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10 January 1934

My dear Miss Butts,

You will, I hope, by now have forgiven the
abruptness of action into which the news of your letter
provoked me. I only received it last night when I was
on the point of leaving the Press, and (very unusually!) it seemed necessary to do something at once - for the mere
defiance of the devil as it were.

It is sometimes you suggested that there was
no need to answer. And if I reposed in anything like
sanctity probably I shouldn't; probably I should happily
leave it to the Omnipotence, But having begun I may as well
finish, and ask you to pardon the impatience.

I have never repudiated, never could and never
should dream of repudiating (by God's mercy), anything real
in the novels. What I have probably done, 'at divers times
and in divers places', is (i) to make small jokes about them
(ii) to refuse to lie about them. It seems to me extraordinary
that if anyone says: 'why did you write the *Place of the Lion* ?'
and I say: 'To pay my child's school fees', then (as I have
found happens) there is a sort of feeling that I am being
frivolous or mocking or downright diabolical. There is a

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS CONTINUATION 1

DATE

10/1/34

temporal occasion for everything, and it is a very unsafe thing to look beyond the temporal occasion - and the will of God - for cause. But why the temporal occasion should be supposed to negative all spiritual existence I cannot see. Why, after all, did the Blessed Virgin go to Bethlehem ? To fill up the census papers. The sequence was outside her temporal business. I suppose some people would think she ought to have said: 'To be the Mother of God.'

Forgive the wild metaphor. There are moments when I despair of sanity. Must I cloak myself in solemnity and seem to sit in a divestral chair because some fool can't understand the times and seasons of integrity ? Would the archdeacon, would Lord Arglay, would Anthony ? I believe with all the capabilities of my being in the place of the lion and the lamb and the eagle. I believe in the union of temporal occasion and eternal justice. But I think eternal justice can look after itself in any books I write without my having to do more than put all I possibly can into getting them done.

See what incoherences you provoke. But I am very deeply indebted to you for your letter, so please receive them with goodwill. I had better try and be more careful in future. But I wish - O how I wish! - that I hadn't killed Sir Giles.

Yours, very sincerely and gratefully,

Miss Mary Butt.

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25 January 1935.

Miss Mary Butts,
Tebel-Vos,
Sennen, Cornwall.

My dear Miss Butts,

I have had a letter from Methuen's about which I have been meaning to write to you, asking me if I would care to contribute to their proposed anthology of genuine super-natural experiences. I should very much have liked to have done so, but although I should be inclined to regard certain incidents as very nearly super-natural I am compelled to add that all of them come under a perfectly natural heading. I mean one cannot describe the dissemination of light which accompanies (what you will let me call) romantic love, or the successful relation of some difficulty to the power of the Omnipotent as super-natural, can one? It would, I feel, be certain to be disappointing to Methuen and to their readers, though you and I might easily repose a greater attention on such things than on any number of ghosts, pterodactyls, werewolves and snowstorms. My wife has a firm conviction that she had a semi-ghostly experience in a flat we used to inhabit; on the other hand, my wife is not in the terms of Methuen's letter, a distinguished personage! Thus, gloomily contemplating exclusion, I nevertheless take a good deal of pleasure in writing to you about it. I have so long felt that

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Miss Mary Butts,

cont.

- 2 -

25 January 1935.

it would be nice to have an opportunity to write again, and
although a cause is not perhaps necessary, yet in effect one
never does write without a cause.

I hope all goes very well with you; few things in
life have given me more pleasure than our slightly dramatic
acquaintance.

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31 January 1935.

My dear Miss Butts,

(though perhaps we might approach christian names
after the intimacy of the correspondence ?)

It is an extraordinary moving suggestion that you
make. I need hardly say that it would give me not merely great
pleasure but also a momentary sense of value which I should attempt
to annihilate. But indeed if, in the general abstraction of treating
everybody as equal, which makes life so mathematical, christian, and
exhausting, you found my particular mathematical symbol worth the
study that you suggest, I should be temporarily gratified and
spiritually grateful. Ellis Roberts has generally had a tender
spot for me and of the two papers that you suggest I think perhaps
his would be the most willing and the most desirable.

I am very sorry that you have been ill. But all
that you will know. Let me say again that I was very deeply moved
by your letter and let me beg whether you write what you suggest
or not, we may not lose a correspondence so happily rediscovered.

Very sincerely yours,

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7 February 1935.

