The Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett

by Compton Mackenzie

Genres: General Fiction; Classics

Synopsis

With the spirited and unforgettable Sylvia Scarlett, a character acclaimed as being 'one of the few really great women in fiction', Compton Mackenzie brings us his very own Becky Sharp. Originally published in two volumes, this complete edition follows her fortunes from childhood and marriage, through her escape into prostitution and her later career as a singer and cabaret artiste, until at last she finds romance with Michael Fane. A tale weaved with Dickensian skill and humour in characterisation, THE ADVENTURES OF SYLVIA SCARLETT holds its place as one of the most vital and picaresque romances of the twentieth century.

Release date: November 22, 2012

Publisher: John Murray

Print pages: 687

Sample

Forword to New Edition

In April 1915 after finishing my novel Guy and Pauline I went to Gallipoli. Then in the autumn of that year I went to Athens and later to Syra in the Cyclades where I remained until September 1917. In the small hours of the blazing summer of 1916 I wrote a novel in twelve episodes called No Papers which was intended for serialisation in the United States to fulfil a contract entered into shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. The central figure of this story was the girl who appears in Sylvia Scarlett as Queenie Walters. When my house was shot to pieces and sacked by Boeotian Reservists brought into Athens by the anti-Venizelists to settle with their opponents, the manuscript of No Papers disappeared; it was probably supposed to be a document of value to the Intelligence of the pro-German party. Full compensation was paid by the Greek Government a couple of years later, and some of the incidents were used in Sylvia Scarlett. Apart from No Papers I wrote nothing from the moment I landed on the Peninsula until I left the Aegean two and a half years later except two or three dispatches from Gallipoli, innumerable Intelligence reports and about six thousand telegrams.

On my arrival back in London the Chief of the Secret Service wanted me to become his Number Two at Headquarters with the idea of succeeding him a year or two after the war. I told him my ambitions did not lie in that direction but that, although I was unwilling to work with him as his heir-presumptive, I would serve him as his vizier. I need not have worried. Twenty-four hours later he sent for me to say that on his announcing to his staff the proposed appointment he had received a round robin signed by all of them to let him know their desire to resign if it was made. Unlike the frogs in Aesop’s fable they did not want King Stork. So in the end I went to Capri on indefinite leave and full pay. The full pay of a Captain in the Royal Marines was not enough to maintain a villa in Capri and by now a long period of earning nothing from my own profession had swallowed up all my money. It was therefore imperative to write a novel.

A week after I got back, on November 3rd, 1917, St. Silvia’s Day, I sat down to begin Sylvia Scarlett.

I was extremely tired after the arduous and exciting time of building up an organization which started in October 1915 with £150 a month to cover all its expenses and which by September 1917 was requiring £12,000 a month and the services of over 40 officers, naval and military. This fatigue made me subject from time to time to the attacks of an acute neuralgia in the sciatic nerve. Looking back to those days, I am rather astonished now that I was able to write all but the last two and a half chapters by the middle of January 1918, when pain asserted itself and I was unable to finish the book until May. However, by January my publisher Martin Secker had decided that the shortage of paper would make it impossible to publish a novel of over 300,000 words and it was decided to publish the first two parts under the title The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett in the spring of 1918 and to wait until the following spring to publish the third part under the title Sylvia and Michael. So, in March 1918 the first volume duly appeared printed on a foul flaccid greenish paper. As I remember, 12,000 copies, all the available paper ran to, were sold within a week or two; and then the book was out of print for more than a year.

The reception by the critics was mixed. Those who liked the book were more than generous in their praise, but many of the old brigade were shocked by its apparent contempt for all the conventions that even as late as this still exercised their power. Undoubtedly it was a handicap to bring it out incomplete, and when in due course Sylvia and Michael was published all except a few critics were completely bewildered. This was the first novel affected by weariness and disgust of the war and most of the critics at that date had been left behind by the march of time; they still thought war should inspire lofty and romantic notions in a novelist’s mind. Moreover, they were suspicious of a writer who failed to live up to the label they had affixed to him. The fact that Sylvia Scarlett herself (whose name was suggested by a novel Stevenson never wrote to be called Sophia Scarlett) had already appeared in Sinister Street added to the puzzle of the changed style.

