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Hugh Lee (’Ham’) *
Оглавление27a Bishop’s Road
London, N6
21 February [c.1990]
Dearest Ham – No-one but you – absolutely no-one – would find any old letters in a suitcase of their father-in-law’s at the bottom of the carcase of an old freezer. You’re someone to whom things happen.
It’s kind of you to suggest that I might write my autobiography but I shan’t do that as I’ve written something about my family already and also about what (in the tedious little talks I sometimes give) I call my work experience – I used to regret that all the letters and photographs we had went down to the bottom of the Thames, but I see now I’m better off without them. The reason is that as my step-mother gets more and more hazy in her nursing-home (but this is a blessing to her, I truly think, because she doesn’t worry as much as she used to do) we’ve brought home all the old papers from her flat and I’m beginning to go through them, and it’s such a sad business, so many forgotten names, so much wasted effort, that I’ve decided I simply mustn’t leave my children to go through what I’ve accumulated, I must give them to the NSPCC who bring a green bag round every week to collect the waste paper.
I don’t know why I’m rambling on like this,
love to you both. – Mops.
I had to change my handwriting because the bank wouldn’t accept my signature
‘PUNCH’
10 Bouverie Street
London, EC4
5 October [1939]
Dear Ham,
I spiritually drank your health the other day by ringing the bell (this is a very well-appointed office) and sending for all the books on ballet from the Art Room and a lettuce sandwich – I read them all through and could now maintain a conversation on the subject with almost anyone – but perhaps as a result of this indulgence I caught ‘flu, and had to take a sinister lightning cold cure which has made me very hazy, and rather the colour of a cream cheese. On the other hand I feel even more sympathetic about your toothache, and about Yorkshire too, I am told the wildernesses literally howl there.
I am waiting in agonies for the reports of Hitler’s speech, as any reference to unknown weapons will hypnotize me with fear. The sub-editor from Lowestoft, who is sitting opposite me, has a permanent flush this morning, and is even glowering.
Putting aside the idea that he has been drinking, I think he has heard something to my discredit, or perhaps suspects me of making advances to him. I have discovered that he is a gadget fiend, and has made a penknife and magnifying glass combined, out of old razor-blades. A magneto would be nothing to him. He is now with angry gestures filling his pipe with tobacco, and I can’t make up my mind whether to warn him that this will make me feel sick – owing to the lightning cold cure – or whether to collapse suddenly on the floor later on, which should teach him a sharp lesson, and prevent his smoking Craven Mixture for some time to come.
In spite of the somewhat ominous news I am in one of my optimistic moods, in which I feel that it will be a short war. Please concentrate on agreeing with this,
love,
Mops.
16 Avenue Close*
Avenue Road, NW8
13 October [1939]
Dear Ham,
This is another letter which you needn’t read if you don’t care to as it only expresses the fact that I am melancholy and terrified of the celebrated Blitzkrieg. I start at noises in the street, sleep with my head under the bedclothes, and listen to the owls hooting – they really do hoot around this block of flats – with gloomy relish. When I get as depressed as this though, I must get better soon, it’s a law of nature – but the really annoying thing is my fondness for doughnuts. An organisation called the British Doughnut Association has sent us a pamphlet announcing that a representative will call at the office with some samples of the new type of doughnut to get our opinion – now this was 3 days ago, and I suspect that the doughnuts have been intercepted either by the Advertising Department or by the publishers, or by the sub-editor from Lowestoft, who is something of a gross feeder – at all events I have seen nothing of them, and I have an unfortunate tendency to pin my hopes to small things.
I haven’t seen Oliver,** for he has departed to Cambridge, I think on a bicycle. I admire, and always have admired, the way he quarters the countryside. He ought to be a Transport Officer really,
love,
Mops.
16 Avenue Close, NW8
[1939]
My dear Ham,
I hear you are being visited by Mrs Breakwell, which I suppose is a refresher course in itself. She went flying down to Devon on full sail with the bomb bags trailing after her. I should very much like a list of the objects these bags contain.
Here is a photo of Oliver, Mrs B., Kate and me entertaining the famous French soldiers at an al fresco meal in Hyde Park. They ate cakes and drank lemonade which one of them declared, with a forced smile, was the champagne of England.
Oliver has become very wild and spends his time disappearing in a cloud of dust on his motor-bicycle and reappearing with a headache next day after an evening at The Nuthouse. The Nuthouse is a night-club, and I should say what the Daily Mirror calls a haunt. You frequent haunts, and Oliver accordingly frequents the Nuthouse.
The mulberry tree at the back of the flats has suddenly produced a large crop of fruits which, though you live in the country and don’t realise it, is a very pleasant surprise in London, so we have made quantities of jam and jelly.
On second thoughts this seems a remarkably dull bit of news, so perhaps if I have sunk to this level I had better stop.
There seem to be rather too many bombers over your part of the island, so you might learn to dodge,
love,
Mops.
