by Mary Wesley
Thornworthy – 2.9.57
I have dispatched Jacques, little brother and all the others to Exeter for the day. Roger and Toby and I have the house and Pebble’s howls to ourselves.
Thank you for yesterday’s letter … Roger is faithful and good and, as Toby says, ‘There’s a lot more there than you can see.’
A sleepless night. Toby came back beautiful and nervous and ranged about my room until 11.30 – so like his father … A long outpouring over Carol’s futility and Averil’s – ‘I wish to God Eric were my father.’ Nothing ever decided or done for him except by us and terrible embarrassing uncertainty as to whether he is to go to university or not.
I must go to London to see Carol, but when? My two-edged sword is overtaking me alright. ‘They never read a book!’ ‘Those idiotic cocktail parties!’ … The sharp cruel judgements of adolescents and the furious sense of not belonging, of being different from other people. A fine turmoil.fn57 I wish he would go fishing which is the only thing that calms him but he is lying on his bed preparing to write letters …
Naturally I long to tell the truth. I need someone to advise me. You. Father Mangan. God. In a way I am inclined to tell him [Toby] the truth, a terrible risk, and that Carol has been made use of long enough. My sin. What does Carol know? I don’t know … Then how deep, how serious is this? Begun how? Friends who have intellectual fathers? Other values than Carol’s? Unworldly?
What is certain is that he now needs you urgently, as you always said he might.
Paul [Ziegler] says never tell and I suppose he is right? I told him [Toby] that we all criticise our parents. That I consider myself very lucky that he even speaks to me … That Carol with all the negative points is generous and kind. That he must never expect people to be other than they are, that it is waste of breath, that if he considers himself and his few friends ‘different’ from other people he is a dead duck as I have always been and must accept it. One is! He has been staying with a psychoanalyst called Guirdham at Bath. The boy is his best friend and will come here. Papa anxious to come too apparently to meet me in the flattering sense. I feel astride a bolting horse and can only pray hard …
All due to a bright idea in a Hungarian restaurant in Soho 18 and a half years ago! …
Your Polly
Thornworthy – 2.9.57
I told Toby I feel very responsible for my folliesfn58 and his position and he said, no, not at all, that he knows a lot of young whose parents hang together for the sake of appearances and the results are appalling nervous strain. I feel humiliated, he is so grown up. I feel it is wrong that he should dismiss my shortcomings with a loving snap of the fingers as poor Carol cannot help being what he is or what I have thrust on him and he has been whether consciously or not as wonderful as he can manage …
At Bath Toby was loudly greeted by a restaurant proprietor as a fellow mittel european and was most amused! Loud German shouts about Prague and Vienna. What next? The Rabbi I suppose …
Our next problem child is of Polish (father) Swiss (mother) parentage and has been tried in every school in Switzerland. He is an intelligent fourteen and his only hope of English public school education is to get next Easter a scholarship for Gordonstoun. I am going to try to get him in to Bryanston and am playing Hahn. His mother may descend on you in London en route for Chagford. Her name is Mrs Klossowska and she lives in sin with an Armenian … I hope to get hold of the boy and rid of the mother as soon as possible …
Mary
Clapham Common – 3.9.57
Toby is (at last) growing up; and this is adolescence. It rouses all sorts of memories and responsibilities in you, but these have nothing to do with his ‘problem’. And his problem is an inner turbulence which might take any form; thank God it’s taking the form of both seriousness and sensibility and wider interest. Carol is an ass, but nothing you can say will alter that. There is not the slightest point in telling Toby anything now, at this stage. But there is an inner (secret) argument for his becoming independent as soon as possible. On the other hand, if he can get to Oxford, that is not to be despised. All you have to do is cope, as usual …
I met Nat at the Authors’ yesterday at tea. He has written an article about me in The British Weekly (non-conformist!). He is wild to meet Schacht, and he is doing a Brains trust at Exeter on October 4th, so I am writing to Schacht urging that they should coincide. Especially as … I see Nat as a valuable third party in my ‘interview’ – he is a friend of Niemoller and was amazed that doors should be shut against Schacht …
Thornworthy – 4.9.57
I am very glad about Nat and Schacht. The combination with you would be very effective especially as you never know what Schacht will say next …
What Toby needs is to be guided into some profession from whence he can tilt at Windmills. He is obsessed by Albert Schweitzer and the Negro problem at the moment …
Would Nat like to stay here? Plenty of room, old gentleman much the same as little boys! Then he and Schacht could get to know each other, you could all have a shouting match together, punctuated by meals …
Clapham Common – 4.9.57
Having had a row yesterday because I couldn’t get breakfast until I had waited half-an-hour today the door is slammed in my face … My novel is like stone in the womb, thanks to London landladies …
I believe Landladies in Literature to have played a sinister part – silencing Keats, choking off Chesterton etc. My genius is a tender plant. I would be sad if I did not feel my fingers on your shoulder blades and spine – all my love to you.
