But beyond the parish boundary, the struggle continued.
In November 1947 Eric finally sued Phyllis for divorce on the grounds of her wartime desertion. This move interrupted her campaign of persecution. Eric’s father Otto, a distinguished teacher and linguist, had died in January 1947, and with the small amount of money Eric inherited he and Mary were able to buy a house with ten acres of land in Cornwall. They moved into the new house in the spring of 1948. The property, called Peakswater, stood three miles in from the coast at Lansallos, between Looe and Fowey. It had no electricity. In later years Mary remembered that she was happy there, learning to be a writer. In the late summer of 1948 Eric wrote to her frequently, from Chagford, where he had retired to write a novel.
Chagford – 8.8.48
Darling Mary,
I left [Peakswater] feeling sad and sore. Mrs L.fn7 said pointedly several times, ‘We’ll do anything for Mrs Siepmann’; and one of the boys said ‘are you leaving for good?’ …
All this is exaggerated, and my telling you of it in direct contradiction to my resolution … to write gaily and say nothing, and to wait six weeks by which time I shall have forgotten the stings of horseflies and tenants. But … in my present mood, I wouldn’t be prepared to live at Peakswater again without a guarantee of good will as well as good behaviour from the L’s … Alternatively … I should like to raise their rent, limit their gardening activities, or get them out … Why should I be upset and tormented by the stupidity of others? … I did not escape an office, to be pinpricked by bumpkins …
Chagford – 12.8.48
… I am happy here. I have polished Part I for the typist, which makes 30,000 words …
You have nothing to reproach yourself with, except choosing me. And the disadvantage of me is that work must come first, and that I came to it late so that I have more difficulty than others in concentrating. I promised you a life, and I shall be in a position to give it to you about 1951 …
We will be alright; but it may be a bit drastic for three years. Thank you for your faith in my talents …
Chagford – 17.8.48
Darling,
No letter from you today, which is a disgrace and fills me with anxiety. I am playing for Chagford at cricket tomorrow. (Their plea in inviting me was that the N.U.R. – National Union of Railwaymen – should be represented: an allusion to my blue trousers.) …
I am having my shirts patched with their tails, but there is nothing to patch my pyjamas with! Is the third pair, which I left at Peakswater, so torn that it would serve?
The cellist from the Hersch Quartet is at my table; so I am learning a lot about music. He agrees that Myra Hess is wonderful and Harriet Cohen awful. He says la Cohen plays everything slowly because she can’t play the piano.fn8
It has occurred to me that Jack McDougall, who took my first novel, will come in useful when it comes to making ‘an arrangement’. (I want £600 for three books … spread over the next year.) It would be logical to follow him from Chatto … The point about Jack McD is that he knows every character of whom I write; and knowing me might be easier to discuss terms with.
I reckon we’ll be £150 down by the time I sell my book (exactly your money from Carol for another year!).fn9
All my love,
E.
Chagford – 19.8.48
… I am going to the [Agricultural] Show with my cellist. I can’t tell you what it means to have an artist at my table. It makes me realise what specialists we all are. I have nothing in common with anyone else in the house. We listen to the Proms together, and he is helping me to enjoy Sibelius and even Dvorak – but I am doubtful about the latter. He (the cellist) was in the RAF and played at the Potsdam conference, and says the Russian back-slapping was sickening and that when Stalin came to dinner with Winston he brought his own guards six deep …
PK menace abated my foot. She is telephoning and writing to everybody saying that I’m ‘in prison again’, adding as a post-script to … my informant: ‘Are you by any chance coming to the Mental Health Congress?’!
