Thankyou so much for a very nice Saturday – a real break for me, and it was lovely to see you and very kind of you and your friends to take me for granted, so to speak. But I can’t help being very angry with your French tutor – very angry. It just seems to be not only mistaken but quite irresponsible for tutors (or even VI form teachers) to be unfair, unpleasant or bullying – it doesn’t matter if they’re stuffy, old-fashioned or ridiculous, but surely it should be a kind of partnership to study the language – to make anyone you’re teaching feel unhappy means you can’t teach them anyway – if things aren’t right you could always talk to them privately – but she really is lucky to have you to teach, as you’re perfectly ready to do the work – I suppose she’s a ‘sick woman’, like Miss James, but it’s too bad, the French system is impossible, and I see the lycéens refuse to accept even the new reforms and the lycées are in chaos and I’m not surprised I imagine Milène alone in a grey classroom trying to write her entrée en matière as usual. I’m so glad that you are now to have a rest and 4 weeks Spanish.
I’m sorry that the poor English school is so dull too – the truth is, though I would never dare saying it in public, that the value of studying literature only really appears as you go on living, and find how it really is like life – that it all works – and it’s a pity this can’t somehow be shown in the course, except I suppose in Marxist Free Universities.
I’d love to know how your poetry circle party went. Seeing so many bookshops has, actually, gone to my head a bit, and it’s a good thing I have a long staff meeting, on Monday.
Daddy says they’ve managed to transfer nearly all the Poly Lunn customers onto other airlines, but of course the ‘Turkish all-in holiday’ has to be cancelled – all the exciting ones really – they have to cut back – I do so wish we’d gone last year, but the wedding made it impossible. I suppose I shall never see Constantinople (as I choose to call it) now.
Ria came home at 2.30! and said it had been an engagement party with mums and dads, and vodka and lime, and she couldn’t leave earlier – John was affected by drink, and finally a parent gave them a lift – it was in Tooting – Ria drank Dubonnet – I feel it is all beyond me, and I am old and grey and full of sleep.
Well, I did enjoy it yesterday, I really did – If you decide to come up, which wd. be nice, just send a P.C. won’t you
Love Mum
Miss Freeston’s
[Westminster Tutors]
18 November [1968]
Dearest Tina,
Yes I was worried about your headache and felt I was being tiresome asking about it, but I did enjoy the week-end and felt very much better on the Sunday (but this also made me feel worse because you weren’t) – I would love to stay the night again, another time. When I was up at Somerville I was always extravagantly worried about something – now it soothes me, particularly when it’s damp, dripping and cosy.
I hope you got P.C. I tried to persuade the V&A slides dept. (now in charge of amateurish lady in cardigan, and still behind piles of masonry and bits of statues) to send the slides off at once – but she said they couldn’t be assembled till Friday.
I told Mrs Macintyre how much we’d enjoyed Donald’s performance – she said anxiously Didn’t you think he gabbled? I at once replied no I thought that was an interesting part of the interpretation. Mrs M. very pleased.
Just received the copy of Grandpa’s book on the Church school – very nicely done in offset type, but no illustration or photograph of the school, which I think a pity. A bit of a shadow, because grandpa declares that this is the last thing he’ll write, after 70 years writing! – but satisfactory to see it finished properly. I’m going to read it all carefully as soon as I’ve got a civilized time to do so.
Thankyou again darling, it was lovely to see you,
much love Ma
Miss Freeston’s
[Westminster Tutors]
[early 1969]
Dearest Tina,
Still wondering how the play is going and whether the ladies will squeeze or half squeeze into their low-necked costumes obtained from Dorchester-on-Thames. Donald Macintyre and company are returning at end of Feb to do special Twelfth Night in front of the unfortunate Middle Temple who are expecting a nice evening of Shakespeare with nice music; more dirt and filth is specially being sprayed on the costumes.