My dear Mary Butts,

It makes me feel rather an ass to be sending you
this sort of information. But as Mr Puff said on a more famous
occasion "you did it first". The two novels about which you were
asking are 'The Greater Trumps' and 'Shadows of Ecstasy'. The first
one was the Tarots. The trouble about it was that, about two-thirds
of the way through, the theme ought to have gone on and become
profound and significant and all that, but as a matter of fact it
rather turned back and got lost on the way. Still it had its
pleasantnesses. The other book was about the African gentleman;
it was not actually as intelligent as any of the other four, but
that was because in fact it was the first written, and was re-written
on the same theme after the others had been done. So that in fact
its real place was at the beginning of what I shall very soon be
calling my Cycle. I have written one more but it needs re-writing.
Ellis Roberts asked me for something the other day and I sent him
the first chapter. It is called 'Descent into Hell' and it's all
all about people seeing themselves and a succubus and substituted love
and a meaninglessness of everything in hell - oh! and a suicide of
a most significant kind! But when it will get re-written I cannot
think. As to the criticism I don't myself think very much of
'Poetry at Present' which is probably the book you read. But if
you were interested you might look at the 'English Poetic Mind',
for which I have a tenderness, and even at "Reason and Beauty in
the Poetic Mind'. The Press would certainly lend you copies if you
wanted them, so do tell me.

Of course, years ago - and not perhaps all those
years ago - I used to write verse as my chief pleasure, and I have
had some thought of producing a kind of selection this Autumn with
some of the old stuff and some new in it. I have always had an
intention, which recurs spasmodically, of writing a real cycle of
Grail poems, or rather, since that is an offensively sentimental
title, let us say, of poems about the whole Myth, Arthur and
everybody. The dreadful thing is that undoubtedly those names
have been spoilt for us by mis-use of them by the unintelligent.
It is hardly possible for any sincere writer, whatever his personal

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cont.

- 2 -

7 February 1935.

Miss Mary Butts,

beliefs, to use the word Lancelot and not smile. However, I have
been playing with them again in the course of the last few months
and I may yet bring something interesting out of the chaos. It is
a very curious fact that the whole Myth has been so inadequately
treated in England - and that is not running down our dear Tennyson,
who did the best he could but made a complete hash of the Dolorous
Stroke.

But if I go on about the poems I shall merely find myself
repeating them all to you in prose. They have a curious tendency to
become geometrical in their imagery, to say nothing of an occasional
twist towards anatomy.

It does just occur to me that you don't mention having
read the 'Myth of Shakespeare'; I don't know that there is anything
particular in it except that Shakespeare at the end became rather like
Lord Arglay with a touch more genius. But here again we could send
you a copy if you wanted it.

This, as you quite unjustly remarked about your own letter,
had better end here; once I begin I never stop.

It is ridiculous but I think I should like the sensation
of asking you whether you know this, that, or the other, almost more
than the purpose for which it is meant. Do believe that I am very
deeply indebted to you for your suggestion and do make any use of me
that you can. I will not say, like so many authors, that I don't care
to talk about myself: like every other intelligent and sensitive
person I like talking about myself. (It has been suggested to me
that this letter would prove that anyhow!)

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HUMPHREY MILFORD
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14 February 1935.

My dear Mary Butts,

To accept a fact as a fact - and one's own part in
the fact, and yet to be somehow detached from one's own part - his
labor, hoc opus! And you will see how easily a desire to preserve the
quivering balance becomes twisted into repudiation and all that kind
of nonsense by the unintelligent. Yet I hate the kind of well-meaning
piety that says (as solemnly as no doubt sincerely), 'O it wasn't I
who did it.' It was I who did it; very much it was. And if it
pleases the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory to take part in it, then
though I will ascribe everything to it, I think it is itself courteous
enough to pretend (in its infinite goodwill) to attribute something to
me too.

This meditation on the nature of Authorship arises
from the very real anxiety I have to make clear that, while on the one
hand I lap up almost greedily everything you say (it is rare enough,
to me, to be precious), so on the other I push it all on to - O let us
say Taliessin; who in my Arthurian poems is precisely me and not me.
Because on that understanding I can say how sweet it all is, and yet
not be thought over-pretentious. And the danger of pretentiousness is
more subtle than one always knows.

