I suppose you know about Dora Carrington? You must, you who know everything. And nothing. Well, I'll tell you anyway, since every day I find it harder to bear this quiet.
She was this boyish unusual painter, which isn't to say there's something unusual in being boyish. Rather, with her devotion. Because, when she was 23, she met this older writer, Lytton Strachey, and fell in love with him so completely and desperately that she devoted the next 16 years of her life to him. He was, of course, gay, but that didn't stop him from loving Carrington fiercely in his own way, right up to the moment he died of stomach cancer aged 51. Apparently, on his deathbed, he confessed wanting to marry her.
It was a bizarre story, you know. She broke off her own engagement for his sake, then later ended up marrying his lover, Ralph Partridge, and went on to live for years in a menage-a-trois arrangement with Partridge and Strachey. They took that part out of the movie. No, in the movie, she and Ralph are a more conventional couple, which doesn't stop either from having lovers. Of course. I suppose modern audiences might've thought her too deplorable if her husband had slept with the love of her life. To waste away one's youth, tied so pathetically as some man's third wheel. It doesn't make for a good story, but then what is a good story.
And more importantly, what is a good enough hill to die on? I think sometimes, madness is worth pursuing. Only sometimes, only when it's inevitable. And it seemed to be for them, because despite these many arrangements they filtered through during those 16 years (all three of them - Dora, Lytton and Ralph - lived quite openly with several lovers) the devotion between Dora and Lytton never wavered. And, presumably, never ceased causing her sorrow.
If only I wasn't so plural. Especially when people seem to want me so conclusively.
She tells Lytton, whilst contemplating an affair. Except it doesn't seem she's plural in the slightest. When the right love is wasted, plurality becomes easy. There's this abundance of love and possibility, all these things you might do, people you might be, and why shouldn't you pursue them? It's less a case of not knowing who you are, and more of knowing who you'll never be.
What's the point if it's not my point?
I know. I'm overly sentimental when I least need to be. Did you perhaps suppose that would wash off with age, and were you maybe right?
Anyway, he dies, anyway. In spite of her love for him. Just gets sick and dies. Stomach cancer. And you know what she does, don't you? She waits until the house is empty again, then shoots herself. In the stomach.
It was all for you; I loved you so utterly and now there is nothing left to look forward to. You made me so absolutely happy. Every year had grown happier with you. It is impossible to think that I shall never sit with you again and hear your laugh. That everyday for the rest of my life you will be away.*
And you know what the saddest/strangest part is? That we look at that and say oh what a shame. She was only 38. If only someone had stopped her. If only she'd had more dignity, had found something meaningful in life to take her away from that doomed obsession. Except wasn't that meaningful already, and should doom equate futility?
Is it worth trading the open breeze of hills for temperature-regulated comfy chairs, and is that dying any less? I think sometimes how much easier my life would be if I wasn't such an entertainer of hills, you know. If I could be sensible about things. Practical.
Yes, they'll say, but was that really worth dying for?
Only, it rather seems to me, we spend so little time in our lives looking for things to live for (things actually capable of shaking you in your boots) that we're hardly in a position to make such comments. Is it worth loving completely, absurdly? Only if it's worth loving at all. Yes, but what about her art?
Except what's the point of art as anything other than a complement to madness?