The explanation was simple enough. I had spent two years squeezing telegram after telegram I wrote into the fewest words possible and by now I was almost unable to use a single adjective or adverb of mere decoration. When every word costs nearly two shillings to send adjectives and adverbs do not stand a chance with the blue pencil. Furthermore I had read Stendhal and been bewitched by his theory of unnecessary decoration, and the demand that his characters should express so much of themselves in direct speech. Finally it was imperative to write Sylvia Scarlett as quickly as possible in order to relieve the financial situation for myself. I wrote and revised for twelve hours a day until I cracked after writing about 280,000 words in eighty days; the remaining 20,000 took me a hundred days.

To add to the difficulties I lacked writing paper, and the first part of the book was written on the back of the manuscript of Guy and Pauline. The typing was done by my wife, and as a tribute to the ribbons of those days it may be mentioned that the blue part of one ribbon on an old L. C. Smith No. 2 typewriter I had bought very cheaply in New York held out for half the manuscript. Later the red part of the same ribbon served D. H. Lawrence to type out for himself his Fantasia of the Unconscious. I can see him now like a caryatid bringing back that grand old typewriter on his head along the cliffs of Capri, a bottle of Benedictine in one hand to be opened in celebration.

I mentioned above the character of Queenie Walters; it will probably be obvious that she is a portrait and that some of the incidents I have used were based on real incidents in her strange life. On the other hand Sylvia Scarlett herself is entirely a creation of my own fancy, although some of her adventures in Russia and Roumania were related to me by a French woman from her own experience. The character of Mrs. Gainsborough was entirely my own invention, but about nine years after she had first appeared in Sinister Street I met her in the flesh. Mrs. O— looked like Mrs. Gainsborough, Mrs. O— dressed like Mrs. Gainsborough, and Mrs. O— talked like Mrs. Gainsborough. Nobody could have acquitted me of painting an exact portrait if I had happened to meet her before I wrote Sylvia Scarlett. This appearance in real life of an eccentric character evoked earlier from my own imagination has happened to me several times but most uncannily in the case of Mrs. Gainsborough.

D. H. Lawrence read Sylvia Scarlett when he was in Capri. ‘It’s so like life,’ he murmured in that high dreamy voice he used for his most benevolent mood. If Lawrence was right the book will still be readable. If he was wrong it will now be unreadable.

COMPTON MACKENZIE

I

 

 

The first complete memory of her father that Sylvia possessed was of following her mother out into the street on a clear moonlight night after rain and of seeing him seated in a puddle outside the house, singing an unintelligible song which he conducted with his umbrella. She remembered her mother’s calling to him sharply, and how at last after numerous shakings and many reproaches he had walked into the house on all fours, carrying the umbrella in his mouth like a dog. She remembered that the umbrella was somehow wrong at the end, different from any other umbrella she had ever seen, so that when it was put into the hall-stand it looked like a fat old market woman instead of the trim young lady it should have resembled. She remembered how she had called her mother’s attention to the loss of its feet and how her mother, having apparently realized for the first time her presence at the scene, had promptly hustled her upstairs to bed with so much roughness that she had cried.

When Sylvia was older and had become in a way her mother’s confidante, sitting opposite to her in the window to sew until it was no longer possible to save oil for the lamp, she ventured to recall this scene. Her mother had laughed at the remembrance of it and had begun to hum the song her father had snug:

 

La donna è mobile

La da-di la-di-da.

 

‘Shall I ever forget him?’ Madame Snow had cried. ‘It was the day your sister Elène was married, and he had been down to the railway-station to see them off to Bruxelles.’

Sylvia had asked what the words of the song meant, and had been told that they meant women were always running about.

‘Where?’ she had pressed.

‘Some of them after men and others running away from them,’ her mother had replied.

‘Shall I do that when I’m big?’ Sylvia had continued. ‘Which shall I do?’

But it had been time to fetch the lamp, and the question had remained unanswered.

