Carrington's Letters

by Dora Carrington

  Dearest Noel,

  Well there were some excitements in London yesterday. I could have wished you had been with us all. When the guns were fired at 11 o’clock I thought it was a good joke on the part of some junkers to come over and bomb us while the cats here were at play. But it soon turned out to be Peace with a big P. Instantly everyone in the city dashed out of offices & boarded the buses. It was interesting seeing how the different stratas of people looked travelling from Hampstead. Seeing first the slum girls & cockney people dancing. Pathetic scenes of an elderly plumber nailing up a single small flag over the door. Then the scenes became wilder as one reached Camden Town & more & more frantic as one approached Trafalgar Square. Office boys & girls, officers, majors, races all heaped on taxis, and army vans driving round & round the place waving flags. In the Strand the uproar was appalling. I was to meet Monty Shearman in Adelphi for lunch & it was almost impossible I would get there! He then took me off to the Café Royal to meet some other rejoicing friends of his. Some young men I might regret to say – very far gone with the liquor of the North. – Ashmead Bartlettfn71 your friend at Christ Church was of the company! We then had our lunch at the Eiffel Tower restaurant. But everyone was too scatterbrained to give the customers food – which slightly reduced the spirits of the company. Finally I left them & went to the 1917 club where – as one would expect – the promoters of Peace sat deep in their Trade Union papers & discussing Reconstruction after the war! Not all of them – but many.

  Then at 6 o’ck I struggled back to Hampstead in the underground. I have never seen it so jammed with people, honestly they were pressed face against face! I had the underground conductor for my partner. Dinner with Alix at 45 Downshire. Then off to Monty Shearman’s room where a great party was in full swing. Everyone was there. The halt, the sick, & the lame. Even old Lytton from his deathbed in Sussex rushed up & joined in the merriment. I disclosed to Ashmead that I was your sister – his face blanched visibly & he groped for his hat & stick – It was a great party. I danced without stopping for 3 hrs. [Augustus] John was there. Nick [Bagenal]. All the Cambridge dons. The Café Royal outcasts. The Russian Ballet dancers. The wife of the Belgian Vandervelde. Clive Bell from Garsington. Alix. The Sitwells. Gertler and many fair ladies & officers the names of whom I cannot tell – for I did not know them. I enjoyed it very much. Nick stayed the night with us at Downshire Hill. He lives at Rye now by himself in a little cottage learning the art of farming. Barbara is getting well alright and the offspring is to be called Judith Jane! A familiar young lady she will be if she lives up to such a name. It’s very nice being back in London with all this merriment again. I am glad I just escaped from Cheltenham in time, imagine spending such rejoicings with mother moralizing & the provincials trying to be roistrous. Thank you dearie for your sermon. I do heartily agree with what you say and lament the laziness of my ways […] I am very well. But as yesterday’s gay crowd probably bred a thousand more microbes I doubt if anyone will live long […] I had a very long & depressed letter from Rex in Italy yesterday. Letters of depression – I know I sin also – ought to be forbidden or held by the writers a week & then read before being posted […]

  Oh dear one it’s good about Peace. One might almost start negotiations about that cottage! All my love in high spirits

  Your loving D. C.

  XXX for Peace

  To Lytton Strachey

  45 Downshire Hill, Hampstead

  Thursday morning, 9 o’ck [14 November 1918]

  Lytton, it was good to see you again on Monday and I am so happy because you are really better. But I felt in a bad mood, the last two days, I think really because you vanished so suddenly, so I waited till I had ceased to be peevish. You are too good a friend to me, to inflict with tedious letters about a hysterical mind. I read a letter to you in the underground last night and actually had to laugh at myself for being such an ass!

  On Tuesday night we went to Gordon Square. Clive has already I expect written a long account of it to Mary. It was one of the most exciting evenings I have ever spent. I suppose if one had been a man, with Cambridge behind, it wouldn’t have astounded one quite so much. The only conclusion however arrived upon by everyone was that French letters must be more advertised to reduce the population, and that all the black races must be castrated. But it was astonishing apart from the arguments to see the characters of all those people, their faces, their attitudes. Yesterday I went to tea with Mark, to see his work, and met there a Miss Ruch, a pupil of Bertie and [George] Moore. Mark was very charming and interesting. I liked a new painting of his of a Harlequinade and some pen and ink drawings. He had some singular stories about Roger and himself and Bertie.

