Carrington's Letters Page 6
Farewell. Dans un misère gris je reste votre bébéfn13
Carrington
A plan was being hatched for Carrington to join Lytton on a walking holiday in Wales with Barbara Hiles and her suitor Nick Bagenal. Needless to say this required deceiving Mark Gertler. Meanwhile at Garsington her refusal to surrender her virginity, which Gertler had made known, became a topic of keen interest.
To Lytton Strachey
Shandygaff Hall [Garsington Manor], Oxford
Sunday afternoon, 30 July 1916
Reverend Sir,
It is all very complicated! Jack Hutch has just written to me, a long letter insisting that I go on the 15th to Eleanor! Mark’s affection has increased in my absence.
And I want so much to go to this land of mountains and (since this disgusting cult of truth has begun) so much to be with you again […]
Ottoline insists on trying her best to get my state of virginity reduced, and made me practically share a bedroom with Norton!!fn14 And Poor Brett got sent out four times in one morning with Bertie [Bertrand Russell] for long walks across remote fields by her Ladyship!! So you betrayed me to Maynard [Keynes]! But he is much more truthful than you only really cryptic. I read John Donne all day now. A lovely poem about Fair ships in harbours. But what will ever be written as wonderful as Rimbaud’s ‘librarians’. Her ladyship has now taken on your duties as educator to the young, and read us the Irish and English poets during the long evenings. Even Philip plays the missionary and recites Shelley through his hairy nostrils. This is a poor letter but I lie exhausted, in the sun after swimming in that cess-pool of slime.fn15
Monday morning in bed, 5 o’ck
I spent a wretched time here since I wrote this letter to you. I was dismal enough about Mark and then suddenly without any warning Philip after dinner asked me to walk round the pond with him and started without any preface, to say, how disappointed he had been to hear I was virgin! How wrong I was in my attitude to Mark and then proceeded to give me a lecture for quarter of an hour! Winding up by a gloomy story of his brother who committed suicide. Ottoline then seized me on my return to the house and talked for one hour and a half in the asparagrass [sic] bed, on the subject, far into the dark night. Only she was human and did see something of what I meant. And also suddenly forgot herself, and told me truthfully about herself and Bertie. But this attack on the virgins is like the worst Verdun on-slaughter and really I do not see why it matters so much to them all. Mark suddenly announced that he is leaving today (yesterday), and complicated feelings immediately come up inside me.
Brett sold her big picture of Black Widows to Lady Hamilton. So she is happy. I leave here about Friday probably. Il y en a qui m’enseignent à vivre – et d’autres qui m’enseignent à mourir – Maintes et maintes fois.fn16 I look at the hills. On these hot days they once again seem very near.
I am glad you are working hard, and eating vigorously. Ici il fait de plus en plus chaud chaque jour! Goodbye. Votre bébé très triste.fn17
To Lytton Strachey
London
Saturday, 8 o’ck, 5 August 1916
Write me another letter soon please.
At last I have left! It seems strange to be out of that mass of intrigue. You have no idea how incredibly complicated just before I left. But isn’t it wonderful about going to Wittering and Wales! Ottoline in one of the many farewell interviews that I had with her yesterday morning, asked me if I was really a fraud. All very embarrassing.
Wittering, 7:30
It is Sunday now, and I write sitting up in bed in the big barn with shrieking birds all round, and a wonderful picture of green grey mud, and little grey blue distances outside […]
It is wonderful here. We walked from Bosham, and had lunch, in yellow cornfields with Jack and Mary and then sailed down the river, in a big ship with a bulging white sail, and pale yellow mast. It was exciting, riding up and down, with smacks on the green waves […] Then we had tea at Eleanor, and swam in the warm sea. Even Mark came in, looking very absurd, in a bathing dress! I liked Aldous Huxleyfn18 at Garsington. We used to sleep on the roof together, as it became so unbearably hot in those attics. Strange adventures with birds, and peacocks, and hordes of bees. Shooting stars, other things […]
I felt almost light headed with joy gazing over miles of empty flat land yesterday! we lit candles up the ilex tree one night. Great black shadows on the reptile branches. I was worn almost thin trying to capture my letters before Ottoline saw who they were from. Your first note which only arrived on Friday nearly brought about the fall or decline of Doric, especially as her Ladyship was in high wrath because you had written curtly demanding some books, and told her no scandal! She makes me steeped in debt by giving me all her letters to read. And then has long jabberfications about people deceiving her and being reserved! But I did enjoy it very much in between all these confusions. I did a Goya-esque portrait of our Lady of mystery which gave me some pleasure. But as I made her look like a pole-cat it had to be suppressed from the public eye.
