The West fest takes an entirely unexpected turn

Rebecca West (cover photo: Family Memories)

Do you indulge in saturation reading? As in immersing oneself in a single author, book after book after book? I've done this at various points in my life, starting in childhood with C.S Lewis's Narnia Chronicles, all of E H Nesbit, etc etc, and then on to adolescence and Thomas Hardy and, at 15, Turgenev, who proved to be the point of departure for my journey of discovery of the works of so many other pre and post-revolutionary Russian authors. In my late twenties, Graham Greene grabbed hold of me and refused to let go, until I abandoned him for Lawrence Durrell after reading The Alexandria Quartet. In the past year, and as described on this blog, I embraced Nuala O'Faolain's writing. There have been many other authors who have exerted a similar hold, across the decades.

But the writer whose books above all others have seen me through the rollercoaster of the months spent confronting the Massive Inconvenience is Rebecca West. I'd envisaged putting together a post at some point, explaining what it was about her writing that resonated for me but kept delaying - just so that I could read another book and then another. Because, if I'm honest (and possession of an Eng Lit degree notwithstanding), I'd much rather read than write about what I've read.

Nothing, however, had prepared me for the twist in the tale that emerged as I started reading Family Memories, a collection of West's memoirs that she worked on, rewrote and embellished during the final 20 years of her long and eventful life. It opens with the author recalling a journey with her husband, Henry Andrews, from their home in the Chilterns to London, via the northern part of Notting Hill. A chance detour takes them into:

'a delapidated square that looked more than shabby, that looked as if it had been devastated by street battles . . . as we drove away my eye fell on the name of the street and I saw that this was the place where I had been born.'

Notting Hill having been my home for so much of my adult life, I rushed to the notes at the end of Family Memories, to find the precise location, which turned out to be a road in Westbourne Park. Something of a puzzle this, as we had lived right in the middle of Westbourne Park, an area on the eastern fringe of Notting Hill, but I'd never heard of the road. And yet, like the Dear Daughter, I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of these streets; over the years, we must have walked up and down every single road, square, street, mews, passage and alleyway. However, it's not uncommon for London street names to change; moreover, thousands of London's houses and entire streets and neighbourhoods were destroyed during the Blitz in WWII, although many of Westbourne Park's fine Victorian houses still stand and are now regarded, once again, as highly desirable properties.

There was also the Rachman factor. In the 1960s, Peter Rachman, a Holocaust survivor from Lvov, achieved notoriety as a slum landlord, initially in Notting Hill before extending his property empire to other parts of London. He featured in what came to be known as the Profumo scandal and the term Rachmanism found its way into the OED. For my generation, his name brings back vivid memories of events that were unfolding as we stood on the cusp of that era in which to be young truly was 'very heaven'.

Writers have grappled with the nature of the man; dramatist Peter Flannery based the eponymous lead character in his play, Singer, on Rachman. (I was fortunate enough to see this when Singer was first performed by the RSC in 1989, with Anthony Sher in the title role.) More recently, Sandor Kovacs in Linda Grant's Booker shortlisted The Clothes on Their Backs, was loosely based on Rachman.

The heart of Rachman's Notting Hill operation was a relatively small complex of streets, rows of multi-storey Victorian houses that were eventually demolished in 1974, as so many of them had fallen into total disrepair. It was a move that divided - and continues to divide - the residents of Westbourne Park. These days, more effort might have been made to restore the damage and save these once elegant houses.

In the 1960s, at the height of the Rachman era and before demolition

Could this explain why I could find no record of the road in which Rebecca West had been born? I thought that it might be the case and it was at this point that I began to experience that anticipatory tingle of an impending discovery. The most obvious source of information was likely to be one of Charles Booth's Poverty Maps of London, which date from 1889; Rebecca (birth name Cicely Fairfield) was born in 1893. There was every chance that the road would appear on that map. It did.

And that was when the tingle assumed quite different proportions. The road in question, whose name had subsequently been changed, had been located in the area that was demolished. After demolition, new homes - flats and maisonettes, with private gardens, including roof gardens, communal gardens and play areas - were built, creating homes for 300 families. The project was something of an experiment in community cohesion, a mix of social housing and homes for sale only to people who had lived or worked in the City of Westminster for more than 10 years. By the end of the decade, the properties were filling up rapidly and it was here that we bought our very first home.

It was here that I read my first two novels by Rebecca West: The Judge and Harriet Hume, just after they were republished by Virago in 1980 and just yards, as I now know, from the author's birthplace. I had had no idea and I am still reeling from the discovery.

* * * * * 

Throughout her life, Rebecca West remained fascinated by coincidences.

Comments

[colleen]

Wonderful post - and a fantastic discovery.

On Booth, I found that one of the streets highlighted in the Museum of London's new(ish) exhibit of Booth's map was the street where I was raised. Those links back in time never fail to captivate.

And thank you so much for the Nuala O'Faoloain tip a while back which set me off on the path...

[Dragonfly Dreams]

Oh, goosebumps! Seredipity at its best!

[lovethosecupcakes]

Love this post. Like you, I do tend to devour an author's catalogue if I've been swept away by a first reading. Funnily enough Rachman popped up in An Education, a film I watched recently. How fascinating to discover those connections to RW.

[Dancing Beastie]

How delicious. A good coincidence can light up one's experience.

[Cinderellen]

What a fascinating coincidence! I have also wallowed in works by a single author, sometimes to the detriment of my appreciation. The little tics and habits of a writer that are merely identifiers when read one at a time can become annoying when you plunge through several books in a row.