‘PUNCH’
10 Bouverie Street
London, EC4
30 October [1939]
My dear Ham,
I don’t know if you are still in Yorkshire. I can’t believe that you are, everybody seems to be so mobile nowadays, and to flash to and fro past or through the metropolis leaving me glued to my desk. There is something to be said for remaining static, however, for it gives one an illusion of being nailed to the mast, or steadfast at the post. A message has just come through from the censor forbidding us to mention the state of the weather in any part of the country – the proprietor apparently takes this seriously and has qualms about the only too familiar snow scene which is appearing on the cover of the Christmas number. – The sub-editor from Lowestoft has lost a good deal of his timidity since he came into the office during a thunderstorm (did you have one in Yorkshire, presuming that you are in Yorkshire?) and found me crouching under the desk among the back numbers. Further, he actually came to dinner and made several independent, though not original remarks, until he was silenced by a large cigar which my father gave him. Though he draws a considerable salary he only has bread and cheese for lunch, and lives in Fleet Street to save tube fares – what can he be saving up for? I believe he is a Gauguin at heart and yearns for the South Seas, but isn’t quite abandoned enough to go there until he has got enough for a return ticket.
I have no news at all, for I haven’t seen Oliver and I missed Janet* on her last leave, though I believe she is going to abandon the Air Force if she can. I have a practicable idea however, which is to exchange the Magna Carta for all these aeroplanes instead of paying cash. It’s at New York anyway, and the Americans seem to be fonder of it than we are,
love,
Mops.
Punch Office
10 Bouverie Street
27 November 1939
My dear Ham,
I can’t bear to think of you being so uncomfortable. You ought to curl up on silk cushions like a cat and exist against a luxurious background. The only thing I can say from my brother’s experience in camp, is that it gets better – that is, the discomfort – not worse, but I suppose this is due to a gradual dulling of the faculties, known as merciful oblivion. As everything is so horrid, I can think of nothing consoling to say, except that I am glad you are not in the Navy, and being sunk every day. Sean and Oliver and I were at the ballet the other night and very much regretted your absence, especially when the Lac des Cygnes was danced in a highly kitchy manner with clouds of dust and reverberating thuds.
Lowestoft sits opposite, basking in the warmth and sucking his pipe. I am getting very fond of him as we have a kind of tacit arrangement by which I hold him responsible for the bad news in the paper every morning, and he leads me to look on the brighter side of things. ‘It is no good’ he says ‘being pessimistic.’ With that, and a piece of chocolate, I am able to face the morning.
Please forgive this odious piece of paper. I love apologising for the quality of the paper and ink when writing a letter, as it is so perfectly pointless.
love,
Mops.
‘PUNCH’
10 Bouverie Street
London, EC4
1 January 1940
My dear Ham,
Happy new year (the Sergeant Major here actually says ‘the compliments of the season’, but I never met anyone else who did). I think the gramophone records are wonderful, I didn’t know either of them before, due to my ignorance, but I took to them like a duck to water and play them all day, and even try to sing them in the bath, which is disastrous of course, and it was better when I stuck to ‘Run, rabbit, run’ with my own variations; only I do love the records and it is now one of my premier ambitions to go to hear Otello in the flesh.
I went to an alarming dinner party at the Hoods the other night. For want of other conversation I told Mrs H. (quite accurately) that I couldn’t abide bulldogs, and insulted the horrid but apparently precious specimen which she keeps. Now she is stalking up and down and saying that intelligence is all very well but other things are more important. I was terrified of Sinclair too. He looks so dry I want to wash him; but this may be my feline instincts coming to the top. Oliver was kind and covered up my social errors as well as he could. Jean is up in London today and we are all going to the Toy Symphony with Kenneth Clark conducting.
I gather a lot of rum was issued to the troops at Christmas, so I hope that if you didn’t get leave you at least passed the time in a vaguely pleasurable daze. I was at Oundle, where I had to appear in a charade as a British slave dressed in a bathing suit and Mrs Fisher’s fur coat, which, it seems, disgusted and appalled the audience. I am back at the office now and have made the room so hot, by the simple process of shutting all the windows, that Mallet has fallen fast asleep,
love, Mops.
Ministry of Food
Great Westminster House
Horseferry Road
London, sw1
11 June 1940
My dear Ham,
Thankyou very much for writing – I wish I could have come down last Sunday but I had to stay here and draft a message for the Minister to send to the National Association of Bee-Keepers – and though I have applied all the brains and training I have to the question I am unable to think of anything, though I am very fond of honey in the comb. I’ve got a new straw hat, such a one, with red roses, which seems vaguely connected with the subject somehow.
My ideas of Officers’ Messes are based on lurid films and novels by P. C. Wren which I read under the bedclothes at school. They include quarrels of honour, with cards and glasses all over the floor, and horses jumping on, and off, the table, and also jackboots and being roasted alive by Roundheads. I do hope you are enjoying yourself. I suppose, however good and broadminded you are, there is some satisfaction in being an officer and superior by profession to so many people. Have you a comic batman, I wonder?
You will be pleased to hear that I haven’t been to any films at all lately as I have a vague feeling that it is wicked, and I expect I shall gradually lose the habit and be able to despise films as you do, though I suppose not with the same fine scornful profile.
Rawle* is coming up to London on Saturday to get made into an officer – then we shall have to go through this saluting trouble all over again – but I believe I am a 2nd lieutenant now too as we have our own tasteless rifle corps to defend the Ministry against assaults and I seem to be embodied in it,
much love,
Mops.
