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More Than Is Good For Me
15 April 1944
Dear Bessie,
I received today your letter dated 1st March. It has taken such a long time to come and I have felt so disappointed and unsettled at its repeated failure to arrive during the last fortnight, that this may explain my dis-satisfaction as I reached the end. I am puzzled by some of the things you say. Perhaps I should amend dis-satisfaction to ‘unsatisfaction’. I hope you understand the feeling.
I will attempt to reply to your paragraphs and tell you what I cannot fathom as I go along.
You ask ‘Where shall we end, Chris?’ Well, I dunno, but I’m sure it won’t be very dreadful. It might be a great adventure for both of us. I have an idea, but I am not wearing my planning trousers.
Emphatically, I agree that most of us want to love and be loved. Tell me, please, what your reaction is to a marriage where one party is not imbued with one-hundred-per-cent enthusiasm for the other, but marries perhaps for companionship and the wish to avoid loneliness. Do you think she is playing the game?
If my brother asks me why I am getting letters from you, I shall tell him that we are engaged in an interesting correspondence about life. If he asks (and he won’t – but your questioners might) if I am proposing to court you, I shall laughingly deny it, as you (I hope) will do the same.
So I may write as I feel – would that I could! These words would burn the paper and scorch you. (If you get ashes one day when you open the envelope, you’ll know that’s what has happened!) You’ll recognise my tantrums as they occur. Trouble is that you’ll forgive me before, during and after my stupidities. It will be wise for you to commence the development of (or acquire) a critical faculty regarding me, otherwise I am going to be one big unredeemed disappointment for you.
I cannot write you daily but I do think of you hourly. You set all my senses humming, and make me sweat. I want to feel you. I want to go with you to a quiet place and tell you with my body what I can only half say in words.
Yours,
Chris
16 April 1944
Dear Bessie,
There are a couple of points in your letter which I did not reply to, and will do so now. Dictionaries – although I am what people call ‘a good speller’ I found when I came away from all my reference books that I was very shaky on some things. So when I was in Cairo I bought a small dictionary. I add to my vocabulary as I can, otherwise I should speedily relapse into baby talk. I have always investigated and made a note of unfamiliar words, and I also enjoy learning the exact shade of meaning of all words. It’s no good me telling you anything about quidnunc; you will look it up in a dictionary one day and remember it the better. Perhaps when I give my delightful new-found words an airing I ought to mark ’em with a star?
This afternoon, with great speed, I received your wonderful Letter Card of April 8th. How I long to be what you think I am, and bring you all you desire. You can tell me no more than you have already done, yet I need you to keep on telling me that I am essential to you, as you, my dear, are indispensable to me. I thrill to you. You write about my ‘powers of self-expression’ – I have none without you.
You will notice an improvement in my last two letters. It is becoming clearer to me that you are my life’s work, and that I must see that I do hold onto you, and please, please, please, do hold me tight. 18–30 are different ages, but I am happier that you loved me first when you were nearer the former age. I know that I am not the victim of a desperate, blind, unloving grasp. I shall keep on saying I want to feel you, and I want you to know that my desire is no less than yours, nor ever will be. My head is on your breasts, my hands are about you.
I love you.
Chris
18 April 1944
I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU
Dear Bessie,
I have just stuck down a Letter Card, and I must straightaway carry on writing to you, around the subject of yours of the 8th April.
Our association in the future depends on your ability to put up with me and my defects, not my ability to put up with yours. And that if we are spending much of our time regarding the other as a bed mate that is a very natural thing, since we are likely to be in that position before too long; I hope it doesn’t mean we are very lustful, but if it does, it doesn’t stop me wanting to tell you how I stiffen and ooze as I read your words and imagine you writing them. I am your servant and your master at once. I will command you and be commanded by you. Your breasts are mine.
I do not feel very happy at the thought of the practical difficulties in the way of setting up house after the war. Every shark in the commercial world will be up and about.
Unfortunately I used to donate most of my money to various ‘good causes’ and I did not start to save until the end of the war in Spain. I think I had about £75 when our own war started; I did not increase this until I joined the Army. At the end of last year I had (my Mother told me) a mere (for my purpose) £227. I think that I am adding to this at about £2 10s. a week. I do not know what will be required. I don’t think there’s much doubt that we will be old enough. Incidentally, I think that engagement rings are jewellers’ rackets, and that marriage is more properly transacted at an office than mumbo-jumbo’d at a church. I am sorry you don’t already know my views on this. You will have to be told sometime.
