Rebecca West and H.G. Wells
Wells with Rebecca West and friends. Photo credit: Bridgeman Art Library
This letter says it all:
“Dear H.G.,
During the next few days I shall either put a bullet through my head or commit something more shattering to myself than death. At any rate I shall be quite a different person. I refuse to be cheated out of my deathbed scene. I don’t understand why you wanted me three months ago and don’t want me now. I wish I knew why that were so. It’s something I can’t understand, something I despise. And the worst of it is that if I despise you I rage because you stand between me and peace. Of course you’re quite right. I haven’t anything to give you. You have only a passion for excitement and for comfort. You don’t want any more excitement and I do not give people comfort. [...] On reflection I can imagine that the occasion on which my mother found me most helpful to live with was when I helped her out of a burning house. I always knew that you would hurt me to death someday, but I hoped to choose the time and place. You’ve always been unconsciously hostile to me and I have tried to conciliate you by hacking away at my love for you, cutting it down to the little thing that was the most you wanted. I am always at a loss when I meet hostility, because I can love and I can do practically nothing else. I was the wrong sort of person for you to have to do with. You want a world of people falling over each other like puppies, people to quarrel and play with, people who rage and ache instead of people who burn. You can’t conceive a person resenting the humiliation of an emotional failure so much that they twice tried to kill themselves: that seems silly to you. I can’t conceive of a person who runs about lighting bonfires and yet nourishes a dislike of flame: that seems silly to me.You’ve literally ruined me. I’m burned down to my foundations. I may build myself again or I may not. You say obsessions are curable. But people like me who swing themselves from one passion to another, and if they miss smash down somewhere where there aren’t any passions at all but only bare boards and sawdust. You have done for me utterly. You know it. That’s why you are trying to persuade yousrelf that I am a coarse, sprawling, boneless creature and so it doesn’t matter. [...] But I know you will derive immense satisfaction from thinking of me as an unbalanced young female who flopped about in your drawing-room in an unecessary heart-attack.”
–Rebecca West to H.G. Wells, 1913
Comments (36)
No F. Scott and Zelda?
Uh, yeah. F. Scott and Zelda. Seriously.
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Anais Nin & Henry Miller
my vote is for Henry Miller & Anais Nin ~ they were the epitome of Ill-Fated Literary Couples!
{i was half of an Ill-Fated filmmaking couple} ~snb
No Tom & Viv??
Page 7 the picture represent Jean Cocteau and Jean Marais a famous french actor (I believe they were together at some point too) and not Raymond Radiguet
Sartre and Beauvoir all fucking day
sartre and beauvoir missing from this is list? strange!
Elizabeth Hardwick was more then a “housewife.” she was the co-founder of The New York Review of Books…
Not even Lowell and Hardwick — Lowell and Jean Stafford, his first wife! He ruined her life by driving a car intoxicated, giving her severe chronic pain for the rest of her life and basically shattering her face. “The Interior Castle”, anyone?
Louis Aragon & Elsa Triolet
Aragon celebrated Elsa’s eyes, in ‘Les yeux d’Elsa’ and under a pen-name, another part of her anatomy in ‘Le Con d’Irène’.
The men in these heterosexual couples come off as a bunch of heartless, philandering, self absorbed bastards, like so many men.
Yeah, really Zelda and Scott…
Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammet
Elizabeth Smart and George Barker
What about Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell?
[...] Posted by minijen on Aug 18, 2011 in Misc | 0 comments Flavorwire » Bad Romance: History’s Ill-Fated Literary Couples: [...]
Lord Byron and Mary Shelly?
Lowell plus Plath equals Oven. It’s a no brainer literally.
You know what would be news and should be your next list — writers in successful marriages.
First and only couple I could think of is Louis Begley and Anka Mulhstein. I enjoy their work and although LB’s novels have stayed in print for a while, I am not sure if they will be part of the immortals, so if you can think of literary marriages involving at least one first rate writer that didn’t involve too many tears, do let us know.
So how did Yezierska go to work for the WPA in 1922 when it wasn’t created until 1935?
Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey?
yeah, if Hardwick was a “housewife” then why is she on the first page of wries married to writers? These articles get shi&ttier all the time. At least this one had the good sense to stop at 10 instead of dragging on to 20 like they usually do. I always get so excited when I see somehtying like this in my inbox, and then I read it and just get pissed.
Yezierska and John Dewey? How was there a sexual relationship if there was no contact? Why mention she was light skinned, as if WEB was not? Why include journalists/reporters as if they are writers? This list sux
William S. Burroughs and Joan Vollmer. Duh.
You left out Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas???
Steel pipe|
Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunn?
+ Ray and Maryann Carver
Take that back, I guess. Maryann helped with RC’s writing but as far as I know did not publish herself while they were together.
Great piece Kathleen! You guys come up with the greatest story ideas. For whatever reason our literary heroes haven’t typically led the most happy lives… Maybe we can all learn a little from their tribulations. Thanks!
anais nin and henry miller were never officially together, they both had marriages outside of each other.
For her first and only heterosexual experience: Patricia Highsmith and Marc Brandel.
Re Rebecca Wells: This is beautiful and my teenage self can relate… However, knowing what I know now, she did it wrong. That’s supposed to be HIM pining for her, wondering why she left him and why he’s not good enough. It should be her pointing out his faults and communicating to him – when he asks – that he will have to chase without ever having; thus ensuring his everlasting unhappiness. and close with a “Ba-bye”… Because deep down, he knows he’s imperfect, and sooner or later, a well used word or label would have eaten away at his ego.
[...] listicle of literary couples, while juicy (“I weep for the eight years I spent…worshipping his image [...]
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