An Imaginative Experience
A lust for life in the writing of Mary Wesley
Welcome to A Narrative of their Own, where I discuss the work of 20th century women writers and their relevance to contemporary culture.
This Christmas, I returned to one of my favourite authors for escapism, Mary Wesley. Her novel An Imaginative Experience takes place over several months, with the latter part falling over Christmas, which often means it’s a nice book to wind down with before the festivities.
Mary Wesley is an author I came to after picking up arguably her most famous novel A Camomile Lawn in the mid-90s from a second-hand book fair. I mainly picked it up as I recalled a television series had been made of it (the front cover of my copy has two of the actors from the series on it) and thought it might be a light read.
The Camomile Lawn opens on the lives of a group of young, middle-class cousins at the outbreak of WWII, as they gather at their aunt’s house for a final summer holiday. There is a lot of talk about the possibility of a war, and whether they will fight or not, whilst the aunt and uncle remember the first war and worry for their young nieces and nephews.
The book then follows the cousins, their friends and lovers throughout the war, flashing back to the present day, when some of them are reminiscing on their innocence on that final summer of peace, whilst on their way to a friend’s funeral.
But it isn’t a typical war novel. Wesley’s writing has a unique style in its exploration of relationships and characters that are unexpected and even sometimes slightly shocking.
Wesley’s writing is not one for fans of vivid description: her novels contain a lot of dialogue and quirky, often dark humour, plus a frank attitude to sexuality. Although she generally portrays the middle-classes, she often does so with her tongue firmly in her cheek. Both the men and women who populate her stories are often boorish and frightful British snobs, and her central female characters are generally quiet, likeable introverts.
Wesley herself claimed that, as many of her books are centered around the Second World War, there was a general feeling that you never knew what was going to happen and whether you would see friends or lovers again. This, she believed, meant that people were far more relaxed about jumping into bed with one another, making the most of the time they had, and generally having a good time when they got the chance.
As I made my way through Wesley’s back catalogue - she wrote ten novels in all - I found that many of the characters had similar traits. She even mentions several characters from A Camomile Lawn in some of her other books. But what I found even more remarkable when I devoured them was that she was 70 years old when she had her first novel published in 1983. She then went on to publish the other nine over the next decade of her life, practically one a year, with three being filmed for TV.
“Why did I not do more in my life, I ask myself, as I read the obituaries of the people who have crammed their lives with "doing" while I have wasted great chunks of mine dreaming?”1
Wesley has been noted to return to similar themes in her work (and particularly her interest in the years around the Second World War), which was likely due to much of her writing being based on her own rich and varied life experiences.
The typical Wesley heroine is a young woman who has been affected by parental dislike or outright neglect. She often meets a conventional type of man who fails to understand her and then goes on to find happiness with a more eccentric, interesting lover, who recognises her quiet, unassuming qualities.
However, her work is not limited to this or any particular age or situation of central character. Her novels An Imaginative Experience and Harnessing Peacocks, for example, (which was also televised) both feature a thirty-something female living in the present day, whilst Jumping the Queue (also set in the present day) is the story of an older woman. Others, such as Part of the Furniture and The Camomile Lawn see her treading the theme of WW2’s effects on both generations.
Mary Wesley was the third child of Colonel Harold Mynors Farmar and his wife, Violet. Born in Englefield Green, Windsor Great Park, she hardly knew her father and held the strong belief that her mother favoured her elder sister. Wesley did not attend school, the family believing she would not need to work for a living, which added to her isolation. Further losing her beloved nanny when she was three years old after she was sacked by the family, she received a minimal education from a series of foreign governesses.
Her education was something she always regretted and in the 1930s, in an attempt to rectify this somewhat, she attended lectures in international politics and anthropology at the London School of Economics from where she received, albeit 60 years later, an honorary fellowship.
Presented at court, as was the custom of her class, she was married to Lord Swinfen in 1937 and later gave birth to two sons. She had satisfied her parents’ expectations of her, but later caused a scandal when she left her husband and divorced him in 1945.
Her life was transformed during the Second World War, which went on to form the background to many of her novels.
Being of the ‘right’ class, she found work in intelligence as many other young women did during the war. She referred back to this period as giving her generation a very good time, “an atmosphere of terror and exhilaration and parties, parties, parties".
In Patrick Marnham’s brilliant biography, Wild Mary, commissioned by Wesley on the proviso that it not be released until after her death, he details her varied love life and portrays a complex woman who had many sides to her character. She is shown to have been rebellious and headstrong, with an outward respectability, with some of her scandals making the papers. She had attempted to write her own autobiography many years before, but had found difficulty in this, and was afraid of the shame the book might bring if it was to be released before her death, particularly for her children. Marnham reports that she was virtually estranged from one son due to bitter financial rows and claims that another son only discovered his father’s true paternity after the father he had known had died.2
Dining at the Ritz in 1944, she met Eric Siepmann, a playwright and journalist educated at Winchester and Oxford, of whom her family disapproved due to his German father and Irish Mother. Quite shockingly, Wesley began living with the married Siepmann until his second wife was convinced to divorce him, whereupon they married in 1952. Their marriage was a happy one, though according to Marnham’s book, Siepmann was an unsuccessful writer who was often drunk and occasionally violent. Wesley gave birth to a third son with Siepmann, and their lives were often one of poverty and isolation as Siepmann constantly changed jobs.
