So I Have Thought of You

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  I hope your 2nd Greek visit went off as well as the first. I thought it was very brave of you to go, as the whole set up, with a mysterious dying millionaire and suspicious relatives (did I make those up?) sounded more like Raymond Chandler than anything else. But I envy you, as I haven’t been to Greece for so many years,

  And then you have the computer to tame, though I expect that’s done by now. Lovely weather here, lilac blossoms falling onto the page –

  love and many thanks

  Penelope

  27a Bishop’s Road

  London, N6

  22 September [1990]

  Dear Howard,

  Thankyou so much for your letter, and how you got hold of my book* so quickly I can’t think, but I appreciate your kind words very much, as you can imagine. I’d thought, while I was writing it, that it was a bit longer than usual, but I’m already getting letters to say that there seems to be some mistake as it is so short and some pages must be missing out of their copy. It’s Collins’ fault for not putting The End, like we used to have at the movies in the dear old days.

  Bob will tell you that there are hundreds of clematis – but you have to choose between montana types which flower profusely but only in spring, and the more cultivated ones which flower twice a year, but are not nearly as strong. There’s a moral there somewhere I daresay. I’ve put in Nellie Moser and Mrs Cholmondeley, but a montana would have been safer.

  I do so hope to see you if you come over in November. I’m going up to the Lake District on the 9th I think, but you’ll be in London before that I hope –

  best wishes, Penelope

  27a Bishop’s Road

  London, N6

  20 November [1990]

  Dear Howard,

  I’m addressing this to Revere because, you know, I never did get the address and tel. no. of your London flat, which was the first great mistake I made – and the second, the date when you were coming to lunch, wh. I was looking forward to so much, must have been my fault too, because you’re the business man, and I’m anything but – I was very much distressed when I got back from Kirkby Lonsdale to find that you’d been, and gone – however I hoped perhaps you might come the following Thursday, which was the day I truly thought we’d always arranged, so I made an apple pie &c, though not with much hope, and finally had to tell myself that I’d missed you.

  That meant of course that I never heard about your strange adventures in England, which you told me were stranger than anything in Greece, and I don’t know what wonderful things you bought this time. I’m glad you like the Spencer Resurrection and the Cookham pictures – I used to be taken to see them when I was quite small, and indeed Stanley Spencer was a familiar sight on Hampstead Heath in those days with his pram full of canvases. The big exhibition is going to be next spring, I think, with a long biography coming out at the same time. No-one wanted this biography, and then someone at Collins happened to fish it out of what publishers over here call the slush pile, I don’t know what they call it in America.

  I’ve just had a letter from Father Hagreen, son of Philip Hagreen, the wood-engraver who did some beautiful broadsheets for the PB – he says he has his father’s papers &c in a room at his presbytery but no time to sort them out – I feel I’m too old and stiff to do this, but will find someone.

  Once again, I was so very sorry to miss you – best wishes, love Penelope

  27a Bishop’s Road

  London, N6

  8 October [1991]

  Dear Howard,

  How nice to hear from you, and to hear you’re coming to England, although I was a bit dismayed when I realised how busy you were going to be – and you’ve said nothing about time spent in buying pictures and bits of old mantelpieces, not to speak of books. However, I know how you fit things in.

  I’ve been one of the Booker judges this year and as always there have been alarming differences of opinion, and even one walk-out, the first in its history I believe. However that will all be over on the 22nd Oct:. I’m going up to the Lake District after that until the 7th Nov:, and on the 8th I’ve got nothing down except ‘pay income-tax’ – but you will be in Paris. Is there any chance of your coming to lunch on the 12th Nov? You can be sure there wouldn’t be any confusion about the day this time.

  Meanwhile I’m sure you’re right not to miss the Munch exhibition – the last time we had one in London it was marvellous, and they even had the extraordinary plates of wood – separate plates for each colour – that he used for the woodcuts. Still, as you say, ‘walking and looking’ are the main thing –

  best wishes and hoping to see you –

  Penelope

  Sydney

  [postcard]

  19 November [1991]

  I hoped, you know, that you might come to lunch in Highgate on the 12th but perhaps you didn’t get my letter. Perhaps we’re fated never to meet again, but I do hope you had a wonderful time in Paris – I’m sure you did – and still hope to hear about it one day –

  love Penelope

  27a Bishop’s Road

  London, N6

  18 December [1991]

  Dear Howard,

  So many untoward things seem to have happened in London that I wonder you have the patience to come here at all, but then, probably as the result of doing so much travelling, you seem to take it all with astonishing calm – the only way to take it really.

  I can’t imagine why the locksmith took the door away – the all-night locksmith, who I’ve had to call in once or twice, is expensive, but produces the lock and new sets of keys on the spot. What’s the use of saying this? I’m very sorry about it all, anyway.

  I went to Australia because the writers of Tasmania asked me to come – they are a very lively lot of people, deeply concerned as you can imagine with saving the lakes and forests and supporting aboriginal claims to the land. They have a writer’s cottage on the waterfront in Hobart and while I was there the icebreaker came back from the Antarctic to her summer moorings. It was just getting hot (which I don’t like) in Sydney and Melbourne and I did find the 24 hour flight a bit much, just 45 minutes stop in Bangkok, still it’s a great thing for me to have seen wallabies crossing the road and heard all those strange birds singing.

