We are all breathing again! The Bear has taken himself off for one of his camping holidays, complete with painting outfit and half a dozen scribbling pads. He is actually going to write a book! — telling people how to live on nettles and toadstools and that sort of thing, and how in case of another Great War we could support the entire nation on boiled hedgehogs or some such nastiness. My dear, it is such a relief to get him out of the house! Of course, he couldn’t go off without creating an unpleasantness. He was absurd enough to suggest that Mrs Harrison should go with him — the idea of it! in a horrible little shack, miles from anywhere — damp as a well, I shouldn’t wonder, with no proper water or sanitation or anything. Did you ever hear of such a thing? Naturally, Mrs Harrison said she didn’t think she would care about it — what did the man expect? He didn’t say anything more about it then — I think I’ve taught him not to bully his wife when I’m about! — but he took it out of her when they went upstairs. She came in crying at 12 o’clock at night to sleep with me because she couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘My dear,’ I said, ‘why do you take any notice of it? If he wants your company so badly, why can’t he sacrifice himself for once and take you to Brighton or Margate, or some nice cheerful place? He just likes to make people miserable, that’s all.’ So then I told her a little about what Dr Trevor said about the people who enjoy inflicting torture on others. I said, ‘You must just look on it as a kind of disease and not resent it if you can help it. Build up a wall of protective thought about yourself and determine to be quite detached about it.’ We had a very interesting little talk about repression, and I have lent her my handbook to Freud. It is so important to get a healthy angle on these things.
Mr Lathom has been very nice, coming in almost every evening to keep us company. It must be a relief to him not to be bothered with the Bear’s everlasting drivel about Art. He is going to paint our portraits. Mrs Harrison is going up for her first sitting tomorrow. It is to be a blue, green and bronze colour-scheme — blue dress, green background and a big bowl of those bronze chrysanthemums. It gave Mr Lathom a great deal of trouble deciding it. Of course, Mrs Harrison is very attractive-looking, but you couldn’t exactly call her pretty, with those greeny eyes and her rather pale complexion. I haven’t decided what to wear. I asked Mr Lathom, but he said he thought I should look nice in anything and he could safely leave it to me. I think I shall have it done in that orange thing with the square yoke — the one which Mr Ramsbottom said made me look like a Pre-Raphaelite page — you remember? — and have my hair waved and curled under all round to carry out the idea. I pointed out to Mr Lathom that my face wasn’t the same both sides, and he laughed, and said no human being ever was the same both sides — Nature never worked by rule and compass.
I am doing well with my stockings, and have had several orders for scarves. Don’t forget to tell anybody who wants one that I am quite ready to undertake the work. I am experimenting on some calendars, made like the old-fashioned tinsel pictures, with the coloured paper-wrappers off chocolate creams. Some of the designs are simply beautiful. You might send me any you get. I think I might get some Christmas orders for them. I’ve thought out quite an original idea . .
[The remainder off this letter, which contained only some designs for needlework, has been detached.]
17. John Munting to Elizabeth Drake
15a, Whittington Terrace 28.10.28
Darling Bungie,
Just a line to say I am running down to Oxford to stay with the Cobbs for a week or two. It is simply impossible to work in this place at the moment — the downstairs menagerie swarms over us all day. This is the last time I’ll think of setting up housekeeping with a man on the strength of a school and restaurant acquaintance. Of course, it’s financially useful — but, damn it all! money isn’t everything, even when one’s hoping to get married. Lathom will insist on being a little ray of sunshine about the place. Damn sunshine. If it hadn’t gone joggling up the perfectly good and placid atoms in the primeval ooze, they would never have sweltered up in this unsatisfactory world of life and bothersomeness.
The great idea now is to paint a portrait of Mrs Harrison as a surprise for Harrison on his return. Knowing Lathom’s style, I should say it would be a very great surprise to him, indeed. It will probably be a very fine work — the man can paint — but I wish they could get on with it quietly by themselves and leave me alone. That poisonous old woman is in and out the whole time. I daren’t emerge from my own room for a minute without being collared and asked some imbecile question or other. Impertinent old bitch. She’s a dangerous woman, too. In Harrison’s place I’d give her the sack. She had the damned sauce to edge into my room after me yesterday and ask whose photograph that was on my table, was it my best girl’s? I said, No — it was my last mistress but three or four, I had lost count. (It was Brenda’s, as a matter of fact.) I was told I was a dreadful man and that Miss Drake ought to know the way I behaved. I was furious. I don’t know how the devil she got hold of your name. Lathom’s damned chattiness, I suppose — confound him! She wound up the interview by saying, really, she didn’t think it safe to be in the same room with me, and leered her way out. Disgusting fool! Fortunately, I was only revising ‘Birth and Childhood’, or I should have been too irritable to work for the rest of the day. I hope, for your sake, I am not becoming neurotic — that would be the last straw.
