Stephen Spender and his world

Contemporary Review, Jan, 2005 by Joan Bridgman

Stephen Spender: the Authorized Biography. John Sutherland. Viking. [pounds sterling]25.00x 627 pages. ISBN 0-670-88303-4.

Spender is a difficult subject for even such an experienced hand as Professor Sutherland. Success came early with his Poems, 1933 and he continued to publish up to 1985--a span of over fifty years. In addition, he led a very active social life, becoming a cultural ambassador, the editor of literary magazines, a roving lecturer and the close friend of Louis MacNiece, Auden, Isherwood and C. Day-Lewis. Prof. Sutherland lists numerous primary sources: Spender's journalism alone is a twenty-volume Xerox archive and his correspondence is scattered in university libraries across the globe. He was an attractive man who made his way into the intellectual circles of his day with ease and his biographer has dealt with many personal recollections and memoirs of friends, while, as he says, 'the trails were still warm'. It is a minor miracle that he weaves such a fluent and coherent narrative over the six hundred and twenty-seven pages of this biography.

As the 'authorized' biographer he has had access to everything, yet citation seems severely pruned. There are endnotes, but they are not comprehensive. As a former student of the biographer I feel aggrieved; he wouldn't have let me get away without reference to every source in the text. Perhaps there is a shying away from the detailed academic tomes which have become the norm in biographies, towards something more friendly to the average reader. A strategy for dealing with the mountain of material is the division of the book into decades prefaced by italicized summaries which give clear signposts rising out of the mass of detail. Spender himself appeared to see his life in this fashion, announcing once 'I think I'am having a final phase'. Many friends noticed his solipsistic streak. He wrote his autobiography at forty-two and said he was the Columbus, the explorer, of himself. He kept journals from 1939 to 1983, published in 1985. It must have been a difficulty for Prof. Sutherland that his subject preempted so much. It is frequently hard to tell where the authorial voice is coming from. Another constraint must have been Spender's dislike of the 'vogue of tell-all biographies' where what is personal becomes public. He gloated, in 1989, that he was 'still litigiously alive to stop biographies'.

Although the author praises Spender and quotes many 'fine' poems there is little discussion of technique or poetic development. I found the poems quoted show a slender talent, whereas prose extracts from journals, letters and conversation are vivid, lively and often funny, illustrating why Spender was such an entertaining companion. He described shaking President Lyndon Johnson's hand: it was, he said, 'like the hoof of an elephant'. He was an acute observer, but, apart from a few poems such as 'Abyss', which was forced out of him by the Blitz, he had little deep experience which really pricked the self-congratulatory bubble in which he lived. His aim was to be a leading writer and be famous. Hence his 'networking' of literary figures, the rich and the powerful. Prof. Sutherland tells us that the Spenders spent every Christmas with the Rothschilds and if travelling north, of course, one stayed with the Devonshires. He lays the evidence before us, without comment, so that we may draw our own conclusions. He quotes Roy Campbell's criticism of Spender as a 'chairborne shocktrooper of the knife and fork brigade ... a guzzling poltroon and a banqueteer' and at least a part of me agrees.

Sutherland deals with the exposure of the C.I.A. funding of Encounter, an influential magazine Spender co-edited. Since he who pays the piper calls the tune, it was suggested that it was a propaganda vehicle for pro-American views. The author makes clear his belief that Spender was lied to and behaved honourably throughout. Yet Cyril Connolly's memorable comment on the existence of two Spenders comes to mind--one an inspired simpleton and the other, shrewd and ruthless, and creates doubt. There is no doubt, however, of John Sutherland's admiration for his subject's 'remarkable life and distinguished body of literary work'. Spender was a thoroughly likeable and disarming person. He was once a colleague of Sutherland at University College London, where as a professor of English he had to set papers for students. He wrote to a friend that he could only think of two question: '(a) Was Cassaubon impotent? or (b) Was Daniel Deronda circumcised?' Who could dislike such a man? He added to the gaiety of life.