  Then the evening I spent here with Alix. Today I paint Mrs Bridgeman. With a golden crown on her head as Queen Elizabeth! – Oh I know what I did on Tuesday, which I forgot, had lunch with Aldous and then went to tea with Osbert [Sitwell] He had bought two African figures in wood which excited me very much.

  His appearance was too wonderful! Lying on two chairs, surrounded by silk shawls and cushions, writing poetry on a large sheet of paper. His collar turned up straight against his cheeks, like Byron, with a black tie wound round […] He gave a very good account of his father appearing suddenly to see him and the way he ordered the servants to pretend he was just living in lodgings in the house. He then crept into his bed, and interviewed his father, who was so charmed with the rest of house that he almost took the first floor for himself. Osbert now lives in terror of his appearing again. Aldous told me that he took the Sitwells to see Mr Mills of Chelsea, who instantly, when alone, tried to rape them, separately! Also that the Prince of Wales has now taken Mr Mills’s house as a pied de terre!

  Now I must stop as I have got to go and see Barbara in her nursing home.fn72 Oliver gives a party next Monday. Perhaps you’ll rise from the dead for it. My love to you dear Lytton.

  Yr very loving Carrington

  To Lytton Strachey

  45 Downshire Hill, Hampstead

  Friday morning [15 November 1918]

  Dearest Lytton,

  I see yesterday’s letter isn’t posted yet. But never mind. How are you? – I saw Barbara yesterday morning, she looked surprisingly well and a Japanese grub in the cot beside her. What is the female body made of? For she told me it took nearly 24 hours coming out with acute pain all the time. In the end they had to pull with pincers. The next morning she woke up and had coffee, and eggs for breakfast, and now feels quite well! […] I saw some good Cretan Figures in the Museum and, oh Lytton, Antinous!fn73 What a Catamite to possess!

  […] And oh Lytton I do love you so very much. I can’t say this idle life of distractions makes it easier not to miss you. Yr Mopsa

  To Lytton Strachey

  45 Downshire Hill, Hampstead

  Tuesday night, 8 o’ck [19 November 1918]

  […] Yesterday, since you never wrote, I had every hope that I should pass away before the clock struck twelve. But God who seeth all things, one too many peutêtre? saw the boney fingers of my well beloved scratching feebly with a goose’s feather, and spared my life until tonight, when behold dear Alix brought me a letter from you. Oh dearest it has made me so happy that I have sat up for the first time today, and have forgotten the horrors of this loathsome disease. Mrs Bridgman has just brought me in my bowl of bread and milk, made very differently I confess to your Tidmarsh brew! And now, oh dear dear one, I am happy. I confess today I felt wickedly towards you and cursed God for not letting me die.fn74 You hate me writing neither one way or the other. So I will be serious when I mean to be serious, and tell you that your letter only just came in time. All day I have been reading Sense and Sensibility and when Marianne received no letter from Willoughby I could have cried in sympathy for her. You will see by this letter that I still have a temperature and am not yet normal. Oh God! I’ve just upset the whole of the inkpot over my sheep skin coat, the sheets and blankets. I see any reunion with Alix is fatal! For the other night she a
nd James upset an inkpot over Faith’s best Persian mat and James used my new bath sponge to mop it up with. Last night Alix who is slightly ill, also taking her temperature in the bath room, started brushing her hair with the thermometer in her mouth, hit it with the brush, broke the tube and swallowed a considerable amount of the mercury!

  […] On Saturday night I alarmed them considerably by starting a conversation on Freud, and complexes of children. Howardfn75 admitted he was very interested in the theories of Freud but knew if he once started reading those sort of books it would become an obsession with him. His wife said ‘you remember Howard it very nearly did once’. He said: ‘Yes and I felt I should be seeing all sorts of queer things in my friends.’ C[arrington]: ‘It’s astonishing the number of perverts one does discover.’ Howard with absolute horror: ‘Oh I’d never go as far as saying that,’ and instantly turned the conversation.

