Alison Joyce Waley - Robinson

As a teen, Alison had a regular kids column in the Evening Post, the evening newspaper in Wellington, NZ. Later she became a published poet, story teller and author.

http://neglectedbooks.com/?p=3093

A Half of Two Lives - A Personal Memoir:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/alison-waley/a-half-of-t...

Bloomsbury gothic: in the feverish, episodic style of a poetic romantic fable, Waley (b. 1901) tells of her obsessive 40-year love for scholar/translator Arthur Waley--a love thwarted (but never extinguished) by Waley's inextricable attachment to companion Beryl de Zoete. They meet by chance in 1929, in a restaurant. It's love at first sight: ""an enchantment seems to have descended. Time stands still."" But though they have everything in common, mutual passion abounding, Arthur says: ""You must never come here again. There is a lady in Fez."" The lady, of course, is Beryl--and Alison must give way upon her return. So she marries somebody else, has a son, there are brief, glancing encounters through the Thirties. (""Arthur turns and dives down the dark and squalid stair."") Yet, by 1943, Alison has separated from her husband--and for the next 20 years she and Arthur will be lovers whenever possible (""he drew me to him: crushed kisses upon me, murmured 'Love me. Love me now. Now' ""). . . while Beryl is always a witch-like, possessive, jealous figure in the background, especially when she becomes increasingly ill and unstable (Huntington's chorea) through the Fifties. Does Arthur love Beryl more than he loves Alison? ""Love her? I am terrified of her!"" Nonetheless, he will never leave her side--and Alison will accept the situation, even trying to share Arthur's devotion to Beryl. And when Beryl at last dies in 1962, the aged lovers (Arthur now in his 70s) will be together--sharing a house (after still more fussing) and marrying one month before Waley's death.

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/04/24/books/becoming-mrs-arthur-waley.html

BECOMING MRS. ARTHUR WALEY

By Humphrey Carpenter; Humphrey Carpenter is the author of lives of W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.

Published: April 24, 1983

A Half of Two Lives By Alison Waley Illustrated, 326 pp, New York: McGraw-hill Book Co $16.95

There are many kinds of biography, and this is none of them. It is, rather, an intensely emotional narrative written over 37 years about a love affair that lasted that long.

In 1929 a New Zealand girl in her late 20's, Alison Grant, came to London on a visit. She quickly sold the return half of her ticket, began to scrape a kind of living by reading manuscripts for publishers and found herself a home in a garret opposite the British Museum. One day she was sitting at a Soho pavement care table when a jet of steam from some subterranean outlet soaked her thin white dress - one of many scarcely credible incidents in this strange book - and this incident attracted the attention and sympathetic protection of a handsome but grimy gentleman who quickly became the major figure in her life. Though a relationship of considerable intimacy (emotional, if not physical) quickly ripened, she somehow avoided discovering his name. A few weeks later at a gathering of some literary group, she declared that the person she most wanted to meet in London was Arthur Waley, the celebrated translator of Oriental poetry. Came the reply: "Well, You do live in his pocket."

Yes, Waley was her adorable grimy gentleman, and this was the beginning of a passionate affair that was both tortured and tortuous, extraordinary even by the standards of the London district they chiefly inhabited, Bloomsbury.

Arthur adored Alison, or at least said he did, but there was Another Woman, his wife in all but name. This was Beryl de Zoete, an anthropologist of striking appearance ("the strangest creature...a sort of effigy of Pochantas...The thin-beaked profile of a bird of prey"). Beryl had some curious sexual enthusiasms; at the time of Alison's arrival on the scene, for instance, she was having an affair with three men in Fez, though actual sex apparently played very little part in her goings-on. Her grip on Arthur was complete - one is reminded of Laura Riding's power over Robert Graves in the 1930's - and she had no intention of allowing Alison, more than 20 years her junior, to take her place. (Beryl was 10 years older than Arthur, who in turn, was 12 years older than Alison.) She was prepared to let Arthur out on the leash for short periods but would then give a sharp tug and haul him back again, leaving Alison loverless until the next time.

Consequently, there were long stretches in Alison's life that could not be spent in Arthur's arms, and she occupied them in such ways as marrying another man, having a baby and living in a series of charmingly tumble down tall Bloomsbury houses. Sometimes too, she would rush madly round Europe in the vague hope of finding Arthur. The moment Arthur reappeared, husband and baby took second place as she flew once again into his arms:

"On a long breath, he drew me to him: crushed kisses upon me, murmured 'Love me. Love me now. Now.'

"We lay a long time."

"The sun sank low in the forest."

There must be dozens of such moments in the book. Lots of them are in the present tense - "Suddenly, swiftly, he turns to me, grasping the ropes of her hair, and kisses me wildly" - and the effect, to be candid, is all too reminiscent of pulp romantic fiction. It would, indeed, be an indigestible confection if the book were not saved by Bloomsbury.

Alison was not a true Bloomsburyite. There is a revealing moment early in the book when she and Arthur are laughing happily in a garden in a Bloomsbury square: "The heads jerk up from books and papers. There is a movement on the garden seats as gear of many kinds is collected.... and presently the gate on the east side clicks as - one after another - the Stracheys go home."

Obviously Lytton & Company would have nothing to do with her. She was allowed to visit the John Hayward-T.S.Eliot menage, but great care was taken that she shouldn't actually speak to Eliot. She seems never to have set eyes on Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Yet the book, beneath its lush romantic coating, is imbued with the spirit of Bloomsbury. There is endless name dropping, or rather Christian-name-dropping, with footnotes to explain who everyone is. It is like being invited to a literary party where one is expected to know all the guests but the host keeps murmuring their names in one's ear just in case.

Hilary Spurling's introduction to "A Half of Two Lives" attempts to throw some objective light on the whole peculiar story and delicately suggests that not everything in it may be true. (Some of the stranger episodes...do not tally with other people's recollections.") Alison seems, indeed, to have had a touch of paranoia by the end; the later parts of the book ar full of sinister threats to her happiness with Arthur - a parachute lands on them in a field, someone throws a beer bottle at them in Venice, and she is menaced in an empty hotel restaurant by a male transvestite.

On the other hand, who can blame her if her perception was a little distorted by this time? Arthur and Beryl had kept her dancing as their puppet year after year, and even after Beryl's death Arthur kept blowing hot and cold - first he'd marry her, then he wouldn't. Eventually he decided to tie the knot but only when he knew he was dying of cancer of the spine, complicated by a nasty car accident. So Alison (whose own husband had long ago bowed out of her life) finally became Mrs Waley when Arthur was on his deathbed, and we now have this oddly endearing book. The author gives almost no impression of Arthur Waley as scholar and poet, but her story is a kind of mad, splendid poem in itself.

There is also plenty of background data available at www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast

Enter alison grant, alison waley or fairiel. Fairiel is the name she went under in the Evening Post's children's page on Saturdays. The page is headed 'The Fairy Ring' and that can also be entered. Take a look at the whole page display at the bottom of the window.