Thank you for asking after my friend. We went to the doctor the other day, and I’m afraid there’s no doubt that one of the lungs is already affected. This weather doesn’t help much, either.
I feel as if I am shortly going to enter upon a period of travelling, half against my will. I don’t want to start shifting about, and yet I know I shall never be happy till I’ve visited the places one sees on cigarette cards. Did you go to India for any special reason, or just because it’s such a long way off?
I am writing an indecent bumptious stupid sort of novel about Berlin which I fear you won’t like.4 It’s strange, I long to do very moving Dickensy scenes with tears, and when it comes to the point I dry up like a stone and write something venomous. It’s as if I had some nasty green poison in my system.
My mother heard you over the wireless and said: what a charming voice.
There was a cabinet meeting here the other day to discuss the permissible limits of bathing dresses. Prussia seems to be in the hands of the Roman Catholics.
Yours
Christopher Isherwood
* * *
pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 19
THE 1930s
19
As From:
4-1-33
West Hackhurst,
Abinger Hammer,
Dorking.
Dear Isherwood,
I was so glad to hear form [sic] you—have been meaning to write—and so glad you saw I’d had the pleasure of mentioning The Memorial. (Your mother thought my voice sweeter than ever, I hope!)
It’s exciting about Manchuria, but I won’t mention it even very definitely to myself, for it would certainly be annoying to come to Berlin and find you weren’t there. I’ve several times dallied with the thought of coming. But my voice incommoded me, and though it is now happily silenced I am [taught?] up in the memoir of a friend—Lowes Dickinson. It’s so long since I’ve written a book that it feels like opening a tomb.
If there’s no news your end there must be less here—except that between the last paragraph of this letter and the present paragraph I went to bed and dreamt that, although still writing to you, I had been to Russia.
What can this mean? No doubt someone can tell one. But I reflected in my dream that I should be able to continue this letter in a more interesting way, and I felt complacent.
I will write again, so will you, and specially you, for I want to hear about the Manchurian plan when it develops. You did not mention (in this letter) about your friend. I was very sorry indeed about the bad news which you gave me previously. It is such a wretched time of year too. I do hope things are going rather better. And good wishes for 1933.
Yours ever
EM Forster
* * *
pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 20
20
LETTERS BETWEEN FORSTER AND ISHERWOOD
[Postmark: Abinger Hammer, Surrey, April 13, 1933]
Dear Isherwood,
I was very pleased to get your card on my return from Ireland. I wish you would be so kind as to ring me up on Saturday morning before 10.0 if you are in town, so that we may see when we can meet. It is Terminus 5804.
I am not there for the moment but in bed in the country and feeling rather muddled. However I shall be there, if somewhat complicated by an Indian.
I do hope we shall meet soon.
Yours ever
EM Forster
Thursday
* * *
Monday [April 1933?]
West Hackhurst,
Abinger Hammer,
Dorking.
Dear Isherwood,
Symbolically enough[,] the roof of this house is falling off. I have to put it on again and I can’t be sure of doing so before Tuesday evening. I must therefore take back the suggestion I made to you, much to my regret. I do hope I haven’t put you out. I hope to get up Wednesday. If you could send me a p[ost] c[ard] (here) as to your movements this week[,] I should be grateful.
Yours ever,
EM Forster
* * *
[April 27, 1933]
West Hackhurst,
Abinger Hammer,
Dorking.
Dear Isherwood,
I am very sorry not to see you again. I count on your letting me know when next you are in England. I don’t suppose I shall get to Germany. Bob and I did talk of it for his holidays in the latter half of June, but no doubt we shan’t get further than England. I was very glad you liked Maurice, especially pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 21
THE 1930s
21
the part about Alec, which I have just read again. An example of domesticity, such as you were asking for, is presumably to be found at “Tisselcot”[?] but I daren’t thus instal them, no, nor even under a hay-stack. I think what might happen is a permanent relationship, but with all sorts of vagaries, fears, illnesses, distractions, fraying out at its edges, and this would take a long time to represent. One might shorten it, perhaps, if one made them take a vow, and Maurice could take it, but I doubt about Alec, as about myself. We are, both of us, more likely to look back and realise that we have, after all, sacrificed enough to bring the thing off.— I’ve some other stuff to show you some time, thought it better than Maurice until recently, but begin to have my doubts; as you say, why shouldn’t one date? [i.e., be dated]—William
[Plomer] will have given you my message, that the MS [manuscript]. is to be left at the Reform Club. I don’t come up till Monday. I wanted to hear more about the German with whom you might be going to Brazil.
Yours ever
EM Forster
* * *
[1933?]
Reform Club,
Pall Mall. S.W.1.
Dear Isherwood,
Your address is pleasantly reassuring. However, look at mine. Do send me your promised letter, in fact it is to secure it that I write, for I have not much in the way of news. Who’s the friend with you? The one who was ill?
I do hope he’s on the mend. Also have you seen Gerald Heard whom I have just heard as being in Greece too.
God, this is going to be a dull letter. Still, why not? I have just come from a committee meeting of the London Library, which was presided over by Sir Arnold Wilson, victor in the Hitchin bye[-]election with an immensely reduced majority, and sister to Mona Wilson, my friend. A shit of a man.
And last month, our chairman was Lord Riddell. I had just finished, unknown to my fellow members, a dialogue between a porter and a passenger, which is not publishable nor indeed very amusing. Sir Arnold looked as if he had just finished with Lady Wilson, and Lord Riddell was not there at all. We discussed Stephen Graham, who at the last annual meeting had been the sole dissentient to our application for a Royal Charter. We had got our Charter, and the question was whether our report should be sullied with the mention of Graham’s name. Not a name I want pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 22
22
LETTERS BETWEEN FORSTER AND ISHERWOOD
to see in other places, but here. . . . It was finally decided that his name should be omitted but his protest recorded, and we parted fairly pleased.
[no closing or signature]
* * *
July 8 [1933]
L’ILE ST NICHOLAS
CHALIA
BEOETIA
GREECE
Dear Forster,
I wonder where you are and what you are doing? If you happen to be in Greece, please come and call. All you have to do is to get to Chalkis by train, then persuade some farmer to bring you as far as Chalia with his cart, from whence half an hour’s brisk donkey ride will bring you to the shore. From the shore you must shout very loud, and I will come over in a boat and fetch you.
It is not really very nice here. The landscape is superb but it is far too hot. And there are too many insects and body vermin. Also we have a permanent water shortage as water has to be brought from the mainland in cans. We live in tents and await the building of the house. It is promised to be ready by the middle of August.
You know Greece well, of course. What do you make of it? Can you fit Plato and Sophocles on to these mountains covered with spiky bushes and these vallies [sic] like ovens, full of sand, inhabited by goats and vultures? I can’t, but I expect that is because I had the wrong sort of classical education, designed to make the classical Greeks as much as possible like Varsity rowing blues. The Greeks nowadays seem so strident and cunning and picturesque. The Spartan toughness remains—I see that. But I simply can’t picture even remotely any of them caring about the Golden Mean or the Good Life.