| Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff | |
|---|---|
C.K. Scott Moncrieff painted by Edward Stanley Mercer (1889–1932) |
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| Born | 25 September 1889 Stirlingshire, United Kingdom |
| Died | 28 February 1930 (aged 40) Rome, Italy |
| Occupation | translator, author |
| Nationality | British |
| Period | 1894-1930 |
Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff MC (25 September 1889 – 28 February 1930) was a Scottish writer, most famous for his English translation of most of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, which he published under the Shakespearean title Remembrance of Things Past.
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Scott Moncrieff was born in Stirlingshire, the youngest of three sons. Because his brothers, Colin Scott Moncrieff and John Irving Scott Moncrieff, were several years older, the young "Charlie" spent much of his childhood playing alone or lost in books. From the age of seven he attended a local day school, where he displayed an uncommon genius for languages.
He attended Winchester College and while still a schoolboy, became associated with the Wildean circles of Robert Ross and Christopher Millard, Ross' sometime secretary and author of the first bibliography of Wilde's works. Millard was also known for his pandering to younger boys and may well have had a relationship with Scott Moncrieff. There is, however, no proof of this.
In 1907, he published a short story, 'Evensong and Morwe Song', in the pageant issue of New Field, the literary magazine that he edited, while at Winchester College. The story deals with sex between two boys at a public school. The magazine was hastily suppressed, although not before copies of the offending edition had been mailed to parents. The story was republished in 1923 in an edition of fifty copies for private circulation only. It was never published again in the author's lifetime. Although it is commonly claimed that Scott Moncrieff was expelled for this act of rebellion, there are no records of expulsion in Winchester College Archives and there are letters in the archive which mention his returning there before the war as an "old boy", which would have been unlikely had he left in disgrace.
After Winchester, Scott Moncrieff attended Edinburgh University, where he undertook two degrees, one in Law and then one in English Literature, an obvious choice for the son of an eminent magistrate who had also been a published author. Thereafter, he began an MA in Anglo-Saxon under the supervision of the respected man of letters, George Saintsbury. He graduated in 1914 with first class honours, winning a prestigious prize, The Patterson Bursary in Anglo Saxon. This stood him in good stead for his translation of Beowulf four years later.
During his time at Edinburgh, Scott Moncrieff made the acquaintance of Philip Bainbrigge, a schoolmaster at Shrewsbury and the author of miscellaneous homoerotic odes to Uranian Love. He was also a close friend of Vyvyan Holland, younger son of Oscar Wilde.{"Son of Oscar Wilde" autobiography of Vyvyan Holland 1954}
He fought in World War I, serving on the Western Front from 1914 until 1917, when he was seriously wounded in the right leg after being thrown into the air by a shell explosion from behind. He walked with a limp for the rest of his days. He made a conversion to Catholicism while at the Front in 1915.
While convalescing in London in 1918, Scott Moncrieff worked in the War Office in Whitehall. He supplemented his income by writing reviews for the New Witness, a literary magazine edited by the great man of letters G. K. Chesterton. During this time he befriended the young poet Robert Graves. He also succeeded, inadvertently, in earning the life-long enmity of Siegfried Sassoon whose The Old Huntsman he had given a mixed review.
It was at the wedding of Robert Graves in January 1918 that Scott Moncrieff met another poet, Wilfred Owen, with whom he maintained a difficult relationship for several months. Biographers of Owen disagree over whether or not this relationship was sexual. Coded sonnets by Scott Moncrieff, addressed to a "Mr. W. O.," suggest that his love for Owen was unrequited. However, rumours of an affair were enough for Graves to cut off correspondence with both men.
On the day of Graves' wedding Scott Moncrieff testified as a character witness at the trial of his possible sometime lover, Millard, at great personal risk to himself.
The last months of the war dealt a cruel blow. His closest friend, Bainbrigge, was killed in September 1918, and another possible ex-lover, the poet Ian Mackenzie, died of pneumonia the following month. Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918, Scott Moncrieff arriving at the Front too late to be reunited with his beloved.
After Owen's death, Scott Moncrieff's failure to secure a "safe" posting for Owen was viewed with suspicion by his friends, including Osbert Sitwell and Sassoon. Sitwell reportedly told one biographer that Scott Moncrieff had "as good as murdered" Owen. Scott Moncrieff was subsequently cut out from the attempt by Edith Sitwell and Sassoon to publish Owen's poetry, despite being in possession of some original drafts. During the 1920s, Scott Moncrieff maintained a rancorous rivalry with Sitwell, who depicted him unflatteringly as "Mr. X" in All At Sea.
In 1919, Scott Moncrieff published a translation of The Song of Roland, dedicating it to his three fallen friends. The poem addressed to Owen, the last in his series of sonnets, expresses a hope that their "two ghosts" will "together lie" in the next life.
Through his friendship with the young Noel Coward, he made the acquaintance of Lady Astley Cooper and became a frequent house guest at her home Hambleton. He dedicated the first volume of his translation of Proust to Lady Cooper.
After the war, Scott Moncrieff worked as private secretary to the press Baron, Alfred Harmsworth or Lord Northcliffe, owner of The Times, until Northcliffe's death in 1922. Soon after, his health compelled him to move to Tuscany, Italy, where he divided his time between Florence and Pisa, and later, Rome.
He subsequently supported himself with literary work, notably translations from medieval and modern French.
Scott Moncrieff published the first volume of his Proust translation in 1922, and continued until his death in January 1930, at which time he was working on the final volume of the novel. His choice of the title Remembrance of Things Past, by which Proust's novel was known in English for many years, is not a literal translation of the original French. It is, in fact, taken from the second line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 30 ("When to the sessions of sweet silent thought / I summon up remembrance of things past..."). In a letter written on his deathbed in 1922,Proust congratulated Scott Moncrieff on his remarkable translation, but objected to the lack of ambiguity in the title: "Temps Perdu" meaning, in French both Lost Time and Wasted Time. However he apologised warmly for scarcely understanding English himself.(Letter from Proust to Scott Moncrieff dated 10th October 1922 in National Library, Edinburgh)
The original French text of the Remembrance was re-edited in later years, in two successive editions, and these additions and revisions were subsequently incorporated in later English translations. Thus, Terence Kilmartin revised the Scott Moncrieff translation in 1981, and an additional revision was made by D.J. Enright in 1992. The work in these later versions is given the more literal title of In Search of Lost Time. To what extent these revisions (and revisions of revisions) have improved Scott Moncrieff's text has been discussed and evaluated differently by different people.
Scott Moncrieff died of cancer at Calvary Hospital in Rome in 1930 and was buried in the Verano Cemetery. His remains lie in a small communal ossuary with those who died in the same month in the same convent. The exact place can be located by doing a search with name and date of death at the gate.
The Translators Association administers the annual award of a Scott Moncrieff Prize for French Translation.
Among the many works translated by Scott Moncrieff are:
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