Can you see that it is gradually dawning on me that you are too good to be missed? Do you observe that I am refusing to bow to my own change-ability? Will you tell me that we may be together really one day, and you will hit me if I start wanting to go?
I am in the permanent state of hoping for letters from you, but I must have flushed my delight an hour ago, when I was handed your LC dated 1st, but postmarked the 3rd. The last three letters had come to me via my brother, and I have been annoyed. He has got an ‘idea’, I feel sure. I had to eat tiffin and delay reading you until I went to work. But now I have done so four times so far. Oh, I do desire you! Oh, I am not really alive except in you, and through you.
Certainly let us mention marriage. Consider me as the one you will be with always from this day, if you want me and will chance it. You are right about it being ‘heavenly’ – but oh hell, angel, you are a long way away! Bessie, Bessie, Bessie, I want to be with you.
I love you.
Chris
18 April 1944 [Second letter]
Dear Bessie,
I think that I will now start to tell you something of myself and family from the Year Dot to the present day. I think this is necessary because I want to (it is very difficult to write – all I want to do is tell you I LOVE YOU) marry you very soon after I return to England, and I want us to do most of the talking through the medium of our letters. There is a lot more to tell you, and I hope to do so. Deb knows much of my history as a person; I want you to know as much as anyone, if only so that you shall never be party to a conversation and be at a loss about it. You won’t remember everything, and I am not certain how I shall proceed. But I think it is desirable. Your time is much more precious than my own, but I hope that you, too, will give me an abridged ‘something’, so that when we do, wonderfully, finally meet, we shall know more about each other than could be obtained by a contemporary or current correspondence.
We have met only comparatively little in the past – and I expect I discussed the weather as much as possible! Some of the things I tell you will not be news, one of them you will need to spend a little time (at least) thinking about, and all of it I hope will be of real interest because it is about me. My ignorance of you can be judged by the fact that I don’t know if the B.I.M. stands for Ivy, Irene or Itma, I don’t know your birthday, or your birthplace. I want to know your food dislikes, if any; if and what you drink; whether you still smoke; how you housekeep or if someone else does it somehow. Please, please, please, tell me of and about yourself, so that I may breathe you in, and wallow in news of you. For by now you must have serious doubts of your ability to escape marrying me, and wondering what the Dickens you have done to deserve it. Please regard me as a serious challenge, your confidant now, your mate when you give the word, your ‘lawfully-wedded husband’ if you will.
I think I can make a start on my career now by telling you that when I was born, my Father was 34, a Postman, and getting about 25s. a week. The family was increased to six (I have two brothers and one sister), and had to move from rooms in one part of Holloway, N.7., to a four roomed house in another part. It came under a Slum Clearance scheme when I was 13, and we were rehoused in a 5 roomed house on the London County Council Estate at Tottenham, until I was 26, when we moved to our present place at Bromley, which my brother owns. I am the baby of the family. My sister is 33, my second brother, ARCHIE, is 36, my eldest, HERBERT REDVERS (Bert, after a Boer War General!) is 38. Dad is 64, Mum, 62. My early memories are few. I remember digging big holes in our back yard and lining up for the pictures. I don’t know how much you recall of the last war? I remember the great fun of making cocoa after we had come back, seeing the R33 (which I thought was a Zeppelin); wanting to be a ‘Spethial Conthtable’ when I grew up; my Dad, a strange, awkward, red faced man, coming home from India.
Things here (I’ll leave The Story of My Life II till later) are about the same, except that today we have gone into Khaki Drill which is much nicer than Battle Dress, and can be washed anytime one wants. I am playing chess as usual and Bridge at night when possible. I’d like to creep away somewhere and do a bit of hard brooding about you, but I have to go through the motions of behaving normally, like you. Whatever I do I am conscious of the fact that you are in the same world, and it is a pretty great thought to be getting on with, rather overwhelming at times. I hope the time we are away from each other will not seem too painfully long, and that before 1999 we shall be able to TELL each other what now we can only think.