  So on Sunday night we talked of Bolshevism and in the end I got onto my pet theme of the prevention of prostitution, and suggested that if decent intelligent females lived with young men, prostitutes would considerably diminish. I saw Howard and his wife getting more and more uneasy, till at length he said, ‘Personally I cannot understand the feelings of a young man who can “go” with any woman. I should have thought it essential to feel love towards a woman to get over the repugnance and disgust of the act!!’ The obvious reply of referring him to other methods with another sex I left unsaid – as he seemed so upset. The next morning they said at breakfast that neither of them had slept all night as they had talked so much! I would have given a good deal to hear that conversation! But really, Lytton, can you believe such a young man could exist? And his intentions are, to teach Philosophy after the war, at Oxford to undergraduates! There was a great deal more conversation of great import, and bearing on their states of mind. But I will tell you of it later. I was glad to see however when the small boys were given a lump of dough by the cook to play with, they insisted on making very prolonged no I don’t know the plural COCKS. But I spared the already perturbed parents to any illusion to the fact. I went to bed when I got back yesterday morning, as it was so bleak and cold outside and all today I stayed in bed. You were mistaken about Alix, for she is the best of nurses. Most reassuring. And has never yet asked me how I feel! I regretted missing my lunch with Phyllis and Edgar.fn76 But everything can reoccur in this life.

  Maynard takes me to dine at Kettners on Thursday, and the new ballet afterwards! I shall go to Tidmarsh to recover next weekend, and stay there I expect indefinitely unless London offers any inducement to return. But these plagues hardly make existence worth living here. Dear Lytton I am so glad you are so happy and well cared for. Do you know, I wonder, how much I care? So much, that to know that you are getting better and happy, makes it possible for me to bear your absence […]

  Give Mary my love please. Don’t forget. Oh the horror of this winter. My hands have become icicles, it is as if I were lying on the pier at Brighton. Yet every window, and crack is sealed! Dearest. I love you oh so much tonight.

  Your ever devoted Carrington

  As this last letter shows, Freud’s ideas about sexuality and the unconscious were beginning to be discussed in polite circles. The first article on his work intended for the general reader was published by Leonard Woolf in The Nation in 1914. James Strachey had been following him seriously since 1912, and was to go to Vienna to be analysed by Freud himself in 1920 before returning to London, becoming an psychoanalyst himself and undertaking to translate Freud’s writings for the Hogarth Press. Even so, both Carrington and Lytton were wary of Freudianism, not least because his followers then tended to regard homosexuality as a curable disorder.

  To Mark Gertler

  The Mill House

  Tuesday [December 1918]

  Dearest Mark,

  So active & energetic do I feel this morning that I’ll not allow your letter more than ten minutes. It’s cold & very clear. The sky is blue and the sun shines. Its like the ballet with an orchestra … one must dance to the tune they play. Lately it has rained every day & has been almost completely dark. You don’t realize the difference a morning like this makes as London is always damp and dark! This last week I got two little village boys with beautiful solid faces to come & sit for me in the evening – I pay them 6pence a night! But it made me realize how good your drawing is. And the jew girl head you did. What an achievement it was. My results weren’t much better than what I did at the Slade 4 years ago! Next Saturday I shall do a painting of them. They are such nice creatures. Then in the mornings I sat in the Big Mill & drew the machinery. It was a wonderful feeling being up there surrounded by bulging sacks of flour & the great wheels grinding round & round & the whole room, which is indefinitely long shaking & creaking – and then the smiling miller carrying, like some Michelangelo figure the heavy sacks on his broad shoulders. And a cat with speckled kittens lay asleep in a bag of wheat. It was so unreal, like the scene in one of those French books – by Daudetfn77 – one translates sometimes and never finishes – and then to know next door to that old mill house all those complicated relationships lived! I liked the incongruity of it. The drawing wasn’t as interesting as my feelings I regret to say!

