Carrington's Letters

by Dora Carrington

  You are very dear to me. Bless you.

  Your Princess Doric

  To Gerald Brenan

  The Mill House

  Sunday, 23 March 1924

  […] Do you know if I was very rich, I should send telegrams. How fascinating it would be to interchange telegrams with you every few hours from Paris.

  Gerald, I am so happy at the thought of you coming back to England that in spite of a certain unease that Lytton’s illness gives me, inside, I lead a very happy life. It is alright about Lyme Regis. This elder sister has definitely promised to go with him, so I shall not be involved. Promise you shall send me a wire from Paris telling me when you arrive at Victoria?

  Last Tuesday we went to Ham Spray House for a sale of relics. You never saw such objects. It was a fit subject for Virginia’s pen. ‘Ladies Shooting Boots’ went for 2/-. Terrible bamboo furniture, little rockeries of ornaments, faded photographs of young ladies, a Turkish Bat made of india rubber, all these cast off objects were strewn on the lawn in small groups and sold by auction. Everyone pointed us out ‘that’s Major Partridge and his wife, who have bought the property’. I suddenly felt as if we were appearing in the first chapter of a novel by Morgan [E. M. Forster] […] and they all saw us. I can’t think what they thought. They little knew we were poorest of the company probably.

  I’ve bought a few things very cheap. But most of the things were too horrible, ‘gimcrack’ to use my father’s favourite word.

  I am terribly excited over the house!

  I was a thousand times right to insist on them buying it. Already I’ve invested it with a special beauty. The rooms, the arches, passage, have a very definite English character. The garden is romantic and yet very gay with huge bushes of lavender and red hot pokers.

  You must be very enthusiastic or I shall be miserable. I know I shall want to show it to you before anything else. Perhaps you will help me paint the inside. I have chosen the colours for the rooms. I shall consult you about a great many things. And I am going to grow the most exquisite flowers […]

  Gerald had decided to leave Yegen for the time being and return to England, where he intended to write a book about St Teresa of Avila and win Carrington. She met him at Victoria Station and spent the night with him at a hotel. After this promising reunion, she was to prove once again that she did not like to be pressured, especially over sex. Moreover Ralph had made it plain that he did not wish to share Carrington sexually with Gerald, as her needs were minimal while his were strong. He continued to supervise her correspondence.

  To Gerald Brenan

  The Mill House

  Thursday, 3 April 1924

  Dear, I simply can’t tell you how happy you made me yesterday, I am only sorry I was so agitated and rather tiresome over the telephoning.

  But that was not our fault. It didn’t really matter. I only feared this morning, in the cold light of the Belgravia Hotel, you might think I was rather boring with my perpetual telephones!! Ralph quite understood, and didn’t mind of course in the least. The truth was, I was rather tired and exhausted. I only saw, and felt, when I met you, how very much I had been looking forward to yesterday. It made me so happy, that really I minded nothing, not even the post office, or the Belgravia Hotel.

  How very fond I am of you.

  This morning I looked at all our treasures. I love my white shawl. You will see this summer how beautiful I will look in it, for you. I will see a little figure walking down in Inkpen Beacon; I will then rush into the house, and in a moment, a Botticelli nymph, in a flowered shawl will fly across hedges and dew ponds and treading softly on gentians will meet you […] Do you know you were very charming, and looked, to me, beautiful.

  […] I could write to you all day. xxxx Don’t for mercy’s and Miss Moffat’s sake write back anything that my mother couldn’t read! You are too kind, too kind, she murmured.

  PS Oh happy I am! xxxxxxx

  […] Cirod

  Instead of the regular meetings he longed for, they decided on an exchange of long ‘diary’ letters about their daily doings and their past lives. Gerald wrote at inordinate length; Carrington’s attempt to write the story of her life stopped when she was six.fn5

  To Gerald Brenan

  The Mill House

  Saturday, 3 May 1924

  I haven’t finished your diary yet. I’ve only read one third of it. I read it slowly because I shall have to give it you back I suppose and I would like to remember it. I read your letter, it depressed me.fn6

  You know I do a great many things, and say a great many things, for your ‘good’. I know this will drive you mad. I can’t help it. I believe in many things I am wiser than you. I am more conversant with this world. I know more than you do, the impossibility for some things. For these reasons I am sometimes, what you term ‘a governess’ but I can’t help it. And you make it harder by protesting.