  And meanwhile you didn’t get my letter! I do hope you get this one, because I want to wish you everything good and prosperous for the New Year best wishes,

  Penelope

  27a Bishop’s Road

  London, N6

  [1992]

  Dear Howard,

  Thankyou so much for the catalogue of the Katonah museum exhibition Designing Utopia. I saw from my Wm. Morris newssheet that the American (and I think the Canadian) branch visited it, but I hadn’t a catalogue. I think they were lucky, although I can’t agree with most of Prof. Eisenman’s introduction and certainly not with his remark ‘Capitalism improvises all sorts of modest pleasures for its workers in order that it may never have to face the socialist demand for a regime based on the principle of ‘joy in labour’.’ – However we’ve had Prof. Norman Kelvin, the editor of Morris’s letters, over here from New York, – talking to us about the last volume. – I think he feels rather strange, having finished it at last.

  Hoping to see you in November –

  love

  Penelope

  Hope Cottage

  Milton Abbot

  Devon

  4 December 1992

  Dear Howard,

  Thankyou for your letter, and it was so nice to see you – this is only to wish you well for Christmas, as apart from that I can’t pretend to have much news. I’m down in Devonshire at the moment – floods lying in the fields and water rushing stormily down each side of the road. This is my elder daughter’s house, or rather cottage – decidedly a tight fit at the moment when the three children come back from school, but very cosy when we light the wood-stove.

  Tell Bob I have an Alpine in the garden, still flowering – it is really I think a very miniature geranium, with sm
all clear pink flowers and a great many of them – I know the name begins with an ‘e’, and nobody else seems to have one – I’m afraid this isn’t a very good description but I can recommend it.

  very best wishes for Christmas and 1993 –

  love, Penelope

  (I never managed to ask you what bibliography you were working on now, but good luck with it – )

  27a Bishop’s Road

  London, N6

  15 December 1994

  Dear Howard,

  I still think it was kind of you to wish me a happy birthday on any date – after all birthdays are like clocks, which have to be right every 24 hours.

  This is my Christmas letter and brings my good wishes to you, Bob, the rock garden and the Burmese kittens, now I suppose grown into grandmotherly cats. I wonder if you have meconopsis baileyii in the garden (it’s not an Alpine, I know) as I’ve been fascinated by it ever since I saw one in Sunderland, and I set myself to find out all about it.

  The three grandchildren have mysteriously expanded to take over the whole house (no 27) including the staircases, which are covered with space armies and followers of the Lion King, but I suppose we were just as bad when we were little.

  You don’t tell me whether you saw Arcadia or what you thought of it? Or indeed what you’re collecting now. But no matter. I note that Sara Holmes will be arriving in the New Year and hope that she will ring up. And Jim Hepburn is still going – and still looks as he did in Nina Hammett’s portrait all that time ago –

  best wishes for Christmas and 1995 – Penelope

  [Bishop’s Road]

  31 March 1995

  Dear Howard – How nice to hear from you, and get another assortment of amazing stamps.

  It’s quite true I’ve been ill since last September ( – I can’t breathe very well, which is inconvenient – ) but they can’t quite make out what of! I’m bringing out a book next September*– but would much rather see the desert flowers.

  I’m still hoping to meet Sara Holmes, in case I could be of any use, but she has seen the Hepburns, who will probably be much more – love Penelope

  27a Bishop’s Road

  London, N6

  12 September 1995

  Dear Howard,

  What beautiful stamps!

  Thankyou very much indeed for your kind letter about The Blue Flower. I’m amazed that you’ve got a copy, as I haven’t even had my own advance copies yet, and it was very good of you to write and tell me you liked it.

  I didn’t mean to insult the book-selling profession, far from it, but it still seems to me that if you go into what I think of as a genuine bookshop (not so many left now) you see the proprietor sitting quietly in a dark corner absorbed not in a book, but in a catalogue. That wasn’t meant to be a criticism, though.

  I hope that you and Bob and the Burmese cats are well –

  with best wishes –

  love, Penelope

  P.S. My idea of the ideal blue flower is the blue poppy – meconopsis beton. baileyi – although it didn’t arrive here till the 20th century – I wonder if you grow it in your rockery?

  27a Bishop’s Road

  London, N6

  25 January 1996

  Dear Howard,

  How nice to hear from you, and thankyou again for the wondrous display of stamps.

  I’m sure you will have heard by now of the sad news of Jim Hepburn’s death. Margaret (who is 14 years younger) of course in great distress. He seemed indestructible, always interested in everything, and always with so much on hand, still doing the garden, arranging to record Anna Wickham’s songs, everything – He went into the Royal Free Hospital and died 9 days later.

  I’ll tell you about the papers I’ve kept – I’ve got the ms. of The Gate of Angels (then called The Unobservables) and an ms. notebook with a draft of the ghost story from it – also the publisher’s setting copy, with my corrections – and I’ve got the ms. of the Blue Flower and the setting copy of that – but I haven’t kept any reviews or short stories, once they’re published – so you see it isn’t much, apart from my notebooks for the Blue Flower, which I suppose aren’t of much interest to anybody. I don’t think it would be more than a 3-inch pile of A4. –

  Snowing here – and with you too I expect.

