Lily Brisco: A Self-Portrait by Mary Meigs

Lily Briscoe is subtitled as an autobiography and Meigs' first book. To be super-accurate, it's more of a memoir, each chapter comprising a quiet, thoughtful essay on critical elements in the author's life. She writes of her childhood in a very proper and moneyed family, first in Philadelphia, and later in the social arch-circles of Washington DC. She writes about relationships and love triangles with U.S. writer/activist Barbara Deming and Canadian writer Marie-Claire Blais. She writes of significant friendships with artists and writers - their emotional effect on her, their reactions to her own work as a painter, their reactions to and with eachother. Like the movie The Company of Women this book is low key and enjoyable - if not quite as charming because we are stuck inside one woman's head instead of being in the amusing position of voyeur to a wider social dynamic.

In general, I admired Meigs' clarity and honesty, while I completely related to her acute sensitivity, which seemed to contribute so much discomfort to her emotional life. It's not easy to get these subtleties of feeling down in writing. She describes a tense aspect of her friendship with writer Mary McCarthy and husband Bowden Broadwater:

"Their kindness to me had a double edge; it was a concern for my welfare, but it contained within it the plain suggestion that my welfare consisted in following their advice.

I had the feeling not only that they thought I was infinitely malleable, but also, that I wanted to be transformed by them; it was as if they were fitting a ghostly skin over me that I could not shake off. A conversation comes back to me. They were discussing my choice of a smoke-grey sleeveless dress of pleated chiffon. "You've decided to become the kind of person who wears that kind of dress," said Bowden. "You've chosen your type." Everything surged up in me in protest; it was all wrong, this analysis. He had put the cart before the horse. I had chosen the dress, I explained, not in order to define myself, but because I liked it. "Exactly!" cried Bowden triumphantly, and my insides began to churn with a familiar turmoil. I couldn't bear it when people squeezed me into corners, reduced me to clichés. I had enough trouble supporting the severity of my own self-analysis and didn't need any outside help."

These last italics are mine. I'll just bet that this sentence applies to a ton of women.

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