Jean Rhys: feeling different and not belonging

Carole Angier's biography of the novelist Jean Rhys contains some very insightful remarks about her and her life. Some of these remarks are very similar to what I would have come up with myself if I had looked at the same source material. 

The miraculous deliverances and spiralling down elements of Jean Rhys's life have been introduced. This article covers some more key features: she felt different from most people and she felt that she didn't belong anywhere. 

Feeling different 

There is nothing unusual about Jean Rhys's feeling of being fundamentally different from the people around her; after reading biographies of other writers, I would think it very unusual if she didn't feel like that! It's what they all say; it goes with the territory. 

What does seem strange to me is how various people of interest quite independently describe their feelings and experiences in much the same words. 

Something that Carole Angier says about Jean Rhys could equally apply to many others, including Stella Benson and Antonia White:

“One of the strongest feelings Jean had always...was that she didn't fit in the world, that life was a game she had never learned how to play...She did not understand the rules.”

This is exactly how some people feel: everyone knows the rules of the game but them; everyone else knows how to behave, what to say, where to go and what to do, but they are baffled and clueless.

Such people may see the world as a club to which they will never belong no matter how much they want to and how hard they try. The article about Jean Rhys and Antonia White contains uncannily similar quotations about how something always goes wrong when they try to be like other people.

Stella Gibbons’s My American and writing: Part I

As previously mentioned, Stella Gibbons makes some insightful comments about writers, writing and the imagination in her novel My American, in which Amy Lee is the main character. Amy's love of reading, writing and research and her need for solitude as a young girl are all very typical of people who grow up to be writers. 

This article contains some particularly significant extracts with the commentary they inspire:

Freely flowing words and ideas

What Stella Gibbons says about Amy's writing is a good description of what it feels like when the ideas and words come easily:

“Her stories never stuck, but sometimes she enjoyed writing them more than she did at other times. When the pen flew and her hand ached, when there was nothing real in the world except the white paper before her and the flying tip of the nib, and the picture in her mind that she was describing turned so quickly into words that she could no longer tell at what instant the figures in it became marks on the paper—then the story was Beginning to Run, and unfortunate is the writer who has never tasted such a moment.”

Unfortunate indeed is the writer whose creations are never fluent and painless - or frictionless as Rudyard Kipling would say.

And yes, the whole outer world often does disappear for some people when they are engrossed in reading or writing.

More freely flowing words and ideas

After getting a job as an office girl, Amy is sent to collect some copy from a very famous writer who has produced many stories for the boys’ magazine she works for.

Artemis Fowl and the demon cult leader: Part I

I read the first three of Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl fantasy novels when they were first published. I remembered them recently when compiling a list of light and amusing reading that would help to counteract the effects of negative and disturbing material.

I needed a break from reading about the writer Jean Rhys, which is even more depressing than reading about Stella Benson and Antonia White! I decided to renew my acquaintance with Artemis the young Irish prodigy and his fairy friends.

I found that there are now eight Artemis Fowl books. I am reading my way through them all. I didn’t expect to find anything that would inspire any articles, and I was right - until I reached Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony (2006), the fifth book in the series.

The Lost Colony contains some material that immediately reminded me of what I have read and written about cult leaders and people who feel different on the inside from everyone around them.

The Artemis Fowl books contain many supernatural entities, including elves, dwarves, trolls and goblins; The Lost Colony features demons.  One of them reminds me of certain writers who felt different right from the start and went on to develop a special gift, and another one behaves exactly like a cult leader. 

Something about Eoin Colfer’s demons
Eoin Colfer’s demons begin life as imps. They go through a process called ‘warping’, which turns them into demons. It sounds similar to the way in which a caterpillar builds a cocoon then emerges as a butterfly.

A very few imps never warp into maturity. While ordinary full-grown demons have no magic of their own, these special imps become warlocks who can perform magic.

Most of the demons are collective-minded, bloodthirsty and aggressive with few redeeming characteristics, but there is one exception.

This special, different demon is called Number One.

Context and the total picture: Part II

Part I introduces the idea that putting painful experiences into the context of the lives of well-known people can have both positive and negative effects. 

