Dear H.D.

Its such a shock to get your letter....when people don't leave when you get in your head they will, you somehow think they will be staying for ever. I thought you'd be leaving almost at once after K. and Bryher. And now I feel like rushing round to Legrain's to see, if there's a ghost of Legrain H.D anywhere....O.B. is so much nicer, isn't he? That is a preposterous thing to say of anyone, but its a shorthand, I like most things, for all the elaborateness of "maybe /s/ its I that am nicer" (equally preposterous) or maybe I am more used or more understanding oretc, etc, ad.lib. But I think everyone is changing, not really like that, but moving forward or not even that, but refusing to become anyone thing which people can leave behind. Except me, because I suddenly feel I want nothing but a comfortable job in an office with a comfortable salary and ALL my evenings my own, to get on with things. A routine/ lifeless job that won't absorb one. I say "It is really time you ceased to be like this; if you're going to earn money, you must earn a lot; otherwise there's no excuse for it". "It's time you were established" I say, and wonder as what. And go plugging on-- waiting and feeling something will happen in the New Year, something that is quite gaily gestating as long as I let it and don't do anything about it, but go on, without feeling very much about anything. Perhaps its evolution from sponge, which is only stomach and mouth, to limpet. Or perhaps from limpet to movable snail. But one always does know when one comes to the end of a period...and one always knows when one's at the beginning of a new one; only its hard to tell when it starts.

And I just don't see where Essie comes into this. She wrote me a pained letter and I am going to eat fried chicken with her to-morrow night. But worst of all she has this minute rang up, and said "O, Buddy, dear, how are you, is there a film society on, I'm alone with nothing to do". And there was no film society on, but I did NOT say "Come round" or "let me take you out". And I know she felt all hurt and brave as she hung up the receiver. And it isn't that so much as what she does to me that worries me...why should I feel I ought not to have kept my afternoon free? Why is she always putting me in the wrong, and is it wrong to refuse to be interrupted? I don't think Essie could see that if I feel interrupted I am no possible use. And it is awfully hard to blame the fact that you are writing a book for all your apparent "oddnesses"...without seeming "Arty" and tense.

But Essie makes me feel a pig, so she's wrong. I only just wonder where I shall have got in my mind about her when I come back to-morrow night.

The other day I went in to the television studios, and I did some work in Fleet St, and I saw some paper men for jobs, and when I went into the London Mercury office to meet someone Squire had got in, I heard Mrs. Macpherson had been ringing up most urgently at my home. I couldn't do anything then, and when I was through the office was shut....they had rung up home 3 times during the day, saying it was most important. So I rang up next morning and found I was wanted to correct my proof. Bryher said you liked to see your proof if possible, that was all" said Mrs Macpherson....if things come out of how hard it is to get me to do anything, will you remember this is what happened? And if the proof was urgent, you see, the old lady waited all morning and afternoon phoning about it without doing anything....that is what makes it so peculiarious with the office; she never realises one is often out all day and can't get in or be got at a moment's notice, often only to correct a proof, and I always feel that I must seem to be taking no interest in the office at all and preserving a haughty aloofness. Mark has sent some Braunberger man to see me. Not the main one. He rang up and said he had some trade show tickets and would take me. I was so alarmed

at the idea of someone coming from Paris and thinking I had no trade show
tickets myself(although it was as a critic he saw me) that I accepted,
and am wondering how I can get out of seeing Helen Twelvetrees, on Wednesday.
I have a film show that night, which keeps me up till past twelve by the time
I have been in to Fleet St, and it leaves only the afternoon to work in, and
one can't work all day, and if one doesn't get on with a book, one's all
phobed... its awful to find one's self pining for a regular life.

I quite suddenly went wild on the idea of hyacinths, and went out and bought
so many that I had to go out and buy more fibre. Then I ran out of bowls. Then
at the end I had so many bowls I cannot put them all in the dark and they
won't grow. But I think hyacinths must be one of my two hundred favourite
flowers (if two hundred are all there are), except freesias, which I only
discovered yesterday you can grow in bowls.... but they won't, because the
only dark place left is the coal cellar, which is so cold I have to alternate
with the drying cupboard and that isn't good for any flower, even small
bronze chrysanthemums, which I think I do draw the line at.

I hope you travelled easily, and find Territet right, with not too much Mrs
Goode, and all of them well. Are you coming back at Christmas? So many
thanks for your letter,

ri

1, Irvine Court
Porchester Terrace.

Dear H.D.

......so I made a film in Switzerland, then I went to England. It was a very good film, but I do not like to stay very long in one place so I went to England. When I was little, I used to be taken every year to the sea, so that I did not stay too long in one place. The sea is never still, I think it has a great lesson for those who can see it "(His eyes grew salt, thinking of the sea)" and when I came to England, the first thing I was told was "keep moving". A policeman said it to me, "It was so bewildered and I suppose he said it to help me. But I could not speak English like I can now, so I said "yes". In my own country we do not say "yes", we say "no". That is why you all say I am long-hat and, how you say, drop-stage. Well, the day after I arrived, I went to see Mr. Lapworth. He is director of Whitehall films. We have no Whitehall in my own country, so I felt very strange. A woman came to the door when I rang. When I said who I wanted, she said I must ring twice. I said if she felt that way she should pin up a notice, and she shut the door. We do not ring twice at home, how was I to know? Well, I saw Mr. Lapworth. He was in his pyjamas. I had never seen a man in pyjamas before. But I sat on the sofa and listened to what he said about "Jeanne d'Arc" because I thought that was the way in England, and then I said I had seen the picture, and he was very surprised, as he had not, nor had any one else in England, although it was already bought, they had only seen the rushes. So I said I had seen it five times. In my country, in my speech, "five" is a lucky number, it means "several", but I did not know the word for "several" then, so I said "five" and he took it quite liter-

ally, so I went to turn to his wife who was talking a lot of nonsense she did not understand. At home when women do not understand, they do not talk; they listen, so that they may learn. But this woman talked, it was very hard for me. She told me that they had thought of being over Lillian Gish for the part. The parts they seem to think of for that girl are very strange. I should not like to be a star. And then he said that at first Falconetti did not want to act the part, she said anyone could, but they persuaded her, and as time went on, she got very fond, how you say, lost in the part. In real life, she is a very frivolous person. I do not like frivolous persons, I like the sea, it is not frivolous. Wanton perhaps, but is not, sometimes, when we look back over the nothing-doin' years, is not life?" There with the blind blowing in the wind and a dark gown of some silken material about him, who could tell?

"But to continue, Mr. Lapworth showed me some parts of "Jeanne d'Arc" that had been cut. They were long shots, that M. Dryer had cut because he thought they interfered, spoilt what one should feel. But one or two are going to be put back in England, M. Dryer wants, because they make it more clear when Jeanne leaves the court and goes to her cell. This film has been so popular that M. Dryer's next one has already been bought, though he has not begun it yet. When I thought I had been there long enough, I left. It is not true that Isaid "I go Home". One day I went to see the manager of a cinema that shows good films, so that he would show the one my good friend, Mr. Macpherson, has made. I owe everything to Mr. Macpherson. I am going to Constantinople in bare feet with him one day. And I went to Allied Artists, who have Mary Pickford and Keaton, and Swanson, so I thought they might as well have me. And they are very nice, But they were in a hurry. Why are you always in a hurry in

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England? The man I saw there is a film man, and he talked to me about "transition", so I felt a little less strange.

But I do not go out much. I am a quiet person. My little sister who used to share my cot says that. So I like to be alone, I do not like always living with a lot of men. When I want to see someone, I call them. For that you say I am proud. I am not proud. I told Mr. Hasslacher I would like to see him. I was very nice to him, because I wanted to find out things from him. He is in the trade, so he is very depressing. But he said he could get the film shown to people if it was brought over, and he said it was very hard to get people to see films, they want to see only their own. That is silly, for they know them. But he said they do.

He said he could make them come and look at it. So I thanked him, and gave him some tea. Then I said, how could one see films if one had them in London. And he said he would find that out. I said I might want to be able to see films of my own. So I thanked him, and gave him another cake. Then I asked him about developing films, and he said he would find out, and also where I could get a camera. He said I could get a Debrie for £15, but in a wooden case. When we made our film, we did not have a wooden case. I did not know, I wished MR. Macpherson had been with me, he would have known. Mr. Macpherson knows a lot. So I said I should see Mr. Hasslacher again. He is very small, and he said people always thought he was much younger than he really was, so I could not ask how old that was. I am twenty five. You say I am twenty six, but you are wrong. It is John Gilbert who is twenty six, and he is a very gallant little woman, and his mother is the Entrepreneur of the Industry. We all owe her a lot, and I hope she may soon forgive her losses.

I went to one of your English dances, too. But we did not dance, for my

partner said she did not know what it would be like, and we went to have supper at a place first, and I saw Alice Joyce there, and then we went on to the dance, and they were all having supper, and we could not find our hostess, and then a black man sang. He sang very well. It is not true that I do not like black men. He was Paul Robeson, and when he sang, I thought and thought, and that is how I did not hear when you all clapped and so you said I did not like it. But I did. They wanted him to sing the song he sings at his play, but he said he was under contract not to. That was the first time I had heard of a contract. Mr. Macpherson does not have a contract. But now I have a manager. Well, they asked him and asked him, and I went out and looked at the sea, and then he said he could HUM the song, and his accompanist could sing the words, and so he did, and I felt I began to understand, England. After all, one of your queen was a great Dane. That is all. Every word of it is true, and this cancels every other life I have ever written. One should live one's life, not write, but it is hard, when one has so many people misunderstand one. Why do people misunderstand? It spoils the, I am learning your ways, the game so!' He slipped out through a door marked "cabinet" and I was too shy to say that perhaps if they did understand, there would be no game. I might have, for though he would not have heard...

Le Touquet

Monday

Dear H.D.

I had not forgotten to write. But it is impossible to, down there,
so I made lists of joke things, and thought over in the train and now
piece them together. I hope you will think that the better way and forgive
any neglect you may have felt.

I was glad you ran through to the balcony as we drove off, it felt funny
going down there again. And when one got there, funnier still to find it
wasn't the same place at all. The kaleidoscope had swung into a new pattern.
The same blues, and the red of oleanders - but more green, because more
palms (imported). Everything reorientated. The new Sporting de l'Ete gives
it a new focus. The Cafe de Paris off one's beat now - that toll up from
the Reserve something not done any more. Instead the same exercise by
walking all the way from the beach, along the new road. Right from the
beach to Lavrotto it is a succession of shops, hotel, cafe, bar, Schiaparelli
Elizabeth Arden, Weil, Chanel, bar, with palms and green swing seats the
sea side. Half of Lavrotto itself is turned into a bar called "Le Can Can",
which is not in the least funny, but it's "done up" nautically, with fishing
nets and waiters as sailors (the wrong kind - of waiters, I mean). It was
old, to me, though, because I'd thought of a nautical bar first, in me play.
Everything was like my play, it fussed me so much - even a large tourist
boat put in (tell P. I could not discover its name, as people said it was
P. and O. Orient, which made it hard to tell even the line. But it was one
of those 8 day trips, with terrible people). And the Sporting was like
my stage set.

Clothes had a new twist. Very much a bandana year. Women wore them instead
of brassieres, instead of anything, looped round the neck and waist, corner-
wise. Men retaliated by wearing them as scarves over their backs...the
beasts! Men also wore gay coloured trousers, and pyjama trousers too - you
remember I was one of the first to "sponsor" them and spent many hours
chasing them in mens shops before I resigned myself to those I did get!
There were plenty of people and no great feeling of depression. It was ...
noticeable that nearly all the people were English. The Beach restaurant
often had no tables, and the Sporting was full for its galas. I suddenly
thought the English were a remarkable people, for they were the only
ones keeping the Riviera alive and spending money, and it seemed rather a
gesture, to come along and leap into fancy dress and behave as if money
really were not only pointless, which it is, but plentiful.

Just here and there, occasionally, a few signs of the times - not much surf
boarding, because that is 100 frs an hour. And not the social parade of
pyjamas and costumes changed twice a day at the beach. But no real feeling
of "ecnomy", save in the Casino, the old one, where only three tables were
going the one night I went in.

All these alterations of the Sporting and Can-Can and new road meant there
was little of the old beach and no rocks for Kenneth to "die" on. But he
didn't seem to want to. He was very unabstract.... though he preserved
that gift, not of negating himself, but of negating other people's opinion
of him. So that we would be standing listening to a rumba band through
glass doors, K. would decide he would like to watch closer and would just
dematerialise, and appear the other side of the doors, looking faintly aloof
if anyone suggested he should pay another 20 francs for being in that
room..... Of course, when I tried, in a more mundane way, to get nearer the
band by just walking through the door..... well, I didn't even get through
it before it was suggested I pay more.... the disadvantage of having dark
hair on that coast! Very hard, you know, to be born with a gigolo aspect.!

There were rumbas everywhere. K. fell hard for them. I gave him a few discs, and he played them all day. I was usually woken up by strains of pea nuts from his room. He developed a habit of before breakfast bathing, oppoiste the hotel, and at the beach swam out to the rafts, quite calmly, as if he always had.

There was a lovely woman who found a book she liked - it was very witty, and she liked "that epidemic style of writing".

The whole English family of boys and vampish mother arrived.

They have men at the beach, sweeping the sea with shrimping nets to keep it free of the least touch of seaweed.

The famous Ile Enchantee was quite awful. If you dine on the terrace, you pay many francs to see it, with champagne obliged; if you go to the bar on the roof garden you can see it much better for the price of a cognac.

The show when I was there was Les Jeux Olympiques... a facetious behind of Greek games and the present ones at Los Angeles, in terms of French revue. Quite grim, except for the end, when the cast dived into floodlit water against a background of fireworks which made a diamante curtain.

This same thing is happening here to-night, but it won't be so funny. I find this place cold, and fake. The sea goes out, and it takes twenty minutes to wlk to it - that is fun. But I seem to have been away so long;

Kenwin seems ages ago, and I loved that, loved being in the house and what went on; and Monte was fun, after I lost my first apprehension. It seems a bore now to have to begin over again in London. That constricted life producing the minimum for the maximum amount of energy. I hope when you are all over for the film, I shall be able to see some of you.

I don't know about my domestic stabilisation yet. There is a cloud of Mo W's wedding anniversary coming up, that is why I had to be here. After that, .........

But I feel fine, loved being at Kenwin and hope these are the kind of bits of Monte news you wanted. Please thank Bryher for all.

No boat at all came near Monaco, but the one undiscoverable tourist - I'm sorry!

They are filming here - some bi-lingual with Kathe von Nagy. Exteriors, in the streets and at the pool.

Dear H.D.

I am so glad you Do link up then with Duse. All the time reading her book I felt it was familiar and that I must touch it at some point and I got as far as her knowing Isadora Duncan long before it actually occurred in the book....But I never knew she had talked to you about her. Which is most important, and I read "The Lady From the Sea" again, and remembered it all, only kept seeing Helm in the part....

Robeson says when he knows the film is about to be shown, he will arrange with the B.B.C. to sing, or do something somewhere publicly, so as to "tie up" all on his own he said that, rather sweetly. He lunched with me yesterday three quarters of an hour late, and I had said the Spanish restaurant, and added "lets meet outside, in case you hate it, then we can move on". You know what it is like waiting outside a restaurant for someone, with the commissionaire leering, and there is always someone easy waiting for a friend who always turns up before yours?....so I went up....and drank and angry sherry....and then Paul arrived, and I could hardly hear a word he said in that place, he is a most indistinct person, and he talked about his career and him self the whole time, and it felt like those first evenings, when it was all too much of a strain, do you remember? He too has this curious octopus thing of thinking that there you are, that is what you are there for, to nourish him....and he makes you talk and agree and discuss all himself. If the whole time....most curious....because he thinks that is really what you want to do. Some people take you on with them, because you both feel you are making something, and liberated selves meet; you don't talk about them, nor they about you, you talk about lobsters or why someone else is dull or film, and you meet above whatever it is. But Robeson seems to think you find your fulfilment most naturally in being absorbed by him....most curious....seems to think he takes you on that way. A sort of Matabele Mother of All Living.

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And then after all that exhaustion, we went out into strong sunlight, and suddenly met a man I knew years ago, who I thought was in Persia, and another man, and Robeson had been on a party with them the night before, and very socially introduced me, and was surprised I knew one of them better than he knew him or me....after lunch....and then I went on to an Elinor Glyn film about dukes and spies called Natsha Boleska and met Ernest Betts....you DO see why, don't you, the film is so near, I can't talk of it in terms of itself? Its all here, translated into Paul and social friends and a trade show on a hot day. And Essie was nowhere about you see....and its the first time I have ever seen him for a strtch without her, and that seemed worse, one was kept on that level the whole time, and then swept off it, not by her nice voice, but by Paul himself....

So I am going away for the week end.

I do hope you get freely to the South of France and think of "Manolsecus" the whole time; it is awful how people crop up everywhere, isn't it? I should be mad myself, I think I should be living like a ghost at Lutry hotel de ville, if I were you with all these people - people coming out...I am not unkind, I know they are sweet and kind, but how they must pull and twist one, and how fraying it must all be....so much worse when you, so to speak, might expect to have no people of your own to cope about, to have settled all that. I think this is a reasoned statement that one's own families, in the long run, are less of a strain than other people's. Will you mark my saying that? I usually say "Parents, so odd, they are so nice as people....when they are somebody else's; immediately they are one's own they are impossible". But I think one's own people are so much more easily dealt with. Take less time and real energy. The trouble is that when other people's people become one's own to consider, as they do....on purpose!

Lady Ireland is a trouble at the office. When I went in with "All Quiet" photos, she said "0, I do want to meet your mother so much", and gushed and

15, Irvine Court

Leinster Place

W.2. 7.2.59.

Dear H.D.

It's so funny to find KEW out. You will have had the copy by now, you know what I think of it, so I needn't be arch. And anyway, if I hadn't let it come out (getting a publisher was another thing... just a fight) I should probably have been writing books like it for the rest of my life. I'm not exactly ashamed about it, because I wrote it in 1926, but I cannot understand why I did it, why it occurred to me to write just that kind of a story and what the point is, and why I wrote it like that, anyway. It IS funny having it out, after all this time.

Out and done with. You wrote to me not very long ago, ... how awful it was to collect manuscripts and have them put by to "revise". And its funny tearing one up out of one's mind by having it in covers. It's almost the only thing left that was on my mind. I'm a positive Ariel, out of his tree. I tore up no end of junk in the summer. Funny junk. Why DOES one keep things. Not only copies, but "rough copies" and "second versions". Heavens, the conceit... quite unconscious, then. Never of course, now; never UN-conscious, I mean. And history note-books kept not, if you please, to show what I lot I must once have assimilated or to represent a mass of sheer slogging work I should be incapable of now, but because they "enshrined" that was the word, some fleeting line, to be used later. Pomes built round lines, and any actual experience quite severed in the junctions of the "lines" which were so much more important... and now KEW, which having the first pome I have ever had in a book, seems so funny. I wonder if you'll see any connection between the pome and BOND ST? I know Bryher (being kind) said Bond St. would remind her of Congreve, if she was sure that was what she meant, and I wondered what she and you all would think of this 18th century kind of Bond St.... I think you were all very kind over that pome. I read it the other day, before sending it off to a Post War ant hology thing a man asked me to submit to and it didn't seem to me to get there at all. I think the KEW pome better. But I can't THINK how I wrote it, how it occurred to me to do that part of the book in verse, or how I spent so much time in the British Museum over "the history". Because I did.

I've finished the German book. Its rather bad to have that too coming, another book I don't care about. Not only getting tired of always being about to do something I needn't be ashamed of, but feel I CAN do something now, some thing that is that I shall like, and know more or less, I think, how to. I mean not bothered about "writing PROSE". Plans for such a lovely London novel, just to set that for myself. LAND retires rather into the background, and on the other hand I want to live with the new one in my mind for a bit, and also, don't want to begin right away, journalism and a book at night again, and want to come out to Territet free. KEW doesn't make me feel free, it makes me feel a younger relation has done something surprising and that I haven't much time to cap it myself.

WHAT a dreadful very much author's letter!

I haven't much to write about really, because my little mind has been bent over the German hard, getting the English, and then I have rushed out to the necessary films as relaxing. I have seen over thirty this year. Only possible because none of them have been an "experience". Pleasant and improving and useful to work on, but MEANING nothing to one. Not in a big way.

Robeson is singing at the Albert Hall on the 16th.

It is very cold, sort of getting colder each minute, so that you make yourself

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shiver largely through thinking how really cold it soon will be. It snowed lightly in the park this morning, with bright sun shining. And black matt trees and curiously black earth. Rather nice.

Woolworths, I am sure you'll love to know, are having a sale. Isn't that rather wonderful?

My publishers have asked me to lunch to meet Iris Barry, a woman I have said/ avoided for years.

I am sending Violet Hunt a copy of KEW. Do you think that will be all right?

I took the risk, because I am so afraid of it coming back on you if I am a чурlish young man, and she just might see it in Bumpus. She told me the other night she was writing a book very hard, I don't know if it was the one we all talked about. If only I could have put that conversation in KEW...and if you could only have seen the Mayor of Lambeth, who is Labour and sounds it, and Mr. Baldwin opening Bawden's wall paintings, which are as grotesque as these pictures, yesterday....

I hope you'll be a little amused, perhaps, here and there.

-m-
A

15, Irvine Court
Leinster Place
W.2. Wednesday.

Dear H.D.

I wrote you all a general letter of incoherent gratitude, but I meant and wanted to write you a special letter, and so I couldn't write at once and any old time... because I am really amazed and not at all there about what you say of KEW, but terribly, terribly happy at what you say about me. Not bothering about whether it's true, or whether I'm pleased, but because you've said it because...O, I don't know, but its impossible not to feel impertinent talking to you about what one dares to want to do, faced with you (and, if I may say so, differently, with Kenneth). So easy to become pompous and say "do you really think so, Mrs Aldington?". However much one tries, and even succeeds in trying, not to be taken in by this deep-sea diving stuff I go in for, it is hard not to be a bore when the people one would most like to like it, accidentally do like it... it's hard not to seem that one is taken in and make them think you're taken in. I think you've taken them in too. Anyway, I don't like KEW, though I do think (being a bore again) that I did it as well as I could then, and I'm terribly terribly glad you get that. I'm also glad there was all the delay and bother, because I think I can leap-on and do something like it, differently, full circle-wise, instead of having a trying intermediate stage. I know what I most naturally do, which I didn't then, and I think its worlds under worlds, what goes on under what is going on, and LAND will be the same, ship-world, plus passenger-world, plus passengers home-world. ONLY, I do hate this clogging sea-weed kind of diction. I can't get rid of. It didn't matter perhaps in KEW, because of the period, but it bores me to death, and that's half-why daily journalism of a respectable kind is helpful.

When Bryher said Kenneth had remarked "every comma in its place", my heart sank. I thought you must all hate it! Commas being in place seem so very unimportant, when you know that Kenneth could put three commas after one word and none anywhere else, and have everything "Wrong" and still, and because of what that meant, write untouchably and make nothing else matter and be, as you say Kenneth, with three breathless exclamation marks. Its all quite wicked; but thank heaven there are worlds under worlds, and one can crawl about between, and be, which is his great gift, so happy in knowing one needn't even try to be like him.

I hear you are reading VILE BODIES. Here is what is supposed to be the clue in London to the people.

AGATHA RUNCIBLE... Elizabeth Ponsonby (one of the Bright, etc. She gave the party in a swimming bath, have the first bottle party, her father lives at St. James's Palace. She used to go round, about 1927, with Hutch).

LORD METROLAND... Lord Beaverbrook.

LOTTIE CRUMP... Rosa Lewis, who runs the Cavendish Hotel in Jermyn St, and that should be the one occasion on which one can say "enough said".

MILES MALPRACTICE... is a young man called EDDIE GATHORNE-HARDY, who is most unpopular and has all the insolence of people

London
Friday.

Dear H.D.

Bryher will have left and K. is cutting, and I don't want to break through that, so I forgive having a lot of petty details thrown at you. You are working, too, I expect, but if I tell K. that Garbo is searing, it may do things to the film, and it may not matter to you. I must tell someone. I rather think I have gone off my head, but it seemed to me that she has made a complete jump forwards from "Joyless Street", all between being discarded or even, made some use of. The wonderful thing is that it is entirely due to her voice. Its the voice makes quite a new Garbo. Bryher, I do hope, will manage to see it, and she will be able to convey to you what it all means; and she may hate it. I may be quite wrong. But it seemed that if Garbo was once an icicle, she makes Anna Christie a block of crystal. Its not the same as ice, but it develops from it. And such a voice! Deep, husky, throbbing, and used so casually. Someone speaking for the first time. The wonderful thing is that having speech makes her face more living, more absolutely searing. Hey gyes are so extraordinary when she talks. And she doesn't bother at all. But it is the only voice I know that comes from the back of the mind, and lights the face with it.

It was one of those rather destructive midnight presentations which end at two, and I am still rather tired, and other things none too well, and I can't make out why people who had seen it in America just say "Garbo is good, but the film is poor". That doesn't seem to come into it. It IS a poor film, as regards mounting and mechanics, and I think the play is rather tiresome. O'Neill never quite does, to me, come off as he should. But Garbo walks on and you suddenly see her flying at Anna Christie, and making someone terribly pent-up and at breaking-point. It is such claustrophobia and so close to one. Garbo in a tiny bar, Garbo in a tiny cabin, Garbo on a berge, with tugs going by on the Hudson and the skyscrapers behind, with the noises and Garbo suddenly saying to herself "I like this. You feel kind of detached from everything".

I want to lunch with Bryher. I hope she rings me up. I shall not write, because it would not be helpful if a letter from me were waiting immediately the family thought they had got her. But if she does not ring me, I shall break in on the phone. It really seems funny to think she'll see the Robesons here. I have asked them to come to the Film Society on Sunday. I wrote on Tuesday, and have not heard yet.

I went to your Chinese restaurant the other day again. The office sent me proofs to correct, with among them those two astonishing photos of Paul. I was transposed to Lutry again (I mean, Lutry came out of one's mind, in front of one in those photos) and something had to be done. I rang up a man I have found who spent the winter in Harlem, and he could not lunch or talk black with me. So I went to your Chinese restaurant. I ate pickled jellyfish very foolishly, which made me feel very precarious and I went to Garbo, and I feel rather tired and depressed.

It was so strange of you to add in, the two of diamonds on Bryhers letter. A few days ago I was going to write and say the wish was coming true. Now I can't remember the order of the cards, and I am not sure. I have forgotten, too. Just what the two of diamonds means? The wish may be coming true, but at the moment I feel more like the card rowing two people across the river. And if something begins to seem as if it is coming true which you had never thought of wishing, it is a little difficult to know if you really wish it, and, that being so, whether it comes to rowing two across a river, whether you want

January 13th

I was always sorry for you being there, so I'm so glad you felt you would write to me. I would have felt sorrier, only right at the start, when he told me, K. said he felt bad at you being swept round by it... I felt he had not empletely "lost his head".

But what does that mean, anyway? None of these things for which there are words can be contained by them. Chastity, patriotism, sex, class, professional, insanity... one doesn't believe in those things. And that would be all right if there weren't what you say - "the fact of a hard and fast code" for the lesser things. Money and demi-monde. It is so all-right steering one's way through class and sanity and sex, not being bound down by the dictionary behaviour of other people... but one comes up against the little things, money and "its not the person, but his friends". The words DO fit them, ... it's so awful.

I'm sorry.

But I can't believe Toni as a "professional" - just that. Of course, you have the facts. But I don't see that "professional" alters anything. I never would have thought it; I guessed of course that he had probably been what I think is called "kind". So many are; they choose to be. Well, people choose to be professional. But is T. simply that? I can see it might be much easier if he were. But I said to K. "Whatever you had found about he was or he wasn't there were always those eyes". And whatever word fits him, those eyes are either more than that or they are unaffected. They are either some quite other thing, applique on, or they are an inner thing coming out. But there are always those eyes...

Does "professional" in that sense always have to mean "danger"? It seems to me, I admit, as foolish to leap to that conclusion as to ignore the possibility. People can take up other careers, such as medicine and not be thought to be doing it so as to murder. You can be a speculator without being a swindler as well. Does "professional" have to mean blackmail and leech and climber? I mean, can't the profession be just that, and no more? You know and I don't.... I just can't see him as having all the sidelines that "professional" has rather unfairly been foisted with. I don't believe in romance and I told K. that the boxer's attitude was better than wide-flung arms to the sun, but I don't either believe in danger.... don't we all make too much of it?

Danger always seems to me a sort of Frankenstein you invent and then can't control. And in any case it is impossible to keep out of. One can be got into messes for so many things one has not done, the most restrained outlet for thought alone can cause one such trouble - if one's not safe when one is not being dangerous, I feel danger is overrated. If one stopped to think, one would never dare do anything. Other people can use anything against one - if they want to. Merely stopping to light a cigarette in a shop doorway can get one had up for soliciting, merely tipping a waiter gives an opening, not drinking lets people say "drugs". It is not good being suspicious, if one is careful. K. surely is.

Of course, you know I am not carrying your letter further. There is nothing one can do about that. I am letting loose the flood of reactions it's caused - perhaps inconsiderately. But you are so wise, there is nothing to say, except show what I feel. I mean, you are so balanced and right about DEMI... we do live IN life, and we only get out of it into DEMI if we are fools. Because DEMI is only one thing - it cramps one. There one is and one can't get out.

2.

But I feel the same about "correctness". That is only one thing. One is a fool if one gets caught into it. It is so tragic that there, though, where the harm is greater, the stigma is less...DEMI is not so bad, if one can only manage one thing; in fact it is the layer for just that kind of person - that is its harm, too. It's as bad to be only this as only that - one loses so much, one is rejecting in an indirect way. Would it really not help at all if Bryher could make herself meet him? But of course, with all the others, whoever they are, it's impossible(as you say again) to mix...for you, for her. What I'm trying to say is that meeting doesn't mean mixing, or even mixing mean sticking or being stuck on to. One can, we all do, mix and meet with "correctness" and dulness and sham, and with DEMI in most of its grades, WITHOUT either of them feeling one is only their own particular thing..., one doesn't ask to be accepted by them AS them, one of them, but as one's self, One's self has many facets...on one thinks that anyone thing they happen to be is all that one is. Or isn't that relevant?

I feel none of this is. But it would be no use waiting a week, till I had tried to get clear - and your letter IS overwhelming. Everything you say is right, all round... it IS and It is NOT "as bad as that". I should be the last to say it is all right... it is such a terrible pity. And on the other hand...

But, I hope I am right, it would be unkinder to wait and write collectedly than to send you this jumble now. Jumble it is. I see all round, in and out and oddly, when it clears what tends to emerge is that I am annoyed it should happen with you there.

But what emerges, too, is that I am sure you are right in "K. must come to in his own way"...Bryher wrote me a note at the same time. I don't like the idea of chasing K. with Chaddie...I think Bryher is too hard and fast herself in giving him a "set time". How CAN it be set? With K. of all people...who never can be reached until he himself stretches out to one? Which also is why I can't quite think of T. as what, normally, Professional means.

I think too Bryher is too prone to think of danger and scandal. I know it has happened... but perhaps through too much thinking of it. She tells me T. is famous and purely professional. That is too much for me. But whenever I by "I think", that is too hard and fast a word.

I hate the whole implications of T. of course. It seems such a pity. I am so sorry for you... except that you seem so wise, in the deepest sense. The money is squalid...but... if it were someone else... if the family were one unconnected... well, what use is it safeguarding one's self there if one petrifies all else in one too? There is no sense in saying things like this, except that they are all streaming out as I read and re-read your letter... alternatives are so awful... I think what I mean, under all this what I am trying to let come out unhindered, is that K. need not compromise, need he, but re-adjust? That is all... can't one say that is all? And it takes timemmm... not a "set" time. You can't clamp things down, even, in words.

But I don't see how one could be anything but friend to T... from the little glimpse I had of him, I don't.

And I don't see HOW he could "come back on "you", I mean this making the grade,... there is no grade but one's own. Supposing he made yours and Bryher's, where would he be? And WHO?.

But one isn't so firmly as that in any one kind of world (is one?) that the two don't flow over and one swim, fish-like, in different levels? Come up for air and go down for food, and find one's own purely personal level which synchronises with nobody else's really?

3.

And isn't that why one can't quite stand for such a thing as insanity? Not one person is the same, not one person isn't unfathomably alone...and the minute one finds one has one's own perceptions, one's own reactions and makes one's own use of the world (it is a great use made of it to forget it, surely)...one finds then one is "different", one finds then and knows, surely, that one is for ever a little mad? As a thing in degree, I can see it, but as a thing in kind I cannot. Any more than I can any of those other things. Whatever good would it do making K. NOT what he is?

But none of this is any use, H.D... I suppose because I believe fundamentally in risks. One is never let down if one trusts. By "trust" (word again) I mean NOT people...though I do mean one IS let down if one lets them feel one suspects them...but their power to see one does not want to hurt them because one is frightened. I believe in greeting the dawns with wide-open arms and clenched fists...I think that is it.

On one side, "correctness" (and stagnations) and on the other, DEMI (and self-wreck)...I have sort of held them in my head's hands and looked and balanced...and one can't be on either side. They are the banks, for those who can't swim. It isn't a case of sheering off, but of steering, isn't it? That will come soon, won't it?...Oh, what use is this? I'm sorry, with funny little separate hurts for each one of you, and no malice for T...

Bryher's note to me was or seemed tragic. Too deliberate under-statement and I think hard-and fastness is bad protection. I can't answer it.

And I can't write to K. as if nothing were happening, nor chat blithely of love, because either is impertinent. And advice is beyond me...I can only plague you as I have done so often, H.D., and am so grateful for having been allowed to. And I am grateful that, having done so so often, you still write to me of all this. But there is nothing but a mist of words seething round a tight little core of words which DO fit...and no order in the mist.

There need be nothing drastic, need there? Ah, well,

It must have been awful to have been there, feeling Br. was alone...and now, the reverse. It is also awful to say the thing WILL "run down"...but I am sure, somehow, there must be readjustment, if one keeps elastic. That is just how your own letter ended...there has been no reason to plague you with this. It would be more ordered if I were to wait, but then they would also be no excuse. I had to answer at once.

I would prefer to think only you had this. But it doesn't matter. I mean, really, if you show it to Bryher - don't tell me. I kind of wrote it to you, but it's all indivisible.

I should be more worried if you yourself were not such a rocklike compression of electric psuchic magnificence...really.

LONDON, January 19th.

From Buddy

Well, Toni must be a little stupid, I think. It had never occurred to me before. I had never bothered whether his eyes were him, latent, or implication of something beyond. But if you and K. have suddenly to become an intrigue, he must be a little stupid. Or perhaps at the moment blind. That may be natural. All the same, one ought always to have a third eye that isn't.

Such a strange lack of perception....O, I know one never has when one most wants it or when someone else does...but I think that annoys me most (not that I am "annoyed", but there are so many little ppicks, little rather poisonous pricks about it, here and there)...T. ought to know that who else one wants, does not make any difference at all...he ought to know that K. wouldn't be K. without you. Being in love with K. ought to make him see that, if he hadn't before or couldn't by himself. K. DOES and must always want you, and (switch-over to practical) Self-preservation (ought to teach Toni that. You are kind of "home" to Kenneth... the centre of a maze, "Home" in the middle. K. only goes on, only I imagine ever did go on, because of turning a corner and finding you there. And he only ever will be on for that. It's hard luck on you, being there and sort of having to wait to be there....hard enough without Toni causing further little hedges for Kenneth to crawl through and go round. I know exactly (and when I say I don't want to be sacrificial and mean that word, you must know I do)....and if I didn't, there I have been with you, to show me and sink into my perceptions....and I was in Iceland, without you.
I imagine Toni is a person who, without being very un-happy, has never been happy for long....unsettled and floating, and can't quite believe himself now. But Toni "knowing and being furious" forfeits all sympathy and makes me a Bryher, saying sailors are more sensitive (which she didn't). Toni must know that K. being made to say "don't tell Toni" is K. cheated, K hanging on by subterfuge to something he knows is most essential to him....you make K. more K., real K., that is what one feels....T. ought to see there is more K. in love with him that way....that is not pleasant for you, and that is the worst part. But such selfish cheating blindness, on his part......

He ought to know that there is nothing in "that way" between K. and I. He ought to know that in the way that one does know these things. This is of course on a different level from the above. Nor do I mind a scrap. I never had a good name to lose - not that that could conceivably be losing it. But you see what I mean....tell him anything that helps either K. or you or I hope both.

If it helps to prove that there is nothing, you can tell him, as is true, that I joined you late because I had a lover in London. That will also explain my occasionally hysterical behaviour in the Knickerbocker, which is still on my conscience.

You are perfectly at liberty to say anything that helps, whiteher you think it true or otherwise (not that I imagine I come into it much). But if I were there I should tell him I am normally "queer" (I mean it is normal to me to be queer), but that I should like to be "bi". Because being just one thing, one way or the other, is missing things, and I hate that. Also, "masculine" and "feminine" one also does not believe in. I am much more "bi" than I was, and shall ultimately be so, I imagine, but these things aren't forced....that's all. But anyone can see any of that, except perhaps the bi-sexual ambition.

How right you are about pyschic baby-class.

2.

And why is it always the people to whom fundamentally the little petty matters are most in reach who scorn them? I suppose that is in itself the answer.

But the one thing that is true, that is permanent, not-seething and to be believed in is that K. does need you now more than ever - for the future as well as now.

"Renunciation" is a trick of the will when it is tired - the *breed* touching earth when it has been bent back too far, touching earth *yet* before it leaps back to normal uprightness again. Renunciation is selfish and never works.

I'm sorry.

to you the other day

Funny, what forebodings one has. I wrote that letter A and looked at it. "All in a jumble" I said and "H.D. deserves better". But I said "If I don't do things at once, I don't know when I shall". So I posted it. And since then, H.D., my motor has been dying and is not yet out of danger. They hope she will be in 48 hours. Now she is doped off to sleep and as I can't be there, I am typing, my mind being detached, at the end of a phone.

She hadn't been well. We said the weather. Then she felt ill. I got her doctor.

He came once, and came next day. After his first visit, everything happened. A nurse....I got a specialist....he said she had acute appendicitis...was old and heavy and had a heart, but would I allow an operation, which would be better than later. It never occured to me to say no. Then an ambulance came and I took her to a home and saw her injected and waited through the operation, which was at ten at night, until they said it had been all right and she was fairly comfortable. But it was in a frightful state and there was slight peritonitis.....I shan't know till Tuesday.

I have been up there ever since, waiting four hours to see her five minutes. It happened long ago, on Friday. To-day is Monday and each day and each time she gets better. Doctors and all are amazed at her and pleased and surprised. The news is the best possible, and there is just another 36 hours to wait. I was too busy to tell anyone, and there was in any case no one to tell - only my burther in Africa, whom I daren't worry. But when your letter came, it was such a relief to answer it, and then it suddenly seemed a relief to tell. She is in very good spirits and it has had no pyschic effect at all. She tries to direct everyone and complains bitterly of the way the nurses lift her, saying she may be heavy, but King Edward was heavier and what did they do about that? And she is worried that I got in the most expensive stomach man for her. But everything is going as well as possible - granted that this had to happen - and there is only the next 36 hours before one can say "SAFE".

I don't tell Bryher, partly because of her hysterical conversion. Also because I am just sufficiently tired not to be able to bear to have "Analysis" said at me...it hasn't "meant" anything. It happened and was a job. I gave up all my other jobs for the time and got on with this. That is all. It happened too quickly and for thinking or getting dents in one's pysche. Now she is in the home, looked after, and our perfect maid is *funning* looking after me here and holding off the two sisters my mother won't see. I just have this flat, and my own private one...both empty. It is funny.

But what saved me was that at the same time the person I am in love with got ill. That WAS awful. Because, with all this here on my hands (which meant so comparatively little), I could do NOTHING...couldn't get at him, had to be discreet, felt responsible, could not get to see him or ANYTHING. And all this cut across. So there was no emotion about the home disaster, because that all went into the other one. Conversely, as I waited to hear about the

3. operation, I was CONVINCED he was having complications, was dying, and so on. When they said my mother was all right, I said "That is only half of it". But he's been ill, you see, without my being near... he's better now, he will soon be up. But still, he would have been such a help just now. And before, you see, just after Christmas, we had a most terrific row... all my fault, I always feel things are " too good to be true", I had never been in love so long before, when a little minor thing went wrong, I screamed, "You want to end it, that's what it is you just want to end it". I was wrought up, because (practical things DO count) I had just hired a flat, not a flat, a room, which I couldn't afford, I hate latches turning into swords of Damocles... He, having something to do, wouldn't stand for me losing my temper and left me to get over it. Which I did, the end of last week. Then on Wednesday, he got ill... I at once thought to die... and Thursday Mother got ill and very nearly did die (though I believe specialists always say that if they had not operated when they did, it would have been fatal... don't they?). Now he is better and in no danger at all, and I hear, I get her from what I hear, we still hold good... but it was so important there shouldn't have been that break just now.

So I have two empty flats... it is funny. And I have not been able to pay the rent of my own. As the landlady does not know my address and has a wrong name, I can't send it her... but that will be all right. Our chauffeur has also, on top of everything, had slight flu, but I can send him along with it.

But in a sense I have never felt less troubled in my life. I have just got on with it. It makes me eat enormously and sleep like a dog. I have spent pounds on taxis a day to keep well, and seem to know just what to do. I tell you both these crises now, in case they explain or affect the tone or content of my letters... but I don't think they do. The illnesses don't seem to affect anything. Even the real one affected only the other. I seemed to step into the mentality of a medical student. I am very glad I am alone and running it unaided. The real trouble is that illnesses, except one's own, are always retrogressive... so little is accomplished, really, when the person does get well. Mother fortunately is no softer or more yielding than usual, so she is playing her part all right. After, to-morrow, I shall know where I am. Now, it doesn't matter. But everything else does, in a sense, as much as usual. I mean, one does not stop pressing one's trousers or feel one "hasn't the heart" to do this or that, because the heart doesn't come into it. One simply doesn't play gramophones because one is tired and knows one wants rest. But it did amuse me to see that article on the Robesons in the January "Opportunity", knowing that house we all went to. It has been funny, the way things happened so quickly, and I've never been in anything so shaky as an ambulance in my life.

Please don't think anything of this when you get it, or worry Bryher, as I have no doubt, at present rate of progress, all will be well when you get it, and it is no strain on me, being just a switch-over into another plane,

Yours in "that way", and every way,

P.T.O.

it may be sadism or masochism, to believe in what they call "suffering" - as long as it is definite enough. However, she is charming to visit. Having known how wearing it is going to nursing homes when I was there last year, she won't let me go often and refuses to see me if I turn up more than she thinks fit. At the same time, I do think determination can be carried too far. People, some people, don't see that sheer giving way is as definite and active as anything else.

People are terrible fools. And the only ones who are not are so frightfully unkind, it seems.

A mad and maddening thing to say. The truth is that this week I have been down to the depths, so far down that the roots of mud-flowers would have seemed like water-lilies on the surface if I could have seen them...and now, for as little real reason as it now seems I got down, I have come up... you know, sleep,...and when one comes up, one says the MOST awful things. It is funny, when one comes up, and one smiles bitterly at the fool who sent one down, how they mistake the smile, and are so pleased you are gay again, that everything always comes right...it is a nuisance about weekend though. Waiting till Monday.

I don't like the idea of you having been ill just now. I hope it has cleared you...it should, if you went the right way about it...but it is awful lying in bed, surrounded by ones selves. I suppose it is a comfort no one ever really knows one...when one gets to grips with one's self, one is so mean...though one isn't, it's the only ones affected by others that are, but it is wonderful if one is strong enough to say "Now I really will go down and what a rest it will have been when I come out". Two things I shall never lose hold of are the power to rest and the power to change my skin like a snake. "Volatile" would be the word if I were writing a telegram and not a letter...

But K. seems to have retired into the background. Bryher in her funny way has come up...Bryher, I am not sure, matters more than anyone. Only she won't realise it. And then she has a habit of saying she DOES in perhaps not the right way at the wrong moment. Anyway, no one matters by themselves...if others would realise that. But Bryher can't be let down by anyone-but herself I always imagine you spend a lot of your valuable strength seeing that does not happen.

To what complication of complexes does one owe HEALOUSY? If I could tell you the pain I give others by being jealous! I imagine through narcissism and guilt-complex...I never can believe things can go right for long. I suppose that is frustrated narcissism. And I suppose my equally strong conviction that they never can go wrong for long is the same. But I want so much of people and they won't give it; not that that matters, but that it stops me giving. And THAT I suppose is because one wants to be omnipotent...but all this can equally be put down to imagination; or can't it? I have caused stupid secnes all this week because I imagine things, read things into ordinary remarks. But what I say is, why bother to be ordinary? If one likes a person, I mean, why be polite enough to be ordinary? On a wet night, going home, when everything has gone wrong, they say "It's lucky we're not going down to Bournemouth to-night" and I, thinking of where I had meant to be going, and that rain in any case (as you know) is irrelevant, is a blessing, I answer "We've no need to". And then there's a row. And then, drinking, whisky, and I ask, is it mixed well, am I told "It's as good as champagne"... champagne having other's ritual, significance; I take it to mean it is preferred to the times when we drink champagne, and so that there is no need to have "champagne" (plus) ever...when, after good sleep, I see it is meant as a compliment and rush to the phone...

If I could get rid of jealousy, I'd go to old Chaddie. But I believe she would tell me my thinking it was half the result of having imagination and liking fools, would mean omnipotence complex...does one ever NEED to be TOLD things?

London,
December 19th

Dear H.D.

This will be more the apologies, than the compliments, of the season. For first I wasn't ready when the shops began putting out coloured lights and Christmas trees - that was eight weeks ago; then, I got sad to think that each year there seemed less people to whom I could give things or give the things I wanted to... so that at the last, I have decided that is no reason not to remember those one has and be grateful, and here I am late. What I am sending you won't arrive in time.

That may not matter as much as it sounds.

For I am not at all sure. You may think a joke's a joke, but I go too far, and that regular jokes are a bore, and I may be very unau fait with your mental AS IS. But the point is I DID think the one-parcel was rather fun, and after I saw the other, which was distinctly beautiful, and funny and fantastic, and I wouldn't worry about either separately, but together they may seem a bit too much of a good thing... but will you remember that I did honestly think you would appreciate the quieter one of the two? And at least, if not in idea, in effect they have variety - one being aural, the other visual. (How hard to write letters about things that will arrive after the letter, when you don't want to spoli the effect by too definite description)....

Bryher has been rather tied up with Audley, and I have only seen her once. But we have met on the phone and plan to dine after this week-end.

It is so nice to have Christmas referable to as a week-end, it fits one part of one's mind. I have found a nice seal in black patent leather, which recalls Iceland and should fit Kenwin, for her.

My particular form of Christmas Calvary this year is Felixstowe... no gramophones allowed, and mrs. refuses to let me have the puppy. So I retire there on Friday with the new Butts, specially saved, and a hip-flask, which is my own present to myself.

K. having introduced backgammon to Lady A., I am able to send her a book on the subject - I think she will be pleased that one thinks she is so professional and keen, don't you? Should sort of balance her in her mind with Mrs Mollison.

For weeks I've been going round bored to tears, and bored defiantly against tears, at the thought of the farce of this approaching festival, and as it only occured to me it might be that - well, not farce, but funny - I am hard put to it to get all done, films crop up and interrupt, and shops are like traffic blocks. So Ill not wait to write longly to you, but may do at Feilstowe, if I keep head above water.

I hope things will be funny for you. Switzerland must be really nice at Christmas. I should think the Swiss had the right and unexpected approach. I am sure the stars have the right quality. The whole thing take one back - where one's never been. I sound like Peter Pan. I will stop.

It is funny how one holds out against things, and then gives way so much more than one would have earlier. I meant of Christmas, but it applies all round.

My very best wieshes, and I think even more than happiness in the New Year one should wish people - conviction.

Yours,

Thursday

H.D.,

It was nice to see you...even though you running off on the bus like that made me feel I should have. But Kenneth says you always do.

Though I remember an evening at the Ivy when you didn't, and I am hoping, before you go back, you can save me another one like that, though I did not get the chance to say it. Not to talk about the same things, at least not my side. But in the same way.

I have not rung you or suggested seeing you. I felt you would be busy with Bryher and with your flat. And also, selfishly, you were so magnificently nice the last time I came to tea, when you were in blue, I wanted to keep my memory of that. I felt if you asked me to tea again, and I came, and there was another carpet up or a chair gone away, it would not be the same. I didn't want any frayed ends to that very tonic afternoon....I was waiting till you'd moved.

Then K. said "Come to Argentina", and there I was.

And then Mother slashed across everything, asking you here, leaving a letter with a note for me saying she did not know your address, would I put it.

Why did I feel like, sending you a letter in my addressing, containing I did not know what? Then you sent flowers..., which were miraculously right.

But I felt I could not cut in on any of that.

Mother had a moment when she felt if she surrounded herself with friends, she would feel better. She counted you in - I felt worried - but the fit passed. Now she goes out alone for long stretches. Things are much the same. Time must work miracles, not I. She turns down all my rapprochements.

Three weeks to-day. We are speaking, because it no longer matters. But when I try to speak sorrow or sympathy, it is like stones rattling down a dry waterfall, to remind you the spring has dried up.

It no longer matters to me. I do all I can.

But I am a robot, recuperating.

At the other is dangerously near bringing me to life before I am ready. Before time is ripe. It is so nice to see him... but I dare not let it be just that. I found, when he knew of the row, that he cancelled difficult dates and telephoned me... I was out... mother answered... imagine... he spoke with a foreign accent and said "Mr. Monk". I know that is true, because that week I had messages left that a "foreigner" had rung up. THAT you see so nearly dangerously makes one cry out "O, cut it. Can't you see?". So only dare see him once a week. Time MUST be an ally.

So "things" are all right.

But I felt it seemed I had got you invited here to smooth over things... which maybe she wanted to be felt... so unfair... I was not sure if you knew we are still so apart I would not know you'd been written to without my knowing. I would never get anyone put in an awkward position without dealing directly.

I am going away this week end, to see what that does. So I have to write now, to prevent you getting this just as you move over. I do NOT want to worry you.

Inner circles.

The Savoy... First I went there Paul's first night. It was the first time we had motored alone. We came up from the sea for it. Then, the next time was "Wonder Bar", after seeing which my face swelled up and the teeth business began. Two friends of mine are having teeth out under ether this week. Death gets further away.

Also, two nights later, I went to see Paul; I was early, so I sat on the

2.
embankment. There was then a case on about an undergraduate who was missing
from Cambridge, known to be in London, and later went back to Cambridge,
shot his tutor, a policeman and himself....that night he was known to be
sleeping on the embankment. That night I was moved on by the police and
had to jump in a taxi. A murder case. THAT young man did die. But last
night, the flexby, the same theatre, the murder case did NOT die - Mrs Barney
got off the very night I went to the Savoy. Death gets further away.
Is it wrong?

And wasn't it nice of Argentina to have lilies? I thinkshe is the first
person of whom I can truly say that her own gaiety made me gay when I
was gloomy. She was like a pyschic boxer, flexing a pyschic muscle, and
moving me say "I'll do that, in time".

My palmist told me I should have an unexpected surprise on July 5th -
it happened the day before, but I heard about "Mr. Monk" phoning then.

Say
I'm sorry, but you are the only person I can tell this to. I feel if you
do not want to be bothered, you will glance at the letter and see I
HAVE told you. In a way, it is a kind of sign of respect, TO tell you.

A child was killed near my nursing home to-day.

That is a lovely priest...nicer than the Tarot ones.' Thank you so much for vouchsafing it to me. I can always touch sacred wood.

I looked... I had gone into the very front row to be conspicuous. Thus it was hard to get out. It has drive, hasn't it? Never quite able to accept Lang, I like "M". There is a lot to lose one's self in.

I saw it in Koln last summer, during the time I was there and about the Rhine, by myself...my "healing" time. Odd of it to turn up again now....

Another omen. On the way, I saw four chows. Not just dogs, but the four dogs I saw were all chows. That was odd. But what wasn't odd at all but sheer miracle was an unexpected ten minutes earlier than usual arrival this morning because it was known I was going out....but that isn't much ever since Saturday morning. Time, like everything, cheats so.

To-morrow my collaborator is coming to play jingles.

I do not ring up to-night on the phone because I am cross with the phone. "Close Up" called... I thought it might be you, so I went to it. It was Mrs. M. "Could I go round this afternoon" (it was then 7.p.m.). Could I go round because the number was late, Miss Stevens was no good, everyone was away, she didn't understand.... I actually couldn't, because I had someone coming in. I said so. "It would only take 5 minutes". I said it would take 20 each way to and from the office, AND if it would only take 5 minutes, it could be sent me, I would do it over breakfast and send in by messenger boy... all so disrupting. I hate to be ungracious, feel wrong things get round about me, but I had kept out and on the go all day till 7, I could not go out again, and leave someone here.... so I do not go to the phone for a while if it is "Close Up". I tell you so as not to use that name if you ring up and I am not there. I did NOT tell Mrs M. you were here. She told me K. was coming over, I pretended I did not know. I will call you up when I know how the week goes.

The wood is really right... I know it has charm, that sense and that sense. And it was good to come on a day of signs. I had to thank at once, but am too cross with the phone!

e

Saturday morning.

Dear H.D.

Adah's panic seems over, and one ought, of course, to have foreseen it... that is why I am sort of writing to Br. at a tangent, through you (if you don't mind) to say I do realise I ought to have foreseen it.... But I can't say to her that I _didn't_ foresee it because I never felt anything that happened to her had any connection with me at all. And I still don't, and that is annoying, which I know you will see.

It has simply put Him farther away than ever, and made her no more explic-
able (sympathetic, I mean). I've talked hours with her, and I don't know her
any more than I did in Territet. Though I can predict her reactions, and
even the style she will use, I have simply no contact at all. Only, a bit
like roulette, I can predict occasionally when the white and when the black
will come up. Any and every obtsacle that she can put in the way of that
though she does; "race" (you're so right about that, she's so blacker than
anyone), age, difference of sex, marriage... all the things that ought to
be superficial, she makes fundamental till one wonders why on earth one is
trying at all. And that is why I want to explain why I wrote so desperately.
I won't "in" it at all. If it had been someone else, or if the circumstance
had shifted one degree, so that she was going to kill him, he her or he him,
one would have been aroused. One would have automatically and instinctively
done something. But I felt so "out" of it, so emotionally not connected,
I was merely arguing on principle and sorry on principle, and that was
the strain. She behaved so exactly to pattern... I suppose one does... but
it wasn't a pattern I really thought possible, now.

And why I was worried was that I didn't care - and that rather shocked me. I know it won't shock you to say that. If I had cared, I shouldn't of course have had time to feel the strain or to write.

I still can't see Paul as anything but what he always was - and she as
what she always was. So if you can get them to see what _really_ worried me,

since I know you understand what it was, I shall feel better for having
let loose. (She'd no right to do it).

I've talked to her this morning, and she's all right. Not hysterical, a little
dulled and more sensible. I am dining again on Monday. She has a friend
called Charlotte Moody, in Doubleday Doran's round the corner, and her
Viennese Trude is very good and disapproving with her. She's all right....
and I've got eight trade shows this week and feel her off my conscience
momentarily. She appears to have been sleeping well with some stuff you
gave her; also says she finds you understand so well, being American.... so
aren't you glad you're not here? For she is and remains at each point an
acquaintance."

....

....

....

London
January 4th.

C1982?

Dear H.D.

I had such a nice letter from you, and now a card (a lovely card, quite the right kind) which followed me round and came up from the Haven has made me realise how long ago your letter was...almost as long as the film...Christmas.

Your letter was the kind of letter, like a conversation, that one wants to answer immediately. Only, I don't know why, one writes so many letters of a slick superficial sort around Christmas...one gets into the habit of slickness and I couldn't write otherwise until now...I knew.

Your card was such fun. And you sent Mother such beautiful flowers, hyacinths of that perfect blue colour which isn't a blue at all, but a gathering and transience of all colours, which is what blue is and does to one, I think. Really very lovely and mother couldn't think why you should be so nice, and said it was nice. She has kept the card on them, because she is rather flattered.

Your letter was a great help. I know where I am. I am so often where I don't know if other people realise it...your letter was just right. K. was so much freer and more talkative (again, don't mention a word of this, it is merely as explaining me and what follows, not explaining him) that I neither wondered after...and I felt I should never know if I really had imagined things, because he would never be talkative again (I thought), and then your letter came, and then, atop, K. took the trouble to phone just before they left. I do hope sometime I really shall see you in a little Soho pub or, in your flat, because there's a lot I've felt but known it wasn't my place to give vent to. Such as for instance that I had felt K. was not getting the most of himself...not quite that...but that he was closing in too much. He really did worry me rather at Monte. And then I said "O, we're not all the same, K's quite different from you, Buddy." and put it down to the film. And I put a lot down to the film (K. went out a great deal more in the autumn but I didn't feel he was any happier or happier, quite the reverse, and I put that down to the film). But I knew underneath that the film was something I was saying till I really knew...using like a hat or a piece of paper one holds up to the sun till one is used to it.

When a thing has happened or is happening, one always finds one has known it for a long time.

I think in any case I have a kind of animal foresight, and feel things and put them away for future use in my mind, without a word (even to myself, like an animal). This without any claim to psychic-ness. But I think if one feels kind of connected with earth and with life, one doesn't need to wait for the flowers before one recognises the plant...one is in touch with the roots all along. With one's own roots, which are subconscious, and going on underneath all the time, in touch with it always.

That, too, is another reason why I think analysis is to a certain extent unnecessary. But that is separate.

What I have been trying to say so far, without making you feel K. was indiscreet, was that K's manner put me on the map so to speak; and I tried to drop a hint, which I know from your letter you took, when I wrote about your parcel. (And then I got a little worried when I didn't hear from you, until I saw your card had been following me round). But it was so funny when I went into the office the day we lunched Essie; I knew I had been agitated, and I went in saying "For myself, Essie doesn't matter anymore, she is far away". And Kenneth said it first.

And then he looked really well for the first time in months.
And then he said "How well you are looking, Buddy".

And as I knew why I was looking well and why Essie didn't matter, I kind of knew where I was.

It worried me in the autumn that though I saw K. more I didn't really talk to him more. I almost felt the going out more was a little desperate, I think. But I put it down to my own fault and flippancy... though I really knew it wasn't that then, more than at any other time. One always does know, I think, if one waits quietly, like a dormouse. If one lets things hibernate till its ready for them to come out and be useful.

Which in turn is why I didn't hint till you yourself might say "things are clearer". There's never any need to force one's self and people always know one's there,

Am I being led on about analysis?... That means I have guilt. So have we all, in varying degrees, along with all the other things. And work, like analysis, sublimates... I do think analysis is the great thing, I do think it is more or less necessary... but I don't think it is the panacea Bryher makes out. And I think it is an obsession with her and that she has transferred other fixations to it. Which one has to take into account.

I further don't think it works on constructive people the same way as it would on creative. Creative people do their own instinctively. I know this is heresy and one is not allowed to. But it has always seemed to me that analysis now is in much the same state as writing, the mechanical ability to write, was hundreds of years ago. THEN, people had to go to someone if they wanted to have a thing written (and so sorted out and recorded). And the scribes were shocked and alarmed at anyone but themselves daring to write. They probably said you couldn't write and think at the same time... much as people still say you cannot type and create at the same time. And I imagine the creative people were the first who taught themselves to write as well.

I imagine creative people are always a little ahead-or put differently, a little more in touch with underneath things.

That is practical, matter-of-fact reaction.

But there is also this: I have never read a psycho book in which I didn't really know most of the stuff already. I hadn't the terms and it wasn't in words... but it was in my mind, and I was working on it. Just as with all Eisenstein's fine theories. One had it all already, sub-consciously. And if one does it, if one's in touch with the roots all the time, one doesn't need the flowers (or the words). If, one the other hand, one isn't, then the flowers help explain the roots. But that's all.

This sounds "high and mighty", but I don't mean it. I just know I'm not frightened and not frightfully ill. The two things I would hate would be to feel un-at-home and deracinated, and afraid of being alone. I don't feel deracinated. I am very aware of terrific liason with life, a kind of pact with it. I am accustomed to the idea of its form changing (because ending is inconceivable) because of the recognition one has with everything round... one has seen it before. One feels trees and blue hyacinths not simply for what they are, but for what they have been, where they come from and what it sounds awful to call the common source. But one knows bits of them are in one. And I don't see how one can explain that feeling to anyone who would see it simply as gigantic Oedipus.

Some people won't realise that there are moments when Oedipus seems merely irrelevant.

