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into our lives, May Sarton turned up in London to give a talk to her women admirers and sign copies of her recent books. My old friend, knowing my views on all matters Sartonian, was nevertheless pleased when David and I suggested that she invite Sarton and her travelling companion to dinner. I bought a brace of pheasants from the butcher we patronized in Soho. (Reg, who always served me, was in the habit of saying, during the game season, ‘Hello, Paul, do you fancy a large cock?’ The other customers at the counter were often startled by this question and by my enthusistic reply in the affirmative.)
    I feel somewhat like Conrad’s Marlow, the measured remembrancer of futility and despair, as I think back to that grim November evening. The chain-smoking, hard-drinking Sarton was in a belligerent mood from the outset. I had been told of her fondness for Scotch whisky, and duly filled a tumbler for her. She dispatched it down her throat with surprising speed. Her companion Edythe (felicitous spelling) drank moderately and said very little because Sarton gave her no opportunity to express anything as controversial as an opinion. My old friend tried to ease the tension that was steadily building up.
    Introductions were made. The already tipsy Sarton mistook Lisa, the actress who lived on the ground floor, for a novelist, and assumed that I was an actor. The full nature of her confusion struck me when I expressed cautious enthusiasm for the writer Jayne Anne Phillips, whose first collection of short stories I had just read. ‘Nobody takes the literary judgements of actors seriously,’ she declared. I was too astonished to continue.
    David listened intently as the diarist launched herself into a litany of self-praise. We heard that May Sarton was more than a mere novelist or poet. Sackloads of letters from lonely women reached her home in Maine by every post, and she replied to each one
personally
.
    Breaking the silence that followed these revelations, she turned to Lisa and enquired, ‘What kind of books do you write?’
    Lisa laughed, and said she was an actress, and that I was the writer in the house.
    ‘You’re not an actor?’ The gruff voice sounded angry for some unaccountable reason.
    ‘I was. A long time ago. I’m a novelist.’
    It had taken almost an hour to establish this. I wondered if, from now on, any literary judgement I might venture would be treated seriously, not cursorily dismissed. In one of her volumes of autobiography, Sarton had boasted of a night of sexual – and presumably drunken – euphoria with Elizabeth Bowen. I mentioned, casually, that I had met the great author at a party shortly before her death. I had been tongue-tied in her presence, but she was gracious and charming in the face of my awkwardness as she sat on the sofa in the publisher’s office in Soho.
    ‘I knew Elizabeth
very well
,’ Sarton announced. ‘Very well indeed.’
    That was another show-stopper. Sarton’s proffered glass was refilled. It was clear to me that she wanted us to praise her writing. I am no stranger to deviousness, but I have never been able to pretend to admire work I consider second-rate. It does not follow that an inferior writer must of necessity be an inferior person. I had hoped, against the written evidence, that Sarton would prove to be interesting at least. Fond hope.
    We sat down to eat. Edythe praised the smoked salmon mousse, which Sarton picked at. She was now consuming wine with the same fervour she had applied to the whisky. Trouble seemed to be looming with each intake. She had begun to glower. She offered no comment on the pheasant, which Edythe again was the first to praise, but complained instead of the terrible burden she had to fulfil by responding
personally
to the thousands of letters she received every year. There were days when she had no time for her own work.
    ‘When I get back to Maine, there’ll be hundreds of the damned things waiting for me.’
    ‘I’ve only read two