We meet at 12.00, for roast goose. Bob’s father and mother will be there, also Noel Voge, and Joe and his sister Nancy arrive for tea. Brother Ted is breeding too fiercely to make this journey.
You must be anxious as to whether we are safe, and I must write more frequently. I am so afraid of being depressing for depression’s sake. Most people mind V. 2 less than V. 1.62 I’m not sure I do, for when everything is quiet and the silence I love approaches, I sometimes start wondering whether one [i.e., another bombing raid] is coming. Certainly anyone you know in the London area may vanish entirely at any moment, not run to a corpse even [i.e., burned]. But the percentage is very small so far—that is to say among those I know. Though many houses of friends have been destroyed or damaged. William Plomer is fairly all right—in the admiralty, pal-zeik-02 4/21/08 10:33 AM Page 134
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not too good with shingles. Joe moderate. Leo and Tom still at Dover.
Please write again. What news have you of Wystan?
Best love, and I am sorry to have worried you and much [. . . ?] cable.
Also I should have thanked you for that book at once.
Morgan
Just received letter from Richard.
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3
The Postwar Years
9-5-45
Chiswick [London]
Dearest Christopher,
It is long since I wrote, but soon after I received your last letter my mother died, which has given me much to do, besides terrible grief. You might tell Gerald when you next write, with my love. She was not ill long—
under a week, and did not suffer, or have illusions, and I have no regrets or remorses [ sic], though all the other sorts of sadnesses [ sic]. If I could have come straight away, say out to you, it would have been all right, but neither the state of the world nor my immediate duties permitted that, and I have to drag on at West Hackhurst destroying things—150 years of letters mostly from women to women about women, and masses of rubbish from straw fans to wardrobes which are in many cases not absolute rubbish and have a semi-life which complicates their fate. I dislike destruction, also sadness. What I shall do is beyond me, as it is beyond the world. I have no illusion that problems are soluble: their only use is that they show one, roughly, where one is. Everyone has been very kind, and I eat and sleep all right. The actual date of death was March 11.
I have just turned up such a pleasant photograph—you and me on beach at Ostende while Heinz in middle distance appears to be looking down his back at his toe. I expect that the sight of it got this letter going, though you have often been in my thoughts. I am in bed at Chiswick. Last night was Victory Day, you will remember, and today is another one. I came up to broadcast, also to see Bob, but of course he is on extra duties. I am feeling rather sick as I drank a good deal (for me) in an experimental way. It was not very nice in London. Isolated shrieks, no rhythm, no contacts. Six years have been too long. And we haven’t yet had Vactory Day. Or Vuctory. A man in the club, whose name I do not know, grimly stood me champagne. Then I squashed [?] in pubs for beer. Buckingham Palace, seen well from sideways, was surprisingly effective, with a great decor of evening pal-zeik-03 4/14/08 2:56 PM Page 136
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clouds, and the King lobbing words very carefully at the enormous con-course. I should have liked to be in his place, for there is great thankfulness, and he could have seen it and focused it if in possession of field glasses. I could not see him.
I must get up, dear Christopher, and settle whether to be unwell. No, I need not get up, because I have now done so, turned on the bath, and got back into bed again. It is only 8.00 A.M. so my celebrations have not been riotous. Through the windows I can see the spire of the church which William calls St Utrillo and the flag on it town hall, but dimly because of the dirt. Will this country ever be clean and tidy again? No. I was merely stating a problem. My broadcast will be on Osbert Sitwell and on a concert of Indian Music in the National Gallery.1 Oh that reminds me, I don’t think I ever thanked you for the additional Bhagavad Gitas. I was very glad to receive them. Joe sits on one of them, another is promised to Indians in Broadcasting House.
Please write again, with any news. We are so provincial here, and I have an idea that your province may be larger. The people you know here are all right—that is to say the people you knew with or through me. Bob has bought a boat and is rigging it. At present it lies inside a barge at Hammersmith Bridge, so is not very big. Bob calls the barge a dry dock.
May says with resignation that she understands that there are intervals in the career of a boat when it can be used, and that perhaps one will occur before the end of the summer. Perhaps I shall look in on her this morning on my way up. It is very nice having them so near, and there is always lots of food.
Best love, dear Christopher
Morgan
* * *
26-8-45
W[est] H[ackhurst]2
Dearest Christopher,
News at last, and in the Hollywood sense. Having finished my picture with the Crown Film Unit, I am flying to India to attend a conference of writers. How livelily Morgan writes—always did! No, but this is so. It is an Indian P.E.N. meeting on Oct. 20th, at Jaipur, and I have got air preference.
At the last moment I may be pushed off the plane to accommodate a business man, but up to that moment it is so. And I am partly writing to ask you whether you have a message for this conference. I should be very glad of it if you have. It doesn’t matter your not belonging to the P.E.N. A greeting.
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Or more. And will you ask Aldous if you are near him. And Gerald if the same. Swamis can also communicate. I think the company would be thrilled and pleased if something came from your coast. I will enclose, if I can find it, all that we yet know about this curious stunt. They are my hosts in India, and the British Council is sending us out: odder still. “Us” is self and Ould, the P.E.N. Secretary in London.
All my friends want me to go, and some may be glad to get rid of me, for I partly died when my mother did, and must smell sometimes of the grave.—I have noticed and disliked that smell in others, occasionally—I do not cotton [?] to sorrow.
My old maid has been very nice at being left alone for a couple of months; has a sister who will come, and a former fellow servant, and my aunt Rosalie, and Joe, and Bob, May and Robin. And I have a good gardener. So they should get through somehow, and the house still working on my return. I have still millions of things to see to and destroy, and no visible future or bright reground. But I shall be thankful to see men and women of a different colour in the streets and India will provide that. My best friends there are all dead, and if death meant being with them I should like it. I have a romantic fantasy that I shall never come back. But events don’t stage us like that. Besides, I may never start, which is more likely.
I forget if I wrote to you since my visit to Leo & Tom at Dover, but I don’t want to fill the rest of this paper with small chat—except to say that Bob and May & Robin have gone up the Thames in a boat they now possess, have been away a fortnight and are now returning. I met the boat at Weybridge regatta.3
Very much love from
Morgan
* * *
1946 Ivar Avenue
Hollywood 28 Calif.
[September 26, 1945]
Dearest Morgan,
Just got your letter. I hope this reaches you before you leave. Look here, couldn’t you possibly come back by way of California? It would be so nice, and I know you’d have a great welcome in N.Y. too. Cadmus would see to that. Here, of course, there are Chris,4 Gerald, the Huxleys—not to mention Dodie Smith, who would love to meet you—as who wouldn’t?