[…] I’ve never been so happy in my life as on our voyage. The Seagull was particularly charming and I may say that I am so badly gone on that boy that one ‘night’ sets me up for days afterwards. We had a lovely time in London last Friday evening: a cinema and sipping sherry in the little bed room at Gordon Square out of a tooth glass. Madame Penrose has had a stroke and is very ill so that Alec has become head of the family and is in a terrible state of fuss and agitation. Consequently wants to dominate Seagull and has been very tiresome. So there’s a very complicated family feud brewing up. Rather tedious. However it means the Seagull will be in London more often, which suits my interests […]
This weekend we have Dadie, Dorothy and Janie [Bussy]. Dadie in his highest high brow mood. ‘I don’t think I can agree. You find in Shakespeare’s sonnets …’ comes through the window, from Dadie on the verandah. ‘It is essential that the poet, as indeed all writers, should use words etc. etc.’ However the ladies are delighted and very impressed. Only one pussy cat on the sofa writes to another pussy cat and miaows!
‘There is a great deal of very serious moral idea in the poem as a whole etc.’
Please write me a letter with all your adventures. Nothing to be left out. I wish I wasn’t so mashed on this sea captain. I can hardly think of anything else and I can’t bear to make any plans in case I might see him […]
Falmouth was a fascinating town. But I don’t think quite your style. I have a notion the Devonshire and Cornwall inhabitants are not au fait with that taste. Is it possible? I didn’t see a single queerie. (‘Listen to this: “The expedition of my careless love outran the etc.” Then there is a very good commodity passage in King John. Listen to this …’ etc.)
All this at 11 o’ck in the morning and it’s been going on for 2 hours!
I loved your post card to Lytton. Now really I must dash off and compose a lunch. I love you so much, for being so sweet and listening to my tedious confidences but I love you also for better reasons for – but perhaps you will never know.
Your loving C xxx
To Julia Strachey
Ham Spray House
Wednesday [1930]
Darling Julia,
Do tell me how your chart progresses? and your general state of health? Dorelia told me that they paid you a visit last week and were very upset to find you away. They took several hours circling round the swallows nest like vultures, so were sad after going some 100 miles up and down narrow lanes, to find no prey. Do ask them to dinner, or tea, one day. Augustus would be delighted and Dorelia longs to taste your Wiltshire-renowned-pasties. We had Seagull with us last weekend so I feel rather flattened at the moment. High jinks may be alright for girls in their teens but old Harridans ought to be pushed by old sea salts in Bath-chairs on the sea front instead of being pushed – fill up at your pleasure. Lettice [Ramsey] has measles so will not come here this week. Secretly I am slightly relieved. Tiber is looking very lovely today and sits in pensive vein, staring into eternity. – puzzling out some obstruse problem by Whitehead […]
My love to T and very much to you
Your devoted Tante C
Lytton and Ralph are up in London so tomorrow I am going to do a day’s painting as my record is deplorable this year so far.
To Lytton Strachey
Back at Ham Spray House
Saturday, 2 o’ck, 9 August 1930
Darling Lytton,
I hope you had a peaceful journey. Now you are in the thick of horse shows, and Irish intrigues. I give you a month! Really there is nothing to tell you, as I’ve hardly done anything since you left. I painted 18 tiles. But will have to go back next week and do another 20 in order to finish […] I saw Gull on and off, fairly often. When I’m not with him I am quite immune but face to face I become like treacle! Ralph came and had tea with me over my tiles yesterday. He was very sweet. He thought letting Ham Spray to Penroses quite a good idea. I gathered Alec was very keen to have it. What do you think he had better pay? Last night I spent with James [Strachey], we saw a lovely film together and at last I’ve seen a Mickey Mouse. I thought it was almost a work of genius! We laughed tremendously (aloud!) over it […]
Puss is in very high spirits, delighted to see me again. Dodo has just rung up and asked me to Fryern, so after seeing my mother I shall go over there. My adorable oiseau Edwin is there! Ham Spray looks so peaceful and beautiful, with our white pigeons dancing a quadrille on the lawn.
