I hope you and your family are well –
best wishes
Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
London, N6
16 September 1992
Dear Chris,
Thankyou very much for the copies of the New Criterion, and the cheque. Still no hope, I’m afraid, for poor Punch, although there is a publisher who produces selections from Punch for Canadian dentists’ and doctors’ waiting-rooms, and he says he might like to take over – dear, dear – but anyway I was very glad to have a word about it in print.
I have a new grandbaby in the house – my ninth – and as a connoisseur you will know how I feel –
best wishes
Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
London, N6
[17 December 1992]
Dear Chris,
This is really to send you and your family all my best wishes for Christmas and 1993. I hope you got the snow. I remember the Rockefeller Centre, if it’s the one people skate round in their lunch hour.
Yes I should like to do the Larkin letters, if you could ask the publisher to send them. I think Anthony Thwaite had quite a hard time making the selection.
A new grandson here, just four months old – a handsome baby, and a great philosopher –
best wishes
Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
London, N6
29 October 1996
Dear Chris,
How lovely to hear from you, even quite apart from anything to do with books or publishing – I certainly would love to know, if time ever allows, how you and your family are – the last news I had was of no. 1 daughter, as the Chinese would say, but I’m so glad that everything is going well.
About corrections to the text of the Blue Flower – Thankyou for the ones you sent, and if possible I should like to add 4 more:
p 122 line 18 from top – read ‘has’ for ‘had’
p 129 2 lines up from bottom – read ‘undertook’ for ‘understood’
p 148 line 10 from top – read ‘spending’ for ‘sending’
p 164 4 lines from bottom – read ‘worldliness’ for ‘wordiness’
Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get any of these put right in the paperback edition over here. Also unfortunately, I have never had an original photo of Novalis’s ring – we reproduced from the collected works (Kohlhammer Verlag), and very unsatisfactory pictures they are, although I think by now the Weissenfels museum must have better ones.
Thankyou so much for all the work I see you must have done on the book and for telling me you liked it, which is the most important thing of all.
Meantime we (my 3 children and 9 grandchildren) haven’t too much to complain of, and my youngest daughter, now a professor of neurophysiology, is just back from Seattle and tells me that it’s the most beautiful place she’s ever been to (like all scientists she spends a good deal of time at conferences). Now I never knew that Seattle was beautiful, and as so often, feel appalled by my ignorance.
However, I have the new entry for Charlotte Mew in the Dictionary of National Biography, and am glad to have the chance of putting the record straight a little –
with all best wishes,
Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road Highgate
London, N6 4HP
New Year’s Day [1997]
Dear Chris,
This is to thank you for the proof copy of The Blue Flower, without its misprints, which were my fault and no-one else’s. I, of course, didn’t know about your Mariner imprint and I feel very pleased to be one of its early titles. Best of luck to it in any case – ‘The stars are with the voyager wherever he may sail.’
This was our Christmas card this year, a picture of our resident policeman, who is now aged 4, the very youngest of my grandchildren. I do hope you and your family are well and that Boston suits them.
Once again, thankyou for all you’ve done for my book, and very best wishes for 1997
Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate,
London, N6 4HP
2 March 1997
Dear Chris
Thankyou so much for your welcome letter and the before-publication notices of The Blue Flower. Over here, you know, racehorses that don’t do well are said to ‘disappoint their connections’. I do so hope I shan’t do that, because you’ve given me such a good start.
Thankyou too for the corrections to The Bookshop. I’ve come to the conclusion (or rather, I came to it some time ago) that I would never make a decent proof-reader. I’m never good enough, for instance, for the New York Times Review of Books. I’m just doing a piece for them now, on Muriel Spark, and I’ve been over it time and time again, but I know that they will ring up and (with the greatest politeness and kindness) point out my errors here and there – As far as I can see I don’t want to make any further alterations to The Bookshop, and I apologise for not having any more reviews, but it was my first straight novel, and I think the ones Flamingo quoted were all I could expect.
I did appreciate the Houghton Mifflin catalogues – they treat books seriously and with appreciation of what books mean and, as I see it, will always continue to mean in a human society.
You kindly say, ‘are there any books here that you would like for yourself?’ and I have to answer (because I don’t think that I can get it over here for myself) that I would very much like a copy of the Mariner Wild America. I understand of course that it’s a commemoration of Roger Peterson, but James Fisher was my cousin, and I’ve so often driven about with him (when he was working at the London zoo) with the zoo’s first Chinese panda in the back of his car, together with a supply of bamboo shoots,
best wishes
Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate
London, N6 4HP
2 April 1997
Dear Chris,
Thankyou so much for the 2 copies of your edition of the Blue Flower, which arrived here with the spring, just as our pear-tree came into blossom. Let’s hope that’s a good sign, and meanwhile let me thankyou again for all the care you’ve put into the book before publication – believe me I appreciate it, with best wishes, Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
London, N6
25 April [1997]
Dear Chris,
Thankyou so much for your letter and for having done so much for The Blue Flower. Someone must have done it! I’ve never been so well looked after as I have at Houghton Mifflin, and I’m sure it was right to start with paperback, and I’m very happy about the reviews. I’m also so happy to think that you and your family are back in Boston, where you started from and wanted to be. Sometimes something does go right in this world after all.
