I Cheyne Gardens.
S.W.5.

18 of 05. 1954.

DEAR Mr. Pound,

Just a little something for your
birthday from Richard and me and all sorts of fond
wishes come with it.

I wasn't asking Charlie Chaplin to tea because
of his politics etc., I was asking him because I thought
max he'd be amusing. But still if you and he were goin
to fly at each others throats it wouldn't be very
amusing I suppose. Would you be interested in the NEXT
party?

NAPOLEON
EMILY BRONTE
RICHARD III
G. MANLEY HOPKINS
COLETTE
BUDDHA

and Mr. Ezra Pound????????

May I ask you something? Would you be willing to
give me some idea of how to become better educated
towards knowing your beliefs, hopes, plans, or whatever
word you would choose?. I want to know everything I
can that has to do with you. Perhaps you think I
I'm being presumptious and impertinent.

We are rather worried in case you have to pay
any sort of duty on the enclosed birthday present.
Will you let us know if you DO and we'll make it up
to you in some way.

AD.

I Cheyne Gardens
Chelsea

S.8x W. 3.

8 of Nov. 1972

Dear Mr. Pound,

cake WAS edible and that it survived the journey. I wish
I could make the journey to you as easily.

The off-spring is called Mercedes Francesca Selina
Rachel Jane.

Mercedes was Richard's choice and Francesca was mine. Everyone gasps with a sort of suppressed horror when we say "Mercedes", and then murmur rather faintly "OH-------- how unusual" and then change the subject.

I am just beginning to learn Italian, so I'm
STILL translating the last sentence of your letter.

I started learning some time ago but
then I suddenly got a job on a long tour, which
kent me so busy that I wasn't able to keep up the
classes.

Crede ella che potrò imparare presto la
lingua italiana bene?

Autumn is here. Wet leaves sticking to the pavements, mists, and a general air of sadness.

I went to the British Musuem to get you this
card. I thought you might like it.

When I have learnt more Italian I shall send you a
complete letter in the language. Some years ago,
a doctor I knew said he would take me to Persia
when he went next (he was always going there) and
so I started teaching myself Persian. I don't quite
know why he said he would, --- his intentions
MUST have been HONOURABLE (as the novelists say!)
because I was only fifteen. But I never went, and
I just seemed to lose sightof him and the Persian
lessons faded into the distance.

Are you well and able to work satisfactorily?

I also am enclosing a picture of me and
off-spring. One of Richard will come soon.

HÂLÂ EJÂZE MIDID, MORAKHKHAS MISHAM.
SALÂM ALEKOM

I Cheyne Gardens
Chelsea

S.W.3.

England.

23 Nov. [1954]

Dear Mr. Pound,

The "c" in "Mercedes" we pronounce like an "s" sound, and not like "th". But it's more Spa nish the other way I know.

I am wondering if you ever got a jar of pâte de foie gras that I posted off to you on about Oct 10th. which was to reach you for your birthday? The ONLY reason I ask is that over here we have had a quite bad dock strike, and in the post-office I see a notice to the effect that over-seas parcels and mail may get held up etc. etc. If by any chance you haven't got it could you let me know (if it's not too much bother) and I'll go along to the post-office and see if I can find out what has happened to it. It was packed very carefully so it shouldn't have broken or anything like that.

I see T.S. E. walking in Battersea Park, sometimes. He look a bit dried up and I wonder what he'd do if one dared approach him and just say "Nice Morning" or something as meaningless. He LOOKS as if he'd pretend he hadn't heard. But maybe he's just lonely really.

Am writing a lot of poetry (but then who isn't--- it's those who aren't writing it who are the odd ones--- or so it seems). And short stories (aren't they DIFFICULT? WHY?) And I've been reading Hemingway. Also a book called "The dedicated life in Poetry" by a french man called Au Tour Du Pin. But it's rather "precious" if you mean the same by that expression as I do. A few days ago I was reading some Rilke letters, but his self absorption and self-communion(for want of a better expression) begin to irritate me after a bit, and so I give up and turn to something more down to earth M (Hemingway for instance)

A friend of mine is having XXXXX a FREUDIAN deep analysis and it's been going on for four years. It looks like going on for at least another four. And at the end of it he hopes suddenly to be able to write. He's convinced he has a talent for it but somehow can't express it. It all seems rather like wishful thinking, but I suppose I'm just intolerant. But I always thought that if you wanted to write the only thing to do was WRITE (and read). DO people emerge from a deep analysis to discover they have a great talent? Maybe they do.

I've been trying to get your book on economics from the library but it's always out. But I go most days to look.

I hope to goodness the Pâte de foie gras ISN'T lying at the bottom of the Atlantic or something.

Addie + Sinceres (Addie isn't right, but it's true) Ingrid Davies

I Cheyne Gdns SW3.

[Nov/Dec 1954]

Dear Mr Pound, Sir,

There's no hungry poet here, waiting for Godly wisdom,
other then throu Thurber & Thurber. You managed from Homer Virgil Dante
without typewritten notes on request from the said gents, and having to
work out answers for oneself does'nt harm. Questions were only asked for
the heck, and an answer only expeted if they struck a chord, so to speak,
Denis Gg said, praise be the Lord, you were putting all your eggs into
Cantos, and not troubling to pilot tyros, or somesuch, and for me there's
nothing better than that, waiting, & with many others, no doubt, for the
completion of the Cantos; plus anything else you do, like the Track.

I'm sorry I'm serious. That's a bad trait. Its the
German in me. I had'nt thought a comedy would give me more fun. Some
things, yes. A flat off the Reeperbahn. Abolition of mother-in-laws.
Abolition of the English trait of not being able to make a fool of
oneself. Abolition of all poets and the poetry they wrote. A fat $ in-
heritance. Any damned production, comic or otherwise! That was hox-boffice.
In ref to poetry, to save me reading it, I never could; or anything.
In two years of schooling I was moved down one form, and was bottom of
everything. My prepschoolmaster said, "If you'd worked, you'd have got a
scholarship." I thought, as he said it, at that time, age 14 yrs, "You
might just as well say, of someone with no brain, if they had brain they
could have got a scholarship." At Stowe I got a good way of cheating, to
avoid learning poetry by heart, AFTER they had threatened to send me down
if I was found cheating again. I wrote out the poem in prep, giving
myself a modest 60/70% to allay suspicion. In class, I put this version
beneath the sheet of paper I pretended to write it on, when we were asked
to write out the stuff from memory. Then, when we showed up, I whipped
out the prepared version from underneath.

He'd give us 5 mins to look at
our books, then shut books and write out. That 5 mins was a bore to me,
and I'd dream. I dreamt so well I forgot to shut my book. "What's this
book open?" When I said I'd forgot to shut it, he did nt believe me. I
said, "Would I in my right senses leave the book open wide on the desk?"
He said "Perhaps, relying on that argument if caught." I shall never
forget the roar of laughter from the class when he said, "He's not such
a tool as he looks." And added, "I think he could be very cunning." Then,
with glee, "Well, we'll see. We'll see if he knows it or not? if he can
write it out!" And highly excited, he paced up and down by my desk,
looking every second to what came off my pen on to my "dummy" bit of
paper. Never have I so sweated. The dummy had to be filled, I could nt
pass it off with a dummy scrawl, as he kept reading out the class the
my efforts as I progressed. Therefore I had to resort to the crudest
form, the one I had rejected as unsafe, cheating by copying from a prepared
key, the key here being the version I had intended to show up. Fortunately
the last thing on earth he ever suspected was that I was still cheating.

which I did half the thing and then collapsed with palpitations
of the heart I was afraid he'd see. He was half satisfied, and told me to
see him afterwards. I thought "He only has to ask me to recite it." Why
he never did I dont know. The poem was "Shall I compare thee to a summers
day?" Years later I received it, and a collague, one Jerry Applegate,
a slightly natural cockney comic who was most serious, keen for an original

‡ d natural chord of response.

I Cheyne Gardens. S.W.3.

DEC. 2nd.

Dear Mr. Pound,

WELL, I saw T.S.E. again and so I SMILED at him (and it was entirely devoid of flirtation) and he locked very startled, ducked his head down, and scuttled away loke a crab. ( "I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas)"

So God knows What he'd do if I actually SAID anything. Maybe he thought I was trying to pick him up or something, but I don't see how he COULD have thought it, as I was pushing the pram, complete with baby. So what is my next move?

Am reading Baudelaire (attenting to I should say) in the original I suppose his "aesthetic" articles should be read in conjunction with the poems, as I understand that it isn't easy to separate the poet and the xxxx critic. The poems I've so far liked best are mostly the cat ones. But he certainly seems to have been a good subject for a psychologist.

Do you think I ought to learn Greek? Then I could read the Odyssey, and so learn as you say to write. I didn't learn Latin or Greek at school. Didn't really learn anything at school. The best things I know I didn't find out at school, they came to me mostly when I was alone at various different places at different times. (Does that make sense?)

Also I've read Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited" and did not like it at all, despite Everyone telling me what a wonderful book it was. I think it's the sort of book that people get taken in by. I don't think I like any of the "modern" English Catholic writers (from Chesterton to Greene). They are all converts too I believe. But the modern FRENCH Catholic writers seem so much better. (But I'm afraid I have only read them in translation).

Also read The Old Man of the Sea, by Hemingway. The action is fast-moving and the whole thing seems compact and exact, but somehow I don't seem able to LIKE Hemingway. His personality seems to shine thru all he writes, the heroes all seem to be different aspects of H IMSELF, and there seems always to be a note of self-congragulation in his books. But as I've told you before, my critical faculties are AWFUL shaky at present. But I'm raelly working hard at them.

That friend I told you about who has been haying the deep analysis told me a day or two ago that he has spent 22 TWO THOUSAND pounds on it. Now he's getting it free at some clinic. But 2,000 pounds, does seem AWFUL don't you think. Why with THAT amount of money I could come across and see youand spend ages in Washington. Apart from coming to see you ideally I'd like to hurry off and spend a year on that romantic unpeopled island that Yeats described in the Indian to his Love. London is so full of titillating distractions.

I've just had an idea. I'm taking up photography on a more serious footing than I have done hitherto, and so I'm going to take my camera into Battersea Park whenever I go and WHEN I see T.S.E. again I'll go quite near and take a photo of him. Maybe that will have some effect? But maybe I'd better wait for the O.K. from you IN CASE you think that would be a DASTARDLY thing to do. After all it WOULD be akward if T.S.E. hit out at me or something. Not that he'd make a very BEVEW teeful picture

My ma-in-law tells me that I have no soul and no spirit (whatever that may mean) because I don't go to church. A short while ago I read the confessions of St. Augustine, and I interprerted what he said as "Love God and do as you like, because if you love God you act according to his will i.e. with

I have been re-reading some Stephen Spender poems but I didn't like them at all. Too much indeterminate rumination about "this pulsing skeleton walking in a wilderness of stars", which when it leads to no deeply felt conclusions seems to be just a sort of poetic journalism.

Pure LOGIC isn't much help is it, if you are endeavouring to understand the problems of existence? What I find so terribly difficult is to know how to LEARN TO LEARN. Can you understand me? Perhaps that is what a university does. Teaches you HOW to learn. I just know that there is a great deal I MUST know and am determined to know, but that there are moments when (to use a well-worn phrase) I "can't see the wood for the trees". Perhaps I'm being a bore. Tell me the TRUTH if I am.

I went to the library to get some F.M.F. but EVERY THING literally EVERYTHING was out. BUT I have put reservations on one or two. BUT AT LAST I have your book on economics and when this letter is finished I'm going to start reading it. I know NOTHING about economics. I'm ignorant completely on the subject. But I shall sit up in bed to night and study chapter one.