  Hoping to see you, best wishes Penelope

  27a Bishop’s Road

  London, N6

  9 June [1996]

  Dear Howard,

  I am afraid you will think me very unsatisfactory, but I still can’t get very much sense out of the (nice) doctor at the Whittington hospital and I am sure taking all these unpleasant chemicals is reducing me to a very low state of intelligence – however I’ve looked through my drawers – I know I haven’t any diaries, and what I had went to the bottom of the Thames. As to the letters, they are all in envelopes, but that only gives them the illusion of being sorted, they aren’t really. Some I don’t want to part with, a lot I am sure are very dull, and then there are my PB sheets, most of which you kindly gave me – they do have their special envelope – and a collection of letters from dear Ray Watkinson, biographer of Ford Madox Brown, the Victorian artist – he is perhaps the last of the great letter-writers and many other people all over the world have a series from him and if they should ever be wanted in some selection, or other, there they are. – There are publishers’ letters, quite unexciting personal letters, and then, as time goes on, obituaries and memorial-services – all things that ‘have been and will be again’. One of my sons-in-law is down to act as literary executor and he would get in touch with you if need be, but I honestly think there wouldn’t be any thing of sufficient interest. Such dull old things as writers are. I was so glad to see you – love, Penelope

  27a Bishop’s Road

  London, N6

  9 October 1996

  Dear Howard,

  Thankyou so much for your letter and the cheque for three thousand dollars – it’s very good of you to send it and very businesslike – I know that by no stretch of the imagination could I ever run a business like yours and I do admire it.

  My daughter Maria (the prof of Neurobiology whose house I live in) has had to make 3 conference trips lately to Vancouver, Seattle and Nova Scotia and says that each one in turn seemed to her the most beautiful place on earth. Well, the only one of them I’ve seen is NS and that was in a blizzard, and I’m afraid it’s too late to think of going to any of them now.

  I’m just getting down to write a new entry for Charlotte Mew for the new Dict. Of Nat: Biog. The piece itself isn’t difficult to do, but you have to fill in so many forms and particulars and sources that it must be worse than trying to emigrate. – It made me think about the Poetry Bookshop again, though, bless its heart –

  love Penelope

  27a Bishop’s Road

  London, N6

  21 March 1997

  Dear Howard,

  How nice to get one of your laconic letters which say exactly what you mean and no more – and after all that’s what letters are for.

  But I’m ashamed to say that I’ve never even heard of Big Bend National Park. I’ve been to San Antonio on the way to Mexico, and to the Humanities Library at Austin, the only town I’ve ever seen without, as far as I could see, any public transport, and where the assistant who explained the wondrous systems to me said ‘you mustn’t think this is just Texas brag’ which won me over completely – but that’s all of Texas I’ve ever seen, except the border customs.

  But I hope you have a splendid tour and (because I suppose this must be part of it) see a lot of rock plants. My Alpine violets (which don’t mind any amount of cold, but can’t stand damp) have just about pulled round, and they’re in bud at last.

  I went to the British Literary Awards last night (every 2 years from Coutts bank) – won by Muriel Spark, who came over from Rome to accept &c. Coutts (in the Strand) is like a tropical jungle, with far too many huge trees and houseplants, obscuring the numerous TV screens.

  T
hankyou so much for the piece from The Publishers’ Review. Well, a new publisher for me,* and a new gleam of hope, of the kind that keeps the enfeebled scribbler going –

  all best wishes

  Penelope

  27a Bishop’s Road

  London, N6

  21 April [1997]

  Dear Howard,

  Thankyou so much for taking the trouble to send the NY Times. I felt it was something of an honour to be on the cover, even though the pic. of Novalis and his sweetheart weren’t quite what I should consider romantic, and Michael Hoffman was very kind, specially as I know so little German and he knows so much. You will wish me luck, I know.

  Household here convulsed by the mysterious death of the kitten, Sophie (grandchild’s) first kitten, now buried in the garden, and we’ve had to get a new, tough, plebeian bruiser of a tabby kitten, but at least he looks very much alive and will I’m sure hold his own territory against the other cats, squirrels and foxes. However I fear Sophie doesn’t love him in quite the same way – perhaps because he doesn’t seem so helpless –

  love, Penelope

  27a Bishop’s Road

  London, N6

  12 July [1997]

  Dear Howard,

  Thankyou so much for sending the Richard Holmes review – I was very lucky the NYR of Books asked him to do it, and he’s taken such pains over it, I feel truly grateful – not quite so grateful to Levine, but Houghton Mifflin say I should take it as a great compliment, no matter whether it looks like me or not, so I have to remember that.

  best wishes

  Penelope

  27a Bishop’s Road

  London, N6

  29 March [1998]

  Dear Howard,

  Oh, what a kind thought, and what a beautiful bottle of champagne, all the better for being completely unexpected. ‘You’re in luck’ said the boy who delivered it, and that was true.