Carrington's Letters

by Dora Carrington

  To Gerald Brenan

  The Mill House

  Wednesday [3 May 1922]

  […] R doesn’t see my letters. I always get them in the morning before he comes down. He has been so friendly and charming since France. Perhaps that is partly why I’ve had this reaction of virtue!

  No, but really all I meant was: please don’t dwell on it, and please don’t expect anything from me. I can’t give you anything worth much, except my friendship. Don’t let us spoil the pleasure we get from being friends by having complications and too many secrets from Ralph. But we’ll talk about it sometime. It’s not very important in any case. What would be fun would be to walk from Swindon to Pewsey and take a train back here. I promise you’ll be very happy with me because I am so fond of you; so don’t feel gloomy. It will be lovely to have you here. We’ll go long walks, and we’ll out talk these birds. And Wednesdays we’ll make expeditions to London on cheap tickets, and see the great world, and the intelligentsia of Richmond and Hampstead.

  Please write to me often. I’ve an aching back, a sore throat and a cold so you must forgive me this diseased letter. Don’t quarrel with your father.

  Grrrrrrrrrrrr Bless you.

  Your loving Coldrinda

  To Gerald Brenan

  The Mill House

  5 o’ck [early June 1922]

  I have reached Tidmarsh and now tea is over and we sit on the lawn where for nearly a month every afternoon you have sat with me. Lunch was awful: the weather had turned everything bad. My most lovely steak and kidney pie had to be given to the hens and it was such a delicious pie full of eggs, rare spices, kidneys and steak. Then Lytton thought the cockerel which we had the minute the pie vanished from the table, was bad, so that had to be whisked away. Then we felt so exhausted and our noses so weakened by smells that we only just managed two eggs, and a little salad. Then Pippa arrived and for hours I sat on the lawn and talked to her of Alix and Vienna. I miss Annie almost more than Ralph! I never realised how much work she must do every day, until today I had to do it myself. Lytton is reading a big book on Mount Everest and the expedition. Some of the photographs are marvellous. It makes one almost want to rush off there. It’s almost worth your while coming back here to see this book. The Tibetans look the most intelligent people. You are rather Tibetan you must know at moments. Ha! Ha! What a subtle compliment. Lytton likes you. He talked of you a long time. I forgot all about your cheque, and in the morning I looked out of a window and saw a rook carrying it off to its nest, I suppose for bumphf, so that’s that, a complete rookery on your part. Rooked by rooks for rook shit. They have expensive taste in Bromo, as I told them this morning when one fluttered onto the lawn. I love the animal book so much. Too much. I will give it back to you, as really I am not a fit person to possess such a rare treasure. Even Lytton was delighted with it. Bradfield College acts Antigone in the open Theatre this month on the 24th. I was so excited.

  I wish Lytton could have been here to go with me. The wind was awful last night. I couldn’t sleep, so today I feel just as tired again. I wonder what has happened to R since I last saw him at 6.30 yesterday […] Unless one is uncritical and allows affections to overlook the follies of one’s friends no friendships can survive.

  No, you aren’t a load round my neck, or if you are, I miss my load and would be glad of it soon again. Bless you. I agree, confusions when one is with other people made intimacies difficult. Believe me I shall manoeuvre the ≈ all right.fn146 I have written today to Ruth Selby-Bigge. Tomorrow or very soon I will make plans, and give you more positive days. Be frightfully careful of my letters. You must burn these. Don’t leave them in your pockets at Rodmell, as V reads letters recklessly and she is the worst possible person to know anything. […]

  I’ve so many letters to write before the post. Gerald you mustn’t think I don’t care. But I have lost something which seems to prevent me giving myself away completely ever again. But in some ways I can give you everything and I do give you a great deal of love.

  Your Doric

  To Gerald Brenan

  [The Mill House?]

  [5 June 1922]

  […] Must I shout my remarks in the evening to Lytton on the lawn for you to hear.

  I LOVE GERALD VERY MUCH, AS MUCH as prunes, as roast duck and peas, as Venice, as crown imperials, as tulips, as Devonshire cream and raspberries, as walking on Combe Downs, as Padua, more MORE MORE MORE than all these things do I love Gerald.

