I enclose a piece from the Guardian about Stuart,** unpleasant in tone like all their interviews. (Why is it that when I’m talking to Ria, but at no other time, I always call it the Manchester Guardian, which makes her understandably scornful?)
I’ve at last finished my intro to Emma and the OUP says it’s all right.
All my love and good wishes,
dearest Tina, from Ma
[1999]
Dearest Tina,
I enclose the cheque feeling guilty as always at leaving everything to you to do. Do you wake every morning and check through a list of things that must be done before you go to bed again – mine is very trifling – must get one thing, or even one page or one paragraph written, something in the house cleaned (never a good turnout, that’s beyond me now), one person rung up (but I often don’t do this) &c &c. I have at the moment 2 pieces for the LRB to do (but have written to get out of one of them), an intro. for the Folio Society for Middlemarch, an intro. for J. L. Carr’s A Month in the Country for Stuart,* a serious piece for the New York Times on Vol. 2 of Richard Holmes’s Coleridge and a vexatious piece which I’m also trying to get out of, for the New York Times magazine on the Best Idea of the Past Millennium, an absurd subject. I feel they want things like toast-racks and telephones – well, you may say, a few days’ work but I am so slow and spend far too much time thinking about my ailments, and then going to the shops has its problems – the drink shop has been taken over by new proprietors who have installed a very stiff door wh: I can’t manage – a good thing too, you’ll say – and the grocer next-door urges things on me which he says he’s got in for me specially, and it’s true I have enquired about them, really by way of making conversation, which I’ve never been good at in shops – and one way or another I am terribly behind – terribly. And then I think of all you have to do –
Poor Paschal, poor Luke – but his fingers aren’t thin, they are slender and distinguished, like yours. But of what use to tell him that? It’s funny I remember Valpy used to worry so dreadfully about being thin.
I think it’s going to rain, but Ria has given me her new umbrella, it really is good of her, I used to nip down to Kings Cross to get them, but can’t do it now. Getting old is not to be recommended, but it’s so wonderful to have kind daughters – wonderful.
all my love your dithering old ma
27a Bishop’s Road
N6 4HP
[c.1999]
Dearest Tina – I was so stupid when you rang up – as I explained to you, or tried to, I got home and just closed my eyes for a while, so didn’t really take in what you were saying. – I’m so relieved to have this splendid present for Ria chosen for me. I did want something special and was trying to screw up my courage to go down to Oxford Street, but even then I didn’t know what I was looking for, and, Tina, it was really unselfish of you to allocate some of your precious time and your present-finding capacity to helping me out. Yes, it truly was.
John is back, says Frankfurt is hideously cold. Lyn has had another boy, called Louis (rather unexpectedly). Feel another generation is knocking at the door.
I did enjoy the week-end, and both the concerts, and sitting by the sea in the winter sunshine (I’m not sure that Maria believed this). You were so kind, and it was wonderful being cooked for and looked after like that.
Much love
Ma
Embarrassing letter from the American Womens’ Club, hoping I’m not tired out by giving them ‘words of wisdom’. But I know they always go on like that.
Your children are a great comfort.
[c.1999]
Dearest Tina – Am sending this at once, as arranged. Feel ashamed to have complained about so many things whereas you are looking forward to double the amount of work, and dear Luke enjoys things in such a heart-warming way. I do hope he always will.
Have written to David Godwin* pretending not to understand exactly and hope that will keep him at bay. After all I’m very old, and can’t be expected to grasp things properly.
Eddie scorns me. While I’m fiddling about trying to find my keys he stands on his hind legs and puts his paw on the keyhole in case I don’t know where that is.
love to all Ma
27a Bishop’s Road
[1999]
Dearest Tina,
I’m afraid I’ve asked you this so very often, as I feel very worried at the idea of carrying down 10 Easter Eggs and I shall have to ask you if you could get some, perhaps in Bude before the end of term. I will send some labels, but the important thing is the £££ I think.
Sophie is off to her Activities but John tells me they have no arrangements for anything to do indoors, surely they must have? It’s fine today, but dreadfully cold.
I’m so sick of being ill, and now my foot’s gone wrong again and I’ve lost my travel pass! I rang up Help the Aged but they tell me I must go to Wood Green or Crouch End and there are no buses. I think I must have dropped it while I was paying the taxi back from the Café Royal. I wish now I hadn’t brought it with me.
My back feels as though it is under a bacon-slicer. Complain! Complain! But it’s been like this since we took the trip to Oxford, which I enjoyed so much.
Trying to conceal an absolute conviction that Salman Rushdie’s new novel* is a load of codswallop, in spite of his newly narrowed eyes.
How can they manage this new selective teaching system? Won’t they need many more specialist teachers? Or will it just sink under a load of abandoned schemes?
