Then there is your more recent letter which I want to answer. I can’t do so in detail because I’ve lost that—lent to Joe or Bob perhaps. But you told me in it about “yogi,” very clearly: about the rooms with the clocks in them and the garden at the end. I see that one may, or may want, to go into the garden in the future. But why do you feel you have been there in the past? It’s there I don’t follow you. I long often to be at rest of course, and a good night seems a premonition of something far better. But do I come from, or belong to, sleep or a garden or any conceivable state? I don’t feel so.
I have written to Gerald [Heard] lately. Shall probably send this c/o him, as I think you’ve changed your address. He will have told you my news, unless I send this by air and outstripe [?]. I have several friends and love them—there’s nothing much more to say—and I sometimes look curiously into that love for signs of a new social pattern, but see none, not the least sign of a sign. I am going with a very odd and somewhat marginal friend to Norfolk on Friday—Lord Kennet. He is driving me up. I may see Johnny Fisher up there—you may remember him at Dover. He is now in the army.
In March Bob has a week’s leave, and we hope to go off together. I have not seen much of him lately, being shut up down here with a sprained ankle.
Aunt Rosalie and Mrs Barger stay here—the latter homeless.
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Well dear Christopher this is not a very thrilling letter to cross the seas, but I don’t mind, and indeed remember you instructing me not to mind. I will go to bed now. With my love,
Morgan
Lady Kennet’s epigram:
What is a Communist? One who has yearnings
For equal division of unequal earnings.
Morgan’s retort:
What is a Capitalist? One who hopes
To gain Heaven through knowing the ropes.
Query: How is Morgan’s visit likely to go?
* * *
[Letterhead:] Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures
Culver City
California
February 14th. [1941]
as from: c/o Gerald Heard.
8766 Arlene Terrace. Hollywood. Calif.
Dearest Morgan,
Thank you so much for your letter of January 1st. It was a long time since I’d heard, but I didn’t feel out of touch, as Gerald read me what you wrote to him. How odd, and how artistically right—that the letter about Jacky should have suddenly hatched out of your Mother’s writing-desk—such a very ancient egg, Chinese almost. Jacky, I gather, is now somewhere abroad: I hope he remembers me charitably, if at all. Harvey and I are giving up our house at the beginning of next week and retiring into separate privacies—
quite amicably, however. I hope to get a room near Gerald, and see a good deal more of him in the evenings—until my time at Metro is up and I can surrender myself to the Quakers. What they will do with this valuable gift is still uncertain, but I shall probably start at a forestry camp for C.O.s in the mountains near here. Sooner or later, I expect to get sent to Europe.
Gerald may have told you that a number of the leading Friends on this coast are much interested in his work. They are marvellous executives—unselfish, pal-zeik-02 4/21/08 10:33 AM Page 97
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efficient, devoted; but they’re beginning to feel that ambulance units and soup kitchens are not the whole of religion. In the summer, Gerald is planning to spend a month with them, meditating and discussing. I hope to be in on this, too.
At the moment, Willy Maugham is here, resting for a few weeks before continuing his lecture-tour. He is optimistic about the war, but very tired, I think. He reminds me of an old gladstone bag, the veteran of many voyages, covered with labels. God only knows what is inside. I wish I could unpack him, but it is forbidden. He has been sealed by the customs. Or perhaps I am only inhibited by a legend. Yesterday he came to the studio, and ran into the Marx Brothers, who have no such inhibitions. They crowded round him, slapping his back: “Hi, Willy—what say we get together Friday evening, and go see the fights?” It was so queer and touching. Willy looked slightly dazed, but happy. This, I felt, is how he wants, so terribly, to be treated. But then I remembered a passage in The Summing-Up, in which he says that he can’t bear to be touched.18
After the war, Willy wants to go to India, and revisit the swamis. “But why to India?” says our own little swami, “And why after the war?” He sits curled up in a corner, wrapped in a blanket, for he has just had a series of heart-attacks, and may not live much longer. He is in his fifties, and often looks like a boy of eighteen. Women clatter around him, fussy and devoted, preparing meals and arranging flowers. At sixteen, he was a revolutionary.
Then he met Brahamananda, who said: “There is no failure in the search for God.” And there wasn’t. There is nothing more to tell about him—no anecdotes, not a line for a gossip-column, nothing. All kinds of people have impressed me, during my life. The swami doesn’t impress you—sometimes he is ridiculous—but when you are with him you know that God exists.
You questioned what I said in my letter about the house with the rooms and the passage leading to the garden. Well, I am bad at comparisons, anyway—they make me feel self-conscious even while I am writing them. But I can’t feel that “the garden” is only in the future. Surely we came from it, or how would we have this awareness that it exists? O don’t you agree with Wordsworth?
I needn’t repeat that I think continually of you in the middle of all this mess. At present, if one can believe the newspapers, we are on the brink of war with Japan. I suppose they could bomb Los Angeles once or twice, if they didn’t mind sacrificing an aircraft-carrier. There are people here who are actually considering building air-raid shelters.
Write again soon.
All my love,
Christopher
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* * *
W[est] H[ackhurst]
11-10-41
I quail before preparing an Indian broadcast, and will start a letter to my Dearest Christopher instead, although I “ought not” to do so. It is not the first letter I have started. A fragment about the Chinese wine cups you gave me lies about somewhere. I got off a letter to Gerald about a fortnight back.
I hope it reached him. It was partly about praying. People over here are rather silly and shy about prayer. Anyhow I find it easy to silence them when they condemn it. I believe it is much more like going to bed with someone than is generally supposed. Hence the shyness. Hence the great advantages or disadvantages which may ensue.—Not that, having silenced them, I go away and do a flop. Don’t think it—!
I was not however proposing to address you about this, but rather to give you the menu of a dinner which Bob cooked in my flat last Wednesday for Joe, Stephen, and ourselves. The flat is at Chiswick now, overlooking Turnham Green, and when reached extremely nice. On the mantelpiece were two of your jade cups. On the wall opposite an “oil” by Bob, done from the water-colour sketches he made at Amsterdam when we came to stay with you there. It is said, by Joe & Stephen, to be very good—i.e. one would pick it out in an exhibition. This however was it
MENU
Hors d’oeuvres
Oeufs Mayonnaise: with sliced cucumber, tomato, raw carrots
Joint
Roast shoulder of mutton with mint sauce
Vegetables