M.
* * *
17-2-38
West Hackhurst,
Abinger Hammer,
Dorking.
My dearest Christopher,
I do wish I’d written before. I didn’t want to write, which was anyhow something to write about, and now your letter posted at Columbo arrives.
When I get to London on Saturday I may send you a cable. Bob and I enjoyed that party, though I believe it wasn’t the general verdict and the wine-cup vile and Rupert Doone an obvious crook. Since then a good deal has happened as good deals go. I have taken my Northern Lecture Tour, and stopped for three days with the Lord Lieutenant of Northumberland and walked for once upon the Roman Wall. I liked all this. Today mother and I and Aunt Rosalie have been cutting up oranges for marmalade, and I have—at last—finished Guy Mannering.64 Tomorrow I must start tearing up family letters—there are about 200 years of them in this house, all insipid, and like most people I am the last of my race, but calmer than most, since I accept the theories of Mendel. I’m glad that you came to this place, and think of it as sane: glad that I am [of] any use to you whatsoever.
I always thought you were right to take this outing.—Bother the Test—am pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 73
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so certain I shall fail in mine that I can’t think about it.65 Now and then I get towards facing facts, but get too tired and bored to keep on at it. I only hope I shan’t let any one down badly: that thought does precise itself [i.e., make itself precise] rather alarmingly.
Bob seems older. I think it is stirring him to do something about his painting, though. May is like all women here; no respect for art when it is practiced by her man. I have never seen friction between them, but have the impression that when he wants to win he does and that he will get the oil-paints which will make the front parlour smell and might have been a great coat. His intelligence is so great that it makes up for his inferiority to her in will—if there is such a thing as will. I am going to supper there on Sunday, and he to me on Monday. I could go on writing bout him at length, and I know you would read all I say. He is doing very well at school— this sentence refers to Robin—and can already read and write a little and tell his parents about Jesus.
I hope I’ll get to Berlin, Christopher. My mother is the difficulty, as she thinks Hitler will cut my head off. I will see if Mr Bennett of Caius
[College] can’t again be helpful, and quiet her. Anyhow I will write to Heinz. And when I go up to Caius again I will be seeing Ian. By the way, I liked Oliver Low at your party extremely.66—What a paragraph is this! all the big bits seem to have got together. Like when one cuts up for marmalade. Bob wanted to come to Berlin with me, an April weekend, but it doesn’t look possible.—Well, writing this letter makes me rather sad, perhaps [that is] why I didn’t write it before. I wish we could be talking and I wonder why and how it is that we help one another, for we do. I’ll go to bed now and have some of my extraordinary dreams. These are either sentences which I sometimes write down as I waken, and are I believe proofs that, as a novelist, I have gone underground. Or they are about war, aerial bom-bardment, gas, marshalled by me without any appropriate emotion.
I know that sort of voyage and am very sorry about it. Well it’s over now.
I love you, and Bob and I love you,
Morgan
* * *
[handwritten postcard]
Hankow. [China] March 16 [1938]
Thank you so much for cable and letter. Off tomorrow to look for the moon in the Yellow River. Wystan says may he print your Landor parody “I strove with none,” in Oxford Book of Light Verse? Fine weather here, snow pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 74
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all gone, but full moon, so the raids have started. Best love to you and Bob.
Thinking of you so much.
Christopher
* * *
Friday. [August 1938]
My dearest Morgan,
Have just spoken to Oliver Low. He will send you his address. He was enchanted at the prospect of seeing you again.
Have finished “Maurice,” and am in a state of reverence which even my most irreverent moments of you do nothing to dispel. What a book! In some ways, your very best. In those scenes with Alec, you are positively clairvoyant—nothing like them has even been written about the class war, by anybody. And Maurice himself is a masterpiece—one of the few truly noble characters of fiction. It seems odd, and pompous, after all these years, to be paying you compliments, in words which we both feel are rotted through and through with misuse. But I can’t help it. You are a very great writer. And I am more proud than I can say to be your friend.
I have nothing, really, to criticize about the ending—except that you shouldn’t stop there. Or there should be a sequel. Alec and Maurice have all their troubles before them. Maybe, it’ll be all right—but one wants to know. I suppose Maurice threw up the office? I suppose they both went out to the 1914 war? I should love to know what they’re doing now.
Thank you for my visit to West Hackhurst. I hope there will be others.
Your loving
C.
* * *
28-8-38
Fritton Hithe,67
Nr. Gt. Yarmouth.
Dearest Christopher,
There was and perhaps somewhere is an Epilogue chapter to Maurice but everyone thought it a mistake. Kitty, on an old-maidish weekend in Yorkshire, comes across them both as wood cutters. This seemed both too short and too long. Yes, Maurice chucked his office, and—though the tale is set pre-war—they went to the war, I suppose. That would now make pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 75
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them, if alive, now about 50 each. I can only still see them together if they have passed a life of adventures together.—I have sometimes thought of Alec marrying.
The third section of the book was once much the weakest. I have worked on it cautiously as I gained new experience being very careful not to make it my experience. I was in 1914 ignorant in this way of class—it stimulated my imagination, that was all. About ten years later I met old Reg Palmer, (and about seventeen years later Bob) which gave me knowledge, and stuffed the frame of Alec out in places suitable to his physique. But I tried to keep him as the dream which turned into the scare and then into the mate. I was always determined not to end sadly—as we were saying, it is not worthwhile.
Yes, Maurice is a good man I think and so a nice one.—I think, to run back in this letter, that part III should have been more gradual and longer, more social wrenchings shown or heard “off ” [ sic].I wish it could be published, especially after getting your letter. But it isn’t so much my mother now—it’s Bob. Everyone connects him with me, and this Dover muddle showed me how careful I must be not to bring bother or harm his way. My
“Life” if briefly and blazingly written, might be worth doing after my death, but that’s ruled out too while he lives.
Your letter firmed me up a lot. It certainly is a comfort to know that my work is respected by someone whom I respect and are [ sic] as fond of as you.
It confirms my belief that life is not all nonsense and cruelty—the inversion of Victorian complacency—but has hard spots of sense and love bobbing about in it here and there. The people here, in this Hithe, seem grimly chaotic, just holding on to the wharves till they slip off, the news gets worse and worse, and they don’t seem able to feel—still less are they able to do, none of us can do that. I warrant you, I silence them all at the breakfast table.
However, my visit is in no sense a failure. We bathe, go to Lowestoft Regatta, sit in the lake-ward sloping garden. On Tuesday I go to c/o J.