The sky of course is grey with rain, so there’s really nothing to do but sit in doors, and admire the view. Now it’s crashing down. I hope Ireland doesn’t suffer from the same depression. Ralph has a secret: that Gerald is engaged to be married!! To an American lady authoress [Gamel Woolsey] that he met in the Powys world. But [it] is a deadly secret so you’re not to tell anyone! She sounds a little too ‘Lolly Willowes’fn54 but nobody has been allowed to see her yet!
Now I must go and wash my hair and start off again on my travels. It’s very sad to be here without you. To see so many lovely dahlias blooming unseen.
My fondest love
Your most loving Mopsa xxx
[…]
To Lytton Strachey
Ham Spray House
End of the year, December 31st, 1930
Darling Lytton,
I am ensconced in your snug library, as it’s so much warmer than downstairs. I hope you don’t mind. I am doing nothing but write letters. No chapatties on the floor! Oh, what a day to end a year. What a finale! The wind and rain lash the window panes, and it’s as cold as the north pole. I’ve had tremendous talks with Julia. Rather agitating, and very melancholy. But I suppose it’s impossible to alter the situation now. Yesterday we drove down to Southampton, and met the Seagull and old Macnamara and Witch Edie. We had tea and went to some lovely pubs. I had one amazing conversation with the Queen of the Horse and Groom. I wish I could draw her for you. […]
It’s a marvellous pub, with stuffed bears, canaries and a band that plays old fashioned tunes and gay barmaids who run about singing as they serve the sailors and Sebastians.
We went to another, a very different style, Edwardian, with a little old lady behind the bar and 1880 photographs of the war and ferns and flowers hanging from the ceiling. After dinner we went to the Musical Hall and saw George Robey and Marie Lloyd’s sister, Rosie Lloyd.fn55 She had some of Marie’s old tricks and songs. It was lovely sitting in a box and examining them very closely. I do love Music Halls.
As the lights of the car weren’t working very well, for some reason Julia and I stayed on Beakus’s ship. It was very romantic waking up in the shiny mahogany cabin this morning […]
I wish I wasn’t such a mass of mixed feelings. I feel absolutely exhausted now just by having felt so much, so intensely, these last 12 hours. Gull was rather gloomy and preoccupied, worrying over something I suppose, so was rather unapproachable. Although I know it’s absurd, I mind so much, (partly because I see him so little) if when I do see him, he isn’t happy. And yet really of course the whole thing is a chimera, a mirage of my own making. He is quite incapable of understanding my odd cravings and feelings about him.
Yet in spite of my miseries I would not have had anything different. Would you? For, one perfect evening seems to me, even in memory, to make days of gloom worth putting up with. But this letter is getting as involved as a mooncalf’s labyrinth. So I will stop. Olive, and Phyllis have gone out for the evenings, so I shall be able to eat chapatties on the floor. (Downstairs, not in your library) to my heart’s content tonight, with Tiber – ‘Lady into Cat.’ […]
My love to Pippa and you darling
Yr very fondest C
1931
Lytton’s health had always been delicate. During 1931, it began to get worse. Carrington was full of forebodings. In March, while helping Lytton organise his library, she wrote in her journal:
I thought of Sothebys and the book plates in some books I had looked at, when Lytton was bidding for a book and I thought: These books wi
ll one day be looked at by those gloomy faced booksellers and buyers. And suddenly a premonition of a day when these labels will no longer be in this library came over me. I longed to ask Lytton not to stick in any more.
Meanwhile she was making Gerald and Gamel a patchwork quilt as a wedding present.
To Gerald Brenan
Ham Spray House
29 March, 1931
Dearest amigo,
I fear I shall not be able to join in your nuptial celebrations (G: good heavens, but we forgot to invite her!) Yes, you forgot to ask me but unlike the fairy Gruffenough I will not blight your happy life with horrid spells. I will only stick two pins into your waxen effigy – can you guess where? – and quickly murmer a few mystic words over your (nearly finished now) patch quilt which will give you on certain nights when the moon is full strange dreams. Talking of which I had a very strange dream of you last night. Do you know although I suppose I think of you quite often – I dream very seldom – I sat on your knee because there was no room owing to the little branches of trees & people moving about at a sort of party out of doors, & you put your arm so tightly round my waist that I could hardly breathe & it was difficult to find breath to answer your questions. I woke up almost suffocated, & found my own arm pressing my lungs. So you would stifle me would you? […]
When will you come back to England? I’m afraid I’ve not heard of an hotel yet in Rome for you. I asked in vain. They all sounded so expensive. It is still terribly cold here. East winds, & gales. Did you reach Sicily? I hope you saw the corpses of dead aristocrats in the caves of Palermo.
