From The Sunday Times
August 2, 2009
Muriel Spark: The Biography by Martin Stannard
August 2, 2009
Muriel Spark: The Biography by Martin Stannard
Photo of Muriel Spark in her London home. 1965 - Ian Berry
The Sunday Times review by John Carey
The progress, or otherwise, of Martin Stannard’s biography of Muriel Spark has provided enjoyable literary gossip for many years. There were rumours at one point that Spark had taken offence and forbidden publication altogether. Another report, attributed to AS Byatt, was that Spark was “very upset”, but had gone through Stannard’s text line by line “to make it a little bit fairer”.
The progress, or otherwise, of Martin Stannard’s biography of Muriel Spark has provided enjoyable literary gossip for many years. There were rumours at one point that Spark had taken offence and forbidden publication altogether. Another report, attributed to AS Byatt, was that Spark was “very upset”, but had gone through Stannard’s text line by line “to make it a little bit fairer”.
Stannard’s own account is that Dame Muriel selected him as her biographer back in 1992, was “extraordinarily generous” from the outset, gave him free access to her archive, demanded no veto on what he wrote, and devoted a lot of time to helping him revise the first draft.
She would surely be pleased with the finished product, which is microscopically researched (she was always fanatical about absolute accuracy) and zealously pro-Spark. When it transpired, after her death in 2006 at the age of 88, that she had left her whole estate to her companion of 30 years, Penelope Jardine, and disinherited her son Robin, her “ruthlessness” attracted criticism in the British press.
She would surely be pleased with the finished product, which is microscopically researched (she was always fanatical about absolute accuracy) and zealously pro-Spark. When it transpired, after her death in 2006 at the age of 88, that she had left her whole estate to her companion of 30 years, Penelope Jardine, and disinherited her son Robin, her “ruthlessness” attracted criticism in the British press.
But Stannard’s message is that ruthlessness is what an artist must have, especially a woman artist in a male-dominated world. Spark was “a survivor, a phoenix”, and resolutely shook off the clinging hands of lesser mortals who would have dragged her down.
The first hands she shook off were those of her Jewish working-class family in Edinburgh. They were kind people, and scraped to send her to a fee-paying school. But they were not intellectuals, so at 19 she married a maths teacher, Sydney Spark, joining him in Rhodesia where he had found employment. Robin was born a year later in 1938. Unfortunately, Sydney turned out to be mentally ill and violent, and Spark fled to wartime London, leaving Robin behind in care. She had various lowly jobs while trying to get started as a poet and literary critic. For a time she was secretary of the Poetry Society, but they threw her out for being arrogant, flirtatious and manipulative (“All lies, damned lies,” Stannard assures us, presumably on Spark’s authority).
She had passionate affairs with two of the society’s poets whose likenesses she later ridiculed in her fiction. Why she came to hate them so much is not clear, but it seems in part to have been anger with herself for descending to their level. This became a common pattern. As her career blossomed after the publication of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1961, and as she moved to New York and then to Italy, mixing with fellow celebrities, aristocrats and artists, her old friends found themselves discarded. If they called, they were treated (one complained) like “poor relations”, or simply shown the door. Robin was brought up by her parents, and she saw little of him or them.
The first hands she shook off were those of her Jewish working-class family in Edinburgh. They were kind people, and scraped to send her to a fee-paying school. But they were not intellectuals, so at 19 she married a maths teacher, Sydney Spark, joining him in Rhodesia where he had found employment. Robin was born a year later in 1938. Unfortunately, Sydney turned out to be mentally ill and violent, and Spark fled to wartime London, leaving Robin behind in care. She had various lowly jobs while trying to get started as a poet and literary critic. For a time she was secretary of the Poetry Society, but they threw her out for being arrogant, flirtatious and manipulative (“All lies, damned lies,” Stannard assures us, presumably on Spark’s authority).
She had passionate affairs with two of the society’s poets whose likenesses she later ridiculed in her fiction. Why she came to hate them so much is not clear, but it seems in part to have been anger with herself for descending to their level. This became a common pattern. As her career blossomed after the publication of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1961, and as she moved to New York and then to Italy, mixing with fellow celebrities, aristocrats and artists, her old friends found themselves discarded. If they called, they were treated (one complained) like “poor relations”, or simply shown the door. Robin was brought up by her parents, and she saw little of him or them.
Read the full review.
Muriel Spark: the Biography by Martin Stannard
672pp, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25
672pp, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25
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