So I Have Thought of You

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  love and best wishes

  Penelope

  27 Bishop’s Road

  Highgate

  19 November [1996]

  Dear Mary,

  This is my Christmas letter and you must forgive me if it’s too early. We’re just having our first snow, and I’m sitting here watching it through the windows. My heart is still not going at the right pace so I thought I’d see what a day’s absolute laziness (which you have possibly never had) would do for it. But the laziness makes me feel guilty for that is how I was brought up.

  As far as the election goes, Mary, you’ve had your wish, and I can only hope your trust in Clinton is going to be justified. He seems to me a typical shiny-bright Southern politician, brought up to corruption and taking it for granted as the accepted way to get to the top, rather like Yeltsin, (who however never really pretended to have the capacity to run a huge country like Russia).

  However, this is meant to be a Christmas letter, so let me think instead about your coming to Oxford next summer, something really to look forward to. Highgate is too far, but if you let me know when you have time I could come down to Oxford and perhaps you’ll let me take you out to lunch this time.

  The universities here are on strike today-just for one day, everyone from the doormen to the Principals – they were offered one and a half per-cent pay rise, which has to be ridiculous. Maria tells me that they have no choice – her own department in London University has had a lick of paint, but it is still falling to pieces, and although she’s fortunate in having a high-earning, mild-tempered husband, there are a lot of academics who don’t. And she agrees with you about the Associate.

  Very best wishes to you for your visit to the doctor and I am so glad your husband still recognises you when you come – that means everything. Much love and Christmas wishes –

  Penelope

  P.S. Can hardly believe what you tell me about S.F. library. And here in London (though not in the country) they’re declaring war on the public libraries – we’ve had to fight to keep them open 3 days a week.

  P.P.S. So you have to take on the Bengalis and the Wesleyans. But I know it won’t worry you.

  27 Bishop’s Road

  Highgate

  9 May [1997]

  Dear Mary,

  I was very glad to get your letter, and needless to say, deeply distressed at your news. To watch someone you love change from what they were seems almost more than one can bear, and the only consolation is that they themselves don’t seem aware of the change. All my thoughts and prayers at this hard time, all the harder perhaps because it’s spring. ‘And you were a liar, you blue March day’ as Hopkins says.

  I ought never to have tried to argue with you about the American South, because it’s only too clear I don’t know enough or perhaps anything, about it. I shall just have to trust Clinton for your sake.

  Many congratulations, Mary, on your award for scholarly excellence – surely the right award exactly and I know you will be pleased it was for Christiana Herringham, into which you put such hard and expert research. I remember thinking – what a difficult subject, however is she going to set about it?

  Thankyou for the NY Book Review cover – I’m just starting with Houghton Mifflin, where I have a nice editor who used to be at Addison Wesley, and published the U.S. edition of Charlotte Mew and her Friends – I was particularly pleased when he told me that he and his wife had called their cat ‘Charlotte Mew’. Truly, it’s a good name for a cat.

  I do so hope to see you this summer, perhaps at Oxford (where my son is still lecturing at St Anthony’s but researching and advising all over the world). I’m so very glad to think that your daughter is with you at this time. And I’m sure she’ll make you buy something absolutely new to wear (even though you’ve got something that will do perfectly well already) for the Awards Dinner at the end of May. – love Penelope

  27 Bishop’s Road

  Highgate

  22 January [1999]

  Dear Mary,

  It certainly isn’t too late to wish each other happy New Year, and I feel so much cheered by your letter. I realised that you were feeling seriously ill last summer, nothing else would have made you go home early, and it’s wonderful to hear that you have have had such encouraging results from the two new drugs. My word, Mary, you don’t let anything beat you.

  It’s a very satisfactory feeling to be nearly at the end of one book – just giving it a quick going over – and with another one in mind, or rather more than that. E.M. Forster’s broadcasts are a brilliant idea. Let’s hope the BBC have them all safe – last time I asked them for a script (in connection with The Poetry Bookshop) it was mysteriously missing from the files. But they will have Forster’s safe I am sure.

