Condolences also to Bob. I do hope that will pan out all right. I suppose there’s no danger if it’s done properly. But it’s very depressing and unpleasant.
Do you really suppose that it was a comfort to the Victorians to think that they’d lived and loved? Personally, I should have thought that if you’d really done either it would only make it worse: but maybe they hadn’t.
What is meant by living, anyhow? Most people, nowadays, seem to long for the cloister or the brothel in one form or another. Which brings me to T.E.
Lawrence. I am awfully glad you are doing the letters and hope you’ll write a long introduction. Please don’t expect our “F.6.” to cast a dazzling light on the subject. I only say the play’s about him for shorthand-descriptive purposes. Actually, the main character is all tied up in his Mater Imago: also, his brother is a knighted politician. In fact, the whole conflict is entirely different and much clumsier, as it seems to have to be on the stage. It’s only in so far about Lawrence as the problem of personal ambition v. the contem-plative life is concerned. And there’s a lot of high-hat talk about the significance of power, which ought to go down well if the actors declaim it in sufficiently woozy voices and the stage is suitably lit.
I knew of, but have never read, the unpublished parts of De Pro[fundis].
I should much prefer your short story: haven’t you a copy? When I was in Greece, I began a novelette called: “Werner and Fritz,” but it became more an more positional and less psychologic, and at last even the positions were pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 56
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exhausted, and I threw it away. It is comforting to know that private pornography is one of the few handicrafts you are still legally allowed to practise, as long as you don’t require any audience. To quote the classic review of Lady Chatterley in John Bull (which I think I once showed you?):
“There is, unhappily, nothing to prevent a man sitting down in an English home to create a literary cesspool with an English pen on English paper.”43
Heinz is very well. Having finished the big house for the ducks and chickens, he is now building a skyscraper for rabbits. It is very high indeed and we fear it may fall over in a gale. Meanwhile, I study the Portuguese irregular verbs and occasionally go over and take a peep into the wardrobe, groan and hastily shut the door again. The reason I groan is because there are thirteen books in there waiting to be reviewed for the Listener. (You needn’t tell Joe [Ackerley] this). Did you read Stephen’s “Burning Cactus”?
I must say, I thought the reviewers were very unjust to it. “The Burning Cactus” itself is a masterpiece, I think: it is the whole history of post-war Germany turned into a kind of fable. I don’t think any [of] the other stories are quite as interesting or successfuclass="underline" but they are all well worth reading. And, in comparison with that frigid arty H.E. Bates,44 they are marvels.
The neighbours we don’t see much of, lately. But we have a new friend, a very nice Lisbon advocate named Dr Olavo. We visit him on Sundays.
Scrambling into his chair, he rests his chins on his chest, his chest on his stomach and his stomach on his thighs; then he dangles his little legs high above the ground, orders whiskey and soda, and regards me with anticipation, hoping I shall say something very intelligent, because I am an English writer. We sit like this for hours, waiting for me to compose a sentence in French about Liberty, of which we both approve. The sentence is never forthcoming, but it doesn’t matter much. The whiskey is followed by tea, which is followed by Madeira cognac and light port. The French poet arrives and talks about Verlaine. The ladies come in. We now begin another game, which is to create situations in which I shall be able to let off my two French expressions: C’est quelquechose de formidable and O, en effet!
Alfred, the French poet, helps me here, as he knows what I want to say, having taught me them himself. Then suddenly Heinz, whom everybody has forgotten, says very carefully and slowly: Voulez-vous une cigarette, Monsieur? And we all laugh and applaud for several minutes.
Or I go across to my landlady, Mrs Mitchell, to listen to the wireless news, and we talk dogs with a deaf neighbour from over the way. Naturally, the great dog-topic for English residents here is the English quarantine.
They discuss the relative merits of the various quarantine homes for hours on end. The manager of one home where the dogs are not well treated is spoken of as if he were Hitler at least. It is a milieu, I say to myself, but I get pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 57
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rather impatient when they can’t stop talking while the news is going on.
Europe interests them about as much as the works of Chaucer.
[Handwritten:] This letter now comes abruptly to an end. There are too many domestic disturbances. I have to keep stopping to throw my shoes out of the window at the ducks, who are not allowed into the lower garden: and each time I do this, the cook very politely brings them back. Then the cat keeps attacking the chickens and Heinz hammers loudly: he has just discovered that the rabbits’ skyscraper is so big that he can’t get it out of the carpentry room—so they will presumably have to live there. I will write again soon, and hope you do the same. And don’t forget Portugal as a possible holiday.
Best love from us both to you and Bob—
Christopher
* * *
[July 30, 1936]
[West Hackhurst]
Dear Christopher,
I am rattled by the news from Spain this evening and feel I am saying farewell to you and Heinz. You know those feelings and can discount them; the last parting is never when or as one supposes. I had been planning to come to Portugal in the autumn. Now all seems impossible—there’s Spain; there’s my libel case still unsettled and stirring slightly when all seemed dead; there’s the rumour that you have had renewed passport difficulties. I am writing most particularly about this last. I want first hand news—
please give it me. I stayed last weekend with Rosamond & Wogan
[Lehmann]—they are gossips I hope. This shall go to the London address.
What next for one who is proper worried and scared? A little news, I suppose. William at Dover. Joe at Dover. I at Dover—as I shall be tomorrow, and Bob with me. This may be very pleasant. I have taken a shave in Joe’s flat there.
This nightmare that everything almost went right! I know that you have it over the Communist failure in Germany. As a matter of fact one’s activities (and inactivities) must have been doomed for many years. I’d throw in my hand if all these metaphors weren’t nonsense; there’s nowhere to throw one’s hand to.
This great podge [variation of pudge] of T. E. letters is often a comfort.
They contain nothing which can help the world (unless the example of courage helps). I should have been flustered if it had been Lowes Dickinson
[i.e., his Dickinson project], and feared I shouldn’t finish before the bombs pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 58
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fell. Such an interruption on T. E. would be appropriate. The book leisurely takes form—it is mostly a question of arrangement. Desmond MacCarthy came over the other day and was very helpful.
Bob’s wife is all right—aborted and sterilised—so they can go ahead as much as they like whenever they want to. This brings me to my shameful stories. I too have had difficulties with the positional. Implications and innuendo are now basic necessities with me. Someday, or, to put it less primly, when we meet, I will show you one. And since I began this letter by saying farewell I have surely described a perfect parabola.