Sylvia was five when her sister Elène was married; soon afterwards, Henriette married too. She remembered that very well, because Marie went to join Françoise in the other bedroom, and with only Marguerite and Valentine left, they no longer slept three in a bed. This association had often been very uncomfortable, because Marguerite would eat biscuits, the crumbs of which used to scratch her legs; and worse than the crumbs was the invariable quarrel between Marguerite and Valentine that always ended in their pinching one another across Sylvia, so that she often got pinched by mistake.

For several years Sylvia suffered from being the youngest of many sisters, and her mother’s favourite. When she went to school, she asked other girls if it were not nicer to have brothers, but the stories she heard about the behaviour of boys made her glad there were only girls in her house. She had practical experience of the ways of boys when at the age of eight she first took part in the annual féerie at the Lille theatre. On her first appearance she played a monster; though all the masks were very ugly, she, being the smallest performer, always got the ugliest, and with the progress of the season the one that was most knocked about. In after years these performances seemed like a nightmare of hot cardboard-scented breath, of being hustled down the stone stairs from the dressing-room, of noisy rough boys shouting and scrambling for the best masks, of her legs being pinched by invisible boys while she was waiting in the wings, and once of somebody’s twisting her mask right round as they made the famous entrance of the monsters, so that, being able to see nothing, she fell down and made all the audience laugh. Such were boys!

In contrast with scenes of discomfort and misery like these were the hours when she sat sewing with her mother in the quiet house. There would be long silences broken only by the sound of her mother’s hand searching for new thread or needle in the work-basket, of clocks, of kettle on the hob, or of distant street-cries. Then her mother would suddenly laugh to herself and begin a tale so interesting that Sylvia’s own needlework would lie idly on her knee, until she was reproved for laziness, and silence again enclosed the room. Sometimes the sunset would glow through the window-panes upon her mother’s work, and Sylvia would stare entranced at the great silken roses that slowly opened their petals for those swift fingers. Sometimes it would be a piece of lace that lay on her mother’s lap, lace that in the falling dusk became light and mysterious as a cloud. Yet even these tranquil hours had storms, as on the occasion when her mother had been working all day at a lace cap which had been promised without fail to somebody at the theatre who required it that night. At six o’clock she had risen with a sigh and given the cap to Sylvia to hold while she put on her things to take it down to the theatre. Sylvia had stood by the fire, dreaming over the beauty of the lace; and then without any warning the cap had fallen into the fire and in a moment was ashes. Sylvia wished she could have followed the cap when she saw her mother’s face of despair on realizing what had happened. It was then that for the first time she learnt how much depended upon her mother’s work; for during all that week, whenever she was sent out on an errand, she was told to buy only the half of everything, half the usual butter, half the usual sugar, and what was stranger still to go to shops outside the quartier, at which Madame Snow never dealt. When she enquired the reason of this, her mother asked her if she wanted all the quartier to know that they were poor and could afford to buy only half the usual amount that week.

Sylvia, when the first shame of her carelessness had died away, rather enjoyed these excursions to streets more remote, where amusing adventures were always possible. One Saturday afternoon in April, she set out with a more than usually keen sense of the discoveries and adventures that might befall her. The first discovery was a boy on a step-ladder, polishing a shop window; the second discovery was that she could stand on the kerb-stone and never once fail to spit home upon the newly polished glass. She did this about a dozen times, watching the saliva dribble down the pane and speculating with herself which driblet would make the longest journey. Regretfully she saw that the boy was preparing to descend and admire his handiwork, because two driblets were still progressing slowly downward, one of which had been her original fancy for the prize of endurance. As she turned to flee, she saw on the pavement at her feet a golden ten-franc piece; she picked it up and grasping it tightly in her hot little hand ran off, not forgetting, even in the excitement of her sudden wealth, to turn round at a safe distance and put out her tongue at the boy to mark her contempt for him, for the rest of his class, and for all their handiwork, especially that newly polished window-pane. Then she examined the gold piece and marvelled at it, thinking how it obliterated the memory of the mother-o’-pearl button that only the other day she had found on the dust-heap and lost a few hours afterwards.