Eric
Thornworthy – 5.9.57
You must go on TV with Nat and Schacht. Wonderful. Those pincenez are the very ticket! The young generation of Germans have never heard of Niemoller.
I feel terrible for you with the landlady. Perhaps she has a liver like Lady Waller? It isn’t landladies who have paralysed your novel, it’s just London …
Gert and I are collecting anti-German articles in the papers. His idea of fun but it isn’t funny. Krupp’s yesterday, who now make pots and pans …
Hughes told Roger he was ‘in bad odour’. ‘Yes,’ said Roger, ‘you are’ … We shall not lose that Albatross! …
Clapham Common – 5.9.57
By Christmas we shall probably have Alice and Billy with us, and my aim is for us to be Alone together by the spring …
I am seeing Jack at 3, about how to play ITV against BBC … BBC may flinch [at Schacht interview] because the Authorities do – Kirkpatrickfn59 refused to see him when he was in Germany; and Harry says City is closed to him. That may frighten BBC, but attract ITV …
Thornworthy – 6.9.57
Roger is an angel and works hard for me. He gave up his sailing so I can’t not have Martin [his friend] to stay. Toby is reading everything at once, Plato, Dostoyevsky and has taken to grunting. When I complained about the grunting he said he ‘was agreeing with himself’ and grunting agreement …
I am despatching both Jacques and Gert at dawn on Tuesday … Gert says both Stauffenberg’s sons are complete lollipops …fn60
The geese hate everybody but me and when I go and sit beside them they peer into my face and nibble my jersey with their beaks …
Gert’s good humour and balance is I think due to being brought up in a country without war [Paraguay]. He seems to me to belong to another race altogether … Did you know Schacht started life wanting to be a parson? …
No news about the landlady. That’s the worst of letters. There I was all yesterday, breathlessly waiting for the police to ring up and say you had crowned her with a milk bottle and today no mention …
Clapham Common – 7.9.57
I fear I have failed badly to be ‘a man who looked after you’ – which is what you needed … But Nancy says that though thin you are buoyant; and in good form, compared to some low, worried period when she met you in London a year or two ago …
I think Schacht is a TV natural, as he is sure to say something unrehears
ed – BBC have snootily not answered, so I am going to ITV …
I do not think Krupp can be called innocent. There is a Protestant convent on Catholic lines, in the Rhineland, where they pray and confess daily about their guilt against the Jews. That seems to me right, and normal; there is something abnormal about … Schacht’s blamelessness. (Grist to the mill of my ‘interviews’.)
Thornworthy – 7.9.57
Letters of admonition arriving in droves for Bertrand from his mama and to me. ‘Ah! C’est le comble!’ ‘Encore une autre!’ … [She] is une emmerdeuse du premier ordre …
Toby reading the Bible, Plato, Cicero, Ilya Ehrenburg and two books on religion and busy writing a very boring short story. Hysterical with excitement last night on hearing the Eroica for the first time. Such a nice change from cricket and football pools but as he is suddenly aware of spiritual and intellectual values I have the full shock of the discovery hurled at me. Otherwise he grunts, stalks about and is aloof …
Thornworthy – 9.9.57
… The wind veers wildly in adolescence. [Toby] came to Mass yesterday with Gert and the Frogs, the banker handing the plate winced visibly at Gert’s smiling face. Father Millerick announcing another ‘impot’ from the bishop made it clear ‘these are his lordship’s wishes, nothing to do with me, I am fed up with trying to find money for this that and the other thing!’ Toby giggled audibly and thinks he is terrific …
Clapham Common – 10.9.57
BBC want Schacht (and me) for press Conference; but I want a 15-minute programme, ‘Dr Schacht’ – in which I try to get him to persuade me of his innocence and Germany’s …
Income Tax have now passed the buck to Maida Vale, as they say I ‘reside’ there …
It is hot and sticky … London is a muggy swamp.
