Carrington's Letters

by Dora Carrington

  Next week Waley’s people give us a dance at the great Waley Hyde Park House, also a Slade Fancy Dress dance on the 19th ought to be fun. I shall go with Cooie Lane, & her brother & R. P. I wish oh so badly, that you would be here too. Alix has unfortunately had an operation on her nose so won’t be able to come with us. I went to see her today in the nursing home. She looked rather ill. I went up to see Gertler this afternoon before I went to Alix. He has done some frightfully good paintings lately. Much better even than those you saw in the summer. He asked after you, & sent you his love. He is so sincere. I am always more impressed by him than anyone when I talk about painting to him.

  Tomorrow night I sleep chez Waley – unknown to mother – who thinks I go to Pangbourne tomorrow – & go to Parsifal an Opera by Wagner at Covent Garden with James S. & Lytton S. who is coming up for it.

  R. P. went down to Tidmarsh this afternoon to keep Lytton company in my absence. Lytton gets on so much better with him now, in fact they are great friends and have long discussions on Einstein’s theory whilst I darn the socks – I will try & get you Maynard’s book tomorrow to send you. I see in the papers that it is just out.fn104

  I shall go back to Tidmarsh on Sunday, & stay there until Thursday when I shall come up to London for the Whale fish dance, & the Slade dance, & then go back to Tidmarsh for the Xmas festivities. R. P. goes down to Barbara on Monday next till Thursday to help her paint. Do you know Mrs P asked him not to bring me to the flat because she said ‘Carrington wasn’t polite to me in the summer at Oxford. So I’ve told Dorothy I would rather if she didn’t come here.’ And that’s all the thanks one gets from saving a young man, the apple of his mother’s eye from the clutches of Harlots & the snares of matrimony!

  What would she say if I had accepted her dear Sonnie? I think she had better perhaps be informed of my great goodness, for it behoves her not to talk of politeness, when she gibed at me at Oxford because I preferred your company to that of hers & the brood of misses. R. P. gives an awful account of his home life discussions. Dorothy trying to be advanced, Mrs P trying to be Christian & Jessie dozing over her knitting […]

  […] and what’s your news? Brenan wrote me a very long letter with the wildest doings in S. Spain. He has now taken a house in Andalusia. N. E. of Malaga – further along on Sedellafn105 range. Perhaps – perhaps we might see him in April – as Lytton if Victoria gets finished thinks of wandering out to either Italy or Spain with our R. P. as courier. Now no more as I must go to bed. My love dear & take care of yourself & don’t get ill.

  Yr D. C.

  To Gerald Brenan

  The Mill House

  15 December 1919

  Dear Muchacho,

  I was delighted to get your long letter. It was so full of variety, as long as a month, with all its varying days. Lytton enjoyed it too, and now the wretch R. P. has taken it off with him. So you have the choice of a vague answer, or waiting at least a week before I get hold of it and write you a proper reply. This much I remember. R. P. says it’s no good sending you skis as they will get broken and also stolen en route and they are at least 6 foot high. So he recommends you making some yourself out there!! Typical of this prudent man. He even enjoined me not to send you a plum pudding because he says it will get stolen also! But I’ll defy him and we shall see. If it vanishes somebody is the happier. If it’s never sent, nothing good can possibly come of it […]

  Lytton favours Italy for the spring, and Sicily, but I will if you are still in Spain do my best to get him to change his mind, and to come your way with R. P. and I.

  Oh a great deal has happened in this Mill since you last set foot in it! What fun to write a letter which would incriminate everyone, and be a lasting testimony to these strange times and the nakedness of a female’s mind. But I can’t. Simply because the world isn’t made up of such simple people as we are. Later perhaps I’ll be able to write ALL to you. I find everything so interesting. But this isn’t fair so I won’t go on. I’ve become much fonder of R. P. He has become so much more charming and has given up his slightly moral character which used to tire me. So we never quarrel now, and have become a perfect pair of pigeons in our affections. I certainly will never love him but I am extremely fond of him – I believe if one wasn’t reserved, and hadn’t a sense of ‘what is possible’ one could be very fond of certainly two or three people at a time. To know a human being intimately, to feel their affection, to have their confidences is so absorbing that it’s clearly absurd to think one only has the inclination for one variety. The very contrast of a double relation is fascinating. But the days are too short. And then one has work to do. So one has to abandon some people and the difficulty of choosing is great. Don’t you find it so? Honestly when I get to London, and meet old loves, and friends I can hardly bear the feeling of being away from them. Yet when I am here again, with Lytton […]