I had to go into all that rather mock-Shelley-ism to explain why it does not seem to me to matter when one feels gloomy and depressed. One has to lie fallow at times, and the gloom is merely superficial. Underneath, one has an unalterable sense of enjoyment. Whatever happens, delight or depression, one enjoys - doesn't one? - as long as it uses one a hundred per cent? And that is a matter of one's will to live. People who haven't a

very strong will to live nat-
3. urally, thinking how it would affect them,
get alarmed when one says how bored one is or depressed. Whereas to one's
self, it is the intensity of either that matter.¹

I think even in the interval-times, when one isn't very sentient, I am happy,
because I am waiting and know I am nursing something and it cannot be for-
ced. Even if I am not, I think it is animal conservation of energy just as --
much as any neurosis.

I really mean, you see, that everything seems material, and sometimes one gets bad hits of material, which is a pity, but it doesn't affect one's self.... nothing can affect one's enjoyment of being alive and insisting on being alive. I suppose analysis would help me to be happy **all** the time - but that seems to me like substituting an"even tenour" for ups and downs. And I do hate "even tenours", and I do like ups and downs. Extremes. Extreme heat, extreme cold, extreme quiet, extreme noise, seeing no one and seeing hundreds and seeing one or two. No food or good food. And I recognise the patches as necessary parts between the two.

But it also seems to me that all that means masochism, Guilt, Oedipus and almost everything. I know I like extremes because I am a "depressive maniac", and I do want and propose to be analysed. **One day ...** because one does know, surely, when are the times and when aren't that one needs it? And it wouldn't be to get rid of any of these I should be done, but to help my work. If this "ob security" they tell me about is due to a stoppage somewhere, then I shall be done.... when I have decided it. Keats is such a grim warning of what can happen to work when it is too much a neurosis-sublimation.

But there are two more things. The first being that while analysis takes so long, I cannot help feeling it is still in the experimental stage. I maintain that the drain on one's time and energies, the claustro it would set up, etc, etc would produce a whole string of new things.

The second is that I **do** prefer doing things for myself.

And I know that this is a most complete expose of my ills, which I am giving
into your hands, and that Bryher will have the most convincing arguments
ready and will tell me how ingrown and exhibitionistic I am. But as nothing
is any use till one is ready for it, I don't see that it matters. And if one's
writing, it does work a little differently.

It does sounds so optimistic though.... as if everything's for the best. And it's
awful to find as I get older that that seems truer and truer, with the quali-
fication "In the long run - if the run's long enough".

It is lovely to hear of all the Reserve people. My only sorrow is that now I
shall never be able to write my "Monte Caprico" about them. But do tell me
me more. They're so vivid to me. Did K. tell you that when I went to "Wonder
Bar", two of them walked in. The stout one (with the actress who was not his
mother) and the lean one who wore Nice maillots of stripes and one with
squares, whom I didn't like and always classed as an Oxford intellectual...
do you know the one I mean? It was so funny seeing them in London and it
seemed so much the right place to see them. It is a relief too to know that
I was some use in seeming to preserve the atmosphere at your table (this
gigolo countenance has so few uses). . . . for ever since I have writhed with
horror at the way I giggled and behaved, the things I wore, the stridency of
appearance and behaviour. "Can that have been ME?" I say "And can H.D. and K.
have realised that it wasn't". And then the sickening thought that perhaps
you didn't. Followed by the even worse one that it really was me perhaps.
But as I can't write about them, since you know them, or they you, it is "all
for the best" that Christmas in a hotel by the sea with my mother brought
back in a flood all the Iceland cruise. Being in a dining room with parties of

London and March

It was all grey. Looking out of my nursing-home window, there was St. Saviour's on the right, and a flower-woman on the left. She sat at the corner of a road out of sight from my window. On the corner opposite to her was a man who sold papers. He stood by a tube station (Warwick Avenue) and buses stopped by the flower-woman. Looking out of my window, all the life that there was went on and passed by those two, flower-seller and paper man, who guarded the corner of Clifton Gardens. So you-see I can't be mistaken.

When my mother was in the same home last year, the bus I took from Fleet St. stopped at Clifton Gardens, so I knew.

But it doesn't quite belong there. It is so grey and perhaps because of the sweep of forlorn houses, or the grey pebble church, it seems left by the sea. The roads are too wide for the height of the houses. Instead of space, there is desolation. (Remember of course I knew it when I was ill). In the church and the nursing home and Clifton Gardens make the points of a triangle, which is a grey space where grey roads, and one red one, run into. When it rains, the roads shine like the taxis in the rank in the middle; other days, the taxis look grey like the roads. Everything to me seemed to me made the same when it got there. And then there is a little group of colours, flowers, papers, UNDERGROUND in enamel, and that is at the corner of Clifton Gardens, which runs into Edgware Road, high up, where Edgware Road is thinking of becoming something else. The whole district is called Maida Vale. The Warwick Avenue bit has never got over the war. I think when the people there found they could be hit by a bomb from a war going on in France, they lost heart and did not bother to do up their houses any more. It fits your phrase, "Rather worn 55"....that is to say, not yet had a Jubilee, not yet old enough to be period, and too old at the same time to pretend to be part of an older order of things.

Into that Clifton Gardens shoots, red. I think it meant to be a bit of New Progress, the houses are different, and it brings buses from London. But Warwick Avenue touches it, and wins. It gets seeped over with grey, and just ends with a tube station and a pillar box.

All this is grouped round a canal(VENice, surely, to you). Browning took a house by the canals after Elizabeth Barrett died because he thought it like Venice.

Clifton Gardens goes into Edgware Road and the other side there is St. John's Wood Road. That goes in almost a straight line to Euston, Bloomsbury, where you were when you had the card. Just as a straight line from Sloane Street lands at Clifton Gar dens, going north. I mean, those three points make a right-angled triangle.

I have not been up there again, to look at the number. I thought you would like to know this, and perhaps what the actual, one of others, house looked like did not matter. I mean, I really thought you might resent someone peering and walking by, doing what might remind you of detective stuff and cut in a wrong vibration. Also, as that triangle up there has always meant something to me when I have been brought there, I was waiting till something took me there. One can't run one's head into spells if you are

Sure of one's moment.

Well, one mustn't exaggerate. But I went to school at a place called Clifton. And what my own thread is about began at Warwick itself, the place with a castle in the middle of England. Just a milestone that one didn't recognise till one looked back. It was a question of sun, one

spring, pointing out someone. Which I foolishly consciously refused and ran from till ... Warwick Avenue. Till, in ether, the one person I saw all the time was that person, someone I had then no reason to see, who meant nothing - which alarmed me so much, in case I didn't come back, to think I should have gone on running away, that when I did get back out of ether, I realised your phrase - that nothing would ever matter if I went on rejecting and running. That is my Warwick Avenue vibration, which began in the real Warwick, and is going on now, was going on last year when I couldn't see you and so on. I mean, I do not want to cut in peggishly with my own little thing, but when you asked me out of the blue about Warwick Avenue, and my thread was part of what you have been nice and listening to me about, perhaps I may be excused. That is how I am aware of Warwick, that is all, and can give you the thread you ask for.

I have never told anyone. Not simply because "no one would understand". But because it did not occur to me to tell. It did not occur to me that it existed in itself, consciously. I followed; when I wondered, a new clue appeared - I was not aware of the clue. I followed. The clue always came. I never seemed magical, even at the moments of greatest magic. I did not in a sense know it was going on till you wrote, though I was living by its rules. I do, humbly, hope you will forgive me.

You might have written so many times, when the question would have meant nothing, and I only had "yes" or "no". But just now, the answer must be - all this. Perhaps writing, with that special question, this special moment, is a fresh clue. Showing, if I can furnish a thread, even a bit of a cotton one for their silk, which someone wants, then all this, that so often hasn't seemed worth it, has done what I wanted and needed and will carry me on.

Because that is the fear. Not a thing ending, but using the ending. So my blessings for Greece, which is living proof to me of a working out or on, the great thing.

Do not resent my butting through. My thread's very homespun, purely personal, There is nothing larger, no writing, no Greece, no identification. I have tried to write this letter again and again, keeping me out of it. Then I feel I would not know anything if I didn't come into Warwick Avenue, and then I say, too, "Hell, I'm tired of keeping myself out of things, standing by, submerging myself" - even, in this case, to you. I'm sorry. But, God, God, Go! you've no idea how happy it makes me to see anyone working out their own *perfect* thread/ exquisite thread in such perfection as you. Triangles - I know! There is a wife with me, too, or will be in June. If I had known in the real Warwick, there would not have been. But I waited till ether. It maybe better; people must find themselves, grow out of the transit- ory. June is ahead and what will happen then I do not quite know. It rests with the gods, but of those he has, to myself, made me one, so I suppose it will be all right.

It was nice of you to swoop near now, when Kenneth and Bryher seem so to have receded. They is like a sea-gull pattern. Unexpected close-up of wing-beat fills a sky for a moment that was left rather empty by them. I am silly, but Bryher's "root principles" which one cannot defy with impunity" still sticks in my gullet. I suppose it is pride. I am proud of what I am doing, and think it is a pity people do not know, for they would approve. It is their fault for not being able to. And I can find no root principle that I am aware of defying. I feel in tune. Not for the first time - but that was by chance. This is by control and achievement. Well - one more thing; not very far away from all there is a road called Elgin something or other. I am sorry to have trailed my self across your orbit for an instant - but, thank you. It is nice to know others live by their clues; that clues can be found, and kept; thank you. Do you see what I mean?

Buddy

London
March

One is lying on a rock, being lapped over by waves from a sea one will slip into again the minute one feels one can cope with whole sea. Till then, just to have parts of it lapping, with the whole all round and attainable is... something that happens in cycles, I suppose.

I know Warwick Avenue (even though you fling it out to me from Greece!)

I do hope to God you have read "Brightness Falls", H.D., because how can I "get" how funny it was of you to mention it now, of all times?
Such a fortunate oracle.

Warwick Avenue is just above here, so to speak, north. If you go past this (my mother's) flat, straight on, it is there. Rater grey, and there is a church built of those split pebbles in the way they do at the English sea side. One says of it, "Ah yes, that is where a bomb was dropped during the war, nicht?". And it is.

But the point is that my nursing home was just by Warwick Avenue. I was there with my tonsils. And tonsils began something, some straightening and knowledge of direction, which has just come back to me again now. That is why it is funny you say where is Warwick Avenue...just when I am suddenly waking up and finding I know where I am, and am an inch taller.

Those lovely moments when something that has been going on a long time clears and you find you have been quietly adding a cubit to your stature...

Well, it is funny that once something like you mentioning Warwick Avenue happens, many things happen. There is a house that matters to me. People I do not know very well live in it. I do not like them, I do not often see them. But sometimes they give parties and sometimes I go. And whenever I do, something fortunate happens. Last week I was invited to go to-night. So I knew an important evening *last* night would be as one wanted - harmonious. And, as we were dining, Peggy Ashcroft came to the next table. WHY should Paul's "Desdemona" edge into an important evening in my life?

And while I was out, a girl came to see me, with snowdrops and parma violets. And in the morning my mother's nurse had brought some iris, pale yellow slurring to lilac, tenuous... these flowers arrive, out of nowhere, as my hyacinths end. There is no ending. It goes on like this.

Till the stretch comes when runes cease to run, when the layers don't fit and one can do nothing. I think that is the real fear. That the most happiness can do is be banked against when-it-is-over. That, in itself it is the reverse of Aaron's rod - a flower first, then a rod and weapon. It can't stay as a flower, or as happiness, just a rod to go on with a bit.

But I am getting better. It is so odd. To meet a mood jarring with one's own and say "A few weeks ago that would have killed mine. Now it doesn't seem as important as the mood before or the mood that will come if I-- keep mine intact".

I feel so strong I saw Essie. That also was strange. Because masses had happened to her. Paul refusing to support her. Saying that if she serves him, he will sit down on his work so as to earn no money (glad to do this as his American tour not going too well), and go to Russia with Yolande Jackson. And Essie letting her flat and going to join baby

Paul in the Tirol. And then real Paul witting to say he had not meant it - as anyone but Essie would have expected. So she's up a gum tree. And it was funny to walk into all that. And double-funny, again, to have Peggy Ashcroft at the next table last night. I felt she would so have liked to have known. She is going round saying it is untrue that she will elope with J.B. Priestley, for Paul is the only real love of her life. But I couldn't tell her as she was with her husband. She ate oysters and rhubarb and cream. It seemed bawdy to me.

Films, too, go on. "No Man's Land" at the Marble Arch Pavilion, NOT a little kino, you see, but an ordinary house. And Lawrence at the Plaza, and Dietrich at the Carlton. This, with "Kameradschaft" and "A Nous", ordinarily in London, like that. With "Alone" at the F.S. on Sunday - by those who made "New Babylon". Dietrich is breathless to look at. But there's a <u>kitch</u> streak that stands between one and the screen. She is talking to Clive Brook who is an English officer, and suddenly puts on his cap....you know ? Someone said to me last week "Garbo would never do anything unaesthetic". But, Dietrich, the white prosti, in cocks feathers and jet, with Anna May WO B, yellow sister in satin, travelling in the same compartment is something. And Wong takes the Dietrich line away from her, when, being thanked for saving her life, she says "It is of no consequence". Dietrich has not such lines as in "Dishonoured", save only "I dououou -bt if GOD and I-I-I are on speeeee-king terms". But "Shanghai Express" has none of those undercurrents of the other two.

Gary, in flesh, is in London. On the roof of the usual hotel, wearing a bowler hat and the polka dot scarf, sponsored by the Prince of W. and now worn to such an extent by the nancies as to make policemen follow anyone seen in me....except perhaps Gary, though by what happened in Paris, they have every reason to. He is being lionised here, so I make no attempt to see him.

There is nothing like that cat in "Dishonoured" in "Shanghai Express" - unless it is Anna May Wong. There again, is more funnyness. Our chauffeur had a chow puppy. The other week-end, his father gave it away. It broke his heart, but I heard without pity. Because, he didn't know, but last year he had a fox terrier puppy just as I entered my bad patch. It died. I got in another bad patch while the chow puppy was around - not dire and not all...the time. But when I heard that had gone, I thought..... And then you know, my ether in June was a signpost, clearing, and just this minute, as I know I have added to that, found the road and taken it, I meet a woman in the flat overhead, who has been having the same thing with her teeth, jawbone, poison and all.....if ether-teeth ARE a sign, it couldn't come nearer than that, could it?

One of my very great friends of six years ago, whom I have not seen since he married, I stumbled on by accident in the phone book and found....he was living in Sloane Street, next door to your flat!

Mannin told a woman I know "Never have your boy-friend in the house. Keep him, if keep him you must - but keep him somewhere else". CAN I believe it? I have begun to find a healthy curiosity in people. Which comes from which I don't know, but I have made several nice friends. They don't matter, but are nice in this cycle. Then one moves on. Do you know, I don't mean it quite callously like that, but it is nice not feeling "O, no, I don't want to be tied up with that person"...to feel, now, they are nice to know, and if they are nicer, they will stay. Sometimes people seem all copies and blanks. Bad tunes played by different bands. Sometimes, as a film star might say in an interview, they don't.

Now, your boat - I know it. I studied that plan. I know whose cabins and who can afford what! Those people always send me the tours every year. This

year because I saw no chance of going away anywhere, I day-dreamed over the plan. Saw all the Inges and the Alintons (in whose pew at Eton I once sat with a twin who was really a pupil, but had put his brother with the school and sat, with me, as a guest) AND above all, that Guedalla... I know just where all those people will be, on which deck... it seems so funny to think of you among them. I do hope it won't wreck you, and maybe one payer not cloud the other. Maybe it will balance ?

I am going out with O.B. on Monday. He has collected some people, Brugiere among them, for a ballet or something. He has been hit by something lately, one never knows what. But he is reading a good deal, not "Bunchy", and has discovered the British Museum. That is always a moment. He seems getting background. But he will go to the Film Society in pale blue polo jumpers, and has a pose for bad films.

The Council of Social Hygiene is showing a film"for men only" at... the Mayfair Hotel on Tuesday night. Called "On being a Father"! Its telegraphic address is "Venerdis". Isn't London, doesn't it sometimes reach something rather grand?

It is as a matter of fact rather nicer just now, because simpler. Easier to see people. Less fine snob-meals, and more sherry-and-sausage before a movie and beer and plain things after. I have become again a Cafe Royalist. The only place you can get good Holsteinerschnitzel. The food is so good, it is nice to go there for that and get away from the grubby going in at night and complaining over ham sandwiches with a drink.

Things are very simple here at home, and all due to backgammon. Do you still read VOGUE at your dentist? I mean, you know how "in" backgammon was not long ago? I got one at Christmas. Mother, who has a games mind, if any, is kept in a permanent good temper through one half hour's backgammon a day! It ripples outwards... I have the car much more, people come here, she is much more sympathetic and talks to me of her business worries... just because of moving men over a board with red and black dagger-marks. It's a very runic game, lovely to look at and dopey with its daggers and clink of dice. I am becoming quite good at telepapping them.

On the other hand, they may have a new coinage in South Africa. Which may not mean much. But it means we would have to scrap our cash registers and buy new, a dead loss at a time already a dead loss as far as business goes. My mother has had no money over for five months, my brother has had to buy a new car to look as if things are going well... it is all vaguely threatening. But it has happened before, once when my father died and my mother took my brother aged nine and went over rivers in baskets to put it right; again eight years ago, when a partner went mad and my bother went out. And fifty years ago my brother lost all his money once... but I should hate to have to be the next to go out. Only because it's so mean, being patriotic about people you don't like.

This letter has trailed on till after the evening I went out with O.B. It was a dreary sub-Wedekind play, and it all went wrong for him. The others, who met at the theatre, which is always so difficult, were private publishing women. One by one as the play went on they went dead, and he felt it had not been a success, and I took him to have drinks because I was sorry for him, being left alone when he has such a hunger for people.

He had his hair short and slicked down. Have you ever seen that? The effect is Prince George.

Neither Lawrence nor either publisher who have my book give any answer. Which makes it hard to do anything but write short stories... I hope if you go, you will have time to send me a post card to show me?

And I do so hope it's miraculous. Its most important to "re-sense one's hyacinths". One does owes it to them. And they're measuring rods.

Saturday

One small thing and one's life is disorganised. There is masses I have been having happen, but Black Tiger of Kang Shi shifts it into about as much importance as an interval at Argentina or Tchehov.

There was for instance, Henning in "En Natt", which in itself was a Swedish film again. There is a new lovable Harold Lloyd film, and there will always be Garbo in "Grand Hotel". There is a Sagan picture, "Madchen" on as a play, "Words and Music" to describe grely, a record which contains an imitation of Garbo's voice by that woman I think you saw; there was a funny trip out to sadlers Wells to see "Lac des Cygnes" again, and there was a visit to Dorothy Dickson. All happened this week, and alas, the small pup happened before, so they are not worth detail.

There is also my book returned again, with a statement "Dear R.H., we don't like your book, but we like your writing. Will you do us a book on movies?". And the Camera Club asked me to lecture to them, to which I replied "Lectures give me hell"....

I think Dickson must have mention, though, because it was all so odd. My mothers masseuse rubs Dickson too; she told her I was a great admirer, and Dickson said "Do bring him along". So along yesterday I went. A little shattered because the maid asked if I was for Miss Hyson, her daughter at H&18'. I waited in a very cosy room, brocade rose-sofas, with blue and yellow taffeta cushions, a rich golden shawl on a piano, with a scralet H.M.V. portable on top of it, and photos of Talullah and Noel C. in scralet frames. Dim gold reading lamps.... all very soft and luscious and quiet. And suddenly in comes a small slim girl, who I expect to say "My mother will be in in a minute", and instead says "How do you do?", and that is Dickson, and we sit on a sofa, and she talks on and on, with her head wagging one way and her eyes going the other, just as on the stage. Her hair really lovely, and her complexion amazing. I really do not know how she manages to keep what she is. Such fun to look at, and so tough underneath. She was married when she was 17, left her husband and has lived with one Geoffrey Gwyther ever since, with whom she has rows....

She is at the Coliseum till six every day, then rushes home to her flat, which looks out on Buck.Pal.gardens, has massage, and then goes back to the theatre. "So I only go to films, you see, on Sundays", blandly innocent, expecting to be scolded, with a high note on the "see". She finds two shows a day make her mechanical, and she likes a part in which she can take an intelligent interest. I gather she considers herself rather a dancer, or likes to be considered such.

To look at, she is mazingly trim and neat - not nearly so bulky as you would think from "Wonder Bar". She swoops beautifully when she stands, and when she saw me out, swayed on the door so much that it shut on her before she had finished talking and had to open it again.... It didn't lead anywhere, specially. I mean, I wasn't asked to go round to her dressing room. It was just so odd being told she would like to see me, when I'd never met her, and going to her flat, and having her walk in the room, and feel "This is Dorothy Dickson in front of me". Tell her she had a lot of books about, which were behind glass and

uninspectable.

I think she is a triumph....

Well, the dog. Quite the wrong thing happened. I was practically set on an Afghan. I had seen some small blue cho puppies and not liked them. I had seen an Afghan, and asked for one on approval. Then I went down to some kennels called Kang Shi, saying to myself "It must be a very fine blue pup with yellow eyes", and instead, in an orchard cut up into pens, each

2.

full of miniature red and yellow lions, was an absurd black Mongolian
monster, twelve inches square, and... I had to have it. He came home with
me then and there.

Which in a way is a bore. Because Afghans, with their camel ways and monkey
gait and curling palm-frond tails, are so purely decorative and abstract
and therefore hard to get fond of. They are more art than animal, and
chow is pure animal - mind in terms of animal. I am already fond of this
person.

He will eventually be black, but at the moment has a black head, slightly
lost in a mass of grey wool attached to four Bedlam black feet. A real
honey-bear. His pedigree pedigree pedigree contains two champions - not much
for a pedigree, but nice to know. One of the champions was called Grey
Friar of Silverton, so this black devil may be called Black Monk of
Kang Shi, as there is no reason to call him Tiger, except that his eyes
Do burn bright in the forest of the night. The other champion has the
nice name of Sooty Sun, and was champion of all America. His father has
the nice name of Blue Ching of Waldron...I saw him, a lovely dog who
has sired another dog which has just been sold to America for 1000
dollars. This is no champion, but is a nice, padding, impertinent Tiger,
both gay and seriously trustful. He has been here only five days, and
in that time has learnt his name, to wear a collar and be on a lead,
to bark, to ask for his breakfast biscuit and on two occasions has
asked to be let out....

His five meals and his training take up so much time. I have had to
reorganise my life, and while I do it, he sits in corners and visibly
grows. Most disruptive, ..., worse than Peter the kitten! And only three
months old.

It really is a very extraordinary sight to see fifty chows in an
orchard, and when they all look like lions, and there is just one black
one that looks like a bear, one is lost...

I wish you could see him before he grows-up and loses his mist of grey
coat. And I hope I shall hear how you are, and all is. This is a muddled
slap-dash letter, but it maybe tells you better than if I described
how I am.

Greetings,

J
ho

London
Saturday

E NOV. 1982

Dear H.D.,

I knew that a clue would turn up that would set me writing, and I went to a cocktail party the other evening and met Violet Hunt. So I said "Now, though nothing in the world has happened to me, and nothing that does matters, I will write to H.D. "She was in a rather short black dress with white wool, is it "combed", at the neck, and a green sort of "poke" hat. That is to say, I saw this costume, and the wearer had been talking to my composer for three quarters of an hour, so I went up, and found Violet Hunt. She was still talking of Sarah Bernhardt. She gave imitations of her. At first she had no idea if she'd ever seen me before, then she remembered a great deal - rather marvellously, because it was ages ago that you brought her to see a film here, and detail on detail seemed quite firmly built in her mind, like a house. Just the path up to it had to be cleared. Then she turned to my composer and told him all about me. He was the more surprised as he had no idea who she was. He had arrived as she was leaving, and she began talking in the doorway, and so they had stayed talking... She wants me to take a gramphone round with Bernhardt's voice, because that would be a miracle, and she wants to give a party when you come over, she wants to know when you will come over. Hilda and Phèdre followed at breathless speed in the conversation, and Dr. Sachs made an impression, and then there was a very bewildering bit when Phèdita and a bamboo seemed to be linked, and it wasn't bamboo, but she could not think of the word. I thought, as she kept calling Phèdita "that big girl", that she was being likened to a tree - but, after another passage of Phèdre, it seemed that "bamboo" should have been "yo-yo".

Violet Hunt seemed very gay and happy, making all kinds of jokes, so glad the book was finished, it had taken three years, and laughing about her age and how she had not been to parties for so long and she hoped she would have strength to finish the present one, but it was difficult because she had only a cook, no other maid, and her house had a basement, which tired her, and she wished (with a wink at me) she lived in a basement like mine, because Hilda had brought her and recited Phèdre... you know the kind of thing, and I am not making fun. I would not.
And when she left she said "I am not taking my umbrella, because I cannot remember which it is. I will call to-morrow when there will be only one left".

This was a journalist party, with Rugger blues about, and diversion caused By Squire putting a glass on a modern fireplace which had no mantelpiece, whereupon Mrs Squire, who only sees him in other people's houses, cried "Now the glass has been broken, now the party is a success!" So it was odd to walk in and meet Violet Hunt.... I thought you would like to know.

I have been having one of those periods when all one's unfinished work that one has been waiting for time to complete, looks nonsense; when all the ideas one was waiting to write suddenly appear in their true colours - very shabby; when one is asked to write something and begins to feel nothing one writes ever will be any good, and that the only stuff that would be will never be publishable... so I have been taking a rest and going to every party I am invited to.

That hardly works, because suddenly to appear in the party-world reminds one how many parties there are, and everyone else has been to them, and has no use for one if one's not been. So I merely get rather tired and

disgruntled and inverted-haughty. It seems to me to take so much energy, seeing people. But other people have so much energy. I find it very remarkable, and sit, wondering and watching how they do it.

But my stars never do shine at their best in autumn, and I am suffering from Taurus inability to "get going".

Do you know, by the way, that you can have your dog's horoscope cast? But only in America.

Are you coming over soon? London's as you can imagine. Grey and blue, slashed by red tinsel shop windows. As we can't risk boarding the puppy out, and as he is, too rumbustious to take to a hotel, I am hoping to stay in London for Christmas, which would then be like any other week-end - disagreeable, but short-lived. But I fear that the threat of Mrs.'s sisters descending on us will send us scurrying away.

I too am rather busy "keeping out of things" - my own things. I feel there are distinct moments when one's own life sorts itself better without one. Even if it doesn't one wants a change from always being up against the same thing, and it perhaps helps to be free sometimes to consider how much of what one is up against is one's self and is not. Repeition, when one recognises it, is boring... but, for me, it is hard to decide certainly if what seems only things going in circles again may not be really a spiral.

This not in reference to anything important, but as a general belief, which perhaps is more important than anything, when held to alone.

I saw Lady Audley at the Film Society and talked to her. So I went to call this afternoon, and found her away. It's so difficult to do the "right thing" that to find the fates unpropitious was most shattering... Audley St, four, Saturday afternoon... AND one's own knowledge of pro-crasification.

I hope soon to see you? And it is only the least that I would like to show you Tiger(who also answers to "Kleine", "Spider" and "Miner") while he is still a Reiniger bear!

Felix Hotel
Felixstowe
25.12.32.

The horror of the English East Coast in winter is mitigated by exaggeration. The hotel is run by a railway. All the hall servants are railway people, in railway livery. One expects them to wave red and green flags, and entering the lift should be entering a tunnel.

Aiding the idea of travel, the walls of the ballroom are draped in backcloths representing....L'c Leman! (an omen?) Chateau de Chillon on the left, rather creased because the box for the light switches is under it, then the French side, and on the third wall, Aix Les Bains hurries to Lausanne, missing out Geneva entirely, unless it is all Geneva, and Lausanne and Aix are just swamped. They may be behind one of the folds. There is no lake on the fourth wall, which is serene in its Olde Englishe Panellinge, circa 1909, with a "massive" mantelpiece, supporting Ming(led) vases in rock-cake patterns of blue and once-white. The full effect is obtained by sending back to the panels, when the assembled company have the air, against the backcloth, of being "Titanic" survivors, dancing while Rome, if not Aix, freezes....

Someone says "There's no place like Norway". I say "Why?", and am told "We went there on a cruise once". By such laws of logic is life held at a standstill over this weakening week-end, laws applied in a way beyond me, who am fascinated in watching their process. For this is a country I do not know. It is England. Not London, nor the "shires", nor the country houses, nor even the old country towns. Cornwall is itself; Dorset most personally is, and God bless the Cotswolds. The South of England one knows, and the people are either themselves, in Cornish or Dorset kingdom, or in touch with London. But these, in all ways, are different. A tribe of gaunt women and short-legged men, living by their own lack of lights. They refer to a place called "town", which turns out to be London. But they take nothing from it, on their annual visits, neither clothes nor hair-styles nor music. They take themselves to it, to see the "shows"....it is extraordinary, H.D., to realise how one has no approach to these people. Weather that to us is a challenge/ rebuke merely challenges them. They face rain and fog. The redder their faces become, the more respect they have for each other.

The tunes they dance to are not the tunes we know. The clothes the women wear are of Harrogate fashion. I am used, this year, to knowing that brown is "in" as an evening colour. I am used to much velvet, white and brown velvet, and velvet longgloves. I am used to judging a woman's pretensions by the colour of her hair, varnish and the style of her hair. Here, I find no brown velvet, no small curls on the right temple - and what is more confusing, an entirely other set of such differences taking their place, which I have not yet worked out!

In short, London leaps at me as a club! Most strange feeling. I, who do not belong to London, suddenly feel a member of the club without having realised it. It is more than pyschic snobbery. One knows Leeds people can be as intelligent, that Sheffield people can be as charming, but it is staggering to find that people who're neither intelligent or charming, whom one doesn't expect to be, one is not looking for, that people whom one meets in the casual round just are so different, that one suddenly says "But this is England, and I don't know it". Now that all my tricks don't mean a thing here, and wonder which of their own strange ways they themselves

regard as "tricks"....

You will see I am doing well. Getting through here by being detached and amused as spectador. Profoundly grateful that one has something to spectate. Made more immune too, by an act of blessing from K. and Br. before I left, so that I'm not touched by this. L, ke flying low over country, without landing. Bryher tells me there are cornelians to be found on the beach. That would be a nice occupation. But cornelians cannot be risked by a Taurus, so I dare not go on the beach. I should be terror-struck if I found one, and feel cheated if I did not. But I went for a walk during which a cat attached itself to me, in a nice Dick Whittington spirit, and I read Mary Butts, and am happy at having some red roses from Monte, mixed with mimosa - the old Spanish colours, funny of them to crop up.

And is it not funny, or perhaps only fun, that I called my dog Tiger and when I found one of his pup-teeth on the carpet one day, kept it, and now remember that a Tiger's tooth is a great mascot? It is fun to do right by ones' self accidentally. Perhaps the only way one does. How you will frown on that, in analytic frenzy!

The Tiger was put in a cage over Christmas... but I hope to have news of him later, which I will send out by Bryher, who I am seeing on Wednesday. She and K. called the morning I left, which helped.

Your card was nice. I think rabbits come into Christmas because one feels their burrows get snowed up. I know as a kid I used to take stockings full of carrots and lettuce up to a common and lay them at the mouths of rabbit holes.... Lotte Reiniger sent me a card, also with rabbit....

Christmas has rather lacked "rabbit jokes" this side for me, this year. Mrs. usually staged a sort of shower on me, besides giving me a suit. This year the suit was cut down to a pair of shoes, at the price of which much surprise was confessed, and the usual subsidiary socks, records, handkerchiefs and nonsense were left out. She realises, I think, that she missed a turning when I wanted a "home" Christmas this year, and she refused. She sees I think that it would have been a good thing after the summer row, and she missed it... but it is impossible to follow the processes of someone who never admits them to herself. One might just as well wait till they're negated, as they nearly always are....

Other news of this mad England is that poverty really does stalk the land, outside London. Here there are shops which have gone broke. So the unemployed, among whom are the original tradesmen, take the shop and open it for the sale of strange things: carved or painted by the unemployed. Which people buy out of pity. And the cinemas take payment in a couple of fowls or six eggs. Every church this year has a tree to be loaded for... not the hospital the old or the young, but the unemployed....

And New Year's Eye at Monseigneur is two guineas a head, sans boisson, in London....

The idea of nextyear does not frighten. Certain months lately have been so long, I feel a year has time for anything to happen. And according to my stars, this one coming is lucky. I shall be gratfeul. And I hope you, too, will, twelve months hence, look back with gratitude and forward with hope. I mean - bonne annee.

Yours,

CIRVINE COURT,

FORCHESTER TERRACE, N.W.

Wednesday.

Dear (can't do it in signs) H.D.,

Bryher writes in lightning, doesn't she? Certainly one needs conductors! -I'm glad to be one, and don't feel I shouldn't have read what was not addressed to me because I see a side which helps fill in my admiration.

She's got them - and us - all taped, hasn't she? Of course, many are names and some less than that to me, but I begin to feel it is she should have to write a book. I wish I could hand over "Iceland" to her. Funnily dovetailing, I would not have registered Bryn Mawr much if I hadn't just read, in a life-story, that Hepburn was there (see in some other film than "Little Women" first though - though maybe I don't know what I am talking about; on second thoughts, it may ring bells in you; but the life og a family of girls, or even one, growing up, is something I missed).

I have not of course SEEN these. Also, do you keep the stars to yourself? Does Bryher tend to regard them as something else p.a. should sublimate? If one does put a little figure in a niche, it can be distressing to have it smiled at as a toy, that is all, and I was wondering about returning your books. Perhaps to wait would be better. If you want them, will you let me know?

Heavens, what a book that is! Do you know London is going to be wiped out in 389 years? Listen,-

"Again, about 389 years hence the very violent and evil martial star Aldebaran enters within orbs of London's ascendant, and then fire, bloodshed and war will overthrow London entirely, and 68 years afterwards, the very powerful and regal star the Lion's Heart enters within the mid-heaven of Liverpool, which will then become, about 2291, the Royal and Metropolitan City of England and the seat of government".

As if that weren't enough to happen in one's life, I have to-day seen "Queen Christina". It opens Friday, and I suddenly wondered whether it would be a kind act to reserve seats for Bryher on Saturday? I imagine it will be a bit too much, so early, after America and the voyage, and you will anyway prefer to slip in at some stage of the afternoon - but I just thought of it and say so, feeling to talk may be better, because I do hate thinking "I wish I had thought of that" and it occurred to me as a kind of welcome to arrange something for her after she has been banging round on her own.

Also, would I be of any use at station? Not to welcome or intrude personally. But perhaps I could see to luggage and its disposal while she nips into taxi? Sometimes it's useful to have someone to hold and carry things, and it would leave her free to get off.

Let me know.

I am looking forward to 6 on Saturday, thank you for these, and why don't you see Gemini as the pillars of Solomon's temple, a "very frequent and ancient symbol of this sign"?

Thursday

Dear H.D,

Thank you for that - it was a nasty blockage, not knowing. How
easy it seems....you have a great gift for explaining it all, though.
You get so much more from the symbols and when you talk, you know
your way, like someone who knows the names of plants and why they
grow in certain places...you seem to know which clue to take. Much
that I was asking dissolved away because your mere approach to my
questions made them so clear....

That initial magic I'd hit on! I was going to tell you, but it seemed
ungracious before your own much deeper birth-discovery. "R.H" you can
quite easily see as Saturn and Herschel, R = 7 and the W becomes a Taurus fairly clearly. W = W = W = 8
You know, too, that when I write my name, there
is a wiggle under the "g", which seems to me to
hint at Aquarius. . . .
R. Heming

"K" of course is a ram on a ram, one uppide down. Butting each other. Does
that fit? My mother's first "C" is a Crab, when written....it varies,
but I think there are hints, even when a name gives you a sign not
apparent in the horoscope.

But your birth-idea! I take me, and go back to Virgo. I have then carried
it further and take the more definite stirrings, and land at December.
Now December the TWELFTH, exactly six months before I manifested on
earth, is old Christmas day.....that puts the Bull in the stable, along
with the Virgin.

But this may be over-weaving!

It is only that, when you are tuned, you hear further echoes.

I had these this morning....after what you said about MY letters! I
thought you would like them. Don't hurry to return. I have written.
Thank you so much for yesterday, and for the valuable gift of the book.
I feel rather appalled at taking it, but do so much appreciate the
idea. And also you have a funny knack of cropping up right for me....
the way you have often suddenly sent a symbol at a time when I didn't
now I wanted one. An olive-wood god, or an Hour-ox from Vienna, and the
numbers at Christmas..... oracular! ..... it would be afflicting some-
thing to refuse, I don't mean that, but I mean the cropping up of that
book from you is a good sign.

Irvine Court,
Monday.

C1933/39?

Dear H.D.

I can't help telling you, - she's right! I shouldn't presume on ya with my so-much-less-than-cosmic convolutions, but she IS right. You know I never took quite to my unqualified Taurus, and said also that I wasn't that much Herschel? This new one fits much better. Will you thank the seer?

Each planet dovetails more, Reading not too literally, "unstable position" which comes up often seems to me so right for a journalist's life and the Mars is amazing! I find also with this new one that I instinctively read round more - don't, as I did, take just the face value of words so much. Thus my Herschel's gift of a "chequered career" seems only another reference to being a journalist and it is - I hope - possible that "high position followed by a fall" refers to 1930 when, from never having had a book refused and writing for 6 papers, with a signed column, I descended abruptly to where I am now, with everything refused and no column and only two papers. "Estranged from relatives" seems also, "to be at a distance from"...in short, in much belated short, I find my Herschel may not be very helpful, but is what a Taurus can be at home with. I HAVE two questions; as each sign is almost in two houses, it makes aspects hard to fix. They're so very little different from being trine or opposition to each other!

The other is the usual old one of time - does your seer do that? I too have "blows on the head". But in my pram once, a shop awning fell on me and in a fight at school I cut the back of my head open. I wouldn't mind, you know, thinking that was enough of that!

You may remember I tend to sheer off Scorpio if I can? It occurs to me I have slight bird and insect phobia, Br. would say, p, a-ishly, that is because I was stung by a wasp at 4 and my first sight of death was coming on a dead sparrow. But I notice that the bigger the bird, the better and that seems to me that is, the more like two-legged animal (Gentaur, Pan) they are. It is the same with insects, and I take that as being the nearer they are to Crab....

I "see myself" better, thank you, and thank her. One day, when there is mass of time, I would like, if it's possible, to be done for midnight the twelfth (since I'm not sure it was pat one a.m. on the 13th and the two might combine still more.

I do hope you WILL dine on Thursday....to celebrate you on the verge of Venice. Please do, if you can.

I'm sorry I stayed so long Friday - I found it WAS late when I left. But I think that need not be gone over again, for it rakes painfully, and that's what I mean, I would like Thursday to be fete for your going.

Many many thanks for all this,

London,
Begun the night of June 2nd.

C1933/34

Dear H.D.

I have been typing all day, literally and hard, so this letter will suffer in appearance... but I'm not tired otherwise, and I want to talk. It is like letting one's mind off a lead. I haven't not-written because I had nothing to say (that is impossible, save to some people) but because I wanted to say a lot... your letter "fitted", I wanted to settle down to a long conversation, as over evening drink in Br's room or your flat... but I get into "pockets" with myself... and have to come out... much as, when one's in them, a letter may come which makes one want to type-talk straight off.

You wrote, of course, with your usual strange aptness... it was as if you had sent two flowers identical with two I might have that minute succeeded in raising in my mind's window-box... I mean, the stars and your reference to what one needs from people. Strange, isn't it?, one keeps oneself, in defiance of experience, a open-all-night, non-stop snack bar, ready for whatever one has anyone may want... and they, bless them, are English hotels... nectar measured, restricted... only cold meat after eight... take-it-or-leave-it table d'hote, and if you leave it, pretend you don't recognise it when it's served up again...

However, the "pockets." Actual ones, of course - from films such as the flight over Everest (complete with interview with Lady Houston!) to having chandeliers washed and mattress remade against Mrs' return. Then, the Museum of course, and the haze I get into whenever I am "studying" on any given subject... so much the best way to read... it landed me, to my surprise on Dryden... there's so much of him... and all in a language foreign to one... which is better, though, than one's own spoken by the alien-minded... then the Flower Show, with attendant result of making one have a private fête with rhododendrons, which can always become my favourite flower in their season... and the fact of a new pool, with spiral path, for the Zoo penguins... and, reacting from Dryden, for spare-time reading, that Life of Emily D. that is yours and Bryher left with me.

Now the trouble with Dickinson is that whenever I read anything of her, I always have to go back and read everything else... which takes time and lands one in SUCH a pocket... both for her thought and manner of committing it... she does more than appeal, she answers me. No, asks. The same questions. This Life dismisses the clergyman and advances for lover a lieutenant, husband of Helen Hunt Jackson, not that it matters, except that one likes to know truth of the people one likes... I had, pardon my ignorance, no idea who Helen Hunt was, and would now presumably be reading her novel in which E.D. is heroine, were it accessible.

Then, in the middle of this Dickinson dehauch, I went to a funeral. I have never been to one before. It didn't make any difference that it was someone I didn't know very well, being 85, because I couldn't help wondering supposing it had been. She was a cousin of my father, who would have been 80, and that rather threw one back... as well as the scent of may through an open door at the church, because my father died the end of May and that's always part of dim walks with flowers to cemetery. AND I hadn't been to a funeral before, and didn't know what to do; felt there must be etiquettes, tradition, convention about wreaths, cards, where one sat in church... they asked me if I were a mourner when I got there, it seemed so funny to have been there if one weren't... and when I tucked away by a pillar at the side, they suddenly all came in a little door, instead of by the main one... I wasn't ready for it. And on top of all, an aunt, who didn't know the family had told me and

2.

had not told me herself, so that I wouldn't arrive, saw me and cut me... it seemed so peculiar to be alone in a church and be cut, over a coffin. This would not have been recounted but for the odd chance of having Dickinson's Eternity themes so much in one's head!...

So much for "pockets". But another one I got into was - once again - due to the file. Cleaning out before doing another drawer full, I started reading, as one does, perched on a fricky heel among books on the floor, diaries. Covering six years, from fifteen to twenty-one, when one thought one had grown up and "found one's self"!!). To quote Ina Claire's play, "I've been spending the evening alone with my Life... getting a good straight, clear-eyed look at it. It has a rather sobering effect".

For two things (this was before your letter) pulled me up with a start. First was that always, longer ago than I had remembered, I was complaining that people won't give... it seems funny to see that, before one had remembered (in retrospect) that one felt anything, that anything had "happened", one was saying people give a little in order to deny much... entry after entry asking "What is it? Do I lack so much that I need more than others seem to? Do they need and fear to admit? What's it all about?". Poems, too, variations on the theme that people shake hands in order to get within strangling distance. Occasional enquiries as to why I got found taciturn, arrogant. Then back again to the continual surprise - reception of stone when bread is asked. The other thing was that I knew so many more people, lived on more strategy and was being mocked for writing gloomy pomes when I got so much more out of life than anyone else". That seems so odd, now one is more or less resigned to getting so little; or, rather, to making sure of what one does get. Now these two things should dovetail, or fit cross-wise to make a stile by which one gets into another field...

Be that as it may, and in any case, it will. But it fitted oddly with your "beginning to think that when one asks, one gets just nothing"... I don't mean to intrude. I mean postively not-to-intrude. But I must give a hail, and say "True"... It IS awful, isn't it? I mean, it seems awful. There must be something to be done about it. But I had forgotten I seem always to have met it and the fact that after so long (comparatively) have not found WHAT can be done rather abashes one. Because obviously, one just does not say "Well, I don't care". The solution depends on a most delicate adjustment, which can - or could - be managed. But so few have time. Or interest and ability.

One gets used to it - not to it, but to the agony. Then, there is a kind of numbed glee that it should ALWAYS happen. I'm not talking of love-affairs, but of any contact which touches any depth or hint of depth. In so many ways, interests, opinions, outlook, people will come some of the way with one and then - one can argue in vain, or nearly always in vain, that they wouldn't have begun quite that way if they weren't meant for the whole journey. And one could go the whole way alone, if one didn't feel people wouldn't lock up the house while one's back is turned, the house one leaves and that one is trying to reach.

Well, they're scared. It's a pity though that scare, which starts as defence, so quickly wounds others. One's scared, too, when one asks Little... that never does. I suppose the asking attitude never commands respect, even the slightest. I know now I try NOT to need. Not because I know I shan't be given, but because I don't want refusal to lessen my esteem or interest for anyone, but because it is one's kind of "job" not to be wounded. No one pours wine into a broken jar. I say that, anyhow; it works; one GETS given to when one least expects, least asks, in short when one is well and "radiating health", health is attracted. But... it's a poor joke. One knows one dare not be without - whatever it is one is likely to need. Since "To him that hath, shall be given"

- and that is corollary to yours, that when one asks little, nothing is given - one has somehow got to contrive not ever to be down.

It limits contact and communion so. It is a bore. But one can't blame people; one clings when one's ill. When one's well, one is sufficient to one's self _and_ has sufficient for others, who thereby overflow and there is perpetual renewal. Not that drought doesn't exist! ... but, mentioning laws, isn't there magnetism?

I hope I don't let anyone know what I want from them any more; I think if I see it may be there and am content with recognising what comes up in ordinary intercourse as signs of part of it...that is better...than "entertaining plated wares upon one's silver shelf". But I must say it would be nice to be loved as well as love - as I understand the word. One grows tired of having a book one will never read, Or a coat there's no excuse to wear.

Yes, one envies Pup her good Venus!

Still, one grows. If one grows one's other stars right, maybe they combine to counteract, even synthesise into Venus - a headless Victory, over an armless Venus. Well, Victory has none either, but wings, and we're rich in them...the book you lent me, Encyclopaedia of Psychological Astrology, I had also dipped into, as offset to E.D and Dryden...I find he gives to Venus, critical faculty (in writing). Does that interest you? It does me, my Mars being there and so much of my energy going into criticism, I see it as working more under the surface, too - criticism before you start, or of subject, analysis in fact. The power your prose has of being precipitate (I use the chemical sense). I had never before seen Virgo as Critic, but now it links on with the idea I very strongly have always had of the woman-quality of still meditation, thinking through and through. Giving on the one hand discontent with surface(male) values, and on the other the calm and content. I never saw why you diagnosed Virgo quite so unpleasedly as "school-marm". But I do think I understand your distrust of Gemini, because they represent fuss, Here and There, the irresponsibility due to Two Chances.

Sagittarius I never knew as satire. You will have. I laugh at finding my personality under that. It's odd how personality, energy and writing turn up satire, travel and criticism...to me! Pyschologically the progressiveness of Sagittarius shows as Hope, reaching forward into the future in mental speculations".

Also, "the exaltation of the moon in Taurus shows, pyschologically, Anxiety stilled in content".

And, "Taurus represents an instinctive utilisation of Nature. Virgo analyses and seeks to understand its processes and uses them to safeguard and improve life. This desire to manipulate Nature makes the native of Virgo patient, discerning and careful, but, under affliction, fussy and meticulous because others interfere, or seem to, with his adjustments".

I note too that my favoured Aquarius is given rather more than his usual share of "abnormality" and that "a sensitive emotional nature, especially if Mars or Uranus is prominent or afflict Mercury, ... will find quickness of speech and often considerable bitterness of expression".

AND, "For example, the sloth of Taurus and the restlessness of Capricorn are resolved into the steady work of Virgo. Hermes is well named the Redeemer and Jupiter the Preserver, for they and their signs give in the truest sense understanding and the possibility of the attainment of spiritual poise between the pairs of opposites."

But as you have probably read the book through and through, with your own insight, I should not prance up with my own jejeune findings.

I had great fun the other night. Svereal were talking about Spain. Bull-fights came up, with the usual thing of "It's so cruel on the horses". Now I have no feeling about horses. I don't stick pins in them whenever I see them, but I

Tuesday morning

In haste, a wave that turns into a question-mark... does one ever know why one goes anywhere? One starts going, vaguely-knowing and vaguely not-knowing why; when it comes to departure, so formal, there comes that moment when one says "Well, the fact I've got as far as this... shows I know why... so why bother to go... all this irrelevant journey-stuff, and what do places on maps matter?"...

alone

still, no need for that now. I like the idea of trundling off again, it seems me, what I'm used to and feel at home in... the rest, interludes...

You know, anyway. And I am glad you take it like that. It is... well, a pity. More than that. But to see straightens. It is the darkness and not-knowing what the tragedy one's in, is about that is destroying. I hate to seem to crash in and sear... even what's past... but even just saying, "It MAY be that" seems to set it in place and thus straighten one's self and make one what use there is any use in being. At least, too, stops one being no use to one's self, which is harm to others.

It is not, it must not be, thought too drastic. Such things can be rationed. There has always been a tendency to aneantissement; excesses in other directions may have been due to fear of the directest one. IF it has been found, there may be found regularity. I mean, it may satisfy. Many go on, calmly and constructively, with it. But they don't get in with what, and who, goes with it.

I felt, when I thought I knew, a cloud lifted. That cloud had been hiding what one perhaps knew. Because I am afraid that for me, it was, I hope must have been, interlude.

I am sorry.

I bought coloured chow-handkerchiefs to take(easy to pack, knew they'd been liked and coloured made a slight change). Thank you for the names and addresses. You will understand that I may not want to use them. It is good though to have them back of one. BUT I will see Freud for you...

"White on a throne or guarded in a cave,
There lives a prophet who can understand,
Why men were born; yet surely we are brave
Who make the Golden Journey to Samarkand".

Flecker. But it sounds... Vienna. And I am in the state when I say that and at once wonder hard how Ethel Mannin should have hit on HIM for the title of her last book...

I will write... and, though not to, try to say, somehow, "Thank you" for "thinking to me". Go on, please, and don't get side-tracked into maze.

Best luck,

Saturday,
London.

Dear H.D,

Thank you for writing...and for thinking to...I'll love the nar-
cisse, they're a nice thought...and I liked hearing your news. You've been
very nearly having mine all this week, there's been a letter half-written
that long. Then something funny'd happen and I'd wait to put that in and
before it finished, something else would happen, as well, simultaneously, no
break and no rest. This, now, in a scramble, because I feel another of Bryher's
books may come any minute and that always sends one into a panic...the
book of a Cambridge expedition to Iceland came the other day, I read it
right off, left everything else to do it...they played bridge on an ice-
cap. Their seismic apparatus broke, their cameras didn't work, water got in
things that should have been sealed, tents gave way, they had to learn ski-
ing and they lost equipment so they couldn't do what they had been financed
to do...but they played bridge on an ice-cap. And that is a book about
Iceland.

That is one book. Another is a history of Egpyt that hit my eye, second-hand, and is another of those challenges to the leisure that never comes which books make of themselves, on a shelf. But, the book's there, the first step is taken and one day I shall read about Egpyt. I read too about the anthropological significance of cats' cradles...and all the time about the hammest period in English dramma. That is quite fun - simple collecting of facts, fitting one fact from one book to another in another book; annotating, looking up things, drawing conclusions. I ought to have been a don; I've that kind of mind that puts slips of paper in books and plodson quite happily. My film work and novel in this room, the Sheridan stuff in the drawing-room, and I run from one to other, like a comedian doing two halls a night, changing my mental make-up as I pass through the hall...I think it is very good for one's mind to have at least two kinds of work going at once....makes it neat, prevents extraneous bits getting into the work; I find with the creative and constructive side fully occupied each works better, more clearly and directly. I would be getting on grandly if the B,M, hadn't decided to have the reading room spring-cleaned.

This hits me the more as, while I was working there, I thought it a clever
little idea to have the flat itself cleaned - so now they are in the middle
of it and I am always being surprised by window-cleaners, people appearing
on tops of steps in unlikely places, furniture assuming unusual positions;
Further, delighted at the idea of trying my hand in dealing with landlords,
which I've never done before, I find I have persuaded him to re-wire the
flat at precisely this moment - so that one side of it is in the hands of
electricians by day and has no light at night. You will understand that
the spring-cleaning is confined to the other half, and I spend many moments
wondering where best I had be...But all this adds to the fun, especially as
I started it going myself. Riding whirlwinds is pleasant.

I see no one but Paul. That sounds funny. But I really have seen no one and
do see Paul. I had asked Essie to dinner the other night and Paul arrived
instead. That would be funny with anyone. Under their circumstances, it was
funnier. We went to Lillie, who sang a song called "Sleepy Time UP South".
There were more autographs given. Then, Essie nipped up and I dined with them

2.

and we went to "Macbeth", which was sad. Laughton should be the Porter, and Flora R, seemed to think her role was her one chance to be a lady. She was made up to look like Elinor Glyn, and did, surprisingly - but even more surprising was it when you consider that she was meant to be Lady Macbeth. It was all a very embarrassing display of people finding greatness beyond them, and neither knowing it was or that it exists. Then, Paul and I went to "Biography" and, Essie again nipping up, are all going again, and going round to see Ina Claire after. Well, this is not what one expects or had ever expected. It is funny for it not to be unusual and an "event" to see Paul, and I find that swamping and submerging I used to complain of has gone, and instead there is almost the reverse....because it's nice to see someone often enough to have continuity of contact. He's gay and gigantic and sunny just now - I think they are very happy, and his concerts are going well. For the first time he has a sensible schedule, and he takes time off and is extremely different, not being grave or majestic. There's also a plan that I shall drive him, or them, up to Cambridge when he sings there and then drive hurriedly back after the concert in order to have supper somewhere in London.

It is for these reasons that I haven't yet made use of having been given your seer's address...not that I "haven't time", but because when things are vibrant, one doesn't like to stop the vibration, lest the next's not so good. I'm not letting the stars slip, but following them; one has to, and it is a change to find life taking one along with it, usually the personal tide seems the other way. So I hope you don't think me casual, won't be saying to yourself "No use, trying to help him". I'm not forgetful or negligent but think I know the right times, and this appears to be the time when my Mercury and my Mars are helpful, if challenging. There's a sort of swing on, which must have it's full play....and of course, when "Sheridan" is a bit more organised, I shall be able to star-study again...which I can't yet...and must before I see her....she's frightening and I suspect firm and I must have all at my finger-tips if I'm going to keep on my perch...or even find my way back to it, when I've fallen off.

I DO think it's nice, to be bothered about with Narcisses....How's this for numbers -

13.5.03 = 3, 1934 = 8 and 31 = 4

Taking the "3" as being made of 12 and that as three fours, it reads one four, two fours and three fours...not that that means anything...what does, maybe, is that I have for sometime been getting up at half-past eight. Unheard of, and doesn't help at all,...merely a longer day to have no time in. Thanks for your letter (I would like more, if you ever have time) and for the seances which make me glad, this year, to have another birthday come round, a personal New Year's Eve.

That is why I think you should not worry for the flat. When people surprise one, that one *knows*, one must always wait. For when they do something that is not like them, one must admit that - simply; "They are not them". And then all there is to it is to let, at worst, or to help, at least, them be themselves.
I don't think one is mistaken in what one likes, very often; it is the others, who daren't set enough store by themselves. So when people, out of inferiority (=reaction to wounds) "aren't themselves" the only thing is to be more one's ownself... which usually removes one from pschic harm's way.
The act of hurting is, after all, desire to exaggerate one's self by way of compensation. When other people insist on being themselves, because they have no guilt that makes them not-want to be, it shows the others that they are only magnifying smallness. BE more one's self, and I think others realise they HAVE to climb on ladders to reach one; as that makes them feel even smaller, down they come.

You know I don't feign "toughness". I only suspect all possessiveness, domination, expressions of love and glacial qualities. I think one does so tend to forget the laws of cause and effect... and moreover persuades one's self that it is cheap to follow them. But hardness, of any kind, is a form of fear...and the only way to combat someone's fear is to insist on having what, au fond, no one else can use - one's own life. One doesn't go out if it rains; if one does, one MUST wear a mental mackintosh.

On any plane that you like, your own privacy is important. To be fought for. Without it (without your self), how can you be you to Bryher? Because you know that, ultimately, she would despise you if you did give up what is you, and therefore the one thing to be counted on. That particular thing she is making febrile because maybe at the moment she does not want to believe in it, because she does.

But, as you know, when someone gives one an unbelievable smack in the eye, one has only to find what makes them, to be able to save them more remorse and guilt in giving another, by... keeping out of pschic harm's way. I repeat my schoolboy's chat only because the very first articles of one's faith seem to look funny in time of stress...

It is, after all, not possible that Bryher AS Bryher should do anything that BRYHER, when Bryher, cannot atone. The only thing, therefore, is to prevent her being the one she least wishes and therefore feels most she should be.

High time I closed down. Usually, it is the children who're talked to - I seem to have told teacher what A.B.C. is about! Without knowing..., well, frogive me. But remember, you're YOU.

Friday, etc.

Yes, it is rather deep sea, that incredible glass aquarium lounge in the middle, with a corridor reef going all round, if I am remembering right. I think everything is deep sea, with me sitting on the floor waiting for divers to come and bring me up to the surface. I don't mean I am sitting deep seaishly in everything, but that here as well as there is, and I don't mean deep sea, I mean above sea, me floating waiting to be pulled in and under. O, O I wonder why I can't find a Lovelei.

But things do happen without my doing anything about it since I have been Wireless. I am sure I have brought back a bit of magnetic pole. There was that Atkinson and wanted to supplant me in one of those paragraphs, which I think he is doing even after I said that no, I was just having a trial. Somebody wants me to write a critical study of Chaplin. I don't like him enough. I don't want to have books proposed to me. BUT I don't want to see another of these books calling him maitre. I don't want to write a book on Chaplin, but if I did it would be so much better, mayn't I say, for everybody than the kind of book written by the kind of people who DO want to write on him. Forty thousand words. When no one will publish books on the cinema, is it a pity to turn down a chance? LAND goes on, rather like a habit. BUT I have finished Bond Street, and that I never expected to do. I thought that having got out of it, I would never be able to get back. But after having only done about ten lines on the Arcadian, I finished it all quite suddenly. For the first time, that is.

Been rather B'ish lately. GORGING films. The talkie that will be on at the Empire, and Asquith's Mady Christians film, which does not matter a bit, and yesterday I had luck. I was going up to see The Mystic Mirror, on the way I saw Orphans of the Storm on, which you know I had never seen, so

I slipped in, and arrived at the Avenue later in time for the German film, which has a few points. They use the old Ufa castle. It is the theory of a man who sees his fate in a mirror, and doing everything to safeguard himself, runs into the fate staright. It is well worked out, but you can't get away from the fact that, if that is the theme, I had not seen a German film for some time, but how nice it is to watch the competent blending of themes again. Very good atmosphere. They are having a French season soon, you probably know O.B. was in Paris with Davis, buying films. Is there any likelihood of O.B. having got himself in as arty adviser to the Avenue under the new regime?

Bona Street has become so bawdy that there will never be any chance of publishing it. Like K. those evenings suddenly on the boat. There was a talk on the Basque country last night on the radio. I liked it. I am sure Iceland would go well. Will you be sure and let me know when and where your articles are appearing. Part of LAND is going talkie. That is to say that when I get to Advent Bay, one side of the page is what you might call description and the other isolated tourist remarks. K. will disapprove, but I think it may work, and anyway I wanted to copyright the idea. Moussinac has a new book on the Cinema out. To save time, I am having one sent to you from Zwenners. The two books for K. I will send off to-day.

'Sh

Best wishes severally and toGETHER

London,
Begun Tuesday.

Dear H.D.

Thank you for your friendly scribble at the end of Bryher's letter.
You don't mind me calling it that, do you? because I want to mean it was
a hail, and "scribble" is much more similarlike than a more respectful
word.

Well, here I am.

And if I may say so, always shall be. I mean, it seems it's me that is the
fixed point, and the rest comes and goes, mostly goes - but not for long,
because not for ever. It is perhaps silly to say so, but flying did
something. Flying showed me from a new angle, the earth. And there was I
sitting above it, sitting. I ask you, and I was the same, and the earth
was small, very small, and mountains were seen not upwards but downwards
and through, and towns were big bells that echoed out into the country,
surroundings, large houses, farms, clusters.... And on all of that one
would descend when one wanted, do what one wanted and leave. By the same
process, could hoist one' self up above it all. It seemed one is one up
on the everyday world, because that doesn't know what it looks like, and
flying, one knew both what it was to be out of it and in it......

Which was funny to find, for I had flown before, and for as long. But
only flown to and from. It was funny to look down on Le Toquet covered
in snow and recognise a table I sat at in the Normandie, and say "but
of course that was the summer". And it was funny, considering that on
this trip flying was only a means, and that the trip back, which should
have been a wful, seeing that I was alone and had motored miserably
through the dark along the coast, so as not to leave Monte the night
before, did most. The journey out was mostly slapstick, very elegant
slapstick, Kenneth of course saw to that, but fun - real fun. And
circling out over the sea, thrifty degrees warmer all round than we had
been, to land in a field, just a mountain-ringed field, with an old
glowing outhouse and Alsatian pups that came up and sniffed us but were
unmoved by the plane.... that was fun of a different and special sort,
a kind of "Now what?".