Apart from looking after Mercedes and send letters to Mr. Pound, I also make myself write two sides of foolscap paper every day, either prose or poetry or a criticism of a play or film I've seen, because I'M CONVINCED that if you want to write really and truly and SERIOUSLY, you must make yourself DO some every day whether you feel like it or not. As a sort of discipline

Now I must stop. I hope you haven't fallen asleep over this. I can't BELIEVE that you don't know anything about my generation.

May I write again?

Ingrid / 8 Jan/ BUT

she might keep it as memo/ to guide conversation
with any of the ½ educated( as distinct from the totally IGGURUNT,
and voluntary and of malice obscurers /

dont worry about literacy.

Original sin : dirtiest hoax ever put over humanity , not excepting
Marx and the - iatrists.

Note / Doug/ on perversion / orignial sin , in greek , the
PARTICULAR error , like Agy/ against the
hunting rites /or Odys' gang killing beef.

The START of a partic/ series of calamities.

In the jew book/ Eden. parable for usury / and some rabbis
have SEEN this.

NOT tree of knowledge, and puppygander
fer iggurunce.

Same " free and equal " / MEANT no special privileges at law
for nobility , clergy etc.

BUT the swine twist it into idiocy / there is NO
UNIVERSITY in nature , no two leaves the same.
uniformity of individuals .

Leviticus / NOT a code of ethics , but a racket to impose fines
fer benefit of Levis abd Cohens.

Idiocy of ALL occidental forms of govt/ is to make LEGAL crimes
of non-criminal acts , like sale of beer or transport
of diamenods.

thence the corruption of the police, and
the oedemitosity of bugobracy.

Richard's style improves when he gets to PARTICULAR cases.

I Cheyne Gds. S.W.3. England.

13 of Jan. '55

Dear Mr. Pound, Ronsard is magical. When I read him I begin to comprehend what is meant by the word "inspired". He makes Baudelaire seem almost dull. Is that a sacrilegeous thing to say? I'm reading him slowly of course, but half the time it doesn't seem to matter whether one can UNDERSTAND what is being said or not. It all somehow SOUNDS right. Would it be alright to read Villon, Marot, and Malherbe as well?

It is snowing here. Soon it will thaw and turn to slush. UGH. It lasts such a little time in London (the snow I mean). I love to see it in the country when the only marks on it are the delicate patterns made by birds feet. I don't know about how you feel, (or how you felt when you weren't in jug, but I enjoy walking in the country, over moors and by the sea, with EXACTLY the same reason that I did when I was about fourteen. My friend who is being analysed says "Grown up people DON'T feel like that. To which I replied "Well all that happens is that (for what he chooses to call "grown up" people,) the JOY doesn't necessarily leave them, it's just the painful intensity which disappears". Does that make sense to you? They have just published Yeat's letters here. I want to get hold of them from the library, 'tho I understand why the ones to you aren't in it? I should rather like to have a bull-mastif, but R. says "NO" Or a great dane, but again he says no. His ma says No too. What would you say? I have a Siamese cat but want something a little bigger. I also suggested a racoon, a monkey, a fox, or a badger but nothing met with any response. I invariably want the wrong things (like I read all the third rate writers). I also seem to do the wrong things too (or so it seems). The man who's being analysed spent best part of yesterday evening talking to R. about his "LIBIDO". A horrible word isn't it? When I TOLD him I thought it a horrible word he looked very profound and said "Hmn. That's most significant".

For my novel reading shall I stick to W. Lewis, or could I start off on Stendahl? You've no idea how I have to PLAN and regulate my spare time these days so as to be sure of getting done all the things I'm trying. I have my reading which I very much enjoy and also my Italian, and also my "discipline" writing each day and in a week or two I plan to make a start at Greek. Is it better to try and teach yourself a language than to go to a school or some such place to learn it? On top of all my reading writing and learning etc. I do also trying to write a play (have written several but none of them any good) so that I can earn some money (LOTS) and then buy bull-mastifs, racoons, foxes etc. and come to Washington, and go to Italy, and India, and do all the million things I've been planning since I was about twelve. But lately I've been thinking less about the play and more about my other interests (Ronsard etc etc.)

I'm a bit worried that my letters are getting on your nerves and going on far too long so maybe I'd better stop and start again to-morrow.

Goodnight for a little while.

* That word is meant to be 'pleasure'.

D I Cheyne Bardens, Chelsea, S.W. 3, England.

17 Jan.

Dear Mr. Pound,

Do they ever show you films in your place? If so have you seen any of the post-war Italian films, because I wondered what sort of a picture they give of life in Italy now?. The rich are always VERY rich (or so it seems) and rather wicked, and the poor are very poor and rather virtuous. There seems never to be anything in between. Is that how it is do you think?

I am finding that Ronsard is having a strange effect on me. I seem to be becoming more and more dissatisfied with my way of life, it seems to LACK something vital, "on cherchetoujours", and I can't discover what it is. If I were still in my adolescence I suppose it would just be part of the process of "growing up" but at my age God KNOWS what it is. Do you think that people who are unhappy write better poetry than people who aren't? I myself don't know the answer to that, and I just wondered if YOU had any view much? I DO know from my own experience tho, that any sort of CONFLICT makes me write better than when there isn't conflict. But does conflict necessarily mean unhappiness?

Would it be alright to read ABOUT Ronsard as well as reading his poetry?

To-morrow I'm going to the shops to get the books you've suggested for starting on Greek. They didn't have ANY of them at the library so I'm going to buy them.

Do you know something you do that nobody I know does (nobody of your age I mean). You talk to one (or rather you write to one) exactly as if one were the same age as you yourself, and therefore capable of reading and appreciating all that you read and appreciate. You never "talk down" as so many people of your generation do (I mean the ones who are, or who think they are "clever". The ordinary women one knows CAN't talk down to one on the whole as they seem to have nothing to talk down about.) It gives one surprising confidence. Thank you for it. It has helped me VERY MUCH indeed.
I got into a certain amount of trouble with "your generation" the other day for calling somebody "a bigoted Anglo-Catholic", which he was. Ehhhhh

I was called "obstreperous" (I love that word) and "bad-mannered" and "pertinent" and other dreadful thinks, and the atmosphere was Awful. Why is it that the older generation always think they are right and the younger generation considered "outside" for disagreeing with them? The man in question was supported by a woman who said "All you young people ever think about, is sex and modern novels". Which isn't TRUE. It really isn't. Is it? Which means I could start or shouldn't I start him yet? Do you think I'm trying to do too much and that I shall just swallow everything whole and undigested.?! I'm trying to be careful.

Another long letter. Ehhhh Richard has gone out to dinner with a friend this evening. I've decided I MUST travel and so I am trying to find out HOW to do so without having to pay much (work one's way and that sort of thing). But women aren't much good at "roughing it" are they?

Godbye for a while.

Dear Mr. Pound, I've tried in EIGHT public libraries to get "From Admiral to Cabin boy" AND the LONDON library (who I thought were infallible) and NO ONE has got it. SO, I'm going to write to the Admiral himself. I looked him up in "Who's Who", just to find his address. How GRAND he seems, don't you think? I hope he wont think it a great impertinence to write.

Why does W. L. talk about people lying in "muscular masses". He always seems to describe love scenes in those very ANATOMICAL and col-blooded sort of terms. Perhaps I am expecting something too romantic, ...... rather on the level of those women's magazines??? I get the feeling that he **DO NOT** writes in a more Virile way than he probably actually IS. Or WAS.??

Ronsard continues to enchant me. He SEEMS to write with such SUGGESTION and simplicity. Is that because his technique is superb? And what an enormous amount of vitality and life shines thru his work. Altogether, I find him a VERY romantic figure (amongst other things).

How can LOGIC tackle the problems of existence? It can't, can it? Well if it can't then what CAN? Or are such problems un-tackable? Your generation (the ones I meet i mean ) seem to think that "WHY? and "HOW" are 4 words one should have grown out of by the time one is married with a baby. (Women wanting to know things isn't the SAME thing as men wanting to know things --- that's what they imply.) Marriage and children etc. should be enough etc etc etc.)

Reading the Cantos certainly does make one want to FIND things out. At the moment (and also while I was reading your book on economics) I am trying to understand the theories of Social Credit.

I suppose I'm stupid, but I am finding it a bit confusing. The awful thing IS, that hardly anyone you meet knows much more about economics than someone is trying to know oneself.

Do you think anything more will happen in the Alger Hiss case? Later on this evening I'm going to listen to a discussion on the wireless called "Morals without Religion". One of the speakers (a woman who is a lecturer in psychology at Aberdeen University) gave a talk a short while ago and received a storm of abuse for saying that children should be told about Christmas and such things just as they are told about Father Christmas, i.e. told about them and then told that they are merely legends etc, etc. Members of the various churches got up roaring in protest, but really, it amazes me how much they MIND people saying things of that sort. You would think that they were able to withstand that sort of thing, but they behave like a lot of children who's toys have been taken away for good and all.

If my writing (I mean my HAND-writing!) were more legible, I could write to you more often, without having to wait for Richard to finish with the type-writer. But perhaps that would be too much of a good thing?

I hope you are well. We think about you such a lot.
Good-night,
Laphid D.

I Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea, S.W.3. England.

24 of Jan 55

Dear Mr. Pound,

REALLY, book-shops are MORONIC. For over a week I've been trying to get the Goodwin Greek Grammar you suggested, with NO results at all. However one shop has said they think they CAN get it. SO I sit and wait. Also, I've rung G. Hynes lots of times, and no answer, and written, and no answer. So I imagine she is away. This morning I had such a charming letter from Signora de Rachewiltz. I am going to write again when I've written this to you. Is she the same age as me? I mean as "I")/? I've been trying to find a good book on Ancient Greece, but find it rather difficult to tell which ones ARE good.

Yesterday, we dined with a girl who has just spent three months in Spain. It seems as if they are still living in the Middle ages, (the Spaniards I mean). Although her descriptions (very LURID) of bull-fights, sickened me in the tummy a bit, I couldn't help feeling that if they DO feel like they do, then maybe it's a good thing that they have BULLS to work it off on. Also I got the impression that it is FAR better to be a courtesan, or whatever else they call themselves than it is to be married. Husbands apparently are AWFUL. I saw in the "Times" the other day that T.S.E. has entered a nursing home for medical treatment. I haven't seen him in Battersea Park for a long time.

I got a letter from the Admiral saying that OF COURSE I wouldn't get his book in a shop or library as it had been on the banned list from the beginning. But I'm ordering it from the Britons Publishing co. He wrote me a nice letter, which I've answered.

I find that the Italian Grammar I'm working from ("HOSSFIELDS") is a bit too condensed for someone who is attempting to teach herself. Is there a grammar that you recommend? I wish I had a nice kind patient teacher to give me a lesson every evening. There is something slightly lonely about teaching oneself.

One thing about your generation that really makes me mad (forgive me) is the way the women I meet never stop telling me what AWFUL lives they had compared with the young people of to-day. But how can that be true? They had lots of money (unearned), they never worked, had dozens of servants, didn't have to do ANYTHING for themselves. Didn't even have to dress themselves or do their hair. Had endless parties, never had a sense of insecurity, or wondering what the future held. I know of course that all the future DID hold was probably a dreary marriage and lots of children, but hardly any of them seemed to WANT ANY OTHER sort of future. They didn't want careers, on the whole., and they seemed more concerned with making a good and "suitable" marriage than a happy one. I'm sorry. Perhaps I'm hard on them. But sometimes they sound so SELF-PITYING, and with all they had, you would have thought that they could have xdom MARVELS.

I am enjoying reading the CANTOS very very much. I am reading them slowly and carefully, and often aloud. I often don't understand, but I find it is possible to be carried away by whole passages that I can't really understand, and not being able to understand doesn't STOP me being "carried away". (Awful expression, but you know what I mean). We have a house-keeper (I mean R's. mother has) who ADORES listening outside doors. It is almost her favourite occupation. I wonder what she thinks when she hears me reading the Cantos? I HOPE very much that it will make her want to read them herself. Good-luck, Ingrid.

