Following a visit to Cornwall with Mary, Eric moved in with Glyn Hughes.
Thornworthy – 19.6.57
… I am being pressed by some bill collector from Peter Jones and have passed the whole baby to Rutherford and told him to give them a brisk telephone talk. They menace proceedings within five days …
Saw Toby off last night and then visited Carolyn [Cobb] who is lending me blankets on the way home. She looks awful. Norman has rejuvenated – obviously sees his freedom not far off – Miss Hepburn bright yellow and calm and courageous …
There was a thunderstorm brewing. Got home just in time to shut the doors and windows for the storm which raged for hours. The dogs whined and hid under the counterpane, wouldn’t be left alone. The telephone emitted sparks and the house literally shook. It went on for four hours in the darkness of death. So what with the dogs and the telephone which when not sparkling tinkled I didn’t sleep much …
Thornworthy – 25.6.57
… At Torquay for confession and fished a very jolly fat priest out of the presbytery, egged on by a very deaf old woman so that my needs were shouted all over the hideous church. You must have been dreadfully unlucky with that Frenchman. Mine today said, ‘Oh well, my child, 5 Hail Marys and keep away from the man.’ So I said ‘Indeed I will not’ and explained the situation. So he said, ‘Well, well. Brother and sister I suppose. No children and keep on trying.’ ‘Indeed we have a child,’ I said, ‘and a very lovely one too! A Catholic.’ ‘Well indeed now, how very interesting it is. You come down off the moor at any time and ring the bell and we’ll be here to help you!’ And I was bustled out of the church on a wave of well-wishing and blessings. There are no end of surprises …
Thornworthy – 26.6.57
… The result of my asperity to Hughes was that he rushed at me this morning and expressed great pleasure in working for me. It’s poor Dot [his wife] who drives him madder. Got my first cheque for the first three weeks of the timid Belgian boy’s visit. Very handy. £31–10-0d.
I have house-maided all day and am now going to have an enormous high tea and so to bed even earlier than usual …
Had to write lengthily to Carol of course as he has sent no pocket money and not written this term nor to Roger …
40 Warwick Avenue, London W9 – 28.6.57
My Pol,
Thanks for letter and laundry. I feel very loving. I think I have almost become normal – capable of love …
It’s hot, but my room is shady. Great schemes with Glyn for doing our own laundry and mending. He’s going to iron! …
I am doomed to Lisson Grove, the Catholic Belsen; which is, again, just round the corner here. They are, however, most efficient and have masses of confessions and Masses. I adore your account of the Irish comforter you found at Torquay …
I get a good breakfast round the corner (Germans or Austrians) between here and the church.
I really think I can do this book in the next 3 months …
I lunch with Nat Micklem on Wednesday, and (through him) I am invited to a Liberal social at the House of Commons on 9th for tea! I shall go, because I want to meet Grimond, who is now head of the Party (Nat is chairman) and who married Laura Bonham-Carter. No other social life. I haven’t even sent out my address cards. No time … The Times people are very nice …
With this letter Eric enclosed a clipping from the Star, a London evening newspaper, concerning the case of a young woman who had been detained for three years in Rampton State Mental Institution as a ‘mental defective’. An independent doctor commissioned by the Star to report on her state of health had decided that she was not mentally defective and that she should never have been detained in Rampton. The National Council for Civil Liberties was taking her case to appeal before a Ministry of Health tribunal. This was the continuation of the ‘Jacko case’ that Mary had initiated two years earlier when living at Broughton. Jacko, a fifteen-year-old village boy from Broughton, a playmate of Toby’s, had been confined to a mental hospital after stealing two pairs of socks from a washing line. With the aid of John Platts-Mills, Mary had started a successful campaign to get Jacko released. According to the newspaper report as many as 20,000 sane people were thought to be confined to mental hospitals under the 1927 Mental Deficiency Act.
Thornworthy – 28.6.57
My Darling,
Will you send me your telephone number in case of need? I haven’t got it.
