So I Have Thought of You: The Letters of Penelope Fitzgerald

I.

FAMILY AND FRIENDS

Hugh Lee (’Ham’)

*

27a 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