by Mary Wesley
So I say come out as soon as you can. Come for Voice and Vision (not Vogue) as that means you would get a room in the businessman’s hotel across the way …
Tomorrow I motor off to the border to see the blockade lifted. That means a story at midnight from the border. Then on Thursday (you mayn’t motor at night) I drive up to Berlin through the Soviet Zone … There are going to be millions of journalists and it’s going to be hard to reach or reserve a telephone …
All my love,
E.
Dusseldorf – 9.5.49
… I feel much, much better. I have spoken to my office who noticed no great lacuna; in other words, they don’t care a pin about Bonn! …
PS Fish being in soup anyway, after yesterday’s S. Times ‘She’ has no doubt written to editor, and received a raspberry.fn24
The Soviet blockade of Berlin ended in May 1949, and the airlift finished on 12 May.
Dusseldorf – 16.5.49
… No, the blockade story was not amusing. I couldn’t think of anything to say, to begin with. Then I picked my car and driver so that we whizzed past every other car at a steady 85 mph – only to leave the road by accident, and spend the night dodging Russian police posts in Potsdam! … It was of course quite funny, but oh how disastrous. My driver wept.
The result is that I am doing thoroughly badly. There have been two stories since I came; Bonn and Berlin; and I missed both, through accidents. I don’t think I can do very well because of a. language, b. new country, c. lack of news sense. (I can do features better than news.) So I am now in an un-nerved and disgusted state, feeling that my job may not last. So … I think you’d better come. Firstly, you can help me, secondly, if I am to be here a short time, we may as well be together. So, I shall send my wire to Beddington tomorrow … Berlin rattled me, and when I panic I drink, and then I panic more …
Glad you stopped Carol’s moneyfn25 … Grab at £4000 [for Peakswater] if you get an offer …
Dusseldorf – 17.5.49
Darling,
… I have now faced up to my situation, and I am completely calm. The fact – which knocked me off my balance – is that I cannot do this job. It is a matter of ‘news’, and I am essentially a writer of leaders or commentaries. I cannot even do ‘popular’ features well. And I don’t know Germany. All this, quite apart from the intolerable living conditions, means that I ought never to have taken this job. But I had to jump at it for the sake of having a job at all.
Having you, I have no intention of chucking it without consulting you. I will do what I can, and we might use it to try to guide ourselves into congenial work.
An alternative is to face things squarely, tell Fleming I can’t do this job (he may guess it already) and come back to spend two months with you at Peakswater. Then, if we sell the house, to go to London and take – if necessary – a few months to find something literary and congenial, if modest, which would enable us to live in Chelsea or somewhere and try to do our own work as well. This appeals to me, by its existentialist element of choice and renunciation! But it wouldn’t help my chances of finding congenial work to have thrown up this job …
I have an idea, though, for the future; and I hear this is the very moment to find a job on the Observer.
Let me know what you feel. I am tempted to chuck up and come back. I have made a bad mistake. It’s foolish to go on. I lose prestige every minute …
I am sorry to fail you, but I love you dearly …
E.
Without you, I would now be in the soup. With you, I feel like fighting it out …
In June, Mary joined Eric and they moved from Frankfurt to Berlin. By September Phyllis’s aggressive intrusions had caused such havoc in the foreign department of the Sunday Times that Ian Fleming suspended Eric, whereupon he resigned and returned to England. In October, Eric was offered a position in Paris for the Observer but by December Phyllis had bullied the editor, David Astor, to fire Eric from this job as well. Dr Whitcombe noted that ‘his condition has worsened and he appears to be developing into a nervous wreck’. Eric was suffering from depression, severe headaches and a tremor of the hands. He was approaching ‘a state of acute nervous breakdown’. Harry added that he was worried that Eric might become suicidal. Eric had been paid off by the Observer with £500. He and Mary moved back to the Easton Court Hotel in Chagford where they spent Christmas with the boys. After Christmas, Eric decided to write a play for the West End. In January Mary took the boys up to London to stay with Carol before the start of the new school term.
