by Mary Wesley
When I got into the train yesterday feeling very sick at leaving you, I sank into a coma and was dead asleep when we got to Plymouth, with my legs up on the seat opposite so that the only other occupant of the carriage had to shake me and yell in my ear ‘This is Plymouth’. He was old and explained not sufficiently nimble to leap over my legs or crawl underneath when he wanted to get out. I woke up again at Truro in time to get a tremendous kick of nostalgia and wish I’d had the sense to steal Dennis’s snow boots for you to wear in France.fn10
Be very careful won’t you, my darling, not only of wet feet but of bearing me in mind. Oh dear! I do want you back. Great waves of it are coming over me as I write. I hope I shall arrive at the joys of anticipating your return fairly soon. That’s going to be wonderful. It really is lovely to love you, all of it comes with this. I hope it reaches you quickly, and yet I feel to tell you I love you is a deplorable understatement of fact and things to come.
Mary
Boskenna – 24.11.44
My darling,
After the anti-climax of yesterday … I’ve suffered great uncertainty as to where to project my loving thoughts – London – mid-air – or Paris.
Did you I wonder enjoy the Bridie play?fn11 Or was it that I was in an enjoyable mood the night I saw it, and met you afterwards.
An amusing tweak to our lives is that Betty is terrified that Paul is going to clapper [sic] Claud, Mr Morris. If not Paul, Joy.fn12
I look like taking the train again very soon as my brother has arrived and threatens a wedding any day now. No settled date but autocratic telegrams at hourly intervals. It’s nice to be wanted but I do dread the train. Otherwise no news. My voice is hoarse from reading to Roger with measles. I’ve been pecked by the bull turkey and it never stops raining …
It’s early to tell but my love shows up in an unfaltering manner. Sweet, don’t falter either. Missing you as I do there simply isn’t room to do anything but love which when I come to think of it is the only sensible thing (as well as enjoyable) that I can do, or want to. I’m longing for news of you and don’t forget to send me your next address as it makes me feel nearer to you. My love this is short and hurried but I’m off to bed where I can indulge my imagination and memory as much as I please. The subject has a great sameness but how I like it!
All my love all of it,
Mary
Boskenna – 26.11.44
My Darling,
It’s so cold here, I hope you are not perished in Paris and pray you are getting hot baths. I spent all yesterday marketing in Penzance and ended up looking and feeling like a strawberry ice (wearing the loathsome Pink). The horrors of the morning were slightly mitigated by the genuine pleasure shown by the policeman who caught the Lord Lieutenant’s daughter, Lord Puff-Pufffn13 and me – ‘how she loves her title’ all parking our cars wrongfully outside the fish shop. And by finding Fowler’s Modern English Usage in the book shop. What good reading, I laughed so much reading it in bed this morning that I spilt my coffee and upset my dog.
Betty’s child had her birthday and Diana Blackwood’s child, who is dumped on us here for the duration, succumbed with [sic] the measles. Roger is almost over it and Toby holding out …
I shall go [to London] measles permitting, on Wednesday night for my brother’s wedding … [I look forward to] the sight of my family and all the relations who creep out of the country houses and South Kensington Hotels on these occasions, to pass remarks and make comparisons …
Darling, I do miss you so only you left, it seems to me, some part of yourself behind so that I feel happy all the time, no need of company and completely yours … I must speed this into the post so that perhaps it will catch up with you before you leave Paris. I love you in every conceivable way.
Mary
Eric’s first letter to Mary is written almost a month after their first meeting. He has arrived in Paris to take up his post with the Psychological Warfare Unit.
Major E. O. Siepmann,
Information Services,
British Embassy, Paris
c/o F.O. with 2 halfpenny stamp.
By Bag. Put your name and address
on outside of envelope.
