How is the novel going?Dont you think you ought to get away
from Paris for a bit to the country and get a rest.A work of
this importance is bound to tax your nervous energies to the
utmost. How is your health keeping.But I really counsel the
country should you be feeling at all strained or
tired. I'll write soon again.With all my
heart, your
3, BUCKINGHAM GATE,
WESTMINSTER, S.W.1.

TEL. VICTORIA 8583

my dear,

the study on the ghost-story is amazingly good; I enjoyed it
more than I can say. One can see that it isn't perhaps conven-
tionally quite what the Hogarth habitually publish, but that
absolutely fails to explain their rudeness in not acknowledging
it. Plomer has been staying with Virginia in Sussex- this is a
great friend of mine and a young novelist whom Lewis much be-
lieves in-and said that V. spoke of you with the restrained and
tactful admiration which normally cloaks a slight difference
of opinion. However, I am going there soon and will try to
imagine-tacitly, of course-some reason. I'll give you such news
as I have and return later, lest any gossip escape me, to your
study. Ganz will be here in the next ten days to pronounce on the
future of the Holbein. I haven't met anyone new, except an absurd-
ly handsome, elegant, entirely brilliant and arid young french-
man named René Janin, the completely logical end of intellectual
ised France. Natalie Denny was married the other day, to a kind
of Hammersmith highbrow, cuvée Nigel Playfair, and the rest. Paul
is going to make talkie and his baby gets more and more ador-
able. Barbara Harrison came back yesterday from Scotland and we
went out last night. I have a vile little studio in Kensington
belonging to a Polish friend. London is very exhausting, and I

shall be thankful to see the last of it. Of course one cant tell
how long it will take to negotiate the picture. What news from Swann?
I shall try to get over to Paris for a few days at the end of this
month and come over for some weeks when it finally has been dealt
with. Then I shall go away for a few weeks and paint in the West In-
dies for a little. I dont feel like househunting in mid winter much.
Once the Holbein is sold you will be able to organise your life
in the manner you wish.

Your study is enchanting; your prose more sensitive, incisive,
more luminous than ever. How right you are about the Irish who tend to
use their mysticism as "a national asset". It is so truly and so simp-
ly said. I agree with so much that you say, yet find myself frequently
blinded, totally so, to the exclusion of the discovery of other merits,
where you sift sensibility from sham. Perhaps literature is the only
art where such a winnowing is possible. Off Kipling, Buchan, I get no-
thing, perhaps a hint of something in "Brushwood Boy" and in one or
two stories, but always a falsity, a profound, inevitable lie... for me,
at least. So much so, that I feel that the truth from such a source
would be less endurable than their innate falsity. Why does the sham
literary artist survive, while all the world consigns more or less
to their own limbos such artists in other spheres as Moreau, Berlioz,
and Watts, all men far more "gifted", but about whom no one is duped.
No. From these sources I get nothing. With your other judgements I am
in complete agreement. Your summing up is exquisite in sensibility,
sense and style and I thank you for it from the depths of my heart.

you that Dan has had a stroke, but is
making some progress towards recovery.
It is still uncertain whether he will be
able to return to work or not. She sent
you love and messages, and asked me to
tell you this. There is no news this end.
Mother's accounts of your house sound char-
ming. I may go out shortly to North Africa
to stay with friends if I can raise the
fare. If I go I shall probably be away a
couple of months.

With all my congratulations and all
wishes for you both

I had a lot of enquiries about you from
Viva and Willie King. They always remind
me of figurantes in a Becque comedy; char-
acters etched completely in a couple of
sentences to show up what life or marriage
or anything else ought not to be!!! Do you
like them? I do hope you don't!

My dear Mary,

I'd hoped to write to you to-day or to-morrow about Felicity Taverner, but since reading your letter to mother, I expect you's rather I wrote about the impending sale at Sotheby's. I'm not really the evil genius behind the auctioneer's throne that I may perhaps seem to be; the facts are really very simple in their origin. Mother asked me whether she should see Charles the second's watch; I replied, not unnaturally, that such a sale would depend entirely upon necessity; she suggested a consultation with your friend Tancred Borenius, which took place in due course; he rushed about the flat like a pig after truffles, and collected a bon marche-perhaps-of objets de vertu; in fact he rushed us into a sale of more objects than we either of us wished to part with; of that, more later. I see you point of view entirely, and since it's to a large extent mine, I agree than sympathise with it. My own position is a very changed one to-day; my own marriage must be postponed indefinitely, until such a time as I am able to support a wife, and, I hope, children; I shall be deprived, just as much as you, of transmitting family heirlooms to my children; and no one knows better than you if that's a real pleasure or not; to love and to desire lovely things is not a very original point of view, especially when they have a thousand associations of youth and memory behind them. And the capacity for suffering at parting with them is no more a unique possession, either; I don't doubt for a moment, though, that it has its degrees of pain. What alternative can you suggest? You need not imagine that I am recieving one penny from mother; I am not, nor shall I do so again. I went give you any / Do I know what I was going to say!

