MORE OR LESS

P R I V A T E.

Just to say dear, Fido, that I am looking out the pommme but
have not found it yet. Things got rather jumbled about in the
drawers. And to say I did your new numbers all over and
apparently you are not a 7 but the same as me, an 11. This
is another " bond ", and 11 is just " out of the
numbers " and presumably very high. Also your Hearts
Desire seems to be 11. It is all 11 and 22, the two
numbers OUT of the numbers and that would make you
" different " and anxious to escape. We are both then
nearest in the numbers, it is very odd and significant.
K. would be 9, then and if you are 11, it means you and I
are pretty well " done " with things, came back apparently
to pick up the bits and odds and ends and we better get them
tidied up or maybe no good and have to come back again. But
according to this you are here simply to finish odds and ends,
probably you " ratted " last time and this is why you are here.
Of course, I am not infallible and it is K. 's little fact, but
I imagine you can intrepret them several ways, and there is
no 7 at all anywhere here in this new " reading. " It is
all 11, very harmonious... so there you see ? You were
right about not believing you were a 7.

Now IF I believe I am coming about the 10th, I will maybe be
able to hold out till the following week. I won't dash in
on you, but I am packig and making inquired etc. so as
to be able to leave. It's the sun-light I want... I am starved
for it. There is NO reason why you should like the S. of France
if you don't HAPPEt to like it. All I would do, would be to
dodge talks and scenes and sit in the sun, the sun, the sun.

I would stunt having been horribly ill and creeing away to
myself, there is no reason why I should meet people unless I
go to the various haunts and I more or less, know them.
I would be glad to see you, O so glad. I would not
intend to be there evnings if you were alone. I

would sleep in the dining-room, sort of camp ( perish the
word ) out. Well... I will stay here. I don't
feel so bad since having written last night after the
San Remo cards. But I do want the sun and I wouldn't
bother you or be in the way. But I won't do anything rash and if
I say the 10th, perhaps I can hold out till about the
17th.

All letters so good. DO KEEP WELL. And do let me
come if you want me.

recalls Peter Wildeblood's *Rogues Gallery* series, starring Diane Cilento, set in Newgate Prison, the adaptation of Phyllis Bentley's *Inheritance* novels, and the recent series based on Jane Austen's *Persuasion*.

bering how marvellous she was
in Cranko's much more human
Stuttgart production, I have always
been slightly disappointed by her
Covent Garden Juliet; but this
time she came nearer her full
potential, until the scene with the
potion where exaggeration crossed
the line and became caricature.

If, even with two such stars,
the duets seemed hollow, this is
surely the choreographer's fault.
There is plenty of virtuoso display
in the dancing, there are many
big gestures of affirmation or
passion, but never once does Mac-
Millan's choreography seem to me
to give the slightest evidence that
he has felt the emotion of love. In
this respect Béjart's *Romeo and
Juliet* duet, shown at the Coliseum
last week, although sometimes
naive or awkward, makes Mac-
Millan's look empty.

I really must deplore the slander
perpetrated on itself, on Monday
as so often, by the Covent Garden
Orchestra. Anyone who hears them
only on opera nights cannot ima-
gine how badly they are capable
of playing for ballet. This per-
formance under Em-

Darling Towz.

I send the small atoms of dirt. Have noted Sachs
address. And sent the 100 fcs. though unregistered as I
hoped to catch the early post and get you first thing...I
was on my way to The Marron Glace. Altorfer is a dear
old gent who knows all te Anglais snobs and doesn't mind
'em, being sort of gentleman dishwasher sort of landowner.
Nice old chap. They want my papers of civil state, that
is marriage certificate,-collar plate, so to speak. Before
the definitive thing is inscribed, stamped and sealed. I
have the land provisionally now. And the cheque is paid.
When the certificate issent them it will be inscribed in
our joint names. Apparently in event of death it goes to
our heirs in order of age, though our stipulations in will
are the determining factors. I think I got that accurately,
but I'll get it in writing. Plan of land sent herewith.
I dd not tell him to get the other piece in front of the
olf gent, but will telephone him tomorrow morning.

Apparently over the Haldane signature, it was another
brother - another professor - who was approached, and he
did not know about it. It's quite authentic. The signature
we have. And the Morning Post got the wrong one. We're
straightening it out. Rat sent long letter, I'm answering it,
and she'll probably die of horrow when she sees I've written.
I've explained it to the right quarters.

Dinner ready, so can't stop for the rest of the dirt
crumbs. Love to his Canned Dog, and stroke the kitten
whiskers, and pat his own tail. Love and love....

The Big Dog.

CLOSE UP

*An International Review*
*devoted to the art of films.*

TELEGRAPHIC ADDRESS
CLOSEUP TERRITET

PLEASE QUOTE

Swiss Office :

RIANT CHATEAU
TERRITET
SWITZERLAND

and in London.

Sept. 2, 1929

19

Darling Towzer

1. Secrets of Nature. Have looked through what Russian papers I could find without success. Will have thorough search, however, and confirm this.

2. The bound film Kuriers are excellent, but Trude ordered one red and one blue. They clapped on an extra 5 francs for the blue. Swindlers!

3. My Vol 2 has come from Dori. Looks excellent, but they have done it in two vols, pity, but still, they are lovely books. With it came a nice bound Asia. The Geographig (2 vols) also came from Bumpus. There are no bills avec.

4. Don't know about land yet. They are enquiring again. Haven't heard yet from Braunberger. Will certainly look after him if and when he comes.

5. Will look after English rights. Only haven't yet heard.

6. No proof has come through. Will wire you today if it doesn't come at 11 mail. MUST see Krausz. And please give me list of what has gone in. The Russian photos arrived, but not the Epstein ones of O. B....am waiting for them before I can send in illustrations.

7. You mention having received a puzzle. Did Lady E. get hers also. I sent her one as well of 600 pieces, representing "Amidst the Heather" I should hate it to be lost, because it was a beauty. Glad the dog enjoyed his one!

8. Presume you were being acid about the date of the film from Immingham. If it's actually October I'll kick up row, as I want it shown this fall. Let me know.

9. Buddy's poems reads good to me. How does Ktn. like it?

10. Take care of his dog self.

CLOSE UP.....

Aren't the Sphere epic????? What do they think they mean? And
why have they matured like that?

Sorry Trude has been having Hysterics. Who wouldn't in that
benighted land? I don't like people when they get temperamental.

Your instructions about the bound copies in Goodwin's letter
handed on to Lady McP.

I'm not forgetting editorial or photos. But I'm held up
for additional photos and Krausz article, and the proof on the
rest, and I want contents list of what has gone in to date
so I can make up the composition.

Yes, I saw that note in the Times.....There has been a row
going on in the Fools Advice here about the rotten cinema
shows here. And a bigger row about the music "We don't ask
much. Not that they shall even be musicians. We ask simply
that they are able to sound the right notes." Most of
the films have been "nausebonde"... Glad they are complaining.

The town is grand. By the way. A chicken for five or six,
de luxe quality, costs 10 to 11 francs. Small best birds 6.
En casserole fowls are 4 and 5. We had yesterday four large
and very tender pidgeons, one whole one each. The four for
11 francs, as against 15 or 18 francs for a half one each
when you were here. Lady McP has found a very good shop
near the place de la Paix, with a man who was two years in
Fortnum and Masons. 3 A. chops coat 2.25 E

Weather marvellous. Not too hot. You'd like the garden.
There are hundreds of very good stewing pears. And some
excellent greengages on the big tree at the bottom. The
monkeys adore the stewed pears. Bill was terribly happy to
see me again, and made squaks all morning. Sister turned
up her nose and was quite bored. However, she has come round
now, seeing it was not desertion! We let them out after
dinner without leads. They chase wildly like flying
birds round our startled heads. Sister after Bill. They
look glorious. Their coats are gorgeous. And the orange
has gone all polleny and late summer.

Give my love to Buddy when you see him.
Take care of himself, and be happy.

Love and love from

6 Gerrard St.

Friday.

Dearest Weuggles,

Nina Hamnett is giving an exhibition now at the Zwemmer Galleries. An awful display. And she inaugurated it with a cocktail party since when it has been empty. I haven't seen her, however, and don't expect to. Great consternation this morning because Dennis Archer of the Search Publications phoned indignantly about his exchange ad. It was arranged by O. B. I understand with your consent, and the Search has our advt. in and we haven't theirs - naturally there's a row, and Miss S. says you instructed they were to be in exchange only and that their advt. this issue was to be cancelled. Did you? Why? Because the poor old gent. wants to know.

Your letter arrived only this morning with the snippet about the educational fillum meeting, - wild horses wouldn't drag me to a show like that, Bud. had a trade show and Miss Ray was out of town. I could think of no-one else except Chaddie, and she'd take it as indication of lord knows what admiration if I asked her. So, unfortunately, it went unattended, but be sure people only yapped. Nothing ever comes of these silly shows. Nothing.

This afternoon I took Mog to Kew. It was entrancing. Rather devastating, and 0000000 the things one saw for Kenwin! I've got loads of names. All the azaleas were out ) miles of them. And the Rhodos. A sort of vision of the beyond!

Needing a mat for my feet here, I went out and found a divine sheepskin one rather like the curtains in my bedroom in colour, so bought that and will have it in my room in Kenwin. I've seen too what Henselmann would describe as traumschöne furniture and astonishingly cheap. If there isn't very heavy duty on sending out, this is the place to get it, as prices are sliced breathtakingly. Abysmal armchairs, infinitely vast and pompous and sublime all springs sprung on springs, for nine pounds each! And at Christmas my tiny one in bedroom cost fifteen!

Mog seems well and happy. I miss Kenwin, specially after having been to Kew. The Man I Killed (Lubitsch) is on and supposed to be marvellous. I saw Mädchen in Uniform. It is exquisite. I have never seen the fragile and uncapturable elements in love expressed so sensitively. From the start there is this lovely, changed feeling - Potsdam, rather like that coral red day and the grey when we were there with Pabst. And its sort of windy and quiet and goes as deep emotionally into lovliness as its possible to go. One does not see it at all. Its a sort of transmigration. And I bow down before that old dame as low as I've bowed to Pabst. It has something, and maybe more, of the tenderness and power of certain moments of Jeanne Ney - the lovers meeting in the rain, or where Henning ram

along the garden as Jeanne waved to him. But it goes
deeper, and its rather harrowing, and its like what
baptism might feel like to a nigger pulled half drowned
out of a river. Nearer my god to thee, you know, the
lovliest film I've ever seen in every way that is new to
the screen. And the homosexual stuff is quite straight
- thank god just straight, not done disgustingly as a
tract or salaciously, but as (what I believe it to be)
the highest form of love. And simply and inevitably as
that, and the audience is moved to a stone-cold rapture
and it does them infinite good, and they come out looking
radiant and tragic. I really think it's the most subtle
propaganda for the "half sexes", because it grinds no
axe, it simply makes a statement that is quiet and
grave and vast, and people are all in tears.

Well, you'll judge from this that I quite liked it.
Personally I have no words to say what it meant to me.
Not as subject matter only but as cinema. There's
your new genius of the screen, Leontine Sagan, and she's
doing a new film. Please write and find out about it.
I hardly expected ever to be moved like that ever again
by fillums.

So that Chaddie would not feel unctuous and bitter
about Sunday I wrote the family was arriving and wanted
me for dinner. Could I come instead Saturday at nine.
I await her reply. I shall be very nice to Chaddie,
but if beyond a certain point she is tiresome, then
please don't mind if I tell her exactly where she can get
off at, so far, that is, as I'm concerned. She's getting
thinner and tinnier in every act, like a Coward <u>heroin</u>. (Joke)

Good God, it's after dinner time. Listen
Weuggles, DAMN the strawberries. GET OUT.
Get out, get out, get out. That's the only advice I can
give and mean. You need change and I mean you need it.

Love and barks, and forgive the schwerm
about Mädchen.

