To David Garnett
The Mill House
Friday, 26 October 1922
Dear Bunny,
I must write to you and tell you how much I enjoyed you book last night.fn149 I read it breathlessly at a sitting in about 3 hours! Really I believe you must have written it especially for me it pleased me so much! Lytton says the style is superb and I agree with him, as in all things but I think the story is so beautiful and fascinating […] I suppose you will soon be worn out with flattery and praise if you are not already. But I doubt if any can be as genuine as mine because I am sure no one except a few people could like your book as much as I did. Once I had a lovely dream about a fox and very often buzzards are my night companions. But it is a rare pleasure to find a book to read by day so entirely to one’s taste. The people in England will be idiots if they don’t all read it as quickly as they can, for it makes one so happy. Will you tell Rachel [Ray Garnett] how much I liked some of her woodcuts. The very small one on the front page of the Reluctant Mrs Fox behind the bush with her husband I think I liked best. I am just going to write and tell Alix what a good book it is. Will you please send G. Brenan a copy. Reg: post. And put it down to my account as soon as you can. G. Brenan. YEGEN, Ugijar, Prov. de Granada, SPAIN in case you have lost his address.
I am sorry to write such a bad letter, but this is the first one I have ever, (except last week to Virginia), written an author in praise of his book.
You must be very excited and proud to have made such a book! I feel now one has mismanaged life. Surely nothing could be nicer than that life in the woods with Madame FOX. I am sorry Hudsonfn150 died before he could read it. But I can’t help feeling very glad I am alive to have read it. You mustn’t think because I am rather a flatterer I say all this without meaning it. Because really I do love your book so much and not simply because you wrote it.
Please remember me to that exquisite sister in law Frances.fn151 Perhaps if one can’t hope to have tea at Tidmarsh with a Fox, sometimes a Rabbit will grace our board.
Your affectionate and most admiring
Carrington
Frances Marshall had left Cambridge in 1921 and found a job in Birrell and Garnett’s bookshop. There she met Ralph on Hogarth Press business.
To Lytton Strachey
The Mill House
Monday afternoon [6 November 1922]
Dear, I posted your letters which I found on the table.
I feel very vacant headed today after all those arguments of yesterday. I do so want Ralph to keep in the Press if possible because in so many ways it is such a good job for him. On the other hand it’s intolerable if he really doesn’t suit them, from both points of view […] I wish you weren’t in London. After all these mental crises one longs to sit over the fire, and read Shandy, and shut out this world of activity and crises […] I do love you so very much. And you make my life a very happy one. I am feeling rather extremely today in my solitude how much you matter. Ralph agreed yesterday that nothing mattered compared to our Triangular Trinity of Happiness. Even expulsion from the Garden of Paradise Road is nothing if we three are together. My dear, you are so good to us, and I love you terribly sometimes. Please take great care and don’t get any colds. I am looking forward to Suggia!
Yr most loving
Carrington
To Gerald Brenan
The Mill House
Monday, 14 November 1922
Kunak, your letter has just come. I feel I deserve your reproaches. One does get into states of mind similar to those of scullery maids over this business. It’s true what is this absurd frankness which we all talk about, and do not keep! How can we tell what our feelings will be when we see each other?
Oh Gerald you will never know what it was to be on the battlefield. If you have a nausea for these past events you can guess a little what I feel. But mercifully you aren’t associated in my head with all these nightmare days and nights. I never connect you with them. Thank god I never saw you except once under those hideous clouds. Ralph has been the person who has in a way ruined himself for me in some curious way by being associated with all that ugliness. I learnt to dread him, and to fear him. Which are rather difficult sensations to recover from even in six months. My God, you know I do sometimes blast and curse Valentine for all this havoc!
To Gerald Brenan
The Mill House
20 December 1922
Dearest Gerald,
I am so old fashioned that I keep Christmas almost as seriously as Annie does. So I must write and wish you a Happy Christmas and a Gay New Year. I have nothing to send you. I meant to paint you a little picture, but it was never done. Perhaps I will think of some book that will please you when I will send it to you.