Chagford – 19.1.50
Darling,
What a sad departure. I felt very badly about it all yesterday …
Today there is white ice and a blue sky, and I have decided that we must stay here … I have made a scheme for paying our way, but I need 3 or 4 months.
Whenever I pour out my troubles in terse and bitter terms to Mr Bowden, he yells with laughter and says: ‘Eric, I love your wit.’
Chagford – 20.1.50
Mary,
I am coming up on Monday, because Harry and Rickatson-Hatt want me to lunch with them on Tuesday …
Will you get me a room for 2 or 3 nights at the Hyde Park, Basil Street or some cheap but comfortable hotel? The Observer will pay for one night, so why should I not be near you? …
It is freezing cold, so I hope you have bought some woollen drawers! If not, please do. Rather old-fashioned and exciting.
I see Fry’s play has a poor notice in the Times, so perhaps Olivier will need another play.fn26 I am sure he would see himself as Don Juan …
Chagford – 8.2.50
My pretty,
… Herewith an envelope full of disasters. Never mind! I believe, on the contrary, that we’re about to weather the storm.
I am sorry I was a trifle sharp on the telephone; the letters had made me nervous …
All my love,
E.
Chagford – 10.2.50
… I am busy on the Orwell articlefn27
Thank you many times for Venus Observed which I liked all the more for you sending it to me …
My views about your legacy are: it now strikes me as absurd to borrow £600 and pay £26 a year interest … And we don’t, of course, want to sell for £750 unless you absolutely have to. We have till June on my money to decide that. So we can breathe and talk. And that cheers me …
E.
PART THREE
We Shall Be Rich!: 1950–54
IN THE SPRING of 1950 Eric was still staying at the Easton Court Hotel, attempting to finish another book (Foxy), while Mary was staying with a friend in Mecklenburg Square, WC1. She was determined to find some means of making a living and had an appointment at the offices of Vogue, hoping to interest the magazine in her plans to start a business making cheese. On the back of an envelope from Eric she wrote a recipe and a marketing strategy for home-made cream cheese: ‘A Good name – plain cartons – labels – weighing machine, basins, muslin, string, salt, pepper, paprika, onions, chives, fennel, vinegar.’
Meanwhile Harry Siepmann and Bernard Rickatson-Hatt had found Eric a promising job. This was as overseas sales manager for Portals, a company that manufactured paper for banknotes. The position demanded a talent for languages, political awareness, a feel for public relations and some business experience. It could have been invented for Eric.
Chagford – 7.5.50
My darling,
… This is a gallant effort of yours, and it makes me feel that I haven’t done enough to make our future secure. But, to be plain, I do believe that if you can earn £5 a week in the first months, and I can do a few articles, we can just pull it off – if I sell Foxy, and I think I will. So I no longer think in desperate terms of a superhuman effort as needed, either in cheese or literature, but of a joint effort which could succeed. So let’s add our faith, and move the mountain …
Chagford – 8.5.50
Darling,
… I rang up Harry and reversed the charges – he refused
the call! Family manners …fn1
Portal’sfn2 need someone urgently, so I wondered if I could commute taking long Friday to Monday week-ends here as a trial period of 3 months. I could stay at Whitchurch, Mondays to Fridays, and work on Foxy in the evenings. Then in 3 months we’d know where we were, including cheese. I know you’re against it, but it would fill up the till. (Say nothing of this project to Harry.)
Chagford – 12.5.50
Darling Mary –
… By getting a 2lb order, you have got £10 of your capital back in the first year … Don’t let it worry you, but if you can work it up to six or seven pounds (£) a week, you can live at Easton by that alone …
I am not worried at all. If Portal’s make me an offer, we shall be – for us – rich. That is, we shall soon have that £1,000 in the bank. The good thing about it is that I like him: very quiet, precise, small and not at all lacking in sensibility. (I decided that Wykehamist manners really are best – and a relief.) The others are toughs (introduced by nepotism) or technicians; but I can always get on with him.fn3
I read with shame in the guidebook at the pub where I stayed in Whitchurch that [Cardinal] Newman had spent a night there and written a hymn, and [Charles] Kingsley had written about the Queen Anne ceiling. Because all I had been thinking about was tes fesses.
