I’m in bed with two cats on it, waiting for the local doctor. The weather is vile, but there is a very pretty woolly Surrey view out of the window, a charming old-fashioned Morris frieze, a general sense of security and comfort. Letters have been received from Joe [Ackerley], William, Bob and Lord Kennet of the Dene.
The dog got bitched by a guardsman—that is to say I thought we had better go to a newsie[?] instead. I shall have another try tomorrow (Monday) when I go up in a car, drop my mother at her sister’s, and pick Bob out of his family. He is very anxious to go, too. The press was surprisingly civil, and septuagenarians such as Miss May Lowes Dickinson write with pleasure.
I am full of plans as to what I will do when I get well—e.g. attend every dog that runs, visit the English Lakes, Portugal and Dorsetshire, reform the Police Courts, read all Milton, not lift a finger to hinder the next world-war, be very kind, very selfish, and incidentally write masterpieces. I wonder whether you are on one of the latter yourself. I do hope so.
Please write me your news. I hope Heinz is well and that the particular anxiety you mentioned to me is nothing.
Give Heinz my love.
With love from
Morgan
* * *
March 31. [1936]
Villa Alecrim do Norte.
Sao Pedro. Sintra. Portugal.
Dear Morgan,
Thank you so much for sending me the signed copy of Abinger Harvest.
I am so pleased to have it and so glad to hear from Bob that you are really better now. If I haven’t written for so long it certainly hasn’t been because I pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 50
50
LETTERS BETWEEN FORSTER AND ISHERWOOD
have not been thinking about you and wondering how this beastly operation had gone off. But I thought that you probably wouldn’t be allowed to read letters anyhow and I suppose this is why I haven’t written. I think Abinger Harvest is fascinating: there are parts of it I read again and again: and how amazingly it hangs together. I tried to say this, and other things, in an exceedingly stupid review I did for the Listener. But it all came out wrong and sounded stiff and chilly or else just the reviewer’s usual soft soap. The trouble was, I kept wanting all the time to explain something by referring to your visit to Amsterdam or to something I remembered you saying: and then didn’t, because I think that kind of thing doesn’t do, at least, not when I try it.
Auden, who is here now, is also very admiring. He likes particularly the T.S. Eliot essay and, of course, the speech. Also your own centenary. We are writing a play together, much better, I hope, than Dogskin.39 It is chiefly about our conception of T.E. Shaw.40 It will be finished in a couple of weeks. Stephen and Tony have gone. They are in Barcelona and will soon be in Greece. They like Barcelona very much: it seems to offer a happy blend of night-life, concerts and the feeling of something about to happen without which neither of them are ever really at home.
Here, on the contrary, it is quiet as the grave, which, for the moment, I prefer. We have had awful weather, but I still hope that it will turn fine very soon. At any rate, it is quite warm. Any hope of your coming to convalesce?
You should have every comfort, including a hot water bottle and a room with a view. Perhaps you would take to gambling, as a recreation: the noblest spirits seem to succumb—yesterday evening, after keeping away for nearly a month, I lost three pounds. Heinz saved us by winning heavily.
Auden won a pound and then firmly and wisely refused to continue. My other amusements include walking and taking French lessons from a young poet whom you would like, I think: but I believe I told you that before. The white rabbit ate all her young except one, whom she seems, for some reason of her own, to find indigestible or sympathetic. The hens are reduced to eight. Incidentally, if you come, you may well be the first major English novelist ever to have been killed in an earthquake: one is expected very shortly now. An earthquake, I mean.
Auden and I are deeply involved in the occult sciences. We go to Rudolph Steiner readings at the house of the ladies I told you about. The readings are boring and we argue, which delights the ladies; but what we are vulgarly after is the Tarot Pack, which is produced on special occasions.
Also the cakes are excellent.
At a place not far from here, nineteen years ago, there was miracle. A shepherd boy and three girls saw the Virgin who promised them to do a pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 51
THE 1930s
51
very good deed for Portugal on that spot on the 13th of May, at 12 noon.
So thousands of Lisbonese, including journalists and atheists, went out to the place to see. At a quarter to twelve, the clouds began opening and shutting like doors and at twelve sharp, the sun revolved on its own axis and shone so brightly that ladies fainted. Later showers of white petals descended on the heads of the crowd and a spring of water leapt out of the earth and has been running ever since. It cures all diseases. I got this from my landlady, whose cook was present. They are going this year to see what they can see. We may go too.
I have decided to say nothing about Hitler in this letter, so shan’t.
Goodbye, best love from us both, greetings from Auden and do get better and come here soon.
Christopher
* * *
Villa Alecrim do Norte
May 12 [1936]
São Pedro. Sintra
Dear Morgan,
No news of you for ages and ages. And yet I feel sure you must be getting along all right, or Bob or Joe would have let me hear. Perhaps you have gone off somewhere for a rest? If so, don’t of course bother to answer this, but ask your host or whoever is with you to send me a post-card saying:
“Forster well” or “Morgan middling” or some such bulletin.
As for us, it is quite as if we had lived here all our lives. Really, the perverseness of exiles knows no bounds. Having removed myself all these hundreds of miles from England, I am now seated in front of an English fireplace in an English armchair in a cottage of English design, sipping English tea. It is true that the cottage has been designed by an English lady, our landlady, so we can’t be held responsible for that—but I have seldom behaved in so English a manner as I do here, ringing the bell for the maids, instead of bawling down stairs, and teaching Anna to serve us from the left hand side.
I love Portugal. The people are charming. They lean over the wall when we are having meals in the garden and wish us a good appetite. But how they do sing! The two maids sing in harmony, very old folk songs with hundreds of verses, until I have to ask them to stop, as I can’t hear myself write.
And the farmer, ploughing with oxen just beyond the garden wall sings a song to the oxen which lasts all day. Sintra is a queer place. On one of the hills, a man and a boy (now no longer) are building a luxury hotel. They pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 52
52
LETTERS BETWEEN FORSTER AND ISHERWOOD
have been on the job, all by themselves, for ten years, and they reckon that another ten will see them though [sic]. Then they will sell it to a combine—
but not in our time.
I am slowly learning Portuguese. It is hideous but rather amusing to see how indistinctly one can talk. You must never, whatever you do, open your mouth at all.
Heinz is very happy here, with his ducks, hens and rabbits. He does a lot of carpentry, making hutches, nesting boxes, etc. And it always seems to be time to feed the animals. We have one “treasure” of a maid, named Anna.