SECTION ONE SYNTHESIS

1. Agatha Milsom to Olive Farebrother

15, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater

9th September, 1928

My Dear Olive,

Thank you very much for your letter and kind inquiries after my health. I like my new doctor very much indeed. I think he understands me a great deal better than Dr. Coombs, and he has put me on quite a different treatment. He says I am just going through a “difficult phase” at present, and that if only I can hold on and not let things get on top of me for the next year or two I shall come out of it quite all right. But I am not to have a rest-cure! It seems Dr. Coombs was all wrong about that—of course he didn’t exactly say she was wrong, it wouldn’t be professional, but I could see that he thought it! Dr. Trevor says that rest-cures only “turn you in upon yourself,” and that makes things worse. He says I must get right away from myself and my feelings, so as to “sublimate” all these repressed urges and turn them into some other sort of energy. He says it was quite all right to start with to have my dreams and subconscious betrayals analysed, so as to know exactly what was the matter with me, but that now the time has come when I must learn to throw all these bottled-up desires outwards, and give them something to do. He explained it all most clearly. I said, “I suppose it is sex, doctor, isn’t it?” (Of course, one gets quite used to asking things perfectly frankly, and one doesn’t mind it a bit.) And he said, well, largely; and, of course, that was a thing most people suffered from one way and another, and in these days one couldn’t always take the obvious and direct way out of a condition of sex-repression, because it would often be socially and economically inconvenient. I said that with two million extra women in this country it didn’t seem possible, certainly, for everybody to get married, and he smiled and said: “My dear Miss Milsom, half my patients come to me because they are not married—and the other half because they are!” We had quite a laugh about it. He is very nice and rather good-looking, but he doesn’t seem to think it necessary for all his patients to fall in love with him, like that odd man I went to see in Wimpole Street, who suffered so dreadfully from halitosis.

Well, anyway, he asked me what I was interested in, and I said I’d always had an idea I should like to write. He said that was an awfully good idea, and I ought to encourage it by trying my hand at a little sketch or article every day, or by just putting down my observations of people and things as I saw them. I’m sure I get subjects enough in this house, as far as matrimony goes, anyhow. Indeed, my dear, from what I see of men, I’m very glad there are other ways out of my troubles than what Dr. Trevor calls the direct way!! Do you mind, please, not throwing my letters away—just stick them in one of the drawers in my old desk when you’ve finished with them, because I think I might use some of the funny little incidents that happen here to work up into a novel some time. One puts these things down when they are fresh in one’s mind, and then one forgets about them.

Well, we are jogging along here in our usual placid way—with the usual little outbreaks, of course, when a meal goes wrong, as they will sometimes, with all my care. Mr. Harrison is such an expert, you know, that it is very hard for a person with only one pair of hands to keep everything up to his high standard. And, fond though I am, and always shall be, of dear Mrs. Harrison, I do sometimes wish that she was just a little more practical. If anything at all is left to her to do, she is so apt to lose herself in a book or a daydream and forget all about it. She always says she ought to have been born to ten thousand a year—but who of us could not say that? I always feel myself that I was really meant to “sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam”—you remember the games we used to play about being princesses in the Arabian Nights, with a train of a hundred black slaves, carrying alabaster bowls filled with rubies—but alas! life is life and we have to make the best of it. And I do sometimes feel it a little unfair that so much should come upon my shoulders. Women do want romance in their lives, and there is so little of it about. Of course, as you know, I do feel for Mrs. Harrison—her husband is such a dry sort of man and so lacking in sympathy. I do what I can, but that is not the same thing and it is very worrying. I must learn to detach myself. Dr. Trevor says it is very important to cultivate detachment.

When I was shopping this morning I met Mr. Bell, who told me the top maisonnette was let at last—to two young men! I said I hoped they wouldn’t be noisy (though anything would be a relief after that awful woman with her children), and he said they seemed quiet, gentlemanly young fellows. One of them he thinks must be some kind of artist, because they were so interested in the top back room which has a big window with a north light—you know, the one Mr. Harrison always covets so much. Though, of course, it is not nearly so convenient a house as ours in other ways.

I have started on Tom’s stockings. They are going to be very smart. I have worked out an original design for the turnover—a sort of swirly pattern in fawn, brown and black, taken from the coat of the kitchen cat—tabby, you know. Mr. Perry saw it the other day when he called. He thinks I have quite a talent for that kind of thing.

Give my love to Ronnie and Joan. I hope you are taking care of yourself.

Your loving sister,

Aggie

2. The Same to the Same

15, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater

13th September, 1928

Dear Olive,

I really think it is very unkind of you to suggest that I like Dr. Trevor simply because he is a man. I am the last person to imagine that a woman doctor is necessarily inferior. Quite the contrary. Other things being equal I much prefer a woman, but if the man happens to be right and the woman wrong, it would be absurd not to admit it. I do feel that Dr. Trevor’s treatment is doing me good, and I am not the least little bit prejudiced by the sex question one way or another. I daresay Tom has been airing his opinions, but that does not impress me at all. Men never ever get out of their heads that the whole world centres round their high-mightinesses. I’m not blaming Tom, but all men are self-centred. They can’t help it. Dr. Trevor says that it is a necessary part of their psychological make-up; they have to be self-regarding, just as woman have to be other-regarding—on account of the children and so on. But I do beg you will not take Tom’s pronouncements for Gospel where I am concerned.

I read such a clever article the other day by Storm Jameson, in which she said that all women, in the depths of their hearts, resented men. Now I do think that is so true. It is so maddening, the calm assumption of superiority that a man puts on when he is talking to a woman. We had quite a little dispute the other evening—about Einstein, of all people! Mrs. Harrison started to talk about an interesting account of him in the Sunday paper, but Mr. Harrison only grunted and went on reading something tedious about the Government. However, she went on asking him questions till he simply had to answer, and then he said, quite snubbingly, that he considered the man was a charlatan who was pulling people’s legs with his theories. I said I didn’t think all these professors would believe in him and have him down to lecture and so on if it was just that. So he said, “Just you ask my old friend, Professor Alcock, if you won’t believe me.” Mrs. Harrison said she couldn’t ask Professor Alcock, because she had never seen him, and why didn’t Mr. Harrison sometimes bring somebody interesting to the house? That seemed to annoy him, though I thought it was very much to the point, but, being only a paid subordinate, I said meekly that we were all entitled to our own opinions. So he smiled sarcastically and said that perhaps some of us were better qualified to judge than others, and that the Sunday Press was not always the best guide to knowledge. “But you read the papers,” said Mrs. Harrison. “When I’m given the chance,” said he.

If I had been in Mrs. Harrison’s place I should have taken warning from the way he rattled The Times, but one cannot expect old heads on young shoulders—or perhaps mature heads would be fairer to myself. But she is perhaps a little tactless now and again, poor girl, and said if she didn’t read the papers how was she to improve her mind? Of course, I knew exactly what the answer would be—the virtues of the old-fashioned domestic woman and the perpetual chatter of the modern woman about things which were outside her province. It is the fatal subject, and somehow or other it always seems to crop up. Mrs. Harrison was very much hurt, and said of course she knew she couldn’t possibly come up to the perfections of Mrs. Harrison No. 1. Then, of course, the fat was in the fire. It was just like a woman to take it personally. Mrs. Harrison began to cry, and he said, “Please don’t make a scene,” and went out and slammed the door.