Before that I had many beautiful stories to tell you of the Big Wedding,
O Lady Lavery greeting Beaton in St. Margaret's with "Strike me pink,
Cecil, this is a real riot!", of Eddie Marsh saying as Ma Beaton came in
"She got the hat out of a cracker", and of Cohran standing on a pew
and applauding the bridal procession.... but mimosa, never before seen
by me au naturel, the New Sporting de l'Hiver, Evelyn Laye, Ingelfield
darting like a horrorstruck lizard, those damned steps and the back
streets and warmth.... put the Big Wedding right away like an old
theatre programme, made it seem a London pis aller for gaiety, and I
was relieved when the "Tatler" told me that it is now "dead".... just
one week later. A fact which is perhaps worth more consideration
than the event itself!

And then "Ballyhoo".... I hope K. and Bryher give coherent accounts, of
its freshness and casualness, of "I've Got The Wrong Man", of the pent-
house ending, the Red Ballet, the Debutantes song, the music, the way it
FITS.

Because what I really want to say is what only I can say, and can only
say to you. And I would like you to think I am saying it to you in

2.

your Sloane Street flat, since in the summer, at Kenwin, I didn't seem to
appreciate" Bryher... and that is what I meant and wanted to say. It is
silly to say "appreciate" because one doesn't "appreciate" a raindrop, say,
- one is simply glad that it happens and, if it falls on one, is blest.

But you will understand what I mean.

Summer was difficult for me. I genuinely "wanted to be left alone". I am
afraid I am not excusing myself, but my rudeness, by which I mean lack of
resilience... anyway, once again, you'll know. And if I didn't appreciate
Bryher then, will you see it that I hadn't perhaps had so much cause to?

Quickly I mean not that Bryher has not always been understanding and most
generous and sort of accepting one, but simply that she has been more of
all of these things, and more than these things lately. More of all, and
more besides. As I perhaps didn't know she could, and certainly never
dreamed I would personally experience. There now creeps on me a horrid
fear that I will seem presumptuous to you, but I don't mean it.

It is silly not to believe something, perhaps, till it happens to one's
self, and that anyway is not the case. But to have something happen to
one's self that one had never thought would, kind of ranges one.

Bryher has been being marvellous to me lately in that kind of anonymous
way of hers, which makes it difficult to "thank" her. She is like a kind
note fluttering in through the window... the sender has gone, there's
just a sentence in ones mind, a white miracle, left.

Can you dissever the presumption in telling you from the fact that I felt
I wanted to tell you, and keep only the latter? Please.

Life here is aquarium. Only I'm the spectator. Film after film, crosses and
mammics and Tallu and Tauber in endless rotation. The two male leads
fighting over curtains at "Gasanova" and Marie Lohr keeping them apart
with those excusez-moi panniers. I have been reading Rilke's Geschichten
vom lieben Gott, which I find very astonishing. A clear feeling of purity.

It is, to use a dull phrase "all about" God, in a way I believe you
would like. "I imagine one can never tell whether God is in a story
before it is finished. Because if nothing but the pause after the last
word is still due, he may yet come". And the last story in the book he had
no one to tell, so he told it to the dark, "which leaned ever closer to
me so that I could speak more and more softly".

But I find that, having read it, I am so astonished at not having read it
before, that I think everyone else must have, and dare not mention it!

The dog here, who is ill, improves. It is now mainly a point of after...
effects. There is a question as to whether his holding of his head down
on the right may be merely ear-pain, or a slight stroke. He is very good,
shut up for two weeks in one room day and night without whining. The
difficulty is food. The vet says he must not be made to eat or do anyth-
ing he does not like. So his food has to be very varied, and as he will
only take it from fingers, the days when he will only eat rice get a
bit difficult. I must say, too, that minced rabbit does not make my
favourite manicure. However, he marches, and that, with a symbolical dog
like him, is the main thing. But it is kind of deenergising, getting
through to him and trying not to be put off by a bare room, and his
gummy eyes, streaming nosep, and caked ears. A rather tattered Tiger at
present - but only half a degree above normal, and it is it seems a
feat to get a chow over it.

I had my crystal read a few weeks ago. It carried on right from my June
pamm-reading. The person asked much less, and was remarkably right on
numbers. But if March is going to see me settled, isn't it a little hard

to know that July will see me equally unsettled? Witna wink and a leer,
she said "you are not very interested in women, if you know what I mean".
She then went on about "a fair woman, if you know what I mean", still
with a leer, so that as he whom Bryher sweetly calls "my friend" is fair,
I felt I knew what she meant when she saw that going on a long way. It
also seems my mamma will leave her money to me tied up so that I get
sixpence a week, which I don't think very nice. Old Roma in the fun fair,
by the way, gave another friend of mine a good reading!

I based my visit to Monte actually on the crystal. It might have been
luckier, but it worked. It might have been luckier because a Russian
orchestra got sacked the night we arrived, and so there was not as much
time off as there would have been any other week-end, before or after
since a new one has now been got, to alternate. But these things are not
what count. I think the actual thing that counts is theodd one is
in betweenwhiles, the mood engendered and tended...and what I mean most
of all about Bryher being marvellous is that she referred to "my friend",
saying she was glad all went well. I hope you don't think me impertinent
for saying she is marvellous, I hope you will see what I am trying to
say, and I hope, I would like, this to be between ourselves.

It must be fun in Kenwin with Douglas and fake-spring....I'll have no
<u>hyacinths</u> this year. But I have something else, whatever red roses and
mimosa, sent one at Christmas, dry into....perhaps lotus.

Wasn't it odd, I have no one to tell, so forgive me a minute longer...old
Roma told me I should meet whom I did meet in the summer, to the week.
And met, his dates turn out to be just those I want in which a goaded
Taurus will find "sympathetic and complementary partner". And, the colour
of things sent as Christmas gifts, were the one colour they should have
been for me, "accidentally". This also for you.

I have gone on too long. I always do.

I Bud

Oscar H. D.

April, 1933

I really feel I have been sending you messages when I have posted books, biscuits and entirely gratuitous bits of suggestion to chows....I'm so glad you've been chow-caught! They're rewarding dogs, aren't they? And not dogs at all, save in the final sense, symbolically, Egyptianly. But before that bears, lions, tigers, cats, bulls, actually and, in turn, as symbols and gods, which makes it confusing. This one here is working out its life nicely and developing an entirely different personality from Peter. Peter, the red one, was a confessor; this is witch-doctor. The last shreds of silver puppy-down are going, turning into a rather terrifying black glinting coat. The head is not yet majestic - indeed the head always was rather small, I thought because bone is the last to develop, but now I am trying to bring it on with marrow and malt....

Well, that kept one in touch. And then I felt chary of writing from London. London's such a gift of keeping out of things and seeming flippant. I felt a letter from here would or might be aggravating in the midst of tense Nazi-business and banning of papers, films, so on. I mean, I am living on top-layers exclusively, and that means one has only "news" to tell, and "news" that may seem no more than gossip.

CAN one set against armed police in the Ringstrasse a midnight dress parade here, or a girl's camera studio above Asprey's, reached through winding stairs coiled round with saxophone practice emerging from cubicles of Clifford Essex dance bands? A studio painted black, with Banting decorations on the walls - fig-leaves in ginger, with white veins, anatomical skeletons in surrealiste manner, with occasional photographs stuck like transfers onto the wall, circled with ginger arrows that go shooting off to turn into trees over the radiator? And lampshades made by photographing sheets of newspaper. Ker-Seymer the photographs are signed, if you see them in Happers or Vogue. And then the dress-show, all the not-quites of the smart world driving in cars, sitting at midnight in a Bruton Street room filled with chandeliers, aquariums full of red lilies, and eating afterwards scrambled eggs and tomatoes which I, at least, thought first were fruit salad. The most important dress was a sports suit which zipped from neck to knee in a spiral, all in one piece, and there were four rings each of one square emerald, each smaller than the other, which one wore on the diminishing fingers of the left hand. The editress of Vogue treated like a queen, her opinion asked, begged and sought for, mannequins cavorting before her, and she herself, just to show she had no need to compete with professionals, in dinner dress, not full evening like everyone else. And Lady Oxford hiding a Bourne and Hollingsowrth black sateen gown with a Schiaperelli black and white boa which I expect had been lent....I sat on the piano and marvelled at the number of young men who all seemed to think women's materials fascinating. Whereas give me a good "family" of tweeds, say I.

Did you know by the way that mean's cloths have publishing dates, just like books? I saw some patterns at my tailors marked "Released on May 1st" just like that.

Also, Hermione Baddeley, of "Ballyhoo", which you've heard about, has a dress with a zip-skirt and on the zip-tab is her telephone number. She also has another dress, made like a page-boy, and on one sleeve it says "Bank Account minus" and on the other cuff, "Sex Appeal Plus"... these are off-stage dresses, I mean!

Nancy Cunard gave a party for the Scottsboro fund. I have written and am writing a long account to Kenwin, and told them to send it on if they think you'll like it. It was an amazing party - I mean, amazing. Nothing went right, a man made a speech thanking her for being "a friend of the Negro", and someone else said "Aren't we all?", and others said "Shame", and N.C. quivering, said "No, it is right, let us take a vote. WHO are friends of the Negro?" and everyone rather shamefacedly put up their hands, and a black man said "We don't need no help from anyone". And Lady Macpherson was there, insisting throughout the evening that I did not know N.C., and introducing me to her frequently. She also made an Indian miss her last train home by making her dance with me... I mean, Indians with last trains to Wimblarton like O.B., and doing rumbas in saris... all something I never thought to hit, and or planned to.

I found myself talking to a pitch-black "shine" whose native language is Ga. Just like that. He kept breaking off to talk it to shine-friends. I asked where he was born, and he said "Gold Coast. You'll think I live next door to a lion. But I've never seen a lion in my life. Have you ever seen a Scotch eagle?" I said no. He said "Well, I've never had time to go off looking for a lion". He said that life on the Gold Coast is like life here - "except that there there are more dark fellows, and here there are more light ones. But there's no segregation, and the English don't get the chance to play the fool." I said I was glad to hear it, and he said they couldn't understand what went on in America or South Africa at all. Now, isn't that something to meet? The African whose language is Ga, who has no ill-treatment stories, whose quite away from the American -Negro business most of us know?

Most of the people I found hard to understand, having African inflections in their English. From the point of view of the Scottsborocase, I am afraid the party was a fiasco, but it interested me to hit what I believe I have always told you I am - that I never could see the Negro as American, that to me he was African. And that night there were whole rows of men and women who understood whites, with whom they had lived and mixed, far better than the "Coloured Americans". Most of them couldn't understand how the Scottsboro thing could happen, since on the Gold Coast a white was sentenced for calling a black man a "black monkey". But can that be true? I can't believe there are upright Englishmen in these outposts of Empire.

It happened the day after that I lunched with Robeson. They are now living in the same flat quite separately. Paul gets up about three in the afternoon, if he hasn't a lunch date, and goes to bed after the play about two. And Essie goes round on her life, and when they meet they compare notes. They seem perfectly happy, and Essie thank God has abandoned that nursemaid attitude that was so unpleasing.

Nina Mae is in love with Hutch. She is losing her head, and also going off in her dancing, and being in general what they call "a little fool". Paul is not going to Russia, as he finds he would be banned from every country afterwards if he did. He goes to New York to film "Emperor Jones" in May, not certain if the exteriors will be Haiti or Catalina, and comes back here for concert engagements in the summer.

Cocteau's film started trains of thought in me. Surrealism... absurd to start thinking of that, maybe, now. But I formulated a lot. I discovered that to me it doesn't go far enough. That it goes there, but doesn't come back. Will you tell me, I don't want to be impertinent, but isn't it right

2.

that one goes there and comes back, with the thing, the meaning of *there* in terms of where one comes back to. I always remember the opening of "Narthex" (I don't mean to be impertinent, I *have* to choose that because it seems to me just how you go so far further than surrealism, and most of these things - and I don't want to show that, but that it can be done and should be done, that surrealism is side-tracking). I remember too the birds and pigeons and the iron-table legs. They make in my mind a pattern, a kind of surrealist pattern. But they wouldn't if you had scorned saying "pigeon" and "table-leg" because you were looking at them. If you had at once sur-realised pigeon and table-leg into some associated image, then I would only have got literal pigeon and table-leg in my mind - which wouldn't have been interesting....Isn't that it? Don't so many people confuse the use of image with the effect, and doesn't surrealism do it the wrong way round, leaving only a literal effect? And I wrong? Please forgive me for bringing you into it, but simply the person who wrote "Narthex", and everything else, explains to me why sur-realists aren't surrealist at all.

It doesn't matter, perhaps, but "Le Sang D'Un Poete" was so very nearly my kind of world, and I think your kind perhaps nearly too - it wove and wove - but not enough. Tangled back on itself. Does what one avoids doing - that's what I mean. I cannot understand a man of gifts, like Cocteau, thinking it goes far enough. Or being misled into thinking other ways don't go further. It is so much more fun, that is what it amounts to, to see, to find one's personal meaning, and "get" it its own terms again. I say it without talent or clarity, but I mean that I feel, and you feel, I think, and nearly everyone I find "sympathetic" feels, that the world itself is so grandly surrealist as it is. That WE have done the sur-realising before we begin; by our approach to it sur-realise it.

I don't know why I began on this, except that most people loathed the film, which one discounts, and a few swallowed it hook, line and sinker. And I just felt that one's own world is so much more so than that, because it is both, because one is at home, too with Oceanic magic, which goes so far... that lovely "Animism, Magic and The Divine King" book.

I was glad to hear of the seances. It sounds good. I hope you are feeling you are reaching to good, too. Lord, the processes of one's self! The incomputable changes.

London is a mass of blossom - it is always a marvel to find each year how many trees that blossom there are, and trees whose just-coming leaf is a little spoilt by the sign it is that soon there will be too much, stifling airless foliage, like frozen green froth. And there are women in gob hats and pancake hats, and lots of Dalmatian dogs and a new snack bar called El Patio, with a bar of beer barrels and ceiling like a sky, with cornice of tiles. And then heavens there is Bergners film, which is nearly too much. That moment when she says she can't get up because she has only one leg. And here, in the middle of re-decorating, done free by the landlord, which sends pieces of furniture out of their right rooms, into others, where they looked like maids waiting to be interviewed (maids waiting to be interviewed always sit along the wall, like furniture). So far I have brought about a surprising brown-pink room, round a green carpet. It suits Tiger. But the general atmosphere sends one to old drawers and bookshelves, re-reading old stuff and going over it, instead of writing new, and finding two worrying things - that one could once write better than now, and that one had the MOST awful mind! So I kind of burrow into warrens I once made and come on old tracks and wonder what happened to the rabbit that made them.

And out of it comes a revived interest in writing - without realising that it had ever waned. Also a glimpse of one's self in the whole, from seeing all kinds of odd bits and things jotted down, and what they stood for as what one stood for - rather like seeing one's self walking when one has only seen one's self sitting.

KEW is remaindered - very cheap, and shatteringly many copies. But as I look at the copies I bought in at one shilling apiece (after one guinea) instead of being properly humiliated, I find it funny to think any publisher ever was marzy enough to do it, or I ever careless enough of publishers to write it. So that I feel if KEW came out, anything might, not that it does.

This is a long letter and dull, and forgive me for lurching into the middle bit, it needs K's dragon-flight to get what I meant, but I've just gone on chatting, as it might be over pretzels and picon, or coffee.

Remener me to Trude when you see her (and Alice if need be). I hope you are feeling less "IN and OUT" every week - I know what you mean - a strange feeling that makes one light-headed, and all of one's slef head, to be lightheaded with. As if one is caretaker in an untenanted house and both house and caretaker are one's self.

Do write to me when you can.

Best wishes,

I did not write sooner to thank you for the important hour-ox which so suddenly arrived. I re-doubled my efforts to find the bull you asked after; that seemed the best way to thank you. Now I will slow up on the search, and just hope to come on one - maybe that will be the best way. Be led to it, rather than look with blinkers against anything else. So far, it is hard to light on anything that has not a bazaar look; nothing that seems to be waiting for one.

My own is lovely. I am rather touched by it. I have never had one before. Only a boy one threw rings over the head of as a child, I had forgotten it till this moment. It was VERY nice of you to send it to me. I feel funny this year being three-o in a year that makes seven, but I can never find if I'm the twelfth or thirteenth. Though the latter is official, there appears to be some doubt, which does rather mess up one's "influences".

I am afraid I did rather consider the cat more than the chow-chow - naturally, writing to you. To be frank, there is always the theory that a cat goes for a dog's eyes - any dogs'; I think a chow-chow is more amenable to non-intervention than other dogs. Even if Peter and the pup turned out not to be active friends, they needn't be foes - there is an intermediate neutral level, due to the chow (I always pronounce them "chuff", to get my own back on "plough", also because their tail and general air of all-sails-set is trainish) being able to *ignore*; I think other breeds like or dislike, but aren't capable of negating anything that bores them.

I personally believe that the delicacy one hears so much of comes from confusion - there is the idea they were bred to be eaten, and it came over that they were a "delicacy"! How else can one relate it with the other, equally reported, fact that the chow is an exceptionally long-lived dog? I think also that the kind of dog-person who can put up with the fawning of spaniels and the cussedness of fox-terriers, and the general American-Negro-inferiority complex of most dogs, can't understand the chow and invents something to explain their own lack of approach, just as other people seriously tell one that Negroes "smell" and that one touch of gin sends them raving mad. I mean - myth!

Of course, the chow is not just a kennel-cur you can leave to look after himself. Perhaps because he does repay attention so well, chow-people rather overdo looking after him. You mustn't pay any attention to me, because I'd never had a puppy before and I wasn't going to take any risks. He got distemper, I am firmly convinced, because he went from a central-heated flat to open-air kennel when he was boarded at his breeder's at Christmas - we never had him inoculated, because they said it was not good to do so in the winter. But yours would be old enough to have that done, and if you can get him alone for an hour before you take him, you could have a vet run him over and tell you what the odds are on his health. We ought to have done that with Tiger, but I liked Peter so much, I didn't want another, and then we saw this small black bull sitting under an apple-tree and it was then or never. But we got him cheap and took a risk on him being a throw-out despite his pedigree - one does take risks, buying a dog, I think. But you know yours and will have seen how he goes on. We knew nothing of ours, and

one always feels that a show-breeder wouldn't sell his dogs unless there
were something wrong with them! However, the fact is that any dog going
in Hyde Park is likely to get distemper, and Tiger MUST have been strong
to have got over it so well. The park is a mass of distemper, carried by
the sheep, and also by the convalescent dogs from all the vets round about
which exercise them there. So don't judge chows by Tiger, - and if you do,
remember Peter, the other one, lived to be 13 or 18 and died only of old
age, without any illness.

He, incidentally, also worked out his prowls, and about once a year would
stay out all night. He made it quite clear that he proposed to, and would
come back in the morning.

I believe people say chows' hearts are liable to be weak; usually people
overdo the chow's exercise. It is true their eyes may be troublesome - for item
the light of Europe is still a bit strong, but it only takes five
minutes to bathe them every morning with cold tea or boracic, and that
automatically strengthens them. Again, I believe other people don't notice
what other dog's eyes are like. Simply, a neglected chow looks a sad sight.
But then it's a sin to neglect a chuff. I spend about 15 minutes every
morning on Tiger, combing, washing his eyes, ears and teeth. Ears and teeth
are not the least necessary, but I think that if they ever do want attending to, he will be much less upset if he has been used to it from the start. When his puppy coat doesn't need to be combed out, I shan't take so long on him. He becomes very hurt if, because of an early film or a late night, I miss this and it becomes a game, in which he is highly interested, and which one wouldn't miss.

Do you know, by the way, that one chow recently won a prize wearing false
teeth? I'm sure other breeds wouldn't survive them! And - to close, because
I go on rather long about chows - yours would be a strong one, because it
comes of a spring, not autumn, litter.

I was glad when you wrote to me of chestnuts in Vienna. Bryher had made me
think one saw only baynets, and that instead of petals, there were anti-
Jew signs on every pavement. It was nice to get the other side, the possibility of another side, from someone living there. I suppose you ought
really to be making bandages, but I'm glad you have time to write without
being apparently too war-troubled, or perhaps too troubled to be it.
Sure, London was policed here on May-Day. I think more for tradition than
any need. It just wouldn't be May Day without police bunched in every
doorway round Marble Arch, and hordes of people marching without any
idea of what they wanted to do when they got there. The Opera season
began and Beatrice Lillie opened in cabaret the same night. London is the
only place that can do this without a sense of Fiddling While Nero Goes
To the Guillotine. I think. There were perhaps more police than usual, but
nothing happened. If the park were closed, something might - it did the
only time it was, last autumn. But we do things so differently that we
don't seem to do them at all. Oswald Moseley has a crowd of toughs who
wear black shirts and sell Fascist papers in Coventry street, nights. A
crowd, mainly Jewish naturally, coming from the Pavilion and Rialto, hustled
them onto Eros, where police rescued them - but that was mainly because
they resented the Fascists, they were bored, Fascism don't fit. I think
it was not so much political as personal feeling that one doesn't go on
in that way, wearing black, brown or red shirts, standing on pavements,
here.

Maybe if N.C. realised that, she would do more for the Scottsboro case.
Not that I think she could. She is too tied up with destruction. Her own

3

draws her to that of others', and she gets some pychic recompense and reinforcement from each increasing the others. You were so right about her - that terrible combination of distinction and doom - one gets it at even one meeting - but it is so hard to match up one's impression without seeming hard on her, which one has neither right or wish to be. But, Lord, Lord, what sadness is there.

Anyway, I didn't go, and I don't feel that I should have. Sooner or later one has to decide how far loyalty can make one negate one's self into becoming fodder for other people's death-wishes. I went to Kew instead. I walked into procession with magnolia, plum, and lilac. And KNEW, doing that, that I was fighting for something no less important.

So I was glad that you out of the "storm centre" too wrote of blooms and blossom.

Bryher writes me of war. Her last letter was a discussion of what kind of war work I could find. It doesn't hitch on, I suppose it should. Maybe it will when I see her.... though maybe as I am going to see Schumann on the 13th, she won't see me! I can only click-to enough to feel alarmed at Bryher telling people "No English person will in future speak to a German". Here, it is because we like Germans that we are worried at what some Germans are doing. But no one is yet going to be stampeded into film-star gestures of coming over on the "Ile De France" instead of the "Bremen", as Bebe Daniels, Sally Eilers u.s.w. did. I wish someone would see Bryher's internationalism as composite individualism.... though even then I don't think I'd match up. I'm not good at movements. Sooner or later, they all seem to deny something else, some spiritual value, that one's also fighting for. Not that one won't "face" things, but that one goes on "facing" them after the things that started off by standing for them have sidetracked.

I work and work, and nothing much comes of it. But that doesn't matter so much as it did, as long as goes on in one's self, and works when work is part of that going-on, not opposition. Maybe that comes with being thirty? Resignation in disguise. But it seems to me obvious now that the work of certain times in one's development should be unacceptable to others without being a discouragement to one's self. If one goes on writing what one has to, there must come a time when it is sufficiently basic to meet with some minute response somewhere, and by that time it doesn't matter.

Do you, I wonder, know anything as to the origin of dice? Do dice come from cards? I had a thought that perhaps they started as runes on a pebble, Eastern rosaries...I would like to know how they happened. You also know the history of flower-arrangement in Japan? And the significance - one flower, Heaven, one Earth, one Man, and how they may be combined but not opposed, and how a branch leaning forwards is Waughisly called a "guest-poking branch", and that flowers must not be looked at without bowing, and thus removing from one's mind/the sight of mundane objects first? Then you raise your head slowly, to the level of the water, gradually up, up and out, till your view widens, and you thus find visual release and refreshment, only to be attained after concentration....

Saul, by the way, has now decided he is Eastern. Mainly because he finds he is not Western. But also because he notes similarity of language in Japanese and Ashanti and Hebrew - it's there, a bit, I looked. But that man sweeps on, you know. He now is reading Chinese and Japanese. His approach, being tonal, is interesting, because he is not put off by the

literary puzzles as I am, and think most people are. He sees language as noise, and works back through connection of noises in different languages. That way he gets the same sense of magic that I do from mythology, but he gives me the feeling of being lost and alone in it. I am sorry he has gone, because the night I went to say good-bye, he was pre-occupied, and I had once before said he always made *him* take *him* so seriously and he said he wished I wouldn't, everyone took him seriously and wouldn't let him play. So when I found him pre-occupied, I said "Don't be so reverend, Paul", and he said extremely sadly "I think I always am rather reverend with myself, Buddy", which would have led on interestingly, would at least have let one know if he meant what he seemed to, had not Essie, in Callot black velvet, chirped in. It would be nice to find if Paul is taking to difficult languages through any connection with finding no one speaks his own, or has never been able to find if they do.

It would also be nice to know if, maybe, N.C. has got so far in with the African thing that it's taken her... if the thing that led her to it has snapped, and consequently won't let her find her way back, do you see? If the closer she is, the less black of necessity she finds herself... "All God's Chillun" motive raw, not even half-baked.

There is, mentioning a play, a strange one on now - strange because it is real, with currents and hysterias and unhappiness, and is acted in London by, of all people, Gladys Copper, a kind of white-witch as a headmaster's wife cruel to an assistant master because she loves him. All growing in and twisting out again distorted, ending with Gladys Copper, of all, kicking on the floor, biting the carpet, screaming, when he dies in her bed, and she calls her husband to help move him, so that only he will know, and a young master comes in, and she says "You loved him too, didn't you?", and the play ends, because though she thinks the man over-drank because she herself wouldn't go away with him, the audience remember the previous act in which the other master also wouldn't.... all this beating in a school, North of England, with owls in the trees, and a white peacock and thunder.... very odd for, I repeat, an ordinary commercial play put on with no "hoo-ha", the theme being explicitly that loving a person, one at once, proceeds to want to change them and make them different from what they were. The work accomplished, one hates them. Called "Rats Of Norway". Odd to meet people who know about minds on the stage, and even let men cry in front of their leading lady....

While our cinema goes on with war films, Gable-Mays, Hays-Gary, Gary-CrWFord, seeping hysteria into our minds with their emotional pacifism detached from everything else. And at one party I met Bebe Daniels, Thelma Todd, Sally Eilers and Ben Lyon all at once. Thelma Todd said she had come to see *How* in lilac-time, Sally Eilers said she arrived without a passport, as she got swept away on the ship and, signing autographs, books, signed her passport and gave it away - a good story. Bebe Daniels just said she had never seen England and as she was offered good money, thought she might as well make films in 2 countries as one. She is the nicest star I have met. Has had time to be a person, whilst the newer nonentity stars have had not time to develop any personality other than screen.

I have gossiped too long - it is the hour-ox's fault (I wish I could discover the meaning of that beautiful name!). I will end - Bryher on her own mentioned the chow to me, and said she feared "the political situation" would complicate having it.... I think the chuff more likely to complicate political situations! But want to see Bryher and find out what it's all about. K. as usual doesn't say anything, merely

30.12.33.

I'm so sorry to hear a cold's caught you, H.D, I hope it goes out with the year.

And I hope it isn't an eye-cold, which makes reading agony, because you've started something in that book which makes me want to talk!...
Numbers have always been one of those things round the corner, not numbers at least but numerology. I wanted to know, but felt I wasn't ready. Perhaps "numerology" is a putting-off word, and anyhow, I never quite feel it works to go out and buy quite definitely for one'self. It has to happen, "come up" like a number itself. The book arriving from you "Came up", just right...like that.

Because numbers I've always loved and felt about. Liked certain numbers and never known why. Hated doing things late in the month, noticed I nearly always get 12's and 13's in theatre and press show tickets, always add up the numbers of my room in a hotel... even have added up letters in roads or names of people, to see if I liked the total... before I knew about reducing to final digits, or that letters did have numbers. A sort of private game I had (d'you remember that lovely story in "Several Occasions" about a word, thinking of it all day and finding ripples and rumbles in other numbers?)... L's and M's and P's are good letters for me... You know I'm happy with dice... purely instinctive; only gradually hearing there was a thing called "numerology" and never paying much attention, but going on with my private game. Then, when I met people who knew, they seemed to know so much, it appeared hopeless and difficult...

But not so bad after astrology! That is so wearing! Trines and conjunctions... one gets such a hazy idea, with the feeling it's wrong. Venus and Taurus ought to make me short and thick-necked... there's lots else I can't get clear. But each of these "methods" help, and so oddly insist on writing and moderate luck, and it pats one on the back without giving too much promise...

Well, NOW the thrill! In vowels, Robert comes out at 11...","! In consonants, at 22...! And Herring in consonants is 11...!'.
Life path is 3 or 4.

The sum of all the letters of my name is ...22!

I may have got it wrong, being excited, but I've been over twice and it seems right. It is also most fascinating to find the difference made by my dropping the Williams, as I did, like most things that have had any effect on me, instinctively... all the combinations bring up such fascinating things, so many oddly right...9 seems a number to have, and I find many come up! This appears to be usual, but I've 7s and 8s and 4s and 2s, which are equally usually missing... R as first letter and O as first vowel make an awfully "me" beginning... I find I get such an idea of myself and also that, once in numbers, my name is a something it's much easier to grasp and consider. Tidies up loose ends and gives them direction... I am amazed at the many shades the combinations make... it is like a very subtle form of painting, Has that struck you, done without colour...

Is there, too, a book on colour? I ask because as with numbers I have always "felt for" colours... as I hope for the numbers I like on entering a place for an interview, I like to see a bit of blue or white. A visual "touch wood". I don't know if there is anything about

this anywhere....I've worked through colours. Once, always red. Then a purple phase, then nothing but sand and honey and sun colours, then white....all these, I've noticed, correspond with changes in one. One swings to certain colours as things happen and as the result of crises. Now I find white ending and green coming up....before I bank on green, I'd like to know!

Blue, you see, should be mine. But such peculiar things happen to me with blue. I can't see it as good luck except that it may prevent bad being worse, but that's not the way of looking at things. It is also odd that I love red so very much and ought, Taurinaly, to shun it.... but there may be some influence that alters it, lurking in my planets.

Violet, you see is all right for me. Now violet is red and blue.... there may be that the evil in red is absrobed by blue (as Venus softens Taurus (does it??) or give a tyro!))....you see, if that is so, I could get through to red via a violet phase. Blue is certainly NOT positive in good influence. So I do think meeting red in my violet, it may cancel the bad of red, thus losing its good itself.....

Do you know anything about this?

Forgive me going on so about me, what I am and find out about myself. But you've given such a key and it dopes one into such clarity..... do let us have a séance one day. I feel sure getting to planets through numbers may simplify astrology for me. At any rate, point the way to a reading. Do you know a reliable caster?

All these, numbers and hand and zodiac, back up each other in their reading of me, and all give me writing and travel, mental flexibility, stubbornness, flashiness and throat trouble.

It's thrilling, too, because as you know I'm called "Bob" and "Buddy" and "Billy" by different people, and each of those names seems to match my relations with those people and to be right for the time when I was most known by any particular one of them.....

Enough, though! But boundless thanks. And I pray for a pleasant "personal year" for YOU....

This is immediate fact-answer, to take advantage of week-end post, if there
is any. Your letter come now, Saturday afternoon, so I cannot go bull-find-
ing till Monday, but surely will then, and very happy to. So I thought you
would like to know that at once.

Then, also it must be at once, I do not think chows destroy cats, necessarily.
I mean, one cannot say that chows kill cats, just like that, because a chow
treated right can be made to do anything. Peter, the red one I had, lived
with a red cat before he came to us. They fed out of the same dish. Peter
used to wait till the cat had finished. That wasn't simply a case of
being brought up with it from a puppy, as he only hit the place he was
at before us when he was three and already therefore developed. I think
that with a puppy going to his first home you could be perfectly safe.
It rests more with the cat. Directly the chow associated it with part
of his home, directly he learnt that he was not liked when he chased it
but approved (at first with tangible sign of bits of meat) when he obeyed
other nbt to chase it, he would learn.

Peter would chase a cat if he could outdoors, because they arched their
backs, hissed and said "I'm not afraid of you". And chows like to be
thought frightening. The cat of course would think that the mane, the scowl
and the fluffy tail, whose erectness it took to mean anger, meant the chow
was fierce, and so arch, hiss, and so on. But with home-cats, Peter was
different. When I was making that toy film with Peter, a cat of the flats
came up, and Peter talked to it, and as the film went on, the cat came into
it, simply because he and the cat were friends, without my doing anything
about it. I think that was because Peter knew it was part of Irvine Court,
and so something to protect.

Chows look fierce and funny, but they don't really begin things. They want
to be left alone. If they aren't let alone, they answer back. That is all.
One cannot judge by what they do in public, because they are "one-man",
or "one-family", and therefore are on guard against everything that comes
near the representative of that family outdoors. Similarly, indoors, they
seem fierce to strangers. But when Yo-Fi's pup got to see the cat as part
of you, it ought to be well.

It would take time for this, because a chow's mind develops slowly - but
it would reach it before it was too big to hurt the cat. And if it didn't,
you would know it was no good before it had done any harm. You can tell if
a pup is going to have a "sweet" nature or "vice" quite soon, and if it has
vice, it is no good. A vicious chow must be removed - it is untrainable, and
a bore to itself. But one knows that before it is grown and big. There is
a difference between being defiant and stubborn, and being snappy.
Last week I had to take Tiger to have a gum lanced, as his illness deprived
him of bones which would have helped a tooth come through. When the vet
had done it, Tiger, though he had howled during the operation, licked his
hand and wagged his tail.

Yo-fi I should think attacked the cat because it kows a cat goes for the
eyes, and felt it had to protect the pups it was carrying - perhaps? But
at that time I/cdd one can't judge a dog. Tiger's breeder let me go in
the pens of all his chow-dogs, strange, wild leonine full-grown deities, but
he would not let me near the rails of a pregnant bitch. I think there
again it is the protective instinct, and you should be able to switch that
in your pup to the cat.

They take up a bit of time, grooming and talking to. I should think Perdita would respond with great happiness. And the pup would clearly soon see that she is not the kind of person to give senseless commands, and respect her. Perdita I should think would be a perfect chow-trainer - wouldn't you? And wouldn't forget to brush or give water, or let the chow in any way feel the affection it had was frivolous only. Nor would she confuse it. A chow definitely likes being made a business of, and feeling it belongs. The fun of one in a house is that they do like to belong to one person specially, but give their affection all round, in different ways to each person. So that you each have a different plane of relationship with the dog.

Tiger brings his toy-basket always to my mother - but never to me. He asks the maid when he wants to go out - no one else. And with me he has his own ways. He gives each one a personal analysis!

I AM sorry to have complicated though, and of course hate to feel anyone's life at Kenwin, Peter's included, should be made difficult. But I do think a chow is not something one says "No" to - time enough when they say "No" to you. After all, they aren't bred by lamas for nothing - they know they're sacred. They do such very odd things to one, are such a crystal or card-pack. You can only go through with one, and give up if it's intolerable. (An intolerable chow is so boring that you have no pangs in giving it away). And as the cat in question is "No", the name of my red chow, I am sure that is a clue.

Honestly, without delving, you would soon find, before any evil, if the chow responded right, and they aren't troublesome dogs. They settle down, and lead their own lives, which have much in common with a cat's. They do nothing without reason, and if you find out the reason of an odd act, it's usually right.

However, you asked me, do they kill cats - and I say, I don't think it's in them, more than other dogs. And firm training leads them the way they become happy in going. But as each chow differs, if you found yours refused to learn, it would not hurt your feeling to "part with" it.

When I inspected a litter of blue ones in the autumn, there was a black woolly monkey in with them, and the man said "O yes, I always bring them up with a monkey, they take to them".

They like chasing cats, because they like fun. Anything that runs away, they are after. But when the cat stands still and glares, they are alarmed and retire with false dignity. Teach the cat it has nothing to fear, then it won't run away, and the chow will not chase it. Bring them up to play, associate food or exercise with cat-company, and surely the dog would have no reason to dislike the cat?

I think the chow that attacks strangers does so because he is jealous that his master will give them affection he wants. A chow that has enough sensible care given to it is quite sure and happy. One in ten, through inbreeding or callous treatment, may become mean, but the rest have no rules and will do anything for their master, not going against their own nature, but fitting it in with their masters.

They're not dogs to be had by someone not able to be regular in looking after them, though.

N.C. writes wildly to ask me to join a May Day procession, whites and black, through the streets of London, to Hyde Park, with banners and red red ribbon. One says - what does one say? I am seeing some Negroes to-night to see what they think. They think they would like to be let alone, but must look after her - so I guess. But will see. They live in Warwick Avenue, which weaves, and perhaps why I want to post it from there.

Irvine Court
Tuesday morning.

Dear H.D.

It was nice of you to write. Yesterday was a horrible day, wondering
...by yesterday the posters came out, suddenly, like that, and one knew
nothing, only felt Bryher and K. were somewhere between Suisse and here,
somehow felt a sudden journey had made them anonymous winds, and felt as
long as once could get at them - not at them, but through to someone who
had last seen them, seen them off, - one could make that a tight rope to
help them get here. Can't explain, but I felt they were somewhere between
everything.

It was good to hear and feel you were that end.
And I'm so glad you wrote. It was kind of you, and apart from that I'm
glad. Of course, it is all private, and as it is now officially out, I know,
you see - I knew before your letter came, and that is now destroyed.
Poor Bryher! All day yesterday I wondered, and then there was K, who was
fond of him, and also sad at Bryher's sorrow, - one knows their inter-
actions. And then Lady E. alone and on top of all. And one knew nothing,
except there must be some terrible joruney going on, and what could one
do when they got here? One can't do anything, in a sense. But they know
I am here and I hope feel I am waiting and quiet. I wrote little messages
to them at Audley... It was easier to K, of course. To Bryher, I felt I
could only just say I was sorry - it seemed inadequate, but more seemed
too much and unkind. I told K. that, without intruding, I was here for
anything that could in the least lighten what they had to go through.
I knew what Sir John meant to Bryher, and somehow it seemed impertinent
to say one did. But poor Bryher.

At least, thank God Bryher is no longer able to do it - I did not happen before -
I mean, Bryher is so much better now, so much more able to withstand. I
could picture her white and sort of winding into herself, withdrawing
from contact - I think before she would have been immovable, could not
have made that rush for the plane. But then, Bryher does wind in, make
herself tiny and tense and taut - but suddenly that gives her momentum,
she springs with great strength... I am so glad she managed to get that
plane. How gallant. What a gift she has of being bigger than the moment,
of suddenly becoming huge. I cannot bear to think of that flight. For you,
waiting - I am so sorry. When I read your letter, I thought "At least she
got there, for with it now in the papers, that too would have been in
had anything gone wrong". Then I thought you did not know it was in
the papers, were waiting - I didn't get through to you, for I did not
know the agonising details. Just thought, you know, they had probably
got there in a quick train. And thought a phone call would do you
no good.

I am glad Lady E. was in touch. It seemed so awful for her alone there.
And in a way one can't visualise much beyond Kenneth and Bryher.
The papers, after the facts, are not bad. Admiration the keynote - as much
for the unostentation as anything. "He spent wisely and generously". But
as none of them knew him, none of them know - the humour, the gnome-
quality, the abstraction he gave money, and the kindness with which he
treated people like me. This does not matter, but I thought you would
be wondering ... so much publicity... so hated...

One does not know when they will be here. I do not phone Audley, I shall
not phone at all. I have written and they know I am here. I only wish I
knew how they would be. I suppose Eileen will tell me. I rang her up
when the news came out, she knew nothing except that Audley was being
prepared and Paton had rushed to France, - a help. As long as they know

PRIVATE

Well, well, well, as Yovonne Printemps said - what are we meant to wear, our black crepe or what?....I mean, Jimmie has written to another "Ex" here (not me), saying he will NOT be over. All you have to consider is whether that means he _will_ be and doesn't want it known (heaven in a hideaway and all), or whether he _won't_ be and K. doesn't want it known. Having decided that, you are allowed to wonder whether, therefore, all is or is not well. If it _is_ well, with whom? J. disallowed, may be used as a cover for the next - almost assuredly will. I, too, got the feeling there had been "other experience"....but then, I thought I was meant to get that. I always find it hard to believe people, including my self, play their cards as badly as they do.

So therefore, when you have "Only Jimmie" said to you, I think it may be realised you _will_ remember "only Toni" and "only Buddy". Jimmie has not been well - received; there may be some point therefore in him being thought relegated....as usual, the opposite has equal point; since there has been trouble over him, let it go on being thought to be him. Jimmie or other than-Jimmie, it doesn't matter. The only part of the programme the showman forgets is that the audience is bored.

I had an old-style letter from K. How *deliberately old-style* I don't know. A reconstructor of period can work in feelings as easily as in furniture! Waffles as your mammy used to make them! It is no more use wondering about that than as to why _you_ were told T. was as ever and I was told he was a burnt-out ember; or whether J. has let the cat out of someones bag by saying he's not coming over....anway, I am told by K. it is J. and no one else but J. One knows only that that either means it is or it isn't. There is so much one can believe that one sees no reason to believe anything.

I myself received an anonymous parcel of discs from New York....K says if they were from Jimmie, he'd know. They arrived only last week and are duplicates of those Beaton sent me. I doubt if J. would go to the shop they come from and yet, he is the only one likely to send them who does not know I have most already...they're scarcely more from Beaton, because he never has done that, would not I imagine send duplicates and in any case came round last night, with a new Ethel Waters for me. Which he would not do had he just sent some before sailing....so what? Another clue for the cauldron?.... Beaton of course had his own news, and clearly knew nothing. Harlem to him is like looking at monkeys....which doesn't prevent him seizing any chance to follow a fashion so fast as to seem one of its sponsors; he has just done designs for a production of "Romeo and Juilet", period - Martinique, 1860, to be acted by blacks....! I myself am thinking of a "School For Scandal" in Greek costume, or "The Rivals" acted by Elizabethan Eskimos (there must have been some).....

Well, these fragments are funny. The funniest part of all, is what if it is imagined they make one believe one's self? Wouldn't you love to *think* that you know what *you're* meant to believe? ....you can be sure, it's different from what I'm meant to....I'm glad, though, it seems to be easing.

I wished awfully you had been there when I was - yet, in another way, I was glad you weren't. But one wanted to correlate, and as I feel I shall never ever be told the truth again, it was so hard to believe what often seemed glaringly evident.

Will you be over soon, do you think?

London
Wednesday

It is probable that each letter of mine is made unnecessary by further
news you will have had from Audley since writing me.
But I reply, to tell you that I spent Monday afternoon with K. looking at
beach clothes, and I can't think of a more definite sign than that:
Lady Ellerman knows this, knows the plans go ahead and is most anxious
they should. I have been told to be in readiness for some time next week.
In the early days, I did not like to urge South too much, naturally feeling
as I came into it, one must let Br. and K. see how they felt. But I kind of
dangled South anonymously and detachedly - you know, as much as I could
without being absolutely tasteless. Lady E., I hear, repeats that "that
nice Mr. Herring's holiday must not be interepered with", which is not
the case at all, as you know, one would gladly have any kind of interfer-
ence or abolition that helped them. But it is a help, her thinking that,
and both Br. and K. seem of your mind, that the time has come for another
move.

I lunched with K. on Saturday, Bryher came here to tea on Sunday, I saw K. on Monday, and one day this week he is coming to tea or running in for a drink, to look over records to take with us. Each time there was talk of going away - plans, as I say, you will know more of from Bryher than I shall tell. My job is to be here and prop in any direction needed. But there is no wavering or letting go of anything. And I think K. feels he will soon have done everything that he can here. In that both Bryher and Lady E. urge him. I think, it seems to me, they all seem to feel there is danger at these times of going round and round, till genuine help and sympathy becomes routine repetition and are all anxious to avoid that. Though I haven't seen her yet, it also seems to me that Lady E. has a touch of Bryher's greatness.

It strikes me as very Bryher-eque of her to think of someone as far
from her life as myself at this moment, and if she does, it of course
eases things for them.

I told K. I would go out to Suisse and take W. down if he liked - I thought
that might take something off his mind, and perhaps give a little push
to him getting there, if he liked - but he did not need any push. He said
he'd be going next week, and W. could go down then (as had been planned, only
later).

The heat here is making everyone anxious to get away - Bryher wails that
the black dye comes off and she doesn't like sleeves, and Perdita booms
"It is the first time I have worn stockings since" so many statistical
months! (She sat and chuckled at Tiger in that Chinese way of hers, which
made me want to give him to her. Perdita I mean. Did I tell you someone
came up in the road the other day and asked if Tiger could possibly be
bought?).

I shall be phoning Bryher to-night, and probably speak to K. too, or see
him to-morrow. In either case, will give him your messages.
All best wishes to you, I hope you get news to settle movements and all
for you.

Lady E. made a magnificent reply to press-harrying in "the Times" yester-
day. Some people rise to occasion, others fall. It almost seems a pity
that ordinary occasionless life should level the two kinds so much.

Irvine Court,
London,
Sunday

E23.7.1932

My dear H.D.,

I was so thankful for your letter and honoured (now and again
there are times when one can use words like that) to have Bryher's sent
me....

I have seen them. Been in more or less constant touch. That is more Bryher's credit than mine. She wrote to me about something that might have been awful - this time last week I had posted a chatty letter to her; I meant to ask you to keep it back, but forgot. You know, it was flippant and everyday. It arrived, and Bryher wrote to thank me for it, because "I don't think it is any use trying to keep one's ordinary life too far away, or everything becomes artificial". There was her gesture to her friends, there she was having time to put them at her ease.

I, too, was terribly afraid reaction might set in, but I think the arrival of Sachs will help that. Bryher has phoned me several times, and she let me go to the City memorial service. I was very proud. Not necessarily at being at the actual church, one can pay one's respect at any church, and make one's church anywhere (Paul, suddenly remembered, said just before he left in May, "I think, Buddy, one must always keep one part of one's mind free for a sacred place to retire to"). But I was awfully proud to be with them. And prouder to be allowed to be.

And suddenly in the midst of the service there was that lovely gesture of Bryher's, the scholarship with those words "because of the many hours I spent with him I would like to give to his memory a little to others of what he gave me".

I have had lunch with K. twice. He feels it now more than before, I think, and I think with Bryher it went so deep, it touched reserves, With him, it cannot, so the reserves are not let out. He was looking very worn yesterday. And the inevitable family things and after-math currents tell on him. But I remind him of "outside" - that is what I meant, that was what I was afraid it would do to him. But it didn't. They all worked together, and there is something very fine in the way K. is at Bryher's side, giving to her to help her be more what she is. I mean, it is not two kinds of magnificence, but K. bending his to Bryher. There was something very touching in his care of her at the service.

Bryher is anxious. I take him away soon. Says she does not want him to get rabies and other things harmful to Dogs (those her words), and that she has plenty to carry her on, and Sachs, and will want K. more later. I have it to them. It makes nothing, nothing at all to me. Monte.... one could, if it mattered that much, get there alone... if one felt one wanted to. It is nice being there with K. But just now it is one's privilege to see Bryher and take K. out of himself. That is all.

They have had a bad time with the press. Now, the news about Esther de Sola has leaked out. That was yesterday. John rang me up. I went round, but Saturday is editor's day off, and hard to track them. I think maybe if John had said in the autumn an engagement would be announced, and it would be a short one, that might have been better than saying he was marrying in the autumn. But everything can't be thought of, and they have suppressed many pictures, K. says. To-days papers have little, and odd as it sounds, The flight of the Mollisons will deflect a good deal, I think. There are photos of Esther, who in consequence has had a relapse - the paper says this in gloating italics. Her nurse must be a raving lunatic to let her see papers. Lady Ellerman wanted to deny the report, but John would not..... all that, so soon, must be dreadful. One can

Y. IRVINE COURT.
PORCHESTER HERRACE, W.2.

Friday
Evening

Dear H.D,

No, not upset... though there's plenty I could do without. But even there, one knew before, one had one's instinctive horoscope sort of made from events, which showed there were some baleful influences zooming round... the point is, the others one did not dare believe in, you see. It's difficult to say to one's self "Well, I'm mercurial, so here goes"... without planetary backing, I mean. Who am I to state openly that I am artistic, am vowed to words? !! But it helps to know... sets one in one's orbit in space. Instead of being a comet liable to destruction at any moment...

May I come Wednesday?

I had been planning to ring you up and ask if I might again, but I have been delving so much - every night, like a watchmaker. I copied out all into a book, and various points came up that I can't get. I was going to list them and ask you - but, Lord, it sweeps one on. One gets into a kind of swing, and clocks may strike and one ought to be doing something else, but all one hears is that music of the spheres. (I mean that rather literally).

I did as a matter of fact manage to see something else, eight films ("Thunder Over Mexico", "The Mascot", "Broadway Through A Keyhole", "Everywoman's Man", "Le Petit Roi", "Little Women", "Polish Corridor", "Prenez Garde A La Peinture") this week, and four more at least in the offing. But I've done no WORK... just peered through those pages, making signs, trying to shuffle, finding always something that cancels something else out... at the moment, cadent and succedent houses.

I find great insistence on apoplexy, suggestions that I shall end up in an institution and the fact that some planet's affliction makes the first five months of this year ones in which I should be calm and avoid effort and gloom... so nasty, just the months Mrs. will be away!

But other things compensate.

Clearly, there will never be a point when one can say "that's that". It's like celestial gardening. And yesterday it drove me to a bookshop at 21, Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, which is opposite the Alhambra, with the vague idea of getting an Ephermeris for my year of birth. But there was such an array of astrological books and I felt if I asked to look at any one of them, I should probably be choosing the wrong one, so I sidled off, lit up at the thought of how many there were but wondering which stars had been in operation to prevent my entering the shop! It is called Watkins, and the astrological books are in the right hand front window.

It is good of you to talk about it, and I love it. So, on Wednesday at four.

Thank you!

Best greetings,

Saturday,
London.

Well, H.D,

I've jumped at Bryher's offer. Isn't it awful? Of me.
I tried to consider, what they call "calmly". Brought up all kinds of
"shouldn'ts" and "cants"...believed them, too, at the time. I said, which I
still do believe, that I'd be profanation.

But then, ... considering the idea made one get used to the idea, I felt
all at once that I HAD said "Yes" and it was as if a wall moved from the
window, and there was open country beyond, miles and miles of it...open
to me... I SAW... hilss starred with villages, each one of which one would
be able to reach and examine. So I said, "Well, if that's what Bryher means
to do, of course one says "Yes" without qualms" - even I, not only can but
must.

You understand?

I maintain that I shouldn't be in on this, still. BUT quite suddenly one
did feel that the idea of whatever Ms. it happened to be, made that Ms.
cease to choke. Next books came clearer and nearer and simpler... through
one Ms. being in covers, complete and put a full-stop-to. I think that is it.
It is the awful way Mss. go on, like a tap dripping,... I couldn't write
Vienna if there were the coast-book trickling into it.

There were bad moments about that, too. Coast-book is Rice. One feels that
Bryher must one day scream if she hears of a single more Man Met In
Night-Club! One feels one should say "But you realise?" and then sees that
because she does, it's ungenerous to go over and over it.... I mean, with
odd insight, Br. suggests the coast-book herself. And at first one says "But
you realise?" and then begins to see that she does, more than one has
one's self yet. So that was all right. And when things are, one is guided. But
you see what I mean, both as to her and as to you, ... that there are
limits, and I don't want to bring up bad memories... when I seem arch, I
mean, or protest too much....

WELL, what is Terrific about Br. saying "send "Cactus Coast" is not only
that there it is, a lump of Ms. But that at the moment it shows I was
right. Because I came back, having seen him precisely twice, and never alone,
save for ten minutes walking back, and wrote (1932) my idea of what I thought
he might stand for, to himself. And this year, found I was right - that it
was sort of projection, a prophecy. Wherefore it has to remain so.
And one wouldn't be able to begin on Vienna with that still cluttering
up, and on the other hand doesn't want it to drip over into Vienna.

So what does one do about Bryher? If you tell me you have wondered for
years and reached no conclusion, that is a comfort. But I mean, it ought
to be realised...and God knows, it's hard to realise one's self.

Thank you for the cards. I am AWE-STRUCK. Alas, there's certainly been
a holocaust of death since. How uncanny they are! It was kind of you to
do them. Funnily, the same night I was doing numbers here, and getting
great shocks. His are almost all identical with mine. The name of "Robert"
is bound to be. But when you first write down "Robert Rice" and then
"Eisinger", the family name, you don't quite expect them to turn out the
same as "Robert Herring" and "Williams". The Soul Urge (vowels) is the same
for all three - not only in total, but each name.

The consonants come out the same in total, too. By the way, since R-B-R-T

2.

is two 11s, do you keep it that, make it 22, or 22(i.e-2 11s) I think the last.
I, in latent, come out 22, 11, and 7. That I rather like. The total of vowels and
consonants (expression) is different, but with the same number of 9s. His
numbers fit quite fantastically. And I was thinking "That is too much! Libra
was enough to go on with", when your letter came next morning.

It's tragic about Vienna. Not personal worry; but one hates a person's back-
ground being attacked. I find I suddenly feel just the same about the threats
to blow up the Stefansdom as others did, 20 years back, about Reims. That I
slightly resent! But why is it true, for it is, that the Memlincs and Roger
van der Weydens belong more in Vienna than in their native Flanders? These
Dolfuess and Starhembergs, Feys u.s.w. seem so irrelevant, supers who suddenly
usurp importance. It is the people who ought to be allowed to go on. They
believe in the right things, and the belief takes good forms. Do you hear
from Vienna at all?

I've no news, this is just to say that I leapt at Br.'s lifeline! And want
to thank you, too, for writing meanwhile and acquainting me and saying "Come
in, too" - that was in a way no less kind. Strange of you to have said "Hic
Jacet", for that had always been my idea as a title to a book of poems -
"Hic Jacet. Robert Herring". The other was "I.E.- Robert Herring", but one
felt that too Cummins-y.

It WILL be funny, re-working "Cactus"...but you are right, not for me such a
strain, it not being so "past", there not being so many Mss. I feel indeed I
don't deserve it. But on the other hand feel it will enable me to have
deserved it, years hence. And it's wonderful already to be stretching for-
ward to years hence.

So one day there will be arriving mixed-up story of "pocket Venus"...you
remember that swimmer? ...called Lily, and Tiger, which is 1930, and 1932,
and other atoms, whirling, combining, cooling into worlds....I go to type
now, and probably shan't therefore be heard of for weeks!

Would you work this equation; if Bull charges at Libra, is it not evident
it tips into Scorpio, before Balance is restored in (don't wince) Gemini -
one win in each side of the scale? OR one pillar of wisdom keeping each
side steady?

I hope all marches, innerly, well; despite the shocks of shipwreck and fencers
of which Bryher writes.

Best wishes, and thank you for soothing my scruples,
I had many, till I JUMPED!

P.S. What a GOOD joke that Easi-Squeezi is!

C.IRVINE-COURT,

PORCHESTER TERRACE,W.2.

Monday

Dear H.D.

Many many thanks for the beautiful butterfly book. It arrived
this morning, such a very nice thing to open one's eyes on. Last night
I'd begun writing to you and then decided I'd wait, and then the book
came so gaily and I felt better.

For I've been feeling ridiculously shy. I've never felt shy about any
thing I'd written before, and now do. Because none of the stuff worked,
all I had blithely said about a book being dead and done with when
it's written - that just did not work! Tombstone it may be, "good-bye
to all that and thank God". But Pot of Basil takes a hand - one sprouts
from the tombstone. I hadn't expected it. Found a whole lot of nerve-ends
wriggling and didn't know what to do with them. I was left with a lot
of tendrils, waving.

And then Bryher suddenly says "Fifty? Or a hundred? Or three hundred
copies?" and I couldn't cope. The thought of any copy started me wav-
ing again. I like being able to make a definite answer and couldn't.
So I was so glad when your book came. I felt I was still being spoken
to!

I mean that. You see, candidly, I like the idea of three hundred. It means being read, being even reviewed, and I like the idea of the book (if it is a book) being 300 because, as Bryher is doing it, that makes more definite and visible what Bryher has done than 50. By six times. BUT....

I'm frightened. Other stuff's been objective and somehow over even before
it was finished. Something one made. But this, if you'll forgive me, happened
to become something I am - a process. In a sense, "Cactus" is behind
me because it has cleared so much for me. Whether it's the kind of stuff
Bryher meant to encourage, whether she regrets having made the suggestion,
it has opened a door. I see what I'm about, both in writing and though
In re-working, so much has emerged for what it's worth, or is not worth,
to me. Not in a flash, but like a dog at a rabbit-hole.
But also, having for the first time spun out of one self - well, it's
all right while you do it. But after, How one feels! Yes, after all my
brave talking to you, "...of course one publishes....and under one's
name.....of course, people never consider.....", I feel suddenly I want
a pseudonym. Not only to atone for "using" an experience with someone
else and shiled him, but so as not to saddle it with any associations
my own name might bring. It seems bare and undisguised. One doesn't skewer
one's mind and wave it at the crowd like a bit of raw meat, saying "Look,
look", for them to laugh at OR like, either as bad.

I suppose the idea of fifty seemed cosy, almost "in the family". Bryher
said "A terribly private fifty copy-edition..... NOT publication. It's
getting rid of a lump of manuscript. Then one re-works and in a month ✓

2.

ten years it goes out in the ordinary way. "That was 50. Now come 300. I suppose that is Bryher's way! I suppose I am alarmed because 300 seems much more like publication.

Much too much ado about nothing! ...I know. But though you can thank your stars you're not, I do wish you were here. So that I could sink into Sloane It's unfair to trouble you, but I can't trouble Bryher with these whirlings because it is terrific of her to open the door, and the least one can do is go through without fuss. I feel I'm like an old lady getting stuck in swing-doors, when I can't make a sensible answer. But I don't know. I set out to "fix" a bit of the Blue Coast. I wanted to "fix" both the glitter on the waves and what was below. But the more I look, the waves dissolve, and what was below comes up - the fishes become waves and show something else beyond them. Everything that at first seemed solid becomes a layer of glass through which one sees something else. I can't tell whether I may or may not have "fixed" a bit of the Coast. It doesn't you see STOP - as writing always has before. It is as if you are looking at a blossom and it turns into an apple, and while you loook at that, you feel very well that it is not apple at all, but the first step towards cider. Which is all very well, but not what you meant.

I am so anxious to know what you think. You sent a car-note, saying nicely "so glad you are" in it. But neither of you had read it then, and I felt when you had, I might instead be, very definitely "out". The butterflies made me feel better - that is why I was writing. But I'm so curious to know what you think. You were there. In a sense, more than Kenneth ever was. I feel that when you sat in those solid chairs at the pool, basking, you were feeling it all run through you - the sun, the sparkle, the world one opens one's eyes on underwater, the hot (cement) rocks of that garden at the end, with the lizards, the "Soyez Bon Envers Les Animaux", that there was probably some special tree was your favourite or that you chose one out of many flights of steps to the town because there was a yucca or morning-glory. But Kenneth, when he sat, was not receptive so much as passive - it seems to me. I don't associate him in a way with what I got out of the place - the particular proportion of flowers and people, the stimulation i/ and then that sudden almost crazy boredom which happened when one suddenly felt one must leave the beach and stop doing nothing or go mad.

When I think of Kenneth there, I think of his room, with records and jumpers and sandals; of appearing at places; wearing things, drinking things, meeting; and of much kindness. But all of that could have been anywhere - Biarritz, Le Touquet, almost Montreux. I don't somehow think of him as part of the palms.

So that, though I was only there once when you were, I'm agog to know if you found in "Cactus" any of the things you found there. And because, other times the pool and the plants got overlaid rather with pianos and poker-dice and eating spaghetti in Beasoleil at dawn - I wonder if they come over in the same way as the sun on the water and the steps.

I don't, mind you, think anything of it (only that I've got better, through it) though I make all this fuss. But I can't help wondering if it gets over a small strip of Monte.

And I long for Bryher's criticism, because while you shared the coast, she never could or would and so is detached... I'm not sure which I'm most frightened of, you (because you liked it there) or she (because she doesn't). Perhaps I shall get it both ways! ...but seriously, if you and she have

3.

read it, then you know best and whatever Bryher says, goes.

I have, however, altered the last page because I thought it shirked.

