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 shilling 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 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 companion-able blighters, has gone and struck up 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 premíres 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?