Some people are the worse for learning that they are not alone, some take comfort in the idea and try to make the best of things and a few of them take another big step forward: they start noticing patterns, joining dots and making connections. 

It seems strange to me that some of the writers featured on here appear never to have reached even the first stage. Their writings are full of insights about themselves and their lives but they looked at it all in isolation. 

No context for their lives
I first mentioned this important point in an article about the poet Kathleen Raine: I said that while she made a good, honest evaluation of herself and her life, she did not compare it with the personalities and lives of other creative writers. She actually had many ideas, insights, feelings and experiences in common with some of them, but she never, at least publicly, did much to put her life into the context of the lives of other, similar, people. 

For example, she admitted that her thoughts about and feelings for Gavin Maxwell placed a heavy and intrusive psychic burden on him and that he eventually turned against her because of this. He may not have been the only person she had a bad effect on: he called her a destroyer.

Would it have made things better or worse if she had known about the terrible effect that J. M. Barrie had on the Llewelyn Davies boys and their parents or Benjamin Disraeli had on various people?

Antonia White and a few more familiar elements

This article contains a few more examples of elements that Antonia White had in common with other people featured on here. 

Telepathic connections
Antonia White is said to have established a telepathic connection or psychic rapport with a few people during her lifetime.

This is from her daughter Lyndall Hopkinson’s book Nothing to Forgive:

”...a strange telepathy...had again and again compelled me to leave for England just when Antonia most needed someone, although she had never appealed for help.”

Another link was with a young solder called Robert Legg. As Jane Dunn tells us in her biography Antonia White: A Life, they played a game in which they would not communicate verbally. Antonia White describes this phenomenon in her autobiographical novel Beyond the Glass:

“She had become so expert at ‘the game’ that he had only to will her and she went instinctively to the right place at the right time.”

This reminds me of what Joyce Collin-Smith said about the Maharishi Yogi:

“He seemed to have definite hypnotic power. Most of us could be summoned at a distance and would come at the inner command...”

Antonia White too had a telepathic link with an Indian guru, a mystic called Meher Baba. She too believed that he was sending her hypnotic commands.

Feeling different and copying others
Feeling that they are not real people, feeling different on the inside from everyone around them and imitating others for various reasons are common elements in the lives of Antonia White and Stella Benson - and many other creative people.

Antonia White, Terry Pratchett, snakes and a big coincidence

The novelists Antonia White and Stella Benson have more in common than biographical material that has a very depressing and exasperating effect on impressionable readers.

Stella Benson’s love of snakes  has already been covered; I have recently learned that, at least as a child, Antonia  White was a snake lover too. Not only that, but just like Stella Benson she was taken behind the scenes at London Zoo to meet some snakes.

Antonia White was a small girl and Stella Benson an adult when they visited the snakes, which was around 1904/05 for Antonia and in 1917 for Stella. The big coincidence here is that the same person was involved in both invitations to see the snakes up close.

How the visits came about
As previously mentioned, Stella Benson’s privileged visits came about because at the time she was staying with a friend whose husband, Edouard (sometimes anglicised to Edward) Boulenger, was Director of Reptiles at London Zoo.

Some years earlier, Antonia’s father had been great friends with both the eminent Belgian zoologist George Boulenger and his son the above-mentioned Edouard, who at the time was Curator of Reptiles at London Zoo.

Edouard conducted Antonia on tours of the snake cages. She loved holding some of them, which neither of her parents had the courage to do.

Stella Benson felt that she had the soul of a snake. Antonia White sometimes felt less than human. Perhaps they both felt drawn to snakes because they had reptilian-like personalities.

Balancing the books: a problem and a solution

I started an article about Terry Pratchett’s witch Tiffany Aching by saying what a great relief it was for me to turn to his books after reading a lot of depressing biographical material.

This introduced one of the problems that reading certain books can cause together with a good solution.

While other articles cover the sometimes devastating effects of putting ideas and experiences into the context of other people’s lives and looking at the total picture, this one is about being badly affected emotionally or even psychically rather than mentally. 