Once again, many thanks and best wishes – Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate
London, N6
[10 May 1997]
Dear Chris,
Thankyou so much for the draft cover for The Bookshop which I thought very impressive (although as you say the books suggest an antiquarian bookshop and we weren’t anything as grand as that – alas, the shop in Southwold is closed now and two others, I think, have taken over). I think it must be very exciting to work on a new series like Mariner, with all your future in front of you.
I very much appreciated your card, a beautiful blue flower although if I could get hold of that wily but generous old William de Morgan I would like to point out that these are not pansies and indeed I think the design is based on William Morris’s Larkspur. No matter, they made a splendid tile.
And now I also have a Houghton Mifflin bookbag – the first I’ve ever had since Interchurch Travel gave me one in Jerusalem – and that’s long since disappeared – but I shall look after this one carefully –
Once again (or ever and again, as Henry James signed his letters) thankyou for all you’ve done – love Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate,
London, N6
2 June [1997]
Dear Chris,
Thankyou so much for the proof of the Mariner edition of The Bookshop, and your corrections. There’s only one more I should like to make – that’s on p. 112, 7 lines down, where petolaria ought to be petiolara. (It’s that climbing hydrangea with large flowers like white lace.)
I like the cover very much, because, or although, it’s much less sedate than the old one, and was delighted about the kind word from Maurice Sendak. I’ll never forget first reading Where the Wild Things Are.
As to Kesselfleisch, I’ve never had any myself, but it never ceases to amaze me that the Germans could (at the end of the 18th century) eat the things they did and still produce the loveliest music ever heard by the ear of man. Perhaps it oughtn’t to surprise me, but it still does.
love and best wishes
Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate, N6
8 June [1997]
Dear Chris,
Thankyou very much for the copy of Wild America. I’ve read it of course but never possessed a copy of my own and it reminded me of how things were so many years ago, apart from being a beautiful book in its own right. You say you can’t think (by the way) how they set about it – Roger Peterson and James, I mean – but they managed it by separating the two diaries and maintaining the distance between them, in spite of what became a great friendship.
Thankyou too for The Bookshop – I appreciated the cover copy and don’t think any of it OBJECTIONABLE (your capitals) – particularly glad of the reference to Balzac, because he was the presiding genius of this little book,
best wishes,
Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate, N6
6 July [1997]
Dear Chris,
Thankyou so much for sending Richard Holmes’s review from the NYR of Books. He’s always so thorough, and yet so interesting, but I never thought I’d have the luck to be reviewed by him, particularly as I think he’s at last got well into the daunting task of Coleridge Vol: 2.
About the names of flowers, I suppose the Latin does at least give consistency, but the ‘Name That Blooms’* wouldn’t necessarily agree with each other. For example I don’t think that Blue Bonnet, which I think is the official state flower of Texas, is called Blue Bonnet anywhere else –
love
Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate
London, N6
12 August [1997]
Dear Chris,
Thankyou so much for the two copies of The Bookshop. You don’t know how glad I am to have it in an American edition – it takes me back a very very long way – even the house we were living in when I was working in the bookshop in Southwold has disappeared completely – it was an old oyster warehouse and one day it simply fell down flat – and the bookshop itself, which was the only one in town, has closed. – But on the other hand, my Mariner adventure, as you quite rightly call it, has started, and I do want to congratulate you on the sales, as up till now all my books have sunk without trace in the U.S.
I was also delighted with Jill Krementz’s photographs. They make me look thoughtful, which I’ve always wanted to be. But I haven’t her address, so have had to write to her at Random House and hope that it reaches her.
Best wishes – Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate
London, N6
2 September 1997
Dear Chris,
Thankyou so much for your letter and the reviews – I can’t help feeling particularly glad to read these kind remarks about The Bookshop after all these years. It seems like another world. You’re so right in saying that Mrs Neame (name of the original proprietor, now dead, alas) would have been horrified at the idea of on-line bookselling, and so would the customers, who thought of the shop as the one place to go on a wet day (and the weather can be very bad in Southwold). They would hang about for hours and go away without buying anything – or perhaps one greeting card – but we never complained, that would have been against the tradition of book-shop keeping.
I must say I should be very sorry to see the bookshops go.