  Do you know I really think I shall be glad when we grow up, and become too old to be tormented by these passions, and emotions!

  There! That will encourage you. But I feel it today. Here is a perfect world. Birds that sing for our delight, veal and ham pies, and rare yellow wine, for lunch. Fields of cowslips and primrose, tulips in the border, magnolia trees. Shelley and Keats on the bookshelves. Volumes of learning, and atlases to prevent our ever becoming bored, music in London. Pictures in galleries, lovely creatures in the lanes, and streets. Exquisite painted plates on the dresser, and yet in spite in all of these everyday beauties, we torment each other, so that everything is useless […]

  But do you know I fail to do almost everything I mean to do. I mean to write you very well thought out letters. Telling you what you would like to read, and what would further our intimacy. But I never do. I simply ramble like a rambler rose all over the fence, vaguely without point […] Now everything is put off to Ham Spray. Life will begin there. But perhaps it’s just a new cage I am walking into, a new maze of box hedges from which I shall never find the way out.

  I can’t ever decide really when I am face to face with decisions. I find it easy enough lying in bed early in the morning to plan out wisely my day. But then the mere sight of a thousand dandelions may determine me to make a brew of dandelion wine, or a letter from you may make me write verbosities in the attic all the morning, or an argument with Ralph may make me lie in an arm chair in front of the fire.

  I would like you to be outside my confusions. I would like to come to you, as a ship into a new harbour, without unloading my perpetual freightage […] You happened to meet me too late. My life was more or less fixed. We must recover from the irony of that, and evolve a new and extraordinary friendship from our limitations […]

  Do you know, I think I would rather you came the weekend after this – all my reasons? – a) I don’t think if you are feeling depressed you will enjoy helping paint walls. And you will be angry with me for wanting to paint. b) the weekend after this H [Henrietta] will be coming, and I would like you to see her. c) I shall be now coming to London on Tuesday. So the gap next week will be less than if we see each other this weekend and Tuesday. And then a long interval. d) I am rather depressed. Paraqua? I don’t know. I think the weather is enervating. And I don’t feel very lively. e) Lytton is going away the weekend after this. f) I really don’t know what is in my head, so decide whatever you like. I’ve been trying to pack up things preparatory to moving, which I think may be any day now. I mean in a few weeks, say 2 weeks. I’ve been tying up canvases. The sight of all my old pictures depressed me. What a useless artist I am!

  Then I went and had a cold bath, and lay in the hot sun without my clothes. Now I feel limper than I did this morning and even more empty headed […]

  H has never written to me since I last saw her on Sunday. So I now imagine everybody has turned against me because I am such a detestable character, and I have even turned against myself! Lytton still writes under the rose tree, as if nothing was happening […]

  The air is heavy with the smell of elderflow
ers, how ridiculous one is! What does it all matter … I love you very much, or I wouldn’t write to you as I do.

  Bless you. Very dear.

  Your Cirod

  After her return to London to continue her ‘treatment’ wth Ernest Jones, Henrietta Bingham proved her sexual versatility by having other affairs with both sexes as well as with Carrington, who now discovered what it was like to be in pursuit of an elusive lover. To Lytton and Ralph, both of whom disliked Henrietta, she played down her feelings. Gerald she tried to reassure.

  At the same time as prepraring to leave Tidmarsh, Carrington was redecorating Ham Spray. Ralph and Frances helped her, as did Henrietta and other friends.

  To Gerald Brenan

  [The Mill House]

  Friday morning, 10 o’ck, 13 June 1924

  I want a superlative of Amigo mio. I wish I could conjure up one word to tell you how much I care.