Anyhow some sort of apologia is due from anyone who
a launched his volumes through the air as I seem to be about to do -
even to so willing a recipient: God's mercy take all! I send you
to-day the two critical books; the E.P.M., and its sequel. And the
Myth of Shakespeare. I will admit to a temptation of conceit, but
there again - nobody had pointed out the importance of Troilus and
Cressida. It just hadn't happened, so far as I know. And very few
people have ever been just to Milton; the Niphates speech and the
casting out of the rebels have been admired but rarely (unless I am
a complete fool) understood. And the Keats' odes - but I'm merely
re-writing the books. They were both reviewed respectfully in
general, but they never sold.

Of the Trumps and the Shadows I don't seem to have
copies. But I shall find some somewhere and they shall follow. That
leaves only the Poems - and an introduction or two. I am a little shy
about the early poems now; some of them are rather bad, and most of

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21 February 1935.

My dear Mary Butts,

I have sent you to-day copies of *Conformity*, *Divorce*, and *Windows of Night*. I think I said that I look at some of those earlier poems with a doubtful eye, but some of them are still quite bearable. There was another volume which was published at £3.3.0; it has only one or two poems in it which are interesting, but I think I should like you to see *Lilith*, and perhaps I will send that on. But I don't want to bother you with too many books at once. Looking back over all of them there seems to be an almost disturbing collection of all kinds - though I protest that some of them are the mere product of the necessities of food and shelter.

As for your 'mathematical and christian' - there again I think the simplest way would be to send you a dozen MS poems which represent the contemporary state of the Arthurian business. There is one in which Palomides has emotions about Euclid I. I. in connection with the Arm of Iseult, and another in which the King's poet reduces all his experiences to the four corners of a square. That kind of thing...

I was charmed by your description of your galleys, though I admit I had an impression that Livia had no character to speak of. But you have not told me what the theme is; is it a study of Augustus like your *The Macedonian*? I read that with great pleasure and I look forward to the new one. These historical books are jolly things to play with; I have always rather vaguely wanted to do something about the great Julius, but so far it does nothing but get into the Palomides poems.

The only trouble about discussing my own writing is that, like St Paul, I am occasionally oppressed by a feeling that I ought to be living up to it. You know the rather gloomy sensation that comes over one that one would not recognize the Lion and the Lamb if one saw them, let alone the Eagle. However, that is as much the business of the Omnipotence as it is mine; if I said "more" I should be heretical.

It may amuse you to know that Eliot has been reading the novels during the last year or so and wrote the other week after

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cont. - 2 -

Miss Mary Butts,

21 February 1935.

I had sent him *The Greater Trumps* to say that he did not like that as much as the others - like you, and you are both quite right - but that he simply ate them up and asked for more. I have always liked Eliot but for a moment I felt he was much more bright and good than I had supposed.

I am not quite happy about the *Right of the Passion*: it is all right in intention but I don't feel that the poetry is good enough; though that again may be for something the same reason at which you hinted. I would so much rather write that nothing was given until all was given' than I would do anything about it. But I have never been able to persuade myself that one did the least good in suppressing one's capacity for shaping a thing merely because one's actions left a good deal to be desired in symmetry.

This is an atrociously long letter but if you will lure me on to these discussions I shall be expanding myself into - not the Summa - but the Contra Gentiles - before I realise what is happening. Other people's interest in middle age is a more thrilling thing even than their interest in youth. And there I will stop.

All good things,

Yours always,

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21 March 1935

My dear Mary Butts,

I have had you a little on my mind for
the last week because I haven't sent the MS. poems, and I'm
not sure whether that was pure preoccupation with other
things or a less permissible desire to hang over till I had
something more 'formed'. But it is useless to hope for
that at present. So I enclose them; at least the Logres
ones, which are what I chiefly care about.

The title will be _Taliessin through Logres_ - all modern and mysterious, and traditional and trite. Some years ago I wrote a number, of which I pushed four or five in the _Three Plays_. But I wasn't quite happy, and in the last few months I've tried again in a different style, which I think is a little better. It needs so much time, however, which I haven't got to spare, so many necessary hack jobs happen.