[…]
Goodbye chère grandpère
Votre grosse bébé Carrington
To Mark Gertler
c/o Mrs Hiles, Llanbedre, Taly-cafn S.O., N. Wales
Monday, August 1916
I arrived here on Saturday evening. After a terrible, one of the most terrible, journeys I have ever undergone. Crowds of horrible sticky sweating people.
I am most happy here. Just Lytton, Barbara and Nicholas. We go out most of the day for long walks, and bathe in a wonderful pool with waterfalls. The mountains are quite high, and one gets Cézanne landscapes of mountains with dull green trees, and ugly white cottages with Slate roofs. Lytton has brought John Donne so I read him in the garden. He seems to me one of the most marvellous poets! How vividly he felt everything. He once had a Great Love for a little girl of 15 years and wrote the most violent outbursts of passion every anniversary of her death. But such comparisons. It is very long or I would copy it out for you. Barbara’s cottage is very small, all white outside with a small garden filled with flowers. And all round these huge mountains and a big river in a flat valley below. I hope you are enjoying yourself at Cholesbury. What are you painting now? Give Gilbert and Mary my love. What happened to Gilbert at his tribunal in the end?fn19 The Weather is wet here, and quite cold. Horrible after the heat of the south! and those hot sands […]
Donne is so wonderful you must have a book. I will give you one myself. Also Shakespeare’s sonnets I am reading. I have not heard from you since Wittering do you realize that? Willain. The people all speak Welsh here and but little English. I miss you. The intimacy we got at lately makes other relationships with people strangely vacant, and dull. Are you writing any more Philosophy? Again I laugh at Gilbert’s remark on the top of the bus. How annoying it is to be able to write so little of what I want to you. But it always seems rather false directly I put it down. But you must believe much more now by what I have felt with you.
Yours with love
friend Carrington
To Mark Gertler
N. Wales
August 1916
Dear Mark,
Thank you for your letter. I was glad to hear from you. Write me your poem about Spring in the park or I may never see it. Write it on the last page of your next letter. I cannot write to you about my inner self because it is all confused & very agonizing to pull out. If you cast your mind back to the period before you painted your ‘fruit gatherers’ could you have told me then about your future desires? No – you never could have. Besides may I say so frankly – you asked from two reasons. Neither of which were real interest. Be frank with yourself you will find it was so.
One was a kind of curiosity to know what I do not tell you and the other a mixture of knowing I would like you to be interested in my work as I am in yours. Am I not right? You will never have a passion for another person’s point of view & desires as your own is so great. Don’t be vexed, & rush at me with protests. It is only truthfu
l and why not let us both be thus.
Of course you like Lytton & praised him before I did. Because I did not even know him in those days, when you did. But I felt at Mary’s & do feel that you do not appreciate Lytton very much. Probably as you say because that other objection comes so much always before you.fn20 I have altered my views about that and think one always has to put up with something, pain or discomfort to get anything from any human beings. Some trait in their character will always jar. But when one realises it is there, a part of them & a small part – it is worth while overlooking it for anything bigger and more valuable […]
To Maynard Keynes
The George Hotel, Glastonbury, Somerset
29 August 1916
Dear Maynard,
We are staying here. A very Christian atmosphere prevails, which Lytton is enjoying incredibly. Also a miller’s lad. I doubt if Lytton will ever return. He wanders day after day with a guidebook on architecture in his lean hand gazing at ancient ruins.
