The train is dragging very slowly through the state of Kansas, hours and hours late: pretty woods, and fields of alfalfa (or isn’t it alfalfa?) and little towns with silos, full of people who believe in the verbal accuracy of the old testament. The Middle West is so overpowering that one hardly dares think of it much, like Antarctica, or interstellar space; but soon the land will begin to tilt up and we shall climb gradually all through the afternoon, and soon after midnight we’ll be in the mountains of New Mexico, seven thousand feet above this grilling heat, and some of us lying in our berths without covers will catch severe colds. The train is full of soldiers and sailors, and farm kids going out to the naval bases to be inducted: the war is still psychologically in its opening phase here. Watching them laugh and joke, or turn suddenly serious as some old hand explains the ropes, one’s heart goes to lead. And then, of course, there are the newspapers, and the car-toons, and the commentators (whose forgiveness one can only commend to the mercy of an all-knowing power): but I have learnt a little from experience and try not to wallow any more in mere futile rage. Personally, I have very very much to be thankful for. I am on my way to the country I love now like a second home: far more than I ever loved any country, except the hills and moors of north Derbyshire when I was sixteen. And I shall see Gerald, and Chris Wood, and Denny Fouts, and lots of other friends. And I shall swim in the Pacific, which is like dying and turning into sunshine and foam. And I shall be able to relax for a few weeks, without correcting anybody’s prepositions and tenses.
And then? Well, I have signed the necessary forms and am now registered as a conscientious objector, which means that, with more or less delay, according to the decisions of the draft tribunal, I shall probably be sent to a work-camp. I have volunteered, as I believe I told you in my last pal-zeik-02 4/21/08 10:33 AM Page 106
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letter, to go in an ambulance unit to China, but it seems to be established as a precedent that one must spend at least some time in the work-camps first: and maybe, if public opinion wishes it, we must stay there altogether.
I hope I am prepared for whatever happens along this line: I try to be: but one is generally less prepared than one thinks. However, right now, I’m hardly worrying at all.
Some day, I will try to write about Haverford. There was so much of it that I never got around to describing it to anybody in a letter. Central Europe could hardly have supplied a second such all-star team of individualistic, neurocratic [ sic] virtuosi: there were days when I could have signed an order for total pogrom without flicking an eyelid: and yet nearly all of them were extraordinarily sympathetic, all were fascination, and, when I felt strong enough, I loved them dearly.
And Caroline Norment, our Irish directress—what was one to make of her? Superficial observers called her a phoney old ham, a Hitler, an octo-pus. True, it was impossible to speak to her before breakfast without unleashing a typhoon; true, she yielded to her appetite for tragedy until, in the last two months, she couldn’t enter a room without playing either (i) the heartbroken mother of congenital idiots bravely fighting back her tears with a smile while the poor little slobbering things pluck at her sleeves and pester her with meaningless questions, or (ii) King Oedipus emerging blinded from the palace at the very end of the disaster, slowly raising his hands to his streaming eyeholes, slowly letting them fall. But all the same I have met very few people who could cope with very difficult tired pes-simistic middle[-]aged middleclass aliens the way she can: she has an absolute genius for it. And I am really very fond of her indeed. I guess I naturally like octopi. In the midst of the tempest, I was often reminded of dear Berthold Viertel, yelling blue murder at Gaumont-British.26 He is very happy and busy and well, bless him, organizing Goethe evenings in New York. Nobody else seems to have had the obvious idea of presenting the best of German culture to the German-speaking members of the popula-tion. It is a huge success. Not only refugees come, but very considerable numbers of second-generation German-Americans who have kept up their language and like to speak and hear it but have been inhibited from doing so lately because of the popular idea that all such meetings must be Bund-meetings, and therefore disloyal. Meanwhile Salka writes movies, and so does Peter, the second son (did you ever read his beautiful novel “The Canyon”?) but very soon he’ll be in the Army.27
Wystan I saw last Monday: he has been staying in the neighbourhood of Haverford. He has been expecting to be drafted last week, but the board held him up another month on some technicality, and this was really heaven[-]sent pal-zeik-02 4/21/08 10:33 AM Page 107
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luck as now he reckons he’ll be able to finish his Christmas Oratorio, which I believe is the best thing he’s ever done. He says his ambition is to be sent to England as an American soldier, and then behave insufferably in London literary circles, chewing gum and talking about “us Yanks.”
I wrote to Klaus about your article but got no reply. I’m not sure if it was ever printed or not, but quite sure you’ll get no money for it now, as Decision has packed up for good. I am hoping to get hold of your Virginia Woolf essay. Many people, including Wystan, tell me how good it was. Wish I could hear your broadcasts.
All my love to you. And to May and Bob. I’d love to see Robin again now
[that] he’s bigger. Why can’t they ship the whole lot of you over: I’d even be content if I could choose a dozen: but no doubt I’d pick the ones Britain needs most.
As always, lovingly,
your
Christopher
* * *
25-7-42
West Hackhurst,
Abinger Hammer,
Dorking
Dearest Christopher,
This is not too bad for I was thinking twice of you yesterday and today receive your letter. Joe took me into a certain locality, when enter Brian Howard, looking flat [?] and thin, and we exchanged a few civilities: that always brings back Amsterdam to me, for there I first met him.28 Later in the evening I was thinking I would ask your mother for your latest address: but I suppose this is not two thoughts but one thought. Brian told me that you were sitting in a tent in a desert. Untrue. And that Gerald and Aldous were sitting in a temple with an observatory on top. Untrue? Your letter made me feel very happy. But also very provincial, and it is part of the psy-chology of this war that everyone, sooner or later, will come to feel provincial; your lads in the train, going out to the great clear conflict as they thought, hadn’t got to this yet.
Previous to that meeting with Joe and Brian, I called on Day Lewis in the M.O.I.29 He wants to remain there, doing important work, and it seemed just possible I might be able to pull a string over this. I don’t often see him. Lunch, previous to that, with Roger Senhouse.30 Which brings me back to Bob the night before. He arrived with a toothache and a record pal-zeik-02 4/21/08 10:33 AM Page 108
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called the Big Noise from Winnetken [?]. The toothache went off, and so did the record, fairly welclass="underline" I complained of its thematic poverty. Bob, mashing potatoes around onions and feeling better, argued that rhythm is all that matters. Then we took to drink.