We do not see much of the objectionable Mr Munting, I am glad to say. He often doesn’t come home till very late. You never know what these men are after. It is a good thing that he shares the maisonette with Mr Lathom, who I am sure would not allow any undesirable goings-on under our roof.
I hope darling Joan is quite strong again now. Give her my love, and say I have started on the scarf. I am doing a pattern of purple and white clematis, which will be very chic, I think.
Your loving sister,
Aggie
11. John Munting to Elizabeth Drake
15a, Whittington Terrace
19.10.28
Damn it all, yes, Bungie – I suppose you are right. Our ideas are always ahead of our actions, or rather, askew to them, and we move lop-sided, like a knight on a chess-board. We get somewhere, even if it isn’t the place we thought we were aiming for. By the time the next generation has come along, the ideas which were new and strange to us have become part of its habitual commonplace. It goes straight along them, even when it imagines it is rebelling against them.
And after all, this business of imagining that one is one kind of thing and being actually another – we all do it, all the time, so why shouldn’t whole nations and periods do it? Have you read J. D. Beresford’s Writing Aloud, by the way? It is enormously fascinating, and I delight in the bit where he tells how, in his callow youth, he had a ‘passionate impulse’ to ‘save’ a young prostitute he had talked to, and then prayed desperately to be delivered from the sin of hypocrisy and be made single-hearted and all that – only to be delighted, later on in life, with the discovery that he was ‘not one person but fifty’. One imagines – one dramatises oneself into the belief that one is going one way, and lo and behold! the path ‘gives itself a little shake’ like the one in Alice and one finds oneself walking at the front door again.
Our friend Mrs Harrison is a perfect example of this dramatisation business – and is quite capable of dramatising herself in two totally inconsistent directions at once, rather like the Victorian age. Any attitude that appeals to her sense of the picturesque she appropriates instantly, and, I really believe, with perfect sincerity. If she reads a ‘piece in the paper’ about the modern woman who finds spiritual satisfaction in a career, she is that woman; and her whole life has been ruined by having had to give up her job at the office. Capable, intelligent, a comradely woman, meeting male and female on a brisk, pleasant, man-to-man basis – there she is! If, on the other hand, she reads about the necessity of a ‘complete physical life’ for the development of personality, then she is the thwarted maternal woman, who would be all right if only she had a child. Or if she gets a mental picture of herself as a Great Courtesan (in capital letters), she is perfectly persuaded that her face only needed opportunity to burn the topless towers of Ilium. And so on. What she really is, if reality means anything, I do not know. But I can see now, what I didn’t see before, that this power of dramatisation coupled with a tremendous vitality and plenty of ill-regulated intelligence, has its fascination. If ever she found anyone to take one of her impersonations seriously, she would probably be able to live very brilliantly and successfully in that character for – well, not all her life, perhaps, but for long enough to make an impressive drama of it. Unfortunately, the excellent Harrison is not a good audience. He admires, but he won’t clap, which must be very discouraging.
‘You will gather from this that I have been seeing a good deal of the Harrisons. Quite right, Sherlock, I have. When you once make up your mind to look on people as social studies, you can get quite reconciled to their company. Mrs H. cornered me in the artistic sitting-room last night, while her husband was telling Lathom about aerial perspective, to tell me about her own personality. She feels cramped in her surroundings, it seems. Her mentality has no room to expand. It is so hard for a woman, isn’t it? Perhaps the only way is to express herself through her children – but then – if one has no children? She said she always felt she could have made herself a happy life by living for and in others. I did not say that she would probably end by devouring her hypothetical family, though I could very well see her doing it. I felt mischievous, and said that there were other forms of passionate altruism, and that I could see her in a cloister, walking serenely among the lilies and burning her soul away in contemplation. Could I really? Well, yes, there was something very wonderful about the life of devotion. I ought to write a book about it. At this point I became a little alarmed, and turned the conversation to new books. We had a little difficulty, because her idea of an important writer and my idea are not exactly identical; however, we agreed that The Constant Nymph was a very good piece of work, and, encouraged by that, she tackled the awkward question of Deadlock. I tried to explain what I had really meant by it, and she proved quite adaptable. She said she did not mind a book’s being ‘powerful’, provided it was filled with a ‘sense of the beautiful’. She thought Sweet Pepper was powerful, but nevertheless there was something about it that redeemed it. What a pity it was that Hutchinson hadn’t written another book like If Winter Comes. She thinks that if only I wouldn’t be so harsh and mocking I might write a book as strong and really beautiful as that.