[The rest of the letter is missing. On the opposite page in Lytton Strachey’s handwriting is:]
When I’m winding up the toy
Of a pretty little boy,
– Thank you, I can manage pretty well;
But how to set about
To make a pussy pout
– That is more than I can tell.
Carrington and Lytton shared a bed together during their walking tour after they left the Welsh cottage. What exactly happened between them sexually is far from clear, and the verse above is hardly conclusive; but it was to Lytton, both his and her biographers agree, that she surrendered her much discussed virginity. There can be no doubt, as later letters show, that she found him physically attractive; for a time, the feeling seems to have been mutual. On their return, she wrote him loving, intimate letters, while trying, not altogether successfully, both to reassure and to fend off Gertler.
To Lytton Strachey
Hurstbourne Tarrant
Friday evening [1 September 1916]
Dear Uncle Lytton,
I feel burdened with so much affection and gratitude towards you tonight that I will pen you a letter whilst the inclination is heavy upon me. What a journey! That train was more than one hour late at Templecombe so I did not get here until six o’ck. But I had a happy time however exploring the village in the hot sun […]
Home. No discoveries! As I expected, the most utter boredom and peevishness […] BUT – an aged doctor of 92 years who died at Bath, left me a legacy of £20! My Father just told me as I was bolting down some kedgeree. For I was ravenous. So it does not matter how extravagant we have been! The downs round Salisbury are lovely. It was wonderful to see them again. You are lying on your couch now, with its crochet background reading Gardiner […] I did enjoy myself so much with you, you do not know how happy I have been, everywhere, each day so crowded with wonders. Thank you indeed. It is melancholy here, their heavy dullness, and this dimly lit room burdened with dreary furniture.
Il faut que vous boutonniez vos boutons des mouches (toutes les) chaque nuit! n’oubliez-pas mon ami!fn21 Go to bed at 10:30 and take your Gregory pills. Write to me sometimes, and tell me of your travels, perhaps Rimbaud. Thank you so much for giving me Dr Donne, dear Lytton. I have been so happy, incred i a b l y [going up a musical scale] happy! Quelque fois je voudrais être un garcon de moulin!fn22
Votre niece Carrington
To Mark Gertler
Hurstbourne Tarrant
3 September 1916
Dear Mark,
I was sad to have made you anxious about me. Thank you so much for both your letters. I am glad you read Marvel & Donne, & liked the latter so much. I cannot read Marvel’s ‘Coy Mistress’ because I have not got any poetry books here with the Early English poet in them. Could you possibly get me a Marvel? I should like one so much.
[…] What have you been doing in London? Who have you seen? In two weeks I may be back again. I am always sorry afterwards that I write in the way I do, as it makes controversies. Whereas it is really interesting to get at what we both think. I wish also that I knew you better. But it is very difficult. Everyone is so complex […]
I am excited over everything lately. The fullness of life. So many people alive who one doesn’t know, so many wonders past which one finds everyday, & then the things to come. Oh the wonder of it all! […]
To Lytton Strachey
Shandygaff Hall!!
Wednesday morning, 6 September 1916
Well you may be surprised at my being here chère Grandpère! quite suddenly yesterday morning I bicycled over – as I had to see Brett (who is still here) about the London house. An Excellent arrangement is now made. Maynard and Sheppardfn23 are to live in Clive’s house and we take 3 Gower Street for nine months. Katherine [Mansfield] and [Middleton] Murryfn24 will live in the bottom floor, Brett on the second, and I in the attics. But my rent will only be nine pounds a year!!! So what affluence I shall have for Hotel life!!! I shall like living with Katherine I am sure. Murry has a job at the W.O. [War Office]. It was strange arriving here again […] Numerous questions at once from Clive about you, and Wales. I refrained from all enthusiasm – which you will hardly believe, and created no mysteries. Ottoline dislikes me! Rather plainly. Had a long talk with Katherine in bed this morning, she and Murry have been here for weeks.
