I have finished another book,* only a short one and not quite a novel, and we are now looking for a really good jacket design, I always used to have Old Masters of some kind on the cover but the sales department say that they are now hopelessly out of date.
How nice that the silent security man has turned out so helpful to Anne – he must, of course, have become much less silent – and what a blessing that Leo has got into this practical mechanics course because that surely was what he wanted to do before all these disasters happened.
I don’t quite know what to do – whether to cancel the things I’m supposed to be doing for the whole of the year, or hope for the best, (which isn’t ordinarily something I ever do).
This year I’m the last of my family, that is since Rawle died in June. But oh dear, I daren’t read this letter through again, it’s so disconnected, and I still haven’t thanked you for not one but two most generous presents – a beautiful hot water bottle with a close coat of fur the colour of a golden retriever and the 18th century lovers – everything for an evening on the sofa, thankyou so very much, you can guess how I appreciate these truly nice things. – All my love and best wishes for 1995 from Mops
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate
30 March [1995]
Dearest Willie,
Thankyou so much for your letter and your kind reference to My Symptoms, which Ria would feel a bit of an indulgence, I’m so sick of them, Willie. All I want them to do is go away. But I suppose sooner or later you get to the illness which is going to finish you off, or as my dear Burne-Jones calls it ‘the pale face that looks in at the door one day’ and then you’re obliged to recognise it. Don’t think I’m becoming morbid though. I’m looking forward so much to seeing you and am very lucky that you can manage May 11th.
I’m afraid I don’t take the Times and haven’t got Edmund’s obituary – but if Jeannie liked it, that’s all that matters. Meanwhile it does seem that they’ve found the right treatment for Mike, but she of course must watch him very very carefully and I’m afraid there’ll be no question of her coming with me to decrepit old Somerville, where they’re giving a lunch (not really giving it) for our year in June.
I’m so glad the M.U. still sing There is a Green Hill – nothing like that here – all rhythm and blues so I only dare to go to the dear old 8 o’clock which I expect will soon be given up. – And I’m not surprised you were a little off balance after your marathon birthday treat – I’m so glad you had a look at 34 Well Walk – it was sold about three years ago and the owner, who I knew, asked if I would like to come up one last time and just see the whole place and my old room – I thought it was really kind of her considering she was sitting there with all the carpets gone and her luggage packed – and do you know it was hardly altered at all, although I believe now it’s tremendously smartened up – the rent in our day was £40 a year. – My mother didn’t die there, but when we’d moved to the horrid grand house in Regents Park, which they felt they ought to get when Daddy became editor. – I think the garden you sat in must have been Bush House, which is now a kind of arts and music centre and intensely respectable restaurant.
Mike and Elizabeth are miraculous. Who worked the miracle?
I just crawl out in the evenings, feeling it’s feeble not to – not every evening by any manner of means. I went to the Merchant Taylors Hall (or was it the Fishmongers) to hear a lovely Purcell concert got up by the British Council – but they’re going to send it around the world to celebrate something or other and I can’t help wondering whether in Russia, The Bermudas &c they’re really going to appreciate so much countertenor, theorbo, lute &c or whether they won’t think it all sounds scatty and wouldn’t prefer a brass band selection, or the pipes and drums.
But it was very melancholy and soothing.
I wonder how Anne’s singer, that she used to accompany, will get on without her? Not at all, I suppose, as Anne seemed to be supplying all the go and spirit. But I hope you’ll find time to tell me all about everything in May –
With much love,
Mops.
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate
17 May [1995]
Dearest Willie and Mike,
Back in Highgate, and although I haven’t really got a proper stretch of gravel for the dear little Siberian violets, I’ve planted them and put a little gravel round them to try and fool them. As though one could ever fool a plant.
Such a wonderful holiday I had at Terry Bank, one treat after another. Because I have such a bad memory for the names of places, and I can’t say it’s getting any better – and you’re always wonderfully patient about it – you mustn’t think I don’t look at them or appreciate being taken to them or that I don’t remember them in my own way.