Ministry of Food
Great Westminster House
Horseferry Road
London, sw1
29 June [1940]
My dear Ham,
How dare you resent anything to do with the rustics of Herefordshire? Little do you realise that my grandfather, the bishop, was curate of Kington in Herefordshire and I have spent my holidays there ever since I can remember, and it is in fact the only part of the country I can bear and the only part that makes me placid, with fat horses, fat haystacks, fat rustics and a happy lack of anything famous or distinguished. It is odd that you say that there are some trees that you take to be limes, there are some just outside our cottage, a kind of avenue, green as you say and charming, and one of our few discussions there – there aren’t many subjects of conversation, you see is the great question of whether they are limes or not. Somebody always suggests hornbeams towards the end of supper. Well, everyone here says
1. That Liverpool docks have been reduced to ashes.
2. That Chamberlain, Col. Lindbergh and Laval have got together and are arranging peace terms.
3. That the Germans are arriving in motor launches and amphibious tanks on July 2nd.
4. That Halifax is to be dismissed and replaced by Lord Strabolgin. I want a dog more and more. I suppose the price of Pomeranians has gone up as all the dogs have been shot in Germany, but after the war I shall save up and buy one nevertheless. I have got into the frame of mind, you see – I don’t know why – when I think the war will possibly come to an end one day.
I hope you come to London soon, through the agency of Cyril Falls or any other way,
love,
Mops.
Ministry of Food
Great Westminster House
Horseferry Road
London, sw1
8 July [1940]
My dear Ham,
Thankyou very much for your letter, and I would have answered your first one before if I hadn’t thought you wanted me not to – and I am very nervous of saying anything where people’s feelings and sensibilities are concerned, which often makes me appear even stupider than I am.
I don’t know exactly what you feel about me. I have always been very fond of you and very proud on the occasions when you broke your three silences and spoke to me, and I have always looked forward to seeing you when you come up to London. I hope I shall again. I don’t know whether Oliver ever told you that ever since I broke my engagement* I have been mixed up in a rather stupid and unsatisfactory way, I suppose, but it is the only thing I can do, it goes on and on and it makes me appreciate my friends all the more.
Oliver has left the flat to go and stay with Kate, and in the meantime Mrs B. gave an amazing party at which your sister was a tower of strength with the coffee, wine and cutlets and there was a strange babel of languages – Mrs B. pre-eminent in a torrent of mixed French and English, easily drowning the harassed player at the piano. Jouky was present, but did not sing.
I had a dreadful time at Guildford on Sunday with the L.D.V’s.* The colonel lent me his very large horse to ‘see the fun’ – i.e. 50 men crawling about on a parachute scheme in the height of misunderstanding and confusion – but it bolted and scattered the people disguised as Germans – the colonel however referred to me afterwards as ‘the little secret weapon’ at tea-time.
I have never been to Somerset. What is it like?
love,
Mops.
16 Avenue Close,
Avenue Road, NW8
20 July [1940]
My dear Ham,
Thankyou very much for your letter. It is difficult to follow you in your rapid course through Devon and Somerset but I hope that wherever you have pitched your tent now you are comfortable and at ease. I am sitting in the Breakwells’ flat and Mamma is lying back on the sofa which is draped with an Indian carpet and telling Oliver he is repressed – she has just been appealing to a bus-load of people to throw away Oliver’s stick, to show that she doesn’t believe in the Guards and that French people are understanding and sympathetic.
I have nearly got the sack from my office but I had a last-minute reprieve and I am being protected by the Editorial Officer who is prepared to swear I am indispensable. Meanwhile I am sitting everyday and answering letters to the minister threatening to strangle him if the writers aren’t immediately given more tea.
Raven is in the Field Security now which gives him an excellent excuse for stopping all conversation as subversive (’it’s my job now, you know’) and talking about himself and his latest, and quite dreadful, French girlfriend – supported violently by mamma, of course.
We had our very last champagne party before the invasion the other day – I wish you had been there, as I am all for celebrating, and fiddling while Rome burns,
Hugh and Oliver send their love and Hugh adds that he owes you half a crown,
love,
Mops.
Ministry of Food
Neville House
Page Street
London, sw1
22 August [1940]
My dear Ham,
The lobster salad poisoned me, and there may be a moral in it somewhere. It was extremely nice to see you. You wouldn’t, or at any rate didn’t, tell me anything about what you have been doing, but you looked well and didn’t repeat any stories about sergeants and I consider that these are two excellent signs. I missed however the moment at 5 o’clock on Sunday afternoon when you read through the cinema announcements and condemn them all in round terms. Mrs B.’s French soldiers, I am relieved to say, are expecting to go back to their country next week and then perhaps an autumnal peace will descend on Stamford Court.
I went to a dreadful diplomatic party on Monday night. We had to eat more lobster salad, small biscuits and drink a weak decoction of punch, alleged to be prepared in the Czechoslovakian manner. This was in honour of the Czech minister to Paris and his wife, who had arrived in England and we all had to sit around on gilt chairs and listen to their tale of privations and desperate escapes. This lasted half an hour and was much interrupted by showers of tears from the wife which mingled with the enormous pearls she was wearing and shook the whole sofa till it tottered on its little gilt legs. The conversation was entirely in French and everyone seized the opportunity to make idiomatic exclamations. In the end it turned out that she had had no difficulties at all except losing a fur coat and having only room for nine when she was travelling with an entourage of eleven. But everyone seemed overcome at this disaster and the insult to the diplomatic corps. No-one paid any attention to me except the poodle. Fortunately the household has no bulldog.