I had a wonderful visit to Normandy.fn152 The beauty of the country still makes me a little discontented with our flat marshes, and these insignificant hills. I saw the forests of Eure (probably spelt wrong) that Ralph knew when he was in Normandy. Did you ever go there with him? It was fascinating living with people so strangely different from oneself. I only wish I could remember all the stories Phyllis told me. A wonderful account of Lady Munster her grandmother who lived at Brighton and had 40 clocks all going at the same time in her bedroom. But of course you with aunt Tiz will not think much of such tales. I left just a week ago today on December 13th. The sea was very rough, and a French woman vomited all over my luggage. A just reward for my selfishness, as although I knew she wanted a basin I refused to go and get it for her. However I had some slight revenge when a custom’s officer at Newhaven insisted on opening my suitcases ‘something damp in this case mam’, suspecting brandy or scent leaking over my clothes. ‘Yes, a woman was sick on my box.’ He shut it up very quickly and gave me a look of rage.
Ralph met me at Victoria. We had so much to say, after a week, we talked until we became tired of talking. And soon forgot all we had important to say and talked about absurdities. We had dinner at Ralph’s mother’s flat, in Francis Street. I wish you could see them and the flat. For pure Anglo-Indian plus sham Jacobean taste it is unrivalled. Mrs P is a pretty good example of a provincial missionary’s daughter, full of false pride and ignorance.
Dorothy [Partridge] is much more human. She sings so beautifully and has learnt many lovely songs simply to please R and me, Mozart and the Ganges song and many other good old English songs. Mrs P I think thinks we are very heathen not to like the Italian songs that Dorothy used to sing in Milan. After dinner we rushed off to a lecture by Roger Fry. He is giving a whole series of lectures. Tracing the development of design, and ‘significant form’ in painting. He has amazing slides, Giotto, and the Sienese school. He always shows one a great many that one has never seen before. The last lecture brought one up to Uccello. Tout le monde is at these lectures. The females are characterised by their plainness and serious countenances, and males by their long hair and pasty spotty faces. Everybody knows everybody so before the lecture begins, the babble of conversation is not to be described in words. Chelsea meets Bloomsbury, Hampstead bows to Richmond and even ladies from Mayfair talk graciously to Logan Pearsall-Smith and Mr Tatlock.fn153 If J. H. -J. was only there nobody you could possibly think of is not there! After the lecture Barbara, Ralph and I went to Duncan’s [Grant] studio above J. H. -J.’s old room, to a sort of informal party. It was rather a classical party, with an air of a French studio in 1889. Arthur Waley’s mistress Miss De Z[oete]fn154 played Bach on a harpsichord; the room was lit by candles, young earnest Cambridge men twisted and twirled on their toes and shrieked in high nasal voices. Vanessa drooped like a flower with a too heavy head over some coffee boiling on a stove. Duncan moved about with sprightly steps with trays of biscuits and beer in glasses. I talked to Miss Margery Fry about Vienna and the poverty of the Germans and behind me I heard Ralph discussing Spain with Arthur Waley. The next day Thursday we came down here. Tidmarsh looked wonderfully beautiful after an absence of a week. It is so snug and warm, lined with its walls of coloured books. In the winter wh
en it’s so dark one can’t see the rat holes and the dust; one curls up in it like a fox in its hole, contented. We had a very social weekend, Sebastian Sprott, a young lecturer in psychology at Cambridge, Morgan Forster, and Roger Fry.
So you didn’t like Lady into Fox. Morgan told me he had heard from you and repeated everything you wrote to him! And I liked it so much. Ralph is more on your side than on mine. He didn’t care for it nearly as much for it as I did. But then again, Lytton likes it! Morgan is a charming character. He is so amusing and has good ideas when he is serious. Roger’s vitality never fails. He talks from the moment he appears at breakfast till he goes to sleep murmuring his Coué chant. For he is a devoted disciple of that French Christ. They all left us on Monday. Tomorrow Ralph’s holidays begin. I am glad, secretly I admit, because I want to finish a picture of him.
