Letters to a Friend

by Diana Athill

  So this family drama has rather blown everything else out of my mind at the moment – I must write to Barry and tell him all about it, because he was around, of course, and a good friend to Jane all through her pregnancy . . . Everyone was, lucky little girl, and now this crowning piece of luck. Hurrah!

  Let me hear your news, dear love! Diana

  [My niece tells me I exaggerated her youth: she was fifteen when she fell in love and twenty-one when her child was born. She has always been devoted to children. I asked her, when she herself was still a child, what her ambition was, and she answered, ‘To be the youngest grandmother in Rhodesia’. She says now that the strongest element in her decision to have her baby adopted was dismay at the thought of giving it a miserable childhood. She envisaged how, as a single mother working full-time she would probably have to live in a town, and would certainly have often to entrust the child to minders, and that was so unlike her own very enjoyable rural childhood that it seemed to her appalling. The family she chose for her daughter lived in the country and had ponies for their children: that much she could control. It was, of course, pure luck that they turned out to be such lovable parents.]

  30 OCTOBER 2007

  Darling –

  There are some things in my life which will remain precious until it ends, and one of them is certainly seeing the words ‘for Diana Athill’ at the front of After the Fall – not to mention the lovely handwritten message. It is truly a great thing to be the dedicatee of such a collection. I have just this moment got back from Norfolk and opened your parcel – done no more that weigh the book in my hands and read ‘Credo’. The lugubriousness of the jacket dismayed me for a moment – it’s not fair on the rich variety of mood contained within it, and I wish they’d used instead the photo of you which is on the back, looking so handsome and wise – but I think most people who read poetry think about a book’s contents rather than its appearance, don’t you?

  I’ve decided what I’m going to do: make it literally my bedside book, keep it there and read not more than three or four poems every evening. Poems, like short stories, are difficult to read properly (for me, anyway) because you read one and enjoy it so you go greedily on to the next one – and the next – and the next, until you realize that your eyes have started bouncing off them without taking them in. By making myself more disciplined with yours, I’ll make them a part of my life (as some are already), which poems should be. Oh dearest Edward, I do hope you are feeling as proud as you ought to feel when you see the hugeness of your achievement gathered together. And that the shenanigans of publication will be fun, as well as productive of handsome sales. As for me, I feel immensely proud of knowing you – and now, of people knowing that I know you! XXXXXXX Diana

  3 NOVEMBER 2007

  Darling –

  Of course I didn’t manage to stick to reading only a few poems, I read one or two and then on and on I went until I looked at the time and saw it was 3.15 in the morning! Much of it, of course, was re-reading, but the new poems do include the best thing ever, or so it strikes me – ‘After the Fall’. When I finally flopped into bed my last thought before going to sleep was ‘How I do love Edward!’

  Yesterday I was visited by Jane’s recovered daughter. Their first meeting was less easy than they expected because they were both almost unbearably nervous. I’m v. pleased with myself for playing a part in getting them over this. I’d sent a welcoming e-mail to Beth and something I said hit the right button and decided her to ask for a second meeting rather than call it a day, and that meeting went like wedding bells and climaxed in their coming here for 3–4 hours of most animated talk – really interesting and enjoyable. She’s a good addition to the family. We won’t be seeing much of each other because she and her partner live in New Zealand, but we’ll certainly stay in touch, and enjoy doing so.

  Just heard that the Hay Literary Festival (in May, and much the nicest of all the literary festivals) wants me. Both Jane and my sister live near it, in truly lovely country, so we’ll have great fun. The Guardian’s coming to interview me soon, extracts have been sold to Daily Telegraph and to a v. widely circulated mag. for oldies called Saga, which combined with the sale to Norton has more than earned the advance, so omens are good. And my darling nephew Phil, instead of giving a large drinks party for my 90th birthday, which I forbade, is giving three big lunch parties on Dec. 14, 15, and 16, which he and his wife Annabel are going to cook for, about fifteen people at each party in their v. nice flat, which will be far more enjoyable, marred only by the absence of you and Neil. How I do wish it were possible for us to be at each other’s publication celebrations! And how I do wish that we both astonish ourselves by how well our life’s blood sells. Love and Love and Love XXXXXXX Diana

  5 NOVEMBER 2007

  Darling,

  The party sounds lovely – and so many books sold! It’s amazing and delicious, isn’t it, how reviving an enjoyable occasion is – and what could be more enjoyable than an appreciative audience! Given one about every three days, I guess one could live for ever. Actually I find that even enjoyable things unconnected with the nurturing of one’s ravenous ego provide a revivifying shot, if one stirs oneself up to the point of undertaking them. The other day I went with Clytie and Peter to an exhibition at the Tate [Tate Britain], having started by saying that I wasn’t up to it because even with a door-to-door taxi it would involve so much walking: that huge flight of steps up to the entrance, and then such miles of marble halls to cover . . . But having dithered for a bit, I decided in a martyred way that I ought to give it a try – after all, I could always collapse onto a bench and let them get on with it if it was really too much.

  And when it came to it I enjoyed looking at the paintings so much that I stopped noticing my arthritic hips and got all the way round the exhibition very happily – exhausted afterwards, but none the worse for it. It was useful, too, in that I saw how many oldies were spinning round it in wheeled chairs provided by the gallery. It seems that all the big galleries supply them nowadays, so the next time I want to go to a show I’ll book one in advance – they are self-propelling, so you don’t have to have a pusher – and will be able to enjoy such treats even without feeling tired afterwards. I’m sure the three consecutive days of birthday lunch-parties being organized so angelically by Phil will leave me prostrate, but while they are going on will make me forget my age [which they did].

