Carrington's Letters

by Dora Carrington

  Carrington

  To Lytton Strachey

  60 Frith Street

  Friday, 1 o’ck [9 November 1917]

  Dearest Lytton,

  They tell me you are to be in bed all today. Oh wretched day! most vile day! Now everything is ruined. The gay clouds in the blue sky which I thought we would be under on the Heath this afternoon. May they turn to rain and keep me company in the gloom.

  Never again are you going to behave like this! After November you will start a regular life at Tidmarsh, supported by glasses of milk, and vigorous walks […]

  If you are not well enough you won’t travel tomorrow and get worse will you? And your SANATOGEN if you please at once.

  I’ve caught your COLD you wretch. But the diseases are so manifold that attack this poor human frame, that this latest acquisition almost passes unnoticed. Just had lunch with Oliver at his club. Very ormolu. Beautiful curry. Surrounded by generals and Viceroys of India on the walls. Took him to Omega and London Group afterwards.

  Faith has promised us two BEDS for TidderMarsh, and we are going to buy up all the Omega club crockery and chairs and Oliver has signed the lease!!!!!

  Do get sprightly SOON and appear before me clad in your gay new clothes with your beard, waving like an aspen in the Breeze.

  Your Pollypuss Mopsa

  To Lytton Strachey

  Monty’s room

  November 1917

  Lytton Dear,

  I hope you are better now. I have just had dinner with Mark. He is so charming and gay. Full of news of Shandygaff [Garsington] – What a day! Alix with the winds of Charleston. Then teaching that petit bete – Brett to tea at Frith Street shrieking at the tops of our voices, a thousand accusations!!! But she too is delightful. Then I went in to Tilney Street for a brief while. And found Ottoline talking to a professional pearl-stringer. The gossip!!! ‘But surely the duchess of Ripon had black pearls?’ ‘But Lady Meux she had the finest pearls I ever strung … she said as how she’d leave me her money. But she didn’t. Her maid had forty thousand pounds … Her name was the same as mine. Barnes … She came off the streets before she married Lord Meux!!!’ Ottoline absorbed in the pearly stories of all these old hags, and their past histories. – But she looked very wonderful. Ottoline in various huge hats which she tried on to show me.

  I told her about Tidmarsh vaguely – But put my foot in it slightly over a trivial matter as usual! […]

  Dear dear old yahoo I wish I could have you here now xxxxxxx

  Love from your Mopsa

  To Lytton Strachey

  Hurstbourne Tarrant

  Sunday morning [18 November 1917]

  […] This country is looking divine now. I saw a Heron standing by a lonely pond, as I came along the road, and the Downs stood up terrificallly high enveloped in mists in the distance. I’ve been wandering about the house and garden on a grand looting expedition all the morning. I think by Wednesday a fair collection of salvage ought to be amassed!

  My mother is of course frightfully stingy when it comes to the point of giving me anything useful. And she sold to a dealer the only two things I really cared for. A very old Japanese china candlestick 14 cent. and a 18 cent. English silk embroidered picture of a bird.

  I found in a stable some water-cans and jugs which will be useful. And I’ve got free permission to devastate the garden and green house of trees and plants – But it’s rather sad leaving this place. The view from the window now that the trees are bare, is lovely. One can see right up the valley and the ridge of the hill opposite stands up hard and sharp like the backbone of a whale […] I see by the smoke from the thatched chimney that the old man is making malt in the brewhouse just outside the back gate, so I shall go, and toast over his furnace, and gossip about the village with him […]

  Everything is just the same, even to the conversations of my parents. Even the apples lie on the grass only they are decayed, dark brown, like garrulous old men, and only a few virgin green maidens lie at their sides. The paths are thick with leaves. A few gnats in the air. Not a sign of a bird or a sound from the hills – I perceive this letter is verging towards the sentimental. New paragraph.