I suppose it is quite useless for me to say that I hope you are not in too much danger, as you quite certainly are, and as you said the other night, it’s necessary to talk about serious things, but also quite impossible,
Love,
Mops.
Ministry of Food
Neville House
Page Street
London, sw1
[September 1940]
My dear Ham,
I hope by this time you have heard all about Freddie and that he is safe and well, though his flute is lost, and he is very tired. I saw him in the Café Royal the other night with Kate and he looked the colour of cream cheese but otherwise just the same as usual. I haven’t heard from Oliver about it as he is off down to the country for three weeks, but I am afraid it may have an even worse effect on him than on Freddie, as is often the case with catastrophes.
I wish you didn’t always go to places where danger and boredom are mixed in equal proportions and I have a suspicion, though you don’t say so, that you don’t much care for your companions. It is bad enough being forced into uniform, every war does that, but every war doesn’t drag you to uncongenial watering-places with unsympathetic spirits.
I hope you come to London soon, although it is true that the outer suburbs are falling down like a pack of cards, to the great joy of the town planners who are now revealed in their true colours as ghouls laughing over the wreckage and erecting garden cities with communal health centres, peoples theatres, and spacious boulevards. You may wonder how I know anything about town planning, but it so happens that Mr McAllister, my small short Scotch problem boss, is a mad town-planner, besides having stood for Parliament and appeared as a Tam o’ Shanter in the pictures in the early days of the talkies. If you don’t know what a problem boss is you should look at the Secretary’s page in the Ladies Home Journal which tells you how to deal with them. Mr McAllister is what is known as a caution, it seems that he has been engaged at various times to practically all the short women doctors in Scotland, or all the ones shorter than he is.
I am falling out of favour with Mrs B. who calls me a frivolous little idiot because I had forgotten to post her 25 photographs of the French soldiers and also didn’t appear (mercifully) in a colour film taken of them and her in Hyde Park at a picnic. I am afraid that during the winter hibernation she will come to dislike me intensely but you must support my cause, if you will.
Jean* is up today, but she is just fluttering through London as her parents’ natural distrust of the metropolis has now greatly increased.
I now have to write an article on communal feeding for a paper called ‘Our Empire’. I rang up ‘Our Empire’ a few minutes ago, but, ominously enough, it wasn’t there,
much love,
Mops.
Ministry of Food
24 September [1940]
My dear Ham,
The news about Bill is dreadful, and as I don’t quite know how well you knew him I, as usual, don’t quite know what to say for fear of treading on your feelings, and so I shan’t say anything at all.
I hope at least you are stagnating in Devonshire, that is the quality for which it is famous, and that there are apples, red cows, and the beautiful undulating landscape which I detest, and that your general stupidity, which I don’t believe in, is in harmony with the pervading quiet. All the same it will be nice when you come back, if you do, to the quite alarming noises (alleged to be due to a new anti-aircraft weapon) of the London night.
Mrs Breakwell now hates me so much, and says such curiously far-fetched things, that I don’t think it matters what I do at, or about, 24 Cornwall Gardens – but I forgive her everything, as she has to spend her nights in such appalling conditions.
Dear Ham, I wonder if by now you are imbued with an offensive spirit, or if after all you have decided to fold your hands.
We have had a large oil-canister bomb which came through my bedroom window, so that I have a twisted piece of metal as a souvenir, but I was not there at the time and so although all the windows in the flat collapsed I did not.
I am wretched as I have got a pair of red gloves against the winter, as they say, which make me sneeze continually. It isn’t the colour, because my blue ones make me sneeze, too,
love,
Mops.
There is a photo of me somewhere, I went into the box-room to find it but a large naval gun blew in the window and I retreated in disorder, but I will find it and send it you though it is horrid.
Long Meadow
Longdown
Guildford
6 October [1940]
My dear Ham,
I have not heard any more about Bill, but Oliver and Fred are convinced that he must be a prisoner of war and are doing all they can to find out through the Red Cross and through some mysterious friends of Fred’s in Spain.
Do tell me some more about Devonshire. I like to hear about all the counties and it seems to me that you visit most of them.
Our land-mine has been removed, parachute, tassels, and all, without damaging Avenue Close, but on the other hand a bomb seems to have fallen very near Cornwall Gardens. Mrs B., however, has sunk into her hazy September melancholy and not even the return of Oliver from Chequers seems to arouse her.
We are down in the country getting some fresh air – that means that we all sit indoors, owing to the hurricane outside, and eat too much, and try to prevent the dogs getting on to the sofas or making nests in the Sunday Times. I must soon stagger out, however, and pick some wet Michaelmas daisies.
In ending a letter from the country I notice that people always say ‘I must rush now to catch the post’ – however, I have already missed the post by several hours, so I must just send my love,
Mops.
Ministry of Food
Great Westminster House
Horseferry Road
London, sw1
15 October [1940]
My dear Ham,
Thankyou very much for writing and for saying you aren’t going to West Africa, an idea which alarmed me considerably, though if you had really made up your mind to it I would have pretended to like it.
