This Much Is True

When I first arrived at Cambridge, my Exhibition to Newnham College was for Anglo-Saxon. About three weeks into my first term, I realised that Anglo-Saxon was not a language anybody spoke. I thought, ‘What am I doing here? What the hell am I doing reading Anglo Saxon? That’s bollocks. I want to communicate with people.’ I don’t even know why I’d plumped for it in the first place. I think I imagined it was special and different, whereas English seemed a rather predictable subject, but I was wrong. I went to see Dorothy Whitelock. I asked if I could change. Professor Whitelock was very understanding. The college authorities even allowed me to keep my Exhibition — and my long superior gown, the outward manifestation of my award.

So I switched course and I never regretted changing. I was, however, surprised by the level of academic vituperation that the academics had for each other. I was always a Leavisite: Dr Frank Leavis and his wife, Queenie Leavis (who was Jewish, by the way), embodied the intellectual fulcrum of Cambridge for me, but they were loathed by most of their colleagues.

Lady Lee, the wife of the Master of Corpus Christi and mother of my great friend Susan, gave a party for the Faculty; and when the Leavises walked into the room, everyone else walked out. It was a demonstration of hostility and contempt the like of which I’ve never heard. That was the sort of thing that could happen at Cambridge, especially in the English department, which was riven with bitterness, recrimination and back-stabbing.

I don’t know why people felt such animosity to Dr Leavis, although he was caustic. He would make cutting remarks about the Master of St Catherine’s College, Brigadier Tom Henn, who was very much an army man. He’d seen active duty during the war, and used to give his lectures with a swagger stick under his arm. He would point it at the blackboard and say, ‘Today we’re on the Symbolists,’ and strike the board with a resounding thwack. He and Leavis sniped at each other in their lectures. Leavis was wittier: the hall was always packed when he gave his lectures. He spoke with a curious, slightly dying cadence to his sentences — the opposite of theatrical, but in its very opposition to theatricality, it was unbelievably dramatic. He fascinated me. It was when I was listening to Dr Leavis that I felt I was drinking in knowledge, that I was with the best people, that I had fulfilled my mother’s dream.

It was a heady time; I loved the Leavises: I think they knew it, because they were always extremely nice to me. Queenie gave me a photograph of them together, captioned ‘Creative Quarrelling’. Dr Leavis had been her tutor. They had met when he was a young academic and she was his student, and they fell in love and got married. Of course, her family was against the union because he wasn’t Jewish, and his family were against it because she was. They were used to opposition from the very beginning, therefore, and were never defeated by it.

My new supervisor, Jean Gooder, head of English at Newnham, who is still alive, said that when I came up for my entrance exam, the marks I got were Alpha Gamma, which are unusual marks, because they’re both the top and the bottom mark. I think it means they weren’t quite sure whether I was going to be very clever or very stupid. I am never quite sure myself!

Jean Gooder was a Leavisite too, so she managed to get Queenie to tutor our year: not everybody had that pleasure. We used to go to their house in Bulstrode Gardens, and she would not only teach us, but she also cooked for us: at the end of every term, there was always a wonderful array of goodies to eat at teatime. As well as being a renowned academic, Queenie Leavis was also a Jewish housewife and, accordingly, the most fantastic baker. She fed us scones and strudel and cheesecake.

All in all, the Leavises had a profound effect on me. They taught me that literature has a crucial moral dimension, and I believe that too. I wasn’t just a theatrical butterfly: I did concentrate on certain aspects of my work, but I have to admit I didn’t spend hours in the university library, because, more often than not, I was rehearsing: in my three years at Newnham, I took part in twenty productions. But I’m a more serious person than people give me credit for — I’m not just a funny little bundle. In fact, quite recently Jean Gooder sent me Queenie’s critique of me as a student and I was gratified to discover it was extremely positive.