1931–33

Abstract

By May Aldington was back in France, settled at the Villa Koeclin, Le Canadel, on the Côte des Maures, from whence he forwarded to Sidney Schiff details of villas the Schiffs might rent the following winter. During 1931 he wrote frequently to Schiff, who made efforts to obtain him a better contract from the Sunday Referee than the £400 a year retainer already agreed on. Always in need of financial reassurance, despite his largesse to MacGreevy and others, Aldington was the more grateful to Schiff because of what he saw as an intensive campaign by English reviewers against his new novel, The Colonel’s Daughter, mostly written in a burst of intensive work in the summer of 1930. Prentice was highly enthusiastic throughout its production at Chattos and proposed a huge run until dissuaded by Aldington, who feared enormous numbers of unsold copies. The reviews were once more mixed, larded with accusations which were to become sadly familiar—of Aldington’s rawness, sneering, venom, lack of taste and lack of humility; sometimes (as in the TLS of 30 April 1931) such charges occurred in otherwise favourable notices.