I’m glad that you liked the Jill Krementz pictures. She is a generous person. – best wishes, love Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate
London, N6
29 January 1998
Dear Chris,
This is just to thank you very much for the books, which arrived today. – I haven’t read Maeve Brennan’s stories yet – I’m ashamed to say I don’t know them, but at least that means I have them to look forward to, and meanwhile I appreciated the just-right introduction by William Maxwell and should like to congratulate you on the beautiful appearance of the whole book.
This is quite an anxious time for us in Highgate as Maria (my younger daughter) is down with pneumonia and has had to take some quite horrible antibiotic, so that although she’s a professor of neurobiology at London University, she is lying in bed looking much as she did when she was ill as a little girl. Meanwhile her three children (like all children) are getting rather impatient, though sympathetic, and think it’s quite time she got up again. Mothers aren’t really supposed to get ill –
With all best wishes –
Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
London, N6
25 February 1998
Dear Chris,
Thankyou so much for the copies of Offshore and The Gate of Angels. I do very much appreciate the cover design for Offshore. All writers, or most of them, any way, are impossibly difficult about their covers, but I did dislike the photograph of poor Grace as a trim houseboat in a backwater, whereas she had served an honourable career at sea and still had part of her mast – the only trouble was that she was beyond repair. The new design has just the right rust-and-open water colouring.
I don’t think I have any corrections for Innocence or The Beginning of Spring (I asked a visiting delegation of teachers from Russia about this and they declared everything was all right, but of course this may just have been politeness).
Beautiful spring here and all the daffodils up, but it is so dull having to hear about the millennium dome, it seems to be just a competition in how much money they can waste. – And everyone is ill – but not you and your family I do hope –
best wishes –
Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
London, N6
14 March 1998
Dear Mindy,*
Thankyou for telling me about the error on p 22 of The Blue Flower. I have to admit that it is a mistake – not the only one in the book, I’m afraid – but I have to consider myself lucky that someone should read my novel carefully enough to want to put it right.
If I had the chance to change it, I could take out the line ‘Lucklum, October 1787’ (9th line from bottom on p 22) and leave the dates of Fritz’s visit unspecified. That’s the trouble of trying to combine biography and fiction, even with the best intentions.
I’m glad the books arrived safely. At the last moment, when everything was sealed and stuck up, the despatch company said they wanted to open them all to make sure there weren’t any dangerous devices in them, but they relented and let them through.
Best wishes
Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate
London, N6
14 May [1998]
Dear Chris,
Thankyou so much for sending the cuttings. I see that a lot of people felt that I shouldn’t have been awarded this prize* – which is only to be expected – but I still feel it’s a tremendous honour and I’m truly grateful to you for all the work and worrying you’ve done.
Thankyou too for Sarah Orne Jewett book – now I’ve got stories that I’ve never even heard of, and A Country Doctor, which I had heard of, of course, but I’ve never
been able to get hold of a copy. And it’s such a treat, Chris, to have a book with sewn bindings. However, I must guard against thinking everything ‘used to be better’. I find it hard to say why I think so highly of ‘The Land of Pointed Firs’. It’s the restraint, I think – all the things that aren’t said.
The Booker is a dreadfully slow process. First the long short list (20 books out of 150) then the short list, and we’re not finished till October. Also Booker plc’s profits have declined this year, so they’ve had to make economies, and we haven’t even been given folders and pencils –
best wishes to you and the family – Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate
London, N6
3 December 1998
Dear Chris,
I’m writing to you now because I thought you would probably be going away with your family for Christmas – perhaps to the in-laws who took charge of your cat – so I’ve tried to send this in good time.
It’s such a relief to have the Booker judging over – it’s always the same, you make up your mind to remain calm, dispassionate and civilised and then as the meetings go on you become increasingly heated and quarrelsome. The book I wanted to win, (Magnus Mills’s The Restraint of Beasts) didn’t win, and I felt like weeping. And everyone complained, as they always do, that the judges must have lost their wits anyway.
All reasonably well here, and two of my grandchildren down in Cornwall are in their local church silver band – one plays the baritone horn, and the other plays the cornet.
Thankyou so much for all you did for me, Chris, you can be sure I never look at one of my books without thinking about you, and I do hope all your new enterprises are going just as you wanted.
love and best wishes for Christmas –
Penelope
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate
London, N6
9 January 1999
Dear Chris,
Thankyou so much for your letter and for what you tell me about Richmond, where I’ve never been, but I’m particularly interested in it because I’ve just been reading The Langhorne Sisters, and I’m particularly interested, too, in what you tell me about Charlotte Mew because our experience with Eddie is quite different – reared on dry catfood and water, (because that’s said to keep them healthy and eliminate many problems), he too was allowed turkey and milk as a supposed treat at Christmas, but he wasn’t used to it and wouldn’t eat it. He catches quantities of shrews and, I’m afraid, young birds in the garden, but he won’t eat those either.
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