I have nearly got the house ready for les jeunes who arrive Monday. Three of them, Germaine’s grandson among them …
Sonya [Paynter] has not turned up or rung up. She would be a great help to me if she came as that ceaseless flow of chatter would make a good start. I don’t want her rung up. If she comes it must be under her own volition.
I have read a really funny novel by Margery Sharp called The Loving Eye …
I have booked rooms for little Willie’s ménage, if they come, at Easton Court. I expect Carolyn, who loathes Germans, will keep to her bed but Norman, who was drunk, was irresponsibly welcoming. I made specially good terms, for the Germans not for Norman …
Your socks, sleeping pills and handkerchiefs will come up in relays. I worry about your discomforts …
Later
Ted Kavanagh isn’t dead.fn22 He is coming to stay on December 4th. It is bubbling hot up here … Write when you can for your letters sustain me.
M.
Thornworthy – 29.6.57
I am glad you are keeping up with Nat Micklem. Thank God you can get breakfast round the corner, it is a load off my mind …
Sorry to miss Charlie. Ted Kavanagh doesn’t seem very fond of him, referring to ‘his misguided missiles at us (the BBC) from the United States’ …
Another letter from the Hohenzollern. I can read that it is friendly and that they are next year coming, nothing else …
Thornworthy – 30.6.57
I went to mass in the village. Get hearty greetings now but don’t know their names … Was slightly surprised this morning when the lady in the long black mantilla, who keeps the dotty man quiet, said she was prepared to tell fortunes and had done so at some other Bazaar. I expressed mild surprise and she said ‘Yes I know, but it was quite alright because I confessed afterwards’ …
The girl from the pub who has started this ghastly revel … says that when Father Millerick announced the bazaar last Sunday (when we were in Cornwall) everyone ‘rushed for the door as though stung by bees’ …
I am going to bed very early mit no alarm – my last for a long time …
If you hear of a good job for Thora in the autumn she speaks French, English and Deutsch and has le shorthand and typing and English men like her. She wrote a delighted description of a party at Luneberg [sic] given by the 8th Hussars who convulsed her by their descriptions of how bad they were at everything. She had just [e]merged from a German horse show where ‘the will to win’ had nearly killed her …
Warwick Avenue, W9 – 1.7.57
… Today I got up by mistake at 7am … [I] did two hours work and went out to see Olivier and Monroefn23 and had a snack at Lyons’ and now I’m back here for more work … This is my free day and I’m enjoying it …
My church is too awful. (I confessed at Spanish Place but went again to Mass with Communion at the Lisson Grove Palais des Horreurs.) … I can take a bus to near St James’s, Spanish Place, which is old, beautiful, fashionable and has Mozart. I’ll report next Sunday. (It also has Harman Grisewood.fn24) …
I’ve read Jane Austen’s Emma and Max’s [Max Beerbohm] Seven Men; confirming my view that the English are heartless, snobbish and prudently-realist: (not say, materialist). I doubt those throbbing bosoms, alleged by you to accompany the stiff lip. But the heartless prose makes for good art, in light comedy, and I know what I am about. The light, English novel … heartily infused with French misunderstanding (and intellectualism). That is my comedy!
Everything depends on how it goes. If I can’t do the bulk of it in three months, ought I
to explore the Times and other jobs? I propose to see Douglas Woodruff who is wise without being discouraging, and worldly without being crude …
The film was the Folies bergères mixture à l’anglaise – King George V’s Coronation … laced with bosoms and buttocks. Real showmanship. I enjoyed it. It is quite, quite awful. And pansy.
Thornworthy – 2.7.57
… They are all arrived. Michel Cattier very nice, good manners. Miss Fiertag exquisitely pretty, Jewish I think, also lovely manners. Germaine’s grandson seven feet high and a clown, also lovely manners …
Mary, who had never taken a school exam in her life – though she did once follow a course on politics at the LSE – now prepared to transform herself into a language teacher. Her first students came from Germany, Belgium and France. Both teacher and pupils found themselves facing a steep learning curve.