  It’s Burne-Jones’s centenary year, as I don’t need to tell you, and they had a big exhibition, not in London, but in Birmingham – the refreshments were horrible, they served mead – but it wasn’t my idea of mead – and wasted much time in municipal speeches – five people found it necessary to speak, and then at last we were allowed to see the pictures – and the jewellery designs, and the stained glass cartoons, for it was really a superb exhibition, but unfortunately we had to leave to catch the last train.

  I hope you haven’t moved house, Mary, as I’m sending this to the address you gave me –

  love and best wishes – Penelope

  27 Bishop’s Road

  Highgate

  25 May 1999

  Dear Mary,

  Thankyou so much for your letter and the cutting from the NY Times – alas! (however) I haven’t been writing another book, it’s just that Houghton Mifflin have decided to reprint them all, including the very old ones, and Human Voices is a very old one. However, I’ve no cause for complaint, and they have been very enthusiastic and – don’t forget – took me to tea at the Ritz.

  I’m not surprised at your story about the BBC and the scripts – everything was always getting lost or thrown away and it’s worse now they’re computerised, as their computers break down at frequent intervals – and then they’ve got this mania for moving everyone to White City…

  I’m so very, very glad that the miracle drugs are still working for you, Mary. Just like you to worry because they’re too expensive to be prescribed over here! And your book’s finished! – you say (quite casually) you’re going to leave it with the University Press when you go.

  Yes, Maggie Drabble is a wonderful lecturer, I think that training in the theatre gave her just that edge – perhaps all lecturers ought to start on the stage. And then she always looks so nice. I don’t mean that she isn’t academic as well! Michael, as I expect you know, has written a book about his own family and relations, and his grandparents, who brought him up. I think it’s out this summer. – Mary Bennett I haven’t seen for a long time, but she is like no-one else, you are quite right.

  My eldest grandson is getting married this August – to the daughter of a long-distance truck driver in Cordoba. I don’t quite know what they’re going to live on. But he is such a dear!

  with love, Penelope

  27 Bishop’s Road

  Highgate

  23 February 2000

  Dear Mary,

  Thankyou so much for your wonderful letter, full of doing and being and going places in spite of all the difficulties, in fact you don’t recognise difficulties, it seems to me. Flying! Well, I never thought I’d hear of you doing that. It must be one of the most sincere compliments Bach has ever received, because I know you hate it – no, I won’t say that, this may be the beginning of a new era.

  The New Yorker piece was by Joan Acocella who is really their dance correspondent, she came over to do an interview but was much less intimidating than Arthur Lubow, who also came to interview, but for the New York Times. He took down things in shorthand (but surely nobody does shorthand now?), not looking at all at what he was writing, but watching me intensely with penetrating brown eyes. I suppose it is just his professional manner.
He told me he found me rather a difficult job but the truth was I couldn’t think of very much to say.

  What a splendid occasion the Biographical Passages must have been – they really celebrated you in style, Mary – life does have its rewards, though you’ve certainly earned yours.

  We are all surviving – I didn’t get to Cordoba for my grandson’s wedding which I think was quite a lively party as his friends cut off his pony tail and auctioned it by the inch in aid of some charity. But I shouldn’t have been of much use as I am rather lame from arthritis – I find this very vexatious but am ashamed to complain, as you don’t –

  love and all best wishes, Penelope

  J. Howard Woolmer*

  25 Almeric Road

  London, sw11

  28 September 1978

  Dear Mr Woolmer,

  I saw your advertisement in the Times Literary Supplement today and am writing to you at once although I’m afraid you may be disappointed with this letter because I haven’t any Poetry Bookshop items to offer. But I am keenly interested, because I can remember both the shop (the second one) and the Monros, and I am collecting material at the moment for a book about the Poetry Bookshop and its own particular poets – Anna Wickham, Charlotte Mew and F. S. Flint.