What I wanted to do was just to go up to Mr. Harrison and say, “Now do be a little human. Make a fuss of her. Let her cry if she wants to and then make it up and be friends.” But he isn’t the kind of person you can very well say things to. He would think it impertinent of me. And it’s true that it never pays to interfere between husband and wife. But if only he would listen to me, I know I could put matters right. In my kind of life one gets plenty of experience—lookers-on see most of the game, you know—and Mrs. Harrison would be so ready to attach herself to him, if only he would give her the chance. Often and often I’ve known her work herself up for hours to make an appeal to his feelings, but he receives it so coldly. Somehow it never seems to be the right moment. He is always absorbed in his painting or his natural history or something. How true it is that men live for Things and women for People! To pin one’s heart to a Person always means suffering in this world, if one has an acutely-sensitive nature. You are to be congratulated, Olive, on not being sensitive. Temperament is a great gift, but a very unhappy one, as I know so well from my own experience. I really admire Mrs. Harrison—she never loses hope, but goes on, day after day, trying to be brave and devoted and to keep up her interest in life. And she has such a vivid alert mind—she is keen on everything, even on things like Einstein, which are so very modern and difficult. But I do not see how one can go on being keen about things with so very little encouragement.

No, my dear! No men for me! It’s different for you, I know. You have the children, and I’m sure Tom is attentive in his man’s way—but Mr. Harrison is such a stick. And then, of course, he is a lot older than she is.

So you see you are quite wrong in your ideas about me. Naturally, I am interested in the new tenants, because, after all, we share the front hall and the staircase with them, and it does make a difference whether people are pleasant neighbours or not, but that is all! By the way, it’s quite true that one of them is an artist. We saw the men carrying in the lay-figure this morning—a life-sized one. It came out of the van not wrapped up at all—a most naked and indecent sight—and was carried up the path by Carter Paterson’s man, looking like the rape of the Sabines! You should have seen the heads popping out of the windows all down the street! Quite an excitement in our calm neighbourhood.

I am just turning the heel of the first stocking, tell Tom, and hope to get the pair done before you go down to Norfolk. Mr. Perry is the vicar—I’m sure I have told you about him before. Such a nice man, only rather High Church, but not at all bigoted. I always enjoy a chat with him.

I must stop now and get the joint in the oven for dinner. His lordship is coming in to prepare his special mushroom dish with his own fair hand!! So you see we have a treat to look forward to!

Ever your loving sister,

Aggie

3. The Same to the Same

15, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater

20th September, 1928

Dear Olive,

You ought to thank your lucky stars, my dear, that you are the sort of person for whom “a good husband” is enough. But then, of course, Mother never brought us up to be brainy. We always lived so quietly at home, and what you’ve never had you don’t miss, as the saying goes. I can’t say I should have cared for an office job myself, though perhaps it would have been better for my health if I had had something to occupy my mind. But I am really feeling much better now, and I am getting free of that dreadful sensation of being obliged to go back and see if I really have done things when I know perfectly well I have. I know you say everybody feels like that sometimes, but you don’t know what it’s like to be compelled to do it! The other night I got the idea that I had left the beef out on the kitchen table, and though I really remembered quite clearly shutting it up in the meat-safe, I simply had to creep downstairs in my dressing-gown and make sure, otherwise I shouldn’t have got a wink of sleep. Still, that has been the only relapse for about a fortnight now.

As a matter of fact, we have had quite a lot of thrills this week—very good for us—occupies our minds, you know. The upstairs tenants have arrived!! Two young men—the artist and a poet! They came in the day before yesterday, and oh, my dear, the bumpings and noises! They brought a grand piano—I only hope they won’t be playing it all night, because I’m simply good for nothing if I don’t get my sleep before midnight—and there’s a gramophone as well. Why can’t people be content with the wireless, which shuts down at a reasonable hour?

I haven’t properly seen the poet yet, except that he’s rather tall and dark and thin. I’ve only caught glimpses of him running in and out of the front door, but the artist came in the first night after dinner to ask about the coal bunkers. He is quite exciting looking—very young—not more than twenty-four or five, I should say, with a lot of thick hair and one of those rather sulky-handsome faces. He has very nice manners, and didn’t address all his conversation to Mr. and Mrs. Harrison and leave me out in the cold, as most of these young men do. Mr. Harrison, even, was quite gracious to him and offered him a drink, and he stayed talking for quite a little while. His name is Lathom, and he has very little money and has to take afternoon classes in an Art-school, but, of course, that is only to make money until he gets recognised. He has exhibited pictures in Manchester (I think he said), and some other places up north, but he didn’t talk much about his work. He seems nice and modest about it. I think Mr. Harrison is rather pleased that there should be an artist in the house. He started laying down the law about art at once, in his usual way, and brought out some of his water-colours for Mr. Lathom to look at. Mr. Lathom said they were very nice indeed, which rather surprised me, because I always think they are rather wishy-washy. However, I suppose he couldn’t very well have said anything else, as he was drinking Mr. Harrison’s whiskey and had never seen him till that moment.

Mrs. Harrison seemed rather nervous all the time, and she said afterwards she thought Mr. Lathom was quite a pleasant young man, but she did wish George wouldn’t inflict his painting on everybody. It must be very humiliating to be ashamed of one’s husband’s manners.

I have a dreadful confession to make about Tom’s stockings! With all my care, one of the turn-overs has come out slightly larger and looser than the other. It is so tiresome! Why should one’s knitting vary so from day to day? I suppose as long as one is a human being and not a machine one must get variations in one’s work, but I thought I had been so careful. I simply can’t face unpicking it all, and it isn’t really very noticeable. Tell Tom, if he can manage to put up with the trifling difference for a few weeks, it will probably even itself up in the wash.

I went out to Virginia Water on Sunday on a ’bus and had a lovely walk. I have been trying to put down my impressions in a little sketch. Dr. Trevor thinks it is quite good, and says I must certainly persevere. He says my power of feeling things so intensely ought to make me a really good writer, when I have mastered the technique of putting it down on paper.

Best love to you all. Give the children each a hug from their Auntie. I hope you are keeping free from colds.

Your affectionate sister,

Aggie

4. The Same to the Same

15, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater

29th September, 1928

Dearest Olive,

I am so glad Tom finds he can wear the stockings all right. Yes, I am a wee bit proud of the pattern. And there’s one thing about it—it’s quite original. He couldn’t have bought anything like it in a shop, and that’s something in these machine-made days! Mr. Perry was tremendously impressed with the finished result, and he said that if I cared to do that sort of thing as a little business proposition, he thought he could get me quite a number of commissions among his parishioners. I was rather relieved, because he introduced the subject so delicately, I was afraid he was going to ask me to make him a present of a pair!—which would have seemed rather pointed, especially as he is unmarried! Anyway, I said I should like very much to do it, only, of course, I couldn’t undertake to do any big orders against time. I haven’t the leisure, for one thing—and besides, inventing patterns is artistic work and can’t be done to order. Mr. Perry quite understood, and asked how much I should charge, so I said ten shillings a pair. I think that is fair, don’t you? They take ten ounces of double-knitting, not counting the small amount of coloured wool for the tops, and then there is my work to be considered, and the invention. You would have to pay at least fifteen shillings for anything of the same quality in a shop. I dare say with practice I shall be able to get both legs the same.