3

god no one ever will, for that matter-but the whole thing was neither of my inception or planning; nor shall I benefit by it. The property is being sold under my name, at Sotheby's request. Borenius can confirm this. Camilla has to go to school, and I must wait, how long I don't know, before I can marry the woman I want to, and have an heir-to what? I can't afford to have a child outside marriage- or inside, for that matter. I shall manage it somehow, I suppose, in the next two or three years; but, in any case, the heir to these heirlooms, so shortly to be dispersed, will never know what he has been deprived of, since they will have been sold before his birth; and the same eternal transfusion of cross-bred instincts, which, after all, is all that composes the reality of a family, will continue. And one is, I suppose, fairly safe in supposing that your children and mine will not have the same attitude to anything quite in life, that their parents had. At least, I hope not, in my case. We've no idea how differently they may interpret life. So, even if you condemn me, as a participant in this sale, nominal-ly, there's a faint chance that the child whose property they'd one otherwise day be, may forgive me; I sincerely hope so, anyhow.

Glenway was over here a little while ago. Nancy Cunard was over here for about three weeks; we had some very good parties; one in particular was marvellous; she's just gone back; she's the only woman I've ever waited for for an hour when ravening for a meal! Banting has just brought out a portfolio of astonishingly brilliant drawings, but which are perhaps a shade too pathological; just a little bit uncomfortable, at times; he was asking after you the other day. Nancy, by the way, was saying at lunch one day that she had her divorce served on her, or delivered, or whatever they do, in the temple at Paestum; I call that swell, don't you?

My dear,

I want to tell you how very much I admire "Felicity", and to give you all my congratulations on it from the depths of my heart. Your prose becomes more vivid and jewelled in each book; the elegiac grace of Felicity brings one near weeping; each story of yours is for me something like a dream often repeated; the geography of the dream, with each landmark, becomes clearer and more familiar; one is living for the time in a crystal world, where the figures of Callot, Rouault and Berard move in the luminous landscape of Claude....your prose was never more sensitive, never sharper. Never was the air more beautifully vital with the scents of thyme and of the sea, and with the humming of bees; no house was ever more haunted by a lovelier ghost. You've achieved the seemingly impossible, in making reviewers almost intelligent! But there is something which I find a little confused, a little puzzling. Your characters, even when they are sometimes apparently drawn in duplicate, follow so closely in their objective attributes those of certain of your relations, that an outsider, who did not know how you really felt about them, might scarcely help wondering how far your writing really represented your own personal attitude to these people. I mean Adrian, Julia, mon amie...Kralin and so forth...of course, the obvious answer is: if the cap fits, wear it! Of course, we know it doesn't, couldn't represent your real attitude, otherwise you'd long ago have ceased to have anything to do with the originals. But is it quite wise, from a purely worldly point of view, to present a portrait, or a series of portraits, which might suggest to an outsider an interpretation of your relations with your family, which would actually be so false? The touches here and there are so good, even in the less solid, and, I imagine, composite, Janus-headed projection of Felix. I only mention all this, because I can't help

wondering whether you're quite wise in letting an outside world
form so very false an opinion of how you feel about certain of your
relatives. The only other interpretation which the world might make
would be so unflattering to the intelligence that I hardly like to
make it. It would be so absurd to write about anyone like that, and
yet to maintain the apparently normal relations with them which you
do, that scarcely anyone would be capable of living so complicated a
 existence! I really think, with all due respect, that you should
be a little more careful about conveying so wrong an impression, and
one which you so little intended, to the minds of the outside world.
Not that any of us mind what anyone thinks, but it would be quite in-
sufferable for us to think that anyone who did not know you for
the true woman that you are, might see you simply as a Tartuffe. People
have so little intelligence, and they do jump so to conclusions, which
are almost always wrong, if not quite. Someone who did not like you,
and your gifts are so great that they must inevitably bring you one
or two enemies- might say, on the evidence of "Felicity" alone, that
you really loathed the figures, some of whose traits you have borrow-
ed from, in actual life, and that you maintained relations with them
simply on the score of self-interest... and that would be utterly in-
tolerable, for any of us to hear that said. Not that it matters where
so finely-wrought a book is concerned, so sensitive, so delicate, so
moving... Actually, someone suggested quite casually that it might be
called "Roman Holiday"! So you see how prone people are to interpret
falsely. But I can't congratulate you enough on it. You go from strength
to strength; we're watching all the reviews eagerly. A bientôt, I hope,
a vous deux, yours ever

