Not for Burning

LETTERS TO A FRIEND (382 pp.)--Rose Macau/a/--Atheneum ($5).

Rose Macaulay died in 1958 at the age of 77, one of Britain's most distinguished ladies of letters, with some three dozen sharp, perceptive books to her credit. A Dame Commander of the British Empire, she was a witty, brittle bird of a woman who spread panic in the streets with her ancient auto, regularly bicycled down to bathe in London's Serpentine when she was in her 70s, and published a satirical bestseller (The Towers of Trebizond) when she was 75.

She never married. But in 1917, when she was 36 and had written eight novels whose leading characters had a somewhat sexless quality and a tendency to first names that were appropriate to either man or woman. Rose Macaulay fell in love with a married man. Their affair continued some 20 years, until his death; but only her immediate family and a few intimate friends knew of it until the publication of these letters.

Long Adultery. The letters were written to an Anglican priest stationed near Boston, Mass., who had known her slightly many years before and had written her in 1950 to say he liked one of her books.

In the exchange of letters that followed (they never again met), the Rev. John Hamilton Cowper Johnson of the order known as the Cowley Fathers helped her return to the sacraments of the Church of England, from which her conscience had kept her during her long adultery. Though she asked, and expected, that the letters be destroyed, here they all are, from 1950 to 1952 (another volume is to come), edited and with an introduction by her third cousin, Constance Babington-Smith. Numerous notable literary lights were scandalized when Letters to a Friend was published in England last October. Said Author Rebecca West: "It made me want to vomit." But according to Editor Babington-Smith, Father Johnson and Rose Macaulay's spinster sister, Jean, felt that the letters might be "of inestimable value and help to many."

Late Regret. It is difficult to see how. Their religious element is mostly discussion of erudite Anglican minutiae and spiritual snobbisms that are more likely to chill the unconverted than warm them. They are loaded with off-the-cuff comments that Rose Macaulay herself would have been distressed to see in print. And it is doubtful that many sinners will be changed by her moving repentance of her life's love: "I told you once that I couldn't really regret the past. But now I do regret it, very much . . . Not all the long years of happiness together, of love and friendship and almost perfect companionship (in spite of its background) was worth while, it cost too much, to us and to other people. I didn't know that before, but I do now. And he had no life after it to be different in, and I have lived the greater part of mine. If only I had refused and gone on refusing."

"Letters should be burned," she once told a friend. And the last of these garrulous, amusing, crotchety, churchy letters to Father Johnson ends: "I'm glad you like to have my letters. Really 100? I think you'd better get rid of them, of any you have kept, in that incinerator! I own I have kept yours . . . but I will burn them before I die; they're not for other people to see."

In accordance with her wish, Father Johnson's letters to her were destroyed.

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