Dame Rebecca West, 1892–1983
Rebecca West was my kind of dame. She seems to have had everything – brains, courage, a free and independent spirit, a strong feminist commitment, a love of travel, journalistic enquiry and a formidable writing talent. She was born in Ireland in 1892 as Cecily Isabel Fairfield and her formal education ended at 16. The family moved to London and she studied acting. At this time she became inspired by the rebel heroine Rebecca West in Ibsen’s play Romersholm and changed her name accordingly.
Rebecca and her older sister Lettie became active supporters of the women’s suffrage movement and participated in street marches in support of the cause. Her writing career started at this time with journalistic contributions to The Freewoman, a weekly feminist journal advocating free love and the right for women to remain unmarried. She also wrote for The New Freewoman, a literary magazine and for The Clarion, a socialist newspaper. At the age of 20, in 1912, she wrote an outspoken review for The Freewoman of H.G. Wells’ book Marriage. This led to their meeting and then to a 10-year affair with Wells and the birth of her only son, Anthony West. Wells was already married, but had a number of extra marital relationships. West later married a banker, Henry Maxwell Davies, and their marriage lasted until his death.
Rebecca wrote seven novels but her political awareness was as important to her mind set as her fictional skills. Her life spanned the two great wars of the 20th century, the Russian revolution and the Spanish Civil War. She wrote extensively on feminist and socialist causes, frequently visiting the USA to give lectures and be involved in socialist issues there. Although firmly left of centre and a staunch anti-fascist – she sent money to the Republican cause in Spain during the Civil War – she was also anti-communist, which did not endear her to many on the left who supported communist ideals. She considered Stalin a criminal whose extreme authoritarianism denied true communists independence and freedom, values she passionately upheld. The brutal expansion of the Soviet Union following the Second World War confirmed her views as she witnessed many countries in Eastern Europe forced behind the Iron Curtain.
It was Eastern Europe that provided the material for West’s finest book, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, A Journey through Yugoslavia. Published in two volumes in 1941 at the height of the Second World War, it gives a detailed history and analysis of the region which West gained during three extended trips to the country from 1936-1938. Part travel book, part history, part reportage, the depth of the material and the insights we gain as we travel through the countries that constituted Yugoslavia are astounding. In 1943 she was furious at the Allies’ decision to back Tito’s communists, which subsequently resulted in Tito’s Presidency of Yugoslavia until his death in 1980.
West was commissioned by the New Yorker magazine to report on the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War II; her book A Train of Powder records this experience. In the 1960s she reported on apartheid in South Africa for The Sunday Times.
She continued to travel extensively in later life and wrote prolifically until the end; much of her later work was published posthumously. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1959, in recognition of her extraordinary contribution to British letters.