Yes! I have at last made the acquaintance of the poet. I slept very badly on Friday night, and I thought I’d like an early cup of tea, but all the milk had been used for a rice-pudding, so at seven o’clock I slipped out in my kimono to take in the morning delivery, and there, if you please, was the young man coming downstairs with nothing on but a vest and shorts! I couldn’t escape, so I carried it through as unconcernedly as I could—and really, in my pyjamas and kimono I was far less indecent than he was. I just said, “Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Munting” (that’s his name—what a name for a poet!), “I was just taking in the milk.” So he picked it up and offered it to me with a tremendous bow. I had to say something to the man, so I said: “Where are you off to?” and he said he was going to run round the Square to keep his figure down. I’m sure it doesn’t want keeping down, for it is all joints and hollows, and I think he only said it to attract my attention to his charming person, for his eyes were looking me up and down all the time in the most unpleasant way.

He is very sallow and what Mother would have called bilious-looking, with black eyes and wrinkles at the corners, and a sarcastic mouth, and he smiled all the time he was speaking, in a way that makes a woman feel most uncomfortable. He looks a great deal older than his friend—I should put him at well over thirty, but perhaps it is only due to leading a fast life. I didn’t say much to him, but got in as quickly as I could. I didn’t want everybody to see him exposing himself there with me on the doorstep. I saw him afterwards from my bedroom window, rushing round the Square like a madman.

Mr. Harrison has been more amiable lately. He has bought a wonderful new box of paints, on the strength of knowing a real artist, I suppose, and spends his time working up some of his holiday sketches. He is very excited about a new scheme for fitting up his studio, as he calls it, with some new kind of electric bulbs, which give a light like daylight, so that he can work in the evenings. So we shall get less of his company than ever. Not that it makes any difference to me, personally, only it seems such a very unsatisfactory idea of married life, to be out all day and shut himself up every evening. I have written a little sketch, called “These Men——.” Dr. Trevor thinks it is very promising, and says I ought to try it on some of the evening papers, so I have sent it to the Standard.

I’m so sorry about Joan’s bad throat. Do you think she wraps up enough? I will make her one of my special scarves, if you will tell me what coloured frocks she is wearing.

With best love,

Your affectionate sister,

Aggie

5. John Munting to Elizabeth Drake

15a, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater

30th September, 1928

Dear Bungie,

Forgive me for this rotten series of scraps and post-cards, but I’m a lazy devil, and there hasn’t been a place to sit down in for the last fortnight. Lathom’s things are all over the place, and when I fling myself into a chair in exhaustion, after hours of shifting furniture, I’m sure to get up with one of his tubes of Permanent Blue adhering to my pants.

This place isn’t too bad—rather Bayswatery, but there is a good north light for Lathom’s doings, and that is the essential. We have the two top floors in this mid-Victorian skyscraper, and share the hall and staircase with the people downstairs, which is rather a blight on our young lives, but I daresay we shall survive it.

Unfortunately, Lathom, who is one of those companionable blighters, has gone and struck up an acquaintance with the Harrisons, and yesterday evening I was hauled down to see them. Apparently Mr. H. goes in for dabbling in water-colours, and wanted Lathom’s advice about some lighting for his studio. Lathom grumbled a good deal, but I told him it was his own fault if he would go about being so chatty.

I didn’t think much of Mrs. H—she’s a sort of suburban vamp, an ex-typist or something, and entirely wrapped up, I should say, in her own attractions, but she’s evidently got her husband by the short hairs. Not good-looking, but full of S.A. and all that. He is a cut above her, I imagine, and at least twenty years older; small, thin, rather stooping, goatee beard, gold specs. And wears his forehead well over the top of his head. He has a decentish post of some kind with a firm of civil engineers. I gather she is his second wife, and that he has a son en premières noces, also an engineer, now building a bridge in Central Africa and doing rather well. The old boy is not a bad old bird, but an alarming bore on the subject of Art with a capital A. We had to go through an exhibition of his masterpieces—Devonshire lanes and nice little bits in the Cotswolds, with trees and cottages. Lathom stuck it very well, and said they were very nice, which is his way of expressing utter damnation—but Harrison didn’t know that, so they got on together like a house afire.

They’ve got an appalling sitting-room, all arty stuff from Tottenham Court Road, with blue and mauve cushions, and everything ghastly about it—like Ye Olde Oake Tea-Roomes. Harrison is fearfully proud of his wife’s taste, and played showman rather pathetically. They keep a “lady-help”—they would!—a dreadful middle-aged female with a come-hither eye. She cornered me at the front door the other morning, just as I was popping out for my daily dozen round the houses. She was prowling round the hall in rose-pink pyjamas and a pale-blue négligé, pretending to take in the milk. I dawdled on the stairs as long as I could, to give her a chance to run to cover, but as she appeared to be determined, and the situation was becoming rather absurd, I marched out, and was, of course, involved in a conversation. I made myself as repellent as I could, but the good lady’s curiosity would take no denial. Last night was like a friendly evening with the Grand Inquisitor. I told her all she wanted to know about my income and prospects and family, and Lathom’s ditto so far as I knew them, and by that time she was chatting so archly (lovely word!) about the young ladies of the neighbourhood that I thought it best just to mention that I was engaged. That worked her up into still greater excitement, but I didn’t tell her much, Bungie, old dear. I’ve got a sort of weakness about you, though you mightn’t think it, my child, so I said nothing. Hadn’t I got a photograph? No, I didn’t approve of photographs. Well, of course, they were only mechanical, weren’t they? Hadn’t Mr. Lathom painted a portrait of my fiancée? I said that, though I had few illusions about any of my belongings, I couldn’t expose you to the ordeal of being painted by Lathom. So she said how like a man to talk of his belongings, and she supposed Mr. Lathom was very Modern (capital M). I said yes, terrifically so, and that he always painted his sitters with green mouths and their noses all askew. So she said she supposed I wrote poems to you instead. I replied that poems to one’s fiancée were a little old-fashioned, didn’t she think so, and she agreed, and said, “What was the title of my next volume?” So I said at random “Spawn,” which I thought was rather good for the spur of the moment, and it rather shut her up, because she wasn’t quite sure of the right answer, and just said that that sounded very modern too, and she hoped I would present her with a copy when it was printed. Then I got reckless, and said I feared it never would be printed, because Jix had his eye on me and opened all my letters to my publishers. You’d adore these people, my dear—they are like something out of one of your own books. How is the new work getting on?

