive, St John’s College Cambridge.

  Part of Chapter 4 originally appeared in a centenary tribute to Barbara printed in the Guardian Saturday Review. I should like to thank the edito
rs for permission to reprint this material.

  Warm thanks are also extended to Mark Amory, Ariane Bankes, Anne Chisholm, Matthew Connolly, Artemis Cooper, Simon Courtauld, Jonny Culme-Seymour, Mark Everett, Jonny Gathorne-Hardy, Geordie Greig, Henry Layte, Imogen Lees, Petra Lewis, Alasdair Nagle, the late Janetta Parladé, John Powell, David Sinclair-Loutit, Alexander Waugh and Paul Willetts. I am, as usual, indebted to the superlative editorial advice of Andreas Campomar, Claire Chesser and Howard Watson. Love and thanks, as ever, to Rachel Felix, Benjy and Leo.

  The late Jeremy Lewis took an unflagging interest in the early stages of the project and supplied innumerable pieces of good advice. I hope that he might have approved the end result.

  Index

  Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.

  Acton, Harold 36

  Addams, Charles 323

  Allpress, Mary 113–14

  Amis, Kingsley 325

  Lucky Jim 83

  Angry Young Men 83

  Angus, Ian 319

  Architectural Review 180

  Art and Literature 319

  Astor, David 76, 243, 248, 319

  Athenaeum Court, London 71, 72

  Auden, W.H. 31, 37, 119, 236

  Ayer, A.J. 201, 239

  Bachelor Girl 22, 23