Similarly, Oliver seems so delighted about going to Egypt that it doesn’t seem worth while saying how unhappy I am about it and Mrs Breakwell, poor Mrs B., keeps pointing at soldiers of all ranks in the streets and saying why can’t he go. I secretly feel the same, but what’s the use, because Oliver is pleased as punch, literally like punch, he is effervescent.
I have had my brother on a week’s leave. He slept in the passage, and the Danish cook evidently regarded him as a soldier billeted on us and ran the carpet-sweeper over him remorselessly.
We have had two more bombs on the block, one of them on the show flat, which now has a sign Luxurious Flats To Let swinging over a crater. I think my brother was really glad to get back to the peaceful battery in Scotland. I do love having him on leave but a week is no good at all, a brother should be there all the time like the church and the post-office.
If you get leave do ring up and tell me how to pronounce Melhuish for I have never known,
love,
Mops.
Ministry of Food
Great Westminster House
Horseferry Road
London, sw1
28 October [1940]
My dear Ham,
It is one of my minor ambitions to write as good letters as you do, but short of that I must just say how very glad I was to see you when you were on leave, and I may add that Oliver seemed as gay as a lark when I went to visit him on Sunday at the Duke of York’s barracks, where he was sitting among the ruins drinking a large cup of horrid sweetened tea. Mrs FitzG also came and delighted the sergeant with her furs, pearls and smart black hat.
I do not believe Oliver is going to Egypt for a month or so at least anyway and I hope this means the end of one cause of misunderstanding. The person most to be pitied is Mrs B.
I haven’t got another job yet so I am still at the ministry under the shadow of dismissal. Now that I am going however the rest of the staff are rather kinder to me as they have a comfortable feeling of superiority. Perhaps I shall even get a leaving present from them. A cake-stand or the works of John Masefield. How I hate the poem about the tall ship and the star to steer her by! I believe that you oughtn’t to dissipate your hate in all directions but ought to save it for the Germans, but I can’t help it.
I wish you didn’t always have such horrid billets. I can’t read whether it is a ‘hutted’ or a ‘dratted’ camp. Both, I am afraid. You must start calling it the ‘War House’, by the way,
much love,
Mops.
Ministry of Food
Great Westminster House
Horseferry Road
London, sw1
13 November [1940]
My dear Ham,
I have just discovered that I don’t know how to write out B.N.C.* in full, but hope this will get to you, or at least lodge in the Sheldonian and be found there, or perhaps be handed away next door with the leaflets after the university sermon. You are lucky really to be in Oxford, and although when I left I swore never to be sentimental about it I always am, in fact I feel my soul becomes a positive watermeadow, but if you say you get nothing to eat these memories may not be part of your troubles.
I have just had letters from both Jean and Janet, independently pointing out how nice you have been to them, at some length.
I do not remember a saddler called Forty anywhere near George Street. Perhaps you had your historic 4-in-hand fitted out there.
I looked very closely at the pages of ‘Picture Post’ last week to try and find you in one of the backgrounds of the photographs of Pat Kirkwood visiting Oxford. I didn’t see you. I hoped you might be leaning over a bridge observing one of your 3 silences, or disappearing in a cloud of dust, or rather water, on your motor-bicycle.
I have heard nothing from Mrs B., and I am afraid the incident of the tinned lobster, with her usual autumn melancholy and Oliver’s departure to Egypt, has made a breach between us.
My brother suddenly appeared yesterday in the course of taking his men from Aberdeen to Portsmouth, and gave me a sandwich and some good advice. The men, who are all very simple lowlanders, were fascinated by the moving model of Mickey Mouse at Waterloo station and stood open-mouthed, grasping their lunch-money in their hands.
I hear that Oxford is violently gay and in general suggests those bits in comedy films where you see champagne glasses superimposed on merry-go-rounds to suggest dissipation, so when I come up I do hope you will be able to show me some of it,
Love,
Mops.
P.S. By the way, do you ever regret your 30 men? I should really like to know.
16 Avenue Close
Avenue Road, NW8
26 November [1940]
My dear Ham,
Thankyou for your note – our telephone is going to be restored soon under the character of Primrose 1256 but I do not quite know when this will happen – it is a graceful official promise – meanwhile the porter’s lodge is Primrose 6741, but I shall be in the London Library on Saturday anyway. I do hope you will have time to tell me about the telephone battle – it is the only military activity which has aroused my deepest interest so far. I had a terrible leaving party at the Ministry of Food – the messenger cried, and we had Dundee cake –
love
Mops.
The British Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcasting House
London. W1
5 December 1940
My dear Ham,
I was sorry and regretful not to be able to call in at the Cumberland the other day – by the way I consider you were what I should call rather cagey about these marble halls all the weekend long, and I was very disappointed not to be allowed to have tea or to book a theatre ticket or a piece of scented soap in the vestibule. However. What is even sadder as far as I am concerned is that I don’t believe that this dubious organisation will let me go off to Oxford, or rather they may let me off late on Saturday but too late to make it worth while. I have had to sign their grasping contract which says that I have to devote all my time attention and skill, within reasonable limits, to the service of the Corporation. I don’t consider Saturday afternoon reasonable, but I suppose it is thought, or rather deemed, as they put it, reasonable by the B.B.C.