27.11.44
Darling –
Address as above: F.O. [Foreign Office] has been notified. The only thing you have to avoid is sending messages to other people (not entitled to Bagfn14) which I don’t suppose you’d do anyway! No letter – I’m told they take 2 weeks, alas …
Paris is odd. Went to a party at which my host told me there would be some Americans who know nothing about anything, some French who know too much about everything, some of the haute noblesse who have forgotten nothing, and some of the haute noblesse who have learned something.
I thought it was dull.
Most comfortably installed at Hôtel Louvois – minus heat and hot water, but otherwise good – where I live chiefly because my colleagues live in the Castiglione. I am also entitled to eat there, but eat at the Crillon, for the same reason. This gives me time and quiet to think about my work and you – the only two things that matter to me – without interruption.
The tour looks better than I expected. Guests of FFI [Force française de l’intérieure, title of the Resistance forces incorporated into the French Army] at the good hotel in Toulouse which they have requisitioned; and sallies to Carcassonne, Albi etc. as occasion arises. This will give me time to found my own office, and I foresee sending for staff to hold the fort in early January, and rushing back myself in mid-January to return with P.A. and car. My chief impression at the moment is that it is staggeringly difficult to learn anything – owing to the segregation of various interests (which are far from merged, as one had hoped) and which is also partly due to the sheer transport trouble – I walked ten miles the first day, but have now found use of a car when needed!
I took an exhausted Pauline to see the Bridie play on my last night – and on to the Ritz! This obviously sentimental pilgrimage smashed her last efforts at malice, and she decided that I am a brother to her (‘a better brother than Bobby’!fn15) and made sincere efforts to be nice – which she can be – spoiled only by the wish of all one’s well-wishers … to see one ruined by a ‘bad’ woman rather than happy with a good one. The fact is, they can’t bear to see two people happy; it is an unbearable sight, which is why one should shut up about it! I will, in future.
I thought the play the best in English I’d ever seen (rather like a very good Jules Romain’s) and I couldn’t get over my astonishment at its ever being produced commercially. A great encouragement for the play which I’ll try and have ready to write by the time I see you (the ‘Olivier-Bobby’ soldiers’ return one) and which I shall make – as Hemingway used to say – just as intelligent, Reader, as I can make it. Incidentally, Paul – and several others – were thrilled at the ‘Negro’ play idea, but I think she wanted it for Bobby (she at once suggested an English film produced by Puffin Asquith) – such is the Newton mind, and possibly not a bad idea at that, Puffin being a great friend of mine and all of us being friends etc.! But I prefer Jack Housemanfn16 and [Paul] Robeson.
If you’ll stick to me, I’ll concentrate on all these things. This is a re-hash of a very long letter full of ‘bits’ and jokes which I’ve had to cut out, for obvious reasons. But don’t stint yourself – I mean me – I need some ‘bits’ to live on, and the censor is curious only as regards official secrets or personal messages.
I am playing with the idea of ‘faith’ as defined by you (possibly in your sleep?) and the great journey across the Alps from the bed opposite the Broad Walk to the marriage one, let alone the grave, appeals to me.
It is a bore to have to write in short-hand, and I shall have some very big ‘bits’ to deliver verbally when I see you again. Your photographs console and torment me, but Cornwall is very clear and everything else and especially the Georgics and your eyes at 2-inch range when they smile, and when they don’t.
Write often!
E.
We left my books at the De Vere! Please give them to Dennis.
Boskenna – 2.12.44
My Darling,
It was very lovely to get home this morning from London and find your first letter. Much appreciated.
May I throw back the cry of WRITE OFTEN? The only suggestions or criticism I have to make are that, as you once said to me, you should learn to spell my name, and that one sentence might have been omitted ‘If you stick to me’. It conjures up visions of glue – an unattractive substance usually connected with things broken – I prefer Aragon’s ‘Nous serons tous deux comme l’or d’un anneau …’
I too have been playing with the idea of Faith. One aspect, a simple one, seems to be that having found one person in whom I have faith I am in a fair way to growing smugly impervious to the winds of malice. It’s a startling and enjoyable feeling, rather like meeting God at a party.