When I got back I looked up the date in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Journals, wh. start on May 14th – rather surprised that she’s transplanting radishes and hoeing peas, and it made me sad (for the 100th time) that she would so much have liked a ‘Book of Botany’ to make out which wild flower was which and she hadn’t anything at all and now there are so many. – I also read a bit about Four Gables – I see that Webb did choose Morris wallpapers originally and sent for sampleboards so that the local painters could match the colours exactly – can you imagine them at it – and also that the house was supposed to rise straight out of the grass, ‘in the Pele tradition’; which it doesn’t do now, does it, they’ve got a flower-bed, I suppose that’s a lot easier for the mowing, though.
But the best thing was seeing you both looking so well and undertaking so much and so many responsibilities – (this made me rather ashamed of myself as I have so few now – I feel weighed down even by looking after the goldfish when the children are away) – without seeming to find anything too difficult – it’s a miracle, really.
I was very lucky to see the garden in May and had so many treats – one of them being able to come down in the early morning and just lean against the beautifully warm Aga while the kettle boiled – I don’t mean that I was cold, of course I wasn’t – but oh, I do hope Tina gets her house with an Aga one of these days – and then going upstairs again there was a glimpse of the blue poppy from the landing window.
Don’t forget to let me know, will you, if you come in June. I see I’m supposed to be going to a lunch on the 15th and the so-called specialist at the Whittington on the 16th but could EASILY cancel these things, specially the hospital, so do remember –
with many thanks and much love Mops
P.S. Talking about Pickering &c made me think so much about Jay as a little boy. I’m so glad that everything is turning out right for him –
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate
18 July [c.1995]
Dear Mike,
Lovely to hear from you, and I hope you’ve also made a note of it in your letter book, which has always impressed me a good deal.
What wonderful news that Diana (I think that’s what she was called) has gone to live in Wycombe, though I wonder what she’s going to do with her brother? He’d better not get in the way, though. I know you and Willie have always been very kind and generous about her, but I’ve never been able to forgive her for moving her clothesline into the vegetable garden and pretending her own had blown down. She was ruthlessness personified.
I’m not surprised Old Terry Bank needs putting back into order, but you mustn’t think of doing it yourself. You must put an ad. in the Cumbrian Gazette for a handyman.
Perhaps your Man Saturday could suggest someone – by the way, I thought you had 2 youths, who moved all those shrubs on the lawn below the assault course?
Your garden sounds wonderful, and it’s a pity, in a way, that you stopped asking the Mothers’ Union to come in for tea and admire it. I agree that it’s been a good rose year, though we haven’t got any Rugosa (I love Frü Dagnar, but is she really a Rugosa?), but our garden, I don’t mind telling you, is in a sorry state – like most of Highgate i
t’s really in the middle of a wood, and reverts at the slightest opportunity – the magnolia and climbing hydrangea were overwhelmed and didn’t flower. The mallows grew 8 foot high, and the sparrows and thrushes have been driven away by rampant jays, magpie and blackbirds. In front, the (ill-named) climbing rose Compassion has grown enormous thorns which have impaled the postie, who doesn’t like delivering my letters – I must say it smells very sweet, but this doesn’t impress the postie – and, another thing, the Siberian violets are still flowering and they’ve been at it since the spring.
I’m so glad Joseph isn’t going to have a reception in the house! But you and Willie will have to dress up. Have you thought about that?
I’m horrified to hear that Willie has been carrying buckets of peat. Believe me, no nasturtium is worth that. I’m still gridlocked by arthritis, and it has just struck me that it isn’t going to get better and go away, as infirmities always have done in the past. However, you’ve set me a good example, Mike, so who knows?