I felt very encouraged when in spite of my poor reading I got through to the finals of the Poetry Festival with the ‘Kitchen Drawer’ poem* – I was much helped by Daddy’s loud applause from where he was sitting with the Sunday Times in the back row, and by a decent young poet with a thick head of hair and beard who came after me and said ‘I did like the poem about kitchen drawers.’ In the evening I had to read after Roger McGough who was very funny, and before a compassionate coloured poet, so didn’t really feel at ease, and Daddy had gone home, after sitting through the whole read-in – (many of the contestants cheated and read very long poems about priests and sex and oppression and snow-queens), and tea at Lyons and a visit to Westminster Cathedral (where I was frightened by a new reliquaire, a martyr lying down wearing a surplice with black shoes and polished silver face and hands) so I had no-one to support me and missed you very much. That dreadful Glasgow man Leo Edlon was there trying to sell his tattily printed poems – he was at the reading you took me to in Oxford – he was accompanied this time by an unwholesome youth in a tiny blue corduroy outfit – however it all went off quite well as St John’s has been done over very well by the inevitable BBC and the crypt has become a large bar with red wine and coffee. Yesterday, Monday, I took my VI form – Ted Hughes strangely mumbling with his eyes close to the paper read some animal poems and then lengthy extracts from this ‘autobiography of the crow’ he’s doing, of himself really I suppose. (It seems so violent and not quite nice – better than the animals though). I took 2 Indians on the staff who drove me down in a mini and seemed to enjoy it. Well enough of this. – A further embarrassment this week, one of my pupils is the grand-daughter of the old lady in Suffolk to whom (as they say) Helen is cook! She tells me that her Granny is ‘quite afraid of your brother because he is so clever’. I can’t imagine what Rawle can have said, but I can see that the girl feels it’s all awkward; if I go to see them should I sit above or below stairs?
Poor Ria very depressed (though delighted by the socks &c) but has gone to the Packers today and I hope this will cheer her up. I’ll go now and cook a large dinner, in the hope that someone eventually comes in for it.
much love always and longing to hear all about everything
Mum x
(Valpy is still in Portugal, in luxury suite with bed which gives you a massage if you press a button)
St Deiniol’s Library
Hawarden
Chester
10 July [1969]
Dearest Tina,
I have arrived here sneezing loudly, and shrunk from by everyone, but safely – it is very queer here – very – as strange, musty, smell about everything – I was only just in time (taking a taxi with a lady taxi-driver) for lunch – this was quite nice, with boiled chicken and ice-cream eagerly devoured, as by hospital patients – the guests, with the sub-warden, who seems to be in a coma, were seated round an imitation mediaeval oak table – of good quality – only the sub-warden had a silver napkin ring, we had paper ones – the guests are all men, and all decayed clergy-men – I’m the only lady, and I do think my skirts are too short – when I arrived at table they were discussing Austrian Baroque architecture, and the writings of Professor Asa Briggs – there is nothing spiritual in them – afterwards you go into a mouldering Gothic oak drawing-room for coffee – but everyone stays standing up, to show they don’t intend to have a second cup – it turns out the place is really a theological college and everything is geared to the ordinands – but they were all away for the week-end – will be back in October, clearly a big event – I was offered a glass of cider at lunch – it was left behind by the ordinands – no TV in the
‘common room’ so as not to distract the ordinands – the croquet-lawn behind the library is to give a little recreation to the ordinands – After tea, which came into the common room on a trolley, with sandwiches and Battenberg cake, and teapots of that mysterious metal – some of the clerics helped themselves liberally, but I didn’t like to – the sub-warden showed me the library – a wonderful wood-panelled Gothic library, but smelling frightfully of must – impossible, it seems, to work there during the winter because of the cold – what about these pipes? – they haven’t worked since 1912 – the sub-warden explained our library system – you write your name on half of a ticket, then put the other half on the shelf where the missing book is – clearly nobody ever does this – clerics were tottering dangerously up and down the stairs and ladders. The latest Who’s Who is 1927 – but there are quite a few dusty English Lit: books, and the sub-warden proudly showed me the files of The Victorian magazine – these may interest you – the chair I sat on collapsed instantly. My room is just like a Somerville first-year room, with a pink basketwork chair. It overlooks a gloomy churchyard, where a few ladies in hats are arranging flowers in jam-jars. However the church is pretty and the headstones look romantic in the bright evening sun. – The dinner bell has just interrupted me – I went down five minutes late, which I thought was about right, but they were half way through dinner already, the sub-warden absurdly presiding in a gown – a new, ancient deaf, cleric has arrived from the Canary Islands – he says that in 3 weeks he is going back to the Canary Islands – q. Why did he come at all? – another cleric said to me – I saw you soaking up the sun on the back lawn – I shall sit on the front lawn tomorrow – another cleric who seems to be wearing a wig (they’ve all got wives but haven’t brought them) has asked me if I’d like to come to the Castle tomorrow to see the interesting chapel, but I shan’t go, as he gives me hysterics.