  How happy your letters make me! Very, very, happy. I sing like Annie as I brush the rooms this morning, for has not my Charlie a nice face? I would I could write to you, all day, but breakfasts must be cooked, hens fed and a hundred and one other things done. I say when do you leave the Cotswolds????? ’Cos could I not cram in a day, a pure day, just this week? It seems rather a pity if you pass this way to London not to have one day this week together, if you don’t go to Sussex after all.

  Darling Gerald I’ll never call you Kunak again if you dislike it.

  KANUK or Kobjek or KOTNOB.

  Yr Doric xxxxxx

  Within days, Valentine had told Ralph that Carrington and Gerald were making a fool of him, had been lovers since Larrau and had asked her to distract him.

  Despite his own open infidelity, Ralph fell into a jealous fury and what became known as the Great Row ensued. Gerald was summoned for a confrontation with Ralph; at Carrington’s request he admitted to being in love with her but not to having sex with her. Tidmarsh rang with tears and anger.

  Lytton tried to pick up the pieces.

  To Gerald Brenan

  The Mill House

  Thursday, 5 mins after you have left, 8 June 1922

  I cry so much I can hardly see. Oh Gerald I saw you thought I didn’t care […] I couldn’t trust myself to talk to you of myself and you because I only cry when I think of you away from me, and this end to our happiness. But you mustn’t be unhappy. Remember even if I can’t write I am your fondest friend, and all I ever said and felt towards you was true & nothing that was between us wasn’t real – I’ve not slept since Tuesday and I’ve hardly eaten anything so you must forgive me if this afternoon I was so unhappy & did not show much feeling.

  I could not dare to let myself talk of you much. It broke my heart completely and made awful moments of despair and misgivings rise up. Lytton has been our only true and just friend.

  He is so sorry for you. Really he felt deeply for you because he knew you cared so much for me. Oh Gerald I write to you because I must. It’s harder for me than you think losing you, you’ll never quite believe what your friendship was to me and how terribly I cared today when you left. I will write again if Ralph will let me when I am calmer. You have been such a perfect friend I cannot and will not believe it is all gone. Do not ever think ill of me. Fate was against us that was all.

  […] If I have made you wretched forgive me, you know I never did it willingly and the choice was not made in a moment. Remember I cared and all that was real & that I still care for you very very much.

  Your loving Doric

  I shall sometimes write you letters which years after perhaps I shall send you. It will be easier so because I shall not miss writing to you and telling you a little what I feel. But I shall lock them all up & not send them this year.

  Oh my dear Gerald Goodbye. X

  Burn this letter and all my other letters please.

  Gerald ignored this request. They exchanged many anguished pages.

  To Gerald Brenan

  The Mill House

  Friday morning, 7 o’ck in bed, 10 June 1922

  Dearest Gerald,

  Do not think I shall write anything that can matter to any of us or R now. It is simply I cannot bear having these conversations in my head any longer with you. I have resisted a hundred times since you left, the impulse to go to Cirencester and see you. But I know it will only make it worse for us both if I did. Yesterday I hardly looked once at your face or your body because I did not feel strong enough. Now sinc
e you have left I have only thought of you. Lytton was so kind when I told him of all your misery. You mustn’t think for a moment he was against you. He said he was so touched by the way you behaved in coming to Tidmarsh, and your gentleness, only he thought perhaps after all this may have been inevitable. That you could not have lived always, as we have lately lived, in a strain, deceiving Ralph – But that the cruelty of it all ending, so appalled him that he could hardly bear to think of you separated from us. He says he is sure when R gets over the shock of it, he will not wish never to hear or see you again. His affection for you will return, and he will let me write. But we know somehow that something is lost that cannot be altered now.