So far as I can see I shall miss you, and Jeanie, and Janet all at one swoop and you will have a gay and perhaps even hectic party, according to my notions of Oxford, without me. I am very depressed too and need cheering up, as Rawle’s embarkation leave finishes on Thursday and I have horrid moments when I wake up in the middle of the night and calculate just how many minutes he has left just like the end of the holidays used to be. Well I mustn’t complain as it is tiresome,
love,
Mops.
16 Avenue Close, NW8
[On Broadcasting House headed paper]
11 February 1941
My dear Ham,
Of course I should like to hear from you very much, as I have often wondered lately how you are and what you have been doing, and however surprised I may be at being called a harpy, I am always flattered at being wanted as a correspondent.
In London we are all preparing to snipe at the Germans out of the dining-room windows, and poor Mrs Breakwell is a fountain of tears. I have become very common, and drink cups of tea in the morning,
love,
Mops.
16 Avenue Close
Avenue Road, NW8
19 March 1941
My dear Ham,
Thankyou for your letter. I am glad you are so well and enjoying the spring in Devon
The pleasant cow, both red and white,
I love with all my heart;
She gives me cream with all her might
To eat with apple tart –
And I am glad too that you are pleased with your move to Taunton, but as I thought you were there already I cannot feel the surprise I should.
Poor Janet is recovering from her measles and will soon move to London, to her special post in the bosom, so to speak, of the Minister.
The BBC is not exactly tedious, in fact it is rent with scandals and there are dreadful quarrels in the canteen about liberty, the peoples’ convention, &c, and the air is dark with flying spoons and dishes. Miss Stevens poured some tea down Mr Fletcher’s neck the other day. He knew Freud who told him the term inferiority complex was a mistranslation and there was really no such thing. I have to eat all the time to keep my spirits up, so I am getting quite fat. We are doing a programme called ‘These Things are English’, with the funeral of George V, beer, cricket, people singing in the underground &c. I think the people singing only express their own fierce triumph in getting the better of the London Passenger Transport Board. Besides, they all sing ‘I wouldn’t change my little wooden bunk for anywhere else in the world’. We had a mock invasion the other day. We were overpowered in 5 minutes as the officers in charge of the defence forgot their passes and couldn’t get into B.H.* We have heard from Rawle to say he is safe in India. How horrid you were to me Ham! But all the same you have my best wishes – love – Mops.
P.S. The windows of Marshall and Snelgroves are entirely filled with scarves printed ‘Grim but Gay’ and ‘This is a war of unknown warriors’, papier maché bulldogs, and photographs of Winston Churchill with an old-fashioned sporting-gun.
25 Almeric Road
London, sw11
14 May [1978]
Dear Ham,
Thankyou so much for your card and kind message – I don’t know why I put an entry into the Somerville mag, indeed don’t remember doing so, but I’m glad now that I did. I’m not quite sure why I’ve taken to writing either, but it’s better than weaving, hand-printing &c in that it represents a slight profit rather than a large loss for the amateur; also it struck me that I was getting to the end of my life and would like to write one or 2 biographies of people I loved, and novels about people I didn’t like, put it that way.
My husband died the summer before last, but I’m lucky in that my elder daughter and her husband moved me into the ground floor of their house (the mortgage company’s house) in Battersea, so I don’t have to feel alone.
I don’t know where anyone is except of course Janet and Jean, and have only heard distantly about Jimmy Fisher when my nephew was articled as a solicitor to Theodore G. – I remember him playing Bach however, through I don’t know how many years.
I’d love to come and see you and your wife, and I’ll ring up next week if I may.
love,
Penelope
2 October [1978]
Thankyou so much for a happy day at the Vineyard, for lunch, and for the opportunity to meet some of your family, your tortoises and your pictures, also for making me feel that enormous numbers of years haven’t passed, after all – you were so kind and hospitable, and, whatever I feel about Bloomsbury, believe me I’m heart and soul in the success of the Newsletter – love and best wishes – Mops
[25 Almeric Road]
[6 November 1978]
Thankyou so much for the kind congratulations.* Prize unfortunately is going not to me but to someone who doesn’t need the £££ – my publisher asked if the runners-up couldn’t all have £100 and a package trip to Bulgaria, like the Miss World contestants, but they were adamant – hope you had a good grape-harvest – I made chutney out of my 6 bunches.
love Mops
25 Almeric Road
London, sw11
2 May [1979]
Dear Ham and Penny.
Thankyou so much – it was a lovely dinner which more than made up for the melancholy of realising how many years had passed. I could hardly believe the photographs (all mine went down to the bottom of the Thames when our houseboat sank on Chelsea Reach) – especially of Mrs Breakwell – As I was going home on the bus I remembered her ringing up my father to tell him to come to a Greek restaurant to meet Cyril Falls (how did he come into it?) – ‘It’s a Greek name – D-E.M.O.S, DEMOS’ – ‘yes’, said my father sadly ‘I’m familiar with the word.’ However, I’m writing not really to open the endless store of anecdotes but to thank you and say how much I enjoyed myself – only I was sorry not to see a little more of William-
love,
Mops.