It was a wonderful afternoon, an afternoon of unbridled acquisition, which began with six very rich cakes and ended with a case of needles for her mother that used up her last sou. Coming out of the needle shop, her arms full of packages, she met a regiment of soldiers marching and singing. The soldiers expressed her triumphant mood, and Sylvia marched with them, joining in their songs. She had a few cakes left and, being grateful to the soldiers, she handed them round among them, which earned her much applause from passers-by. When the regiment had arrived at the barracks and her particular friends had all kissed her farewell and there were no more bystanders to smile their approbation, Sylvia decided it would be wise to do the shopping for her mother. She had marched farther than she thought with the soldiers; it was nearly dusk when she reached the grocer’s where she was to buy the small quantity of sugar that was all that could be afforded this week. She made her purchase, and put her hand into the pocket of her pinafore for the money; the pocket was empty. Everything in the grocer’s shop seemed to be tumbling about her in a great and universal catastrophe. She searched feverishly again; there was a small hole; of course, her mother had given her a ten-franc piece, telling her to be very careful indeed of the change, which was wanted badly for the rent. She could not explain to the man what had happened and, leaving the packet on the counter, she rushed from the shop into the cruel twilight, choked by tearless sobs and tremors of apprehension. At first she thought of trying to find the shops where she had made her own purchases that she might recover such of the money as had not been eaten; but her nervous fears refused to let her mind work properly, and everything that had happened on this luckless afternoon seemed to have happened in a dream. It was already dark; all she could do was to run home, clutching the miserable toys to her heart and wondering if the needle-case could possibly allay a little, a very little of her mother’s anger.

Madame Snow began as soon as Sylvia entered the house by demanding what she had been doing to be so late in coming home. Sylvia stammered and was silent; stammered again and let fall all her parcels; then she burst into a flood of tears that voiced a despair more profound than she had ever known. When her mother at last extracted from Sylvia what had happened she too wept; and the pair of them sat filling the room with their sobs, until Henry Snow appeared upon the scene and asked if they had both gone mad.

His wife and daughter sobbed a violent negative. Henry stared at the floor littered with Sylvia’s numerous purchases, but found there no answer to the riddle. He moved across to Juliette and shook her, urging her not to become hysterical.

‘The last bit of money I had, and the rent due on Monday!’ she wailed.

‘Don’t you worry about money,’ said Henry importantly. ‘I’ve had a bit of luck at cards,’ and he offered his wife a note. Moreover, when he heard the reason for all this commotion of grief, he laughed, said it might have happened to anyone, congratulated Sylvia upon her choice of goods, declared it was time she began to study English seriously and vowed that he was the one to be her teacher, yes, by George, he was, and that to-morrow morning being Sunday they would make a start. Then he began to fondle his wife, which embarrassed Sylvia, but nevertheless because these caresses so plainly delighted her mother, they consoled her for the disaster. So she withdrew to a darker corner of the room and played with the doll she had bought, listening to the conversation between her parents.

‘Do you love me, Henri?’

‘Of course I love you.’

‘You know that I would sacrifice the world for you? I’ve given you everything. If you love me still, then you must love me for myself – myself alone, mon homme.’

‘Of course I do.’

‘But I’m growing old,’ protested Juliette. ‘There are others younger than I. Ah, Henri, amour de ma vie, I’m jealous even of the girls. I want them all out of the house. I hate them now, except ours – ours, ma poupée.’

Sylvia regarding her own doll could not help feeling that this was a most inappropriate name for her father; she wondered why her mother called him that and decided finally that it must be because he was shorter than she was. The evening begun so disastrously ended most cheerfully; when Françoise and Marie arrived back at midnight, they escaped even the mildest rebuke from their mother.