I must stop now, old thing: I’ve been quill-driving all day on the Life, and I’m just about dead. But I had to write you some sort of yarn, just to show I hadn’t been and gone and deserted you.

Yours, Bungie, if indeed anything of one’s self can ever be anybody else’s which, as an up-to-date young woman, you will conscientiously doubt, but, at any rate, with the usual damned feeling of incompleteness in your absence, yours, blast you! yours,

Jack

6. The Same to the Same

15a, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater

4th October, 1928

Dear Bungie,

Yours to hand, and your remarks about middle-aged spinsters noted. I will try not to be (a) catty; (b) mid-Victorian; (c) always imagining myself to be truly run after. I did not know I was all those things, but, being a modern woman and a successful novelist, no doubt you are quite right. Also, of course, you are quite right to speak your mind. As you say, married life should be based on mutual frankness.

In return, may I just hint that there are some sides of life which I, as a man, may possibly know more about than you do, merely through having lived longer and knocked about more. I assure you I can size up some types of people pretty well. However, it may give you pleasure to learn that Mrs. Harrison, at any rate, is not out for my scalp. She has read Deadlock and is disgusted with its coarseness and cynicism, How do I know? Because I was in Mudie’s when she went in to change it. The girl said, no, it wasn’t a very nice book and she was afraid at the time Mrs. Harrison wouldn’t care for it, and would she like the latest Michael Arlen? Which she did.

Our place really looks very jolly now; I wish you could come and see it. The Picasso is over the studio fireplace and the famille rose jar is in my sitting-room, and so are the etchings. They give my surroundings quite a distinguished-man-of-letters appearance. I wish I could get rid of this damned Life and get back to my own stuff, but I’m being too well paid for it, that’s the devil of it. Never mind—I’ll pretend I am the Industrious Apprentice, working hard so as to be able to marry his master’s daughter.

Glad the book seems to be working itself out amiably. For God’s sake, though, don’t overdo the psycho-analytical part. It’s not your natural style. Don’t listen to that Challenger woman, but write your own stuff. The other kind of thing wants writing (forgive me) fearfully well if it’s to be any good, and even then it is rather dreary and old-fashioned. Glands, my child, glands are the thing, as Barrie would say. Pre-natal influences and childhood fears have gone out with compulsory Greek.

A Don who encountered a Mænad

Was left with less wits than the Dean ’ad;

Till the Dean, being vexed by a Gonad,

Was left with less wits than the Don ’ad:

This shows what implicit reliance

We may place on the progress of Science.

Talking of Science, I have brought up all standing by Nicholson’s book on The Development of English Biography. According to him, “pure” biography is doomed, and we are to have the “scientific biography,” which will in the end prove destructive of the literary interest. There are to be nothing but studies of heredity and endocrine secretions, economics and æsthetics, and so on—all specialised and all damned. This is where I get off: I only hope this infernal work will get itself published before the rot sets in. So back to the shop, Mr. Keats!

Yours, while this machine is to him,

Jack

On looking this through, I seem to be rather in a scolding mood. But it’s only because I think so highly of your stuff that I don’t want you to get sloppy and psycho. That kind of thing is all sentimentality, really. Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner; tout pardonner, c’est tout embêter.

7. The Same to the Same

15a, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater

8th October, 1928

Darling old Bungie, old thing—

All right, damn it, no! I don’t want to hector and lay down the law. You carry on in your own way, my child, and don’t pay any attention to me. I quite see what you say about taking things for granted—so we’ll lay it down quite clearly for future guidance that, although I am always right, I must never be so ex officio and because I am a man and a husband. No doubt it is irritating. I hadn’t quite looked at it from that point of view, but possibly there is something in it. Signed Jacko, the almost-human Ape.

Making a strenuous effort to adopt this feminine viewpoint, I am beginning to wonder whether my neighbour goes quite the right way to assert his position as head of the household. I fancy he must have read somewhere that women like to be treated rough and feel the tight hand on the rein and that sort of thing. Unfortunately, nature did not design him for a sheik part, having made him small, dry, and a little bald on top.

We were just starting off to dine with Lambert the other night, and were waiting in the hall for a taxi, when Mrs. H. came in, rather flurried and very wet. She was hanging up her waterproof, when Harrison came charging out on the landing and called down:

“Is that you, Margaret? Do you know what time it is?”

“I’m sorry—I won’t be a moment.”

“Where on earth have you been?”

“That’s a secret” (in the tone of voice of someone who wants to have the secret teased out of her. She was laughing to herself, and had a fattish parcel tucked under her arm).

“Oh! I suppose it’s all the same to you if the dinner’s uneatable.”

Evidently no interest was to be taken in the “secret.” The next effort was along the lines of cheerful common sense.

“Why didn’t you begin without me?”

“I don’t choose to. This is my home—or supposed to be—not a hotel” (in a tone of peevish protest).

She had gone past us up to the first-floor landing, and, like the Wedding-Guest, we could not choose but hear.

“I’m sorry, dear. I was getting something for to-morrow.”

“That’s no excuse. You’ve been chattering to some of your office friends in some tea-shop or other and forgetting all about what you were supposed to be doing. No, I don’t want any dinner now.”

“Oh, very well.”

He came running downstairs then and saw us. I think it gave him a shock, because he pulled himself up and smiled and said something vague. Then he turned and called up the stairs again:

“All right, my dear, I’ll be up in a minute.” His eyes were unhappy. There’s something wrong in this house—something more than a little misunderstanding about dinner time. I shouldn’t wonder if she gives this man a devil of a time—probably without meaning it, that’s the rub. Lathom, who is at the chivalrous age, was all for youth and beauty, of course, and wanted to hop out and sling the old boy into his own umbrella-stand, but I told him not to be an infernal ass. Why shouldn’t the woman come home in time for meals? It’s not much to do, and I don’t believe she has any other job in life except to sit reading novels in the front window all day. I know, I’ve seen her at it. All the same, I do wish we had a separate staircase. It’s a bore to have people fighting out their matrimonial quarrels on one’s front doorstep. I’m a man of peace, I am.

I heard afterwards (per Lathom, via Miss Milsom) that the mysterious parcel was a present for Harrison, the next day being their wedding-anniversary. The row in the hall rather spoilt the sentiment of the occasion, I gather. Lathom says the man is a brute. But I don’t altogether see that. He couldn’t be supposed to know, and anyhow, what is the good of giving a person a lavish display of affection with one hand and rubbing pepper into his eyes with the other?

Oh, Bungie, it’s the silly little things of life that I’m afraid of. Don’t they frighten you, too, competent as you are?

