Introspect

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN MIDDLETON MURRY--Julian Messner ($3).

Like Kipling's Tomlinson, turned back at Heaven's portals and Hell gate because he was "neither spirit nor spirk," John Middleton Murry floats in a half-world of his own. Most derided, most vilified man of letters in contemporary England, his respectable reputation as a critic has been overshadowed by his notoriety as a candid friend. His enemies cannot forgive him for having been the husband-of the late Katherine Mansfield, the intimate friend of the late D. H. Lawrence, and making literary capital out of both relationships. Much of his recent writing they have found unpleasantly autobiographical; last week they could take a look at his nakedest appearance yet. If an unbiased jury of readers could have been found to report on Murry's Autobiography and if they had managed to agree on a verdict, it might well have been: guilty of Mediocrity in the second degree, with a recommendation of clemency.

Franker than most autobiographers since Rousseau, Murry makes no bones about revealing some unflattering facts, but his candor often leaves a disingenuous impression. Born in a London suburb in 1889, of poor but respectable parents, he was early made to feel the young hopeful. He won a scholarship to a public school (Christ's Hospital) where he learned to be ashamed of his background. He sums up his youthful self as "part snob, part coward, part sentimentalist ... an unattractive personality." But he went up to Oxford with a reputation as a bright lad. His chances for a first-class degree went glimmering when, vacationing in Paris, he fell in love with a French cocotte. He spent two vacations with her, let her lure him into an engagement, then ran away. In Paris he also got the idea of starting a literary magazine called Rhythm, went back to London and started it. There he fell under the spell of blustering Frank Harris, worshipped him as a hero until he found he was a plagiarist. When he tried to salve his sore emotions by going on a bender, came back with a case of gonorrhea, Murry felt he had touched bottom.

Then he met Katherine Mansfield. She sent a story to Rhythm, he wrote her, they met. They took to each other at first sight. She rented him a room in her apartment, but for a while their relations were purely platonic. When they became lovers they wanted to get married, but for six years her husband would not give her a divorce. Murry felt inferior to Katherine Mansfield, but he did not consider her a genius. (Once, though, he wrote her: "I know this, too, that you and I are geniuses.") Only two real geniuses he has ever met, he says, were Sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and D. H. Lawrence. Gaudier was for a time a close friend, then became a bitter enemy. Because of his threatening letters Murry went in fear of his life, hardly ventured out. Once Gaudier burst into his room, slapped his face. Murry did nothing at the time, "had a good cry" afterwards and felt better.

Katherine and Murry had a hard time supporting themselves, let alone Rhythm, but they struggled along somehow, cheated by landlords, threatened with bankruptcy proceedings by printers. Says Murry: "By reason of their unremitting vicissitudes, the Murry-Mansfields were in danger of becoming a standing joke." An added complication was their intimacy with D. H. and Frieda Lawrence, who were exciting but impossible to live with. Once Katherine left Murry for another man with whom she thought she was in love. Murry says he was not jealous, knew she would come back. She did, but their good days together were over. Murry was exempt from conscription because of his physical condition, but he got a job at the War Office, and much of the time he and Katherine lived apart. Finally they were able to marry. Then Katherine had her first lung hemorrhage, and their gloomy reality darkened into a nightmare. Murry gave up hope of life, took refuge in "the world of vision."

At this point Murry stops his Autobiography. He does not tell of Katherine's last days, her death at the Gurdjieff Institute at Fontainebleau, his remarriage and subsequent vicissitudes. Two names that loomed large in Katherine Mansfield's life --the late Alfred Richard Orage and George Gurdjieff--he never mentions. Though he keeps picking away at the puzzle of his own personality through 496 pages, he never solves it. He admits his unpopularity: "There is more than one portrait of myself lurking in the pages of contemporary literature. . . . All alike are hostile: which is significant. . . . The main question among my acquaintances has been whether it is a respectable big devil that inhabits me, or a little mean one." His only answer to the question is to shrug his other cheek.

Readers may find a clue to Murry in his own remarks on Rousseau's Confessions: "JeanJacques can hardly be called detestable, yet he is certainly not likeable. And it is hard to say why. . " . There is something in it which is at bottom revolting. He is totally without some hard aristocratic stuff which is necessary to the ideal composition."

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