Dreaming of Rose: a biographer’s journal – Sarah LeFanu (2013)

With thanks to Handheld Press for providing the book

Dreaming of Rose was originally published in 2013, but has been revised by Handheld press for this new edition.

Having now read ten books by Rose Macaulay, I do consider myself to be something of fan, and eager to learn more about her. While Dreaming of Rose: A biographer’s Journal is a book about Rose Macaulay’s biographer Sarah LeFanu, it is also, of course, about Rose Macaulay too. I’m not sure I expected to love this one as much as I did, not always being great with non-fiction and being more interested in Rose Macaulay herself and her writing than in her biographer – I thought. Well, I was wrong, everything is connected, Rose Macaulay, her work, and her biographer and I absolutely loved this book. It prompted me to buy Sarah LeFanu’s biography of Rose Macaulay, published in 2003 by Virago. I think this book sets the interested reader up perfectly for the biography – but I shall probably wait a while before I read it.

As the title suggests – this is a journal, a journal kept by Sarah LeFanu during the period she was writing her biography of Rose Macaulay, a writer and great traveller. It is a book which for me works well on two fronts, allowing readers to explore Rose Macaulay through the eyes of another – while also giving us a glimpse into the life of the biographer at work. The biography of Rose Macaulay was published in 2003, and the majority of the journal entries date from 1998 to 2002 when Sarah was writing the book. In 2012 a sealed archive of embargoed Rose Macaulay material was opened – and Sarah took up her journal again, to record this momentous occasion.

LeFanu shows us that the work of a biographer is not easy – there are a lot of hurdles to be got over, many frustrations encountered along the way. Family life, children’s school holidays might sometimes get in the way, and sometimes after days struggling with a particular chapter – it must be set aside for long periods to make way for other, paid work.

“I suspect I’m blaming Rose for my inability to get on with writing this chapter. I desperately need a clear space with no teaching. I’m doing a day school on women poets the weekend after this, and haven’t even begun to think about it. And then there’s all the next term’s reading still to do.”

During this period Sarah was a very busy woman, teaching at Bristol university, abridging books for BBC radio 4, editing anthologies and picking up various bits of freelance work. Yet, as soon as she could, she would come back to Rose, picking up the threads of her literary investigations, persuading people (or not) to talk to her, and thanks to an Art’s Council award travelling to some of the places that Rose had. She is also incredibly honest about her own self-doubt, a terrible critic of her own work, her own worth – there are times when Sarah LeFanu questions her own ability to write the biography at all. Money worries rear their ugly head too – bills are due and there’s little left in the kitty – it’s certainly not all glamour.

The relationship between the biographer and their subject (perhaps especially when the subject is no longer with us) is a unique one. There is naturally a responsibility to that person concerning revelations that they may not have wished to be made so public. In Rose Macaulay’s case many of the letters she hadn’t wished published were published years before Sarah LeFanu began writing her biography. Rose Macaulay’s great secret was already out. Those letters left out of that publication were sealed for fifty years – and opened in 2012. In 1918, Rose Macaulay met a writer, and former priest Gerald O’Donovan, a married man, and father. Their relationship was secret and lasted twenty-five years – until his death.

“This evening I finished James Lees-Milne’s entertainingly bitchy Ancestral Voices. In his entry for 27 July 1943 he describes Rose Macaulay as ‘dry and twitchy’ at a dinner party where they were both guests. I know that it was the first anniversary of Gerald O’Donovan’s funeral. But how was Lee-Milne to know? According to Victor Gollancz Rose’s affair with Gerald had been the best kept secret in London.”

The short story Miss Anstruther’s Letters is inspired by the grief that Macaulay suffered after his death – it’s a deeply poignant story even without that background knowledge. So, alongside LeFanu’s investigations into Rose Macaulay, she must also consider the huge role Gerald O’Donovan played in her life.

LeFanu shows us just how complex and yet consuming the relationship between a biographer and her subject is. Unearthing those little nuggets of information that go into creating a picture of a person – it’s not unlike a treasure hunt, following the clues, hoping to find the things no one else has – fitting it all together, creating an understanding. Appreciating how that relationship works, and where the pitfalls might be, how the biographer can feel like they are chasing a ghost, Sarah LeFanu references the biographer of Robert Louis Stevenson. She also references another long held literary secret – that of Dorothy L Sayers and her son. There is a responsibility in the biographer’s art – and it is one that LeFanu is well aware of.

This is a wonderful book; I am so very glad I have read it. One I think that will interest those interested in Rose Macaulay and those interested in the art of the biographer. Warning – it might make you want to read a lot of books by Rose Macaulay, but of course I would say that could only be a good thing.