I know it must have, I can almost hear squelch of one’s gumboots as you imparted this odd bit of information. And the certain conviction, in my mind, that one had to get away from that dread place at all costs.
As for the Hen, I don’t think she was much of a noter of anything until much older-and, by then, was fairly free of the Revereds. I mean she never specially wanted to do anything except what was there to be done, rather adored the daily life at Swinbrook. When things came up such as fainting dead away on the flagstones on acct. of Woman’s engagement to Derek, that was more or less from outside causes (such as being in love with D) rather than from inner, don’t you think?
After the Revereds became Nazis, Swinbrook life became even more intolerable; but by then, you had more or less left. Again, no effect on the Hen; don’t you remember Mrs Phelps3 saying she was perfectly happy picking fleas off Jacob? Or ticks out of? Which is quite an oversimplification of that complex Hen’s character, but nevertheless a telling observation, in its way.
When one thinks of all the things Muv told about her extraorder childhood, being in charge of Grandfather’s household & political campaigns etc, one can dimly see how her naturally bossy nature got more so, given that unnaturally free rein from age 14.
Oh dear I still haven’t read M. McCarthy’s novel, in spite of the fact it’s the only new book I crave to read. The fact is I don’t read anything any more except PRISON stuff, on acct. of me being a CRUSADER. Yes, Susan.
I am cheering for your continued recovery,
Much love Susan
Darling Debo:
Naunce wants enclosed back-but gave me the option of showing it to you. Please send it to Naunce.
I had a talk with her about Muv before I left & I suppose she then wrote to Decca & got this letter back. She (Naunce) was speaking of a proposed autobiography which was by way of starting in 1945, & then I imagine she saw there wasn’t enough to fill a book (descrips of silly old Dolly etc & none of the inwardness of her relations with Colonel, naturally) so she harks back to Muv & her supposed wickednesses. It is all a great bore. Decca & Naunce are a couple of bitter old creatures who can’t forgive life for being so cruel & look for a scapegoat & find it in-Muv! Really rather rubbish. When I was 16, I begged to be allowed to learn German & was furiously refused permission. But I learnt it later on & it has been one of my greatest joys. I don’t ‘resent’ not having learnt it sooner. Of course to be a scientist one wd have to begin as a child I suppose with mathematics-though if Decca had really wanted to be a scientist she could have ‘gone on’ at Muv & I bet you finally she wd have got her way. It all sounds so romantic & ‘clever’ but when one looks back it simply wasn’t like that.
I had such a strange talk with Naunce, about Mrs Ham & her sons. I said Mrs Ham worried so dreadfully over them being poor, & that really what wrecked their lives was that both married such dud wives, so Naunce ‘Yes, but it was because they were poor they made bad marriages’ (bad is so meaningless, they chose hopeless people) & I said ‘But what about us? We were poor, but some of us married rich & some poor people’ & that partly silenced her clamour. It’s like Decca’s mother-in-law saying one must know rich people in order to meet other rich people. Naunce is NOT a vulgar half-wit but she sometimes pretends to be one.
It is rather telling that when considering writing about Muv she should turn to Decca. Bother everything.
Well darling it was RICH seeing you & knowing you are in the same country.
All love, Honks
Lady
Tea. If you give Wife Earl Grey large tears will fall into it. It wd be like giving water to a whisky drinker. She likes thickest Indian, army style.
Now Lady, yr memories of the Oldsters & Henderson. Remember how incredibly uncivilised teen aged girls are, that’s one thing. To go on with, I was as one with me old Hen until she turned bloody minded-really till she buggered I suppose. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she had conjured up something in her imagination re Burford Grammar School, like Muv being X with you for not marrying. I’m quite sure I should have known if she’d done that, she couldn’t not have told me at that stage of our lives.
Swinbrook was sold when I was 15 and it broke my heart. I can absolutely remember the last rides through the woods, and the dread sorrow of it all. Nothing has ever taken its place & nothing ever will. The other terrible thing that happened when I was a child was the two nights in that school at Oxford. Muv saw that, & took me away thank God. I don’t know what I should have done if I had been left there.
