Letters to a Friend

by Diana Athill

  Much love to you both, Diana

  27 SEPTEMBER 1985

  Dearest Edward –

  What marvellous news! Kent Carroll [of the publishers Carroll & Graf] was temporarily out of my good books because, in a flash of uncharacteristic common sense, he declined to publish my book about my poor suicide [After A Funeral] on the grounds that his sales people don’t think etc. . . . But now he is back in my very best of books for good. [Carroll had agreed to reissue Alfred Chester’s novel Exquisite Corpse.]

  I shall write at once, and congratulate him. I expect I have a copy of my piece somewhere – tho’ he might be shrewd enough to prefer some distinguished American Name . . . Anyway, I’ll offer it [Edward had proposed my Alfred piece as an introduction]. After all, I was quoted in a New York Times leader (on censorship) the other day, without reference to Instead of a Letter – simply ‘as Diana Athill has said’ as tho’ I were Somerset Maugham or someone!!!! Wow!

  I’m glad your book is going well. I’ve been rambling through Village and do think you’re clever – because while it’s the sort of thing lots of people like, it’s not a cynically cooked up nonsense. It’s a most craftsmanlike job, and there’s every reason to be interested in how the people and their relationships develop. Barry didn’t get on very well with it because he’s (to a fault) without any ‘so what happened then?’ feelings – he says he doesn’t despise people who respond to story-telling just as story-telling, but in fact he can’t help feeling that they are a bit infantile, which cuts him off from a lot of fun. He says he feels embarrassed about not having read Village but that he still loves you both.

  I was only in Berlin once, for a few days, just before the war. One could feel Armageddon looming – indeed, when leaning over a balcony in the Rhine valley, revelling in the view as I waited for my breakfast, I saw a group of cheerful boys and girls marching by, led by a sort of scout master and singing a stirring song, and I can still vividly recall a cold sinking feeling that struck as I realized that the words they were singing were ‘Wir gehen nach England’ or whatever ‘we are marching against England’ is in German. ‘Yes,’ said my father, ‘I’m afraid that is what it means. I think it’s probably lucky that we are on our way home.’ So I didn’t take to Berlin . . . another memory has just this moment returned: getting the curse and having to buy some sanitary diapers and the chambermaid in the hotel saying that I could get them downstairs in the barbershop and having to stammer out my request to the fat insolent looking barber while watched with even more insolent amusement by his three even fatter customers, all with two rolls of fat at the backs of their shaven necks, like the tritest caricatures of Germans . . . horrid Berlin! But I’m very glad to know that it is giving you comfortable and convenient shelter.

  Went last night to rejoin my beloved sewing class and found that I’d left it too late and it’s over-full for this coming semester, so ended up in a life-drawing class instead – which was marvellous. Lovely solid pink model and about twelve earnest students, all but one of them with much less idea of how to draw than me!!! I’d forgotten that years ago I used to long to go to a life class and have a naked body there, immobile, for as long as I needed to look at it, in order to get it on to paper . . . God knows why – I certainly shan’t suddenly turn into a painter – but it was madly absorbing.

  My cousin who owns the house and lives downstairs but who is now in Washington until after the next American election, for the Economist, has decided that she can’t after all afford not to let the two bottom floors of the house for a realistic rent. [The music students had moved on.] She is no nest-builder, so it has always been fairly scruffy down there, and by the time she left for Washington it was a slum, more or less, so it has to be decorated before I can let it. And carpeted. And furnished. And – this has only just transpired – cured of very bad damp in one bedroom. And – an even later discovery – the other bedroom’s ceiling to be stripped off and replaced before it actually falls off which it will do any minute now . . . Partly I shudder with horror as what I have undertaken to do, and partly I get a mad kick out of playing at being a real house-owner but I expect the horror will prevail before too long. At the moment I am able to repose in a condition of imbecile trust on the (metaphorical) bosom of my builder, who is really a Nigerian potter (his pots are good), because he is very tall and very handsome and has a divine black-velvet voice and loves gardening – I only have to amble around the garden with Cornelius, talking about propagating lilies, to feel that All Must Be Well. But whether in fact that assortment of elderly Irish alcoholics and teen-age Rastafarians that he employs . . . Ah, let’s not cross bridges until we come to them.