  How is your system? If I had the courage I would ask my mother for a number of bed pans and a commode which lie in the box room upstairs. But perhaps it would hardly be tactful. It is exciting about your Book of Lives. Will the Preface be finished by the time I come back?fn46 May I have you next Sat. and Sunday? Please start taking your sanatogen instantly. I will send the grey muffler tomorrow and please get well soon. How I wish I could transport you here now and this second, to take you with me for a walk over the hill. Dearest Lytton. You ought to be a little happy, as I love you so entirely.

  Your Mopsa xxxxxxx

  PS Monday morning

  The looting expedition progresses with unexpected success. An oak coffer and small gate legged table has been added to the collection, and a camp-bed! I have dug up a great many bulbs and roots to put in the garden. Did you see Brett’s big picture! Please tell me what you thought of it. I shall go over on Thursday to Tiddermarsh and try and interview the old hag, and Percy or Patrick as you will.

  More Love Mopsa

  To Mark Gertler

  Hurstbourne Tarrant

  Wednesday, 19 November 1917

  Dearest Mark,

  Thank you for your letter it came this morning & made me die nine little deaths from various causes! I was sorry about Saturday. There was nothing mysterious about my depression. I had hardly slept all night. I had angered Alix for the first time since I saw her and was depressed over myself as a human being. But I was even sorrier to like you & your work so much & hardly be able to do anything but sit like a poached egg on your blue chair […]

  About James. Well, Well. We all have a mood of aloofness. He evidently more often than most of us! He’s not bad at heart, that I guarantee from personal knowledge this summer, and as Alix loves him he can’t be as bad as all that, & since she does you must forgive. I often when I’m thoroughly depressed, comfort myself that if you love me I can’t be quite hopeless! I am so tired after packing up my belongings & sending them off all today. But I went for a drive along some beautiful country this afternoon. Vast woods, & the downs were salmon pink with the sunset reflections, & the sky ink blue behind! I have never seen such a sight. My mother is more aggravating than ever – the sordidness of her life & the lives of all these people who live in these neat little houses with closed windows. I’m off tomorrow morning at 7 o’ck on my bicycle, to go over to the Mill House, I told you of, near Reading that Oliver S has taken. It’s lovely to think of a whole day away from my mother. I wish you could have been here sometime with me. Later you must come & I’ll show you this landscape which I love almost passionately […]

  The little white dog here is going to have puppies in a few days. How I loathe the spectacle of fecundity! It’s so absurd.

  Will you write to me, a long letter about yourself? this isn’t a very good one. It’s but a bait to catch a fish from you […] They still snore … How dreadful old age must be, to be so bored, or weary, that one can sleep away an afternoon. I’ve been so grateful for your companionship since you came back. It’s made a difference, and I care very much for you. Love.

  Yrs affec.

  Carrington

  To Lytton Strachey

  Hurstbourne Tarrant

  Tuesday afternoon [20 November 1917]

  Quelle Joie! At last it is all packed. Without the heavy looting having been discovered. But the escapes have been as narrow as the way to Heaven. Everything is packed with apples and artichokes and potatoes, instead of straw and paper! This method will probably insure all the china being smashed. But anyway the food supply is guaranteed for some months!!

  I have been given as a present a big wheel-back chair. But you hate those articles I remember. I have also a huge sack of plants, and bulbs for the garden and some carnations in pots for the greenery-house. Pots of jam, and a big bottle of
cherry brandy! Are you getting a little cheerful now old Yahoo at the prospect of Tidmarsh complete with potatoes on the hob by Christmas? … I will write again on Thursday evening after I have seen Patrick Stone and the old hag.

  Please write to me soon. It seems a desperately long time since I last saw you. The collection of baggage even includes malt extract for you – and mosquito lotion for when you sit with Patrick conversing over Egyptian Flour Mills under the Yew Tree next summer – also a Gurkha dagger to keep hostile forces at bay. It’s dreadfully exciting really after these years of conversation, moving at last! Probably I shall find on Thursday the Mill was a mirage and the evil faced carrier will be sitting there in the road on my boxes eating the apples and drinking the malt extract. I hope you are keeping well.