I love you.
Chris
25 April 1944
Dear Bessie,
This will be in pencil because it is the only writing material I have with me at present, as like an ass I forgot to bring my pen with me.
This afternoon a dozen of us had a truck to the sea, by a different route from that we normally walk. It was a terrible (and enjoyable) ride , but worth it, although I found it too cold to dally long in the water. Our way was through the usual shells, burnt-out vehicles, bits of guns, and odds and ends left by retreating armies. Needless to say none of us were very pleased to discover a bleached skull on the beach, only pausing to wonder whether it was one of ‘theirs, or ours’.
A pity that today I got your LCs of 12th and 14th BEFORE TIFFIN. After I had read them I wanted ambrosia and nectar, not dehydrated potatoes and corned beef. Consequently I ate little. I have heard that it is pretty serious when your appetite is affected. This is my first experience and I’ll not give it the upper hand.
The smaller your writing gets, the better I shall like it, please.
You say that I am sweeping you off your feet, ‘such a terrific love’ you don’t really think it has happened to you before. My dear girl, it has not. I address you as your future husband.
I think of your breasts more than is good for me. I am sure you are not entirely disinterested in the fact that I have hairs on my chest. Then we start wondering other things. Where shall we live, do we want children; how about your age. You tell me you have £85 10s. in the POSB [Post Office Savings Bank] without knowing I am just writing you that I have £227.
Thank goodness you did not send me a cross. Really, I am scornful of such things. I have no patience with its religious intent, and I know very well that the gold-cross-laden women at home wear them as no more than lucky charms. They probably forget that Christ was crucified. I hope you didn’t seriously think of sending me any such thing. I must risk hurting you, my love – I hope you aren’t RC [Roman Catholic]. I’ll say no more for the present.
Can you understand how I burn at the thought of you, and stretch my arms to enfold you?
I love you.
Chris
28 April 1944
Dear Bessie,
Tell me of your clothes. Tell me of your room, the furniture, so that I can better imagine you, more easily come to you when you are alone.
Throughout the years, I have remembered the Abbey Wood sun glinting through the trees that you and I were under. It is my one real physical memory of you – I know that you are not a toothless old hag. As I kick around here thoughts of your body excite me, thrill me, but I want you to understand that our minds are the things we have to keep together. If either of us cheat, it is no good.
You say you’d like to be vamping me ‘right now’. I wish you were. Although I suppose I would soon be telling you that life was a serious business and we must ‘behave’. I hope you realise that in marrying me you will be the wife of a man who believes in ‘wearing the trousers’, but not his wife’s skirt as well. I do not want you to be terribly, terribly, terribly anxious to ‘obey’. I believe you and I will get on well together and bring the other great joy, not of the physical kind only, but of the mind.
My autobiographical details seem to have been neglected. I suddenly dropped the idea under pressure of telling you that you are lovely.
But I will potter along for a bit now. I was never christened. My mother had a lot to do at the time, it was somehow overlooked! Now she is very keen that I be ‘done’ but I am quite pleased with my status. I believe that if a child dies without being christened he must be buried in unhallowed ground. That makes me very keen to rebel against the rubbish of that dictum.
I went to Drayton Park (Highbury) LCC School. I was probably a very ordinary pupil but good at English. I never won a scholarship despite parental ambitions. When I had done very badly at Arithmetic once I had to stand up before a class. The headmaster said that a chap with a noble forehead like mine should have done much better. I was elected Editor of a new venture School Magazine, but somehow never got out an issue. I left too soon. I remember, at an Armistice ‘treat’ when I was very young, putting a banana in my pocket to ‘take it home to Mum’. When I got home the banana was just pulp. I had the usual fights, during playtime, and before and after school. I supported Cambridge, The Arsenal, and Surrey. (I got these from my eldest brother who has been a big influence on me throughout my life.) I only remember having one ‘good hiding’ from my Dad when I was about 11. I made a swing, tied one end to the mangle, and smashed it completely when it fell down under my weight.