Yours always,

Jack

8. The Same to the Same

15a, Whittington Terrace

12th October, 1928

Dearest Bungie,

Things are looking up. This Life will be finished by Christmas, I hope. I am rather stuck at present over the chapter on “Religious Convictions.” It is difficult to bring one’s mind into sympathy with that curious Victorian blend of materialism and trust in a personally interfering Providence. It’s odd how they seem to have blinded themselves to the hopeless contradiction between their science and their conventional ethics. On the one hand, an acceptance of the Darwinian survival of the fittest, which ought to have made them completely ruthless in theory and in practice; on the other, a sort of sentimental humanitarianism, which directly led to our own special problem of the multitudinous survival of the unfittest. They seem to have had a pathetic belief that it could all be set right by machinery. I don’t know, come to think of it, that we are in a much better position to-day, except that we have lost the saving belief in machinery. Which doesn’t stop our becoming more and more mechanical, any more than their having lost their belief in anthropomorphism stopped them from becoming more and more humanitarian. Compromise—blessed word!—Chesterton speaks somewhere of the great Victorian compromise—but why Victorian, more than anything else? At any rate, they had the consolation of feeling that this earth and its affairs were extremely large and important—though why they should have thought so, when they were convinced they were only the mechanical outcome of a cast-iron law of evolution on a very three-by-four planet, whirling round a fifth-rate star in illimitable space, passes human comprehension. It would be more reasonable to think so to-day, if Eddington and those people are right in supposing that we are rather a freak sort of planet, with quite unusual facilities for being inhabited, and that space is a sort of cosy little thing which God could fold up and put in his pocket without our ever noticing the difference. Anyhow, if time and space and straightness and curliness and bigness and smallness are all relative, then we may just as well think ourselves important as not. “Important, unimportant—unimportant, important,” as the King of Hearts said, trying to see which sounded best. So, like the Victorians, we shall no doubt compromise—say it is important when we have a magnum opus to present to an admiring creation, and unimportant when it suits our convenience to have our peccadilloes passed over.

Forgive me wandering away like this. It’s just a sort of talking the thing out with you before I talk it out in the book. Because, for some reason, it does seem to me important to do this job as well as I can—not merely because it will do me good with publishers, and so make it possible to embark on the important triviality of marriage, but for some obscure and irrational motive connected with the development of my soul, if I may so allude to it. I am increasingly not clear whether I am a mess of oddly-assorted chemicals (chiefly salt and water), or a kind of hypertrophied fish-egg, or an enormous, all-inclusive cosmos of solar-systematically revolving atoms, each one supporting planetfuls of solemn imbeciles like myself.

But, whatever I am, I must finish the Life and then get on to our life, Bungie, because that somehow does count for something to

Jack

9. The Same to the Same

15a, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater

15th October, 1928

I knew it, Bungie—I knew it, I knew it! I knew we should be asked downstairs to tea. And we’ve been! Down among the Liberty curtains and the brass Benares ware! Three young women, two bright youths, the local parson and the family. Crockery from Heal’s and everything too conscientiously bright. Mrs. Harrison all radiance and very much the centre of attraction.

No sooner had I got there than I was swept into a discussion about “this wonderful man Einstein.” Extraordinarily interesting, wasn’t it, and what did I make of it? Displaying all my social charm, I said I thought it was a delightful idea. I liked thinking that all the straight lines were really curly, and only wished I’d known all about it at school, because it would have annoyed the geometry master so much.

“But you do think there’s something in it, don’t you? My husband says it is all nonsense, but what do you say?”

There was a little stir of triumph about this, and I somehow gathered that the Einstein topic had been deliberately chosen for a purpose. I said guardedly that I believed the theory was now generally accepted by mathematicians, though with very many reserves.

“It really is, is it? Really true that nothing actually exists as we see it? I do hope so, because I have always felt so strongly that materialism is all wrong. There is something so deadening about materialism, isn’t there? I do so wish I knew what life means and what we really are. But I can’t understand these things, and, you know, I should so like to, if only I had someone to explain them to me.”

“As far as I can make out,” I replied, “you are really only made up of large lumps of space, loosely tied together with electricity. It doesn’t sound flattering, but there it is.”

She frowned attractively.

“But I can’t believe that.”

“Why do you want to believe it?” said Harrison. “It’s all words. When it comes to doing anything practical you have to come back to common sense. My friend Professor Alcock——”

“Yes, yes, I know.” She waved the interruption aside impatiently. “But the idea is the real thing, isn’t it? Haven’t they come round to thinking that poetry and imagination and the beautiful things of the mind are the only true realities after all?”

“Of course beauty is the only true reality,” said Lathom eagerly. “But it isn’t always what ordinary people think of as beauty. I mean, it’s not pretty-pretty. When you think a thing, then you create it and it exists. What’s the use of arguing what you make it of? That doesn’t matter to the thing itself, any more than the stuff paints are made of matter to the picture.”

“It matters a good deal in practice,” said Harrison. “Now the Pre-Raphaelites understood that—though, mind you, I don’t think much of the Pre-Raphaelite school myself. Some of their pictures are so remarkably ugly, and so exaggerated in colour. Take that thing of Holman Hunt’s, now——”

“Darling,” said Mrs. Harrison, with emphasis, “you’re sidetracking.”

“No, I’m not. I’m coming back to that. What I mean is that the Pre-Raphaelites, especially William Morris, knew a great deal about the material of their paints. They used to get the right stuff and grind it themselves, so as to be sure it wasn’t adulterated. Now I’m all of their opinion. I say they were quite right. I get my colours from a man up in town, a wholesale dealer——”

“My husband is always so literal,” said Mrs. Harrison, taking the whole company into a confederacy to condemn the unfortunate man. “But I didn’t mean that at all. Mr. Lathom understands what I mean—don’t you, Mr. Lathom?”

“Yes,” said Lathom, “and, of course, it’s true in a way. But you mustn’t think that the form of the thing doesn’t matter, too. Whatever the world is made of, there it is, and it’s ours to make something of.”

“It must be marvellous to paint great pictures!” said one of the young women.

Lathom scowled frightfully, and, ostentatiously ignoring her, continued his remarks to Mrs. Harrison in an undertone.

What a conversation, my God! Harrison faded out and I don’t blame him, and I took the opportunity to tackle the parson, a fellow by the name of Perry. He turned out to be an earnest and cultivated middle-aged spike from Keble, and I took the opportunity to mention the Life and the difficulties about Victorian materialism.

“Yes,” he said, “we’ve rather got past that stage now, haven’t we? I’ve got one or two books that I think might be useful to you, as giving the point of view and all that. Shall I send them over?”

I said it was very good of him (not expecting much from it), and, by way of a leg-pull, asked him what he thought of relativity.

“Why, I’m rather grateful to it,” said he, “it makes my job much easier. We’ll have a chat some day and go into it. I must be going now.”

He oozed competently away, and the party rambled on till I could stand it no longer and rambled out into the passage, where I met Harrison.

“Hullo!” said he, “come and have a pipe in the studio. And a whiskey-and-soda or something. Better than tea.”

I went in, expecting him to talk Art, but he didn’t. He just sat smoking in silence and I did likewise. I had an idea I ought to say something to him, but nothing presented itself. If I had said what I felt like saying, he would have been angry with me.

So much for social life in Suburbia. I had a letter from Jim on Wednesday. He is thoroughly enjoying himself in Germany, and begs to be remembered to you. He is reading hard—or so he says—and he’d jolly well better, the young cub, since if he fails in his tripos there’s no money to give him another year there and he’ll have to go as an apothecary’s apprentice or something. I haven’t looked up Cynthia or the Brierleys yet, but I will pull myself together and do it before long.