Chagford – 15.5.50
My darling Love,
I have thought it over, and accepted. I feel sure we could not do better. I hate the separations, perhaps more than you do … but there is a big compensation in our being able to live here, and for me to return here, instead of living in London again. If I stay more than a year, I am equally sure that we can wangle some pretty voyages together. All told, we have no choice; and I prefer it to ‘public relations’ and to Paris, which is poison to me since all the Toulouse hangovers have installed themselves there …
And it will be nice to have some money! We both need clothes etc., and some security is essential. I have thought it over seriously and extremistically from a writing point of view, and it fits …
Frankly I think it’s a lucky break, and I like my Chairman … Sooner or later we’ll get a play done.
I love you, and I love your efforts re cheese, of which I take a rosy view as long as you have time and occasion to develop it.
So I send you all my warm love, and long to hold you by the hip bones.
A toujours,
E.
Chagford – 16.5.50
Darling,
A cold bare day without a letter from you. Warmed only by the news that Freedman, the best agent in America, has taken up my play. He isn’t wildly optimistic. He writes:
‘I was amused by the play, but whether it will prove caviar or not, I don’t know. However I would like to take a shot at it. I think it might do better in England than here, but there is a slight chance for it and I would like to go after it. It is a very capable job of writing. It is just a question of whether the material will sell at this time. Maybe I can find an actor for it.’
Cautious, but I’m told he handles only top-notch playwrights and that this is a good omen. My idea is to use his interest to work up the Shekels at this end.
By the way, don’t tell anyone about my job or salary. Don’t tell Carol; I believe that Miss Mitchell may be, indirectly, a leak; by overhearing etc. I usually find secrecy too much of a nuisance, but there’s no harm in discretion – against which I’m usually the offender. It’s only a matter of time, but I thought we might give the lawyers a start this time. If you’ve told him, no matter. But I mistrust la Mitch, who hates me and is a bit crazy!
Five midsummer days, followed by two cold ones, and the heating’s off. I pray for more blue weather at the week-end, as the buttercups are thick and above my ankles in the field towards the salmon pond, and the hillside blue with bluebells …
Eric’s new job required him to spend weekdays living in lodgings near Laverstoke Mills, Whitchurch, Hants, where Portals was based. Mary, having sold Peakswater, now took up residence, in her turn, at the Easton Court Hotel in Chagford.
Laverstoke Mills, Whitchurch, Hants – 2.8.50
My Love,
All sorts of pussycats popped out of bags at luncheon with Harry yesterday; the story of his failure to become Governor.fn4 I see now that he is a bitterly disappointed man. Also he has had much to put up with from his dear ones – me, as well as wives. (Cobbold cruelly reminded him that when the night clubs in Budapest played ‘Goodnight, sweetheart’ they sang the words ‘Goodnight Siepmann, Goodnight, Rodd’ – a saga of my own come home to roost!) …
Oakley – 27.11.50
Darling,
… Quite a lot to read and plan at my office. I spoke to the Jugoslav Commercial Counsellor, and he foresaw no difficulty about getting a Visa quickly …
The Simplon express takes me from Paris to Belgrade in 36 hours via Switzerland and Italy. It sounds rather fun …
I am going to London tomorrow to meet the Bank expert and then lunch with Harry and Marsdenfn5 at the Athenaeum …
The only thing that keeps me spiritually buoyant in this squalid pub is the moral and physical vigour engendered by Chagford. Look after yourself, and do write about animals.fn6
My firm is most odd and eccentric …
You are a great joy to me, and you have transformed my life, and I delight to think of you in your cafay-oh-lay condition, and in spite of my recent lack of lubricity, I love and desire you, always –
Eric
Whitchurch – 30.11.50
… I’ve booked at Montalambert [comfortable Paris hotel] for Tuesday and Wednesday. Thence by Orient express via Lausanne, Milan, Venice and Trieste: but I can’t get out! A little Jug. [Yugoslav] is lunching with me on Monday, he sounds nice.