I started in the PO as a Boy Messenger at the Money Order Department on Mch 8 1928. I enjoyed the experience. It was good to be earning money, and I spent most of my pocket money on second-hand books. I was elected Editor of the Messengers’ Magazine too late to publish an issue, as I left in November 1930, when I started at the CTO [Counter and Telegraph Office]. The first girl I ever went out with was a Girl Probationer, whom I took to see Sunny Side Up, one of the first ‘talkies’. I took out several other Girl Probationers, but I can’t recall quarrelling with any of them. I was Secretary of the Cricket Club, but my highest score was 16, and that must have been unusual or I shouldn’t remember it. I played little football. I must have been poor. I was ‘Junior boy’ for nine months, and had a terrible time being dragged all over the kitchen by my seniors, ‘ducked’ in the water, and generally leg-pulled with. One of my jobs then was to clear away the Controller’s (O.J. LIDBURY, he has got on since then) tea tray. I remember still the pleasure of drinking the creamy milk he used to leave.
That is enough for this episode. We’ll carry on later if you can stand it. Please try something similar on your own account, as I am very keen to learn about you, very anxious to get an insight into your history. Do you know French, Shorthand? Understand if you can, how much I want to know all there is to know about your past, so that I can better gather you. Just at this moment, I want to rummage around you, run my hands over you, your hair, your breasts, your arms, your loins, your legs.
I love you.
Chris
2 May 1944
Dear Bessie,
What more elevating thought, what more useful can this page serve, than to contain a list of the books I have read since I have been out here. I should very much like you to tell me what books you happen also to have read on the list.
Science in Everyday Life – Haldane
While Rome Burns – Woolcott
How Russia Prepared – Mr Edelman Dachau
For Those Few Minutes – Eric Gill
Carry On, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
Lord Jim – Conrad
De Valera – Penguin
Victoria the Great – Edith Sitwell
Literary Lapses – Steph. Leacock
A Life of Shakespeare – Hesketh Pearson
Black Mischief – E. Waugh
Mr Moto is So Sorry – J.P. Marquand
Sherston’s Progress – Siegfried Sassoon
Confessions of a Capitalist – Sir E. Benson
I have read plenty of other stuff, not worthwhile recording as it was unexceptional. If you have not read them, I should like you to get [these] from the library (not buy) as I should like to know that you had read them.
I hope I used up the public part of this letter card in a useful fashion. I did not like using another of these LCs so soon after the last, but it is about the only way I can rush to tell you what a lovely silly thing you are.
I have to end this now in order to catch the post (it goes daily here of course), but I hope that you are getting to realise and appreciate that you and I are ‘us’ and ‘we’. Maybe we are only just beginning to feel that vital identity of interest, that significant attachment to the other’s person that will enlighten and enliven us in the days ahead. But everything has to have a beginning. Don’t you worry about any end. Sigh for me, want, desire and need me, as I need you, my dear.
My love,
Chris
9 May 1944
Dear Bessie,
I sent you a LC in reply to your near-lament at the absence of mail. If you must have ‘nagging worries’ as you call them, please let them be around the prospects of my return by Christmas (oh, oh, oh, what a chance!), the chances of a house, the helluva job getting things will be. Please don’t conceal your ‘naggings’, please do tell me everything about you (oh, Bessie, I love you!), please continue to trust me.
Yes, I agree that the body-beautiful is overrated, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to see you in puris naturalibus (I bet you have to look that up. I did!), to drink in your glory, to put my hands on your non-flat bottom, (Bessie, I love you!), to forage around you, to rove over you, to subdue you, to possess you.
I’ve never had a Turkish bath. I should think that the sun out here has a similar cumulative effect. Will be glad to get your account of the process; will you go again?
Deb had told me you would be visiting her again, and seeing the American Communist. (I am afraid I have written Deb very little and somewhat forcedly since her refusal to reply to my arguments about my Mother-fixation.) My first reaction is – thank Goodness you haven’t fallen in love with him! It would shake me considerably to think you were bound for Alabama or Tennessee. Please don’t fall in love with anyone else, my dear. Please let me be the future recipient of your favours, and maybe, the future target for your rolling pin.
The other night we had a very amusing 12-a-side ‘Spelling Bee’, Signals versus RAF, won by the latter 64–38, as the RAF have a different if not better type of chap as a rule. I was very successful with the words I was asked and ‘I don’t want to swank’ (an expression made famous by myself in the Junior Section days) and scored 7 of our points, the most of any. Like an ass, I spelt the flower CHRYSTANTHEUM. I must have been thinking of my second name; we were each asked 5 words, I gained the others through correct spelling of words RAF couldn’t manage. My brother was poor (he never could spell) but others were worse.