There is a pattern - you wouldn't
possibly guess it from these. Arthur is King of Logres,
that is, of Britain, in the days of the Emperor of
Byzantium, and under the Emperor. He establishes the

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-2-

21 March 1935

Kingdom, and all is going well until Balin, under provocation from the Invisible Knight Garlon, son of Pelless the Grail Keeper, strikes the Dolorous Stroke. This separates Arthur from Pelless (who is in some sense Arthur's identity), and sets up confusion: Balin kills Balan, Arthur commits incest with Morgause, &c., besides wounding Pelless. There follow incidents in the history of the Table and the Kingdom, till Lancelot is enchanted by Merlin and Briseis (the children of Nâmue) into begetting Galahad upon Helayne, Pelless' daughter. On the coming of the High Prince, Merlin retires into Broceliande; the Quest begins. As the Quest succeeds, the Table collapses. Arthur passes as Pelless is healed. Lancelot says Mass while the Quest goes on from Carboude to Sarras. (Apologising for the word 'Quest'.)

Well - of course; this is the simplest form of the tale. The pattern lies in the 'identities', and it's difficult to name them without sounding silly and flatulent. E.g. - Merlin is Time, or rather Time is Merlin (and Space, I suppose, is Briseis). The Wounded Pelless is Arthur after the Stroke. The soul-in-God is Galahad; the soul in friendship and sweet love is Percúvale; the soul in the

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-3-

household is Bors; the three of the Grail. The Emperor in
Byzantium is - I can't exactly explain what; not quite the
Church, not quite God, not quite the Immanence, not quite
anything I can think of. The Blessed Virgin is Helayne, but
also a Princess of Byzantium; Nimue is unfallen creation; and
Teliessin is the maker of the myth.

It all sounds quite hopeless; I suppose the
working out of the cycle would make it clearer, and nothing
else. What is the point of saying solemnly that there is to
be one poem in which Logres is the branch (self-anxiousness) and
Lateran the hands, and Circassia the curve of the buttocks
(sensation), and the feet go down into the seas beyond Ceylon
into waters which work round to the waters of Nimue ? No
good; it sounds merely like trying to turn something into verse.

What I send are mostly new. But the _Letter to the Princess_ is older, and I add one or two more, which will no doubt disappear gradually; only without them the thing is too formless. You will allow for this. I am sure there is something in the general idea, but whether I shall do it is another thing. Be as kind as you can to the intention and as cold (he added heroically) as you choose to the suspended result.

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25 March 1935

-4-

Is it for me to say 'this is right or that'?
But I am all for the Emerald Tablet (which shockingly eludes
me) and its maxim. But certainly all the above paragraphs
will show you (what I'd hardly formulated to myself) - with
what efforts after 'identities' I have been playing, and how
in a sense certainly Taliessin feels all around him the
interchanging facts of all the species.

(You might let me have the poems back
sometime; there are a very few I haven't other copies of.)

Go with God.

Yours,

(1) My indirect love to Mrs. Montgomery; it was a charming
union you devised. (2) I may add that, in the curious working of God,
you called back to my mind the Naji's answer to

Miss Mary Butts,
Tebel vos,
Sennen,
Cornwell.

Chloe just precisely when the lady who - alone in my
novels - formed a kind of original for Chloe wrote
in almost Chloe's words (but in a more despairing
sense) from the extreme centipodes. So I replied
with the reply of which you had so exactly
reminded me at the right time! But this between
ourselves.

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24 April 1935.

My dear Mary Butts,

I had thought of writing to you before Easter for no reason but to wish you a happy Easter, and then in the general push of this curious world it somehow got omitted. For it did strike me that to do so would suggest at least that I did not only wish to be concerned with your very lovely feelings about my books. You will however, take that intention as at least an intention.

It was pleasant to hear from you again but not so pleasant to gather that your knee had suffered. It sounds horribly painful and irritatingly inconveniencing. I adore your quotation of my title as a description of the painters. Otherwise it all sounded very beautiful and attractive. When does Cleopatra come out?

Don't hurry a bit about the books. I agree of course with you about *Heroes and Kings*; I think there is some good stuff in it but some of the rest shocks me. There is one thing that I was going to ask you, if it does not seem as if I was forcing myself on you too much. I have lying about in MS for years an extremely youthful and very purple trifle which I called *An Essay on Romantic Theology*. I am happy to say that I have at last introduced the phrase Romantic Theology into the *Life of Rochester*, and I play with the notion that one day it will be a seriously accepted part of Theology in general. I shall probably rewrite the essay one of these days in a more restrained manner. It is concerned with theology as it affects romantic love, and it did occur to me that you might sometime like to see it. Don't allow anything to come to you that is likely to be at all a nuisance; I don't suggest this particular MS as more than a thing which might sometime amuse you to look through. Tell me if you ever want to and I will send it.