I Cheyne Gardens Chelsea X S.W.3.

27 of Jan 55.

Dear Mr. Pound, The type-writer is now working again. I've just given myself my SECOND Greek lesson. But I am inpatient. After two lessons, I almost expected to be able to translate some of the things in the Cantos that I want to. I have been trying to understand the chapter on "breathing". It is very peculiar. Don't you think so?

If there is ONE person who I really cannot stick at any cost it is Charles Morgan. He really makes me sick. All that breathing of spirituality, is suffocating, and then of course he always throws in a sprinkling of something a leeetle more physical, just to show that there are such things. A friend of mine (of my own age exactly) says that he is a very "beautiful" writer, and that when she reads him, she feels as if she were in anoth er world. But who is right? Probably neither.

I have now had two letters from the Admiral. He is a very spirited writer isn't he? Tell me please, do you like liquer chocolates? Eisenhower has behaved in a mad way over Formosa, don't you think? Politics seem mad to me.

Isn't W.L. ANALYTICAL? and too he seems almost BITTER. Almost as if he had a "grudge" or something.

I looked at a long long novel that I wrote between the ages of hhhhhh sixteen and seventeen, and had a good laugh. It has EVERY THING in it Prostitution,, illicit love affairs, drink (gallons of drink), art, poetry, murder, near-rape, and to crown it all the heroine (me of COURSE) dies in child-birth with the April sun shining on her face. Although I throw away piles of old writing, I feel i must keep this, just to make myself laugh if I get gloomy. Did you do much novel-writing when you were sixteen?

Were you good at taking advice when you were my age? Did you find that you were able to Confide in the older generation. I ask because, one does get a lot of criticism for "detachment" (can't think of a better word off-hand to describe what I mean). Of course I suppose when your generation were young, they told each other EVERYTHING. they had nothing else to do with their time perhaps?

A young man advertises in the "Times" this morning saying he is a Milan graduate, and will give Italian lessons. I'm wondering whether to write and ask what he charges? I'm getting rather lonely teaching myself, 'tho I still like it very much indeed. I do rather long to be able to speak it VERY fast and to read Dante hhhhhh quicker than I am doing at present. I'm afraid I suffer dreadfully from impatience Did you when you were this age?

The man I know who's being analysed says I ought to read Jung and Freud again (I haven't since my teens) and he brought a great tome of Freud round the other day. But true to your instructions on the subject of psychology etc., I made him take it back again.

Mercedes has a perfect passion for soap. Every night in her bath she takes a great bite.

I hope you are well. Is it STILL alright for me to go on writing. Or have you had enough.

Good-night Mr. Pound.

Il "Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines" di Ch.Daremberg etc. cita in proposito l'Iliade, attraverso gli *Schol. Iliad*. VII.86 per dare auto-rita' a questa affermazione: "Le mot σειρα, qui est aussi quelquefois une épi-thète des Nereides, fait songer a' l'écume blanche des vagues." Questo nome le é attribuito quando viene trasformata in dea. Bacco che ella ha allevato avreb-be contribuito a questa trasformazione. Come deme amata da Poseidone. La leggenda p-primitiva dice Ino figlia di Cadmo e d'Armonia, sorella di Semele, di Agave e di Autonoé, e sposa di Atamante re di Tebe o d'Arcomene. Soggetto di due tragedie: "Atamante" di Eschilo e "Ino" di Euripide.

Deux versions différentes avaient cours àx son sujet. Dans l'une, elle est une femme odieuse dont la fin misérable n'inspire aucune pitié. Athamas, disait-on, avant de se marier avec Ino dont il eut deux fils, Léarchos et Melikertès, avait épousé Néphélé, qui lui avait donné aussi deux enfants, Phrixos et Hellé. Ceux-ci ne tardèrent pas à etre en butte àk la haine violente de leur marâtre, qui médita leur perte. Elle machine d'abord un singulier artifice: elle persuadea aux femmes béotiennes de faire griller les grains de blé qui devaient servir de semence; le blé jété en terre ne germe pas, et le pays est en proie àx la famine. Athamas envoie consulter l'oracle de Delphes; mais Ino suggère aux envoyés la réponse qu'ils doi-vent rapporter: ils diront que la Pythie a déclaré que l'unique moyen de mettre un terme àx la disette, c'est d'immoler, devant l'auteîl de Jupiter, Phrixos, le fils de Néphélé. Athamas a le coeur déchiré, mais il finit par se résigner, dans l'inté-rêt public, àk laisser immôber Phrixos. On sait comment, au moment même du sacri-fice, Néphélé sauva merveilleusement ses enfants. Cependant Athamas décrouvre bien-tôt les perfidies d'Ino. Dans sa fureur, il tue le jeune Léarchos et poursuit Ino qu'il ménace de mort. Celle-ci prend la fuite, emportant son second fils Mélicerte, et désespérée, elle se précipite, avec l'enfant, dans la mer.

La légende la plus répandue a, avec le même dénouement, un caractère tout dif-férent. Ino n'y apparait pas comme une criminelle, mais comme une innocente victi-me de la colère divine. Quand Bacchus fut né, Jupiter ayant remis le fils de Sémélé-entre les mains d'Hermès, celui-ci porta l'enfant dans la demeure d'Ino et d'Athamas, ou bien présentant une coupe au jeune dieu assis sur un rocher. Mais ces soin-donnés au fils d'une rivale remplissent Héra d'une jalouse colère. Pour punir les deux époux, elle égare leur raison. D'après Euripide, Ino devenue folle se serait jetée dans la mer avec ses deux enfants. Mais d'ordinaire on racontait la fable au-trement. C'est d'abord Athamas qui, àr la chasse, perce de ses flèches son fils ai-né Léarchos qu'il prend pour un cerf. C'est ensuite Ino qui jette Mélicerte dans une chaudière d'eau bouillante et emporte avec elle le cadavre de son fils pour al-ler se noyer, ou, plus simplement, qui fuit, tenant Mélicerte entre ses bras, jusqu'au rivage de la mer, d'ouùx elle se lance au milieu des vagues. Partie de la Béotie, Ino, dans sa course désespérée, avait traversé la Mégaride. On montrait près de Mé-gare un endroit où elle avait passé, le KAMnos, car Kain est encore un des noms qui désignaient Ino; et c'est du haut d'un promontoire des monts Géraniens où, d'un-façon plus précise, de la roche Molouris, qui surplombe le plus étroit passage du chemin taillé dans les roches Scironiennes, qu'elle avait sauté dans les flots. El-le ne meurt cependant pas, non plus que Mélicerte: la mère et les fils sont miracu-leusement sauvés par un dauphin qui les portes àk la coté de Corinthe. Le souvenir de cet événement s'est conservé sur les monnaies de cette ville."

Il Daremberg cita gli Schol.Odiss.V.394 a proposito d'una etimologia di fantasia secondo cui antichi scoliasti "prétendaient qu'avant de se précipiter dans la mer, Ino avait fui en courant (Θεω) àk travers " la plaine blanche" de Mégaride!"

Cita ancora l'Odissea X.95 per dire che forse il home ricorda piuttosto la καθημη γαλάμη, "l'aspect blanchâtre qu'àk certains moments présente au loin la mer, quand elle est absolument calme?"

Cita ancora l'Odissea V.353 (notando che il v.337 pare interpolato) per ricordare
che "Quand elle apparait à Ulysse, elle émerge de l'eau, où elle rentre ensuite,
pareille à un plongeon".

Cita ancora l'Odissea V.336-462 facendo un riassuntino dell'episodio omerico.

= κρημηνόον -Odyss.V.459.

I Homeri Odyssea. Et in eandem Scholia ...veterum... opera Josuae Barnes...
Cantabrigiae... MDCCXI:

traduz. "tum certe vittam a se solvit deae"

(nè scholia, nè notae; ma si tratta della fascia o velo o cintura che aveva
dato Ino ad Ulisse).

II "Apollonii Sophistae Lexicon Graecum Iliadis et Odysseae... Lutetiae Parisiorum.
MDCLXXIII". (cita Ilias K.100, dove é nel significato di cinta muraria).

III "The Odyssey of Homer translated by Alexander Pope. London, 1845."

"the mindful chief Leucothea's scarf unbound"

= κύσε δὲ Ζείδωεν Ἀσπεσ ὅσσα - Odyss.V.663

I (Barnes) trad. "Junco recubuit, osculatusque est alIORa tellurem".

Scholia: Κύσε] Κατερίλλαν

II (Apollonio)

Κύσε .Ore osculatus est

Rédwes. Vitam dans terra; huius enim est epithetum: Et osculatus est alIORa tellurem.

Απολέα .Terra; sic dicta quod aretur.

III (Pope) "and gently kiss'd the ground / Where on the flowery herb as soft he lay".

= Ἀσπετος -Odyss.V.101

I (Barnes) trad. Immensam. Scholia : πολύ

II (Apollonio) Quorum numerum mente non facile consequi possumus. Sicque demum
notat plutima.

(L'sclamazione càspita! in italiano, secondo il Dizionario Etimologico del Battista
é del sec.XIX; é corruzione di càppita! apparso nel sec.XVI e analogo a càpperi ap=
parso nel sec.XVII, e quest'ultimo ancora vivo. Nel dialetto veneziano é dall'anti-
chita' stata usata l'esclamazione cape! Se càpperi é un vegetale, cape é un mollusco
Map nell'esclamazione non esiste ombra di un tale significato, che a parer mio é da
cercare nello storpiamento volontario di altra parola sempre usatissima come esclama
zione:cazzo!, la quale trova equivalenti in minchia! siciliano (mentula lat.)
Tuttavia bisognerebbe vedere in spagnuolo (caspitina!)e in portoghese (caspite) se si
ha un processo analogo)

La nota pronта a merpe prima che mi ammalarSI dei
mici malebetti reumatismi quattro mesi fa, la completo
e specifico era solo, tornando "ciompo" a bottega. In
tempo per parapassare il paro del Vangeli: dato a ciasc
quell ohe è di Cesare, t'as Maw ti de TOV M'OU EOTI...
Ewsh'ali Satki

Mantodon

I Cheyne Gardens Chelsea S.W.3. ENGLAND. 28 of Jan. 55
Dear Mr. Pound, The day before yesterday I was obliged to throw

"Fowlers English Usage" at the head of the man who's being analysed,
(it was the nearest book to hand) because he said "Smoking a pipe, is
simply part of an anal complex" He has psychology on the BRAIN, it's
getting too much of a good thing.

Last night we went to a party. Towards two o.m. this morning, I got
the subject round to Economics, and then tried to explain some of the
things in your book. Then we had a discussion on Mr. Pound, and I some
how managed to "hold the floor" for some time. (I did not of course
tell them that I was in correspondence with you). I hope I did you
credit. Anyway, four of the company said they were DEFINITely going
to listen to D. Goacher's broadcast on Monday on what you believe. So
I hope SOME good has been done.

I had a card from Patricia Hutchins to say that we can meet on
about Feb. 12th. as she's in Paris till then. Meanw hile I'm reading
a book by Lord Pakenham, about the Treaty of '21 as part of the back
ground study and am trying to get hold of "The Imagists". I am very
excited by this D. Fitzgerald study. I am still reading the Cantos,
and also Ronsard, when NOT working on the D.F.

To-day Mercedes crawled towards a book-case, and OF ALL
the books on the shelves she pulled down "A draft of 30 Cantos".
Moreover she opened it up and gazed at it for some time. At fifteen
months, I have great hopes of her future litrary taste.