Chagford – 22.8.48
Darling –
Yesterday was such a day of wind and rain that one could enjoy nothing … The days are now unbearably long, pending your arrival. But your visit has already had one desired effect, and I shall have finished Part II. (50,000 words altogether.) I have done 3 chapters in the last 4 days! …
The book on Dostoyevsky was crammed with interest, and you must read it. The story of how his young wife cured him of gambling, and of their married life generally brings the tears to one’s eyes. I am now reading I. Compton-Burnett with delight. I wonder if you will. It is a narrow but highly original vein which I find exquisitely funny and beautiful, but it isn’t easy to read. Nor am I sure that I want to read another …
I should like to be licked standing up, and then to have you on all fours from behind, and then to whip your bottom with a lash and then to lick you till you came in my mouth and then to fuck you till you came on my cock. Some portion of this programme, at least, we should be able to carry out!
All my love,
Eric
Chagford – 23.8.48
My dear Love,
You will find me with a red nose and bleary eyes and, which is worse, untouchable as I have caught a cold …
Allow me to add that my pyjamas are falling to pieces, and that if there are any coupons I might get some winter pyjamas at Gale’s? …
Chagford – 30.8.48
Darling –
… It was wonderful to have you and, if I fail to make you know how much I wanted and always want you, that was my failure and all I can say is that it was due to being tired and not to any lack of feeling!
You looked forlorn and even angry with your cup of tea, so please be gentle in your thoughts about me and forgive me for being difficult to live with. I really believe that I shall be better, as lover, husband and companion when I have achieved a little belated recognition …
I love you,
Eric
Chagford – 31.8.48 [postcard]
The old lady occupied the bathroom from 6.30am onwards and I have LEFT! … Your note very welcome, as you looked so angry on the platform.
All my love,
Eric
Eric moved from the Beverley Hotel in Chagford – where the other guests were making too much noise and monopolising the bathroom – to the Easton Court Hotel, a mile outside the village, which was used by many well-known writers. Patrick Balfour (Lord Kinross), a contemporary of Eric’s at Winchester and Oxford, had introduced Eric to Carolyn Cobb, the American owner, who gave writers preferential rates. During Eric’s stay, the hotel very nearly closed down when it was removed from a hotel guidebook. Mrs Cobb told her guests that she was on the verge of bankruptcy and so her many distinguished guests put their names to a publicity campaign.
Easton Court Hotel, Chagford – 31.8.48
Darling –
At first sight, this seems a very good move indeed. I have a room in a sort of shed, away from the hotel, a solid table and chair, AND the silence is complete …
I wrote you a long letter last night about your tears and my bloodiness and your terrible threat to fall out of love (with house or me?) …
Your note was a relief … I WILL make it all up to you. You’ve born [sic] all the brunt so far.
All my love,
Eric
Easton Court – 1.9.48
… It is in fact a very good hotel with at least six servants and no more guests than Beverley; and I have at the moment my wing to myself. I sit in a sort of glass cage, which gets all the sun, with a view of thatched roofs and a friendly hill covered with bracken and walls, and a gay flower garden and lawn. No one is tiresome …
Easton Court – 5.9.48
… I must say I am most comfortable and quiet … Moreover, in the singularity of wanting to be quiet, one is not alone. Apart from the Master of a Cambridge college, I have an ally in Elizabeth James, who has had on
e novel accepted and is now writing another … She has a scarred face, two Pekinese and declares that she loathes children, so that I took her for a frustrated spinster till I discovered … that her lover had arrived for the week-end! (She is the daughter of Lord St Germain whom you might have met in Cornwall?) …
All my love always to you –
Eric
PS Did you see the Su. Times photograph of Masaryk? He has Toby’s eyes so exactly that I wonder if you are quite sure what bed you were in?
Easton Court – 6.9.48
… After lunch
Elizabeth James’ boyfriend turns out to be Maurice Hastings, who looked like a guardsman at Oxford but was trying to become a parson. I remember discussing Christianity with him at luncheon. However he changed his mind and took as his Bride not the Church but an American heiress … [then] he took a large house near Oxford and sent Rolls-Royces to fetch Maurice Bowra & Co. out on Sundays … He is writing a book about Exeter Cathedral and calls E.J. ‘lovey’.