Darling, I will telephone to Dennis to rescue your books. I wish I’d known yesterday … as I passed ‘Rubber is Scarce’ – a placard for which I have a strong sentimental attachment and could have fetched them myself.
I had news of the enemy in London – none of it would make Sylvester writhe quieter at night …fn17
My brother’s wedding was a splendid and agreeable performance. In the grossly overcrowded church there were two themes of conversation carried on in carrying whispers. Mary’s divorce, the first to disgrace the family for a hundred years, and the curious fact that Hugh and Constantia look exactly alike.fn18
There was lots of champagne at the party afterwards, in the house of one of the late King Edward’s mistresses, a racy old lady who got bored and bore me off to see the secret stair down which as she put it ‘one can nip down secretely [sic] if surprised’. There was a fine collection of Ambassadors, and their widows, gamekeepers, ex-loves of Hugh’s, mobs of relations, old nannies and friends. My husband was there … He tells me they kick off with the case in January. So many people went out of their way to be pleasant to me that I realised just how greatly in family disgrace I am. At the time it made me rather giggly …
I dined with Alec and Betty, Phyllis Allen and that man Nack [unidentified], both of whom I took a violent dislike to, and unable to stand the company took refuge in the Paddington Hotel where I waited for my train and read The Idiot.
Getting into my sleeper absolutely whacked I was assailed by night horrors about my family’s disapproval, wept stormily and gave myself a sore throat and the feeling that I really had been through the mangle this time and wished violently for you … I just wish they’d shut up … My sisterfn19 without ever referring to the subject managed to convey an infinity of loyal support and went bounding up in my estimation …
While I was away Toby started measles, and is in full swing. Not in the least ill, eating like a horse and tormenting the two little girls who are still rather ill with it. The night nursery has a row of cots filled with scarlet-faced children eating oranges and wearing hideous paper hats I brought them from Harrods.
I am glad to be back so that I can stay put geographically until mid-January, clear up the measles epidemic and get on with the typing lessons I have imposed on myself. I’m being taught by an old maiden with a fluffy white beard who says I am not quite as stupid as some.
I envy you Carcassonne and think it a pity that there hasn’t been a little bit of fighting round it, it might have undone the harm Viol[l]et Le Duc did when he prinked it up so much …
Boskenna – 3.12.44
My Darling,
I am exceedingly interested in your play and don’t see why after it’s been done by Houseman and Robeson it shouldn’t be filmed only I distrust the English Films. In my meagre experience of English film production, they seem to have learnt to do nothing well except miss the bus with unfailing regularity. I would love you to buck up with the writing of it – as I wanted to tell you one day when we were in the Café Royal, and you shut me up at half-cock (now at a safe distance I shall say it!), as I think it should be produced during 1945.
I have recovered from the exhaustion of the family wedding and feel most healthy. Our new cook makes life most comfortable. She is an imposing personality – thinks us all half-witted and on her days off wears sensible shoes, a Harris Tweed overcoat and a porkpie hat. She looks as if she bred Great Danes. I shall probably be very fat when next you see me as she brings me little snacks all the time.
I must have changed as Alec looked at me the other day and said, ‘I don’t know what’s happened to you Darling but I’m very glad.’ Looking at the nursery rocking horse which I painted not so long ago I wondered whether it isn’t true that all forms of bad art are self imative [sic]. I see I have given it eyelashes like ostrich feathers, spots like American bruises [wartime slang for love bites] on its haunches, and as for its mane and tail – Well!
… Possibly impatience of the time between now and mid-January will counteract the cook’s snacks. And there is what I trust will be a very long journey to the grave to look forward to … Lots more letters please. I love the one I’ve got and love you.
M.
Major E. O. Siepmann,
Information Services, British Embassy, Paris
Café, Bd. des Italiens – 5.12.44
Darling –
As I never seem to write a ‘proper’ letter, and yet you are always in my thoughts, I now carry about notepapers and I shall send you scraps. This is nicer for me than for you, because I enjoy brooding about you whereas the ‘scraps’ are apt to give only moderate pleasure.