The yellow cat has passed away. Dead as a ducat. Maynard Keynes, and Lydia Lopokova come here for Christmas. I hardly know Lydia; opinions seem to differ very much about her character.fn155 After Xmas I will tell you what I think of her. Ralph will write and tell you all the Hogarth Press developments. I will not encroach on his domain. Roger’s lectures (on the Italian pictures) have inspired me to start some big compositions. Suddenly reviewing my last year’s work it seems disgracefully amateurish and ‘little’. So I shall now start this Xmas after they have all gone a composition of an interior scene in this kitchen.
Only I shall paint it very big. I do not want to tackle anything too difficult, or I know I shall then despair and give up the composition before it is finished […]
I am so sorry you have not been well. What is the matter with you? If it is serious and continuous, do go to Seville and see an English or a German doctor. Please don’t get decrepid like J. H. -J. and all those Fitzroy people. I have the greatest contempt for people like Middleton Murry and Katherine Murry who think it is ‘interesting’ to be ill and who sniff up their noses at any writer who hasn’t cancer in the stomach, or violent consumption.
I’ve got such a good book on Rousseau. But I refrain from sending you any book, picture, verse, or prose after your severe ‘Vixenish’ rebuke.
My mother has just bought another house, this time in Minchinhampton. Poor woman she already writes, even before she has moved in and asks me if I know anyone who would like to buy it! The shady eldest brother has returned from Spain bankrupt, and now lives fast and loose sponging on my sister in London. Mercifully I have not yet seen him.fn156 Do write to Ralph soon and send him some MSS. This was meant to be an interesting letter to cheer your Christmas feast. It seems to me on rereading it to be about as stale as that Christmas pudding must be which probably still sits in the poste restante at Granada. Would you like the New Statesman and Nation every week or do you take them up yourself? Answer N. or M. Now I must stop, as the paper is all used up. I send my love and best wishes that next year we may all be happier: bless you.
Yr Kunak
To Virginia Woolf
The Mill House
Thursday, 21 December 1922
Dearest Virginia,
I send you this little casket of sweetness as a token of my affection for you and Leonard. Please honour me by accepting it with my best wishes for a Happy Christmas, and a successful New Year. Well, well. So now it’s over.
I thank you for trying so valiantly at Tidmarsh to come to a happy ending. But perhaps reviewing everything now it will all turn out for the best. Ralph is rather disconsolate at the moment but I expect his feelings will soon revive. I am sorry of course, because I cared so much for the Press that I couldn’t help wishing Ralph to be in it also. But that’s not quite a good enough reason for his staying in it when there are so many complications on both sides. But we are still all friends. I must say that seems to me a most important issue. In January I will come and see you again at Hogarth. We had a very gay and talkative weekend last Saturday, Sebastian, Morgan, and Roger. On Saturday Maynard and Loppy arrive. We are all slightly trembling at their approach. Today we went to Reading. The male element were very crabbid and wouldn’t let me spend any money on Christmas presents, so I am busy making toffee, and converting bromo boxes into Italian letter cases this evening […]
I hope you and Leonard will enjoy Rodmell. Ralph sends you his love and best wishes. Lytton also send his.
Carrington sends even more.
As this last letter shows, after a series of awkward discussions Ralph finally left the Hogarth Press. Both the Woolfs had found him an unsatisfactory employee.
To Gerald Brenan
The Mill House
25 December 1922 – Christmas Day
Dearest Gerald,
[…] Christmas Day. One can hardly see the country sky, the smoke of a thousand plum puddings & turkeys soar up to God. We alone insult his omnipotence. Cold saddle of mutton & baked potatoes, salted almonds & cold white celery – But tonight … we shall be Englishest of the English. Maynard Keynes & the lovely Princess Lydia Lopokova are with us. She is almost a dwarf only 4.8 inches high. But exquisitely made. I cannot but help being the slightest bit in love with her. She talks charmingly … using wonderful English words. ‘I smell a great beast in the oven, coming into my bedroom, I like it. Smell very good.’ She is always gay & laughing.
