6737 Via Real. South. Carpinteria.

December 12,

California. U.S.A.

My dead Bryher,

Many thanks for your last letter, and for This January Tale, which we enjoyed immensely. You open - and close - doors on a series of enchanting vistas; all of which we wish to see longer and penetrate further. To me the scene envoked those lost roads of England which are now grassy tracts, cutting through wood, ploughland, heaths, and ridgeways on the ancient throughways in Devon and Dorset. There is one from Honiton to Exeter, and another near Pilton Penn, the highest point in Dorset. We used to picnic on them every Christmas Eve, when we lived at Bournemouth.

Mollie arrived ten days ago, after a most interesting trip across Canada and America. We have seen the slides of her lectures, and her film, and find them absolutely fascinating. Last time she came she was concentrating on town scenes and city lights. This time... in fact ever since she returned from Los Angeles to London on a small freighter, without calling at a single port, she had been interested in 'waves'. On the day after she arrived here, our stream, (almost always dry, but fed by streams from three thousand foot mountains, ten miles back,) came roaring through the freeway tunnel, spewing tree trunks, branches, cut logs, trash, to pour under the estate bridge into the sea a hundred yards away. The flow of water became so terrestial that eddies started building up, just opposite our deck, and soon a whirlpool started; a really amazing sight. If the storm had continued, our garden might have been flooded; but the rain stopped in time. Mollie got a whole series of whirlpool sketches and photographs.

I am sending you anemones for Christmas again; telling the IntaFlora people to find out if you are at home for Christmas, or to send them later. I hope a simple bunch arrives instead of a florist's decoration. We are having a warm spell after the rains. It's wonderful to see the mountains and the foothills green instead of brown. The roses are still blooming, and snapdragons, stocks, cormellias, and peash coming into flower.

I do hope it is not a trial for Norman Pearson to have my MSS. I know from experience how University Faculties' time is tightly scheduled, and that as he could not read Guests during the summer, he may have to put off doing so for ages. It's a great help, though, to know, he will read the MSS when he has time. I am working on another quite happily.

Thanking you again for This January Tale.

67 87 Via Real S.

Carpinteria. CALIFORNIA.

Dec 27,

My dear Bryher,

So very many thanks for your cheque for Christmas. I am putting it towards a round modern dining table, which we have been saving for since we moved in here. We love our house so much, and can now begin to furnish it as it deserves. I am having such fun landscaping the garden, using what stone is available on the beach, a beautiful green, or green and blue speckled rock. It is possible to choose flat stones when the high tides wash the sand away, and these look very lovely when set in stone walls or paths. As our lot runs twenty feet up to a bluff in the north-west direction, there are endless possibilities for terracing. People here are apt to buy expensive stone from other States, yet really the natural rock looks best, and everyone is amazed to see it used in loose dry walls instead of tightly cemented.

Mollie seems very happy to be here. They are putting on a show for her in February, at Ojai. On her long trip home from Los Angeles last time, she became interested in wave structure, and has gone deeply into the subject. For me the idea of a wave is one of climax and movement, but it's interesting to see the strucural imagery of seascapes, and several young people here are thrilled with her paintings. I like better the tender sketches of mountain, trees and sea she does from day to day.

We have cheerful letters from Norah, who enjoyed your visit so much. She is a little depressed this year at being 60, but enjoys life too much to let it really worry her. We are lucky in this day and age to have expanded lives and health. Our great-grandmother's portrait, taken when she was 38, shows an older woman than we may ever become.

Are you going to write any more of your memoirs? I'm looking at *The Heart To Artemis* now. In a hundred years English people should be ready to read reports from people who lived through ' the great decline' or 'the years of reckoning' or whatever this period of the decline of England's greatness will be called. People, with so much data recorded and remembered, should be able to avoid the mistakes of today and yesterday. Nations may have learned international manners.

6787 Via Real. S. Carpinteria.

California. U.S.A.

September 29.

My dear Bryher,

Many thanks for your two letters, for reading Guests, and for your kind reactions towards it. After so many near misses with MSS in the 40's, and 50's, I took a hard look, and realised this was my fault, rather than my misfortune. Since then, it has become very clear to me that I need two or three years to bring a ms to publication standard, (not six or twelve months. Ursula Winant, of Richmond Towers and Benson, took a great deal of trouble trying to place my books in the 1950's, as did Gwenda David, who works for the Viking Press and Seker and Warburg. By 1961, I became embarrassed that they could not place anything I had written, and asked for the novels to be returned. After this long stint of revising and bringing up to date, I feel confident enough to approach Ursula again, and will send her Guests when Norman Pearson has read it.