Can't seem to get hold of "One way song" at the library. But go on
trying.

I have to date given myself three Greek lessons. I cannot yet write
anything and to my great dissappointment neither can I translate some
of the things in the Cantos. I told you I was foolishly optimistic.
Did you aver read much Katherine Mansfield? Maybe you met her?

And Virginia Woolf? All rather Bloomsbury I believe?

Richard appears to be reading Dorothy L. Sayers translation of Dante
I personally don't like doing that because I like to have the Italian
as well (a bi-lingual copy I mean). I have made slow attempts to
read the Italian.

I wonder what you think of all this Formosa business? Does every-
body fear that a major war (or a minor one) may arise ?

If there is one thing that religious people DON'T ever seem to make
clear to me it is the idea of "Free will". They will insist that we
have free will and yet at the same time keep on saying how God
can see all that is happening and is going to happen. Why doesn't
he do something about stopping the horrors that he can foresee, I ask
and they reply smugly "Oh but He wants us to be able to choose for
ourselves. THAT is free will" God certainly doesn't make sense.

Do I write too many letters. Anyway you don't HAVE to XXXX
answer them. If you don't want to.

I'll stop now. Good-bye again.

I Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea, S.W.3. England 31 of Jan 55

Dear Mr. Pound,

ON Association.

Could you let us have the address of Mr. Paige (the one who edited
your letters), please? Also do you know the best sources of inform-
ation of the six odd other people who were indicted at the same
time as yourself? Also Debs./? Also who is Wing?

Trying to find out about Raymond Preston, and hope to contact him for a lead. Would ANYBODY?

As for "female volition" and the she supposed to produce the urge.
Well I think I'm doing THAT, anyway I'm certainly trying HARD enough
But some of the "male intellect" is stubboner and more cautious

than you probably realise. They (males I mean) are so often ready t
to label females "all emotion" (even when they are definitely NOT)
It's a battle alright. * See below.

I admire your information about Vanni very much. Maybe the CLIMATE
here isn't conducive to work or something. Certainly you're right
about the lethargy etc. Another thing. I find that one isn't given
a great deal of encouragement. The lack of it starts just as soon
as one is able to say "When I grow UP I want to be--------" etc.
When I was fifteen and at boarding school, I had SIX books that
I'd filled with writings of one sort and another. Childish rubbish
PROBABLY, but they represented three years HARD (or so it seemed then)
work at something that I had vowed was going to be my life's work.
It took the head-mistress just a few minutes to destroy the lot,
saying "Nothing a child of fifteen can write can be the SLIGH TEST
interest to anybody" And she hadn'T even READ them. She just
happened to find out that instead of doing my Geometry I was writing
DO poetry, stories etc. So she destroyed them She didn't even ASK
ME for them. She went to my drawer and TOOK them. I flew at her and
hit her and scratched her and smashed a precious vase, and tipped at
all the book out of her book-case, and was then dragged off to the
SICK*ROOM in order to "recover". EHEM before I could do anything
further. However.

I can't imagine that anyone WOULD enjoy writing for Punch. Have you
SEEN it lately? Give me the NEW YORKER anyday.

Have sent off JMX for copy of your broadcasts from Rome (sent to
Washington I mean) Have also BOUGHT copy of Time for Dec. 13th.
(altho I'd read it some time ago at the U.S. Embassy. Like the
photograph of you in it VERY much. Doesn't J. Joyce look peculiar
on ytdacec opposite page?

I'm sorry if you think my reading is pretty poor. Am doing my best.
It is after all just as well to learn to be S elective, and one can
only teach oneself (with the aid of Mr. Pound's books) HOW to know
the best when one sees it.

Incidentally, I don't think a little of what the superior male calls
"emotion" is at all a bad thing, in this case. Provided it is under
control. Which it IS.

The amount that I can find in any library about D.F. is Negligible.
Why? Can't see Patricia Hutchins till 12 Feb at earliest as she's
in Paris. Seing Miss Hynes, this week.

Hope you are alright (as far as is possible. Never stop thinking
about you and "things").

Good-bye for now.

I C heyne GARDENS, Chelsea S.W.3. England 6 of FEB. '55

Dear Mr. Pound, Well it was nice of you to say that I can write DAILY if I like. As you may have noticed it's had the effect of making me dry up completely. No letter to you for DAYS.

I sent on the cuttings to A.V. MOOre. and also wrote a letter saying did he know what (if anything) was being done by people about getting you out. The next day or so he rang me up and told me he was the family solicitor. He must have thought me VERY cheeky asking him if he knew whether anything was being done, but as you didn't TELL me he was the solicitor, I thought he was just another person like myself, who wrote to you, and if he had been I was going to rope him in, to coming round here and talking about you etc etc. So if he complains to you about me please understand that I had no idea about him. If I had known who he was, I shouldn't have DREAMED of asking such a question. He anyway assured me that he was doing EVERYTHING he could etc etc. We had the teacher's round here for dinner a few evenings ago. I cooked some Portuguese dish which was liver done in white wine and with bay leaves and peppercorns and God knows what. I like cooking in wine but am never allowed to do it unless we have guests as R. says I send the house-keeping bills up. I like experimenting (it fills my ma-in-law with horror if I don't give guests solid BEEF or LAMB or something, and all done in the conventional way.) It's maddening. Do you have bad or good food at your place? What things do you like VERY much? I was taken out to a grand restaurant for dinner some time ago and had SCAMPI (done in butter) for the first time in my life. I thought they were such good heaven that I had them again instead of the entree. It shocked one member of the party Very much. Can't think why. I should have like to have the a THIRD time instead of the sweet, but thought maybe they'd think I was going too far.

I went to see Gladynes H. the other evening about Fitzgerald. Took some notes etc, and she is going to try and get some more information from his wife. Gladys H. was rather amusing really as I had a book about Ireland and the peace treaty and she spent a good part of the evening flipping over the pages and reminiscing. It was rather like someone looking thru a family photo album. Lord Packenham lives across the road so I am going to call on him and see if he can help. If I could get an Irish friend of mine to "but me up" for a week or so I might almost go to Ireland and see if I can find out much more there. Greek lessons progress slowly. Also reading been slowed down a bit, due to D.F. investigations. But continue with the Cantos, and Ronsard. On Tuesday R. and I are going to tea with the Admiral. Very much looking forward to meeting him. He sounds VERY lively in his letters. Anyway, certain he won't be as terrifying as Wyndham Lewis. I still feel weak at the knees when I think of THAT tea-party, and how I disgraced myself by having to admit that I was there on account of YOU and not HIM.

Is Admiral Radford dotty or what? Does ever yone WANT another war? I suppose they do. Everyone seems to be behaving in such an irresponsible way over Formosa.

Did R. tell you AGES ago that we met Raymond Hughes? I liked him, 'tho I cou'dn't help being amused by him sometimes as there seemed something almost HOLY about him. I should think he was very clever. Must stop. Good-bye for now.

I Cheyne Gardens Chelsea S.W.3. England. 8 of Feb. '55

Dear Mr. Pound, Weeeeeell, we went to tea with the Admiral this afternoon, and liked him VERY much undeed. He has certainly set me thinking very much about a lot of things. He told us things that I couldn't believe happen(in America I mean) but he swears they do. He says that Forrester is believed to have been PUSHED out of the window that he was alleged to have jumped from. Is that true do you think? Also lots of other things, and things about the Free masons. I've NEVER been able to get OUT of anyone just WHAT exactly free masonry IS. I still can't understand. Also (as he had two) he gave me a photograph of you which we both love and to-morrow I'm going to buy a small frame for it. The Admiral was very amusing too and told us several stories that the Bishop of London tol him.

Incidentally, I CERTAINLY feel you could be right about conducting himself as a major poet in Battersea Park. We had tea in what he calls his "den". It was what I suppose HE would call "ship-shape" and full of nautical atmosphere. Aservant brought in tea and she seemed to boss him about rather. He said he is on very friendly terms with several Jesuits as his wife became a Catholic later in her life (she is dead now). His garden backs on to Wimbledon Common and he has Two dogs (which he gets from the Battersea Dogs Home) and two cats but we didn't see them as they had been banished to the kitchen or somewhere while tea was going on. Also he is as deaf as the proverbial post and it took him several minutes to get his hearing aid working and even then we simply had to YELL. I don't know why but having to yell to a deaf person always makes what one has to say seem so silly. Don't you think? He has lent me his book "By and Large", and he thought me very strange to be learning Greek. (But then so does everybody else I meet) I intend to ask him to dinner in a week or two and also Gladys Hyhes to make up a four. He is VERY lively indeed. We stayed till half past six(LONG past the accepted tea-time) and I should have like to stay even longer but Richard dragged me away. Richard was madly taking notes all the while.

It is in the Evening paper about Malenkov "resigning". It seems to have come at a bad time, with all this Formosa fuss. It is VERY suspicious isn't it the way ALL the Communist leaders who "resign" are FULL of self criticism and gu_d guilt,----- it's so UNNatural. They are always SO READY to admit that they have done wrong etc. I suppose that is all part of the "resigning", --- all part of trying to make it look natural. But does it take anybody in? If Communism hadn't got to China, WH AT ELSE could have been done for them? weren't they (at least the poor) pitifully dis-organised and in NEED of something? And Chiang Kai Shek was (is?) so corrupt too. What are you to offer people like the Chinese IN PLACE of Communism? I am sorry if I seem ignorant. But I've heard some awful stories of the conditions in China before the Communists took over and it did sound as the they needed something. BUT WHAT? I'll stop now. It is time to go to bed. I hope you're not bored with this letter.

I Cheyne Gardens Chelsea S.W.3#

8 Fob 55

Dear Mr. Pound, Haven't you had a nice rest from me? Only ONE lette
in a whole week? I got in from shopping to-day to find one from you
Very nice surprise. Hate shopping so felt very cheered up.
One thing that seems unpleasant about the psychiatrists is the way

One thing that seems unpleasant about the psychiatrists is the way
they use drugs on patients to "make them talk" or go back to
babyhood etc. My friend hasn't allowed that yet. ONCE when I had
tonsillitis( about three years ago) a doctor who was treating me
put his arm round my waist and whispered "I could do a lot for you
if you'd let me hypnotise you" (He was a REAL hypnotist actually)
But I was very put off THAT idea as you can imagine (speciallv
you'd SEEN what he LOOKED like.)
Sorry you didn't complete your rhyme about Queen Persicora.

Sorry you didn't complete your rhyme about Queen PersicoraXX.
Saw Oppenheimer on Television last night. NEVER watch it usually(WE

Saw Oppenheimer on Television last night. NEVER watch it usually(WE
haven't got it but that man has). Think it a NAUSEOUS medium. But
it certainly does seem to hypnotise people.
You'd be amused by a woman I went and had a,

You'd be amused by a woman I went and had coffee with the other day
She's FORTY and she asked MY advice (MY ADVICE) about a husband
who flirts madly with other woman. SO I told her that if that's
ALL he does she's very lucky. Which remark upset her rather and so
I had to break it to her that if she SHOWS she's fussing she'll
just make him worse, and ANYWAY he's bound to have had dozens of
girl-friends since he married HER, and she must just accept it etc.
She seemed to wishfully think that perhaps she could change human

She seemed to wishfully think that perhaps she could change human
nature (listen to Grandmamma talking now) but I was forced to en-
lighten her. But IMAGINE a woman of THAT age asking me ME, such a
thing. How should I know any better than her? I just made it up as
I went along. All rather embarrassing really when women WILL talk
about those sort of things. Don't you think? I mean UNLESS the men
are present also.
Well Greek seems to me a bit confusing. Perhaps I've just got out

Well Greek seems to me a bit confusing. Perhaps I've just got out
of the way of learning or something (it certainly seems like a long
time since I left school) But I am giving myself a lesson every day
(more or less) Whenever am I going to be able to read the parts of
the Cantos that are in Greek? Am very impatient.
I had no idea how exciting Dante was. (to raed I mean) How extra-
ordinarily the mind worked at that time. While reading him (I should

I had no idea how exciting Dante was. (to raed I mean) How extra-
ordinarily the mind worked at that time. While reading him(I should
say trying to read him) I'm looking for another GOOD book on the
Renaissance, to follow the one I've finished. Is the Trevelyn one a
any good I wonder? How I love raeding about that time in Italy.
I sometimes think I was born in the wrong century. But then
who WASN't?
Are they going to do anything more about Alger Hiss?