Sylvia’s father kept his promise about teaching her English, and she was granted the great pleasure of being admitted to his room every evening when he returned from work. This room until now had always been a Bluebeard’s chamber, not merely for Sylvia, but for everyone else in the house. To be sure Sylvia had sometimes, when supper was growing cold, peeped in to warn her father of fleeting time, but it had always been impressed upon her that in no circumstances was she to enter the room; though she had never beheld in those quick glimpses anything more exciting than her father sitting in his shirt-sleeves and reading in a tumble-down arm-chair, there had always been the sense of a secret. Now that she was made free of this apartment she perceived nothing behind the door but a bookcase fairly full of books, nothing indeed anywhere that seemed to merit concealment, unless it were some pictures of undressed ladies looking at themselves in a glass. Once she had an opportunity of opening one of the books and she was astonished, when her father came in and caught her, that he said nothing; she felt sure that her mother would have been very angry if she had seen her reading such a book. She had blushed when her father found her; when he said nothing and even laughed in a queer unpleasant sort of a way, she had blushed still more deeply. Yet whenever she had a chance, she read these books afterwards and henceforth regarded her father with an affectionate contempt that was often expressed too frankly to please her mother, who finally became so much irritated by it that she sent her away to Bruxelles to stay with Elène, her eldest married sister. Sylvia did not enjoy this visit much, because her brother-in-law was always making remarks about her personal appearance, comparing it most unfavourably with his wife’s. It seemed that Elène had recently won a prize for beauty at the Exposition, and though Sylvia would have been suitably proud of this family achievement in ordinary circumstances, this continual harping upon it to her own disadvantage made her wish that Elène had been ignobly defeated.

‘Strange her face should be so round and yours such a perfect oval,’ Elène’s husband would say. ‘And her lips are so thin and her eyes so much lighter than yours. She’s short too for her age. I don’t think she’ll ever be as tall as you. But of course everyone can’t be beautiful.’

‘Of course they can’t,’ Sylvia snapped. ‘If they could, Elène might not have won the prize so easily.’

‘She’s not a great beauty, but she has a tongue. And she’s smart,’ her brother-in-law concluded.

Sylvia used to wonder why everyone alluded to her tongue. Her mother had told her just before she was sent to Bruxelles that the priest had put too much salt on it when she was christened. She resolved to be silent in future; but this resolve reacted upon her nerves to such an extent that she wrote home to Lille and begged to be allowed to come back. There had been diplomacy in the way she had written to her father in English rather than to her mother in French. Such a step led her mother to suppose that she repented of criticizing her father; it also prevented her sister Elène from understanding the letter and perhaps writing home to suggest keeping her in Bruxelles. Sylvia was overjoyed at receiving an early reply from her mother bidding her come home, and sending stamps for her to buy a picture-postcard album, which would be much cheaper in Belgium; she was enjoined to buy one picture-postcard and put it in the album, so that the customs-officials should not charge duty.

Sylvia had heard a great deal of smuggling and was thrilled by the illegal transaction, which seemed to her the most exciting enterprise of her life. She said good-bye to Bruxelles without regret; clasping her album close, she waited anxiously for the train to start, thinking to herself that Elène only kept on putting her head into the carriage window to make stupid remarks, because the compartment was crowded and she hoped someone would recognize her as the winner of the beauty competition at the Bruxelles Exposition.

At last the train started; and Sylvia settled down to the prospect of crossing the frontier with contraband. She looked at all the people in the carriage, thinking to herself what dangers she would presently encounter. It was almost impossible not to tell them, as they sat there in the stuffy compartment, scattering crumbs everywhere with their lunches. Soon a pleasant woman in black engaged Sylvia in conversation by offering her an orange from a string-bag. It was very difficult to eat the orange and keep a tight hold of the album; in the end it fell on the floor, whereupon a fat old gentleman sitting opposite stooped over and picked it up for her. He had grunted so in making the effort that Sylvia felt she must reward him with more than thanks; she decided to divulge her secret and explain to him and the pleasant woman with the string-bag the history of the album. Sylvia was glad when all her other fellow-travellers paid attention to the tale, and she could point out that an album like this cost two francs fifty centimes in Lille, whereas in Bruxelles she had been able to buy it for two francs. Then, because everybody smiled so encouragingly, she unwrapped the album and showed the single picture-postcard, discoursing upon the ruse. Everybody congratulated her, and everybody told each other anecdotes about smuggling, until finally a tired and anxious-looking woman informed the company that she was at that very moment smuggling lace to the value of more than two thousand francs. Everybody warned her to be very careful, so strict were the customs-officials; but the anxious-looking woman explained that it was wrapped round her and that in any case she must take the risk, so much depended upon her ability to sell this lace at a handsome profit in France.