Reading about the lives of writers such as August Strindberg, Stella Benson, Mary Webb, Ouida, Jean Rhys and Antonia White, who have all been featured or at least mentioned on here, can have a very bad effect on impressionable people.

Some people are very good at getting inside books, sharing the writers’ viewpoints and living the lives and stories.  This can be a two-edged sword: when reading certain books, such people are in danger of getting sucked in, overwhelmed, trapped and poisoned by psychic contagion.

Some of the harmful effects come from picking up the writers’ inner states from the material: general negativity and feelings of misery, agony, abandonment, depression, desolation, disconnection, doom and despair can be infectious. 

Counterweights and antidotes
By far the best solution is to read very different books, ones that have on the whole a very positive effect. They can be inspiring, educational and informational or just entertaining. 

Children’s and young adults’ books are often ideal; old friends, comfort reading and new books by a favourite author are all good too.  

Stella Benson, Douglas Adams and the total picture disaster

The novelist and travel writer Stella Benson, who has inspired many articles, had some good insights about herself and her life.

She may never have realised though how much she had in common with other writers. What effect would it have had on her if she had put her life into the context of the lives of certain other people? 

What further effect would it have had if she had seen exactly where she stood in relation to the entire human race?

Having one’s ideas and viewpoint expanded is not always beneficial; it can be devastating.

Stella Benson herself mentioned the danger of realising that we are nothing special, not individuals but just one of many. 
She said this in her travel book Worlds Within Worlds:

“The world would come to an end if each one of us suddenly began to see himself as one of a crowd—and that a funny crowd...We all intend to be seen as Ones, not as crowds; all our details of personality are evolved to clothe us as Ones, not as crowds.“

It may seem that Stella Benson was exaggerating when she said that the world would come to an end if people realised their personal insignificance, but she is not alone. Douglas Adams, author of the comedy science fiction series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy so in a sense a fellow travel writer, dealt with this Issue in a way that is both amusing and alarming.

Public libraries present

For much of my life, I took the existence of public libraries for granted: they were just there. I can now look at them more objectively and put my experiences into various contexts.

I now know something about the background and history of public libraries and about other people’s views on and experiences of them.

There was a long discussion about free public libraries on the old Conservative Conserpiracy Forum. Some posters approved of them, others did not. I made several contributions in their favour and challenged some of the points made by the antis.

In addition to my personal memories, those old posts and some information I compiled at the time are the main source of material for the public library articles.

This one will bring my personal experience up to date. 

Leaving the public library behind
After leaving school, I continued to be a great user of local public libraries for some years. Then came a time when I allowed my membership to lapse and even forgot that public libraries existed! Buying books instead of borrowing them became the norm for me.

There were several reasons for my defection:

I had moved to an area where the local library was not at all impressive; it was small and there was a very poor showing on the shelves, with little to make browsing worthwhile.

I became interested in New Age and other types of metaphysical books that my library didn’t stock.

I could afford to buy whatever books I wanted, fiction and non-fiction, new or second-hand as available, and I was spoilt for choice as there were many bookshops of various kinds within easy reach including specialist, second-hand and discount. There were charity shops everywhere and they were a good source of cheap books. Some street market stalls sold books too. Browsing in all these places was enjoyable and very productive.

Joyce Collin-Smith: imagination, alienation, and an imaginary friend

Novelist and journalist Joyce Collin-Smith’s autobiographical work Call No Man Master has inspired many articles to date, and there is still a little more miscellaneous material of particular interest to come. 

This article covers some of the attributes that Joyce Collin-Smith had in common with other writers mentioned on here.

The article about Stella Benson’s imagination and the one about her imaginary friends spell out what life is like for someone who is very good with words, has a very vivid imagination and feels alienated from the real world.

Joyce Collin-Smith is another example of such people.

Joyce Collin-Smith’s childhood
There are some very familiar elements here.

Joyce Collin-Smith tells us that she was a thin, ailing, solitary, excessively shy and nervous child. Fearing rebuffs or incomprehension if she voiced her thoughts, she busied herself with private activities, including writing or imagining stories.