  Although you’re a mere octo, you have a more testing time than I do now that Barry’s in Jamaica. Not one single onion have I chopped or piece of pork have I grilled since he left, and my god what a relief it is!

  I wonder sometimes whether living on bread and cheese, yoghurt, large quantities of fruit, occasional slices of salami or fillets of smoked mackerel – oh yes, and bowls of oatmeal porridge from time to time – may the best thing for keeping up energy, but I take a few vitamin supplements and I don’t in the least want to eat anything else.

  Probably at this stage one doesn’t in fact need proper meals, and one certainly doesn’t need the chore of shopping for them and preparing them. I’ve had people to dinner three times since he left, cooking things that could mostly be prepared a day in advance, and each time I’ve felt uncomfortably overfed afterwards, even though I’ve given myself tiny helpings. But men do need to eat more than women, so perhaps you resent regular cooking less than I did. May you have many more alert and appreciative audiences! Love and love. D

  POSTSCRIPT

  The collected letters go on for another year, and the correspondence still continues, as does our friendship, but it seems to me that this is the time to write FINIS. The reason is simple: we have become old. The relaxed form of the letter makes it more than just a way of keeping in touch; it is a way of sharing experience, and too often the experience old people have to share is wobbly health. One does mind a great deal about the health of a dear friend, and one wants to know about it, but the detailed swapping of symptoms does undeniably become boring, so the brisker informative
style of the e-mail begins to take over from the expansiveness of the letter, and the fun goes out of the writing.

  That is not to say that life after November 2007 became nothing but aches and pains. It was, in fact, very full of other matters, because both Edward and I had the luck to experience Indian Summers. He, having endured a period during which his poetry went out of fashion, is now seeing it come back again, while I . . . well, Stet was a success and after that book came two more, the second of which was even more of a success than Stet; but greatly though I enjoyed this unexpected development, the wish to write about it, strong to begin with, soon began to dwindle. I found this hard to understand at first, but now I think I know the cause. When I am doing the things entailed by success – giving talks, being interviewed, meeting well-known people and so on – I certainly enjoy it because I have discovered that I am good at it, but all the time a tiny inner voice (I think of it as the voice of my family) is whispering ‘You are showing off’ – and in my childhood ‘showing off’ was the worst thing you could do next to lying. And not only was showing off so disgraceful, but occasions favourable to showing off were ‘bad for you’, they were corrupting. The whisper is not loud enough to make me avoid such occasions, or to stop me having a good time at them, but it does cause me to think about them as little as possible – deliberately to avert my mind from them – so it has gradually leached away any pleasure I might take in describing them. Which leaves for letters mostly the aches and pains. I would like to end with a bang rather than a whimper, but bangs don’t happen to the old (short of the last one), so please accept a quiet ‘The End’.

  Diana Athill,

  London, March 2011

  More Praise for Diana Athill’s Letters to a Friend

  “Athill is a wonderful letter writer—always aware of the need to entertain and beguile her reader.”

  —Daisy Goodwin, Sunday Times (London)

  “These letters are quite different from the polished prose of the memoirs. They are spontaneous and unstructured, full of daily minutiae . . . and delightful snippets from her colourful personal life.”

  —Economist

  “Vivid reports on life in late 20th-century Britain as experienced by a writer, editor, daughter, partner and pensioner with an extraordinarily ‘beady eye’ on human relations and a phenomenal capacity for making the most of everything that comes her way.”

  —Alexandra Harris, Guardian (UK)

  “Every letter . . . is a small masterpiece; chatty, companionable and very, very intelligent.”

  —Valerie Ryan, Shelf Awareness

  “The doyenne of the English literary world, as she has been seen, has struck again, this time retrospectively.”

  —Karl Miller, New Statesman

  “[Athill] describes beautifully those ‘lovely moments of pure being’ that make it all worthwhile.”

  —David Evans, Financial Times

  “Athill is simply a wonderful writer.”

  —Carol Edwards, Post and Courier

  “[Athill] is known not only for her burning personal honesty but for her economy of style. A critic once wrote that she can convey in a single word what other writers need a paragraph to say.”

  —Nancy Reynolds, Washington Independent Review of Books

  “Endearingly forthright, buoyant and detailed.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Throughout this warm, enduring literary bond, Athill exposes a charming wit, vanity, and graciousness.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Copyright © 2011 by Diana Athill

  First American Edition 2012

  First published in Great Britain by Granta Publications under

  the title Instead of a Book: Letters to a Friend

  All rights reserved

  First published as a Norton paperback 2013

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  Production manager: Louise Mattarelliano

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Athill, Diana.

  Letters to a friend / Diana Athill. — 1st American ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-393-06295-3 (hardcover)

  1. Athill, Diana—Correspondence. 2. Authors, English—20th century—Biography.

  3. Women editors—Great Britain—Biography. 4. Field, Edward, 1924– —Friends and

  associates. I. Title.

  PR6051.T43Z46 2012

  828’.91409—dc23

  011044200

  ISBN 978-0-393-34549-0 pbk.

  ISBN 978-0-393-08434-4 (e-book)

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