Hospitality, where art thou? Gone down the general drain, perhaps, with free hold estates and pairs of bays.
But Viertel—after what you say I really shall invite him to the Reform Club. The fact that he praised my eyes is very reassuring, because one’s eyes are always with one, they do not vary from day to day like the complexion or the intelligence. Let him gaze his fill. I shall certainly like to see him again and to thank him—which will probably be a mistake—for a most remarkable and enjoyable evening. I have often thought about it and described it to other people without interesting them. It is a milieu—so energetic[,] friendly & horrible. I can’t believe everything isn’t going to crash when such a waggon [ sic] gets so many stars hitched behind. Every film I ever see will now appear incredibly good, also I shall suppose that it has allowed people like you and Heintz to escape for a bit into the sun.
Virginia has now come out, aprony[?] from some article or passage, and has suggested a photograph should be taken of me. L. thinks it is a good idea, and continues to saw the buddleias. It is 5 minutes to one—no, one, the bell rings, and I must jolly well lock this letter up during lunch, or it’ll pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 30
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LETTERS BETWEEN FORSTER AND ISHERWOOD
get read. I know these particular ethics. This evening we go to a meeting of the Memoir Club, at Maynard Keynes, and if this letter were read there, and aloud by me, it might be the star turn.15
12-4-34
Memoir Club and much else over. I am back at home, quarrelling with my ground landlord through our respective solicitors. He lives 100 yards from me, but before we can exchange a reply there is
letter from self to sol[icitor]
letter from self ’s sol[icitor] to his
letter from his sol[icitor] to him [entire list is enclosed in a bracket on the left]
letter from him to his sol[icitor]side, [and written next to it:“one week, with luck”]
letter from his sol[icitor] to mine
letter from my sol[icitor] to me
17-4-34
Still waiting for the reply, and think I shall go to the South of France.
Bob is ill, or rather laid up, and I can only see him in his own home. I must send this letter at once, or it will never go. Please write and tell me the colour of Mr Abercrombie’s pyjamas. I do hope you will have a good time.
Please give my regards to Heintz.
Yours ever,
EM Forster
[Postscript:] My blow for British freedom is struck on Thursday.
* * *
c/o Banco Hispano Americano
Las Palmas
Canary Isles
April 30 [1934]
Dear Forster,
Thank you for your letter. Mr. Abercromby was a distinct disappointment—an elderly man with a military moustache and dishonest blue eyes, pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 31
THE 1930s
31
he approved of Dollfuss because he had never seen a word written against him in the Times. He was very informative about how to avoid tipping hotel attendants in the [. . . ?]evant[?] or the best way of getting a good cabin on a liner. Other key-phrases included: “My friends tell me I ought to work with a camera.” “It’s what I call a potty little island.” “He’s a strong-looking devil” (We were in Madiera harbour and watching a boy diving for coins). “They kept the two of us waiting—just like servants.” “She was a very smart girl—I’m not speaking immorally.”“The German is no good; he goes to pieces at thirty.” “One of these tripper hotels where you see young chits stripped to the belly-button.”
Here there are black volcanic hills and white flat-topped houses; an African town, with palms. A sand beach protected by a reef from sharks.
The inhabitants are beautiful; quite a lot of them fair-haired, the remnants of an earlier race, the Guanchos, who worshipped one God, had blue eyes and imprisoned anyone who spoke to a woman without being introduced.
Why don’t you come here, instead of France? It would be much cheaper.
Up in the mountains, the peasants live in caves and mix poison for their relatives. There are banana groves and cathedrals and extinct craters and no snakes. We have a lovely room on the roof of the hotel, looking across the bay to the peak of Tenerife. We like it so much here that we’re staying another month. It isn’t in the least a fashion resort, like Funchal. Some of the characters from a Passage to India are staying here, but they don’t bother us. They go to some mysterious club and play golf and come home too tired to be aggressive. There are also Germans who bow from the waist and say: Permit. My name is Schenck. The Canary Islanders themselves are gay and handsome and are just discovering, with enormous excitement, the Cocteau decadence cult of 1925. The only statue in the Public Gardens is [dedicated] to a poet. There is a Carlos Marx Street. Real live canaries fly about from palm tree to palm tree like sparrows.
I have ordered your blow for British Freedom and await it eagerly. At present I am reading “Great British Modern Plays.” Well, at any rate, I suppose they’re British.
Do write again soon, and consider seriously if you couldn’t come. It such a simple journey; and no customs examination when you arrive.
Best love
Christopher Isherwood
Goodness knows what happened to Mr. A. He disappeared as we landed.
* * *
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LETTERS BETWEEN FORSTER AND ISHERWOOD
15-5-34
[St. Rémy-en-Provence]
Dear Isherwood,
I was getting on all right here until your letter arrived when I wished I wasn’t here but with you. I enjoy myself here as much as usual and always wonder why the usual isn’t a little more. My friend and his wife are of peasant stock; intelligent, affectionate, gay. Provençal cookery[,] which I like, all natural good sense and natural good taste. [C]omfortable rough little house without taint of artiness and bang against that rough little range of hills which runs from Tarascon to Cavaillon, peasants coming in and so on.
Why isn’t it acute pleasure here? I think I don’t ever get more intimate with my friends or with the scenery, it must be that, and I know that the peasants are always women or old men. So I am wanting to come to the Canary Island and since I can’t do that [I want] to go home. It’s too quiet.
Amusement or work can alone stop one from brooding on the coming smash. My particular impasse for the moment is: (i) Nothing can be done/
(ii) yet the people I admire most try to do something—and character is the thing I care about, both in myself and others,/ (iii) but if one has realised (i) then any attempt to avert disaster is only an attempt to show how admirable one is/ (iv) which isn’t admirable.
I think the explanation of the impasse is that the human race has never before been faced with a world wide dilemma, and the individual has the right to be staggered at it and to pity himself at having been born just now: a right he is still too shy to exercise.
At this point we went in the bus to Avignon and I tried to buy you a tie, like the one Bob bought his brother the railway porter three years ago. But I couldn’t see one.
I ought perhaps to make clear that the friends I am stopping with are called Charles and Marie Mauron, that he translated A Passage to India into French, that their house is called Mas d’Angiranz, and that it is close to
“Les Monuments” of St Rémy-de-Provence. They pay for everything (which they cannot afford) so my holiday will only cost me £10. Still I do wish I was[ sic] on the Canaries.
If Mr Abercromby had disappointed you less he might have me more. I can’t tell you how glad I am to know about him, nor how lightly I condole with you for a companionship which produced so many memorable phrases. I do not mind his having disappeared. I hope that my Blow for British Freedom has reached you by now. I struck a puff for property too before leaving England: I arranged that the lease of the house where I live should be extended to cover my mother’s lifetime and I refused to sell a freehold wood adjoining it, which the landlord, Lord Farrer, tried to make pal-zeik-01 4/21/08 10:51 AM Page 33