  I’m now going to write to Kent Carroll – I shall even address him by his first name, which I have never done before! – and tell him how much honour he brings to American publishing.

  Much love, Diana OOXXOOXXOO. Do Americans write hugs and kisses like we do?

  10 APRIL 1986

  Dear Ed,

  Sorry to hear that you’ve had such a terrible winter, and that your poor mother is in this ruined state. What a nightmare! Of course it’s not heartless to ‘flee abroad’ when there’s nothing you could possibly do if you stayed . . . but of course you are going to feel guilty about doing it. One goes on stubbornly feeling that all situations must have ‘right’ answers which, if hit on, would leave one feeling good about them – but it’s almost always a choice of evils; and certainly you’re choosing by far the lesser evil in this case, since only you will be made uncomfortable by pangs of needless guilt – your sisters would have to be there anyway.

  Listen – I shall be coming to Washington on May l5 for a three week vacation spent mostly staying with my cousin – but no doubt I’ll visit NY anyway, and certainly I shall if you are still there.

  Congratulations on finishing the book [a successor to Village, but less successful]. Oh what a heroic and industrious pair you are!

  Much love, Diana

  Would a one room flat do you? With small kitchen, bathroom and separate john? Because, having done up my cousin’s part of the house for her, I’m now doing up her son’s flat, the floor beneath mine. He wants to keep one room ‘in case’ – he’ll rarely be there – and a tiny room to store things in, and I’m planning to let the remaining sitting room as a bed-sitter. It won’t be smart, but it will be clean and not disagreeable. But I feel that it would almost certainly be too claustrophobic for two people. If Adam wasn’t around, his room could be overflowed into for sleeping – but it would be full of his things . . . I reckon I can charge 50 a week for the bed-sitter plus kitchen etc. (it’s all on Barbara’s, my cousin’s, behalf) – you’d probably be more comfortable elsewhere, but I could keep this for you if you wished. XX D

  9 JUNE 1986

  Dearest Edward,

  Of course I didn’t mind learning that Alfred bad-mouthed me! [To his friend Harriet Sohmers who told me about it when I was in New York and Edward had us to dinner together.] I was lucky that he never went for me – he easily might have done, considering what a perilous relationship with him being his publisher was. I enjoyed Harriet enormously – just thought ‘The old bastard!’ at the bad-mouthing bit, and forgot it. It’s dear of you to have worried.

  I loved visiting you in your cave – your exotic, snug, oriental cave. I’ve been wondering ever since, on and off, how that impossible space can possibly have been so attractive and welcoming . . . clever you!

  Kent Carroll has written offering me ‘a token fee’ of $100 [for my piece about Alfred] – ok by me – and sending me a copy of their jacket, which I think is very good.

  Enjoy the Getty. Stern Neil! I expect he’s right, and staying put is the thing if you want to get that wretched synopsis done.

  Much love to you, Diana

  10 SEPTEMBER 1986

  Dearest Edward,

  Just as I was getting around to feeling really bad for not having answered your last letter, here comes another one – and such a treat of a letter. I
t’s not possible to imagine more delicious words than ‘absolutely spectacular’!!!! Barry likes the piece [the Alfred memories] too – he said ‘exciting’ . . . and I know why it has worked so well: it’s thanks to you and Neil.

  Because I was, in the first place, writing it down for you two and not thinking of it in print. I’ve often said to people here who have written a disastrous blurb – ‘Look, imagine you’re writing a letter to a friend telling them what a lovely book you’ve just read. That’ll get it going.’ And it does – which this little introduction is a proof of. I must say I’m a bit cross with Kent – something like half a dozen glaring typos, no me on the title page, and not copyrighted! That really is very amateurish. I hope he’s ashamed of himself. I didn’t have the nerve to complain about the title page (why the hell not? I don’t know a single writer who wouldn’t have, and quite right too . . . it’s some ridiculous residue from An English Upbringing) but I did about the copyrighting, because that’s really shocking.