Anyway, the Cobbs’s invitation came at the exact right moment to prevent my doing something regrettable, so I’m barging off. Otherwise I should probably have had a row with Lathom, which would have been a nuisance, as I’ve paid the rent up to Christmas.
No news from Merritt yet. Probably he has slung the poor old MS into a drawer and forgotten about it. It could write its memoirs by this time: Pigeon-holes I Have Lived in. How goes your latest?
My love to the Governor and everybody,Your loving J
18. Agatha Milsom to Olive Farebrother
15, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater 8.11.28
Dearest Olive,
Ever so many thanks for sending the order from Mrs Pottersby; I will get on with it as quickly as I can. I have two more scarves in hand, and Mr Perry wants two dozen calendars for people in the parish, so you see I am quite busy just at present. I am glad Tom’s rheumatism is no worse, and that Joan’s little illness turned out to be such a trifling matter after all. It must have given you a lot of anxiety.
I am feeling very much better, I am glad to say — in fact, we are all brighter and happier for our period of peace and quietness. The Bear came back in quite a good mood, for him! — and dear Mrs Harrison seems quite a different person. She reads a lot, and I am encouraging her to live in her books, and abstract herself altogether from the wearing and irritating realities of life. It is easy, because she has a wonderfully vivid and romantic imagination, which makes the world of literature very real to her. Of course, that is what Mr Harrison would never be able to understand. It is hopeless to try to discuss anything with him. I tried to get him to talk about Gilbert Frankau’s new book the other day. He said he hadn’t read it and didn’t want to. I gave him an outline of the plot, but I don’t think he was listening. At any rate, he only said, ‘Oh!’ and went on to talk interminably about his eternal fungi and hedgehogs. Still, provided he keeps his temper, it doesn’t much matter what he talks about, and Mrs Harrison listens to it all most patiently. I wonder how she can do it, but she is in a wonderfully serene and happy frame of mind. I am rather proud of my work, for I am sure it was our little talk in my bedroom the other day that showed her the way out of her troubles.
I am sorry for what you say about Ronnie. It is most trying for you that he should have got mixed up with that sort of girl, but no doubt it will all blow over. Dr Trevor says that that kind of adolescent love-affair should always be dealt with sympathetically, and will work itself out naturally if not thwarted. I’m sure it would be most unwise of Tom to exert his authority in any way. I cannot forget how our poor dear Mother ruined my life — of course, with the best intentions — by her old-fashioned ideas of what was ‘nice’. Nobody will ever know what I suffered as a girl, and I am sure it is all due to that early unhappiness that I am in the doctor’s hands now. It was not the same thing for you, of course — you never had that complicated and delicately balanced temperament, and would probably always have been happy enough, whether you had married or not. People of your kind are much the most fortunate, but then one cannot help one’s temperament, can one? If you take my advice, and treat Ronnie with sympathy and indulgence, you will avoid making the mess of his life that our parents made of mine. I feel that Ronnie and I are very much akin — perhaps a few words from me would help to explain him to himself. I am writing to him tonight.Your loving sister, Aggie
19. The Same to the Same
15, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater 15.11.28
Dear Olive,
I have been much surprised and deeply hurt by Ronnie’s letter to me, which I enclose for you to see. I cannot believe that he would have written in that spirit of his own accord. I can only suppose that you and Tom have been prejudicing him against me. Of course, he is your child and not mine, but it is quite a mistake to imagine that, merely because of the physical accident of parenthood, you are, for that reason, divinely qualified to deal with a sensitive temperament like Ronnie’s. I (not having my eyes blinded) can see quite clearly through what he writes, that you have succeeded in apparently bringing him into agreement with your point of view; but, if you did but know it, you are merely encouraging him to repress his natural feelings, with consequences which may be terrible to contemplate. I can imagine nothing worse for him than what you call change of scene and companionship, when I know perfectly well that you mean that unimaginative and completely insensitive Potts person. I cannot imagine a more dangerous influence for a boy in Ronnie’s state of mind than a footballing parson. The harm done by men of that class is quite incalculable, and their minds are, as a rule, perfect sinks of dangerous and sublimated libidos (I don’t know whether that is the right way to spell the plural). However, it is your own affair, and I am powerless to interfere, but I do think you ought not to set the boy against me, merely because I am, unhappily, in a position to know more than you do about certain facts of life.
Thank you, I am glad to say we are all very well. Mrs Harrison’s portrait is finished. It is a very striking piece of colour. Of course, Mr H. thinks it does not do her justice, but then, as you would expect, he is quite out of sympathy with modern art.