His death in 1970 left her devastated, and his constant changing of jobs and failure to accumulate any capital left her penniless and without an income, leading her to sell her jewellery and knitting items for paying customers. She claimed to have been resented and rejected by her mother and was eventually estranged from her family, although she claimed to love her father, stating that his last illness had been kept from her, so that when she arrived to see him, she met his cortege returning from the cemetery. She had rejected their world and been rejected in turn, but this had led to her finding her own sense of freedom and personality.
Wesley had been writing for some years but lacked confidence, in spite of her husband's encouragement, and threw most of her writing away. She did manage to publish two children’s books in 1968 with a third in 1983, but after Siepmann's death she suddenly seemed to find her voice. Whether that was from the sheer need to make some income or not, her writing began in earnest at the age of 70.
“I have no patience with people who grow old at sixty… Sixty should be the time to start something new, not put your feet up.”3
Her first novel, Jumping The Queue, features a widow who does not wish to live after the death of her husband. Feeling she had been let down by him, as they had planned a suicidal picnic for their joint demise, the quirky, darkly humorous novel was unique in the early 1980s when it was published. A friend encouraged her to submit the manuscript, and it was initially turned down, with editors believing there would be no interest in that style of book. Her agent however sent the book to James Hale of Macmillan, who disagreed and published it, whereupon it was received well by both readers and critics.
Following Siepmann’s death, Wesley claimed that she had herself considered ‘jumping the queue’ but had instead written the book.
She was said to have considered her life after her husband’s death as a bonus: having been through the worst, death no longer held any fear for her. She began to emerge from her grief and live the remainder of her life to the fullest, saying she felt ashamed when she lost younger friends whilst she went on living.
“My family has a propensity - it must be in our genes - for dropping dead. Here one minute, gone the next. Neat. I pray that I have inherited this gene. I have no wish to linger, to become a bed-bound bore. A short sharp shock for my loved ones is what I want: nicer for them, lovely for me. What shall I find? Is there anybody there? Shall I be starting something new?”
There was much talk of her novels containing illicit scenes and characters who use bad language not usually associated with someone of Wesley’s age and class. There is also a violence and hatred threading through some of her novels, such as references to more than one of her female protagonists committing murder, yet being none the less likeable for it. It is these examples of violent expressions of long-buried anger and the frank sexuality of her heroines that make her work unique. Her writing is peppered with humour, irony, and often suppressed emotion.
Wesley was often referenced as holding a rare kind of beauty as well as a poise and self-containment; in this she appears to mirror many of her loveable and often frustrated protagonists, who, like Wesley, appeared shy and to hold themselves slightly aloof. Friends have reported that she was a tiny, delicate older woman in later life, with a quiet and dignified presence, who would suddenly burst into laughter and say something laced with obscenities.
When Wesley finally began to receive the financial rewards which came with the late arrival of fame, she bought a new car and slightly larger house with a garden, but not much else changed. She continued to dress in the elegant manner she always had, and reportedly gave money away to help friends, even strangers, appreciating that she had once experienced poverty herself.
Though living in various countries and places throughout her life, Wesley spent much of her time in the West Country, and many of her books feature women who have a love of the countryside as well as London. Locals have mentioned anecdotes of the characterful Wesley, visiting the weekly outdoor markets of Totnes, Devon, her final home, and conversing with the stall holders, and she remarked how being amongst the bustling market town helped with her writing. One of my favourite of her books, Second Fiddle, features an older woman living in a similar market town, assisting a young male writer with his first novel whilst helping him set up his own antique market stall.
She reportedly found stinging reviews of her books difficult to take, refusing to review books which she did not enjoy herself in order to avoid offence. But she thoroughly enjoyed the process of writing long-hand on an old, rickety table at the top of her stairs for hours at a time. She enjoyed her own characters, growing desolate when she finished a book.
Mary Wesley died on December 30th 2002 aged 90, at her home in Totnes, Devon. Despite being born into an upper-middle-class family, she defied her family’s expectations of a ‘respectable’ young lady of her class. She later experienced great poverty and anguish, as well as grief over the loss of the love of her life.
She did, however, achieve something remarkable: she found her writing voice at last at the age of 70, becoming a best-selling and uniquely talented writer, utilising her own long and varied life to bring both her characters, and herself, to life.
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Quotations taken from The Time Of Your Life: Getting On With Getting On, compiled by John Burningham, (2003), Bloomsbury.
Patrick Marnham, Wild Mary, (2007), Vintage.
This is such a great piece. I didn’t realise how fantastic she was, such a positive, spirited writer. Brilliant write up.
Thank you for this fascinating account of Mary’s life. I read her novels in real time, as each was published in the 1980s, through my child-bearing years, so have wonderful memories of reading them in the quiet hush and low light of those night-feeding times. Such enticing titles...The Vacillations of Poppy Carew...I mean what young woman in the 1980s wouldn’t want to read that!
We still live in Devon and would often see Mary walking around Totnes back then, and I’m sure I remember seeing her wearing the Kaffe Fassett ‘Temples’ cardigan. I had the same one. I still have those original copies (and the cardigan) and you prompt me to get them off the shelf and re-read almost forty years on.