Are they going to do anything more about Alger Hiss?
ONE saving thing about psychiatry seems to be that AT LEAST you can

ONE saving thing about psychiatry seems to be that AT LEAST you can
not be analysed UNLESS you submit yourself to it. THEY can't force
it on you (I mean on one of course) Wouldn't it be fearful if
people could be forced to be analysed? Tho most people seem to
LOVE the opportunity of talking about themselves( and not even havin
to look the doctor in the eye. Doesn't he sit behind one while one
lies on a couch in a sort of stupor?)Another man I know who is an
actor used to read "Sexual behaviour in the Human Male" in betwern
acts of the plays and sometimes in the wings of the theatre. I
should have thought that an ordinary Party was enough to tell you
all you wanted to know on THAT subject (observing the behaviour of
human being at party I mean)
We are going to tea with the Actuair this

Richard is hurrying me up. We are goin'

I CHEYNE GARDENS CHELSEA S.W.3. ENGLAND 13 of 13 Feb 55

DEAR MR. POUND,

I have been reading Canto LXXIX over and over again
It seems to me superb. They ALL do but some (naturally I suppose) I
like more than others. I often read the Cantos in the morning, in
Battersea Park. I'm usually the only person IN the Park at that time
in the morning (round about ten), and the calm and cold almost hard
brightness of that time of the day, is somehow conducive to reading
them. I've just made my ma-in-law angry by refusing to "sit" for
a painting in the mornings. But I love having my mornings to myself
(with Merc. too tho') and I just felt I COULDN'T give them up. I do
loathe sitting still for a whole morning too, and anyway she's done
DOZENS of portraits of me.

The man who's being analysed said he had a dream one night in which I pushed him over a cliff with a long pole. HE of course has some very FREUDIAN interpretation for it, but to me it seems quite simply that I wanted to push him over a cliff. Ever since he started this analysis of everything in life means sex. (Perhaps you'd agree with that anyway, ?) But I mean even if I say, laugh out loud in a restaurant or some public place he says it's all "aggression and sex". REALLY. It does become boring after a while. He also says that everything the Communists prophesied over the years, has happened and presumably will go on happening.

He is urging me to read The Threatening Catastrophe, but
it sounds too depressing. All Marxists books seem so heavy, so
rather feebly I've never managed actually to read one from begin
ing to end.

I have not yet written to Rev Swabey as you suggested some letter
back, to ask him if I could read his "The Church and Usury". But
I have had a lot of other reading that I was anxious to finish,
and also starting out on Greek has taken up some of my time. But
I think now that my reading is getting on a bit better, I might
write and ask him for it.

I kkep urging Richard to have a gathering of Mr. Pound's admirers
here, ---- on a large scale. Get THE LOT, and talk Mr. Pound the
entire evening. Also I th ought we should get in some who aren't
as well acquainted with your work as they might be, and so get
them properly interested etc. I think we ought to have such
meetings regularly, throughout the year. People could arrive abou
abput eight o'clock (having had dinner) and then spend the rest
of the evening and early morning talking "Mr. Pound". And I'd get
things to eat and drink etc. in order to keep up their strength.
(You know how men are inclined to fuss over food. At least the
ones I meet are).

This type-writer is behaving queerly again. I'm nervous. K. will
say it's MY fault and forbid me to use it. Can you read my hand
writing if he does?

Perhaps I'd better stop before the wretched machine blows up
altogether.

Good-bye again. Will write again to-morrow. (do I
hear loud groans from Mr. Pound?)

Dear Mr. Pound, --- I have at last succeeded in finishing my German letter, &
& you & it follows this terramarique. No one can accuse me of rushing it, &
it will probably give you indigestion! I see my difficulty, though. I cant
change from one thing to another. I get bogged down in whatever I am doing.
Since you appeared I now have to read your reccomendations, write to you,
keep contact with your elderley female society, etc etc, and in addition, go
on writing my plays and visit other peoples. All this effort of SWITCHING
my concentration from one to another hurts, not the doing of the different
things, which I enjoy. I think it is a damn good thing though, and jerks me
out of ruts, and I am doing my best, so please be patient. I am, by the
way, as well, now on the committe of the local branch of the United Nations
society and, oh! God! Treasurer as well: to gain experience in committeess
and etc. One live wire is a Jew, as Jew as Jew could be; and waddayewno?
His wife is Scotch very very dour and Scotch: and so all their children are
little Scotch Jews. I didn't know there were any.

Thank you so much for
your other criticism of my work, which you sent via Ingrido, to wit that I
am better at particular things. I take this to mean that, for instance, I
am better at describing a motor car going over the edge of a cliff than the
nouances of belief ... between a Jesuit and a Franciscan. If, that is
I had the chance of discovering the latter. I went on to assume, rather,
that this might be the difference between an aptitude and a chronic
incapacity, and thus too endemic to my construction to be greatly alterable
might be, but I hope not, and will do my best about it. I assume slightly
that if you thought there was no chance of improvement you would *not* spoke.
not av spoke.

I have just read the Inferno as translated by a new hand, a
detectivestory/writergal one Doroty L Sayers. I tried Binyon, and honestly
I found him deadly. I am sure I have sunk pretty low, for I could not
put Sayers down, and remained clamped to it, with my head in the book and
my eyes dropping out, and following the charts and maps and diagrams, Ikke
a school child soaking up a horror comic. Such a thing has never happened
to me before, not only not in the realms of poetry, which I find dull &
difficult, but even in my successful grapples with novels which excited me,
such as Dostoevsky's. I have to go right back to Captain Blood to find
anything comparable. She has given the language just enough racy spice to
convince me of it being horribly true: yet the verse, and particularly the
triple rhyme, ... was like a vice which clamped hold of you me, while the
metre raced me through the story like a toboggan slide. Even where
passages were relatively dull, the language danced and glittered, so that
I read, and let it flow over me, like music and new tunes that are felt as
a pleasing noise but not understood. I am afraid that with Binyon, I felt
the whole time it was not how people would speak, now even how I should
like them to speak. An odd thing to read. Sayers, I kept instinctively
thinking it was Dante, not her, placing the words, and having to jerk
myself to the realization they were not his words they were hers.

But she
has only done Hell. Four years ago. Now she's due for more and it don't
come. Do you think, if I sent her a new rhyming dictionary it woul help?

Milo left wishes,
Richards Rastdavíz

you want me to answer THAT question? I did in fact say "No, it was really only "practice writing" but is that alright? He too said that the only way to get ENOUGH information about D.F. is to go to Ireland, and see his wife. Gladys Hynes wrote to her on my behalf, but has not heard. Gladys says that she is very AGAINST helping anything of the sort that she thinks will be published and on other occasions has refused to co-operate. Anyway I'm not going to let a thing like THAT put me off.

Did I tell you that I quoted your remark (without of course saying that YOU'D made it) to the man who's being analysed, re. Nobody who can stand deep analysis is likely to write anything ANYWAY" and this man got VERY huffy about it and said "That's nonsense. It's usually the BIG people who have successful analysis. Only the really big people have personalities which can stand up to a deep analysis, the "ordinary" person hasn't a sufficiently developed personality for a Freudian analysis".

I will kid you SOMETIMES (in a very straightforward and teasing way if I may) but I would never kid you over a thing like the identity of the man who's being analysed. That would be more than kidding after all, that would really be a lie, and I wouldn't lie to you. I have told you who the man is in an earlier letter posted this afternoon. His name is GUY (so called because he was born on Nov. 5th.) He's quite sweet really if ONLY he weren't being analysed. But do you realise HOW MANY people of my generation ARE being analysed and LOVING it? A terrific lot of them. Two or three people (including Guy) have urged ME to go, saying it's so "relaxing" and "calming", both of which everyone seems to think I need. Can't think WHY. But I wont succumb, truly. I think I should feel such a fool, lying on a couch and drooling on about myself as a strange man, who took it all down in a note-book. Don't you agree?

Do you know any nice people of my age in America who would like to write and exchange letters or something?)

Of course different people dislike psychiatry for different reasons. My ma-in-law for instance hates the very mention of it because as she herself says, "It's revolting. All about Sex"

Can I ask you another question (probably as stupid as the rest) A man who has had things of his own published read something of mine and said that he would like to give it to a publisher as he thought it would be published. But after thinking about it I wouldn't let him as I didn't consider it as good as SOME things I'd written. To which he replied that it was not for ME to decide that, it was for him or the publisher. When one has anything published for the very first time, is it best to rely on one's OWN judgement about whether or not it's good enough (even when the publisher says it IS) or should one take the advice of the man in question? I'm so nervous of putting people off by showing them mediocre work. Is it safe or right to rely on one's own judgement in the final decision? It is a bit of a responsibility if it is. Richard says I'm the least good judge of my own work, or something of the sort. Sorry to ask so many questions about myself, but I do write with a serious purpose and intend one day to get into print, but to get in PROPERLY.

BELOVED Maulador, (also as usual Beloved Mr. Pound, ) and gracious I have
QUITE forgotten to put my address and date etc. Well address you know and to
day it is APRIL 8th. '55, I hope you do not MIND me addressing you as a very
beloved "maulador" but ever since you first put it in your letter to me, I
have loved the sound of it, and so etc. But if you think me disrespectful to
you (which actually I am NOT) then I wont use it any more. I'm sorry that I
wrote such a short and hasty letter by hand, yesterday, but - did have SUCH a
full day. Coffee with a dreadfully boring woman who lives in Cheyne Walk, in
the morning and a wedding in the afternoon at St. Margaret's, and then Charles
in the evening, and Merc squeezed in BETWEEN all the various things. A wedding
at St. Margaret's (Westminster) is always a more or less PUBLIC occasion as
the Royal Family go to lots of "big" weddings there and people always gather
hoping (I imagine) to see someone etc. Also weddings DO draw crowds don't they
tho' mostly of women. I wonder why? No Royalty at yesterdays event. Drank a
glass or two of champagne, which always makes me fearfully drunk, I mean I can
not walk steadily after it. Now I must stop all this nonsense, and start tell-
ing you all the various things that happened when I dined with my father oh
Friday evening, and with Chas. on Saturday evening. My pa and I dined rather
soberly at the Ritz. We talked a lot about the money and the allowance etc.
He said that he had MENTALLY set aside a sum of money for me, long ago, and
intended I should have in some form or another. He said that my mother will
definitely make a large fuss, and there will be scenes, and my fear is that
papa will get ~~drowned~~ in the said scenes, as he usually does. In which
case I shall be sunk too (as far as the allowance goes I mean). OBviously she
can doing nothing about what he leaves me in his WILL, but we were talking
about BEFORE he dies, i.e. money that will enable him to avoid D.D's etc

I wondered if I ought to promise NOT to touch the capital if he gives me some
or whether that would be rash, in so far as I might one day NEED the capital.