Thornworthy – 11.9.57
My Love,
The Klossowska has arrived with Stakhov. He is a tiny very intelligent fifteen. She very rich, I don’t know whether I like her or not. The child is furnished with wireless, electric blankets etc obviously used to much luxury. She is I think staying at Easton Court until Saturday so as to see you. She seems to have all her meals here so we are seven again. I wish she would go as it would be much better for the child but of course she must see you. It did not seem to occur to her to leave today and see you tomorrow. I shall be alright as soon as numbers diminish, it is too much in this bloody weather.
All my love, can’t wait for Friday,
Your Pol
Clapham Common – 11.9.57
The TV’s are (I think) tricky. Geoffrey Cox, the ITV news editor, thought Schacht had been condemned [i.e. to death]. I expect BBC are best, but I’m beginning to doubt if it is the right medium. They will trap him, and ignore me – unless I’m careful …
I am quite clear now about sex; with us it’s love; and I have no intention of giving it up. I had the intention to try, when I became a Catholic – as Tony says, that is genuine and enough (I didn’t discuss any further with her than that). I am genuinely sorry that I’m not a wholly spiritual being. (I should hate it if you were!) Is this honest? Doesn’t it make sense? …
Hurray for Friday,
Eric
PS I find Billy’s jokes very funny. (Doctor I had myxomatosis on Tuesday. – Then why didn’t you send for me? – I sent for the Vet!) Genius.
Clapham Common – 17.9.57
That was a very fine week-end …
I have fixed for Schacht to appear on TV for about 10 minutes – if he wants to. If it’s Press Conference on the Monday (which would suit) I would be with him … If Panorama (Friday) it would be without me. I told them I am indifferent, but on second thoughts I am veering to Press Conference – as you never know! …
Authors’ Club – 20.9.57
Feeling an access [sic] of Gloom and the Devil I anticipated them by taking the bus over the hill down to the Oratory (who have full time confessions). Here I told my confessor exactly what I feel about sex and our marriage; and I told him clearly that I had no intention of living as ‘brother and sister’, although I had recognised that as the aim when I joined the Church, and still recognised a spiritual life as preferable … Well, he said, God would recognise our good intentions, and knew best; and not to torment ourselves …
I feel better because I have said clearly to a priest what I told you was my eventual reaction to it all. What I would not do is pretend to aim at a sex-less life … I need you too much. (And, as I told him, I cannot think it wrong!)
Almost invariably I go into a church thinking that [it] is perhaps best to give up faith and live courageously and truthfully by admitting that life is a short, sharp struggle full of beauty: but meaningless and finite. I come out thinking There is reality, and see things instead of being blind. Today I even saw the National Gallery for the first time! …
Eric left The Times subs desk on 25 September, and returned to Thornworthy determined to earn a living as a private tutor while writing his novels away from the distractions of London and the gloom of a solitary life.
In August 1960 Mary and Eric left Thornworthy after five years and moved away from Dartmoor to Basclose Farm, Otterton, near Budleigh Salterton on the Devon–Dorset border. It was a pretty pink house large enough for Eric to continue lodging pupils. He was an outstanding tutor, as a testimonial from the mother of one of his pupils suggests: ‘We have just been for a week to Rock and on the way home took the A35 from Exeter and made a detour so that Charles should see Otterton. He really was quite “emotional” and one could see how happy he had been there. He frequently talks of the time he spent with you and of how much he learnt from your husband and how much he loved it all.’ Mary and Eric bought Basclose Farm with money given to them by a friend of Mary’s, Phyllis Jones, who had come into an inheritance. Phyllis (who, with Antonia White, had acted as godmother when Mary was received into the Church) lived at Callow End, near Stanbrook Abbey in Worcestershire, with the American writer Emily Coleman, also a Catholic. Mary sent Eric to Buckfast Abbey, in Devon, ‘on retreat’ while she managed the move from Dartmoor to Otterton. Much of the correspondence was conducted in the summer when one or other of them was on retreat with the Benedictine monks of Buckfast or the Benedictine nuns of Stanbrook, but no letters from Mary from this period have survived.
