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meantime, you can return to England if you wish. So nothing irrevocable has happened.
Do write soon, to say how you are and what you have been doing. We entirely lack any reliable news about England. One day the newspapers tell us everybody is in a panic, the next day they are calm. How has conscription been received? What do the Left say? Are they simply preparing to kill the entire German nation in order to free it from Hitler? Or have they thought up something else?
I have written nothing, and shan’t do so, until I’m free of my present mood, which is worse than useless. I seem to have lost what little courage I ever possessed; but it will come back, no doubt. Perhaps I’ve simply been eating too many oysters, or drinking too much milk.
How are Bob, May, Robin? How is your Mother? My greetings to her. I suppose you never ran across Jacky Hewit again? He’s another problem. A very big one. I heard something from Heinz, the other day. He’s just had an operation for hernia. I only hope it exempts him from active military service. Oh dear . . . it’s all very well for Gerald to talk about non-attachment!
Which reminds me that the other, all-too-attached Gerald tells me he’s been seeing you. I’m afraid that Satan has been deserting His own, recently.
Poor Gerald seemed in a very bad way.
My address in Hollywood will be c/o Christopher Wood. 8766 Arlene Terrace. Hollywood. Cal. Hope to hear form [ sic] you there.
Love, as always,
Christopher
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W[est] H[ackhurst]
14-5-39
Dearest Christopher,
I don’t seem to want to write letters to you. An unfinished one lies somewhere, saying how wonderful I thought Wystan’s poems in the China book, and how I found the prose a very good account, but not as good quite as your talking. I meant too to write to you after I saw On the Frontier in London.73 Meant & meant. You ask how things here are, whether people are upset or not. It’s very difficult to describe. I have not been upset myself for nearly a month. I don’t think my conduct out (as Bob has his), but I try, by shirking the wireless news and most of the newspapers, to keep calm and cheerful, and often succeed. It’s a choice, for me, between (i) “facing reality” and feeling and acting poisonously in consequence, and (ii) being amusing and helpful and carrying on a few private dreams. The trouble is pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 80
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the awakening, which might make me go crackers (certifiably insane);
“yah—you haven’t hardened yourself—BLOP.” But I’m fumbling after the belief that one ought not to mind before hand being caught out, one ought not to insure, and that’s all that the hardening process is.
The above state, and other people’s proceeds from the extreme singular-ity of the social scene; the crisis has gone on for a year now: unheard of: and it’s impossible to echo its crescendo with a personal one. In that sense the individual has already given up, thrown in his hand, failed. If you don’t play the crisis’ game though—and Gerald Heard will teach you how to do that—failure will seem less certain. I wonder that I should have taught you anything, but it is quite true that I don’t hate a lot, if that is at all exemplary.
It is partly idleness, partly an attempt to avoid being hated, but partly an impulse towards love. I have had a very lucky life—my best book (Passage to India) has been translated into many languages and become a Penguin, and my heart has been given Bob. This is out of the way luck.
But what are you to do dear Christopher. I don’t see, after what happened to Heinz that you can help hating, and I hope G. Heard won’t try to persuade you out of it. If you can come to love in your own way that’s all right of course. But don’t feel worried at being bitter.
I have still not told dear Christopher what he is to do. Well I in your shoes would not return to England unless the social scene normalises. Your mother can go to Cheshire if there is a bust up, and those of your friends who are caught in London—you couldn’t save them by getting caught too.
Don’t complain[,] I’m talking common-sense. I know I am.
Your account of America is depressing, especially the letter in which you referred to Lincoln Kirstein. My heart lept up at his name—I thought him so nice when I met him in London a few years back. I thought you were going to say that lots of Americans were like him. Instead of which you say none of them are like him. I look forward though to see[ing] this film maker (name forgotten).
I have done nothing about Jackie. I wish I had seen more of him before you left. I don’t know how to talk to him, though when we have run into each other he has been very nice.
G. Hamilton has not told me of his troubles. He introduced me to the purlieus of the Wine & Food Society, and I have written an article for their magazine called “Porridge or Prunes Sir?” but am not sure what J . . .
Symonds74 will think of it. We lunched at the Ecun[?] de France—silly and bad, I thought. [A]nd how sillily and badly the Hogarth Press have brought out my Pamphlet by the way. I told John Lehmann too, I did. Give me back the Woolens if 6d cannot buy a better clothing than that. Now I must go to bed.
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15-5-39
I do not seem to have answered your questions, but here is the backside of a calendar.75 I don’t know how conscription is taken. There was an enormous procession against it the other day but my taxi driver was in favour. I may send you Liddell Hart’s pamphlet against it. I see rather less of the Left or of the poor. Must counteract these omissions. My health is all right again. I have two major works in progress—the editing of A Modern Symposium for schools, and the sending of England’s Pleasant Land to a publisher. I have just been reading an article by Priestley who rightly prefers genius to wealth, and wants genius to be boosted as wealth is. I don’t know what will happen to Conscientious Objectors. Nothing in the present mood. It entirely depends on the Axis. I go to the Libel Committee twice a week and like the Chairman (Lord Porter).76 It is soothing, with the Thames flowing under the gothic windows, but it is fatal for a writer to know so much about the Law. Even if the Law is improved, things must get worse & worse for literature and all forms of public expression, it seems to me. Everything will have to be considered and vetted.
Bob, May & Robin are well—if there’s war May, Robin, Vi (Ted’s wife) and Shirley May and Bob’s mother & father will all get to Berkshire I hope. We expect Cousin Percy and (ugh) his wife, also two schoolchildren (little boys).
Had such an affectionate letter from Wystan.
Bob and I hope to go walking in Dorset soon (Cloud Hill).
With very much love,
Morgan
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W[est] H[ackhurst]
17-6-39
Dearest Christopher,
At a Cambridge commemoration dinner this week, Guy Burgess, supported by Anthony Blunt, came fussing me because you had behaved so badly to Jackie.77 As I daresay you have, and they then wanted me to read a letter from you to him which they had brought to the banquet. This I declined to do, to their umbrage. I could not see why I had to, when neither you nor J. had requested me to do so. G. B. [Guy Burgess] was insistent I should write to you, which I should have done in any case. He is [a] most cerebral gangster.
I wrote not long ago to J. suggesting a meeting, but had no answer, and now understand why, and am glad he did not answer. I guess the situation, pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 82