BOOKS / Alun Lewis

IN his article on Alun Lewis (27 Feb 1994), William Scammell makes assumptions about the poet and myself which are incorrect. Such half-truths, when describing the extreme despair from which Alun Lewis suffered, make an understanding of his work less profound, even invalid. As the woman with whom he fell in love, as the wife in a marriage about which Mr Scammell knows nothing, I am anxious to correct these misconceptions. Mr Scammell writes: 'She was a striking blonde, slightly older than him, with two children and a secure but unexciting marriage . . .' I hope I can correct this harsh impression by quoting Alun himself: 'Oh Frieda, Frieda . . . your dark hair and your gold'. (I had tawny hair.) Mr Scammell is equally wrong in assuming that my marriage was unexciting. It was far more exciting than my love affair with Alun Lewis. That was tragic, beautiful. 'And we've known the end all the time, the joy that ends in loss,' he wrote before he died. We were in each other's company for less than a fortnight: eight days in the Nilgiris where he visited us, and four in Bombay. Our intimate understanding of each other came mainly from our constant letters. There was in me a tender love for him, in him an obsessional love which drove him to despair. But I loved my husband and was proud of him. And there is no mystery about Alun Lewis's death. He committed suicide. He was a depressive. He wrote that he felt no guilt about his love for me, but he felt anguish at the hurt to his wife. This, his ill-health and his hatred of war induced his last deep depression. Death was always on his mind. He talked about it, wrote of it: sometimes with loathing, other times with something like joy. There is no mystery.