It turns out the ordinands are all late vocations – men of advanced years – thank heavens they’re away. We discussed life-spans at dinner – one of them said his father knew Newman well – On the other hand it must be admitted that it’s beautifully quiet here, just the birds, and as all the clerics are really on holiday, I have the Gothic library almost to myself, and my room with a desk, and no-one disturbs you at all between meals, and I’ve done a lot of work already, and the whole house, including all the shelves on all the landings, is full of wonderful old books, memoirs and novels (I’ll have to give up the resolution to stop reading Victorian things) and busts of Mr Gladstone; and the clerics are very kind really and quite restful. – I’ve now actually had a bath – the bathroom has a queer brass column to let down into the plughole instead of a plug, and a brass soap dish with holes in it.
Thankyou so much for taking charge at the week-end – I really felt proud as I said good-bye at having two such gorgeous daughters, in fashionable nighties. Well, I shall certainly get all my work done here easily, and shall rush back to see the twins: of course, I shall be able to baby-sit, if you would like to go out. Do hope house-keeping money &c is all right and I forgot to show you the plums – they were for Sunday lunch. I don’t think Ria will need to get very much.
much love darling,
Mum
St Deiniol’s Library
Hawarden
Chester
14 July [1969]
Dearest Tina,
Thankyou so much for your letter, I was so pleased to have one as all the clerics seemed to have one (many with Church Repair Fund on the envelope) and they were glanced at amid the tapping of eggshells. Many more clerics have arrived – some quite nice, including Father something or other (Anglican I think) who is sportingly running a hostel for religiously minded youth at Sussex University, with no money and discouragement from free-thinking authorities. Unfortunately he squints so hard that it’s hard to tell if he’s addressing you or not. Others clearly think I shouldn’t be here at all, and I do see that my Swedish beach dress, which I’m defiantly wearing as it’s nice on a hot day, is too short for my years, but they’ll just have to put up with it, you and Maria both said it was all right. The Warden and his wife come back on Tues: – hope she won’t speak to me about this dress. It’s when I sit down it gets a bit short, so I try to draw in my old oak chair rapidly at meal-time, but this won’t do, as the clerics feel they ought to push in my chair for me and worse still, half get up when I come into the room and bow frequently (like Daddy).
No TV in common-room though I think there’s one in staff sitting room (all the maids are very kind and nice but wear very long skirts and white aprons) – and radio doesn’t work – hasn’t for many years I should say. There are some little figures in a glass case which I at first thought might be pin-football, but turns out to be a model of St Deiniol’s in the 13th century made entirely of edible materials (i.e. marzipan). I asked the sub-warden when he meant to eat it and he replied oh, not yet, we’ve only had it for three years. Everyone nodded, and an ancient vicar who comes here every year said we hope to keep it indefinitely.
Bells go at 8.45, 11 (tea and digestive biscuit), 1, 4, and 7.30 but quick as I am into the old oak dining-room or common-room (for tea) I’m always last. Can it be they’re sitting in there waiting for the bell?
The meals are very nice but small – the clerics finish their platefuls in 30 secs. flat – of course they’re used to semi-starvation in country vicarages as I know well enough, and I suppose the ordinands are kept on a low diet – but I’m not complaining or buying biscuits (though you were quite right about this) because I’m steadily reducing round the waist.
It turns out that the Rev: Mr King doesn’t wear a wig, but just brushes his hair forward, a human weakness – he’s studying mediaeval Latin breviaries: but another little man has arrived from London University (studying nineteenth-century church documents and letters from some Tractarian, so he says) who really does wear a ‘piece’ and a Madras jacket from the C&A and tells me he uses Ambre Solaire: clearly he’s regarded as worldly by the others.
