Horace is so bracing. He came to see me yesterday evening & solemnly urged my mother and myself to evacuate ourselves to my farm in Wales, so that when the Nazis smash us, we can make a ‘quick getaway’ via some northerly port. Dear Horace.
Oh! darling. I haven’t seen you since Newton started Taking an Interest in Apples – and that was hundreds of years ago.
Monday 10 June Aubrey came into the drawing room, stiff and correct and every-inch-an-officer – and the bridge-players (including my mother & father, darling – what a Sorrow) just looked at him with a glazed eye &, as he said afterwards, made him feel like the Shrinking Man in every Bateman cartoon. My father then bore Aubrey & me off to the Front Parlour & told us All, with vague & gloomy expansiveness. All he said could be condensed into one poignant & succinct phrase. ‘What a sorrow.’ Aubrey called him Sir, and put his case – in the Pauses for Breath – and my father said he’d do what he could for him with Colonel Kisch & Lord Lloyd. He then said A Few Words on the subject of Glorious Evacuations & went back to his bridge. Aubrey seemed to think he might be helpful – but he (Aubrey) was tired & nervy & stilted – and when I told him about the Importance of Shoes in marking the distinction between Forwardness and Wantonness, he was only able to manage a wan smile – and it was obvious that his Mind was elsewhere.
I felt suddenly & frighteningly out of touch with Aubrey tonight. Perhaps because I’d hung on to the thought of his coming as a kind of indirect link with you – and he was completely detached from us and our idiom and our Solaces & Sorrows.
Of course, it’s not surprising. It looks as though MI2 is off – but he hopes with the help of Dr Weizmann, Major Cazalet & perhaps Pa, to get to Egypt & Palestine, and do the kind of work that interests him – once he gets there. Everyone in Whitehall disclaimed all knowledge or responsibility in the matter or expressed Great Sorrow – Oh! I hope All will be Well with him.
Tuesday 11 June When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions, darling – as I may have said before.
This morning Lord Inverforth3 telephoned & my mother picked up the receiver. He asked if he could speak to Dad and then urged him to go into another room – alone. Something in his voice must have frightened my mother because she turned dreadfully pale – and I, rather foolishly, advised her to pick up the receiver & listen in. She did – and oh! darling, she just lay back in bed gasping & choking with dry, coughing sobs. Lord I had had a wire from her sisters asking him to tell her that Uncle Elie had died suddenly (acute appendicitis with complications). She has this rather frightening & very Jewish bond with all her relations – & in this case there was no warning or preparation of any kind. Dad came into the room & sat down – his face was quite grey & blank & he kept muttering ‘She doesn’t deserve it’ over & over again – & nurse danced around squeaking with maddening ineffectualness. Mon dieu, quel cauchemare! (I can’t spell, darling, even in an emergency. I don’t know whether there’s an ‘e’ in cauchemare or nor.) Now, there’ll be another year of black and apathy & withdrawal for my mother.
Yesterday she was worried because all her money is in her brothers’ bank & may be confiscated by the Egyptian Government – and that would mean that our only steady income would be cut off completely – & now there’s this. I’m glad I’m here today, my dear love – not but what I’m completely useless & ineffectual – but she seems to be pleased that I’m back in London.
This isn’t a letter – just thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.4 (Eliot is a great poet, dear.) Oh! I am out of suits with fortune!
Referring to you at lunch today, darling, my father said in mock-bewilderment that he couldn’t understand ‘this business’ at all – but no doubt it had some profound Medieval Significance – to which I replied that you were a verray parfit gentil knight5 – and, in addition, a Great Solace to me. ‘What’s that?’ he said. ‘Solace? Solace?’ and then, dear, the Beauty of the word dawned upon him, in all its glory. ‘Solace’, he murmured into his Camembert. ‘Solace!’ he added later between noisy sips of coffee. ‘Solace’, he said, puffing the word out with his cigarette-smoke. This is the first glimpse of my idiom he’s had as yet. Perhaps I was wrong in keeping it from him for so long.
It’s been a wearing day – my father has suggested that a Good Way to end Italian intervention would be to dress the Pope up in Full Regalia & send him between the French & Italian armies saying ‘Shoot if you dare!’ (A Beautiful Thought in its way.)
Wednesday 12 June Yesterday evening my father & I walked to Primrose Hill for air. He was peering over fences at potato-patches in an ecstasy of dig-for-victory enthusiasm – but I was looking wistfully at the mollockers in the long grass & thinking that the nobleness of life would be to do thus if you & I could do it. Oh! my God, the Dragon School has just notified us of a violent epidemic of measles & Dicky is coming home on Saturday for a fortnight! where’s that kindly & protective providence you told me about?
Friday 14 June I’ve just fled upstairs to escape the 1 o’clock news. Cowardly, dear? – but the tension here is growing & growing, & I’m so terrified of my father’s deciding suddenly that we are to go away – to Canada or God knows where. If that happened, then that dream I’m always having about not being able to get to you would be real, darling. Oh! God. I’m bereft of all words at that thought.
My mother is eating off a low stool with a slit in her petticoat – a gloomy business – & my father sits & speculates upon our chances of survival when the Germans occupy London. Tomorrow Dicky will be here to give us a taste of Nazism in the Home. Tired of all these, for restful death I cry … as I said in one of my best sonnets – adding hastily however – save that to die I leave my love alone.6
Saturday 15 June I’ve been keeping out of my father’s way – & last night he commented on it – acidly – & then took on a martyred air, & today he keeps coming into my room & asking me to go downstairs & talk to him. It’s exactly as I told you, darling. I can’t escape – and every time I’m with him, I simply quiver with fury – because he took me away from Cambridge, darling – and I can’t bear it. Dicky has come home today, doubtless to spread measles & havoc. There is no light … no light.
I had a letter from Aubrey this morning. There’s no question of MI. Dr Weizmann’s son is in exactly the same position, it seems – and Dr W has had a Cackle of Cabinet Ministers pulling wires All in Vain. However, he hopes to get to the Near East & establish himself as an Asset when he gets there. His training ends on Friday & then he gets a fortnight’s leave.
We had a diversion yesterday in the shape of a fat little refugee rabbi who came to instruct my mother in the Art of Mourning. (She ought to Know All by now – she’s had enough practice, poor woman, but she’s so frightened of Leaving Anything Out, that she always likes to have a Spiritual Guide to Hold her Hand.) He was small & round and his features were richly curved – & he thought up a perfectly incredible number of things which my mother ought to be doing – & then when he got home he remembered yet Another – & he telephoned to tell my mother that she must on no account wear leather on her feet (Give me a shoe that is not leather soled! – or a bedroom slipper, for that matter) lest we should all Perish or be Cast into Hell. It was obviously a matter about which he felt strongly.
I’ve done nothing since I left Cambridge but let my melancholy sit on brood – and read crime-stories – the bloodier the better. I’m suffering from an infinite prolongation of