[Icelandic] Sprott, Magavelda, Blakeney, Norfolk, and to the flat for a night on Friday, where [I] will ring you up.
My mother much enjoyed your visit, she writes. I specially liked the talk about China, or rather the Atlas. I think a good deal about the book. It’s a major technical problem.68 Howsoever that’s solved, the book will come easily, but unless the solution is the correct one, the book won’t be good.
And I cannot think what the correct solution is. Perhaps Wystan divinely distrait, will hit on it, but I am more disposed to rely on you.
Well I must conclude, hoping that you will like this letter and your household its envelope. Coronets seen everywhere, on the little boats, on the bigger boats, on the bath towels. I cannot make it out. Host and hostess are out calling on some Colmans (“we’re all mustered here”). Weyland69
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and his cousin—15 o[r] 16, pleasant—have gone out in a pram, which is a little boat, to visit boys across the lake, and I have been walking round the estate with Lady K.’s slightly critical elder sister.
With much love & great gratitude from
M.
* * *
[October 1938?]
Sunday
Dear Christopher,
I find that M. M. Gabet and Huc had exactly your and W[ystan]’s problem to solve, and the result of it was “Huc’s Travels.” H. writes sometimes
“I,” sometimes “M. Huc” and of course sometimes “M. Gabet.” The result is very readable.70
It is 10.0. P.M. and I have only just found or indeed looked for my pen.
I am really very depressed and perhaps shall join the Labour Party.
Communists, cut off from the one practical experiment in their creed, will become even more flimsy and irresponsible than they are now. The alternative to the Labour Party is to find some ballast in my own past.
Nothing seems right—the table is too high, the bed packety [ sic], and all because four people who could under no circumstances have been my friends have met at Munich.
I come to town Monday and go to Scotland on Tuesday.—I was very pleased to hear that the Chinese book is to be dedicated to me.
With love,
Morgan
* * *
14-11-38
Dear Christopher,
I am “thinking of you”: a nice evening for the elderly lovers, no rain and not much wind. I shall see it in London.—I come up on Wednesday, at least I suppose so, but have mild influenza or a bad cold. Under their stress, I have signed Toller’s letter to Roosevelt, sent Richard Acland money for Mr.
V.[?] Bartlett,71 favour the arrival of Czech refugees at Hollingbury, recommended copulation to Zukunft, and asked my M. P. to support the Abolition of Capital Punishment. But I have refused to ask New Zealand to send mutton & butter to Spain. One must show a little proper pride.
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THE 1930s
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Perhaps I shall see Jackie some time.72 I can’t feel that Guy Burgess matters. I used to take him seriously, but he used “a priori” where it made no sense, which I found disconcerting. The si tua tion, the taking away someone from someone, is more serious I agree, but if J. is a strong character this won’t matter either.
May ring you up Thursday morning if only to ask you Gerald Heard’s address.
M
* * *
W[est] H[ackhurst]
23-12-38
My Dearest Christopher,
I have had your card, and—today—your letter. I rang your mother up the day before yesterday, having forgotten your dates. She told me in brief a story which you will now have heard at length from her—namely that Heinz had rung up the house, under the impression that you were leaving almost at once for America. This suggests that letters between him and you have been miscarrying. She gave me an address to which I sent a card and to which I had better write, I think, after I have had a reply from you, and learnt your latest news or absence of news.
My life is a water-colour rendering of yours: a burst water-pipe instead of a frozen radiator, cough and cold instead of clap, failure to start an article on “How I listen to Music” instead of a novel, and a £50 loan to poor Mrs Morgan at the garage instead of an American debt. I will not mention to anyone what you have told me. I don’t wonder you feel a bit down. When I see you again I shall like an account of the illness, about which I am vague, I’ve had catheters, and if they are the painfulness to which you refer, it gets less and less each time. Is the doctor good as well as sensible? (The Englishman always assumes that every continental doctor is sensible).
I shall see Bob, May, Robin, Mum, Dad, Ted,Vi, Con, Les, Else, Monday if I’m well enough to go to them; then I have to broadcast twice in that same evening.
I have been away (Nott[ingham]s[hire] & elsewhere) for about a week.
You don’t mention Wystan’s operation. Please send all news, particularly about Heinz. I was very glad to hear about Jackie.
We are almost snowed up here—primitive and comfortable, plenty of coal, food, and wine, and the gardener can flounder as far as the accumula-tion and the postman as far as the back door.
Love to Wystan. Very very much love to you, and thank you for your letter.
Morgan
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* * *
237 East 81st Street.
April 29. [1939]
New York City.
My Dearest Morgan,
I am so sorry to hear that you have been ill. I do hope it wasn’t very serious? Wystan has written to you, and you’ll have got his letter by this time; but I don’t know if he told you any of our news?
Barring accidents, I am leaving New York on Saturday next, en route for Hollywood, travelling by bus, with my American friend, Harvey Young, whom I think I told you about. We plan to make a big loop to the south, taking in New Orleans, then up through Texas. The whole journey might take three weeks.
I certainly shan’t be sorry to leave this city. It’s really not New York’s fault, but mine, that I’ve got so little out of being here, except the feeling of pure despair, values dissolving, everything uncertain. The war-scares, the central heating and the publishers’ cocktail-parties have combined to create an atmosphere which I can only compare to the wood at the beginning of the Inferno. Perhaps, too, it has to do with the approach of my thirty-fifth birthday, which is a key-birthday, I believe. But where is Vergil? The only one I can espy on this continent is Gerald Heard, so I must go out west to talk to him. Particularly, I want to talk about pacifism, for I know now (it’s about the only thing I do know) that I’m a pacifist: or, as Wystan defines it, I won’t kill people I don’t know personally. And certainly I wouldn’t kill even my dearest friends to save the imperial trade-routes. So what is to be done? Gerald thinks the Red Cross. I agree. But it’s more than that. You have to get into a state of mind. You have to stop hating. I mean, I have to stop hating. You, I know, never have: that is why you and people like you are the only visible towers of strength in this awful time. I suppose, if I knew definitely in advance that the English authorities were going to shut all conscientious objectors up in prison, without the option of doing medical or other work, I wouldn’t return to England at all. There is no sense in being a muzzled martyr; unless, of course, you’re so famous that
[your marty]rdom makes an impression on other people. Or what do you think? [Wyst]an, provisionally, is staying here. He has been more or less definitely [off]ered a teaching job next month, at a public school upstate.
We both plan, if war doesn’t break out, to get on the quota, which will enable us to take any kind of employment here. That doesn’t commit us to becoming American citizens. In fact, you have to have been on the quota two years before you can even make your first application. And, in the pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 79