Do you get a glimmering of my delight in you, my need for you, my love of you? I wonder.
Chris
17 May 1944
Dear Bessie,
A lot of good things have happened to me lately. Today, after what has seemed a long, long, time I have received two LCs from you, thus terminating any doubts that I had that you had been bombed, or run off with an American, which seems the modern equivalent of the ‘fate worse than death’ lark.
Good Thing No. 2 is the news that I should be commencing leave on the 22nd, and should get seven clear days in Alexandria, bathing (which is nothing new but nevertheless delightful), eating excellent food and ices, drinking all the milk and minerals my stomach desires, and looking, once again, at houses and paved streets, young children and trees.
The third Good Thing is that this week I am doing an easy job, not telephone operating, which enables me to write in peace (I wrote five letters today and have ten more to do, such has been my inertia of late) and sleep at night (tonight is the first time I have had five consecutive nights in bed since November.
Now to your letters and our love: Where did you go for leave, and with whom? (I imagine, Iris.) Tell me all about it at your leisure please. Please prepare for about a fortnight without letters while I am away. I shall try to write if there are facilities, but remember I am chaperoned.
Did you understand that my fellow sitter in the photo, the ‘chap named Barker’, was my brother? He is a fine chap, sorry you cut him to pieces.
Congratulations, before I inconsiderately forget, on the really good efforts you are making at small writing, I hope you’ll maintain the standard.
So your Dad knows … It couldn’t be avoided. It was inevitable, and perhaps desirable. But do keep on holding him to practical silence. If your brother Wilfred tells any of his pals, the secret (for what it is worth) will be out within a month. You had better tell him, but urge him to treat it as a whisper. I think it is better to keep our state shielded for the present, but no doubt we shall have to talk later. But I want to tell you something first, and I can only do so in my own time. If you feel I should write your Dad, let me know and I’ll do as you say. I always remember ‘God gave us our relations, but he left us to choose our friends’.
I feel very relieved that you are not RC, and that the cross had no real significance, and that at least we shall not fight over religion, the cause of so much fighting. I am an agnostic, but I have ‘C of E’ on my identity discs (usually I do not wear them, but I shall do so next week in case I get slugged).
One day I shall actually see you. One day we shall really be together. Then we shall really begin to live, and our education will have begun. I hope you really have got an appetite (the other chap in our tent never eats a dinner, only a sweet) but anyhow I’ll give you one. You’ll never get an easier bloke to cook for if you live to be a 100.
I don’t remember calling you a ‘flapper’ but I expect I thought it was justified. My dictionary tells me it means ‘A young girl, not yet out’. It sounds as though I was right, don’t you think? Anyway, we are now both flapping wildly at each other in a pretty successful endeavour to persuade the other that this is ‘it’. One day I shall come to you. I shall take you and you will be glad. Together, we will rejoice.
I love you.
Chris
A photo strip sent to Bessie in 1944
20 May 1944
My dear and lovely Bessie,
Today there came your LC of May 10th, to tell me that Iris (but oh no, not Lil Hale!) was now aware of our altered state. It doesn’t worry me at all, and I fully understand the difficulty of concealment. Probably I should have told you to tell Iris, as there is no doubt that she would have divined something. However, I don’t think it will be long before I get a letter from someone commenting on the new alliance. You can think the position ‘safe’, but nothing travels faster than a shared secret. But please do not accelerate the publicity if you can help. If you can’t help it, well, I haven’t it in me to rage at you. I just would prefer you to keep it dark.
One thing that I really do want you to guard against is ‘sharing’ me with anyone, whoever it may be. For goodness’ sake don’t quote any ‘funny bits’ I may rise to in my letters. Please do not refer directly to anything I say, recognise that this emotion I feel is for you, not for anyone else. So don’t quote me. If you think a thing I have said is worth repeating, do so as though it was you who had thought of it. I do not want that to read the least bit unpleasantly, what I intend expressing is my desire to come to you direct and fully, and stay with you, not dispersed. On other occasions you will find I am a jealous and selfish lover who demands the un-demandable. I shall snarl at appropriate intervals to suitably impress you. I am not afraid of the interpretation you will give to any act or thought of mine, but I do not want an audience of two nor desire the help of anyone else. Do not expect others to share your view of my virtues, please do not try.