Those two things were worse than anything that has happened since, the loss of three babies, my four greatest friends being killed in the war-nothing has saddened me like the going from Swinbrook. So the poor parents seem to have messed things up all along the line.
Hen seems to have forgotten the lengths Muv went to to try & cheer her up when she turned so sour, she’s perhaps forgotten the terrific thing of the round the world journey she & Muv & me & the Brett girl1 were about to embark on when she left us all in the lurch without a word. Poor Muv, she had Farve to contend with as well-it’s a wonder she survived.
I note Hen says she was bossy. That’s odd-it’s not my idea of her at all-cold, possibly, distant, vague, but not bossy, that’s how I would have described Bridget Airlie & many others, but not Muv.
Is Hen crusading for letting all murderers out of prison? I do wonder.
Tomorrow is Duncan Grant & Honks. Ann Fleming is coming as Adjudicator.
Last night Jakie2 took me to a Reading of Yeats, all by one man. He never stopped talking for 2½ hours. Give me the W. I. where the actors say Pardon? to the prompter.
Much love, 9
Dereling
We went to the motor races yesterday, with Micky,1 it was a boiling day. Max raced in a sort of semi-joke race but I could hardly bear to watch. Then we had a picnic & then there was the big race & the roar is unbelievably loud. All of a sudden, from out of sight beyond a lovely golden wood, one saw a plume of black smoke, & then silence. The race had been stopped. All the cars were invisible to us, other side of the hill. No announcement made for ages; finally the man said an accident, & the race not to be finished. Then Max came & told us Siffert2 was dead. It was so dreadful, & unbearable. Huge crowd on pleasure bent, perfect day, & this horrible death. Max very sad because he knew him well. We just went away, couldn’t think of the other silly races. We were to dine at the [Edward] Rices & as we were very early went to see Canterbury cathedral.
The Rices said ‘The old ladies of Eastry are coming to dinner’ & who should appear but Patricia Russell3 & a Hungarian lady she lives with. You can just imagine how amusing, her impressions of Asthall, she said ‘I’ve known you for 50 years’. About Uncle Jack she said ‘Didn’t I have a lucky escape?’ Then we talked of Bobo & Tom & you, she sent you best love. She told me one interesting thing: Bobo told her & Jimmy Erdödy that she wd kill herself if Germany & England went to war. They said ‘What with?’ & she produced her little pistol. Jimmy, who knew all about firearms, said: It won’t kill you. And proceeded to tell her what she must do (I couldn’t ask what it was-there were such a lot of people moving about & so our talk was semi-overheard). They didn’t try to dissuade her, which wd have been useless, but tried to make her do it more efficiently.
Altogether yesterday was battering & harrowing-yet I was pleased to see Pat Russell. She says I am Farve to look at-can’t quite see it myself.
All love dereling, D
Get on
Your Memoirs From ’45. I suppose it will be Got Up, Dressed, Went Out, Came In, Had Lunch-I can’t see you enlarging on your Love Life and so what will you say. Can’t wait …
Much love, 9
I’m afraid Duncan Grant has got a bit old all of a sudden (88). He faithfully came to lunch & he & Honks had quite a good jaw. He says he’s plagued by American students asking about all his erstwhile mates who have become so fashionable. He is the absolute nicest man in the world I think.
De
ar Miss
I see I’m on the verge of being scolded (holier than thou is beginning to raise its hackles). I repeat & can’t repeat too often that all sisters will receive copies of the book & will have the right of veto. If one writes an autobiography it’s not enough, as so many people seem to suppose, to tell how many housemaids one’s father employed-one must UNMASK oneself. Roughly speaking I shall say what an unsatisfactory relationship I had with Muv, to explain my love for old ladies: Aunt Vi1 (Peter’s), Mrs H[ammersley], Mme Costa, & others. I would like vaguely to try & find out if this relationship, shared with Decca & Honks, but not with you & Tom, was one’s fault or hers. The others loved her in old age: I deeply respected her & liked her company & jokes but never loved her. Owing to your right of veto I shan’t mind asking questions & shan’t leave things out for fear of annoying, which might not annoy at all. That was Decca’s great mistake in my view. I might make each of you write a review of Decca’s book. Incidentally my book will begin in 1945 when I came here with flashbacks at the death of Boud, Muv & Farve. I won’t bore the public again with our childhood to the extent of more than a few pages. Never thought of Muv as bossy far too vague.