Thus beginning with a deprecatory courtesy we reach the same old subject at the end. I am only unashamed because your mind and mine can feel the absurdity both of important and unimportant things, and in that absurdity one can say things which otherwise would be forbidden. It is, when one comes to think of it, a very extraordinary thing that the same thing uttered to one mind produced all that nonsensical chat about repudiation and uttered to another becomes a

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24 April 1935.

cont.
Miss Mary Butts,

mere gesture of friendship and goodwill.

All good wishes for Whitsuntide - anyhow, that is
in time - and all good wishes for the knee.

Yours,

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7 June 1935.

Miss Mary Butts,
Tebel-Vox
Sennen, Cornwall.

My dear Mary Butts,

At the end of next week then. I saw the
Observer on Sunday and remained with a divided mind. Of
course he meant well and I hope he did a great deal of good,
but at the same time it did not seem to me that you were quite
like that, unless I have merely dreamed Alexander. I will not
condole with you (as Johnson said about Bacon) on James Agate.
These things happen. Did not Mr Spender say that *reason and
beauty* was just the worst thing ever, and calculated to destroy
all reason and all beauty in poetry? I never could understand
what twists in the Universe allows us to write one thing and
people to read another; it terrifies me to wonder what on the
day of judgement I have misread. But we will discuss all this
when I see you.

All good things,

Yours,

P.S. I was going to buy *Cleopatra* at the end of this month,
but it will be lovely of you to send me one!

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25 June 1935.

Miss Mary Butts,
16 Mildare Gardens,
W.2.

My dear Mary (mayn't we ?),

I talked to H.S.M. this morning, but though
he entirely approved the idea, he was clear - as I am
once I had taken to think about it - that it ought not
to be published by the firm for whom I work. T.S.Eliot
took the same view himself about the book which we shall
be publishing in a week or so. I rung up Norman Collins
at Gollancz and asked him to let me know his feelings;
if he says 'yes' I will put you in touch. If he says 'no'
I will try again. It is a marvellous notion and I can't
tell you how thrilled I was at the idea.

I spent most of Sunday reading Cleopatra. I
brought it up to lend H.S.M. but he has bought a copy.
I thought it was extraordinary good, although you had
prepared me for a much less satisfactory work. It seems
that your gruesomeness out-goes mine, I am sure Cleopatra's
dream gave me the willies, but I think especially I liked

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1 August 1935.

Miss Mary Butts,
Tebel-vos,
Sennen, Cornwall.

My dear Mary,

(The lady who is about to type this says that she was
down your way last month - while you were in London -
and adored your house and position. This gratifying
tribute seems to me a thing which should be mentioned
first.)

I have owed you a letter for so long, but there has been
actually half a reason for the delay. Vague feelers have been put out
towards me from Canterbury to know whether I would do a play for them
next year. Until I was clear actually how far these feelers meant
anything I waited before mentioning it to you. They still seem to me
to be deplorably inefficient in their manner of fixing things up, and
I still don't quite know what will happen. I had hoped to please you
by telling you that it was all fixed. The general vague notion is
Anselm.

But I wish you would not mention things like motor accidents
and death quite so casually. I know you are right ideally and
theologically, but human nature is weak and my human nature is that of
the chief of sinners, and it gives me a sudden unpleasant jar to discover
your second sentence. Your third indoctrinates me again. But I repeat
rather dazedly - It has the funniest way of going on.

I wrote to your friend Hugh Golding - fortunately a tactful
general letter. The result was that Douglas Golding rang me up the
next evening with a voice which sounded as if he were prepared to
quarrel if I wanted to. I coed at him over the telephone, explaining
I had been told how brilliant his son was and that he had heard of me,
and that we might like to meet, and after ten minutes we telephonically
parted as the best of friends. The understanding is that one or both
of them may come along in September when Hugh is back from his camp. If
you had heard me being tactful you would have had a still higher idea
of my capacities in this present dispensation. At least there is
nothing more to be done there for the moment.

I don't think there is any more news though of course one
could go in chatting. James Stephen says I am a very lucky man to
have one or two poems which he has seen in my pocket. I am sure he

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Miss Mary Butts,

1 August 1935.

is right though I could think of better bits of luck if I
try very hard, or at least what might to an uninstructed mind
seem better bits. But otherwise nothing frightfully
interesting has happened.