After lunch Warden and wife have now arrived, and it’s such a relief, as she’s very nice – wears a long crimplene dress, but clearly doesn’t mind what anyone else wears and is cheery and motherly – and has quite a lot to do I imagine because the Warden it turns out is blind and very stout – and she has to manage him as well as the ordinands. One of the clerics points out to me quietly that all the drawers of the dressing tables are lined with pages of the Radio Times in Braille. And this is true.
I’m so glad she’s come – there was much more for lunch as a result and I can decline the invitations (from an ancient cleric) to visit
1. Mr Gladstone’s seat in the parish church, on which Archbishop Benson collapsed and died.
2. The dog cemetery in the castle grounds where the tomb of Mr Gladstone’s favourite dog may be seen.
I shall go to this later, and I’m always in and out of the parish church anyway, as there are fine windows by Burne-Jones – the west window is the last one he ever designed – and I want to see them both morning and evening, to get the different lights through them. I’m still mindful of not getting sunk in Victorianism – but I do do modern literature courses, indeed I find everyone else strangely reluctant to undertake them, so perhaps as I’m here it’s all right to ‘give way’.
When you say you can’t stop laughing in church, is that because you’ve come to feel the whole thing is absurd? I do hope not! (I thought of this this morning when I was counting my blessings, one great one being that all 3 children are still believers, as we used to call it.)
It really is restful here and I shall easily get all my work done and a bit of Russian. It’s a ridiculous but most peaceful and regular existence and very calming to the nerves. But I do worry about you and the twins in this heat, it must be so sticky pushing the pram. I shouldn’t think it’s any hotter on the Costa Brava.
I’ll make a daring expedition now to post this in Hawarden sub post-office,
much love always
Ma x
Thankyou for getting in supplies: I’ve told Da that if an answer comes from Spain he must read it to you at once.
Beach Hotel
Attakoy
Thursday [summer 1969]
Dearest Tina,
I’ve decided in the end to write to Poynders G. as the post here doesn’t inspire me with confidence – we do have a Guide Bleu (borrowed) which says that the post in the larger cities works ‘as with civilised nations’ but I don’t believe this.
There is too much to see here, and Daddy is being very good and although he is so deliberate and keeps saying he’ll just finish his cigarette or walk to the end of the beach (not much of an ‘end’ as the whole coast is strictly divided into lengths of greyish sand and bluish sea and each one is a private beach) – the next one, Turk Camping, is much gayer with loud songs and games but I am glad to be quiet here. Each room has a balcony where you can sit and have a glass of acid Turkish wine and it was built on the site of an old farm house so there are nice willow and plane trees, with leaves that make different noises in the night breeze.
You get into Istanbul on the public minibuses and taxis and more and more helpful and unintelligible people squeeze in as you get nearer to the city. You arrange what you’re going to pay before you start so it’s not worrying, and we’re getting very good with the phrasebook. The Turkish for ‘station’ is ‘tren’ but what is ‘train’ I wonder? Old Istanbul is very dirty and seedy but tipico beyond words and rather like Spain used to be (except not the trouble about the girls). You have to look out as the porters carry vast loads of mattresses, chests of drawers &c through streets and there are horses and donkeys wearing blue beads against the evil eye, and everything including hair-cutting, bread-baking and furniture-making going on in the street. The watersellers have lovely water containers with luscious flowers, ladies and landscapes painted on the back, and a long tube through which water comes out ice-cold. I feel I must have one but Daddy is difficult and suggests it is too heavy to carry back, he was very reluctant too to buy a glass of water so I could snap him and now I’ve gone and let light into the camera by pressing the open button by mistake, I’m so miserable! Just when I’d taken a stunning picture in a Moslem cemetery, with children’s graves with stone fezes on, and the father with a stone turban! I don’t know what to look at next, as I’ve never seen Turkish architecture before and everything is different – a bit like Spanish I suppose. I think it’s lovely in the mosques, the big ones are so empty and quiet and when you’ve taken your shoes off you shuffle over very old very soft lovely Turkish rugs with a green one here and there, grass green really, then there are very wide alcoves near the windows where people sit for hours mumbling over a Koran looking completely peaceful and it’s so noisy outside. Travel description! We’re going up the Bosphorus by boat this afternoon as there are some ancient fortifications and I know Daddy would like these. He calls the whole place Constantinople, and wants to trace the walls, and I feel it’s his turn.
So I Have Thought of You Page 11