Buckfast Abbey – 15.8.60 (Assumption)
My darling Pol,
… Very good retreat, so far. The Virgin has played hell with my chapter, but has averted all – or nearly all – destructive moods. The splendours of flame and gold; and the Abbot wore white satin slippers at Pontifical Mass today! We have even had Pontifical Vespers …
I agree with you about Green [sic].fn61 It shows how dangerous and difficult it is to write about religion – and perversion! He used to write Racineesque tragedies in the form of novels. Or so I thought. He has (as you said, at the start) genius.
I had permission from the Abbot to have Father Wilfrid bless the house on Thursday but I’ve cancelled it until we’re ready … (Also, the parish priest had better be squared, said the Abbot.) …
My missal says November was the date of the dogma; but surely we were there? Or did we invent the story about the Osservatore Romano headline ‘Virgin Goes Up’?fn62
For lack of tennis, the boys take me out for rollicking walks … and this morning they dragged me up the tower to see bell-ringing and the view. I was terrified by the stairs and heights, but I didn’t dare show it.
My thoughts were with you during the arrival. You have managed wonderfully. Fr Charles much amused by your parking me out for the move.
I have found some wonderfully apt books for my subject, and I become madder about Russian history every moment. The history is mad. Full of astounding stories, murders, adulteresses, and the interplay between Russia and Rome a heartbreaking series of malentendus and renewed efforts and mischief made by the (Catholic) Poles …
I must go to my lavish luncheon …
Basclose Farm House – 3.9.61
&nb
sp; … I’ve just been to early Mass with the Bretts … I’ve had a row with neighbours (children chasing Constable [the cat]) and with a farmer called Carter … (True ‘frightening bullocks’!) …
Lots of love,
Eric
Within two years they had moved again, selling Basclose Farm and heading back towards Dartmoor, to a rented cottage near Ashburton. The house had a distant view of the moor and placed them once more within striking distance of Sunday Mass at Buckfast. It was at Ashburton that, following the visit of an old girlfriend from America, Eric took an overdose of sleeping pills and fell down the stairs. Toby (by then an undergraduate at Oxford) had to carry him up to bed. Mary had told Toby that his father was Heinz Ziegler in December 1960.
Priory Cottage, Ashburton – 23.8.62
My darling,
I had a good night, with pills, and feel rested. Vespers (BBC) from our old Carmelite church at Notting Hill contributed to restoring me.
If I can’t do my Russian book – which is synthetic (but a bloody good idea, and important) – I do not need (Vespers told me) to despair. I can write comic books, which is (perhaps) my metier. Both, however, involve work, which is not (yet) my habit. I shall have an answer to the conflict by the time we meet. Meanwhile, please suspend judgement.
Did you, thanks to your attraction for young policemen, get shoes? (and whisky?) … Does Billy get pocket money? …
Priory Cottage – 27.8.62
Darling (an odd word),
Your writing has become so bad that I can’t read it. What is the matter? Betty [a home help] insists on washing blankets. Constable howls for breakfast at 8am.
… Giving Father Gabrielfn63 breakfast on Sunday is a new chore, which I like. He is very uncharitable, rude about his parishioners (‘that frightful Captain – yells away’) and comes here rather than a squalid cottage whose poverty nauseates him and where he is given ‘a really filthy breakfast – alright for Father Stephen’!fn64 These monks are amusing …
For God’s sake write decently; haven’t you got a proper pen? I enclose la Mitford [a novel by Nancy Mitford], to spur you on to something better than she can do.