Talking Across the World: The Love Letters of Olaf Stapledon and Agnes Miller, 1913-1919 (review)

Book Reviews115 tury. Bellers had not sought the abolition of class distinctions; he saw the rich as stewards of their wealth answerable to God for its proper use. But to the European left he appeared as a forerunner of their ideas. He is, so far as I know, the only Quaker to whom a Soviet scholar has devoted an entire monograph. Now, thanks to George Clarke and his publishers, Bellers's contribution to social thought is easily accessible to all of us. University of TorontoPeter Brock Talking Across the World: The Love Letters of Olaf Stapledon and Agnes Miller, 1913-1919. Edited by Robert Crossley. Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1987. xli, 382 pp. illus. $27.95. These always engaging, sometimes deeply moving, selections from the monumental correspondence of Olaf Stapledon and Agnes Miller provide nostalgic reflections upon an earnest, idealistic, and painfully innocent generation that was both shattered and awakened by the Great War. Editor Robert Crossley sets high standards in a variety of ways: his judicious selection of letters (only one-tenth of the total correspondence) elucidates both the central relationship and the extraordinary context in which it took place; his deft touch ensures that he does not intrude himself into the story except to enhance understanding or heighten enjoyment; his clear and informative introduction sets exactly the right tone for the reader about to plunge into an amazing longrange love story. From the moment they met in 1903, Olaf at seventeen vowed that his first cousin Agnes, then nine, would be his wife. During the succeeding decade, with Agnes safely returned to her Australian home, Olaf pursued his dream maiden with the guileless ardor of a storybook prince charming. When in 1913 Agnes returned to Europe for a year's education in art and life, Olaf, then in his late twenties, wooed her until on 24 July 1914, Agnes very tentatively said, "Yes." Ten days later the European crisis encroached upon their budding romance for the first time with Olafs recognition that "it may be the beginning of unheard-of horrors" (p. 44). Then, in early October 1914, Agnes embarked for home and they began, as Olaf said, "to talk across the world a little" (p. 53). During the next four-and-a-half years that "little" became more than two million words encompassing the hopes, doubts, dreams, and fears that young lovers have always expressed, and all relentlessly framed by the overwhelming tragedy of the Great War as well as the ironic circumstance that, psychologically at least, Agnes and Olaf were on different sides of the conflict. Although Olaf consistently opposed the war on moral and political grounds, he was driven, largely by social pressure, to participate at some level and joined the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU). Olafs letters from FAU in France reveal a young man uncomfortably suspended between the worlds of fighting soldiers and protesting conscientious objectors, never fully a part of either. And at the same time that Olafs letters are filled with increasing antagonistic references to the war, Agnes writes of her support for the Australian referenda on conscription . She wants to believe that she understands his convictions, but, in the end, Agnes's opinions are shaped by her bloody-minded, strong-willed, and much-beloved father. Olaf, despite his anti-war sentiments, was not really a pacifist at all and seemed confused about the war. Agnes and Olaf are so winning, so vulnerable, so lovable that when they are finally reunited in May 1919, the reader is positively stricken to discover that their reunion was an unmitigated disaster. She had 116Quaker History to fall in love with Olaf a second time because "it was his letters I was in love with" (p. 373) the first time around. Like most novels, this story ended well. Olaf and Agnes lived happily together for thirty-one years—he as a prolific and reasonably successful futurist novelist/ philsopher, she as the mother of two and later vice-president of the British section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. When Stapledon died in 1950, The Friend, in acknowledging his life and career, said that he had been close to...