How glib I sound saying so. Bill manages to see John Simpson at B[irming]ham and Forrest Reid at Belfast. But I expect he has written to you. He has seen a good deal of the Kenneth Clarks in London.
The dolour and heaviness which invade one when writing to a friend who has been long far away—discount them when reading this letter. I was pal-zeik-02 4/21/08 10:33 AM Page 121
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moved specially by two things you said in yours. One of them was your reminder to me how I had burned some stories in order to finish A Passage to India. That sacrifice still seems to me right, still inexplicable for I wasn’t and am not ashamed of them. I will try to connect it on to “God.” Your other remark was about my feeling for Bob. It made me realise that he (and he only) can make me feel a shit without saying so, or even thinking so.
There does seem—in both the above—a reaching out into some sort of sea.
Paul Cadmus, who did a bad picture of you, has done a very nice one for me. He writes very pleasant letters. What sort of a chap is he? He has asked me to get into touch with Lincoln Kirstein’s Mexican friend, but no success so far.
It is cold here and there is no gas[,] no electricity here, scarcely any coal, very little oil, and green wood. So war suffering is in this direction. London has plenty of everything as far as I can see, and there is no gas rationing such as you have been worried with.
My aunt Rosalie, whom you may remember from Dover, is here and she and mother send you messages. I have become a “good”—i.e. acceptable—
broadcaster did I tell you, having made my reputation on the Indian service, and there is a clamour to use me on the Home [broadcasting service]
to preach culture. Preaching (with me) would soon lead to compromise and falsity, so I go careful[ly]. The things I want to talk about, like the destruction in Italy, I shouldn’t be allowed to say. We are all crouched around the drawing room fire, the ladies are trying to mend the knees of my drawers, but arguing so much that I am losing my sense of gratitude. I will finish and take this to the post. Best love to Gerald when you see him—yes, I owe him a letter. My good wishes to Aldous, also to Willie
[Sommerset] Maugham. How is Wystan? This piece of paper is from a present given me by Miss Phillips & Miss Hayles. They live in Devonshire now.
Much much love from
Morgan
[Enclosed Postcard:]
With love to Christopher from:
[signed names:]
May Buckingham
Stephen Spender
Joe Ackerley
Bob Buckingham
Robert M. Buckingham (Robin)
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Bill Roerick
Natasha Spender
Morgan Forster
9 Arlington Park Mansions
Chiswick W.4.
February the 8th 1944
* * *
28-2-44
West Hackhurst,
Abinger Hammer,
Dorking
Dearest Christopher,
Yours of 22-1-44 has been with me some little time and merits answer.
Your previous letter of 27-?-43 took a much longer time to come. Which brings me to Mr Norris. I had not heard of his conversion to Catholicism, but Tony Hyndman, into whom I ran in a tube, said that he was violently anti-Semitic. This, and other rumours, has caused me not to see Mr N.
though I am false to myself in not doing so[.] I ought to examine his depths for myself, since I got amusement out of his shallows in the continental days. Occasionally, when I have been where perhaps I shouldn’t I have been conscious of him through the reek.
Bill Roehrick has gone, missed by many, and particularly by me, for he has gone out of his way to be serious and sweet. It is long since I have felt so close to such a young person. I don’t know how much the “well known writer” in me is important to him. Legitimately important in so far as he has been trying to make me write. He got down here for an afternoon and all loved him and the day before he left we spent ten hours together trailing about London and the Churchill Club, and got so thoroughly worn out that we could only grin at one another and say so. I have written at his introduction to Tommy Ryan. The other boy, with whom Tommy was, is killed or missing. As for Martinez, I have been hoping to hear from him, for Paul Cadmus also told him to look me up. But no one has any news of him, and perhaps he may not be in this country.
You will have read of the renewed raids. All whom you know are safe, so far as I know. Bob had his usual heroic gruesome time, and he’s been very grave since, and has changed—come nearer to your point of view over this and to mine. No further satisfaction in smashing civilians in Germany. We pal-zeik-02 4/21/08 10:33 AM Page 123
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are all feeling pretty serious minded. My flat shook, and the windows and door of his flew about. I hope America will never have anything as bad, and I hope Poland etc. hope that we shall never suffer as they have. It is a ladder of misery, in which each rung is tempted to keep to itself, ignore the rung below it, criticise the rung above.
Yes, I’m aware of something in myself at times which isn’t myself, and which Stephen wanders towards in his poem. I don’t like to call it God nor do I think it wisely so called, for the reason that the word “God” has kept such bad company and hypnotises its users in wrong directions. I even queried your saying that it was infinitely greater than oneself: different, yes, but one hasn’t the apparatus for measuring size.
I returned from London the day before yesterday with one of my pleurisy threats, and since then have mostly been sitting, quite well really, in the drawing room with my mother, and getting muddled and fidgety.
And I’m not content with my remarks on God. When the weather improves, and I can be alone, I will write about him again. Do you like Blake? (I do) Do you give good marks to generosity, tenderness? In what set of values are we to believe if generosity and tenderness are to colour our conduct?
Yes, William’s autobiography is splendid. I have written a long thing for me (40,000 words or so) about this house, and it’s amusing in parts, but dispirited and scrappy, and anyhow couldn’t be published because it criticises the living. I wrote partly as a social document, partly to read to the Memoir Society.
Much love and Bob will be sending his. He is altering deeply but you would like him. I wish he would paint or even read but know by analogy that he can’t go farther than gadgetting [ sic].
Morgan
Two lovely food parcels, let me repeat, reached me from you at Christmas.
* * *
1946 Ivar Avenue
March 16. [1944]
Hollywood 28 Calif.
Dearest Morgan,
I am sitting writing this against the wall on the beach. Denny Fouts, whom you would probably like as much as I do, is studying anatomical German—part of his work at the University, where he has just started, pal-zeik-02 4/21/08 10:33 AM Page 124
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being free of the draft with a heart-murmur. Anatomical German, incidentally, is much easier than anatomical English: the occipital, for example, is just called the Hinterkopf. I suppose this proves something—but as Denny has to learn both words anyway, the interest is somewhat academic.
It’s really a very cold day, owing to a wind off the snow-mountains, but this wall is so hot that I feel quite sick. Five yards form [ sic] it, we’d be shiv-ering. This also proves something.