Love to everybody. Wish I was up north with you among the burrns and birrds. Give the Guv’nor my love. Has he had good sport? I suppose the hills are beginning to look a bit grim again now, bless their granite hearts. Remember me to all the artist fraternity.

Ever and ever yours, funny-face, old dear. I’d like to see your cheery grin now and again. I must be damned fond of you—sometimes it positively puts me off my stroke. Damned inconvenient. I shall really have to see about this marriage business. I cannot have my work interrupted in this way.

Yours deeply injured

Jack

10. Agatha Milsom to Olive Farebrother

15, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater

15.10.28

Dearest Olive,

I am so sorry I have not written for such a long time, but I have been feeling anything but fit. This household is most trying to live with, and I really feel that in my present nervous condition I am hardly fit to cope with my work here. I have been to Dr. Trevor and put the whole situation very fully and carefully before him, and he agrees that I certainly ought not to be subjected to so much emotional strain. On the other hand, I know poor Mrs. Harrison does cling to me so much for sympathy and support that it seems almost wicked not to hang on if I can possibly manage it. She has no one else to confide in at all, and I do at least feel that here I am being of real use to somebody. Dr. Trevor says that if only I can lose sight of my own difficulties in helping her with hers, it will be good for me to make the effort, provided I do not let the atmosphere of the house get on my nerves. I have started a little exercise on Coué lines. Every morning I say to myself: “I am cool, strong, confident,” twenty times, and at night I say: “I am satisfied and at peace,” also twenty times. Dr. Trevor thinks these are quite good phrases to say.

I did hope, a few days ago, that the difficulty was going to solve itself. Mrs. Harrison announced that she was going to take up office work again. The idea of it seemed to brighten her up tremendously, and I think it would be the best thing she could do. But, of course, the Bear played his old trick again. When she first announced her decision, he pretended to agree, and said she could do as she liked, so she was awfully pleased, and rang up one of the people at her old office to see if they had a vacancy there. As it happened, they had, and she practically arranged to start work next week. Then Mr. Bear started off. “All right? Well, I suppose it is all right if you think so. But don’t you think it’s a trifle hard on me, my dear, having a wife out all day, fagging herself to death in an office and coming home fit for nothing? I give you a good home, and I rather expected, or hoped, you would like to make it a home for me to come back to. That is the usual idea, isn’t it? But I suppose the modern woman thinks differently about these things. If hotel life is your notion of happiness you ought to go and live in America.”

It is too bad to work upon the poor girl’s feelings in that selfish way. She tried to reason with him, but, of course, the end was that she made herself perfectly sick with crying, and wrote and told the people that she couldn’t manage to take the job after all. And now he goes about saying it’s a pity she can’t find something better to do with herself than reading trashy novels all day. I spoke up. I said, “Mr. Harrison, excuse me, but you ought not to speak to your wife like that. She gave up the work she wanted to do, entirely to please you, and I think you ought to consider her a little more and yourself a good deal less.” I daresay he wasn’t best pleased, but I thought it my duty to say it. I felt most terribly exhausted after this trying scene. It is such a drain upon one’s personality, coping with outbreaks of this kind. One is giving, giving, all the time. I am asking Dr. Trevor to prescribe me a tonic. A curious feature of my malady at the moment is a craving for shrimps. Our fishmonger keeps very good ones, but sometimes I have to go quite a long way to get them, because I am afraid he will think it funny if I buy shrimps every day.

I am sure I don’t know what we should do if it were not for Mr. Lathom. He often drops in of an evening now and cheers us up immensely. The Bear is always dragging the poor man off into his studio, as he calls it, to twaddle about art, but Mr. Lathom has most delightful manners and puts up with it heroically. He thinks my scarf-patterns and stocking-tops show great talent, “a very good sense of design.” He is a real artist, so I am sure he wouldn’t say so if he didn’t think it.

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 maisonnette 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 chessboard. 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 post-card. 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!

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 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 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 calculations 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.

As you see, I am down in the old shack for my usual holiday. I was obliged to take it rather late this year, as I could not be spared from the office till we had got the new power-station through. However, the weather is fortunately very favourable, and I have been able to do a good deal of sketching as well as rambling after fungi. I missed our old Puff-ball friend, Lycoperdon giganteum, of course, but I gathered a beautiful dish of the little Amethyst Agaric yesterday, and to-morrow morning I am going out in search of Amanita rubescens, which I intend to try very slowly and delicately stewed in beef broth, or in a mock-beef gravy of Fistulina Hepatica, if I can find one in good condition. I do not know whether any one has ever tried this combination of two fungi. If it is a success I shall give the recipe in the little book I am writing on Neglected Edible Treasures. Messrs. Hopkin & Bigelow are interested in my “operculum,” and I rather think they mean to publish it.

I am sorry you are not here to go a-mushrooming with me. Margaret, of course, does not care for this kind of camp-life—I could not expect it of such a thorough little town-bird as she is—so I have had to become an old bachelor for the time being. I am hoping that young Lathom will come out with me sometimes on sketching expeditions. He seems a very decent, friendly young fellow, and it is very pleasant to have a fellow-artist in the place, with whom to exchange ideas. He runs in and out of our flat frequently of an evening, and we are always glad to see him. His lively chatter seems to amuse Margaret, and it is nice to have some young life about the place. We do not see quite so much of his friend Munting. He is reserved and quiet and talks modestly enough, though I believe he has written a book of very risqué verse and a rather salacious novel. Margaret says she dislikes his sarcastic manner, but I cannot say I have found him in any way objectionable. Miss Milsom seems to have taken offence at something he said to her, but then she is not a particularly sensible woman. Nothing I can say will stop her putting dripping in the pan when frying a steak, which is a great nuisance. She has no real feeling for cookery.

Well, my boy, I have written rather a long letter, and I must stop now, as I see the lad approaching with the bread, and I must secure his services to take this to the post. I enclose a little cheque, as an offering which is always suitable in every season and country, and remain,

With every good wish,

Your affectionate Father,

Geo. Harrison

16. Agatha Milsom to Olive Farebrother

15, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater

25.10.28

Dearest Olive,

We are all breathing again! The Bear has taken himself off for one of his camping holidays, complete with painting outfit and half a dozen scribbling pads. He is actually going to write a book!—telling people how to live on nettles and toadstools and that sort of thing, and how in case of another Great War we could support the entire nation on boiled hedgehogs or some such nastiness. My dear, it is such a relief to get him out of the house! Of course, he couldn’t go off without creating an unpleasantness. He was absurd enough to suggest that Mrs. Harrison should go with him—the idea of it! in a horrible little shack, miles from anywhere—damp as a well, I shouldn’t wonder, with no proper water or sanitation or anything. Did you ever hear of such a thing? Naturally, Mrs. Harrison said she didn’t think she would care about it—what did the man expect? He didn’t say anything more about it then—I think I’ve taught him not to bully his wife when I’m about!—but he took it out of her when they went upstairs. She came in crying at 12 o’clock at night to sleep with me because she couldn’t stand it any longer. “My dear,” I said, “why do you take notice of it? If he wants your company so badly, why can’t he sacrifice himself for once and take you to Brighton or Margate, or some nice cheerful place? He just likes to make people miserable, that’s all.” So then I told her a little about what Dr. Trevor said about the people who enjoy inflicting torture on others. I said, “You must just look on it as a kind of disease and not resent it if you can help it. Build up a wall of protective thought about yourself and determine to be quite detached about it.” We had a very interesting little talk about repressions, and I have lent her my handbook to Freud. It is so important to get a healthy angle on these things.