  I can’t tell whether you’re perhaps a private collector or perhaps a bookseller, but in either case I should so very much like to know details of your collection of rhyme sheets. The collection in the British Museum here is ‘closed’ – no-one can take photo-copies of it – and I have lost all the sheets that were pinned up on my nursery walls (among them the John Nash Ducks on a Pond and Charles Winzer Leisure) all lost in various disasters. It would mean a lot to me to hear from another enthusiast –

  Yours sincerely,

  Penelope Fitzgerald

  (Mrs)

  25 Almeric Road, sw11

  29 November 1978

  Dear Mr Woolmer,

  Thankyou for your letter of the 21st – It’s a treat for me to hear from anyone who knows so much, and above all in an orderly way, about the Poetry Bookshop.

  Joy Grant (now Vines, with 3 children), is a friend of mine and I very much admire her work, but the situation has changed a good deal since Alida’s death – and most of the PB papers, apart from those which went to America or the British Library, are, as I’m sure you know, with Mrs Luttrell, who is a delightful old lady and, as she says, a Bohemian of the old school, but can’t decide what to do and at the moment won’t let anyone see anything.

  The rhymesheets I still find very confusing, I agree there seem to be 12 in the first series ending I think with Ralph Hodgson’s The Birdcatcher, but I don’t know if this was taken over with the Flying Fame series. Then there’s the New Broadside series which contains some of the finest, for instance no. 14 Robert Graves’ Finland, then The Rhyme Sheets with Monro’s Overheard on a Salt Marsh as no. 4, but the address on these is still 35 Devonshire St., then the 1916 Blake set (the Curwen Press still have one copy of one of these) – then Series 2. Here are some more titles (in case you don’t have them) from Series 2:

  6.Beautiful Meals (written and decorated by T. Sturge Moore)

  7.The Vulgar Little Lady (Jane and Ann Taylor, decorated R. Marshall)

  11.Farmer Giles (W. de la Mare, decorated Philip Hargren)

  18.Leisure(W.H. Davies, decorated John Nash)

  23.The White Window (James Stephens, decorated Philip Hargren)

  I think there were several Nursery Sheets: no. 2 was by Eleanor Farjeon, decorated by Terence Prentis. – And then there are others which have no series numbers at all.

  If only I could return to childhood just for a day and get all my rhymesheets back! I’ve met numbers of people who feel this.

  Now I’m going to ask you one more thing – if by any chance as a bookdealer you have any of the rhyme sheets on offer, particularly New Broadsides 15 (Herrick), Rhymesheets Series 2 no. 18 (W. H. Davies), or 7 (Jane and Ann Taylor), or the unnumbered They Say (decorated by Mary Berridge) – would you be kind enough to let me know? Of course, I don’t know whether I should be able to afford to buy them, but writers are sometimes lucky! – Yours sincerely,

  Penelope Fitzgerald

  25 Almeric Road

  London, sw11

  6 January 1979

  Dear Mr Woolmer,

  I want to thank you so very much for your kind present, the On A Certain Lady At Court. You don’t know what a lot it means to me to have a Broadsheet again, (or rather I should say you’re one of the few people who do know), and I’m very grateful.

  I’m puzzled about series 2 and 3 – the titles I mentioned to you are from the series 2 examples in the British Library. The trouble is that the copyright owners won’t allow them to be duplicated – but they are certainly issued as Rhyme Sheet (not Broadsheet) Series no. 2.

  I’ve been talking to Bob Pocock who, when he was a policeman on the beat (1928-9) used to shine his torch into the window of the (second) bookshop and learn the poems off by heart. He is a bit of a character, but has a photographic memory. He gave me the following list of the sheets which were then in the window:

  On Drinking Abraham Cowley

  So We’ll Go No More A Roving Byron

  The Butterfly Wordsworth

  The Animals Whitman

  There is a Lady ?

  Winter the Huntsman Osbert Sitwell

  Arabia Walter de la Mare

  Leisure W H. Davies

  The Dromedary ? Campbell

  The Tired Man Anna Wickham

  Journey’s End Humbert Wolfe

  Heard (he means Overheard ) on a salt marsh Harold Monro

  O Blackbird, What a Boy You Are ?

  With Love Among the Haycocks ?

