They are inhuman, and people can’t get to grip with them in their minds, and feel thwarted, and are driven to reconsideration, and so to—?
Bill keeps writing to me. He is a grand fellow. I disappoint him with my sterility, but no matter: he must keep on being disappointed. What a lot of pleasure that rapid meeting with him has given me!
Jeanne de Casalis and Antony Asquith want to make Howard’s End into a film.59 What do you think of the idea? I think it is a dreadful idea, though I am struck by her sensitiveness. She sees what the house is and does see herself, I fear, playing Helen. I wish you were here to talk to. You would be sure to have some opinion. Umm. The house is an actual one, and during the past two years I have been going to it again. They would either shoot it
[there], which I should not like, or build it which I should not want. They would do something really English, and said so, in the Ivy, and I have a pal-zeik-02 4/21/08 10:33 AM Page 131
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vision of elm trees in the hedgerows, and of thousands of cows, such as astonished the Hardys when they saw Tess.
Popping into the Red Cross Book Sale yesterday I bought the Memoires of Saint-Simon.60 Six volumes, which seemed to be wrong, with London Library edition contains [ sic] forty. Still, six will be quite enough, for my main object is to find out what happened to civilisation when Madame de Sévigné left it, and before Voltaire came to it. I want also to find out which human beings have scored for the human race by having happy lives; Saint-Simon is unlikely to tell me—too cross. I think I have scored myself and I do not mean anything subtle by “scoring.” I have had good friends, and have not been parted from them too soon, and health, and have gained a reputation of the sort I’m glad to have had.— How tepid this reads. Please steep it in something, Christopher.
You will keep on getting letters like this from me I’m afraid, for the reason that we are not for the moment at our mental best in the London area.
Love from Morgan
* * *
1946 Ivar Avenue
July 29. [1944]
Hollywood 28. Calif
Dearest Morgan,
I think of you so much. There is no way of knowing just how bad the bombing is on any particular day. The newspapers are not allowed to say, and anyhow the news is not popular, because it doesn’t form an harmonious peal in the victory carillon. Please keep writing very often as long as this continues, even if only postcards. (But of course I hope and even expect it will have stopped before this letter reaches you).
There seems little news. The Gita translation will be ready next week and will go off to you, to John Lehmann, to Stephen, etc. You probably won’t be in the mood for it at present, but put it aside. It can wait. It has waited more than two thousand years. At the moment I’ve just finished a very priggish-sounding article on “The Gita and War” for our magazine. It annoys me, but there are things in it I wanted to say. The rough draft of my novelette is ready: a triumph of will rather than literature. But perhaps I can turn it into something. The present war gets in the way. One tries to choose between wisdom after the event and deliberate stupidity. I have been so very active this year, writing anything and everything: which I can’t help taking as an omen that the war will end very soon. Spring coming and the nest-building instinct. If novels are nests.
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I will now come right out quite frankly and say that I have no idea what Saint-Simon wrote about. Or Madam de Sevigne, either. Or, for that matter, Chateaubriand, Rochefoucault, or someone else, with an appetising name—Beavais, Bernaise, Bonpoint—oh, I remember, St Beuve. Not to mention Montesquioueuoueuouxxxxxqq. And weren’t there some more Madames? Recalmier? Or did she just lie down? But I have asked you enough questions for one letter. Please answer on one side of the paper, dismissing each character with a single sentence, or silent disdain, if you prefer.
Howard’s End, to my mind, is a play, not a movie—in that it is designed to induce claustrophobia rather than agoraphobia. Pictures should never be made about old or loved houses: the camera destroys all the atmosphere.
But Asquith has plenty of taste. And de Casalis helped write that rather good play about Napoleon on St Helena. I agree with you in mistrusting the
“really English” line. “Really English”—that’s a rare bird, not to be caught by the camera: unless one photographed it by mistake for a parrot.
Strange grey lifeless weather again: as if all the sunshine had been taken over by the government and made into something explosive. Must stop and cycle over to see Dodie Smith, who, as I’m sure I must have often told you, strangely reminds me of you. Your letter didn’t seem the least tepid, but if it had, you know what I would have steeped it in.
Lots of that, as always,
Christopher
* * *
15 Dec 1944
[telegram sent from Hollywood, CA]
How are you no news in ages worried please write
love happy Christmas Bob Buckingham family friend
Christopher Isherwood
* * *
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18-12-44
West Hackhurst,
Abinger Hammer,
Dorking
Dearest Christopher,
I have just wired to you and this inadequate letter shall go off tomorrow.
We are all of us all right. My good news is that I have at last news of the Maurons. They have emerged after four years from their cares and their Chinese mysticism, and Charles, now quite blind, has gone straight to the Mairie and is organising the distribution of food. Marie looks after five goats and has written five books. I find it difficult to write to them, as I do to you. Old Gerald once neatly explained why; starting to hope is painful, and we have had to practice, for so long, the better kinds of despair over here—gaiety, endurance, helpfulness, the enjoyment of art are some of those kinds.
I am just broadcasting to India, of all places, about your Gita, of all books.61 I like the translation very much indeed, far better than Mrs Besant’s, the only one I had read. (N.B. this is not my first canter though, vide Abinger Harvest). Instead of thanking you, I have cabled you to send me another copy, for I don’t like to lend mine, except to Bob, and people start asking for it.—[I] Don’t say much to India, of course. Quote poem about Fig Tree towards the end.
I hear constantly from Bill. Another American soldier has also been found—by Bob, and we are all getting fond of him quickly. His name is Noel Voge, from California. He is a translator, and married, in Portugal, a Yugoslav wife. Bob is going in for French, also for high class drama, and here he is supported by Robin and May: the four of us attended Hamlet and Richard III. Their party is on the 26th—we shall be thinking of you.