TEL: 6180 VICTORIA.

13, GI COLLEGE STREET,

WESTMINSTER, S.W.1.

December 16, 1921

My dear Sir

I must thank you very much for your kind letter of yesterday to Bomb my books.

It afforded me, I own, immense pleasure writing them, but it placed me in my most meaningful moments. Dear Sir, I know to me that anyone would derive benefit from reading them.

The public however have been very kind and generous.

You are certainly beginning a very lucky career at a very lucky age. May I ask if you are "Lewis Meville", for, as I think, my Press Cuttings' notice from the "Bookman" of November past, I find it so signed.

Wishing you great success, and again thanking you for your letter,

Believe me, dear Sir,

Very faithfully yours

B. van Thar Esq

1.

READING WITH BOTH EYES OPEN.

A Reply to Mr. Herbert Van Thal.

Dear Mr. Van Thal,

You have never heard of me, but I am writing to you because
I am very sorry for you. Why are you so disillusioned? Let me
try to cheer you up. I am one of your large female reading public
(or perhaps it is more elegant to say your large public of female
readers) and I am such an ordinary female reader that I think I must
be a fairly typical example. Anyhow, you will feel happier if I
can convince you that my case is typical, so I hope I shall be able
to do so.

Just look at me and you will see how ordinary I am. I am
short, dark, 33, married. I was educated at a High School, topped
up with a finishing-school abroad, and later I trained as a physio-
therapist and worked as one until I married. Now I have three
children, of whom the eldest is just four, and I run a medium-sized
house with help that fluctuates in a disconcertingly unpredictable
way. You will agree that most of your female readers live very
similar lives, so you will also agree, I hope, that it is just
possible they may think in the same way. (I am only dealing with
female readers at the moment, the writers will come later).

Now this kind of life plays right into your hands as a publisher.
Thousands of women are so tied by house and home that they have to
find their relaxations on the spot. I personally spend my spare
time with two of the three R's; *not* arithmetic, for the house-

3.

possible number of things in the shortest possible time, I do not feel equal to reading the commercialized adventures of mass-produced people, and in bad English to boot. I want something that is original and instructive and which I can think about next day as I cook the dinner, wash nappies or make beds; something that I can talk about and argue about with my husband; for if one is never to argue about anything more interesting than, for instance, whether eggs are better fried on one side or on both sides (always supposing one has two eggs with which to make the experiment), then one might just as well grow roots immediately and spend the rest of one's days peacefully and comfortably in the vegetable plot.

Now if I do not want secondrate novels, then thousands of other women like me do not want secondrate novels either, yet you say you still let them get past you now and again. Tut, tut! You know this is a shocking state of affairs! If you did not publish what I call "tripe", then tripe would not be read. It is as simple as that. Couldn't you take yourself in hand, on Shrove Tuesday, say, and decide firmly to give up publishing tripe for Lent, or better still, when New Year's Eve comes, make an unshakeable resolution to get right through 1950 without publishing one single novel that did not conform to your highest standard of literary taste? You would feel ever so much better if you did. It is you, and you only, who can raise the level of literature, for as long as the demand continues to be greater than the supply second- and third-rate books will be bought and borrowed, even though they are afterwards thrown down in disgust by most of their readers.

4.

So much for the Female Reader. Let us now consider the Female
Writer and see if the picture is as dismal as you think. Why do
not more women write good books? Are all the answers in the first
few paragraphs of this letter? I might ask what woman could be
expected to write an "Emma", a "Wuthering Heights", a "Daniel
Deronda" while she scrubbed the doorstep, mended socks or stirred
soup. And is it really, as you suggest, lack of material that
checks women from writing? Almost everyone has had some interest-
ing, amusing or poignant human experience during the last few unquiet
years, most women are shrewd observers of all that goes on around
them and many have the ability to write fluently. It is rather
unkind of you to suggest that most of us are too apathetic, too
uneducated, too spineless to read or write anything worthwhile.
Please take a less dreary view of the question; things are not
really as bad as you think.

The demand for books is greater than the supply and I believe
this is partly, perhaps largely, because women who could fill the
breach are fully occupied in other ways. I will agree with your
objection that genius will out even under the most unpromising
conditions. You may say that marriage and motherhood, getting
round the butcher and doing mental contortions with eight ration-
books would not have daunted an Emily Brontë or made her less of
an Emily Brontë. Well, that looks rather depressing at first
sight, but I think we may take courage, for if we admit that to
be true, then we must admit that the women writers of the future
will not allow themselves to be daunted either.