These are the people who read the books, Bungie. And what are we to do about it, you and I, if we want to live by bread?
Next day I met her in the hall, dressed in a demure grey frock, with a long veil swathed nun-like about her cloche hat. She saluted me with a grave and far-away smile. I grinned cheerfully, and mentioned that I was going to watch a football match.
Your not-very-well-behaved and rather malicious
Jack
12. The Same to the Same
20.10.28
My dear Bungie,
Don’t be a silly ass. I thought you had more sense than the ordinary futile sort of woman. I am not in the least fascinated by Mrs Harrison. She quite simply interests me as a type – a personality, that is. It is my job to be interested in people. I might want to use that kind of person in a book some day.
Good heavens! If I was ‘fascinated’ by her, I shouldn’t be likely to analyse her in that dispassionate way. She is essentially a suburban vamp, as I think I said before, if you have thought any of my remarks worth remembering. And I never said she was beautiful. Her mouth is sloppy and bad . . .
Later: Saunders Enfield burst in on me when I was writing this, and hauled me out to lunch with him. On returning, with the better part of a bottle of perfectly good Corton inside me, I realise that the brilliant line of defence I am taking up is exactly the one I should equally have taken if the accusation had been true. I should have said just those things, in exactly that tone of exasperated superiority, and I should have elaborated them with such a wealth of detail that you could not have failed to disbelieve every word of it.
My first impulse (after lunch, I mean) was to destroy the incriminating paper, and to ignore your observations altogether. But I think that would probably have a highly suspicious appearance also. Upon my word, I don’t believe there is any convincing reply to such a charge.
Except to tell you that I honestly don’t care a damn for any woman in the world except one. And if you don’t believe that, my child, then it doesn’t matter what you think of me, because I shall be beyond caring.
I believe you’re only pulling my leg, anyhow. Blast you! Don’t do it again.
And believe me (as the business people say),
Yours faithfully,
Jack
13. The Same to the Same
15a, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater
22.10.28
Hullo, Bungie, darling! My God, but I’m played out! I’ve been sticking to the accursed Life like a leech, and have finished the religious outlook. Having ground it out with incredible sweat and travail, I read it through and thought it so awful that I was in two minds about chucking the whole thing into the fire. However, I didn’t, but instead went over and joined Jim in Paris for a week, on his way home, as you saw by my postcard. We had
a mildly riotous time in that cheerful city, restraining each other in a brotherly way from the more perilous kinds of exuberance, and reached home feeling fit for anything. I took up the infernal religious outlook, read it through again, and came to the conclusion that it was bloody good stuff, after all! So now I am pressing forward with shouts of joy and encouragement to the critical estimate, which is the only part of the thing I really want to write at all. Dilkes, the dear old man, to whom I explained my troubles, talked to me like fifty fathers, and said extraordinarily nice things. He thinks, by the way, that the flippant and imaginative kind of biography has had its day, having been too much imitated, and that the time has come round again for solid facts and research. ‘The great humility of science, in face of the infinite and valuable variety of Truth.’ Isn’t that an exquisite Victorian remark? ‘We should pray,’ said he, making me feel like a very grubby fourth-form infant, ‘to be delivered from cleverness, because very clever people end by finding that nothing is worth while.’ So I said, rather ungraciously, that probably nothing was worth while, and he gave the funniest twinkle from under his thick eyebrows and replied: ‘You must not think that, or you will become a bore.’
