Patrick A. McCarthy
Stapledon's Microcosm of Community
Robert Crossley, ed. Talking Across the World: The Love Letters of Olaf Stapledon
and Agnes Miller, 1913-1919. Hanover & London: New England UP,
1987. xlii + 382pp. $30.00
Few writers of SF have offered more fascinating glimpses into their own lives than Olaf
Stapledon. Paul in Last Men in London (1932) and Victor in A Man Divided (1950)
are examples of characters who appear to be modeled in part upon Stapledon (although the
relationship is not a simple one, as we see when Paul meets a person whom the narrator
identifies as "the one colourless but useful creature whom I have chosen as my
mouthpiece"-- that is, Olaf Stapledon). Likewise, at least two characters--Pax in Odd
John (1935) and Maggie in A Man Divided--are patterned after Agnes Miller
Stapledon, Olaf's Australian first cousin whom he married in 1919, after a four and a half
year separation during the First World War. For that matter, the marriage of Olaf and
Agnes became Olaf's primary model for the ideal of community that recurs in such works as Star
Maker (1937) and Odd John. Their relationship is played out most revealingly
in the autobiographical interludes of Death into Life (1946), which record
epiphanic moments in their life together and conclude with speculations on the future.
The present collection of letters, most of them written while Olaf was serving with the
Friends' Ambulance Unit in France (where Paul would meet him in Last Men in London)
and Agnes was waiting out the war in Australia, record the development of their
relationship over a period of six years. The existence of the letters was known only to
Agnes Stapledon until 1983, when ill health forced her to move to a nursing home and her
family went through her house to decide which papers should be donated to the University
of Liverpool's Sydney Jones Library and which should stay in the hands of Stapledon's
heirs. These letters remained with the family until 1984, when Robert Crossley was allowed
to open the "two worn suitcases" that contained the letters. The publication of
a substantial selection of the correspondence, edited with introduction and notes by
Crossley, provides Stapledon's readers with the most extensive primary evidence available
about Olaf's relationship to Agnes, his attitude at the time towards the world war, and
his speculations on a variety of subjects. Although the letters were written some years
before Stapledon's first novel, Last and First Men (1930), they shed light upon
his attitudes at a time when he was beginning to think through ideas that are crucial to
his fiction.
Readers of Stapledon's fiction will find a good deal of familiar material in these
letters. In an early letter (August 1913), Olaf sets forth his fervently-held idea that
"the spirit of the [human] race, as a being in itself, lives on" despite the
deaths of individual beings, and that "as matter is indestructible, so is spirit, and
therefore that the 'soul' of a cell, & of man, and of the race is eternal each in its
own character" (p. 19). In March 1914, the speculation turns to intelligent life on
other worlds, which Olaf imagines both as "utterly different and
incomprehensible" to us and nonetheless involved with some of the problems that are
basic to human existence (pp. 32-33). The concept of their union as somehow related to the
form of the cosmos-- an idea at the heart of the search for community in Star Maker--appears
in November 1915, when Olaf describes a ring he is designing with a small alpha and omega:
capitals, he says, would suggest "the divine symbol," but "the small
letters, stand for Agnes & Olaf, & joined together they form a sort of little
universe, a microcosm, essentially the same & yet different from the great God's
Universe" (p. 116). In October 1917, Olaf wonders what it would be like to experience
the world through the mind of another being, whether it be Alexander Kerenski, an Aberdeen
terrier, or a common fly; here, he introduces a theme of crucial importance in several of
his novels (p. 251). There is even a description of an incident that resurfaces in Last
Men in London: in a letter dated July 1918, Olaf relates his horror at having
mistakenly assumed that a badly wounded soldier was dead and having passed him by for that
reason (p. 314). The amount of space Olaf devotes to the incident, his obvious sense of
guilt, and the fact that he exaggerated it when he fictionalized the event (in real life,
Olaf eventually realized his mistake and picked up the soldier, whereas in the novel, Paul
passed him by), suggest the power of this terrible scene over Stapledon's imagination.
