Among the unseen influences that affect people's lives, there are what I think of as good ideas and 'good ideas'.
In the first case, obeying an inner prompting results in unexpected but very welcome benefits; in the second case, making a wrong assumption, making an unwise decision or obeying an inner compulsion results in unexpected trouble or even disaster.
I am very interested in these ideas; I have experienced both kinds many times myself. For example, on the good side I described how I went to a small town on impulse and found a book that I had been looking for everywhere; on the other side, I described how I went on a long bus ride on impulse and it turned into quite an ordeal.
These ideas also apply to some of the people featured on here. For example, Stella Benson's 'good idea' of walking through the night led to a nightmare scenario.
I found another example of an expedition that was expected to be exciting but turned into a nightmare in Carole Angier's biography Jean Rhys: Life and Work.
When Jean Rhys returned to her birthplace of Dominica after a 30-year absence, she had what she said was a 'splendid idea': she decided that she and her second husband Leslie would cross the island by the old Imperial Road. He and other people were – very sensibly - against the idea as the road was disused; as was usual with her, any opposition to her plans made her even more - childishly - determined to have her own way. Eventually they gave in.
She expected to have a 'wonderful adventure that would end happily'; it all backfired of course. Carole Angier even says that she nearly got herself and Leslie killed in the attempt.
She tripped and fell and hurt herself. The people with her had to hire a mule to carry her; as soon as she got on, it threw her off over its head! Then came the torrential tropical downpour ... her party had a narrow escape from being stranded as their driver had wanted to return without them. She found no trace of the road, so everyone suffered for nothing.
All this reminded me of Stella Benson's ordeal. And what a coincidence that Jean Rhys should use the expression 'splendid idea'!
When Jean Rhys and her third husband Max were old and frail and had trouble managing even an ordinary life, she insisted on moving to a yacht that was moored in an estuary in Wales!
As with the Imperial Road expedition, it all backfired.
Access to the cabin was via a steep ladder; life was one long struggle with unfamiliar objects; winter was coming ... this episode lasted only two months: it ended when she fell down the ladder and injured herself.
She had to return in defeat to the London she hated.
Jean Rhys's life seems to have been one long 'good idea' with few if any good ideas on the other side to balance things; perhaps her inner demons had her all to themselves.
Unsympathetic people might think that she deserved all she got as a result of her 'good ideas', but the unfortunate people who were drawn into her crazy schemes are another matter.
Anyone who has been railroaded into doing something against their better judgement, anyone who has been dragged around from place to place and led to disaster at the whims or obsessions of someone who was not a responsible adult and never learned from experience will surely feel very sorry for Jean Rhys's husbands, who were her primary victims.
Jean Rhys returned to Dominica in 1936; this picture with the despairing statue – perhaps it had just heard the latest 'good idea' - was taken some time in the 1930s:
