Carrington's Letters

by Dora Carrington

  […] if your decision meant that I should somehow or other lose you, I don’t think I could bear it.

  As for ‘the physical part’, he suggested that Virginia was not always to be believed, and that what he said to Ralph might well have been ‘a passing phase’.

  The Italian honeymoon journey was a mixed success. Carrington lost her wedding ring and they fought a good deal, but they met Lytton in Venice and were happy walking in the Tuscan hills. She wrote Gerald four long letters about art and landscape.

  Back at Tidmarsh, it was not long before Gerald came over from Spain and hurried down to see her. They picnicked and kissed on White Horse Hill. Soon he realised he was ‘deeply, irretrievably in love’.

  To Gerald Brenan

  The Mill House

  Friday, 8 July 1921

  I feel absurdly happy today, what a lovely day it was. Really you are one of the best companions in the world … and when I got into the train I thought about all the things that I wanted you to talk to me about. Bosnia, Yegen, your writing, so many things which we never reached […] Isn’t exploring the most exciting thing almost in the world, yes in every direction.

  This morning I feel everything so acutely. The smells in the garden, the sounds of the flies & the bees, & the warmth of the early day, for it’s not yet nine o’ck.

  I feel so full of affections and happy … And I look back every few minutes on yesterday & feel happier & happier until I want to start again, so I put out of my head the vision of White Horse Hill & then after five minutes recall it again. I hardly feel it was you I was with, the same person I am now writing to.

  How very perfect to have one such day a year in a lifetime.

  You couldn’t have enjoyed it quite so much as I did. You don’t love those downs & the colours quite so much, confess? Then you didn’t feel a shepherd’s toothbrush burning a bristling into your face.

  Ralph was very cheerful, we played Bagatelle most of the evening. He loves you also so much.

  Goodbye Gerald for a little.

  Come & stay here before the 28th please for as long as you can. You must come very soon.

  My love

  Your Doric

  To Lytton Strachey

  The Mill House

  [n.d.]

  Dearest Lytton,

  […] We reached the Woolfs rather late for tea but of course they are so charming they never really mind and the tea was delicious. Really Virginia does make heavenly jams. Then, after tea, Leonard went for a walk over the downs with Ralph, and Virginia and I trailed behind gossiping and croaking. Mary, you and your writing (of which I knew nothing), Vanessa and Mary, Ralph and THE SITUATION, the merits of Rodmell against Asheham, composed our conversation. I came back full of enthusiasm for Virginia. It’s impossible not to fall in love with her I find. She was so friendly to me I couldn’t help but collapsing completely. Dinner. Then a sogjourn – which I know is spelt wrong but I can’t make it look better – to the summer house. Leonard very grave after a terrible silence. ‘Well I think we had better perhaps discuss the situation.’ Then he started. Really he is superb: so logical, fair, and intelligent. Then Virginia gave her point of view. Then Ralph rather tentatively returned the fire. And I summed up the proceedings at the tail end of everything. Ralph is writing to you and will talk it all over when we meet again. Leonard and Virginia will also talk it over. So I will not now repeat it. We slept like logs on the Rockeries but I doubt if your back bone will hold out! Really Tidmarsh is the Carlton in its comforts. Why do we ever fuss? The next day Wednesday was divine wasn’t it? So lovely at Rodmell I longed to stay on. It was terrible to have to leave. Leonard gave us masses of apples and pears to take back with us. We spent most of the morning picking pears for him at the top of a ladder. Then we raced off before lunch as La grand Loup et fille were appearing in fact did appear at a quarter to one […]

  […] Lytton dear, I love you so much today. We talked for a long time over the fire last night and a great deal about you. I feel much happier today. Ralph is so fond of you and Tidmarsh. Bless you my dearest one. I hope the good weather will go on, and that you will enjoy Rodmell. It’s perfect here today. This morning Mrs Wright united two families of bees with great success. I wasn’t stung and I had no glove on one hand.

  I wish dreadfully that you were here just because it’s so warm and beautiful.