Manie T'Sjot has everything you want. But a red-hot fan-tips to meet you. But we cannot understand 'Armed with madness'.

## MADISON HOTEL

143, BE ST GERMAIN

PARIS

TEL. : DANTON 57-12

— 57-13

My dear, really Paris seems nice again, even in spite of the slump; things, here and there, look a bit shabby, but all the same, the French don't seem to mind very much—the ones one sees at least; and they're probably all so pleased about being able to say: "I told you so!" about Germany, that they can forgive life a good deal. Monroe is still fulminating about your dear friend Bernardine Fritz, after his stay in China; you'd be quite of a mind. Glenway has a Guggenheim prize, which is better than nothing, if not too flattering. And they are all well and ccheerful. Ivy Pierce is living with a ravishingly lovely Chinese painter called Mamie T'sj; I am just going to meet for the first time Ann Green, sister of Julien, and author of "Reader, I Married Him"—the blurb on her jackets always says: "A New Best-Seller. By The Sister Of Julien Green, Whose Books Are As Happy And Carefree As His Are Morbid And Sombre!"

Harold and I were sitting on the veranda when a little girl came running up to us. She said her name was Ann, and she wanted to know if we were friends. And then she said, 'Please don't worry about me, I can take care of myself.' And that's all I know about her. And then she said, 'Please don't leave me.' And that's all I know about her. And then she said, 'Please come and play with me.' And that's all I know about her.

ain,
are,
dont
ast;
g
at they
culmin-
after
nway
g
thing,
d c
ly
ust
ter
-the
eller
AS

a

Harold Acton has left Eddie Coleman, the Negro singer, and is living for good in Pekin, where he is an official lecturer in eighteenth-century literature. Julien is staying unfortunately at Cuvervillles presumably with Gide, whose address on the Hitler ouffages the other day was nothing short of ludicrous, alas. He is trying to convert all the young men in France to communism. A sort of attempt to- side towards a self-induced intellectual-and in time, too- rejuvenation, I suppose-because he is perhaps getting a bit gaga, and wants once before he dies to belong to life and youth, naturally enough...but in that way....Paul and Essie are off to Hollywood and Haiti to film the Emperor Jones. Dudley Murphy directs. We had a party at Bricktops last night; very 1927 in a grand new boite all black oilcloth and mirrors. Louis Cole crooning. Everyone is talking about Alexander, and how. I am satying here till Saturday in the hopes of finding Howard Jordan, who I thin you've met with me, ages ago. But I cant wait after then. The morning is obviously full of birds and sun, of which I can see nothing through the funnel of the hotel-shaft, but I have to wait

[1933]

3.
in for a call from Louis, who is trying to find him. I saw the Vails, Lawrence and Kay Boyle, at Villefranche, but not to speak to. I was always with Dorothy Dudley and Katherine Dudley, and there has been a slight coolness, they don't know why. We went to a really remarkable french movie last night, Monroe Ivy, Barbara Harrison, Mamie T'si and I, called La Tête d'un Homme, with Gina Manès, Inkijinov, the Mongolian actor who played in Storm over Asia, who has lost every trace of his exquisite oblique beauty, but who acts like a million dollars, Harry-Baur and Damia. It ended up with a wholesale massacre in the best low-life wild party I have ever seen on the pictures, with Damia sitting on a tin bed in woollen combinations, looking like the wrath of god straight out of an ash-can, unmoved by all the outwards and visible signs of rape, murder and despair all round her, singing with a face as detached and cold as that of an oracle, "le cafard m'envoahit; c'est la nuit d'une vie, ou tout est gris!" Or something of the sort. In the conventional abstract form of a regular detective story they really got across through their actors and photographers a nightmarish William Faulknerish atmosphere. And some superb street scenes straight from the adorable and divine Utrillo. The Joséphine Baker revue is fun, when she allows the brakes off for a moment, and remembers Harlem, and stops being une grande artiste. I haer from Dorothy that Montherland has nearly finished his Congo novel which he has been working on all these years out there and that Céline is working on a terrifically long novel of mediaeval France, brutal tragi-burlesque as before, written in violent contemporary parisian argot. I'll be in town sat or sun or mon, chez Sickert, or William or Laurens van der Post. When are you coming up? Have got to find a job, if I cant fall on my feet. alas, my days of getting me a sweet, daddy all are long over, if they ever existed, which they didn't, so maybe I just got to work!!! A vous deux, when do I see you? Adress say care of Richard Sickert 14 Barnsbury Park London. N. (Pentonville)

Hotel des Bananiers.