  In hinting at ‘strange times’ at the Mill, and expounding on the complexities of love, Carrington was both enticing Gerald to join the dance and revealing that she, Ralph and Lytton had moved into a closer relationship. Ralph was fundamentally straight, but an element of sexual play is revealed in Lytton’s letters to and about him. For a while, all three of them were precariously happy, sometimes shared a bed and were accepted in their world as an established, if curious, threesome. Carrington had achieved another triangle; Gerald Brenan was waiting in the wings.

  1920

  To Gerald Brenan

  The Mill House

  2 January 1920

  Dear Muchacho,

  I’ve not sent a Plum Pudding yet. But I will this next week.fn106 This is to wish you a happy New Year, & to answer your last letter which now is restored to me by le oiseau Partridge […] And in April I have the greatest hopes of seeing you in Spain. You must write often so that we shall know where you will be & your plans. R. P. has stayed here all this winter. He has become great friends with Lytton now, which is an immense improvement all round. As Lytton delights in teaching anyone literature, it’s made R much happier, & less diffident, and I can have him here as often as I like. I am doing a large oil painting of him every day which gives me greater pleasure than it does to the unfortunate victim. Here he comes stamping along the passage, so I must stop till after tea. It’s odd to sit here in front of a roaring log fire in my little library with those prints of flowers on the white wall, & wonder what your evening is like. And if you are by a fire with white walls […] I send you a small P. Pudding by tomorrow post. I made it myself for you. So forgive me if it tastes queer. I wish I could get you straight in your house. It is the one thing I love, buying saucepans at old ironmongers or foreign earthenware in markets […] R. P. lies exhausted on the sofa in my little library reading the Athenaeum like a confirmed dilettante. I make him wear such nice clothes now, leather jerkins, & knee breeches so that he looks like some lovely serving Elizabethan man. Lytton has lately read us Restoration Plays – The Relapse by Vanbrugh,fn107 & poems by Pryorfn108 – I read M. Keynes’ Finance Peace Report when I am not painting […] I’ve no news of people as I’ve only been in London for a few days the whole of this winter. I’ve become rather ambitious about my painting lately. I want frightfully badly to so arrange my life that I can paint a great deal more. At present I am so uncertain of myself, and have so little confidence in consequence. Directions re plum pudding will be attached, in case this letter goes astray. R. P. insists on reading my letter to you, so it’s impossible for me to write anything about him! This as you may perceive is merely put in to jibe him.

  Next week Clive Bell and his consort come here for 4 days. I always grudge visitors rather, as they involve me leaving my painting & doing fatigue duties which I detest. How true is what you wrote about happiness. I almost scream sometimes to watch it stealing away from me. I hate drabness so much. Lately I’ve been able to say often ‘this hour was happy’. But in writing this one feels perhaps it is because one is easily contented & perhaps one does not analyse it, & so calls satisfaction & pleasure
‘happiness’. I say this because when other people tell me something gave them incredible happiness I think their standards are not very high. We had a great argument on Christmas afternoon at tea. The mathematician Norton, James S. Lytton & R. P. on happiness. I thought of you. I wished you could have been of the company. If I was a better writer, & could remember things truthfully I’d like to write you what they said. But I am neither.

  Now I must go & put some CHOPS on the kitchen fire to grizzle [sic] for Mrs Legg does not come on Sunday night to cook … CHOPS CHOPS Fizzle Fizzle while the old dilettante reads to young dilettante. Lytton sends you his love. He likes you very much. And so do I. So I send my love & best wishes

