The whole thing was in fact just as unexpected as possible. My editor at Houghton Mifflin told me about the awards* and said I’d better prepare a few words of acceptance, but I thought it couldn’t conceivably be necessary, so he composed a few himself, went to New York and, lo and behold, he actually had to deliver them. Unfortunately he had appointments with agents &c &c the whole next day, and wasn’t able to celebrate. – But I have, and you must picture me sitting round the kitchen table with my daughter, son-in-law, and the cat, gratefully opening the bottle –
best wishes
Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
London, N6
June 8th [1998]
Dear Howard,
Thankyou so much for the ‘green flower’. My family comes very much from the Protestant north, and I married a catholic from County Cavan, so I feel I can qualify as a reader of your catalogue, very beautiful to look at, as always. And I very much appreciated the essays by Wes Davis, but what I can’t understand, Howard, in spite of your very helpful introduction, is why the Milberg collection is confined to poets whose first books were published after the end of World War 2, with some rather eccentric exceptions, and why you’re adding new things as they come out, but not earlier ones?
Don’t please think I’m ungrateful – I repeat, it’s a beautiful catalogue.
All quite well here. Our cat has developed an amazing intelligence in regard to everything concerning his own food, welfare &c and a total lack of interest in everything else –
with thanks and best wishes Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
London, N6
2 July 1999
Dear Howard,
Thankyou so much for letting me know about Dominic Hibberd (he sounds saintly) and the biography of Harold Monro. I’m so glad he stuck at it, and got a good publisher too. I reviewed a biog: of Humbert Wolfe the other day, which must have been even more difficult to place. Everything has to be about Bloomsbury! And I’m perhaps the last person alive who used to go to sleep as a child with a coal fire and the PB rhymesheets on the walls –
best wishes for everything –
Penelope
[Christmas card]
[December 1999]
Howard –
With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year – I won’t mention the millennium as I’m beginning to regard it as unbearable.
My Alpine violets, supposed not to do well in London clay, have now taken over all the beds. On the other hand, I can’t think of a short story, which my publishers say I must do, as then they can bring out a Collected Short Stories, and I haven’t really written enough to collect.
Have been reviewing a Letters of John Butler Yeats, edited from the Hone edition. JBY was a great talker, but I think in those days Irish people accepted talking as one of the professions –
love to you both
Penelope
Richard Ollard*
25 Almeric Road London, SW11
[postcard]
12 January [1979]
This is the T/S of Offshore, which you kindly told me you would look at – I didn’t realise when I came to see you that all the type-writers in the family had something wrong with them as a result of physiology theses, poetry, schedules &c being produced in quantity – so I had to do the best I could – I would very much appreciate your advice –
Penelope
25 Almeric Road
London, SW11
24 January [1979]
Dear Richard,
Thankyou for your letter – I’m returning the contract form but have crossed out ‘non-fiction’ in the options clause as you suggested. If you could ever make time however to talk about my general list ideas I should be grateful. Some of them Raleigh** told me were hopeless and I think they’re not the sort of thing Collins do, but still. – Duckworths are still interested in a biography of L. P. Hartley which I’m getting together but can’t get the permissions for the moment.
I also enclose what press cuttings I can find but I’m afraid I haven’t many. I don’t keep them usually, perhaps I ought to. The Knox Brothers had a good Times review on the day it appeared and a good notice from Malcolm Muggeridge in the TLS that week and I could check those if you wanted them. – I feel I’m letting you down here. The TLS was also very kind to the Bookshop and said it was a novella in the tradition of Henry James, not a selling point perhaps.
I also enclose a note on myself and a list of back titles –
Best wishes
Penelope
25 Almeric Road
London, SW11
29 January [1979]
Dear Richard,
It was very nice to see you at lunch-time and I hope I didn’t try to put forward too many notions at once, – one thing I certainly didn’t mean to suggest was that I looked down on money-making subjects – indeed, I look up to them.
I enclose some more cuttings, but the TLS notice of the Bookshop, which was so nice, is missing. I suppose I was lucky to be reviewed before the TLS itself disappeared.*
As to Charlotte Mew, &c. I’ll send you something further if I may, when it’s in a fit state to be seen – yours Penelope
25 Almeric Road
London, SW11
14 June [1979]
Dear Richard,
Please could I ask you one more thing, which I hadn’t thought of when I rang you up the other day? – I’ve got a long list of people I still have to interview about Leslie Hartley (whose life I’m supposed to be writing), and on this list is Veronica Wedgwood – I remember (though of course she wouldn’t) that Leslie took us both out to dinner once or twice, and she was exceedingly nice, but since then she has become very eminent and also I’m not sure how well she is and how much she sees people. – Now it’s suddenly struck me that as she publishes with Collins and what’s more writes about the King’s Peace &c, you must be her book-editor, so perhaps you might be able to tell me whether it would be all right for me to ask if I could go and see her. (You see there are difficulties – Lady Aberconway has drunk herself to death, poor Walter Allen, Leslie’s literary executor, is too stricken to see anyone, and other people drop dead before I’ve reached them on My List; it’s really much better to deal with 17th century people who can’t be interviewed except by calling in a medium) –
best wishes
Penelope
[postcard]
11 Aug [1979]
Thankyou so much for the copy of Offshore – I did think it looked nice, and it cheered me up, always absolutely necessary first thing in the morning. Just off to the seaside for a week with bucket and spade – Penelope
25 Almeric Road
London, SW11
9 September [1979]
Dear Richard,
Thankyou so much for your letter, it’s good of you to take time to console your easily depressed authors – I’ve always had very bad notices from the New Statesman even for biographies – I’m a total failure where radical chic is concerned. Indeed I was going to ask you not to send to the NS but thought it would sound like a fuss about nothing. – The financial pages today say that Collins is facing imminent ruin, but I hope this is just sensationalism.