Still I have my Golden Pen. And I do so want to come and see you all at Easter.
much love to all Ma
27a Bishop’s Road
[1999]
Dearest Tina – I expect you’ve seen these pix** in some version or another but sent them just in case. The ones who seem to me to have changed are Mark and Martha, but we’ve all changed I expect. Film had good reviews, but I alas haven’t seen it. Perhaps I’ll have a chance one day, as I should love the lavish backgrounds. Stayed in all yesterday but man did not arrive to see to The Boiler. Really this could not matter less but it poisons one’s whole life for the time being –
All my love Ma
10 July (I think) [1999]
Dearest Tina,
Luke here, such a pleasure to see him. Yes, he has grown a foot at least.
This is not a proper letter, but just an enclosure for Paschal’s birthday. Ria is getting him the Right Kind of Lego, but I do not know which is the right kind.
I think I’ll have to resign from the Royal Soc Lit committee, as Maggie Gee is due to come on to it.
Expeditions to the shops getting rather painful and I always drop some money and feel people are laughing at me –
much love to you and Terence – Ma
[1999]
Dearest Tina,
This is just to say, at the risk of always thinking of myself, which Ria does warn me about, that I do very much want to go on holiday, but I can now only just get down to the shops. But can you think of anywhere?
So glad Luke has arrived so successfully in Seville. It’s rather a strange feeling to have him growing up like this – not painful, that would be quite off the mark, but it is a ‘stage in life’, even for his granny. all my love Ma
[1999]
Dearest Tina,
So much love and many thanks for arranging holiday – you mustn’t think me ungrateful, I’m just a bit creaky – Ma
27a Bps Rd
Highgate, N6
[1999]
Will stagger out to the post with this – if I collapse on the way, take it as a sign that I did very much want to go to Oxford.
Independent have just rung up to ask about my education – I can’t remember any thing about it. A haze is descending – all my love Ma
Maria Fitzgerald*
185 Poynders Gardens
London, sw4
18 April [1965]
Dearest Maria,
Just a short note as, of course, I’ve really got nothing to
say! After seeing your train out of the station I went to the Charing X Road, and after some difficulty got the Lara music from Dr Z. for the piano – no guitar setting I’m afraid but at least the notes are there! Then I went for a walk through Soho to smell the cheese and wine and pretend to myself I was having a foreign holiday. Very racy outside the Spanish and Italian shops in Old Compton Street. I note you can get ‘catering’ sizes of all these Spanish things, olives and so on, so Angie would always be able to get them cheap that way.
Have had a bit of a tidy in your room. I bought myself Mozart’s Kleine Nachtmusik, while I was in the music district, it has a terrible cover with a sultry blonde on it (why?) but it sounds nice while I’m dusting and polishing.
Sudden thunderstorm so I must take the things off the line. Sheets of rain, and the cringing inhabitants are driven indoors from the playground. Not like the lovely view through the arch out of the yard at Terry Bank – I love that view, and I hope it stays sunny for you.
Please give my love to everyone and tell Auntie Willie I feel very melancholy at not having come and am now going to the kitchen to have a glass of something – it helps –
Send me a line some time –
much love, dear
Mum
St Deiniol’s Library, Hawarden
[postcard]
14 July [1965]
Can’t show my room because it overlooks the graveyard at the back! Wanted to say that I found another card of red buttons and they’re in the button basket, if you want them. Hope all is well and you aren’t worn out with school and housekeeping.
(X for Daddy) Love Ma X
15 July [1965]
Dearest Ria – just in case you’re too busy to think of these things – if frig: is giving up could you turn dial (inside back) to 6 or 7 till the heat-wave is over? Don’t forget sunglasses and colour-film! I expect you’ve thought of all these things! Lovely here under an oak-tree by the stream in Mr Gladstone’s grounds. (Guess who this is on the statue!). I’m so lucky to have this weather here. Please offer Daddy my sympathy in his thick clothes! XX Love Ma
Many more clerics now – we’re quite full up.
Poynders Garden, sw4
14 July [1968]
Dearest Ria,
We’re missing you very much and wondering how you’re getting on cooking your first dins, but by the time you get this you will of course be an experienced old hand; perhaps your first postcard will come soon.
Tina is walking about restlessly packing and spraying things onto her shoes, only one sandal can be found. Yesterday they went out shopping and Terry bought some wet-look half-boots, and an orange top at Miss Selfridge’s – I am saying nothing about this. We’re all going to The Idiot at the Old Vic this evening, it’s very nice of them to let me go with them – I don’t know how often I’ve seen it by now so must guard against saying It’s Not Like The Book.
I have now been to fetch my new specs from Mr Miranda, the genial oculist, they are very small and mean looking, like toy spectacles, with thin frames, and give me a stingy, cruel expression, and Tina laughs every time she sees me – but they do enable me to see the A to Z.
I went up to Grove Cottage, all the tiles are off the roof and lying about the garden, with ladders, battens &c. – Grandpa stood at the door looking at it all gloomily and then said: ‘On the whole I think the garden looks better like this.’ Mary showed me some of the old 17th century tile-pegs they found in the roof – they were made of birch-wood.
