Rebecca West writes to her lover, John Gunther, about her recent nervous breakdown, which she attributes to the behavior of her oldest sister, Letitia. West believed that her sister disliked her immensely (“She thinks I look awful. She thinks my career is a despicable failure.”). West also blames H. G. Wells, with whom she’d had a son, Anthony, in 1914. Wells and West were involved for ten years, although they never married. Gunther, a fellow journalist, was nine years younger than thirty-three-year-old West, who enjoyed introducing him to literary luminaries. Gunther would confide in a letter to a friend that he was “a little afraid of [West].” Time magazine would later call West “indisputably the world’s number one woman writer.”
Hotel Josse
Antibes, A.M.
France
[summer 1926]
My dear John,
All your letters have arrived within four days of each other. I have been worrying about where you are and even now I am not clear. But I haven’t worried as much as I would have, because I have been having a real old-fashioned nervous breakdown, and it hasn’t seemed to me that it mattered where anybody was as all people on this globe seemed equally miserable anywhere. This nervous breakdown earned its keep, I think, because I am now so tough that I could keep my head up and see where I collapsed and why, and I have found out something useful. My breakdown was due to Lettie. And it was due to the fact that she hasn’t a thought about me that goes more than two centimeters below the surface which isn’t dislike and shame. She wishes I didn’t exist. She thinks I look awful. She thinks my career is a despicable failure. (Do you know that when I gave her my little book on Henry James all she said was that she hoped his relatives wouldn’t mind and be able to do me any harm; and when I gave her The Return of the Soldier all she said was that she hoped that the present occupants of the inn at Monkey Island wouldn’t be offended; and when I gave her The Judge all she said was that she couldn’t understand how I could invent anything so unpleasant as Roger. And that’s that.) She is constantly embarrassed by my conversation and my manner. She treats Anthony as if he were the most appalling freak because he is mine. She actually has delusions about him. She alleged to me quite solemnly just before she left that he was so dark that of course it would be a handicap to him all through his life because people would think he had coloured blood in him. She is nearly crazy with an elder sister desire to call little sister down. And that is a force that all my life has been depressing and annoying me. I [am] perfectly sure that it is that and nothing in the way of a morbid neurosis which makes me dread going back to England. It isn’t, as my family has always conspired to make me believe and as H. G. in his sadism loved to tell me, that I am a neurotic who cannot stand up to life, but that I am healthy and I have been preyed on by neurotics till they have bled me nearly white. So there we are. I feel better, but accursedly alone. I have felt during the last four weeks quite miserable because you were so far away and because there is so slender a hope that I shall for months to come have more than a nibble at your dear company.
But you had a good time. I have goggled with envy over those letters. What is it about Islam that makes it armour-clad in every way except unity? Did you ever read the History of Islam in Spain? (particularly a book by a Dutchman called [Dozy]). There is no reason under the sun why they should not be there now and doing very much better than their Catholic Majesties were it not for just such damfoolishness as seems to have informed your Congress. I have had a quiet time here. It has been the most iniquitous weather, wet for days at a time, and extremely cold. The chief guffaws I have had lately been at the letters I have had from America, on the subject of the General Strike in England. As you will have guessed it was as calm a bean-feast as may be, but America would have it that it was a Revolution. I had one dolourous letter which contained the quite serious sentence “How dreadful you will all feel when Ramsay Macdonald moves into Buckingham Palace.” To an English mind that does seem so deliciously irrelevant. I have spent a good many evenings talking to a rather nice American who is staying here, Lloyd Morris, who seems to have done quite a bit of reviewing as well as some books and gives lectures on Contemporary Literature at Columbia. He has been here dreadfully ill ever since March, and has had one operation. It is a dreadful modern tragedy. He is the son of a widow, and has, I think, been a very decent and sweet soul up till a year ago, contented with his social life and his books. Then he met a young man whom I met at Villefranche with Paul Robeson, I think I wrote you about him, called Glenway Wescott. And Glenway has pretty well made hay of this gentle creature, has conveyed to him that it is the chic way to be a genius to be a homo and take dope. Glenway being an ox with as much nerves as belongs to the ox-like state can do it, but this Morris boy is just a quivering mass of nerves. I am desperately sorry for him.
I have written a bit, but not so much as I had hoped, for I have been struggling with this desperate depression. For about a fortnight I found it difficult to be alone without bursting into nervous tears. But the place has done me a lot of good. There have been two days fine weather, and I spent all yesterday writing on the beach in a bathing-dress. And I like the Casino, where one has food such as is not in the whole of New York for about a dollar. And oh, I do like the pinewoods when the broom is out. But I shall never live in these parts. I would fondly love to live someday on the Cote des Maures. Do you remember it? That quite lonely stretch of woodland tumbling to the seas before you get to Toulon. Hereabouts is being covered with villas while you look.
Oh, such a queer thing happened at the hotel at Marseilles. I came down in the morning and asked for the bill in a hurry. They said “What room?” I said, “Room 225.” The two cashiers looked at each other and said, “There is no such room.” I said, “Well, that’s where I slept.” They said, “Where’s your Key?” I said, “Oh, I left [it] in the door.” I then turned to the man who had brought down my bag, and said, “What room was it?” He said, “Room 225.” The two cashiers got very excited, and the bag-bringer confided to me it was the first day he had worked in the hotel. Finally they alleged you had paid. I said, “But what about the mineral water I have [had] since Monsieur left, and so forth?” They shrugged their shoulders and did nothing about it. So there you are. Do you think the God-streak that is in both of us had been functioning and we had created a bedroom? It is odd. (Let’s thank God that’s all we did.)
I am crazy with joy at the thought of your coming up from Genoa. It is a grand idea. Stay a few days, and we’ll have such a good time. I am also thrilled by the scarf. I think I know what it looks like—like a coat of mail that has gone in for the gay life. It was a good idea to buy it white. Oh, but what’s the good of anyfink? I want to talk to you, to John Gunther himself.
Yours ever, with ever such love
Rebecca
From Selected Letters of Rebecca West. Edited by Bonnie Kime Scott. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.