  What wonderful work you’ve put in. I wish I could think there’s some kind of Alfred-consciousness still floating around, to know. Of course, there may be, since what I think or don’t think has nothing to do with it.

  My dears – if Elaine says your book’s going to be Money I’d be very surprised if it isn’t. Oh how clever you are. Having never written anything that didn’t bubble out of an Impulse, I’m stunned with admiration for the kind of constructive effort that goes into thinking out a book. It must, of course, bring the impulses in its wake – once you’ve rough-hewn your characters you must find lots of things about them beginning to dictate themselves . . . I’m not surprised that you are beginning to enjoy teaching yourselves how to write novels, but I am a bit awestruck that you can do it.

  How extraordinary people are! There are you, going around with an aura of such assurance and poise . . . I truly find it hard to believe that you aren’t pretending when you say you’re not like that. Is it not rather comforting to know that the efforts you have made to appear what you don’t feel like have been so very successful? And as for old – you’re very lucky to have Such Good Bones, dear! Eyelashes don’t matter all that much when the features are Truly Distinguished. When you get to be really old it will be possible to say of you what a cleaning lady I once had wanted to be able to say about her wildly irresponsible Polish husband: ‘Oh God,’ she said to him, ‘I wish you’d hurry up and be eighty, because then I’ll be able to enjoy you as a work of art.’

  I’ve decided that it’s a waste of precious time to think about getting old. We’ll have to think about creeping and wheezing when we’re actually doing same, but to hell with letting such miseries cast their shadows before them; while things like not looking pretty anymore, getting fat (me), losing eyelashes (you), hair getting terribly thin (me) . . . it’s amazing how little they matter if you forget about them. I reckon my looks were more of a worry to me in the days when they could aspire to being good than they are now – Jesus, the anxious hours I used to spend painting absurd Thirties faces onto my faultless 19-year-old skin!

  It’s lovely that your travels are now in sight again, so to speak. It’ll be such a delight to see you again. Much love, Diana. XXOO from B.

  13 JANUARY 1987

  Dearest Ed –

  How I bless you both for laughing at After A Funeral, because I thought that lots of it was funny in spite of the misery of it all at the end – but most people seem to be too oppressed by the sadness to feel that. As for me in the role of psychiatrist – on showing to date I’d have a dismal record, since nothing but the Worst seems to happen to the nuts who come my way!

  Alas – the flat downstairs has now been claimed by my cousin’s son. My feelings about Barry’s absences follow a well-worn path: first, pangs of loss; second, when I set about cleaning his room, Black Rage (God, what an old shit he is!); third, a nice, serene time of enjoying being on my own; fourth, fairly mild but genuine pleasure at the thought that he’ll be back next week . . . Ah me, look at what becomes of Passion!

  Writing about sex – I enjoy it while I’m doing it, but yes – I do feel quite embarrassed when it’s done. I try to avoid thinking of people reading it! When I said that to Barry he said once, ‘Well, why don’t you cut the bit when you went to bed with Waguih?’ But it seemed to me it had to be there.

  Much love and longing to see you. Diana

  20 JANUARY 1987

  Barry’s gone off to Jamaica for two months – the first time since his mother died. He sounds glad to be there. He’s worried about his eldest brother Carol, whom he hasn’t seen for years, because he thinks he may have Parkinson’s; and his sister Cynthia has just had to employ three men armed with cutlasses to catch her mad son, who had taken to living wild in the bush, and reported this to him ‘in precisely the same voice as she used when she talked about everything else!’ Poor Cynthia – I guess she’s so accustomed to the tribulations of having a mad son that she feels she is talking about ‘everything else’. A foolish woman of my acquaintance who loves to drop little seeds of discomfort into her friends’ lives, has just written me a long letter condoling with me for having to spend a dreary Christmas with my ancient ma while Barry ‘is off to all that sun and family warmth in the Caribbean’. Little does she know! Fortunately I don’t have to pay good money to keep out of that simmering little plague spot of an island, but if I did, I would! However, B does love his family, so it does him good to see them from time to time.

