TURVILLE HEATH 310

IBSTONE HOUSE,
IBSTONE,
№ HIGH WYCOMBE,
BUCKS.

April 19, 1950.

My dear John,

It was such a relief to be told the truth. You cannot believe how much Freudian junk I have had thrown at me lately, particularly from America, and how much timid evasion which serves not useful purpose.

There is one thing in Anthony's favour which I must say. I think the particular picture he draws of me is inherited. After I left H.G. he went about telling people that I was neurotic and that he had given me vast sums of money. Three thousand a year, I once heard, to my surprise. Actually, all the capital I ever received from H.G. was about five thousand pounds, which - although he may have thought it a gift was not. For years before we parted he had prevented me working and, though I was already an extremely highly paid journalist, I could hardly earn more than a few hundreds a year; and as he did not pay his fair share of the expenses of our common home I had had to spend all my little inheritance and my savings. As my inheritance amounted to between two and three thousand pounds you will see that the financial situation was not as poor H.G. represented it. But I don't complain about this, for H.G. was incurably fuzzy about money - in 1938 he told me that he had his shoes made for him and thought they cost about a pound a pair - and when he was in a rage he genuinely did not know the difference between truth and fiction. After he often was most generous in meeting expenses incurred over Anthony, and I would not like you to think I had the faintest resentment against him. I am sure that if I had actually fallen into need he would certainly have helped me handsomely. But I think he may have told Anthony some rigmarole when I married, and he flew into a rage. It is true that I have since explained fully to Anthony my financial situation,

TURVILLE HEATH 310.

IBSTONE HOUSE,

IBSTONE,

№ HIGH WYCOMBE,

BUCKS.

I am in an embarrassing position about his claim to be
unhappy over his illegitimacy. To question it looks as if I
were callously trying to deny my responsibility for a tragedy.
But I have read his letters over again and I just can't believe
a word of it. They are the most terrible ham stuff that I ever
set eyes on, and I can't help feeling that he is just using this
as a stunt to justify himself for inaction and to punish me for
my various defects. I also hear of his telling his various odd
confidents that he has an inferiority complex owing to his ille-
gitimacy; and I think you said that he had told you something of
the sort. But people who can tab such a complex in themselves
are either cured of it or are inventing it. If you've genuinely
got an inferiority complex for any reason, you can't bear to admit
it. Surely? In any case you don't write this curiously fake
stuff.

I shall resign myself and stand by to cope with the results
of this strange development, and there should be plenty. I will not
be a bore about this again, and I do hope that when we come back
from France you will come down here and stay.

Do you know, I cannot avoid a suspicion that Anthony has settled in America simply because he rightly thought he was going to make some money and did not want to share it with Kitty. There does not seem a spark of humanity in him, nothing but this terrible greed. I suppose it is my fault, but good God, I did not mean to have a child and I did my best when he was there, and I would have thought Anthony could have seen that.

Oh, dear. Come and see us some time when we get back from France. That will be in the end of September. By the way do you know anything about a man called Sloss, Duncan Sloss, who was Vice-Chancelor of Hong-Kong University, and now lives in Oxford? For some reason an American friend of mine wants to know something about him, and I can find out nothing, a very blank accountant Who's Who.

Much affection and good wishes,

Yours ever,

overlook the fact that she is over fifty.

Do come down here and stay the week-end.
It is really very pretty here, and I won't bore
you about Anthony, I have simply grasped the
fact that he is a comic character and not a tragic
one and ceased to worry. I shall be up in the
North next week, but anytime in April or after
it would be lovely to see you here.

Yours ever,

TURVILLE HEATH 310.

IBSTONE HOUSE,

IBSTONE,

№ HIGH WYCOMBE,

BUCKS.

October 19, 1955.

My dear John,

Come down any week-end except the next. The house is warm, thermosealed up to the eyes. I gathered from talk at a lunch at which Gilbert Harding and Roger Senhouse were present that you were having a dreadful time with your mother and also that someone had planted an R.D. cheque on you, but I had no idea that you were in such a depleted state. I am very glad that you feel well again - there is no murse like the Mediterranean.

Your account of your telephone conversation with Anthony makes me feel still more horrified. It makes the hypocrisy of his visit here and the later meetings more disgusting still. For what he said to you makes it quite certain that this book is part of the old campaign of malice. As a matter of fact, I think it most unlikely that when he spoke to you he had not already arranged to seeme, for he rang up very soon after he and his wife had arrived here, and I am sure that he had the intention from the moment he landed, because he told Kitty so. I ralise now that he simply came in the hopes of getting some money, which he did, and this made him shy of telling you, as he knows you know him very well. It is a most curious thing that he should have talked to you of his ex-children, for Kitty said that they were singularly unmoved when he left, she had never seen that before. It is also curious that he should have told you that every word in the novel is true - because there is not a single incident in the novel which bears the smallest resemblance to fact. Apart from the misrepresentation of my feelings for him. Kitty has not usually a strong sense of h mour so far as Anthony xxx is concerned, but she is amused because at the end of the book he represents himself as a very serene young man, capable of dealing with every situation that arises with the most delicate tact and skill, and always repelling the advances of charming girls.

I don't think there is anything that can be done. What worries me is the insanity. I know that what enrages him with me and with

TURVILLE HEATH 310

IBSTONE HOUSE,

IBSTONE,

№ HIGH WYCOMBE,

BUCKS.

