Nothing from Tommy Ryan so far. I hope I shall see him.
I shall like to see your Gita translation. I read Mrs. Besant’s and got a good deal out of it. Best luck to your Viertel novel. I liked him when we met. I don’t expect I shall go to his anti-Nazi play. Most people here are fed up with them, and I am disgusted with the Lunts’ change of locale from Finland to Greece, though they acted well.
The rain redescends. Not even de Quincy would have gone for a walk with a rather Doverian gunner, and I don’t expect I shall for the gunner won’t call for me this evening.56
Susan Glaspell—I can’t remember whether she once sat on the edge of my bed at Brunswick Square or not. Norman Matson, who was closely connected with her, certainly did, and I liked him. Didn’t she once have another semi-phony play about a University? Bill lent me Wilder’s The Skin of our Teeth. Not phony, but sometimes foolish and expecting carelessness to do the job of charm.
9-5-44
This about a week later. Have reached home and the flat. Nice second letter from Bill, introducing personalities, but what is not so nice [is] my letter to Tommy Ryan returned to me[.] “Name rejected” is the alleged and mysterious cause. Meaning, I guess, that there are two of his name and that the naval address given me by Bill was not enough. Please write to him and give him my address, and we will hope to get into touch that way.
Must go and broadcast.
Love,
M.
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West Hackhurst, Abinger Hammer, Dorking
Saturday, 16-6-44
Dearest Christopher,
I don’t suppose that pilotless planes are more dangerous than anything else, but new forms of danger make one self conscious, and I find myself waiting to get off one more letter to you. I don’t think I have written since my visit to the Lakes (Ullswater) at the beginning of May; I had been lecturing at pal-zeik-02 4/21/08 10:33 AM Page 128
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Glasgow, and looked in at those lovely model mountains for 5 days. So small. But I got so tired and was so happy. I thought of you amongst carrots in huge Mexico—and now it seems to me I must have written to you since, and if I did it tells you something about my life: its lack of variety.
The Lakes will stick out for years. I wanted Bob and May to go, with [?]
Robin, when they take their holiday in August, but they have managed to hire their motor boat again. It does not move, but stays in the water between Teddington and Richmond. You get from the bank to it and back in a dinghy. I stayed a night there last summer, and the early mists rolling off the Star & Garter were certainly striking.
The windows keep shaking, my poor mother calls down for assurance, (she is very good over this hateful rubbish) and I call up that it is guns.
Probably it is. But Christopher[,] how disgusting, how difficult not to grumble in a war’s 5th year, how impossible for me to create a book. I wonder whether you, by sheer willpower, will succeed, as you intend to do.
Sun.
At this point I went to bed. What a night—cold[,] starlit and restless.
Everything far away, including the owls, and the voices of boys calling out excitedly. The house shaking itself gently for no reason. I didn’t intend to write you this kind of letter, but perhaps it is worth preserving as a document. As for news, I hear constantly from Bill, but (as I mentioned to you when last writing) my note to Tommy Ryan was returned from its official address. William [Plomer] came to a meal in the flat with us last week. I have rather lost his acquaintanceship through his overwork, and I have lost Joe’s [Ackerley] through his emotional specialisation. [R]egrettable losses, though they aren’t losses of friendship. I have had another letter from Paul Cadmus, a long one. I do think he must be very nice. His horror pictures gave me the depressed feeling that impotence does—I felt the same, more strongly, when I saw the pictures of D. H. Lawrence. I did not want to vomit. Do you know his friends the Frenchs?
Best love from
Morgan
I envy you your film work, and wish I knew more about the tricks and technicalities of that trade, so that I might spot the dishonesties in a picture with less bother and be left free to enjoy its achievements or possibilities.
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July 8. [1944]
1946 Ivar Avenue. Hollywood 28.
California.
Dearest Morgan,
Your letter of June 16 arrived today. It had been opened by Auntie Censor (unusual these days) and was directed to the old Alto Cedro address. So, considering the delay, it was very quick.
Yes, I’d been worrying a lot about the rockets. Here, we argue about them, wondering if they are more frightening than piloted planes. I have rather a thing about the malice of pilots: they may suddenly take a dislike to your particular house. But the rockets must be dreadful, too. So imper-sonal, like roulette.
Your earlier letter told me about the lakes. (I answered it a week ago).
I’m so glad that was a happy time.
Hope that you will be seeing Lincoln Kirstein. He has your address. I think you will find him very stimulating, and able to talk the language of both hemispheres, which is rare. Also, he might bring Pete. It seems he’s in England still. I wrote L. and am awaiting a reply. He may also see my Mother.
Am reading George Moore.57 I infinitely prefer his gossip to Proust’s. It’s about nothing much, but I like the tone. He is fearlessly preoccupied with the things he thinks important (in Salve) and assumes you will be too. So you are.
Or at least I am. The account of his hunting for a house in Dublin—told without the slightest attempt to amuse. One couldn’t care less, yet one reads on.
Also saw Garbo in her first big film, Gosta Berling. She isn’t special—only 17 and curiously plump. But the atmosphere of the picture. Those immemo-rially old saga-faces. The whole smell of the North. The gloom which somehow isn’t depressing. The great lakes and forests, and the neurosis and the furs, and the scowl of hopeless love. Strangely cosy. There were also some very sympathetic wolves, which, apparently, could only run on ice. As soon as Garbo and Lars Hansen reached the bank of the frozen lake, they were out of bounds, and the wolves retired and they had a love-scene in big fur mittens. Several young ladies of enormous size fainted on top of small but agile men, who bent under them but did not break. Mrs. Viertel told us that Garbo’s eyelashes were so long they had to be curled up before her eyes could be photographed.
Gerald has written a life of Christ from the point of view of Gamaliel.
Brilliant, I am told. The Huxley-Ish[erwood] movie story is not sold yet.
I’m getting ready to write a life of Vivekananda.58 Harvey Young is coming back to Hollywood soon, which may mean almost anything or not much. I feel more and more strongly that I shall see you before long.
Best love,
Christopher
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7-7-44
West Hackhurst,
Abinger Hammer,
Dorking
Dearest Christopher,
All whom you love are safe so far—the narrowest shave has been William’s, who was keeping John Morris company in his (M’s) flat. They were mainly battered by the noise. Glass broke but did not stale them. Bob injured his knee carrying a boy out of a blitzed house—returns to duty today. Leo writes cheerfully on his own behalf and Tom’s from Dover.
Down here it is fairly safe, though occasionally Goering doesn’t put enough stuff in, and they flop on the downs. I am mostly here, so do not worry about me. I only go up to broadcast or to see Bob. I am thankful that you are away from it—not so much out of the danger, which you aren’t interested to be, as out of the daftness. Only to music do I retain a first hand response. Everything else is conditioned by bombs; one is bearing up; one is setting an example; one is being kind; one is patronizing the past for its ignorance, or enjoying it for its security. Even if I could write a novel, I wouldn’t; it wouldn’t have integrity. Your work can have it. You are spared this unedifying worrying. One or two people are heroic certainly: Rose Macaulay plays away at a work of erudition, Visitors to Portugal, and won’t even leave London for a weekend. But silly heroism, what. Daft like the rest of us. She is not making anything of the amazing situation which has burst on us. I do a little thinking about the Flying Bombs, though. I believe they are going to be important psychologically. They will bitch the Romance of the Air—war’s last beauty parlour. Fewer films entitled Flarepath at Dawn.