76 Clifton Hill
London, NW8
28 May 1983
Dear Mary,
I do hope that during the crossing,* the captain’s table, the competitions, the swimming-pool, and the indexing and proof revisions, you haven’t forgotten your delightful farewell party at the University Women’s Club, such good company and it was a great pleasure to me to see you again, just at the last moment, because, as everyone agreed, the year seemed to go nowhere &c. I’d have liked if possible to see so much more of you.
I can remember when the club was a place of dread where one went to meet aunts who had been at Girton before the first world war – no men ever crossed the threshold, there was a strange silence in the dining-room so that footsteps sounded loudly on the parquet, all voices were hushed as though in a college library, and indeed it was just like the women’s college dining room Virginia Woolf describes in A Room of One’s Own. Now it’s a most genial and sympathetic place, men can be heard talking quite loudly, and in fact it’s appropriate to the lovely building the University Women seem to have acquired almost by accident. Now that is a change very much for the better, which makes me think that the world isn’t altogether going downhill!
I’m just struggling to do a (very short) introduction to a reprint of Leo Myers’ The Near and the Far trilogy* which I’ve always thought a most wonderful novel, although Myers himself was a very strange person indeed, I notice that Forster called him ‘rather cold’, so I suppose Myers didn’t ‘connect’ or didn’t want to. He took an overdose in the end and killed himself, like my poor little Charlotte Mew.
I can’t see you ever getting down to Somerset. And I can’t pretend that much goes on there – only cows standing about the fields, which were all marshland not so very long ago, so that some of the people in the village remember rowing to school by boat, when the floods were out. That, and the cider apple orchards all ruined by having such a wet spring, and Wells cathedral. But perhaps you’ll come there some day. Meanwhile it will be wonderful to see your family, wonderful for them too.
Thankyou again and very best wishes for Vol. 2.
love Penelope
76 Clifton Hill
London, NW8
26 July 1983
Dear Mary,
How nice to get your letter and, as always, the amount of work you get through is an inspiration to me, or should be, and I can only hope it’ll last as I seem to get slower and slower. Well, it’s not ‘seem’, I suppose, it’s just the course of nature.
I’ve just come back from Cumberland, the Kirkby Lonsdale district, surely the loveliest part of this country when you get sun coming after rain and clouds reflected in the lakes – we went over to see Ruskin’s house at Brantwood, where I’ve never been – indeed I didn’t know that you could go and see it – and not many people do, they’re diverted by either Beatrix Potter’s cottage, or Wordsworth’s – and having got back on a very slow train to Euston I saw yesterday’s Observer poster – which read E. M. FORSTER: MY FIRST LOVE AFFAIR. I’d no idea it was going to be serialised so soon, (and my friends up in Cumberland would never dream of buying a Sunday paper) – so now I’m going to ring up one or two people and see if they’ve kept it. I’m so glad EMF’s letters have started out on so successful a career, but they are obviously going to be just as successful, so to speak, on the ‘serious’ end, for students and scholars and thoughtful readers – I suppose hard work is a justification in itself, but anyway, your hard work is certainly justified now.
Thankyou for the Charlotte Mew query – she does seem to attract biographers, but it seems to me that if you’re going to talk to anyone who remembers her, or about her, you’ve got to come over here – meanwhile I’ll send a note to this girl, as I’ve just about finished all I mean to do, but if I can help her at all, I will.
I’m glad you were able to go on indexing, in spite of fog and icebergs – but I think you’re truly courageous to go by boat – those endless meals, and the threat of quizzes and fancy dress. Very best luck with what remains to be done and do come to Somerset – we won’t go up the Tor, just walk about the lanes and eat goat’s cheese. – love, Penelope
76 Clifton Hill, NW8
5 November 1983
Dear Mary – I’m sure you’ve seen the enclosed from the Evening Standard, but thought I’d send it anyway, as Michael Ratcliffe doesn’t often review for the Standard, only, I think, books that he’d consider worthwhile, and what he says seems to me to fit in very well with what you say in your letter – I thought it, in fact, a very sensible review, in a paper that reaches a lot of readers.