I have discovered that I am, emphatically, a
well)iving but wholly unextravagant type. I mean that
I should never want or care to handle a bigger income
than five thousand a year. A fortune teller we have
all been to in a fun-fair, who 's fat and smells of
sweat, - told me I should soon have it. Like all the
others she says I can't help falling on my feet and
that every time, and that my successes haven't started
yet. I hope she's right! I was so exaltè I went and
had my photos done on an automaton, and the results were
so dimming that I lost all faith! Needless to say
all this happened with Buddy - and that other young man
who is rather nice - Justice Avery's son.

Stevens got the wind up - oh, I mean rather
literally too - for when you wrote her angrily, she
said "You don't think Miss Bryher wants to sack me, do
you? (Then a belch! like one of Chaddie's) Oh, pardon,-
'cause I wont give notice or I'd lose me dole."

She went so red, that by the time she belched she
hadn't any more red left ad the only thing left was
to go pale, which she did in patches. Poor old soul.

Am about to drop into Haudley for tea to inform
them I'm staying. Lady H. in great form these days.
Chaddie sent Eileen a very acid note - now she was back
she would be settling down into the old routine (???)
and please not to forget that an hour per day was being
held for her. E. is writing her she is not settling
down at all, and indeed, is just off to Devon. Poor
Chadwick! She must be feeling sore. But life doesn't
let you down unless you're cheating yourself somewhere
- that's certain, and if Pabst has gone Yogi, he'll bear
me out. Is Pabst's Yogi a result of his trip to Africa?
I don't see how anybody could go there and not feel
that after all Europe was a hollow little hole hardly
worth "saving". However, I leave out Copenhagen,
Helsingfors and the Norrrrrrrrrrthern Ice.

Mog comes for dinner. Tomorrow I expect to buy
furniture. Do you think the fifteenth will be too early
for you to go back to Suisse, or will you want it later?
Anyway I took the flat for an extra fortnight as they
threatened to send future tenants in to look over it
and if I felt people might be bursting in any time it
would be no use to me at all. But I don't mind leaving
any time to suit the menage.

Much love,

Saturday.

Dear Fido,

your batch of appalling letters has just come. I'm quite bowled over dear, in fact I fell off a daybed reading them and rather hurt my rump. If it were not that you're alone there it would be howlingly funny. But please take an old dog's advice DON'T THE WHOLE STAFF - boomps, like that. Don't wait for "diplomatic reasons" say Monsieur has heard the whole scandal and out they gets Otherwise, believe me, it'll go from bad to worse. That I can promise you, and why ones life should be a stomping ground for servants' hysteria I cannot imagine. I'm not sure if Robert and Jules might stay, but out with Alcide Marthe and Claire. And do let's get a middleaged dame next time. Please Towx, wash your hands of Claire before she starts playing the fool with obstetricians. I'm really quite nervous for you, really, and I'm sure these negligible shits will stir up infinite trouble round you, that may even land you in trouble. What guarantee have you that Claire wont suddenly turn round on you and accuse you the same as she has done Alfred? Please allow, she may be insane slightly, and may be apt to do these things. I Imagine if she had a nail it her head she may well have a kink. And DO think, Fido, you'll be at their mercy for whatever accusations they may care to bring, and experience has shown us the unique vindictiveness of the Swiss nature. I should NOW, this very day, sack them, shut up the house entirely, put it under police patrol, and get out for at least a month, in order to collect your scattered and shattered wits, dearie. And insist that the Packard is put under lock and key while you're away. I think that's funny about Jules and his party, but it wouldn't be funny if it happened again. Really, I think they're a pack of devils. We've kept them too long and been too good to them. It only brings them out in psychic boils like this. FIRMNESS next time.

So Chaddie's onthe warpath. Well, I see her tonight. The old cunt. Let her try to play her tricks on me. If she tries to skin my tail I'll CUT HERS OFF.

Sorry about the lawsuits. No, I never signed anything at all for Ferenczi except the original agreement made with the architect (in which I'm pretty certain no such clause was inserted, or if it was was never read aloud to me) and the architects passed plans. That's all I ever signed. There was an evil genius presiding over the building of Kenwin. I think the evil eye has shifted now, and we suffer in its aftermath, but it was a pretty solid, baleful glare it cast in our direction. Thieves, opportunists, fakes, liaars, incompetent idiots and ruffians. Little else and nothing else but the lowest carrion. I include the skivs. Wont you call them sternly, simply, and say - waving this letter - Monsieur has heard of this affair, and writes me that no half measures are possible. You know the line. Alice will slop around with her vacillating sympathy, don't listen to her. FIRE THEM. Alcide first, the little turd! I'll send flowers to the

famille and telephone them tomorrow morning as arranged.
Thanks for the cheque. But I'll tell them I expect to
return in the middle of the week, as we fear to leave
the place alone and the new car must be protected from
possible use. As to coming over that can be done any time
you like. O. B. has since written to say he is getting here
early in July, and it would have been rather nice to
see the poor little ass, but no doubt I could arrange
for him to come out for a week and swim somewhere with me.
So count on me any time there I'm needed. In ever so
many ways I wish I had stayed altogether now, but now
here one night as well see it through at least to the end
of this month. But I shall tell your famille I return
to Suisse about Wednesday pn account of the garden and all.
I haven't yet waited to read White's article. I'll let
you know about it, and send it with the one I said I
liked - which I've kept because I haven't big enough
envelopes and wait till my next Woolworth visit to buy
some big ones.

Please keep oil on tail, please listen
to Rover's words of widdom. Please sympathise with
and believe NONE of them, neither Jules, Clairenor Alfred.
I think they're simply scurrilous people, and one should
never enter into any relationship with ones servants that
involves their emotional life. That I'm convinced is
a TRUE "root principle" and a very moral one too!

This ain't nagging, Towx, but
I'm getting worried for your personal safety among these
ramping savages. Save your neck, my dear, and never
mind theirs. They wont mind yours, be sure!

Much love to you my dear,

Gerrard.

Fido darlink,

that was all very sudden and unexpected-like.
I had no idea you'd hit Berlin like that, overnight.
What a time you must have had with those bloody swine.
How really awful I'm terribly glad you're out of it
and think you're so wise to be. Berlin will be very snug
to tail, that's pretty certain. Shall be interested to
hear what transpires.

Really though, if you think it would be better
for someone to be there I don't mind leaving at once -
not a bit. Talking of which, your family think I'm
leaving thursday or friday of this week, - I'm supposed
to be waiting over for John's show. I've seen his flat.
I think its awful, - and the furniture which Bill Cox got
him, and charged heavily for, is ghastly hire-purchase
muck of the worst kind. WHY? And Bill Cox's firm
did the walls and they're appalling! Talk of bad plaster
work - Kenwin's is like a mirror in comparison.

Thanks very much for the cheque. I'll get all
sorts of things for Kenwin with it. But not until I have
counsel from you - I mean, is there a very heavy duty
on new furniture going in? Then also I have the names
of some lovely english bushes and shrubs and want to send
some out for when I get back in July, - if that's
possible, it may be too early of course.

Your family seem very well and happy. Lady E.
went off with Eileen first night back to see Madchen in
Uniform. I do think her loving the film so much is very
comic. She MUST get the full implications.

I like those italian pots. Shall certainly
order some. I think a row of three long ones along under
entrance window beside front door, kept full of stocks
and bright potted flowers. And several dotted about the
garden. The famille are tremendously impressed with the
new Elephant, and very pleased you have it. They want
one!

Here there is no news much. Mog seems well
and happy. I take her out a lot and usually see her every
day. Only she WILL "bant", and has sketchy little
suppers. I try to persuade her that feeding is one of
the highest functions of the human organism. And she
has fallen hard for Kew and went off on her own yesterday
and spent most of the day there and made a lot of notes
of things she liked. You should see the asaleas and rhodos
this year. It's too fantastic. And their Lebanon cedars
are two hundred feet high! Ours has a little way to go
yet! Hope all marches well and happily. Will you
come back by sea or land and WHEN?

Take care of the tail and give my love to Turtle
and greet Kurfurst for me. Shall you see Henselmann?

Thursday,

Dear Woggles,

Your Berlin news is all very - well, logical outcome
one might say, of evident constituents. I sympathise
both with Turtle and with Goosemwadow. Both, I agree,
are quite right, and both at one of those awful moments
in life that makes us all dear, said she with a tear in
her voice, seem like PAWNS in the hands of a Jocund Player.
I'm really sorry about the poor darling's lung. Mustn't
he now go back to Suisse and have it looked after? I
don't like the idea of sending him out to Boston to die
of T&B. Berlin sounds awful to me. Except for my darling
gorilla, who must be divine and exquisitely outsize now.

And I'm glad Pup takes kindly to Berlin. Lotte
will probably take good care of her and prove rewarding.
DO let me know what happens if you see Die Bergner. I
think it ought to be Das Bergner. She is so neuter.
But I think, too, that something ought to HAPPEN -
unless she surrounds herself with entourage. Shall
you see Mrs. Williams??????? And do ask Pabst for
stills from l'Atlantide. The animals kindergarten sounds
too exquisite. There's a wonderful ex-naval rating waiter
in a restaurant I go to who was throughout the war in the
north, and for three solid years north of Spitzbergen
at the ice edge and in winter they got frozen in and five
men went mad. And they had a pet polar-bear who adored
rum and was always given it until he lay down on his
back with all four paws in the air and snored. And he
used to chase them and playfully zip chunks out of their

pants without ever attempting to bite them. He's such a nice fellow and very interesting, but unfortunately - although he'd be ideal for Kenwin - has a wife who drinks and then goes mad and he, presumably, could not leave her. I would add that my acquaintance with him does not go beyond the luncheon table where he seems fond of chatting because I too have been north and apparently asked one or two intelligent questions about ice and things. But he'd be ideal really as a sort of super Robert.

As to Robert, I don't know if we should suggest to his guardian that I train him as butler-valet and keep him on - he'd like that, but if one has anything like that one might as well have someone good and hm! rewarding!

Anyhow, there's plenty of time for that! O. B. will soon return, and reach London about July the 8th.

That will - presumably - just give one time to see him. About furniture. I think I have a better idea than a fitted divan - which would cost FAR too much, 18m sure if specially made. I thought I'd get some ready made thing with a vast chair to match. They are so much cheaper and chairs like the one you got John are now 8 guineas.

Anyhow, I await report from the Northern Transport as to duty.

Regarding Search advt. Apparently the Toxwx wrote one letter to Lady M. saying "give them one half page only" and another to the Stevens saying " cut them out" so there was a malentendu somewhere. I'll put it right with them by offering a full page in next issue. I don't think anyone is to blame, neither Stevens, Lady M. or - in view of his preoccupations - Towx. But the

confusion seems to have been due to contrary orders, and
Stevens didn't query it because she thought "Miss Bryher
had heard something and didn't wish to continue".

It's hot. I've bought a gramophone. And am
worrying my neighbours. Last night I saw John's show.
Bad but slightly better. Oh, tripe, but a little
attention given to detail, and less of the old
distressing vulgarity - although quite enough, I'll
admit.

Saw also Dubarry, with the famous new German Saph.
Took me some time to "get" her, and feel sure she'd be
more admirable on second acquaintance. She seems to get
the females madly, but hasn't such appeal to males -
hence I feel you might feel much as I do about her.
Brilliant, but not inspired. Very interesting about that
Potsdam school. But then I never said education should
be as it is. I think it should be _abolished_ as an
organised evil, dear, and brats dragged up by competent
Alices, or something like that. Anyhow, Mädchen was
exquisite and lovely.

Alice sent me a packet of radishes!

Love to the Towx, and keep the tail in oil for more
than its complexion's sake!

6 Gerrard

Dear Towx,

I judge fur flies. I'll be very interested to hear what you made of l'Atlantide. Do let me know, won't you. So Lotte has adopted Pup - I think it'll be very good for her, and a change. Fresh company is extremely important, thinkest thou nicht?