I'm having terrible days here. To-morrow, Evelyn Laye, Delysia and Conchita Supervia, all in one film. Wednesday, three films - morning, afternoon and midnight. The last, "Treasure Island" - these book films are very trying. One's editor always knows the books so much better! Films on later days have Zasu Pitts and Edna May Oliver, and there is Joseph Schmidt - d'you know his voice, a sort of Kiepura, who sings songs about "Frag nicht, sag nicht" and "Frag nicht warum" and "Frag nuer meine Augen". Then, I had to go to the Regal to hear Tauber relayed from Vienna at the end of his Schubert film here. In the midst of this, however, a slight thrill - I walked into the office the other day with a "story" and no one knew whether it should be a "special" or "par" and all editors, London, assistant and dramatic were out. So I rang up Manchester and discussed it on the phone - which was a new experience. And almost offset the loss of the Mercury - which also means loss of about £40 owed me. In some way, it seems what was owed to contributors is not taken over by the new owners. To-day, I go to interview Maureen O'Sullivan, Tarzan's mate - so this letter will shortly end.

But I went to the open-air again. Madam hadn't seen it. She liked it. Did you know there was a biergarten, with blue umbrellas and lager in glass mugs? She liked that, too. But, really, even though "Midsummer Night's Dream" is such an acid little piece, it was amazing. A kind of ethereal quality and I suddenly for the first time, having aljs seen the play six times (first in the replica of the Globe at the Earl's Court Exhibition of Shakespeare's England) I suddenly realised that it was rather cute of Shakespeare to have his lovers quarrelling and then introduce us to fairies who were quarrelling too - domestic strife among the fairies in that day must have been a definitely Lubistch touch! But realising that Titania's change-ling boy must be the first gig in English literature, I got all mixed up seeing it as a Mediterranean Night's Dream, with Oberon as Cora Healy doping everyone, and Hippolyta some Toulon Lesb giving a house-party, and so got rather far away and tired.

BUT BUT BUT - Phyllis Neilson Terry as Oberon! Did you see it? If not, you must know she had a striking resemblance to the Loch Ness monster, as well as to the original Olde Blasted Oake. Her dress was clever, being so designed as to be vague and with a huge oak-patterned chiffon cloak which flew out and showed something could be larger than she was. But she had on her head an antlered crown of aluminium, which made her look like the Monarch of the Glen. And she sang "I know a bank where the wild THYME grahs" and then laughed, elfish-ly. But being no elf, it was the best imitation of Tarzan's yodel I have heard. And, as the night wore on, the grass grew slippery and she came rather faster down the slope than she meant. To think I saw her as

Queen Elizabeth in 1914! And did you ever look at the tent-theatre they use when it is wet? Because the audience's tent is one and the stage is another tent. Between the two is an open space of six feet, through which the rain can fall. So that watching a play in a neat storm would be like seeing it through a curtain. Almost worth going up for.

I must go to interview...but, if I've bored, and been foolish, you see how helpful the butterflies were. You couldn't have done anything kinder.

Well - YES, tell Bryher THREE hundred if *she* thinks so. Why not? If Hepburn wasn't afraid, who'm I to be! The thing's done, so what's the difference. But only if she thinks so. And what are *you* doing?

Repeated Geburtstag-gruss (to-day being the day),

London,
Saturday.

Dear H.D,

Thank you for letters. You helped very much - as so often. I should not have squealed. But I knew I was squealing to someone who knew what squealing meant....that in a way made it worse, for I felt that, if I wanted to, what on earth must you, making as you truly say a web of your own nerves, feel like?

But I can see what you mean about feeling better, when it's done. It seems to me that though it is "Hic Jacet, it isn't a tombstone. One gets it out of one - I mean, you do - but it isn't laid out. It is a life going on, that, once it's in covers, and nowhere else, one can live any time. I don't mean "go back to", but actually live for the first time, understanding in present terms what happened then. Not re-creating the past, but getting it out of one, so that it exists instead of straggling on and putrefying in one. Another time, parallel with one.

If one can do that, make a fourth dimension, I am sure one should not worry - you shouldn't...."Kora and Ka" came last night. I read it in bed, quietly. In the morning I wasn't sure if I had read or thought or dream-lived it. I have read it again, and am quite sure - it is not reading; it is a going into that time. "Kora and Ka" caught me up in its currents. I was a fish, swimming back and forth, each time in a new current. You know how the silent and swift glide of fish in a tank are like electricity in being? It was like that, (I always think that fish, with their darting pushing and inter-patterning and displacing of each other, are like one's mind).......only one wasn't looking at them, but inside with them....I have never read anything like this before.

It is extraordinary how K. lives in both so much more than he does in himself. And - I was so grateful for that hand! It had always been a problem - whether his hand was beautiful despite the affectation or whether the affectedness might not be the beauty.

(I see so well that one must purge one' self of resentment and sense both of one's own and of others' shortcomings if there were somewhere they lived, as in these).

I can't get over "Kora and Ka" but how beautiful "Mia Mare" is... since the hand was my clue in the other, was the building that pink mystery of honeycomb, seen from the sea, - which was a house one entered from the boulevard on a ground floor that was really the ninth? That strange house, so pink, and always "looking newer than ever", was always something I considered privately, as I had the affected hand, wondering why it was so affected and what it'd be like if it weren't - so I wondered why the house had to be so pink, and be there, with a chimney before it, and why it was built just there.....I didn't feel alien, when I saw you had taken it. "Mia Mare" was like going to Monte for the tenth time and seeing it for the first. It is a small detail, but I sat up straight when I realised the fringe of cafe awning is, as you said, amber ....inside I knew it was and knew I had known it, but wondered why I had not been aware of it.....the story was like that all through, How beautiful it was then, that first putting of a pychic toe in the water, before it was deep or disastrous or anything but warm.

Yours is a lovely coast. That thing it has doesn't come again, though it is the thing that sends one back. It set me re-living the window-box flowers outside

2.

the dining-room and the texture of the paint in the Reserve iron-window-frame under them...and the marrows that grew by the bowling-green at the corner where there was that fake miniature fishing quay under the arch, with the low red-lit dive and a shoemaker with shoes no one bought, on steps that led up to a despondent horse-head and a statue, to stairs where one's shoes finally slipped...up to the Casino exhibition grounds...all that! Which one wouldn't have had, but for the walk up.

And it at once seems so awful that "Reserve" is "French for" a "fish-tank"... all that row of balcony tanks! With Inglefield and his parrot, and the anglai mother-family and the awful Italian boy with his blonded mamma, and the rest, all in tanks, with mosquito-net instead of glass over them...doesn't one itch to get that out?

Yes, I only met Cora one day. But I think it was a very vivid day, heightened perceptions and all, because it was the first day Bobby did not come to lunch I'd done all that one does do when people don't arrive - dashed back and forth between every rendez-vous that might have been mistaken, convinced that that would only make me miss him at each. Then I'd relapsed into a drink with K, who materialised at he does at such moments, and Cora appeared. I found quite complete satisfaction for my nerves, it seemed funny, in noticing that she drank her cocktail very slowly because although she obviously wanted another, she wanted even more to keep K, talking and renew liason of "the dear dead days gone by!"

To switch over, - I know well that instantaneous broadcasting you speak of. But when I suspect it, I find a very good way is to tell each end a different version of the same story, and watch for it to come back to one - It is extra ordinary how angry they get to think they've been lied to, can't show it, but know you know they're angry and are longing to ask you which was the true story. It happened in the summer - though the broadcasting set was slightly different. But K got very cross.

With Eileen, it's a case of frustration. She's out of so much, and though K won't let her in on his life, likes to know about it. That makes her a sympathetic listener, then she feels loyalty, and after that, pique again because K won't see her or anything. So the result is a buzzing of messages. Once one knows that, the system has its advantages.

I hope I don't sound too much like a gangster!...

Thunder's returned. Most disrupting. It crackels all round, like a fire-hoop. Well, thank you...for wise comfort and for letting me see what I'm sure Duse meant by " a newer and more effective kind of poetry"...there IS something about the first print-shape of an Ms which makes one hate splashing in corrections, isn't there? One's used to it by the time the book is out, but the first proofs have a crystallised thing all their own.....so I'm not throwing away the pages, if you don't mind.

This thunder's a bore. I've been tired all the week, and busy and want to get on, and it does intrude so. Makes ones veins choke.

Many thanks,

1. IRVINE-COURT,

PORCHESTER TERRACE, W.2.

Sunday.

Dear H.D.,

Thank you for your kind letter....I'm sorry, by the way, that my last one was so undigested. I couldn't even bother to sort out what I wanted to say to you or Bryher....but I felt it was better that way, the effect on me rather than deliberate diagnosis. Because now, the only effect is the effect on me - the rest seems so unreal and I am left outside wondering why I have to bother to be this self that isn't me in order to meet on amicable footing....and get so annoyed that I go a step too far, show what I think I'm among a little too clearly, go just that little bit too cheap which enables one or other to say "There, you see, - I saved you." (My foot!)

It is, of course, only - only, that one treats songs and sidecars as one's playtime-accompaniments and it is impossible to meet those to whom they are work. Because work is work and one's work is different. Enfin, impasse.

Well, I didn't really worry about Oppy - that way. It's excellent that people write best-sellers or railway guides or "Proud Mans" - they're all being good in their way. What I worry about is not their "success" but that I'm not good in my way. I have no achievement,...and nineteen editions of anyone one started with, remind one of it.

The more forcibly as at the same time, I found I wasn't "in" the new "Mercury". Just like that. After working three years unpaid and having written unpaid the last two, quietly dropped by the new management. Without a word. And some new man put in. That shouldn't happen. I know about films; I consider I have done a good job on that paper with them, and it is polite to tell me, at least, that a new policy demands a new outlook on movies they do not think I have, - this is all very childish, because it was my first paper and it's like a friend one can't see any more.

But it matters less than it did, simply because "Ermy" helped me see Oppy (not that it was Oppy, but you know what I mean), and also because the Proofs have arrived! In yards. I was saved agony because it was only the first part, which all seemed very neat and like a menu being offered one - didn't feel I had much to do with it and yet was surprised it was offered for my approval. Also, while I am typing "Icehand", it is funny to see South from North - intensifies both and sets even clearer what I feel about each. Also, helps to make me feel delightfully busy and constructive. And already I begin to feel I can look that Coast in the face, which I hadn't been able to.... "Mira Mare" is not slight - I think it is a layer nearer the surface, but it takes its light from the under-layers, lifted to sun. It is quite extraordinarily as much yours as is the gull-in-park London yours and no one else's, and everyone's, all at the same time. One feels the essential thing of Monte as one does that of London in the other; the difference being only that the "you" (I don't mean necessarily you, as H.D, though it is your) behind, who is such a factor, like the earth flowers grow from, or the sun and wind that makes them, is more at rest than in the others, but I

2.

don't think slighter.

Still, one can't tell. One of the things that happens is that the stories change each time I read them. As if they had turned in the light and were showing a different colour. "Two Americans" does very odd things. Lately, I've realised K.most in it. Each time, one or other of the people have come up at me - as if I were seeing it from another angle, were on a moving camera. As I think I said, one walks into each different currents each time.

A letter arrives from Bryher - they always do, while one is writing. Tell her that more proofs also arrived and will reach her with the first batch.

It's nice of you to offer to take "messages" to Wien. I don't think there are any, though - I mean, as you haven't seen me lately, there's no "news" of that kind. I don't suppose there's any point in you stepping into where he is - I don't imagine you go what Br. calls "nacht-lokals" in Wien! Still, if you ever have after-Oper sandwich, .... I mean, I don't imagine you want to "meet". But if you do, or just feel like taking a look without mentioning me, or even to say to yourself "Good gracious, Buddy's friend is in there" as you scurry by, I'll send the address.

I rather think at themoment that he's in a nursing home. I had a letter which looked indelible pencil-ish, saying he was in bed with a cold, and he is liable to write ten days later and say "I wam sorry my last letter was short, but I had had an operation."....he's due for two soon. But I don't know where. And don't know if he is still working or has gone in yet. Nor can I think of anything to do about it, or any"message" thanks.

If he is working, he begins at 9.30, and the places are then empty for about two hours, so he plays through any opera or operette one has seen, or absurd Italian tunes that may mean much to one. He likes to be asked to play things (he is supposed to be unable to be stumped) and likes to talk English.... but I don't imagine this is of any interest.

Birthdate, incidentally, is 29.9.02, if you ever happen to peep into Adams.

No, I know "no Doris Leslie effort, no matter how successful" would not help - I do get that isn't it. Only that one wants to be good in one's own way.... "where there's a will there's a way", and I wonder what has happened to both of mine. I seem to be loitering, rather....Still, though I've no reason to, I am pleased with "Cactus", the proofs look good, and that helps - helps "Iceland", too. It is astonishing what an air of confident clarity proofs give.

I have a new guide-book to Iceland which says "Among the many fine shops in the capital are many fine bookshops. In close proximity to the town are the Lunatic Asylum, the Sanatorium and the Lepers' Hospital."

Skall,

London,
Saturday.

Dear H.D,

I've been reading your letter in the Park...one of those autumn days which are misty six feet off the ground, then very bright with thin gold, all in a balloon of further mist. Bonfires and pheasant-colours and the Round Pond had turned over and gone to sleep like a huge duck...the sheen of the water was all underneath...the nearest "set" for Vienna I suppose one can get here, not in actuality or appearance maybe, but in atmosphere...but I didn't DO that! It happened that your letter came as I was setting out with Tiger, so I took it up. Tiger, and a swan that suddenly sat up and shot out its wings, were the only definite things in the goldshot blue haze. As I suppose news from Vienna is in one's life. It IS far away, yet it's near, right in the centre of one's head. I think that's the thing - that one holds it, it is what one holds.

I tested that thing, "WIEN" in the Park. I mean, Berlin once meant so much, and Monte made one live only from summer to summer, and one is chary of mirage, and distrusts volte-face, so I've be-littled Wien to myself. Said it was fortunate, and meant something, but not formulated too much. But to-day I find it still definite. I've been busy ever since I left it, but it still holds. I find that undeliberately I do prefer opera to jazz still, orange juice to sherry(and then more sherry) - I wondered why I was so pleased to hear of the Opera, and found it did mean something, that unconsciously since I've been back when I wanted a new tune, I bought a funny aria instead of Ellington's latest - or rather, didn't have to buy, but re-played... it would be funny if Wien were one's Prague of that Student Film... the glass you remember, and the other self coming out. But also, which the film didn't do, the other self put behind glass, known to be reflected not real... It would be funny, not that there are Pragues in one's life, but that one should know it at the time.

Did I tell you I met Lotte Lehmann here? She talked of the Wien Oper - from her side, of her dogs and her dressing-room and the fireman. She is nice - charming, and alive. Yet her voice has not really any magic, to me at least. I play her and play Schumann, and there is a magic in Schumann. I played the other night all kinds of discs - Ponselle (in "Norma") and Gote Ljune-burg, if that's right - a lovely voice. But the only one in whom I found the thing that seems of one's life, the thing that makes one recognise a Pavlova among hundreds of honester and physically lovelier dancers, was in a very old record of Melba. It scratched and screeched the top notes, but the same thing was there as is in Schumann... the odd thing, you know how very young her voice sounds, and how surprised one is at a concert when she appears rather hausfrau? Lehmann's voice, to me, goes with the Schumann appearance - it is much older than she looks (She looks rather well, and dressed with superbly quiet streamline elegance-cum-efficiency skill)...I wonder if DIE TOETE STADT will be played while you're there? I would love to see it, I hear always it is so good.

Did you ever hear Melba? The record I have was made the year I was born. I had always thought she was a display, it came as a shock to get such a genuine thing from "Otello" sung by her.

I, too, saw Sten (yesterday). Forgive this sudden descent!...don't you find it (

in 2.

funny how films are begging to be Film again, much, but not quite as, they were? I don't mean the good films, but "Kiss Me and Say Good-bye" stood for something; when I read it in your letter I thought over what it was, KNEW it was a bad film, an AWFUL film....but, it left something solid. That kind of overlaying, the power of bad films to be bad and often leave something better than a better one, is happening again. To me at least. If you see about, anywhere, the name Francisca Gal, do see the film. She is rumoured to be interesting - a musical film, light but I believe she has something of the Anny Ahlers thing, I mean of that kind. She is Hungarian and whenever I wanted to see Gitta Alpar, I was told Francisca Gal was so good. So of course, being in Wien, I saw neither!

All proofs of Cactus have been passed. What a moment. More and more kept on coming and I got so interested in the story, which I read as a story for the first time, that I cut and cut and read on - and Bryher found plenty of mistakes I hadn't found! She brought them along to the Curzon....can you imagine, they were serving punch to us before the film, as it was very cold, and all among that and the chromium, Bryher walked in with proofs and said "Can we not go into them now, if you have time?" So we sat in the cinema, correcting them till the lights went down. That was fun, and very much the sort of thing someone who pops up from a hole in the ground or a tree would do....Proofs in page form are good. When it's the complete book, just not-bound....isn't it peculiar when you look, at first casually, sort of "O, all this old stuff", then find - the least thing you expected - that you have written a story? I was quite surprised, and turned pages to see what happened next, rather interested to find that one page did follow on from the next....there's a lot that isn't there that should be; on the other hand, there is more than I thought - reading, things come up and I say "O, yes, it was like that, and one did feel that", as if I had had nothing to do with it.

But you must discount this, because Bryher wrote me a note, saying "I almost forgot the Artichaut was a night-local" and that....from her....is the best thing that could happen. It is what I wanted to get over, what happened what proved how much else happened - that the actual Artichaut, which became the hub of one's life, ceased to exist. So when Bryher says she likes it, "even if it is against red ethics to write of a love-affair", then-as Bobby says, Excuse me!

Anyway, I'm telling you this not because I'm pleased so much as that it's been on my mind that Bryher was backing something she probably didn't approve of, and it's good to know that the night-club, which she might have loathed so, strikes her as "a cross between a Manchester lounge and E's, dressing-room." I feel immensely relieved and also hurray-ish.

As to the prickly pear in person, he is now at a place called the Bristol bar, which is not the Bristol hotels, but opposite, an annexe to the Cafe Bristol. He has moved there from the Kaiserbar and it is not so smart, but as he is solo, it is counteracted thereby. It is minute, about the size of my room here. Panelled in red and green brocade, with about six tables and wall-sofas, a stamp-sized dance-floor, a small bar and a grand piano, at which he sits from 9 p.m. till 3 a.m. The proper way in is through a big door at the side of the Cafe Bristol (there is a notice saying "Bobby Rice" when he plays there, and a doorman who is not often there). The door opens onto a hall which looks like flats or blocks of offices, but at one end you see another door, and that is the bar. I mean, when you push open the door from the RING, you expect to be in the bar, and you're not. So you

3.

push the next door and then you are. Also, if you go in the Café Bristol and right through, where it narrows, there is an entrance on the right. That is more casual and non-committal. It's "respectable" but not smart, and Rice doesn't dress there, and there's no music but piano. I haven't told him about you, so you won't be quizzed at. You'll know him by him looking Chinese-ish, green-eyed and quite shatteringly "plain", as well as fat (since returning to Viennese Kueche) so if you're put off, there's no need to speak. I didn't tell him, because it's much better to feel if you do want to, you can say you know me (as Robert H. Buddytoo), and if you should happen to, tell him I seem to sound well, happy and busy. . . you won't, of course, mention "Cactus."

"Iceland" nears completion. I'll be glad when it does. I suppose one gets tired of the mechanical typing and one's mind is darting off on to the next book as one goes on and on, getting the fair copy done. I can't see it yet, but think I like it. There's masses of action - flights, rides, killings, people marry, people die, - and, as you probably know, it ends after the next war but one.

I had great trouble over my Garbo name. She is now Friedl Steenholdt. When I saw your star was Freda, I thought something must be done... I'd tramped in on your coast, and had used a name, Howard, too. So I tried other names - landed on Lotte. She just wasn't Lotte, and the only one she could be was Friedl... you make this kind of conversation awfully difficult, now, because of Ermy... I catch Ermy in me so often!... I know you know I'll realise just the particular thing that makes Ermy's questions so Ermy-ish, but you have put such a finger on that kind of thing that it's there for "all the time" - Ermy-ising! Anyway, I hope you don't mind Friedl.

"Iceland" is a funny book, and I think it is and am glad it seems to be as I meant it to be. BUT, what "Cactus" has done (and perhaps "Iceland") is that I don't want to write another funny book. I don't want either to write quite another "Cactus". I don't want to judge things by white her they make me want to satirise them or not. A permanent eye for satire, I think, squints. I want to do not complicated stuff, with many twists and sort of "Ya-hoo, you thought that was going to happen, but it didn't" - I want to do something very simple and try to get some fulness into it. The man in "Iceland" starts very *very* nervy and critical and uncertain. And he marries Friedl, and she dies, and that is awful, but the main thing is that he found enough peace before she died not to lose it after - it's still a bit stunt, not being so upset as one'd think sort of thing, - but I'd like to do that finding-of-peace-after more simply. Actually, the book didn't start out like that, but it happened and that's why I'd like to follow it up... "Excuse me!"

I went into Audley yesterday. There is great knocking going on whilst Chesterfield House is demolished. Lady E. was in storms - purely slapstick storms, ringing bells, sending footmen out with "Stop that noise!". That rather dislocated things. I know no one so barometric - you can see rising storms in her eyes, even while she talks of Eastbourne. You wonder when the thunder will come and why, and then she goes to the bell and "I won't have that noise" crashes out... storm-cone was flying yesterday. But only over the noise... you can imagine, Audley tea, the flowers, the lights, and crash, bang, pneumatic-drill noises ruining the picture... I think it was the indignity more than the noise worried her... Bryher was laughing... it was of course purely slapstick... a sort of Mickey Mouse squeak in the

TELEPHONE.
PADDINGTON 2976.

1, IRVINE COURT,
PORCHESTER TERRACE,
HYDE PARK, W. 2.

Sunday evening.

Dear H.D,

I meant to come in today - I hope you don't mind, but I did! - and so didn't come yesterday. But when today came, it arrived to be the maid's day out, and I couldn't. As Mrs doesn't, and can't, take Tiger out. So I have to be in. I am sorry.

But glad to have seen you Friday - it was nice, once again. Only, there's so much to say that someone else now one daren't begin. I don't mean gossip, but ideas one has been keeping company with and thoughts one would like to see the other side of from someone else. In short, talk... but from summer to winter's so long, especially when winter turns into spring en route, and one gets topside down, and I have never yet managed to ask you how you are, as it is the first time since, that I've seen you... but you know that, don't you?

There is a Film Society next Sunday....the film, which is called "Cactus", is a Jewish one, made in Palestine....I would have a ticket, if you care to come?

Best Gruss,

(My perfect date, surely? Friday, to start with. The fourth of the fourth, and the year adds to eight)

1. IRVINE COURT,

PORCHESTER TERRACE, W.2.

Friday, April 13th, 1934.

Dear H.D.

Greetings and reassurances first, and lots of sly jokes. I enjoyed myself, I am well, busy and serene. I know no one of us seems to have any right to be, but this is not a selfish beginning but to show you the mood, more than mood - state, achieved state, of the person writing this letter.

Because - a quoi bon? Aqoi bon trying to keep up! A Quoi bon considering feelings! Because I wanted to leave you such a long note and it seemed unfair to plunge you, straight from Venice, into all that old <u>that</u> again. And I thought, if I had done my job, you would sniff and know what was what and I could write when I got back and acquaint you with further atmosphere layers by the time you were ready. Then, - this happens, Bergner. And Bryher.

It seems so unfair. And too much. One knows it all and that there's nothing to do but go on. But one hates other people having to go on. Give these to Bryher. In the haste of catching airmail-express before the local <u>postes</u> shut, I forgot them, I think she's all right, Bergner I mean. Clearly nervous exhaustion. I suppose only Bryher knows from what or why. That must be hell. But stress that physical illness is outlet as well as symptom. And somehow get over to her that devotion is not enough, by itself. One has to dish it up. And both are so like the unvented sides of the other that it seems to me they are stultified, until one or other says, "Well, now I'd like to see what I (i.e - the other) can do". Bergner, knowing more tricks, makes Bryher do perhaps the things she is not good at.... I don't know, but that's what I feel. Anyway, stop Bryher blaming herself, which never does any good, and suggest swashbuckling. For I think all this "de ci, de la, cahin-caha" is an urge to action, misintrepted. All this that happens, on every plane, is only a challenge, for to me, clumsy as usual but also detached, it seems all Bergner wants is to sit like a damsel at a tourney while her projected self jousts, so that she can either garland the winner or bandage the loser, who is of course Bryher. If she doesn't, she should be made to. It is no use tilting and turning tail. Though there are better things to do than have one's tail pulled.....

Well, to go back. You will have seen Kenneth. He will have told you he is very happy, or else that he isn't. In either case, he will say one thing and seem (honestly, with the best will in the world, he can't help seeming) the other. Like a movie address not accustomed to synchronising face action with dialogue, you will have come back, tired, from Venice, you will have had your room again and the stream and the house (of which I now think the most important thing is the fact that when you close your door there is a passage cutting it off from the rest, to which it is linked not by balcony but by view (=outlook, state of mind)). And on top of getting into all that, which takes energy, you will have seen K.... and wonder. On top of which this Bergner thing. So that spotlight shifts once more to Bryher!

2

So I'd better tell you straight off what happened to K and me. I don't think this need be "confidential". He'll probably agree with it. If not, I have a right to speak for myself.

He came to dinner, and I thought it would be as of old. I wanted it to be. What happened shouldn't in itself have constituted a permanent gulf. He breezed in, (that is the real word) very formally - that really is possible, and instead of talking, treated me to a lot of small talk. Rather like Br, writing a postcard to someone she wants to keep in touch with but doesn't like. "New York is very gay. One doesn't go to bed at all. The best dance band is Eddy Duchin. It is the only place to live. Ethel Waters varies from night to night". That went on and I got unsympathetic.

But after all I am not entirely cut off from news of New York, and it seemed silly to be hearing that. K. was handing me a line while he felt his way and he knew that I knew it. I have never got less idea of a place than from what he told me of New York and so when he said, in answer to enquiries, that he was perfectly happy and that it seemed to him the one place to live, I could not help saying he had told me nothing that enabled me to think so.

I went back on nothing in saying that. K. and I, we all know, love or loved Monte in a way you and Bryher might not share but at least saw. Circumstances since 1930 had brought a number of loyalties I would still stand by. I mean, it is, or was, natural that K and I should get out of something something you and she, or anyone else, might not, and that would be something in common. But Monte was never quite imagined to be the whole of life. I wanted to know what New York offered, because K and I fall for the same thing and I might fall for that. But I can't, now, believe that just what has been brought back is my idea of happiness. And I am afraid I am too set to conceive of it as anybody's for ever in whom I believe. In that sense, it may be true that I have altered. But K. is the last one to blame me for that, having caused it (Actually, of course, is the first - I mean, "should be the last").

Anyway, it is evident that on K's map I am marked as deserter. It seems funny.

Also, foolish. I want genuinely to know what is this charm of New York. K. should have found me a sympathetic listener. If I can't stand for social small talk, he knew before that was a thing we never indulged in.

But I am not allowed to be myself. I have been influenced, of course, been "got at" - like a piece of old cheese run after by mice. I think were that true he, the cat, should have seen to it the mice should not mix. To leave me not knowing who knew what, leave me to sort it out, at cost of only recently reestablished relations, and then to come back and complain that I have been "getting together" seems... boring. That is the best word. It all is. But K. might be reminded that before he left us all to find out how much each knew, not one told the other they knew, in the language he likes, "all".

This is all very boring, I know. But, in the slow way, truths suddenly dawn, I have realised K. is the only person I have ever known well who has let me down.

It seems such a pity, - on his part.

I don't think I ever let him down save on this one occasion, when he came to dine here. Then I was aggressive. But he came in wrong and put on an act, just as he did when he was ostesnibly telling me the "truth". It is ture that when he told me J.D. liked me so much that he had his photo in his bedroom, I said "No doubt - one more scalp to his belt". That was cheap. But K. was or used to be wise enough to know one is cheap when one is made so. I wanted terribly, that night, in the old phrase, to "let bygones

3.

be bygones." He seemed unwilling to see it. I suppose it is natural if one has fallen hard to resent someones making the cause of one's falling merely a super. But I can't stand for this dramatisation. It was I that was left to pick up the pieces, no one else, after the bit was picked up. and I made a good job of it. One doesn't have to dramatise. One tones down, to get by one's own censor. And if only K. were happy, he wouldn't have to. But he's obviously not.

Of course, my thinking that may be unwitting applause to the best act yet. But one wouldn't say New York is either revitalising or rejuvenating, I think, to look at him. And that's all I am allowed to do, since the "I" that I was no longer exists.

Well, what is your reaction to all this?

It is unfair to worry you. But it does seem to me perhaps of help and of interest that I, as I stand, am no longer of any interest to K.

I saw him again. We aplogised for having said what we didn't mean to thru' drink - he'd said Br. insulted him, through refusing to meet J.D., an artist, when he had always met Bergner. I scoffed, naturally, reminded him that I had never believed the young man was one of the world's wonders even when he was my personal one, and that she had at any rate met Wickham, even though the opportunity was given a bit late to make any choice. I also said that one doesn't justify one's self if one's happy, and asked why I had never heard these sad tales of being uncared for when he was UNhappy _ all this I tell you, as I see no need to be ashamed of anything but the defence against misrepresentation one is forced into.... It is natural, I am told, I should be "bitter." The word should be "impatient". Since to the enquiry "What now, what will come from all this". there was no answer. So we met again, and both, I imagined, realised, that if we didn't stick to badinage we should bicker.

And thus, on the way to Croydon, hardly spoke. And at the drome, Bryher had that awful crucifix look in her eyes. Because of a row with her mother, but one didn't know that at the time, And K. wouldn't sit with his back to the plane, and didn't want to meet Stein (who after all is no more boring than any fat third rate "artiste", as long as she's coloured) and turned his collar up because it was cold in the car and generally had to look after himself because there was no one else to, as well as no need. And at Auxerres we were left to go out at night by ourselves, which was embarassing, and I tried to put K. at ease by informing him I was happy, both here and with my Viennese no-more-than-friend. I meant that as a quietus to all his help, but he wasn't there. It was important I should be jealous of J. and important it be forgotten that the only hurt I had was the behaviour their own rapture made it possible for each of them to hand out to me,

So the rest of the journey passed, and, on one's other level, beautifully. because something that could not be overlaid was the fact that I, newly assembled, had finished my book and was on holiday, and here were fields, black lambs like Tiger and flowers. And also Bryher, opening slowly as she got nearer to Suisse, stretching roots, to the sun and the fields and cathedrals....I am, you see, fourteen, I'd flown over in a huge plane, was riding in a huge car, through Burgundy...history and wine and something I had never done before. Then the foothills, the roads hinted with snow, the fact of mountains and...well, it was such fun to be free of all K. was going through.

It was such an obvious "step by step further from thee", Burns-y attitude. Not felt, but put out. It would have been so easy to have said "But, you know what it's like, help me." for who knows better than the one

4

who's been in love with the same person what separation means? That should
be an advantage, but in this case isn't allowed to be.

So poor K, got back, and as Br. opened out and I chirped to be in Kenwin again,
of which more and more, wilted...I do beg of you to be kind to him, I know so
well what that awful marking-time attitude is like. Maddening as it is to
others, one does surround one's self. Builds up a wall of exasperating noise
(of course, I got in wrong at once by calling THE records "easy emotion"...
but then K, dismissed Schubert as "rot", and that is simply a child who has
got hold of adult language by mistake) and then using his sidecars as
stones to sink one to the cess-pool of memories...I recognise all that, and
would help, but mayn't. Because I am supposed to be jealous. As if there aren't
better things to be (whereas K. only thinks I mean "better people to be of" and
wraps himself in an expensive kimono of cynicism).

Br. will tell you of the fraught nerves, sudden sallies and cloud-rift charm.
But Br, won't tell you that I was a stranger in that defiantly coloured room,
that the first night a cocktail was brought to me in yours, and that the last
night he mixed an undrinkable one....that he hated me knowing the tunes he'd
brought over...and the people he'd met....and it seems a pity because I
think he and I had something that didn't interfere with anything else (Toni
knew that, Mr Rambeau to give him his real name, won't) and helped both.

And then, do you see - as I imagine only you will - how, outside that all,
completely happy I was! A/I'd finished a book. The minute one has that means
nothing, - still it gives one a holiday, and, Lord, what heaven it was to see
hills, to smell woodfires and fertiliser, to watch sky's twice-daily perform-
ance, like the post coming in from a friend. And of course, Leman means some-
thing, in a way different from what I class as "Riant". I mean, that lake was
my first bit out of England- it is so much "that" lake. The first time I saw
vines, mountains, or lakes. Cowbells, oxen, - I can't tell you what it meant,
the first change from English seaside. Also, I had just met the master who
had told me "You must write, but write better. And you won't make money if you
do, but you won't be happy if you don't". And he, thank God, was a triple Blue
which DOES help keep one's faith, balance, sense of fun and all else...

Also, we went to Chexbres to meet a girl my brother had been in love with, and
when we met her, my mother liked her but he didn't any more and thus for the
first time I hit emotional conflict and confidence and sobed with both by
cramming all with open burnt-plum torte till I got ill...

So that Keman is always a revisiting of the moon's glimpses, a bunch of
flowers at one's taking off place, and it always seems odd to have private
memories, growing stronger, of a place which is in any case friend-punctuated.

It is obvious this letter won't ever stop. But why should it?

I too felt my private feelings were scoffed...though "sour grapes" can hardly
grow backwards. To be able to look back 14 years to Vevey and see a fairly
straight line, though, is fun. One cashes some kind of pyschic cheque. With less
chance of being dishnoured than in the south.

Added to which, may I be allowed, entre nous, one small spell? To go back to Tonny

5

completed the circle. You know how I came out that first time, in that
state of seeming a relic and irrelevance in one's own life....one can't
let places stand for that and that only. It was important to come back
and sit on the roof where K. and I had sat in such gloom. (I went back on
the roof - but alone. That, too, was funny). To look at those mountains
and ask "How'm I doing?"....do you see? And be able to look at them
because one came back with what one was then losing, consolidated. And
when I found I was to have your room, I felt that kind of ended that
spell! ....I didn't understand then your understanding of what was
going to happen. You were a year too early, and I hope that if I had
known I would have gone through with it; but it is nice to know you
were right. And funny to think how confident I was you were wrong!
Also, it is funny to remember, what I had till now forgotten, that that
same summer Roma had told me I would have trouble with a fair friend
over a dark one...she too a year too early!

I was hoping all this might be left in your room, enclosed in atmosphere.
So that you'd know. I mean, that the brunt of coming back had been broken
by someone else being there first. But now you have not just that to
come back to, but Bryher. I should not write this, all this old stuff, at
this moment. But simply because it becomes increasingly clear one can
never keep up, one has to. I imagine, too, you will have such divided
energy to cope with all after Venice and may care to know what occurred.
K. came to at the end. Gradually thawed. He may, when you get this, be so
spring-like that you doubt this. I have almost no doubt that he will.

But I doubt if he will ever thaw towards me again. No doubt I make it
impossible - unforgiving, inquisitive, arrogant. That might work - I would
almost believe it myself. But others haven't found me so, and more diffic-
ult problems have been solved than the stock little incident which may
make K. find me an awkward reminder.
I found K. now has to be agreed with, and suddenly wanted to laugh as we
talked about dance bands to realise that in the summer it was just that
that drove us mad about Wickham. But K. can't take laughter, so I was left
wondering why his finally- found happiness should have all the same
symptoms of my misery, two years ago......?

A final word, free of all this. We had a grand day in Bern, and I thought
you would laugh at those little bears in their glass. Then I realised
there were TWO....it wasn't done on purpose, I begged Bryher to tell
you. One was sitting, the other standing - there wasn't a third. But I
am horrified if that was the last straw. I meant too that you would see
that bear(=bull) had found he was cased in his own life. They were
meant to say "No contact at all" to you, and also that one was quite
safe in one's little globe. That YOU might take them as Gemini I never
saw till too late! (- I have a lot to write you about that, but it must
wait).

Your letter from Venice has come as I write. I am afraid I tremble more
at your return. But things always work out differently from expectations,
so maybe it will be all right for you. Anyhow, such an aura seems in my
case to be put out that it doesn't seem worth trying to dispel it.

I don't know what you will find. I would like to know. I'm not sold on the

London
April 19th.

I write, perhaps I wouldn't otherwise, the day before Garbo's new film is shown. Imagine two Garbo Films so shortly... it may mean nothing to you where you are, in a sense it is like going upstairs, into another room, from where I am, but Garbo films have always also been threads to me, chronological colour that runs in regularly and frames crises-colours between.

I went by the house.

I was wrong. The church is not pebbles. It is property kind of rock. Very Mary Shelley-novel, romantic fortress kind of rock. Nor is the street wholly red, 16 Clifton gardens occurs in a cream patch... but that is it, you see. I was wrong on the church, I got the pillar box wrong and its cream and not red, but it makes it more strong that these things should be not what I thought and yet give the impression... a cream house of being red, and a grey street of being red. Do you know?

It is set back from the road, grouped with a dozen houses in semi-privacy behind a stone balustrade on the pavement. At each end there is a break in the pavement, and a road runs in, a little road, twenty yards long, and there is another pavement before the withdrawn row of houses. Each side of that, the other houses are content with only one road and one pavement. They are tall, pillared porch, two windows to the left, then windows one two three, one two three, getting smaller for three floors, and an attic floor hidden behind another stone balustrade on the roof... you MUST know.

On the door there was a plate, as if the house were divided into two flats. For, half way up the curtains changed. It had been newly painted, a maroon kind of house, very tall, set back from the road by this other "private" road. It is all rather like the Violet Hunt region, only not compressed as that is, so that the definiteness of the atmosphere lies in the very feeling that the atmosphere has "faded into air, into thin air." I do not know why I should think of "The Tempest".

"I like Venice too. Do you know it?"... only though "Narthex". I know it enough.

I did a thing I have only dared to do to one other author - to you: I wrote and thanked Mary Butts for writing her books. And then held my breath. And seems that my letter arrived with another from someone telling her she was wasting her time, which had got badly into her skin and depressed her, and mine helped. Which was nice; if it's true. Anyway, for your private information she is finishing another.

I hope I gave my detective news about Clifton Gardens all right? That is what it was - like that.

It continues to be odd that you hit that time to write to me, because I had been reading "Animism, Magic and the Divine King" again. It happened that suddenly bits leapt out at me, meant something ... you know, how one reads a book often before one is ready. "Magic" led me to that book again this spring and I didn't know it when you wrote, but the book in turn led to Greek mythology. I let it have its way, and it led me there. I cannot let you writing stop that, can I? But you see how funny I feel, because I always do feel, through what you have done, that to know you AND approach Greece at the same time, I must take my shoes off in Biblical respect... I mean, I am aware I am not worthy of approaching, but I cannot ignore my clues, and it happened.

It has also happened that my hyacinths have become primroses. This is the first time that this has happened. They turned into primroses. It means that when I am sitting alone I feel too small for myself, and

enlarge into worshipping tears....literally cry because I cannot "contain
myself" - and to hell with Freud, who goes so little of the way. It is
something I have never met before, this terrific opening out for which
the only word seems to be trust. There seems nothing to do but respond;
- and try to lessen the other's fear of responding. That is a worth-while
life's work. But alas, we have not a life-time.

I think it is rather staggering to mean something to someone( I don't
mean emotionally, I mean everything else and so that of course too) when
one doesn't to one's self. How IS one to be convinced of one's existence?
I have been in the country. In spring. The English country in spring. And
even that fits. Neither too much nor too little. I think one does not know,
that is all, one just does not know, till one has before one, through the
shining windscreen of a car, a road unruddling, while one talks as one
drives, knowing one's companion more at each milestone....the road ahead,
clear, simple, progressive, with the trees and the country each side scattering
each side of the car, flying behind and being caught up again, concentrated
and resolved in a crystal, in the driving mirror over your head. So that,
you see what happens to the road you are reaching as you reach after,
while you talk, talk, and marvel.

Well....one does not live in vain.

side/

I see your letter dates to April 2nd. I am so sorry. I waited...and Carbo
was a spur.

Let me know what I fear to ask crassly - how it was.

London,
Sunday.

Dear H.D,

Thank you (and will you thank Pup) for your message on Bryhers card
with the flowers? I felt beautifully garlanded. And on Saturday evening I
entertained a black cat on lobster...that is to say, I walked in through
the doors of the dining-room, which in this weather are open, and played with
Tiger till he inadvertently knocked it over. Then it went out sort of say-
ing "I always have had star role and won't be fobbed off with mere lead
now"...still, it was very pretty, and what could be better?
You've laughed at me for my white cat superstition, but in the Swixs talkie
"Rapt", Sibiriskaia knows her marriage won't come off when a white cat
crosses her path. It stands there, and she just shivers and goes on. "Rapt"
is from Ramuz"La Separation des Races", filmed in the Bernese Oberland. Have
you seen it? D'you remember my once raving over "Menilmontant"? Made by
him.

I have been quite solemnly asked by "The Provost and Fellows of King's
College, Cambridge" to dinner on June 19th. This is a bit of a shock. They
ask so-many of each year's undergraduates ten years after they have gone
down....I hadn't realised it was so long! I DON't feel ten-years after
twenty-one at all. In fact, I feel a coherent and established twenty-one, It
is, in a way, a pity one is never one's age when one is. One could do so much
more with it. The invitation states I shall be given my old rooms to sleep
in....seems so funny....a kind of backward-looking sentimentality I have
not got....ten years of others will have done my rooms up differently and
even if they weren't, I have realised ever since how awful that then very
exciting yellow and black and purple must have been....still, I shall go.
For last time I dined there, I got my place on the Mercury. When wheels come
round again, one must see what happens.

Is the man so reliable? He has written so many books, it'd be nice if he
were. I remember Cole saying something about him in your flat once, but
forget just what....I am thanking you, too, you know for that large book,
which I haven't forgotten you gave me then for to-day. And it certainly
helped.

I had a funny party yesterday which I unexpectedly enjoyed. None of the
people I thought would hate each other did. Still, I don't know if the
result reached was really worth the trouble. But those flowers certainly
could not have been left to blush unseen.

Thank you,

CIRVINE COURT,

PORCHESTER TERRACE, N.E.

Friday, July 20th,

Dear H.D,

The enclosed isn't selfish or sadistic. It seems so at first, but it's
NOT.

Briefly, a number of deaths happened and I had to work out why. I wanted to place on record that I WAS aware of a reason. I didn't send this till I had the thread I waited for. I had to write it to someone, because one is never quite convinced or calmed by "talking to one" self. I only send it now because - here is the clue.

I had had no news from Vienna ATALL. Rice had been talking of a tonsil-
operation, also one on his nose, he had to have. I naturally thought they
were happening immediately and that I'd not been told. To-day I get my
first letter and NO OPERATIONS ARE NEEDED. After consultations and exper-
iments, it is thought the troubles can be dispersed, blue-lamped and gargled
away....

Well, is that or is it not....not "magic", because that is a Butts word and
she has lost her spell, but is it not....real, "funny"? Something was happen-
ing, you see, and I think that excuses me for having written the enclosed
last Tuesday....I knew it. It seems to me the very tail-end of the shadow
lifting.

Certainly, very definite that East lies life (for also there comes news of a
year's recording contract, which apart from success or not helps the "minor-
ity" complex, as well as making him, financially a freer agent).

Also the cousin who died was my father's god-son....it seems to me so
peculiar, so peculiar too to be so patent.

I'm not callous. It reads so. But it is using ordinary-layer words for very
deep, or very high, layers. I mean, experience talking - and having nothing
to talk with but words that must shock. But it is the inside part of one,
nothing to do with being sorry others die or hurt oneself by it, trying to
get something over with least fuss. So don't be shocked. A certain reference
to "wish -fulfilment"...that was sub-conscious. It all was, that I was
trying to get out.

And I've always said that once something starts, it has to be completed; but
have never met anything before which I could explain so clearly, "there,
that's what I mean".

I'm not hysterical either. It wasn't simply that when something dreadful
happened, I at once thought of someone I like and got worried. It wasn't
that plane at all.

But it HAS been an awful week, sitting quite still, wondering if the light-
ening would hit one or not...the funeral was made worse because there was
no mourning allowed, and the widow had to turn up in blue and white spots
and a gay hat, which was AWFUL....and it was near my father's grave, and my
mother's eyes kept straying.

Well, things are "funny" ( a word the M.G. says I can't use...must write
"odd", which I say means "queer" and so have to put "strange", which to ME,
in German means "fremd", foreign, and not at all what I mean...) and I don't

W. IRVINE COURT,

PORCHESTER VILLAGE, W.2.

Tuesday.

Dear H.D,

I'm glad you arrived safely; wish you were back but, still, - thank you for tiger-snarls, since I feel I can answer. I'm all set for a gossip. Do you mind? You know how long mine go on for, but in this case you at least do not have to sit up.

It is these patterns, H.D. Is it or is it not a hell always to recognise the beginning of one, almost before it appears....and not, of course, know the end? Because ohne beginning, one wouldn't feel that the next thread may come from left, right, middle heaven or nadir, and there are certain directions from which one feels the next thread must NOT come and therefore feels one can hardly think of.

You know, perhaps, that on Friday a friend of my mother's died (eighty). On Saturday, a nephew (forty). I was already crossing my thumbs, but walked onto the boat yesterday and said, at six, "What kind of a voyage did you have?" She said "I was all right, but it was sad - two people died". At once my mind clicked into shape. One person died just before she left. I said to myself "Ever since she began to come home, people have died". Therefore, she is not meant to...well, to "come home" means to find what you left. I am part of that. But I am not what she left. I said, chattering hard all the way up I said to myself, this is the most lucid warning that I AM to hold on, am NEVER never to be as I nearly was. I am now living, before was half dead, the balance has to be adjusted, it's taken four....I said, she was not meant to come home. To her home is me, she must not find me ever as I have been, frayed and fretting and friendless.

Well, that is all right. But it seems a bit drastic. I can't - quite - take it as a convincing interpretation.

I start again. I've been told, you know, - crystal and palm - that she would die this year. They said, that is, that a woman with heart trouble - NO, that a woman related to me would die; also that someone with heart would die. I wish-fulfilled, I suppose, the two together (that was two years ago Roma said that). She DID have three heart attacks in Kokstad - I clairvoyanced one, and believe I told you at the time I knew she was ill. It seems to me that NOW I am free of death-rhythms, she got over those attacks, and death had to go further afield, as it does, gradually.

But that doesn't quite work, either. Once more I start, this time seeing clearly that Death Comes From Africa. That seems evident, what with my father and all, looking at it from family point of view. Africa has never done me no good. It is possible that even Bryher might agree that for sometime I was trying to over atone with Africa, get in well with it. The crux being someone we need not mention, last year. It was last year that, on that coast, Rice said something went out of him, he had a crise into which I walked, but instead of helping, moved on - to Monte and THAT). I can see it as highly probable that all my life, in compensation, I have gone South when I should have gone East. I went further East this year than I ever have, and so maybe the South emerges clearly as death-ray - I'd "Got" Monte as that, maybe it needed THIS to convince me of further South. In terms of houses, it seems clearer. But one wonders which one to take, the "Death From Africa" hint, the withdrawing of death, and the clue that I, being home, am not to be as I was.

2.

It is strange, anyway, to have a return one was not looking forward to made straightforwardly sad. But four, the minute she set her face to England, seems hard to take straightforwardly. I don't mean "hard", but that one would be a fool if one did take it just at face-value....you will appreciate this, and so pardon me for elaborating. At any rate, I feel you alone I can express my doubts to.

One knows, always, that things happen in two ways - the act-ual is either in substitution for the real, so that if a vase breaks it is so that a thought shall not break; but a vase may also be broken because other things are about to - the second way being that the act-ual reinforces the real. One doesn't know quite which to take. As there's no news from Vienna, I daren't of course write there, because if this death thing is around, and Rice happens to be ill, I can't break in. I DON'T myself think it is prophecy - I think it is the act-ual being made, to atone for the real having shifted. Things were once set in motion; they can't be stopped, they have to be shifted...so people only slightly connected...well, die. There being no life without that. So that any growth or recrudescence has to be accompanied by elsewhere reverse.

If that is so, if the pattern's so literal, - well, in your phrase, one's hair stands on end. But literalness I always suspect, especially in symbols. Whatever it is, resurrection or the reverse, and I THINK the former, it is "funny", I don't know why but I don't feel it aimed at me, or my life. I feel it a clearing. And I felt I must tell you of my awareness. Because, be one never so aware, there is - not a moment, but a between-moments, when one says "Well, joke or no joke, this isn't a good one". I might get frightened, after Vienna, feel life was going back to its real self - but I don't. I only slightly resent having to hold on harder than I think it good to have to realise one has to hold on, to what I have in my mind. And rather like an acrobat call out, without losing the grip with my teeth, "how often do they cut away the trapeze?". For what is worse than saying "This is too much" is to realise clearly what would be too much, and wonder if that thing is nearing or been conjured up only to vanish once and for all.

J. ARVINE COURT,

PORCHESTER TERRACE, W.2.

August 4th.

Thank you, H.D., for your messages of hope! I certainly need them....for, O, "I don't like it, I don't like it"!....in the *thick* of it...and you know what that means....I haven't, before.

I remember Bennie! You told me of him. It will be funny to see "an old early little Buddy"....O Lord, I find that happening in *mine*. Lily, the swimmer, your "pocket Venus", you know, - she is me. At least I put my own feelings into her, and, reading now, recognise just enough to wonder why the rest isn't familiar ...till something *awful*, that one can't help knowing as one's self, unchangeable, comes up! But I look at the stuff and say "That was you then. Good God, and how lightly, Mr Herring, life's let you off". This seems a very scurrying, *undecided* decisive and entirely undecided person.

But what alarms me is, - there it is! Lily falls for R. He is a pianist in a night-club, he is Austrian. He remains aloof and she goes away. She comes back and finds him gone (which he had (when I went back once)- in spirit). At this point, I arrive as myself - a year-later. Only, that me is much more like R., and Lily has anyhow changed R, so that he himself, in the second part is more like a quietened continuation of me in the first; and it gets very mixed, and I don't know what I thought it meant at the time. But what it seems to mean is that my feminine side roused his worse male side (I mean, masculine), and then this mellowed and I mellowed (only I have to be two persons to do it, and he doesn't!) and balance is found. That's what it seems, *now*. But I don't know if I thought it did, *then*.

There's no one in it. I am slightly surprised that despite all that always happened in the way of K's "crises" every time down there, there is no K. at all. I was linked up, I was in it, K and I were there often together - in fact, each time, but for the first summer with you, and nothing happened to me then. It was the next time, and K was in it, and yet...when I sat down to write, K just simply didn't come into it. Nor any of his life. The Reserve doesn't, nor any of those. I seem to have felt they didn't matter. I mean, when I sat down and tried to get MY coast down into words, what came out were pocket Venus, the pool, R, Healy (whom I only SAW, even, once), the gardens by the musée oceanographique, and a night-club, which is called Fond d'Artichaut.

Which is WHY it won't be interesting. It's just that, nothing more. When one does meet someone and flame happens and a voice (one's own voice) says "that is it, that is the secret, the answer"....I don't know how one writes that. And there is poor R, not changed at all, same work, same ways, same colour eyes, even at moments called Tiger, no disguise at all. I call him Richard at times, because in Wien they sounded "Rice" with the "i" as "e", the "C" hard and the 'd 'e' sounded...but I don't think I like it.

That, too. I've never done this before. Written something that's got to be kept secret from the person one would most like to show it too...."M.C" is right, far too right.

Anyhow, I think it's a slightly demented diary; which is NOT interesting.

What would be, perhaps, is what I now think may be true. Though I take no res-

2.

pensibility if it is. You say K. is "a sort of force, must be". I have said
before that I think his planets are bad for my planets. But I think I have
somewhere a very preserving one. So that when my Herschel spits at me and my
Venus just blights, some other saves me....

I think, that is to say I shouldn't be surprised IF (and that, suddenly found,
is definition of thinking)...I was "led" to put Toni forward...saving
myself.

Because, reading the coast thing, I remember; I found the Knocker-bocker (yes, I
apologise; but you remember, what fun you were there with chicken-sandwich
one night?)...I ran Toni to earth there. Well, I was a bit too early led to
that place, what I had to find it for was R, two years later. But it kind of
brought T, to focus, who'd only before been a guest to giggle at over olives
at lunch. If T. had stayed just as part of the Reserve, he might have...stayed
that. I'm sorry if I'm responsible for what the Bocker stands for, sorry if
T. might not have happened...but something else would, one isn't responsible
for K. he causes his own damage.

All I say is, I wonder if I, *having* to find the Bocker, *had* to find also T, whom I liked, ... so as to escape? For if there hadn't been T, maybe I would not have been left to meet R. Considering what happened last year. Either I would have been destroyed or R. would have been dazzled. Maybe. As it was, anyhow, *last year*, K(as did I) thought R. had died in himself- and what happened was that J.D. got dazzled and I thereby as nearly destroyed as possible. I mean, at that moment, there was nothing else more likely to. So, as far as he was concerned, it had to be done.... I wonder.

I do know, though, that that very year, in K'enwin, you, as you told me after, felt I was getting swept in and tried to warn me. And if you felt that then, as you did, I might have felt it before (as it affected ME), the first year...do you see what I mean? Might have been led to change the direction of arrows I didn't know were on their way.

Sounds very bogus, sub-mystic ... but I mean, deeply led, so deeply that one isn't conscious of being impelled.

It fits, anyhow. And to round off and complete, he has to go back to Juan, which was the place I "died" in last year. R. had lost everything, he was a mirage, and it wasn't tolerable to see. But some planet helped, some star in the East landed on Wien and I learnt why he was "dead" in Juan.

So that one's free of all that. And Wien is good... THAT has made these last weeks rather trying. The shooting, blood, bullying... all pushed that with rather a bang into the past. When it was meant to be with one. I've heard, all right - so that's all right. But that's what one says when one comes round after ether - "So it's all right". And when the ether wears off, it feels what one's in the vile phrase, been through.

That's why I'm grateful to have so much work to do. And don't think these qualms are crying-off. They're not. I plan to finish the lecture over weekend, and send the Mss. out then.... but one does have qualms, and you, by sending consolation almost before they began, showed it would be O.K. to admit even I have them. Because one daren't to Bryher - she's such a bully!

Darantier means something to me. When I was beginning, ten years ago, I met Mrs Flecker at a private performance of one of Flecker's plays, and she sent me a copy of a special Japanese vellum edition of fourteen of his poems she had had done for herself. Fifty copies. Darantier. Later, Close Up came along. Darantier. And Bryher sent me your and K's Darantier books.... the name stood for something. And now you said "Near East" at me, I remember that Flecker book and feel - direction? I certainly do feel I AM going in a direction, that things lead on. That is something. There is much

3.

else one would like, but it's so terrific that what one does get is never
what one looks for and usually better. Usually something one didn't know HOW
to look for. So that one spends the rest of one's life trying to deserve
it.

I see; suddenly, a proposal back pages, that red is the colour of death. And that destruction is a "red rag" to this bull. Which is why he both attacks and gets mixed up with it.

It must be very - well, strenuous, going back to mid-war. These days, with all saying "Twenty years ago", and me finding even a week of wondering rather much, I thought, almost for the first time I saw, what it must have been like. One knew, one said "It must have been awful to wait". One didn't know, personally, what waiting was like....you do, you've so much you have faced and that you know you did face; it must be a very solid backbone. But, H - I wish you good luck as you go over that writing.

And will you tell Bryher the Mss. will come, be sent on Monday, that she isn't to be put off by it; it begins in hectic brittle sunlight, goes into coma, and wakes up.

I'm so frightened - of that, of the lecture, of Europe - that I say "one gets used to fright" and find *that* echoes back, distorted, as "refuse to be frightened"....

Best aspects,

London,
Saturday.

Dear H.D,

I'm so glad you can come - and it is good of you to, and to change our date so readily....you notice that the ballet is called "Raymonde"? I could not think of going with anyone else! What with that, and it coming via the North straight from Monte (where it's been having a season), I felt we must both be in on it. It seems so odd, for the ballet has never been done in England before, and there is no particular reason why they should choose it for this year, the year of Bryher books....except that it is the year of Bryher books.

I myself am so excited at the idea of really gala ballet again that I daren't think of it....I believe it's rather a museum piece, the choreography is by Petipa and he considered "The Dying Swan" revolutionary! So it may be rather formal - but at least Nemchinova will be fun and it should give her opportunity to do all her fouettes and entre chats.... I'll be with you at 6.45, all being well.

Jokes continue. I have brought off something unheard of in the annals of the M.G. Never never do they use film stills, even of the most remarkable or talked of films. And I have got them to take - Mickey Mouse. Can you imagine the iconoclasm? Can you see Mickey perking out of those chaste pages?

In preparation for more "Cactus", I have been getting new names for further streets, etc, and submit these -

For a squalid hotel, around BeauSoleil - Grand Hotel de Lille.

For the Terminus (by the station) - Grand Hotel de la Lune et de Londres.

Other hotels along the coast - Pension Vanderbilt, Hotel des Ondes, Le Cosy Marina Hotel, Hotel Oceanic.

Night Clubs - Chez Troy, Chez Sing Sing, Au Petit Pitti.

Bars - The Mel Bar, Au Flamand Flamboyant, Aux Reines d'Angleterre, Le Mauvais Loup, Au Gin-Swig

Cafes - Le Sandringham, Cafe Belvedere, Cafe Mont Blanc, Le Foyer Fleuri, Le Dive, Le Bateau Ivre.

Streets, etc.
Avenue Cleopatre, Rue des Ecrivasses, Rue de l'Aube, Passage du Cerisier, Rue Lyonesse, Promenade Du Pays Des Galles, Allée Proust, Ruelle Borel, Rue des Etoiles,

And so on.

These letters I thought you might like to see, as they are non-carbon. But do not trouble yourself.

Till to-morrow,

Best wishes,

London,
Tuesday night.

Dear H.D.,

I did so enjoy last night, it was real gala for me....and I hope
you did not mind my not being able to take you back...this is what I did
instead.

It reads rather coldly perhaps. That is to say, there are observations which
are quite beside the point, to us....but I had to make people go, and I think
I got over that it should be seen, and also suggested in what spirit I hope
so, anyway. And I thought it would be hopeless not to prepare them for Peti-
pa. There are traces of editorial scissors, but that is because I wasn't
ready by midnight, which is the time by which it has to go to press...it
is rather exciting, having it wired up to Manchester and printed as you
write, but also apt to be alarming!

I did love it so. I think it is a question of thought-waves, dancing is so
like the gyrations that go on in one's mind...I think one sees in ballet
the visual rhythms to which, in one's own way, one is trying to harmonise.
I think that is why your writing is so alive and deep-reaching, and I think
it does one such good to see that glorious assurance which can concentrate
on gait in the midst of a maze of movements.
And it is so wrong that, with all that tough muscular control and well-
being, 'ballet' as a word is so fancy and finicky and affected.....

I think I should not hurry your writing. I think, so to speak, you should let
go. There is so much swimming up, I think you must sit and wait in yourself.
Really. It cannot be a thing to be coped with quite calmly, what has come
up, and I think to write is to drive yourself. D'you feel it would be a
release,? And if so, since you can't, don't you also feel that it is because
you don't want it that way? I don't know, because my brain rather reels when
I put myself in your position and think how you have gone on with no
visible whine for so long....but I can think, and do think, that with the
time, sequence vouchsafed, it will come out. For anything does, it is the
cutting short of time, the destitution of pattern that breaks, not one's
self, which is perhaps at most dent-able, but the thing. And your time thing
is complete, and not completed.

I don't do much but try and be - well, un-abrasive. But I throw pyschic dice
with blessed hand for you....and I have new glasses, which contain, within
their stems, ice-tinkling dice which roll as you drink. Will you come and
let me "mix" them? We feel here, you know, that we have been "very rude to Mrs
Aldington", but I don't ever quite know how you feel about Mrs, her bombard-
ment is with blanks, of course, but I do know it's a bombardment if one
feels it is....I hope you don't, and would come in for a quiet evening
meal, gay but not grand, and listen after to "Turandot" and "Coppelia" and
"Swan Lake" before we go to it (or, if that's sugary, Schnabel playing Mozart)
Mrs fortunately adores Nemtchinova, so one doesn't have to speak of
ballet, and I have lovely pictures of Nemtchinova.....

I lunch with the graphologist on Thursday. He doesn't do it for fees, and
says he is most amateur, but I will ask him if he will do someone else's
and then maybe you will write me a note, saying it would be nice, which I
can hand on.

London,
Tuesday.

Dear H.D,

This is what I bought at Bumpus and meant to bring to you. The combination of saints and animals made it seem rather right for you. I notice now that it has your Saint Anthony, but I did not see that at the time. And who is Costebo?