All good wishes for your recovery. Oh! I forgot to
say that of course I should love the article. It did occur to
me that if Canterbury really got going it might be worth while
my putting my Curtis Brown people on to the consideration of a
possibility of the book. After all, there is no reason why
they should not do something and it might give everybody an
opportunity of a little perfectly good publicity. It is a
comforting reflection that it is heresy to think that celestial
duties are incompatible with terrestrial pleasures.

1)

Yours always,

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17 June 1936.

Miss Mary Butts,
Tebel Vos,
Sennen, Cornwall.

My dear Mary Butts,

It was extraordinarily nice to see your handwriting this morning, though of course it did make me feel I ought to have written long ago. I have thought of you many times and almost gone so far as to write, and then the things of this world have pushed in to delay me. So I commend myself to your forgiveness and goodwill and leave off apologising.

But, indeed, I am so sorry that your life becomes as dangerous as apparently it does. I was never one to love peril; I am like Shakespeare - give me a quiet life for myself and enough excitement in other peoples' for me to write plays about. I send you - as I have been meaning to do but it is only just published - a copy of my *Cranmer*, which I hope you may like. Next week I go down to Canterbury to see it presented.

I wish I saw as many new books as you do; that is the advantage of being a reviewer. But I shall try and get hold of *No-one Talks Politics* (the trouble of course is that I have never yet been able to afford a proper library subscription and consequently I depend either on public libraries or odd secondhand purchases). However, this note is not to discuss politics, though indeed I do think that Europe is very much more comprehensible than the cheap talk of our pseudo-liberals suggest, but only to congratulate myself on your being still capable of writing to me. And if that is selfish, let us hope it is a celestial selfishness and forgive under the Mercy. By the way, it occurs to me that if you are not using *Romantic Theology* at the moment you might perhaps post it back. I have promised (can you believe such a ridiculous thing?) to write a memorandum for the Bishop of Chichester on the nature of Romantic Love. Thus we shall effect the English Hierarchy and so Christendom. Of course the Bishop will not put it over just like that but he is an intelligent person and may grasp the idea.

All blessings. If you are in London this summer you will let me know?

Yours always,
G. W. B.

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4 August 1936.

My dear Mary Butts,

The cutting from *Time and Tide* has just arrived; I must say you do me very proud. But the sentence which went direct to my heart was "everything that he writes means the utmost that he can mean". No greater compliment was ever paid me nor one which I should more rather have deserved. We go to Bath at the end of this week for a week but after that we shall be in London again and I shall look forward to your being up.

Under the Protection,
Yours,

The OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

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15 January 1937.

Miss Mary Butt§,
Tebel Vos,
Sennen, Cornwall.

My dear Mary Butt§,

It seems awful that I have not answered your letter
by now; it seems awful, if it comes to that, that I had not written
to you of my own motion before I got yours. So, following what I
hope are the councils of good, I make no excuse.

I am the more sorry that things are so trying. It
is very odd about the Sunday Times. I am more inclined than you to
believe in the pure inefficiency of periodicals. Lakin once came
here, and went away leaving the general impression that he was going
to see that something was sent me. But he never did, nor did I
much expect him to. In your case however, I admit the thing is
different, nor can I very well see why they should suddenly drop
sending you books unless they were put out over something. I don't
think there is any conscious pro-Jewish stand, though I think there
may possibly be a terror of getting mixed up with anything that could
by any means be called an attack on Jews. A terror, I mean, not
worldly so much as intellectual; the kind of twist which makes them
say "Oh, anti-Semite" if anyone says that perhaps Judas Iscariot
was less moral than he should have been. Unfortunately I have lost
any touch that I have ever had with the News Chronicle. No-one ever

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- 2 -

15 January 1937.

cont.

Miss Mary Butt,

sends me any books from there - on-one as a matter of fact sends
me books from anywhere, and I have not the smallest bit of twine
where I can pull in that office since Norman Collins left it. I
think what I must have said was that I once could have done something
but now could not. Do you do anything for *The Criterion*? You know
Eliot or I would offer to send a line to him. My own relations with
him are so tender that I don't want to do any work for his paper
myself; it would merely embarrass me, but I could very well bring
up your name if you thought it desirable. Or if there is anything
else that I can do you won't hesitate to ask me. It would be
unnecessary, absurd and immoral to hesitate.