No, I don't think mog is fasting - she's eating but I'd consider myself very underfed on what she appears to eat. Anyhow, she comes out frequently to meals and has to eat more then. She has some smart new Kuhl clothes and they are very smart. She'll be here in half an hour or about then. Has been to Chaddie for tea with Violet Hunt. Was there myself last night, and couldn't avoid a full dinner which Chaddie had cooked for me. It was as it happened, quite good, and, - one reflected - it saved money. She has never mentioned not going to analysis and seems resigned, and extremely cheerful. Tant mieux. Also, it appears, The Essies aren't letting baby Paul go any more. You're sure to get a long letter from her about it - in fact she said she had already written, so I need not repeat it, but - although I don't think it'll be in any way bad for the poor child, I do think that it's oretty shoddy conduct on the part of Gramma and Essie as it was a gift from you - I think you might justifyably get sniffy, don't you??? Or had you other dirt?

I had the duty on furniture from the Northern Transport.
It's pretty high but even so will be much cheaper, and
I'll see what can be done. I got goblets yesterday but
unfortunately we cannot replace the buff breakfast and tea
set - the firm has busted! That's very unfortunate but
I'll look elsewhere for something approximate. Alice
sent me a packed of radishes from the garden. Of course
they were rather like cottonwool when they arrived but
it was kind of her. Isn't it a shame we're missing all
the peas and strawberries.

Judge that in spite of shocks, the tail of the Towx
contrives to wag. But Elizabeth - as you say - with
mange in her ears in Paris - it's a problem! I think
perhaps not worth chasing unless you propose direct
action - but to see once fugitively across a hotel lounge
- not good enough! Is poor Turtle better? I'm so
sorry about him.

Well, flaunt the tail,

Yaps,

Tuesday.

Dear Weuggles,

thanks for all the nice long letters. You
do sound in the throes of things, dearie! What a pity you
didn't like l'Atlantide very much. It sounds the kind
of film I shall always be furious I wasn't able to direct
myself! But one can think of many scenarios where the
desert isn't only a place for shieks and shrieks. Maybe
I shan't be so furiohs after all - but the photos of camels
and sand make me very, very nostalgic, I admit. Thank
god for the Sahara and sand! Well, I shall make a swift
selection of stills and send back the ones not wanted -
except the numbered ones which you say I may keep. Then
I can send back the others used when blocks have been
made.

If Berlin is a dream, dearie, to me it would
be the sort of dream following a lobster supper. The
electorial element and the jubilant, febrile enthusiasms
arising out of events which were anyhow loathsome, as
well as the sordid suffering trailing after them, seems
to me a thing for all right minded creatures (Hm8) to
try and keep apart from HM8 - like rabies or summer colic
Mais, chacun a son gout et degout! Kuhle Wampe did not
sound very exciting, or was it? I liked the ass who shouted
"Ich!" O God, aren't people frightful - especially
the young!

What a loathsome Nacht Lokal Madame F. would
run! Gott o Gott o Gott ! Do go and peep at it.
(Indignation from Small Dog)

Listen, - I had thought to leave here - bar
accident and the usual events that baulk and prrrrrevent -
about the middle of July - say the 14th. or 15th.
It looks as though that would suit you too, and if so
so much the better. Uncle N. wants me for Calabria
on Sept. 15th. - but shall have reluctantly to refuse
this time on account of the jardin. As to Kat's plans -
I haven't the least idea what they are. But she seems to
be making connections here and I think it is very important
for her to have connections, as she gets so nervy and prob-
ably unhappy alone in Switzerland. So if she seems
frightfully anxious to stay over a little longer, I
do hope the small Dog won't urge her to return too
promptly. The people - whom I haven't met - seem to
be some rather nice young females, - also Steven has
chucked analysis (on the verge of a suicide's grave)
and is bouncing all over her, and on the whole, I
do believe she is enjoying herself. I see a lot of
her and take her out and she is going to start eating
more because I lectured her long and sincerely on the
necessity, as a gift of God, of Good Food. Alas,
if only one could always find it!

I don't mind having a sniff at the Radio gramophones
- but wont or can't do anything about getting one
at any rate before you come back. Parce-qu'ils coutent
tres cher, mon cher! Bud. has a crise. The Monkey is
being married today. Also he has spent all his money

on said Monkey and got nothing for his pains. Poor
dear, I wish I could really feel for him and be helpful
but some stories are so radically and fundamentally boring
and this is boredom in excelsis. The only time I tried
to be helpful he ran around to H. D. and said I, I, I
had let him down. Gosh! AND Bud came to see me in a
**melon**! It sat on his ears like a quaint ungainly craft
about to be lauched, I thought it very odd, and he
wanted to know if a silver felt would suit him, at which
I could think of nothing except to suggest a tarboosh.

The Marco people had - and there is full record
of it in office - the four vols. sent on Feb 22 5th.
From the Charing Cross Post Office. And they never
arrived. There seems nothing to do but send duplicates,
which I have ordered to be done, with a letter explaining
that it is our rule to undertake no responsibility for
any matter lost in the post, but are making this an
exception on account of the fact of the length of time
this has been pending and incidental inconvenience so
caused, that we are endeavouring still to trace dispatch
through the post, beg them to do the same, and if the
duplicate vols. arrive please to return one set.
A pity, but it seemd the only courteous thing to do at this
date.

The fire must have been alarming. All Londin seems
to be bursting into flame - things burning merrily
every day.

I sent odd numbers to Brussels. Thought this better
than volumes. There are no O. B. stills in office and
none available - so cant send those.

About Kuhle Wampe and Harlekin. Miss Cohen is
a JEW, my dear, if that means anything to you. And
although she is interested, she wont undertake to show
any film she has not seen herself. If the are sent over
undoubtedly she would be pleased to see them. - etc,
etc blah blah blah. And, I'm sure, show them. Especially
if we praise them in Close Up. I'll try and see her
in person, as my immense personal charm may influence
her.

Yes, I'd like an english version of l'Atlantide,
- but why didn't he think of it when they were in Africa,
or will they go there again? In which case, I accept
unconditionally.

Hope the Macmillan book comes off. It ought to.
Blessings on it anyway. PLEASE let me know how the
small dog got on with chopsticks!

Am seeing Bud tonight for dinner together with
a lad named Geoffrey Avery - son of Justice ditto -
rather a nice person. Mog and I went to Party,
- Ivor Novello's play last night. It is enchanting.
We laughed ourselves silly. I go to tea to Haudley
today and am supposed to be returning to Suisse
tomorrow (Wednesday) I'll send a letter to Alice to
reforward announcing safe arrival.

Your family seems very well and quiet and
serene - Sir. J. is only worried about the peas I shall
miss - VERY anxious to get rid of Rover!

Barks and love,

Thursday.

Dearest Fiend,

Dr. Bagier's evening sounded like a sort
of awful and prostrating nightmare. I'm sorry Pabst
will have to stop working in Germany - very sorry
and what does he plan for after? Surely mit's going to
be very difficult? And what shits to turn down a man
who so obviously has brought so much money to German
enterprise, etc. etc.....

I went last night alone to see Lubitsch's
new film, The Man I Killed. It is awful. I mean in
quite the right way. I can't think how he got away with
it, except that perhaps in the original scenario form it
was as sloppy as say Clarence Brown might have made it,
whereas he had done things that were almost too much.
It made me feel quite prostrate afterwards. As peace
propaganda nothing has ever touched it, and it has the
masterly mind of a really great director back of it.
And yet Lubitsch has nearly always to make the films of that
unspeakable Chevalier! The kino was almost empty. Is
this the answer to propaganda? I mean, won't the public
stand for it? And yet those who were there seemed to be
just as willingly racked as I was. But it's certainly
one of those films that knocks the bottom out of you
for a long time afterwards - out of me so much that I
had to telephone Mog after for a word of human comfort.
And yet it is full of tenderness and compassion - maybe
that's why - and there's a glorious scene in a German
pub where one old man rounds on the others, and cries
My heart is no longer with you, Old Men. A year ago my
son went past this door to his death and I stood and
cherred. And then goes for them so magnificently, and
so demolishes war and patriotism that I cannot believe
it possible to have been passed unless the censors
simply failed to see anything or were too drunk to hear.

Well, that I shall see again, in spite of its
shattering profundities. I hope you'll be able to.

Thanks Toxw, for the telegram. I think that is much
simpler really, as one then does not have to face the
risk of running into the famille in the street. Lady
E. is anxious for me to stay, Sir J. anxious for me to
go back and eat those peas. How peas matter to that
old, elderly Fido! I believe they meant more to him than
anything else we had done. I am seeing them for tea
today and shall say I would be so embarassed with those
two Viennese girls to entertain and nothing but females
all round me all the time. My dear Towx, IF you see
die Bergner, you know quite well you'll sit simply and
make small talk with her from far ends of an hotel lounge.
Is it worth it? I say emphatically not.

Sunday.

Dearest Dorg,

I never heard of that old gentleman, as I wrote you
so cannot begin to imagine what he thought he was after. Nor,
I must say, can I quite understand the enclosed....rather
unpleasant and blackmaily letter from (obviously) one of the
Borzoi's tarts. I shall ignore it, of course, but think now
it would be much wiser to remove him from Lausanne, and maybe
have him dumped in the country. After all, Cevey did state he was cured
I imagine he told her marvellous tales about ho he had been
abandoned by people who plucked him from the bosom of his simple
English life. Anyhow, I find this letter distinctly unpleasing
and would welcome Doggie's pronouncement.

How is Kenwin and the garden?

Here it is very hot. Lovely. And I've installed
a cheap ice machine - very nice, so I can have drinks and
milk and tomato juice cold as ice!

When does the small object ( the griffon) intend to
unpark his behind from the weed-slopes of Kenwin? Or doesn't he?

I went to Escape me Never last night. Elizabeth
exquisite. Several shades more blond. I noted Carol's part very
carefully, and decided I'll be given the waiter! Or the ballet
master!

Lady Mcp and Pop dining Haudley tonight. Lady M.
very excited about her holiday. Now has decided on Algeciras.
Leaves the 23 or 22. According to boat.

Please thank the Mog for paw mark. I told Mrs Ash
she will be probably coming over and she must have the place very
nice. A lot of stuff has been cleaned and cost eighteen
shillings - she has two shillings balance for the Cat.

How are the fleas of the small Dog? Rover finds his own
quite peaceful for the nonce.

Shall, doubtless, be seeing him very soon.
and send love to all the bin.

Thursday 2-111-34

Dear Fido,

Many thanks for your letters - I've been sick, orribly sick, with the worst cough I've ever had! I only wish one were in a position to say "I'll never have me tonsils out again!" It was just like yours, and still goes on - and, of course, it's the incredible weather we've had. There was the night I got it - so cold I just knew at one moment I'd never been so cold in my life. One could feel the wind blow straight through to ones heart, and suddenly said I to myself, K. M., you're about to fall down dead, - get inside some door, any door, and call a taxi. So I fell, CRYING WITH THE COLD into an apartment block on Park Avenue, nose, eyes, ears frozen, and immediately caught this appalling cough which now, thank god, is on the wane but has wracked the interior out of me. Last week end I was supposed to go to Boston at laid in bed. So I'm going this week end instead, and I think I'm sorry that it's me last week end in America which I'm nobly spending out of New York.

Since all that we've had the worst blizzard in twenty seven years, and the snow has been piled in drifts higher than myself. People have died or fractured themselves from head to foot all over and altogether it has been un grand spectacle, mais pas une programme de famille.

Are you actually letting Eileen go back to Vienna - here we have wild and lurid reports that the Nazis are all armed, concentrated and ready for their offensive at any moment, that Germany and Italy have troops massed at the frontiers, and, in fact, that war cannot be mor than a day or two off - but, of course, one never knows.

We sail on Thursday at eleven, and Jenny is being very Anglais and patriotic all at once, having found her American friends CRUDE, my dear, for some reason or other.

Probably that artist person we met at Lady Duveen's will be on the ship too. .......I met Lilian Taskman the other night - the Hollywood atmosphere ladles out in that manner was quite eye-opening. With her as Adrian, the costume designer, and he, oddly enough, was a sort of American O. B., very sweet and civilized, which I hardly expected, but (suspiciously) drank nothing but lemonade.