  Dear, I send you my Love

  Yr Mopsa

  By the end of 1917 Carrington had managed the acqusition of the Mill House, started to decorate and furnish it and found local domestic help. The Tidmarsh venture was underwritten by Maynard Keynes, Harry Norton and Saxon Sydney-Turner as well as Oliver Strachey, all of whom were entitled to use the house by arrangement. But for Carrington, it meant a home for her and Lytton at last.

  To Maynard Keynes

  c/o Oliver Strachey, Chilling, Hants

  Friday [end of 1917]

  Dear Maynard,

  You wretch you never wrote me a letter, or even a postcard from New York, and you promised faithfully – I hear strange stories of your goings on, the strangest. Middies [midshipmen], admirals, gambling, whales, New York Millionaires. And again middies upon middies.

  […] what a life here! smoking fires so that the rooms are dense with grey fogs & smut & Raging winds outside. Aeroplanes, sea planes and Oliver & Lytton talking politics furiously & listening to a torrent of conversation all the evening from Madame Berensonfn47 who is here also. By the way we’ve just found a most superb Mill House at Pangbourne or a mile away from that place – where we are going to live … and the Miller himself … the vilest of flour could not obliterate his beauty […] I am glad you are back.

  Love Carrington

  1918

  After spending Christmas 1917 at the Mill with Carrington and friends, Lytton retreated to London. It is as well that she did not know he was writing complaining letters to Virginia Woolf about the cold, and even wondering, Woolf’s diary records, if he had made a mistake in setting up house with her. ‘That woman will dog me… She won’t let me write, I daresay.’

  Carrington began 1918 alone in the Mill House, while the rats in the roof, said by Lytton to sound like buzzards in wellington boots, kept her awake at night.

  To Lytton Strachey

  The Mill House

  Sunday evening, 6 o’ck [20 January 1918]

  Not a sign of a human being! Alix is pretty well damned now. To have enough energy to go to Lord’s Wood with Bunny & not enough imagination or curiosity to come here. She’s a dull green toad […]

  I sleep worse and worse. It must be a disease. I got up this morning at 7 o’clock and gardened from sheer boredom of lying in bed. Another electric light globe shattered. Can you abstract a few from some ODD rooms in Belsize? as it’s getting a little tedious having to carry a globe in one’s pocket to fit on each time one enters a room. I’ve rigged up my studio in that tank room. It will make a very good place to work as there are so many shelves to spread the litter out on. And the lighting is good […] I’ve thought of a brilliant idea to subdue the Buzzards. Purchase a ferret or a mongoose, and put it at night under the floors and in the attics, et voila! EXIT la bottine de monsieur Wellington! I suppose you will promptly put forward some absurd objection […] Next Sat. we shall meet no doubt in Paddington and tramp the long long platform of Reading side by side […]

  My love dearest Lytton,

  Carrington xxxxxxxxxxxx

  To Lytton Strachey

  The Mill House

  Monday evening, 6.30 [21 January 1918]

  […] A mongoose must be purchased – since Mrs Burton a farmer resident here has one, Leggettfn48 just told me, to catch the Buzzards. You will have a raid tonight for a certainty. Poor moon, to be shunned now even by the POET. Dear, may I tell you how much I love you tonight? So much that if you were here I should hug your thinness into nothing. Did you ever want to strangle the thing you love, so it would be over once & for all? No more crescendos – no more horrid earthy dullness, calm & well regulated, which nobody knows better than you how to bring into force!

  But I know, for when Mark wanted each day to be wildly chaotic I hated it because it had no connection with one’s life & was so devastating.

  Today gardening I thought how good it was that I knew you, what luck. How easily it might never have occurred.

  Dearest Lytton.

  My love to you

  Carrington xxxxx

  To Lytton Strachey

  Friday morning [15 February 1918]

  Dearest Lytton

  […] I am so sorry about that scene. It was rather my fault for not being more careful. I hope only you were not in any way upset by it. Maynard will go down Sat about 5 o’ck train. I do not know quite what I shall do. But I’ll phone you after breakfast tomorrow and say which train definitely.