  Your Mopsa

  The ‘situation’ under discussion concerned Ralph’s future at the Hogarth Press. He was frustrated at being a mere dogsbody and the Woolfs found him idle and temperamental. Virginia also disliked what she saw as his histrionics and his bullying attitude towards Carrington. ‘We have had a mad bull in the house’ Virginia wrote later, ‘A normal Englishman in love.’

  To Noel Carrington

  The Mill House

  Sunday [15 July 1921]

  Dearest Noel,

  As this elegant figure below, which some old gentleman at St Pancras tells me is my husband, clad in familiar and dirty pair of white shorts and a rowing vest is writing you a letter by my side I feel I cannot do less than imitate his excellent Sunday example.

  But what can I tell you? Life is happy. The sun is as hot as India now in England. R. P. works hard now all day at the Hogarth Press and returns ravenous and wolfish at 7 o’ck for his evening meal. Lytton comes down every weekend and often Oliver and Inez and sometimes good people like Brenan, who is back from Spain on a holiday and various friends. Tidmarsh is still a communal nest for breakers of the law so the Partridges escape having a home to ask in-laws to stay in and refrain from silver teapots and cradles.

  I’ve become signboard painter to the county of Berkshire. I’ve done and finished one signboard for the Tidmarsh Inn and now I’ve three other commissions given me on the strength of it. If the Brewery will stump up £10 a sign I’ll be content to be their painter for the rest of my life, and when you come back my humble efforts will greet your eye at every pub you tarry at! I will do the Phoenix bookplate and one for you very soon, tell Cumberledge.fn134 Tidmarsh is so lovely this summer, full of charming animals, geese, ducks and hens and a yellow cat and such good company. We have a gramophone now and it really is getting quite a vast library as Lytton is becoming reckless with his wealth in buying books […]

  […] I had one long day on those Wantage Downs alone with Brenan a week ago, very near where we three spent a day with Brenan just before you set off to India. It was baking hot and we cooked our lunch under a beechwood and basked on the downs and talked about Spain and people we knew. I think you must get out at Gib. on your way back from India and we’ll meet you and then go and stay with Gerald in his cottage in the mountains.

  You know of course mother has left and sold Driftway […] It’s good to think you’ll be with us in the spring and the daffodils.

  Your loving sister D. C.

  Early in August, Carrington set off with Ralph for a holiday in the Lake District, along with Lytton and James and Alix Strachey. Gerald, struggling with the realisation that he was in love with his friend’s new wife, was about to set off back to Spain.

  To Gerald Brenan

  41 Gordon Square

  Friday morning, 8 o’ck [5 August 1921]

  It’s just eight o’clock and I have packed up my clothes and look out on a grey sky with plane trees waving, and lurching in a cold wind. I’ve rather a hollow sort of feeling inside about going away to the Lakes. Already I see the rain, uncomfortable wicker chairs, a linoleum tablecloth and discomforts on every side – and I am so sorry to leave you.

  But perhaps it wouldn’t have gone on being so very happy if we had lingered! […] But how very perfect it is that we have with so little restraint been able to understand, to a hair’s breadth, our fondness for each other.

  Please keep very well in Yegen, and don’t get ill or I shall worry.

  If you ever did and wanted someone, if J. H. -J. doesn’t go out, you must always wire. R. P. and I would come at once. Please remember this.

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nbsp; This letter is dull, and explains nothing but how can one write? I think that you know that the discovery of a person, of an affection, of a new emotion, is to me next to my painting, the greatest thing I care about. I shall think of you very often dear. Please say nothing in your letters. I shall know in spite of their nothingness. G-rrrrrrrrrr ‘how difficult life is’. Yet G-rrrrrrrrrrr how exceedingly and excessively happy the same life can be.

  You’ve not got the camera! I’ll leave it wrapt up and addressed to you on the hall at 41 G. S. Please call for it today, or some day, and do go and see Birrell. A chemist photographer will explain the camera to you.

  My love my very dear one. Goodbye till the spring.

  D. C.

  To Gerald Brenan

  c/o Mrs Wilson, Watendlath Farm,

  nr Keswick, Cumberland

  Sunday [7 August 1921]

  Well, two days have passed, as the postman only calls once a day for letters, and as my letter is seldom ready when he does call I will start one now to you, with an exquisite fountain pen belonging to Alix and try and get it finished by tomorrow afternoon. A scene of our sitting room in the farm house. Our daily life is dominated by Mr Wordsworth as we call the amiable stuffed ram who is attached to the wall above the window.