  Dear. And now I would write no more. Do you see that in ‘dear’ I say all I can […]

  I remember nothing of yesterday morning. I believe you spent it with me. I only remember a dark hall, and the shutting of a door. I woke up and found myself in a barber’s shop with a female hairdresser washing my hair with a strange smelling verbena hair wash. Alix didn’t notice my hair, but Henrietta did! […]

  Then I rushed off to Knightsbridge to Henrietta’s secret house. A house which nobody knew of except us. She had taken it for her friend who arrives tomorrow. But not a soul knew of it. We had a lovely tea in the kitchen, of biscuits and garlic sausage and tea with lemon. Then she drove me across the park to Paddington. It is nice of you to be pleased because I am happy. I hope you will meet her soon. Perhaps it’s all a delusion, she may of course be quite uninteresting inside. I hardly ever speak to her. We are the most silent of friends! But I feel sure she is very like her early Italian exterior. She also has a goodness that is unusual.

  […] Do you know James saw you and Frances at Wembley? Alix said ‘is that an affair now?’ James said ‘no, I am sure it is not, from their backs, as they got out of the train I saw it was no affair’fn7 […]

  Bless you, most dear amigo.

  Your princess of Georgia. Cirod

  To Gerald Brenan

  Sunday morning, 22 June 1924

  Dearest amigo, xxxxxxxxxxx –

  I have had hardly any time to write to you. But I remember everything. You mustn’t think I don’t realize how good you are to me. I do see it. And then I behave badly. I get carried away by Kentucky Princesses who after all compared to my Amigo are not worth one half minute’s thought […]

  Write me a long letter please. I am never quite certain of your affections, so the slightest silence on your side can always make me feel you have turned against me. I wish I could write a long letter. But we are starting for Ham Spray in 5 mins. My head is full of images, so strange and exciting I can hardly believe they are real. I shall be more controlled and less thoughtless the next time we meet. I love you so much dearest Gerald. Remember nothing you do can ever offend me and I forgive you for any of your vaguenesses long before you have committed them. My dear dear amigo bless you.

  Yr Cirod

  To Gerald Brenan

  Monday afternoon, 23 June 1924

  Amigo Mio, it’s such a beautiful day here, a hot sun and the sound of hay cutting machines on every side coming over the brick garden wall … I am afraid this last week I simply can’t come up to London. I haven’t enough money, I want to make before I leave Tidmarsh a painting of the Roman Bath. So now it is at last hot, I shall start my days of painting out doors. I have just been bathing in the deep green waters under the elder bushes, it was so cool, and dark after the glaring sun […]

  All yesterday we spent at Ham Spray. Henrietta came down with Tommyfn8 to lunch, and helped paint the walls all the afternoon. After tea we all went for a long walk to the top of the Downs. And H and I went far across ploughed fields, through a little cornfield plantation until we came on to ‘Shepherds Down’ and far away in the distance the Downs of Tidmarsh.

  She won me by being completely captivated by my Downs. I long for you to know her. I can hardly bear to care so much for anyone that you do not know also! She dresses badly, talks American, and has a hundred faults but somehow they don’t matter, she is so beautiful, and so charmingly sensitive.

  Sebastian Sprott and a Mr Ritchiefn9 spent last week end here with us, and both came over to Ham Spray.

  I am painting my bedroom pure white, as I like the effect that one gets in Italian and Spanish inns of cold cleanness. Henrietta was a wonderful painter of walls. Far better than I was to my surprise!

  I have never seen the garden quite so exquisite, the rose trees were covered with flowers. Red hot pokers, moss in the bull rushes and many new flowers were in bloom. But nothing equalled the loveliness of those Downs, with the skylarks rising and falling in the air, singing their high transparent songs. I would like to know that you will sometime this summer either live near us or in the remote end of the house […]

  Please Gerald, remember that even if I am dstracted by Kentucky Princesses that you have only to murmur in the quietest whisper your reproaches and I forget them all for you … You do not know how much I love your rooms. How I enjoyed our evenings together, and those most delicious meals of grapefruit, honey and coffee. I think I love those rooms in a way that I have seldom loved London’s rooms before. I feel they are, in part, mine.