Now pack up your Church Army uniform & keep in close touch.
Fond love, N
Wooms is here but for such a short time but it’s so dull I can’t urge her to stay a few days.
Do you realize that envelopes are soon to be very valuable, you should keep a few as a dowry for Celina.2
Get on
I CAN’t WAIT for LADY UNMASKED. All what I’ve never dared ask you-and it’s the ONLY thing people are interested in, love-life to the last. Are we going to get POSITIONS, & will Lord Longford1 like what’s coming? Oh Dame, the thrill of it. I may take off my Church Army uniform for a quick read of it behind locked doors.
I’ve written something. A brill piece for The British Goat Society’s Year Book. Do be impressed.
I usually keep Valuable Envelopes if the letters are two page affairs, like yours of yesterday with the unmasking news. Otherwise I’d pity the monkey’s orphan* who would have to put the thing together.
If Woman really takes up residence here from Xmas shall I let her have all Muv’s letters etc to ponder over, & do you think there might be some things which might make her sad, I mean refs to her, one never knows. There’s a lot of stuff.
Well lady get on with the Dance of the 7 Veils, the thrill of the Century.
Much love, 9
*Brill person of about the year 2000 who will make a thrilling, silly book on the Last Correspondence Between People using Pen & Paper.
Darling Soo
How lovely it would be if you came but I shall send a list of strikes I mind-viz. I hate a postal strike & snap my fingers at a plastic bag one (scented for sanitary towels).
I’ve got two doctors I comfortably believe in so the awful struggle against drs is over. The English pen pal & a French one here in Versailles. They write to each other because the English one knows French. Froggie’s new pills are labelled very large contre sénilité & I’ve even forgiven that. He is such a dear. He clasped his hands yesterday &5 said ‘Comme je voudrais vous aider’1 which I have never felt was true before. He has written to the Eng. surgeon to ask why he operated-I said for £200 I imagine & doc (dark) was shocked (sharked). He thinks that may be the clue to all. Meanwhile I take 6 pills at every meal, what would Muv say? I’ve become reckless. And I’m bound to say the pain doesn’t compare with what I’ve had but I’m as senile as can be, no hope of beginning souvenirs. I’m going to make the others review your book for it & you can review it if you like but, as it’s ’45 onwards, you hardly come in alas. Woman is grumbling already at the hard work entailed. It ought to give your Hons a boost. I can’t wait to start, I’m already sharpening up in every direction.
Yr letter about Muv. As Honks said it is probably we who changed & not her, there’s nothing so awful as teen aged girls. We none of us, Debo, Honks, me, see her as bossy-too vague. Didn’t know about scientific interests-yours-one thought of them as literary. Susan you might have invented the Bomb what a wild tease-still there’s always the Mitford2 to help poor suffering mankind.
People don’t know much about Arabs I’ve discovered since living (!) with Hassan. His adorable qualities & very harmless faults are all aristocratic, one can’t imagine that such as he could ever succeed in an industrial complex. Frightfully stupid exc. at his work-as much unlike old Marie as chalk from.
That’s all-keep in close touch N
Darling Susan,
Well I shrieked about the counter-senility pills, I wish I cld. lay hands on a few, just what I need about now. Otherwise the medical news sounds so incomparably better, with two trusted Drs. in the act, and pain receding.
I agree bossy isn’t the word: more, implacably disapproving and thus arbitrarily disallowing anything one craved to do. (I mean she didn’t make one do things, which was too often the fate of other wretched children in those days-being forced to eat food one loathed, or Susan in the case of one I know having one’s BOWEL MOVEMENTS EXAMINED by the gov. each morn.) While the Hen may not have noted this I bet Diana did, having been on receiving end of said disapprovingness from at least age 14 to 18 & then again when the Divorce Courts were nigh! said Annie to Pam.