I found also the remark of Gerard Manley Hopkins which I thought helped. Bridges had, I gather, been experimenting and feeling he would not publish because England did not like experiments, especially from Laureates. At any rate, Hopkins wrote to him,-

> "I say it deliberately and before God, I would have you, and all true poets, remember that fame, the being known, though in itself one of the most dangerous things to man, is nevertheless the true and appointed air, element and setting of genius and it's works."

I approved. I think, the more one thinks of it, that "the being known" is an integral part. The process isn't complete without it. I think that possibly a book fails of its object if one doesn't let it have its appointed air, element and setting. Because till it is in that air, it is still part of one, one hasn't got free, hasn't set the milestone.

I know it is awful, but I think there is no peace unless it is faced. I think what does also add a bit, to make it seem that little bit more awful than it is, is that till a book is out it is taking from one - sapping, and dependent. But once out, it fends for itself. It becomes a life of it's own, from which one can in turn take. I think one forgets that.

In the same letter to Bridges, Hopkins says, "For a great work is like a great battle won. "That suddenly made me see the word "shield". I think we think of writing as using one's sword, but forget that it is more nearly a shield. Not a negative refuge, but a protection that enables one to go on striking."

And that, I think, Murray Constantine forgets and is why she shirks. I think even her Devil and Independent is a kind of begging the question. A mist-making, not an illuminating. Because with it all, one feels she is there, behind it. She doesn't want to come out in the open, but she only makes one unable to see her-) she does not make one forget she is there. Invisi-ble but not unsensed.

But in your writing one is not now aware of you. One has no curiosity. One does not feel it is the author "speaking". One is not aware of the author. It is different writing, you see, the first of its kind. Not prose so much as pysche. One has not the feeling that you are "contained" in any of the books, because it is more than that. One has rather the feeling that you expound a process with the express purpose of emerging from them. It is chrysallis process. You are gone, "risen". That is the word. The whole bus-iness of writing is in that Nicodemus tomb story....even down to the return of Christ, finding his own friends so exalted with the ideas he tried to make them accept when He was with them that they can't accept Him Himself when He comes back. The whole book thing is the ressurecting.

2.

It seems to me you are doing something that is just the extra peak ahead... not round the corner, but seen and wished for, but something one has to reach. It is like climbing, when one comes on a hut on a col, and there is a message that someone has been there before and has gone on, and leaves directions. You are no longer at that col, you're at the next one. And when one gets there, you'll have gone on again.

It would be very easy to stay on the col, to repeat, ... there would be time to be met, for recognition, for tourists to come, chars a banc to take them up. But it isn't the same thing. The ultimate fame comes from the fact you have been there and will be somewhere else, are always. But never just there to say "Here I am".

"She is not here, but there
She might have been"...

That seems to me the true "being known", the REAL air, element and setting that is owed to one's work.

But forgive a little hackworker his impertinence.

And remember that he didn't quite dare to try to say anything after you told him of your personal story.... I wanted to write a kind of Solemn Mass. But I found the best worthiness I could show was silent genuflection. I do, though, dare to say I am grateful to be allowed to know of a courage and a going-on while holding fast that is, to know of, an exaltation. I bow, simply, to a stature that it is healthy to know of.

I go on Friday. This is to say temporary "good-bye". That is why I have written the above. And then run off.... I would, perhaps, have rung up, but have been held up by someone staying here till to-day. I shan't know how long I'll be away till I get to Paris. But I'll write to you and ring up on my return. I think, about Monday week. Officially, I stay in Paris.

Best wishes, and many thanks.

Don't let anyone else get in at you. Remember, you're not there, but on ahead, and that's where you belong.

door.

And the man is interesting, like most of the "commissionaire" type.

I am, however, angry, because one always thinks of Whitsun as a "holiday and therefore long, and it seems to have ended without anything done more definite than replying to a lot of letters that log cally needed no answer.

I hope you travel well; give my love on arrival; and assure that the part-
editor is doing his job. I was so glad for that last quiet and happy
evening, much as you insulted me by your bill-query!

But you're right, it is fun and one of the reasons, which you CAN'T
know, is the glory of having H.D. in Ms and feeling, whenever one sees
a crowd, as I did yesterday on the last Jubilee drive (She was white and
gold and he all drugged and unfocussed) that "Though you don't know it,
soon you're going to read SOMETHING".

Salutwrite as soon as I can after your arrival In Suisse This is salut.
Thank you so much for so much since you last arrived here, and surely
what has happened meanwhile is in many ways a matter for happiness?
When one thinks,...

Humbly, one way and another,

LL/HA

LIFE AND LETTERS

27.4.35.

Dear Madame,

I am requested by my directors to bring to your notice the
above periodical. As you may know, it has recently changed hands and
will in future be run in accordance with a policy which can best, though
roughly, be described, as a living interpretation of the relation between
the two words in the title. It is hoped thereby to fill a gap among
English publications and to provide a platform for those writers whose
development is more a matter of the future than of formula.

As it is considered important that the first number of the new "Life
and Letters" should contain the best that it is possible to print, I
am taking the liberty of asking if you would honour us with some work
of your own. We should consider this not a contribution, but a valued
responsibility and would be happy to know that, by being fortunate
enough to be favoured, the new regime of "Life and Letters", which we
feel sure will always have promise, will start with so definite an
achievement.

Payment is on acceptance, the first issue will be during the summer,
and the material which we hope you will send us should be sent to
myself, who am at present acting editor.

Yours sincerely,
( for Mme Bryher),

1, IRVINE COURT,
PORCHESTER TERRACE,
HYDE PARK. W. 2.

£.6.35.

Dear H D,

A note to say that Friday would be fine, if that will be for you, too. I would come about quarter to seven, I suppose, but will, if I may, be phoning you before.

Shall we just talk (there seems plenty to talk about or would you, before you leave, like to see Markova dancing, at the Shaftesbury, I think?

I, too, am happy. Some good stuff, for one thing. But I always am, in a half complaining way, reading Mss... NOT books, but Mss. with envelopes and little letters. However bad, however appalingly bad so that sometimes you shudder and wonder how anything good IS written, still there is something, some buzz, about all these people, some of them little people, sitting writing, writing, not very hopeful and never dis-

couraged. Silly, probably, this "girls together" idea,
but it kind of _feeds_ one.

Now, _another_ story from M.C. has come in. Her agent
sent it, so she doesn't know, and don't let her,
please, that we have it. It is very long, and political,
(calling Hitler an impotent homosexual) and Br. wants
to avoid that. Actually, I don't think it _takes_ her
very much further. "The Last Power", the Merlin one, I
thought did. This you put with other work and it adds
to that work, but it is the same.

I am sending it to you, though, for I know you like to
read her work, and rather collect it. This is a Judge-
ment Day .... you will see, what it is like. I will
send it with the Dobson one and the L. and L's, and
you can return it when I come to you.

So many stories are about the Devil, or God going all
gossipy, or visions and beings and the next or the
last world or parallel worlds that I am beginning to
believe there are a million M.Cs. Perhaps there is no

M.C., but this thing, this ser quality or spirit,
which possesses people and makes them write, auto-
matically. It wasn't happening five years ago.

The enclosed tickets are for a film which is not
good, a circus affair, with a man killed in a lion's
cage. They sent me two lots, and as there has already
been a morning show, I thought....if Pup is with
you....and you kind of vaguely are thinking of
going out....she might like the tickets....but I
don't recommend it, though there'd be a Mickey M.
and a news reel. Anyhow, don't bother about them.

Gruess,

No viennese news for a month, so people thinking.

IRVINE COLLEGE

PORCHESTER TERRACE, N.2

13.5.35.

Dear H.D.

This is splendid. I return it to you, but admit I have taken a copy. The nails that woman quietly hits on the head! Rather like Queen Elizabeth. There's a lovely serenity about it, rather like the best kind of English light on a certain English landscape. I shall have much to say to you about it (and her). But I write now, to say simply it seems to me definitely "material", if she will let it be. A little of it possibly be worked a bit...that is why I took a copy, in case anything got lost if she did work it for us.

I would like to do a Jubilee symposium. I don't know what Bryher will say to it, but it is a historical thing and one would like to collect and record opinions...yours, if you would; this of M.C; Gerald might give us something from St. Paul's, nothing to involve him necessarily, but just the record of someone in official capacity; Bryher was taking notes all the time. K, if he is friendly to the project, might have the reaction of arriving in on the aftermath. I could do some of the night and crowd scenes and might get in a man who commentated ...I don't know if you heard the particular reel, I think it was Movietone. It was an excellent commentary, not clap-trap but quietly moving.

I think, after the shouting has died down, it would be good to print a collection of opinions, to say for the future "Yes, it was real, and this was it." And not too out of our province, seeing that the new "Life and Letters" starts as making something for the next twenty-five years. It is re-born in the Jubilee and leads on from it...the revival of pride and the muddled but not at all material English thing which is, au fond, poet-ical.

That perhaps is the oddest result of all this. Underneath the paper garlands and streamers one has found, I think, that the manifestation has been a manifestation of all the things that, since the war, one has been trying to preserve and find outlet for. We most of us found it in other countries immediately after, Russian films, Berlin as a city, anywhere where there seemed "kick". But each place turned round and denied itself, and it seems, very oddly to me, that it is here it has been, sleeping but growing, and has come out now...the *purely/spiritual* belief in the spiritual, the good-humour, the gaiety which isn't Gallic nerve-gaiety. It has been so odd to me to find myself and what I hold in my head for once in tune with the place I live in.

I am so very glad now I gave myself up to it. It may all be a fortuitous combination of circumstance - I hate to think England IS right, it seems so disloyal to think that - but the things that have come out this week have been the very things that have been stamped on in other places. It seems to me possible we may be about to enter another Elizabethan age. I mean this purely factually, distinct from the Aquarian. Merely as a matter of history. The atmosphere seems to me the same. I never thought I should understand why Shakespeare wrote that John of Gaunt speech, but that emotion has been real this week. I mean, I think at last there's a harmony and the poets, who have been deracine, may once again soon be expressing the spirit of the age, instead of standing against it. By that of course, that the people have caught up with the poets. There has been, in the

streets the same spirit. One hasn't, as usually, felt alien.

I remember now that when the King was ill, much the same thing happened. People were drawn to the Palace, to read the bulletins. There was discontent then, and trouble and depression in the air. But the King was outside that, and he was ill and in pain, and people were sorry...not for the King, but for the man in the Big House. But I didn't realise then that the people have made him a representative of themselves. He isn't just king, but a man, and the thing they revere is the way that man fills his office. I don't know anywhere else where they treat kings as one of themselves quite so much. Except in the New Testament, ... but then of course, we are at heart a Catholic country, the King our Pope. We both got that Latin thing about London last week, the very night-air had Southern quality and the festa spirit, which one never knew the English had. We never were really Protestant and I don't think we would have been if Henry hadn't wanted a new wife. We just illogically, as M.C. says, switch over and make the King Defender of the Faith, and I think that has been what has happened, that the King has not only defended but that we have a faith and are celebrating it.

Hasn't it been odd to see us not ashamed of ourselves, not ashamed of England, or of anything? No crowing, none of that. French national pride, not at all directed against anything else, but quite determinedly saying "We have a right to do this. It is our island, we have defended the faith and Unitarian it's one that works. Though perhaps only for us".

I have liked, too, seeing it tribally, witch-doctor and medicine man, totem poles, ritual. I have liked having precedent and feeling it's sort of Congo ceremony.

Thank you for your good wishes. I'm afraid I, too, had the 13th rather sprung on me this year. There hasn't been time to consider it, it seems irrelevant and also it was celebrated in all this thing, the big thing one was celebrating.

But now it's arrived, I too would love all to meet and dine somewhere. That would be fun, and it seems long since we have (HOW long it seems since that ballet time) Bryher rang up last night from Cornwall, and said she'd be back Wednesday. I think we have provisional date Friday. But any time would be grand. Nice idea.

It'd be nice to see K too. I hope he won't dislike L. and L. or come in wrong with Jubilee, though somehow one is secure about that. He spoke to me on the phone last night, which was nice of him. (But Lord, with Madam today, I saw Borzoi in Harrods. Nothing happened, but I thought you might like to know of that chance of running into him).

Do you know that Marina's mother was on the balcony Jubilee day, and no paper reported it? She arrived officially on Saturday and Marina officially met her then. But she was here the Monday before!

Remind me to tell you of a strange conversation about English and British. In a pub, which suddenly reminded me again that this is four countries, a thing we forget.

Thank you for all,

Sorry "I've no friends" rang oddly. Forget the context, but wasn't that
all right in that? I think I mean"now that one feels one's self, not
clinging to others as proof of existence". Vienna did that, real set me up
on my feet, and "Cactus" complemented. I mean, positive and not, as has been,
a collection of negatives. Also, when one is wanting a friend, one is
imagining a lot of qualities? It's always a mistake to write at night, as
I did then (and Lord love us, am now) but I think I had the feeling, sudden-
enly, that I was growing out of wanting a lot of things I couldn't get
and can't now imagine what I'd do with, no longer risking wanting them.
But then, here I am again doing something I thought I didn't any more-
which is, give myself away! But I doubt it, too, I'll have to go
into a long life.

EDITED BY ROBERT HERRING

PETRIE TOWNSHEND

LIFE AND
LETTERS
TO-DAY

TELEPHONE
TEMPLE BAR 7697

Friday

26 MAIDEN LANE,
LONDON, W.C.2.

Dear H.D,

Forgive not writing before. Printers have startled us by advancing date of sending copy, the times are unsettling, that procession went right by yesterday, we were in the thick of it (and how marvellous S.is!) and Theo is behaving very badly, draped in black and going to cocktail parties, and standing in Lyons windows to see the coffin - till they pull the blinds down, so she doesn't see and gets a sore throat in the street, which is one more reason not to come in. She has hardly been in at all this week, and there is so much to do. It'll be a slip-shod number, I'm afraid.

But I'd love to lunch. I don't know why you need pain, but apart from that, how would Wednesday be again? Or could make Monday. It would be fun. I'm so glad I didn't jar you, it is terribly easy these times. It was grand to find you feeling so like that and made me once again smile at the temporariness of most people's imaginations, the way they don't see. You've always been stereoscopic.

EDITED BY ROBERT HERRING

PETRIE TOWNSHEND

LIFE AND
LETTERS
TO-DAY

IFE AND
LETTERS
TO-DAY

TELEPHONE
TEMPLE BAR 7697

Tuesday

Dear H.D,

How very very nice to have your letter! It's so lovely to have
a comment, and the odd thing is that now there aren't so many of the
papers that there were (The Dial and so forth) and one feels in time
others may help make this a sort of latter-day equivalent, I see your
letter almost for the first time not as someone I know, but as someone
I read, and say involuntarily, "Good heavens, H.D., in caps, likes the
paper!" And am quite encouraged, before I also register that I know
that H.D., or rather the one who is also able to speak so that it does
encourage.

But, after that, writing to the one who, apart from any achievement in
the initials, is someone who's always been so companionable - it IS
a nice number, isn't it? I mean, rather our kind of a number, with odd
bits of gaiety and seriousness and knowledge and gaffes? A sort of
unorthodox kick, which makes one like the seriousness more, like S.
putting in bawdy jokes!....he said to me, when I clicked and pres-
ented copy, "It is high time I subscribed". And I felt that then we'd
get on to money again, so I said quickly, "No, it is good of you to let
me clutter you up with it".

And of course, as I write this, I see that it IS really his kind of
communal child with us, and that that is why it is natural to take it
to him. It IS his paper, he is attache - and, Lord, he certainly has to
go through the birth throes of each number. Still, he is responsible,
there wouldn't be it without him.

I'm having a bad time there at the moment. He's being a bit Franz Josef.
At least, rather "property basket" over interpretation. Insists that I
want to castrate him and sleep with the smug beaver. So difficult to
explain that, as deep as one can tell, that would be the least of one's
desires! However, one gets through these bad times. But I must say, I
think Funny-Face behaves much more sensibly and that it is wrong of
people to hide and leap behind doors or go dumb on landings in their
own houses.

I am beginning to think of him as compensating his squireel moments by
being sort of sea-leopard or wilarus, that sort of blubber quality.

My mother is going on fine, in her trooper-like way. I took a radio over
to her to listen to the King yesterday, and after the Welsh music and
the anthem, and then him, she said "It's like Mistinguett the other way
round". And then the matron told us that when George and Mary went

there to visit Helena of Rumania (that is the wife, not the Lupesucu), George V. was being friendly to the nurses and Mr. Queen stomped her umbrella and said "George, don't stand in a draught". But George got his own back by saying "Very sensible to have visiting hours, one wants to be alone when one's ill".

There is a slight crise at moment as Madame wishes to leave home in order to be back at flat for son's arrival. Quite understandable bit of vanity, "no, I haven't been ill, I'm really quite well" sort of reaction - which he wouldn't get. As he has travelled 3rd, spectacularly but unnecessarily, which she doesn't know, I rather wish she would be in home when he arrives, or he'll wonder why the hell he's come. Also, the return of Mrs. one day and my brother the next is a bit of a hoot and fuss. The doctors are all being very helpful, but if she doesn't realise it suits me better to have her home after me brother, I shall see her through her return and then go away - not from the Zoo, but otherwise. It's no crise really, but the usual conflict between a not-quite-well who wishes to be well and a well-who's liable not to be as well as he wishes, I mean just bored and surface-tired.

So till I know, may I postpone saying a lunchdate? They do brace me up, too, most extraordinarily. But of course, for that reason, one doesn't ever want to have one that isn't a pleasure, that one comes to conscientiously and not casually.

It was hard not to tell you. But it's better to get through such things alone, and wait till one's through. It WAS difficult at the Film Society, I knew what the film was going to be like and wondered if I could cope, I'd been told two days before, and I had to screw up so much as a journalist in order to go through with it. I came over, actually, to sit with you. Then I found I sat on the back of a seat, facing rows, and thought I was making myself the "case" before the students, so it seemed better to sit alone... - it was a good film, here and there, - but after, you had gone.

If mother doesn't come back on Thursday, she will come back on Tuesday. I shall know to-morrow. But of course, when my brother is back, I shall be skipping round like a lark.

That Lotte thing wasn't nearly as good as it would have been when she did "Bristol". It's really writing and forestalling criticism about her own work, and that is very charming and very graceful and gay, but it is always difficult to stop "minor" being spelt as "minus", especially in art - and going pompous is the surest way to make that mistake. I find it an illuminating let-down.

But I like Lye, and many other things... only, wait till June!

Did you think my Ed. references gauged what we'd be thinking now?

And tell me, bang, whatever was wrong and maddening.

Best Grueses,

It says in my dictionary that a woodchuck is a kind of marmot, and that a marmot is a kind of a rodent that has a banking cap!

Irvine Court
Sunday

Dear H.D,

Many thanks for your letter. I got your message, it was so odd, that very day, Keigwin rang up and wanted me to lunch (the day you couldn't) so I did. You can imagine, just after I'd written to you of him, and just now with my brother home (or rather away, playing goff) how helpful and startling it was of him to turn up.

Opening words, when met at his club (not one of those kind, but Lansdowne House, with cocktail and snack bars, ballroom, fencing room and sofas in silver leather, sort of Coast-y in London) were "I feel, in honour of Cactus, you must lunch in the bar at the edge of the pool". So I said "And where is the rackets court" and Keigwin didn't know. He said "I've got all there is to be got out of rackets ages ago", and I suppose if you are good enough, if you've been Cambridge and England at it, you can not-bother to find out where the court is at any place you happen to be.... anyway, such a relief, so gay and JUST the right cancelling out and sort of psychic "Pooh-to-you" to the brother-thing.

Then, atop of this, Ricka the Tiger writes that he is coming to London. I say "O yes, good, very nice for you". Then, a bit late, realise in kind of long-shot, that it involves me, and once it would have been a great deal nicer for me than I feel it can be now. I mean, around two years, or three?, ago, it would have "saved one's life". I don't know.... I can see the reality situation is confusing, it being the time my brother will be leaving, and there will be duty-dates in that direction, and then after one's mother will be "well, that's the end of that" (which this visit has rather done). But the other side, I can't see at all, I can't say "It is very good for analysis that you are here, but you see, I'm three stages further on about you than you are".

It'll be all right; as you say we do call forth the thing we need - but when the thing one needED manifests (I think, because one has got on) one may perhaps permit one's self a little slightly wistful resentment.

I did all that once, for Jimmy; taking round, "this is a good shirtmaker, this is a gay little hole, this you may not like but you'll be glad to have gone there, that is Gertrude Lawrence, we will lunch to-morrow, I'm sorry I can't dine, I will dine the next day, O, you ARE dining - WHY and who with?". One doesn't do that twice (one won't with Bobby, but it'll remind of J.D), one re-arranges and most of the desire to dominate now going into work, I am for the first time for years finding someone I've known ages starts saying, when we lunch, "When'll I see you next?" and if one can't fit in, ringing to keep in touch, so that one hasn't that fear one's not what the Polar Bear calls "interesting" any more?

But these are just squeaks faced with what will, when met, be very good. Simply, one lives through a crise at a time (I mean, each phase has its predominant crise) and it seems as if others won't "play" when two or three phases suddenly overlap and say to one "What do you make of that?".

Meanwhile, your pages, with note appended. And my review of Anthologies. Can you possibly think it gives a fair idea to others? I find, the more I look at the book, the more grateful one is - it does give a decent idea, I think, and you feel, or I do, that Parsons is sort of one of one's selves, not an interloper who oughtn't to be allowed in on it. But one cannot say that, quite - I hope what I have said, seems fairly oke. Do suggest.

I'm so sorry about the fever. I'd have liked to have helped - somehow - but one feels one helps most by not intruding inviably; always the times

EDITED BY ROBERT HERRING

PETRIE TOWNSHEND

LL

IFE AND
LETTERS
TO-DAY

TELEPHONE
TEMPLE BAR 7697

Good Saturday

Dear H.D,

The post baffles all intentions. I sent those flowers on way to office this morning, meaning to phone after lunch when I got home...but at tea your letter came. In barely a minute...I meant to say, I didn't quite see why I'd bought lilies and roses together, but separately, they kind of "called" and I hoped to-gether they would be all right, but I hadn't been able to stop, there seemed a queer kind of subtle thing about the obviousness, or round it or behind it, that pleased me.

I was so delighted, when I read your proof, to find your met-
iculousness about hyphens. I felt, too, vastly encourgaed. There
is, isn't there, a terribly different feeling about "ball-room"
and "ballroom"? I feel people are rather bluntened if they
write them as one word. Am I wrong, perhaps, or isn't there a
very definite difference. A sort of respect for layers in the
hyphen, an allowing both their quality, and by that, causing
there to happen an overtone, like that shimmer where sky
meets sea on The Coast. Well, "sea-coast", like that, is something
different, sea and coast and one for all and all in one, which
"seacoast" isn't. "Seacoast" I see as sort of the edge where
the rail-line runs at Monte, one only thinks of "seacoast" as
"very clever to put the line so near the water without it
falling in". But "sea-coast" gives me up the hill, Beaulieu, and
the steps and beach trousers flapping, and also the sea, the
rafts, the rocks and "The Duke of Westminster's yacht, it always
is". And so with all those half-and-half words. (They are
that, gemini words, NOT Centaur)

Also, purely as matter of words, it worries me if "head wind"
is like that, because "head" I see as a noun, not a qualificat-
ion (in this case). It is a wind, head on. There are two things
there, I feel awfully uneasy when I see them forced into one
disharmony. It's like lamppost written with one "p", not
paying enough respect to one of the thoughts.

Pardon me for all this! But I read it after you'd mentioned

ears, and heads(re the polar bear) and was so happy to find I had not
evidently been wrong in my fussiness,since you corrected the same.
"Ear-ring" is a very different thing from you,and a very nice thing,
it reads as sort of using another set of nerves or muscles;as when
one finds floating around in sea much more natural than walking,you
know how one gets summertime sometimes.It seemed a new element,not
that you had exactly discovered,but had discovered you were in and
could both get into and out of.

I'll send you page-proofs,too,if I may;that is really,as regard
look,as much a step as from type to gally,and sort of exciting,calm-
ing.

I think,since you wrote me a corner-turning letter,I've only seen
you when I've come in with Bryher,which isn't quite fair.But it
was most uncanny and comforting to have your phrases,"head-hunters"
and "sloppy suppressed homos".

May I, therefore,talk?But first,polar bear being away;as to me,thank
God,I am finding it so lucky the brother is back NOW and not at
Christmas,the first break.Now I think I'm far enough,or clear
enough,to see and learn without much hurt.I think if it had all
happened the first time S."left" us,at Christmas,I should have been
flapping round with that high-pitched buzz,like a disturbed bat
strangled itself out of self-pity in ones psychic hair.Do you know
that extraordinary high buzz one's nerves give,not when something
frightful is said or done,but suddenly,at the culmination,or even
only during the accumulation,of many things which are simply NOT
as frightful as you know the people would like them to be?

It's disturbing,one knows one is coping with the reality and that
buzz means one has to cope with it,with one's self...I haven't
had it,but I recognise the situtation,the cause,sort of the setting,
and _remember_....I'm remembering so much,as if seeing a revival of
a play in which one once acted.

It is amusing,because before I haven't been able to"remember" when
The Voice behind the Throne said "Perhaps you were bull-ied?",I
have said "O,no,no;no,I mean if I were,I did too.No,I never noticed
anything".And now,when my brother looks at me hatingly,I think
"What a fool you are not to _recognise_ me,not to see that I _am_
and what I am".But I remember.....it is so odd,I remember,sort of
by proxy,terrors and panics when I thought "Even if this (that is,
_his_) is the only world,I can't make it.There must be another".And
then,when one had kind of found things books and people"in the
17,romantic way,how I clutched.

In a way,it was all right at termtime,because though one fought,one
had friends and it was anyway a bigger world,an outside thing one
was fighting.But at other times,one was ripped away from them and
their setting,and there was only one's room,and one had to cling
to one's execrable poems and occasional letters from Keigwin.
That,too,is so odd,that Keigwin was a naval officer and a super-
games-man(he wasn't really,he was more athlete in the right term)

EDITED BY ROBERT HERRING

PETRIE TOWNSHEND

LIFE AND
LETTERS

TO-DAY

TELEPHONE
TEMPLE BAR 7697

2.

and yet had everything one was struggling too - tolerance, curiosity, knowledge, nonsense, gaiety and a kind of vision. I think if Keigwin hadn't, through his many games (he played them all as one reads books) been so like the Brother, I would have gone under. Because he did them all supremely, and wasn't "hearty", and also wrote verse and translated, he showed me one could be that very strange thing, a Man and not at all what Family expected.

My brother knew that; he knows I still have Keigwin and that Keigwin approves of me. Which is background for me, but makes my brother more sadistic....

It is So funny. I find now I have the same ease that was always so astonishing with Keigwin (one never knew how he quite put up with him; and of course if he did, others would).

It is so strange, seeing so clearly that my brother really feels long ago he lost control of me, a control which, emotionally, he won't admit.

One is so unused to dealing with people who don't know or admit themselves.

I knew before my brother had different interests, a different make-up which needed different outlet. But I've been, I think, too busy finding my own and maybe justifying it, to realise that there ARE people who would resent that very fact. I'm used to people being "polite", adult, admitting fundamentals and so having jokes. Mrs. in her own barnstorming way, can joke - bluntly, but with a certain amount of spirit and sort of detachment from reality. We have no jokes here now. She says "It is so funny, dear, but don't tell Ernest, my convalescences have always been carnivals. But he doesn't seem to give himself time to see the fun in things".

I'm interested, really. I listen to myself being called affected abnormal, I wonder where is the difference between having my hair what is called "long" and his clippered, "russianly", so that it isn't, and I find lovely patterns working out, that this barking-manner (in which "good-morning" becomes "Hullo, sir, what are your plans, you slacker") is penis-pride and fear,

I watch "simplicity" and "honesty" failing to work, even on Mrs,
I see the UNk.dithering in frantic uncertainty and frustration,
and, thankful it's unable to hurt any more, remember the more
clearly how it did - the fakes one was asked to believe in, or
would have accepted.

God, what is worse than this suppressed-homo stuff! They loved it,
they loved being together, in a nice substitution-symbol trench,
"roughing" it, working themselves up so much they had to -

a/ kill other men and b/ destroy the women they wouldn't
otherwise have dared to approach.

They were all jolly good chaps together, and they couldn't bear it.
My brother's own attitude to women is amazing, a sort of despising
defference). Why couldn't they get what they want? Even if they did
not consciously know, one kind of has a way which seems blind at
the time, but later comes out clear as struggling through to get
what one only knows one was insisting on when one has it.....

I feel so very glad we know, I and my generation. We can't have that
put across us. And even the most chi-chi dyed-hair fairies seem
at least "honest", ironically enough, compared to this emasculinity.
The net result is, I feel rather proud. "I am what I am - and even
those of my friends who're not, admit they see no reason not to be".

How boring this is, but I've never quite got it that clear before.
Never, oddly enough, felt so representative of myself or compact. One
is so "well" though, and also one thinks hard and so doesn't have to
be ponderous over trivia, one needs jokes, quick-wit, it's a little
hard not to be able to have them! But only till the 8th.

Till then, one has an unlooked-for job - preventing one's mother from
being disappointed. Is it a terrific fixation to think that when the
doctor pays his final visit, a son will be in to get details? My
brother chose that day to go to Birmingham; the doctor had rush
cases and couldn't come, but came next day, That day, my brother went
out to golf. The effect on Mrs. was none too good, and I, apart from
having myself to be wasting two mornings, wondered at his fear....

You see, I am sitting in my room again, "clutching" at the real world,
writing to you. But without being involved. But IF, twenty, fifteen,
twenty five years ago, one hadn't wanted to have that world, -phew,
where now would one be?

"Arbo's in "The Painted Veil" at the Court in Sloane Square this
coming week, if you and the Pup haven't seen it more than three
times.

I'm reading a terrific Icelandic novel And I think Dorothy R. has gone
mad for, with Bryher's permission, I sent her a proof of Bryher's
and Pup's translation of Ramuz, and she has returned it to Bryher
with corrections!! BUT NOT! as I asked, brought her own article in
line. And I think POETRY has been slightly unsympathetic and stuffy
about the paper. Have you seen April? I'm slapped and stood in the
corner. WITH a nice toffee for a good boy, which makes it worse!q
A Happy Easter!

["crude. But if I were allowed to feel your lovely lines sort of\npartook of the air, it would be a great and oddly starry satisfaction", "You must forgive me for not manifesting lately, I think I consist of\nthree shadows and no self this last week. No doubt it will come\nright in time. But Rules now, on top of all, tell me that they will\nbe glad if I don't take Paul there any more, and that hurts. Also\nmy mother is so furious she wants to go round and say what the\nhell do they mean by telling her she can't lunch there with someone\nshe lunches with at home and at the Ivy, and somehow one does not\nwant even a fool to help on such occasions. Such a bore because my\nwhole bunch now has to move and one can't afford the I by as one\njust could at a pinch. Rules.", "I'm sending you as a joke a story I'm putting in the next number.\nIf you don't think it a joke, tell me, because we are plenty full.\nBy the way, I took another of the Ruk.pomes you sent.", "Heavenly U.S

Prag 2.
52,Upper Cheyne Row,
S.W.3.
Tuesday.

Dear H.D,

Thanks so much for your letter. Yes, Windsor! ... my golly, there is something there. Only one can never tell anyone, because so much else is so AWFUL. And then Runnymede, isn't it the oddest thin g, where else would it be, that one just turns a corner in suburban Surrey (Ducks') and comes on to *unfenced* Runnymede, making "lush" as a word suddenly true, with nearly always a swan on the river and Sidney, unless it is Wyatt, telling Thames to flow gently.

"I'm happy the flowers were all right. Br. said to send lilies. So I did. But as it was so hot then, the second lot I made going basket, as that seemed kinder to the flowers and to you. Sorry if you were mystified but it wasn't for me to intrude on.

I have just met Charlie Ford. A true face. In himself, bit over-serious, one wants to say "Well, A RE you Barrette or Yats?". Because as well as being over-serious, he is also over-social. But a nice quality.

Good thing you didn't hear me on the radio, I think. I wasn't allowed to imitate Katie Hepburn and "the woman I love" is a phrase I could not use. But I did get by with "Green Astures" and am doing another on Aug. 22nd. All very useful, these days, with a house!

I'd have liked you to have come round and seen it before you went off. But as I hope you know, I have a Welsh friend of some duration staying here and however 'long' you know a person, to share a house with them is quite different. So until feet are found, bearings got and myself a bit more used to 'leaving home', I have just been digging in.

Also, I must admit, that - old as it may be, as K. would say - I have a face to save, and really want to get settled before I make a song and dance about it. Further, one owes to one's friends not to fling them into meetings before one has done that.

It's not a case of being 'up to old tricks' so much as getting back to the original, if you get me. I mean, Schmide approved to the extent of a present to the house (from Asprey's!) of something which means more to him than to me.

You knew all this, I guess. Anyway, I have tried to be very circumspect and let it filter through. You must forgive me, but the name is Johan - why Welsh for that name has to be Austrian, I don't know. But you know my Austrian bias. The next name is Edward. Yes, I'm sorry, a sort of Egyptian-looking Basque bi-lingual Welshman said sorrowfully, 'They shouldn't have taken him away from us' and it turned out, chez 199, that having met in Jubilee Year and having then had the Funeral, one could not - well, in Fred Astaire's words, "They shan't take this way from me". Sorry, so sorry, H.D! But what a time I have been having up there! Things are enough as they are, without being symbolical too.

Don't please, feel diffident about the house. As you have seen, it is the perfect house to run on the lines it is run on - separate flats with a mutual or common bar-room (the back ground floor). Friends of neither are involved when either has any in. I find it a joke, as 'life' is at last beginning to be - by 'joke', last remnant of defence I mean, things as they should be.

I like the river, it's fun to have a place of one 's own, it does great good to know someone willing to put up here while it suits, and that's all there is to it. It didn't seem worth telling before, especially as I didn't know till the last minute and it may change any time. But you will appreciate that, mit guest, one wanted to sort out feelings as well as funriture, first, before sherry-parties.

A good trip to you, when you go. And for joke, perfect joke, Tiger (of 'Cactus Coast') is marrying Edna and coming to live in London. It seems she can get him a job!

52 UPPER CHEYNE ROW CHELSEA S.W.3

Sunday.

24/1/37

Dear H.D,

You are very nice, - and it was fun to find you looking
and being so gay.

I was glad you brought Pup. It had seemed to me a bit of a problem. You see, for facade purposes, chez M rs W. and Audley, etc, there is a 'manservant' here... I didn't know how much Pup 'knew', and didn't want to plunge her into anything trying to her. It was perfect, the way you brought her - or would have been, if Johnnie hadn't gone into hiding!

How am I to apologise about that?

Let me say right away, that with anyone else but you, I should
have dragged him out, or gone into his room with them, on pre-
text of showing the house. That would have done the trick, that
would have put him 'on view' - and that would have been fatal.
It matters he shouldn't feel 'on view'.

With you, I felt I didn't have to do that, and that meant that I
was saving him indignity and the he-here-with-me thing, saving
that damage.

I hope you don't mind, but it helped, letting him go his own way,
however rude it seemed.

Now, facts. It was extremely unfortunate that, the night before we
had had a row. What happened was this. He went out, and I was work-
ing. Some friends of his came, and I nobly entertained them - I
suppose, at the back of my mind, registering that that was delaying
me.

After they left, all cigarettes had been used, so I went to get
some, and took the dog. When we came back, Johnny was in. He said it
wasn't my business to take his dog out. I replied it wasn't mine
to clear up after it, and that I had taken him out so that he
shouldn't dirty. I/added that/ Johnny took that to mean I didn't
care for the dog - 'he's just a nuisance to you, as I am'. I said
I took him out because I was fond of him, and also because I had
spent some time entertaining his friends and didn't want to spend
more time cleaning up after the dog.

So that got on to that his friends were unwelcome. From that, that
he was. And on and on, and back and forth, adding bits to the origi-
al dog-story. - thus, Johnny said I took Gwyn out to show he
didn't look after the dog any better than he looked after me.
Which 'identification' is so ps-a, and lands one in such depths
because one can't use the convenient short-cut ps-a terms.
So today Johnny was being a sulky puppy and had retired to his
kennel.

Also, it is true he is terribly shy. I have seen him get into paralysed panics and then suddenly 'bolt' when faced with meeting a new person.

It is to be remembered that he is 22, not English, and since the last eight years has never lived consecutively in a house - barracks and ships only. The whole thing is terribly new to him. He does marvels in readjustment, all things considered - of course, sometimes it never occurs to me what there IS to consider. But there it is - all the time we met since the beginning of 1935, he had back of him his Army friends, his regiment, his duties, the fact he was in the Prince's own company, waa chosen always for every guard of honour (85 in four years), - all that just as I had my office, my papers, my journalist acquaintances.

Now, he is out of the Army. He has 'lost' all that.

And I got him out.

So there have to be times when it is taken out on me.

However, this is getting into ps-a, and there are still some more facts - if they don't bore you? Only, I never said much about him before.

Really, all I think that need be said is that he is a person that it isn't an insult to ask Bryher to meet.

I mean that seriously.

I didn't know it till they had met. But I have never admired two quite different people more than that day when I saw Bryher able to make someone I liked, feel at home. Bryher freezes so easily that I knew then I hadn't insulted her - and that IS something.

Still, it's very odd. Johnny has such a strange code. It is sort of folk-Elizabethan (he uses the word 'nice' meaning 'dainty'). Quite literally he is a wild Welshman - primitive. But primitive with the sense of old culture behind. When people come in the evening, he talks quite all right for about an hour. Then, abruptly, says he has an engagement. Goes out, returns in an hour or two. I used to get cross and feel hurt. Gradually, I learnt a/he was tactfully leaving me alone with my friends, b/ he was sniffing, puppylike, to see if he liked the bone offered and c/ that he went out in order to come back - he then came back more released, and on his own ground.

Also, as S. says, 'identified' himself with the guest, w/ whom he had been jealous, by returning as a guest.

Well, well, well! I am sorry you didn't see him to-day. In hope all the same you will come again - and don't feel insulted. I'm sorry, but it does seem to me necessary he should feel his room is his own. It's all very well, my saying the house is his as much as it is mine - he knows who pays for it, and the least I can do is not to let him feel that because I do pay, I have the right to inter-fer

2.

fere with his'individuality! Sounds pompous and probably is. But it's so startling for him - as startling as for the pup, suddenly finding itself the only dog in the establishment, instead of among many in kennels.

The pup, indeed, was meant to shift that - if you see what I mean, in S's way, he would feel less of a puppy, less 'gartitude-guilt', because his own pup-ness would shift onto the dog. O dear - those phrases - 'aggression', 'identification'. I can't tell you how much there's been, S. is excellent (mostly) - not only psychically, but pur actuality, as soldier. He explains things I would never have been able to ftahom - he is always saying how strange it is to be out of an army and letting me see J.'s reactions in a way I could, no one could, simply because S. knows what army does to one.

Well, I hope you don't mind. It's a nuisance it happened, because I don't have many week-ends in London, 'at home' - that of course is a reason again. When I AM home, J. becomes aware of the other week-end I am not here - feels guilt that I have stayed on his account, and is also jealous of Mrs. for the other times. Lord, but it is useful to know now what is going on - don't you find that, one can discount so many actions that would formerly have hurt awfully?

Apart from which, it is very nice here, isn't it? All the frantic things - running out of soap, buying food on the way home, forgetting the laundry - all are part of the joke. I'm sorry the crumpets were cold, and so on. But I'm new to the game, I think it's a sort of psychic coming to Europe from America, if you get me.

I do hope you will come round again - soon - and not mind about Wales. It never is 'we' here, was always meant to be he in the house and I in the house and each their own way. Usually, though, he is polite enough to put in an appearance if asked!

Pup's pup is a wonder, isn't she? So proud and wise. What hieroglyphs they do make. I was glad to see her.

All best wishes, and many thanks

Monday,

Dear H.D,

I had this letter from your 'Flavian', and I feel you have
to see it. I can just make it out. I feel also you must see my
answer - it must, so to speak, be 'given under your hand'. So will
you look it over and post it, if all right? You _do_ know him, and I
am so appalled at finding someone distinguished in the family and
don't want to shame him.

How strange it all is - but for me, so stabilising. Just at this
minute, too.

I must say, that with father and son marrying sisters, there seems
to have been a good bit of Oedipus coming out.

Wasn't it odd, to have that telephone call when I got back? I
suppose I shan't hear for a month or more now, but the point is I
at last know I always shall....

I am sorry you seem to get involved in 'fireworks'. I can't help the
way things happen. But I do realise that you are going through
something, and I would like to make a formal statement to that
effect, and to say that if I'm all too tirseome, please don't
hesitate to refuse to be bothered. I have no wish, as well as no
right, to presume, but I never can hold back. I know I've no need
to say 'don't let me be a bore', but I would like you to know that

- sometimes - even I get detached enough to remember others'
courage and to feel rather mean.

Bear, bless his blindness (it's becoming rather like that, His Grace
the Archbishop, His Royal Highness the Duke, His Blindness the Bear
the Bear, when I told him of J's phone call, said 'A strange hour
to ring up'.

Click - *after* midnight. You see?

I said 'Lord, he lived here, he knows I am never in bed before 1'.
It didn't do. I - I myself - knew J. and I always talked at the end
of an evening, around after midnight, saying where we'd been or
when we'd been out together, discussing it - that meant nothing. The
very thing that did, getting matey and letting your hair down over
a water bisuit. It was simply not 'correct', not 'conventional',
Dear Bear, with all his 'passing shows' and 'lilliputs' and 'punch-
es' and other *prnography* in theat back waiting room. Does he know,
do you think, how we laugh, and pity, and patronise?

I went to a party to-night and finding myself among Randall Swing-
ler, John Lehmann, the whole of 'Mass Ob' and many others, I talked
most to a stranger, who turned out to be Gorowny Rees. A Welshman.
I can't help it.

Always, thanks,

FLAXman 8560

Monday.

Dear H.D,

To you, libation. I don't know how or why you do it, and thank God I don't care, but you do what no one else can or, as one sometimes thinks, will - set one's energies free, say to one literally but in the psychic way one can understand, 'Go on, be a man'.

It is silly to have to come to ask for that blessing. I do know, too, I have no right to ring up, be a bore, wear you out.

Please know I realise that.

BUT, I have to get over that because there is a kind of goodness about you, and when I know goodness is what I want, I have to let myself go out and get it. And that does so much good. I think the word I really mean about you is 'virtue' in the healing sense, 'much virtue has your rosemary', the 'virtue has gone out' of a thing - it goes out from you, but there is always more. So one repairs to you.

I use these rather archaic words deliberately, they get it, it is 'repairing'.

And I think all that talk is. It isn't 'gossip' and it isn't understood as such - that is the comfort one can talk of all kinds of seemingly small things, things one hasn't summed up because one felt it might be mean quite to admit them and out they come in the light and fall into shape.

I mean - well, it really doesn't matter to me whether someone makes up their face or not. My own face is mine and whether I crystallise it like a Christmas pear or let it live, I presumably think it is better whichever way I choose.

That's what one says.

But beyond that, one knows one is surprised by others who do - why not be your age, one says. If one has worked well with one's self, one is so glad to have reached that age. I think that is what startles one, the suspension of activity which implies that being permanently young-looking is worth preserving. One so wants to say, 'but preservation is what you do to mummies, not to living people'.

And then behind that is the question, 'what are you (1.e. they) at?'. I think it is when you feel that people don't know what they're at that they are alarming.

It means their activity is being bent from straight line into circle. One needs circle. One needs straight line, too. One can put this phallically if one wants to. But circle and line are the two basic shapes and you can't

turn the one into the other. As I see it, it is this - the line
is what you go out and do. The circle is what you draw round to
keep what you've done. I mean, anyway you like - line is hunter's
spear, circle the caudlron or burnt ash-ring of the fire in which
is cooked what is brought back. Or line is turret or flagstaff and
circle the wall built round. Or flower pot and flower.

But when people turn their energy into conserving, that is *bend* the line into circle, one *knows* here is something wrong, because they have nothing to keep in their circle. The energy-line has been used. Wrongly. And the circle bristles, like barbed wire.

I think that of the people one is at home with, feels safe about,
there is always that straight line sense. One says '0 yes, they are
in a bad patch' or 'They've swerved a bit', but they always seem to
go on, be true to themselves. They're 'all right'.
But others seem to break the line, not even make a circle of it,
just a lot of broken arrows ill-joined and sprouting in the wrong
way.

THEN one is frightened. I am never frightened of Johnnie because
however unaccountable he is, some part of me knows he is being
himself. However stunted that may be at the moment. I think I am my self
fundamentally nearly all right, however much I go off the deep end
at times. The end may one day be too deep to come up from, but at
least one will go through with it.
J. has done things that no one would do to a stranger, let alone to
a friend. They hurt, but they don't fester, because one knows he is
following something out.

But other people, who don't mean as much, do something far less,
something really tiny, and it gets one far worse. I *think* because
they are denying their line. Malign because shattered, neither
circle nor line.

Relationships are fluid. If you see what I mean, that is what keeps
them solid. We know that. A thing that changes from day to day is
the thing that is with one always. Only a Gemini would insist on
the fluid thing first, because they look ahead and are terrified
of the result of that fluidity.

I see it this way - Gemini HAS to have others to act out their
lives for them. The other houses are to them a sort of super-
cabaret show. My Gemini works in this way - I never mind having a
row with someone, because there is always the other ME to make up.
If Castor turns nasty, Pollux can make amends. If Pollux flops, Castor
can do the job.

But I think purer Gemini, with that fluid Mercury, make everyone
else their twin. People like me are both twins, never know which,
ofteh find themselves saying and doing what they don't mean, often
suprise others by 'showing a different face'.

52 UPPER CHEYNE ROW CHELSEA S.W.3
2.

But other Gemini are so frightfully vaporous aery Mercury-ruled,
that it takes everyone else they know to be the other twin and
do things for them.

It is that horror I have, of not taking part in one's own chess
game, which you do so much in relieving me from.
Because, you know when one sees other people shy-ing, shie-ing, from
things - I think Aries repeated butting is that, Taurus doesn't, he
either stands still or charges - one thinks 'My God, here am I
trying to build, painfully and slowly, sweating blood, not letting
go of either patience or principles, and these others fling every-
thing to the winds, deny, distort, de-struct - and get away with it.
The same Sun shines on all, but seems to bless them'.

And one wonders why.

Because there is no abstract fun in building. It is labour, in
archaic 'in labour' sense too, and pain and concentration. There
is none of the relief of kicking things to bits. That is untrained
outlet for energy. Builders have to learn to train theirs. And
on one goes, getting no fun, maybe not wanting it in the others'
sense - but still a bit baffled they are content with theirs.
And saying, each time they kick a wall down, 'My God, do they know
what they're doing'.

And realising that with so much more energy than one has one's
self, they might be doing much more.

Is it that they are terrified of their potentialities? Make us, I'm
talking generally, do it for them, because we do it worse? They
make their line the circle - there's nothing, so they are free to
leave and soar.

Whereas I plant my little line, put a round trench round it, water
and tend it, and can't get away.

Then, too, I think this - K. repeats himself, that is his duplication,
his Gemini (Ram must be twinnish, because of the duplicated butting).
Bryher regards all of us as 'branches', put in business terms. We are
a lot of little Lyons, scattered round. That is, represnetatives -
each in their way, OF her. That is her twin.

Now, Leo doesn't call to Leo or Cap to Cap, quite. But twin must call
to twin, otherwise there isn't a twin, if you see what I mean.

My own twin thing seems to me to work because so much Mercury
makes the bull a sort of pantomime Pegasus, and with my Saturn,
finds its twin in Sag.

Other aspects may upset that, but that is the final thing, the thing

I am certain we know. I have never felt this before. And if Wales
and I finally can't make out, there won't be that feeling of a
mistake, only that there was too much in the way.
Gradually, it seems to me, we clear up our 'afflictions' one by
one.

I did what you said. I left a note as well, after the telegram.
Well, it didn't work.

He rang up at eleven. Awfully cheerful, had had a nice day and
rather pleased with himself. I couldn't understand, and it jarred.
It was a long time before I discovered he had not been back but
had been at a movie.

When I told him Gwyn had died, he didn't believe me. He said 'He's
been dying for a long time. Every time I ring up, he is worse'.
I, of course, flew off that he knew he was very bad and hadn't rung
up for ten days.

He said, if I didn't choose to tell him the address of the vet, it
showed I didn't think much of him.

I said that as he had himself walked out on the dog in the first
place, I had no reason to suppose that he was more interested in
him than in me.

He then said, there'd been a lot of talk about my analysis but it
didn't seem to be doing me much good.

To which I said, if he wanted to know that, he should ask the anal-
yst. But he never would. So please cut out the blame about not tell-
ing the address of a vet!
It got like that, you see!

But I simply felt that if, every time anything happened, either good
or ill and I wanted to see J and couldn't, well it was silly to go
on wanting.

I realised that he had rung up on his own, without knowing about
Gwyn, 'because it's about the time you get back from Eastbourne and
you sometimes said it was lonely'. But I felt he might begin to
realise a bit about me.

Finally I said, 'Well, he was never my dog. You told
people you'd given him to me just so as they thought well of you'.
And 'I didn't want anything given me. I didn't pay for Gwyn, that
was the trouble'.

I heard myself saying 'You can pay for him now'.

J. gasped a bit, asked what I meant.

I said 'Listen. I ask you for sympathy, for ordinary decent mateyness
I am feeling low, I want to be cheered up. With anyone else I know,
I could go round and say that. To you I can't. Although you are
the only other person who knew Gwyn. Okay. You don't understand
sympathy or civility. I ask for what you do understand - money.
Since you left, I have had to park the dog at a vet. You couldn't
buy him and say that is why you left. You're earning money now,

8.

if you want to clear up, you can pay some of the bills'.
He was very surprised. So was I. Aroows whizzing. But he always
recognises arrows. Uses them as such. If you get me, in terms of
darts, he plays darts, beats your own score maybe, but does NOT
blunt the dart by using it as a tin-opener.

He said 'You know I can't pay'.

S

And, honestly wihout any behind-the-scenes-sadism, I said 'You can
work overtime when you want new shoes. You can work overtime now
and pay half the bills.'.
He said 'I won't forget that'.

And I said 'You'd be better not. I'm taking you at your word about
money, and I expect you to keep it'.

There you are, as you said - the words one does NOT say. Arguing
about money. To someone who has none. Phew, phew, phew.
But it was straight, it had been in me for ages. You let it out in
a direct way. I don't mean you, but I was able to say that - which
was simply, 'if you say the dog wasn't yours because you didn't
pay, you can now'.

I went to bed, thinking I had ruined everything. And too tired to
care.

S kindly told me that I had done my best to get rid of J, out of
panic, because Gwyn had gone too - destruction. S. then talked about
castration, which honestly one DOES know about, and then said 'Why
do you have to like people who ill-treat you'?. I said 'You fool,
I had to a year or two ago, I don't have to any more, and that is
just exactly what J. has to know. He's behind the times quant a
moi'.

S. was quite nice, told me he had a white dachshund that died, white
dogs of special breeds are difficult. But I didn't get, took the
strong news.

Incidentally, what I didn't say to you was this - I didn't want
to go 'News of the World' morbid, but what was so strange was the
heraldic quality of Gwyn. There he was, 'dead', and had left a sort
of hieroglyph of himself, a sign 'This is what has been, therefore
it was and is'. Very strange, it was, looking at him.
And, on top of that, I realised something about his being white. I
have always seen myself, in nursery, as white. In those days, you
know, aetat 2, one was put in white frocks and pelisses and things.
Everyone else was in black - mourning. Black was against white. I,
in white, was an exception, a monstrosity; to be killed. I realised
that Tiger, a black dog, I had HAD to nurse back when he was ill.
The white one had to die. It seemed.

So I didn't feel bad about Gwyn, and reality came to my aid, because
I said 'Well, if he were weakly, it's better he went now than later'.

To-day was sort of mechanised, making one's self a tank instead of a unit with a horse, no sense of life, only of performing the adequate motions.

That's one thing easy with an office, one can do the routine jobs which on better days are dull and get put off.

Then to-night, I had a hunch. I said 'I want to see Johnnie more than anything. I have a right to. If I see him and we row, it will not be my fault. At least I shall not hate him because I feel I dare not go out and find him'.

So I went out - and found him. It was a funny kind of hunch, perhaps not one at all. Because I went to where I had asked him to meet me on Friday and as he hadn't come, in a sense I might have thought he would avoid the place. I don't know if he thought there was a chance I might go there, as we always HAD met there.

Anyway, he was there, with another soldier.

He came up and spoke, which, considering the phone conversation, was a surprise.

'What are you doing here, drawing your sorrow?'

'Maybe'

'Well, you went off the deep end enough last night, I thought you'd be drowned by now'

'O, I've come up for air'.

'I'm surprised to see you. I'm only here by accident'.

'Everything happens by accident' I said, and having got his own fluidity-thing approved, he moved off to play darts.

It was awfully funny, because he wouldn't drink or smoke at all! He mustn't spend money, as he was meant to be saving for Gwyn; he had to do 'penance' - he always cuts off from something when he is annoyed with himself - and he had to do the usual ritual of not accepting anything till he is sure it is offered genuinely. In that wiser than me, for I say 'Cigarette?' because it gains time while one is finding if someone is friendly, if wars are over. J. won't take cigarette till he is sure they are. So that the cigarette means more - 'building' there.

After darts, he came up and said 'I'll be seeing you soon'. AND I couldn't be more grateful to you. Either way one looks - that, at last, I went out and looked, instead of waiting here, a la Mme Recmier do I mean?, but really at last went to find him, or else, as you said, 'go and bang on his door, what the hell'.

Either way, it worked. This is a long story. You had to have it that way, to see why it is I am what even you may still think a fool. It was a real hell of a row last night on the phone, one of those I always call to myself 'bottom of the pond'.

4.

To be able to meet the very same person next night, to know there
was nothing malign in either him or me, and that that was accepted -
how can I say, it is what happens, across a bar, over plenty of others
eyes meet, planets tune in. 'My orbit or not?'.

And J.'s agility, so often boring, seen only as way of avoiding what
might be a comet....

MUSH, maybe.

But I had never been free to do that before. Say to myself, I will
not wait, I will go out and find. If I do, and there is a row, o.k,
that is his permanent personality.

And I found myself saying 'Schmide will not approve, Schmide will
say I am deliberately breaking something. But I am tired of trying
to behave as I think S.may think I ought. If I am I, my own impulse
is what I act on'.

I did, and that was recognised.

Honestly, I can't tell you how tired I am of sort of taking up one's
examination papers to schoolmaster Schmide! It is like walking in
a 'crocodile', one is terrified of getting out of step.

You see, I had written to J, saying that if things went well with me,
he knew it was safe to leave me alone; when they went bad, he thought
it better to - leave me alone. I said I was tired of that, because
if one falls down in the street, any stranger helps one up. But if I
fell down and he happened to be around, he'd say 'You fell down by
yourself, you can get up by yourself'.

In short, he could, so to speak, keep his banana skin.
I hadn't posted it.

And can I explain that a few words, by chance, make it unnecessary to
go over that ground?
It's all said in 'I'll be seeing you'.

Well, on and I go, and on. Don't hold it against me. I say that to my-
self as much as to you. But it isn't, as you well know, personalities.
It's their, literally, 'line' that gets one. 'Affairs' one can take
at face value, Love put up some sort of show to, whatever Love is,-
but the final thing, the thing that makes Love and Hate and all
the rest just puppets dangling from the same wire, THAT thing is
whether people are malign, not even to one's self, but IN their own
selves, I think that is what I mean, or whether the bud dare unfold
into a straight leaf, not go curling round into a flower-forbidding
'front'.

That is what one looks for in people. It doesn't really matter wheth-

er one finds it in others or, ultimately, in one's self. The thing
is, one knows and recognises, and so do the others of one's 'houses'.

But certain houses don't seem to recognise anything, just pull
their curtains and blink. Or so to speak, tell the maids to go out
and have a good time, instead of them.

I rang up Bryher and, believe it or not, what she said was 'Speak
to Alice'...!!! One telephones all the way to Suisse and one is
told to speak to someone whom, anyway, I always find it hard to
find anything to say to!

Dear Bryher!

But I think I'd rather be the bull that goes down in the arena
than some of the others, at least I know where I am, even if I
don't like being there.

This is unutterably long. The maternal visitation makes it seem
long before I can resume life. And I want to get all this that is
herein out of the way before I see you next.

May that be Friday? And would you come HERE to tea? It does bring
this poor old house to life so.

You will be receiving flowers from me. They are both personal and
Stafensdom candle to a liberating saint....I only tell you in
advance so that you won't have qualms about undoing a bunch when
it arrives!

Has anyone ever done Schmideberg's horoscope? It might explain
much to us!

Tuesday

Dear H.D,

I dashed you a quick note, explaining why I couldn't say much on the phone, because it did feel rotten, I was so overjoyed at your ringing me and asking me, and I _knew_ I must be coming over very strangely!

But it was important to get Mrs. off by Thursday and I knew she would want to see the film if she knew of it.

So I had to be like that!

Actually, I wish I had asked Pup if she would come to the film with me. But I'd asked Coxhead, first because she is a film-critic and so one can gossip easily, film-chat, without having to put up a show (I do find lately that so often in the middle of talking to people, I forget what the conversation is about, it's so difficult).

I thought that would be easy company.

And then she had met Johani, in the good days here, and been rather interested, and always since talking about him.

So I thought either way, she was indicated for Thursday night.

Well, I had written you the enclosed last night.

I hadn't sent it, because frankly, I thought I had bothered you enough. When I got back and found you had rung up, with relief I found that your patience wasn't exhausted.

I send it now.

It isn't as good as it sounds. It only is good because Sunday night was such hell.

We said all one doesn't, and what made it worse in a way was that he had rung up on his own, without knowing about Gwyn. And he was sorry that he hadn't known, hadn't been there. So sorry that it took the reverse-defence form of saying the dog hadn't been his.

After Sunday, it was good what when he saw me, unexpectedly, unprepared, he did talk.

But the fact remains, I was left alone for sometime, and that he left before I did. All right to say, he was working things out with himself - it was funny, rather touching in a slightly irritating way, to see how when he turned his back or went and stood in a nother part of the room, or got awfully busy chalking up the dart score, he was working it out in himself.

The fact remains, I have been left to go through with it alone. And there is no reason, nothing I have done, which deserves that treatment.

That is a plain fact. As you said, I had a right to go and knock on

his door and say 'I want to see you'. I had a clear conscience, I had been let down, and it was because of that and not because of anything else, none of those past 'agressions' one didn't have that I could face the risk of there being a row. I saw him through the window as I went by, the door is round the corner, and in that bit as I turned the corner, I said 'If row it turns out to be, it will be on one thing only, not a series of old I.O.U's.' It is good at last to feel that.

And I know that that 'I'll be seeing you' meant a million things. It meant an apology...for not having been with me at the time. It meant, the telephone-fight was forgotten. Rather quickly. It also meant it was a bit too near yet, to risk seeing. In case of fireworks.

And it meant, this - at first I had said 'Johnnie, it is nice to see you. But you never say when you are coming, you walk in, take me by surprise, complain I am nervy, and walk out. It would be easier for me if you made a date, any date, however far ahead'. He replied 'I never make promises I may not keep'. The 'I'll be seeing you' was the first step to that.

It is terribly hard to get over to anyone who hasn't seen him, that is why I would so like it to be possible for you to meet him one day, but there is so MUCH going on. The tone of voice, the eyes, all 'inform', infuse the words.

Put it this way, - an English person says 'rain'. It sounds 'rehn', or even 'R'n'. J, with Paul's voice, says 'ray-ain', and one suddenly says 'O yes, there is 'a' and 'i', the two sounds of shower striking and the soft fall as it runs away. God help me, the word 'loves'. i/ That happens again and again, vocally.

Put that emotionally, psychically, you get a bit of what I mean is there.

Of course, it doesn't matter two hoots how much is there if he won't answer it. If he always has to go on, being sorry in his way, which is to go away and hide, without having the liberty to know that *my* way of being sorry about Gwyn is to *need* sympathy, which he shuns.

But that *is* there. He is as dumb as hell, you can talk to him as above about vowel-sounds, but he does it *pereceptively*, *not* intelligently. Only, when he sees one unexpectedly, there is that lovely questing quality in his eyes, 'Are you a knight of the same order as me?' is how I think of it. It was always, not the riding out to meet the other, but the riding out together, to see what there was in the world. It meant, to me, not striving to be equal to my elder brother, or, by consequence, better than younger people. But at last level.

Factually, it couldn't be level to him, there were too many other 'distinctions' -economic, class, etc. I think simply saying 'All right, you don't understand sympathy. You say money keeps us

apart. Pay your share' was something he could cope with. It WAS on
his level.

And when I walked into the pub without him, I think he felt that at
last I didn't need him, was standing on my own feet, and had shown
I had a right to behave in my way.

