Carrington's Letters Read online

  During 1916, Lytton and Carrington’s relationship deepened; but both were shy about it, Lytton because he knew his circle would be astonished that he was at all interested in a girl, even a cropheaded bohemian one, and Carrington because she did not want to lose Mark Gertler’s devotion. She became increasingly secretive.

  They were, as they both knew, an unlikely couple. During the summer Lytton told at least one friend, David Garnett, that he thought he was in love. Several of his other old friends, Ottoline Morrell and Virginia Woolf in particular, were not pleased when they perceived that Lytton’s attachment to Carrington was more than a passing experiment. For his part, as his many letters to her show, he was never just the passive recipient of her devotion. He wrote often and at length, never openly emotional but always responsive, intimate and affectionate. She undoubtedly touched, charmed and amused him, and there were obvious advantages for him in having a devoted young woman to arrange and manage his domestic life, and by her presence to protect him from the suspicions of curious or disapproving onlookers who might suspect him of illegal passions.

  At the beginning, it was essential that their move to the country was as discreet as possible, to avoid gossip and scandal. To both sets of parents, it was presented as a group enterprise, a retreat for some friends, which to an extent was true. Both of them needed to escape family scrutiny of their unconventional loves and friendships; Lytton wanted a place in the country where he could write, and Carrington wanted a studio where she could paint. By the end of 1917 the Mill House at Tidmarsh, outside Pangbourne, found, furnished and decorated by Carrington, was becoming such a place.

  It appears that she accepted from early on in their relationship that, despite some early excitements, sex between them, what Lytton called ‘the physical’, was not going to be successful or lasting. At first she found this painful, but it is striking how quickly, after her initial distaste, she accepted his essentially homosexual nature and even encouraged it, both by play-acting herself and by drawing pretty boys and handsome men to his attention. Within Bloomsbury, gender and sexuality were recognised as fluid and various, and that a predominantly heterosexual man or woman could sometimes be erotically drawn to someone of the same sex was taken for granted. In this atmosphere, Carrington’s own feelings for women gradually came to the surface.

  Moreover, her own long-standing fears and ambivalences about her own sexuality meant that Lytton’s nature had great advantages. Unlike Mark Gertler, whose position in her life was inevitably eroded by her new attachment, Lytton had no interest in possessing or dominating her, sexually or otherwise, and he was never jealous. On the contrary – when in 1918, her brother Noel brought to the house a handsome fellow officer, Reginald Sherring Partridge, then known to friends and family as Rex, she came to realise that she could strengthen her position in Lytton’s life by attracting a man whom he found attractive.

  None of the letters between Carrington and Partridge have survived, so there is no direct evidence of a relationship which was also, in its way unlikely. He was the product of a conventional middle-class Anglo-Indian family, an adored only son and brother, a tall, strapping, blue-eyed young officer and brave soldier with predictable opinions about the war. When they first met he was about to return to the Italian front. He was not in the least bohemian or much drawn to art or literature, but had a good brain; high-spirited, sporting and well-educated, he had gone from Westminster school to Christ Church, Oxford, to read law before joining up. He was, in a way, the embodiment of the Victorian and Edwardian values that Lytton had set out to subvert in Eminent Victorians, published and acclaimed that same summer. Before long, Carrington and Lytton were to liberate and transform him.

  He remained, however, conventional enough to become determined to make Carrington his wife, and despite her extreme reluctance she finally acquiesced in May of 1921. His hold over her was largely dependent on his hold over Lytton, who was for several years in love with him. Carrington knew that he was essential to their ‘triangular trinity of happiness’. Fundamentally, though, she resented him for forcing her to marry him, and retaliated within weeks by starting a romance with his great friend Gerald Brenan, an aspiring writer of intense literary ambition and a natural bohemian with whom she was soon exchanging very long and very emotional letters about love, life and art. When Rex Partridge – now renamed Ralph by Lytton – discovered what was going on in 1922, Lytton had to exercise all his wiles to hold the Tidmarsh ménage together. Carrington was more honest about the centrality of Lytton in her life and her problems with sex and commitment in her correspondence with Gerald than with anyone else.