They spilled some amusing dirt which I'll be glad to retail when I come back. Mostly about Joan Crawford and Garbo.. I quite agree, incidentally, about the film - she was exquisite but the film was about the worst she's ever been in. Why, I wonder? I'm thinking I'd like to go Kenwin, if that meets with your approval, in April for a short while, pick up stuff, and maybe turn a film of short metrage which need not have sound. But we'll see. Elizabeth has gone over here with even more eclat than in London. It's he biggest success on Broadway. I think I'll blackmail her to give me a job on her next, or something in her new york production, whicj, I see, is due in October. She might take me on as assistant stage manager or something, but now definitely she's int he money and should be clung to if not for herself alone, as Stein might say. I saw the first night here and it was madly acclaimed and everybody howled with cheers for at least ten minutes at the end and the success was unprecedented.

That's all for now as I'm getting late on a dtae.

Love from
Rover

1, SOUTH AUDLEY STREET,
LONDON, W.1.

The Empress will grant an audience
this afternoon at five at the May
Fair Hotel. She trembles. Life
over, etc, - I am invited but
can develop a cold or something
- will be here anyway to talk
if you want me from about four
Phoned Cat but she was out, -
I'll be able to see her later
for a drink.

Ope it hasn't been too god
orful all/day

Love

25th. April

Dear Fido,

Firstly a concerto, a rhapsody of barks for the
lovely "tied-up" capital! It makes me feel like Cat
when she saw her grand planner! Words do quite fail
me, I can only join in the chorus of thankyou's which
is your daily accompaniment, hoping mine may take
some definite form that may make it worth your while.
God Jesus, if that doesn't sound pompous I'd like to
know what does, but - I sais it when I said words fail
me. As Uncle Norman would say "It's very naughty of
you" but I can't tell you what fun it feels to be
right in the heart of the capitalist classes all at
once! Certainly the psycho. was a miraculous investment!

I'm torn in two - I want to sniff Kenwin and the
farm, and cannot bear to leave here. Spring has come
in with a big sweep of blue and sun, and transformed
New York into a quite new miracle. I wish you could
see Central Park now. A daze of magnolia and narcissi
and pale buds of beech trees. All that frozen blackness
has turned to flowers and it actually gives one a kind
of ache inside, just as Ella Wheeler Wilcox would have described
it; and the evil humours of the world seem to drop away
and be quite unreal beside the brief time of early
blossoming and first warmth. All the shops become excuse
for display of forsythia, tulips and long boxes of
hyacinths, while Radio City, on every one of its terraces
has become a sort of vertical garden, literally. Flowering
cherry, plum and almond, cypress trees and stacked azaleas.
The fountains gush and the pavement about is a carpet
of azaleas. All done, of course, with the abandon
and fantasy that New York is. I do, do wish you could
see it! I've never seen anything so lovely in my life.
The amazing contrasts of the place, and now this new
touching and magnificent love of flowers! There is surely
no place in the world like it!

I spent a long week-end at the Stettenheim's
place in Bedford Hills, New York State, on the edge of
Connecticut. They have a lovely house on a hill) top
surrounded by woods full of dog's-tooth violets. Really,
the country about here is very lovely. Fred Stettenheim
says analysis is the only thing that kept him alive
and the one reason why he is here today, so we discussed
it at length, me, as usual, sniffy!

Alas, I shall miss the Jubilee. But will be back
for the tenth of May in London. I am sure that the idea
of going voluntarily onto a ship away from here is similar
in the reluctance it gives me to the process of being born,
and I am sure that it is the fear of the pain of this special
parturition that made me see as valid that when begged
to stay for Fred's birthday on May the third, and knew
that a ship sailed at noon on the fourth, I should see or
fool myself I see a kind of defining date in that. They
begged me to stay, and as they have been so generous to me

- well there it is, and well I see how weak it looks on paper.
But a sort of numbing bleakness rears its ugly head when
I think that New York is not a place you can slip over to
for the week-end, and once gone it is almost like a life
going from one, so remote it becomes and so faint one's
contact with it. If you were not in Europe nothing would
bring me back, that I know. This damned Spring has just
finished me, and so far as this end of it is concerned,
New York seems to have become something inside of me,
deep and richly fulfilling. Leaving it will be hell
of the exactest precision - that is why I cling a little
longer. So please don't blame me if Central Park has
defeated the patriotism in me. At least I shall see the
decorations!

Fido, you love it here too now. Do let us spend a lot
of time on this side!

The ship, the measely little ship, is the Champlain.
It's French but they say new and excellent, and it's only
170 dollars first as against 260 first on the Aquatania,
Rex or Olympic. And it goes on the right date. It could
be a raft for all I care, except that I do want to see you
again, and the farm and Kenwin. Don't forget, I'd love
to decorate the farm if possible - I've got a whole lot
of new ideas!

So, I shall be seeing you soon after this letter.
My love to you meanwhile, and very real, very profound thanks
for what I think is a swell gesture; one for which
I have a special very personal gratitude. Thanks.

125, East 64th. Street
New York City.

15 Jan 1936

Most dear Dog,

This is heaven. I can't tell you how wonderful
to be back in one's adopted kennel. Firstly, though, let
me tell you about the trip over. It was torture. We blew
right into a gale in the first hour out and stuck in it
till the last day. They told us we'd be twenty four hours
late but the boat 6 which can make marvellous speed, caught
up in that last day and did six hundred and fifty miles
which would jus enable us to get in that evening. We should
have arrived in the early morning. Well, firstly as we
got into quarantine we struck a fog. Then as we steamed
slowly along being piloted in, suddenly we began to roll
in the wildest way, and presently went right over on one side
and stuck there. It was terrifying - I fully thought something
serious had happened as we never moved. The ship stopped and
there we stuck at this awful angle of literally forty five
degrees. Suddenly the ship started to shake and tremble madly
and after about ten minutes of this, with the fog getting
deeper and deeper, we began to move slowly backwards,
always at this absurd angle. It then appeared we had been
mis-piloted and had gone on a sandbank off Long Island.
So we went out about a mile (taking an hour) and by degrees
regained our vertical position. There we stopped. There
we stuck. Nothing happened. Nobody knew anything. It began
to get late. The fog got thicker. We beat gongs on all sides
of the ship, and again we heard we'd not be able to get in till
the fog lifted, in any case not before the next morning.
All cabins had been emptied, everything put away. Wretched
people sat hopelessly holding their rugs and bags and
peering desperately into the fog. Then we had our passports
done. By this time I felt like vomiting from frustration and
despair. They had to rush out an emergency dinner. And there
we stuck, doing nothing within a few miles of lovely Manhattan.
After dinner the fog had lifted one saw Long Island and the
big Wrigley sign, and it was maddening not to be able to get
across that little strip of water and just take a chance on
a taxi from there. Then, my dear, to cheer us, up came the
ship's orchestra to the smoking room, and started to
play Strauss for us. Elizabeth Welch was on the b oat with me
and this proved to much for us. We broke into wild singing
and the whole crowd joined in. Then when that last spark of
hysteria had given way to that special kind of raging numbness,
a cable came for me saying "Too bad you're not channel swimmers,
we're bored." "THEY'RE bored!" Howls Elizabeth, but my god,
that friendly word put new life in us. It made the contact
and one did not feel abandoned any more.

Finally about eleven we started to move in and got to
the very irate customs about midnight. It was one thirty before
we got off the pier and everybody was so dazed with waiting

that the only thing to do was to rush home and take plenty
of whisky, good and strong. If ever it was deserved that was
the time!

Since then it has been just one round of engagements, some
shopping and a party everyday so far in my honour. Incidentally
while on shopping, I bought the Little Dog the Alexander
Woolcott book which I old him about and another new one which
is a glorious dirt bin called Mrs Astor's horse. I do hope and
feel pretty sure he will enjoy them. I'll send along some
more when I get to some other good news.

Tonight starts the round of theatres. Porgy and Bess first.
Friday to Ghosts with Nazimova, which I hear is superb.

Both of these are voming off, hence these as first choice.
The Taming of the Shrew is also coming off, but I don't
think I mind missing the Lunts somehow. Next comes Jubilee
and At Home Abroad. Dead End, and Pride and Prejudice
and finally Queen Victoria (Helen Hayes) Others will
come along too, but these are the first choice. I'll cover
them and any other gossip and lovely dirt that comes my way.

It's quite muggy here - not in the least cold. But they predict
a severe spell to follow. It all seems more crazy and exciting
anf the pace faster than ever. Anyhow it has always that
high voltage of intoxication that makes it all like a
dream experience in a world of super reality. And plans
for the little film are already under way @ I'll give details
when they're ready. And the Leica is at my disposal for all
the pictures I want to take. So Life is, I repeat, heaven.

The Little Dog must (forgetting the sea) come over soon.
Once one is here there seems utterly no reason I can
think of or even conjure up, why one should be anywhere else
at all in the world.

And for making it possible, the little dog has Rover's undying
gratitude. And love,

(if he would care to send this to Cat, he'd be grateful,
as I'm much too excited and electrified to sit down and write.
Love to Kenwin. Love to the Little Dog and to the Big Cat,
and more will follow when the first explosion has subsided a
little!)

Some glorious new music, much better than last year
(excepting the Kick out of You number) I'm trying to get
records today and will have some sent to Pup if I find the
right ones.

Dear Fido and Cat,

I wish I could send bulletins
in the Fido manner. But even the great Schmied
has not (as yet) instilled into me a passion
for writing letters! It's so, so wonderful
here and too bad you left so soon. I've
decided that all the time the joy of being
here is trailed by the shadow of the
thought of leaving. But I've focussed the
idea of Hollywood now, and will make the plunge
by air. Coooh! It DOES alarm me! And
Pabst, I know, will have disappeared again,
and there I'll be, stranded in some awful
hotel twiddling my thumbsand never, never
meeting Mae West!

Jean passed on to me here laryngitis
- couldn't speak for three days, but now
that's better if still kicking round in the
background. The chemist downstairs is very
nice and brushed my throat with some special
poison brew of his own which helped a lot.

There was violent snow when you
had gone. It came down all that night and
next day we were all snow-bound again. But
now that's gone too and it's beautifully
warm. Thanks so very much for the cable from
the boat. It was so nice to get it.

And how does London and Leowndes seem?
Shall look forward to your letter with news.

I cabled Pabst where would be a good place
to stay, and if he hasn't pawned his car I shall
expect to be taken round in it. Alas, no
word of his film! Just when I was all set to
become the new Connie! You know, that's a
real disappointment to me. However, if
Hollywood proves as horrible as most New Yorkers
seem to think it, I can sit on the beach
and watch the blue Pacific rollers!
And later join you in Villefranche.
That'll be nice.

Love, dear Cat, and many thanks for your
kind good wishes - which are a very warming feeli
to come all the way from London.

Today I get my Radiogram. Isn't it
wonderful. I'll let you know all about it when
I have it. It'll certainly be a comfort
in Hollywood. Lordy, WHY am I going?

Love to one and all. I'm writing
Lady E. separately.

The St. Moritz
ON THE PARK
New York

Dear, dear Dog,

many thanks for the storm-tossed letters
just arrived from the ship. What a ghastly
experience it must have been. I do trust
by April storms will be over. It seems
so long since you left, yet not yet two
weeks. Yes, what an idiot I was in my
last letter not to tell you about the plays
- which was a kind and very generous thought
of yours. Petrified Forest I adored. I think
that last act was terrific, - and how charming
Howard was in that special part. Previously
I had always considered him a tiresome old
gent. But that machine-gun fight was one
of the most exciting things, - and the lines
were so good. Only the girl seemed to me
too weak - it was a good part, and she made
so little of it. The All In Wrestling I
think had exciting and authentic sultry
feeling. But I don't think I like la Fontanne
and the Lunt is definitely ridiculous. The
tense young man wasn't bad at all, I thought, and
the troupe of virgins adequately imbecile.
But of all, Shaw remains the top. Other than
those we shared, I've seen the Barretts of
Wimpole - a play I don't like, but beautifully

done, Personal Appearance, which is one yelp,
Rain, another louzy play with Tallulah
consummate in a role nobody could go on
finding anything but a goddam bore. That's all.
About the movies, oh how I agree. They're
dreadful, dreadful!