'Don't know, it's not FOR me to think what he thought, but I AM
awfully glad I did that. It seems so simple - if someone doesn't
come to you, you go to them.

A little magic, too. I am sorry for that word, but he always has
turned up at the worst moments. Unfortunately, their very worstness
has sometimes made trouble. But usually, just when I feel I am over
the cliff, at the last minute he comes.

It shouldn't be the last minute, and it shouldn't be so necessary he
did. But it is the final answer, a lunar pull.

I imagine that in a sense it was worse for him than for me, for he
saw more of the dog. He'd never had a dog before, and in a way, that
broke him up. We got Tiger here in the summer, I said 'we can keep
him, shall we?'. He said 'He belongs to your old life, he'll always
sneer at me'.

When I brought back Gwyn, tiny, it was too much.

He clung to him so much that I am sure in a way he had to leave
him.

And then having been with Gwyn dayv in and day out, having had him
always in his room at night, and carried him round like a squirrel
in his coat, - afyer that, it was weeks and weeks since he last saw
him before he died.

I think it will take J, longer to acquiesce, that may make him say
something callooms such as 'What's a dog anyway?'. Months ago, I
would have said 'Not much, but Gwyn was more'.

"Eply 'O yes, a child. But parents always quarrel over children'.
Golly, how one can see one's self in retrospect! How glad I am to
be free of thatTo know that what one says and does applies only
to the present, isn't only stored-up hate - but can be, if it is,
present hate, for defined reasons......

But Johnnie's dog's gone, he has at the moment to say it wasn't his.
It was always, in one way, something he could come back to here. In
another, something that kept him away. There was the boast, 'My dog in
my other house'.

On the other hand, 'I can't go back to the house where I walked out
on Gwyn'.

When he came round at first, there was always 'I'm not staying, I
won't sit down, I only came to see Gwyn'.

Then, when Gwyn was away 'I am not staying, I won't sit down, where is
Gwyn'.

To which, 'Johnnie, you have no need to come on a twenty-minute bus
ride to ask how Gwyn is. You can either have him, or I will write
you'.

That kind of English logic so infuriating!

And to-day, funny - a contributor, a young man who edits a paper
from C armarthen came in. He was talking about Glyn Jones, Dylan
Thomas, Rhys Davies, David Jones and of course, the 'wicked' Jack
Jones. He said 'A treacherous lot, we Welsh'.

I laughed and said 'Each of you has to say that the first time
you hit England, to forestall that 'Taffy' rhyme. We, who live
among the English, have got over it'.

He said 'The trouble is, we hate ourselves. Every Welshman loves
himself. That's why each is an aristocrat. A collier goes to Cumber-
land and learns he's a proletarian, he never knew that before. A
Welshman has a terrific opinion of himself, he is critical of other
Welshmen because they betray his own ideal. Irish and Scots say
they are all grand, we Welsh write always about how bad we are. A
treacherous lot... but yet, I was at a party last night, and 'd
rather go through all the difficulties that go with knowing my
countrymen than live in the shallowness this side'.

I may say, the man was editor of a paper which had a 'Welsh poets'
number, in which I was lucky enough to be included. So he spoke a
bit more coeur a coeur. But it was nice to hear it, derailed by
one's editorial chair.

Nicer, even, to know, you have such beneficial effect. I cannot tell
you what a fool I sometimes feel at my age not to be able to handle
things in a sophisicated manner.

Yet when I see J, I am so glad he puts the value on sophisication -
'MUSH'.

"Ever to be explained, but in a room, leaning on a bar, drinking less
than one drinks with you, among frosted glass, the soft ping of darts
it just was GOOD to see J. being himself.

When he wasn't talking to me, but took out cigarettes, I knew the
next gesture with match. I knew how he smoked, the way the fingers
went. Before he bent his head, I knew how it would be. It was like
notes in music of something one knows well... it was fun, gaiety
and solid satisfaction, to know THAT was a FACT, a simple tangible
fact, apart from whether the next gesture led him towards one or
not.

I looked and thought, in a quite impersonal way, 'That really is
grand'. And when that same head, that same match-striking gesture
came up to me, it seemed 'Naturally, this is grand. This is someone
who _lives_. That's why we speak.'.

'His, again, has gone on very long. But it means 'll be 'rational'
on Thursday. It means, reality - not fantasy.

I remain wretched, but continue to consider myself privileged.

Friday

Dear H.D,

I thought I would drop you a line to say how glad I am that
'they' got over all right.

And then - that Glastonbury book! I shall never be able to thank you enough for it. Hood heavens, though! Doesn't it set things buzzing? Not only stars, but everything goes whizzing into place.

And the worst is, as one reads these extraordinary things one says 'Yes, yes, of course', it all seems the only way to see things and one seems to find it the only language one understands.

Here are my inn-signs, my theatre prints( for the Giants of the
Jack and Beanstalk, Jack being George, you know), possibly even
one's film(stars) one's animal thing - I mean, the dogs, and leop-
ard skins. Here they all are swinging into place. Part of the same
thing.

It is like that moment in analysis when one sees, when it becomes
quite clear that one's self is at times one's mother, and the
other person almost at the same time that same mother, too. The
moment in analysis, I mean, when it ceases to be difficult to
keep up with the interchanges of identification.

One result is that - do you remember I wrote in the very first
L. and L. a sort of semi psycho, semi anthropological article on
the significance of the Bird in ballet? - I am doing Disney's
dwarfs that way.

Relating Disney's 'kind animals', his animals always are kind,
to those grouped round the Manger. Now were they put there as
myth-relics of earlier religions - the Bull, the Lamb, etc?
Then again, the Apple in that film, Lilith-Eve direct; and the
re-birth of the princess. What are the dwarfs but disciples? Or
Knights? Or satellites? ...

Other oddments; going to Cecil Court to-day, I stopped in at the
Round Table in the next one. Suddenly, I remembered or realised
that there is a Welsh Harp near the office, also a British Prince
(which I had previously thought was a sneer at the Hanoverian
ones, 'at last we've a British Prince', but now see as British in
the Breton sense, the British who were driven into Wales). WHY
within a round hundred yards should there be such a Celtic
encampment?

None of these names, as far as I can find, exist anywhere else in
London.

Next, I find in the Glastonbury book, that my 'emini is, first
King Arthur's son, and then The Bird on the Rudder of Orion's

Ship. Sylvia D. said 'erring was 'heron'. And _my_ father's name was Arthur.

Then, John (who is called Jack in Wales, which makes him George) as Sagittarius, is Arthur himself.

Jittering and meanderings, I know - but you see? What it does. I had always been bored with the Arthur legend! Now it comes to light, and WHY I was bored!

Mother, who is Cancer, becomes Lancelot.

If that isn't enough, 'It is said the Iberian type lingered at Dundon longer than anywhere else' (p.106). I find that remains identical with Basque type have been dug up at Glastonbury, and then, twice last week, John in my presence was asked if he were Spanish.

Like analysis, it gets one 'on the hip' on every angle, mental, spiritual, emotional. And it wouldn't happen anywhere else, it couldn't. Where else could one see every day of one's life a bus saying 'Angel', and know that that refers to the Anunciation, or that another going to the Mitre, Isleworth, is really saying Poseidon?

It has set me off now on Arthurian legend, and I want to follow the Druids. Do you know any books? And is Arthur David at all? You know Arthur is a Welsh tale, and he killed 960 of the enemy with his own hand - in Glastonbury is the Giant; usual full circle opposite-is-the-same-as thing. Isn't the Arthur a bit carrying on the David sling business?

But can you tell me who St. David was? All I know is, a monk from J's county of Glamorgan. What did he do? Michael killed snakes, George dragons - what did David?

My theatrical print shows him as a crusader. We know that St. George got mixed up with a crusader circa Coeur-de-lion. But of old Dewi or Dai, I know nothing.

I'm sending with this a set of Pub Survey proofs. I hope proofs don't annoy you. But I am impatient to let you see it - Page 25 is where I begin to go'dotty'.

Funny, isn't it, that you can go into any public bar and almost any British workman would meet you on those grounds of Druid-derivation? All mixed up with greyhounds and Eden and darts, and the dole.

Not long ago, I began talking about bridges over the Thames, and an elderly postman knew just when tolls were done away with, and when 'attersaa bridge ceased to be wooden, he hadn't read it, he only reads when he's ill, 'when I have a headache anyway', but his grandfather remembered and had told him - 'handed down', we would

2.

O, is the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes anything to do with
Virgo (wheatsheaf) and Pisces? Has anyone taken the miracles
zodiac-ally, ever? Could one?

To-morrow I go to Eastbourne, which means I again see the largest
represenation of the human figure in the world. Did you know that
existed on the Downs outside? A giant cut in the chalk, holding
two staves. Huger than the Sphinx, the Taj Mahal so to speak -
in England.

You'll find PUB SURVEY is written by one G.R.N. List. That is sor
of phonetic short for 'journalist', because I have been, as R.H,
in both previous SURVEY pamphlets. The dedication may make you
think I have been a bit flighty. But John was called 'Sam' in
the regiment (again, so awkward, my artist grandfather's name) and
using that enabled me to dedicate it to him without so to speak
'advertising' anything.

All this, as you may imagine, leads us to - Bear. To-day, something
happened. I don't know what. I have argued with him before, often
enough. I got on to HATE to-day - saying the obvious thing that
hate and love are two cog wheels one has to keep in synchronis-
ation, otherwise the one chews up the other.

I could feel him listening. You know, sometimes he sits back and
says to himself 'This is Heinz soup'.

He put out a counter-clue, and I bit - at least, I said, sure, if I
wanted, I could persuade myself that boot-polish is just as black
as coal. But it comes to me more naturally to admit that coal is
black!

Those aren't shriek marks, but quotes.

After that, Bear for the first time said 'I think we should go
on with as little interval as possible, can you come early to-
morrow before you go away?'.

I can't say it to him, but we know, all the rest of us, it is the
old zodiac swung into shape - I seem to have got my orientation.
I have stood up to Schmide for so long and said 'yes, yes, BUT you
won't realise'. I'd got so sick of his telling me I really hated
the people I loved - it wasn't till to-day when I said that hate
was a driving factor in love, the point being whether one kept
it as that, so that the kiss didn't turn to bite (via Judas, of
course) that he listened.

And YET, H.D, one had KNOWN that for so long, and been so used to it,
Hate is always something to be harnessed. So as to be useful.

For ages, I had said 'My God, one gets a dog - with me, always wolf dogs, the wolf that takes the kids away - one trains them so that their hate becomes love; not that, but isn't hurtful, it's used'.

Schmide wouldn't listen then.

One <u>knew</u> all that, the hate thing. I think, so much that it never occurred to say it.

To-day, at last, I was allowed it.

Anyway, for the first time, I am summoned on a Saturday, instead of being permitted, to help me through.

There is masses yet to be done, and finally J.himself will have to be analysed, he is already complaining that the army does things but doesn't provide psychologists. He calls us a 'family, shell shock', but is rather class-consciously jealous at the moment. And taking it out <u>on</u> me by having a sore throat which is blamed on the cigar of Veidt, whom I know, in front of us at a movie!

After all this, are you very busy on Tuesday? Or would I be allowed in, soon after five?

Sorry to ask, and of course, it makes nothing if inconvenient. It is only that Bear has slightly startled me, by wanting an hour.

AFTER that hour to-morrow, I have two Sussex days....if I could nip in, it would be such a help. You know, one can do the Gloucester Place stuff, and more or less one can cope with ordinary life.

But it does make the transition easier, when one comes to you and talk of <u>everything</u> in terms of <u>anything</u>, for a few minutes.

D'you like the new number?

Tuesday

Dear H.D,

I've just read 'Snowdrop' (it's that in my translation) again.

And, o dear, why did Disney supress that the Queen was a step-mother?
AND she paid 3 visits to Snowdrop - first, laced her stays so tight
that her breath went, then gave her a poisoned comb, finally the
apple.

AND she could only sleep on the seventh dwarf's bed. So 'the seventh
dwarf slept an hour with each of the other dwarfs in turn'.

Interesting, that there were 3 visits of the Queen.

And the thing I thought wasn't in the story - the animals - are.
The birds of the air watched the Coffin. 'First an owl, then a raven,
and at last a dove'.

And in my version, the prince doesn't kiss her. He lifts her up, and
'the piece of apple fell between her lips' and she woke up!

LAWKS!

AND and and - the house was tidy, the house of the dwarfs.

Now, what do all yours do?

I'm so sorry, but what with inns and Arthur and all (it has just
occurred to me The Load of Hay may be the Manger?) it is most
important. All sun worship and fertility, isn't it?

I was so glad at what you said about analysis. It's a terrifying
thing. Quite honestly, and speaking rationally, one enters it far
too lightly. It's not a case of '0, you ought to be analysed'. It
ought to be done like confirmation - preparing, classes and all
that.

Instead, one jumps in, and finds one hasn't landed in Bethesda (is
that the healing pool I mean?) but into the witches cauldron.

Really, however badly one managed things before, whatever messes
one got into, I have never been nearer the brink and over the
brink, knowing what the brink was. And knowing there is no going
back.

It's the Ghastly wood, one stumbles on, breaking branches, thickets.

Sometimes there's a magic well, sometimes A Disney woodchuck throws a bridge over the crocodile stream. But there's always a giant's lair or a swamp. And on and on.

It is something that one should be solemnly warned about. 'Are you willing and able to go through with it?' An adventure perilous, and NOT as one thinks at first, a voyage of recuperation....I think some we know, treat it as a sort of Cook's tour of the psyche. They switchback round the grounds, but don't venture in.

Please - I know it sounds I exaggerate, and I'm not saying 'What I have been through', the echo is 'If it's this bad for me, what can it have been like for others' - that is why I feel free to talk. There aren't, you see, many others who've gone through with it.

I know, plenty have. But perhaps not always on those layers? You are the only one I know who has gone the whole way. It seems to me so many go on all right, but when it gets to those layers - give up. Get off the roundabout, don't give the wooden horse a chance to the Pegasus....I don't know. One doesn't criticise anyone. Perhaps they know what they want, and switchback view is all they want. Up and down, round and round.

I wouldn't do it again myself, if I had half an inkling. I think I'd say 'maybe, but I can do without Canann'.

It seems to me it's our later and more subtle trial-by-tourney, native initiation, ordeal-by fire, and why one lets one's self in for it, God knows.

Because one has to finish it.

I do wish I hadn't begun it. I did because of J. Maybe one should not need others to focus on. Still, to myself I give myself credit that I didn't repeat the old thing; that time, meeting him, I did pull myself up and say 'This time, somehow, you learn how to flower'.

I wish I hadn't done this house thing, too.

Bad enough, as to guilt, leaving home anyhow. Making a home for someone else simultaneously, was too much. In reality, let alone with ps-a.digging up more guilt than one would otherwise have felt. Both these things, ps-a, and this house, should have happened at other times.

The most I can say, is - I did at least let them happen. I did at least say, 'This is what I have waited for, this is whom I live with'.

But no one said, 'Wait'. No one warned of one's wood. S. sat back and said 'One cannot work on the steel till it is molten, it took J. to melt it'. The only person who does help, the only tree that turns into a crane lifting one over morass, or light which turns out to be windows is - J.

And that, at times, he shouldn't be. One isn't ready. One has to say 'Please don't help yet'.

Knowing one couldn't say that to anyone else.

Which makes it worse!

2.

This has been interrupted by Ross coming round with daffodils. J, whole Welsh, being naturally out toto-night, one yet didn't want the Welsh emblem from a Scots Club (it's such a differentelt). I don't know what it is, but there are certain commutations of Ceats that don't go. Gin and It, Gin and French, but NOT French and It - so to speak.

To return, it IS so fine to be able to come round to you. May I say something? Others will get pubs, others will get ps-a, others tea-leaves, others darts, folk-lore, hors'd'oeuvres (divided last Supper), Pang, New York, what have you.
But who else but you gets all of them at once, as one and yet as part of something?
That is why I, whether it's with holes in my shoes or a flower in my label, can come to you and talk for tea, and stay over for sherry, and practically for supper - WITHOUT feeling 'guilt'.
Put it any way you like, you trace in the sand, or you play ell these games - anyway, one can come and you make it all easy.

I hate, terribly, 'strutting' my own particular 'affair' (memories of K. make one say that, one is so grateful J. didn't 'get' K. and did 'get' Bryher? I mean got what there was to get from each).

Said 'affair' has been going on so long and will, that it's an independent thing in itself, a plant in a garden. In which so few gardeners seem to care about annuals.

But it is much simpler to enlarge one's ground gradually - I am talking of J - than claim stakes one can't keep up. He says 'It takes 6 months to be trained for the Guards, 4 years to get out of them'.

I got him out. My job isn't done. It's to see the job he gets is the job that lets him be himself. I may be surprised at what that is.

THAT is the pregnancy at the moment.

But the surprise won't be minus. I do know that. Even if it calls for more effort on my part, it will be plus as to him - in his terms.

One shouldn't bother you with this. But there you are - ready, not only to listen, but to come out with one to 'pubs'. At least, I hope. To the right pubs, ad to the right kind of anything, publishers (if there are any) and so on.

One day... which is so like a Jeannette Macdonald Song, which is where one things branches off from another. Because Jeannette M IS

mamma, whereas Showdrop is so clearly Bryner.

Take no notice of me. I am happy to yodel over olives. Good of you
to let me. But don't let gratitude overstep the marks of courtesy -
it's better to be kicked out than locked out.

I'm having a harder time because I am fighting for happiness than
if I weren't. And all that sounds such twaddle. Or would if there
were not ONE dwarf was one's self.

When one ends, how glad one will be - if it's full circle. But how
damned long it takes to get there.

## Wednesday now.

This would have been posted before, but a sort of daffodil symbol
has happened. I mean, to-day some came from Keverne. Then at S,
there were some. And then I had to explain that daffodils were
the Welsh emblem, it seemed so strange to have to say that. And of
course, one elaborated, explaining David is Daffy, hence taffydils.

And then Humphrey Hare, the author of Rimbaud, came back from Spain,
he's an ambulance driver there, and lunched with me. And just, whizz,
things happened.... contact. I was talking about being under fire
for the first time. He said 'Well, of course it wasn't the first
time, because you and I were in air-raids, and were in khaki at
school, that was much more for us then, at our age, to be in the
first air-raids of history, than being under fire in Spain now'.
And one said 'Of course, of course' and it was an enormous relief,
for we know that we probably will be under fire soon, and hopes
one won't show up too badly under it, and I thought 'But I've been
under fire, of course, of course.'

And then Hare said how odd it was to find the gulf between our
generation and the 27-28 year people now. He said, 'it isn't only
because they don't remember the last war, but because we were
born in the echoes of the one before'.

And we got down, all cosy, to how the Boer War had just finished
when we were born. I remembered a nursery plate with Lord Roberts
on it, a sort of Jubilee plate, and he remembered seeing Lord Robert
and then I remembered the old Boer songs that were on the piano,
'Soldiers of the Queen' and 'Dolly Gray'.

And out of that, quite clear, I saw another thread in ps-a - an
army thread running right down. Maybe I was christened Robert because
of Lord Roberts, anyway my nurse always called me 'Bobs', which
I didn't like, it was too like 'Babs', till I knew it was what Lord
R. was known as always. And the plate linked up with feeding. And so
I saw why it had to be that Johnny had to be, as regards me, a
soldier.

But isn't it odd that at certain times things seem to switch into

8.

conjunction? I might have known Hare for ages and still stayed on
the same formal basis. But with all this Arthur-Snow White thing
around, one seems to break right through in least expected direct-
ions.

Hare is an Etonian and son of a Brigadier. I asked him what were
his plans, he said 'I am writing a life of Swinburne' (I had meant,
was he returning to Spain or not). And added 'It is so interesting
to find how, the older and more of a mother Victoria got, the more
'passionate' the poets were, whilst impotent in their lives, or
else the more sad their love-poetry was'.

We decided the same thing happened with Elizabeth.

And the joke was, I was realising, when the army-thread came clear,
that WHY it had come clear was that there was he, a soldier, who had
returned from Spain, where there was no food, and I was giving him
a meal.

Just as I knew that when Ross brought daffodils because it was
David's day, it was nice, but also sadistic. Because he alone among
my friends is jealous of J, and the one person who patronises him.
So there he was, better than J. because with daffodils....

One can go on like this for ever. But how easy it makes things,
seeing them clearly? Once you know motives, motives cease to
matter.

And Bear had to listen to-night to my saying 'Of course, to go out
and kill is the fundamental instinct. The soldier is always the
hero, and used to be poets or musicians too. Because I was frighten-
ed of killing, I had to sneer at the military. Having done that, I
could like them. Because I knew that at the back of my mind I des-
pised them and of course guilt prevented me from liking what I
admired.'

Bear blinked a bit - I DO find that sometimes when, after a block-
age, things rush out, he doesn't follow one's jumps.

But the minute I could admit that I wanted to kill mother before
she killed me (having already, as I thought, killed my father), so
much moved. The penny in the slot machine, that made the figures
dance.

Incidentally, have you noticed that in nearly all fairy tales, it
is the mother who is bad? Jealous queens, stepmothers, witches? The
fathers and kings are either benevolent or ineffectual (in Hansel
and Gretel, both). And most fairy tales were written by men.

Whereas the only woman fairy-tale author I know, the Comtesse
d'Aulnay, wrote the Frog Prince, in which matters are reversed.

But in most of them, you find always the fear that the elders will
turn into something bad, whilst the young people always turn from

bad to good - that is, emerge from a spell cast on them by their elders. Witness Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, The Princess and the Golden Ball, in masses there is either the girl who is treated badly or the prince whom the girl's kindness turns from frog or horse into human form again.

Odder and odder and odder, and one is so at home in it, and almost in nothing else.

It gets down finally to just one thing - our identification with animals. I look at a Tirolese hat, with the brush of a chamoix in it. I know why that's there. I know why women wear furs (if they want to keep warm, they would wear warmer clothes). I appreciate the 'blooding' ceremony in hunting, the armorial animals, the mascots, the prevalence of animals in trade-marks - Metro's lion, Kiwi boot polish, White Horse whisky, Black Cat cigarettes, Eagle beer, Camel cigarettes, Sharps Toffee (Parott sign), Fox's mints (Bear), Emu burgundy, Wolf for Hogarth Press, Phoenix Insurance, Zebra polish. The national emblems, boo - dragon for Wales (that you see is so strange, why dragon, when George is the dragon-saint), eagle for Russia, and the States, etc.

One knows all the practical reasons - as I keep saying to Schmide, with the intellectual part of one's mind only.

But beyond that one knows we take the animals to ourselves because way back they were our first foes. We can only persuade ourselves we have killed them, made them harmless, by wearing their skins or eating them, being them.

Which gets round to the killing I started out by saying it was such a relief to recognise - as tribesman, one went out and killed the wild beast, NOT only to make one's home safe. But to absorb some of its dangerous qualities.

Have you noticed that there were no animals in Eden? I think I am right, but animals don't come till the Ark. Eden had the snake. And the Angel with the two-way sword is surely the fanged serpent - the tempter is also the one who punishes. Sheer Oedipus?

That poor man! Can't you see him turning, in his sort of Stygian Madame Tussaud's, and saying to whoever you like, Lilith or Lady Houston, 'WHY do they blame it on me, it had been going on so long, and others have much easier names to remember. Adam, for example'.

I don't quite know what one does about this. When Gemini and Laurel and Hardy become interchangeable, when there isn't much difference between Donald Duck upsetting things and the Son of Man being 'Bohemian' in Bethlehem, I don't see where you get, because you seem to have got as far as there is.

One sits back, still taking part in it but also apart, in one's rocking chair, and rather like a cross between old Caspar, of that poem, and Violet Hunt, hopelessly muddled, one says 'Yes,yes, they're up to their tricks again. It's just like the Flood, they ran special

4.

excursions to that, too'.

And one can say, in the middle of a conversation, 'O, Johanni, aren't we being a bit Pluto? Disney's made other films since'.

And J. can say 'Pluto is the furthest away star, it takes longest for its rays to reach us'.

And one knows where one is - somewhere very odd, very quivering and, ballet term, *en pointes*.

But one is able to keep there, because one doesn't have to bother with all the rest - the literal stuff, the *surface* symbolism, the what one might call Eugene O'Neill-<u>Winterset</u>-V.Wolff level. How can one explain that? That, in a sense, Murray Constantine 'matters' more, when she comes off, than perhaps Proust ever could? He is not a fair example, because he did institute the <u>recherche</u> into <u>temps perdu</u>. But you will get me, and will know I DO appreciate Dorothy Richardson....THOUGH...!!

I don't know, it seems to me all I ever ask for writing is to be given one spur, such as Pub was, or such a thing as The Circle ( zodiac, roundabout, for chevaux de bois are degraded zodiac, if they are anything, via sundial and clockface (why are clocks circular, and thermometers vertical?), to roulette, dart boards, the shape of race-courses, etc.

You see how I go on, once I start....One doesn't know at all, which side one is. All one knows is, one doesn't mind. Someone brings daffodils, as poison; because one knows that, they're not, someone comes back from Spain, one says 'Father was Africa, war was in Africa, father died, did not come back, this time someone has'. EVERYTHING fits, swims into a place which becomes a growing, not static, pattern.

Only, no one knows it but one's self. I can't say to Bryher, 'THAT is why I didn't go to New York'. It is even possible that the word York, standing for Wars of Roses, meant White Rose, and I daren't be against England, mother, England's emblem being red rose until J, who often buys me red roses in pubs, left me free to be the white - the leek and daffodil....I don't KNOW.

And I just can't say.

But I do love coming to you and saying, what fun the linking is.

P.T.O.

Thursday. I kept this, to read -lest it be too looney-bin, and then, o dearie me, Schmide showed me that sword handle he keeps on his desk.

I had suddenly seen that the bearskin worn by the Guards is relic of the swage wearing the skin of the leopard he has killed. We got on that old stuff about the cross of St. George being the blood from wounds at Crusades, and then at the end of the hour, S. said, showing the sword, 'He was the patron saint of my regiment, too'.

At which I must stop, for I can well see one will never write anything else, ever!

I should be sorry to inflict this on you, but somehow it didn't seem to have reached its right conclusion till this page.

So many thanks,

P.S. That inn sign book identifies George with Jack thus. The Green Man is Jack o' the Graine. But The Green George was another name for the Green Man.

But there is an explanation less esoteric; if only I could lay my hand to it.

Meanwhile, J. decided to-night it was time to go to the Merlin's Cave (it had been mooted for months, but he had to wait till this Arthur business, about which he didn't know). And isn't it nice, how Welsh people know all about their legends, all part of them, in a way English don't? Very few English you can talk about Stone-

henge to. But Merlin meant something, and landed a long dissertation on the fact that it is really only the _leaves_ of the daffodil that matter, the leaves make it like a leek (is it the same bulb plant?) but'of course, the English had to turn it inside out, as it was Welsh, couldn't leave it alone'. So, I was told, they concentrated on the flower.

Whoops, thought I, English genital-displacement.

And from that to the green-white-and-red of the Welsh flag, you know Mary Butts calls those 'the colours of benevolent magic', and thence to a sort of arrangement for a visit to an Antelope tomorrow. Said Antelope having also been barred for months, there is a special kind of beer there called Cold Spring, I had kept it up my sleeve for months and last year trotted it out, and he didn't like it. Now, he wants to go back to it.

I know now that there is a psychic conjunction, going to the Antelope means meeting, literally, as well as zodically, in another 'house' WHY do the Welsh know these things? One is so grateful. But it must be awful to be so keenly sensitive to almost every breeze. It does explain the touchiness! But it therefore makes one protective, the one thing that's disliked. Because wanted!

This letter is starred with _Pub_ names, causing me to say, I don't know why, except that I think I saw Mrs Macpherson coming out of a pub near Bear to-day, that pubs don't mean 'drunkards delight', because as J. says, 'Why spoil a thing you like? No one wants to get drunk. They merely like drinking. So they don't drink what they can't'.

There's MUCH too much of J. got in here, but this George on a horse, centaur, patron saint of Austrian regiment, bearskin (black chow), dragon and all does whirl a bit thickly!

King Cole comes into it, too, that being the surname, did King Cole ever bother you? He was God in a good mood to me. Plus the little matter of not being allowed in the kitchen as a kid.

And though this does go on and on and on, like spaghettis, which one should boycott, what can I do but yell, when I remember that to-day I shouted 'But I spent six days out of seven in khaki for two years, I know how to clean and handle a rifle, I built pontoon bridges, I'm able to be a soldier, I really don't see, Schmide, why I need these substitutes. I have been one myself, and that is more important than being one now'.

Will you imagine how surprised I am to know I always wanted to be a soldier? In red, as that was blood. Me as a miniature Lord Roberts is an awfully new picture which makes me laff and laff. The awful thing is, I really can see it.

But when does this stop?

Thursday night.

Dear H.D,

Here it is- by no means the 'finished article', because it grows and grows, and there is, incidentally, much that I put in on proof, particularly at the end.

But there, for better or worse, it is.

So much that isn't in it, so much that should have been. But, well, that may have its purpose, too - what one doesn't say is echoed thereby, through association?

That's why I hoped you'd be free for tea to-morrow, to sort of toast the damned thing!

I'm so SORRY about the Brookfield. She was nice, you know. But I just got that slickness as a nice bit of social toughness but sexual thin ice.

You get that?

The one in inverse proportion to the other.

I tried to be so meeting half-way, with Madge Garland, Vogue, Ritz Paris 19-whener 19 was-any-date, sort of talk. The friend is, she knew that!

I think the fury is, a lot of people can stand getting into all kinds of situations, preferably impasses. They meet someone who seems to them playing the same game or else is, which they don't realise, not playing it, but saying 'Yes of course, we all know what impasses are' - and they go mad. Because once you get in an impasse you either jump over it or re-trace. And those who do get in one, don't or can't.

Apart from which, and now talking 'socially' (Larks), Constance Brookfield struck me as a very nice person who would have been much nicer if, at some time, she hadn't decided men wanted to rape her. Therefore she had to rape them. The only ones she did were - there naturally - not satisfying. Wherefore, whops, dominate women, patronise men, get everything square (checks in costume) but be in an awful thin iceuddle with one's self.

Because the kind of man one gets with that tactic is either the kind of man who gets the real 'virile brute' she herself wants, or the

man who marries his, or more usually her, younger sister.....

I don't know. And I liked Cornelia B. I felt easy because I knew, I'm sorry she threw off on you. But I once knew someone called E. H. C. Jones, who had a minute sort of Bloomsbury success with a novel before there was Bloomsbury, called 'Quiet Interior'. She was so much the same. Frank, friendly, and so thin-ice, one felt one had to do something about it.

One knew she was frank and friendly, and yet the thin-ice thing made it fake.

But a nice woman, I thought. Honestly, I can swear I hadn't been rude. First, in those early days, I didn't know who were bores and who weren't. Secondly, anyone 'introduced' one was so careful about.

I wish she had said so, to me. So much easier, thatta way, However.

If your return way happens to lie not too far off from here,
won't you come in with Pup for a sheery? I have nothing to ask
Pup in for, but if you're passing en route to parking, - do it later.

17.3.38.

Dear H.D.

This is in the nature of a last request.

It's easier to write than to say, because somehow I wouldn't
dare to ask an elder person, and an admired and respected person,
as definitely as I know I must, now.

I can ask you as a miraculous friend, whom I have always been
able to turn to - but I can't risk the faltering and stammering
and blurting that would come with actual speaking.

It's simply this - would you wait, please, until Johnnie comes?

I had always wanted you to meet him. I hoped it would happen
differently. But the gods don't seem to allow us time, and one
must make what effort one can in the lulls, to deserve whatever
good there may be on the way.

I can't quite tell you (you know) what it is like, knowing he goes
the first. He said to-night "In my opinion, wars should end when all
the professional soldiers are killed. It's my fault I am a profess-
ional soldier. There's no reason you should be. If we attacked
Germany I would have to go. If Germany attacked us, maybe others
than professional soldiers would feel they had to join in. But you
join in, not join up. And it's your own affair. I know you'll think
for yourself, and that'll be right. I can't, I signed that away when
I became a professional soldier, and I can't go back on it."

It was a long speech, and it went on to this, sort of; "These songs
and athems about one's country, they're only because one is part of
them. One is really loving one' self. Every man has to have some-
thing to worship and it always comes down to what he wishes he
were. If I got to Norway or somewhere, what'd I think of myself?
Wgat'd I be? I would even be worth a sandbag to stop Hitler a
minute. I'd have lost what I am more than by dying".

It is strange to me, to be able to accept one's 'professional
soldier' thing without any kind of jealousy for those who are
'luckier'. I haven't got that far, yet.

I hadn't got very far at all.

You see, he hasn't been living here for sometime.

Analysis got to the point where we parted.

Domestically. To save, emotionally.

I didn't know there were people who could see that, before).

He keeps his key. He wanders in whenever he feels like it. Offi-
ally, as regards Army and his home, he is still here. But there was

so much tension, the only way of saving things was to agree to keep
out of scratching distance for a bit.

In a sense, it makes no difference. We see each other more than
when we were living 'to-gether', in a way. For instance, Tuesday,
and long phones yesterday, and all this evening, and he comes
round to-morrow.

Last week, we were talking so much, it got late, it was silly for
him to go to where he lodges, he stayed here. The Farr fight night
(up till 4 Saturday) the same.

While I have been finding my psychic feet, he has been finding his,
literally, by earning a living, finding he can get on, as a foreigner,
in London. He says it was hopeless, trying to be at home in London
till he knew that, ad a Welshman, and a foreigner therefore, he could
get on by himself.

You will understand, at first it was hell, putting up a good front.
I didn't tell you he had 'gone', because he hadn't. He had merely
moved. He has that kind of open mentality that recognises states
of mind. We parted in order to stay to-gether.

At first, met once a week. At first, he wouldn't accept food here.
Slowly, back he came, saying 'it is my home after all, why didn't you
let me know?'.

Now, he says 'It seems we get on so well, I might believe in analysis myself. Anyway, if you go on making the house so cheerful, I may take you at your word'.

To-night, he asked 'That doctor man, Frood, what's happened to him?
And if Hitler doesn't like Frood, why does Musso allow Gigli?'

Well, that's gossip. Silly attempt to depict him for you. Quite
unnecessary. He is different from you or me. He looks like some-
thing from Egypt, but is simply 'yeoman' - that sort of centuries-
certain solid 'are you as good as me' stuff which is the final
aristocracy. The recognition of what one is and the refusal to
try to imitate it. 'If you're good in your line, I can meet you
on mine'.

What I am trying to say is that I am not asking you to meet a
gigolo or an imbecile or ' a low type'. He is a curious kind of
Arthurian-Mediterranean link.

And apart from that, it is ME. I wouldn't ask you, you know that,
if it were someone trivial or cheap (however attractive I found
that person). J. is a psychic-gent, not long ago that would have
been awful to say, but J. has not that shim-sham shallowness, if you
get me.

Even so, matters are at this stage with me - I beg of you to stay
just a minute or two, to meet him.

I have tried not to tell you how I feel. But this, that I have been

working to and HAD started working out - then suddenly, all
threatened.

This is not panic talk, but being ready.

And it makes it a bit harder, having parted in order to come back
again.

Will you please help? Just that! tidying up! which means so much.
The feeling there won't be any I lose ends, and that there are no
regrets.

I would so much like to know you had met him. It would make it
easier for me to know you had met him.

I had kept pretending he was here, because I knew that was the fidl
truth, he would be soon again. Outside things shatter that.

And I hadn't been able to ask him before, he works you see, and it
was difficult to plan. But now this evening he has promised to come
in, though he has hurt his foot.

Could you do this for me? It honestly is important.

I see him to-night, and to-morrow I have to go to Eastbourne, and
I don't know when I see him again.

PLEASE

Friday.

Dear H.D,

I write rather cowardly, because I am going away, so I feel
'It will really be Monday before H.D. gets this, it's not too
much of a yell'.

I am terribly sorry your saintliness was wasted.
It was lovely, anyway, would have been, anyway, you staying, all
casual like( the food was there, jellies etc, because I blush
to say it, it is really ridiculously Grimm, I always put out the
extra dish, there is always enough 'in case....'). So often, when
Mrs Payne comes in, and I have my evening meal, it seems so
silly, what the hell, and 'o, 'ow different it might be'... it
was nice, there being a point to the meal, nice you not being
'company', but sharing in.

And no one else would have, in quite that way.
There is also no one else I would have asked that much of.
It isn't much, maybe. But it is to me.

The war threat has of course rushed things. I did always want you
to meet him. It is some kind of zodiac thing, it's not complete for
either without.... you know, we once got my Taurus Mercury and
Gemini thing leveled as Pegasus, and the Centaur Sag is so near
that, and it may be my Mars in Virgo, via Army, seems to lead to
you.

I hate so much seeming to have plunged you into that other thing,
though, 'Buddy and his boys'. I wanted you to know that even in 1935
I had known finality when I met him.

Honestly, there has been every difficulty in the way - the army,
the class, the economic difference, the foreignness, the difference
in jobs - every kind of difference which wouldn't have counted
had he not been sensitive enough to feel them AND sensitive enough
to work through them by degrees.

And at first, all those things - the army, the foreignness, the I-can-
do- this-for-you were added causes of glamour. Each of which he
refused, saying 'I'm not like that'. And stage by stage, in ps-a, one
knew those were defence obstacles one was putting up to prevent
one's self knowing and liking whom one wanted.

At last, I had seen that. Had got clear, set up on my own, even long
before, had gone to ps-a because I wanted to be sure that this time
I didn't break a relationship. I knew the very first time I met
him, that there was ,not the home I hadn't had, but also (important
the also, because the home I hadn't had was in it too, hence the
tears) but also the home that was the home one made. The final
palace or cottage of the fairy tale.

And always, at every turn, Johan, Schoni, Johnnie, has been the Disney
mascot that got one through the thicket _he himself_ had got
through or knew was there.

Was, in a sense, to night. Rang up, I mean, to see how the Wishing
Well was - and the Wishing Well reflected badly. Though naturally.
But if I had said 'Ok, Johnnie, what's one night among many, come
round to-morrow if you feel like it', he'd have liked that. Just
because it _was_ important, it became _essentially_ he wasn't 'trapped',
as he is trapped in this Reserve and Army business.

If one is numbered and labelled, if one knows ones boots and tunic
are waiting in War Office depots, I think one does have to prove to
one's self there are some engagements one is free NOT to fulfil.

That is part of it.

Other parts are, as we said, tiredness, 'guilt', shyness, need for out-
let to assert independence - I think he may feel that if he wanted
this evening, by so much the more would he be wanted to-morrow. If
you get me. Not 'bitchiness', but simple mathematical progression.

I don't _know_. It is not my side of it _to_ know. I like him because
he is him, and it does seem to me that however unwarrantable his
actions appear, he can only be himself.

A great deal of that self I find lamentable. All kinds of things
would be easier IF this and that. But those things will be better
in time, IF the gods give time; meanwhile, it is 'for better or
worse'.

I get tired of his having to show the _better_ worse, to be sure of
the better. But that is being John Henry Edward Cole, and as that
is a person I like, I can not at all see why John Henry Edward
Cole shouldn't do what he thinks fit.

Socially, he gaffs - as to-night. Psychically, never.

THAT is what it is so hard to explain unless he is seen.

I have to admit I wouldn't care if he were gig. So easy it would
be, then - and wouldn't matter a hoot. It is annoying, very, and it
will have to be altered as he grows freer, that you were let down.
But I must admit I think more of someone who isn't a gigolo on
tap, however much he over-compensates, the other way. I like men,
and this is the first man I've known, he has the 'guts' to be
feminine.

The trying thing is this; one identifies first. Makes the other one's
self, who does all one never did or can't. Then one gets on one's
own, and J. finds his feet (so sweetly, goes out and gets a job and
works out in accidents to hands and feet just what I do in ps-a)
and it is just that need to be _separate_ individuals which pre-
vents one from assessing others lives.

I know that, to-night, he was asking us to meet him out. But I know
that in the long run that would have been fatal.

Our immediate reaction was 'go out and find him'. It was my impulse, too. I think it was your immediate feminine reaction. Maybe it would be as well if I were that free.

But I'm not ready yet. I still feel it would be 'spying', catching him out.

J. has the key, knows the number. He can ring up or come in when he wants to. If he does neither, ergo he is doing something else, if only staying in because the clean laundry hasn't arrived.

It's simply a question of the Sun in this and this house, if he rang up but didn't come round, that meant that; on the other hand, he need not have rung up, the phone meant signal he was moving over a cusp....

It don't KNOW. It was humiliating for me, and insulting to you. But finally he knows when he can meet as he can meet. If there are difficulties in his way, one does best by not hurling one's own as cannon balls in the way.

I wanted the chance of putting an authentic zodiac creature on our map, I feel he knew it and that maybe the stars weren't right (simply because he didn't feel like coming out).

He can't for ever go on being so grand, but I think the less he has to be grand, the easier he becomes, in himself,

I know, the mere fact he wanted to come - prevented him, and all that.

I'm sorry for this long long dreary letter, the old story you must have heard so often. But give it a chance, and it will be something two people are so proud of, they won't remember any problems existed, save as obstacles it was up to them to get over.

I know perfectly well J. didn't come to night to see if I would be here, that is not in Eastbourne, to-morrow. But, apart from my work, he has to clear himself sometime.

I've hated yelling, H.D., because with this, I know all will work out. It's the slash across time upsets me. It becomes the conflict between imagination and perception.

It has been terribly hard for me, at 35, to admit what I've had to. I do hope that will explain, the resistance overcome, why I have finally taken such liberties - out of assurance, and that always miraculous trust in your understanding.

I am DELIGHTED with Brookfield. She has done what I never knew could be done; she has made me Welsh. Just like a customs stamp.

I had no idea I gave that out. Even if she had been told my
name was 'Williams', she need not have felt anything. I wish she
would say it to me one day, so that out of pride, I could be
humbly happy and friendly. It is so swell to be recognised.

The joke is, the two people who have been so grand and held me
horses when I felt like rushing round and so on, have been Horner,
and Avory, both of them Welsh, though I never knew it before.
I don't think one does know about some things, one just falls in
and says 'there may be the hell of a lot of difficulties about
this, but at least I know how to answer'.

Well, now you know. There I am. Give me a few marks for being here.
I tried gas, fire, being run over at various stages. They didn't
work. One had a job to do. J. seems momentarily to say it isn't
worth doing. That only means, something in himself. He, like me,
wants to be free - and that is his way.

When you write Bryher, hint what you like. I shall soon be writing
her. I had hoped not to bother any of you till I'd come
through.
But we will soon.

I wouldn't submit you to anyone but J, know that please. One
does weigh up social rights, however devoted I am not 'in' love,
one may be.

Thank you always,

Saturday.

Before going off for what refreshment I can find, even by contrast -
may I seriously repeat -

1. You ARE the one that is bringing the case.
The judge has to know that you know that. It's a compliment, in a
sense, if he asks. One doesn't bather to put people through their
paces unless one knows they can do them. A bore, I know - but
noblesse oblige means that one has to 'oblige' in order that
others may in turn learn sufficient 'noblesse', not only to
recognise one, but, in time, to save one' self and all others from
the necessity of ordeal before one is recognised.

2. Everyone is one's equal; the usher, the judge are just parts of
the same ritual - in which you find yourself a part, too, for the
time being. By bowing or calling the judge 'me lord' one is not
only paying official respect, but implying that one CAN do that
because - well, to bow means one expects a curtesy. One doesn't bow
or say 'me lord' to people who cut one.
And in England the fact of saying that or bowing carries also the
right not to be cut.

3. If you can, find out the way to address judge if you have to. Just
to be cosy. And also ask about referring a question to K.C.
I think one has a right not to make any answer that might go
against one - I may be wrong, that is why you must ask. But I think
the strong point of English law is that 'leading questions' aren't
allowed.
For instance, 'Would you have done so and so if you had the chance?'
is not permitted.

But I don't sufficiently know, so check up on procedure.
Only, as everyone is presumed innocent until it is proved they are
not, one has the right to refute questions which seem to drive
one into the wrong 'house'

4. And that is what your K.C. is for. Remember he is on your side.

5. Remember, too, he knows what the judge is liable to be like - but
he doesn't know what you are liable to be like. So he has to test
you first.

6. Finally, at all times and in all circumstances, you have a dis-
tinction which does more than carry you through. It means others
recognise it. Not simply 'literary', but in beating.

13.5.38.

Dear H,

(whom it is better to be A.than R.A) -

Very very formally I would like to thank you for allowing me to be around to-day; and secondly, to find it was not necessary to offer support.

Very very formally also I would like to thank you for surpassing our estimation of yourself, which we had not quite dared to admit.

'H.D' may be a bore to you.

Well, why not? I knew you when, eighteen years ago, along with Sig. (sorry - but I behaved so well the other day, in my white collar, a common soldier's, incidentally) and H.H.So easy to say 'H.D.' was all right then'.

'H.D.'never has been all right, (then'(thank God). She has always been a rather unknown quantity which made one rather apprehensive you know how at a concert one sings with the singer, and dreads the difficult bits, and one's throat is tired if the singer is tired, and all? With 'H.D.' as author, one always knew, once the note was struck, one could sit back, and listen. It was all right, she knew.

But how was anyone to know you knew that much about to-day?

Sell me as much as you like, snapstick, sidecars, parapluies! None of that would have helped.

You might still have collapsed.

You might not have collapsed; I think I knew you wouldn't.

But I WAS afraid of St.Joan.

Naturally, to us down below, you were that...it was horrible, hearing those things, seeing those bills (I didn't look at the first, then did, then didn't).

Only what I had forgotten, or rather what I had not had the opportunity of seeing, was what you CAN be like, left to yourself.

Pray God you never have to be alone.

But your naturalness, you weren't even saying 'this is ME' -
you took that for granted.

Glad as I was to be there, I loathed the whole thing. Yet I would
have liked everyone I know to have been eye-witness to both
the nicest exchange of psychic symphy and of socially-cultural
recognition I have seen.

Honestly, and this is not rude, I never knew you could do it. I
don't know what I thought it would be like, but while it was
happening I thought it very frightful; you went through with it
with a bang which made all the Law Courts out-dated.

I can't tell you, you turned your head to the judge, I thought
'Gosh, that cheekbone is thin, I MUST make her have omelette, not
soup'. And then, you see, the judge said 'Won't you sit down?' and
I felt, that was o.k. the hard light was oke, you were beautiful, and
Pavel was oke, and it didn't mean that a minute later you would
feel dead, you fitted. With law, fake as it might be. But R.A's
fake was fake-fake.

I have seen you 'handsomer', which is a word I wouldn't apply to
you, save by comparison with to-day. But to-day - this is in sheer
mannquin terms - you were at your best, those four words the end
of 'beautiful'. One just said 'Hat hell - it shows her face, she
isn't ashamed, hair oke, but WHAT I haven't met before is that
cheekbone, and what is straight is that nose, and when that
woman knows how to frame that clear-cut mouth into words like
these I hear, why in hell does she have to stand here, meekly
explaining her past life when her mere carriage is Court-pass-
port to her present?'.

You do see, don't you, how much fun it was THAT was got? It wasn't
at the time? I felt you'd falter, I had all sort of silly trics,
I should I have worn a white tie after all? Well, after all, who's
afraid of English law' etc. We were all with you!

It's over now - and simply because it is - Orchids to you, please
don't expect them. Spinach and eggs, more like, on Monday - will
you mind?

I'll fetch you sevenish, anyway.

An dI wish the whole world had been there to applaud not only
that actual achievement, but the life that enabled you to do that
that is the grand thing - and meeting Law not just on its own
terms, but not only as a poet, which would have been easy, but
just as the difficult thing, 'I am I' and without any emphasis
at all, carrying it through on a couple of cheekbones, two eyes,
a voice, and all that enabled each of those to be clear-cut.

I suppose, once again - men are fools. One should have known it.
I suppose I should have known you are not only grand in Life
but in Law - but how was one to know that?

Slip it over on me, a la Lilian Braithwaite, when you come here. I
shan't believe it. Of it turned into fun, so much the better - one
lump of sugar instead of two - but I'll know it wasn't much fun
to start with.

That's why, maybe, no reference, when I see you on Monday. Rough and
ready as usual. Chivvied from room to room - bit it's a case of
moods!

I can't possibly SAY admiration, it doesn't come well from me.

Tuesday night.

Dear H.D,

Thanks, your letter was a relief. I don't know, I have got
so into the habit of saying things to the Bear, finding he doesn't
understand, I feel I've said what can't be said or something, have
gone too far....and that goes for ordinary conversation.
Each time after you leave, I think 'O God, I shouldn't have turned
over that stone, shown H.D. those worms'.

I don't know, Bear doesn't seem to see one says such-and-such in
order to see them and then know they're not true. He gets lost
somewhere on the track. That gets me down so, and so I feel I
don't want to talk, not even where I could or might......

I altered the ritual when you were here the other day, tried to
avoid the progress from te and 'tattle' to sheery and psyche by
not being upstairs, not having sherry the same time....I felt
terribly lost downstairs, it was odd. But I couldn't face, that
particular afternoon, real talking.

Half because of my own feeling, half because I did somehow sort of
know how you would be feeling - not in so many words, nor so many
terms as to actual incidents, but like a breeze coming ahead of
you, I think I knew how you would be when you came, 'taken for
granted' is a matter of fact phrase, but something like that.
I think I was glad you said, not dinner that night, though I was
sorry.

S.W. AARON WOOD CHERRY BAKE

I won't myself, call up or come in, for a bit. I want to be
forgotten about. By myself, too. A thing happens, and one goes
stiff and can only say 'It is NOT happening, I am imagining it'.
It is not the blow, but the yell of one's self to it one is
scared to find can 'happen'. One draws one's self up and says 'No'.

BEAR, too, had one of those wonderful moments of blindness which
with him are so much greater in scale than his moments of vision.
Blank blindness reaching hostility....so that one felt, 'this
is how he is himself, the moments of sympathy are a strain to him'.
A remark I can never forgive, neither for content nor for time
it was made.

I was so numbed, I couldn't take it up then, couldn't believe it,
went on talking while it sank in. To-day, couldn't talk at all. I
suppose soon I shall.

But it is better not to think about it, or about myself, or talk
mcuh. So I won't call. I'll send a dopy flower now and again, to
show I've not forgotten you.

The outer part of me is active - one can be so active, that odd
doll one seems to dangle in front of one, which others quite
obligingly seem to take as one's self. It functions fine, one
sees it and is surprised, 'look I am lifting a fork to my mouth,
I can still do that....I can do more, look, and put butter on
bread, too'.

Well, I lunched Alice, husband, brother. Pup was there, and helped. I wonder if she noticed, though? Remembering 'no food in Vienna' and thinking to fill them up, I took them to have a reasonable table d'Hôte. Alice screams, 'O, I can't eat so much, we do not eat so much' and proceeds to order ONE dish a la crate, which costs MORE than whole lunch. And would take no hint. Silly point, but you know that *would* happen when one is giving lunch to people one isn't personally very interested in!

And then, what should Alice drink, as she had a cold? I thought of the pregnancy, I nearly laughed, nearly said 'God, woman, enjoy your liqour without making it medicine'. But I said 'Whisky'.

Only, you see.....

Was it to be wondered at that I found myself ordering gammon? HAM. Among Jews. I know they're not, and ti didn't matter, but you can see what I mean, how I saw my unk working overtime when ONE plate of ham was brought to the table.

Then this morning, I get news from Ricka in Praha that he has got his English visa, can leave, can come here.... but must fly, as he cannot travel via Germany. And there are no seats on any planes till after Saturday. He writes of luggage, I have been running round, raising money to *wire* fares, I realise suddenly he may be here. Apparently, indefinitely.

In a sense, it rings no bell at all.

In another, it is almost more than I can bear.

It is too crazy, 'Cactus' is so long ago, and Ricka was never
the real thing I was looking for in everyone, but a branch line,
do I mean a turntable, the line that helps one make one's conn-
nection.

Years ago he couldn't come, wouldn't come. Now, does.

This place will be a home to him - to Johnnie, not. And exactly
a year ago, I was getting it ready for 'us'. Now, it is clearing
a cupboard, finding an empty drawer, putting up hooks - dully,
as a sort of deadened duty. All the time saying 'Ricka will be
here, now Johnnie can never be'. And that stirring up again, 'But
yes, just for that Johnnie may return, and there IS room, I can
have my bed in this room'.

Irony's a silly Hardyesque word, but I do seem to have got it.
Bobby writes, 'If ever I have money again, I will buy you a dog',
and I think 'Fool, if you'd come when I first asked you, Gwyn was
alive, you could have looked after him, maybe Gwyn wouldn't have
died, it's that Johnnie can't forget'.

Just exactly a year ago, it seems so extraordinary. One could do
without it.

To-morrow, I am going to make an effort to call on Heron-Allen.
If I don't now, I don't know when I will, and I have all ready.

You awe-struck me when you said I could ring you any hour of the
night! I never would. There are some things one doesn't inflict

3.

on a woman kind enough to be one's friend. But I do know what
sleep means to you, and to be woken by a bell, and I never would
do that - but somehow, to offer it was so wonderful, wonderful
enough to make me feel I wouldn't need to - I mean, if I ever
did get like it, I would think of that, and not have to.

All good wishes

O, yes, and there was an awful sort of gutter voice on the phone
at 6, and I thought 'someone has an awful office-boy, I really must
leave my tailor if that's their kind of staff'. And it was
Chenri Ford, doing what I can only call a Cockney Old South. I
don't know, it had never seemed like it before, but it was an
impertinent little voice, and it said it had been trying to get
me at office, and hadn't been able.

Well, Isitt had told me that he had rung at 3. the day he was
meant to be coming, and he had given him this number - I was in
from 3, there was no call. I told Ford that, he said he hadn't
been able to get on to office, and had had no message given
him. Again well - for we had rung him twice, and the said, yes,
the message was given the first time.

He did a series talk on Tchelitchew's big picture, I was to go along and see him on it, he would ring up on Thursday at noon and maybe come round in the afternoon, too.

I said, O yes, thinking I could trump up an excuse by then - For master Ford has got hold of the wrong end of the stick, or both ends at the wrong time - you can't be grand AND casual, can't wear a white bow with corduroys.

So I think I shall say I am busy with refugees, and Mr. Ford can decide he's not the only visitor. By then I really may be, too, I don't know, it doesn't bear thinking about.

Wednesday

I said you wouldn't be hearing from me, H.D., but a laugh's a laugh, and without quibbling over writing not being the same as calling up or coming round, prepare please for a good hoarse laugh -

I said to Bear to-day, 'Is that so? Well, I'm the Queen of Rumania!'

He said 'Now that is very interesting, what made you say that?'

O dear, O dear, O dear!

AND, to make it worse, or better, I started with this; 'It is as hard to get our kind of language over to you as it is to explain a New Yorker joke to an Englishman....you know the way (I said) that if someone says something unlikely, one replies 'Is that so, then I'm the Queen of Rumania!'

Bear leant forward and said 'Now, what made you say Queen?'

And I laffed. Laffed and laffed and laffed. I said 'I could explain that that is a joke, a pass-word, a phrase that has been on everyone's tip of tongue for years in London. But - pardon me please!' (He leant forward ominously)

'I know I would then have to explain WHY I said 'tip'. That would take two weeks. Then 'tongue'. That would be 'very interesting' - another two weeks. And then, why choose 'London' - two more weeks.

But really, it seems to me far better to choose the people I talk to than to have to choose my words till they become rubber-stamps, with no possible chance of being mistaken'.
Bear went on about 'aggression' and all, and I laughed, and he said 'I can say nothing right to-day'....

And wasn't it perfect? I mean, that OLD chestnut, THE instance which I thought even Bear would have heard, therefore was using AS an instance, and yet WITH warning.....

Once, when he said 'That means you wish to ahem, er, return to your mawther', I said 'Womb, my foot' and he replied 'What made you say foot'. THAT was pretty classic. BUT - the Queen of Romania!

I had to let you know this.

Mr. Heron-A. wasn't in to-day when I went. They weren't sure if he were 'Birds' or 'Fishes'. It sounded so like a miracle, they decided he wasn't in, I expect he was on secret service, probably AS a bird or fish.

WHAT a horoscope this week.

All Guess,

Tuesday- Wednesday

Dear H.D,

This is one of those letters which shouldn't be written,
but wouldn't get written at all, otherwise.

Also, it's one of those nights(3.a.m. - last night, after leaving you,
I read proofs till 4.a.m, and was in office by 9.30) so forgive any
eratic typing, IF.

Spelling mistakes and all.

I am rather rattled as I have had a letter from my cousin in Bexhill. A nondescript kind of Mrs Irwin cousin - in fact, a 'cousin'. Fringe of family, and more family than fringe of outer life...you know the kind of thing.

She wrote that "Heron-Allen had sent on MY letter to him, to her, Well I suppose O.K, I am a 'newcomer' as regards family to him, she has been long on 'map'.

But I do hate having letters sent on, one writes so differently,
I don't mean changes one 's tune - perhaps one's key. Obviously, I
write differently to an elderly and unknown relative, and some-
what resent that letter being looked at by a ten-year-older who
was when I grew up getting out of flapper stage, and therefore
still is in it.

What I want to ask is, is that part of the Secret Service act?
Because I do mine more secretly!

Odd though - to get a letter from Bexhill, 'I heard from our remote
Cousin Edward, enclosing yours. What you literary Herrings get
through. You ought to be after Edward's own heart'.

Well, maybe. But it isn't a case of being AFTER anyone's heart. I
just feel that snooping is all right, and as regards family pron-
ably essential, but, but, the 20th century Herrings, as represented
by me have other ways, I don't mean a different technique or
better 'spies', simply DON'T send one strangers letters on to
another....tell me that is part of the Heron-ry!

I hope you may feel better? I would so like to ring, but don't, lest
it worry you. I mean, I am almost relieved that Aloysius is away
because he has been so quietly comfortable lately and taken such
care of me, that I feel I must SEEM more cuckoo than I know I am.
I hate the idea of Allse'off the map', yet perhaps the only thing
I can say which isn't catty, and which explains other, apparent

cattiness is that he went to 'Jezebel' and got NOTHING

It has been heaven to-day, not going to Bear.
Apart from much else, I really do think I have a psychic time-
lag. All very well talking about 'taking out' on him. But one
cannot take out to order, at such and such a time daily.
Only a Bear, with two dead carnations and a dandelion in a
vase first, and not-very Irish stew after, can do that.

It has been heaven to live through a day, more or less in con-
trol of one's self. Wretched, miserable, and thinking that life is
a great deal more trouble than anything else, but still - for
what it's worth, which is nothing minus minus, at least
one's own - at least not a hang-over from Bear.
THAT is what is so wrong, the sort of 'couple of quick ones' one
has psychically with Bear, and hang-over, IF, after.

To come back to-night, and walk through the house without demons -
it was as empty as ever, but it hadn't Gloucester-ish demons, -
it WAS such a change.

You were right about the eclipse, it is next week-end. There is, by
the way, a new 'Prediction' this week.

Don't stress my birthday too much. I can only see it as a kind of
football match, something to face as a ' fixture ', and hope one will
get through. Last year, and the year before, and so on, was 'so
different', this year if one sort of stores the idea, that is the
best one can do. Don't forget me, quite - but nothing to 'celebrate',
please.

I MAY be able to get out of Eastbourne. I don't know. It occurs to
me, with the secretary having measles, and Mrs. recently recovered
from 'flu, I could stunt quarantine... with the chaffeur's 3-yr
old daughter and all!.... I don't know, if I go do n to Eastbourne,
I do get enough sleep and simply have to eat enough to see me
usually through the week (I haven't since the Knightsbridge Grill,
have you?). One just has to weigh up whether the drain on energy
is worth it.

I do stay, there is the fear of hysteria, and all that business
of fixing up salient meal-times.... I don't know, I get will ring
you, may I?.... and you will ring me, please?

I enclose a letter from Bryher - references to Heron-Allen not-
withstanding - you know that. I am sorry about the last paragraph.
I can't tear it off, for that.... you KNOW I am not kind. Say I am
a fool, and unfortunate and unbalanced, and all the other things
one hoped one's life had led away from instead of up to - but I
have never been 'kind'.

That at least I have a clear conscience of. One insult not offered
to anyone I know. Not that I mind insulting, but simply to be 'kind'
to people is not in one's 'gambit' (orbit,). One is - I don't

know what one is - but one tries to be it certainly enough so
that, like a skunk or a stock, SOMETHing is put out that makes
others feel at home - not really for their blessed sake, bless
them as one does-but because it is much easier that way, to
be one' self and trust to luck the other will thereby be too.
But kindness is not a word, only a symptom of one of the very
few illnesses we have been spared - along with 'kindness' itself!

