W[est] H[ackhurst]
31-10-39
My dearest Christopher,
So you have been naughty, not religious. I had all sorts of theories as to why you would not write to me, and had made up an amazing sentence about looking at one’s navel and seeing something like a fountain pen. But you have merely been naughty and idle. My chief extra news is that Bob has portated me into a flat near him at Chiswick—same accommodation as B[runswick] Sq. at 1/2 the price and a lovely view over Turnham Green which reminds me of Harrogate.3 I don’t much like it, but I came not much to like B. Square. Bob arranged the move, took up and put down the lino, called in his helmet on the electricity and gas, fixed the black-outs up, and May stitched, lengthened and stretched.
I seem to have mislaid your letter. I am very glad you and Viertel are doing a new film. As you know, I want you to stop where you are. I don’t know what I feel about the State of Emergency prevalent this side. I seem to get used up trying to be in good spirits and pick up scraps of art. One has slightly smiling confessions with the most unlikely people: “Well, as a matter of fact I feel all right.”—“Well, why, fancy! so do I.” The country looks sweet, there are no aeroplanes. London looks lovely when it is moonlight, and has a charming ultra-violet lamp at the bottom of the Haymarket, which looks like a fuchsia and lights up the luminous paint upon the sand bags.
There are good lunch hour concerts at the National Gallery, at one of which I sat close to the Queen. It feels like the end of an age, and I can picture a new pal-zeik-02 4/21/08 10:33 AM Page 90
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London which other people will consider sensible and civilised. Of course, when I think, all seems raving nonsense, as it does to you—except that I’m sure it’s it, not we, who are mad. I wouldn’t smoke so much. Foolish.
Nicotine. And if I look forward I’m sure we are all in for a bad time during the next six months, perhaps for being killed. That’s one of my reasons for not wanting you and Wystan back here. Another is that you both must and can carry on civilisation. I have had some praise for being civilised lately, from John Simpson, Michael Roberts, etc., and lap it all up. You must take care not to get so desperate and hysterical lest there is, in this pompous word, something worth carrying on.
With love, as always,
Morgan.
Will write again soon. Many messages from Bob.
[written along the margin of the first page of this two-sided letter:] Will you send me a newspaper now and then—not the New York Times, which I see. Something of Hearst’s? Or are they too silly?
* * *
31-1-40
West Hackhurst,
Abinger Hammer,
Dorking.
Dearest Christopher,
I got your letter yesterday. I have told Bumpus4 to send you most of my non-fictional work, also Where Angels [Fear to Tread] and The Longest Journey. My books can’t all be out of print in the U.S.A., though, as I keep getting cheques form [ sic] Harcourt Brace for them. As for the newspapers, I didn’t know I had got any from you, but perhaps I have mistaken yours, for Harold Barger’s. He sends us a good many New York Times, and has presented me with a subscription to Time. Now and then a Life arrives. Would that be from you? I have had no Pacific-side papers.
I am very glad you are making money, as some day you may have to give us some. I have had good luck financially though, as an investment which I thought was a goner has paid up in full plus arrears of interest. And my new flat is half the rent of the old one. Bob has got it very nice. I like the bedroom, tolerate the sitting room, but hate the pokey passage, kitchen and W.C. On this last I have seldom sat, as the pipes have been frozen for weeks.
I suppose it is the war that makes me not happy there. It would be difficult to say when I was happy, but it would be untrue to say I was unhappy.
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Though we have had a good deal of trouble here with my cousins, domestic misery indeed, they came here for the duration and left at Christmas in a huff. I think they behaved very badly. The other protagonist was my mother.
My nice aunt Rosalie is here for the present, and we are snowed up. I meant to go and see Bob tomorrow. Do you get news of H. N. [Heinz Nedermeyer]
by the way? If you do I should like to know. We had a Christmas dinner at Bob’s—he, May, Robin from the country, Ted & Vi & Shirley May, Mum & Dad, Les & Con, not Else, not Sid who had made her great with child, me, and Joe came in with a blackamoor. May is nursing, but because she wants to and has nothing to do: private patients at the West London Hospital.
My life isn’t socially rich, though. I have this home stuff and the Bob-stuff, and a good many cheap invitations from exactly the same people I’ve known all my life, though some of them get younger. No Charlie Chaplin, no Krishnamurti. “Oh but you could see them if you liked.” Yes—and more easily than I think, I do think. I asked, very hesitatingly, Norman Birhelt to dinner. He didn’t come for weeks so I thought he didn’t want to. No—
merely busy, and now he writes me a friendly almost raving letter out of the blue, proud to know such a person as myself. Sometimes I regret my long mouse-tunnel and shake my head at all the mice I have met at the cross-ways—I must poke my head out and roar before it is too late. I must ask the French Ambassador to lunch and not have J. B. Priestly to meet him. I must remind Sir Edmund Ironside that Tonbridge, where we were both at school, might well be forgotten. Over all this, I suppose, or upon it, sits Gerald (Heard).5 Is it true that he is fat and has a beard and likes robes? I do not mind, but has he? I myself am much fatter than you remember me—the result of the operation, it’s thought. I am certainly more cushiony and courageous than I was, but more irritable and with fears of hysteria. I don’t expect to behave well when the trouble starts, shall be offended and maybe go mad, running slowly in large circles with my head down is the way I see myself—I think I once told you. Oh this believing! As soon as you believe a thing it goes dead in your hands, and you have to begin again, and on the same thing. It makes being a prophet or a teacher so impossible, and for the life of a mouse. All the splendour and solidity I encounter now is in books written in the past, the shut-away, unnibbled past of Madame de Sévigné.6 I wish I could write one more book myself, and may still be young enough to have it forced out of me by suffering. Wisdom is not a sufficient impetus by itself. I will shirk suffering if I can, don’t worry about me, but if it catches me I would like to make something of it.
Love as always, and Bob will join.
Yours affectionately,
Morgan.
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Write a bit about Harvey—don’t know him.7 Send his photograph? Love again, M.
P.S.
11-2-40
This has laid about as your address was at Bob’s and now I open it to mention our call upon Mr. Norris. We found him in his cul-de-sackery, and he read us your letter to him about the Tom Driberg quotation—I think because he guessed I should have heard the more lurid version, according to which he sold it. His explanation is that T. D. scribbled it down without his knowledge.8 Passing thence to the cellar, his stock did not rise, for there were a quantity of bottles of 1921 Chatéau d’Ygnem and he had much the most persistent efforts to drink the 3 bottles which I had been given for an article in this Food & Wine Magazine. I had only saved them by lying to him, and saying they were drunk. Returning to the drawing room, my stock fell, as I made a festive reference to that day we (though particularly he) were tracked at the Hague. Vagueness and surprise were registered—the chief point though is that you did write him a very nice letter, I thought.