All my love to both of you
Mops
P.S. Just a word about the Blue Poppy. You say specialists are at work improving it, but that, of course, will make it something different. Left to itself I don’t think it does more than 2 years in captivity. It was you, wasn’t it, who told me that it should always be seen from below, which means a hill garden, like yours. –
27a Bishops Road
Highgate
22 October [c.1995]
Dearest Willie, You’re quite right, I was relieved to get your postscript – it isn’t that I wasn’t worrying about Mike, who could help it, but that the 10 stone is a most comforting figure – only Willie, surely he doesn’t like being weighed? I can’t think how you persuade him to it. What a relief that he’s able to eat, so it’s worthwhile going into Kirkby Lonsdale and getting something really nice. It’s so terribly difficult to keep one’s mind on a high level when it’s consumed with worry,
Ria and family have gone off for the half-term to the farmhouse they’ve bought in Wales. I haven’t seen it yet, I’m waiting for the new wood-stove to be installed, and when I do get there I shan’t be able to struggle up and down the hills – but I’ll have a go when spring comes. John was up so early, attaching the children’s bikes to the bike rack and balancing the lawn-mower, in its special waterproof bag, on the roof. I beg him to get a gardener in from the village, and also a carpenter to put up bookshelves, that’s what the locals will expect as they clearly regard him as a harmless millionaire sent to provide them with employment. – He works so hard and it does my heart good to see how happy he is at the idea of fiddling about with the window-catches and damp-courses, and Doing Something About the Barn. He also loves the instructions for the wood-stove – but it hasn’t got one of those nice round lids in the top which you take off with a little iron thing, and then you forget where you’ve put it.
Very exhausted by the Chinese exhibition at the BM although it was much smaller than I expected. Perhaps it’s time to give up culture. I told you I’m sure about my evening as a poetry judge at the Groucho when my leg bled all over the floor. Safer at home.
I loved Anne’s poem and hope it’s always going to be true, I mean I hope she’s always going to have happy days and thankful evenings. I’m glad Carl(o?) has been given his dismissal – he’s had plenty of time to become a fine man, if he was going to be one. But what a good girl she is, looking after her aunt Helen, I am sure she wants to, but how many daughters are there like Anne?
Delighted that Helen’s op went off so satisfactorily.
Laurence (Valpy’s 2nd) has now taken up with an older woman who runs a hair-dressing salon and thinks of starting a new life in Brighton. – Valpy says he’s given up commenting on what his children do (though this is not quite true).
All my love to both of you,
Mops.
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate
15 June [1997]
Dearest Willie,
Thankyou so much for your p.c. – you must count it as an answer to this – I know you haven’t time to write. – I think it’s very clever of you to find a place where you can have some nursing if you want it – Bet there are some fairly ridiculous people among the guests, though. – But wonderful that Mike feels well enough to make the trip.
I’m just watching the Queen’s guests who were married the same year she was, and to my dismay I found tears in my eyes! Really, this won’t do. But one woman said how she’d opened the envelope with the invitation in terribly carefully for fear of getting it torn, and I wondered if the British Public had changed at all, in all the many many years I’ve known it.
I’m glad to tell you that I don’t have hay fever any more – I’m too old – I do have my old enemies, My Back and My Heart and they’re a proper nuisance particularly when it comes to walking uphill – and this Welsh farmhouse which Ria and John have bought is lovely, but it’s poised on the side of a hill, and quite near the top, and I feel I’m a bit of a nuisance there, though nobody has said so. Actually I’d be quite happy just to sit there and look at the view out of the windows and the sheep and ponies on the hill.
I’ve had a mild success in America with The Blue Flower and in consequence an alarming photographer lady called, dressed in silk and linen – she came from New York, and in a car from Brown’s Hotel, which she left outside, (including the poor driver) from 10 a.m. till 3 – she wouldn’t have coffee or tea, and I felt fit to drop – she specializes, so she says, in informal author portraits, and kept pulling the furniture about (I’d stuffed a lot of things behind the bed) and springing on top of things to take interesting angles, I always look dreadful in photos and these will be no exception. And a dreadful drawing of me in the New York Review of Books, done from photos I suppose, but the U.S. publisher says I ought to be grateful as it’s a famous artist, even more famous than the photographer.