Other letters recount Olaf's social and political views: he describes the importance of
his W.E.A. lecturing, declares himself a socialist, discusses the various reasons for his
decision to join the ambulance unit, opposes conscription (but is tolerant of Agnes's
support for a conscription bill in Australia), and wonders what judgment a future age will
make upon his generation. Of particular interest for any reader of Star Maker is
his description, in a letter dated 16 September 1915, of a cosmic fantasy in which he and
Agnes travel throughout the universe and eventually enter directly into the minds of all
the sentient creatures in it, in each case recognizing for the first time a fundamental
identification with another being (pp. 99-102). Throughout the letters, one characteristic
theme is Olaf's sympathy with other people, or even with a lettuce that is pulled from the
ground (pp. 89-90) or with his father's bees, whose plight reminds him "of the
soldiers of the human hives" (p. 327). This power of sympathy, of seeing things from
a different perspective, is one of the most engaging features both of these letters and of
Stapledon's fictional works.
I have so far stressed the potential use of these letters in relation to the
interpretation of the fiction, but they are valuable for other reasons as well. Having
known Agnes Stapledon, I am perhaps prejudiced in this respect, but I find her letters
just as interesting as Olaf's, and I agree fully with Crossley's observation that
"Agnes's skill as an observer, her expressive range, and her manipulation of tone and
voice all undeniably grew as the correspondence went on." The letters reveal her
strong character, her growing awareness of war's ugliness, and her inquiring, independent
mind. Agnes's responses to the events in Australia, and to her personal situation --having
to resist the advances of another would-be lover, an Australian named Jack Armstrong,
and facing her father's disapproval of Olaf's pacifist views--have as much intrinsic
interest as Olaf's descriptions of the war.
Just as interesting as either mind in isolation is the narrative situation itself: the
attempt, almost daily, to carry on a direct, intimate correspondence across the world
despite the fact that Olaf's letters were read by a censor and offending passages were cut
out, along with whatever he had written on the other side; that whatever either wrote
could be lost if the ship carrying it were sunk; and that even under the best of
conditions, several weeks would intervene, and several more letters would be written,
before the writer could expect a response to anything said in a particular letter.
Maintaining the impression of immediacy under these circumstances was difficult; but as
Crossley observes, these letters provide us with "a lesson in the power of words to
shape realities" since "the writers knew that their correspondence could at
least allow their two disembodied voices to approximate a conversation that would link
their minds until the world allowed them to join in body as well as spirit."
This, then, is clearly an important book for the study of Olaf Stapledon and his works,
but also for other reasons. Those interested in English or American politics during the
war, in the Friends' Ambulance Unit, in military censorship (it is interesting to note the
strong criticism of the government that was left uncensored), or in the attitudes toward
gender and social class developed here will find Talking Across the World a
significant collection of letters. It is perhaps significant that the letters' interest
for our alien, intruding minds seems to be anticipated by Olaf's declaration that "If
all our letters were to be read through on end, alternately yours and mine, what a lot
they would tell of all sorts of changes and fluctuations and gradual evolvings that we
knew nothing of at the time" (p. 161). This contrast in perspectives might foreshadow
the distinction between the way events are understood by their participants and by the
narrator from the future in Last and First Men. Like Stapledon's novels, these
letters often become self-reflexive commentaries on the situation of the writer and the
reader, who in this instance includes not only Agnes and the military censor but us as
well. Crossley's introduction is detailed and perceptive, his notes invariably helpful; in
editing the letters, he strikes a reasonable balance between the desire to preserve the
flavor and integrity of a letter and the need to keep the voluminous correspondence down
to a manageable size. In every respect, this volume is a model of editorial tact and
dedication. We are fortunate that Agnes Stapledon kept these letters safe over the decades
and that Crossley has been allowed to publish such a large selection. Now we can hope that
Crossley returns to work on the biography that, I suspect, will become the one essential
book on Olaf Stapledon.
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