We are relieved from the presence of Mr Munting, who has gone to Oxford, on a visit to some friends, or so he says. I think it is much more likely that he is leading a double life somewhere. He unblushingly confesses to having innumerable disreputable entanglements, and I am very sorry indeed for the girl he is engaged to.Your affectionate sister, Aggie
20. George Harrison to Paul Harrison
15, Whittington Terrace 20.11.28
My dear Boy,
I was very glad to get your letter — the one dated 7th October — and to know that all goes on so well with you and the bridge. You took exactly the course I should have advised myself in the matter of the man Matthews. In such a case, consideration is out of place. Your duty to the firm (to say nothing of the thousands who will use the bridge) must come before any sympathy for the man and his special circumstances. Far too much laxity is shown nowadays to outbreaks of so-called ‘temperament’, with most disastrous consequences, and there is far too much talk about ‘not being able to help one’s self’. I should not let the matter prey on your mind in the least. I quite understand that the man has brilliant powers and an attractive personality, and that you are sorry to lose him, but it is fatally easy for a man like that to imagine that the ordinary rules of morality do not apply to him, and to indulge him in such ideas is bad for him, and may easily be ruinous to other people and to his work. I entirely approve your decision, and so, I am sure, must Sir Maurice, if the matter comes to his notice.
I am feeling greatly benefited by my little holiday, and am glad to be back to work again. I found all well at home on my return. Margaret was in very good spirits over a little surprise that she and Lathom had prepared for me. She has been sitting to him for her portrait, and he has made a very striking piece of work of it. While I cannot say I think it does her justice, there is no doubt that it is a handsome piece of coloratura, and the kind of thing to attract attention at the present time. Lathom belongs, of course, to the modern school. He paints, I feel, in too much of a hurry, and his pictures have not the beautiful smooth finish of a Millais, or, among living artists, of a Lavery — but no doubt he will grow out of this slapdash method when he is older. It is a kind of affection which besets the young painters of today, and, while I cannot help but see the defects of the method, I am not blind to the merits of the work and to the kind thought which prompted the execution. He is anxious to show it at the Academy next year, and Margaret is (naturally, I suppose) delighted with the idea. I was obliged, however, to say that I did not care about the project. It is the kind of picture to attract a good deal of comment of one sort and another, and these young people do not quite see the amount of undesirable publicity it might involve. I fear they are both rather disappointed, but later on, when I was able to speak quietly about it to Lathom alone, he saw the matter in the right light, and was very nice about it. We are hanging it in a good light in the drawing-room, where it will look very well.
There has been a very amusing sequel to this. Your old friend (or should I say enemy?) Miss Milsom has taken it into her head that her fair features ought to be immortalised, too! Lathom, with his usual extraordinary good nature, has actually consented to make a picture of her — but only on the understanding that this time, if it turns out well, he shall have the right to do as he likes with it! Miss Milsom is only too enchanted at the idea of being hung at Burlington House. I did not feel called upon to interfere, since he is obviously only ‘pulling her leg’, and there is not the remotest chance of the portrait’s being exhibited; for, as you know, the lady is scarcely the Venus of Milo! She is very much excited about it, and has produced the most incredible garment to be painted in — very tight as to the bust and voluminous as to the skirt. I understand that a quattrocento effect is aimed at.
I am very hard at work of an evening now — with a number of sketches to work up and my little opus to prepare. I am illustrating it with water-colours of various plants and fungi in their natural habitat, and it should turn out a very pretty and useful volume.
I enclose the formulae you asked for, and remain,Your affectionate Dad
21. Agatha Milsom to Olive Farebrother
15, Whittington Terrace 22.11.28
Dear Olive,
I have received your letter about Ronnie. No doubt you think you know best. I will not allude further to the matter.
I am feeling much too upset to discuss such things just now. Mr Harrison has been behaving abominably, undoing all the good his absence has done, and creating his usual atmosphere of unpleasantness.
Mr Lathom painted a most beautiful picture of Mrs Harrison. They both worked like galley-slaves to get it finished in time for his return (H.’s, I mean). I say both, for sitting is most exhausting work, as you would know if you had ever sat to anybody for a portrait, and she would end up sometimes so cramped she could scarcely move. As for Mr Lathom, he seemed quite inspired over it, and painted and painted away without food or rest, till I got quite worried about him, and had to bring him up cups of hot Bovril and Ovaltine, for fear he should over-tax his strength. He is an extraordinarily generous young man, because, though he cannot be well off, he actually painted the portrait to give to Mr Harrison, when I feel sure he could have sold it for a big price, it is such a splendid piece of work, and he says himself it is one of the best things he has ever done.