best wishes
Penelope
25 Almeric Road
London, SW11.
10 October [1979]
Dear Richard
There is one other thing I wanted to ask you, although I know it isn’t something you have to deal with at all – it’s about TV rights – my other novel is now with an admirable free-lance TV director who, however, is hard hit by the ITV trouble and is drawing National Assistance, and I think this is so much water under the bridge, but meanwhile people keep telling me that I ought to get an agent to try to sell the TV rights of Offshore. I was harangued and indeed written to by Booker McConnell on this subject ‘as you cannot expect the publisher to do this for you’ they said reprovingly – the latest one was the C.O.I. man who started lecturing me yesterday as soon as
I set foot in his recording room ‘you cannot expect &c’, and I don’t expect it at all, but the trouble is that I don’t want an agent to deal with publishers, but only with TV possibilities, and I don’t know if there are any who would do this. Have you ever heard of any?
I also wanted to thank you for getting my spacing right, you may well have forgotten this, but it meant a lot to me,
best wishes for your new book
Penelope
25 Almeric Road
London, SW11
2 November [1979]
Dear Richard,
Thankyou for the Dutch notice – I do know a little bit as I once had to help take 14 prep-school boys round Holland by water and find them all somewhere to sleep free every night on land, as there wasn’t enough room on the boat. Certainly I know enough to see that I’m said to be of the school of Beryl Bainbridge which is a good corrective to vanity, I expect.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had a minute to look at this piece of Prof: Kermode’s, which he did before the awards for the London bit of the NY Review of Books – he is the only critic, and indeed the only Professor of Eng. Lit, whose opinion I value since Lionel Trilling died, and indeed I don’t think I could teach anyone anything about the novel at all if it hadn’t been for his The Sense of an Ending. What worries me isn’t that he doesn’t think too well of Offshore – (in fact I’m very pleased that he should say anything about me at all), but that I get the feeling that he’s saying I can write a single-consciousness novel (which anyone can do if they can find a pen and a bit of paper) but I’m not up to multiple-consciousness, then I just fall into bits, and that depresses me.
You must blame Sarah* for this letter as she said ‘You can always consult Richard if anything worries you.’ She was most kind when I came to the office – PR man obviously despairs of me, but it’s no good pretending to be what you’re not.
best wishes, Penelope
P.S. No reference to Frank Birch in all these 4th man + 5th man +…books, where will it all end?
25 Almeric Road
London, SW11
6 November [1979]
Dear Richard,
Thankyou very much for your letter and the Leclerc xerox – I love him (at a distance) as he’s my faithful fan and I’m glad you’ve written to him. – I told the Krug operative (who turned out to be an old pupil of mine) that I’d love to be congratulated** by them, but I’d prefer it to be on the front of the Guardian which they agreed to, and they did send a sample.
I’d love to come to dinner at all times and I enjoyed it so much when I did, but unluckily for me not on the 14th as I’m supposed to be going out that evening, it’s all to do with my son who is going out to Nicaragua where they’ve had their revolution, to do over the economy.
Sinister Dr Garlinski’s Enigma book is coming out today so Dents are launching it with (light) refreshments and we’re all to be allowed to see the original machine – I wish Oliver was here –
best wishes
Penelope
I’ve now got The Image of the King from Foyles and am enjoying it very much and hope you’ll sign my copy one day.
25 Almeric Road
London, SW11
13 December [1979]
Dear Richard,
Thankyou very much for letting me know about The Bookshop and The Golden Child I’m sure that’s out of print as Colin* printed the extra copies here and sent them out to the U.S., it wasn’t really published by Scribners.
My TV director is now buoyant as he’s been made director of the theatre in Leatherhead, he has to open with Play it Again Sam and The Winter’s Tale and has to negotiate a bear from Chessington Zoo, nevertheless he still wants to do the Bookshop so I am going to see Kendall D. to see if he can understand it all, because I certainly don’t.
I’ve given up reading the papers till after Christmas, but Ria showed me the piece from Jim Callaghan about the Image of the King, that was really nice –
best wishes
Penelope
25 Almeric Road
London, SW11
Thursday [February 1980]
Dear Richard – I’m afraid this is very rough,* not only the typing, worse than last time, but bits of the story – (for example, I’ve not had time to go and check the Charles I statue, although it suddenly strikes me that you might be able to tell me about it, as it’s an image). I’m not quite sure the end is too clear either. Perhaps none of it will do.
