Book Review: Sydney And Violet, The Wall Street Journal

Wow, this is exceptional. I generally don't do this, but it's so nice to see. Awhile back I read the book and posted some notes on Sydney and Violet, by Stephen Klaidman, and provided a nice (?) review over at Amazon.com.

Today, this is one of the featured reviews in The Wall Street Journal.

There is no entry for Sydney Schiff in the Oxford Companion to English Literature; none either for his wife, Violet. Her elder sister, though, is remembered: Ada Leverson, author of half a dozen witty novels and the woman who bravely gave hospitality to Oscar Wilde between his trials and welcomed him when he was released from prison.

Yet the Schiffs were prominent figures in the London literary world between the wars, and Sydney's novels were well regarded in their time. The couple were friends of Marcel Proust, and, as Stephen Hudson, Sydney translated the last volume of "Remembrance of Things Past" into English. They also hosted the famous dinner in May 1922, at the Majestic Hotel in Paris, that marked the only meeting between Proust and James Joyce.

Reports of the conversation between the two are various, and all unreliable. But, according to Ford Madox Ford's fanciful version, they found common ground only in discussing their ailments.

It says something for the Schiffs' standing that they were able to organize such an occasion—other guests included Diaghilev, Stravinsky and Picasso. So who were they?

Both were rich. Both belonged to the Jewish haute bourgeoisie that had settled in London in the 19th century. Sydney (1868-1944) had known an aimless and unsatisfying life till he was 40, having been dispatched to America in 1887 after he refused to join the family merchant bank, failing to make good there and contracting an unhappy marriage to a woman who came soon to despise him and then cuckolded him. "I think I was born to be solitary," he wrote. Meeting Violet Beddington (1874-1962) in 1909 saved him from this fate. She was old to be still unmarried, but intelligent, musical and well read.

They seem to have fallen in love almost at once, but Violet insisted that they should not see each other till he had secured a divorce.  

I found it a very, very fascinating book. Highly recommend it for folks who are interested in this sort of thing.