A lot would be let loose with that word, though S, wouldn't know
it. Meanwhile, with the sky and cats doing arabesques, the only
immediate problem, thank god, is whether the soup I am about to
hot up is onion or Scotch broth. I hate both, along with most else
stuff one does for one's self. But here's to you - in ten minutes -
in died carrots -

Northlands* Monday*

Dear H.D.

Greetings - after long! More of that later. First, birthday wishes. I am sending you a Life of Robin Hood. Don't be alarmed that it looks juvenile, it actually has more about the various members of the band than we have ever found elsewhere, and also, it is American. So I hope you will think I have chosen well and will like the re-echo of the trip to Sherwood.

I'm sorry not to have written while you were in Cornwall. I don't think I am meant to be a housekeeper and therefore, finding myself one, I take it too seriously. The same probably applies to trying to write poetry. I have finished that, at any rate, and hope never to do it again....by which, probably, I mean only I am ready for the next stage. Which will engulf one as much.

The results don't warrant this talking of, but it seems so long since you were here, and yet I remember I was beginning then, emerging now, rather blind.

I wish you would write. Working, I am closed in. And with shopping cough, more cut off from the Hall than I am used to. One goldfish has died, and two sparrow hawks attacked the bridge house yesterday, this is the sum total of my news, apart from shortage of parrafin, difficulty of puddings, and absorption in the intrigues of Elizabeth's last days. If only one knew what that woman had felt I think a lot of extra clauses would have been added to Oedipus...? Re-moved from, too, -

And now we get on to the fact that it is clear I have more or less GOT go make terms with the Nectary. Such a bore. Religion has never been hard to accept, I mean it was not one of the stumbling blocks, one 'took' it and re-interpreted it, as one 'took' and reinterpreted Shakespeare. Plenty of other things were hidden stumbling blocks, but that one wasn't, on the whole. - only the outer organisation. The social, the pew-holding, the bitch-bazaar

attidue....I suppose if I had had my wits about me,I would have taken a
pew when I first came,and then anyone from here could have gone,and I'd
have been left in peace.Only,I do think I like my Mother's line,when
they wanted her to have a priest when she was ill, - "How the hell do
they think I could have lived all these years,if I hadn't made my mind an
altar?"....any parson who comes near me is up against much more than he
knows,unless one can tell him that,first.And how can one?

The Hall imply I _ought_. I say,damn it,I was with the Hall for 5 months
and never saw the Rector;he never called her for 4 months after that,so
what the hell.....only,Edith has now star ed going to church,so I feel
kind of responsible.....

Meanwhile,I hope Cornwall did you good,and I know,at the same time,you
don't mind being back again ? Or _are_ you? The great difficulty of NOT
playing Brother'a Barra game is that I don't know where your are likely to
be ...if I DID play,I wouldn't know _where_ she (or I were) so it's the
lesser of two evils, - but are you there,wher I am sending this letter,
or still in Cornwall? And,if so - how? You must have reams to write -
if you'd direct some of it to me,it would be of a service and gratitude
I will tell you later.

Meanwhile.

- auspicious greetings,

Thursday night, too late to post.

Eased Saturday.

ALL SAINTS' HOSPITAL,

EASTBOURNE.

Dear H.D,

I was up, lawyer-chained, and then had to see to office, left a bit to look after itself the last week or two naturally. I knew I had no minute and would only have left disrupting ripples if I rang up, so when Pup said she was seeing you, I leapt at sending Br's letter as a sort of 'Ave'.

I'm rather touched at Pup being relieved I wasn't, what?, 'strange I suppose, yes, one death brings back another; I know Mother's breathing at the last reminded me so of the chow, Tiger, when he was dying - and I had hated that, because I knew that soon I would have to 'assist' at mother's. And, in turn, Lady E's funeral was to me far worse than Mother's, because I knew that would soon be coming along.

I've always disagreed so much with that idea that 'bereaved' people should seem like a ghost. If I didn't leave a hushed impression on Pup, I am glad.

Actually, of course, a bereaved person (what a word) is less like a ghost and more full of life than before. Psychologically, and also sheer external relief-reaction. He is set free - and if he has got himself right, he is free too, to be a carrier of quite useful memories.

Old Bear, I think, got me fairly straight about that relationship and honestly, IF a person has been able to complete their life and if their last months are a good summing up, and there's no pain, I honestly can't see the gloom. I've been really very happy down here, in its own way, and glad I was able to return a bit, with no backwash.

I found all the way through that none of the fears one had feared happened; although I was there, I didn't notice the actual moment of dying; the gravedigger was one who had buried my father so there was none of that hired stranger business, I had known him thirty years, and the clippity-clop of the earth, dust to dust, didn't happen because it was silver sand, running quietly.

I'm in full black, by the way. My mother liked formalities, and though she waived them for me, so that, for instance, I wasn't expected to go to church or not to swear, I think one does for her what she did for others, and I know my father would have wished, for whom I am, as son, in that respect, trustee.

Only, if you hear that I am in 'mourning' and yet my manner does not match my clothes, know why - I say this, remembering how tales spread!

Well, -lawyers! Mother took all the sting out of the business of 'The' will, by going through it with us first, windows open and birds singing.

She has been incredibly 'fair' - as I am not married, but as she gave my brother certain cutlery and plate when he was, I am left with the same amount. I am left a brooch and a diamond ring, in case I ever marry - all this chosen and settled before she died. But she had her joke. My brother and I are equal beneficiaries, but I am executor. Now, ME - do laugh! Of course, it is a tiny estate, she gave both my brother and I not the allowance a young man has at Cambridge, but the capital to bring it in. That was part of our education, to learn to cope and have the responsibility as well as pleasure of standing on our feet. So there is not much extra to come in, by the time all is done. That in a way is rather nice. One goes on as one was.

The valuer came down yesterday (none of these things are as bad as they sound). The stuff isn't worth much. Therefore, I think I can 'take in' certain things which have rather association to me.

There is the hell of a snag about the lease of this flat, and my brother is roaring mad to get back to S.AFRICA. I had half expected at least a gesture of help, it is really more help that he doesn't give it, he is slow and panicky and yet, at same time, wants to rush. The whole war situation must be very trying for him, especially with Italy now having cut off his return by air. It clears up rather more than I had expected that there is absolutely no glimmer of a feeling I might have any passing loneliness or other difficulty. Just pack up, sort out, and go. Good.

But what a funny time, H.D, for me to find myself owning a silver teapot, some really lovely silver gilt spoons, and a Chippendale tallboy! Bombers fly overhead, and we sort out 'the plate'. I shall have things not at all in keeping with my station, simply because it is better to keep than to sell. But with how different a mind, had one more than six months to look forward to.

Meanwhile, the house. It is nearly ready. Willetts solve all problems. Never go to anyone else. They saved on the estimate, they meet you half way on ideas -the kind of ideas that I have. There is a new A.R.P. protection for windows which I feel is so Bryher that I am having it. A liquid, which you spray on windows. It leaves a film, as transparent as Pyrex, of sort of gelatine, which prevents splinters - glass is so far more dangerous than bombs. This liquid scarely shows, is far better than cellophane, etc.

My bathroom curtains, Dutch bathmats with Coronation surplus bunting as fringe, turn out really successful. Willett's entirely understood about your 'shrine' (which after all is a bit difficult to put over, it being a window demanded by the L.C.C. for

2.

ALL SAINTS' HOSPITAL
EASTBOSTON

necessary ventilation, and also containing pipes. They solved it by getting it passed after the work was done, but before they had glassed it in).

D an is grand. Still in London. I think to bring him back next week. But thought it difficult, while we were turning out drawers and until probate is granted; it would be difficult if he ran off with a fur or even a petticoat. The nice part about that dog is that he doesn't only fill out his frame, but in affection and spirit.

As to old dotty Ma Payne, she hid behind a cross at the funeral and went up with fresh flowers on Sunday, as it had been hot and she thought my own wreath would have died, - that class love morbidity, but it was kind, I thought.

I am coming up on Monday, I have written Bear for an hour, I think good to get rid of the last hours which were a mixture of love, and Lysol, I want also to get my own home ready for my old one to come into - it really is fun, the coffin going the right way. So....maybe, you'll hear I am about, but won't hear of me. I hope that is o.k?

I think Br. is all right. It is a nuisance she is there, but it is better than most places, and the chief thing is, her tone is all right. It's silly, though - she ought to be able to buy a plane and go anywhere, and she gets caught, immobilised, more than any of us. Anyhow, I feel all right about her. I think she is happier there than she would be here.

For myself, I like being here. Hell to the government and generals, but what reserves the rest of the people have got! We had a rehearsal at the hospital to-night (my brother seriously suggests I should give up the hospital. A patriot, he, and quite unable to see that I couldn't go on without that. A better person if I could, probably; but as I am, it is entirely necessary. I love it, and Lord, what I learn from it).

Look. Without joking, - IF we are invaded, communications from here to London will be upset. Here, coast, stands a good chance of being wrecked....could you ever give house room downstairs to a suitcase of stuff? I don't entirely want to leave it in 52, as that is empty jhalf the time. Nothing valuable, just stuff I am fond of, and not worth box at bank.

Peace: 52 UPPER CHEYNE ROW · CHELSEA S.W.3

War: 3 PARKHOLME · MEADS ROAD · EASTBOURNE

20.6.40.

Dear H.D,

Your letter created a deep surge of gratitude. But hasn't been easy to reply to or from. You know, I'd almost hoped no one else felt as I did about it, the France not understanding *la* France. I did things I don't ordinarily do, such as walked through a multiple store(I go to definite departments, never just amble), had lunch in a station buffet (not one with troops), all just to be sure of seeing silly automatic f aces to whom it didn't mean a thing - and it did.

We have been brought up on France, even the shallowest of us know that our shallowness(even) has been served. We were used to the idea of us, England, being of no account; never France - though we knew it, and let's repeat, we knew she would crack first, that was the motto almost of this war. That was France, the sort of Laval layer, never never never *la* France. And one had hoped the French people, and the French army, had struck the balance. In fact, the more they had such as Laval and Bonnet and Flandin in, one hoped the famous 'peasant' act would re-assert itself.

Perhaps we failed to translate the 'peasant' into 'yeoman'.

No, it can't be endured. We shall be the stronger for endur admitting that. I put off saying this, your calm has been so radium active, but you said it first (as the saying is) and if you can say it, I'm with you - we can endure so much and so much, but when it comes to La France, one simply has to go into retreat, in both senses, and emerge with new skin, as you say.

(Incidentally, I stayed in London a night after I rang you, but felt that - NOT to ring you just quite then).

France to me was first advance. Not 'escape', not only that, but *liberation* (the distinctions are never sufficiently kept). It became, because I saved each year to go there, what I lived for - one saved to reach a certain village, any village, and under the plaited planes of the café, and between the walls of the roads (because also, those walls differed among provinces) and *living* among them, summer after summer, knowing the different harvesting habits, learning to expect which kind of farm kitchen, recognising the differences in outlook between French cattle and English - from 1920 on, that £10 one and one's friend used to save up, which took one there, both let loose and brought back into form so much that couldn't have been done elsewhere - I know. I have tramped the New Forest in auguries as happy as Auvergne, but just not

that benisson. From so many little places on her coasts (not Monte, that was THE Coast) I worked out so much, all that necessary seventeen, stuff and onwards.

I learnt what "sun" meant first in France, and "heat", and therefore the need for "water", and how to choose it, and thence to peaches, and all these by associated experience, not just as words, but as part of finding one's way about. And as part of finding what was there to greet one; which is about as important.

I sat down and did the hell of a shuffle-card about France being civilisation, and therefore all we who are civilised are still France.... but that didn't help me.

Paris I didn't so much mind. I wanted to know about Beach and Monnier and Guilloux. But Paris the Germans had always wanted, and I hadn't. It had never come true to me. There was always something a bit unreal, if you put your penny in the right slot machine it worked, otherwise not; and visually, there is nothing like the privilege of walking one's dog to work through the Mall, St. James's Park one side, Green the other.

But Paris came to mean plenty, though most it meant the jumping board, the couch - the plaited planes, the grey gravel which made one go back to one's hotel interminably between appointment to clean shoes, the glasses on stems, the two kinds of grey paint on doors and wardrobes, the meal-ritual, the tightness of flower-bunches, the dark interiors of long farm kitchens, - o, heavens, on and on.

That isn't anything one can see wiped out, or taken possession of. The Germans may be there, but Germans and Bordeaux don't add up.

Yet I suppose it is only the final test of one's purpose? Or part of it. We knew we were 'figthing' "something loathsome". It is not only the enemy ahead but among. Not only wrongness, which an enemy is always supposed to have, but rotteness. In ourselves, too - the worst of it. Well, we knew that, also. But that is the worst to face. The less expense for our standards, so to speak, and the more need for them.

I think we had all got used to the idea of England betraying France; and of France betraying herself, is just a new one. I think that is so hard to measure up to. England has always betrayed England, and it had become accepted that we let France down, thank God that can no longer be said, - but for France to add on la France, for this clumsy armistice business, and for Reynaud's frantic appeal to America - that saps more than anything.

If we let it.

I suppose we have to, that also is what we fight. I don't suppose at all, I know it. From whatever quarter it comes. However it smarts. One has not only to say that la France exists despite what may happen to France, one has to say that if need be one holds sufficient of France - and if the traitors hurt that, so much as even to make that no longer tenable, one has to hold

2.

one's self. In part for France, in part against what she is guilty of, and in part guilty of that, too. And then all that, all over again, for Britain. Three Trinity snail-jumps, slow as the feeling of pain -hoping one has it in one to call them Holy, by the end; which must be the beginning.

I went, after I rang you up, the night they gave away France, to the French church, off Leicester Square. You know it, between the Empire and the Warner theatre. I lit candles to Therese. Then, I rang up a friend on a Ministry, Margery Locket, whom you know, and said 'How are you?' more or less, and her gist was that she had been wondering about the fate of her two brother's graves in Boulogne until she heard her mother was dying, and then she had been glad she had once met the sister of a saint...

Well, I don't know. I am not a 'client'. I don't feel one can ring up saints casually, and Therese does know that I've only come conscious lately. For years, I had taken 'Little Flower' as (I told you) sort of 'Great Power' medium. I can't ask favours. And I am content to suppose that it was favour enough that on the funeral day there were some rose petals at the undertakers, though I don't suppose the unknown soldier that had been taken in just as we arrived to leave had had just those flowers, from a bare hospital ambulance.

But still, to light a candle to Therese keeps a sort of scaffolding going.

One needs it. How much harder than necessary it is, I can't help feeling, this business of duplicate moving. Just now. It's a small thing to mutter about. But to-night I knew definitely that J. is a prisoner. I don't mean quite that the heart has gone out of things, but that it is just one more thing to make an approach to. And that is something I haven't the heart to do. I will in time, but just this minute, I'd like to ask, *why*?

There is no point in asking that, and I know that one should be glad, possibly, that it is 'only' that. But without looking at it, it's a fact. Just a locked door. J.

I knew it weeks ago, I only got the news definitely to-night.

It seems too late to alter plans, anyway one wouldn't. So I move quite soon. My brother has been persuaded to leave on

July 4th. No 8. will by then be ready, I plan to move in there, and as I have No.52. till September, to let maid and chauffeur with their families have it; said families moved up from Thames estuary's raid on Tuesday, only to run into a four hour one here last night. But there's naturally more room for them here, and once you've got these old people on the move, you can get them up to London if the coast gets trying.

Luckily, I am not committed here indefinitely. Indeed (especially as that should have been spelt better) there seems very little time to be anywhere. August is now the time for my calling up, instead of January. I imagine one has 3 weeks after that, and then Br. will be over - the office rang me, twice, re the wires. One's feelings are so mixed. I love to know she's on the way, however deviously, but hate to think how she must hate leaving Suisse.

Thank you for kindness about parking. None of it 'valuable', merely swag one feels a bit odd with.

Dorothy Sayers sent in a poem on Leopold, Eddie Marsh rang up asking to write, having often declined, and Marie Stopes sat outside both my Chelsea houses last week, looking like a Ruth Drape character, in a country vicar's tennis dress of several shades of white, with billiard table legs, which she can't help, and an opinion of her own poetry which no one else can.
You will understand it means much to have Dan with me again!

From The Times 30.3.43.

Mr.E.HERON-ALLEN,F.R.S.

A Gifted Amateur of Science

Mr. Edward Heron-Allen, F.R.S, F.L.S, F.G.S., F.R.M.S., died at Large Acres, Selsey, Sussex, on Sunday.

Though he had no scientific training, he had a strong bent for microscopic work, and as, for the greater part of his life, he had ample private means, he was able to turn a hobby into a serious pursuit. Selecting the Foraminifera, a group of minute organisms found in the seas and with shells abundant in fossil-bearing rocks, he secured the permanent assistance of Mr. Argthufer Earland, who became a skilled and laborious colleague. He collected a unique library of the literature. His scientific work remained to the end his real occupation. Alone, or in association with Earland, he produced a long series of monographs published by leading scientific societies. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1919. His generosity to scientific institutions and individuals, and his hospitality in London and at his house near Selsey Bill, won for him many warm friends.

Born in London on December 16, 1861 he was the son of a well-known solicitor. After education at Harrow (the Headmaster's house) he was admitted a solicitor in 1884, and for a short time practised. But his tastes and accomplishments were not those of a lawyer. He was interested in the violin and by 1882 had published a little essay on violin making, to which he added later a series of bibliographies of the violin. He took up palmistry, writing two treatises on it. An accomplished linguist, his qualifications led to his being called to work at the War Office in 1918. He had taken up Persian and had published a literal translation from the Bodleian Ms. of the "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam".

From 1886 to 1889, he was in the United States, where he conjured, practised palmistry and lectured, but on his return to London he settled down with an assured income. In 1891 he married Marian, the daughter of the pater, Rudolf Lehmann, whom, after she became a complete invalid, he nursed with devoted affection until her death. In 1903, he married secondly, Edith, daughter of Dr. W.B. Pelper, and had two daughters, one of whom predeceased him.

NORTHLANDS

CHESTERFIELD

ECKINGTON
near Sheffield

Saturday

DERBYSHIRE

ECKINGTON 33

Dear H.D,

I meant to have sent you this earlier, and I meant, too, to have written myself before the occasion for it arose, - BUT! I have managed to get myself into such a state of excitement and to be working on two layers at once, so that if I once start a letter, I go on and on in a state of pre-looney-bin rapture, which is good for no one!

I hope you liked the way your poems looked in L. and L.... I was sorry they had to run on from Welty, but wartime we can't leave half-pages unfilled. If I'd begun yours on a separate page, they would have ended on a half and something else would have had to go in. I thought that'd be a pity. And by beginning as they did, they ran straight on to old man river Jordan-Gordon's review - which I hope you liked.

Bryher mentioned David Garnet in a letter - that Pocohontas book was fun, wasn't it? You know, Bloomsbury or no Bloomsbury, I always rather liked David Garnet. So many of that kind of English writer have a style I can only call like munching moss. But Garnet always seemed to me so pared - like a fresh peeled stick. I think his last was that book about learning to fly, "A Rabbit in the Air" and that makes me think I am almost sure he is in the R.A.F at the Air Ministry. If not, then M.o.I.

Do you know there is another of those Mysteries of the Ancients out? Druids and the Mistnetoe Sacrament? It is apt to be 'the mixture' as before, but each time there is something else as well, isn't there?

Today is the Show up at the Hall. This is all

rather alarming, as O. and E. have lately continued their offensive re the new 'vector'. We all know who the 'vector' stands for to them, of course but it amuses O. to pretend I am naughty about "vector" - however, I can't go calling on the Viceroy off my own bat and as I did once introduce myself to him, I feel any move is up to him. But on occasions such as a Show, it is awkward running full tilt into The Village when one has lived avoiding The Village - the Mrs Miniver part of it, I mean."

I shall skirt nervously round the marquees and probably trip over a tent peg, thus drawing attention to myself in a big way!

There is, I see, among the side-shows a clairvoyante - Mme.Psycho! O dear, O dear.

Do you see Norah Hoult has written a novel in which the main character is clearly Violet Hunt? Called "There Were No Windows" or something. Not so much on the lines of that Goldring book, I gathermas of the last days alone with the maids in blitz. I wish people would leave her alone, even Hoult.

I am glad it is being fun with you, the rest of the world hardly bears looking at, does it - I mean the implications of the names alone, in France and Italy almost undermine reason. I do so wonder what is happening to the unfinished Michélanges in the Boboli Gardens.

All my greetings. Soemone, whose poems I rejected the other day, has since written in to say that she would never have submitted them if she had known, since seeing yours, the high standards of L. and L! -

8 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, S.W. 3

PLAXMAN 8560

Thursday

Dear H.D,

I thank, I thank, and I congratulate and
bow!

There is, if I may say so, a particular person-
al interest in this book, since you let me see
it in Ms and let me print it as an Ed, and I
kind of feel, remembering you writing it, that
I have seen it grow, - as if, and with particular
application, - a tree one passes every day comes
out in blossom, as they're doing now.

I also feel this; "there you are, you see. Our
H.D. has shown us again". You have followed The
Walls with this Tribute to the Angels - your
and our sort of Angels of our spiritual Mons -
and it all comes just now, so that you not
only herald but have created peace.

Peace is no good to anyone unless they have
made it in themselves, and that you have done,
and then being you, have put it out, and made
everyone else aware of it.

The thing that impresses me so much always with
you is that the intensity of the planes you
are on, the really very high and Tibetan world
you reach, is never nebulous but always so
very strong. You challenge far more than Faust
but you never waver, never swerve. And by that
you become for others the very Grail you have
so constantly before you.

This is schoolboy cheek. Forgive it. But it is
great for a schoolboy to have the Word made
living.

And this in your second war, when it really
can't be much fun for you to have your

daughter taking the jobs of the males in the
last one, and no one realising perhaps what it
means to you, because it is taken for granted
now that girls are called up. But I often think
how searing it must be. Quite apart from the
minor a la carte menu of all the forms of dying
you have been so constantly offered to date -
would Madonna like her bomb with fire or without,
poached or with sauce!

What's a world! Thank God you live those yards
ahead of it.

I think the book is like not quite a paean
of white blossom against this Madonna satin
sky and not quite that shout of triumph that
sky is, but the vibration and rushing air
between them. You are never quite what IS,
always what MAKES things be and SHALL be,
evermore - the movement and the motive and
the principle. I think you are terrific.

Thank you very much indeed. And please
forgive my inadequacy for
cheek.

8 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, S. W. 3

FLAXMAN 8560

Sunday

Dear H.D,

So many thanks for your letter. It was nice to find it here as welcome....I rather like this va et vient which we've begun this year, don't you? I thought, - before it happened, that the Stratford trip was one of Bryher's mad ideas. But it's been a kind of spring-board - it was our V-Day, - and since they instead of holding the fort literally, we have each been attending 'shrines' - you Stratford, Bryher her Cornwall, I Eck. AND now here - for it works, it works. Much as I hate leaving Eck and Eckington air, much as I love a garden, no sooner do I turn the corner here than I think this is the ONLY street in London - I've decked my window-boxes with fuschia, cherry pie, petunia and though there is no garden, I can go into my inch-square yard and look up and think there is no other part of London where I can stare at quite such stars or hear such trees and birds and river-shipping all mixed up....It's heaven here. As anywhere one is, should be.

But I am frightfully sorry about Arthur. One always tends to think that people 'like that' (and also analysts) should have NO troubles - it's only we who do. But I'm beginning to think that our lives are on the whole models of simplicity compared to others! At least we know what we're doing - or why we don't do it! And perhaps we're not (I speak of myself) as psychically dumb as we think? To return to Arthur - one thinks it would all be plain sailing with him, that he would 'see'

FLAXMAN 8560

2.

part good friends and say, we've learnt.

I suppose you can't do that in marriage, and
it's probably why so many marriages don't
work.

I think, too, marriage is a form of blasphemy.

It would be so wonderful IF it could be achieved. But it means so much, such utter vulnerability, I think it's why the Church took it as a phrase - the Bride of Christ, and so on.

It is the perfect thing, to achieve which is to die.

But love, which is much easier, seems to me of 3 kinds. You love a person because of some noise their appearance, ways or voice makes in your past - they 'ring a bell'. You have to answer it.

Or you love someone entirely for the present,
as one does a rose(forgive the sloppiness!)
knowing it soon will fall, or a blackbird's
song, knowing how hard it gets.

And there is the third, when you think someone
will be so much nicer in ten years, when you
look at them and think, yes, they'll be just
as handsome in a different way when all their
teeth are out and their hair is grey - and
you want to be with them then, as well as
now.

I think that is the final one. Someone who'll
always be the perfect answer, - in their own
idiom - to any conditions, any time. So that
they lose nothing by Time, but rather gain,
being more formed and moulded.

Now that one, grateful as one may be for the
other two, kinds, that third one one KNOWS.

8 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, S.W. 3

FLAXMAN 8560

3.

been hanging 38 of Piper's pictures all day.

Well, H.D! - Piper, Piper] Why do they always need these reinforcements of lesser geniuses than themselves? O, with his taste - how can he? Even then, one wouldn't mind the badness of the pictures, we all lapse at times, but it is the emotional content of the boosting. First Willie Walton, who has now commercialised into film-music, leaving Britten as THE man - I always remember the Grillers telling O, and E. they were so wrong not to follow Britten. But after all, Lady Ida was a racing gal, and they 'back' in their own way, and nearly as disastrously.

But I can't tell you how queerly cold it was, to have Osbert's two calls to me entirely devoted to Piper.

I think you know that the thing one is working towards is self-abnegation, a sort of whizzing-out of ceasing to matter - I don't mean suicide, I add hurriedly, but eventually, in one's last life. All the same, not being awfully interested in one's self, save as a mummy case made mobile, it is odd that O. never should ask how I am, or my work or happiness - isn't it?

Not that I matter, but I'm a sort of general grain, a pea in fellow pod.

I was living so happily at Eck, with flowers and cats and St. George and nice letters from home - it blew so cold, that Piper wind!

George goes magnifcently. I'm sorry, but he does! It's going to be much too long, but I can cut that later. I find it's like going

to a gymnasium to fence - you don your mask,
and at once, the attitudes of epée come to you.
I know them all, know where they lived, what
George's mother did while he was away, and
what Tyre looked like when he landed - all I
do is write. Often I get off a bus, and nip into
a Post Office, to scrawl down lines on Govt.
telegraph forms. - This is being lamentably
poete. But I think, once over 40 one can allow
one's self a few of the privileges it was wise
to scoff at earlier, no?

Blank verse is a very queer thing to write!
I tend normally to be rather constricted - My
musical education is poor, I have no ear but
lots of tongue - my words dicate their rhythm.
This is bad for sense, I get drunken with words
and also bad for complete structure. That's
why I like plays - each scene has to begin
at a certain point and reach another (if it
doesn't - you make a separate scene - there
speaks the amateur!). But I find blank verse
can thin out so treacherously, into almost
dictated prose. I have to watch that, which is
good for me.

I also find that if you are writing of the
3rd century A.D, so many terms of allusion are
cut out! That's good, too, though.

No, I don't think one can write of Akenhaten.
Maybe one day; not yet - he's too much God.
Nor could one give Nefertiti // words, at
least I couldn't. I've even spelt her name
wrong at the thought of it. I think only
you could write that profile.

It might be possible to do a play in which
she didn't come in - it was Ty, and whoever
it was he made the sergeant/scribe, are so
extraordinary. I would like to do the play
as the building of the city, because I know
I lived there, in a corner house - I'd like a
play on the new capital, with throwbacks and

FLAXMAN 8560

4.
throw-forwards. All the same, I don't think one
can write about Akenhaten. He is one's full-
est silence. He's too terrific. GOD is not. God
made himself a sort of Boyriil trade-mark,
and admitted his own failure when he sent
down the Son of Man, instead of himself.
We know this was to give the Eastern idea
of feminity a boost, but still - there has
never been anything sacred about God, he had
it all too much his own way. People like
Akenhaten, Sophocles, Shakers, H.D, Blake,
Shelley, Whitman (with much cut away) and
Freud - you can't touch Saints.

I would like to write one play in which Michelange's Adam comes to life, to him, to his own inspiration and to God.

I think that Adam is as far as Europe goes -
and why we turn to Egypt.

Yet - Shakespeare knew them both! How was
Twelfth Night? - is there any play at all,
save Hamlet, which begins so beautifully?
No nonsense, no easy lines while audience
settled, but up with the curtain, and then
bang, into a realm of a ding loveliness -
I think one of the uncanny things about
Shakers is that he sort of uses every flower
and herb as a most visual members of an
orchestra.

I love Much Ado for the ripostes of Beatrice
and Endrick - I love the Clady-Luce in the
part, it ought to be Vivien Heigh. Poor little
hampered soul, how could she have the first
idea of Beatrice? The names of the two, to
start with, give the clue - blessing and
badinage.

the Mary who'd answer "Woman, what have I to do with you?" with "A damned sight more than you realise". And also, a Mary who had none of the ease of being either Madonna or Magdalen.

But as I say, no poem - and even as that, only what Nell G.might have said to Charles 2.- but really, just rough-scratch notes on the margin of (heaven help us all) CALENDAR!

And you'll understand why YOU, adding on from WALLS, just when one is shaken by THE GIFT, each whorling so really from the other, makes a formal implication that on the whole one is glad to be alive at the same time, rather cheek.

I believe Elevation of the Host is to be faced, if one can face, by bowing. The same thing, in our own terms, is - psychic process. Which makes yr.writing a ritual.

To be watched, but in silence. I don't think one can praise a Passion?

Forgive the enclosed, but I hope you'll like her, even if she is only Delysia.

If this poem is called

THE FOURTH MARY,

the following note may be necessary -

There were three Marys at the foot of the Cross. For any fourth, fifth, sixth or other Marys, there may therefore have been little room.

I have pictured one of these later Marys as, through humility, and in-
decision, arriving a little late (at her own tenebrus, as well, of course)
and standing ' a little way off'.

But being thereby in more direct line of vision.

This fourth Mary represents all other Marys (after the first three) but
is to be more specifically identified with St. Mary of Egypt, Mary the
Sinner.

Though she lived very many years after the Crucifixion, her legend com-
bines or reflects many points in those of the other Marys.

She was prepared for death by St. Zasimus of Cappodacia. That is the
country of St. George.

St. George is the chief intermediary for sinners interceding. Anyone
who calls to God three times in St. George's name will be heard.

Mary of Egypt is addressing Christ through George, but as she insists
on the human attributes of her god (even as St, she is always known as
Mary the Sinner - unlike the Magdalen, who did a sort of Qusling on
sin), she insists that Remunciation is no part of Redemption, that she
is only half-way through and that if George-Christ forgets his
humanity, she will not reach completion.

Her litany is therefore a love-song.

LOVE-SONG

of

PENANCE IMPENITENT

Sir,-

'tis my giving-up of grief
makes me, your wooer, wrecked;
as unto fruiting falls the leaf
by earlier storms beflecked.

Peace-after-pain meant, once, to freeze.
Stark, I was nighthought strong.
Had gale not golden into breeze,
I could have lasted long

as first you found me,-- seeming sure;
defeat's epitome!
But, crowned, I'm craven. Since your cure
is homeopathy.

All you give, others had gainsaid.
All you are, had witheld.
I hardened undisturbed, when dead;
But I haunt me, now unspelled.

Sir, -

Analyser of all ill,
joy's Gabriel 'nunciate,
decree not Dragons that you kill
in me, shall turn to hate

your well-come wings to scales of woe.
All against loss you kept
shakes soil in me, whose shoots now grow
where once in fear, they slept.

Yes, Algol Argus drives in me.
Seismic erupts my ice.
Soul's seven seasons are set free
that Virtue grip, like vice.

Till then -

Sir, -

helmeting of gold
perpetual, needs no shine
of suppliance. You will not scold,
with scalding, tin that's mine.

2.

You'll let my night's mare run its course,
my moon dip in your sun,
knowing your faith will find white horse
the black your backing's won

and ultimately, Ursus star,
true Plough of tested fields,
alone - each past what now we are -
we'll be, not sow, what's yield.

Sir, -
my Lorettos lurch to hell.
Un-holy sepulchre
must be the cave wherein I dwell,
in place apart from Her.

Sicken not that I do not stand
clear-eyed, clean, circumspect.
I could be as you'd understand
did not that mean reject

the glow of fur within your voice,
the samite of your eyes.
Purity purrs through you. Rejoice
shipwreck hits reef as prize.

Sir Saint, -
my raddled soul you raise.
'Tis therefore none dare sink
as low as I. To you.

Whose ways
prove filth's fringe, Re-birth's brink.

NOTES

This Mary signs no petition. She has spent her life being a sinner, and that is what she is.

I could be as you'd understand,

i.e. like the other Mary, 'saved',
did that not mean reject -

reject the particular human qualities by which she was convinced of
godhead. She attaches herself to the glow of fur within your voice
which first won her, and then, lest that seem too animal, adds there
was samite, too, in the eye.

She ties the two up into "purity purrs".

But so she insists that salvation is not a de-sexing. Her Saviour is
as much man as she proposes to be woman. She reminds that, though to
a saint, a converted sinner may be a ship brought to haven, to the
sinner conversion is a bitter foundering on one's own sins, for
which rescuing may be the hardest punishment. Though to the rescuer,
one may be prize, one is wreck to one's self at the moment one most
wants to be more worthy -

Sir, 'tis my giving up of grief
makes me, your wooer, wrecked.

She has, it is hoped, no illusions as to her worth, and in that is a
little more humble than some of the other Marys. To her conversion
does not mean blinding joy, but bitter remorse at a past she is
not going to renounce, but live through in the new light.

Fruit and soil metaphors have reference to the meaning of George as
'farmer'. Gold is an attribute, as also helmet and white horse.
St. George and the sign of Taurus being linked, and Taurus being
Plough, 'gives' verse 10.

May, being Ma(r)y's month, and the Ice days coming in the middle, when
Algol dominates, 'gives' verse 7.

Verse 11. is nightmare running together of events in the lives of the
other Marys - the Virgin's flying house, the Magdalen at the tomb and
also the cave in which the Magdalen lived her last years. Mary of
Egypt also lived her last years in a cave. Her conversion occurred
at the sepulchre in Jerusalem, - and to get there, after she had
Seen the Light, she sold herself to the captain and crew on the
voyage, having no fare.

8 CHEYNE ROW. CHELSEA, S.W. 3

FLAXMAN 8560

Sunday

Dear H.D,

I enjoyed this afternoon so much, and thank
you for making clear to me the dance of the
signs.

I am just back and feel I must carry on the con-
versation about Re-inccarnation, or pre-carnat-
ion. Otherwise, it will get lost.

I am surprised to find I had never mentioned it
before. I suppose I took it for granted as one
takes it for granted one writes and therefore
(unlike Bowen) doesn't talk about it. There seems
no need to.

I think Egypt wasn't the first - there was a
life before that, I can't get it but it has to
do with caves and ivy and shaggy dogs and was
tribal. It was a lower kind of life, but I was
all right in it.

There, of course, it is so difficult - the diff-
erence between times and layers of civilization.
One may have first lived in a very cultured era
and then next time, gone back - in another land
to a more backward life.

As I feel I have by being here now.

My lack of enthusiasm for certain modern invent-
ions isn't only conservatism, but that, once I
knew better ones, and can't really whoop with
wonder at these things of to-day, which seem
toys merely, containing memories (at the most) of
magic long lost.

Egypt is helmets and roses and gold - gold armour
gold skin, gold sun and gold bricks. The other
colours are blue - blue air, blue silk hangings,
blue that floats, and red - either scarlet, or
umber. There have to be these colours. I think

gold corn, too. Rarely green, which seems the colour of death, and very few other colours. But always gold, red and blue. The red can be the colour of running blood or of dried. Dried, or spilled, blood is not death, because there is no such thing as dying. Dying, as such, is a changing on to another form of life. Death, as such, is a negating of life.

I think I was a captain of horse. I think I lost an arm or a leg in battle. For I have always spent a great deal of time, instinctively, learning to stand for long stretches on one leg 'in case' and in being able to do things with both hands or arms, in case I ever only had one. This has been like a past memory. And I am always doing things to my right hand or arm.

I think fire comes into it, or maybe what will come. This may be infant memory, as my nightdress put to warm on a chair, caught fire once and Mother hid the charred chair so that I should not remember it, but I found it in the box-room. I am NOT frightened of water - maybe, I have had that. Water cannot harm me. I think this is the Nile. (See it written)

I know my own bit of the Nile, and I always have to be by rivers (Here, Cambridge and Clifton). I know all the background of 'Antony and Cleopatra' as if I had written it. And it is odd that that is the only rare Shakespeare I have. I tried to get 'Measure for Measure' but it was imperfect.

I think Egypt was my high-light. I can't make out if, as a captain, I was in with those above me -- colonels - or had very good subordinates. I, short, whether now, I am seeking those under me that I used to lead, or wishing to be led by them.

I think all that was wrong then was that I was a voluptuary. But didn't work it out. I shall be a monk - not a religious one, but an ascetic. On a mountain monastery. The blue will then be white and grey, the gold pale sand, and the red, the blood, will have been polarised.

8 CHEYNE ROW. CHELSEA, S.W. 3

FLAXMAN 8560

2

I think my old soldier self doesn't like this apotheosis - I think disciplined, pent up in barracks, he would have liked to have had his fling in warm Egypt, doesn't like not-having it here. I think he may have been walled up before he was dead.

I have no feeling about Renaissance times. I like Plantaganet, and I like Restoration - that is helmets and swords again, as if one were telephoning and got the wrong exchange. I wore a gold or copper breastplate, I miss that and dress accordingly, and I miss my sword. Which was short and broad-bladed.

I need a certain quality in people's voices, which I can only describe as being filtered by fur. I am frightened of short people - Bryher doesn't count as short, because her personality is so terrific, it reaches her up to six feet or so. But everyone I feel at home with has to be tall.

My right hand man was either killed in another part of the battle, or perhaps martyred when I wasn't; or else I was killed or martyred. But either way, it was a question of one or other not being able to get there in time. I have been looking for that person ever since.

I think rather that if Egypt was my first or third life, then have said this wrong, I think if Egypt were my second life, it was this person's first or else third. All this may be simply a way of saying one is looking for an older or a younger. But I know a friend said to me quite sincerely "It is extraordinary, how you always have to find very old types".

With people, I look and like first hands, then voice, after that skin, eyes and hair. Face means little - as if face is only a mask. And I am

always trying to force people to admit what they
were and to be what they will be.
Which of course isn't easy.

I find this present life, in 20th century, verging
drastically beyond the irrelevant. Which is why I
think, I really can't bother to make a success of
anything. I feel it is simply a rather unimporta-
tant Tube station.

The only part of me that is consciously and sing-
ingly alive in this century is my body. I don't
think I have ever been more physically fit. But
in this life, I am working out that fitness with-
out the component happiness. And my mind won't
be happy till the New Age. By which time, as an
ascetic, I shall have left my body behind. Which
will be a bore.

And what is bore is the impossibility of using
one's mind and unk.fully,because this is only
the 20th century.In the old days,my body used
my mind as an extension of itself,and I fought,
leapt onto horses,my horse was always grazing
while I grew roses out of Nile mud,and mesmeris-
edions,which I can still do,or did the last
time I saw them.

But now,in this between-whiles era,my mind has
to to use my body in mental terms only and that
is useless,because we know we are leaving the
realms of merely conscious intellect.

I think that is why I don't get on with so many
people ,because they know I scorn what they
most represent.

I think also I dislike the future because,while
I am corporeal,I still want to live out the
life I never had then and still think my Egpyt-
ian terms were the best,if one could have had
them straight.This half living out past and
half pre-living present, is so trying.More es-
pecially as one's suicide would only send one
back to a backward form of life, being a rat or
something.

I dislike the whole thing,frankly,and don't real-
ly know why one has to bother, except that one
has to work it out.But when it is only for one's

8 CHEYNE ROW. CHELSEA, S. W. 3

PLAXMAN 8560

3.

self, it seems an awful lot to ask of one, does'nt it?

I suppose the Validity of Self is the whole basis of any religion, but it's awfully hard to forge that self forward - alone - isn't it, when it is really the background one is looking for, to take one's place in? And that is a bit more than even ps-a can do.

I don't want to be free of my mother, my brother etc ONLY! I want to have back my horse and my knight, my roses, which were pink, and the moments of peace, polishing armour. And the hell is, however much one gets them all back, the terms are so apt to be different, it is shoes not greaves, cats, not lions; one will never get synchornised.

And only this awful cowardice, of being afraid of starting all over again as a rat, makes one keep on.

Forgive this. It's there always, But now you can meet me with no reference to it. I loathe life, as at present, so very much, that I feel the only thing to do about it is beat it, if possible, on its own terms.

But I don't like the future, IF one wins, because the future is dis-embodied, and the only terms of reference I have from other lives lead me to be embodied in this.

I trust all this isn't trespassing on your patience. But it gets it over.

And I find it so helpful, H.D., that without any distinction of age or inspiration, I can talk to you because you have always been so polite

to me.

I have never felt any claws out, indeed have
never felt anything but at peace - ram or bull
grazing.

I've often thought, how odd it is that YOU, who
are a very important person, have never made me
feel little, never patronised me.

I find it odd, and then I say "samite's the word
for H.D.she's much younger (in the vestal sense)
than anyone was or will be".

I suppose that is what you are - a vestal fulfilled, someone who gives so much more than many and yet retains a vestal quality so that, for instance, even I would never like to say anything that would insult you.

But now I must insult many others. I must write
what I think of the world - an Editorial!

GAWD help me. And them. And us. But God bless you-

Yrs,

FLAXMAN 8560

14.2.45.

Dear H.D,

Thank you enormously for the numbers, and for doing mine out, too - so kind of you. Quite nice I think! In fact, as with horoscope, I always feel, so nice, one wonders things don't go a bit more so - or is apt to, and then a what-not falls ( a bit rackety to-night!) and one feels one is lucky after all, and is grateful - though that isn't the word, perhaps 'sensible of indebtedness' would be better!

I am glad my letter arrived opportunistly. It is the XVIIIth dynasty, I think - Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), who tried to found the 'new' religion, or at any rate reigned at the time of conflict of two, like us now. And the two capital cities have significance, I think. But, I agree - not too much to be talked of, or even too consciously thought of, or one goes shooting off sometimes on the wrong tack, and gets into not the right place. But other times, it all seems so clear.

Very very many MANY thanks -

NORTHLANDS

ECKINGTON
near Sheffield

DERBYSHIRE

CHESTERFIELD

Monday

ECKINGTON 33

Dearly respected H.D,

A line to hope you travelled well, and got away before the thunderstorm - I woke for the 7.a.m. one on Saturday, but had no more till here yesterday, when the Zeus-blitz travelled North! I hope you therefore missed it.

Look, I have found your George... both your copy and mine were here. So sorry. But yours was in the important bookcase, with the Magazines - I thought Br. brought it back, but as she didn't, I evidently locked it up. I won't bring it back, as I am bringing mine and you can have that if you wish.

It is heaven here, the garden in profusion (I suppose, having been up lately, my de-budding, weeding etc has worked, anyway I have never had such flowers before). Carnations in really royal spendour, the roses in which I 'specialised' so beautiful that one forgets all the horticultural side of them and merely revels in their silken suns - deep red, bronze, peach shot to amber, and tea roses. Sweet peas, red - and white wallflowers. Also, cornflowers, tiger lilies, gentian, campion. The verbena is in flower, and so is bergamot, which I have never seen before. I have a vase of deep crimson carnations and Sweet William (Sweet Anne Page - or rather, Sweet Will Shake!). There is even an appalling rustic arch of ruby ramblers. All this you know, in windswept North, means rather much!

I got the papet away before I left, and also sent down the August number, so for the first time I have no L. and L. with me, and for four

days have only my own work to do. I don't remember when I have achieved this before. Much as I love my L. and L, it is so strange not to be torn, Mazeppa-wise, between one's editorial and personal self in writing.

The play goes FINELY. I have now the names of all the people, except the girl he was betrothed to. This is a nuisance, but I am calling her Honoria, or rather the Coptic equivalent. I have collated all the versions, and got down his deaths and miracles in order, so that I have been able to work out the play in scenes and acts.

I am taking it that he didn't die at all, only that those who wished him to, did what they thought would make him die. That is, if you have faith, you can't die - you could have died in 1918, again in 1940, but you didn't. Tho' you had enough to make you die, if you see what I mean. FAITH I am taking in no theological sense, but simply as WILL to know and therefore, to survive. SACRIFICE, which comes in so much in religion, I take as Transcending, not abnegating, Self. And 'Christian' seems to me much more easy of assimilation when spelt with a hyphen - Christian, that is 'Christ-ish' - Christ was a good man, we Christians try to be like him. I have pinched a leaf from Dowding, if you don't mind, who said the Buddha was concerned with simply his OWN salvation....I think it was the peculiar function of Christianity, or if you like, its development from other religions, that it suggested (frankly that is what it is) there is more happiness in loving others than yourself, IF your view of love is such that you cast out the devils from you, to be sure of loving right.

George being a soldier and we being scribes, sword and stylus, saves me from 'intellectualism' - Now I have the script clear, I go ahead like mad. O, H. D, if only one were living in the Stratford days when plays were the normal channel of expression! I could write and write! I would so like to do, beside Dick Whittington

NORTHLANDS

ECKINGTON
near Sheffield

DERBYSHIRE

CHESTERFIELD

2.

ECKINGTON 33

straight, Akenhaten and his mother and that
strange nurse and her husband, who was a sergeant
and succeeded him.

I must nip to ppst - all wishes to you, and give
my love to Shakespeare. Walk holiyly round Chipp-
ing, too. I return on Thursday, can send you cig-
arettes etc if you're short.

You saw Elsie Fogerty had died? And also Nazi-
mova? God rest their souls, though I imagine the
former's was so hard-cased, it won't be till 50
years it will creep out and need our prayers.

My love, and as always, gratitude -

430

26 MAIDEN LANE STRAND LONDON W.C.2

TEMPLE BAR 7697

Monday, 9th.

Dear H.D,

Thank you so much for yr. letter and cutting - indeed, for the meeting. I have put the cutting in a book of drawings of the R.A.F. I have (you know) at beginning of the war, I collected every R.A.F. book), opposite a drawing of him.

Yes, it was funny of him about the glass. I felt something was going on then and could only think he wanted the glasses to pass through his hands, for he handed it on to Arthur, who handed on to me, then he handed the next to Arthur, and kept the third and you kept yours - and so the circle was complete, the first one having come back next to you (by being handed round to me).

This may simply be the old thing one does with port, the host pours out and hands the glass, which goes on, round the clock - or else he passes the decanter round. But I felt Dowding was sort of being benedictory.

He is a funny old bird, I can't quite make out the mystery. There certainly is a mystery, for after all to save the world and then be retired, is very odd. I got in touch with an R.A.F. friend over the week-end, to mention the name casually. He at once leapt to his feet, to attention, saluted and said "That's what we think of him", but added "there is something strange about his being retired". I mumbled to the effect he had imagination and those high up always fear that.

Do you think it is quite literally that he foresaw and foretold the Battle of Britain, what would happen, and the physical destruction - and from that has moved on to the threat of spiritual destruction, which cannot be faced?

It may be that Bryher knows something of the official view, but I should think rather it is some kind of father-fear. Plus also this; Bryher always adored flying. She has frequently said she has hated so during the war, not being able to fly. She was, after all, a sort of pioneer in air-travel.

Do you not think the airmen have taken that away from her?

As passengers, we shall all have to fly again after the war, flying in different machines, at different speeds, going undreant-of distances.

May it not be that Dowding is a sort of father-airman who has taken away from her the air - in which she was free and which was her sort of escape from not being a boy?

I am being a pest and enclosing you the first scenes of the play I am doing on St. George, about which I was such a bore about the book.

Don't let this be a bore to you, though - and don't bother to return it, it is carbon and I have the top copy. I merely thought I would like to show it to you. Tear it up when you've read - if you get as far as that!

LIFE AND LETTERS TO-DAY incorporating THE LONDON MERCURY AND BOOKMAN
EDITED BY ROBERT HERRING

This first part merely sets George's relationships and influences - it really was very odd that when his father, the Governor, died, he was adopted by the new Governor and got engaged to the Daughter, who was thus nearly his sister - most Egyptian!

The tricky part will come when I get on to the martyrdom and miracles! Phew. I am going to go straight ahead, neither theologising on the one hand, nor de-bunking on the other. George simply progresses in understanding, discarding pride, etc as he goes on, and the miracles simply are that a person who is strong can do ANYTHING.

The only thing I do rationalise is about God being brought on. That is too difficult, so I am letting God be simply George praying aloud, and then manifesting as Michael and Gabriel - Messengers of God.

Well, I won't plague you with more now. But I'll be glad if you think the first scenes readable.

I am so sorry about Cole. I don't see what you can do, and only hope you won't let it get you down. I suppose it is partly guilt at having survived the war? But as she won't help herself, no one else can and you must NOT let yourself be drained or worried.

It seems to me that one's 'bunch' of friends is a sort of group of cells, making a collective unity. One hopes they all function equally, but until everyone is analysed, they won't - it is like having a perfectly whole body, and then one stubs a toe or cuts a finger. Cole is that toe or finger (in one group of mine, Lorna Lewis is a Cole). But there are many other organs and limbs with stronger life-wish, so it's all right really. The main thing is not to let the finger infect one.

Now, to close, a story. - The R.A.F. chap I mentioned I got round over weekend, came in last Sunday night. Naturally, I used all my drink for the party so when I knew he was coming, I nipped opposite with a jug to get some beer. - There I ran bang into a certain Sir John Squire. You know, he is the last person I want to know my address. So I could not at once nip back with my beer, I'd have seen him I live.

On the other hand, the R.A.F. man was due!

So there was nothing to do but engage Squire in talk outside the pub, in the road, so that I could see if my friend came and he would see me and know what would be happening!

And at that moment there walked down the road not my friend, but David Horner, in uniform and WITH one of the PRIESTS who live opposite. Why David should ambulate with priests on a Sunday past pubs, I don't know. But it was embarrassing - naturally, I did not 'see' him. But now, you see, there will be a long tale sent to the Hall that, really, Robert has now taken to drinking in the road with Squire on Sundays, he is probably going the same way as Squire, is it not too much and I suppose I am now too disreputable to be admitted to Hall ever again - all because, for once I was trying NOT to let disreputable Squire know where I lived. O, dear! Still, a joke and who cares - but mildly annoying!

ACT 1.

Scene 1.
Lydda. The Courtyard of Count George's home, pen on one side, through pillars, to the desert, towards which Theognosta, his Mother, frequently lifts her eyes. She is attended by her daughters, Marta and Kasya, aged seventeen and thirteen, who are spinning.

To them enters rather excitedly the Daughter of Justus, betrothed to George. Theognosta is placid, without the conscious hold over her son that the Daughter imagines. There is, though, none the less a hold and it may explain some of the young Count's later actions.

Daughter (entering with accepted informality) Where is your son?

Theognosta (graciously)

I hope, where he would wish

D. (impatiently)

Some have to hope, whose have is not to hold

Theognosta (as her girls

laugh at the wheel) To have given birth is - not to have grown

(Marta and Kasya have got into difficulties with their spinning.) sour.

Marta

Spike not upon the wheel, which as you see, grows worn.

(Theognosta smilingly shoos them out, as it is clear the Daughter is a little overwrought)

Theognosta

I said - he's where he'd wish.

W. (jealously)

Meaning, the field?

Theognosta (proudly) Meaning, in feats of arms!

Chap challenges for pride!

D.

Risks for reward. Without reward, no risk.

Theognosta (sympathetically)

That is more women's' warfare.

D. (speaking mainly to herself)

Men will go

Theognosta (looking at her admiringly, for she is beautiful)

through Rubicons for roses. Roses smother all.

Their scent can captivate.

D. (self-righteously)

Their petals droop

Theognosta

And 'tis your woe, you think, that your lips' rose

(wishing to help)

is scorned to kiss them better? Come, my child,

men must be boys before the boy turns man
and while the body grows, all heart, all brain
speaks but as body, urging it to knocks
that help it hayden as a house for Soul.

He'll not be ever thus; away from you.

D.

He fights from pride.

Theognosta

One day, he'll fight for faith!

D. (out of her depth) Faith?

Has he not that now? Has he not me?

Theognosta (simply - and if the girl knew it, half her doubts would be clear

You? He needs more than that. Men do.

D

You talk now like a mother!

Theognosta (unruffled)

Women do.

And send good girls from home; To hear -

D

Theognosta (tenderly)

Yes?

1.

Theognosta (kindly)

Nor would, since words are woe.

With love your lover's fraught.

Lessen his leaving for him, To him - so.

(She urges the Daughter towards George, who has gone up to age,
during this exchange. Then, as he turns towards the Daughter,
she exits through the pillars between them. George unloops
curtains, which close the colonnade and seem to make a
chamber of the courtyard)

SCENE 2

(George, leading Daughter of Justus forward, as if into a
room of his own, the curtains seeming to remove trace of
his mother)

George

What storm clouds my return?

D.

My lord knows

this brew would be his heaven, not hurl bolts
of thunder.

George

Even now, your tongue

D(relaxed, twisting)

darted its lightning at my mother's head.

She makes me out, not what I am but all

she dared not, or has feared that she might, be.

Her nimble speech upturns, like a quick plant
that, as it clasps, constricts what it embraces.

My slow, as yet soft, oak she twists from its
direction:

I, poor sapling, I inst her rooted years,

lack strength to break the poisoned ivy-words.

Now... I have said too much?

George (as if to a child)

Knowing so little still,

how can you say too much? Your surplus words,

being empty, blow away - like smoke from shots

tired, out of fright, to fright - but leave no

wound.

D(vehemently)

One day you will not mind what others say.

Then may that day come soon! For till it does,

and you alone come - hear no now! - you are
a very chiding champion when you woo.

George (teasingly)

Are you so sure I do, then?

D

Once I was.

But now, your horse, your mother and your men
mean more as much than me.

George (laughing)

Gloss her not with my charger or her rage will
ride,

at that comparison, rough-shod over you! I did!

I might be numb to feeling, I whose own
seem to be no'er respected nor returned.

D.

George (seriously)

All feelings are, though as just now you said,
re-turning sometime, twists them. These her words
are bramble not yet blackberry. Time will come
when she will fruit to friendship in your sun -

5.

(embracing her) -

D.

George

One of her family has already, see!
And that's her son, which is my trouble too.
While we are as we are - not one - she sees
me as one half my father, half her self.
You take the two from her. But when we're wed,
I, whom she's lost as son, become the man
her husband was, and you her youth renew,
as daughter, dovered with the love that she found true.
All will be well - it will be - once we're wed.

D(fervently)

George

Amen! if you have leisure for such littleness.
I do not think you trivial. Would I be a
chained to a chit, a trinket tinkling 'mew'?

D.

Not I, my lord, think you class me as small,
And if you did, I've ways to wreak you wisdom.
Ay, and words, speak in disarmoured hours,
that showed me in your estimation high.

George

Too high, perhaps, for one so worldly-fixed
as needs sweetmeats of flattery, not affection's food.

D.

Worldly, my lord! From you! But marriage is
only a small part, worldly. That may be
a reason you disdain it. For your horse,
your toop, so not claim wedlock, yet they have
your time and troubling. They are your career.

George (gravely)

Do you know my career?

'Tis almost all

I was allowed to, for your company
and all adhesive to it, I'm denied.
Once, you were always at my home. We said
'George grows into our gatepost' - so much you
were lintel ornament while father lived.
Now he is gone, you come not. It is I
must go a-gidding after you, poor fly
those blazing scarce obtrudes on business.

George

Your father was the Governor. I, his ward.
He gave me rank, responsibility and taught
trim training that has gained me all men's love.

D.

George

Would that they loved you less and you me more!
Am I not known to be the youngest sheik,
yet bravest colonel? Even my vanquished foe,
after their conquering by me, in praise
that floods like Nile in these, my Egypt days
of Spring. And would you dam that?

D.

I would be.
alone the world of compliments to you.

George (musing)

'Tis I that am alone. - Yes, I have you,
my lotus. But, the Governor, dead - your father,
mine before him, I have foes ahead
and now no friends behind me. I must seek
rivetting to the armour at my back,
else will my shoulder-blades be sun and moon,
hacked into separate spheres. Therefore I go
to Tyre.

D.

I think Tyre calls
only because it draws you from my arms.

5a

Here round we

George

Pass not the matter. Now yet have I,
these twenty years, been single. And I would
are a ring rounds us, break off every chain,
even allegiance, to stand up at length
and say "George is, - for George dare be, alone".

D.

You speak in spate and though I take your words
as irrigation, I am not yet come
to harvesting of approximation.

George (gently)

All my life I have been cured for. First
by my father, after him by yours.
Both were the Governor, gave me rank and power
or loaned it rather, since it was not earned.

It is not natural for a man to have
two fathers and two Governors. I am tired
of being governed.

D. (alarmed)

George!

George

I have to be
My Governor. I must learn self-governing.
For love, - that too was given, yours following
my mother's. All I have is given,
inherited. But legacies lean over
like shadows from the sun their shade
blinds me from facing. I must find myself
not in the tombs of others but in life
ahead carve my own hieroglyph,
and out of time, trials and triumphs, leave my name
scorn my own way, no other. I must fight
with sword as stylus. Soldiers can be scribes,
the holiest occupation.

D (musing)

So...My part
as part of you, your wife, is then to help
the buccling of that inner armour, which
shines outwardly as soldier. Lo, I learn

to talk like Thesognosta!

George

Mothers have
the trick of handing on as wisdom, what
their children know by instinct, as they did, like themselves.
As to wife - I see you as no part of me,
but someone I would reach and, having won,
travel the further through and with; beyond,
if need be. Only, know not assured

6.

**George**
No distance does not to your tongue's tune.
See that it bars not. I to Tyre must go
in confirmation of my rank and rights.
due/ in/ win/

(He draws one of the curtains, as if to let in air. It is clear
night outside)

**D**
We have so much already, scarce need more
had we both seven lifetimes for expense.
Where'er you look, no limits to your lands.
As thick as dates on palms, your palaces. And as the sands
your untold jewels jostle.
(She joins him, gazing at the sky)

All, I think,

**George**
I'll never own will be those stars - your eyes.
They must ride in a heav'n as quiet as that.

Their sky, my soul, must win serenity
that I earned peace by fighting for my faith.

**D.**
Are power and pomp such fit partners for faith?
Christ's followers fought by giving, not amassing.
They did leave their all to follow him.

left/

**George**
My all must be greater than gear of fishermen.

That prize again!

**D**
Not pride, but duty. Anyone can give
all if, in but little, it is light to lose.

Health shackles us but, orst of, sets us freer
than nomads' knick-knacks, easy to discard.

**D**
Ifiligence is knick-knack - pray, discard!

Wealth as a weapon I must wield. - It were
fitting that those who first the Light did see,
did so instinctively - unlettered men.

plain, natural/

Even before them, it was simple men beasts
first bared to Him, born amongst them. Kings were late.

**D.**
They had had far to come.

On reason's road

**G.**
they travelled, doubting the way.
Those who believed at first, did so at once.

Later, some Paul and others, lettered, rich -
with more to overcome and so, to give.

sacred/

It must not be borne the poor are rare,
else poverty is seen, riches poor.

We must have fighting funds, reserves and rank,
for men are rabbles and cannot be men
unless one expiate as target and
example for them. This, my breeding gives.

But I'm a weak warrior. If my weapons are
dependent on tyro'dal whims at Tyre.

So I to Darius go with gifts,
seeking his approbation's seal, in turn
to seal his anger into atrophy with gold.

**D.**
My heart go with you! I'd not have it here,
though it held yours. I would have it go
help at this dragon's tail-twisting. There's brave
in safety!

be

Tis/

7.

George(realising she understands)

Because I am a Christian, does not mean
I must indent my checks with groans, fold hands
and, since I found salvation, be obsessed
so much with sin, I see roughed but my own.

Christ was good company. His deeds have cleared,
not cringed, my conscience. Heaven I take to be
so to live here, that when I die, my life
may so encourage others that it, once single, will
flower in myriads.

In this one, it still
But let me go with you. I'd be as still
as every separate hair upon your head,
so I might helmet it from sculpting sords
of indigolous sinners, as all are
intending injury to you. In my eyes.

I fear this badiamus, friend or foe.

All men are foes, till they have learnt to love.

(He leads her out, the curtains falling behind them)

Dr.

George

London: 8 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, LONDON, S.W.3

Country: NORTHLANDS ECKINGTON DERBYSHIRE
near Sheffield

CHESTERFIELD

Tuesday night

FLAXMAN 8560
ECKINGTON 33

Dear H.D,

I sent off your cigarettes to-day, and I must say, I was delighted to feel of some practical use. I got them at Harrods, but posted myself, as I knew, than I would be sure they had gone at once to you.