Well, they got it finished in time for the Bear’s return, and Mrs Harrison was ever so delighted with it, and thought the creature would be pleased. It was quite pathetic to see how eagerly she looked forward to surprising him, poor woman. Well, he was pleased, in his grudging kind of way, though he had the impertinence to criticise the painting — as if Mr Lathom didn’t know more about Art with his eyes shut than Mr Harrison could learn in a month of Sundays. And then it was all spoilt by the Bear’s horrible selfishness. Mr Lathom said — very nicely and courteously — he hoped Mr Harrison would see no objection to its being sent to the Academy. Of course, as it was the best thing he’d done, you’d think anybody would see he had a right to exhibit it, and you’d think, too, that when anybody had received a valuable present like that, he’d be only too willing to be obliging. But the PIG just said, ‘Well, Lathom, I don’t quite think we can go as far as that. My wife would hardly like to be put on show, you know.’
I could see that Mrs Harrison felt the discourtesy to Mr Lathom dreadfully, and she said at once she would be quite pleased to let the portrait be shown, and then he laughed — just laughed, as if it was of no importance to anybody, and said, ‘Oh, Lathom won’t insist on making an exhibition of you, my dear.’ I could see how vexed Mr Lathom was, and so could Mrs Harrison, and she begged and prayed him not to be so selfish and unkind, and Mr Lathom spoke up and said, if Mrs Harrison would like her portrait shown, surely he was not going to be a Victorian husband. Of course, that was unwise (as I could have warned him if I could have got the chance), and we had one of the worst rows even I can remember. Mr Lathom couldn’t stand it and went out of the room in disgust, and Mrs Harrison cried, and her husband said the most insulting and unjustifiable things, ending up with: ‘Of course, if you want to make a public exhibition of yourself you can. Do exactly as you like’ — as though anybody could, when they had been spoken to like that about it. So that was the end of trying to do something to please one’s husband! It was a most miserable ending to the day we had all looked forward to with so much hope and pleasure.
For once Mrs Harrison has taken a firm line with him and refuses to speak to him. It is a very uncomfortable situation for me, and I am feeling very unwell. All my insomnia has come back, and so has the uncontrollable longing for shrimps. It is very tiresome and disappointing.
Mr Lathom has been perfectly sweet about it all. He went in to see Mr Harrison when the uproar had calmed down a little, and finding it impossible to move him, gave way gracefully. I was determined to do my best to make it up to him, so I went up and said how sorry I was, and added that I insisted that he should do exactly as he liked with my own portrait. He could show it anywhere he chose, I said, even if he liked to call it Portrait of a Middle-aged Spinster. He laughed, and said he wouldn’t think of calling it anything of the sort, and he certainly wouldn’t show it if I would rather he didn’t, and I said I was determined he should show it, whatever it turned out like. So he said, very well, that was a bargain, then. So we have begun the sittings. I am rather nervous about the result, because as you know, I always photograph very badly. But then a photograph cannot show the animation of the face as a portrait can, and people have so often told me that my animation is what gives character and interest to my looks. I hope it will be a good likeness — perhaps you will say that if it is it won’t be an attractive picture, but Mr Lathom seems very keen on it, so perhaps it will turn out better than you, with your sisterly prejudice, might expect.
I am very tired with keeping the pose — I sat for two hours this morning and again in the afternoon — so I hope I may get some rest tonight.
The scarf will be finished tomorrow, if I can get the right shade of silk for the fringe.Your affectionate sister, Aggie
22. John Munting to Elizabeth Drake
15a, Whittington Terrace 1.12.28
Beloved Bungie,
Here we are again! Back home and full of beans and fit to face anything, even Lathoms and Milsoms.
By the way, I’ve got to take back what I said about Lathom. I’ll forgive him anything for being such a bloody fine painter. My God, he has made a fine thing of Mrs Harrison — old Halkett would grunt in his funny gruff way and say, ‘It’s a masterpiece.’ He wants to send it to the Academy (where it would probably be the picture of the year, if the Committee didn’t hang themselves in their own wires under the shock of seeing a decent bit of painting for once) — only, of course, those imbecile women have made a hash of it and put Harrison’s back up. Blether, blether blether — rushing at the poor man with chatter about newspaper sensations and standing under my portrait on opening day, blah! blah! before the poor man had finished reeling under the impact. Row, of course. I told Lathom not to be a silly ass, and to go and apologise quietly to Harrison afterwards and tell him there wasn’t any slightest intention of showing it against his wishes. If he uses a little tact, the old boy will take it for granted three months hence that the thing is going to be shown and imagine he suggested it himself. I’ve got Harrison fairly well sized up, but his wife is a silly egoist, and Lathom has no practical sense at all as regards human relationships. Anyway, I hope the thing will be there, because I’d like you to see it. It’s really first-rate. And revealing, my God! only Mrs H. doesn’t see that, and I don’t think Lathom realises it either.