Your letters [are] not before me. I am in bed and must get up, for I am going this afternoon to Cambridge with May. She most kindly coming to overhaul my wardrobe, but will be trapped into a certain amount of festiv-ity I hope. I did have a little influenza for my birthday, however I got here with it, and was not bad. There are two sorts of influenza, the little and the large, and the large is mainly north of the Tees.14 Always think of us in the south, when you are inclined to be depressed.
Don Windham has been here, much nicer without “monster” Sandy.15
He comes up to Cambridge for the day on Thursday. And there has been a long and welcome visit from Noel and Marietta Voge from Berkeley—
them you don’t know.
Well dearest Christopher [I] must stop. Much much love to you, much to Bill, and respects and regards to the friends with whom I should have been immediately working.
Bob may want to add a line. Much love,
Morgan
pal-zeik-03 4/14/08 2:57 PM Page 149
THE POSTWAR YEARS
149
[note from Bob:]
My dear Christopher, I did my best for you but it was “no go.” M. dis-trusts Hollywood too much. I expect he is right. I will encourage him to make another visit to America when he is really better. We all send our love, Bob
* * *
King’s Coll., Camb.
Jan. 14[,] 1952
Dearest Christopher,
I found your letter on my return—what you say about Maurice excites me.16 There ought to be that extra chapter, but should it not come before the boat chapter at Southampton instead of after it? I mean like this: Leaving the British Museum, they go off together, we know—in surround-ings not too unsuitable they talk as you say, they feel as we know, and M.
says “It mayn’t work but we’ll give it a try”—A[lec] says I can’t, I daren’t, I must go as arranged with Fred, you’re the only person I’ve ever . . . but I can’t—also (perhaps) there have so often been women that I daren’t—In the boat chapter he has dared, Maurice has won him. The final chapter with Clive then stands firmer than ever.
Do you think this would work? Or do you still prefer them to have it out after the boat?
I will have a try—humility my guide. I don’t think though that I could write fiction—and of that type—anymore.
I enclose a precious and remarkable letter to Dear Forster, which please return.17 It shares your fear that it may be only physical attraction. It is an enlightened letter—sometimes too much so: some great things also happen in the dark—it is there that the physical may start flowering.
It occurs to me that you may have seen the letter already. I adopted some of the criticisms when redrafting. He is the model for Risley, as he gaily suggests.
I’m sure we’re right about Arctic Summer, though when I read it aloud, with cuts, it seems much better than it is.18
I come up on Sunday the 20th for most of the week. What can you manage?
I was not at all sure that you would still like M[aurice] and feel very happy.
Love,
Morgan
No. Much love
pal-zeik-03 4/14/08 2:57 PM Page 150
150
LETTERS BETWEEN FORSTER AND ISHERWOOD
* * *
[King’s Coll., Camb. letterhead crossed out and replaced with “As from Bob’s”]
Jan. 18[,] 1952
Dearest Christopher,
I could meet you Tuesday evening—dine say, or after dinner if you couldn’t dine. Please ring Bob’s. Monday as you suggest. I get there Sunday night and may be staying on a few days.
I have drafted out that chapter, and would like to show it you, together with the chapters before and after. British Museum—that chapter—boat at Southampton—good bye to Clive is the sequence. I’m afraid it isn’t right in itself, and couldn’t be after so many years, but my wanting to do it is important, and I am sure it is wanted, and may—despite the jar in tone—
strengthen the stuff on each side of it. A (recorded) meeting between M.
and A. after the boat sailed might too much resemble the signing of a pro-tocol. As it is, A. has full license to misbehave and throw this attractive weight about, and M. to be grand. [A]nd I should like to think that they take it. I do feel so grateful to you. I have had the story much in mind these weeks, wondering whether A’s entry up the ladder could be heated up without becoming hot stuff. But your query is infinitely more important.
What have you done to little Mark Boxer? Last term he called me Morgan, this term Sir. Still if you do not have a similar effect on Ken Shadbolt and Alex Kwapong[?].19 I do not really mind. Dined with Simon Raven last night, and got a little drunk on nicely calculated wines. Both boys pleased with your messages.
Love and gratitude from
Morgan
* * *
As from Bob’s [London]
10-2-52
Dearest Christopher,
I have hammered out a technique. Alec is known to favour the Boathouse, Penge, as a trysting place. He is also known—and Maurice knows him—to have Maurice’s home address for he wired and wrote there when Maurice fled. What more natural than that he should communicate there again? Maurice thinks of this (we didn’t) and rings up his mother pal-zeik-03 4/14/08 2:57 PM Page 151
THE POSTWAR YEARS
151
from Southampton, after the boat has gone. She, amidst babblings, reveals that a telegram awaits him. Shall she open it? Yes. It contains one word
“Boathouse,” which she will conjecture as to be a code-word. He goes there and it is obvious they have clicked before his interview with Clive.20
I deplore the neatness of this. Raggeder [ sic] suggestions welcomed.
The hotel chapter is done.
Equally important, I come up Wednesday to Wozzeck.21 Stop at May’s till Friday and then perhaps to my own flat. Shall I see you dear Christopher?
Love,
Morgan
Let me have Lytton’s letter back.
* * *
[return address of air letter: King’s College, Cambridge]
[postmark date: Oct. 3, 1952]
Dearest Christopher,
Lovely to hear from you after all this time and I have much to say, but will confine my reply, or most of it, to Maurice.22 I have heard from Monroe Wheeler (whom I know better than I do Glenway) and I am today writing to my Lit. Ex[ecut]or Jack Sprott, who has been away. He will own all my copy-rights MSS after my death, so it’s complicated and I don’t know what I shall decide. In the interim, would you be willing to have a copy of Maurice on condition that it wasn’t published until I died, and was only published by you in the U.S.A.? I am afraid that that’s the most the gift is likely to amount to.
Also it would arrive without the additional chapter which I have never got into shape. Don’t be angry—who has not yet finished his novel? Or shall we be angry with each other?
No you can’t be equally angry with me, for I have finished the Dewes book.23 The publishers are now peeking in it for libels.
So write again, please, and by then I should have consulted Jack Sprott and seen Monroe.
Next week I go to Belfast to unveil a plaque to Forrest Reid,24 and next month (I hope) to Paris. The French Government has invited me, and to do nothing, it says.“Merci, madame, d’avoir existé” as they said to Rosamond Lehmann.