Stella Benson and L. M. Montgomery

This article summarises a few common elements in the lives of novelists Lucy Maud Montgomery and Stella Benson.

They both had something to say about the feeling of being innately different from the people around them and the horrors of having to live an ordinary life. They both came to realise that their marriage was a terrible mistake.

Shared feelings of being different
Feeling fundamentally different is so common in creative people as to be almost a cliché. I have quoted Kathleen Raine on the subject. 

This feeling usually goes with the territory, although they don’t all go as far as Stella Benson did and believe that they have the souls of snakes!

As previously mentioned, Stella Benson felt different in kind from the throng of ‘real girls’ who surrounded her. Sometimes she felt superior to them. She wrote, “I know I have something infinitely more important which these giggling girls have not.“

L. M. Montgomery too felt this way. I mentioned in a previous article that, like many others of her kind, she felt that she did not fully belong in this world. She seems ambivalent about this:

“It was really dreadful to be so different from other people…and yet rather wonderful, too, as if you were a being strayed from another star.” 

From Anne of Windy Poplars

Stella Benson's diaries

I came across this quotation from L. M. Montgomery recently:

“Only lonely people keep diaries.”

She kept a diary from the age of nine, and this is where she wrote the above words. I think that they are probably true in some cases but definitely not in all.

Sometimes diaries are kept primarily for record keeping purposes, to be used for reference in the future if necessary. Isaac Asimov for example kept detailed but mainly factual diaries for much of his life.

Journalling is a possible outlet for creative people who must write. It provides a way of exercising writing skills and keeping them honed; it keeps the channel of inspiration open.

The quotation made me think of Stella Benson, who kept a diary from the age of ten until shortly before she died. It is certainly applicable to her. In Stella’s own words:

“To set down a record of my contact with people...is most necessary to me. Because my most continuous sensation is a feeling of terrifying slipping-away from people - a most devastating loneliness - I have to place on record the fact that I was human and that even I had my human adventures.”

More words about writing from L. M. Montgomery

This article contains a few more hard-hitting quotations on the subject of writers and writing from L. M. Montgomery.

She seems ambivalent about the whole business of being a writer, seeing it as both a gift and a curse:

“You'll never write anything that really satisfies you though it may satisfy other people.”

From Emily Climbs

This may be true in some cases - artists often feel that their works fall far short of their visions - but the converse also applies: some writers may be proud of their productions while their readers may not think much of them.

Disapproval, criticism and discouragement

People who read a lot are often criticised for it, and people who try to write are often discouraged. L. M. Montgomery obviously experienced much disapproval herself:

“’I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet,’ scoffed Marilla. ‘You’ll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time that should be put on your lessons. 

Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse.’”

From Anne of Green Gables

Although this disapproving attitude does a lot of damage, that last line seems quite funny to me.

The two worlds of L. M. Montgomery

Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery, best known for her Anne of Green Gables series, has recently become a person of interest.

She will eventually be the subject of a longer article. In the meantime, here are two quotations from her that describe the two worlds that some people live in. It was these quotations that made me decide to investigate L. M. Montgomery, her life and her works: 

“I grew up out of that strange, dreamy childhood of mine and went into the world of reality. I met with experiences that bruised my spirit - but they never harmed my ideal world. That was always mine to retreat into at will. I learned that that world and the real world clashed hopelessly and irreconcilably; and I learned to keep them apart so that the former might remain for me unspoiled.

I learned to meet other people on their own ground since there seemed to be no meeting place on mine. I learned to hide the thoughts and dreams and fancies that had no place in the strife and clash of the market place.

I found that it was useless to look for kindred souls in the multitude; one might stumble on such here and there, but as a rule it seemed to me that the majority of people lived for the things of time and sense alone and could not understand my other life. So I piped and danced to other people's piping - and held fast to my own soul as best I could.” 

From My Dear Mr. M: Letters to G.B. Macmillan from L.M. Montgomery

So she too was faced with an unaccommodating, often incomprehensible and sometimes unbearable real world, and she too was able to escape to the inner world of the imagination.