I hope you enjoyed yourself with Carol, and I look forward to hearing about it …
A demain,
E.
Easton Court Hotel, Chagford – 5.12.50
My dear Love,
You should now be arriving in Paris and I will cast this ahead to Belgrade hoping to catch you but if there are no aeroplanes the mails will perhaps be slow? …
It is still very cold … Yesterday I had to unfreeze the icicles on Pebbles’ whiskers with a warm cloth. Today we bussed to Chagford and went to see Mr Sadleir who is a useful aide and adviser à propos Roger. He is going to write to the Eton housemaster and he says that if Roger were his, he would send him to a crammer. I have already written at length to [the] crammer and hope to go to meet Carol with a clear head and proposals …
I wish I was with you. I would love to see Yugoslavia again. I remember the scarlet leaves of the wild pear trees among the pine forests in the autumn and rushing rivers. It must be lovely now …
Easton Court – 6.12.50
Much colder and no baths this morning as the pipes froze … Pebble and I have just skated perilously back from Chagford by the lanes, solid glass in places. There were fat piping bullfinches and yellow-hammers and flocks of redwings and fieldfares. Fat piebald ponies down from the moors munching along the hedgerows and staring with mouse-like eyes from under deep fringes …
Harry has sent you a volume of Proust’s chronicles …
Easton Court – 8.12.50
… I accepted a lift into Exeter from Mr Bankes [fellow hotel guest] yesterday and went with him to the antique shops where he exhibited a lot of bad taste and as a revenge I took him to a bycicle [sic] shop and after buying a very fine bycicle for Roger, watched a dreadful Marxian [brothers] scene while Mr B and the boy from the shop battled to get the bycicle into the back of the car. At one moment poor timid Mr B. got pinned underneath it onto the back seat. He left this morning with Norman [Norman Webb, Carolyn Cobb’s partner, and hotel manager] and twenty pieces of luggage to Southampton …
There was a crisis day yesterday with pipes bursting, Miss Holmes’ [fellow guest] nose bleeding, unexpected visitors arriving and Ina [staff] having a heart attack. Oh! And the sweep inexorably sweeping all th
e chimblyes so that there were no fires …
Otherwise no news. The sweep has managed to block the mouse hole with soot …
Penelope Sandbergfn7 has announced her engagement to a gentleman in the Guards so no doubt the Sandberg family are in full squawk. It will give them a new impetus for their annual Christmas row …
I miss you all the time, your arms, your company, your mind, your jokes …
On being asked when it was announced that we were coming to stay and what were we like la Russell [another guest] said, ‘Oh yes, I know them very well. Not what you and I would call cosy.’
I will write next to Paris.
M.
Paris – 8.12.50
… I am just off to Belgrade … Most enjoyable and interesting luncheon today with Cassou and his wife and daughter, and we have been talking ever since …
(Everyone says how well and happy I look, and that is you) …
Basingstoke – 26.12.50
In bed! 9.30pm
My darling,
My gloom was a. disappointment, at our ‘slightly spoiled Christmas’, b. self-reproach at showing my annoyance with Toby, and on Christmas day: – resulting in an utter sense of failure, with you and with the children. Forgive me.
I feel better now, although the black cap fell over my eyes, for a moment, as I entered my public house bedroom, and found myself alone. I am afraid of my dependence on you. ‘I am afraid to lose you, I am afraid of my fear’ …
But I had a good [train] journey with Nancy [Gow], two living sandwiches of luxury (my metaphors are odd, tonight) between Bank Holiday hoards [sic] who shrank from invading our [compartment] cold, dignified, middle-aged and offensive solitude – they invaded everyone else! Then the landlady was courteous, the fire was lit, the sheets are clean and I have washed. And there is, of course, the chance that one will wake up an utterly different person tomorrow; or at any rate, Next Year …