In one of George Eliot's Scenes from Clerical Life a lady addicted to reading tracts skims rapidly over references to Zion or the River of Life, but has her attention immediately caught by any mention of 'pony' or 'boots and shoes'. A reader of modern biographies can see why. The best things in them are usually the facts, the objects, the unexplained and inexplicable things that cluttered up the lives of the august and famous, as they do everybody else's, and now find a place in the story. The greasy trilby hat Ford Madox Ford put to dry in Jessie Conrad's oven, provoking the only outburst of wrath ever seen on the part of that placid lady; the 'good sandwiches' which the soon-to-be-cast-off Hadley Hemingway promised to make for her husband's outing to the races at Longchamps; 'black-eyed Susan', the New Mexican cow beloved by D.H. Lawrence: these are the things that stay in the mind when diagnoses and depreciations are forgotten.

LRB 26 September 1991 | PDF Download