Villefranche.

My dear Mary,

So you've done it again! All my congratulations!

The Macedonian hasn't arrived, but I'm waiting patiently, till Zwemmer's sends it. Or rather, very impatiently. But Humbert Woolfe tells one very little. I've been here a few weeks. Glenway and Monroe, the latter just back from China, have been here for ten days, and left this morning. I met a friend of yours, very handsome, Marise Kessel.

Germaine has just realised, much to her astonishment, some of the facts of life, notably homosexuality: "Deux femmes ensemble; ça devrait vous donner des droles sensations!" The local tapettes are suffering from all the local plagues of Egypt; garlic, gonnorrhoea and gossip. Otherwise the place is unchanged. Pierre Mayer is the latest drug suicide, but he seems to be very unregretted.

There is a raging scandal, in which an Englishman named Martin is involved. It is quite paralysing,

the things that have happened to people whom one knew or knew of, in
the last three years. There is even no peace in death; I am told that
tourists are now shown Lawrence's grave in Vence; and that comes from a
sober British spinster. It is surely the last indignity. As soon as all
my money is gone I shall return to London and try and induce someone
to find me a job, if such a thing be possible. Lawrence Vail and Kay
Boyle are some-where near here; and all the Dudleys and Harveys, except
Caroline Regan are living in the Reserve. Katherine, whom you won't re-
member, is all het up at your having gone from Wishart to Heinemann, as
she is just signed up, I understand, with W. The weather is unbelievably
beautiful; warm and crystalline. I live off motor-tyres and tinned peas
here. I have been learning to box, in a crazy fashion, with Jack Taylor,
the ex-champion. I was at le Lavandou for a long time, or near it; but it
is being spoiled now. I must confess that a little intimate and incid-
entally quite respectable contact with the peasants forced me to in-
terpret aspects of peasant-fisher mentality in rather different terms
to those in which Lawrence and Aldington have written of those very
peasants at le Lavandou. What I saw made Mexican-Indians seem almost
comprehensible! La Cabane has been rechristened "The Frizzy Lily" or
something of the sort. "Les Frizélis".... The Welcome is for sale.

There is an awful near-luxury hotel called le Provençal in a suburban
- style
architect's nightmare vision of a provençal farm. It is the most ador-
able place. Villefranche, I mean. G and W are very well and handsome.

Bernardine's life in Shanghai is spent telling all the other Europenas
how awful they are, because they've never met Paul Morand, van Dongen,
Georges Soulié de Morant, Maurice Magre and so on! Or perhaps Picasso
and Valéry. And she's so rich that they take it all lying down. Argentine
is coming here, which is the main excitement of the moment. Any good
wishes are so superfluous that I'll just send my love to you and G.

Anthony

Bananiers,
Villefranche.

27.3.1933.

Well, Mary my dear, if I may say so, I certainly
hand it to you, and how. The Macedonian arrived just as I'd
read a quarter of "Light in August", which I promptly laid by
and forgot for the time; and I think that for such an aston-
ishly beautiful, terrible and nerve-searing novel as Faulkner's
that's saying something; it's been en exciting spring, what
with Alexander, Faulkner, and here, Céline's vile masterpiece,
"Le Voyage au Bout de la Nuit", and William's frozen land-
grabber, Mr. Rhodes. And Stephen Spender's poems. Are you going
to repeat this with an Akhn Aton or an Aldibiades or a Vir-
gil or somebody? I don't really think you've ever written as
beautifully, or as poignantly, to be frank. You certainly unveil
the hidden life of the hero; and bring the god into sufficient
line with man to make him partially understandable. One can't
find any part more lovely than the whole, in your book, even
with the, to me, special beauties of the section VII to the
end. And when he is in the end dead there's a dry bitterness
in one's mouth, as of when the god's moved away from where
one is. A thing which struck me at Elefsis one summer day.

