Transcript for the Piece Audio version of RN Documentary: Becoming Rebecca West

“Becoming Rebecca West”

A portrait of 20th century journalist/writer Rebecca West with memories from her great-niece who has become a journalist/writer herself, and thoughts of an actress who plays her in a one-woman show about her life.

Interviews: Helen McLeod, great-niece of Rebecca West
Anne Bobby, actress “That Woman: Rebecca West Remembers”

Sound: Excerpts from letters, writing, & the play itself

SCRIPT

VOICE: Radio Netherlands’ Vox Humana presents: “Becoming Rebecca West”

SOUND

DAVID: Early this year I got an e-mail from theatre producer Paul Lucas, who I’d met in New York City a few years back, about a production he was bringing to Amsterdam called “That Woman: Rebecca West Remembers.” The name didn’t ring a bell. So I did what I often do these days. I went to the internet and “googled” Rebecca West – Interesting…journalist, novelist, critic… born in London 1892 - at 14 wrote a letter to a newspaper in defense of suffragettes – wrote her first novel at 18 – became H.G. Wells’ lover at 20, and had a son Anthony out of wedlock – by the age of 30 was being hailed as George Bernard Shaw in skirts… did a lecture tour of American and had an affair with Charlie Chaplin… wrote a 1500 page book about Yugoslavia before World War II, and after covered the Nuremberg trials. In 1949 Time Magazine called her the number one woman’s writer in the world. And she played a role in Warren Beatty’s film “Reds.” I’d never heard of Rebecca West but her extraordinary life spanned almost the whole 20th century. I decided to see the play…

SOUND: From the play – 1.15-1.53 + 2.13-2.30 DUR: 1’00”
FW: I think everyone…
LW: …Thursday afternoons.”

HELEN: My name is Helen McCleod and I’m Rebecca West’s great-niece. Her sister was my grandmother – my father’s mother – and I knew her until she died when I was 17. -Actually, my first memory of her is that I thought I’d murdered her husband, Uncle Henry. When I was 2, they came for Christmas at my house in Edinburgh, and my mum was busy cooking dinner for 12 adults & 6 children. Uncle Henry used to wear very beautiful tailored Savile Row suits, bespoke suits. So he was bouncing me on his knee just before we went into Christmas dinner and I got a little over-excited and I peed on him. And there was a huge fuss about it because they had to delay dinner and my mum had to sponge down this incredibly expensive special suit. I really got freaked out. I thought I’d done something really terrible and about 8 months later he died, so I was convinced that I’d killed him and that Aunt Rebecca would definitely have it out with me so – I remember being quite scared of her from an early age. DUR: 1’15”

SOUND: from the play 18.30-19.30 DUR: 1’00”
FW: I was 18…
LW: …Ibsen’s play”

DS: My first idea…
HELEN: Oh absolutely. I think its very important to remember one of her first loves was acting. I think she would’ve loved being on the stage and I think that she was to some degree playing a part. But if you think about it, it’s because there were no role models in real life. There were women in fiction who were strong and clever and influential. But there were very few in actual life. So she had to write a role for herself and then fill it… But I never discussed it with her. I think that the whole idea of her taking on the name of a character from a play was quite intriguing. She was a very dramatic person. She tended to rewrite her own personal history. I think it had a lot to do with that and I think my father and my mother almost ignored it – she was Aunt Cissy to us and that was that… But especially after I started becoming a writer myself… I liked her as Rebecca and I called her Aunt Rebecca and I think she liked that actually. DUR: 1’15”

ANNE: My name is Anne Bobby and I’m the actress portraying Rebecca West in the play “Rebeca West Remembers” as well as one of the co-writers… I first heard of Rebecca West, actually, through Helen McCleod - who is a friend of Paul Lucas and I’m also a friend of Paul Lucas – Paul and I did theatre together – summer stock when we were very young – and Helen used to live in the same building as Paul and eventually he put the three of us together in one room and Paul said “Oh, Helen is Rebecca West’s great-niece.” And I went, okay, I don’t know who Rebecca West is but – but Helen started telling me about her and I started to look her up on the Internet and I started to read about her life and read Carl Rolysson’s excellent biography of Rebecca West. -And I got extremely drawn to this character, this woman. The idea of playing her didn’t really occur to me until Helen’s father Norman, who was Rebecca’s nephew, came to visit Helen for a time and over a dinner he said, “You know, you should really play Rebecca.” And I was like – Oh, Really? (laugh) and that’s how it all started. . DUR: 1’30”