  Please write me a long letter tomorrow Tuesday. And post it early so that I may get it on Wednesday morning.

  I think of you so often. Do you know that?

  This is a dull letter, but I am rather exhausted by the agitation of yesterday, the continual conversation, too much sherry, too much sun today and the coldness of the dark green water.

  My love. Your princess

  Your Cirod

  Carrington’s infatuation with Henrietta and the difficulties of finding time to spend with Gerald intensified. She had found sex with Henrietta a revelation, and was more reluctant than ever to spend the night with him.

  To Gerald Brenan

  The Mill House

  Friday morning, 25 July 1924

  I would rather know you didn’t come because you didn’t care for me, than you were prevented because you hadn’t enough money. The fare is 10/3 return weekend. But I am glad at any rate you have told me you were poor. I should not have taken your present. The little right I had to ask you to do anything to please me vanished last Wednesday. So I shall not ask you to come again. I am only sorry I wrote those plaintive and rather unnecessary letters. You had much better conduct your life in future without considering me. I agree with you entirely. I am impossible. I say this in no particular mood of deprecation, but the result of a week’s thinking alone. The solution to all my difficulties lies upstairs in my studio. Henrietta repays my affection almost as negatively as you find I do yours. In the end I think you will find St. Teresa your best and most faithful mistress. I feel rather tired and dispirited and perhaps I shall not write for a little. Bless you. I love you.

  Yr Cirod

  Gerald had recently written to Carrington: ‘I do not understand the possessive instinct … it is part of my philosophy that love is free and unrestricted and is increased by being divided.’ But he felt very differently when Carrington wrote that she was coming to London but would not be able to see him. He replied: ‘Do you really think to behave like this is nothing? […] If I could make you unhappy I would; I should be dishonest if I pretend to any good wishes or gratitude. I simply see in you an object which (for motives I don’t understand) causes me the most elaborate suffering.’

  By the end of July, Carrington, Ralph and Lytton had moved in to Ham Spray.

  Gerald had decided to leave London and to try to break with Carrington.

  To Gerald Brenan

  Ham Spray House, Hungerford

  Wednesday [6 August 1924]

  Amigo Mio,

  […] I find it difficult to give up at a moment’
s notice, my affection for you. I think too much about you. I can’t tell you as I have a horror of writing to you, if you are in another mood. On Monday morning Ralph found me crying at breakfast alone. He was very sympathetic. But I couldn’t bear to talk about you at the moment, so I said I would talk about it later. Yesterday I saw from something he said about you, he hadn’t in the least grasped what I was unhappy about and really had quite forgotten about it. This morning he said, ‘We must have missed one of Gerald’s letters. He never said anything to me about giving back the keys.’ Then I saw it was too late. I couldn’t tell Ralph about your letter. It would mean endless conversations about you and our relations and then on Thursday Frances would hear it all and I should be treated ‘sympathetically’ by Ralph. So I said nothing. Now I shall never say anything. I don’t really suppose Ralph will notice until a few months have elapsed that we aren’t writing to each other! I prefer really to think of you alone inside myself, than to have you discussed, even with Ralph. His relationships are so easy, he never finds Frances lacking in any quality. He can’t understand our difficulties and if he does he simply thinks either you are mad, or that I deserve what I get because I behave so badly.

  Henrietta came on Monday night with Mina and picked Tommy up, and carried him back to London. It was such a confusion I hardly had time to speak to her alone. She goes to Scotland for a month now and is engulfed in her father and brothers. So it’s better to get her out of my head.

  I am glad I knew her, as I did know her. It was an experience and I feel I have known the strange possibilities that some women are capable of. Alix was the only other woman who ever surpassed H in a peculiar variety of magical charm. I think Dorelia has it, but then I never felt it myself, for I never knew her. Lytton is still in Brittany but I hope he will come back soon, perhaps the end of this week […]

  On last Tuesday evening Ralph and I made a compact that we wouldn’t quarrel, or argue, again. And that if we did the person who first made the quarrel be to blame. This was because we both became instantaneously bored and disgusted by our habits of wrangling.