  Your Carrington

  To Gerald Brenan

  The Mill House

  12 January 1920

  Dear Muchacho,

  A letter for Partridge has just come five minutes ago. But he is in London, so I impatiently opened it, to know your news. How sad it all sounds. I am upset by it. I know it all so well. The difficulties of moving in a house; the expenses and feeling ill. And Malaga with its Victorias. How that one day we spent in Malaga comes back to me. I had ten blisters on one foot and six on the other. The agony was exquisite. The roads hard and hot. Then I was too hot to eat the lunch they gave us, and the afternoon burnt one’s face and made me hungry. Then we walked along that long road to Velez Malaga. It got darker and darker and I was so hungry and my feet hurt so I nearly cried. Then all we could find was a little fishermen’s Inn for the night. And the people were hostile and pressed on us and smelling children crowded round and still we had to sit waiting for a dinner; 10 o’ck at night, and trying to be amiable. Then R. P. started wrangling with his sister, Noel became gloomy and I hoped the end of the world would come, as you did. Never have I felt quite so wretched as that night. Oh Brenan I wish I could be out with you to make things better. One can get faint amusement out of such despairing situations when one has another with one. But I hope now it’s passed, and you are installed with books in your cottage and happy. I think the lack of money is perhaps more sordidly grim than anything. I’ve known it in London, walking from Waterloo to Hampstead because I hadn’t a penny. Eating twopenny soup packets, meal after meal, in a smelling studio in Brompton Rd – and for you, removed even from the chances of meeting people to lend you money, really it must have been despairing.

  […] Lytton I found this morning in bed, studying a Spanish Grammar. Which I took for a hopeful sign. I shall bring some money for you in case you are very poor. Tonight I’ve got a vile throat, all thick with horrid blisters and boils inside. It makes me feel rather cheerless but I cannot go to bed for that would upset Lytton. R. P. has been down in Devonshire with his father since last Thursday. Do you mind these vague remarks. Yet I am not wholly material. I should like to know more about your imaginings, and mental travels. Sometimes with Lytton I have amazing conversations. I mean not to do with this world, but about attitudes and states of mind, and the purpose of living. That is what I care for most in him. In the evenings suddenly one soars without corporeal bodies on these planes of thought. And I forget how dull and stupid I am and travel on also.

  It’s rather a responsibility having someone in love with one. One’s behaviour becomes so much more important and it ties one to the earth in a curious way. But the interest is enormous. Do you know even at the most intimate moments, I never get the feeling of being submerged in it. I find myself outside, watching also myself and my workings as well as his from the detached point of view. I confess it has made me much happier, his affection. For owing to the fact that I deserted almost everyone, except Alix, for Lytton, there were moments when he did not want me, when I recognized the isolation of it all, when one turned in despair for some relation with a mortal to assure one, that one wasn’t entirely cut off. Now it is good to tell one’s feelings, and feel his fondness at such times. I hope you got the plum pudding I sent. I am slightly doubtful, I had to fill in so many forms and I could only think of ‘La Fruita Pan’ to express the contents of the parcel. But we’ll bring you stores with us in March. Lytton won’t walk, so that we can bring baggage. Perhaps you’ll meet us at Seville, or Cordova and so have a change of scene. But if we set foot in Spain I promise you we shall see you. I write tonight because I feel too degraded to do anything else; my throat aches worse and worse. The thought of eating is agony. Yet if I don’t, Lytton will notice and tomorrow R. P. will be here, and I shall have more than ever to conceal it. Clive Bell and Mrs Hutchinson came here last weekend. They aren’t my style. Too elegant and 18 cent. French; for that’s what they try and be. I felt my solidity made them dislike me. Then I had to make their beds, and empty chamber pots because our poor cook Mrs Legg can’t do everything and that made me hate them, because in order they should talk so elegantly, I couldn’t for a whole weekend do any painting and yet they scorned my useful grimy hands […]

  My love to you

  Carrington

  In the middle of January, when Carrington and Ralph were in London, Lytton bought a four-poster bed.

  To Lytton Strachey

  41 Gordon Square

  Thursday [20 January]

  And shall we really find you listening to the birds under the moon, or the morning sun in the Great Four Poster.

  [From Ralph Partridge]

  What a triumph about the bed. You might of course just leave it in the garden and build the New Wing around it. Tchekhov is all finished now and being taken to the printers today. I shall be ready for some typing during the weekend My love to you Ralph.

