Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator
Reading Jean Findlay’s lovingly told biography of her mother’s great-uncle, C.K. Scott Montcrieff (1890-1930) feels, at times, like a literary dinner party replete with winking allusions, knowing banter, and sexual innuendo. Montcrieff, a Scotsman, was at varying times a poet, soldier, spy, and renowned translator of great literary works by Proust, Pirandello, and Stendahl, and at all times a man of great intelligence and a rapier wit. He was also gay, necessarily closeted throughout his forty years because of laws against homosexuality – laws that landed his acquaintance Oscar Wilde in prison. His literary life, which included such luminaries as Evelyn Waugh, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, and E.M. Forster, will hold the lover of literature spellbound, immersed in Montcrieff’s passion for great writing; the middle section of the book, dealing with his World War I years, feels more like a section to be endured, as undoubtedly it was for Montcrieff.
Still, his unflinching heroism shines through as does the tension between his deeply held religious beliefs and illicit desires, making for a complex, sympathetic hero we wish we’d known in person and, by book’s end, almost feel as though we do.