What do you think, if I may ask you? I know that one SH OULD live on or
within one's income etc. Having never really had to cope with money on any
large scale, I am full of queries (only to myself tho') I am rather worried
about my father's state of mind over things in general. It is dreadfully in
the vein of "I don't KNOW, and I've given up CARING". I asked him what he
thought of Churchill. He said he was "an utter bounder and cad!!!!" He said
that he has got to his present position in politics by BEING a bounder and
said. No, he does not know either the Admiral or his ma-in-law, nor does he
know Daniel Vare, thot seemed to think vaguely that he knew OF him. You must
realise that everything about my father at the moment IS vague, he seems to
lack INTEREST in things. A far *WA* away look kept coming into his eyes while
we were dining, and of course he DRINKS a lot. I kept on trying to tell him
NOT to let my ma "depress" him, but it didn't seem to do much good. He was
sweeter to me than I have ever known him, and asked if we could meet more
often, so of course I said yes, as often as he likes, if he doesn't mind me
asking a lot of questions. I tried very hard to explain that I was beginning
to feel responsible about "our" things, and what was to happen in the future.
He didn't seem able quite to GRASP that, I mean that I really DID feel differ-
ently, and that I thought that my past behaviour had been very childish. As
a matter of fact when I tried to explain tXX WHY I wanted to break away from
home etc., he just said "Only damn thing you could have done after all". And
yet at the *TINE* he didn't have the courage (or whatever it is) to SAY that."
We got onto "class" and all that sort of thing. He was most EMPHATIC about
class differences being necessry. He says that the u.c's have a greater
sense of responsibility (or SHOULD have) than other classes, and a greater
sense of authority. And he said that it is for THAT reason that the U.C's make
the best OFFICERS. It is, he said, something you learn from the very begin-
ing, and I suppose he is right? Anyway I asked him a few questions, but I
was greatly hindered by HIS lack of

ability to CONCENTRATE, (partly due to drink and partly to general depression and also by the fact that there were people there who we both knew and they WOULD come and talk to us etc, which drove me dotty with frustration. But he is seeing about the money as soon as he can and I am to wait for a phone call some time this week for us to meet again and talk some more. Sorry not to be able to give a better report, but he IS very tricky to deal with and I have a lot of time to make up, I mean all these years that we have been strangers to each other. I will try again very hard. Please be patient with me. The two meals I had with him WERE quite successful in a way, because you can't know just how difficult things can be with my paw.

Last night I dined with Charles. I took a taxi to meet him, rather than have him pick me up here by car, as he suggested. NOT because I was ashamed of going out with him—I was NOT—Richard KNEW where I was going and any way we never bother each other with WHERE, or with WHOM we are going out. I did it because I can't BEAR being watched ('as I always am' by my car), but I don't know WHY, I just didn't like it. We met first of all at the Dorchester and went there for some beer drinks which I really didn't want, but could NOT refuse. Then we went to Ciro's for dinner and dancing. There were LOTS of people we both knew, and how some of them STARED, but CAKE didn't seem to mind, and I certainly didn't. I didn't want to eat at all, I just wanted to dance, which we did on a floor SO crowded that you really COULDN'T dance. It was silly of me I know, but I felt TERRIBLY excited because I haven't danced raially like that for a long time, and it all seemed quite out of proportion in my mind, so that altho' dancing on such a small and very crowded floor wasn't very thrilling, it all SEEMED rather marvellous, if you can understand that? I kept getting waves of my perfume (which always says you should NOT say my perfume) you should say "scent," but as I keep telling her, SCENT has now become the L.C'S expression for it and the word perfume is THE word now, but she wont accept it!!) which is Molyneux (NOT Channel) Numero Cinq, and which is LOVELY. I suppose dancing is a very sex-making thing isn't it? I thought of you nearly ALL the time while I was dancing, remembering all you had said to me on the subject. There was no tango tho', but it didn't matter WHAT one was dan cing, because the floor was SO crowded that proper "steps" were quite out of the question. Perhaps that was a good thing as I should certainly NOT have done the right steps. While we were actually eating (and I had NO appetite at all) I talked to him about things. Alas he is a Conservative and all that. He doesn't think Churchill "A bunger and a cad". He didn't seem to want to be very serious, and I suppose the atmosphere wasn't exactly CONDUSIVE to serious conversation. I mean he would keep taking hold of my hand, which was rash of him, I suppose but there it was. You are right about hands. ANYWAY, we talked about history and I gather that he hasn't read Blackstone OR DEL Mar, and so I said he SHOULD (having never read them myself). BUT he did say that he was absolutely crippled with financial worries, having several big estates to think about and cope with. He ALSO suffered very badly thru death duties and on that he WAS prepared to be serious. He fairly RAGED on against them, and then later I brought out you bit about "present production etc etc" and the mass of

3

the river. He stopped the car. And then he kissed me. I had known all along that he would, ever since he first touched me when we danced. Apparently I kiss rather well. His exact words were, "Christ, who taught you to kiss like that?" What I should have said was *I learnt by correspondence*, but of course I didn't. God, if only he KNEW how amateur I really am. But then it all seemed so easy, I mean one just relaxes and it happens(kissing I mean). He was rather good himself, but I know that he isn't "THE" one I'm hoping to find. I just feel it. Then he said "Are you happy with Richard?". And so I had to say "I can never bear it when people start talking about the people they are married to". And so we agreed not to. Was that wrong of me? And etc. also I could never tell anybody about R. *anam* as I told you. I just couldn't DO it. We didn't kiss very much, just two or three times. It made me realise how very much I miss NOT being kissed with any regularity. Made me feel rather like a spinster must feel if SHE gets kissed one day rather suddenly, and *anam* when the next time will be. Chas. was very sweet to me. He asked if I'd like to meet gain soon, and so I said yes. *(NOT to be kissed, but mainh mainly to talk, tho' of course I didn't tell HIM that.)* On the drive back we stopped at some queer place for coffee, and my appetite which had been miss-ing at dinner suddenly seemed to return and so I had some very nasty sandwiches, but it was all very silly and we both were rather hysterical with laughter by the time we got back to London. Then he told me that he liked the shape of the back of my head and we kissed once more, and I came in. **WE** VERY late as you can imagine. I can't even remember the time. We are to meet again some time this coming week. So again I shall see both my pa AND Chas. in the **ONE** week. Wish Chas. were more like you, or more like the sort of **TV** person I must have. It would perhaps be so simple then. I mean he seems to like me fairly well, but I can't feel NEARLY **intercete** interested enough in him, not in **THAT** way, at least. *NMT* Do you think his praise of my kissing was probably just the sort of thing men say? I only wonder, because I WANT to be able to kiss well, naturally, and I never seem to get much chance to practice, because I never much care for the men who seem to **WANT** to kiss me etc. Oh hell I really **MUST** stop drooling on like this. Forgive me. I haven't been kissed for such AGES and AGES, that is why I was inclined to ask you about it. Forget it if you can, and I'm sorry.

To-day (Sunday) we, that is R. and Merc. and I went up to the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, and again my thoughts were full of you. Did you go there much? To-day the model yachts were having races. The boat I like d best was painted black and white and was called "Troll". It won about three or four heats and then failed to do well in the next one. One of the boats went straight into a swan and practically turned it over!!! (The swan I mean) Lots of kites were flying, but that always seems to me a very DULL occupation flying a kite. It was very windy, and warm too. Kensington Gardens was like Brighton on a bank holiday. Full of l.c.'s. (to be THOROUGHLY snobbish!!!) I thought of you and how you might have been there ad so decided to look upon the seething mass of l.c.'s as "novelists material" in the making etc. Kensington has always seemed to me to be quite ENCHANTING since I paid that visit to your place at Church Walk, and H.P.Chambers. I must stop now because it is very very late and I suddenly feel v. tired. All these late nights.. Goodbye for now

England 26 of April 55

I Cheyne Gardens Chelmsford

Beloved Mr. pound, still answering yours of 9 April Series B. No.3, though how on earth you ever remember what you say to all the many people you must write to. God alone knows. You probably write to hundreds of people. The man you mention called Jack Buster, has he died or gone or what,? Are any of the people at your place sufficiently lively to be good company or what? Forgive me if you think it is none of my business and I suppose you are quite right it is none of my business, only I can't help wondering about you in those sort of ways. What is all this about Maidens prefer the grass to the sand dum lilly dum lilly la? Is the 2nd

line YOURS, and if so what SHOULD it have been? HOW is one to be "damn sure" I mean one can hardly ASK a man whether or not he has some disease or other. Must one take it for granted that the man one chooses couldn't POSSIBLY have anything of the sort etc??? No Guy's ma isn't Marie Lloyd, she's called Athleen Harrison, and she's very good actress at cockney parts etc. Indently when in Yorks I got a letter from Guy saying he had got a job as stage manager at a very little theatre. He now thinks he will be a producer of plays, and NOT a teacher. SO. But OF COURSE I LOVE to be teased, specially you. Don't quite GET your meaning of CIAO. I thought it meant "so long" or "good-bye" or something of the sort, but presumably I am wrong??? I have absorbed your statement about Pornos only being applied correctly when it is a matter of sale. I get too the very definite feeling that you think my future as any sort of writer is NOT hopeful, but never mind I will NOT be just a member of a class that does nothing, I am ready to do anything you suggest along the lines of "class behaviour" or whatever but I must also TRY as hard as I know how to DO something etc. And that is that, and my mind is made up. I KNOW the U.C's have a responsibility etc, but that isn't always enough. At least it isn't for me. And anyway it isn't just a WHIM (wanting to write I mean). I thought that if I could get any money from papa (I mean a large sum or allowance) SOON I might just pack up and go and live abroad for a year or six months to see how I got on, tho' I might not get on very well not KNOWING any country but this and Scotland etc. Not that I should be in the least NERVOUS of departing and settling for several months in a strange place. If you KNEW how I dread the thought of having to "take over" anything of my pa's and cope with it. NOT because I don't like responsibility, but because I want time to do OTHER things. I expect you will lecture me (and you do it so sweetly) on the responsibility's of the U.C.'s. etc. and of course I AGREE with you etc BUT etc etc. Did you ever get the feeling when you were my age that SOME things suddenly seem "all too much" and one feels overwhelmed with it all and one feels one can't face anymore etc?

Forgive me if I'm being stupid. I just don't want to be caught up in thing which seem to be a mess and that sort of thing. Maxx Enough of this nonsense I am only trying to say that when I think of ma and papa and that sort of thing I feel I'd rather go and live in Spain or Italy or wherever you would advise than sit at home trying to "run" things etc. You will tell me I have a duty and that (the thought of the duty I mean) worries me very much. It is no good having any sort of conscience I've decided, but how can one GET RID of a conscience for God's sake?? NO Chas does NOT have a lithp and he DOES have a chim and as far as I recall it is cleft (I never care much for THAT aspect of his face). HE's dark and FIERCE looking in a strange sort of way. I've a good mind to ring him up and get him to take me out to lunch, but I suppose he wont because of "people" talking or something. I miss a lot of fun in that way cause the men I like quite, are all married and we are denied an innocent lunch (most times anyway) Isn't it a bore? I strongly and firmly believe that a man should be able to have other women's friends (platonic or otherwise) that his wife DOES NOT share in. I mean a man should be able to take women out without his wife either having to a

I CH eyne Gardens Chelsea S.W.3. England 27 of April 55

Bien Aime MR pound, I had two letters from you to day, one posted 15th the other on 17th. First page of one posted 15th is headed "12th April" 6.37

It begins to transpire that I do NOT entirely write the sort of letters that you would prefer, i.e. I don't put in enough detail etc. Please don't think I am making excuses but I have all along been afraid (truly) of BORING you with detail. Take the point to point for instance. I should have liked v. much to have given you a description etc and what it all meant but I wondered if you might not think "Hell, does she imagine / don't KNOW what a point to point is" etc etc. And you say that a "budding novelist" would have treated the subject as tho telling it to someone who was ignorant, but I didn't realise that I was allowed (by you) to write as a budding novelist. I thought it would be a bit presumptuous to write to you as tho writing as a budding novelist, and as I've already said, I have been nervous of boring you to death with what I imagined would be tiresome details etc. HOWEVER, as you so kindly suggest otherwise I will forwith put in a few details etc and as soon as you get bored I must treat you to SAY so or something. NO I don't know the lyric, (american) a bit of which you quoted about luvv an' my dove etc. Tell me more please. And must I REALLY ask for a doctor's certificate first???? Can't quite imagine what sort of response but still. Try anything once is my motto from now on.

