by Mary Wesley
All my love (my lunatic),
Eric
Eric had probably known for some time that he was mentally ill. Mary denied this possibility. In 1963 clinical depression was not commonly diagnosed; sufferers were supposed to ‘get a grip’ and ‘get on with it’. Eric had been displaying symptoms of depression for many years, perhaps since the collapse of his first marriage in 1929. He now began to face this situation, but instead of seeking professional help he turned to his religion. It is clear from Eric’s letters that Mary is beginning to feel the strain.
Priory Cottage – 22.4.63
Dearest Pol,
… I have re-written one chapter. It is a hard (and final) test. I still think it can be done. Once started I average 1000–1500 words a day …
I go my magnificent walk. Anemones and primroses and usually I meet Father Gregory. Fr Wilfrid rang up, but did not come after saying he might. His brother nearly died (‘say a prayer please’).
On the way back from 8am mass it hailed so hard that it cut my forehead … Betty is a saint. Now that’s what I do call a ‘saint’. (I’ve done no washing up). The dining room walls gleam …
I shall certainly not make a list of your habits. You must put up with mine. It is I who have grossly failed you, by not ensuring your security. Bad, though possibly not the worst kind of failure. Nerves. That is the worst.
I cannot say that I miss you. The ego-centric, uninterrupted peace is welcome (and I am sure you are glad to be away from my grumbles). But the profitability breaks down as soon as I fail to keep a rigid regime. Work-walk-work-read (I am training myself to keep a 7 to 10 day). As yesterday. When I retired to bed at 4, and surprised myself – and the animals – by suddenly weeping loudly, and even wilfully though I did not put it on or force it. I just let it go, to see what happened. And I heard myself practically screaming like a lunatic. Kindly reserve two beds in the Insane Asylum, for Phyl [Phyllis Jones] and me. Adjoining. (Explanation: in case you look wider – strain of writing, fury that it just doesn’t come right, without effort.)
I am, of course mentally diseased. The job is to make my neurosis profitable …
Things are moving fast in Russia (Khrushchev to go) but that suits – not me but – my story …
We have both been beastly lately. Nothing to forgive – au contraire, don’t force yourself to be sweet, like Phyllis: that, I think, is a really false basis. (I had a particularly ardent Mass. Came home. The Devil took over. Anger, idleness … Muriel Spark says it’s the despair of the flesh after all that uplift of spirit. Uplift mixed with scepticism, in my case; perhaps even more hysteria-making) …
True is ghastly in bed. I’ve discovered a trick. She has her own hot water bottle, to lure her away …
What is True supposed to live on? We give her mince (daily); but usually she scorns it. She eats nothing, except chocolate biscuits.
Some respect (mixed with irritation), much Gratitude, and all my love, (whatever that means) –
Eric
Priory Cottage – 24.4.63
… Yesterday Father Gabriel came to lunch (he goes to Oxford today). He is less gauche, due to Oxford – and Priory Cottage’s shock treatment. Very nice. He said the best thing for those old girls at Callow Endfn65 would be the hardest – for them: to tell them to mix charitably with the ‘bourgeois Catholics’! He was a bit shocked at their arrogant isolation – and ours. He teased me about becoming friends with Catholics now, eg Cdr. Ker!? We both had doubts about the practicability of the advice, as far as Phyllis and Emily are concerned. But, just because it is the toughest advice, it might appeal to Phyl? (I doubt it.)
After a bottle of wine and half a bottle of light port I made him walk through the woods and pretended not to notice his difficulties with the mud. That’ll teach him not to appreciate Father Wilfred: whom this time, he praised as saintly, but whose knowledge of human nature he doubted. I told him it was ten times his own.
Just as he left the Vet called in, to inquire after Constable. He had a cup of tea, and a long discussion on education and then left saying he’d ‘see pussy another time’. I think he was lusting after you: couldn’t see any object in the visit otherwise …
I hope I’m not as horrid as I think I am. I love you quite a lot …
Eric
Priory Cottage – 14.8.63
The two days after you left were a sickness (after excesses) but on Sunday I had an invocation of the Spirit and a charming and effective Mass at Ashburton …
Result: 2250 words on Monday! (after a pill). Next, after a sleepless night, suicide. Despair. Horrors … I hope for a flow of words tomorrow.