SOUND: from the play 21.15-21.45 DUR: 30”
TBA – editing it a bit…

DS: How important was H.G. Wells…
HELEN: …I think he was enormously important to her development. I think that the fact that she could hook someone of that calibre. I mean, he really was a huge star. And the idea that she at 20, at 19 could be so fascinating and attractive and intellectually powerful to take on somebody like that – more or less as an equal certainly on an intellectual basis – I think that must’ve had a big impact on her. It must’ve given her enormous confidence and momentum. But then on the other hand, of course, he drove her nuts! And was responsible for her not having the early literary career or early recognition that she could and should have had if she’d stayed in London. And that’s why when she got rid of him and went to America it was a huge unleashing of energy and power. DUR: 1’10”

READING: letters to H.G. Wells DUR: 2’00”
FW: “Dear H.G…
LW: …Yours, Rebecca.”

ANNE: She is truly ahead of her time as a feminist, even then she had such a deep – well, one of her most famous lines is “I’ve yet to figure out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I seem to express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.” And, um… She was well aware of the fact that feminists were headed for an uphill battle and look at what’s happening in the world. That battle is – I don’t know what the female version of Sisyphus would be but that is the feminist struggle. And at the same time she could be so bitterly dismissive of women, you know – comparing American women – “There were very few good-looking women my age. Almost every woman not theatrical who spoke to me wore an untidily arranged hairnet dragging across her forehead.” Oh, oh, yes- “Their complete and utter lack of sex attraction was simply terrifying.” Owh! Hey! Aren’t we all in this together? Come on... But she did not suffer fools gladly and she had no patience with anyone who would try and rest on their laurels. What a feminist! (laugh)
HELEN: She was a very intimidating person and she had been quite unkind to my older brother and sister. So by the time I was sort of thrown into the moor – we used to be taken for visits to her flat in Knightsbridge – and it was a very intimidating “Oh my god we’re going to see Aunt Rebecca.” But when I turned about 15, she and I had a very great conversation about - I’d just got my nose pierced – and she was just hilarious about it and said it didn’t go with my demure haircut and should get a different haircut or whatever… So we ended up being able to talk about a lot of things. She would tell me funny stories – like she told me the story about Chaplin, breaking into the Central Park boathouse and nearly being arrested- that’s how come it’s in the play…
ANNE: When I heard about Rebecca West’s incredible power of attraction to some of the really great personas of the day, it really didn’t surprise me that much. I think that at the time, a woman of her intelligence, a woman of her incredible charisma – I mean, a charisma comes through in her photographs even now. I think that was very exotic still too – it was the beginning of the film industry. Actresses were scandalous and here was this incredibly composed, highly intelligent woman taking her first tour of America, hot on the heels of her gossip, you know – “H.G. Wells’ mistress is coming to America. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” I think that men were just so drawn to her. I mean, Alex Wolcott and the Algonquin Round Table, Paul Robson, Charlie Chaplin – it makes perfect sense to me. It really does. I’d like to go even further into that and – oh, the Barrymores – and who else? But no, it doesn’t surprise me. She was a force…
. TOTAL DUR: 3’55”

SOUND: from the play 105.30-106.30 DUR: 1’00”

HELEN: …I think she was deeply concerned about the way the world is and was. And she had a huge capacity for moral outrage which she would then use her powers to unleash her opinions about things. And I think she probably did change a few things. I think that she was instrumental in perhaps getting some people to see that Stalin, for instance, was a mass murderer and a bad thing. And I think it started early with her – just seeing this fundamental unfairness of women being disenfranchised. I think that taught her early to see that there were things that were wrong and then they could change and that we have the power to change things through writing. And I think she really made that her business. And the Yugoslavia book is an amazing book. It’s often been described as one of the most important books of the 20th century. And I think the reason for that is that she is so good at analysing the causes of mass sources of human unhappiness – this love of ugliness, this divided self where half of us loves pleasure and half of us wants to be involved in catastrophes. Why would we want that and she has a lot to say about that being the case and needing to watch out for it and watch out for its consequences. DUR: 1’25”

READING: from “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon” DUR: 3’00”
FW: “In Macedonia…
LW: …of any good thing.”