My parson turns out to be rather an enlightened person. It appears he took a mathematical tripos among other things, which is one up to him. He also has read Eddington, and, moreover, took it for granted that I had read Jeans and Japp and one or two other fantastic scientists whose names I had never heard of, which was two up to him. Also, he seemed quite delighted about the whole thing, and said he was thankful to find that scientists would at last allow him to believe what the Church taught, which in his young days they wouldn’t. I should have put this down to the usual shifty ecclesiastical clap-trap, but for the obvious fact that he knew what he was talking about, and I didn’t, so, feeling a fool, I put a good face on the matter and asked his advice about the religious outlook chapter. He gave me some really very useful stuff about Victorian materialism, which you will find in the book when it’s finished. We ended by discussing, with much laughter, some incredibly silly letter from correspondents in the Daily Dispatch, one of whom said: ‘Sir, Genesis says that God made Adam from the dust of the earth. God is the initial cause and dust is protoplasm. Yours faithfully’; while the reply observed briefly, ‘Sir, Dust is not protoplasm, Yours faithfully.’
Dearest, do you really want to be married to the sort of unsatisfactory bloke I am? It is extraordinarily brave and dear of you. You will have a devil of a time. I want to warn you now that when I say I want you to keep your independence and exquisite detachment, I don’t really mean it. I shall try to mould you into the mirror of myself, fatally and inevitably. When I say I am not jealous, either of your work or friends, I am lying. When I promise to look at things from your point of view, I am promising what I cannot perform. When I declare myself ready to discuss everything fully and freely and have a situation nette, I am pretending to be more honest than a man ever is or can be. I shall be reticent, inconsistent, selfish and jealous. I shall put my interests before yours, and the slightest suggestion that I should put myself out to give you peace and quietness to work in will wound my self-importance. I know it. I shall pretend to give you freedom, and make such an unholy martyr of myself that you will take up your chains for the sake of a quiet life. You will end by hating me, and leave me for some scamp of a fellow who knows how to handle women. And you will be quite right, from your point of view. I have been trying to look honestly into the thing, and I want to warn you. You think I am ‘different’, but I am not. With all your theoretical knowledge, Bungie, you haven’t had experience. You are generous, I know, and think you are willing to risk it, but I must try and make you understand the facts. Don’t think that I am wanting for one moment to cut our engagement out. I want you as I have never wanted anything. I want you terribly. But do try and understand that it won’t be what you think. I don’t want us to end in a ghastly sort of muddle.
I know you will say that you understand, but you don’t. You have an idea – all women have – that you can enter into a man’s point of view. You can’t; any more than I can enter into a woman’s point of view. Don’t, for God’s sake, tell me to cheer up and it will be all right. Don’t be sweet and understanding – be brutal, if you like – I shall not take offence at anything you may say, but I want you to realise what you are in for.
Yours ever,
Jack
P.S. This is arrant hypocrisy. I am bound to take offence, whatever you say, and we shall have one of those painful and acrimonious arguments. If you say nothing, I shall be offended at that, too. But for God’s sake don’t chuck me, Bungie.
14. The Same to the Same
15a, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater
26.10.28
Dearest and most wonderful Bungie,
Forgive me for writing such a foul letter, and bless you for answering it so promptly. The alarming list of faults which you have produced in answer to mine relieves my mind a good deal. Thank Heaven for a woman with a sense of humour. I was feeling rather awful that day, being thoroughly fagged, and had, I suppose, a grouch against civilisation. But I quite agree about the innocent ‘animal’ business; I can imagine nothing more tedious. All the same, I feel very strongly, in my more honest moments, that love has got to be happy, for fear it should become all-important. I can’t expect you to understand this, and you would be an unnatural woman if you did, and I should hate you for it. But I do feel that the old ‘not long will his love stay behind him’ attitude is degrading and horrible. I don’t want to feel that anybody’s life and happiness is bound up with mine. What dignity is there in life if one is not free to take one’s own risks? It doesn’t matter whether it’s a wife or a parent or a child or a brother – people should set their own value on themselves and not ‘live for others’ or ‘live only in their children’, or whoever it is. It’s beastly. And yet – if I heard you say that – I don’t know, but I expect I should go off the deep end like poor old Harrison.