I am in the ‘old café’, underneath my office – of 1930: waiting to go and see Le Quai des Brumes, in the same cinema where I saw it before. These nostalgic exercises do not prevent me from looking towards the future: a habit which I had lost, and thanks to you have found again. The T. S. Eliot poems on Time which I read with you at my feet strike me as very good in retrospect. They and the Georgics would make an excellent Christmas and birthday present: I shall try and spend the latter with you, January 21st.
I have ordered a French woman to find you an umbrella, and please name your scent as otherwise you will get (a) Bourgeois ‘Soir de Paris’, which Malcolm Muggeridge’sfn20 says you ought to have, or (b) Je Reviens, which is my favourite but which I do not connect with you.
No word from you since wedding.
Malcolm, carrying an ultra-secret bag to London tomorrow, has refused in violent terms to carry any umbrella in it (I didn’t tell him for whom). Churlishly he said that if I sent one round he’d give it to the secretary whom I’ve described as beautiful and whom he described as ‘wizard’.
I shall be in Paris at least until Monday or Tuesday (11th or 12th). So please continue to send by Bag, and even after I’ve gone they will forward to Toulouse as best they can – probably fortnightly.
I had 50 minutes’ talk with the Ambassadorfn21 who was interested in any report I can make on my region. I have been concerned to have the idea of my office (now backed by the F.O.) accepted by the Embassy here – MOI having done nothing to gain their sympathy as usual, so that if I hadn’t acted I might well have found myself detested as an interloper. Meanwhile I’ve also had the necessity of a P.A. accepted by my MOI boss and I shall probably send for my secretary in early January to hold the fort while I fetch the said P.A., and a car, from London.
Luncheon today with Adrian Helman, the Minister known unfortunately as ‘l’impuissant’ since he married Tyrell’s daughter with éclat in Notre-Dame, only to have it annulled shortly afterwards by the Pope. He has a new, serious wife (rather good for Résistance purposes) whereas he is Catholic and jolly and gave us lots to drink. They live in the flat of ex-Herr Mumm, the champagne merchant, with a lovely view. One French woman and one French F.O. official were capable of talking me down (without frowning at, even, interruptions) so that it was quite a good party. Anyhow, it was quite obvious who were the intelligent members of it.
Everything is interesting. I’ve seen old friends. Two hours with Geo
rges Borisfn22 who more or less started the Résistance and BBC in London. Very depressed, very depressing. They mostly hate themselves at the moment, are nervous, exasperated. The city is sad, wet, dark at night, no buses and taxis, amazingly beautiful, cold. I went to see the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life – only I was nine when I thought so, and that was 32 years ago and I hadn’t seen her since! She was still beautiful, had been hiding youths from Lorraine (her country) in her house, fussed with her brooch which she kept on taking off (her breasts were, indeed, white) and began to take my life in hand, reduce my daily expenses-sheet and tell me that I should meet ‘All Paris’ in her flat. In fact, she instantly produced a lively one-eyed youth who was described as a major in the Résistance and the future Minister of the Interior. I left, alarmed but imperceptible, in the middle of a sentence and I suspect that she is talking still. I forgot to say that her two sons are prisoners [POWs], and her daughter’s flyer-husband killed, that’s what it’s like here. Other friends – after 10 minutes’ uneasy conversation I asked: ‘Et Pierrot?’ A brilliant boy of 18. He had disappeared a year ago, having – I believe – become a communist. His parents are white reactionaries.
I find you brave and amusing, understanding and beautiful, simple and sophisticated, and I love you. More than that, I mean to get you. Off to the film.
E.
Hotel – 7.12.44
My darling – what joy to find your two letters: as if I’d never expected to get one again …
I was entranced by the account of the wedding, I could not help being pleased by Alec’s remark, and derive delight from the narcissistic decoration of the rocking-horse.