Stella Benson, two men, and great disillusionment

Strindberg’s ignoring of his initial feelings of mistrust when he met the mystery man who became his ‘former American friend’ has reminded me of what I read about the negative feelings on both sides when the novelist Stella Benson first met the man who was to become her husband.

Reading about various people who fell for a false image and let wishful thinking and other factors distort their perceptions has reminded me of the man who at first made a very positive impression on Stella Benson, only for her to be devastated when she learned that he was not only greatly inferior to but in some ways the exact opposite of what she thought he was.

It is the points, issues and patterns rather than the people that are of interest here; the underlying scenarios, unseen influences and connections are more important than the details.

The information comes from Joy Grant’s biography, which is based on Stella Benson’s letters and diaries.

The first meeting

Stella and her future husband reacted much the same way when they first saw each other. They had premonitions, and not good ones. She didn’t want to go anywhere he was going, and the feeling was mutual: he couldn’t get away fast enough!

They came to revise their opinions of each other, but it might have been better for both of them if they had not ignored their initial misgivings.

Stella Benson’s marriage

Stella Benson, like Stella Gibbons, married a man who was younger than she was. The age gap was five years in Stella Gibbon’s case, but Stella Benson’s husband was only 18 months her junior.

In both cases, the husband’s family was not impressed; the Stellas failed to pass muster in their eyes.

More about Stella Benson’s travel nightmares

The novelist Stella Benson travelled the world. She saw some beautiful buildings and scenery, she gained a variety of new experiences and she met some interesting people. Travelling provided her with plenty of good material for her writing, but she paid a high price in suffering, discomfort and danger.

She turned some of her bad travel experiences into good stories and treated them lightly, presenting them in her articles as amusing and interesting adventures, evidence that she was doing something exciting with her life, rather than as the ordeals and nightmares that many of the incidents undoubtedly were.

This article contains a few more examples of her experiences and some thoughts about the issues that the accounts of her journeys raise. I wonder why she would put herself through so much; I also wonder how much of it she did in the right spirit, as opposed to just going through the motions. I wonder whether she thought that it was all worth it. 

In Stella Benson’s own words

“Nobody but a true fool tries to cross the United States in a Ford car in the middle of winter."

“Also we had another loss. Money in an inner coat pocket is safe enough in circumstances that permit a man to stand dry and upright as his Maker intended him to stand. But tip that man in and out of a Ford foundering in floods, load him with wet kit-bags, bend him like a hairpin, bereave him of hope and dignity—and where is that money at the end of the day? Where indeed is it? We had nothing now but a few dollars, which I found, sodden, in my breeches pocket.“

“Arriving that evening at a small cheerless hamlet, cold, soaked and exhausted, we were given a room full of holes, through which the draughts whistled... We were soaked, shivering, and sad.“

Stella Benson’s Living Alone: Part VII

This is the final article in the series inspired by Stella Benson’s fantasy novella Living Alone. There is still more to say about Sarah Brown and the House of Living Alone and some related issues, and there is a very strange statement about the nature of reality that deserves to be highlighted.

Science fictional solipsism

The woman who holds the weekly gatherings where the occult is discussed is called Miss Meta Mostyn Ford. Miss Ford is the one who helps herself to a packet of magic powder in Angela’s absence and lets the magic loose, causing all sorts of damage.

She says something very strange while under the influence:

“No place and no person matters when I am not there. There are no places and no people existing where I am not. I have suspected it before, and now I am sure that everything is all a pretence, except me. Look how easy it was to dismiss that gross grocer from sight. He was just a bit of background. I have painted him out."

The ‘gross grocer’ is the Mayor, who was made invisible by her actions.

So while Sarah Brown believes that she is not real but most other people are, Miss Ford believes the opposite.

Such ideas remind me very much of themes such as constructed reality and pantheistic solipsism that are often found in science fiction.

Only the narrator or main character is real, everyone else is an actor or construct. The environment is all specially constructed too, like a stage set. The Truman Story is a good example of this. 

