Life Regained: Diaries 1970-1972: Volume 6 [Paperback]

Frances Partridge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1999

Francis Partridge's diaries are the record of a woman who not only participated in the lives of the legendary Bloomsbury group, but was the circle’s oldest surviving member until her death in 2004. In this volume, aged 70, widowed for 10 years, and still mourning the loss of her son Burgo, Partridge still manages to write and live with an extraordinary passion for her friends, traveling abroad, playing in string quartets, walking in the country, and enjoying life in every way. This volume takes her to Russia, Spain, Poland, Tuscany, and France. Partridge lives and writes with an acute sensitivity to all things in life, whether it is the first fall of snow in winter, a desperate love triangle of one of her friends, a mesmerizing performance of an opera, or the dazzling wit of a friend.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Noted English diarist and former Bloomsbury group member Partridge opens this sprightly journal in 1970 as she turns 70. Active and alert in mind and body, she discusses Shakespeare and Noam Chomsky's linguistic theories, goes to the opera and theater, plays Ping-Pong, translates Jorge Luis Borges, travels to Poland, Spain, Russia, Corfu and Italy. An elegant and poised stylist, she punctures the egos of friends and acquaintances with rapier wit, analyzing their relationships, sex lives, neuroses, marriages. We get glimpses of Cyril Connolly, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Duncan Grant, Quentin Bell, Iris Murdoch, William Golding and Rebecca West. Partridge was linked to the Bloomsbury circle by family ties as well as by friendships; her husband, Ralph, who died in 1960, had been previously married to painter Dora Carrington; the author's brother-in-law, novelist David Garnett (son of eminent translator Constance Garnett), later married Angela Grant, daughter of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. True to her credo of never saying no to a new experience, Partridge strives to carry on the Bloomsbury ideals of living life as an art form, cultivating friendship and creativity. And she is often amusing: "I was unfortunately put next to my host 'Dandy Kim' (a well-known crook)... He had no conversation whatever and kept jumping up and leaving the room. It was strange, but not quite strange enough to be interesting." As her contemporaries move to the right, supporting the establishment, she increasingly opposes jingoism, xenophobia, war, class distinctions and stale conventions. While much of this gossipy, rarefied diary consists of ephemera, Partridge astonishes and delights with whiplash turns of phrase, epiphanies and thumbnail character sketches, and by growing old with grace and art. Photos. (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

This latest volume of the diaries of Partridge (Love in Bloomsbury, 1981, etc.), the last surviving member of the Bloomsbury group. ``It's always an effort to adjust to a new life that is not one's own, though I do it so often that I'm becoming almost an adept,'' she writes on a visit to her beloved, if trying, old friend Gerald Brenan at his home in Spain. Not only do Partridge's diaries provide myriad glimpses into the lives and homes of the shabbily genteel artists and authors who make up her social circle, animatedly discussing ethics and aesthetics one day, writing and politics the next, but they also record a world that seems increasingly remoteone without cell phones or e-mail, in which letters are a frequent form of communication and intellectual discourse the most respected currency. Partridge, though a talented diarist and translator in her own right, is still best known for being the second wife of Ralph Partridge, who loved and was married to Dora Carrington (though Carrington was in love with Lytton Strachey, who was, symmetrically enough, in love with Ralph). Since the notorious Carrington's letters were published and an exhibition of her works shown in London in November of 1970, Partridge is asked to comment on her frequently during this time, and though she does so with grace and insight, one can't help but be moved when she writes that a ``sort of reserve prevents my reminding people of my own intensely happy thirty years with Ralph.'' Though she displays little self-pity, and indeed rarely writes about Ralph or about her late son, Burgo, her frequent travelsto Russia, Poland, Spain, Greece, France, and Tuscanyover the course of two years and her restlessness in her London apartment evoke their absence in her life. These delightful, erudite diaries should be part of the education of any budding memoirists. (8 pages color photos) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 271 pages
• Publisher: Orion Publishing (April 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0753807548
• ISBN-13: 978-0753807545
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,871,283 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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