Alas, I agree with Diana that she prob. didn’t change, as people don’t, much, esp. after middle age; more likely we did. Or at least-and in my view this is more like it-the balance of power changed once one had fled the coop. So one met on totally different terms. I was much struck by this when she came to Oakland that time, about 1947 or 48 after what then seemed like aeons of time since I’d seen her. I was in a state of near terror about her visit. And then she tottered forth from the aeroplane (it was a v. rough trip, she was quite done for by it) and at once it became apparent she had come to make friends at all costs. Same thing when we went to Inch K. in 1955 etc. And I could see what an incredibly thin time she had had, on the whole, in life.
Do you remember the letter that Jim Lees-Milne wrote to The Times after she died?1 I thought it was marvellous (although it took me to task for falsifying), and if you haven’t got it I’ll send, if of any use, as I have kept it somewhere & cld. easily find it. All about how she had the soul of a mariner. All very well for J. Lees-Milne, thought I, but who wants to be brought up by a mariner? And, at that, a fairly ancient mariner by the time I came along. I think one trouble is that people sometimes get militantly nasty in middle age (oh dear, my age) and that’s the time of her life when I was growing up.
Of course I long for the sisterly reviews, but suppose I shan’t get same. So far, from those quarters I have received: 1) your letter when Hons & Rebs. came out, which I was extremely pleased & reassured to get but you sent it by Surface Mail and it didn’t come for six weeks, 2) total silence from the Hen, 3) a letter from Woman saying I was beastly about Uncle Tommy, 4) a furious letter from Diana in TimesLit. Supplement, also one in some issue of said Supplement from Mrs Ham. Susan, DO send the sisterly reviews. But I suppose Xerox has never been heard of in Versailles. (A Xerox strike is the one I shall never organize, as I depend on this amazing thing for all my PRISONS research.) Couldn’t that nice typist make a copy for me?
Another thing: I’ve kept an awful lot of your letters, & could sort out and have XEROXED if that would be any help? In terms of remembering times and things, I mean. Prob. not too much in ’45, as I don’t think we were writing much then. But if you want what I can find, do say.
Darling Sooze
How kind you are to say you will look out some letters-such a boring task. Later I’ll surely be grateful. I’m not well enough to start work as yet & in any case my scheme is to write down what I remember & then pad out or fill in from letters-or correct the most violent errors (unless they are funnier than the truth-oh I hope I shall be honest). The idea is to put what the others think of your book into mine, me as umpire. Yes disapproving is right, bossy wrong: Honky says the 10 years dividing us brou
ght many a change for the worse. Tom & his clever friends, I & my pretty ones, were dispersed. There was no longer a library where one could sit quite alone & read away from the Revereds, one sat under the nose of the male Revered. Perhaps you weren’t allowed to have people to stay? Our friends were certainly a great help specially all the Oxford ones.
What could Xerox be? A sort of anti-senility?
Oh dear I think people get nicer with age-I hope I have. But perhaps they need a stiff dose of Xerox. Must stop or weighage must take place such a bore for poor old Hassan.
Fond love, N
Dearest Hen
Many thanks for yours. Sorry I haven’t written for such ages-the usual wild rush & being first in one place & then another. The Lady is certainly a CASE. As you know she has been much better lately because Duckie1 has found a pill which has more or less dealt with the pain. It has side effects-dizziness, & dopiness by early evening-a nuisance but nothing compared with that foul pain.
I slightly dread the memoirs, but of course I’m all for her having something to do which amuses her. She promises any of us can veto anything we don’t like. I suppose if she goes for Muv & I say how foul she is she’ll start on the Holier Than Thou again. Oh well, time will show. She says she’s going to unmask herself. Hen the thrill of that, shall we be explained her love life at last, all what we’ve never dared ask, I can’t wait.
Well Hen I must close now. All the grandchildren are coming for Christmas, what a study it will be.
Much love, Yr Hen
Darling Honks
Woman & I went to a concert (one man singer/entertainer) for the hosp. for dying folk I told you about in Sheffield. She was wondair & wore her thickest tweed coat throughout & held the Master Cutler enthralled in the interval. She thought we were in Leicester, but it didn’t matter.
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