Mr. Lathom has been very nice, coming in almost every evening to keep us company. It must be a relief to him not to be bothered with the Bear’s everlasting drivel about Art. He is going to paint our portraits. Mrs. Harrison is going up for her first sitting to-morrow. It is to be a blue, green and bronze colour-scheme—blue dress, green background and a big bowl of those bronze Chrysanthemums. It gave Mr. Lathom a great deal of trouble deciding it. Of course, Mrs. Harrison is very attractive-looking, but you couldn’t exactly call her pretty, with those greeny eyes and her rather pale complexion. I haven’t decided what to wear. I asked Mr. Lathom, but he said he thought I should look nice in anything and he could safely leave it to me. I think I shall have it done in that orange thing with the square yoke—the one which Mr. Ramsbottom said made me look like a Pre-Raphaelite page—you remember?—and have my hair waved and curled under all round to carry out the idea. I pointed out to Mr. Lathom that my face wasn’t the same both sides, and he laughed, and said no human being ever was the same both sides—Nature never worked by rule and compass.

I am doing well with my stockings, and have had several orders for scarves. Don’t forget to tell anybody who wants one that I am quite ready to undertake the work. I am experimenting on some calendars, made like the old-fashioned tinsel pictures, with the coloured paper-wrappers off chocolate creams. Some of the designs are simply beautiful. You might send me any you get. I think I might get some Christmas orders for them. I’ve thought out quite an original idea. . . .

[The remainder of this letter, which contained only some designs for needlework, has been detached.]

17. John Munting to Elizabeth Drake

15a, Whittington Terrace

28.10.28

Darling Bungie,

Just a line to say I am running down to Oxford to stay with the Cobbs for a week or two. It is simply impossible to work in this place at the moment—the downstairs menagerie swarms over us all day. This is the last time I’ll think of setting up housekeeping with a man on the strength of a school and restaurant acquaintance. Of course, it’s financially useful—but, damn it all! money isn’t everything, even when one’s hoping to get married. Lathom will insist on being a little ray of sunshine about the place. Damn sunshine. If it hadn’t gone joggling up the perfectly good and placid atoms in the primeval ooze, they would never have sweltered up in this unsatisfactory world of life and bothersomeness.

The great idea now is to paint a portrait of Mrs. Harrison as a surprise for Harrison on his return. Knowing Lathom’s style, I should say it would be a very great surprise to him, indeed. It will probably be a very fine work—the man can paint—but I wish they could get on with it quietly by themselves and leave me alone. That poisonous old woman is in and out the whole time. I daren’t emerge from my own room for a minute without being collared and asked some imbecile question or other. Impertinent old bitch. She’s a dangerous woman, too. In Harrison’s place I’d give her the sack. She had the damned sauce to edge into my room after me yesterday and ask whose photograph that was on my table, was it my best girl’s? I said, No—it was my last mistress but three or four, I had lost count. (It was Brenda’s, as a matter of fact.) I was told I was a dreadful man and that Miss Drake ought to know the way I behaved. I was furious. I don’t know how the devil she got hold of your name. Lathom’s damned chattiness, I suppose—confound him! She wound up the interview by saying, really, she didn’t think it safe to be in the same room with me, and leered her way out. Disgusting fool! Fortunately, I was only revising “Birth and Childhood,” or I should have been too irritable to work for the rest of the day. I hope, for your sake, I am not becoming neurotic—that would be the last straw.

Anyway, the Cobbs’ invitation came at the exact right moment to prevent my doing something regrettable, so I’m barging off. Otherwise I should probably have had a row with Lathom, which would have been a nuisance, as I’ve paid the rent up to Christmas.

No news from Merritt yet. Probably he has slung the poor old MS. into a drawer and forgotten about it. It could write its memoirs by this time: Pigeon-holes I Have Lived in. How goes your latest?

My love to the Governor and everybody,

Your loving

J

18. Agatha Milsom to Olive Farebrother

15, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater

8.11.28

Dearest Olive,

Ever so many thanks for sending the order from Mrs. Pottersby; I will get on with it as quickly as I can. I have two more scarves in hand, and Mr. Perry wants two dozen calendars for people in the parish, so you see I am quite busy just at present. I am glad Tom’s rheumatism is no worse, and that Joan’s little illness turned out to be such a trifling matter after all. It must have given you a lot of anxiety.

I am feeling very much better, I am glad to say—in fact, we are all brighter and happier for our period of peace and quietness. The Bear came back in quite a good mood, for him!—and dear Mrs. Harrison seems quite a different person. She reads a lot, and I am encouraging her to live in her books, and abstract herself altogether from the wearing and irritating realities of life. It is easy, because she has a wonderfully vivid and romantic imagination, which makes the world of literature very real to her. Of course, that is what Mr. Harrison would never be able to understand. It is hopeless to try to discuss anything with him. I tried to get him to talk about Gilbert Frankau’s new book the other day. He said he hadn’t read it and didn’t want to. I gave him an outline of the plot, but I don’t think he was listening. At any rate, he only said, “Oh!” and went on to talk interminably about his eternal fungi and hedgehogs. Still, provided he keeps his temper, it doesn’t much matter what he talks about, and Mrs. Harrison listens to it all most patiently. I wonder how she can do it, but she is in a wonderfully serene and happy frame of mind. I am rather proud of my work, for I am sure it was our little talk in my bedroom the other day that showed her the way out of her troubles.

I am sorry for what you say about Ronnie. It is most trying for you that he should have got mixed up with that sort of girl, but no doubt it will all blow over. Dr. Trevor says that that kind of adolescent love-affair should always be dealt with sympathetically, and will work itself out naturally if not thwarted. I’m sure it would be most unwise of Tom to exert his authority in any way. I cannot forget how our poor dear Mother ruined my life—of course, with the best intentions—by her old-fashioned ideas of what was “nice.” Nobody will ever know what I suffered as a girl, and I am sure it is all due to that early unhappiness that I am in the doctor’s hands now. It was not the same thing for you, of course—you never had that complicated and delicately-balanced temperament, and would probably always have been happy enough, whether you had married or not. People of your kind are much the most fortunate, but then one cannot help one’s temperament, can one? If you take my advice, and treat Ronnie with sympathy and indulgence, you will avoid making the mess of his life that our parents made of mine. I feel that Ronnie and I are very much akin—perhaps a few words from me would help to explain him to himself. I am writing to him to-night.