Now I have cabled Pabst where I'm to
stay. I was leaving Tuesday to arrive Wed
all I found Wed was the 13th, which seemed inauspicious
so I shall leave Thursday to arrive Friday,
and that will give me as long, and probably
a good deal longer than I want in Hollywood.
When I come back I've been invited to stay with
some very charming Jews - the Stettenheims -
he has been psychoanalysed and knows Schmideburg
and is a great admirer of the Turtle, - so
I shall probably stay there till the Rex or
Conte de Savoia sails. Don't not come to
Villefranche. It's the one way I think
I could bear to leave this country. I mean
by not coming back to England, where I think
I shall not want to be more than necessary.
And do let's sort of plan to come back
in the Fall. It's such a swell place when you
get in the rhythm of it, and I couldn't have
been happier that you liked it more this year.

Bless the Cat from me, and as I'll probably
be very miserable in Hollywood, I'll try to send
news bulletins after your own style! To pass
time away, I mean.

Love and thanks again for everything.

Dear Fido,

I'm sorry it takes not. I can
imagine London must seem gloomy and dead after
this. I've just written out a cable to you
saying Pabst has disappeared again. I sent
first on the ninth a telegram saying I expected
to fly arriving Friday morning the 15th. No
reply, though I gave address and asked for a good
hotel there. Next day I put through a personal
call with no result whatsoever! Yesterday
I wired again, and today no reply. So now I
am wiring you. I know I should go to Hollywood
but where and oh where is that goddam fool?
I mean if he has disappeared wouldn't it be
silly to just go there, knowing nobody? Or
should I make a dash and see what I can do
on my own. That seems more than alarming.
If only you were here to share it!!! But to
plunge into that wilderness without even the
refuge of Pabst at the other end - how horrible
- and yet something suggests (most meanly)
I should see it. I don't quite know what to
do now - whether to wait till I hear - write
wire again or what. He may just be away from
home for a few days, or he may have bolted from
creditors across the border. Well, I'll
wait till Saturday, and probably if nothing has
happened by then I'll simply go anyway on

Monday, sniff, and (having seen an orange grove)
pick up my tail and bound, barking, to the
return plane! I think that's probably best.
If only there were somebody to share the
horrors!

London news sounds gloomy indeed. Never
mind, you'll have to come back here in the
Fall. And stay here a bit, not in Boston.

I suppose - unless things have happened to the exchange - it might be too expensive for you to meet me in Villefranche - but it would be heavenly. What I'd love to do would be to come back via Florence as we did before - but no doubt that is out of the question. But wouldn't it be nice??? That might just possibly lure Cat from her Stahl grandpianner.

Dear Cat,

thanks so much for the letter. As you see, I'm in a ker-wandery, waiting for that wretched Pabst with my heart in my mouth. Why isn't Schmied here to face the Unknown with me? I'm sorry, Fido complains NOBODY wants to hear about New York. Why, they must be crazy! The truth is they can hardly know what they're missing - just as London is your soft-bed, and you myrtle to its bog, so I am cement to New York's reinforcement, - I wonder how much the almosy shockingly phallic insistence of the place especially in this pre-spring sunlight - casts its age-old spell? And, oh, oh, oh - Hollywood! Dampening thought - and worse - sixteen hours in the air! Shall I ever come back alive? I hope so - to Villefranche, if possible. Truly

N. Y.

6th, March.

Dear Fido,

Many thanks for the several letters and all the dirt. You'll
have had by now the cablegram I sent to you saying Pabst had a film
proposition. Now I may have done quite the wrong thing in staying,
but I thought that here I am, within twenty hours by air from him,
and could get in personal touch if necessary and talk things over.
If you think that a wise thing to do, then cable me the moment you
get this, and I'll fly across and see him. Here are the proposals.
I'm not sure what you think of them. The first is explained in his
letter to the Turtle (about whom more anon) which I enclose with
this - a film to be made of the Ritual Murders by the Jews, its
tendency to show that Jews among other oppressed peoples are au fond
ords of the earth and its inheritance - you know the kind of thing.
Now Turtle was in two minds about this, saying that it would be
gruesome and terrible, and maybe too much so unless one were considering
it as an artistic venture only, and not as a business proposition.
My objection was this: there would be no capacity for me to work
on that film except as supervisor, which would be fascinating and
great experience, but if the film flopped, all that money would
have been sunk, and dimly people who HAD seen it would remember it
as that MARVELLOUS masterpiece of Pabst's - and never know I had
had anything to do with it. On the other hand, a new suggestion
has arisen, concerning the formation of an independent Pabst
Productions concern, which would start out with three films, each
of comparatively little cost. Of these three, I would be given
the direction of one, and the one suggested for me is the filming
of They Shall Not Die - to the making of which I could give everything
that I have - I mean it came like some marvellous gift, plop, like
that, right out of God's sweet bosom - even the suggestion thrilled.
Naturally, I know you're bored with much that I've been and am, and
may feel wholly disinclined to put any capital into anything, and
should hardly blame you. Turtle and I discussed this latter plan
in great detail, and thinks it a solution to many things. He insisted
however, that if it were considered, you would have to put a financial
expert in rigid control - but you have heard all about that already.
My opportunity on the other two films would be in capacity of
supervisor, by which I would gain experience for my own, which would
be entirely directed by me under supervision of Pabst. Now
this seemed to me a momentous thing, and I decided in a moment to stay
right here till I hear from you, so that I can make contacts and
if possible, hurry on the thing as much as possible. I shall
in no event be later than my old birthday in arriving in London,
as the Berengaria sails again on the 21st. arriving the 27Th,
or if you wire nothing doing, I can probably make a smaller and
I expect fairly lousy boat leaving on the sixteenth. Or it may
be the fifteenth.

Turtle and I agreed, after much debate, that the first
proposal - at least in so far as it concerned my work - was hardly
interesting, in view of the little it was likely to achieve for me.
The second sounds superb, and my only fear is that it may sound

TOO superb! But I think you will agree that I in my "all agogness" am wise to wait on this side pending news from you, as contact or discussion across the Atlantic is very difficult, and if I could talk all this over at length with Pabst now that I'm here, one would save much time. If such a company were formed, I was wondering if you'd be interested to run it, and whether that might not give you the outlet for activity you require. However, it's all very much in the air as yet, but Pabst is in earnest, and so am I, and it's just for you to say "I'M interested" or "I'M not."

Went to Boston, and rea ly, Dog, it was rather appalling, for
Turtle had many hours while I sat alone in that bleak little
house, and there was a LONG lecture given by Dr. Alexander from
Buda Pest and discussion afterwards, lasting from eight until
well after midnight - and at this lecture, in a private house,
round a big mahogany table, sat a pack of old ghouls - the Harvard
psycho group, and each had a glass of water, made copious notes whenever
the word penis was mentioned, and asked very long winded
pertinent questions at every opportunity. Brooding over the
whole, in a bay window, was a red mud head of Freud, and a book shelf
with Imago, the Psycho Quarterly, and odd manu als of psychiatry,
science and mental healing. Most disturbing, and Turtle WOULD walk
me all over Boston in a ghastly spew of melting mud and snow.

Spring has come quite suddenly to New York. Blue sky, sun and
birds and sweet warmth. The blizzard and piled snow of a day or two
ago have entirely vanished. So, thank God, has my cough. I'm
terrible sorry about Eileen. Turtle thinks trouble in Vienna will
certainly come, maybe at any minute, but, as he says, nobody can
say when.

Please thank the Mog for her kind paw notes. I'm sorry
Kinnerton is not a small dog run - you COULD type on the desk
in the corner - it opens, or did I lock it before I left?

I shall probably give this to Jenny to post, anyway it will
go over in place of me on the Berengaria. I've seen Sir Ashley
Sparkes, and he is quite a sweet old person and very kind.

Love to all the menage,

storm at Omaha, and had to stay there for three hours. What a terrifying continent it is - and what a terrible sense of aggraphobia one has, lost in those flat miles of dry brown earth, stunted, sparse trees, emaciated cattle grazing on burnt out alfalfa, starved lean-gutted people with something wolfish about them, obsessed and weighed down in some way by the monotony and deadness of their surroundings and lives. Well, I feel I sensed it all too vividly, and saw more than enough to impress me profoundly. Now, exhausted and deaf, I'm back, and it seems a sort of Paradise!

How I wish you'd come back, so I need not hurry back - still,
in a few days I'll start thinking about it, just needing those few
days to draw a veil of oblivion over that scalding experience!

And if war does break out, then please come here - it will
be so disgusting and even a gas mask won't help!

Thankyou, Fido, for having made it possible for me to go
through the worst, but possibly most enlightening experience
of my life.

Pabst says no possibility of working in Hollywood. He is
anxious still for us to work together - I feel dubious, but
open-minded. He is sweet but madame and the child are
impossible! And so much of him belongs to them and gets in the
way of intimacy. Possibly he'll write you, for I think he
is still hopeful of backing, though he did not mention it.

But please don't tell the Turtle I hated it - for he will
then in turn tell them, and they love it - a home, I suppose, being
a home even if it is the Far Ouest. So I couldn't say, as they
showed me the sights, how loathsome I thought it, - it would have
been ungracious for one thing, but more, I felt if I started to
say what I thought I would be plunging into dangerous whirlpools.
So I said the flowers and the climate were marvellous.

Oh, what a rank, empty shell of a place it is, and how
rich and subtle and nobly traditional it makes even the
shoddy old Riviera seem!

Love to you and the dear Cat and Pup, and all else who would
like it,

125 e 64

Monday

24th Feb. 1936.

Dear and noble doglet,

many thanks first of all for the several
letters. So that was what happened to Pabst. It seems
he had not the nerve to tell anybody, for he had also
signed up Toni Hughes - a very charming kid, like a
masculine edition of Kate Hepburn (you might meet her
sometime, think you'd get on) - and she had heard nothing
either.

The trousers Fund sounds incroyable.
Trousers and teeth. I wonder when it will come to false
buns to pin on old ladies thinning hair? And is it
trousers to the exclusion of other articles of clothing?
Presumably, if a man is well covered there his *menace*
is decreased if not entirely obliterated. Strange how
virginal minds work.

I've sent you separately a book on the
Behring Sea which I think you may like - also will send
on some of the books I've been buying but am keeping them
till I've made notes, as they are mostly about coloured
people or by them, and I want to do this as a review,
maybe for Life and Letters if not for Opportunity, as
I've met the editor thereof who's asked me for something.
Also I've sent you Challenge, which is a negro (the only
negro, I should say) avant garde paper (you may know of it)
and as it is the sepia L and L and has some excellent
material, I thought it would interest.

Flannel sheets. Good god. I can say
no more. Yes I can, I can repeat Good God!

I loved the story of encircling the
queen's waist with a protective arm. I'm buying a Moore
book for Elinore. She may not like it but have it she
shall, and could a man do more for friends? We went (she
and I) out on the eve of Washington's birthday, which was
like New Years Eve, and we wound up, trusting hearsay,
in a dump called the Gay Nineties ( which reminded me of
a song a girl here has written 'Can any one say what was gay
in the Gay Nineties') which so appalled us that we seized
a postcard and sent it to you and fled.

Saw Margo at a party the other night for
a brief few minutes, looking same as ever, sent her love,
and had time to mutter she and Marty are separated, that
pity though it is, it "was for the best" (darkly) and had
no means of elucidating as beseiging hordes swept us apart.

Oh, by the way, that letter to you
from the Riviera has nothing to do with me, or either of
us that I can see. I return it, though, I feel, rather
uselessly. Berenice, by the way, I haven't seen. She
has a job on the WPA and spends other time in darkest
political labrynths, of which there are so many here these
days. Muriel Draper is madly communistic now and Esther
Strachey wants to meet you. If it could be arranged sans
husband (Gavin Arthur) you'd be convulsed as well as
interested. She is a perfect example of something and should

be seen to be believed.

Ethan Frome was to me great disappointment. SO
gloomy and episodal and despairing. Which is not a New
York attitude and seems here totally dated and unrelated.
On the other hand Dead End is fantastically good. Full
of violence and energy and impact. And completely
explicit and within its own frame.