I think next day at least you put 5.34p.m. so it MUST be

Thank you SO much for the "je t'embrasse" re Packy etc. Je t'embrasse back.

What a GORGEOUS story about a Parkenham being shipped home in brandy I'm so glad that the brandy eventually served a worthy cause and not just pickling old P.

Is the one who is luring Boris brother to Australia male or female? I suppose female but you didn't say? NO NO I WONT let my mind get into a rut and OF COUR I still have "a future" as you say. If I thought I hadn't well god knows WHAT people do when they think they HAVEN'T a future???? It must be AWFUL.

Re your remarks about Liz II (1st in Scotland of course) WELL I can tell you that if any member of the R.F. are at any gathering where they are meant to be in an UNOFICIAL capacity, it somehows always seems to FLATTEN out the proceedings, I mean no one feels FREE to "lark about" etc wotw as for instance at a night club or a Guard's dance. The atmoshpere becomes HEAVY to say the least. She (Liz) is I undersatand rather prim etc etc. Anyway she does not seem to have much abandon to her. tho of course how CAN she have under HER cos. But she's very bossy I believe, anyway she WAS as a child cos I went to a fancy dress party where she was and she DID boss. AWFUL. I've always seen her loathed being bossed. HAVEN't you??? And when WOMEN boss they just seem to overdo it!!! NO NO Ing does NOT know the Spanish refinement o.b.l.o. PLEASE elucidate etc. Trouble IS I can't usualy BEAR to look at their faces for long if I do I begin to shake inwardly from suppressed laughter etc or worse But I will tread carefully etc really carefully. Can you understand what the DEVIL I'm talking about? I mean the faces of some of the u.c's. that I have to look at.

Yours headed 15th April.--- WHAT oh WHAT DEEEEAAR Mr. Pound is this story ending "once a philosopher" And my ears Are NOT delicate and you MUST NOT (Please) Start telling me a story or limerick or obscene verse etc etc and then not FINISH it cause it means I PINE and wilt away wondering about the rest etc. I bet I've heard as many really terrible (in my ma-in-law's sense of the word) stories and rhymes as YOU have SO. Please tell me the rest of the story WONT you?? As to your weight well when I told you MINE I purposely told it to you in POUNDS cos I KNEW that Americans worked in POUNDS (in weight anyway). Wasn't that kind of me?? There are 14 pounds to a stone so if you are 180 pounds then you are 12 stone and 12 pounds which seems a very nice weight for a man to be but then I'm not much of a judge etc. I'm 112 pounds (at least I was till I started on one meal a day which I've now abandoned) so that makes me exactly 8 stone.

You are exactly 62 pounds more than me then aren't you?

Yes (as per yesterday) Signora de Rachewiltz HAS written and asked me to and stay there for a couple of weeks. Are you sure she won't be too busy or something? She must be TERRIBLY hard working, wont she find it rather a nuisance having me and merc dumped on her for two weeks? NO she hasn't asked Sabina!!!

# DETAIL (as from other sheet) As FAR as I remember it was a largish party at a house in Grosvenor sq or street or around there. As far as I remember Margaret was dressed as a Dutch girl but forget what Liz was dressed as. My sister and I went as Pierrot and Pierette (or Colombine I suppose it SHOULD have been) I being the male half. It wasn't my choice, cause I WANTED to go as a tiger or a leopard but my damned old nurse had different ideas etc. I can remember that I won a prize for making a hat out of a large sheet of newspaper which was one of the "games" or its competitions or whatever. I won a fountain pen which didn't much thrill me. Liz started to do her bossing when a punch and Judy show was introduced. "I'M going to sit in the FRONT" said, and proceeded to oust everyone else from the best spots. My instinct was to bang her firmly over the head with my dancing pump the elastic of which had broken, but Nannie (hundreds of 'em) was sitting somewhere in the vicinity and I knew it wouldn't be worth it. She WAS altogether very uppish and pleased with herself. I understand that when shopping with Queen Mary in Harrods once (this was AFTER her pa was king) she knew the crowds had gathered outside and said to her grand mama "Hurry UP, they're all waiting to CHEER me" But then one hears so MANY things and stories of that sort especially about the Royal Family. I'll tell you some if you promise not to tell anyone WHO told you them etc. Will you. Probably WHO you don't WANT to hear any such stories.

One thing to perhaps make you laugh tho I suppose not. A relation of mine who is married to a sister of Lord Montagu (recently imprisoned for doing things" with other men etc) and now released, you MUST have heard about it?, well apparently he is going to tell the house of Lords whar perfectly "AWFUL FOOD" prisoners get given!!! He was, apparently APPALLED tho he was at a prison without bars I believe the sort of place that the ordinary man might consider a "rest cure". THIS IS P.W.Yvit(please) Incidentally I went to a house party there once (at Lord's) and he behaved TERRIBLY badly cos he could NOT feed his damn tennis racquet, sulked and fussed on for I don't know HOW long and said he couldn't POSSIBLY play tennis with ANY other racquet etc etc I have always assumed that you throw all my letters away, so -----.

Isn't it AWFUL, but I seem to have forgotten every damn thing I learned about Greek. Looks like I'll have to start again from the beginning. That's what three weeks at Fyling Hall does for you. Trouble is that at the moment my head is FILLED with all sorts of other things, i.e. allowances and who I can see and that sort of thing and all my reading seems to have gone by the board (terrible expression) Oh hell I forgot to tell you that I rang papa today at about ten different places only to discover that he had gone to Scotland so I rang him there and he is coming down in a day or two and we meet for lunch then as son as he does. You might have been amused cos I went up to St James's to see if he was in one of his clubs but he was not and the man I asked looked askance when I stepped over the threshold of that all-male place. When I asked for him the man said "are you his secretary?" and I screamed with laughter and said that he didn't did not HAVE a secretary. It was like laughing in a tomb or at a funeral. The place echoed with the AWFUL sound. Then later this evening I rang Charles, London police to ask him to take me out sometime (I said in yesterdays letter that I might) but he wasn't in London so I wrote off to him to ask him to ring me AS SOON as he next gets to London cos I want him to take me out. I did like wise with three other young men of the U.C's that I know, two of them being married. I have a luncheon date with one to-morrow He is married. He is trying to do it all I think. Or is he? I forget. But

said all that BEFORE, but still. I shall understand very well if you DO
want a rest. Really. YES they DO serve savouries AFTER the sweet at largish
dinners. Why we've even done it HERE!!!! But you know I feel AWFUL if there
are many courses. Soup or hors D'oevres (spelt wrong I know) THEN fish,
THEN meat, THEN sweet. THEN savoury, and THEN dessert!!!! Torture, I think.
One feels one will surely burst. And of course one cannot REFUSE anything
(not like that blasted Lawrence. Why didn't you BANG him over the head???)
My papa told me that in HIS pa's day the rule was that at TEA time you were
permitted to refuse SEED cake, but that that was the ONLY thing you were
permitted to refuse. No one seems to know why. Isn't it mad? I LOATHE seed
cake don't you?? Filthy stuff. Apparently that rule still stands.
Maybe you think I ought NOT to speak on LERV or Sex antmore to you???
Please forgive me if I have been be'aving not as a yung lidy should on
those matters. Are you irritated with me for asking so many damn silly
questions wcc which presumably will answer themselves when "he" comes
along.? I have been thinking of you as a sort of Theoretical equivalent of
the sort of man who should get a girl and "teach" her etc etc, so forgive
me all. One last word, and that is that I expect you were (ARE) a superb
lover etc etc. Don't be angry, at my impertinence. You couldn't LOOK like
you to and NOT be. Surely?

you to and NOT be. Surely?
How LOVELY to have a letter from you which ends "su devoto MAULADOR", I
speak no Spanish but got a dictionary etc. DO say some more. It sounds a
LOVELY language. Makes me want to learn it. Best stop now, as I have one
or two things to do before going to bed. To morrow Brigit P and son dine
here. Still haven't decide what to give them tho' it will consist ONLY
of a first course (like Pate, or soup, or so) and the meat and the sweet
and then choose if they want it and same with dessert. And coffee.
Best In
Ingrid

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U.S.A.

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Sender's name and address:

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ENCLOSURE; IF IT DOES IT WILL BE SURCHARGED
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I Cheyne Gardens Chelsea S.W.3. England 5 of May 55

BEST Beloved MAULADOR, but to be properly respectful, best beloved Mr. Pound to day arrived from you THREE letters (oh joy) and they were posted at very different dates. Answering in the correct order, one headed 16 April; THANK you for that lovely photo of *The Puss*, who looks an extremely fine animal indeed, BEYEW tiful eyes and very lovely slender paws. I showed him to Sab. and she sniffed about and rolled over and seemed altogether very taken with the gentleman. I was DEEELighted too, to see the Difference in the puss cat's tail after a period of three years (I refer to your most excellent drawing) of Wu Zzu. We'lll to day I sent off a little history in book form of Ingl etc SO there is NO secret any longer. Actually there never WAS any secret, it is just that there is ONE point about a member of the family which I wanted to tell you about (it's fairly important) but NOBODY else at present knows about it but my na and ma and one other person, and all sworn to secrecy etc. Not that it IS very secret but still. It has a bit to do with taking over certain bits of land or something. If you are already crowed out with junk etc just send it back and I'll add it to my scrap book. NO you are not in the LEAST sententious, how COULD you be. You are perfect. Tomorrow I lunch with my paw. Feel slightly nervous, don't know why.

yours of 17 April. Well I hope it wont take me (as you say) FIFTEEN whole years to write a novel. I wrote one after all when I was sixteen and I cant wait all THAT time to produce a book. But it is nice of you to say that I can caricature etc. Still when you read my letters you must think to yourself that I'll be damn lucky if I ever write ANYTHING etc. And NO you are not crowding "too much" into your letters, you could never give me too much I can take any amount. I only hope I digest it well and not simply swallow it whole. Yes I will lokk out for Waddell, and let you know if I find any Richard is lunching with Lord Hankey's son, and to night Brigit and son din here. I have decided to put out the silver candlesticks just for fun tho' I am not going to let one of the house keepers do the parlour maidring as she usually does. I thought I'd do that myself. SO glad you agree about being "flat on the tum" etc. Yours trooly is so, thank God. In FACT when I had Merc the doctor told me I had the BEST tum muscles of any female wot he had attended etc. SO. Don't know if paw ever "ploughed one ceremonial furrow" but I'll ask him. YES I've mets LOTS of people in the theater wot take MILD VERY mild drugs i.e. benzedrine or something. In fact I have some myself somewhere in the house of a drug that you take and you then feel extremely pay and abandoned. I was given them by a friend for "fun" and I took one to see what happened(novelists material after all) and it had the afore mentioned affect. But God knows where I put them after trying that first one. I gave one to my ma-in-law to CALM her the day I got married and she felt WONDERFUL but V. low after it had worn off etc. I think drugs are VERY dangerous even those very mild things like people take in the theatre etc. One think let me say re "novelists material". When Merc was in the process of being born, I was offered "gas and air" and so took two whiffs, during the early stages. Then decided that I should see the whole thing thru minus any more. I am a very bad physical coward, I mean that pain has the effect of making me feel faint or weak at the knees or whatever it is. But on this occasion I saw the whole thing thr(and it has it's very bad moments) without anything at all, even at the very end when things get bad, I gaily waved away the anaesthetic that was about to be given and had the extraordinary sensation of holding Merc's hand before she was completely born, that is holding her hand when she had only been born from the waist upwards and before I even knew if she was male or female. So that NOW when I read any phony accounts of child birth in novels etc I KNOW what it really is like. I mention this medical detail(and forgive me if it offends you) to show that I CAN be quite sensible sometimes.