  Lytton sits muffled in overcoats reading ‘Family Life’ by E. F. Bensonfn135 looking infinitely depressed, Alix plays chess with an invisible James, who has crept out of the picture. They take twenty minutes over every move, and never speak, and I sit as you see at the corner of the table. It is black night outside and rains. On my right twenty photograph frames face me, north country rustics in their hideous Sunday clothes.

  The two most cherished relatives have mats of sheep’s wool to perch upon. They really deserve a still life or a sonnet to themselves. I would like to, if I could, write a novel introducing these twenty human beings, with their portraits, as they appeared in my novel. Still Mr Wordsworth glares down on me with his glassy yellow eye and moth eaten countenance. Yesterday I went a long walk with Lytton, some 10 miles, before supper.

  Alix and James arrived at 8.30 in the evening. It’s delightful to have Alix with me again. I love her very much. She is so unlike other women, so impersonal, more like a man. This morning we went a walk by ourselves to Rosthwaite, and talked of everything that had happened since we parted last September. They give one the most stupendous meals here. So big that I’ve ruined my digestion with sheer greed […]

  To Gerald Brenan

  Wanlen Hall, Ambleside

  Wednesday, 9 August 1921

  I’ve not heard from you once yet, because I’ve left Watendlath & joined Ralph here for 5 days. – I hope I’ll find a letter when I get back there on next Saturday – Ralph came over on Monday afternoon for me in a car with his friend MacIver. It turned out that unless I went with them they couldn’t come over again. Ralph rather made me feel it was impossible not to go … so here I am with the vegetables of Liverpool. They are so ‘hearty’, so conventional & very amiable. Why should one so constantly be depressed? I really don’t like living aimlessly and I now definitely feel it’s a waste of time to talk banalities with people I don’t care for.

  Yesterday I went fishing and caught 2 perch. They were so beautiful. We put them in a bucket so I could watch them closely. Windermere lake is a fraudulent affaire. Hotels, boarding houses & horrible people in boats. I feel Wordsworth’s melancholy spirit in my bones. It doesn’t suit these lakes to make them into imitation Blackpools. In the afternoon I went sadly with Ralph in a yacht with MacIver. Rushing through the water, and sitting under the bulging taut sail has a delight for one unlike any other pleasures.

  Ralph after tea made a feeble attempt to convert me into a country house lady & tried to teach me ping pong! But unimpressed after a few minutes it was hopeless because I don’t care for winning or playing seriously. I really was sorry, as he enjoys games so much.

  The evenings are the worst part of this house. The men play bridge & the females sew & talk to each other. I can do neither. Grrrrrrr.

  Protect me from such society in my old age, children, babies & golfing men & females.

  Today Ralph & I went off alone to Langdale valley and climbed the Langdale Pikes and walked in the Watendlath direction. We were to have met Alix, James & Lytton but they didn’t meet us. I suspect it must have rained too much for them to start.

  The beauty of the mountains quite restored my temper. Ralph borrowed a small car & drove me to the foot of the mountains & back again. Now he has gone fishing & I sit & write to you alone in a magnificent Liverpool drawing room – and you are still in England … Ralph wished you were here today with us on the Langdales … and I?

  I’ve been reading a life of the Benson family by C. F. Benson, Lytton had it from the library. It’s almost impossible to read because C. F. B. is so stupid. But it’s rather interesting as an insight to an Archbishop’s life.

  Soon you will leave England. I wish you had gone. You can’t think how different it is … to remember there is nothing really which prevents me from seeing you except a few hundred miles. You must write to me often please. Because I am so absolutely fond. I thanked you, when I met Ralph, that you were as Koteliansky the Russian says ‘a güd man’. Bless you.

  Your loving Doric xxx

  PS Did you see in The Times last Friday, that ‘Gerald Brenan & an accomplice, were arrested & reprimanded for assaulting the Dean of Westminster & his son, in their garden late in the evening. The Dean did not wish to prosecute so the proceedings stopped.’