I’m so glad about the Silver Pen list – Sybille Bedford was talking about you at PEN the other evening, but I didn’t quite follow, – I thought A Bend in the River a very fine novel, but if the Pen is for the best piece of prose, I think it has to be for you – best wishes for the house-hunting – Penelope
P.S. I don’t know whether you’ll like this or not, but in any case could I come in and see you for 15 minutes some time when you’re back from Dorset?
P.P.S. Are you going to the Hatchards party? I don’t think I can face it otherwise.
25 Almeric Road
London, SW11
[card]
20 February [1980]
Thankyou so much for ringing about Human Voices. I’ve found various small bits on the backs of envelopes that should have gone in, but perhaps it’s too late to do this, I hope not though. Very best luck with the house-hunting, which is more fun than moving, so perhaps one just ought to go on looking – Penelope
25 February [1980]
Dear Richard,
Thankyou for the corrections which I hope I’ve put right, along with a few other ones, and if there’s to be a photo (I think the readers do like to see what the author looks like, although I notice you don’t put one in), well I enclose the only one in wh. I look approximately human. Also, I don’t know whether you are having a jacket illustration or not, but if so, I wonder if you would agree that the artist we had last time was a bit on the old-fashioned side?
best wishes
Penelope
25 Almeric Road
London, SW11
29 February [1980]
Dear Richard,
In case you find this letter too long to get through, I’d like to ask first whether you and Mary could come to dinner one day in the week of the 17th March, any day, except Friday Saturday and Sunday, my cousin Jean, the sister of James and Christopher (now I come to think of it, perhaps he was too old to have been in college with you) Fisher is coming then, she’s married now to an overworked but genial High Court judge – it would be so nice if you could manage it.
I was delighted to hear that you are printing off a few more Offshores. I thought it had got shipwrecked altogether by so many unpleasant remarks. I’ll never forget the Book Programme, I still get letters about it. – As to the jacket of this new one, of course I leave it to you, I’m always trying to meddle about with designing and getting quite properly put in my place.
Thankyou for sending the blurb for Human Voices, I think it’s impossible to do your own and I’m very grateful to you, nevertheless could I make one or 2 suggestions. – I’d rather not say that it’s better than any serious work on the BBC as there is only one, the Asa Briggs History, and he’s been so kind to me, and apart from that it’s very good and cost him years of research – I didn’t re-read it before writing this novel, but I have the greatest respect for it – 2nd would it be possible to quote Thomas Hinde in the Sunday Telegraph, rather than the Observer, he is a very fine novelist and wrote me a very nice note about the award. 3rdly do you think it would be possible to make this book sound a little bit less like a historical study and more like a novel? It is really about the love-hate relationship between 2 of the eccentrics on whom the BBC depended, and about love, jealousy, death, childbirth in Broadcasting House and the crises that go on behind the microphone to produce the 9 o’clock news on which the whole nation relied during the war years, heartbreak &c, and also about this truth telling business, don’t you think these might be mentioned as it would make the book sound a little mor
e readable, I did try to put a bit of action in it? – (Incidentally, as no-one reads Heine I suppose no-one will understand the name Asra, but that’s by the way.) I’m sure you’re too used to the writers, as I’ve heard them despondently called in publishers’ offices, to mind all this, perhaps I ought to have a go and then you can tell me where I’m wrong, what do you think?
Thankyou too for the contract, wh. I’m returning. This novel isn’t any more libellous than my other ones, so I expect it’s all right.
One other thing, I’m now sitting down to write the book you definitely didn’t want, I must get it done, I’ve seen so many relatives and so many letters about the sad lives of the Poetry Bookshop poets (who are they? as you said). I realise that is not likely to be Collinsworthy but would you like to see it when it’s finished?
I’ve written all this because I thought it would be shorter than my appearing at Collins and rambling on about my troubles, such as they are,
love
Penelope
25 Almeric Road
London, SW11
6 March [1980]
Dear Richard,
Please don’t think I’m ungrateful, I am sure you know I’m not, but I’d rather not make this appeal to those who knew London in 1940 as this would mean that the readers, if any, were all in sight of the end, as of course I am myself. What worries me a bit is that having taken a check (really just for interest’s sake) over four VI forms I find very few of them know that there wasn’t any TV or commercial radio in 1939–45, although they have ‘done the war for O-level’. They can’t conceive of such a thing. You see, I think both the versions you kindly did are a bit too grand, they make it sound more like a thesis, and it’s only a story I’m afraid, no more than that. However I enclose what I’d like to put and hope to see you next Thursday. Sarah said it would be all right if I came round a bit before 5, love Penelope
25 Almeric Road
London, SW11
14 March [1980]
Dear Richard,
Just to thank you for taking me to the party, I should never have had the resolution to go otherwise and indeed I noticed many people, obviously female novelists, standing about looking at a loss, and I was grateful not to have to do this. I enjoyed it very much and you were quite right (naturally) about the Martini Terrace. In Piccadilly, afterwards, I had the experience of seeing Philip Z* run for a bus, what a turn of speed he has, or turn of foot, as the Daily Express Racing puts it, it’s amazing.
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