someone else's wife or husband isn't it? I suppose the thing is just not to mind? Anyway the more you try to stop a person from doing something, the more they want to do it, or so it seems to me. Do you feel like that, or is it just a thing one "grows out of"? I must stop and get ready for Charles. I said I'd like to go somewhere where we DIDN'T have to dress up so much so apparently we are tho' I know not where. Can we still write to each other when I'm at Brunnenberg please? The other evening GUY drove us over to see his ma's house at Wimbledon. He had been going into raptures about it for ages, but knowing Guy I wasn't expecting too much. WELL, it's the TYPICAL house that the lower middle class thing absolutely WONDERFUL. IT has only just been built, but it is AWFUL. Shapeless, feelingless, ugly DULL, and standing in a row with others rather like it, tho it is NOT one of those hideous little suburbun houses that stand in rows and absolutely identical. It is one better than that. We had to pretend we liked it, of course, as Guy was so very pleased with it. I wandered into the rooms and found some lovely whole-meal bread and cut myself a large slice and spread butter on it. It made Guy laugh very much I don't know why. It was the BEST thing about the house, that slice of bread and very thick butter. Then asked for a bite which I gave him and then HE wanted a slice so we all ended up eating bread and butter and the men drinking beer and me drinking

Dubonnet which was the only thing he had that I liked. Oh it WAS a dreary house. It is funny what bad taste Guy has (or perhaps it is just LACK of taste, I don't know). I tried to be polite about it, but when he stopped the car outside the house, at first I thought he was JOKING about it being his house, and I began to laugh an if he were teasing me. When I discovered he was NOT I had to become very solemn very quickly. Must stop

First fold here

PAR AVION
AIR LETTER
AEROGRAMME

Second fold here

Sender's name and address:

OR SENT BY ORDINARY MAIL.

I just made it

Love -afraid

I Cheyne Gardens Chelsea S.W.3. England 13 of May 55

BELOVED Maulador, very dear Mr. Pound, Well NOW what am I to do re Charles, because last night I dined with him again and he got TERRIBLY intense and that sort of thing and I just DON'T feel the same way, I can't help it, I just don't. It is such a bore because I thought we might meet quite often and talk about this and that and about IMPORTANT things like D.D's and the Soil Association and the Corporate state and that sort of thing. But he seems to have other ideas about it all. I honestly think he's just rather bored with being married, and like anybody else wants a change or something. It was quite funny kissing him the LAST time I saw him, but yesterday he seemed more ordinary and I didn't much feel like it etc. I couldn't HELP it. He isn't the kind of person I want all. He's too hemmed in by his class he lacks "breadth" if you can understand me? But I DID think we might be able to discuss some things together in a friendly sort of way, but he drools on about other things, and it was all very dissapointing. Don't want to seem prim and priggish, but he doesn't attract me in the way I should really want, and anyway he just IS NOT NOT NOT the right person, and I do want to wait (as you say) for something really good. Enuff of this boring conversation etc. I just thought I better mention it, as I had high hopes of Chas so far as talking about the many things you have mentioned in your letter the sort of things I am to speak to my napa about etc.

It has struck suddenly occured to me that May June and July are the big months for "social" activities. Maybe I ought to potnone my visit to Signore de Rachewiltz till Sept. which is the other time she said I could come. I don't know WHAT to do.

I have been terribly distressed because Richard has been reading to me about the Dreadful conditions under which small children worked in the ninteenth century in factories etc. It is unbelievably bad to read it. When I read things like that I feel very strongly that one should have a great sense of responsibility to the lower classes, I mean that one should NOT try and pretend to oneself that things are "alright really" if in one's heart, one knows that they are NOT alright. How could people bear knowing about the conditions of the poor in the nineteenth century? Was it because they refused to allow themselves to THINK about it? Pretending to themselves it didn't really happen? Maybe you think I'm being sentimenta. Maybe I am. But one doesn't just feel NOTHING. I once heard someone say "The poor deserve all they get" and it IS NOT true. They can't HELP what they get, in most cases. Forgive me if I'm making a fuss about what must seem like nothing. But the things Richard read me WERE very dreadful, and they did make me feel very wretched.

Max W.J. rang up last night. He was talking to me non stop for 50 minutes.. I thought I should never get away from the phone. The trouble IS NOT WHAT he says but the WAY in which he says it. I mean he seems unable to make a simple sentence, it is all wound up in a mass of irrelevent detail. I am not being unfair to him I hope. I think it very clever of him to have got to the position of being able to free lance, especially as he started with absolutely NOTHING. A girl who lives opposite has given me "I was an American to read. It is by a woman called Ursula Wassermann. Looked at it rather vaguely but don't feel like getting through it. What I LONG for is to MEET people who KNOW, not just read about it all in books. MEET people who KNOW about Communism and Fascism and all those things. I'm so SICK of reading about Communism and Communists and never being able to judge for oneself. Did I tell you that I was asked if I'd like to go to a U.N. dinner (VERY grand) but had arranged to meet Chas. just before and so had to turn it down. I see in the Times that PACKY was at the said dinner. Wish to God I HAD gone, jus in the hones of speaking to him. Oh by the way, you'll be glad

I Cheyne Gardens Chelsea S.W.3. England 19 of May 55

BEloved Mr. Pound, very dear Maulador, At last at last a letter from you (noy counting an air mail I had yesterday telling me the best way of getting to Merano) You have headed it May 7th but the post mark says May 11th. Do you SEE how MAD the mail is? I mean this letter seems only to have taken EIGHT days, and yet sometimes they take as much as 16 days. It's maf mad isn't it? Not that it matters if they get there in the end etc. Yes, you are right about the silver bracelets and being chucked into the lake. A silly thing, it was just that I had given them to a daughter of a servant who had been very very ill, but recovered, and I asked if I could give her a present, and was told yes, and so gave my bracelets, cabochon B UT they were taken back by my bloody nanny and given to me with the reproof that I could BUY her a present, not give her my own bracelets. I don't know why, but I felt ashamed. Just didn't want the horrible bracelets any more, SO. Childish, probably.

Sorry if I seemed to be "fussing" when I wailed "no letters for eight days" I wasn't really, it was only to show h w much yours truly is fond etc etc. Enough of this. Maybe a ship has been sunk or something and one hasn't noticed it in the nanaers or something.

You say a settlement? Well yes, when I speak of allowance I suppose I MEAN settlement, cos presumably an income will result from a settlement. My pana on the phone says to lunch either Friday or Saturday, I wait to hear when. Id pana goes on drinking heavily he wont live very long, which is SILLY of him, but he doesn't seem to care. My ma is very angry with me I think for mentioning the allowance (no I mean settlement) She asks why all the fuss, but I have not the slightest intention of fussing, as - have always though one got nowhere by fuss, anyway I dislike fuss, and I prefer detachment. I think I shall get the money. There seems no reason why I should NOT. My pana seems to think me quite a sensible (and quite nice) girl, the please do not think me conceited to say so. And I am trying to BE sensible, I mean I am becoming more responsible etc. All due to my very dear Valentine. Etc. A photographer with a RED beard once took a flying leap at me and nearly snocked me down and I fought him off, as I did not like him AT ALL, but that the nearest I ever got. He also had the most nauseous name of DEREK, which does not help does it?

No I didn't draw the two crests very well did I in "trooooo confesherns". I didn't even draw the WHOLE thing, I think I left a lot out of ma's and a little out of na's. Not gifted for drawing..Maybe not gifted for anything, but must find out. Oh hell, I do hope Signora de Rachewiltz wont think me dreadfully ill, mannered for having put her off. I tried to explain my reason but maybe it wont make any sense to her.

There has been an icy wind for days. We are all going about in the clothes we were wearing in the depths of winter. But then after all we are ALWAYS in the depths of winter here. To think that by now I should be only a few hours away from Brunnenbery. Oh well it's no use crying etc etc. I was due to arrive this afternoon you see, round about three o'clock and it is now after. YES it is going NOW. A horrible din. What sort of row does yours make? Ours is very deep when you bang it hard and very shrill and silly if you just give it light taps. But whatever you do it's a horrible row.

LATER, tht same day. HOORAY, cheers, oh bliss and joy, THREE letters
from you by the tea time post. One posted on May 6, one on 8th., and
the other on 11th. Must answer them in that order. Oh it WAS lovely to
have them. I don't think it was discretion on R's part re saying he got
Brigit's name out of the news letter. He really DID, and was not conscious
of the fact that any discretion was necessary. Neither was I till you
breathed something about Lustra being dedicated etc. I may as well say
that I AM discreet if you want to know. Not that you are interseted but
generakly speaking I am. etc.

I don't think the inhabitants of Los Angeles can be treating their pets
or animals or whatever in the right way to have sus tained so many bites
Do you. Isn't it a pity that you can't have a nice fat wuss-cat at your
place? wouldn't it be nice to have him(her?) to stroke and make a fuss
of etc.? Is Firenze REALLY the lousiest city in Italy.? A doctor I
once knew lived and worked there for years. It was his idea of heaven.
My sister is called Pamela. Sorry not to have mentioned this before. She
is younger than me. She got engaged during her first "season" (always
considered a great success for a deb.) but it was broken by mutual etc.
She took up fashion modelling which became "fashionable" for her type,
all the debs were doing at one time, just so long as it was only dresses
or coats that they were modelling. NEVER any form of beach wear or under-
wear or anything like that of course. " And here is the Hon so and so
wearing a simple cotton dress by Hartnell" (HORRIBLE man I imagine). Me
is of course a homo, SORRY, a buggar. But then aren't they ALL? The
weazel has the deeficult problem of deciding about a wife or not a wife
etc. Oh yes, and the Radnor daughter (EARL of's daughter) has just had
twin GIRLS having already got ON, other girl and a great gloom reigns
not only among her family but among the members etc of the shate, because
there has GOT to be a boy etc, entails and all that lark. Rather depressi
for poor Belinda (sorry, I mean for poor Lady Belinda Dugdale) because
no sooner is she out of the anaesthetic (or maybe like me she didn't
have an anaesthetic) than she has got to start thinking of going to
do into production again. I do pity her. While on the subject I have a
confession to make. I was a bit nervous to tell you for fear of what
you would tell me to do, the actually I trust you before any other person
I know so I don't know WHY I was so nervous. BUT it is simply that an
uncle who died unmarried and with no off spring of any sort had left
a certain amount of land (this all happened a few years ago) and my
father HAS it, BUT it is to go to whoever of my sister and I has a SON
first. There was great excitement in the camp when my sister got
engaged as you can imagine, but. I have veiled hints, etc from most
people these days cos Merc being nineteen months, they all think it is
time to start again etc. Have you any advice to offer on THAT subject
I wonder?

THANK you for the note about Papier Fayard. I shall SEE if I can get
any and I'll let you know. Also I shall go and see if Mr. Garner is stil
about. I love to go up to Kensington now. Perhaps you can't imagine
how enchanted it all seems to me now.

It was sweet of Signora de Rachewiltz to ask Sabina to Brunnenberg.
Sabina would have LOVED the life I'm sure. Darling animal. I wish I
could lend her to you. But she is as fond of you as I am, and sends
you purrings and that sort of thing all the time. WELL she must have
sensed that I was sneaking of her cos she has just come into the room.
OH HELL I have never sent pictures of Powderham castle, and the castle
in C. Limerick, and Walreddon in Tavistock, and Ford House at Newton