  I’m feeling very happy at the moment because I’ve just had a New Year’s card from New York addressed in a hand I didn’t recognize, and it turned out to be from the cousin of the man I wrote After A Funeral about – the cousin appears briefly in the book, called Mémé – and he says he’s just read it: ‘tears, laughter, tears – you’ve written a lovely thing’. Such a relief to know that a member of ‘Didi’s’ family was able to like it – I’ve secretly been dreading what their reaction might be if they came across it. (I think I’ve been failing to allow for how very much of the stuff about them I cut at the last moment.)

  I never got a note from Kent to say he was sorry he’d left my name off the E.C. Isn’t he horrid!

  Much love to you both, my dears. Diana

  [Waguih Ghali (whose nickname in his family was Tou-Tou but I changed it to Didi in my book), author of Beer in the Snooker Club, killed himself in my flat after a long battle with depression. After A Funeral is my account of our relationship, in which some members of his family figured.]

  9 SEPTEMBER 1987

  Dearest Edward,

  Oh what torture that tax business must have been – I’m sure I would have expired from stress. The sensations of guilt inspired by the very word! That you got off so lightly in the end ought to inspire the beginnings of confidence that they won’t actually eat you up if they catch you – but of course one will go on cowering and squeaking at the sight of brown envelopes.

  Have just buried poor old George Mikes, whose rather unfunny funny books (largely written – hush! – by me) [a gross exaggeration!] we’ve been publishing for forty years and who was the last of André’s Hungarian childhood friends. Funeral strictly family (memorial due later) – so who was the very elegant and rather insane-looking Hungarian lady hovering on the outskirts? I went over to be hospitable and she clutched me by the wrist (hers tintinnabulating with gold bangles and chains) and hissed: ‘I vas zee first fiancée – zee werry first. He did not leaff me – I leaf him. He vas not man who show feelings – you know him, you know zat? – but ven his sister tell him I marry somevun else – he faint.’ There must be a great difference between the way little Hungarian girls and little English girls are brought up, when it comes to Boasting. I’d have died rather than tell anyone at the funeral how much the lazy old so-and-so used to expect me to do to his books – and only tell you because you are far away and never knew him. But perhaps if there had been as many editors in George’s life as there were women, I too would have felt the need to proclaim my standing among
them.

  Love to you and Neil, Diana

  19 JANUARY 1988

  Dearest Edward –

  What a disappointment – the collapse of your plans for the winter. I’ll certainly let you know if I bump into any likely prospects in the way of ‘exchangers’ – and you must be inventing seeing my face fall as I first saw your exotic lair, because I liked it at once. It seemed to me beautifully un-New Yorkish.

  I’ve had to decide on four days in the country looking after my ma to every three days at home in London. On first reaching that decision I came home to London and instantly went down with a violent flu – which proved to be psychosomatic, since once it was over my despair at the prospect was purged. It does mean frantically hard work during my three London days, because I can get very little done in the country – a couple of hours a day if I’m lucky; but fortunately I love my ma, and my sister has lent me an old car to keep down there so I don’t have an exhausting drive twice a week but come and go by rail, which is quick and comfortable and can be read on . . . it isn’t too bad, and I’ve learnt not to waste nervous energy when there by waking up at night and brooding on the fact that sooner or later I’ll have to cope with ma’s dying. Of course, she may become ill beyond my nursing abilities and die in a hospital, but I do really hope for her sake that she’s carried off by a heart attack while still at home. Mentally she’s fine – reads avidly, knits and embroiders the most dashing objects considered madly trendy by her great-grandchildren, and we share a passion for her garden . . . and Barry and the flat give me very intense pleasure now they are no longer every-day, so there are blessings to count.