LITMIR.BIZ

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at me as often as you do. It is Very Beautiful of you.

Saturday 6 January Darling, I’ve just this minute-as-ever-is finished writing to Leslie. Of course, I Know Nothing about the reason for Leslie’s resignation,18 and I never suspected for an instant that it was coming. I’m sorry – not because I agreed with his politics but because he knew how to remain human in a clogged and sluggish machine. (I mean Neville and his Naughty Ninepins.) He was a man (and still is, bless him – (Dear Leslie).) Take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.

Sunday 7 January I am now unemployed. I had a cryptic telephone message from Miss Fox saying that, for reasons that I wotted of (or words to that effect) my services would not be required on Monday morning – or subsequently. Oh! darling, Leslie has been most notoriously abused (as Olivia said of Malvolio in a different connection). It is a Great Sorrow to me. I hope a nasty judgement descends on someone for this. I shall just go on Adoring – and Hope.

Joyce and I had a fantastic journey to London on Friday – with Sir Alan Cobham.19 He’s an Awful man. He talked all the way about the ‘Dirty Reds’. (‘Pity,’ he said, slappin’ his thigh, ‘Pity Germany went in with ’em. Why, if she’d attacked ’em, she’d ’ave gone through ’em like a dose o’ salts – what? And we’d have bin in the background, sittin’ pretty. Suited our book, what? Dirty Reds. I flew the next aeroplane from Goering in a race in Germany once – and I beat him. Ha! Ha! Got £1,000 for it too. Not bad goin’ – a thousand pounds for beating a dirty narzi – what?’) He then went on to talk of Famous People I Have Met – but two can play at that game – especially if one of them is Really Trying – and it didn’t take me long to leave him standing. Joyce sat convulsed with mirth in a corner, and my voice was all aquiver with the giggles too. It was like something out of a play. Silly old man.

Saturday 27 January Darling, I’ve got a grey hair – I mean white! I found it this morning in the Library – and I rushed off to the Catalogue Room to tell Joyce – in a dramatic stage whisper. There was a smallish man at the next catalogue who resented the interruption – he turned round (perhaps in order to catch a glimpse of the celebrated hair, which I was holding away from my head with two fingers – perhaps not) and it was Dr Bernard Lewis!20 He thought I was mad before, my dear love, now he’s sure of it! Isn’t it Awful?

I saw John Gielgud in Trinity Street this morning. He looked old & plain & knobbly – and he carries his nose higher than any man I’ve ever seen – with his head thrown right back – he looks like a parrot that’s trying to make its beak look retroussé! Fantastic!

      Monday 5 February I didn’t sleep last night, Gershon. Not on account of the Warning – but because you are reproaching yourself on my account. Listen, my dear love. I have known, ever since there was anything to know, exactly what your attitude was – and because of this there has always seemed a touch of irony in the kindly advice of Mrs Turner, Joyce & Joan Friedman who (in that order) advised me to take stock of my intentions before I went Any Further with you.

      I told Joyce (but not Mrs Turner or Joan) that I sincerely and honestly believed that in this matter I was not being unfair to you, because you knew and I knew that my Intentions would change according to your wishes. She said, yes, but I must consider the question of whether I would be prepared to make a drastic change in my attitude to marriage should the occasion arise. I said that it would be unfair to myself even to consider that question, unless the occasion arose – and I didn’t believe that it ever would arise. She said that she thought I was deliberately evading the issue – but I maintained that since my whole plan of living was based on the assumption that I didn’t want to marry, I dared not reconsider it, since I believed that you had shifted the basis of our relationship only because you thought I was safeguarded from being seriously hurt when it ended, by my views on marriage. And now you aren’t sure, are you dear, whether I am safeguarded by them? And neither am I – but that is my fault and not yours. After all, you told me very seriously, quite a long time ago to hang onto my independence, and you’ve often told me that you’d never met the woman you wanted to marry. So, darling, please believe that you have nothing with which to reproach yourself – and all I want, is that our relationship should go on until you are tired of it – and it won’t be any more difficult for me later than sooner – since it is quite clear in my mind (I hope) that the break must come – and, as far as I’m concerned, the longer it is put off, the better.

As for my changed attitude to Forwardness, I haven’t any regrets about that, either (though I’m glad I still think the same about Wantonness). I feel, rather arrogantly, that the nobleness of life is to do thus, when such a twain & such a mutual pair can do it.

      I’m afraid all this sounds rather clumsy & solemn, darling – but I want to be faithful, even at the risk of expressing myself stupidly.

In conclusion, darling, please don’t worry about me. ‘I wonder, by my troth, what thou & I did till we loved’ and now – ‘you are all states and all princes I. Nothing else is, Princes do but play us.’21

      Monday 19 February Last night you were wondering about Aubrey, darling. Wonder no more – I had a letter from him this morning – written in a barracks room which he was sharing with twenty vociferous & newly-inoculated privates – all singing ‘Kiss Me Goodnight, Sergeant Major’. He’d just had a meal consisting mainly of spinach. (‘Dear Leslie,’ he says in an embittered parenthesis – and I can’t say I blame him in the circumstances.) You shall see the letter when we meet – but I’ll keep it for the present so as to be able to answer it point by point – as is my way.

Sunday 25 February It really has been a very varied day. I had a terrific discussion with Jennifer about the way Men of Genius treat their wives (the particular instances in question were Shelley, Byron, Milton & Dickens). She said all the wives must have been Fools to Put Up With It. I said, with Infinite Wisdom born of Age & Experience that if they (the wives) were fond of them (the Geniuses) I expected they thought it was worth it. She snorted & said Tush, or something equally intolerant – & added that No Man was Worth Anything unless he knew how to treat his wife. Shelley & Co. were therefore all hypocrites – posing as social reformers indeed, when they’d have been better employed in reforming their own conjugal habits. (Further snort.) Women who married Geniuses, she added, were fools. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove,22 I said mildly – but I’m afraid she thought it was a quotation from ‘The Desert Blooms’23 – so it didn’t carry much weight. Ah! me.

      Monday 18 March Oh! I’m so tired, darling. Mr Turner hammered on my door at seven, this morning – and it seemed such a short time since you’d left, that I thought you must have come back to collect something you’d forgotten! I almost said – ‘Come in, darling’, but fortunately I woke up, properly, just in time. Poor Mr Turner – he’d never have been the same again – and it would probably have disorganized the Administration of Justice at the Saffron Walden Courts (where he’s appearing today) very seriously. Think what he was spared – if only he knew!

It’s been a wearing day. Aubrey drove Semiramis24 to London – just as if she were an Army lorry, darling. I shall never be the same again. Occasionally, he thought Semiramis was a motor-bicycle, and that was even worse. Outside the Blue Boar I met Raphael Loewe.25 When I said I was on my way to collect Aubrey – he said intensely ‘Ah! yes – he left me at eleven last night’ just as though he were describing a Tender assignation which he felt to be Very Beautiful. Then he wished me a happy vac in an impassioned voice – & vanished – it was a Beautiful moment, in its way.

The Nester baby circumcision was Awful. As soon as I got to the hotel, I went to see Duncan – leaving Aubrey & Mrs Turner to drink coffee with my mother. I suddenly had a Horrible Thought and, parting hastily from Duncan, I rushed into the drawing room & asked my mother – d’une voix mourante – whether we’d actually have to witness the circumcision. (I’m frightened of shots in films & plays – my dear love – but it’s all as nothing to the Terror I should feel at seeing a smallish, pinkish baby wriggling beneath the surgeon’s

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