I must thank you for your letter. I write later than I meant to, but I can't tell you what an extraordinary time I am having. On Sunday, I had to clear the kitchen for the painters. They are as co-operative as can be, want to do it all, themselves - but you know, one PREFERS to hide even one's twopenny tin of pepper, probably lose it too, than just rather coldly leave it to others to turn out! And what hordes a basement kitchen can contain - in wartime, one has thrown no tins away, even kept empty cigarette boxes for the times when one had to buy them loose - such stacks of stuff. I'm having a revolt against possessions!

Still, it's all great fun - snow-blindness will result, I'm sure, from this new dazzling white! But it's a bit Alpine, living from crag to crag, not being able to get into either bathroom or kitchen properly! In fact, which is so funny, I am living a bed-sitter life, my dinding room littered with shoes and breakfast trays and in the midst, papers and books and papers, for I can't stop writing - and over all, I say, I wonder if Edith or Kenneth ever had such fun! It may seem odd, to bracket them toGETHER, but you know how they stand unKISHLY, I think, for people who don't seem to get enough out of life. Or rather, don't know the sides of life that make the rest such fun.

Yes, I know Wilson Knight! Sorry, but I had a bit of correspondence with him at one time. Ages ago, I think he wrote from Canada. It didn't come to much, I think I was not 'aware' then enough, or 'awake'. Only interested but disturbed. I think, though, it was nothing then as terrific as all this you mention re Shakespeare and St. George, and I am sure I should have got that, as I have always felt that thing about them and the dates. -

What you say about St. Michael is most exciting, has helped me, too, a great deal. If God became Man, in the form of Jesus, son of Mary, then I can see Michael could become George - the angel, I mean, an ordinary man, - George being as much 'below' Jesus as Micahel was 'below' God.

There is an awful lot I want to know about Michael, though. For instance, he and Gabriel are Archangels, yet M. is always Saint Gabriel, rarely. On the other hand George and M. are both St. and both Champions.

of Christendom. And then I find that Gabriel and Michael don't speak, because one is adopted by the Jews, the other by the Muslims.

I have written stacks of George. I did all his martyrdoms in one long speech, which is supposed to go on as he is being tortured. The various forms of punishment being simply verbal images, the speech itself concerned with his development through them. It seemed the only way to avoid that awdul sadism of Dreyer's Joan film. I am not sending you this speech, God spare you!

But I AM sending you his first Resurrection speech, when he sort of steps aside from his physical remnants, because I want a sort of Easter wonder as he looks at himself and considers it is only this very very thin layer of skin and blood that makes us living. It always seems to me so astonishing - without that tiny layer, we'd all be bones. But with it, we have not only what 'lifts Adam above Acheron' but makes that Adam individual - just in that matter of blood is the difference between Nero or Nefertiti - I hope such considerations are legitimate for George as he rises from the dead - I think they are, but doubt if I have done it. Don't return, - destroy.

Dadianus, I may say, is the tyrant who torments him, and he is just about to revisit him as revenant -

You have enabled me to do one scene of his with Michael. Then, I mean now, I must do more -

I hope the weather holds and the plays surprise. I LOVE the cards you have been sending me.

All my best wishes -

18, STATION ROAD

ECKINGTON

DERBYSHIRE

near Sheffield

Saturday

CHESTERFIELD

ECKINGTON 33

Dear H.D,

At last I can say it - we have got through. All of us, I mean, intact - or moderately so. And I think what did it were your *Walls* and *Tribute*. We had all been working away, in our own ways, but yours was the crystallising, the thing one could look into and say "YES - that's what it's about".

And now what a very good place you have chosen to be in for the real end of the end of the war! - Is it not queer, for V-E Day, we were all on such tenterhooks, not daring to leave London or move for WEEKS, I got an absolute wreck. This time, we are all separate - I think it is a good thing. We lived at such close range during the war and it seemed to me it was when we started moving - to Stratford in April - that the war began to end. I think we ended it then. It was that sermon preached, that poets were the most important thing, that seemed to me to mark a turning point - as if the spiritual side were at last about to be realised.

Possibly, and let us hope, we are again in advance of the scientists and while they are splitting that atom, we are synthetising it - forgive me mentioning the word. I was about to write to you about it, for I felt you must feel as sick as I did - not only at it, but at the idea men can *think* of it and be driven towards it so inexorably. - I was sorry to think of you alone. But then when Japan gave in, I was glad you were where you were.

I came up here yesterday. I left London just about an hour before it was known - and quite out of touch with rumours, as I'd been at home packing all the morning. Indeed, I think most people had been so smitten with the cosmic horror of what humanity had done, they had forgotten *this* war might end.

I got the news on arrival at Chesterfield, so ran up me Chinese flag here - I really did feel it meant more to the Chinese than anyone. I unpacked my suitcase and found that my large flag of St. George had mystreriously got in on top.

I suppose it had got in because I was in a muddle at home, after
the painters, putting something away and packing others for here. But
as I hadn't been thinking of peace in terms of flags, it was a queer
porphetic shock to see it on top of my suitcase!

I am very glad to be here. Not only am I having two end-of-the-war,
the old original VE-Day in London and now this down here. But the
election and the atom had drained me. I was surprised to hear people
were celebrating. As a matter of fact, I think it was only the strays
who mill about the West End - that centre of London which is NOT
London. I rang up my home last night, as I knew a friend would be
looking in to see all was well, and he said it was very quiet, that
he wasn't bothering to have a drink and he thought most people felt
even the enormous amount of people who would be free from prison
camps - we have 60,000 British alone - didn't quite wipe out the
fate of Nagasaki.

It is strange, isn't it, that since so many Allied nations have come
to London, they all make for Piccadilly Circus on these occasions?
The average London person makes for Trafalgar Square (you remember
last war) and Whitehall....This making tourist and prostitute
Piccadilly the sort of Paris of London is so what the Bear would
do, isn't it?

Up here, I found it was the Show at the Hall. You know, they have
an annual Show for War Comforts - rabbits and bantams, and a flower
show, and pony jumping and a clarvoyante and the band from the
steelworks (playing Selections from musical comedies as it were
under Edith's window!). There was a programme, designed by Piper,
you bought for a shilling, with a new picture of Sir Osbert, Bt,
with a buttonhole and a Message from him, beginning "Now that our
beloved country can once more return to pursuit of happiness" -
all very regal.

I had forgotten the Show, had forgotten they would be playing King
and Queen up here (even to the extent of that word 'beloved'). It
somehow didn't fit in with atoms and Japan.....

I didn't go up. For one thing, David might have been there, and it
would be difficult to be cut by him before the whole village. Also,
as they didn't know I was here, I didn't feel I could enter the
domain without warning - they might have had Piper or Rosamund L.
or Oprie or some other VERY important author they wouldn't want
me to meet.

Also, I came here after all to be in my own home. And I can handle
the peace which this Peace brings to me, because it is what we
have been working to be ready for all these years. But I don't

18. STATION ROAD

ECKINGTON

DERBYSHIRE

near Sheffield

3.

CHESTERFIELD

ECKINGTON 33

think I could deal with a rather explosive atmosphere of either, "Isn't it lovely, now we can get on with our careers and illnesses" or the alternative of "Something bad will come of it".

I revelled in sun in the garden - it is the golden season, marigold and Golden Rod and sunflower and tea-rose. And I wrote and wrote on George - I think the title will HAVE to be 'The Mighty Martyr'. I reached his miracles to-day, they come bang after the speech I sent you about 'Blood restles round me'. After his miracles, he is confronted with a wheel with knives. Then Michael appears. Micahel I find myself rather in awe of. George is all right, I know and love him, and you can't be in awe of the <u>pesron</u> you love, it's really of the love you're in awe of, then. I suppose it is because I don't know Michael. I <u>see</u> him, but don't know him. His speech is more or less dictated to me, it is much simpler than George's, no imagery - queer speech, sort of white-flame, very simple words and so faint a rhythm, almost pedestrian.

George, of course is rather <u>gamin</u> - after all, half-Jew, half Negro (his mother was an Ethiop) and entirely gay young soldier. He can shed his cross during the play, but Michael alarms me - chiefly because I find it a bit uncanny mere thought of him DOES alarm. Anyway, he has brought his own speech with him and I know in my mind how he looks and how he moves. He is always on the right of the stage, I find, and full face always, never profile. More solid than St. George. It is as if, being wholly angel, when he comes to earth, he takes on a bit of earthiness. George on the other hand, ALL earth, because he is aspiring, has feathered feet.

Did I tell you I have worked out all stage movements on my toy theatre, using figures of the saints from the R.C.shop? And evolved a lovely set of revolving pillars (using candles) that can be a temple, a Courtyard, a Palace, simply by different groupings and draperies between them.

I fear this is being rather Professional Author! Sorry.

I forget - forgive me - if I sent you the proof of the bit that is to go into September. If not, would you return here IF before the end of the week? If later, address it to Miss Voules, chez Strano

Notice you begin with 'Victory'! - The result of holding you over a month I thought. Scores of enquiries. In September you are with Edith, Margiad Evans, two garled little poems by that nice Scot Jimmie Hendry, and in October, you head a galaxy of Dorothy Richardson, Edith, two 'new girls', a Chinese pal, Chun Chan Yeh and a very moving story by H.E.Bates. Your October instalment ends with the 'Kennst Du das Land'. It is a book, I think, which gets more beautiful each time I read and God knows, I must have read it at least five times by now. I don't think I have ever read anything which I took to so immediately as being pure Light.

I think I once said it was a new kind of writing. But I think now it is a new kind of perception, using a practised writing. It is incredible to me and seems the sum of all colours, diamond-burnt to white.

You see the Old Vic are giving us Henry IV, One and Two, with Olivier as Hotspur - perfect! I'm not so sure of Dame Sybil as Ma'am Quick ly - it needs Maisie Gay for that, surely. Still, she's a bawdy old thing and will probably rather enjoy herself. I'm more doubtful of her as Jocasta - in Oedipus - I can't help feeling these terrific female roles should not be played by women. A woman can't help mak-ing them personal, womanly if you like. A male actor seems to me to symbolise them much more -

I remember when I was a Soldier at the palace steps in Oedipus (at the Chiswick Empire, of all places), the male Jocasta was intoler-ably moving. But the female Helen in the play that succeeded it made no effect.

Do you know much about St. Thomas? George conjures him to baptize nine dead men he raises from the dead. I rather feel agin having too many odd saints popping in and out, like celebrities at a cocktail party, but suppose baptising isn't quite in Micahel's line - he is really Officer Commanding God's Armoury, isn't he?

I am seeing about a pig on Monday. I shan't know till then when I return. If you SHOULD want a car to meet you, however, Voules has an extensive list of car-hires at office, a telegram would fix it.

When I return, please come down very soon and see my white and gold hall and blue and white drawing-room - I'm so glad I got the house done <u>before</u> and ready for - Peace?

Those cigarettes I sent were on my own account. I hope you don't mind, I thought I'd like to. I eat and drink so much in Lowndes.

NORTHLANDS

CHESTERFIELD

ECKINGTON

near Sheffield

Sunday

DERBYSHIRE

ECKINGTON 33

Dear H.D,

Thanks so much for your letter and the proofs. Corrections are in order. And I really do thank you for writing to me whilst away, I am not 'frightened' of you, but I have a strong dislike of making inroads on anyone of your stature, and always after I have written to you, tend to feel 'O dear, I shouldn't have done that, it'll be like the telephone ringing in the middle of a bath'.

The plum-tree is perfect! It is so like the two kinds to do that criss-cross and the whole thing so much what could only happen here. Don't you find England is a queer beneficently haunted place, with certain pockets where it is simply radio-active? Stratford is one, Chipping C. another, Cambridge (to me), also Winchester and the New Forest. Up here is NOT radio-active, tho' near-by is. But I think that I, as English, could not live in TOO radio-active a part. I couldn't work in Stratford, because it is too much home, and at home, as a boy, I was never allowed to be indoors in the morning - a good idea, probably, as otherwise I'd never have got any air and it's that air in my lungs now that lets me enjoy life so.

Up here suits me because it is my equivalent of crossing the Atlantic - up here I am among Danes, Northern people, very terre a terre, who see only, as you say, with mere-man-eyes.

Yes, you are right about Edith's 'Elizabeth'. I had not seen it, that way - I had said to myself 'It is applique'. I felt it was seen from the outside, but seen so piercingly, the DOES get through to something. Only - well, with my George,

I am used, when I contemplate a play or the
idea seizes me, to 'see' them - I work them out
on my toy theatre, both mentally and in real
action.

I can't quite explain, but the very first speech
George came into my head with, which made me say
'Hullo, I'm going to write a play about you' -
I knew that George, entering my mind, had come
in RIGHT, Back.

All the time the characters and their speeches
are happening in my mind, I 'see' them at it -
as if I were a puppet-manipulator at the back.

I am behind them, waiting.

I am not really putting them into anything, or
putting much into them. I am simply watching
what they want to do, and when they get into a
jam, give them a hint -

It is like bringing up a kitten.

But I feel Edith is sitting in the front row
stalls and putting into the puppets what is
not, always or invariably, there. It is a lovely
interpretation. But I think Catherine Howard or
Anne Bullen might be a rather temperamental
star and say 'This is all very well, Miss Sit-
well, I may have done that, but I assure you
I didn't feel like that when I did it'

And Edith would say 'Nonsense! It's not for you
to feel. I've given you very good lighting, you
have a fine dress, you're being given far more
attention than you've ever had before. Go back
and behave yourself - as I wish.'

I am NOT belittling a magnificent achievement,
but I simply do feel it is Edith who lives
through her characters.

And I do know, however much I fail, that on the
other hand, my characters live through me.

No comparison - simply a different approach.
Rather as if one were a flower, one sits there,
and a certain kind of butterfly comes along -
certain ideas, or people, come into one's head
to write about, and once one starts, they really
write through you, you don't write about them.

However badly, God knows !

NORTHLANDS

CHESTERFIELD

ECKINGTON

near Sheffield

2.

DERBYSHIRE

ECKINGTON 33

That's why I don't feel penitent either for
the Farquhar play or old St.G. - I feel if
they'd disliked it, they would have had their
own ways of making me get stuck!

This may be mere sophistry, but after all, it
lets me go on, and that is the main thing.

I've finished St.G. I send you now two more
speeches, to add to the chunk I sent Bryher. The
George one, apart from the note attached to it,
is what I more or less said every night I was
in a raid and some silly little German boy was
hovering overhead, likely to kill me - and all
of us.

The other, the Dadianus one, is dramatically motivated. But, I hope, an analysis of analysis. I have tried to put the process of psycho into a speech - the swift beginning when one knows what one wants to say, the stumble, the using of symbols (dervishes), and the final linking on to actuality, without - in this case, - having got anywhere.

Now, I have had a queer shock. Having finished
the play, I permitted myself to look up Milton.
You know, he used St. Michael as the Angel wot
turned Adam and Eve out of the Garden. - I
always felt that unfair. I always felt that
was an Anonymous, rather manqué, angel. And not
liking Milton as a man, tho' loving his sonority
I suppose I had blocked that.

Anyway, that was all right. I read the St. Michael
part of Paradise Lost. THEN I remembered that
I myself had written several poems in Milton's
garden at Cambridge! - one of my friends was
at Christ's, and had rooms overlooking them. We
used to tea with each other alternate Sundays.

Then I remembered that Milton was called
'the lady of Christ', partly because, apparently,
of his extreme good looks and partly because he
would not partake in wild undergraduate excess-
es - i.e., would not be ' a man'. Therefore, was
called a lady.

That was all right. We know Milton married 3 time
which suggests pent up fires. I then looked up
Milton - it was a little shattering to find
his last wife outlived him by fifty years.

He didn't marry his first wife when he was all
that young, so his last wife must have been
almost a child. His first two died in childbirth
This I find so difficult. If a man's first wife
dies in childbirth, surely he would never wish
any woman to have that risk again?

It was one of the things I found so unfriendly
about my father, whose first wife died like
that, and I could never understand why my own
mother took it on.

It was one of the things, do you remember, when
you wrote me from Wien about the Professor's
chow, always eating her puppies and having a
bad time, and my first reaction, though sort of
breeding-professional, was - had the Sire too
heavy bone-structure?

Anyway, a lot of Milton's early poems are in
Latin, which I can't read easily, so - all this
was last night - I turned to Wm. Cowper's
translations. Then I found Cowper had written a
poem on the Late Vandalism Committed on Mr.
Milton's bones - It seems he was buried in
that church we all know about, but in no
marked grave. It was supposed to be under the
lectern and in Cowper's time, the rector opened
it, found a coffin from which he removed the
teeth and hair, and allowed the sextons to
exhibit the body as Miltons.

BUT, says my edition of Cowper (which my father
won as a school prize in 1868) - "it is doubtful
if the relics were those of the poet, as the
hair and other witnesses of the mortal remains
indicated the body to be that of a woman"!

WELL - am I raving, or is this 'the lady of

NORTHLANDS

ECKINGTON
near Sheffield

DERBYSHIRE

CHESTERFIELD

3.

ECKINGTON 33

Christ's' come full circle ? I can't this the
most extraordinary story? Does everyone know
it?

'Gentle Shakespeare' - yes. But never, anywhere,
any suggestion he wasn't a man. Only, a new sort
of man - a 'gentle' man.

But if Milton were as an undergraduate, 'the
lady of Christ', and practically made himself
the Lady OF Christ, a Virgo turned Virago -
a sort of large-sized O.B - it is really
most explanatory, isn't it?

Remembering he was, in fact, a Restor-
ation poet, and friend of Dryden, who wrote so
many of his plays for beloved Nell!

Well, well, well! - I hope to be back by the end
of the week. Meanwhile, I have one thing to ask
you - how was Much Ado? Such a strange play,
a all in prose and that Hero part of it, but I
love so much the Beatrice-Benedick, 'then there's
a partridge wing saved, for the fool will eat
no supper that night' and 'What, my dear lady
Disdain, are you still talking? Nobody marks
you?' - it seems to me that those two have
the perfect relationship, - no courtship, but
every word of banter an unspoken wooing. No
love-making, yet such perfect trust, such con-
fidence in cheerfulness.

Gentle Shakespeare, indeed! I often think he
took Dante's Beatrice where Dante left off,
brought her down to earth as a sort of Daughter
of Man-made Beatrice human, but in such a way
she goes straight back to heaven.

I think in those scenes of Beatrice and Bene-
dick, Shakespeare not only spoke, but gave us
what we are.

I hope that *cur*, - de Luce - didn't ruin it!

What a festival, too, we are going to have in
London this autumn - Henry 4, The Rivals, School
for the Arts doing Farquhar again, Lady Winder
mere, and all. I am sorry Piper is doing the
sets for Oedipus. He will give us broken pillars
and brown-dark blue skies, riven white (suggest-
ing agony) - we don't need Sophocles 'romant-
icised'. Sophocles is everything. He needs
nothing. One can just about bring one's self
to talk of Shakers, but Sophocles is a little
beyond that....

Though I think _Macbeth_ would be much more
satisfactory if it were played stark, as an
Oedipus.

I wish they would use Sheppard's translation,
it was so lovely -

"A little shifting of the
scale,
and old men sleep" -

but I suppose they won't.

I am now going to write to the Bear, because I
am a little hurt that he, too, hasn't made - to
ME at any rate - the least bow for the fact
that in gratitude at having got through the war
we paid a tribute to The Blameless Physician.

But I still think Bear feels Freud ought NOT to
have died. I think he married Melitta before he
died - as a safeguard, as he knew he'd go haywire
once Freud did die. Freud was the death of Eliz-
abeth and Dunkirk.

I did the same myself, after so many died at
Dunkirk. Only, my post-Dunkirk turned out to be
not a Melitta but a 'good Queen Anne' (who did
far more good than the more glamorous Eliz).
Bear knows that, and I think, should not necessari
pay respect, but give an inking that he has some

That is all we want - after all, we know that we
deserve it. But it's nice to know others do -

I hope to be back by the end of the week. All
Gluck.

George's Resurrection Speech.

Act 2, SCENE 4. The Prison House. The body of George in torpor, flung down 1 ft. Back, right, a Guard asleep.
Growing light reveals that the body bears no trace of wounds, and as it increases GEORGE rises from a mass of blood-stained clothes, clean and in white.

GEORGE (gazing at himself) Blood nestles round me, as if loth to leave
the training depot that my body is
to what flows through it, teaching me thereby
the miracle of man's being man! See how,
blood nets me briefly to this strange façade
of less-than inch-thick flesh, millim-attres
meshed on a frame were else still skeleton!
(wondering) Without the vein, so transparently thin,
brandished on bone like benediction
of sun's first flush on rose, that takes therefrom
the dew as tears wept for the life it gives -
this body were unbreathing! This mere mask,
this coverlet, contains us! This spread stream
sprinkles ambition's acorns into oaks!
This skin, suspended between Sleep and us, -
knotting of nerves upon an else-dead skull -
is what lifts Adam above Acheron!
These surfaces, pale as papyrus, as papyrus are
all we can write on our souls' signature,
if we have learnt to write and not be wrecked
out of control by consciousness' complex! ...
(advancing) Here's one - Salome. There - a Solomon.
No difference much in spelling. Yet, a wrist
can bear hairs on its angle and a neck
be accented with mole and there's what sets
identity establisher. So the use we make
of what we're made of, makes us Noah,
Nero or Nefertiti - this same skin,
canopied on us, goatskin-tent, can house
Ham or his hailed inheritor, Japeth,
the son who journeyed far, to fare most home.
All's as we handle us. - God, I have waged
a hundred deaths for that small particle
of Your Perfection You purliued in me.
Yet I would meet a million miseries more
to seize them by the hand - not they my throat -
and find I tristtle with a lark-spurred song
into the loved discovery that my limbs
are indestructible by my own fears!
I have survived, my Lord, a sacrifice
I never should have made. I did lay down
pride and my temporal trappings ere I did,
but to lay down a life is not to use
it fighting. I arise out of the blood
I build from. I will make my limbs
show Dadianus my unghostliness - prove
his the death he did design for me.

NORTHLANDS

CHESTERFIELD

ECKINGTON

near Sheffield

Wednesday even

DERBYSHIRE

ECKINGTON 33

Dear H.D,

The book is -

"Shakespeare and the Actors
(The Stage Business in His Plays,
1660 - 1905)"

by Arthur Colby Sprague.

It was done by the Harvard University Press and the volume we have is the second printing (1944).

He also wrote 'Shakespeare and the Audience' and 'Beaumont and Fletcher on the Restoration Stage'.

Whilst on your lectures, allow me to say that 2 more poems are in my head - "Phillida flouts me", and one of Waller 'On A Circle', I forget how it exactly begins, tho' it is his next, so to speak after Go, Lovely Rose. I think its opening line is "This which her waist lately confined".

I was AWFULLY interested in what you said about the Ben Greet players, partly because I was brought up on him and partly because I have been reading old Edward Dent's history of the Old Vic - 'A Theatre for Everybody' and it was Ben Greet who first persuaded Lilian Baylis to put on Shakespeare at the Old Vic. You know she originally ran it simply as a temperance concert hall, to keep people in the New Cut off the pubs? She had not a licence for stage plays, and they used to do simply tableaux from Shakespeare! Then

Greet came along, and the whole thing beg-
an.....only about 30 years ago,yet it goes
right back into the old days of only a few
theatres being 'legitimate' for spoken drama.

Queer. And to-day. I' went back' into early
English theatre again - to pantomime. •ester-
day and to-day were both very very wet and
blustery, really impossible to go out, and
high winds banging round the house, making
it rather bewildering and headachey indoors.
So went to Sheffield and saw 'Humpty Dumpty'.
Very well put on, an excellent principal boy,
and the story taken quite straight.
The more remarkable, as there IS no story to
Humpty Dumpty!
But they had decided that there was a king
who would lose his crown if the egg fell off
the wall. It did fall, and a little boy came
out (Humpty Dumpty) who had been there for
1000 years. He was in love with the princess,
but she scorned him because he was only a
boy. He couldn't help that, because there had
not been room for him to grow in the egg. But
he was rather soured, so he stole the crown.

The Prince, who had a ship, then took everyone
to look for it, in the Land of Snow (transform-
ation scene, end of Pt. 1.)

The little boy, Hump-ty, then changed the Prin-
cess into a bird, so that the Prince could not
wed her. But the Good Fairy, though she could
not change her back, was able to see to it
that the bird should be the Blue Bird of
Happiness. She brought luck to the Prince, who
found the crown.
All very psycho, it seemed to me!

The Prince then turned into a Captain of the
Guard; with Tiller Girls as toy soldiers - very
embarrassing, in the circumstances, but, as we
know, there have to be toy soldiers in a pant-
omime. As soldier, the prince then fought the
Witch in a duel and no one thought it un-

NORTHLANDS

CHESTERFIELD

ECKINGTON

near Sheffield

2.

DERBYSHIRE

ECKINGTON 33

chivalrous of a young man to kill an old woman in a duel, or for the old woman to be a man and the young man a woman.

After this, the boy Humpty repented of his misdeeds, was so to speak 'put toGETHER again' by the sight of the Prince and Princess happily in love, and gave back the crown.

This seemed to me as good a story as any, and certainly went with a swing.

There was a comedian with long Little Tich boots, who did a marvellous dance, and one scene was a quayside, which meant the chorus HAD to be dressed Dutch, and that allowed them to do real Wanchasire clog-dance.
The colours were fine - all the Tiller girls in one scene wore tunics of jet sequins, with magenta cloaks lined with thin Directoire stripes in black and white, and poudres and gauntlets of lime-green.
The Prince wore silver sequins, a lime-green cloak lined with black and white and had black plumes and gauntlets.
All against a background of white - really very gay.

What I would like to know is, how these stories were handed down - well, I know that. But what they were originally. For they are old old myths, still kept living....I feel they are stories of childhood fears, of folk-childhood's fears, I mean racial childhood, too. Certainly fear is at the back of them, it is the resolving of fear which is their impetus.
I am certain that the funny men are NOT there to amuse the grownups. I think the Dame, the Baron, the King, the Brokers Men or

2.

the Robbers, etc. ARE how children see adults.

I know that I saw adults as caricatures. My nurse and my mother were fairly normal, because I saw most of them and was used to them. But others got increasingly strange as one saw less of them - my aunts were frightening, my grandmother was remote as the Giant in his castle, and so on. And I think in proportion as they were strange and one didn't see enough of them to get used to their peculiarities, so one was frightened and _therefore_ made them into jokes one didn't have to take seriously.

Equally, the idealised people, the Principal Boy and the Girl were as one felt one could be, and really was, if adults would only leave one alone....

It was nice after, coming home through the dark countryside in a lighted bus, and then high tea and a blazing fire, with the cats round it.

The new kitten seems settling down well, I suppose it hadn't been in Cheyne long enough to feel uprooted when brought here. It is growing, I think will be rather pretty and certainly full of character.

I can't refrain from sending the enclosed. It was in a cracker, and seems so queer that they put Shratford onto transfers!

All best wishes, and again thanks for 'Good Friend' and for ye epitaph -

(These are not so much the 10 poems I
would necessarily like if I could have no
others - but they are those which first
came into my mind)

The Ballad of Clerk Saunders
"Christ, that my love were in my arms"
Speech on Eternity by Bussy d'Ambois in
Chapman's play of that name
Webster's dirge, "The robin redbreast and
the wren"
Song from 'Cymbeline'
O Mistress Mine
Keith of Ravelstone
Up at a Villa, Down in the City (OR The
Last Ride Together)
Sonnet -"When in despite with fortune"
or
"From thee To me, fair friend"
or almost any of Shakespeare

Also,
"When thou must home to shades of underground"
(Campion)
"His helmet now is made a hive for bees"
(Peele)

Ulyssees' speech, "Time hath, my lord, a wallet
at his back" - from "Troilus and Cressida"

Omar.

BRENDIN PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.
LIFE AND LETTERS

Editor: ROBERT HERRING

19.11.45.

430 STRAND

LONDON, W.C.2

Telephone: TEMPLE BAR 7697

Dear H.D,

Don't say that I won't play! - here is some home-work.

I don't say they are my Ten Definitive. But they are those
that came into my mind when thinking of poems I couldn't
live without.

There are further -
Herbert's 'I struck the board and cried 'No more!'
Wyatt's 'Lute' poem
Ralegh's 'Scallop shell'
Waller's 'Go, lovely rose'
Morris's sonnet, 'Pray but one prayer for me over the corn'
Marvell's 'Coy Mistress', and The Fawn -

I will be very selective soon. But these are in me head, and
are all there without turning them up or looking at bookes.
The only conscious selection I exercised was to keep out
ANY we had mentioned on Saturday - which day, and meeting, I
enjoyed so much!

My many thanks,

P.S. All modern poetry kept out, too.

DIRECTORS: ROBERT HERRING • W. MACPHERSON

PLAXMAN 8560

30.11.45.

Dear H.D,

A private yell, a loud 'NO, NO, No' - I have
been glancing at Edith's book. And I'm shocked
and I have to shriek.

It's not a case of being 'disloyal' or anything
like that, but I am bitterly shocked, and I must
say so, for some of the things my eye has struck
are an attack upon life -

O, no doubt I am frightened. The Unkind Mother
and so on. And equally Bryher would rationalise
and say "You see, Edith has to..." - just as she
rationalised the Lady of Shallot into the Albig
ensian heresy, or was it Eleusinian musteries?
But there are somethings you can neither rat-
tionalise nor psychologise.

They are bridge things, leading from one to the
other, and if it is the wrong bridge, one has to
yell.

Now, what has got me down is one of the Notes,
and the last lines of Song of the Cold itself.

The Note that has upset me is " 'Venus...I used
the name merely as a symbol. The poem is not
about a far-off myth" (p.115)

Well, I cannot have Venus talked about as 'mere-
ly', to start with! And you don't 'use the name'.
You bow down to it, or rise up to it, but you
don't say 'O, yes, that'll do to write about -
I'll use it'.

Nor do I see how the name can be symbol if it
is not to do with a myth, AND I don't see how
any myth CAN be a myth and be 'far-off'. It is
in the nature of a myth to be ever-living, ever-
near.

There is a lack of reverence in all that that
curdles one. But the main thing is, you don't
need to say "Venus is the girl next door", for
we all know that the girl next door is VENUS.

It's neither here nor there whether someone did
not think Edith was, because when she says the
poem is 'about all beauty gone', it's so odd to
think she takes Venus as the symbol for that -
Venus is the symbol for all beauty living, surely

And then I thought I ought to read the actual
poem, Song of the Cold, before I wrote my letter
about the book. And I hadn't read it before, and
at the end, the last two lines, page 39, I came
on

"That I may weep for those who die of the cold
The ultimate cold within the heart of Man".

Then I yelled! It seems to me so wrong of
Edith to say that. It is all very well for her
not to know any better, and we can all ration-
alise it out, but no one should make these
sweeping generalisations, should they?

It isn't the ultimate cold people die of, it's
the pen-ultimate - the crust, the defences, the
treacheries outside.

To say that man's heart is, ultimately, cold
seems to me searing blasphemy, because wholly
untrue. The core of mankind's heart is surely
fire and warmth? It's there, even if all our
inhibitions stop us from getting to it.

I don't only think this, I know it, - though I
am damned if I am going to break down a recent
and hard-won reticence to say so.

It is the ultimate warmth that makes one weep -
because it is so warm, and because it is so ult-
imate, in the sense that it takes such getting
to.

Edith may not know this personally. Most of us
do. Most of us know that there need be no such
thing as absence, parting, loneliness, age. But
surely she can imagine? What else does she
do all day? Surely she can imagine?

And if she can't imagine, surely she still
could reach to a sort of censor - as we call
it - what would enable her to see detachedly

8 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, S.W.3

PLAXMAN 8560

2

that one can't just make *freezing* remarks, in
however lovely poetry.

For I think that *half* of poetry is the things
one doesn't say, the form one does NOT give to
what is tranistory or wrong - one spends ages
NOT writing, surely?

And next, IF Edith has only got as far as she
seems to have got, I think it very sad.

The sonority, the language, the line - all terrific. But what about the line of spirit, the sort of unspeakable language of being alive, - the sort of things that aren't just a matter of being a 'good poet', but of being alive.

These English poets seem to me to get so tied
up with their damned words and their being
published. But being a poet isn't a matter of
being published, but of fighting. Fighting for
life, even for breath.

I feel Edith isn't fighting for life. I feel she
is freezing her death into crystallised poetry.
I don't mean this as at all 'personal' *against*
Edith.

It doesn't 'worry' me, psychologically. And we can
all 'fix' Edith either rationally OR psychologically.

The fact does remain, though, that there is some-
thing becoming rapidly boring and stunted about
these grandiloquent statements which simply do
not link on to life at all.

*** *** *** ***

I wasn't going to post this letter, but to-day
I have found myself doing something so funny, I
think you will understand. And it's not *really*
based on reaction from Edith.

As I think you know, since '43 I have had a friend
living here who, day by day, has become increasingly
all that I ever looked for.

I am not an easy person to live with, so when I found the impossible happening, I didn't dare speak.

The nearest moment to difficulty was when I had to realise that I was liked - somehow, this had never occurred to me. One had been so busy with Bear's straightening one's own liking out of sadism, etc.). I'd learnt to be relaxed, but it had never occurred to me that anyone else should feel quiet and peaceful when with me. Even then, I thought it was a matter of the war being on.

But it honestly never occurred to me that I was liked - I don't mean that cloyly. I have usually been so certain of whom I liked, that I went champing out - it never occurred to me there might be any reciprocation. I'd never thought of that one! I suppose I would have one day. One usually grows. But this time, I was aware only of ease - this was a quite wonderful thing, no excitement, but continuous energising peace. Nothing had to be formulated, everything could be fluid because one *knew* - you know the sort of person one arranges to meet 'under the clock' or in the tea-room at Harrods', and they're always under another *clock* or NO in the tea-room?

Well, there IS the reverse - the person who is under the clock, even if it's been blitzed.

This Edith doesn't know. I speak of her not as Edith, but as the oracle she makes of herself. The *ultimate* heart of man is warmth. One day, long after, when one is cold, one may perhaps be a bit shivery. But only in an autumnal way, not winter's.

There is no particular need to say this, no really. Overly guilt or compulsion, except that I have had the one thing I really wanted happen to me with very God-to-be thanked timing, the last two years of the war. What I learnt from Bear was not to worry; to let life be on the couch, so to speak, and sit back one's self and not interfere.

8 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, S.W. 3

FLAXMAN 8560

3.

Well, if you like the kind of person I like, you never say much. You don't make speeches. You say "Hullo" or "Have a cigarette?", and that is all. You know perfectly well you wouldn't be meeting, and able therefore to say "Hullo", if you were not certain and contented.

But if you are new-in-health, as I, you are apt to be so grateful for absence of crises, that you fail to take important events at their worth.

It was thus that, a month ago, through wishing not to take advantage of what might have been war conditions, I nearly hurt someone very much by making them feel hospitality here had been only due to war conditions, and missed all the clues that had been leading up to peace in every sense of the word. "I always told you I'd be wheeling you around when you're sixty, if you're not wheeling me first. It's the first ten years are the hardest, and we've had three of them already".

Someone of 35 presumably knows their own mind. Okay. Now, here is the joke of what may seem else an unm่า ably personal screed -

I in myunk have no longer any need to make a violent end of happiness when I see it becoming possible. The other one decides what is happiness and makes plans accordingly.

I therefore, have been making farewells. No more unfirom for me. I am going into civilian life! Now, one or two survivors are coming back. None I really cared for, but one or two it is good to know are alive. Taffs, mostly. They are on duty. This has meant ringing up the Palace.

Yes, that one! It has seemed so funny. Dialling,

"O, is that the Palace? But me through to the
Cook Room, will you -, why, hullo Sam! How are
you?"
"All right. They're out of town this week-end".

You know who 'they' are?

To save phobias, I will add that I don't ring
up from here! But it's funny, I feel, and going
round to have a farewell supper - so like
making a night-club of Audley!

One gets such a sense of what is going on *under*
England. How inviolable the good-nature of people
is. How really grand people are if you can be
among them when they are being themselves.

Well, I have taken leave of the colours now -
in the very best way, by the summit of all colo-
urs having hung flag here.

And then I thought "Death is a misnomer. I have
worked through all the last war set up - which
was the virginal *fear* of death. This war, we have
had death.

Lots of the chaps I knew have gone. At the Pal-
ace last night, there were only two of the old
bunch. But the new ones that came in ("The girls
just come through, there won't be any more
trouble to-night") were all carrying on. There
was no real contact between them and me, because
they didn't know the Army that I knew. I was
grandpa. But they were all the right stock -
would give you their last shilling, bring out
their family photographs and never light a
cigarette first for themselves.

I said "There is no death", and then I statted
thinking of Cole. I didn't know Cole had worr-
ied me. But suddenly she was let loose - I
wrote the enclosed. I hope it isn't cheek to
send it to you. But I rather hope it may in a
way relieve your feelings, which I have shared.

I feel this is a silly letter and not at all
what I started out to write — However,!!

8 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, S.W. 3

FLAXMAN 8560

29.12.45.

Dear H.D,

Yes,yes,yes,and a million thanks.I don't
know if it's me or you,but I find what you
sent me,as I also found" The Flowering of
the Rod" something I had known all my life.

I do not mean this insolently. But you and
Shakers, Shakers and you, I have known all my
life. It's both something that was written
deep, deep down, and now uncovered, as if the
sand had overblown it, And it is also, some-
thing that was never written before, that
one was waiting for, and in a sense feels
one HAS written written one's self.

This is a DREADFUL thing to say, but I suppose
as regards Shakespeare it is because there
was never a moment when one didn't remem-
ber him. I don't think I ever knew a time
when I knew any other language, Shakespeare
oddly enough, in a non-literary household, was
always 'presented' to me. He wasn't thrust at
me, but I was allowed to read him - I wasn't
allowed to read much, because the idea was to
be in the fresh air. I'm glad for it now, because
I am so well. But Shakespeare was always a
member of the household.

There were stacks of other books, but none of
them seemed to fit in with the life one had -
the garden, the dog, the cat, the mother in
mourning, the robust people in the kitchen,
the sun which came in through the bathroom
window, the hints of old wars, the connection
with Africa which made Othello familiar, the
Scottish relatives which made Macbeth o.k.,
Mother's own preference for Romeo and As
You Like It.

I was taken to every Shakespeare play there was, and I remember an exhibition in 1916 at the Grafton Galleries, where I saw his glove.

Then - obviously - the reaction came. I wanted to win the Shakespeare scholarship at Cambridge. That meant studying English for two years. But I had already 'read' history for two, and Mother decided that she could only afford me three years up there. That is the normal time, and that is what my brother had. So of course I only had three years.

Sheppard brought all his guns to bear on her, and for some odd reason Irene Vanbrugh was brought into it - she came up to see Oedipus. But Mother was not the sort of person to whom the bringing of guns was an advantage.

I only had my three years, with the result that I only got Second Class Honours in English, instead of First and a proxime accessit in the Shakespeare. George Rylands got the Shakespeare.

I don't blame Mother, because a widow with no scholarly interests wasn't to know and anyway it was entirely off her own bat that from 37 to 70, either I or my brother had any income or education at all.

But that failure to give me the extra year at Cambridge so that I could have won the Shakespeare - which I only wanted in order to take as a bunch of flowers, and say, at Stratford, "you see, I love you" - that was the first overt split.

So I edited Sheridan instead, to prove I was a scholar after all!

No complaints, I am better off as I am. Nothing can ever alter the extraordinary quality Shakespeare has. I don't know what it is. There is a sort of love, a knowing there is a safety in love, and a sort of certainty, as calm as the smell of violets, which pervades and catches one.

all thanks, & best New year wishes, Robert.

Cheyne, London, 26th.

My dear Hilary,

Thank you so much for the proofs. It is always a pleasure to get yours back, you do correct them so well. I have seen to the faults you mentioned and they will all be o.k. - as a matter of fact, this is a matter ofunk, you had omitted heartsease, at least on the copy I had. But the others' were all printers' errors.

I think I shall be sending you a set of page proofs, as the number itself may get hung up with Easter, and I know you would like to see how they look among the other items - an article on Beowulf, a rather touching Valentine Ackland story, a rather terrible george Barker poem, and me on French films -

We have two more coming on next week, a Raimu-Fernandel, 'The Wellmakers, Daughter', and one by Pierre Blanchard at the Academy.

Yes, I think you were right on your politico deductions of Les Enfants; what I got so much was the death-wish - as if the French, to get by, conformed to "Caligari", possibly without knowing it.

A queer thing has happened to me since that and the Gide film - I am making a study of national films, as expressing sort of national ink. I find it very hard to know what IS, a British film - for instance, Cavalcanti gives us a Dickens which simply isn't Dickens; on the other hand, Hitchcock, though working in America, is surely English. And what am I to make of a film made here, but from a French novel, starring Simone Simon?

So far I find that whereas in most recent French films, death and renunciation are regarded as good, in British there is a slight feeling "Let's find out what has made things go wrong". I know this is the British as usual being a good deal late, and catching up on analysis, and of course they don't come up to the French for startling psychic poetry or to the American for slickness, but in a blundering way, they are trying - they have moved on from action or love-stories to states of mind. I saw an awfully interesting one the other day called "Odd Man Out".

To-night I have just come back from "The Alchemist". Very gay, very bawdy, very boisterous. A pleasant evening, tho' of course I missed you and Bryher, and our return back, and all that your company made such an 'outing' of. It was very well done. Ralph Richardson very good, tho' my private opinion is that he is really male charm at its nicest, or perhaps I mean 'good-nature'; I don't feel he is an actor - Olivier, whom I do not find I warm to as a person, I do think a good actor - a theatrical actor. But Alec Guinness is an actor simply because he is taken possession of; there is a nice good-nature about Richardson (you remember his Peer Gynt), but Guinness has a beauty, he is almost oddly the exact counterpart of Jean Louis-Barrault. After his wonderful Fool in Lear, to night he was the comic Abel Drucker in 'The Alchemist' and I have never seen a comic character that was so sweet. He seems to clear the boards with a magic circle when he steps on, and to make those boards flowering holy earth. A strange, haunted instrument, one imagines in his moments of rest he is like a harp, in a shaft of twilit sun....he's not at all really, I've met him; offstage he's almost everybody (Helpmann is always Helpmann), but on stage, he is one feels someone Shakespeare would have liked to have written for.

The audiences aren't the same now, at the New. You know they were rather brave and charming when we went, with lots of young people in khaki and bleu marin. Well, of course, now they are out of it - praise be to God - and are ordinary boys taking out ordinary girls who 'swoon' at 'Larry' (Olivier) and 'Ralph' (Richardson). And the whole thing has become a sort of Gilbert and Sullivan. Knowing it all by heart and laughing before the joke - but I suppose it's all right, there's a glorious cleanness about it. I wish you could have heard the delighted roar that went up when someone arrived, in the play, and someone else had to be hidden - 'where?' - 'In the privy'. That couldn't have happened on the English stage until the war - the war we went through.

It pelts and it pelts; my brand new roof, which cost £80, is leaking. Hundreds of acres of our best land are ruined. They say, for 10 years.

2.

But it is the Aquarian time, after all (why did I spell
Aquarian like that?).

My love to you for Tessin. I plan to go North for Easter,
as usual, hate to uproot but already feel homesick for
the rooms and space up there. I am taking several of the
cats, to leave - they live in the garage, and old Baker
looks after them. Then when I come back, I hope to have
a chow or an Alsatian, to keep burglars away, down here.

It's a very odd spring here, for it is warm, but of course
there are no bulbs out yet, only crocuses. And the boats
bob about road-high at the end of the Row - the Dunkirk
boats.

Life isn't too bad, I should like to be eight people at
once, to live all of it - one has the awful feeling one
is missing something all the time. But I am not too dis-
pleased with myself, I have acquired, through much self-
discipline, not only an ability to meditate, but a soft
insistence to myself, that I can't be active any other
way - I must have the time to assimilate and, not think,
but meditate, some times.

I am - this is secret - for the first time writing poems
deliberately. One might almost call it 'to order'. Of one's
unk.

I begin to want to see things as part of a whole, or rather
to say things which are. I don't like being at the whim
of an un-correlated idea, and I find all my ideas now are
correlated. I am making a book called 'Pogues' Gallery',
a series of poems which begins with Michelangelo's Adam,
runs through various ones you already know about, Harlequin
and Farquhar and Ribert Greene, has a few sort of 'music
hell songs', and now I need certain aspects of one's
Hamlet personality - The Monk, the Witch, the Drunk Sailor,
the Virgin, the Initiate, the Baboon. When I say I 'need',
I mean, these are there - waiting to be said.

And I suppose I only want to get this book done into a
complete form because no one - literally no one, - seems
to be taking any notice of 'Westward Look'.

My God, was I right not to publish before! One doesn't want notice, I think my whole aim in life is to deserve anonymity, as the most unfettered enjoyment, - BUT my feeling at the moment, having put out a book, and dead silence resulted, is rather that which one has when one doesn't answer a telephone call....one wonders what has happened, why one didn't dare get through.

Well, no one takes any notice of one book - so one writes another. Or, rather, one doesn't write it; one has been writing all the time; but one, now and again, collects one's writings and builds them into an idea - from which one goes on.

Where to, - one knows. But it's folly, I think, to let one's self imagine one's readers or other authors do - what a much better person, for instance, as far as I am concerned, is little Sylvia D. or any of her group, coming up with vegetables, than Elizabeth Bowen lunching in a new hat at the Ivy!

Of course, I must never speak - the phone has rung. No answer when I replied. One of these try-ons. But the two cats who are sitting most hieroglyphically on the mantelpiece didn't stir, and looked at me on return as much as to say "Anyone would have known, that wasn't a real call". The kitten, who is asleep in the drawer from which I take the notepaper, didn't stir; only her sister, who is of a jealous and wild disposition, flew down with me to answer the phone, and then laughed at me, as much as to say "I told you so" - a real watch that girl-cat is, she hates not being 'in' with the rest, she thinks it a sissy household in which all the cats are stroked - but if she can get the rest out or down to their meals, she will come along pretending to be them; and then fly at one, as soon as she gets cosy.

She is the one I am keeping, because I don't think she has much of a chance. And - to be honest - if, on her own, she doesn't melt, then she too will have to go up to Eckington. And the others come back. She likes me as long as I don't speak to her or touch her. - Bunkum, all this. But Lord, how I love the cironade of cats down the stairs, and their implacable furies - what an odd way to end up with a message ofaster love! - Best regards,

Night of June 10th.

My dear Hilda,

Every time Bryher writes, brings news of some fresh kindness you have
done me - either scouting round hotels, then fixing me at the Sport Garni, or
booking that Venice trip - now I hear you have carefully booked front seats.
You really AFE kind. I don't know why you should trouble yourself so much.
But it really is nice to feel it all fixed and that it will be all right.
Still, I don't think gallant and chit extinguished poets, and if I may say so, tiny
bit elder ones, should run round doing chores for ME!
I feel almost badly about it!

Especially as I must have seemed so awfully un-responsive about the DREAM.
First, let me explain how difficult life has been lately - you know I had to
get rid of my charwoman for stealing; that was an upset, and always a bit of
a shock. Then, it meant I had to do my own housework. Then, permit came to have
house repainted - with ultimatum that it had to be put in action at once.

So then I went to a firm which supplies male 'chars' - they're called handy-men. I think I can deal with men better than charwomen, - the latter always get maternal on me and I spend hours listening to their aches and pains. and living up, or down, to their idea of what a Gentleman ought to be. The handymen come by the hour. I had a couple of horrors at first. One was Communistically inclined, said with a sniff I was lucky to be able to spend so much time at home! The next simply slept while I was at office - and used my electric alarm clock to wake him up half an hour before I got back! But he forgot to alter it and, having failed to wake up one morning, I found it set at 3.30 p.m! Dire complaints then produced a good man, over 40, ex-soldier, who actually needs no telling, just goes through the house looking for work. I don't have to bother at all. So I have booked this one regularly twice a week, and have no bother about being employer - it is the firm employ him, I am merely a client and if he ever gets ill, they send a substitute. So this may be solution.

Anyway, I have been able to plan numbers of L. and L. ahead and am now all set
for the next three months, so feel better generally.

Further, I have most elaborate burglar double-locks all through house. I took
my SEVEN cats up to Eck. last week, and am leaving house locked up. The last
twice I have told police, it has been broken into. This time I shall not, and
we shall see!

So many loads are off my mind, and on Saturday, all set for Zuerich, then on
15th to St. Moritz.... I think it's rather gay to be breaking new ground this
year... then onto Lugano and before I come, I want to write about the DREAM.

I think I am one of the worst people to write about it because in so many
ways I am too near. Worse than Bryher, who in a sense was 'in' on a lot. But
I wasn't, and yet at the same time don't count as a detached reader. I am
afraid I simply get stuck by Howell - I recognise him so vividly, I cannot
believe anyone else wouldn't, and that of course hinders me about publication.
It seems to me quite amazing, because although I only glimpsed on two occasions
in ALL the other aspects and conversations you mention, it simply IS him. From
just my glimpses I can see that.

Of course, it is the most amazing book. No one else could have done it, and frankly, I am amazed that even *you* could. Its clarity is so glorious. You hold about fifty threads all at once, and you 'establish' each one so deftly and vividly that when, ages after one has been mentioned and left, pages and pages after, only a slight hint - and one is absolutely au fait, quite sure, never confused at all. WRITING ON THE WALL was amazing enough, but this leaves that far behind.

I think this is very astonishing, because it could have been, in lesser hands, or a lesser mind, so DIFFICULT, so 'esoteric', but this is so lit and elucidated, - it isn't only that YOU knew exactly, but you give to the reader that exciting sense that HE knows too. So that when you bring in a thread, only previously darted in, nevertheless it is so vivid that almost before you have finished beginning to mention it, one says "Ah, yes, I know" - it is time and space all in one. To use a metaphor I naturally have in my mind, it's like being on a peak and seeing what has previously been a jumble of Alps, all ranged in order.

But just as the Matterhorn blocks all at Zermatt, so I find - for MYself - that one figure jumps out at me and switches me from being a reader to, as it were a publishers' reader, saying professionally "Would this be permitted"

I may be being over-sensitive, partly because as I told you there was that Shakespeare book, partly because of a fracas I have had with neighbours here. As you know, they use the table in the same way. Now, they are Derbyshire people. He was a butcher's son, and his faith-healing brought him to London. Now, after the lovely manners of the Stratford people, I began to wonder why I put up with the dour hostility of all the villagers at Eck. My neighbours, being sensitive, may have 'got' a slight anti-Derbyshire feeling. Anyway, when my house was being washed down in the re-painting, they complained that it splashed them. They had been done last year and I was splashed then, but did not complain....anyway, there is that slight feeling at the moment,

Yes, I leave it at L. and L. office, all ready for any directions. We can perhaps talk when I come out to Lugano?

To-day has been odd. It SHOULD have been the Trooping of the Colour. All set, Guards to be in scarlet and all. At last moment, whole thing cancelled. Reason, the weather. We did have a little thunder at 8 a.m. But not even rain since. The officials say, as the scarlet tunics are now public property, and can't be replaced, they could not be risked in the rain! This raises two questions - are the Guards nationalised? And why not wear capes? Anyway, there was no rain! If the King or Princess had been ill, - well, they could always trot out the Duke of Gloucester. So there is great excitement.

I'm booked as Williams at Hotel Bernsaconi, St. Moritz till 18th. Think then I shall move somewhere cheaper till 24th, when due in Lugano (HOW you make THAT live, by even a slight reference).

Posting you out a book as slight herald and thank-offering.

All love, and do forgive my impertinence.

* No - bringing it

Cheyne, Sunday evening.

My dear Hilda,

So many thanks for your letter of Thursday, arrived yesterday. I
shall be happy to follow your instructions re Ms. and when the typecript
returns from Ethel Christian, I will send you the top copy; then wait to
hear it has arrived before sending the carbon.
Thank you too for details re the carbon and then, a H U G E, baffled, breathless
thanks for something to do with a wardrobe trunk. Br. said you had said you
did not want it and had yourself suggested me as a possible recipient. So
she arrived round here with it. It is of course perfect and wonderful for
storing summer clothes and blankets and, vice versa, winter clothes etc. But
I still feel it is too good for me and that I oughtn't to have it and
that, anyway, people don't just go handing large wardrobe trunks around as
gifts. So I don't regard it as 'mine' but as something I have here on lease
and if you ever change your mind, the lease ends..... but it was quite wonder-
ful and touching, if I may say so, of you to think of me.

Yes, I drove out with Bryher when she went to see Masefield, and saw him my-
self for a fleeting second. What I wasn't prepared for is that his village
is Dorchester-on-Thames (which raises such irrelevant Hardy echoes of the
Dorsetshire Dorchester!) - all very four-star Badekker Old English black-
and-white, with Ye Antiquay Shoppe, a Hand-Loom Weave, even a Forge and a huge
church, an abbey, almost a young Milan Cahetdral - really huge, early English,
simply littered with tombs of Crusaders.... I was very put out by the size
of such a church in so small a village.... till, coming back here, in me books
I found that it was a cathedral; in pre-Norman times had been the biggest
dioecese diocese in England - then the Nomans shifted it to Lincoln, leaving
the huge church empty.... I suppose it was part of their business of breaking
up old associations.

Next, I have read Br's 'Cattle' and find it really astonishing. I think it so
brilliant of her not to create the period of Hastings by going BACK to it,
but by leading one FORWARD from the times before. There is a terrific living
freshness about it I think, and the characterisation most vivid, in even the
people glimpsed for a moment, and the relationship between the men most
right. Depth and emotion and lovely thought in it - all most moving.

We went to 'The Wild Duck' and it was so awful, we left during an interval!
The whole spirit of the production was again the spirit of Ibsen. No sense
of Scandinavia at all. An awful film star from Stockholm called Mai Zetter-
ling, coy and cosy, a sort of Bergner made of semolina; she had a Swedish
accent. Then the actor who played her father, Anton Walbook, was Austrian and
brought Mittel Europa into it, and Fay, who was his wife, elected to play in
a conscientious Cockney accent. No one acted in any relation at all to anyone
else, each just for himself. It was disastrous.

After that I had to go to a party at the Italian press attaché for they have
got het up - the Italians, I mean - about our 'special' numbers of L. and L,
and there I had to meet the editress of a review called "Ulysee", published
in Rome.

It was that best-selling novelist in New York all over again! Br. will tell
you. All I'll say is that this was a dark Italian of about 50, a sort of
patrician Oppie, in dark-green taffeta silk with a bustle, four rows of pearls
and long white kid gloves. When I was introduced to her, she patted the sofa,

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said "Seet-a 'ere, by-a da meee". I know it is fatal when dark women pat sofas in a winsome way, and once again I was all alone! I offered her a cigarette, she said "No,no! Your see-GAR-ettes are like you English-a men - too strong."

It really was sheer Lillie doing a vamp. But apart from that, she was nice, intelligent and cultured, and very keen on L. and L.

She has broken both her knees, ski-ing(unusual for an Italian woman?), has a house in Cortina and at once asked me out to stay there, O dear!

Horizon were there in force and I heard Horizon fixing up with her to visit them at their office on Monday. So I thought I had better nip in and go one better if possible. The great thing with a foreign visitor is to ask them to one's house. So I asked her into a drink last night. She said "No,no,I nevah go to an Englishman's 'ouse,you English gentlemen are not safe".

I said I was so glad to hear at last someone realise that, but that I was no gentleman, I was a bachelor who had my name to think of, and that I had asked the Italian press attache and his wife (whom I had only that moment met).

So last night they all came. Now, there is a young French writer from the 'Mere-cure' over, whom Br. is responsible for having sent, he can't speak a word of English but wants to meet English authors. So I had him in.

I had also asked John Lawrence, me friend on the Times, and his wife; Jack Lindsay and his wife, and Willy Richardson, one of the contributors to our recent West Indian number, a Trinidadian, fairly light Negro, sixfoot and a bit.

I asked Bryher, but she said she couldn't meet Westernes, because otherwise it would get back to Sylvia, who would be cross she hadn't been to Paris -etc.

Well, to have a Frenhhman into meet a few English is one thing, to have the Italian embassy in is another. I felt the keynote had to be elegance without ostentation. So I simplified the drink question by having simply a bowl of Pimm's No.1 cup, with lashings of ice, lemon, cucumber and grapes. Flowers I concentrated on 2 arum lilies at 2/6 and four good pink chrysanthemums by the door (for flowers aren't happy at tobacco-ridden parties).

First thing that happened was the Lawrences brought her mother, a charming old girl from Glasgow, who'd been a doctor. Then came the Lindsays. Then - suddenly, BRYHER! Looking very smart and lovely, but quite unexpected. She said she simply HAD to see Italian editor-woman!

It was wonderful to have Bryher at a party, made me feel so happy.

All told, there were just twelve of us. One of whom as I said was the old girl, John Lawrence's mother-in-law. Well, you know what Bryher is like if she sees an old dame! One look, and Bryher was on the sofa next her. She spoke a few duty words to Jean Westernes, but then whizzed back to the old dame.

The Italian lady this time was in black silk, I think the description would be "dramatic side-interest in drapery". On her wrists she wore two huge brass clasped-hands, which Victorians used to use to hold back portiere curtains.

Her hat was black buckram, shaped like a boat, over one ear, with masses of wired chiffon veiling shooting off over the other and across her eyes.

I led up in turn the West Indian, the Times, the Frenchman and Jack Lindsay, who as we know is Left. I think she felt that was a pretty varied 'bag' to be offered on the spur of the moment.

Desternes was a little disappointed not to talk more to Bryher, but he really is not easy to get on with, and I said Bryher was always 'un petit oiseau, who flew in, flew out, hardly perched, one did not realise she was in London, let

3.

alone one's house.

The West Indian scored two invitations to lunch, with 'The Times' and Jack Lindsay. Then, to me, he burst into tears and said that could never have happened in Trinidad, - O, yes, and the Italian press attaché's wife asked him. I had had a bad moment about the *Abyssinian* war, wondering how the Italians would take colour. Especially as my three-half-days-a-week man-char had told me he had worked at the Italian embassy during the *Abyssinian* war, when they had a map in the kitchen with flags on it, and he had got cross and moved all the flags back!

I should add that JUST as I was cutting sandwiches in the afternoon, AGNES LATHAM rang up and asked how she could find Desternes! So I gave her his number. But when he came, he had never heard of her, and he is to lunch with her at Canuto's on Wednesday!

And then, ten minutes after, - LOTTE rang up! Well, TOO difficult to ask Lotte to meet French and Italians, or rather to ask them to meet her. Lotte is trying to 'sell' Berlin very much, and how marvellous the Berliners are. Of course we can accept Lotte but AS Lotte, not as Berliner, and of course she had only a year in Berlin and only all the rest of the war in comfort in Italy. Also, Lotte is being strange, this time. She is shifty, evasive, reserved, seems holding back on something and as if afraid of giving herself away about something. We all notice it. It isn't just shell-shock this time, she is much calmer in that way.

But for one thing, she is only here a few weeks, and we thought it was for 3 months. She says the money won't last, but she has with her her assistant, a girl called Helge, from Berlin, and one can't help wondering if she has brought her on her money. Also, she has rows with Koch - slapped his face the other night in a taxi, and emerged to give a lecture in tears. Koch, it seems, has a girl friend, - but that shouldn't worry Lotte, I mean they were never all that close. Lotte now goes back, parks her mother in another 'zone' and then returns here. But it is all very difficult, and one can cope with Lotte but not with three of them, all being Berliners.

And NOW, as I write this - 00000000! - the Italian, Signora (NOT Signorina) Maria Astaldi has just rung up and asked me to lunch to-morrow. I envisaged Claridge's and hurriedly asked her - what WILL Rules think? We are doing an Italian number together. What is so awful is that though she IS a Messaline, when I said our office entrance was in William IV St, she at once said "Ah, Chatto and Windus", so she DOES know. And her magazine, a sort of Mésures, carries an article on Shakespeare's hand in the play 'Sir Thomas More'.

BUT - I now have to write an editorial for me Indian-Pakistan number!

Forgive, therefore, a scatter-brained letter.

Re the young Prince, I think almost the nicest touch was that Queen Mary at once shot over from Marlborough House, and didn't return until midnight - at HER age. Also, the King broke with precedent and refused to have the Home Secretary present. He put out a decree, saying there was nothing in the Constitution to warrnt it, and that it was merely an archaic custom. In other words, he once again put his foot down. But he had out the troopers in FULL ceremonial when they fired the guns - in pouring rain. Not the usual Life or Horseguards, but in blue, with lashings of yellow frogs and loops, sort of Hussars.

George whizzed up in the middle of this rather hectic week. I hadn't seen him for a month as his wife has been in hospital having incipient varicose veins treated. He was absolutely delighted because she had a JAMAICAN nurse.