I spent last week in London. Rather pleasant for a change from this wind swept wilderness. One evening Dodo took me to see Vivien dance at her dancing school. It was a marvellous world of jeune filles, exquisitely beautiful, half naked, dancing, & learning somersaults. I hope Gamel is keeping well. Please give her my love & accept some for yourself. Barbara & Nick arrived this weekend in their Baby Austin. But I will not say one word against them, such useful members of society … I will leave that to Ralph. I feel I have learnt a few golden rules of conduct all the same from Barbara. – God, strike me dead, if ever I discuss ‘Milky Puddings’ or ‘rheumatism & old age’.
I hope you are enjoying yourself in Italy. I must now go for a walk with Little Barbara although writing to you is so much more to my taste this afternoon.
My love
Yr loving amiga Cirod
To Lytton Strachey
Sans Pareil, Falmouth
12 May 1931
Darling Lytton,
[…] Falmouth looks so sympathetic in spite of the rain and mist. We sit in the harbour not very far from the Green Bank Hotel. George is cooking dinner in the galley and I sit over a little fire with a grey tabby cat. I hope it will be fine tomorrow. The old salt ‘William’ says it is going to be hot. Please tell Olive I shan’t be back on Thursday, and tell her you’ll let her know about the weekend if you haven’t decided before you go to London. I will go back Monday to Ham Spray to tell her. Could you possibly send me from the bottom drawer in my wardrobe a red silk dress, with a red belt and a black and green check silk blouse and from the bathroom cupboard a pair of pyjamas either blue or blue checked? It would be extremely kind of you if you could, as thinking we would only be away 3 or 4 days, I didn’t put in any clothes. Olive would pack them for you. I hope you’ll be very happy with puss and your fire. You’ve no idea how much I loved last weekend alone with you and our excursion to the forest of Savernake. I feel I’ve been rather dull lately darling but truth is ma Coeur etait craque – comme le dos, you told me about and I’ve been trying to rivet it together again, which was rather painful and I felt made me often self absorbed and tiresome. Your friendliness means more than I can ever express. Coming in the train (it was too shaky to read Proust all the way) I thought of you and how happy you made me by living at Ham Spray. I wish you were here to prowl up the little streets with although I confess tonight it’s hardly an evening for flanning.
Proust is fascinating, but the end of Charlus is almost too terrible. It has the appalling horror of Lear, in quite a different way. I wish I could write properly. The emotions and curious visions that come back to one sitting in this little cabin and seeing Falmouth again. It seems rather a waste often to have so much material and to be able to make nothing of it. Now I must go and show George how to make our fried bread and sugar sweet […] I hope you’ll have lovely weather for next weekend and enjoy yourself very much.
My very fondest love,
Yr most loving Mopsa
PS Don’t leave this for the abigails to read please!
To Rosamond Lehmann
Ham Spray House
Thursday [early June 1931]
Darling,
How very kind of you to write. It was a beautiful surprise this morning after a terrible night of thunderstorms, nightmares, and glooms. You couldn’t have been as disappointed as I was. I was really so savage, Wogan will tell you, I started cutting off the innocent heads of the verbena on the verandah with a kitchen knife.
Beakus is better this morning.fn56 So I feel it was probably worth while giving up London and staying here.