5.

If in this age Art must sometimes be sacrificed in the struggle
to find pennies to pay the bills, which flow in with so much
greater regularity than publishers' cheques, we still need not be
too despondent. This is an age of struggle and it is in such times
of stress that great works of art are born.

When you go home this evening, just look at all the very ordinary
women you meet. You probably will not meet one who will write the
great novel of the century for you, but just remember that they can
all read. How many of them are short, dark, possibly 33 and
probably married? Many more than you would have expected before
you started to count them. Doesn't that make you feel a little
more hopeful that they will not ask for the secondrate if you give
them the firstrate?

Mrs. Dix Hamilton,
The White Cottage,
Lindfield,
Haywards Heath,
Sussex.

A-D

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LEICESTER

SENIOR LECTURER

UNIVERSITY ROAD, LEICESTER

6 July 1951

Dear Sir,

I came across a reference to Ella d'Arcy recently in W.C.Frierson, *L'Influence du naturalisme sur les romanciers anglais* (Paris: 1925), about p.150. He mentions her two collections of short stories, *Modern Instances* (1895) and *Monochromes* (1898) and says something (but very little) about Maupassant's influence on her work.

H. van Thal, Esq.
30, Museum Street, W.C.1.

7 GREENWAY COURT
LITTLE CRESCENT
ROTTINGDEAN
SUSSEX

Tel: ROTTINGDEAN 3191

27-8-65.

Dear Mr Van Thal,

Here are photographs of three of the letters. There are 8 or 10 similar ones - the rest are real letters - outward signs of the 'correspondence' with Jean Cortian which went on from 1948 to 1963, three months before his death. 'Perhaps the 'real correspondence' is even more visible through the drawings than through the letters - but that depends on who looks at them, especially on who 'sees'.

I must look through my translations a little more before sending them for retying by your wonderful secretary. I hope to do so before going abroad on the 11th September.

North Marston
268

THE MILL HOUSE
NORTH MARSTON
BUCKINGHAM
MK18 3PD

3rd April, 1974.

Herbert van Thal, Esq.,
London Management,
235/241, Regent Street,
London W1A 2JT.

Dear Mr van Thal,

Thank you so much for your letter of 29th March. I greatly enjoyed our talk at the launching party for Harry Franklin's book and was most interested to hear about your work on THE PRIME MINISTERS. It will give me the greatest pleasure to receive a copy from you when it appears, particularly if you will kindly sign it for me.

I have thought about writing an autobiography, but have come to the conclusion that I would not do it well enough, particularly as I failed to make provision of the basic material in the form of a diary. So I have decided not to attempt it.

Many thanks again for your very kind letter.

REAR-ADMIRAL P. N. HOWES, C.B.D.S.C.
THE PRIVATE SECRETARY
TO
THE RT. HON. THE LORD MAYOR

TELEPHONE, 01-626 2500

THE MANSION HOUSE,

LONDON, E.C.4.

30th April 1970

Dear Mr. van Thal,

I write to tell you that the Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress plan to hold the Midsummer Banquet this year on the evening of the 24th June.

As I expect you know, this Banquet is held in honour of those eminent in the Arts, the Sciences and Learning and I now write at this early date in the hope that you may not already be engaged on 24th June, and will, with your wife, be able to accept an invitation to this Banquet.

I would be most grateful if you could let me know whether you expect to be able to come or not. If you are able to be present a formal invitation will be sent nearer the time.

HOME & VAN THAL LTD.
publishers

Directors:

THE LADY MARGARET DOUGLAS-HOME
HERBERT VAN THAL
G. FIELDEN HUGHES
J. KERSLAKE

3 CLIFFORD STREET
BOND STREET
W.I
MAYFAIR 3509

January 7th.1964.

Dear Mr. van Thal,

In clearing up some papers the
other day, I came on this nostalgic re-
minder. What, thought I, could I do with
it better than to write to the quondam
Managing Director of this distinguished
but ill-starred firm which did so much
not only to forward the cause of liter-
ature in England, but even better to
cement that friendship between you and
me which is still the main consolation
of

Your obliged humble servant