Cyril Connolly - Beginning of Literary Career

Beginning of Literary Career

In August 1926 Connolly met Desmond MacCarthy, who had come to stay at "Big Chilling". MacCarthy was literary editor of the New Statesman and was to be another major influence on Connolly's development. MacCarthy invited Connolly to write book reviews for the New Statesman. Later that year Connolly made a trip to Budapest and Eastern Europe and then spent the winter of 1926/1927 in London. Pearsall Smith took Connolly with him to Spain in the spring, and Connolly then set off on his own to North Africa and Italy. They met up again in Florence, where Kenneth Clark was working with Bernard Berenson who had married Pearson Smith's sister. Connolly then departed for Sicily and then returned to England via Vienna, Prague and Dresden. Connolly's first signed work in New Statesman, a review of Lawrence Sterne, appeared in June 1927. In July he set off to Normandy with his mother and then for his last stay at the chalet in the Alps. In August 1927, he was invited to become a regular reviewer and joined the staff of the New Statesman. His first review in September was of The Hotel by Elizabeth Bowen. Also in September, Connolly moved into a flat at Yeoman's Row with Patrick Balfour. He was working on various works that never saw the light of day – a novel Green Endings, a travel book on Spain, his diary and A Partial Guide to the Balkans. He approached Cecil Beaton to draw the cover design for the last and he received an advance for the work although it was eventually lost. However, he did start contributing pieces to various publications that appeared under his own name and various pen-names. At this time he developed a fascination with low-life and prostitution and spent time in the poorer parts of London seeking them out (while other contemporaries were seeking out tramps). At the same time he had developed an infatuation with Alix Kilroy whom he had met on a train back from the continent and used to wait outside her office for a sight of her. He then made a more positive romantic approach to Racy Fisher, one of a pair of nieces of Desmond MacCarthy's wife Molly. However, their father Admiral Fisher wanted them to have nothing to do with a penniless writer and in February 1928 forbade further contact.

Sharing a flat with Balfour, Connolly's social circle expanded with new friends like Bob Boothby and Gladwyn Jebb. However he was ill at ease and set off for Paris in April 1928 where he met Pearsall Smith and Cecil Beaton and visited brothels posing as a journalist. He went on to Italy where he stayed with Berenson and Mrs Keppel where he was taken with her daughter Violet Trefusis. Then via Venice and East European cities he made his way to Berlin to meet up with Jebb. Jebb and Connolly stayed with Harold Nicolson in the company of Ivor Novello and Christopher Sykes and then made a tour of Germany. Connolly returned to Paris in May, borrowing money off Pearsall Smith so he could live cheaply in the rue Delambre. In Paris he met Mara Andrews, a poetic lesbian who was in love with an absent American girl called Jean Bakewell. On the way back to London, Connolly stayed with Nicolson and his wife Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst. In August Connolly set off on his travels again to Germany, this time with Bobbie Longden and Raymond Mortimer and the experience gave rise to the essay "Conversations in Berlin" which MacCarthy published in his new magazine Life and Letters. Connolly travelled separately to Villefranche and spent five weeks in Barcelona with Longden before returning to London. Boothby lent him his London flat and he shared Gerald Brenan's fascination with working-class prostitutes with experiences that appeared in his fragment for a novel The English Malady. He spent Christmas at Sledmere with the Sykes family.

At the beginning of 1929 Connolly went briefly to Paris and just before returning to London met Jean Bakewell and stayed an extra night to get to know her. After a while he was drawn to Paris again and through Jean and Mara became acquainted with the bohemian Montparnasse set including Alfred Perles and Gregor Michonze who was to become the basis for Racasse in The Rock Pool. He also met James Joyce about whom he wrote The Position of Joyce which appeared in Life and Letters. Connolly and Bakewell went to Spain together where they met up with Peter Quennell. Connolly then went to Berlin to stay with Nicolson until the latter managed to remove him as "not perhaps the ideal guest" Unable to return to "Big Chilling", he was stuck in Berlin for a month before returning to London. John Betjeman had moved into his room at Yeoman's Row, so he went to stay with Enid Bagnold at Rottingdean before visiting Dorset with Quennell. Bakewell had returned to America in the summer and was planning to return to Paris in the autumn to start a course at the Sorbonne. She had agreed before her departure to marry Connolly and Connolly established himself in Paris in September. They spent most of the rest of the year in Paris, and started their collection of exotic pets – first ferrets and then lemurs. Connolly spent Christmas again at Sledmere.