I’m going to admit to you that when I first read Forster, as a 15 to 16 year old very many years ago, I knew nothing about his sex life and very little indeed about homosexuality – but I responded to the novels as I read them – and I’m prepared to swear that there were many thousands of other readers like me. The bias now has altered so much that the media have to concentrate on his sex life at the expense of everything else, but I wonder if in the end they’ll prove to be right? As you say, the ‘truly literary letters’ are there to be looked forward to in vol 2 and perhaps the Observer will make a better choice of excerpt next time. – I sound like one of Forster’s maiden aunts, I know, all the same I do think the papers underrate their public, but I suppose they or their circulation managers haven’t the courage not to.
I deeply sympathise with you about the hot summer, though I know heat in Missouri and heat in St John’s Wood are not the same thing, and then you were ill on top of it.
As to us, my daughter’s new baby was born a month early, but he is thriving and is a great comfort, though I don’t mean that he will take the place of the little boy that died, but he is a splendid individual in his own right. My son is still in Nicaragua, I think the only economic adviser who isn’t a Cuban, and I must say I’ll be glad to see him and his family back in Europe again.
I’m just getting Charlotte Mew ready for press – but oh, the biography industry – I wrote this book because I wanted to – but a friend who is interested in Barbara Pym and wanted to see all the diaries &c. in the Bodleian, found she had to queue, there were so many Pym biographers there already.
So glad you’ll be here in 84 and best wishes for everything –
Penelope
76 Clifton Hill, NW8
8 July 1984
My dear Mary,
I’ve only just heard from Mary Bennett about your illness and operation, and that (as she says and as I should expect) you are ‘carrying on writing regardless’. She didn’t give me any more detail than that, but my husband and 3 of my uncles died of cancer, which couldn’t be treated then, as it is now, and I know that age-old courage, combined with brand-new treatment, is the only answer, I mean from the human side. Please do accept my very deepest wishes for your recovery.
I’m down here in Somerset where my daughter and her husband run the little store and sub-post-office. It’s the moment for making redcurrant jelly and freezing the raspberries, and although we haven’t got a large garden it takes up an amazing amount of time, particularly as the baby is just reaching the stage when he can crawl and walk insecurely, as long as he’s holding on to something, but these somethings tend to give way, as he’s not a good judge as to how stable they are – anyway there seems to be a series of disasters every day, but all are forgotten by next morning. And the dog is due to have puppies.*
We’ve had good biographies this year, the Ivy Compton Burnett** I thought was exceptional, the Edmund Gosse† perhaps rather too long which is always the trouble when you’re writing about someone who isn’t really interesting in themselves, but only the ‘friend of friends’. And it must have been a great day when Margaret Drabble finished her Oxford Companion to Eng. Lit. I very much admire anyone who can classify and arrange and keep things neat and orderly. I haven’t the gift, although I know that you have.
And Forster, I don’t know how you feel about him. – whether he’s been a faithf
ul companion or whether you’ve got sick of the sound of his name – but perhaps you’ve already got your next subject in mind, they seem to appear and announce themselves, one doesn’t have to look for them. – love and best wishes
Penelope
76 Clifton Hill, NW8
10 August [1984]
Dear Mary,
Thankyou so much for your letter – strangely enough I’d just written to you at your Missouri address, having heard from Mary Bennett about your operation – it was a ‘get well’ letter, and I’d no idea that you would be able to go ahead with your plans so soon – but I’m delighted that in fact you have – you’ve got the better of everything, as I might have known, and arrived over here to finish off Forster – many congratulations and don’t bother to read my other letter when you eventually get it.
You must have collected an immense amount of information about Forster (that strange creature) which you haven’t been able to use even in your splendid vols. 1 and 2 and I’m glad you’re thinking about writing some articles – there’s a curious impulse, once you’ve finished a book, almost to turn your back on it, as though it must go out into the world now and take its chance – don’t you agree? – and then to devote all your energies to the next one, but perhaps after all this is a mistake sometimes.