I think Lathom is rather getting on my nerves. If I had known he was such a gregarious devil I don’t think I should have agreed to set up housekeeping with him. Fortunately, as he is merely an acquaintance, and not my wife or my father or my brother, I can more or less ignore his vagaries. He is always ‘running down’ to see the Harrisons, and having them up here. You can’t get on with your work when people are everlastingly coming in and out. I just chuck it now, and sit tight in my own room, and let them get on with it.
I like the old boy, though – and, by jove, he does know how to cook! Yes, cook! He has a passion for cookery as a fine art. I must get him to show me how to make omelettes – I don’t believe you know anything about it, do you? Also rump-steak, on which his views are very sound. He also has a fungus complex – thinks the poor peasant ought to go forth and cull his grub from the hedgerow, and all that. He knows a tremendous lot about edible toadstools, and delivers lectures on them to Lathom, for whom he has taken a great fancy. As a matter of fact, Lathom is one of those offensively healthy people who shovel down anything that is set before them, but Harrison doesn’t see that, and enthuses mildly on in a sort of resistless river of speech that forces itself past all interruptions. Mrs H. yawns, Miss Milsom yawns, Lathom yawns and I do my best not to yawn, because I’m the only person here who has any real sympathy with the subject, so it’s up to me. I’m not sure, though, that his monologues aren’t better than her intense duets. However, Harrison has now gone away into the country on his lonesome, so perhaps we shall be free of visitors for a bit.
I have been round to see Merritt & Hopkins, and this time saw the great Man of Merritt himself. He was very genial, and encouraged me to dig my old novel out of its sepulchre, in a last forlorn effort. You know – the one I wrote just before I met you, and which no one will have anything to do with. He has promised to read it himself, which was so decent of him that I hadn’t the heart to suggest that a younger man might look upon it with more sympathy!
&nbs
p; I have just been reading the Messenger’s interview with you, my child. How entertaining! What grand publicity! And how damnable impertinent. I suppose I shall be expected to put up with everybody’s having the right to comment on My Wife in public. We shall have rows about it; I see that inevitably. I shall sneer first and then lose my temper, and if you once give in you will be a lost woman.
Are you still quite sure you want to risk matrimony with
Yours infuriatingly,
Jack
15. George Harrison to Paul Harrison
The Shack, Near Manaton, Devon
22.10.28
My dear boy,
This month I must begin by wishing you very many happy returns of the day, and I trust that the mail will live up to its reputation and deliver my letter in time for the auspicious occasion. God bless you, my dear boy, and send you all happiness and prosperity. You are now thirty-six years old – still a very young man to hold the responsible position you have made for yourself. Yet to me it seems strange to think that when I was your age I had been married and settled for sixteen years! I was only a boy of twenty when I married your dear Mother! Her memory is very near and dear to me at this time, as indeed, at all times. You must never think that, because I have formed other ties of late years, I do not think of her with the deepest affection. But I know you do not think so. You know that there is room in my heart for both: and it is a great happiness to me to have a son whose face recalls, even more vividly as the the years go by, that of my dear first wife.
I was greatly pleased to have your letter and to know that the work goes so well. Yours is a great opportunity. I know how proud and happy I should have been at your age to have the advantage of working under so distinguished a man as Sir Maurice. In my opinion he is the greatest engineer of his day. It is most gratifying that he should entrust so much of the responsible work to you. Be very careful to check every figure and test everything, no matter how small, before it is put in place. The most brilliant calculation will not compensate for a defective bolt. Dolby’s is a first-class firm, but it is a sound rule to take nothing for granted.