Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 81

flUDAY 16 AUGUST 1991-17 EVENING STANDARD The diaries of Antonia White reveal her as a tyrannical parent who terrorised her two daughters ANNE DE COURCY talks to Susan Chitty about the difficult decision to publish the full disturbing story of her mother LEFT: Antonia White with her daughters Susan (left) and Lyndall Susan Chitty Antonia diaries described her daughters as millstones witt OW that publication of the late Antonia Diaries is a mere fortnight away has the dust settled the blood been scraped off the walls is it kiss and-make-up time? Will Susan Chitty and her sister Lyndall Hop-kinson meet for their annual week together in a health farm or will further feuding bum up the wires between Rome and West Hoathly? And what of relations with Carmen Callil? The last question brings a stifled scream and some serious facial contortions be in the same county as her I be in the same universe says Lady would never Chi' wish to be with She is talking of the five-year literary battle to publish the Diaries White who died in April 1960 left everything to Susan naming her Lyndall and Carmen Callil managing director of publisher Chatto andWindus as Jomt co-executors Carmen had become involved when Virago resurrected Antonia books neglected and forgotten for years Lady Chitty wanted to publish the other two bitterly opposed it Eventually Susan ownership of the copyright gave her the victory As for her sister she continues there been a single word from her then I dared send her a copy because I want to stir her We sit in the kitchen of her red-tiled Sussex cottage ginger beer on its well-scrubbed wood table It is an unlikely setting for the tale of paranoia jealousy anger and intrigue that now spills out The emotional cross-currents into which Susan and Lyndall were bom were enough to conftise anyone Susan was conceived out of wedlock by one of lovers Silas Glossop Lyndall (now the widowed Countess Passerini) was the daughter of Tom Hopkinson Antonia second husband mid the man who made her write her most famous novel Frost in May Until she was six Susan thought Tom was her father The sisters had a traumatic upbringing at the hands of a mother who by all accounts was appalling one time Lyndall and I hated her so much and were so frightened of her we used to plan to murder her with the knife Then we were going to stick a wooden stake through her heart to make sure she return like a vampire had the most terrible temper You simply never knew which way she was going to go Anything set her off as she was very irritable especially after been to early morning Mass my God she was dreadful then and I would be waiting at the top of the stairs because we knew the instant she came back we had to have the tea made and the toast on If she get something to eat and a cup of tea within five minutes it would be like the end of the After Susan returned home from Oxford with a nervous breakdown her mother threw her out will leave tills place within 24 hours I will burn anything you leave Reading that your mother secretly regards you as 1CWM this day says Susan Chitty she bear opening letters and she bear answering the telephone the same At boarding school the sight of a letter in handwriting made us squirm in the base of the stomach You never knew what she was going to say It might be a sweet loving letter or it might be an excoriating destruction of your As for Carmen there was a very strong bond between her and Mother says Susan think Mother sort of fell in love with her she went in for very intense female friendships And Carmen was very good to her doing her shopping and so on suspect that Carmen sort of instituted Mother as her mother the kind of mother she would like to have had literary well-connected and so on and that she thought that if God had sorted things out properly Carmen would have been Mother's SHE hopes to become closer to Lyndall be very relieved when the Diaries have come out My feeling is that things will get better absolutely charming to my four children who go out and see her in Italy and I think very good I very much want to be reconciled both in our sixties and I just feel we got that long I certainly want to die alienated from ftinny how deep these things go she says awful thing about these emotions you have about people when small is how terribly strong they are and how hard to eradicate Being reasonable and grown up diange Antonia Diaries edited by Susan Chitty are published by Constable on 2 September fD Antonia to keep her happy but never getting involved with her emotional life Lyndall went out in the evening Mother would say must wear your pretty frock with the frills that I bought you from Peter Lyndall would get all done up in frock and halfway down the stairs go into a cupboard and change In the morning she would assure Mother that the evening had been a flop Mother thrived on the failure of Lyndall says her sister grew up to become very secretive very Machiavellian now learned constantly to she says I really value I One never really knows more than a quarter of what Lyndall Susan who was put in an institution for the first two years of her life now finds it very hard to become warm or emotional with people like touching or being touched I always back away from it I never had cuddling stage find it very hard to feel any point in life that I have any real existence inside me I think the worst thing is just a lack of calm happiness as you go through the day when you are not doing anything special like To woman Benedicta de Bezer who dressed as a monk Then when I went to Oxford and became a perfectly normal undergraduate and rather dropped the religious thing she felt So deep-seated were the feelings aroused that at one point during the fight over publication the meetings were held at the office of the estate lawyer through whom at the head of the table they icily addressed each other you ask Ms Callil if should like Countess Passerini to know reply to Lady Chitty UT is she on speaki terms with her sister She to see me though not on the cosy terms like I think she has very mixed emotions about a lot of hostility although I know also very fond of me This feud has brought out all sorts of feelings in Lyndall that I never knew existed especially jealousy had great social success Rome very wealthy but look at it from another standpoint and she got a husband she any children she published a row of survival strategy with her mother was to lead her own secret life doing enough with blocks and as Antonia described both her daughters must be shattering Stinging little phrases leap out from the welter of neurotic self-obsessed sentences the confusion over lovers husbands and lust partners the flashes of artistic perception left here on Saturday Chaos insolence lying endless trouble for me and is like a creature poisoned at the is affectionate and she is more subtly selfish than has been a financial drain on me ever since she was The first time Susan read what had been written about her in 1948 she felt she says physically ill think I have now managed to absorb it I say to myself she was obviously Her idea was that I was really evil a ruined souL She never said anything like that about LyndalL I can see why upset I think basically she liked me more lots of bits in the diary where die says just a dear little animal but Susan has a great and how she wished she could give Lyndall away to Tom and keep love can turn to great hate She built me up into this incredibly spiritual figure when she and I were having religious mania both of us madly in love with this.