Thornworthy – 3.7.57
… Kleine Miss Schacht is arriving next Tuesday which will even up the sexes as the boys gang up together and leave Gisele Fiertag out. Also I hope for Sonya on Monday …
I think there is a class difference between les boys and la Fiertag who is jewish, gentle and half German and has an enormous behind …
It is infra dig to wash up in Belgium but I am altering that. Also they lay the table. The situation until they become less shy, or Sonya and Biene Schacht arrive, is that unless I speak French we might as well be Trappists! …
True chased a sheep last night and Wonnacott to whom I resorted said calmly ‘It doesn’t hurt them. Nell did it for years and does still.’ …
I wish we were together but at least some of the bills are getting paid …
Michel Cattier made a face of enlightened astonishment when after I had said there had been too much bombing of Germany and he had said ‘Well they began it’ I taught him his first English proverb, ‘Two wrongs do not make a right’ …
Thornworthy – 4.7.57
… There is a possible companion for Nick for the autumn arriving by way of Christina – half-Polish half-Swiss, the nephew of her beloved doctor. He has an Armenian millionaire step-father so I have suggested £15. That would make £25 a week till Christmas and you can finish your book …
Harry [Siepmann] has written to say that he is coping with kleine Schacht. I forgot to tell you yesterday that Horace, as Harry calls him [Schacht], wrote that he was telling Harry to ‘deliver her safely’ into my hands. Little does he know that it’s three hours in the train and Harry is just going to pop her in and leave her! I have lost my engagement books so all the arrivals and departures will be surprises. One boy who was coming for July and August has ‘ratted’ un examen so is leaving on the 31st. In fact all this lot have ratted and are busily reading Stendhal and Rousseau instead of English. ‘Now don’t you start Madam,’ exclaimed Mrs Wonnacott when I shouted a command in French – as if it were a disease! …
Authors’ Club – 5.7.57
Darling,
I am relieved to hear the first news of les enfants … Don’t talk politics! You can be startling, but it may sound very differently by letter: without your charm and aplomb to relieve it …
It might be delightful if the little Schacht and the little Jewess get together (and relieve each other’s timidity!) Anyway, I am sure you do marvels, without any advice from me …
At LAST, I’ve found what I wanted. Just across the bridge from The Times is Clapham Common – which I have always fancied. I went there this morning, having reached breaking point. I have taken a nice attic room in a clean Guest House – the room is quiet, I’ll have my table, my own … bath … because no one else is on the attic floor. Good breakfast, and room done daily by resident maid. HURRAY. It is 12/6d a night [62.5p]; not bad. The Common is lovely, with a round pond. Beautiful houses abound, and teddy boys and molls. A pauper’s lunch is served at a new restaurant, run by a writer (woman) and painter (husband) who have just ‘given up’. I’ve just had lunch there. She is a bore, but was published by Faber; and oddly enough her last book, refused all round, is called To Hell With Love and is said to be ‘too unpleasant’ …
At the restaurant I had delicious rice and egg salad, 2/6 [12.5p]. The danger is too much conversation … She comes from Bideford, is related by marriage to Asquiths, knew Peter Quennell and all the literati …
I was pretty desolate yesterday, but really my slum is too awful. Poor old Glyn! I am giving a week’s notice …
I brought D. Woodruff yesterday to lunch at this club with Nat Micklem. Most interesting and delightful – mutual suspicions, mutual goodness, much erudition. Nat (a non-Conformist) emerged as intellectually 2nd rate as compared with Woodruff: who had seen the Pope, but not Wyszynskifn25 who was closely watched by the communists but (I think) messages were exchanged …
Thornworthy – 5.7.57
… Boiling hot here. Germaine’s grandson is gigantic, lazy and amiable, rather stupid but very nice. The little girl is half-Jewish (papa). She was hidden in the Ardennes during the war while her father was in a concentration camp and her mother, not Jewish, worked away at hiding and saving Jews. I am gaining her confidence. She is agonizingly shy. Michel Cattier has a vast inferiority complex which takes the form ‘that women are only good for cooking and keeping house. There has never been a woman in the world who could do anything intellectual.’ He has just failed his English exams but refuses English lessons here.