A concert is in preparation for this evening. Great confusion. Like Clapham Junction, chairs and tables being shunted about everywhere. The performers and Pipsie at the Pianola! What an evening last night. Philip reading Boswell’s life of Johnson with his own remarks freely strewn in between the passages. ‘That’s good, excellent’, ‘all this part is very dull I’ll leave it out’. Clive cackling in the comfortable chair, your chair, pugs snoring, Ottoline yawning, Maria, Mademoisellefn25 and even Katherine knitting woollen counterpanes. Brett with her telephone. What a scene! I thought of you, and longed to transport it all to you, lying on your sofa with its garden, but all conversation absolutely failed. I suddenly realized I did not want to talk to her in the least. It is extraordinary being here again. They all seemed enchanted. I cannot explain it. I think I shall not wait for the concert tonight, but bicycle home after lunch. I feel so desperately lonely. Your letters gave me much pleasure […]
By this time, Lytton and Carrington had started to talk of finding a country retreat together, to be shared with other friends for financial reasons and also for discretion. She and Barbara began to look around. Suspicions and rumours about the unlikely romance were building up.
To Lytton Strachey
Hurstbourne Tarrant
Friday morning, 8 September 1916
[…] Tomorrow I am going to look at a house near Hungerford for you. I boldly went into all the estate agents in Newbury yesterday, and enquired about houses. This house is only £32 with a huge orchard four miles from Hungerford. But more anon when I have seen it. Clive is writing to you. He will share if it’s near Newbury, so that he can come over from Oxford. Will you like this? Brett has taken your Garsington house. (‘Her great leap.’ ‘The great plunge.’ They are merely trying to excite our curiosity with those letters!) If you were here, and could see these downs. So lovely, you would tremble with excitement at the prospect of your little cottage. I have maps of every square inch of the country now! And correspondence with every auctioneer in Newbury, Marlborough, and Reading! There is an amazing house to let in the middle of Savernake Forest. But £70 a year! Lytton, all the books arrived yesterday! I was so thrilled at having John Donne again last night. Thank you very much. And for Tom Jones also.
Katherine is writing to you a description of the concert so I will refrain. It was full of comic incidents, and humour abounded. We wished you had been there.
Never have I seen the garden look so wonderful. A moon shining on the pond, covered with warm slime, bubbling, and fermenting underneath and great black shadows cast from the trees over it all. And inside, music and these strange villagers with their babies, and young men in hard
white collars and thick serge suits. Clive sitting lost in thought on the steps. Maria in her yellow trowsers, lying, covered in a black cloak in the passage, distractedly in love with Ottoline. We acted a play. Katherine sang some songs and danced ragtimes. We talked late into the night together after it was all over in bed.
What fun we will have in Gower Street. She will play all the games I love best. Pretending to be other people and dressing up and parties! What weather. I am so full of energy that I cannot concentrate on this letter. I long to rush off and be on the downs.
Here are some photographs. I loved your long letters about your walk, and Westbury. There is great indignation at Garsington because I refrained from any excitement about our journey and merely gave a short description of the landscape! To hell with them! If one is ecstatic they accuse one of being superior and uplifted. If one is silent, and tempered, of being cryptic and exclusive! What news from Barbara about her pursuit of the cottage? […]
My love to you
Carrington
To David Garnett
Hurstbourne Tarrant
Saturday [postmarked 14 September 1916]
Dear Bunny,
I am sorry to have taken such a long time in answering your letter.
Will you when we come to London come to dinner with me? I made a muddle about sending your letter to some wrong address and sat waiting for you to come to tea with a clean table cloth and new buns, and no Bunny […]
Such an evening at Garsington. The d’Aranyisfn26 gave a concert to all the village people. In the hall a gathering of nearly a hundred aged mothers with babies and children in red flannel dresses and white pinafores, all the labourers in those thick grey serge suits and white washed collars. It was a strange assembly to see standing round the table in that shiny red panelled room eating rock cakes!