Art. Sorry, you asked before and I forgot to tell
you. First and marvellously, a grand exhibition of Goya
at the Met. Overwhelming. What a grand painter, and what
a hard, satirical social consciousness. Then there is
an exhibition by an american called Walter Quirt at the
Levey Galleries. Essays in propaganda, you might call
them. Amazing for detached Dali-esque detail without
the surrealist mess. There is a grand collection at
the Marie Harriman gallery of french moderns - Cezanne,
Matisse, Derain, Renoir, Picasso, van Gogh, etc. I
say moderns, meaning too those who led to the new trends.
Then I saw at the Kraushaar gallery a wonderful painting
that stands out in my mind by one Henry Keller, called
evening on the Granada road, somewhat Dante-esque as to
light, but full of drama and suggestion. There are
of course dozens of shows - some very fine negro studies
by a woman whose name I've forgotten for the moment, and
a collection of Soutine. Today is so warm and fine, suddenly,
I shall probably visit a few more.

Please thank Pup for her messages. I do hope she
marches well with her english, tehe, and that the
translations are not too great a trial.

Well, now, the day starts to ripen, so out I
gets while the sun is still warm. You should see the slush!
And, alarmingly, they clean it up with terrific jets of
water from hoses, so that if you don(t get drenched that
way, you're apt to be caught in a sudden torrent hurtling
round a corner as you step off the pavement.

Love and barks,

125 East 64th.

Dearest Doglet,

As I cabled, Pabst is here. I've just come back
from Lunching with him, and, poor old Pabst, he was incredibly
sweet, but more than discouraged. Not only personally,
since he says that he is fortunate in comparison with his
friends who are all either shot or interned. Anyhow he's
just back from a weekend with Turtle, who no doubt gave him
a few friendly talks, though it is quite true Pabst is not
discouraged over personal maladaptation, but because he
does see ahead so clearly. They want him in Russia, and
he says he would go only their equipment is so primitive
and to direct in Russian would take at least a year's
solid hard work in learning the intricacies of the language.
And, having made a film or two, any roubles he had made
would take him no further than the frontier, when he would
not have the fare to the first station over the border.
And he says, with his usual brilliance, the English are a
great nation and a great people because they have achieved
a magnificent dictator who seems not to dictate but to
"hope" and "suggest" his people will do this and that,
and each has the illusion he is being cajoled by a charming
playboy. Then he added, "We depend our lives in pretending.
Your Edward is a charming boy who has to pretend to be a
king. Roosevelt pretends to be a charming boy and is a
a great king - over almost every letter of the alphabet."
He was referring, of course, to WPA and AAA and PWA and
NRA and all the others.

Turtle comes here for the weekend, so we all go out
on the spree Saturday evening. Did I ever tell you, by the
way, I saw Georgieporgie, who came more than decorously
to lunch, and I DID behave well, I promise I did, and didn't
tease him once.

Spring seems to be about to be about on the
great horizon distantly to burst. Several people have
said lovely things about the second Manchester. Miss Tiptaft
has been picked out for special praise. I have three
subscriptions - Esther Strachey, Carl van V. and Nella
Larsen. Carl may write for us, - would it matter? I love
the very proud and scathing poem of Thoma, don't you? I
loathe Lotte, how dead, how it makes me feel I'm in the
NEW WORLD. And so far, that's all I've read. Your book
on the Behring Sea comes on the same boat as this. I
found it very readable, and do hope you will.

Bud wrote me a charming letter about my bit, which
I was diffident about, but now L and L comes, I feel I've
got something, just by being on this side, that L and L
needs. That's just my simple modesty, dear, don't mind it.

They are fitting a lens to the Sinclair which
will take night stuff. Then we start shooting. God knows
where we will show it - Pabst is SO discouraging!

Did I tell you, I'm asked to write for Opportunity?
Feel I could never live up to that.

Much barks and many love,

Did I tell you, I am sueing Life and Letters for plagiarism
libel and false claims, to the tune of $50,000, for
that cover, printed under my name? Well, take a good look
at it. WHO put that disgusting blue band down the
other side of the authors. It wrecks the whole design.
I wouldn't be held responsible for anything so clumsy. You'll
note that Rover just will be a primadonna over small
things ( having no great ones to be even a greater primadonnz
over!) But it's just as painful to me as say Neither
honey nor tea for me" must have been to our Cat. Which
is saying plenty, yes-no? I hope it was Life and not
Letters, - it looks like Life. I will write them about it,
and think the next volume might be done in battleship grey
and canary yellow. Life might prefer strawberry pink and
forgetmenot blue.

nyc 27th March

1936.

Dear Woggles,

I'm getting this off in somewhat of a hurry for
the Aquitania, post leaving at eight. Dear, dear, it's
been and going on to be a day! Mrs Pabst arrived yesterday
and I lunched with them plus Peter and she is nice but
so difficult. Well, they are on their way over, leaving
here on Wednesday. I'm going, fortunately, to the
country with the Stetts for the week-end - a house party
for my come-of-age. That puts me in a helluva position
as I do shrink a little from house parties. But you
should see my room - like Lizzie's dressing room on a
first night!

I'm getting some grand stuff, - I think- for
the June L and L. My own. And some other bits. It is
all but ready. Just being pulled into shape.

Give Cat my dear love and tell her to pack you
over. On the 21st April.

Your letter of the 15th just arrived. I'm
sorry the family is so touchy. What's the cure for a
chip on the shoulder? Goodwill is useless. Probably
TWO chips, but on one's own. I'll be glad to give the
Little Dog a couple of griffons any time he gives the word
- I like the sound of FOBO. And will note as to colour.
Rough red meets with my approval too. Give Schmied my
love if you see them - him and her. It'll be nice to see
a garden again. You spoke, you remember, of daffodil buds
and aubretia. Kenwin must look grand. Incidentally,
I'm sorry, I forgot about the pillar. I do think green
would be a pleasing change. Red is more a city colour
I think.

Shall send you some pictures in my next. So far
I have only the little strips but do not want them enlarged
in a shop. Watkins has promised to reveal the secrets of
enlarging and printing. The whole secret is in that. He
sometimes makes twenty prints and tears nineteen up.

Now to work. I'm trying to swirl in a sort of
composite impression of the dust storms and floods and the
elevator strike which is interesting but difficult. The
secret instructions to the Italian press were much appreciated
- it's all such a scurrilous game, and England's as bad if
not worse than any of them. It is only the careless frankness
of the U S A that allows admittance of the word racketeer.
Actually their politics - because of this - could not
possibly contain so many lies and so much graft.

I do hope the tail of the little dog will not
suffer in London. Take all care.

Love to him and the Cat,

nyc

Fido, angel,

you are too good, dammit, too damned good. Why do
you give Rover such a present which truly he doesn't
deserve? It gives him, however and needless to say,
great joy and pleasure, and will be grand for the film.
As well as for many other things, and gives grand leeway.
Incidentally, some of it went today, but that couldn't have
been otherwise. Poor Pabst was in a jam and have to have
three hundred dollars which I could not very well refuse,
could I?

He is in litigation with the Faust people who owe him
some thousands of dollars on contract, but until he gets
it he is broke. He comes to England next week, having
twice postponed his crossing on account of the case. I
don't know what he will do there, I think he is considerably
troubled about his future, but apparently he is in negotiation
to work there. He also hopes to get hold of some means to
o something about his properties in Austria and Germany.
How I agree with you - it is so great a pity he is not at
work. How could he be when one considers the movie today?
I have seen a lot of him, naturally, and of Mrs. She is
greatly improved - adversity perhaps, or perhaps she now
feels she can be herself, as she speaks English fluently.

Life and Letters. Am sending first batch of new stuff
today. Don't be mad at me, I'm including a story by
Glenway Wetcott, which I liked immensely and was astonished
because I did. But it is beautifully told, terse and
urgent, and has a strange, emphatic story which nails the
attention. I'm sure you will at least not hate it.
I am not sure now about Nella Larsen - the story I was
so crazy about is coming out here in June, and you said
we could not print anything that was appearing elsewhere.
She may have something else.

Sorry the trade didn't like the cover. I think an
entirely new one for the second volume. I'm not crazy
about the duck-egg myself, though I like the design.
But if they want something more emphatic they can have it.
And I'm sorry Doris is perturbed by the paint. I imagine
she would be anyhow, but perhaps they haven't done it well?
England, anyhow, is so unalert and dead about anything that
changes anything that great grandmudder xxx approved of.

I don't want to part with the C. U. stills. But I
certainly think the barry's might have the blocks, if they
care to handle the cost of transport. They may not, however
want those. I don't think the Modern Art is rated fascist.
It is, of course, just inasmuch as it is not dommunist, and
a bourgeois standard of art has the fascism of tradition and
choice. I feel that a reprint would be even a better idea
but shall haggle with the Barry, who wants Borderline. She
could have that too if she would get the museum to pay for
it. Shall write Douglas. Congratulations on the bookstal
job for the congress. What fun for a wee dog!

Do come out here for a few weeks in Spring. Then I'll
feel better about staying on. Give my love to Trenoweth -
it'll look lovely, my god, won't it just! A million
thanks and very much laugh and barking, love from Rover

nyc - and its mellow!

Angelic doglet,

spring here is like the birth of wine in a
new world, and Rover has been staying in the country for
some days, putting his long nose down loamy mole holes and
sniffing new shoots. Very exquisite. I only wish the small
dog weren't so far off, and everything would be more than
more.
Came into town yestiddy for the first night
of Macbeth. Doggie, it was fantastic. First of all
two blocks from the theatre all traffic was diverted and
the whole street was blocked for three blocks with one milling,
jammed mass of humanity. There was the Elks band playing
outside the theatre and the Paramount News cameras under
terriffic arcs taking the arrivals. They took the Large Dog
so you may be seeing him! All New York was there, it
was the most spectacular opening there has ever been east
of Hollywood. The show itself was too amazing. Let
me tell the doglet about it. Jack Houseman (who did Four
Saints) produced, with Orsom Welles directing. Virgil
Thomson did the music and effects. They changed Duncan's
Scotland to Haiti of the early nineteenth century and
the witches to about fifty strange voodoo manifestations
-zombies or something bike that. Voodoo instead of
witchcraft, and tropical palms and dense jungles twining
into the castle walls. I have never seen such lighting.
The man who did it lighted also Four Saints, and for this
he got more lamps thanthe whole project is using in all
its theatres, and there are four hundred light cues in
the show. The result is a sort of changing pattern of
strange poisonous radiances, sometimes dim and under waterish,
sometimes flooding up in a complete orchestration of
colour, never representational. Eerie indeed. With the
lights forests deepened or were obliterated, became transparent
or solidified into sinister giant foliage, so that the people
had an amazing intangible quality which the voodoo made
hair raising. Strange noises from Virgil's musicians
and faint thunders drums and howls and wailing punctuated
most fatal sort of silences. The "All hail, Macbeth" became
a really shattering cacaphony of howling voices and
dwiniling echoes. The costumes were Empire, swashbuckling
and tropical, and terribly grand against very rhythmic
black naked bodies. And, above all, you cannot imagine
the joy of the lines, spoken with absolute simplicity and
none of that deadening traditional rant. The critics
in a block hated it. Apart from their shattered prejudices
there is a strang fascist determination to quench it.
And it is a terrible pity because it is the most
extraordinary magnification of the stage's scope that I
have yet seen, except Piscator perhaps.

It is such a pity that because Broadway is jealous so
fine a thing is black-listed and the papers foul-mouthed
with facile gibes about the poor bard and the t rning in
the grave. It was so wonderful suddenly out of a thundery
evening to have the stage suddenly filled with waltzing
couples to a Strauss tune, to see cigarettes lighted and
gunmen for the murderers. All it needed was some apes.
I do wish the Little Dog could have been here to see it.
for it is just one of those things which - now so rarely -
mean so much.

Pabst leave tonight. So you'll probably see him. The
missus goes to Germany and he to London. Poor Marling,
he's so blue to leave his beloved America, and well I can
understand it. He sails on a German boat as he can pay in
German marks, and I believe he is broke, but he refused
more money.

How is - was - Cornwall? How lovely it must be
right now. And Kenwin too. Why didn't we build it
here? No, - no I don't think that would be right. I take
that back. That lovely lake and those gorgeous mountains.
It's a very enchanted place and I do hope we will be able
to be there in June till you go to the far east or far
north or wherever it is you are going.

