Quicksands: A Memoir [Paperback]

I had eagerly awaited "Quicksands," undoubtedly the last of this wonderful writer's books, given her advanced age, but sadly I was disappointed. Bedford's novels, which I have read, are autobiographical, despite her disclaimers, but I didn't realize how true to life they were until reading her memoir. Bedford lived an erratic, charmed, difficult life, part of the European artistic generation between the wars, when one could exist for long periods of time on the generosity of friends and move relatively freely from country to country. But Bedford's memoir feels removed from her life, in a way her vivid novels are not. "Jigsaw's" characters reappear--her father and mother, Oriane, Issa, Allessandro--but she observes them from afar, and they feel flat to me. She assumes the reader knows a lot already from her novels, so some incidents are briefly and cryptically covered in a way that without prior knowledge they are meaningless. An example is the story of Rosie, whose lover was a famous English jurist who secretely led a double life for many years. Bedford covers this emotional, painful, amazing story in a page and a half for the sole purpose of finally revealing the jurist's name, but without the vivid background from her novel the revelation has little impact. "Quicksands" is leading me back to the novels I haven't yet read--she's an exquisite writer. Try "Jigsaw" for the real story of this amazing woman's life.

A very good writer tells of her unconventional past in Europe, with the memories harvested mainly from the time between the two great wars. Ms. Bedford omits the retelling of many episodes covered in her previous books (none of which I have read) and assumes the reader knows more of history and twentieth century literature than is probably true of most current readers. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book and admired its many "true" sentences.

Sybille Bedford, OBE (16 March 1911 - 17 February 2006) was a German-born English writer: a novelist, journalist and biographer. She was born Sybille von Schoenebeck in Berlin. Her parents were Baron Maximilian Josef von Schoenebeck (1853-1925 and his wife, Elizabeth Bernard (1888-1937). Sybille was raised in the Roman Catholic faith of her father at Schloss Feldkirch in Baden, and had a half-sister, from her father's first marriage ( Maximiliane Henriette von Schoenebeck). Her parents divorced in 1918, and she remained with her father, until his death in 1925. Sybille then went to live in Italy with her mother and stepfather. With the rise of fascism in Italy, her mother and stepfather settled in Sanary-sur-Mer, a small fishing village in the south of France. Sybille settled there as a teenager, living near Maria and Aldous Huxley, with whom she became friends. Sybille Bedford also met some of the other writers and intellectuals (including Alma Mahler, Wilhelm Herzog, Lion Feuchtwanger, Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht) who also settled in this area during that period.

During this period, Sybille's mother became addicted to morphine and, in what was for me, some of the most moving writing in this memoir, Sybille describes how this occurred and how she became responsible for procuring and administering the drug to her mother. There is no self-pity in Ms Bedford's account, simply a description of causation, events and consequences.

`My next account - not joyful - will have to be about a destructive blow of fate brought about through a blend of antecedents, chance, ill luck.'

In 1935, Sybille entered a marriage of convenience with Walter `Terry' Bedford. The marriage did not last, her use of his family name did. With the assistance of Maria and Aldous Huxley, Sybille Bedford left France for America before the German invasion of France. Her memoir ends once she is in America.

`Wish I could tell the half of it ... But, I repeat, there seems to be no time.'
`Had I but world enough and time ... I have not. And shall not now write about the life that followed.'

This memoir covers Sybille Bedford's life from World War I in Berlin, to World War II when she leaves Europe for the USA. I do not recognise much of the world in which she lived and of which she writes, but her writing gave me some sense of that world and of her experiences within it. At one stage, when she has a guest for a period, she writes:

`What I minded was the loss of solitude - essential to the cashing in of writing-thoughts.'

This is the first of her books I have read: I hope to read some of her novels later this year. I enjoyed both the content and the presentation of this memoir. I found it inspiring: there is no room for self-pity, nor is there any sign of resentment. Things just happen, and they are written about. Perspectives may change.

`To get into one language deeply, I found, one has to forsake all others.'

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

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