Very good news of my Siberian violets that Mike gave me and which I thought weren’t going to survive the late frost last winter – they’re now multiplying furiously, even though I’ve no gravel to give them. So I must survive until next spring to see them in flower again.
Willie, you don’t tell me about your eye operation – I did say don’t answer, but do let me know about that – just a word –
Much love to you all – Mops
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate
[1997]
Dearest Willie,
I didn’t know your eye op. was to be so soon – nor did you, I suppose – and I think it’s hard you couldn’t spend what sounds to me like a pretty hard day thinking entirely, or even a little bit, of yourself, and being indulged every minute, or at least for a few minutes, but I know you wouldn’t see it that way. With those formidable women doctors you have to think, well, they probably had every kind of discouragement, and feel that they have to demonstrate their authority &c at every moment, but all the same, it would be nice if they were gentler and kinder.
It was mad, dear Willie, to have a large party (16 staying in your house, even though it’s a mansion – you must have had people sleeping in the log-basket) just a few days before the op. but, mad as it was, it was obviously a stroke of genius, and it must have made up for everything when Leo gave you the Great Hug. (You don’t tell me, though, what you think of his girlfriend? Bournemouth is such a long way from York.) But I didn’t know Joseph had been ill – I thought he was training to be a solicitor – I don’t even know what Crohn’s disease is – and poor Jay – but they’re better, thank heavens, you say.
I’m not quite sure whether Jeannie’s op was a cataract. But I do know that telling you to keep still wasn’t nonsense, and you must absolutely avoid doing Useful Things.
You kindly ask me what I’m working on – well, nothing at the moment, I had taken a quarter of an advance (they pay it in quarters to keep the tax down) on a new novel, but hadn’t done anything, or even had an idea of anything, when Chris Carduff* (lovely name) – he was
the one who called his kitten ‘Charlotte Mew’ – got a job with the best publishers in Boston – I think I told you this, but you know how it is, Willie, one’s memory isn’t perhaps one’s strongest point – well, Carduff, who I only know from talking to him over the telephone about his wife, his children, and his beliefs, has always been a kind supporter and has now bought in all my titles and arranged about advertising them on the internet &c – and so I don’t actually need to write anything more, and I think the best thing to do is to keep the Harper Collins advance apart from everything else so that if I can’t think of a new novel, or don’t want to, I can send it back just as it is.
I’ve now been elected to the council of Royal Society of Literature and I go to their meetings because they’re at 4, and I’ve more or less given up going out in the evening. Tea is served at these meetings and I’m amazed at the amount the male writers eat. Perhaps they have nothing else all day, but whole cakes, and plates of sandwiches, are soon reduced to crumbs. Luckily there is a very competent secretary, otherwise we should get nothing done, and, if I’ve followed things correctly, we’ve just inherited a large sum and are negotiating to buy a new building. I do wish, though, that I’d been born a more efficient committee member. I truly think they’re born, not made.
so much love and very best wishes to you and Mike – Mops
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate
30 August [1997]
Dearest Willie,
I don’t think I’ve made it clear how much I appreciate your cards, particularly of Brantwood perhaps, but no, I loved all of them and they made a kind of traveller’s diary. You say you’re ‘idle’ during the mornings, but this seems to me frankly ridiculous. You know you always have too much to do.
I’m glad the bank is so good this year. Maria had a great fit of energy and hacked down the R. Ponticum. She just couldn’t bear the way it infringed on its more delicate neighbours. This was when they came back from their farmhouse in Wales, where I also went for a few days this August. You remember it’s their holiday house, and they made a giant move, having bought 6 starter sets from IKEA, each with one knife, one fork, one glass, one bed, one chair &c, a wood-burning stove and a ping-pong table, but they’ve done a tremendous amount since, and transformed the barn, or one of the barns, into a sort of visitors wing. It’s all on a tremendous slope, so that I have to walk quite cautiously about the garden to avoid falling and breaking something, which would make me more of a nuisance than ever. But it’s a lovely place.
So I Have Thought of You Page 24