I was interested to hear that there’s yet another prospective editor for the B/Jones letters, but I’m not at all surprised that the family, and perhaps others, are getting annoyed with all these repeated applications (Eileen Cassavetti, for example, made copies of all her correspondence for Michael Case, but what was the use of it?) – and I certainly think it would have been wiser to get in touch with the family first. I haven’t heard from Christopher Newell, but do give him my address and number if you care to and think I could be of help. I hope that (unlike Case) he is able to read Victorian handwriting, and has some idea of the extent of the material. To select, one surely ought to try to read all there is to select from – impossible in this case.
By the way, Norman Kelvin, though moving with the slowness of mountains, has come good, as they say, at last, don’t you think? and I’m very glad, though I don’t know how long we’ll have to wait until Morris vol 2 appears. I daresay I shan’t live to see it.
I’m just off to Yorkshire and the Lake District partly to give a course, and partly on holiday. Please may I ring you up when I get back, and see if you can find time to meet?
very best wishes
Penelope
76 Clifton Hill, NW8
18 June [1985]
Dear Mary,
I met Jock Murray at a party (one of the parties) given for the Oxford Companion to English Literature and was talking about you – and he said ‘Ah! Mary Lago!’ somewhat wistfully – I daresay he regrets the EMF letters, but I suppose as it’s a family firm he has, after all, to watch the money very carefully. Anyway, I think Collins brought it out pretty well, and I want to send you congratulations on Vol. 2 and its success. – I too wonder ‘what you will do next’ – writing a novel gives you an intoxicating free feeling, no paper, no references, no retrieval systems, you can think it all out, on top of the bus, but at the same time I find you miss the support you get as a biographer, or an editor, from knowing that the truth is there somewhere and all (if you can say ‘all’) you have to do is to find it. And there’s a very real worry about the characters being recognised by friends and family who think it’s them. Still, I think it’s worth trying!
I’ve written to Valpy (my son) to tell him the sad news about St Edmund’s – I’ve only met Nicholas Lash once or twice but he lived next to Valpy and family at Cambridge at the time of his marriage (he’s born to be the victim of a scrupulous conscience and to do everything the most difficult and delicate way possible) – and he (N. Lash) is also the godfather of Valpy’s second son. He’ll be deeply interested – and now his third baby, it seems, will be born in the Baptist hospital in Managua and when I shall see him, or her, I don’t know. Of course, I’m hopelessly prejudiced, but I don’t think Reagan and his advisers have made any attempt at all to understand this very poor and struggling but still religious and well-meaning country, which has to make friends and borrow money where it can. But they are absolutely broke, the students are all called up and the 12-year olds have to break off school and pick the coffee crop, and what will become of everything I can’t see. (My two elder grandsons are coming back to go to school in the Hague. But I’m sorry to say that they’re reluctant to come, because in Managua they have a real machine-gun in the garden.)
I didn’t know about the Burne-Jones/Margaret letters which I’m sure will be charming, but what thousands there must be still (like Lord Hardinge’s) which I suppose will come on the market one day! I think if the collected correspondence is really to see the light it will need someone much larger, stronger and better informed than any who’ve appeared so far. And I wonder whether it will be worth it?
Many congratulations on the Distinguished Faculty Award – and on the generosity of your university to the Shelstone – and on having a new era of foot-comfort ahead of you. I note Manchester 10th October, but do hope to see you in London –
love Penelope
76 Clifton Hill, NW8
16 September 1986
Dear Mary,
How nice to hear from you, but how sad to think that your sabbatical is over and I haven’t seen you again – and even more annoying for me that I missed you at St Edmund’s, because my daughter-in-law and her 3 boys were taking a holiday there when my son went back to Nicaragua – a wonderful holiday because they were allowed to play on the empty tennis-court and in the empty games room – and I went to see them there, but, alas, after you’d gone. How wretched about the bronchitis, or was it perhaps something even worse than that, a virus which was ‘about’, as they say, last summer, flourishing in the damp, I expect, and which laid low a number of people. – And so I didn’t see you, and never found out what you thought of the film of A Room with a View.