I’ve got so many books on my table I haven’t read that there’s a sort of barrier all round me, and nobody can see the T.V.
Beautiful weather, raspberries cheaper, clematis still flowering. The Devil Rides Out is on at the Balham Odeon, and Daddy wants to go, and says If Ria was here she would come with me, but I wonder.
When Tina goes to the Major tomorrow I shall have to start clearing up, but I shall be sad. She says it’s the dullest little house possible, and she and the major will have to sit opposite each other at the tiny dining-table over the macaroni cheese, and give him a shopping list each day so he can fetch the things in his car. But perhaps it won’t be too bad, and they go to Aldeburgh later. Anyway, no temptation to spend money. – Tina says she hates all the things she’s got and all must be altered! – Wondering so much how you are getting on, you’ll have to be patient and tell me every one of your adventures –
much love Mum
Chez Mrs Parsons*
1 August [1969]
Dearest Ria,
Thankyou so much for your nice letters – I do hope Jenny is better now – I’m sure you’ll cheer her up, as you’ve often done to me when I’ve felt low and depressed. I feel I haven’t much interesting to say, compared with gorgeous doings in Malta, but I’ll write anyway!
Tina is giving me a course in modern baby care, which I am sure will prove useful in the future – things have not changed v. much I find since you were in your Moses basket – not nearly as much as they did between my times and Grannie’s – but I didn’t know the new way of folding the nappies, and how to put on the new ‘Babygrow’ rompers. Tina gets a bit impatient with me sometimes but I hope I’m helping her a little! The Parsons are back this week-end, driving back through sun-drenched France, as Mrs Parsons puts it, and staying in hotels chosen from the Guide Michelin – but England is also sun-drenched, a bit too much for poor Daddy who’s still flogging down to the office in his fusty suit, and still doing those fearful tickets!
I feel much better for my stay at St Deiniol’s and had some very nice beaux – Dr Buckley, in his neat orange wig, sometimes came and had a tiny glass of sherry with me and my favourite was called Mr Snodgrass, believe it or not, he was a curate from Liverpool with a real Liverpool voice – unfortunately he went for a day out to North Wales and the friends he went to call on were out so he went for a cup of coffee and a roll ‘at a modest café’ and his front tooth broke on the roll so that he had to talk all the rest of his time at St Deiniol’s with his hand over his mouth! We had lovely weather all the time and I was very happy relaxing among the cows, buttercups and oak-trees. I’ve also done nearly all my work for next term.
Thankyou very much for looking after Daddy &c. while I was away. Things were getting a bit dusty when I returned and many eggs had been cracked over the stove, but all is straight now.
Tina is going up to Oxford next Tuesday to settle Francesca into her new flat and hang all the pictures and fixtures before Suza gets to it!
We have now received an invite to William and Mary Jane’s wedding on the 6th September – unluckily the day that Tina and Linda are going to Málaga, but I’ve accepted for you (it’s a Saturday), and I do hope this is all right as I regard you as my great supporter at weddings! (I’m sorry, it strikes me I said this in my last letter; forgive me. You see how little news there is.)
I went to return my (over-due) books at Chelsea and couldn’t imagine how the Kings Road inhabitants could endure the heat in long velvet gowns sweeping the pavement. However, some thundery rain now which will be good for my plants. (The weather – discussion of the weather). I got V and A* an African violet for their first wedding anniversary. Daddy says they really did bloom in the wadis, but the flower was over in the same day: he can’t understand why ours goes on blooming.
Mrs Pereira is still very smart, but for some reason she has purchased a large bucket of small white stones, which the sturdy baby throws about the landing, causing everyone to slip up.
I’m keeping your ‘Petticoats’ carefully. The owner of the newspaper shop is now keeping it himself, having come in one morning and found the ridiculous manager fast asleep in bed – he never used to get up and sort out the papers so they were never ready for the children to deliver, and that’s why they were always so late.
Much love darling. I wonder what colour your shorts are? Have you been to see where St Paul landed – love to everyone and to Alison – x Ma
Poynders Giardino
5 August [1969]
>
Dearest Ria,
Thankyou so much for lovely letter, boat trip to the islands sounds truly wonderful. So sorry Ellie is seasick (I do remember Mrs Packer I think calling her Ellie before?) When you say sailing boat, I suppose it has an inboard engine? If you get any chance of sailing and actually holding the little ropes, do try – don’t laugh at me – as any chance to learn these rich sports should be taken, opportunities aren’t so many, and it’s amazing how useful it comes in afterwards! You were too little to try sailing at Blackshore.
Very hot here and Tina quite exhausted with the twins – she went up for her day off to Oxford to help Francesca with the new flat and Mrs Parsons told her: Of course I had to have a proper breakfast and a stiff drink after my heavy day looking after them by myself – Tina never has either! She’s coming home this week-end for a flop.
So I Have Thought of You Page 14