  Carrington

  ‘That scene’ took place late on the evening of 14 February, when Mark, having finally realised that Carrington was indeed ‘living with’ Lytton in both senses, sexual and domestic, got drunk and hit him as he left a party in west London with Carrington and Keynes. Other friends came to the rescue and pulled Mark away; Lytton described the incident as ‘extremely painful’ and felt sorry for ‘poor Mark’. They soon made up over dinner at the Eiffel Tower restaurant in Percy Street, but Carrington remained embarrassed and annoyed. She did not, however, let Mark go.

  To Mark Gertler

  The Mill House

  February 1918

  Dear Mark,

  I was glad to hear from you this morning. I confess I was dreadfully upset by that incident. Not so much about it. But because I felt so responsible – that it resulted through a neglect of my duties to you and lack of foresight on my part. I am rather worried about you altogether. What’s to be done? Frankly, I wish you had some better friend to keep you from getting dissipated and wasting your time in the evenings. Monty’s really not much good is he. I hate to hear of you at the cafes. It’s just because I know you are worth more and that more intelligent people like you and would be friends with you. I am sure it’s all too short this life to waste time in a boring way – & confess now you must be bored with those café people night after night. Perhaps I am wrong but I hear from so many people of your careless evening life. Will you try, Mark, to get on with the other sort of people and not drink anymore. Ruth is in Chelsea again now. Please go & see her soon. I am not preaching, it did however upset me to see you drunk at Mary’s party & I felt it was so much my fault for leaving you for so long and making you unhappy. Do you know the Anrepsfn49 in Hampstead. I went there the other evening and they seemed friendly & simple. I care very much that you love me still and if you knew how delighted I was to hear from you the other morning and again today – are you quite well from your cold.

  Could not you go & stay at Garsington with Brett for a little while. It is so beautiful in the country now that all the flowers are beginning to come out & the leaves […] Nick, Barbara’s husband, has made me a little stove for my studio so I can now work up there in the cold weather – which in fact is the state of climate this morning. Lytton told me you had met at the Eiffel Tour. He was full of sympathy with you from the first moment. But as you say it can be forgotten now. The more important thing to me is that you should be happier, so that you cannot feel so wretched about it even if you get a little drunk, ever again – will you please promise me to value yourself higher & not waste your time. And if you knew how fond immediately people like Maynard are of you! Maynard is down here this weekend. Barbara & Nick go back tomorrow. Please write & tell me about your paint
ing. I am doing some landscapes from my attic window of the river below, & trees reflection & also one of the mill itself & the millstream. Tell me also when you next write more about your friend Suggia the celloist. Remember I care always very much for you. Just as much as I used to. It is in no way changed – and if you knew how much I felt your pains & griefs it would lessen them for you. I shall look forward to seeing your work again next time I come to London. I find it fearfully hard to write to you even now after all these years of writing, but you will understand I do not want to interfere with your life only to tell you what I have been thinking and to assure you that you are not isolated or very distant from me.

  Love from yr

  Carrington

  To Mark Gertler

  The Mill House

  [28 February 1918]

  I will come, if you want to see me, when I am back in London. But I hardly see the use of corresponding when you are so antagonistic towards me. When I said I wanted to tell you more about myself, I did not mean to make that crude statement, which I knew you already knew, but it is clear I cannot really help you, and after all it is a little discouraging and exhausting to have feelings for a person, and to know one day they care for you and the next day to receive a entirely contradictory letter saying there is no connection between the two persons. When you make up your mind for any decent length of time that I can be of use to you, I will gladly. But otherwise I would rather leave it. Evidently from your last letter we think so very differently about relative values of everything now. Yet it is impossible for me not to care every time I see you. Very much. This letter is not bitter; only I feel rather tired, and perhaps disappointed about it. But don’t write any more. I would rather not start it again. And you also feel that, I know, permanently inside.

  My best wishes for your work.

  D. C.

  There is no answer to this letter.

  To Mark Gertler