I finished Fishermanfn66 – such rot ought to be censored by the Vatican (Holy Office, Inquisition and all the rest of it). Luckily I have a splendid paper-back on the Eastern Church which holds me as a jig-saw. This is my subject, and as I piece it together it becomes exciting. (I need some continuity in my ideas.) …
The thought that I have only six weeks (in which I mean to finish my book), and one year until we are flat broke, makes me tremble … and work! Especially as find I conceive masterpieces nowadays; not just ‘funny books’ …
I have just had a splendid new central idea … as I walked with Madame True across the fields …
Analyse yourself. Now, analyse yourself! And tell me the results. (And for god’s sake don’t be meek and self-critical, like Phyllis Jones.) But tell me, who is Mary who is she? …
On 15 August, Harry Siepmann wrote to Eric to thank him for sending photographs of Billy. ‘As it happens I was thinking (telepathically?) in the night – a prolific period for me nowadays – about the deficiencies of our family relationship, which I deplore as much with reference to a future I shall never see as to a present which is more dissociated than I think it need be.’. After receiving this letter Eric proposed to visit Harry on 6 September, then decided he was not up to it and suggested a postponement to January. Harry Siepmann died on 16 September.
Priory Cottage – 19.8.63
Bill sends me a card: ‘Happy Hangover!’ … The Creator Spiritus is giving me a bad time …
Priory Cottage – 22.8.63
Darling,
This is to greet you chez Phyl. Give her my love. My bad temper has been due to the major crisis, involving my work (or my inability to work). But things are going better, ideas bubbling up just when I have decided that ‘I can’t do it’. Fr Gabriel spent an afternoon, and helped me. I was still writing three books! – and had to decide which …
Priory Cottage – 24.8.63
This morning’s letter rather alarmed me. It looked as though you were drunk, hangover-ed, or had just committed suicide. Are you alright? …
The agreeable thing is that I am able to do a little work after a 3 o’clock tea. The miracle which alone can save us, may have occurred. Certainly the book is taking shape …
I do hope C. Burnett [Ivy Compton Burnett] continues to ‘take’. She is, I think, an immortal. I shall be happy in sharing her with you. I am reading the Russian church, interrupted by the superb KUNGfn67 which came from Sheed and Ward …
Priory Cottage – 26.8.63 – 6th Anniversaryfn68
… Post came early, and your letter has arrived. You will certainly be welcomed! … Please don’t bribe me with sex – as, I think, you consciously did before you went … It is alright, I want you to rest … However, you are kindly offering me a week getting up at 5.30 and going to church 4 times daily [i.e. a retreat at Buckfast Abbey]. ‘No need to go to’ the Imperial Torquay, or anything like that! Harsh, aren’t I? (The fact is, I think my vanity is hurt.) …
Montini [Pope Paul VI] is clever. He must know that a statement to anyone but the Eastern hierarchies cannot lead to anything … I am increasingly pessimist … Altogether I am sceptical about any get-together, Christian or Christian and Communist. This is my greatest hope (when I believe at all). But it will only come, not by reasoning, but out of blood …
Priory Cottage – 30.8.63
Dear Pol,
All is well … All my books are written except for the prose …
In January 1964, Eric, driving to pick Billy up from school, had a serious accident after which Mary’s beloved dog, True, had to be put down. Following this accident Eric’s handwriting changed. He failed to recover his previous state of health and underwent a long series of hospital tests which were inconclusive.
Priory Cottage – 6.4.64
Pol,
This is a damned exciting play. How can I stick at it till it’s done? Glue needed; as when I said ‘you’d better stick to me’ (December 1944) and you reprimanded me – YOU, ME! – for my English!! …
Priory Cottage – 9.4.64
Dearest Neurotic,
You are not a neurotic! (Repeat, NOT). You are sensitive and loving and anxious, and that’s all. Hence the tautness. It was the biggest mistake I ever made, to take pupils for these 4–5 years. From my point of view I’ve just read what I hadn’t realised to be the ‘brilliant’ notices and letters about my abilities: which I wrote off as ‘failure’:-it was the 5 vital years lost. As for my using you as housemistress, it was (to use Winston’s phrase) ‘to harness a thoroughbred to a dung cart’! I am terribly sorry. We must recapture time, and happiness (this can be done, but it needs gifts – which we’ve got).