  […] I hope you will enjoy your Xmas at Garsington. Won’t you send me a little picture please. A pen & ink drawing to celebrate our good friendship.

  Now I really can’t write anymore as it will be fine enough to sit outside & paint in a few minutes. Tell me what you read? In the evening Lytton has been reading King Lear to me. The completion of it made me dreadfully sad last night. But what a stupendous work of art it is!

  I do take such pride in our art as it is. When I hear what good things people like Roger & Boreniusfn78 say about your work I swell out with pride! But also you know you are so progressed as a character. And that’s very nearly as difficult as to have improved in painting. I found it altogether delightful being with you this last time. And that’s more than we ever managed before – at least for 4 days on end. Yes, next year we’ll stay in the country together. It will be enjoyable.

  Best wishes

  Yr Carrington

  To Mark Gertler

  The Mill House

  8 December 1918

  Dearest Mark,

  Thank you so much for your letter. It’s very odd how natural it seemed to see a letter in your writing again, and after a whole year! This weekend David Garnett came. I know you dislike him, well, well. Anyway he was very kind to me, and sat for a painting, and one evening in contortionist positions without his clothes, so I am full of gratitude as it means I can now get on with some compositions. He also cut up a lot of wood and was an obedient slave in the house. How exciting it is to draw nudes. Really I wish one could have a person to sit every day, as the excitement of drawing always upsets me rather. NO not the excitement of beholding a rather over fat young man! […] I am glad Roger liked your work so much. He is one of the best people I think. As he really cares so much for good work. And is aloof from criticising people for their personal weaknesses and characters. I’ve been reading a History of the Popes by Macaulayfn79 which I liked very much. But most of this week has been spent getting my studio ready and setting the old house straight. I grudge every ½ hour spent on such things. But my nature is so dreadfully untidy that unless I start ‘straight’, in a week I should not be able to move because of the mess. And with painting that would be impossible as you know. I like looking back on my visit to London because I saw you. What I always feel is we are meant to persevere through this somewhat awkward time because later things will be better for us. Yes when we are very old with grey hair we will live in a little cottage, probably Miss Walker’s at Cholesbury, and you will hold my withered old hands in yours. Well, well […]

  Yrs affectionate

  Carrington

  In late December 1918, Carrington’s father Samuel died at the age of eighty-two. For ten years, since suffering a stroke, he had been helpless and often in pain.

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nbsp; To Lytton Strachey

  Tatchley

  Sunday [December 1918]

  Dearest, you were so good to me all of yesterday. I must thank you at once – Well it was absolutely different from anything I had imagined. But the daughter of Lear has come down for breakfast, so I must stop for a moment: well that’s over. Last night to judge from every appearance nothing might have happened. The conversation at dinner was too horrible. My sister sat there in a black evening dress, with her pale fat face as hard as a block of steel. When my mother said: ‘We had to go to Davis the local undertaker; it will be just plain wood, not oak, with a cross on top of the coffin. There is such a shortage of wood you see,’ the sister replied: ‘Naturally at a time like this with a great shortage of materials, wood is required by the Government for purposes of greater National Importance.’ And so it went on from coffins, to wills and deeds of settlements. My sister’s toneless voice discussing strokes, and other cases of death through paralysis she had known. Her character is such that my mother is completely dominated by it and I saw her becoming less and less human. I didn’t want them to weep, but at least they might not have taken such a cold hellish interest over his relics. I couldn’t help remembering all the time that a dead body lay in the next room, across the passage, instead of that human being in the bath chair in front of the fire. You are right: there’s nothing so crushing and wretched as hard human beings without feelings. They were simply like two pieces of furniture conversing. The piano, and the marble mantelpiece could not have felt less. They say the funeral will not be until Thursday so I suppose I shall have to stay till then. If I was a little braver I would run out of this house.

  I don’t believe they can have felt physical affection for a person.

  It used to be so different when I came home, and went into the dining room. He used to hug me and almost cry because he was so glad to see me. They sat eating cold turkey, and made some polite address, and then discussed my clothes and what I must buy. The little cook with her wizened face feels more grief.