  By 1923, despite weathering these emotional storms, the early happiness of Tidmarsh was starting to fade. The damp of the Thames valley did not suit Lytton’s health; he was spending more time away in the wake of his literary success. Ralph was openly carrying on affairs in London, one of which was becoming serious. And Carrington herself had encountered a young woman who before long was to extend her understanding of her own nature. As both Lytton and Ralph now had some capital, it was decided that they would look for a house to buy. By 1924, the Tidmarsh years were over. The Ham Spray years were about to begin.

  1916

  To Mark Gertler

  [n.d. February/March 1916?]

  I am miserable Mark to think my selfishness in being happy this last weekfn1 has made you wretched now. But I am sure it is impossible for us to party always. I shall only try later, if you still wish, to spend more of my life with you. But I think it would be unfair if I promised to live with you, because I do not think I ever could. Do not tell Brett please this time. Yes, it is my work which comes between us. But I cannot put that out of my life because it is too much myself now. If I had not my love for painting I should be a different person. I understand. But I think a few months spent together in a year is worth it – but you do not think so – later perhaps we might spend longer together. I really am certain I could never live with you sexually day after day. […] I at any rate could not work at all if I lived with you every day. It is because you want me sexually that you are miserable. Do not deceive yourself. Otherwise you would not be so miserable seeing that only my corporeal body has left you.

  Oh why did we ever leave those woods that Friday night. You understood me then for the first time. Well I leave it to you. I wish to God I was not made as I am.

  Carrington

  To Mark Gertler

  Garsington

  31 May 1916

  Dearest Mark,

  Your letter came this morning & filled me with the uttermost sorrow because I know how miserable you have been. It makes such a big gap & makes me realize how little you believe in me. Do you not see an island in the middle of a big lake, many islands of adventures which one must swim across to? But one will always return to the mainland. You are that mainland to me. I will leave you sometimes perhaps. But always I shall come back and when the best state of our friendship is arrived at, you will love my adventures as you do your own. Mental & physical adventures perhaps. Perhaps none. This world is so big & full of surprises, but the great thing is, a simple faith in you & a greater love for you than mankind. Do you never feel the excitement of this big world & ships & many people?

  To return to your letter – Gilbert [Cannan] is not worthy of discussion as he was not an adventure. Honestly you must know how little he even affects me, simply because he is too like myself. I find no excitement in his company for he tells me nothing new or seldom and it is really a disapointment. I went & saw him that morning for breakfast, simply out of friendliness. When I came into his room he seized my hand, with his outward form of enthusiasm, & gave me a hearty kiss. But this I swear to you as he does to Sammy.fn2 That I know annoys you – but it seems to me you must take the habits of a man along with him […]

  Do you not see a colossal difference between the way I kiss you & you me & anything else? I am not defending myself & I hate as much as you do the casual kiss to a stranger meaning not
hing. But some people grasp your hand to show pleasure. Others kiss, others silence. They are all modes of expression. Accept them as such […]

  I care so little for anything except making you happy that I will promise not to kiss anyone, since it causes you pain. But do you not see that you cast a cloud of doubt on our trust in each other, by thinking for one moment that anything else or anyone could interrupt it?

  […] You must cease being miserable at once & believe me. What do I care for anyone else? & you know it.

  I am not affecting anything, when I say that I had entirely forgotten the whole incident so little impression it made on me. No more than a kiss from my brother […]

  I will not fail you. Do not fear. But I am human also. You have had phases & moods. I also am mortal & am like unto you. I may have phases also. You must never be surprised or distressed. Because you know I shall come through & we are in the whole part together.

  Carrington

  To Lady Ottoline

  16 Yeoman’s Row, Brompton Road

  1 June 1916

  Dear Lady Ottoline,

  You know how much I have enjoyed myself, so it is useless for me to try, & write you an eloquent letter of thanks, or express my extreme misery at having to leave you […]

  It was exciting reading the paper yesterday about what Snowden said in Parliament.fn3 Brett is going swimming with me tomorrow morning.