You say if you lose me you will have lost all. Nonsense. First, I am not ‘all’. Second, you are not going to lose me through any act of mine. I am going to hold onto you as tightly as I can – a sort of death-grip!
No, I should not wish you to go out to work, though I should resist you becoming a home-tied, house-proud drudge. I don’t know about children. I am glad you don’t sink to the bottom upon entering the water. I can’t swim very well, you know, but I can keep afloat and I have confidence. We shall swim together one day. I’ll ‘find you lazy’ you say. You’ll have to improve, if you are, but I don’t suppose you are. If you are, I’ll shake you. (Aren’t I horrible?)
You must understand how I ache for you, want my light-brown arms to enfold your white body, my hands to forage around, my body to give you its message, my whole being to dominate you yet be subject to you. I want you to receive me. I want to pierce you and be part of you. I want to tell you that I love you.
Chris
25 May 1944
Dear Bessie,
I am writing this in ‘Alex.’ The first leave I have had in 16 months. You can understand that I am a little elated to be my own master – be it only for a little while. We only have one military function to perform, i.e. salute every officer we pass. I salute them with great gusto, believing the while that my act is another nail in Hitler’s Coffin!
27 May. I am now in the new, clean, bug-free billet, and am enjoying the change from the desert. Have had many fine ices, ice drinks, and meals hastily cooked and nicely served. It is nice to drink tea from china cups and see the whole of the face when one shaves.
The clothes of the people here (‘Europeans’) would make you go green with envy. Very fine cloth, well made. I have yet to see a pair of trousers under £5, prices are very high. There are many clubs here, and some are really fine, in leafy, green, quiet surrounds. Have had some swims, but the facilities are not so good as I had expected, as the sea wall prevents bathing too near the central part of the town. Have been on a ‘sight-seeing’ tour with the YMCA, this morning, but it was not very good, some of the alleged Roman wall-scrawlings looked to me very much like 1944 daubings.
Have had a number of photographs taken and I think some are like me. We must have a lot done, as my Mother wails that my eldest brother is looking so old, and we have to keep on having photos done till we get one which says the reverse. Will send you copies later. There are many luscious ‘come-hither’ types around here. I must tell you the whole yarn later on. I have bought a ‘Swan’, but as you can see by the bad writing, the nib is not very suitable.
Strawberries are 2s. a lb. here, potatoes 6d. a lb. I am looking forward to getting your letters upon my return. For me that is the only ‘snag’ of this leave. I hope you fully realise just how I feel. My apologies for this very poor effort. My brother is a foot away!
My love.
Chris
11 June 1944
My dear and lovely Bessie,
How can I start to reply to the seven letters that awaited me when I arrived here, the two that came the day after, and the one I received yesterday? Shall I reply to them chronologically, or in order of importance?
These letters of yours are just like an English river running through green fields, clear, refreshing, bright, confident. You come rippling down at me, surround me with your beauty and your meaning, and just as I am thinking ‘that was wonderful’, you come to me again to say that you still are.
So will you accept my humble thanks (you make me feel humble) for these many evidences of your feelings, and allow me to commend you on all the fine, small writing you did. Don’t try to make it any smaller or you’ll ruin your eyes.
The story of my return from Alexandria is a sorry one. I will leave all the other leave details till I have replied to your other letters, but I must tell you this. We did not last out the third week, but on the Wednesday had to en-train. I awoke in the barracks with a bad headache (I never have headaches usually) which persisted throughout the train journey which lasted the usual 24 hours. My brother had to cart all my kit about, while I carried only the rifles. Arrived here I saw the Medical Corporal, went to bed, had tablets, slept a little. Following day saw the MO [Medical Officer] who gave me a good general examination and said there was nothing wrong with me. He excused me duty. More tablets and bed. The following day I only had a pretty bad ache around my eyes, again excused duty. Today I am somewhat cloudy in the eye-region, but expect to be bunged on the switchboard any minute.