The film makes slow headway, but fascinating. It
take in - except for introductory shots - all the incredible
stuff behind the shop window. The slums, the districts,
the housing conditions; it gives a New York that people
don't know, rude, violent, sinister and terribly living
and dynamic. I think it will be good when we are done.
Some of the stuff on the lower East Side is magnificent,
photographically and in what it shows. Isaac Watkins,
- he's such a weird nice New Englander - is a great
cameraman and we have exactly the same ideas about
photography, so that is grand.

No more in this - the mail goes so shortly.

Love and a million barks,

Dear Fido,

I suppose you have gone on
somewhere from lunch. I believe my unc. has
misbehaved again, or hasn't it, for
I thought I remembered this apresmidi that
a tentative arrangement was made for me to
lunch with the Pup. I was out to lunch
and wondering why I had a sort of uneasy
feeling about something, and then remember red
and tried to get in touch, - too late -
when and if you get in, phone me in my room
and come and hear the new records.

Hope the analytical lunch
was music. We dine together tonight, yes?
I'm afraid there's another
party for me tonight beginning about nine,
so if you think it not worth while or want
not to be held up, well and good. But it'd be
nice, and I hope you get back early so we
can have a chat.

nyc 21st. 1936 Ap?

Fido most handsome,

I'm sorry to have got behind with my letters
- i've been in the country again and boats have slipped
out during my absence. The same applies to Sunday's papers
- I was mad to miss them, for Sunday here without papers
is like a day without food.

How sorry I am you're not coming out yet.
I think you'd love it now Spring is really here, it's
almost too warm if anything, but very very pleasant.
But you must come over for October.

Where will you be for June and or until
you go to the North Pole? Because I'd like it so much if
we could be in Kenwin. Unless, of course, war starts,
which I doubt.

How is life? And how are Life and Letters?
I've just been re-reading Rover's Mss. and feel very please
about it. What is the Small Dog writing for it? And the
Cat?

Not much news from here at moment. I suppose
you'll see Pabst if you're not back in Kenwin?

I trust the depression anyhow does not still
afflict the tail curls. You should, you know, have been
here weeks since. Anyhow, the picture of the Uhlan
in green Hebridean Tweed is gay. Do you suppose those
little tight German bloomers with a Tyrolean bonnet and
spats? And an alpenstock and rucksack?

Believe George sails tomorrow. Ruth Baldwin
does, so the Saphs will quieten down a bit! What news of
Lizzie? How like her, all that. She is a sore trial that
icky-wickie-pixie.

The film marches. You shall have stills
in my next, as we are going to cut some bits of it
tentatively. We hope to get some shots from the air,
so we can start as a map of Manhattan, on which we close down.
It'll be a monoplane, but I always say if you must suffer
for art perhaps it's expected of you to die for it too.

Never a line from my family. I don't
mind but haven't even the remotest idea where it is hanging
out.

See you here there or somewhere soon.

love, a million thanks and barks

N.Y.C.

31st Mar 39

Thankyou, darling Fido for the letters, for the handsome
birthday offering - always a joy; and even above and beyond
that for a joint gift which J. will have written you about
in which he put his money to some you sent over and got me
a heavenly twenty-four volume gift of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, which is invaluable to me as reference.
Olivia, bless her heart, gave me another book I wanted,
History of History, Vol 1. just out, with a lot about
Zozer and Imhotep.

The Stettenheims went out of their way to give me a
heavenly birthday. Elinore took me to lunch at Passy and
at night Fred gave me a party at his apartment, which
turned out to be really marvellous. Everybody was sweet to
me and it had a charming, friendly feeling, and I was
delighted. I wished you'd been there. In the evening a
nice, rather fido-world sort of old dame called, believe
it or not, Hortense Powdermaker, a member of the N.Y.
Ethnographical Society, had invited me to a private
showing of the material taken on the Denis Roosevelt
expedition to the Belgian Congo (same people who did
Dark Rapture - awful title but wonderful film) and this
was fascinating, giving in detail close up shots of the
circumcision rites (a little blood-curdling) of dances
in which people passed out with orgasms - shown in detail -
of beautiful dancing girls, with funny little folded-up
envelopes for breasts, of men and women in the mines,
with superb travellling shots of their codpieces with
the amazingly classic satyr, horn--extensions stuck on
the end of their penis and waving in the breeze. Many seemed
to get excited by the motion of walking and definitely
showed erections, to which they remained quite indifferent.
A wonderful wallow! Rene W. is going with me to his
friend, the African traveller curator of the Natural History
Museum for a dinner given by the African Society where
this and more will be shown. This history is leading me into
things!

I've had flu, and feel limp. Everybody has had it.
I've booked provisionally to go on April 19 to the W.
Indies. There's a round trip on a four thousand Purness Line
boat for sixty pounds and it has two days in Trinidad.
Fred and a boy friend are going too. It takes between two
and three weeks round trip. Details later if I go, but I
feel if I don't get out of N.Y. soon I'll really
collapse. All this bending over books and typewriters
for hours on end, unrelieved by exercise has got Nature
annoyed. Nature says "stop or I'll stop you". I can take
all my notes on board and write up provisional chapters.

I shall also take a round trip ticket on the Normandie
(provisional) leaving N.Y. May 17 and returning from
Europe on July 26th. If there's war, naturally I'll stay,
and expect you to be over as soon as possible. I don't
think it's coming yet, but nobody knows. I only know
my instincts which said it might in Paris last fall were
drowned by a much deeper conviction that it would not come
at that time, and the same conviction is there now. If
all is peaceful in July and no rumblings, there's a
nice Normandie on Oct. 4th.

2

Many thanks too Fido, for all the books - the Sykes
is amazing. Who'd have thought that old blunderbus
to be a scholar, and REALLY erudite? The dear Duchess
d'Abrantes I must say I find far from dull - it leads
me right away from research but is quite funny. As a
matter of fact it WAS the Memoires Secretes I wanted,
- probably they were not publicly reprinted. These
are not the ones, alas, but accidentally I stumbled on a
reason for them which justifies the whole ten - a
graphic account of the horrors of her dear cousin in
Haiti, with Christophe, an ape of a monster, exceeding in
senseless brutality his predecessor Dessalines. Very
succulent! Love's labour is never lost.

I've ordered the Breasteds - he has a new one
The Conquest of Civilization. I would like to own these,
as peeps at his work fascinate me. There is an endless
mass I have to read in the Library, and it's so uncomfortable
I love to have some to deal with at home. What a wonderful
man Frederick Douglass must have been, to say nothing
of dear, truculent Harriet Tubman, forcing her slaves
to escape at the point of the gun. Really, the fascination
of this study is unbelievable.

Did I tell you, the vet says never in his experience has
he had so stud-worthy a dog as Rex. who disposed of
the lady's virginity with one unfailing swoop.

Sorry to hear the doctor sends a grave report - I
don't believe in him at all - I think I prefer the
frank racketeer front here to the sneaky and underhand
polite blackmail of the English. I should think almost
anyone could realise that Lady E's condition is nine-
tenths psychic. Don't be upset by what the doctors
say.

Sorry about the blackmail suit over Butts. Surely
a very shyster lawyer and a complete try-on? I suppose
you've taken legal advice already - but if not,
no word to the effect that "any reference to living
persons is purely coincidental" was not included, any
little blackmailer may try to prove it's written about
him. I feel the ton of the lawyer's letter is
more than suspect, and not at all in the terminology of
such a matter correctly handled, but has every sign of
blackmail. "spiteful attack upon him by a woman with whom
he was known to have been on terms of intimate friendship
and who, we understand, is no longer alive."

I suppose you'll know what to do, and take advice about
it, but I would - if okayed by lawyers, set up a counter
charge of false claim for extortion. Unfortunately
I have not the book here. There is an important point, I
imagine, for defence in the remark of the lawyers that
"no our client (who) had already suffered probably irretrievable
damage through this spiteful attack". A reputation must
be very weak to suffer irretrievable damage through a
purely fictional story, in which there is no proof of
any identification with any living person. I believe the
whome thing is a blackmailing try-on, and should be dealt
with as such. There is no way for them to prove that
the character represented is that of G. Dunlop unless
everything printed is acknowledged to be a true picture of
him. If it is not a true picture of him, he is to be
suspect (1) for saying he recognises himself, (2) that

31 Mar 1938

Fido, honey,

Wow! Imagine coming back into this after four weeks of exquisite basking of the behind! Well, to get horrors over first, Trude is still here on my advice. Fred is looking after Egon and I believe putting up the bond necessary - the appalling sum of 3500 dollars, but that's what it is and no way to buck it. I am terribly worried about you being there in the midst of the horrors, and it's all so ghastly and undermining that I shall try to cheer the Small Dog up with something quite different. Trude passed her exams with honors - a noteworthy achievement. Seems others took months where she took weeks. I always said she'd fall on her feet, but, poor girl, she is distraught, and we are all doing our best to comfort her. So hope Alice and the others get out, and that something can be done for Freud. We all agree very doubtful since he refused to budge and needs his doctors there. Trude says gloomily, now only a matter of months. Well, I'll stick here firmly and do what rescue work I can.

Olivia returned yesterday on the Normandie looking marvellous, and very sad to have missed the Small Dog.

The day I left for West Indies was an auction where I had seen a superb Knole sofa - one of the tall backed things with loose ends that tie on with cords - very Italian - and Trude went and got it for me. Guess how much. In England fifty pounds would be cheap. Apparently nobody wanted it here so she got it for sixty dollars. And it's a beauty.

Trip: Fantastic. Madame Stett. very well behaved. BUT.... announced on eve of departure the most embarrassing coincidence had happened. A sum of money had been sent to Joe Marvell by his mother and he had been talking casually of a trip he would take.... and, yes, you've got it. He was due to appear on our return boat to Trinidad and come back to N. Y. with us. Well, at least, thought I, that will let me out, so I said I thought it an excellent idea. Well, duckie, we got off, amid carnival streamers and a yelling mob of Bronx monsters and ate bally and silent well till St. Thomas (Virgin Islands) A weary dump. American owned. Bleak except for scrub, cactus, a wan palm or two and very fine bougainvillea. Marvellous bay rum. Bought a huge bottle for thirty cents. Cigarettes - Luckies, Chesterfield and Camel for thirty cents a carton - in other words just over a shilling for a hundred.

Next stop Martinique.

Breathtaking beauty. Wilderness of palms, tree ferns fifty and eighty feet high, hibiscus, bougainvillea, bananas, orchids dripping from branches, and everywhere all across the island (we took a long drive) delightful little homes where the negroes live - neat and always with bright gardens rioting with flowers. Many chrysanthemums - which seemed odd, cheek by jowl with priceless lilies, orchids, etc. St. Pierre, once the Monte Carlo of the Caribbean, now a mushroom shed town like Ischia. Here it was a volcano that swept down and demolished the town in a few minutes. Gruesome and fascinating museum of remains dug out of the debris. Fort de France, on the other side of the island, completely provencal in character plus the element of black population, unlike British West Indies, gay, brilliantly clad, smiling and always songs. A delightful memory. Definitely to revisit.

Next Trinidad.

Queen's Park Hotel. "The Haven of the Elite".

Arrival at daybreak. One, two, three, four, British destroyers
sprawled across the bay. First news. Garbo and Stowokovski living
in sin at Amalfi. Port of Spain a big town, negroes and indians
in white suits with monotonously over developed genitals clearly
visible. Hotel seemingly cool and quiet on a strip of grass
that might be Wimbledon Common. Shown to rooms. Dropping of jaws.
A squalor not to be described. No windows, just shutters.
Fretwork walls leading to hall, so that every footstep inside
or out reechoed. Mosquito nets on leering, lowering beds. Tiny
white wash basins with grimy water in them where drowned flies
floated. Bare floors, none too clean. A smell of food from
right underneath where the kitchens were. We hired a car for
the three days we'd be there. We drove to a beach to swim
and got acute claustrophobia. It was so shut in and Tarzan scenery
rose in precipices all dripping with green on each side and
the water was dark green and leaves flapped at you and small
jellyfish stung you and giant pelicans kept flopping in the water
and you had the feeling your rear might be mistaken for a tasty
morsel. Tired, retired. Found shower, dressed, dined. Had a
drink. Retired. Elinor opens her door first,

"Oh, oh, oh! I hear her exclaim, quietly, soulfully, to
herself.