  Well? Surely there are not two Gerald Brenan’s in London? And what did you do to the Dean or was it his son? And after all what were they doing in their garden after dinner?

  Grrrrr you are NOT what you pretend to be, you Brrrrr.

  PS I will not have any children, ever.

  PS There are 12 children & 3 babies in this house.

  Urged on by Carrington and Ralph, Gerald changed his plans and joined the Watendlath party on 18 August. For the next twelve days he and Carrington hid in barns and behind hedges to kiss and talk of love while Ralph fished. He tore himself away on 30 August and headed for London and Spain.

  To Gerald Brenan

  Watendlath Farm

  Tuesday evening [30 August 1921]

  Dear,

  You can’t think how I minded sending you away. But I felt a shiver when R suddenly came over that mound. It might have been different. It seemed a warning from the heights. I think one can’t keep things at a certain pressure indefinitely. I felt you were becoming slightly strained, was I right? The whole relation was shifting to one of trying escaping alone. Yet you must know my heart was almost breaking and my eyes crying when you left. Ralph unfortunately made it worse. He became instantly depressed, you wronged him when you said he did not care very much. He clung to me and burst out ‘I always feel something may happen to Gerald, and perhaps we will never see him again.’ I think he thought of Michael Davies, who was drowned. He became suddenly so sweet, and lonely and talked of no one but you, and how he cared for you all the way back. Then he turned on me, and said it was my fault because I had made you go, by not persuading you to stay, and if anything happened to you he would never forgive me, and said it was my selfishness that made you go. It was dreadful because I couldn’t tell him anything and I couldn’t tell him I cared fifty times more than he did, that you should have gone. Yet, I feel now it was best. All the same I think it is about as fine a torture as could be invented to force a loved one to leave one when there was no necessity for a departure.

  The beauty of Watendlath is the same as last night. I have just been for a walk with Lytton and Ralph right round the end of the tarn. But its loveliness made me sad. Lytton also is going tomorrow. Maynard Keynes wants him in Sussex on Friday. This adds to our gloom. We both miss you so much, very much. You know Gerald you mustn’t pay too much attention to our wrangling, and disputes.

  Really I love Ralph so very much. That is why I am a little disc
ontented he isn’t rather more to me. I would so like to find all I want in him. I fear you thought we were rather a disagreeable couple. But really I think he is very happy with me and I with him. What a wonderful time we had. I also go over all the pleasures we enjoyed with our eyes, and our other sensibilities. I could not suddenly bear to hazard such pleasures for a few moments more, which might have marred everything. Ralph loves you so much, he would have been wretched even if he had only dimly guessed we cared a little more than ordinary friends. Now, we neither of us feel any guilt. And who can tell what may not have happened by next spring? But we will have the pleasure always now of remembering this short very perfect span in our lives. And we will write conscious of it, all this long winter – Promise you believe me when I tell you I did want you to stay?

  You mustn’t think that I ever do not care as much as you do. I believe I know your feelings to a hair’s breadth – Write to me from the Pyrenees.fn136 I shall give Lytton this letter to post tomorrow, and I hope you will get it before you leave London, otherwise I trust God it will be sent to you unopened […] I’ve given up my painting this evening to write to you. Alix told me she saw you in Keswick and she took my breath out of my cheeks by saying you all but ran into a big motor bus in Keswick street. Please be very careful. What can I tie on your finger to make you remember not to run into motors, or sit on railway lines? It seems gloomy without you. Ralph is fishing before dinner. And I’ve fetched your picture from the barn. Now there is no reason to ever go there again. I was sorry not to show it to you. I don’t want you to see my work unless it’s to my satisfaction. I am rather vain after all I find, to have your good opinion.

  Your train will soon be rushing into London.

  Please write to me very often Gerald. We leave here on Friday. Write to Tidmarsh always please; not 41 Gordon Square.

  Now you are gone I remember all the times I might have been more friendly. I pour coals of contempt on my head for not taking more risks, for not being more adventurous, for not spending more time with you alone. Grrrrr. But this always happens. Why have we these predestined lives of inaction?