76 Clifton Hill
London, NW8
[postcard]
15 January 1983
Thankyou so much for Charleston material, on which I most sincerely think you’ve done wonders, I wish you absolutely all success in spite of my reservations about some of the personnel.* Next Sat (22nd) I’m going to Somerset and could I think find a copy of a play written by one of my uncles** about L. Strachey, M. Keynes and when they were all at Cambridge (c. 1910), from which you might take a short extract, if that’s not too remote, I’m not quite sure what kind of thing is wanted really, I’ll send it unless you say no (and if it hasn’t mouldered away in the damp wet country) – love Mops
Theale Post Office Stores
Wedmore, Somerset
22 January [1983]
My dear Ham,
Alas, I can’t find any of my notebooks at Theale at the moment – they were in the garage, which is in the process of being turned into a hen-roost – so Dilly’s play (which is very good really) isn’t to hand, but I’m not sure you were very taken by the idea anyway! – I enclose a couple of paragraphs in the hope of their being of use, but shan’t of course mind a bit if they’re not wanted – there’s always the WPB,† as my grandfather used to say –
love Mops
P.T.O.
I don’t for a moment say that Q. Bell* &c are rich, but I do say that they’ve turned their family, and connections, into an industry, with the help of Michael Holroyd (who is always so kind and polite to us all) – and I think it allowable to feel that they might support Charleston out of all the £££ and dollars that they have made out of digging out and publishing their family skeletons. That’s all I meant! But I think there are some others who think as I do. –
76 Clifton Hill, NW8
31 January [1986]
My dear Ham,
Do send me Quentin B.’s Bloomsbury and I’ll write something (how long?) in case it’s any use to the Newsletter – only I can’t guarantee to be rude as he’s such a good writer – I think it was awe, rather than hatred, that we shabby long-ago Georgians felt – and I did think, although this of course isn’t something to be mentioned in the Newsletter that Nigel Nicolson in particular has made enough money out of his ma’s old letters discovered by chance in the attic, &c, to pay for Charleston without any public subscription, but I’ve come to see I was wrong.
I do hope PEN** is allowed to come in the summer, though hitherto Francis King† has always shepherded us in a large coach, and I don’t know whether Michael Holroyd would be prepared to do that – perhaps he would. We’ll see!
Unfortunately, since the Arts Council subsidy was withdrawn, PEN has to spend half its time raising £££, like everyone else.
Must now summon up energy to go and see new grandchild, who has arrived in Holland, from Nicaragua, and I do so very much want to, only it’s so cold –
love
Mops
76 Clifton Hill
London, NW8
21 February [1986]
Dear Ham,
I didn’t mean to criticise the Alpine Gallery exhibition – I only thought, & still have to think, that Freshwater* is rubbish, but then it was only intended for home consumption – it was a very good exhibition, very well hung in a difficult gallery not too well suited to it, and I was only sorry to miss you and Penny.
While on the subject of criticism, I’ve sent a notice of Bloomsbury, but if you don’t like it do throw it away, or cut bits out. I’m glad to have the new edition anyway, although I do think it was disimproved as they say in N. Ireland.
If you use it, and want a bit about me, could you say that I’m a biographer and novelist (a word I still prefer to ‘fictioneer’). Burne-Jones is the only biography I’ve done that is of any kind of interest to the Friends of C., I imagine, as after all he did paint Mrs Stephen pregnant with Vanessa in one of his Annunciations. That came out in 1975, and then I was given the Booker award in 1979 for Offshore. What a long time ago all this was. I’ve got a new novel about Florence coming out this autumn, I think – that is if Collins survives all its frightful present disputes.
I must tell you that when we went to Rodmell some of the PEN members were very disappointed, feeling that V. Woolf ‘couldn’t have done very well’. They expected it to be a house like Barbara Cartland’s –
love, Mops
Best wishes for the cellars.
27a Bishop’s Road, N6
29 October [1988]
My dear Ham,
Thankyou so much for taking time to write what, I daresay, is your 101st letter of the day – I quite agree about the judges,** and Michael Foot* drifted alarmingly in his (supposedly) summing-up speech, telling us repeatedly that Walter Scott was ‘another conservative’. Also the stately corridors of the Guildhall were lined with police, as Salman R.** claimed that a threat had been made against his life and he was in imminent danger, still there were plenty of people there and Ria and I enjoyed ourselves very much and were taken about in a car from the Collins fleet, for the last time I fear. All this is quite good for business. But now I have to write another novel.
I’m glad that the envelope sale went so well, but now they’ll expect you to produce another brilliant notion, you’ll see.
Tommy feels he would like a tortoise, but I suppose the spring would be the best time
much love to you and Penny
Mops
27a Bishop’s Road
London, N6
26 January [1992]
Dear Ham and Penny,
Thankyou so very much in the first place for a splendid lunch, although I only discovered at the last moment that the rabbit was done with chocolate, in an improvement surely on the Mexican style. – And it was a great treat to meet Katharine – who may well not spell her name like that at all, so forgive me – she was so interesting, and also interested in everything that everyone else was doing, a great gift, not a very common one though.
In respect to Wittgenstein, I do hope you liked Ray Monk’s biography – I had to help judge the Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the year before last, and I thought it far and away the best book, even though some good ones were sent in, perhaps because Ray M. is a philosopher himself, although, as it turned out, a young and cheerful one – anyway he got the prize and I am sure he deserved it.