When the frontier was reached, Sylvia alighted with the rest of the travellers to pass through the customs, and with quickening heart she presented herself at the barrier, her album clutched tightly to her side. No, she had nothing to declare, and with a sigh of relief at escape from danger she watched her little valise safely chalked. When she passed through to take her seat in the train again, she saw a man whom she recognized as a traveller from her own compartment who had told several anecdotes about contraband. He was talking earnestly now to one of the officials at the barrier and pointing out the anxious woman, who was still waiting to pass through.

‘I tell you she has two thousand francs’ worth of lace wrapped round her. She admitted it in the train.’

Sylvia felt her legs give way beneath her when she heard this piece of treachery. She longed to cry out to the woman with the lace that she had been betrayed, but already she had turned deathly pale at the approach of the officials. They were beckoning her to follow them to a kind of cabin, and she was moving towards it hopelessly. It was dreadful to see a poor woman so treated, and Sylvia looked round to find the man who had been the cause of it, but he had vanished.

Half an hour afterwards, the woman of the lace wearily climbed into the compartment and took her seat with the rest; her eyes were red, and she was still weeping bitterly; the others asked what had happened.

‘They found it on me,’ she moaned. ‘And now what shall I do? It was all we had in the world to pay the mortgage on our house. My poor husband is ill, very ill, and it was the only way to save him. I should have sold that lace for four thousand francs, and now they have confiscated it and we shall be fined a thousand francs. We haven’t any money. It was everything – everything. We shall lose our house and our furniture, and my husband will die. Oh, mon dieu, mon dieu!’

She rocked backwards and forwards in her grief; nothing that anyone could say comforted her. Sylvia told how she had been betrayed; everybody execrated the spy and said how careful one should be to whom one spoke when travelling; but that did not help the poor woman, who sobbed more and more despairingly.

At last the train came to its first stop in France, and the man that had denounced the poor woman suddenly jumped in, as they were starting again, and took his old seat. The fat gentleman next to Sylvia swelled with indignation; his veins stood out, and he shouted angrily at the man what a rascal he was. Everybody in the carriage joined in abusing him; the poor woman herself wailed out her sad story and reproached him for the ruin he had brought upon her. As for Sylvia, she could not contain herself, but jumped up and with all her might kicked him on the shins, an action that made the fat gentleman shout: ‘Bravo! Vas-y! Encore, la gosse! Bravo! Bis! Bis!’

When the noise had subsided, the man began to speak.

‘I regret infinitely, madame, the inconvenience to which I was unfortunately compelled to put you, but the fact is that I myself was carrying diamonds upon me to the value of more than 200,000 francs.’

He suddenly took out a wallet from his pocket and emptied the stones into his hand, where they lay sparkling in the dusty sunshine of the compartment. Everybody was silent with surprise for a moment; when they began to abuse him again, he trickled the diamonds back into the wallet and begged for attention.

‘How much have you lost, madame?’ he enquired very politely.

The woman of the lace poured forth her woes for the twentieth time.

‘Permit me to offer you these notes to the value of six thousand francs,’ he said. ‘I hope the extra thousand will recompense you for the temporary inconvenience to which I was unfortunately compelled to put you. Pray accept my deepest apologies, but at the same time let me suggest greater discretion in future. Yet we are all human, are we not, monsieur?’ he added, turning to the fat gentleman next to Sylvia. ‘Will you be very much surprised when I tell you that I have never travelled from Amsterdam but I have found some indiscreet fellow-traveller that has been of permanent service to me at temporary inconvenience to himself? This time I thought I was going to be unlucky, for this was the last compartment left; fortunately that young lady set a bad example.’

He smiled at Sylvia.

This story, when she told it at home, seemed to make a great impression upon her father, who maintained that the stranger was a fool ever to return to the carriage.

‘Some people seem to think money’s made to throw into the gutter,’ he grumbled.

Sylvia was sorry about his point of view, but when she argued with him, he told her to shut up; later on that same evening he had a dispute with his wife about going out.

‘I want to win it back,’ he protested. ‘I’ve h