  Cargoes Masefield

  He can still repeat all these by heart. One or two of these I don’t know at all. And I’m still puzzled about the salt-marsh with the Winzer decorations. I believe you are right and it is no. 4 of the first rhyme sheet series.

  I enclose a copy of a novel I had out this last autumn, I thought it might amuse you as it’s about a (very small) bookshop, Yours sincerely, Penelope Fitzgerald

  25 Almeric Road

  London, sw11

  18 February 1980

  Dear Mr Woolmer –

  Thankyou so much for your letter, and I’m glad your house is going along so well. It’s very good of you to say I might come and stay overnight, but I feel that would be a lot of trouble and I am sure I can get to Revere, either on the bus or perhaps by car as my daughter and son-in-law hope they can rent one so we can get about a bit – I’m determined to get there anyway and will ring up if I may when we get to NY on March 29th. We’re supposed to be at the Tudor Hotel, but I daresay they’ll put us somewhere else, as we’re all-in tourists –

  Yours sincerely, Penelope Fitzgerald

  26 February [1980]

  In continuation of my last – I’m sorry but my daughter tells me that we get to NY on the 4 April, not the 29 March, but, in any case, I do hope to see you –

  Penelope Fitzgerald

  Tudor Hotel

  E.42. St.

  April 1980

  Dear Howard,

  Thankyou so very much for your kindness and hospitality yesterday – apart from anything else it’s wonderful to find someone who cares about the same kind of material as you do yourself, and I felt really happy at seeing your collection – in fact I was thinking about it while I walked back from the bus station and scarcely noticed the distance from W.41 to E.42.

  It was also very good of you to give me these Poetry Bookshop items. When I got back here I read them – perhaps Ralph Hodgson only wrote a very little good poetry, but he certainly caused happiness in others – it’s something to be called ‘pleasant to know’ by T. S. Eliot. – I have a few notes here by the way, and I see F. S. Flint’s 2nd book Cadences was published by PB in paper covers with a wood-cut of a swan passing under a bridge, hand-coloured so that every copy is different. However I’ll send yo
u a Xerox of my list and any addresses which might be of use when I get home.

  Don’t forget to let us know if you are in London and have any time to spare, and meanwhile very best of luck with the house, the barn, and the planting, you’ve taken on such a lot between you but it must be worth it as it’s such a beautiful place –

  Best wishes

  Penelope

  The Post Office Stores

  Theale, nr. Wedmore

  Somerset

  7 October 1981

  Dear Howard,

  Thankyou so much for your letter and rhyme sheet list. I was very glad to hear from you, although I don’t quite understand what is happening to letters from the U.S. – they seem to take a very long time and to be arriving here on foot, so to speak, although we haven’t heard anything about an American postal strike, only in Canada. And that’s why I’ve been so slow in replying – also (and I know you’ll sympathise with this) we have been moving from London to the depths of the country, and so many things seem to have been lost or mislaid. I do mean the depths – my daughter and son-in-law have decided to give up teaching for a while and run a very small post-office and village store, the kind that used to have a cracker-barrel, (and in fact we do have sacks of potatoes and firewood, which act as cracker-barrels) – the locals come in for their morning paper, leaving all their cows outside in the road, and they peer through the window. I have to come up to London during the week, but try to give a hand at the weekends, and get things straight at the same time. So I understand very well how you feel about getting your office off the front porch, though I remember you always seemed to be able to find everything you wanted, which I can’t.

  My PB collection is at a standstill at the moment, and I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re the most difficult things on earth to collect – I know that they’re ephemeral, and were meant to be, but surely more people must have kept them? (Why didn’t I keep mine from the nursery?) And I can’t get anyone to see the beauty and interest of them – over here the mania is all for Stevie Smith, whose life is being done by 2 hard-working biographers from Mississippi and Hofstra Univ. respectively, Jack Barbera and William McBrien. Now I was very fond of Stevie, yet I truly think Anna Wickham was a more interesting poet. I have been seeing quite a lot of her elder son, who is retired now, and lives in Hampstead, having been a soft-shoe dancer and civil servant – and he has documents of all kinds but no broadsheets – and he can’t help me with the vexed question of the numbering!