  I am so full of affection for you this morning that I cannot write properly. Give my love to the Bearded Bard. I hope he is regaining spirits & still continues with his light nourishment.

  I felt like writing you a marvellous letter like sunshine on the water. But C’est Impossible. Alas I have no ‘partner’ to congratulate you & myself over.

  Still Pug. Pug. Pug.

  And again Pug. Pug. Pug.fn4

  Yours most affectionately

  Carrington

  During the summer of 1916 Brett took up semi-permanent residence at Garsington, which Ottoline and her husband, the pacifist MP Philip Morrell, were turning into a refuge for friends who, like them, were opposed to the war.

  Carrington was soon sharing their views; she too became a regular visitor, and it was there that she and Lytton were much together and subject to the inquisitve gaze of their circle, who found the new alliance very strange, especially as Mark Gertler was evidently still in hot pursuit. Carrington’s letters to Lytton show their adoption of private jokes and nicknames; they liked to pretend he was her venerable grandfather or aged uncle (athough he was only thirteen years older) while she was his naughty niece or granddaughter or simply baby. Sometimes she called herself Doric, an acceptable version of Dora. Soon he was calling her Mopsa after the simple shepherdess in As You Like It, while he became the Fakir or Count Lytoff. She was always his eager pupil, thrilled that he was ready to instruct her in French and English literature. She liked to address him in her grammatically eccentric French.

  To Lytton Strachey

  16 Yeoman’s Row, Brompton Road

  Sunday evening, June 1916

  Mon chère grand-père Lytton,

  […] Have you recovered from your greyest gloom yet? Indeed I sympathise with you. It seems long ages since we were at Garsington, everything seemed bare, and so chilly here and then I hate more and more having to go to the mouldy museum everyday. My greatest pleasure is a motor bike which I am going to learn, and then all England is within my grasp. Will you meet me at Newbury and then away to the Inkpen Hills, and Combe? […] Barbara came to supper on Friday with me. I am miserable over my work just now. All grey stones compared to what I want to paint. What do you do all day now? I still am writing this letter with a censor inside. I trust you so little sometimes. Are you still starved? I shall send you like a poor soldier biscuits and bully-beef?

  No, I cannot write you anything, and I thought I had so much to say … But send me the Rimbaud poem.

  My studio is incredibly dirty and I sit knee-deep in crockery, and old letters, and everywhere drooping flowers, with pools of deep-red petals and on the mantel shelf long spines with vertebras hanging brown and musty by little threads. These were once lupins.

  The buses and tubes disappoint me, only aged hags, and men with yellow teeth sit and chuckle, and the soldiers have pink raw faces with boils.

  Will you write a tale about the grove on the little hills at Wittenham?fn5 Surely, you cannot but do so. The deaf lady [Brett] sends you her greetings. Write a long letter again soon. I send you a small brown paper parcel and remain

  Votre grosse bébé Carrington

  To Lytton Strachey

  16 Yeoman’s Row, Brompton Road

  Tuesday morning, 13 June 1916

  Chère grand-père,

  It was indeed ungrateful of me not to write before, and thank you for the amazing poem.fn6

  But so many things happened at once, and I got frantically depressed, and so it was no use trying to write. You will believe me I know when I tell you, that the poem made me ill with excitement. I cannot understand how all these people go on so calmly. And when it becomes too much, and one tells them, how little are they astounded. I will ask you, because I care so much that I do not mind even if it is a nuisance to you. But you must send the poems about the dove-cot and the Brown sky and the ladies with the silver finger-nails searching for bugs, almost immediately. Are you coming with Lady Ottoline this week to London? We have just been down to Witteringfn7 for Whitsun. It was an exciting place, but the company, repeat it not, was dull. I had a wonderful walk from Chichester late at night there, with only a half sucked acid-drop of a moon for company. I like Mary H so much. The conversation was merely lewd without being amusing, and a dreadful domestic couple made everything dismal for me. Do not you hate united pairs. But is not the shore with the long flat stretches of mud, and sea grass beautiful and a wild black horse which ran madly on the grass. I came back in a motor car with Shearmanfn8 and Mark. Yellow wine, and pate de Foie Gras on the top of High hills near Arundel for lunch. Do you know I can ride the motor bicycle now all around Regent’s Park before breakfast tearing quicker and quicker leaving gaping faces of city clerks behind on either side […]