In August 1964, Mary and Eric left their rented accommodation at Ashburton, below the moor, and moved into the last house they lived in together, Cullaford Cottage, a small thatched cottage high up on Dartmoor and not far from Chagford and Thornworthy. It was too small to lodge pupils and Eric’s tutoring work had in any case come to an end. In 1965, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, one consequence, in Mary’s opinion, of his car crash. No letters survive from this period. As Eric’s health deteriorated Mary left him alone less frequently, but in 1966 he felt well enough to travel with his sister Edith to Bristol, to visit Clifton College, where Otto Siepmann, his German father, had been one of the most celebrated teachers of his generation, and where he and his brothers and sisters had been born. He made this journey while Mary was in hospital for an operation.
2 Sion Hill, Clifton, Bristol 8 – 20.6.66
My dearest Pol,
This is to wish you an easy op. And a complete cure as after-effect …
I was delighted with your letter, news and £1!fn69 I feel useless with all this charity coming in but that can’t be helped – in any immediate future that I can see. Enough. (Did you see Miss Rigg’s marvellous notices? My play ‘would have been’ perfectly timed. She is now ripe for lead and play of her own.)fn70
… [We] called on the Headmaster at Clifton, were made much of, passed on to the most intelligent housemaster for half-an-hour’s very good chat (chiefly on homosexuality) and invited to their garden party; it turned out to be ‘Commemoration’, with a beautiful cricket match which I enjoyed! Also, as it is term, I found the High School active and was shown over my house, including the room in which I was born. It is all traumatic and magical. As I write I can see Suspension Bridge, and my unconscious gives a twang as if I had suddenly become 8 again …
I had a most salutary and even entertaining confession. After I had confessed, sardonic silence. Then an excellent brief discourse on Redemption, which I never understand. Then: ‘If you can remain in these dispositions for only, say two months …’
Me: ‘I shan’t!’
‘Alright, that’s irrelevant. Say even two weeks. Say even two days …’ (then with faint but humorous impatience) … ‘if only two minutes’!
A nice man. Cathedral is hideous.
2 The Terrace, Boston Spa, Yorkshire – 27.6.66
… You did not seem anxious to have me back, but I am afraid I must return on Thursday …
I wish you liked P. [pornography] Lit. I have just read far the most outspoken and improper books ever published – or at least, I thought so – and, at the age of 63 I learned all sorts of things I never knew! Do study a little harder. (They are: My Life and Loves Frank Harris and The Adventurers by Robbens [sic],fn71 read by Toby, 10/6 each, I fear; but I don’t like to be innocent, or rather ignorant, at my age.)
Edith is a bit less innocent than I thought, but very sweet and good and not at all boring in her own home. Family sagas, galore. I fear Harry really was the evil genius of our family.
I am cannibalising all I have written – except the play – in last 18 months into open book. Thrilling.
On s’en tirera … but I am terribly sorry it’s a rough patch … You are a marvel and a help and I love you,
Eric
In the summer of 1967 Mary decided to take Billy, then aged thirteen, on a long visit to their friends and family in Germany. Phyllis Jones moved into Cullaford Cottage to look after Eric.
Cullaford Cottage – 1.7.67
Dearest Pol,
… I have finished Part I (34,000 words) and having it typed helps immeasurably. Like Bill, I can’t write decently and a decent size. What is this disease? When I’ve made money I’ll get a tape recorder …
Cullaford Cottage – 26.7.67
My darling Mary,
We were very glad to get your first letter, and that Billy hound! … I do hope you flourish in the change of atmosphere. Toby said (he rang up) he had never seen you in better looks or form!