Thankyou so much for the cuttings – I’m a bit embarrassed by Robert E. Hosmer Jr who is writing a thesis (I think) on female British novelists (I think), although he’s very kind in coming to our defence. I have another one out now (another novel I mean) which will be published by Holt next year, if all goes well. What a relief when something gets finished, before you know you ought to start something else – a short but precious time.
Apart from the 2 new grandsons, and the novel, which we called Innocence in the end, I haven’t much to report – my younger daughter has moved to a large Victorian house in Highgate – apparently the ghost of a little girl in blue appears on the staircase before the occupants leave the house (not when they come to it) – it’s a nice friendly place with birds and squirrels in the garden.
Congratulations on the electronic typewriter – I can’t get my poor electric one repaired, they tell me it’s being phased out –
very best wishes –
Penelope
76 Clifton Hill, NW8
New Year’s Day 1987
Dear Mary,
It was so nice to hear from you, even though it’s vexatious to think about your illness (it must have been something worse than bronchitis) and the tiresome experiments at Manchester University which you could have done without. I also agree with you about St Edmund’s – when I last went there to see my daughter-in-law and 3 grandsons, who were over for a holiday in vacation time, the place looked as beautiful as ever but there was a feeling of not knowing what to do next to make ends meet and, as you say, too many conferences will drive out faithful old customers – the kitchens were closed too, which was a nuisance.
A Room with a View had lots of success and was said by everyone to be ‘charming’ – and so it was – but in any case it’s never seemed to me to be a serious book – the Passage is, and the film was ridiculous and Alec Guinness must have known he was ridiculous as Godbole. Ought we to mind? My children tell me that it’s ridiculous to relate a film back to t
he original book and the 2 things ought to be artistic experiences. Meanwhile I’m sitting with a 2-year old grandchild, watching a video of The Snowman.
I never knew that E. P. Thompson* was, so to speak, of Wesleyan descent, but how much that explains! Morris, too, was brought up by Evangelicals and a Tractarian tutor. I’ve just been writing a series of introductions to the novels of Mrs Oliphant, which Virago are bringing out – I wonder what you think of Salem Chapel, which is largely about a minister who finds his life ‘too devoid of imagination’? Though, as with Ruskin and Burne-Jones, the early limitations are surely what leads to the great expansion later on. I agree about Julia Atkins (there are really, so to speak, two of them, aren’t there, one researching and the cousin writing the book) – their energy (or her energy) is amazing and there can’t be much now they don’t know about the Ionides.** I wasn’t, alas, able to help them much about ‘the ugly Luke matter’, and Luke himself was not a reliable witness, and hardly wanted to be. – I feel myself that I’ve lost the energy and resilience which you need when you set off on a new biographical trail – I wish I still had it. – By the way, I heard from Norman Kelvin at Christmas – I hope Julia Atkins went to see him.
I do hope to see you this summer – someone’s made me a friend of the Academy as an Xmas present – and we might meet there, as it’s quite central. Best wishes for the New Year to you and your family – love Penelope
Holt are publishing Innocence in the U.S. some time this year – but
I’m not sure when. –
76 Clifton Hill, NW8
1 May 1987
Dear Mary,
I hope this will reach you before the 19th, and if not, well, it must just wait at 231 Arts and Science until you are back again.
I’m so glad you’re fixed up with a nice and convenient house in the Portobello Road (I can remember when the Portobello Rd. market was very different, and there were real ‘finds’, artists and actors looking for old costumes and old music scores and so on, but it’s still quite fun, I think?) and I hope that in spite of the transport difficulties you’ll be able to come up to St John’s Wood. – Just one change on the underground at Bond St from Notting Hill Gate.
So I Have Thought of You Page 35