I suppose you wonder sometimes why I am so fond of him. It’s really very little to do with him actually, but because he is so like my brother who was killed. I couldn’t say this to anyone. Please don’t show my letter to Wogan, as I am awfully self conscious of being a romantic, and rather stupid. My brother was very silent and removed. I hardly ever was allowed to be intimate with him and I always put it off, thinking one day I’d be able to show him how much I cared and then it was too late. And partly because he wasn’t reported killed, it took me ages to ever believe consciously he was dead. I don’t know why I shouldn’t say this to you. Only you were so nice to write about your feelings and glooms. I don’t agree about your being ‘stuck’. I think Wogan puts almost too much emphasis on ‘movement’ and ‘adventure’. Well that’s not quite what I mean to say, really I think it’s NO good being anything but what you are and the great thing is never to do anything one doesn’t feel genuinely inside oneself. (This is Lytton’s creed, not my invention!) And actually one can be very tame inside in spite of all one’s dashing about. People like Sandy and Bryanfn57 aren’t truly progressive characters I am sure. James Strachey is more advanced, although he hardly ever budges from his gas fire. I think your writing is what is really important and if you found the house and domestic things hampered that, I would agree with you about it being bad for you. I always see Rebecca West when literary women are mentioned! I am sure really everyone has to find their adventure in different ways. Wogan clearly finds stimulation in parties and excitable people, but I don’t see why you shouldn’t get, in other directions, quite as intensely. I am sure you do. I pass over your cauliflower moan. It’s just the result of all your horrors and lying in bed. I am eight years older than you are darling, so if one’s going to start talking in the cabbage vein, you must condole with my later winter broccoli. Ralph is always blowing me up for not settling down to a purple sprouting old age and hates me going off to parties and boozing! – and holds up Beryl de Zoete as a warning! I will try and get hold of Brett. Perhaps she will be in England this year. She could, if she would, tell you far more about Katherine M[ansfield] than I could. Another person who could is Koteliansky and Gertler, but you’d have a job sifting the evidence.
I am so glad you liked the tulips. Yesterday Paul Crossfn58 and an aunt (?) (a dreadful old lady with a white nose – truly like a cauliflower and clothes that gave one the creeps. She was quite friendly, but so lacking in some quality of charm that is rather essential to spidery ladies of 56, if you understand) and Angus Wilson and another young man, came over after tea. Ham Spray was looking beautiful, untidy and dusty. I am afraid they were rather appalled. And then the old aunt said: ‘And you live here all alone Mrs Partridge, how romantic, and after we go you’ll go on weeding the garden? and you don’t mind the loneliness, No? of course n
ot, not with this view.’ I was half longing when I was showing them the mosaic that Beakus would appear in his pyjamas wandering to the W.C. Now I must go and see about lunch. I read Dr Moreau’s Island to Beakus all yesterday afternoon. Have you read Vita’s book? Very unoriginal I thought.fn59 James said Alix was getting on much better now and will soon be well. Lytton has asked T[ommy] and Julia for the weekend. I do hope they’ll be able to come. Your reproaches towards yourself for not writing more, make my cheeks burn with shame. For really I used every excuse not to do any proper painting. It’s partly I have such high standards that I can’t bear going on with pictures when I can see they are amateurish and dull. This is a tediously long letter darling and it was meant to be a bright ray of sunshine to cheer your invalid cell instead of which it’s as heavy as suet pudding. I am sorry. I’ll ring Wogan up tomorrow. All my love darling.
Yr very fondest loving C
Although Julia and Tommy’s marriage was in trouble, Carrington stayed close to them both. She hoped she and Tommy might work together on a ballet.
To Stephen Tomlin
Ham Spray House
Monday, July 1931
Dearest Tommy,
This is a very private letter and I shall MURDER you if you show anyone my scenario, or pictures. You must read Goblin Market to understand, I expect, the gist of my ballet –
Do you think
(a) There is anything in it?
(b) If there was would you combine with me over the dresses and masks, and scenery?
(c) If there isn’t any of (a) will you say so and say no more.
I am too impatient to draw it out nicely, also I’ve a terrible cold and a temperature so can’t concentrate. The dairymaids would be dressed in my favourite rustic china-figure-1840-style. You would have to make my masks and help with the inventions, please. I then thought, supposing you thought it possible, we might draw it out neatly, with colours, and ask Lydia [Lopokova] and Constant Lambert to give us a £100 and put it on stage. Or shall we ask Mr Cochran and get £100 and sink art and ambition?
Carrington's Letters Page 43