Phyllis is a perfect companion, and cooks delicious lunches …
Cullaford Cottage – 6.8.67
My darling Pol,
We are flourishing, thanks to a lovely summer … We see inordinate loads of muck on TV, and I do a little work. Phyl is perfect.
A little work, and a little lust. The current Stern has a photograph of a naked 13-year old negress with a figure like yours, looking down and smiling as if she was being had. And I say to myself, that is how Pol laughed and looked down in the gay times. So hurry home …
Give Ludwig my love. He married the secretary of the Manchester Guardian (Terence Prittie’s), English, I think. They took me to Hammerstein on the Rhine for wine-drinking.fn72 Ask him if he would like a Weekly Letter (radio) from ‘an experienced journalist’? Love also to Popsy Donhoff, who takes herself so seriously. (Would she like a Weekly Letter? An outsider’s angle, ‘Germany’s mission as peacemaker’ etc?) Don’t put yourself out. The time to cash in will be when my political thriller has appeared. (Very good new title – Secret, Tell NO ONE – Maquis International). I still AIM to end in September.
I have all that I want in knowing that you and Bill exist. I love you both, and I am proud of you. ‘You are my raison d’etre’ … to be sung to tune of ‘You are my heart’s delight’ (‘Du bist mein ganzes Herz’, to Billy) …
I find that I think very highly of you, indeed …
Your affectionate husband,
Eric
The correspondence that started in the autumn of 1944 ends in the summer of 1967.
Maquis International was never completed. In 1969, by which time Eric had become too ill to write, or read, Mary’s first two novels – Speaking Terms, for children, and The Sixth Seal, for young adults – were published.
Eric Siepmann died in January 1970. He left his own epitaph in a poem dated 18 December 1964 that lay undiscovered among his papers and is published here in its complete form for the first time.
Epitaph of an Idle Artist
Here at my desk I mock my fate,
If help comes now it comes too late.
The valued pictures in my mind
By sheer neglect have made me blind.
My dream deserved a steady look,
I failed to put it in a book,
And now, and now I cannot see,
My dream destroyed reality.
Disliking fact I looked for truth
And patterns new allured my youth,
I would reveal the hidden thing,
But (slothful) I forgot to sing.
So then from truth I turned away
But blinded by the light of day
Found radiant fact too much for me,
I cannot bear reality.
No fact consoles me for my flight,
No truth can give me back my sight,
No dream can make me think I see,
No life is left, so bury me.
Mary was devastated by Eric’s death and for many years she suffered from extreme depression. On the 30th anniversary of their meeting she wrote in her diary
30 years
Hold my hand
Stay close
Don’t leave me
Drive carefully
– a litany that reads like the memory of words exchanged in the moments before she left Eric on a winter’s night in 1970 to drive to Cornwall to fetch home their son.
In 1978 she started to write ‘Please do NOT resuscitate’ inside the front cover of the engagement diary which she kept in her handbag – a habit she maintained until 1981. Eventually she decided to fight back and to imagine her way out of her despair. Jumping the Queue was drawn directly from her experience of those years. It was accepted in 1982 by James Hale and published by Macmillan. The Camomile Lawn followed in 1984 and the next four novels at twelve monthly intervals thereafter.
Mary worked at her writing with great discipline and intensity until 1997 when she completed Part of the Furniture, her tenth and final novel. She made a lot of money from her writing and gave a lot of it away. She enjoyed the unexpected change in her fortunes, and she greatly enjoyed creating the outrageous and outspoken personality of her public appearances and broadcasts. It was the life that she and Eric had once hoped to share, when his life story ‘became more than first chapters’ and his writing career started to succeed.
Directory of Names
Aragon, Louis: French poet and Communist resister living with his muse, Elsa Triolet, in Paris in 1945
Asquith, Hon. Anthony ‘Puffin’: film director, school friend of Eric, son of the statesman, H. H. Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith
Astor, Hon. David: owner and editor of the Observer
Balfour, Hon. Patrick: later Lord Kinross, writer, became a friend of Eric’s while both were stationed in Cairo during the war
Bankes-Jones, Edith: sister of Eric, married to Rev. Roger, a sanctimonious Anglican vicar