She adores Maynard and listens whilst he is telling Lytton & Ralph some utterly boring facts (‘Mexican Eagles & Industrials will go up after Christmas’) with an exoteric [sic] expression on her face as if he was Shelley propounding some new philosophy. She dresses beautifully in a Russian style. Her stupidity is far greater than Barbara’s. But her charm and high spirits make it almost unimportant. One wonders when looking at Maynard with a cold detached eye, how she could fall in love with him … Except that he is bald, pot bellied & lascivious & resembles a high official in a government department in one of Tchekhov’s stories one can see little attraction in his appearance! His intellect seems almost entirely to consist of economics and stocks and shares, & his long accounts of his successes in diplomatic & political circles. She can talk of nothing else but the Russian ballet & Sir Oswald Stoll!fn157 Yet they are enchanted by each other’s company and in spite of the cynicism of Bloomsbury spend all day … perhaps discussing Sir Oswald Stoll. Perhaps the revision of the peace treaty … at the moment lying upstairs together … in connubial bliss?
The question is whether Maynard is so far gone and disssolved that he will have to marry her or whether he will be able to avoid it. His more intimate friends in Gordon Square are considerably agitated as she is without all higher conversation, very boring to talk to after a little & quite insensible to any atmosphere of hostility.
However I can’t see that it matters if Maynard doesn’t find her limitations boring. And if he can’t disentangle himself from her to see his friends alone he can hardly be worth saving […] I think women of real intelligence are as rare as Hoopoes or Hoopoos in England, so that it is better for them to be lovely & charming in character than boney-faced, vulgar & half intelligent as Inez Fergusson & young Cambridge ladies. Lunch is over, the lord has sent me as a special present … The Fiend.
So now I really am provided with an excellent excuse for any dull wittedness. I hope we shall hear from you soon.
Please now let us write every week to each other. There are some things I like to be even methodical about, & one is a regular letter from you every week. Lytton has a new German philosopher in the house. Perhaps he would suit you. He is very crushing, & gives no hope, or false promises. I like what Lytton has read to me because he supports my Hume. That there is NO cause & effect. And there is no reason unless one is superstitious to believe the sun will rise the next day. Yes, I will send you this new philosopher. He was once at Cambridge, & Bertie thought he was so great, even in his youth that he went down on his knees & adored him. In the war this philosopher fought for Germany & was captured, imprisoned in Italy where he wrote this book I speak of. – He has now retired to a mountain & forsaken the world.fn158
Ralph has been
so friendly to me lately. Really it is not true that we are not such good friends. I think we are better. But you must write often to prove to me you are also my friend […]
Last night at dinner Maynard entertained us with a whole bag of conjuring tricks. Lydia shrieked with laughter. It was just what she loved. False eyes, & teeth & a plate which jumps mysteriously on the table is happiness to her. After dinner we played cards till bed time.
Today I am still rather crotchety. So I am browsing over the fire thinking of you. Last night I dreamt I met Valentine & Bonamy. I turned as I left the room & said I thought with extreme cleverness ‘I hope I shall never see either of your hideous faces again!’ I was enraged this morning that I had not been really sarcastic …
I can’t help minding a little that Christmas brought no letter from you. Please write to us soon. You can’t think suddenly how happy I have grown now that there is no more enmity between Ralph & you.fn159 I think Barbara is almost too stupid. I tell you this as a slight warning. Her indiscretion appears some times … and much as I love her irritates me. I think her denseness makes it rather difficult to reach any higher planes of friendship with her. Yet she is so charming inside one hardly notices it generally.
It is Wednesday. And Maynard & Lydia have just left us. Lytton lies exhausted in his chair after the strain of so much weighty conversation with Maynard. I painted Lydia yesterday and today. Damn but it wasn’t what I meant to do of her. That’s so awful when conflicting ideas crowd into one’s head. The model is before me, one must paint, one throws away the first & chases the second. I meant to do a very large head side view boldly like a Matisse almost, against a black background painted extremely quickly & simplified with no modelling, I did instead a rather spottist painting of her in a Chinese dress, rather elaborate & down to her knees. But she has promised to come again & stay with us & sit for me. I liked her very much in the end. She is exactly like a little girl in War and Peace, I forget her name – so excitable & young, always happy & absurdly serious listening to old Maynard holding forth on stocks & shares. She is a year older than I am. But she looks only 20 …
Carrington's Letters Page 26