I don't know the Atlantic coast of America, only the Pacific. All the way down, through Washington, Oregon, California, to Baja California, it is enchanting; wild, beautiful, with many lonely beaches where one can walk for miles without meeting anyone. Here on Rincon Point, we have a lot of surfers, as it is one of the finest surfing places in the world. Fortunately we are on a private estate, so they park their cars half-a-mile down the highway, and paddle out into the sea from there. When the surf is up, we can sit on our deck and watch them catch the waves, skim over them, or get 'washed-out'

I had never expected to find somewhere so beautiful to live. The mountains come close to the sea here. Our Mr Bates, who owns the Point, planted trees in about 1920, when he returned from heading an ambulance unit in Italy. Ernest Hemingway was one of his drivers. Now, looking towards the water, we have a frame of green, a little river, which never quite dries up, and an old white wood bridge, which links us with the rest of the estate. The rocks on the shore, green, grey, puce, pink, varicoloured, volcanic, are blazed with fossils or worn to wonderful shapes. Herons, pelicans, kingfishers, cormorants, and so on. These are excellent clams for the digging, and off-shore islands to give exotic contours to the horizon. And of course the sun shines nearly every day of the year, with the result that roses bloom all the year round, and one can grow lemons, limes, guavas, and ginko trees, as well as lilac, forsythia, cammelias, and gardenias.

Making a garden is a real joy, and an excellent light-relief from writing. I am working at the book about the Basques now. There hasn't been much written about the Spanish Civil War, except from International Brigade point of view. To allow a mixed bag of people to start in a Relief Camp, and bring them up to NOW, will be quite exciting. To me the present is exciting anyway - more so than ever as I grow over, and learn to anticipate the probable moves.

A friend who came yesterday was very impressed with your Visa For Avalon, and liked it best of all your books she had read. I myself read Yuan, for the first time. I must have missed it when it came out. In the Saturday Review, your book which comes out in November was mentioned nicely. Seeing you on the shelves of the different libraries is good, I'm sad that H.D. is scarcely known on this coast at all.

6787 Via Real South.

Carpinteria, California. U.S.A.

December 26,

My dear Bryher,

Very many thanks for your cheque for $100 which you sent for Christmas, and for the little diary. I am keeping it for a turf lawn. When I made the golf practice green we put down stolens, but by the time we finished feeding and weeding we might just as well have bought turf in the first place. There is a firm here which specializes in grass to suit the climate, and in any case grading and leveling will take quite a time. I have designed as trouble-free a garden as possible with trees, shrubs, ground cover, a lily pool and a lawn as its main attractions. Until the trees and shrubs grow we will fill the borders with annuals and perennials. Here one can grow hibiscus, magnolia, guavas, persimmons, dwarf lemons, etc, as well as papyrus, cammilleas, gardineas, azaleas, arun lilies and the usual cold climate plants. It is very exciting to meet the challenge of heat and drought instead of cold and too much wet. Thank you so much for the cheque which will enable me to make a lawn in the spring instead of waiting until next fall.

I hope the anemones arrived in time for Christmas. Last year I sent them through a very friendly shop in Ventura, but this year in Santa Barbara, the assistant did not seem so competent, and as usual she could not understand why one wanted to send a simple bunch of flowers instead of an arrangement.

How exciting the New York black out must have been. Did you see the photographs which CAME out afterwards. They were magnificent.

I shall get back to work when Liza resumes teaching in the New Year. It was a great blow not being able to find a publisher or an agent, but now that we are settled in, I hope to rationalize. The trouble is we are such moral creatures. To put the greater part of ones efforts into something that does not 'come off' seems rather frivolous. Yet, writing books is my way of reaching some kind of clarity in my thoughts. I can meet the human demands made upon me because I am intensely interested in human beings. Also, I don't feel that I have failed, though I am ruefully aware that I have not succeeded. One goes deeper and deeper IN.