You might say, and perhaps quite rightly, I don't know- that it was
just a case of my being insensitive to an atmosphere, but no place
gave me so strongly the impression of an empty shell, emptied of
every quality, except perhaps of the terror of divinity. A place
where one would have thought that associations lasting so long, at
such a pitch of concentration, a place that so stamped the spirit
and the mind, and which yet seemed stripped of everything but a
sheer tormenting nightmareish inhumanity...or is that the last wit-
ness of gods who have made their temple elsewhere? The Hadescleft
was still there; the flowers were still infernal, but everything else
seemed to be, as well. You might explain, interpret more differently,
more accurately than I. Or the gods were protecting their own in
their own way. But a curse, not a blessing, seemed to hang in the
white sun and the indigo sky and the feverish, poverty-stricken,
factoried village. The curse of man's mind, not of God's? I don't
know.... I have nothing to say about the Macedonian, except that it
seems perfect and alarming in its beauty, and true, and I can do no-
thing more but congratulate you. May the sun shine on you.

Should you not have read Light in August, I'd advise you to.
Here is another fabulous artist, with every gift in the whole world,
except, perhaps.... I longed to get all the dope about him from Glen-
way, but felt a little shy of asking him. If you want a copy of
Céline's novel, which is exactly what Valéry has called it, an abom-
inisable masterpiece, send me a card, and I'll post you one; it contains
among the other nightmares of tragic buffoonery, a scene which makes
Dostoievsky pale, for atrocity; the argot at times is a bit too much
for one. I will be here for two more weeks, and then in Paris. If you
want any books got you there, send me a line care of Nancy, at 15, rue
Guénégaud, VIe., with "don't forward" or something on the envelope. Or
before to-day fortnight, here. I don't know where I'll be. Then London.
I shall stay probably with Laurene van der Post or William, till I
can get some work. If I can. With my profound admiration,

à vous deux,

Anthony

IO Fitzroy.

Saturday.

My dear, thanks for your letter; sorry
about the week-end. I want very much to come and
see you, but expect to go abroad in September
in about four weeks time. I have no idea how far
you are from Penzance, but could I get rooms
there some time soon and come over and see you,
as I may-in fact, shall be very rushed- in a few
weeks time? Let me know the best way we can fix
things. Do you know Tristan Tzara's address or
where I can get hold of it? Hasn't Bryher had a
quite improbable piece of what is, I suppose,
considerable luck? I may be staying for a while
with Dorothy (Dreiser) Dudley in the south before
I sail for Genoa. Shall stay here for a while as
there's no one but you I want to see, hors town,
but let me know soon how we can fix things up, as I
must let D.D. know when I am coming and boats

from Genoa are highly infrequent, at least the cargo boat I want is. The Covarrubias were living on Bali and have just left, after being there an age, which I'm sorry about, as they are great fun. Your friend-at least I think she is-Fania Marinov, is in town, but without C.van V. So far as I know. But, let me know soon if you can suggest anything so we can meet.

A vous deux,

IO Fitzroy.

1933

My dear, I'm very sorry about the bout of malaria; I hope you're all right again now. If you're sure it doesn't interfere with any other plans, may I come down and see you on Sept. 3rd. ?I think it's a third, anyhow on the Monday. But if the night train is much quicker and no dearer maybe I'll take that, which would make it Tuesday morning. Is there a station at Sennen, and if not where do I book to? Will you let me know, and also if to bring very thin things or not. If this is in the least inconvenient let me know, as I see the coast-line of Bali receding rapidly out of my life and could surely manage it a bit later; I had hoped when I wrote to you before, that I'd make it eventually, but I am far from sure now. However, I'm by no means sure how Miss

Gordine and I would have got on. It may all be
for the best. There's just a dash of the Hitler
about her, and I'm not very fascist-minded. Have
just read a very neat article by Quennell-who is
not my favourite man- on Surréalisme, in which he
points out that the Sub-conscious has not pulled
out very many plums as yet, speaking of Dali and
Ernst. Though I have a sneaking weakness for Dali,
despite his oleographic colour-sense. In trying to
locate just why I like him I think it must be due
to seeing as a child a reproduction of a pre-rapha-
ite picture of Isabella and the pot of basil, in
which I., coiffed like a Zulu, in an expensive William
Morris tea-gown is doing things to a skull; the skull
made a lasting impression on me; I can never see one
even to-day without experiencing a kind of deligthfu
chill down my spine. It's very stuffy here and a
fetid slatternly breeze is just enough to blow one's
papers about and remind one of the tube. The new
stations are huge and give one a glimpse of a very
gruesome infinity. With love,

IO Fitzroy Street.

