A legacy, sybille bedford
Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education
September 29, 2023
This is a great book and I’m adding it to my favorites. It’s an autobiographical novel of the youth of the British writer Sybille Bedford (1911-2006). By “autobiographical novel” I mean most of the events, people and places are true but it is fictionalized. There really isn’t a plot other than the sequence of events in her life. It’s fundamentally a story of the relationship between this young woman and her mother. As we learn in the book, while at times her mother could be loving and caring, much of the time she was simply 'nucking futs.'
As I summarize her early life in the review below, I am also giving away the 'plot,' so I should write:
SPOILERS FOLLOW
Sybille had one of the most international upbringings you can imagine. She was born in Germany near the French and Swiss borders and lived her formative years at various times in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France and the UK.
Her father was much older than her mother. He was loving but distant. He collected art and turned their house into a Renaissance museum. But let’s get to her mother: if Sybille grew up today, social service agencies would have a thick file on her. Her mother was never quite sure what she was supposed to do with a child. (I’m reminded of Stoner’s wife in John William’s novel of that name.) She would visit a bachelor’s apartment and leave Sybille in her baby carriage in the hallway. She would simply take off to visit and travel for weeks, leaving Sybille with strangers she met on the beach or with hotel maids.
At a very young age Sybille ran away from home (by train) to live with her half-sister and her husband. After a desperate search involving police, her parents said – 'ok you can stay there.' Her schooling and sometimes private tutoring were sporadic - often nobody bothered to enroll her in school. After her German father died, and because her mother was not a German citizen, Sybille was at times a ward of the German state and her mother, then living in Italy or France, tended to ignore the thick legal packages that arrived by mail.
After her father died, Sybille’s mother was almost engaged to two men at once. She finally chose an architect/designer 15 years her junior. As Sybille got older it seems like her mother remembered once in a while that she had a child. A letter would arrive commanding Sybille to pack up, travel by train and come to live with her mother. Once the only way Sybille knew where she was going was by the postmark on the envelope (France).
Most of the story takes place in Sanary-sur-Mer, where she ended up living on-and-off for 14 years. That small town in France was chosen because her mother and her new husband were headed for Spain but her mother tired of the train ride and decided 'let’s stay here.' This was not considered part of the French Rivera in those days but it attracted artists and offbeat folks including the Aldous Huxleys, Colette, Thomas Mann, and the artist Moise Kisling and his wife Renee. Man Ray took photos of her mother.
These were the people Sybille grew up with. Many of these artistic folks were avant-garde in their lifestyles. The Kislings, for example, had a ménage-a-trois going, one woman; two men. From a very early age Sybille was exposed to a world of unstable adult relationships. She writes of this instability “Was it never possible for everybody to be happy? Did anything good have to be at someone else’s expense?”
Hints of Sybille’s sexual orientation began at an early age. As a young girl in Germany she received permission to invite her three best friends over for lunch 'at the museum.' The cook and the maid were shocked (but not her parents) to see that all her friends were boys! She asked permission from her local priest to act as an altar boy at her local parish and did so until the bishop put a stop to it. Although some who have written about her say she was bisexual (and she did have experiences with men at an early age) in a very late-in-life interview, when asked about significant others, she only mentioned three long-term partners, all women.
In the book she writes that her favorite quote is one that she memorized at a very young age: “Si on est amis, il n’y a acune difference si on fait l’amour avec.” Which she interpreted in a non-literal translation as “If it’s a friend, it’ll be all right to make love together.”
In the 1930s, when anti-Semitism started rearing its ugly head in German and Italy, her inheritance was frozen in Germany. This was because Sybille was still a German citizen her mother had Jewish ancestry. Friends of the family arranged a marriage of convenience for her with a British man to obtain British citizenship. The only result was that she dropped her German name (von Schoenebeck) and kept his name, Bedford.
As an older teenager, in today’s lingo, we would say Sybille 'went clubbing' nightly, having experiences probably with both men and women. She would come home at dawn to her morphine-addicted mother, who was in despair over an affair her husband had (the husband 15 years younger than her). For years Sybille was caught in a terrible position, torn between giving her mother ‘tough love’ and fighting with her to get her into rehab, paid for by their wealthy neighbors. Other times she gave in to her mother’s screaming and begging for drugs and became her enabler.
Sybille Bedford did not write a large number of books and the ones she did write were quite varied, so it’s hard to say what 'type' of writer she was. Most of her writing was for newspapers and magazines.
Around age 16 she spent some years living with her mother’s friends in London. She regularly attended court cases as entertainment. Undoubtedly this led to her work as a trial correspondent. She covered many high-profile cases including Jack Ruby’s trial for Life magazine. (Ruby assassinated Kennedy's assassin.) She covered the Auschwitz war crimes trials and the Lady Chatterley obscenity prosecution.
Sybille wrote a book about legal systems in various European countries, which became a textbook. She wrote a biography of her former neighbor in Sanary, Aldous Huxley. She loved food and wine and became known as a travel writer with a gastronomical flair. One of her best known works is a travel book to Mexico, A Visit to Don Octavio. In a New Yorker piece on Bedford, Joan Acocella wrote that it was the only travel book that ever made her cry and another reviewer called it 'the best best travel book of the 20th century.'
Jigsaw, written when she was was 78, was nominated for the 1989 Booker. To an extent it's a follow-up to her first novel, A Legacy, published in 1956. Both are the story of her relationship with her mother.