It would be wonderful to go home this year but I don't think I shall be able to make it. I could not keep on with my job and make our garden so I gave up the job. I know I should try to write articles but have not yet organized myself to do so - How to coerce the super-ego? - People say, though that one can join some club and get to London, Paris, Rome et al for about $300, I should have chosen to live on the East Coast where passage is easier.

The house is all we could wish, and worth every bit of effort. Here are two photos of the unfinished structure. I will send 'the view from the house' soon. We are just over a hundred yards from a private beach where the waves break on sand

185 Rincon Point.
Carpinteria.

California 93013.

May 14th.

My dear Bryher,

Very many thanks for your letter. Yes, you're right about older people being harder hit than the young by present day conditions. We are fortunate here in the U.S.A to have many special concessions. In Ventura, where we used to live, people over 65 don't have to pay library fines, a help for those who can't often 'get to town'. There are bus fares too, and income tax allowances. Here homeowners are 'amid' because of huge public spending, and a proposition to cut house taxes may pass this June, though Government is doing everything in its power to scare voters into accepting lesser cuts.

You have always helped people in difficulties. I don't suppose all the Jewish people who escaped from Austria and Germany have forgotten that, nor authors and poets you have encouraged?

We have not read Nicholas's 'Beatle Book' yet, though we asked the library to get it for us. It was lovely seeing Perdita and John in their Long Island home last year. We took the ferry to the mainland from Orient Point just about this time last year, a glorious time to see the East Coast, and visit more friends on Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard. Yet this summer we shall be very happy to stay at home. We get 'ourfer's dogs and litter on our beaches, but at least they stay in the waves most of the time, though they tramp across gardens and climb fences to get to the beach. We're so sorry about your swimming pool complex. Perhaps people won't come, once the novelty wears off. What a bore it is for you, especially as you planned Kenwin so cleverly above the gravel pit for maximin privacy.

Norah and Mervyn are off to the Lake District next week. So I'm hoping the torrential rains in England have ceased. I enclose a review of Brigid Brophy's latest book, 'PALACE WITHOUT CHAIRS', which sounds enchanting. I remember you worked with her to get authors' fees on library books; isn't a law still held up but pending...? The colour hearing sounds so interesting. I wish you would record what colours appropriate to what sounds. For someone who can write to analyse 'corpor-as-sound' might help inarticulate people who have the same facility yet fear it as a problem or disadvantage.

Love and blessings,

April 28, 1966.

6787 Via Real S. Carpinteria.
California.

My dear Bryher,

Many thanks for your last letter from London. I'm so
happy Mervyn was able to show you Hastings, and that you heard Mollie's
plans for her American trip in the autumn. I shall try to take her to
Mexico this time - an artist's paradise of movement, colour, and feeling,-

Sylvia Norman wanted to see Santa Barbara so we drove her around the pier, the old Spanish shopping centre, the Mission and the Botanical gardens, a wonderful spot under the mountains where all the wild flowers of California are collected. I met Sylvia last in 1939 or 1940, when her marriage with Edmund Blunden was breaking up, and remembered her as someone tall, brilliant, bitter, and impatient. - The friends I went with were Edmund's friends, not hers - Therefore to see her twenty-six years later, so twisted by arthritis, came as a shock. I felt ashamed of being robustly healthy. She lives with such gusto and zest, and we both admired her tremendous spirit.

Yes, I would love to see Elizabeth. Her drawing's on Perdita's
letter s are charming. What alchemy in painting and ponies. I shall
also look forward to seeing your latest book. You illustrate the timeless
ness of time. Amazing how far we have travelled in space, how little in
human consciousness of continuity.

I would be most grateful if Professor Pearson would read some of
my work. The fact that I could not find an agent or a publisher here
caused a great deal of heart-searching. It seemed easier to concentrate
on other kinds of creative work; making a golf practice green, and a
garden, for example, but writing comes first and won't be silenced.

It struck me that I might never get anything published, but that
I should concentrate on getting four or five books into excellent shape.
I have been working at one for the last two years, but it is difficult
to sustain the proper respect for one's work without outside criticism.
Even if he could see a couple of hundred pages, it would give me an
enormous lift. - The fact you wrote that he might, has doubled my
energy and output already -

This certainly is a lovely place. I find the sea shore
absorbing and ever-changing. To have a garden is wonderful, especially
here where things grow so superbly. Someone gave us some orchids which
grow out of doors. Cinerarias flourish, camellias are native, stocks,
marigold, and most other common annuals run riot.