Navigation

• Main Page

• Random Page
• Create a new Page
• All Pages
• Categories
• File Management
• Login/Logout

L P Hartley

The Knitting Circle: Literature

Biography,work,bibliography.

British novelist.

Full name: Leslie Poles Hartley.

His mother was Mary Elizabeth (Bessie) Hartley (née Thompson). His father, Harry Bark Hartley, was a solicitor in Peterborough. L P Hartley was given the name Leslie afterVirginia Woolf's father, Sir Leslie Stephen. He had two sisters, Enid Vary, who was three years older, and Annie Norah who was eight years younger.

With the discovery of Lower Oxford clay locally, brickmaking became successful and profitable. In 1898 Harry Poles became one of three directors of the new Whittlesea Central Brick Company. In 1908 the family was able to move in to Fletton Tower, a few minutes from the centre of Peterborough, and which was styled as a miniature castle protected by a high wall and trees.

Leslie and Enid Hartley were first taught at home by a teacher who visited after he had finished his day's work at a local school. Enid Hartley was then sent to St Felix School at Southwold. In the autumn of 1908 Leslie Hartley became a boarder at Northdown Hill preparatory school in Cliftonville, Thanet. While there he enjoyed gym, cricket, tennis, and shooting with an airgun. In August 1909 he was invited by one of the other boys, Moxey, to stay with his family at Bradenham Hall which they had rented from the Rider Haggards, near Swaffham in Norfolk. It seems plausible that this inspired elements inThe Go-Between, with Bradenham Hall becoming Brandham Hall, and Moxey becoming Maudsley.

In April 1910 Leslie Hartley became a boarder at Clifton College, a public school on the edge of Bristol. He met another boy of the same age,Clifford Kitchin, who was a day boy. They would meet again at Oxford nine years later. However, after a three-month stay at Clifton College Leslie Hartley was removed, supposedly for health reasons as he had developed a chesty cough.

He was then sent to Harrow School where, and although he had a slow start, he eventually settled in and was very successful. He became captain of the house football team, he won the long-jump in the house sports, he played cricket and squash rackets, and he became a good marksman on the rifle-range. He ended up as head of the school.

In December 1914 he won an exhibition to Balliol College, Oxford, and he arrived there in October 1915 to study Modern History. He became friends with Aldous Huxley who took him to London and introduced him to the restaurants of Soho. However, with the start of the First World War the future at Oxford was uncertain and he wondered for some time whether he should enlist in the Army. In the spring of 1916 he made his decision and left Balliol College. For a few weeks he worked in the office of Perfect and Co., suppliers of meat to the Army. In April 1916 he enlisted as a gunner and went to Cooden Camp, Bexley, and waited to see whether he would be declared fit for duty. His friend, the artist, Harry Clifford Pilsbury, painted his portrait in his khaki. In August he was moved to a camp in Shorham, and then he was transferred to an infantry regiment at Catterick Bridge in north Yorkshire, where he took on the job of the camp's postman. He was then sent to an officers' training corps at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he passed or avoided various tests and was made into a Second Lieutenant. After being diagnosed as having an infectious disease he was sent to an isolation hospital at Middlewich. He was then billeted in the town of Colchester. He was moved to Walton-on-the-Naze where he was given the roles of battalion education officer and battalion sports officer. A bout of bronchopneumonia put him into the Third London General Hospital for two months. After attending a Medical Board he was given a month's special leave to recuperate, and after attending a second Medical Board he was invalided out of the army in September 1918.

After a year of further recuperation he returned to Oxford in October 1919. He became a member of the Brackenbury Society and also of the Pagan Society. When he was President of the Pagans he had the task of introducing and thankingSiegfried Sassoonwho gave an address to the Society.

In 1919 Leslie Hartley met Lord David Cecil (1902-1986) while walking along the Oxford High, and from then on they spent a great deal of time together.

In March 1920 he was made a co-editor of theOxford Outlookalong with Gerald Howard and A. B. B. Valentine, and he began to commission work from authors such as Charles Morgan, L. A. G. Strong, Edmund Blunden, Louis Golding, John Strachey, and C. M. Bowra. His own work began to appear in the publication, includingThe Cat,Night Fears,A Portrait,A Summons,A Condition of Release, andThe Duke's Tragedy. He also started contributing reviews, includingClifford Kitchin's collection of poetryWinged Victory, and Aldous Huxley'sChrome Yellow.

In June 1920 Aldous Huxley took Leslie Hartley to see Ottoline Morrell at Garsington Manor, and this was the first of many such meetings.

In July 1920 Francis Fortescue Urquhart, a Balliol Fellow known as 'Sligger', invited Leslie Hartley to travel with a 'reading party' of undergraduates to the Chalet des Mélèzes at St Gervais les Bains, close to Mont Blanc in the Haute Savoie. The trip was unusually adventurous for Leslie Hartley.