"What's matter?"

"Nothing."

I peer out. I see one, two, three tropical cockroaches as
big as big mice come charging from her room. I turn completely
over. They are coming in my direction. I say "Boo!" and they do
stop. But by now MY door is open. I bleat "Boo" again, imagining
a cascade of them pouring about my feet, and almost lose my
dinner there and then. But my room seems free enough until
the three start dashing in. I slam the door. One gets in. I drop
a towel on it and then jump on the towel till I hear a pistol shot.
then, gagging, I kick towel into corridor. I hear Elinore being
seasick. There is a stink of Siamese cats. One gets to bed.
Elinore comes in looking like any family ghost, silently sprinkles
camphor all over the room, then toilet water and drifts out saving
not one word. Night sets in. Nobody goes to bed. Commercial
travellers arrive and bash their boots and shoes all over the
hotel. Maids bawl "Noah, Ar tell yar Ar 'Arven't seen it."
Heat stifles. One dies in nightmare.

BUT: Trees, flowers, shrubs - a beauty incredible. A
giant orange-vermillion flowering tree called Imortelle. A tree
called Saman where mad ferns and orchids drip from every giant branch.
Miles of cocoa trees, very decorative, the beans sprouting in
four or five coulours from the trunks. Coffee trees, bamboos
a hundred feet high. All this most exciting. Indians very beautiful
here, negroes a poor type on the whole, with some notable exceptions
I have conversation with one or two. They all say, after first
shyness, the same thing. Trouble again later this year, the last
strike having accomplished nothing. They say only the late governor
who resigned, prevented massacre. The new one will not. They have
a sad, desperate, bowed down air, terribly in contast to the
Martiniquoises, and many, the most part of the houses, if you
can call them that, are pitiful mud shacks of one room - or one
minute mud space, for a whole family.

From here to Tobago. Tiny island with beaches so beautiful
you cannot bear to leave them. Primitive in the extreme. A hotel
called Robinson Crusoe, where we stayed, kept by a retired
British army man, what what, old chappie. Married, evidently
a bar maid he did wrong, who, on the strength of marriage became

Darling Fido,

23rd March 1939

as I am wiring you, today is Rexli's wedding day.
Glenway's family's bitch suddenly got in the mood and I
have just left him with her at the vet and the two virgins
are expecte to consummate the marriage until tomorrow.
Won't Rex be surprised and won't he take kindly to marriage?
They say as they're both virgins they may take a little
time finding out what it's all about. The lady is very
handsome rotgelb, not with so glorious a crushed pansy for
a face, but very noble and steadfast. Boxers, I have found,
are all neurotic. She won't yowl like most bitches but
wonders what is the matter with a pained expression and
keeps turning round to look at herself. If they don't
take to each other today and tonight, they go tomorrow to
the country to make love beneath the moon among the bushes.
J. gets choice of puppies. In six weeks, my dear, we may have
a baby Rexliwexli! Gradually you see, they begin to inundate
us.

Many thanks indeed, for the first book to arrive -
dear Percy Sykes, which came this morning and at a glance
surprises me extremely by its erudition. He always looked
such a moron.

I wired about Z. because first and foremost she has to
have the disintoxication, as the whole nerve and blood system
is intoxicated, and the man has apparently much fame with
cabinet ministers as it only takes a week, and then a week to
get over the shock - something newer and much more effective
than demorphine, which is hideously painful and not always
successful.

After that one can see. She's fairly tough and has her
head screwed on the right way, and has really boundless energy
and plenty of friends who could give her a job, once she
is able to attend to it properly, so I think if I just pay for
the disintoxication that is all one need be expecte to do.

No news much - I just sit and read and read and read
make notes, mislay them, find them again and file them.
Olivia is a godsend and very cheerful and brings stacks of
material. I think eventually this should all be formed
into several volumes - the first being a summary and outline,
the successors an amplification.

I had an awful time when my back gave out, catching
a sort of cold I suppose, and sick with aginising pains in
the spine behind the neck and above the rump. But that has
passed off now.

News from Europe is so foul and awful - one only hopes
a strong line may be taken at last. I think it's the most
touching symbol of disillusionment and chagrin that Mr,
Chamberlin scorns now his umbrella.

Fred and J. are jointly giving me a birthday party.
We'll drink to you and miss you.

all love to Kenwin,

4 Jan 1939

Fido darling,

N. Y. certainly seems a sad and oddly empty place
without a small dog with a latchkey. Mighty nice it was
while it lasted and it seems very gloomy to be over so soon.
I still kid myself you may return, and what heaven if you
did! Well, till then, no use brooding. So here's the
dirt to date.

When you'd gone, Carl brought round Judith Anderson
and her husband to see the head, THE head. They all but
died, and genuinely, with admiration and delight. Husband,
Professor Lehmann from California, said Carl had told him
it had the quality of Donnatello and said now Carl, keep
calm, that is saying too much. But he said, having seen it,
he saw at once what was meant. That the thing lived not
in its surfaces but from an illusion of intense inner life.
"Who could believe, or would need to, there's only layer
on layer of marble inside THAT?" Well, they stayed an hour
or two and Barthe was there, very much purring, and Jimmie
purring also at far too many flatteries, and myself in pride
of ownership and glad to hear Barthe tell how you said "I
think it should be in marble." And Carl said "Bryher doesn't
only write as an historian, she MAKES history."

Next the stand arrived, very lovely and takes all my
records. Next day a talk with Eddie Welch shaking the big
head, eyes down, saying "it's a real loss you know when
Bryher is gone." And Lotte moaning "Why the devil you let
Bryher go back to that feelthy barbarism?" And me: But,
Lotte, her refugees!" And Lotte: "Refugees, hell! We're all
refugees, nicht. And Bryher must not be thrown away ON THESE
DAMNED EUROPEAN FRAUDS." I imagine Lotte was letting
escape a certain bitterness on account of personal annoyances
and obligations.

Now my room is being painted blue to surround THE HEAD.

Last night Mamba's Daughters opened and Ethel Waters
comes out of it like the first ray of creation, a goddess,
reviving all the lost hopes in stage and cinema. I cannot
tell you, Fido, how exquisite she was or how classic in a pure
ageless pre-Euripidean or post-Euripidean way. There was
in her a profound incredibly felt and sustained inner conviction
and ecstatic dumb grief and devotion that beat in one like
a new heart. This great clumsy creature evoked an heroic
beauty that has in my experience never been equalled. And
for ten minutes New York made no attempt to clutch a coat or
hat when the show was over but cried and cheered and clapped
their hands until Ethel herself, overcome, with her face hidden
forced them in very decency not to demand hef to appear again.
This was theatrical History, and let no one say here is anything
less than the greatest. Catherine Cornell came away shaken
and trembling, Tallulah lost every vestige of her make up
and could only wave her hands in the air and make noises
like someone coming out of an anaesthetic. Judith Anderson,
herself, I think, the best here, burbled "no actress has
ever done as much."

The world was there - Carl and Fania, Carl suave but
proud as an old tabby with a new phenomenal litter;
all Harlem, of course; Norman bel Geddes, Gladys Calthrop,
Len Hanna, Niki de Gunsberg, Dorothy Gish, Cornell, etc.
But above all else, what was most moving was the almost
unprecedented ovation Ethel got at the end; it might
have been a bullfight! Roar and roar and wave on wave
of male Bravos and higher nasal womens' bravo-bravo
Georgette Harvey is in it. Damned good. She's Mamba,
and Ethel is Hagar, her daughter. Then there's Georgie Burke,
Fredi Washington (don't think you've met her) Alberta Hunter,
and endless others I know but think you don't.

So that was that. Today I wrote to Ethel trying to
tell her what she had done for the dramatic Theatre; that
she had brought to life a dream one had always had of
greatness with names like Duse, Bernhart, Siddons, etc. But
had never quite experienced, and then found it like a blow
between the eyes. She makes a classic and legendary figure
and I hate most of anything that you had to miss it.

Len being back, Jimmie lunched with him today and
he has the cash ready and Lloyd and J. are working to get
the liquor licence hurried through. I am to do the decor.
Or help in it which, me being me, amounts to the same.

Isaac turned up in town and stayed with me and now
stays at Fred's. He looks very worn but cheerful and well and
was upset to miss you. He will stay in town a while. I
have a date with Eddie this week and he is going to help me
on my research work in Negro History (yes, I did say by
the end of March) Anyway, I shall study here a while and
get everything out in note form and then go South. Mildred
is sending me to Tuskagee where she knows the heads and says
that will be most useful.

Records will follow - One of them may surprise
you!

Dear Fido, I still feel part of me that was torn away
and stayed on the Normandie when I got off that gangplank.
As I wired, I didn't find Jekels, but Jimmie was there and
that was a help and we came straight here and that was
a help too. I was delighted but surprised (as you'll see
from the clippings) to hear you'd had a good crossing. Her
the gale was terrific.

All my reallest love and devotion, ever and
always, ever the old fog-og.

Rex is in great form. I just washed his ears in
eau de Cologne. And he smells again like a whore. Love
to Cat, Pup, etc.

New York
1 June 1942

Darling Fido,

I believe I've had all your letters so far - number

seventeen arrived, with its exciting suggestions. Of course, if
you are able to get over here, I shall be able to support you, what
next! Are you not my wife? Excuse the Dickensonian touch, I could
not wholly resist it! Of course, when the "fighting and the tumult
dies" (Kipling!) I too shall want to go to Switzerland, when possible
for our house is there and one will have much to put in order -
that is....well, we needn't go into that. How I miss that heaven
garden! AND ---AND the Zoo has a douracouli! O! It's rather
big, but just as orange and black and white and mousey. All in the
right places. And it gurgles! Sometimes I seem actually to be
walking beside the lake - that's always at night. When I'm among
the vineyards, it's afternoon and hot and we're walking in single
file down dusty slopes. Then I see Emile's silly cabbage rose
of a face and processions of our prolific maids in various states
of extremity, physical and otherwise. And your funny yellowish/
room. Not a good color that! I will want to change all the paint.
This is just a dream, don't take it seriously. These happy
thoughts I find strengthening to the morale. Some of our
pourruer patriots good as they are, go a little far. Poor Peggy
Blodgett was called "not only complacent, but actually dangerous"
for still listening to Mozart! New York is quite specially
wonderful dimmed out - the buildings go up into infinity, quite
dark, No neon lights, most of the lights out - mysterious and
impressive.

You said you got only "water faintly tasting of hops" to
drink - haven't you been drinking the wines? You ought to look
carefully into that situation, because some *ateri* deteriorate
after a certain time. Apparently we have enough for five years
here. They've had sales of wines etc. from the ships.

Your Persian sounds extraordinary! How brave! I've been
struggling with Spanish, which quite destroys the Italian I'd
been acquiring with distressing difficulty. I'm afraid I have a
curious subnormality when it comes to languages - a tremendous
stoppage. Best of all I loved your sultry-sounding melange
of collecting camel hair and thence to your Persian - an
extraordinary image of the east....once after a brandy punch you
talked of the barbarian and finding your way by camel bones.
Now it's wool, but the effect is just as archaic, and almost filled
my shoes with sand! What clever things you think of. Don't
forget Angora rabbits! You just comb them and get all the fluffy
wool you need. So they say. I will look into the Pavlik
situation. I saw him only a few days ago at a cocktail party
and he seemed to be chatting as volubly as ever, - I imagine
little ails but his Russian temperament. Charlie is still *anmam*
around, not quite as large as life and a little less unnatural.
So....well, anyhow, I'll see what can be done. We had news
that Sylvia Beach can be brought over through the Red Cross
so I O. K'd that, I knew that was what you'd want - she, of course
may not wish to leave, but if not she's a fool. Anyhow the
State Department has her case under its wing now and I do hope
she gets here. Endless friends would see to it that she did
not suffer hardship. We would probably unite and set her up
in a new Shakespeare. Do you like Chirico? The early Chirico.