By the way I have a typewriter, Underwood (cost me £14 14s. in 1938). Would you like to have it, if so I’ll try and think out a scheme. I could get £25 for it any day I think, but it is more useful than money and is just lying about useless at home.
I am glad you like the second-hand bookshop idea.
I am sorry about your gumboils. I should leave your private (acquisitive) Dentist and pay at least one visit to the Dental Hospital at Leicester Square, which is concerned with saving teeth, not making money through extractions and dentures. Don’t have your teeth out before you need do, and without seeing the Dental Hospital. They are good people. I shall make some lighter remarks in a later letter. The enclosed photos (most grim) show some of my teeth fairly well. I lost two on my right, upper, through private dentists. You do want me to tell you, here, that I love you though you be molar-less? I do!
I give you my glad sympathy at your efforts to abate the smoke nuisance. You are a good girl, Bessie. We are now getting 50 Players/Gold Flake weekly out here. Pity I cannot send mine to you.
I must again say I don’t want you to think of me as a superior. Of course I kid myself I have a sharper perception of some (maybe unimportant) things than most others. But you are better than me at French, Algebra, Arithmetic, and I am confused (and remaining so) about Morse and Electricity and Magnetism.
I love you.
Chris
12 June 1944
Dearest,
It is a little bit pathetic for you to tell me I am ‘such a lover’, when all I have been able to do is put on paper a few sentences conveying what I mean, but not, surely, the force with which I mean it. You have been wonderful in gathering my intentions, you will be wonderful administering to my needs. Please never forget that I have needs, and that you are my greatest.
It is not much good me trying to tell you that I shall not flirt with hundreds of others. Events will show you.
But for goodness’ sake, go steady on the near-occult. Do not trust your ordinary brain to deal with extra-super ordinary things. I became interested in Spiritualism years ago, but after I had read a book (I think it was Valley of the Mists by Conan Doyle) that made my head whirl with thought and possible happenings, in no spirit of mock-humility, I decided it was a subject which I had better leave alone. My brain was, I thought, too ordinary.
You ask me if I want you to be a modern woman par excellence, and you ‘rather hope I am the least bit old-fashioned’. Well, I am sufficiently old-fashioned not to want you to work after marriage. I want your main job to be looking after me. But, as I have said earlier, I do not want you to go house-mad. I want you to take an interest in other things, and if necessary, join up with people like yourself who may be similarly interested. I have seen (theoretically!) a woman stop being useful to the world upon marriage. I want you to develop, say, something that the circumstances of your working life have prevented you following. I can therefore be, not the bloke who bangs the Harem gate shut, but the one who gives you the chance to do something (quite accidentally); obviously I am marrying you because I am selfish, not because I think a little leisure may make you another Van Gogh.
Don’t rush to the photographer, there’s a good girl. I shall be very glad to have the snap of ‘The Author at Age 20’ – as, my love, one day I shall be very happy to have you.
You amuse me when you say you don’t think managing money is my strong point. (I haven’t got any strong points except those you make.) I expect you will find me a horrible old skinflint, but I hope you’ll agree to have pocket-money, as I shall have it, and that should enable you to be at least independent in little things. In any case, you will be doing the housekeeping, and I shall assist only at your invitation.
If anyone in the Ministry of Labour asks you what your war-work is, you can show them my dark-frowned photo, and you can tell them your trouble with me is only just starting.
I’ve never really asked you, have I – Will you marry me, Bessie (for better or for worse)? There are no good reasons, but the only excuse I can offer is that I will love you always, my fashion. Reply by ordinary LC won’t you?
Thank you, Bessie, for telling me you want to be at my mercy. One day let us hope you will be, and then we shall really meet. You make me feel a little drunk when you place yourself at my command. I so much want to caress you, to lie with you and commune. You do not wonder at my wish to rummage when it is your lovely body that I seek? Do not mistake the depth and the age of my desire to enter you. I want to kiss your breasts till they flame, I want to squeeze them till my roving hands move on to your buttock and hips. I want to mould your loins with my hands and kiss you again and again. I want you to receive my homage, my love, and then I want to come into lovely you myself.