Clifford Kitchen had come up to Exeter College, Oxford, but had also had his studies there interrupted by the War. On 21st July 1921 Clifford Kitchen invited Leslie Hartley to join him for the weekend at the home of the Asquiths at the Wharf, Sutton Courtney, in Berkshire. Herbert Henry Asquith had been a Liberal Prime Minister. The invitation was a sign that Leslie Hartley had been accepted into an elite circle of friends. At the Wharf he played tennis with Lady Cynthia Asquith who became an important lifelong friend.

In September 1921 Leslie Hartley was invited to stay with the Cecils at the Manor House, Cranborne.

He became part of the artistic set centred around Lady Ottoline Morrell at her country home at Garsington. He met Lord David Cecil, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, Edith and Osbert Sitwell, Edith Wharton,E. M. Forster, and Elizabeth Bowen.

Leslie Hartley was still confused about the direction his life should take and he proposed marriage to Joan Mews of Upper Portslade in Sussex. Nothing came of it and by July 1922 he saw an announcement inThe Timesof her engagement to someone else.

In August 1922 he travelled to Italy and by September he arrived at the Grand Hotel in Venice where Clifford Kitchen was already staying. Clifford Kitchen would have wanted Leslie Hatley to become more relaxed with his sexuality in a place where gondoliers and stevedores provided the opportunities for sexual encounters more readily than in England.

Back in England he met Marie Belloc Lownes, the novelist sister of Hilaire Belloc and they became lifelong friends. He also met Gerald Berners and also metSiegfried Sassoonagain. Leslie Hartley spent the New Year at Siegfried Sassoon's home at Sutton Courtney. In the summer of 1923 he metVirginia Woolfat Garsington.

He left Oxford in 1923 with a Second Class Honours in Modern History. In December he was introduced to Constant Huntington, an American publisher who was to become central to Leslie Hartley's publishing career. Six months after leaving Oxford Leslie Hartley was a reviewer for theSpectatoron the invitation of John Strachey. He was also contributing to theNation and AthenaeumandCalendar of Modern Letters. In May 1924 Constant Huntington published the storiesNight Fears. In November 1924 Leslie Hartley joined theSaturday Reviewfor which he provided weekly reviews of three or more novels.

He met the painter Ethel Sands who was the daughter of Mrs Mahlon Sands who was a friend of the Prince of Wales. Ethel Sands had a circle of friends that includedHenry James, Virginia Woolf, Walter Sickert, Clive Bell, and Vanessa Bell. Ethel Sands had met another American painter, Anna Hope, in Paris in 1893 and they fell in love and were a couple until Anna Hope's death. Ethel Sands provided Leslie Hartley with his strongest link with theBloomsbury Group, and he got to know Virginia Woolf, Clive Bell, and Vanessa Bell, Desmond MacCarthy, Raymond Mortimer, Boris Anrep, George Moore, Logan Pearsall Smith, Percy Lubbock, and Arnold Bennett.

In August 1927 he travelled to Italy, stopping off at various friends on the way, and arrived at his house in San Sebastiano, a poor quarter of Venice. He had his own gondola with gondolier Pietro Busetti. During October and November he was visited by David Cecil, Leo Myers and Elizabeth Bibesco. Over the following years he was settled in Venice and had a number of visits from his friends.

He joined theSketchin 1929. He ended his employment with theSaturday Reviewin March 1930, the same year in which he started working for theWeek-End Review.

At Easter 1932 David Cecil stayed at San Sebastiano. Another visitor was Jimmie Smith, David Cecil's cousin and director of the stationers W. H. Smith. Later in 1932 Leslie Hartley received a letter from David Cecil saying that he was to marry. This was very upsetting for Leslie Hartley and he was forever to feel betrayed, but he pulled himself together and agreed to be the best man at the wedding at St Bartholomew's, Smithfield.

In April 1933 Leslie Hartley was dining as a guest of Victor Cunard and met Osbert Sitwell who was also a guest along with Gerald Berners. Five days later Osbert Sitwell and Gerald Berners were staying with Leslie Hartley in Venice. He then met Osbert Sitwell's lover, David Horner. Leslie Hartley became a frequent visitor to Renishaw Hall, the Derbyshire home of the Sitwells, and also to their Italian home at Montegufoni.

He was a reviewer for theObserverfrom 1935 to 1942.

The developing hostile politics in the late 1930s made life in Venice less comfortable, particularly with Adolf Hitler's visit there in 1938. By October 1939 he had rented Court House on the river Thames at Lower Woodford in Salisbury. In the spring of 1940 he started making frequent visits to the his Oxford colleague Anthony 'Puffin' Asquith's cousin, Stephen Tennant at nearby Wilsford Manor. There he metE M Forsterand Margaret Rutherford.

In the summer of 1941 David Cecil and his wife wanted to move from their home West Hayes at Rockbourne but wanted to keep the house on, so Leslie Hartley moved in temporarily.

He ended his writing as the "e;Literary Lounger"e; for theSketchat the end of 1943. He was a reviewer forLife and Letters Todayfrom 1943 to 1946.