  I did not discuss anything else with Lytton. He was terribly shattered. He has had to bear everybody’s unhappiness. Last night he read me Hardy’s Poems. Some of them are almost too real for one to bear. Ever since you left the house I have thought of nothing else. Oh Gerald please please remember how I cared, and still care. That you alone acted just as in the worst moments I knew and wished you would act, has been my only happiness in this nightmare. You alone did think of me, and remember that a friendship was more worth than anything else. I never until then only for an awful moment, when Lytton said (after he saw Ralph yesterday morning), believed you could forget my affection and my feelings, and everything we had said to each other.

  It was trusting you in that one thing that kept me from breaking down, from rushing away wildly and at moments from ending my life. If when I first saw you I was cold it was not from ill feeling. The second I saw you in Pangbourne I knew you were my friend. Oh Gerald I moon in the orchard looking at the seat where we two sat, at the flattened grass where you lay. And I wish that I could have told you then how I cared, how great my misery was when I knew I should not see you again. I could not simply trust myself to speak. I knew it would hurt you more to see me cry. I longed to have your affection to cling close to you and tell you all my thoughts and talk of Valentine and Ralph as I did, and not to talk to you of what I minded most and felt so cruelly. But I could not bear our last meeting should be one of senseless grief. Yet it was best so. And I feel, you must have, even if I behaved coldly, you must have felt my pent up love go out to you with every sudden look, whilst we sat on the grass. You will care for the little picture; I gave you so much more, as I gave you that.

  I am crying now again. I cannot see the paper. Oh I have cried since you left until my eyes ache. Even Annie knows I am unhappy and tries to be kind to me. She speaks so gently, and I saw last night she had cried also. The last straw was when I was trying to plant some lettuces in a despair of wretchedness, the cats both came and sat beside me, and rubbed my hands with their faces. Lytton’s pale face, and affection makes me break down every moment. Gerald, my dearest friend you mustn’t think it wasn’t worth while, for you know it was. That I mind so terribly is awful. That you care even more is worse still. The irony, the superb irony, was that no good could come of it. I was tied, I could not leave with you. I should have felt for ever an exile, with a ghost between us. I couldn’t have left with the memory of that face in the orchard distorted with rage, and horrid threats of murder. Our relation was so very perfect. It was never marred by callousness, or too much intimacy. It never faded into something casual. Every day I learnt more to be fond of you, found new pleasures. That no one now will notice what I wear, or how I feel, that I shall no longer rush down to get letters from the post, that no longer I can plan to see you in Spain is more awful to me, than anything else. If this happened with anyone else, if only I had had the outlet of being able to write to you my feelings, my griefs, and my happinesses I could have borne it. One never knows until one loses a person exactly how much they mattered to one. You may think (you are so humble in remembering I care for you) I could decide easily to live this altered life here? Do you not know it would have been far easier to rush off with you? Not to endure this pain? But I could not. One does owe something more than the enjoyment of life to a person like Ralph. How superb he has been, only Lytton knows. You will forget me, you will in time simply look back on me as something that was very good, and perfect for a few short years. It would have been different for Ralph. Do not ever quite forget me however. You MUST burn this letter, dear please. I have said more in it than I meant to when I first started to write, but the agony I have been through since you left has left me less brave.

  Please remember my last wish and your promise to me. Do not see R or Valentine before you leave England […] I remember everything. You must also. Your friendship was one of the most perfect I ever had. We never once quarrelled. And I never liked you less; only more, as we knew each other better. Remember that. You mustn’t please tell J. H. -J. about this, for if he comes back to England he will tell others, and it may make it harder for me.

  Remember dear I gave you a great deal, for I loved you, for that if you can, not to talk of this to anyone. I think the Woolfs will still go to Yegen. And Forster would also. I am sure of that. You must write to Virginia please from Spain. I will give you Forster’s address at the bottom of this letter; if I don’t you can always write to his publishers.

  Every word now recalls a joke, a happier mood when we were such friends only a week ago. Tidmarsh pervaded with you, memories.

  Do not hate Valentine. I think she did it unconsciously, she did not mean all this pain. But I never think of her now. It is better not to, otherwise one gets thoughts which hurt one’s head to contain. And you mustn’t rebuke yourself for anything you did or said. Because I’ve never once rebuked you. I forgive everything. It was simply misfortune. Gerald I’ve never once turned against you. And still care as much as I did a week ago.