11.8.1933.

My dear,

Many thanks for your
letter; may I come down on Saturday week, to-
morrow week, if that is convenient to you? If
it is, would you send me a line telling me
what station to come to? I am looking forward
very much indeed to seeing you both, and
Cornwall, where I've always wanted to be; it
must be exceedingly beautiful. The exotic
weather we've been having has broken at last,
not with a bang but a whimper, and the sudden
change is a little disorganising. I have spent
several days going up and down the river to
Greenwich, which is, I think, the most lovely
place in London, and one of the most mysterious;
other than the few bits left us of Wren
and Regency it's the only part of town that

absolutely fills the eye and the mind; it also shows up Miss Eve Kirk somewhat, when one realises how little of it she has really "seen". I cant possibly describe its grave beauty and its secret nostalgia, but I suppose that's common to all places where shipping's to be found, and on the turn of the year so many dreams are loosened. Town is uneventful; a show by Joan Miro of the most hideous surréaliste pictures ever painted, in which the aesthetic is as dubious as the pathology, all mixed up with a horrid kind of pseudo-dutch semplicetto quality which I find quite indescribable. Lots of ballet, but as I cant afford to go, I've persuaded myself that I dont want to. But a few weeks ago Argentina was dancing more grandly than ever. If ever you go to the pictures don't fail to see one called "The done him wrong", with Mae West, heavily censored, but enchanting; unfortunately the censor has cut out a good deal where she sings such classics as "Frankie and Johnnie", and "I Wonder Where My Easy-Ridin' Jockey's Gone?" I've just read E. Arnot Roberson's "Ordinary Families", for which I would suggest as a sub-title, or "Common-Sense Rampant"; but it is extraordinarily good; it's just too bad! I have just begun "More Women Than Men" in which it's said that Miss Compson Burnett has surpassed herself. How odd that the French, of all people, rave over the books of the beautiful Rosamund Lehmann, which are so dull, and havent yet got on to you- or have they?- or these other gifted women, in their own way! I suppose than really that nothing's harder to make an accurate judgement of foreign literature. Miss Satrkie's "Baudelaire" is tiresome, in so far as her judgements of character go, but she has certainly got all the dope together, but her complete fair-mindedness to such people as Major Aspic, Jeanne Duval, Anselle and so on, end by irritating one rather. It is a triumph at least of hard work. Mme. Sabatier's letters are infinitely moving and touching. She

must have been quite irresistible.

I heard from a friend that Davenport was staying with you. What do you think of him? I had never seen him before, but he rushed up to me at a party of Nancy Cunard's and said? "Tony dear!" or something of the sort, and was certainly most affable. But not exceptionally bright in the head, I thought. I am not sure yet if I shall go to Bali with Dora Gordine, because I don't quite know where the fare's coming from! Her recent show was very good, on the whole, and her work had very much improved. What is Hope- (I ask, believing that he will be there, too) Johnstone like? I hear he knits very well, but knitting is so inconclusive, isn't it? Elsa Lanchester, Sciaparelli-ed up to the eyes, is back from Hollywood; she is almost aggressively not the successful woman, if you know what I mean, though that's rather a bitchy thing to say, as she's very nice and aimable. Send me a line re trains. A bientôt and love to you both,

My dear, it's quite all right about the
letter; those damned cornish posts! It's years since I had a
photo taken and haven't seen one about in ages. Barbara Ker-Seymer
might be induced to do me cheaply; and if she will, just for the
charge of paper, paltes and so forth, I'll get her to and will
hasten to send one along. And I don't know a soul who has one,
either, though if or when I see Essie before she goes to
Leningrad on Saturday next, I'll ask her. As regards the head
of me, that's been lent to Willaim for the last year, and I
promised it him for so long as I had no settled place of my
own. I shall be leaving here soon, as Wogan wants to come
back next month some time. I saw Angus to-day, looking very
well. I don't know about the tortoiseshell box, as it's one of
the things mother most values, and she keeps all her personal
letters in it, but will ask her on her return to London. I hear
Jean Guérin is in California with Mary Barnwell. His brother
dined with me the other night. We went to the Palladium, where
we saw Roy Atkins, Zena's latest. He is too handsome to be al-
lowed! God knows how she gets them! Sophie Fedorovitch is going
to live in Harlem with Olivia Wyndham, I hear. Will write soon.

love to you both.