On the other hand, in respect to Skidelsky, I consider that Ham in fact has been singularly patient with this absurdly irritating man – I daresay he knows a lot about Keynes, but he’d have to be ashamed of himself if he didn’t. Thinking about Skidelsky, and even feeling irritated by him, is a waste of precious time. – What I should like to know is what you’re going to undertake next. If only there was someone with your persuasiveness and ruthless energy to defend the Public Library Service. Here in dreaded Haringey, to which Highgate unwillingly belongs, they’re going to close all 7 branch libraries, the music and the mobile libraries, because reading isn’t a priority leisure resource. It’s all very depressing. Last year we managed to get the closures put off and I had to go to a party with non-alcoholic champagne made with pears, at 10 o’clock in the morning.
I so much enjoyed seeing you, thankyou once again for asking me –
love
Mops
I take it the tortoise isn’t stirring yet
27a Bishop’s Road
Highgate, N6
11 September [c.1995]
Dear Ham and Penny,
What a lovely lunch party – if I wasn’t afraid you might think me sentimental, or perhaps even feeble-witted, I could say how happy it made me to sit and talk to people I’m so fond of and to see you both again, and Janet, (this ought to be easy enough but hasn’t proved to be so at all), and then Alyson,* who I hardly expected to come but of course she did, calm and smiling as ever, though whether she really always feels so calm I can’t tell. I enjoyed myself so much, and still haven’t said anything about the lunch itself, which, after Penny had said, as a kind of afterthought, ‘I must do some cooking’, seemed to produce itself by magic and was so delicious.
Janet’s energy, and genuine interest in everything, is wonderful – I had thought it a merciful dispensation of nature that I like things less and less (though a few things more and more) but Janet makes me feel that’s not so, and I must try to wake up a little.
Thankyou again, it was a Sunday to remember –
love, Mops
Just looking at the photograph of Jonathan Pryce as L. S. (he is a parent at the church school where Thomas and Sophie go) – I’ve never seen Carrington but I have seen Lytton Strachey and I think the Pryce make-up (I last saw him as Fagin) is very successful. But I suppose it’s an easy one to do. –
[summer 1996 – after PMF’s 80th birthday party]
Dear Ham –
I’m so glad you and Penny enjoyed the party and it was lovely to see you – the last day of summer.
By ‘one stroke’ I meant the kind of bike people used to have, with an engine you switched on when you were going uphill.
I don’t agree that the children in my novels are precious. They’re exactly like my own children, who always noticed everything.
As to ‘may’ for ‘might’, it is frightful, and we must do all we can to eradicate it. I think it’s American and they think it’s the subjunctive. –
Love to you and Penny – Mops
- Hibernating time now I imagine.
27a Bishop’s Road, N6
15 February [late 1990s]
My dear Ham,
Thankyou so much for sending me the evidence, which only confirms what I’ve always thought, that the intensely unpleasant atmosphere of Bloomsbury (which must have come close to choking poor Leonard, for example) has lingered on in what racing people call their ‘connections’. There is a Byzantine feeling, they will all end up poisoning each other. That is the moral.
Your statement of course is surely very restrained, as there are so many things you might have mentioned – the colour photographs in the Newsletter for example – but it was better to leave it as you have, as an absolutely clear account of a deliberate decision to make you resign. They took advantage of your not being there. Their next step, I suppose, will be to elect somebody as Chairman, or President, or whatever, of the Friends, in spite of having said that they weren’t going to.
Judging from the few societies I belong to, something like this always happens – (I think Alyson would confirm that it particularly does at the William Morris). – Another example would be the Arts Council where Lord Gowrie seems to have jockeyed Michael Holroyd off the literature panel for no reason whatever except a love of pushing and shoving. But I’m sure that you were right to resign now and, as I find it difficult to imagine you without something to organise – something worth while, I should add – I suppose and hope that you’re looking round, or at least leaving yourself open for the next field of action.
I myself can’t organise the (proverbial) whelk-stall and you know I would never try to give advice, but sympathy I do give. You worked so hard and I don’t think they could have got it all started at all without you. I wonder if they mentioned that at their committee meeting.
love to you and Penny – Mops
P.S. Our urban fox has gone lame and lies pathetically on the compost box – I don’t like to disturb it to put any more leaves in – It also seems to have lost part of its brush.
27a Bishop’s Road, N6
26 June [late 1990s]
Dear Penny and Ham,
Thankyou so very much for inviting me yesterday and the royal treatment you gave me, a lift back across 3 counties. It was such a nice lunch, and although I must restrain myself from talking about the quails, I did want to tell you that they are very special as far as I am concerned because my mother, who’d always been used to plain living and hard thinking and a large vicarage family, and was presented at court, as people used to be then, after she was married, had her one and only chance of trying quail that day at the palace and missed it, because the tray was taken away while her back was turned.
I do so hope everything goes well on Friday. I was just looking through the old Charleston mags yesterday evening and I still think they were better. There was an enterprising friendly feeling about them, but I suppose that belonged to the earlier stages. And I did like your colour pix, Ham –
many thanks and love to all of you –
Mops