  I hope it will make you a little happier to know I still love you. Gerald I still don’t realize quite what I’ve lost in you; my one happiness is that you never deserted me, or thought ill of me, and our affection wasn’t killed, only forcibly divided. Forgive me this letter, I write in such misery. I only hope you will soon forget, and please never reproach me. I could not bear that last blow. Will you try and write again. Remember I think more of your writing than of anybody’s but Lytton’s and could you send Lytton sometimes the things you write, for judgement? Then I can read them also. I shall think of you not only today but for weeks and weeks and only with love. Goodbye. If you knew how brave I am at not asking to see you again, you would be happier. Bless you, my very dear friend. Your Kunak

  To Gerald Brenan

  Sunday morning, 9 o’ck [11 June 1922]

  Gerald, I see R has written to you. Please even if he begs you, do not see him again. I will some day send you a letter telling you every thing that happened since you left. R has now been hardened and is cynical. I am treated rather like a peculiar variety of imbecile! It may be too difficult, but Lytton begs me to be patient for a little. He says Ralph’s hardness is just the reaction after all this […]

  My Dearest Gerald. Bless you. Goodbye again.

  Your Kunak

  Later. Sunday, 5 o’ck

  I did not mean to write another time, but now I must.

  Ralph has today for the first time talked to me. He admitted he nearly didn’t come back because I hadn’t told him everything at first on Wed. morning. When I told him the reason I think he believed me. But I see Valentine is determined to push matters as far as she can, even now. Really the things she told him, unnecessary things that she had heard from Gertler. And when I asked him how I had behaved ‘treacherously’ to her to deserve such treatment, the only treachery she could produce was my questioning her motives about her telling me not to see Gertler. Now everyone is against me. You are let off as being ‘vague’, and well intentioned. I am a deliberate villain! Yet I can see R really believes me a little, and when Valentine leaves he will grasp we were fond of him, and we didn’t behave quite so elaborately as he now believes. The sordidness of it all and the lack of necessity for all this, wearies me. I feel perhaps more than anything the hardness of Valentine’s heart. Th
e meanness of all this conduct. You will go away soon please? I want to think of you away from all this. Lytton is superb. Today I am perhaps less unhappy than yesterday, that is all. You must always let me know where you are in case I want to write.

  The uttermost indifference is shown to all my actions now. But R is so unhappy I don’t think he realizes quite how I feel. Gerald dear, you must forgive me for having made all this bother and having caused your pain. What a misfortune it has turned out! You mustn’t regret anything that you did, nothing matters now. I shall never regret knowing you. I will tell you later how everything goes. Please remember not to tell J. H. -J. very much for my sake. I hate it all so much. I’d like to feel it wasn’t going on any longer. Again goodbye. I am going to try and be an artist and paint very hard this summer. But I will write to you sometimes unless you would rather I did not. Only you must not write until I tell you. My love dear from

  Your Kunak

  To Gerald Brenan

  Written in my bedroom

  Wednesday afternoon, 3 o’ck, 14 June 1922

  Gerald, I simply couldn’t come up to London today. You needn’t think I didn’t want to come, for I did! […] R still sees V although he never tells me he does. But he isn’t coming back tonight or tomorrow night. I shall be here quite alone till Saturday, as Lytton goes away tomorrow for 2 days. I am going to change my bedroom into a studio. For now I shall have a great deal of time to paint. Lytton will tell you if I am ill, or if I die. I hate myself for being so strong […] We are all so tired and unhappy, and yet we can’t go away, because where can one go to? I think Lytton must long for next week when he can get away from us all, and be in Venice. He hates these sordid ‘repeatings’ as much as we do.

  Let us forget all that part of it, and this last week. And think of a friendship which, while it lasted, no one but we two knew the texture of it. How far V was from ever understanding us. I am glad that the intimacy of our friendship was never dragged out into this shattering daylight. The most important thing to us both they never bothered to ask about! I alternate between despair and hatred of myself and my character, and a hatred against the irony of the whole situation.