The great excitement of my life this season has been
the production of a Nativity Play in Essex. It is not printed or
I would send you a copy. But it was a very odd Nativity Play;
still it got over marvellously. And I will say that all the people
who might have been expected to be doubtful of it were very charming.
Well, perhaps not all, but most of them. The Bishop of Chelmsford
who started with a good deal of shyness about it ended up by being
frightfully thrilled. I have almost promised to revise the *Rite
of the Passion* for them; and when I say revise I really mean, it is

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Miss Mary Butt,

- 3 -

15 January 1937.

becoming obvious, write a completely new play instead. Meanwhile,
I run after my own tail in attempting to produce a life of Henry VII -
but don't let's discuss that.

I return again to the point that I do wish I could be of
some immediate use to you. But the Oxford Press has this
disadvantage that it exists in some sense more remote from the
complications of London literary life than most publishers' offices
do. We are no doubt everlasting but we are not much in the market-
place, and it hampers us, both for our friends and ourselves,
when we look out of our windows on the marketplace. It was very
good of you to write in your circumstances. I know nothing more
awful, though I know several things more immediately agonizing, than
that sense of a drying up of the stream of money. If there is any
rock anywhere that I can strike I will do so, and you will tell me
if any occurs to you - believing in my good intentions even if
either I am nowhere near the rock or it takes no notice of my
mosaic instructions.

All good and all blessings.

Under the Protection,

Yours always,

The OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

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6 March 1937.

My dear Mary Butts,

I had meant to write to you yesterday and the
day before but many things intervened. It was extremely kind and
lovely of you to write to me about what I suppose I must not call
your most appalling morning. For the moment as I read I thought
you were going to say that the ceiling fell down and killed you
and that you were writing from some more advanced state of being.
I suppose my rational consciousness would object, if I ever got
such a letter, and indeed though I would never rule it out as a
possibility, I should not be in a hurry to accept it. But marriage
between scepticism and devotion can hardly ever be carried too far.
But I was very much moved to think that the most beautiful conclusion
of such a morning should have been in any way connected with Many
Dimensions. It is I who acknowledge the treat; though it is nice
of you to say it was yours in writing. It is one of the oddest of
things that one never does know what one's books are doing; I
discovered only yesterday that a perfectly unknown woman was lecturing
Bournemouth
on War in Heaven to a/Literary Society. She a little startled me,
or at least the extract startled me by saying that the book had
recently been revised and reprinted - a fact of which I don't somehow

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cont.

- 2 -

6 March 1937.

Miss Mary Butts,

seem to have been made aware. On the other hand (I hope you will be pleased), I think that we are eventually publishing *Descent Into Hell* by the request of Messrs Faber and Faber. Eliot wanted to read it, so I sent him the revised version with a delicate, subtle but strong suggestion that if he thought there was anything in it he might show it to his firm. I have not actually signed the contract, and I never believe in publication until I have signed a contract - not always then. However, things seem tending that way at the moment. I look forward to your reading it. It is rather different from the others, in so far that it has no phenomenal instrument, but it has a substitution of a contemporary young woman for a 16th Century ancestress at a crisis of everybody's life.

I cannot for the life remember what it was I said about myself, but I am very sure that it was quite unimportant. (Henry VII won't be out till the Autumn; it is the dullest book I have ever written, and I can not get on with it. It sticks and sticks and sticks, and I break down and cry over it, and the Omnipotence is no doubt being helpful but in one of its curiously remote moods.)

It suddenly occurs to me that perhaps what I did say was about Lakin and murder stories in the *Telegraph*. If so, I ought to be honest enough to admit that he did send me some and even put

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cont.

- 3 -

6 March 1937.

Miss Mary Butts,

in a review. Whether anything else will happen remains to be seen. I am the more glad that I thought of that because I felt a little when I saw the review that it looked as if I was sliding in where you had been evaded. You will know that the two facts, if they are facts, are utterly unrelated. There will be no objection - will there? if I am down at the Telegraph office any time and see Lakin to my asking idly, that you had remarked as idly, that you had had no books from The Sunday Times recently? You will trust me to say this without the least suggestion that I am inquiring or commenting or thrusting in where I have no business.

And finally, I look forward to seeing The Crystal Cabinet. It is the kind of book you could do enormously well and have no doubt done. It is the kind of book also that I never could do and never shall do. I salute from the other end of prose style the achievement of a unique thing.

Under the Protection,