  To Lytton Strachey

  St Mildred’s Hall, Turl Street, Oxford

  Tuesday, 10 o’ck, 10 February 1920

  … What a pity you didn’t come to that tea party of generalisers yesterday. It was such a nice one. I liked Michael Davies. He looked more interesting than the average young man up here. But unhappy and moody. Perhaps that is just the gloom of finding Barrie one’s keeper for life.fn109 Then Russell, a cousin of Bertie. He says B.R. has gone back to Cambridge again. And Neil Little, rather vain-glorious, and a superb generaliser! But they all agreed that Imperialism was monstrous and we ought to give up India and felt very fine gentlemen at having discovered this all in one afternoon over tea. Then a supper with a bottle and a pork pie – and a dance at 8. No new young men. All rather dreary Etonians. Perhaps they aren’t underneath but it’s damned hard work turning the sods to discover the body. (This is only to be read as a figurative speech!) Lovely Alan [MacIver] glanced in for a brief moment in the evening, with a shining wet face after rowing. I thought he looked, again, very beautiful. I danced most of the evening with our Ralph, and in between dances we retreated up here and ate cakes and pies and sat over the fire. The ‘missies’ were incredibly dull. Really it’s difficult to see how mother nature could with lumps of dough, and a carving knife, have contrived such heights of perfect dullness in their faces. Lust hid her face in her orange mantle, and withdrew after the first ten bars of music and a respectable two headed middle aged muse called ‘Healthy and Jolly’ appeared, and sat with us solidly for the evening. One young man, a Jew called Baring, discussed Psycho-analysis with me and dreams! but managed very skilfully to steer off P’s and C’s! [penises and cunts] I have lunch with him today, and a tea party later with Ralph, at Neil Little’s rooms. One watches lovely red-headed, curly-headed, striped-headed youths gliding down the street below. How far away! Now we are going to look at the library, and the Ashmolean till lunch. What a damn’d muggy place this is. Tidmarsh is a Brighton in comparison. This is also a dull letter, but that can’t be helped […] An absurd notice in The Times today on Duncan saying that the painting of the open window was the best picture in the show. And even more stupid things about his vagueness and lack of intention. My love to you dear.

  Your Mopsa

  To Lytton Strachey

  In train to Oxford, approaching Bletchley

  10 o’ck [13 February 1920]

  My Dearest Friend,
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  The pleasure of coming back to you tomorrow almost makes it worth while going away. Really it is the best possible of lives in the best possible of worlds – ours at Tidmarsh. And lately it has seemed happier each day. I am now in a slow crawling microbe moving towards Oxford. Yesterday morning was simply Milton in its fairness. Ralph loved your Cambridge, and confessed he found it more sympathetic than Oxford! I saw your Willow Tree by Kings Bridge and thought of you. He was full of appreciation over Trinity. It certainly looked its very best with the willow pale green, and so new, and the sun shining cleanly on the pinkish stone library. But there wasn’t really time to linger and many colleges, and gates we never saw, as his train went at 4 o’ck. I went in after seeing him off at the station and saw Sheppard. There were two young men there, [T. H.] Marshallfn110, and [Patrick] Blackettfn111. The former looked rather intelligent and dominating. Mr Blackett an uncouth Bedalian perhaps, shy creature. Sheppard is producing The White Devil on the 9th March. Don’t you think you, and your children might have a prolonged birthday treat and go there for it? After the beauty of the music, and the songs had faded from my mind, I reviewed The Fairy Queen less enthusiastically in bed yesterday morning. The scenery was really rather unpleasant, arty, and all pale purple and green like some Suffrage tea-room. But I forgive even the most mincing young lady because of the loveliness of that music. Sheppard was delighted because the Newnham Authorities have forbidden the young ladies to act in Webster, so that the female parts can now all be taken by the young men! The young men I thought however, didn’t show the same enthusiasm at the abolition. Fredegond [Shove]fn112 came in yesterday evening. And was very entertaining. Full of whimsical bawdy and scandal. And gave me an amazing description of Virginia and Vanessa when they were young. James, I gather, isn’t going there for The Fairy Queen as he remains in Paris. And Alix alone has returned. So shall I write a review for the Athenaeum instead? Ralph is incredibly happy to have shaken off those Oxford Eight people finally. It was a dreadful scene, when that enthusiastic blue came into his rooms and appealed to his sporting honour and vanity. I really thought he was very good the way he politely but with great firmness stuck to his lie and got out of itfn113 …