The Swan in the Evening by Rosamond Lehmann (1967)

This is the closest Lehmann got to an autobiography in non-fictional form. I hadn't read her for an age, and soon after embarking I had a deep-set recognition: yes, this was the vivid writer I remembered. She achieves here that same sense of vibrating immediacy that made her reputation as a writer pretty well unassailable. And yet here, in subject terms, she has put herself on the line, allowed a huge space for assailants. It starts out with a depiction of her own childhood at Bourne End in very (acknowledgedly) comfortable conditions. There are a significant number of servants, a huge garden, the rowers her father coached always about and on the river, three siblings to clash and conspire with, local notables who visit and so on. Always there is the bright angle of description whereby we get this information in what seems a new-minted way. This clarifies for me the depth of her success, and the starkness of her capability: she manages to turn the traditional zone of the softly poetic away from its sticky path into much more glowing territory; a transmutation occurs which strips away the plodding and replaces it with vision. There is also a revelation here of an important fact for later on: there is a sense of her as a child being prone to what might be called nerve-storms; she's often kept in the dark by the family on hot topics, or we hear of her exploding almost unreasonably about sensitive issues. Then follows the story of the childhood of her daughter Sally. This ends with the horrifying news, not long after Sally's marriage to PJ Kavanagh, and their move to Jakarta, that she has died from a lightning-fast case of polio. Lehmann is shocked and crushed as any mother would be. Crucially, though, as she struggles through the waste land of initial grief, certain signs show that her super-febrile senses are sifting for answers, questing for solution. It soon begins to emerge that she can sense Sally about her, gain impressions of even physical signs of her presence, and, critically, communicate with her on a level which is partially verbal, partially not. These experiences lead her, over the ensuing years, to a fascinated and full exploration of "life after death". This, of course, is where she lays herself open to all sorts of opposition at the best, and abuse at the worst. My turn of mind is generally scientific; on the whole, I would feel a sense of caution about her claims. But, I feel very hesitant about the Stephen Fry-esque fingerwagging and catcalls of FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD! at about the same pitch. These seem to me to be responses to the no doubt prevalent charlatanry in this field, which Lehmann herself acknowledges. She is however openly interested in a calm and even-handed manner in investigating her experiences. It is this evenhandedness that claims me. "I've had an experience; it seemed real to me; I want to know about it and if there is any system of thought that backs it" seems her modus, and I have no desire to send a grenade in her direction as a result. I wonder whether or not it was that profound sensitivity, which mounted to nervous tension as a child, that is a clue here, and the reason why these 'connective' happenings were so strong. Interestingly, too, there is an incredibly strong sense, in her description of the first uprush of recognition of Sally's presence and its impacts, at the house of some friends soon after her death, of the sort of emotional burst of energy which comes from substances like MDMA; the intense feeling of wholeness and loving warmth, and the sensory qualities being super-energised and meaning-filled. I wonder whether whatever human substance it is that is released in an MDMA experience was made available to Lehmann's brain via the stress of her grief and the supersensitivity of her emotional nature. A vivid and intriguing memoir of troubled territory, purveyed with dignity and clarity.