I wrote a long review because I found this book fascinating; both for its writing and the story.
photos top to bottom:
(Sanary-sur-Mer)
[Edited 9/29/23]
As I summarize her early life in the review below, I am also giving away the 'plot,' so I should write:
SPOILERS FOLLOW
Sybille had one of the most international upbringings you can imagine. She was born in Germany near the French and Swiss borders and lived her formative years at various times in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France and the UK.
Her father was much older than her mother. He was loving but distant. He collected art and turned their house into a Renaissance museum. But let’s get to her mother: if Sybille grew up today, social service agencies would have a thick file on her. Her mother was never quite sure what she was supposed to do with a child. (I’m reminded of Stoner’s wife in John William’s novel of that name.) She would visit a bachelor’s apartment and leave Sybille in her baby carriage in the hallway. She would simply take off to visit and travel for weeks, leaving Sybille with strangers she met on the beach or with hotel maids.
At a very young age Sybille ran away from home (by train) to live with her half-sister and her husband. After a desperate search involving police, her parents said – 'ok you can stay there.' Her schooling and sometimes private tutoring were sporadic - often nobody bothered to enroll her in school. After her German father died, and because her mother was not a German citizen, Sybille was at times a ward of the German state and her mother, then living in Italy or France, tended to ignore the thick legal packages that arrived by mail.
After her father died, Sybille’s mother was almost engaged to two men at once. She finally chose an architect/designer 15 years her junior. As Sybille got older it seems like her mother remembered once in a while that she had a child. A letter would arrive commanding Sybille to pack up, travel by train and come to live with her mother. Once the only way Sybille knew where she was going was by the postmark on the envelope (France).
Most of the story takes place in Sanary-sur-Mer, where she ended up living on-and-off for 14 years. That small town in France was chosen because her mother and her new husband were headed for Spain but her mother tired of the train ride and decided 'let’s stay here.' This was not considered part of the French Rivera in those days but it attracted artists and offbeat folks including the Aldous Huxleys, Colette, Thomas Mann, and the artist Moise Kisling and his wife Renee. Man Ray took photos of her mother.
These were the people Sybille grew up with. Many of these artistic folks were avant-garde in their lifestyles. The Kislings, for example, had a ménage-a-trois going, one woman; two men. From a very early age Sybille was exposed to a world of unstable adult relationships. She writes of this instability “Was it never possible for everybody to be happy? Did anything good have to be at someone else’s expense?”
Hints of Sybille’s sexual orientation began at an early age. As a young girl in Germany she received permission to invite her three best friends over for lunch 'at the museum.' The cook and the maid were shocked (but not her parents) to see that all her friends were boys! She asked permission from her local priest to act as an altar boy at her local parish and did so until the bishop put a stop to it. Although some who have written about her say she was bisexual (and she did have experiences with men at an early age) in a very late-in-life interview, when asked about significant others, she only mentioned three long-term partners, all women.
In the book she writes that her favorite quote is one that she memorized at a very young age: “Si on est amis, il n’y a acune difference si on fait l’amour avec.” Which she interpreted in a non-literal translation as “If it’s a friend, it’ll be all right to make love together.”
In the 1930s, when anti-Semitism started rearing its ugly head in German and Italy, her inheritance was frozen in Germany. This was because Sybille was still a German citizen her mother had Jewish ancestry. Friends of the family arranged a marriage of convenience for her with a British man to obtain British citizenship. The only result was that she dropped her German name (von Schoenebeck) and kept his name, Bedford.
As an older teenager, in today’s lingo, we would say Sybille 'went clubbing' nightly, having experiences probably with both men and women. She would come home at dawn to her morphine-addicted mother, who was in despair over an affair her husband had (the husband 15 years younger than her). For years Sybille was caught in a terrible position, torn between giving her mother ‘tough love’ and fighting with her to get her into rehab, paid for by their wealthy neighbors. Other times she gave in to her mother’s screaming and begging for drugs and became her enabler.
Sybille Bedford did not write a large number of books and the ones she did write were quite varied, so it’s hard to say what 'type' of writer she was. Most of her writing was for newspapers and magazines.
Around age 16 she spent some years living with her mother’s friends in London. She regularly attended court cases as entertainment. Undoubtedly this led to her work as a trial correspondent. She covered many high-profile cases including Jack Ruby’s trial for Life magazine. (Ruby assassinated Kennedy's assassin.) She covered the Auschwitz war crimes trials and the Lady Chatterley obscenity prosecution.
Sybille wrote a book about legal systems in various European countries, which became a textbook. She wrote a biography of her former neighbor in Sanary, Aldous Huxley. She loved food and wine and became known as a travel writer with a gastronomical flair. One of her best known works is a travel book to Mexico, A Visit to Don Octavio. In a New Yorker piece on Bedford, Joan Acocella wrote that it was the only travel book that ever made her cry and another reviewer called it 'the best best travel book of the 20th century.'
Jigsaw, written when she was was 78, was nominated for the 1989 Booker. To an extent it's a follow-up to her first novel, A Legacy, published in 1956. Both are the story of her relationship with her mother.
I wrote a long review because I found this book fascinating; both for its writing and the story.
photos top to bottom:
(Sanary-sur-Mer)
[Edited 9/29/23]