Interesting statistics: Alec Waugh works 5 hrs. a day and writes 2000 words. H.E. Bates works four hours a day, five days a week. Elizabeth James works three hours a day, and writes 1000 words. Eric Siepmann considers four hours a good day and writes 17,000 words every 4 weeks …
Darling, I must work …
Easton Court – 10.9.48
… I sat up till midnight reading Waugh’s The Loved One. Fashionable as ever, he succeeds in being as fashionably unpleasant as Sartre himself, without sacrificing his own nauseous style. Quite a technical feat.fn10 It is about an American Undertaker’s and Burial Ground and ‘cadavers’. The girl the hero falls in love with trims the corpse’s nails and hair.
Old Mr Baumerfn11 shows me his paintings. He and I are the only people in the hotel without a title …
Rather suicidal the last two days. I am LAZY, and neurasthenic. Also, I find we need £500 to last us six months, only! This book slump is the devil.
I need your encouragement and faith and joie-de-vivre. I do rejoice in life, when I think of you …
Easton Court – 12.9.48
… I am boiling with ideas like a dog with fleas; and I pray for stamina. I decided in the night to re-write my Balkan satire as The Fall of Budapest … I can do it in three weeks …
Was it Paul Hill … who sold two stolen Mosquitos and four Beaufighters [wartime RAF fighter-bombers] to a crook?! …
Glad to discover that other people are even worse than I am about noise. That sensitive flower Beverley Nichols found even this room too noisy – because of the crooning of the cockerels …
My memory of your body is vivid. And as for ‘feeling randy after five days’ … I found myself singing at the top of my voice as I swung down the lane the following entirely impromptu song …
Oh we went for a wonderful hunt
And we stopped and I showed him my cunt,
And he taught me a curious stunt,
And I came and I came and I came.
Then I reached down and opened his flies,
And it fell like a bird from the skies
As it stiffened and started to rise,
And I came and I came and I came.
Then I thought it was decent to pause,
So I put on shoes and my drawers,
When it rains it invariably pours
And I came and I came and I came.
… What about the [marriage] Licence?! I have two baths a day as a precaution …fn12
Easton Court – 16.9.48
… I am glad that my crude verses tipped you over; and I look forward to tipping you over myself. On the other hand when you refused to read Ulysses as an aphrodisiac you said: ‘All this lust isn’t love.’
Kindly let me know if you commit any infidelities in London, as I shall then purchase a whip and the choice will not be between love and lust, but between aphrodisiacs and sheer pain! …
Easton Court – 19.9.48
Darling,
This is written to the strains of Brahms’ violin concerto and my window looks out on a green lawn where Pebble is sitting in the sun, and I feel that I have much to be thankful for indeed.
This feeling is enhanced by the fact that tomorrow (having been consulted) I shall be alone in the Annexe with the corpse of the old American lady whom you met and who died here this morning. Mrs Cobb had brought her to the hotel these last days, and I believe that she is a kind woman …
How one ignores Death! Donne said (which I love): ‘We die, and yet we sleep!’ (I like the mild surprise.) I shall have an opportunity to think about it … Old Mr Baumer, the White Rabbit, lingered beside my table in the dining-room to discuss my methods and said: ‘Well, you’re lucky to want nothing more than your work and your walks.’ I was surprised, and I realised that my wants are, in fact, simple; as long as I have you. Then he added – and I am afraid he did not think that he was being irrelevant! – ‘You know, William de Morgan began writing his novels at sixty.’ He intended, I think, to be encouraging.
I think of you today, having packed much earlier than necessary, and everything neat. Am I wrong?
Your hips contain a mystery which I shall not weary of exploring, and I send you a sharp, if unwelcome, nip of your nipples.
All my love,
Eric
In September, Mary took the boys up to London. They all stayed with Carol at 12 Ovington Square, SW3. Toby was to join Roger as a boarder at Summerfields prep school in Oxford, a feeder school for Eton. Carol was meeting the fees. Mary was very upset that her younger child was leaving home.
Easton Court – 21.9.48
… Toby’s departure is indeed an ordeal … In other words it is a milestone, marking the passage of time; but you have everything to rejoice in, when one considers that you’ve brought Toby triumphantly to this point (the vital years, according to psychologists) an outstanding little boy – and that nowadays they enjoy school! So dry your tears, and hurry to my consoling arms.