Robert A. Heinlein wrote a short story called They about a man who suffers from the delusion that he is one of the few ‘real’ entities in the universe, and that the other ‘real’ entities have created the rest of the universe in a conspiracy to deceive him.

I would not have expected to see similar ideas put forward as early as 1919. Where did Stella Benson’s inspiration come from?

Stella Benson’s Living Alone: Part VI

This article in the series inspired by Stella Benson’s fantasy novella Living Alone has more to say about Richard the Wizard and his mother. 

Richard is the son of Lady Arabel Higgins. He is an illiterate young soldier; he is also a powerful wizard.

His mother’s attitude towards him is strange: she both knows and doesn’t want to know that he is a magic person.

Lady Arabel’s denial and dissociation

Lady Arabel is very unhappy about Richard’s difference from other boys. Although she knows that he isn’t normal, she is in denial of what he really is. She refuses to accept that he has occult powers. She complains about her friend’s always bringing Richard’s name up whenever anything tiresome or out of the way happens:

“One would think you considered the poor boy a wizard.”

Lady Arabel pretends to notice nothing when Richard performs his magic:

“The wizard's mother obviously had great difficulty in not noticing the phenomena connected with her son, and she wore a striving smile and a look of glassy and well-bred unconsciousness whenever anything magic happened."

She talks a little nervously on very insipid subjects throughout the supper party at which Richard manifests his powers. When Richard does something so spectacular that she can’t possibly ignore it, she turns scarlet and murmurs that he is so merry and ingenious.

It is not only Richard’s magic that Lady Arabel refuses to see. When Sarah Brown tells her that Richard has gone to visit his ‘True Love’, Lady Arabel says, “You are quite mistaken, and I must beg of you to be careful how you repeat idle gossip about my son.”

It is the truth not idle gossip, but she just won’t accept it.

Stella Benson and the sponging Russian count

Stella Benson’s life and works are inspiring many articles, and still the end is nowhere near in sight.

This article is about her involvement with a sponging expatriate Russian count; it involves a familiar personality type and associated scripted scenario.

Stella Benson generously helped this poor old man and made great efforts on his behalf, only to be met with insults, lies, delusions and ingratitude followed by yet more demands and hard-luck stories.

Stella Benson meets Count Nicolas

Stella Benson first met the frail, pathetic, penniless old man who called himself Count Nicolas de Toulouse Lautrec De Savine in April 1931. He was in a free bed in a charity hospital in Hong Kong at the time.

She felt very sorry for him even though he immediately started lying to her. He may have been confused and delusional rather that deliberately deceitful though. He told her that he had no money at all, then some fell out of his pocket. He showed her a picture of someone he said was a princess who had been crazy about him - it was an advertisement!

Stella Benson helps Count Nicolas

Count Nicolas was a mess of a person. Stella saw him as a free spirit broken by adversity. She decided to transcribe some of his ‘memoirs’ in the hope of selling them and getting some money for him.

She started to produce a book that consisted of both his reminiscences - or fantasies - and her commentaries on them. It was later published as Pull Devil, Pull Baker (1933). She gave him a very generous advance payment, but after Count Nicolas moved on he started sending her very frequent begging letters.

Then he appeared on her doorstep, ill and destitute. She gave the ‘silly old cadger’ some more money.

Stella Benson’s Living Alone: Part V

This article in the series inspired by Stella Benson’s Living Alone has more to say about the effect that Angela the Witch’s magic has on people.  

Sarah Brown is not the only person to be inadvertently given the wrong impression and led to disaster by Angela.

When Angela gives a demonstration of her magic to the charity committee, it has such a strong effect on some of them that they seek her out at her place of work. Each one, the Mayor in particular, thinks that she was speaking to them personally.

Angela and the Mayor

The Mayor, a grocer who is Chairman of the committee, makes the fourth person to visit the magic shop to see Angela again.

“And then the Mayor arrived. The witch saw at once that there was some secret understanding between him and her that she did not understand. Her magic escapades often left her in this position.”

He thinks that she is interested in him personally, but this is a mistake. It is wishful thinking, but he is not altogether to blame; she has inadvertently caught him in her net.