I had a brain wave today and drove them all to Torquay and abandoned the boys, who were too un-enterprising to take their bathing drawers, and have told them to find their way home separately. Michel has ‘I don’t speak English’ written on a piece of paper and both have the address and telephone number. I wonder what will occur?
Gisele and I, who both have the curse and can’t swim, drove agreeably home across the moors chatting – in French – all the way. I shall think up some other tricks as I go …
I hope nothing stops Sonya coming as she will bowl them over like ninepins!
Keep my letters. I want to work up a talk [for BBC radio] on foreign guests. The boys look absolutely clean but neither has washed once!
M.
Thornworthy – 6.7.57
How glad I am that you have found other rooms … On Clapham Common there is a house called Wren House in which lives Betty Stucley that was (now I don’t know who) from Bideford. She is nice, fat, was at the London School of Economics with me. Go and see her do. Writes on Boswell …
The risk of leaving the boys at Torquay worked. Yves arrived home in no time, having got a lift from Father Millerick. Michel being shy and farouche took hours. I have now tamed him … He has offered to lend me his fishing rod and we have had a long heart to heart in midlake …
I too get into despair! They don’t talk, don’t eat, hang about, then suddenly are gay, play tennis, go and work for the exams they have all failed – it’s all ghastly adolescence. Longing for Sonya …
Politics are excellent. Electric shock. Just what they need.
M.
Thornworthy – 7.7.57
Sonya tomorrow I hope. Betty telephoned with her usual adder’s tongue yesterday evening and said you had been there and a lot of nauseous things about Sonya. My troop are in hand and I would have no anxieties except that not an English word is spoken and I am rapidly forgetting it myself …
I am teaching Michel backgammon … and also how to make beds and Yves lays the table. Giselle dries while I wash up … Yves follows me about like some colossal puppy when he is hungry. He is about six foot four so I cannot bring myself to ask him whether he is wearing his corset …
They all listen to the French radio all the time … Three is a bad number. Never mind by Tuesday it will be six …
I love you, du courage! As we now say at Thornworthy …
M.
Authors’ Club, SW1 – 8.7.57
… The woman who runs the restaurant is obviously Betty Stucley. She told me about Bideford and about Boswell. I am going to move on Wednesday morning … ‘Madam’ Wols
ka [landlady at Warwick Avenue] is furious, and I don’t like that. So I washed my own laundry this morning …
Sonya is due, isn’t she? She’ll turn up and help a lot … Betty says Sonya is sex-mad. This will annoy you, but I say it only in case of accidents. Are you to have FIVE tomorrow? You can’t!? …
Thornworthy – 9.7.57
Six now! … and kleine Schacht (who is enormous) is splendid. Thierry also very jolly.
The mystery of why ‘le papa de Thierry’ brought [him] ‘en personne’ was explained by the fact that he found my letter so funny that he had to come and see for himself. Not very flattering! … He is a fat little mushroom of a man who is going to send all his friends’ children here …
I am busy from dawn to dusk as it’s all so unexpected. If we had not so many bills I would make a good profit …
Sonya is not sex mad at all. Betty would like her to be what she was herself. Sonya is very natural and madly gay and a great help and simply loathes Betty …
80 South Side, Clapham Common, SW4 – 11.7.57
… Alles in ordnung! … Here I am at a magnificent table, after a trot on the Common. I was called by a maid, had a splendid breakfast (egg and bacon), and my room was done and speckless by the time I wanted to work … This seems like Paradise. The fact that the maid is obviously out of the loony-bin (but nice, she tells me about the bin), that I can hardly fit into the tiny bath in which the geyser drips on me, and that this is an ordinary boarding house – none of this matters …
I had an exceedingly pleasant talk with Iverach Macdonald, the Foreign Editor, who was civil and thought he had met me abroad and was ‘delighted to meet me again’ and yes, will certainly ‘bear in mind’ the possibility of trips. We see eye to eye on NEWS not handouts; he even, as Diplomatic Correspondent, refused to attend Press Conferences. There is quite a chance; and it is more likely to be (French) North Africa than anywhere else …