Chris
14 June 1944
My dear Bessie,
Yes, I got those corduroy trousers a few months after the war started, and long before everyone adopted them. When I got them home, my Mother said, ‘You silly young ass, only artists wear them!’ She was approximately correct. They are grand trousers, though, and wonderful material. I am glad about your non-puritan thoughts based on their contents. I already feel accustomed to your bedroom, and I hope you will increasingly know within you that I am thinking of you there. I don’t altogether swallow the explanation for the sag in the spring bed, but we will try and make it worse, shall we?
Do not let the emphasis on the physical make you think for a moment that I under-rate your mentality and intelligence. So prepare for me as though I was an ordinary person, not the Agha Khan.
Yes, my Mother will be a bit of a nuisance to her prospective daughter-in-law. Not because she is mine, but because in-laws are nuisances. But I shall be able to help you where necessary and when the time comes. My attitude in similar circs. would be ‘Blow the lot of them’. I am not over-fond of relations myself.
You say ‘I am so much in your hands’. Would that you were, my dear. I am afraid of losing you. I am so glad the Yank turned out a bit of a wet blanket. I shall try hard to keep you. Forgive me for my constant thought of your flesh. Your body is always before me, and I find my own crying for union, companionship. These gifts which you wonderfully bestow on me are the greatest I could ask.
I can now commence to tell you about my leave. It could have been so much better had you been there: as it was, my brother’s pretty constant attendance was a great nuisance. I could have wept sometimes. I had all sorts of great hopes about buying something in Alex., but in the event, I had to admit defeat. Cloth was tremendously dear, and its despatch under the eagle eye of Herbert, impossible. So I am afraid that all you will get in a couple of months’ time will be a kind of leather shopping bag, with zip fastener. You’ve probably got half-a-dozen, or maybe you wouldn’t be seen dead with one. But perhaps it isn’t a shopping bag. You must tell me what it is when you get it! Anyhow, it’s leather and should be OK for soling your shoes. Next time, please tell me what you’d like, and (if I can get rid of Bert for a little while) I’ll try hard to be perspicacious. What is your shoe size please?
Please have a thought of me.
My love.
Chris
16 June 1944
Dear Bessie,
I am now starting my account of the visit to Alexandria.
In Alex. you can get what you want if you like to pay for it. Two chaps in our party had nights out which cost them £3 apiece each time. They assured me it was well worth it. Almost anywhere you go, little boys, old men, or the women themselves will say ‘Want a woman?’ ‘Want a —?’ ‘Hello dearie.’ I must say that I shudder somewhat at the thought. A boy about 6 in one street invites you to buy a preventative, with as much loud enthusiasm and as little discretion as the chap who sells newspapers at Oxford Circus. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Well of Loneliness and other items are on sale everywhere, but although they are advertised as unexpurgated, judging by the disappointment of a chap in the train who had bought one, they are pretty much like tracts.
Street entertainers are more numerous and original than our own, there are never any singers or bands only. Monkeys and dogs jump through hoops at their masters’ behest. One man has a couple of long batons, which burn at the end. He pretends to swallow them, but only puts them in his mouth, where they go out. A ‘good’ one is, he swallows paraffin (I mean puts it in his mouth), then expels it into the air, putting a match to it. Done quickly, it seems that he is breathing fire … Then he lays back on a great nail-studded board, while his mates dance on him, after which dancing barefoot on a bag of glass is child’s play. All this to the accompaniment of drum-banging and other noises.
One of my nicest afternoons was watching cricket, on matting-wicket surrounded by a fair amount of pleasant looking grass. We had tea as we watched. I had a macaroon.
On the last night I was able to leave the barracks, and spend an hour with ‘Mohamed Hassan Ali’ at one of the Clubs. He gave an ‘Hour of Magic’, and picked on me to be his stooge. For half-an-hour, at first rather embarrassed, I was his assistant, up on the stage. I threw dice, burned £1 notes, tore up playing cards, tied knots in rope, tried to extricate hoops, picked eggs from my pockets. The queerest thing of the lot was when he said to me, ‘Say, come out McTavish’ and told me to put my hand down my shirt. From my sweaty breasts came a dear little chick. He told me three more names, and I extricated three more. A bit of hard luck for the chicks, but Egyptians are very cruel to animals, and not much less vicious to their fellows.
With you as my companion, anything would be wonderful. This would have been wonderful too.
Love,
Chris
Chris in Alexandria, 1944