In July 1946 he moved into Avondale, a tall house in Bathford near Bath with a garden sloping down to the river Avon.

He May 1947 he made his first return visit to Venice for eight years. He had resigned from theSketchand wrote his last piece for it in Venice.

He was awarded a CBE in the 1956 New Year's Honours List and was given the award by the Queen.

In August 1959 he went to Sissinghurst to lunch withVita Sackville-West, Harold Nicolson, and Nigel Nicolson.

At the end of 1959 he acquired a flat at 58 Rutland Gate in Knightsbridge in London, although Avondale was kept on and it continued to have visitors including the infirmRoderick Meiklejohn.

The critical reactions toPoor Clare, published in October 1968 began to indicate that Lesley Hartley was out of step with his times. Dennis Potter inThe Timesand Angus Wilson inThe Observergave it indifferent reviews.T C Worsleywriting in theLondon Evening Standardas Richard Lister wrote a scathing review under the headline "e;The most flavourless, colourless, characterless, passionless, bloodless woman in modern fiction"e;. Lesley Hartley started legal proceedings against him which went on for months.

His trilogyThe Shrimp and the Anemone, (1944),The Sixth Heaven, (1946), andEustace and Hilda, (1947), is a study of the intense relationship between a brother and sister from childhood to maturity. It was awarded the James Tait Memorial Prize.

His novelThe Go-Between, (1953), won the Heinemann Foundation Award. The novel's opening is well known: "e;The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there"e;. The novel was adapted for film in 1971, as wasThe Hirelingin 1973.

HisThe Harness Room, (1971), is seen as his only homosexual novel.

In June 1972 the Royal Society of Literature named him a Companion of Literature, along with David Cecil, Angus Wilson, and Cyril Connolly.

He died in bed at his Rutland Gate flat attended by his nurse. He was cremated at Golders Green. A memorial was held on 3rd. January at Holy Trinity, Brompton, with the address given by David Cecil.

Walter Allen had been appointed as literary executor and he later sold the mass of Leslie Hartley's manuscripts to John Rylands University Library in Manchester. Papers held by Leslie Hartley's sister Norah Hartley were burned according to her instructions after she died in 1994.

Leslie Hartley often been compared in his styles and themes toHenry James.

Several films have been based on his novels and stories includingJourney to the Unknown, (1968),The Go-Between, (1970),Journey to Murder, (1971),The Hireling, (1973), andFeet Foremost, (1983).

• Night Fears, 1924, a collection of short stories.

• Simonetta Perkins, 1925, a novella.

• The Killing Bottle, 1932, a collection of short stories.

• The Shrimp and the Anemone, 1944.

• The Sixth Heaven, 1946.

• Eustace and Hilda, 1947.

• The Boat, 1950.

• My Fellow Devils, 1951.

• Travelling Grave, 1951, a collection of short stories.

• The Go-Between, 1953.

• The White Wand, 1954, a collection of short stories.

• A Perfect Woman, 1955.

• The Hireling, 1957.

• Facial Justice, 1960.

• Two For the River, 1951, a collection of short stories.

• The Brickfield, 1964.

• The Betrayal, 1966.

• Poor Clare, 1968.

• The Novelist's Responsibility, 1958, a collection of critical essays.

• The Love-adept, 1969.

• My Sister's Keeper, 1970.

• The Harness Room, 1971.

• Will and the Way, 1973, published posthumously by Hamish Hamilton, 188 pages, ISBN 0241023505 (hardback).

• P. Bien, (1963), "e;L. P. Hartley"e;, University Park, Penn.

• E. T. Jones, (1978), "e;L. P. Hartley"e;, Boston.

• A. Mulkeen, (1974), "e;Wild Thyme, Winter Lightning: the symbolic novels of L P Hartley"e;.

• Adrian Wright, (2001), "e;Foreign Country: The Life of LP Hartley"e;, I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 288 pages, ISBN 1860646794 (paperback).

  • Synopsis:"e;This biography reveals L.P. Hartley (author ofThe Go-Betweenand many other novels) as a tragic figure, irreparably damaged by childhood trauma, and struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality. Wright had access to a mass of Hartley's private papers, many of which were later destroyed."e;

  • The better partby Peter Burton inGay Times, March, 1996, issue 210, page 72. "e;Foreign Countryis an absorbing and intelligent biography which rightly sees that Hartley's art was informed by his life, inextricably entwining the two. It is well, too, that Adrian Wright has fulfilled his commitment to his subject. Norah Hartley died in 1994, aged 91, and according to her instructions the family papers, including the great archive of Leslie Poles Hartley's life, were burned. Wright had had access to that archive, so never again will anyone be able to write so thorough a biography."e;

Biography,work,bibliography.

Back to the Resource Centre main page

Click here to return to the Knitting Circle home page.

The Knitting Circle

First uploaded 8th. August, 2001.

Last altered 17th. September, 2006