Olivia Manning - Marriage and Romania

Marriage and Romania

In July 1939, Walter Allen introduced Manning to the charming Marxist, R.D. "Reggie" Smith. Reggie was a large, energetic man, possessed of a constant desire for the company of others. The son of a Manchester toolmaker, he had studied at Birmingham University, where he had been coached by the left-wing poet Louis McNeice and founded the Birmingham Socialist Society. According to the British intelligence organisation MI5, Reggie had been recruited as a communist spy by Anthony Blunt on a visit to Cambridge University in 1938.

When he met Manning, Reggie was on leave from his British Council position as a lecturer in Romania. He had diligently prepared himself for the introduction to Manning by reading her works, and felt that her book The Wind Changes showed "signs of genius". He described Manning as a jolie laide, possessing lovely hair, hands, eyes and skin though an overlong nose, and fell in love at first sight. When he borrowed a half-crown from her on their first meeting, and repaid it the next day, he knew they would marry. Manning was less certain of the relationship, but Reggie quickly moved into her flat, proposing in bed a few weeks later. They were married at Marylebone Registry Office on 18 August 1939, with Stevie Smith and Louis McNeice as witnesses. The bridegroom, unconventionally and true to form, did not produce a ring for the ceremony. A few days after the wedding, the couple received word that Reggie had been recalled to Bucharest. They left within a matter of hours; Manning later wrote to Stevie Smith from Romania asking her to find out what had happened to their flat and to take care of her books while she was away. The couple travelled by train to Bucharest, arriving on 3 September 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany. Between the two world wars, Romania had looked to France to guarantee its security against German territorial aspirations. However, the impact of the Munich Agreement (1938), German-Soviet Nonagression Pact (1939), and the Fall of France (1940) increased German influence and control of the country, and included demands that Romania cede territory and resources. The couple's time in Bucharest coincided with the rise of fascist and totalitarian power within ostensibly neutral Romania, while war threatened from without, driving thousands of refugees within its borders.

The Smiths initially rented a flat, but later moved in with the diplomat Adam Watson, who was working with the British Legation. Those who knew Manning at the time described her as a shy, provincial girl who had little experience with other cultures. She was both dazzled and appalled by Romania. The café society, with its wit and gossip, appealed to her, but she was repelled by the peasantry and the aggressive, often mutilated, beggars. Her Romanian experiences were captured in the first two volumes of The Balkan Trilogy, The Great Fortune and The Spoilt City, considered one the most important literary treatments of Romania during the war. In her novels, Manning described Bucharest as being on the margins of European civilisation, "a strange, half-Oriental capital" that was "primitive, bug-ridden and brutal", whose citizens were peasants, whatever their wealth or status.

Manning spent her days writing; her main project was a book about Henry Morton Stanley and his search for Emin Pasha, but she also maintained an intimate correspondence with Stevie Smith, which was full of Bloomsbury gossip and intrigue. She undertook a dangerous journalistic assignment to interview former Romanian Prime Minister Iuliu Maniu in Cluj, Transylvania, at the time full of German military, and soon to transferred by Romania to Hungary as part of the August 1940 Second Vienna Award imposed by the Germans and Italians. Like many of her experiences, the interview was to be incorporated into a future work; others included her impromptu baptism of Reggie with cold tea because she feared being separated from him after death, and Reggie's production of a Shakespeare play, in which she was promised a prime role that was given to another.

Reggie was relentlessly gregarious, and throughout his life, his warmth, wit and friendliness earned him many friends and drinking companions. In contrast, Manning was reticent and uncomfortable in social settings, and remained in the background. She acted, in her own words, as a "camp-follower", trailing after Reggie as he went from bar to bar, often choosing to go home early and alone. While Manning remained faithful to Reggie during the war, their friend Ivor Porter was to report that Reggie had numerous affairs.

The approaching war and rise of fascism and the Iron Guard in Romania disconcerted and frightened Manning. The abdication of King Carol and the advance of the Germans in September 1940 increased her fears, and she repeatedly asked Reggie "But where will the Jews go?". Just before German troops entered Romania on 7 October at the invitation of the new dictator Ion Antonescu, Manning flew to Greece, followed a week later by Reggie.