Our conversation last night left me disturbed. I was (paradoxically) hurt that you should be ready to give up our home, as you were probably hurt when I was! – and it made me feel that I had failed to settle into and appreciate the home you’d made for me.
But today I feel that in present conditions we might be very happy here [in Chagford]. For one thing the only real home to me will be one bought by my own efforts – for you and the children. Not acquired by a windfall, in which you and Carol played the major part. That is a matter of pride, and does not mean that I am not grateful. Also I think running a place as remote as Peakswater is too tough …
As to affording it, we can’t afford my being here and we are well in the soup already … I reckon we are about £200 on the wrong side. I am going to ask £1000 for my three books; for which I shall probably be offered £150.
So I bought a bottle of champagne to buck you up and celebrate the last days of our (illusionary) prosperity …
Pebble has taken to waking me six times a night; perhaps he doesn’t like corpses. As for the madwomanfn13 she, too, gave me a bad night. But, what the hell …
Easton Court – 22.9.48
… Of course I never said in Chagford or anywhere else that ‘the boys drove me mad with their noise’! You might tell Carol, in case he believed it. I suspect Mr Coxfn14 – a grotesque oaf – as the remarks about looking for a room at home were so circumstantial. What the hell? Don’t let’s worry.
While you spoke to me last night she [Phyllis] rang up Mrs Cobb, who had had several drinks and a row with Major Ritchie (who demanded a postponement of the funeral because he is having his sale today) and who had a funeral on her hands. La P.K.S. was told that I’d left, and on asking rudely to know where I’d gone, I gather that she ran into an American tornado! Tant mieux; and, as usual, she climbed down when the Cobb turned tough …
Hurrah for having the children at Christmas! … I shall write letters to greet them on arrival at school …
Easton Court – 23.9.48
… I hope tha
t the arrival of the fateful day hasn’t been too much of a shock. I am sure Toby will be alright; he is so lucky to have Roger there, and he will love you more than ever in the ‘hols’!
I am ready for you, having eschewed thoughts of sex, smoking and drink as a sort of purification before you arrive (I will not have a hang-over this time) and having written a great deal, so that my novel will be finished in a fortnight …
All my love,
E.
In December 1948 Eric finished his novel, which was turned down by the Bodley Head and he became severely discouraged. He decided that he would have to get another office job but was worried about the possibility that Phyllis would resume her campaign if he did so. His doctor was concerned about his mental health and noted that Eric was in a state of acute worry and insomnia, the result of ‘the persecution he was suffering at the hands of his wife and his concern as to the effect it was having on his ability to earn a living’. Then in February 1949 Eric and Mary dined with Malcolm and Kitty Muggeridge and Muggeridge recommended Eric to the Sunday Times. Eric spoke good German, Spanish and French. Ian Fleming, the foreign manager, offered him the position of Berlin correspondent. This was a key post since the Berlin airlift was still in operation and many considered that Europe was once again on the brink of war. Eric took up his post in March and set off for Berlin. His first letter was written while he was en route and still in London. Mary, who had also finished a novel, replied from Peakswater where, during the school holidays, she was caring for two small boys and a number of dogs, pigs, geese, ducks and hens. After only a year the property was back on the market.
Authors’ Club
2, Whitehall Court, SW1 – 24.3.49
… I have given your MS. to Westaway Press … so you should hear directly from them.
I go, probably on Wednesday, to Berlin, and back via Hamburg to Frankfurt and Dusseldorf …
Germany is critical, and – I gather – grim, with Allies at loggerheads and Germans loathing each other. ‘Assignment in Hell’ was how someone described it. Most interesting! …
My employers are delightful. After filling in questionnaires I have ideas about getting you out there quite separately (via War Office – Stopfordfn15) not using my office facilities! … I’m sure we’ll find a solution … When asked I say I’ve no idea if you (my wife) will join me or not …