  Last Thursday, the arch-bugger Lou Lou Harcourtfn9 came to supper with us at Brett’s studio, a terrible long creature tightly buttoned in a frock coat all the way up, and then a face bulging out all pink, and very tight above his collar. Really a nightmare of a face.

  Of course my grievance is purely personal for he dared to say to Mark outside afterwards that I was a nice ‘plump little thing’. But you are laughing. I will spoil his tight pink face for him one day. He made up to Mark with great rapidity outside. His conversation was as bombastic as Philip’s!fn10 Now this letter cannot be published at breakfast. Are you writing your Clump story? do not be so carelessly lazy. What sort of gossip do you want? But Faith [Henderson]fn11 will have told you everything at the week-end. She came to tea with me last Friday and had a curious conversation. Brett told me afterwards it was with a purpose. I do hate having conversations with good motives behind them. Are you still crouching over the fire reading life upon life of Rimbaud?

  […] Tomorrow Ottoline comes to dinner with us at Brett’s studio – a wonderful picture is in the making – which you will like also I think … and next week I shall see Combe again. But you would never get as far as Newbury alone. Some motor bus on the way would devour you. I shall wait and only strands of your red beard would be blown up to me from the valley of Newbury. And to wait with only a red beard for company under the gibbet on Inkpen Hill – too much. This is no letter. But you know how much I loved Rimbaud.

  Votre bébé Carrington

  To Lytton Strachey

  Hurstbourne Tarrant

  Monday evening, 19 June 1916

  Promise you will not show my letter to a Wisset breakfastfn12 or I will never never write to you again quickly. Promise.

  Chère grand-pèrè Lytton, I can hardly believe it is true. For it has just happened. It seemed like some vile nightmare
. You must realize it; and yet you never can because you never went there.

  I went out to tea with a neighbour. Canny Scotch farmers. When suddenly the old lady, curse her yellow face and grey hair, told me with much malicious glee (for she had long past known of my great love) that Combe House had been taken by some woman and was now under repair. You can imagine what this meant. Taken! By whom? what repairs? At last I managed to escape and rushed away on my bicycle to The House. What repairs! But it had to be. The grass was all cut in the garden. The orchard pruned, walls mended, and neat. Little violas with pert yellow faces and geraniums sniggered round the foot of the house in newly made beds. Think! Violas, in such a garden!

  I found the master builder in an undignified position behind the wall, round the corner. He retreated before me, abashed, doing up many buttons. The painters in the house smiled. But I persuaded him to forgive me, and went over the house with him. Lytton it was more amazing that I had ever seen it before and one room upstairs had black-lead wall painted all over with a pattern of white flowers by hand! They discovered this under an old wall paper. Traces of red walls with yellow patterns were found in all the other rooms, but distempered over! The dining room was entirely panelled with Jacobean oak. Thank God the woman does not seem to be so bad. But the spirit has been driven out by distemper, and white paint everywhere. It will never be what it was. A huge chunk of me is cut away, so many dreams. It all seems impossible. What right had they to come and steal it? Oh, Lytton why is one so small against these creatures. No more.

  Lady Ottoline had dinner with us all last Wednesday and after went to the Palladium where we heard the incomparable song: ‘I’m Burlington Bertie of Bow’. She was very lively with a tall purple ostrich feather, no doubt purloined from Loulou’s estate […] But what of Philip the King and the Pugs? also now I know from Brett what was said when I sat enthralled beside you on the lawn. And when we came back glowing with inspired eyes from The Clumps! Wissett sounds a long way off. It will need much persuasion to make me walk so far I fear. Besides you are not very kind, are you? You laugh much and often …