My dear John,

Anthony is hawking HERITAGE round the English publishers again. There has been a curious sequence of events. He spoke of me in America in a way that can only be described as foul until December. Then, according to my friends, he suddenly came to them and told them that there was no truth in the book (though he had assured them it was true for word of an account of his childhood, which was such perjury that it sickens one) and that it was an imaginative work of art and that he loved me dearly. Then, must before Christmas, I got a letter from his second wife, Lily, which was quite reclusive, manifestly insincere, and shockingly written - she assured me that though Anthony disapproved of much I said and did he had always described me as a magnificent passionate creature, and he had written the book "more by accident than by design." The letter was quite disgusting in its falsity and in its high flown style. Then Anthony wrote a worse one to Kitty, who had written to him saying she thought the book a work of malice, saying that he had no malice in his heart and that he had written it because he had considered the works of Balzac and D.H. Lawrence and he had come to the conclusion that they owed their power to their integrity, so he had decided he must tell the truth about the field where he best knew it. Why this truth should consist of lies about me he did not explain. The letter was a mixture of Chadband and Pecksniff and Uriah Heep. I couldn't answer it, it was so false and so smug and so patently written for some purpose. Now I hear that he is again trying to sell the book over here.

The only thing that worries me greatly is this: I realise now that there is quite a general misconception of the way Anthony has been treated financially, and I would like you to correct the stories he has been - I know now - spreading for years. I had no money from H.G.HP, settled some money on Anthony, I cannot now remember how much, but it should have amounted to some substantial

sum a year. When he went to America I got Kitty to hand over his affairs to an accountant and we discovered a most singular fact. He had always refused to let the Westminster Bank and myself ( who were his original trustees ) to handle his income tax, saying he had a friend who did it, actually he had torn up the forms year after year, thinking he was being very clever because they never did anything to him. But actually he owed the Inland Revenue people almost nothing at any tie, but they owed him a lot of money, so the tax had been deducted at source. My accountant could only recover for the last seven years, owing to the Statute of Limitations, and they were the most propserous of his life, but even so he recovered for the estate over four hundred pounds. As Anthony had done this for eleven years preceding this, when much more tax had been recoverable, the loss was tremendous.

As for me, I gave him very little when he was quite young, because he would not work. As soon as he worked, I gave him money presents which regularly amounted to at least two hundred pounds a year tax free, and I paid odd bills. Henry was extremely generous to him. He gave him a thousand pounds towards buying a house, and four hundred pounds on another occasion to pay a debt on a lease, two hundred and fifty pounds on another occasion and so on - it must have amounted to a very large sum in all.

Since he went to America I have paid considerable sums of money to Kitty, and have settled securities for which I paid fifteen thousand pounds and which are worth within a thousand or two of that today on the two children. These fifteen thousand pounds represent my earnings, or rather a large proportion of them.

I so persistently have rumours brought to me in which I am said to have done nothing for Anthony, or for Kitty and the children, that I would like you to know the truth and would be most obliged if you would contradict these rumours if you heard them.

Blessings on you, I hope all goes well with you,

TURVILLE HEATH 310.

IBSTONE HOUSE,
IBSTONE,
NR HIGH WYCOMBE,
BUCKS.

My dear John,

Thank you for your letter - and I must reply
ot it, busy though you are, just to tell you that
it grieves me that you should regard your own character
"with deep dislike." I have often heard people speak
with affection and gratitude of you because of a charac-
teristic of yours that always gives me pleasure. You
concede everybody else's right to exist while at the
same time you criticise them with sufficient discrimina-
tion to make it quite clear that this isn't sloppy
and indifferent acceptance of what comes. I like you
for that and for your individual X. Which I hope will
flourish in Nepal, even though you didn't concede
Rosita's right to exist there ✓

Much love,

EXPRES
GREETINGS
TELEGRAMS

TURVILLE HEATH 310

IBSTONE HOUSE.
IBSTONE.
№ HIGH WYCOMBE.
BUCKS.

March 23, 1967.

My dear John,

Do come down when you can. April after the 15th would be wonderful. I hate to hear of all your misadventures, particularly as I once had a carbuncle myself and thought it the most painful thing I ever had (except pancreatitis, of which I nearly died three years ago). We loved Mexico, and I am writing a brief booklet about an odd thing that happened to us there. But of that I'll tell you when we meet. Do come down and stay after the date I mention.

Much love from us both,

Yours ever,

TURVILLE HEATH 310.

IBSTONE HOUSE.

IBSTONE.

№ HIGH WYCOMBE.

BUCKS.

My dear John,

Thank you so much for your book, and
for your letter, and forgive me for not
thanking you before for the book or con-
gratulating on the honour we share, which, as
was so bluntly pointed out at the time you
got yours, is not good enough for footballers,
but which I think most becoming. My failure
to thank or congratulate was due to a long
period of flu, which was made permanent over
weeks by the hideous chill of this house -
we went over to oil for the central heating
a year ago !

I shall be in town next week for a couple
of days, and I could lunch on the 13th, if
that suits you. If not, perhaps you could
dine on the night of the 12th, but I should
much prefer lunch on the 12th.

Charlotte came in for a drink at the
Lansdowne the other evening, and I thought
she had become strangely classically hand-
some and dignified - bless her heart. It
amused me the other day at the lunch before
the Brains Trust to realise how her stock
has gone up among scientists since they