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If you get this letter in the middle of an air-raid, just burn it. I suppose 1914 cut short a lot of similar tangles. Please write again soon.
* * *
10-7-39
Dearest Christopher,
Do not forget me. We are getting rather dim over here I think. I mean I rather think that there is going to be “a war,” and that a sort of veil must be descending. I very much hope that you and everyone will try to keep away—it is clearly your job to see us sink from a distance, if sink we do.
Now what have I done today, previous to writing the above thoughtful paragraph?
Picked some raspberries and helped to bottle them, and finished writing an unpublishable though not indecent comedy-story.
I have, however, become worried by aeroplanes—the stunting overhead has got on my nerves and I cannot find out how to ignore it and keep on regretting Abinger Hammer’s lost peace—it only lost it early this year, after having had it for thousands of years. I used to get round this sort of dis-comfort by self-pity, but partly owing to Bob I have given that up and have to remain uncomfortable.
I go to London tomorrow, lunch with Ian! who has kindly invited me, and not to dinner with Nik what’s his name!! and Sandy something!!! who have by a coincidence also invited me. (I cannot go, because George Thomson is coming.) I enjoyed Geneva—or have I written since?
Best love from
Morgan
* * *
W[est] H[ackhurst]
23-8-39
Dearest Christopher,
Yes the news certainly is unpleasing and I feel in a farewell-letter mood.
One or two people I am very fond of will get envelopes posted to them today. I hope the same idea has occurred to you. I had intended to go to Sweden next week but England is the best address. This evening I meet Joe with perhaps a Jamaican Blackamoor79 at Piccadilly Circus. Blackamoors are a distant mystery to me. I am very busy and rather resolutely happy and cheerful. Bob is on holiday with May in Devonshire, but the wretched pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 86
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woman on a farm where they once stayed is ill, and May who doesn’t like her has gone to nurse her and run the place, while Bob remains in Sidmouth with Robin who makes too much noise. My mother is well, but somewhat shattered this morning by the German-Soviet non-aggression pact. I took her for a few days to London last week, various relatives and refugees were seen, also a play of moderate merit entitled “Alien Corn.” Post Card from Ian, investigating social conditions in Greece. Met Max Beerbohm on Sunday. Oh yes and by God a Mr Wheeler or Wheler called last week, and said he was a friend of yours and you were so happy in the States. He is what Catullus would call a “salaputium dissertum.”80
Can you or any one else in the happy States translate that?
Mr W. also delivered a homage speech which left me dumb.
Morgan’s best love.
Bob, I, Oliver Low and his wife spent a most pleasant evening together lately and went to a play of moderate merit entitled “The Women.”
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The War Years: 1939–45
W[est] H[ackhurst]
1-9-39
Dearest Christopher,
Sergt Button [i.e., Bob] and self rang your mother up on the 29th and urged her and Richard to get off at once. So I feel and indeed think I was useful. We didn’t write to Heinz as B. thought that even if the p[ost]c[ard]
got through to him it would do him no good.
I know you want to know how I feel. Well I cried a bit when my mother paid her usual morning call to my bedroom, and I’m a little irritable and hysterical but not at all bad. I am going to write some notes on Beethoven’s Sonatas, and have bought a 2/- book rather than a 4/6 one to write about the war in. Sweden cancelled. I am rather at a loose end. Poor Mrs Barger is here, wearing herself and others out, about her tiresome neurotic daughter who, against her orders, has been dumped by her bossy son in a mental retreat.
It is going to be awful here I expect. Whatever one does is wrong,1 so do not come back here, that is the wrongest.
Love,
Morgan
* * *
September 27, 1939
303 South Amalfi Drive
Santa Monica. California
My dearest Morgan,
Thank you so much for your 2 letters. I only got them yesterday, as Gerald Heard is quite a long way from us now we’ve moved to above address. Please write here. It will be forwarded, if I suddenly leave.
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This place is in the same road as Aldous Huxley, whom I scarcely ever see—and Viertel, whom I see all day: we are doing a film together, in the intervals of listening to the radio. I believe we are both already crazy—but it’s so hard to tell. Anyhow, one lives in a dull, stolid ache of misery, illuminated by hysterical laughter, and alleviated by chain-smoking. I think, at intervals: “Of course, it’s quite ridiculous—I can’t possibly go on like this.”
But I do. Everyone does.
The outside world—which could hardly be less real to the most enlightened yogi—is a thin noisy tone film of fast cars, the Pacific, bathers of superb physique, palm trees, filling stations, mountains, advertisements.
Garbo comes to lunch, and one is not surprised. She has very long eyelashes. There are heat waves, quite big floods. One eats meals. But you, and Stephen and Heinz, and several other of my friends are every bit as solid as the people I talk to in the so-called flesh. I talk to you, too, and have horrible nightmares.
You were only too right in your prophecy that the war, when it came, would be crazy. Just how crazy it is, we have yet to find out. Even as I write, there is an Alice in Wonderland rumour that Germany and Russia will form a new League of Nations.
What shall I do? Stay here for the present. I am half an American citizen, anyway. Later, perhaps, an ambulance corps. Wystan is in New York.
Whatever we do will probably be together.
Give my love to everybody—especially Bob—and write again soon.
As ever,
your loving
C.
* * *
W[est] H[ackhurst]
8-9-39
Dearest Christopher,
Bob writes “I hadn’t the heart to write to Christopher. I feel he must be so upset that I am afraid of making things worse.” As for me, I write, but shan’t do so again until you write to me. (Not huff, Blackmail).
We are comfortably, all too comfortably, settled in—mother, self, cousins Percy & Dutchie, Agnes (servant), and Mrs Jeffrey, former servant, comes and helps. No evacuees so far, on account of my mother’s age. There is no reason I should go to London and danger, since Bob is working or confined to his house when he isn’t. I feel unhappy of course, sometimes very so, but not afraid. I found Gerald’s book most interesting—have pal-zeik-02 4/21/08 10:33 AM Page 89
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reviewed it for Joe.2 My “plans”(!) are (i) to live by journalism rather than by govt subsidy for propaganda work[;] (ii) to give up the B[runswick]
Square flat, and take a cheaper and safer one near Bob[;] (iii) to play and make notes on Beethoven’s Sonatas. I bought a large note book to write in about the War, something was wrong with it, couldn’t think what. Then in a few days I realised what I wanted to do. I have been lent Tovey’s edition of the Sonatas.
Well, this is the very last letter you ever get from me, unless—
Love to all, as per usual.
My ex[ecut]ors are (i) Williams Deacon’s Bank, 20 Birchin Lane, E.C.4
(ii) a personal ex[ecut]or.—J. Sprott, failing him, you, failing you, John Simpson. If Sprott shouldn’t act and it comes to you and you are still as I hope you will be in the U. S. A., you should pass on the job to Simpson.
Morgan’s love.
* * *