Your loving sister,

Aggie

19. The Same to the Same

15, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater

15.11.28

Dear Olive,

I have been much surprised and deeply hurt by Ronnie’s letter to me, which I enclose for you to see. I cannot believe that he would have written in that spirit of his own accord. I can only suppose that you and Tom have been prejudicing him against me. Of course, he is your child and not mine, but it is quite a mistake to imagine that, merely because of the physical accident of parenthood, you are, for that reason, divinely qualified to deal with a sensitive temperament like Ronnie’s. I (not having my eyes blinded) can see quite clearly through what he writes, that you have succeeded in apparently bringing him into agreement with your point of view; but, if you did but know it, you are merely encouraging him to repress his natural feelings, with consequences which may be terrible to contemplate. I can imagine nothing worse for him than what you call change of scene and companionship, when I know perfectly well that you mean that unimaginative and completely insensitive Potts person. I cannot imagine a more dangerous influence for a boy in Ronnie’s state of mind than a footballing parson. The harm done by men of that class is quite incalculable, and their minds are, as a rule, perfect sinks of dangerous and sublimated libidos (I don’t know whether that is the right way to spell the plural). However, it is your own affair, and I am powerless to interfere, but I do think you ought not to set the boy against me, merely because I am, unhappily, in a position to know more than you do about certain facts of life.

Thank you, I am glad to say we are all very well. Mrs. Harrison’s portrait is finished. It is a very striking piece of colour. Of course, Mr. H. thinks it does not do her justice, but then, as you would expect, he is quite out of sympathy with modern art.

We are relieved from the presence of Mr. Munting, who has gone to Oxford, on a visit to some friends, or so he says. I think it is much more likely that he is leading a double life somewhere. He unblushingly confesses to having innumerable disreputable entanglements, and I am very sorry indeed for the girl he is engaged to.

Your affectionate sister,

Aggie

20. George Harrison to Paul Harrison

15, Whittington Terrace

20.11.28

My dear Boy,

I was very glad to get your last letter—the one dated 7th October—and to know that all goes on so well with you and the bridge. You took exactly the course I should have advised myself in the matter of the man Matthews. In such a case, consideration is out of place. Your duty to the firm (to say nothing of the thousands who will use the bridge) must come before any sympathy for the man and his special circumstances. Far too much laxity is shown nowadays to outbreaks of so-called “temperament,” with most disastrous consequences, and there is far too much talk about “not being able to help one’s self.” I should not let the matter prey on your mind in the least. I quite understand that the man has brilliant powers and an attractive personality, and that you are sorry to lose him, but it is fatally easy for a man like that to imagine that the ordinary rules of morality do not apply to him, and to indulge him in such ideas is bad for him, and may easily be ruinous to other people and to his work. I entirely approve your decision, and so, I am sure, must Sir Maurice, if the matter comes to his notice.

I am feeling greatly benefited by my little holiday, and am glad to be back to work again. I found all well at home on my return. Margaret was in very good spirits over a little surprise that she and Lathom had prepared for me. She has been sitting to him for her portrait, and he has made a very striking piece of work of it. While I cannot say I think it does her justice, there is no doubt that it is a handsome piece of coloratura, and the kind of thing to attract attention at the present time. Lathom belongs, of course, to the modern school. He paints, I feel, in too much of a hurry, and his pictures have not the beautiful smooth finish of a Millais, or, among living artists, of a Lavery—but no doubt he will grow out of this slapdash method when he is older. It is a kind of affectation which besets the young painters of to-day, and, while I cannot help but see the defects of his method, I am not blind to the merits of the work and to the kind thought which prompted the execution. He is anxious to show it at the Academy next year, and Margaret is (naturally, I suppose) delighted with the idea. I was obliged, however, to say that I did not care about the project. It is the kind of picture to attract a good deal of comment of one sort and another, and these young people do not quite see the amount of undesirable publicity it might involve. I fear they are both rather disappointed, but later on, when I was able to speak quietly about it to Lathom alone, he saw the matter in the right light, and was very nice about it. We are hanging it in a good light in the drawing-room, where it will look very well.

There has been a very amusing sequel to this. Your old friend (or should I say enemy?) Miss Milsom has taken it into her head that her fair features ought to be immortalised, too! Lathom, with his usual extraordinary good nature, has actually consented to make a picture of her—but only on the understanding that this time, if it turns out well, he shall have the right to do as he likes with it! Miss Milsom is only too enchanted at the idea of being hung at Burlington House. I did not feel called upon to interfere, since he is obviously only “pulling her leg,” and there is not the remotest chance of the portrait’s being exhibited; for, as you know, the lady is scarcely the Venus of Milo! She is very much excited about it, and has produced the most incredible garment to be painted in—very tight as to the bust and voluminous as to the skirt. I understand that a quattrocento effect is aimed at.

I am very hard at work of an evening now—with a number of sketches to work up and my little opus to prepare. I am illustrating it with water-colours of various plants and fungi in their natural habitat, and it should turn out a very pretty and useful volume.

I enclose the formulæ you asked for, and remain

Your affectionate

Dad

21. Agatha Milsom to Olive Farebrother

15, Whittington Terrace

22.11.28

Dear Olive,

I have received your letter about Ronnie. No doubt you think you know best. I will not allude further to the matter.

I am feeling much too upset to discuss such things just now. Mr. Harrison has been behaving abominably, undoing all the good his absence has done, and creating his usual atmosphere of unpleasantness.

Mr. Lathom painted a most beautiful picture of Mrs. Harrison. They both worked like galley-slaves to get it finished in time for his return (H.’s, I mean). I say both, for sitting is most exhausting work, as you would know if you had ever sat to anybody for a portrait, and she would end up sometimes so cramped she could scarcely move. As for Mr. Lathom, he seemed quite inspired over it, and painted and painted away without food or rest, till I got quite worried about him, and had to bring him up cups of hot Bovril and Ovaltine, for fear he should over-tax his strength. He is an extraordinarily generous young man, because, though he cannot be well off, he actually painted the portrait to give to Mr. Harrison, when I feel sure he could have sold it for a big price, it is such a splendid piece of work, and he says himself it is one of the best things he has ever done.

Well, they got it finished in time for the Bear’s return, and Mrs. Harrison was ever so delighted with it, and thought the creature would be pleased. It was quite pathetic to see how eagerly she looked forward to surprising him, poor woman. Well, he was pleased, in his grudging kind of way, though he had the impertinence to criticise the painting—as if Mr. Lathom didn’t know more about Art with his eyes shut than Mr. Harrison could learn in a month of Sundays. And then it was all spoilt by the Bear’s horrible selfishness. Mr. Lathom said—very nicely and courteously—he hoped Mr. Harrison would see no objection to its being sent to the Academy. Of course, as it was the best thing he’d done, you’d think anybody would see he had a right to exhibit it, and you’d think, too, that when anybody had received a valuable present like that, he’d be only too willing to be obliging. But the PIG just said, “Well, Lathom, I don’t quite think we can go as far as that. My wife would hardly like to be put on show, you know.”