DS: What was she looking for…
HELEN: I think she was looking for some understanding about conflict and the shape of history. And I think she did find some of it. She like the Serbs because they all reminded her of her father. So to some degree I think she was looking for her father – looking for a kind of romantic Ideal. But I do think she found something very profound there. I think she basically had a love affair with the whole country from which both of them benefited… It’s difficult to say what she was after – understanding, insight, even in the smallest details – just finding clues to piece it all together.
DS: How do you piece together an extraordinary life of ninety years like this into an hour and a half?
HELEN: The answer to that question is – we haven’t. (laugh) It’s very difficult but what we’ve allowed ourselves to do is to be in that state where we admit that it is impossible precisely because she was such an extraordinary person and was so diverse in her talents. She was a critic and a novelist and a letter writer and a lecturer – all sorts of different things - and the subject matter she covered were very wide ranging and her relationships were incredibly chaotic and all over the place – DUR: 1’45”

SOUND: from the play 115.15-115.40 DUR: 30”

HELEN: She never talked about Anthony to me and she preferred not to talk about him at all. They were completely estranged for at least the last twenty years of her life. And my father was one of the last people to see her compos mentis – she had a stroke and took about three months to die – but he say her the last time she was actually speaking and the last words he ever heard her say were, “Oh that dreadful, dreadful boy.” It just ate her up. It was the catastrophe of her life. It was such a shame. And we tried to give some sense of that in the play but it’s – it’s some thing we’d like to emphasise – the fact that she could be so insightful in human emotions and human dealings with each other and yet, not be able to figure out how to have any kind of good relationship with her own son. It’s very sad…
DS: In your own career…
HELEN: No, she’s a great role model because she had a wonderful capacity to range across a wide range of subjects and weave them all together. That’s something I’m very interested in, so I find her inspirational – particularly her non-fiction… She also tried to discourage me from studying English literature at university because she said it wouldn’t be a good idea if I wanted to be a writer. But I defied her and went anyway – so – But she was always extremely entertaining and very strident; and I think she had a brain the size of a planet and she could look at things from a very commanding point of view that people with lesser brains can’t. And so I often invoke her when I’m writing my journalism or other non-fiction in particular, trying to get that kind of clarity and appetite for analysing things.
DS: What has becoming Rebecca West…
ANNE: I see playing Rebecca West as a tremendous honor and I learn from her every day. She has forever changed the way I look at men and women. I think that the thing I carry with me the most is just how important it is to persevere with your ideas and your goals, your work, your dreams – no one’s gonna kick open the door and spread out the welcome mat. You’ve got to break the door down more often than not – as she did. I am very aware of how we in this century still face a lot of adversity as far as creativity and vision are concerned – and I find that she is an invaluable individual to apply the experience to. Her life is a lesson that anyone, everyone could benefit from
DS: Not thinking… What today?
HELEN: I think she’d be ripping the intestines out of George Bush in the press. I think she would be giving Tony Blair hell. I think she would be telling it like it is and would be very entertaining at the same time. She probably would have rap stars coming around for lunch and be going off and making documentaries or whatever. I think she was a woman way ahead of her time. And I miss her being around now to comment on what’s going on because I think she’d have a lot of very insightful things to say about it. TOTAL DUR: 4’30”

SOUND: from end of play 27.15-29.00 DUR: 1’45”

APPLAUSE

OUTRO: “Becoming Rebecca West” featured writer Helen McLeod and actress Anne Bobby. Special thanks to Paul Lucas, producer of “Rebecca West Remembers” and Xaviera Hollander who brought the production to the Netherlands. The program was produced by David Swatling, with sound engineer Rob Heerschop. Vox Humana is a Radio Netherlands presentation.

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