Naples

17 September 1944. Once before, after Christmas 1942, I started a diary because I was unhappy and it helped to write things down. Now I start because I have had a faint feeling of dissatisfaction with life here, the dull day’s work and empty social round and the fear that I shall never, never write that novel or do anything at all worth doing. Also a faint nostalgia for the carefree unnatural life on board the Christian Huygens and Michael (Lt. RN) and our talks and snatched kisses in the unsympathetic atmosphere of a troopship.

This afternoon we went to Capri. It takes about 2 hours from Naples by boat. It is much bigger than I expected with great sheer cliffs in parts. The four of us hurried ashore, into the funicular which took us past vineyards with hanging bunches of grapes, also lemon trees, but the lemons seemed either green or mouldy. The usual kinds of flowers here, royal blue convolvulus with pink inside, a rich puce climbing thing and another pale blue – I don’t know the names but one must be bougainvillaea. At the top we got a car and drove to Anacapri and then walked the last bit to Axel Munthe’s villa. The usual beggar followed us – an ‘orphan’ aged about sixty. The villa is lovely inside – full of old furniture and Roman sculptures which Munthe dug up in the garden – also Roman inscriptions – I wished I could read them – ‘oh the agony of not knowing Latin!’ Very striking is a great stone head of Medusa which he has on the wall over his writing desk. Apparently he saw this head in the clear water by the old foundations of Tiberius’s bath. How wonderful to have seen it before anyone else did. What I liked best was a cool little courtyard full of these Roman pieces, white walled and peaceful with trees against the sky. I felt tears coming into my eyes and had to turn away. The peace, the beauty, the antiquity, perhaps something of the feeling I have for churchyards came over me. There is also a lovely corner overlooking the sea with a marble seat and an avenue of cypresses. A stone harpy on a corner wall so that it is silhouetted against the sky and sea. Also a large granite sphinx on which you can have a wish. I wished a simple wish that could come true.

There is a pleasant little square in Anacapri, full of souvenirs – corals, straw hats, cameos and the little silver bells which are supposed to be lucky. Of course I bought one, being sentimental and a little superstitious. La campanella portafortuna.… I do hope it will. This place made me quite disinclined to go back to Naples.

Naples. From the ship layers of orange and pink and biscuit coloured buildings and in the evening a mass of twinkling lights. No smells for the first week as I had a cold, but afterwards many smells and dirty bits of paper in the streets – and occasionally a good smell, incense or perfume passing a barber’s shop. The people, rather ragged and dirty but some girls nicely dressed and pretty, nearly all wearing shoes with very high wedge heels – many priests.

18 September. I seem to be liking Naples better and often feel now the exhilaration of being in a foreign land. We worked very hard. In the evening we went on board the Sirius. Was shown all the radar apparatus which is truly fearful and wonderful. We danced on the quarter-deck to a Royal Marines Band. Highly romantic. Then a lovely trip back by the motorboat, wind and spray and stars – dark shapes of ships and the lights of Naples.

21 September. Last night Margaret and I went out with Peter (boredom is an exquisite experience, to be savoured and analysed like old brandy and sex). We were joined by Lt. Cdr. Crabb, who used to be in Major’s Gallery in Cork Street before the war – I couldn’t think where I had seen him before. We thought we might give a surrealist exhibition here – some of these Naval types would need no alteration beyond the addition of some small incongruity like a fried egg on the shoulder or a bird nesting in the beard. We went to the Orange Grove where I pleased the waiter by knowing the Italian for carnation. Afterwards we took it in turn to shuffle round the floor with Peter. There were a lot of Americans jitterbugging and looking so terrible I began to wonder if I were seeing right. Afterwards we went to the Fleet Club and had bacon and eggs. I am always eating here. Altogether the evening passed more pleasantly than I had imagined it would. Conversation with Peter is an impossibility. At the Landing Craft Mess on Tuesday, by the way, we had a rather nice Some Tame Gazelle conversation about baths of hot volcanic mud, how you lie on a kind of slab and an attendant plasters you with mud.

It has been pouring with rain yesterday and today and whites and macintoshes look rather silly.

I wish Michael would write. My morale needs a little bolstering up in that direction, unless I met somebody nice here, which would do equally well, but people seem to be so dreary. They are so rare, one’s own kind.

26 September. On Saturday afternooon I went to the Opera and saw Rigoletto. The Opera House is very luscious, red and gold and baroque with rows of boxes all round and a painted ceiling. After that to the Admiral’s cocktail party at his villa, romantically situated with a terrace overlooking the bay. A crescent moon, dark shining water below and clever artificial lighting – weak cocktails of Ischia wine and something and rather formal conversation with a beautiful Flags (seen in a dim light) and one or two others. Doriel and I went on to a party at the S.O.I.’s flat, which once belonged to some rich Italians and has all the original furnishings and even some of their hats! A lovely big table of mirror glass – portraits round the walls, with one of which I fell in love – a young man, looking like Jay in 17th century dress. Best of all is the bathroom which has paintings of Roman architecture all round the walls, bidet, w.c. and bath at one end and at the other a desk and armchairs. Dinner in their Mess, which has delightful Rex Whistler painted walls. There is also a gorgeous salon or bathroom with much white and gold and rococo or baroque ornamentation and pretty brocaded chairs. A pleasure just to sit and look at it. No need of ‘a remoter charm by thought supplied’…

The rest of the party was dancing, drinking and talking with a good looking (if rather common) young paybob. The first person in Naples with whom I’ve had any conversation. About sex! on the balcony overlooking the bay. He has a cynical attitude to life and the technique of outrageous rudeness. He told me I would make a good mistress because I would be able to hold a man’s attention by my intelligence.

2 October. Worked all day and in the evening wore myself out writing a long letter to Michael – but felt better for it – purged, I suppose! The trouble is I never quite know what I do feel and whether I am being sincere or not. Also I keep myself in check as I think it would be disastrous to care too much and even if it were mutual nothing could come of it. I can’t be bothered with these fleeting affairs.

3 October. A letter from Michael in answer to the silly card I sent him from Capri – a boring, slightly facetious letter, very disappointing, but I had imagined that correspondence with him would be disillusionment. I was a little alarmed when I remembered my intimate, affectionate 8 pages, nearly in my best style, of yesterday and hastily wrote off another little note making light of it and gently hinting that I had not remained altogether faithful. Which leads to Starky (the paybob) whom I’ve seen twice since I last mentioned him. He is rude and impossible and casual, in themselves quite attractively provoking qualities and yet I have a sort of liking for him, probably I am flattered by his attention (such as it is). He is the only person in Naples I can talk to about everything and nothing, though not cultured as far as I know. His cynicism is, I think, a mask of defence, which is always intriguing. He makes me feel fiercely protective because the others don’t like him! Also he is goodlooking and tall and has nice short-sighted brown eyes – but his voice gets on my nerves. We went to a party on Friday night and now I’ve just heard that he is returning to England any minute and funnily enough I mind. Morag says I enjoy wallowing in emotion – perhaps I do, but I still mind. I’m in agony wondering if I will hear anything from him before he goes – tonight we should have gone out together and it’s now 8 o’clock and no sign and does one ever learn not to mind!

12 October. One does learn better how to cope. Sitting on the bed at 6.15 after having pushed a note in at Navy House in the morning and seen him only a few minutes ago standing on his balcony gazing out across the Bay. Oh let him be gone and no more hankering for this, second-rate as it is. But the best Naples can offer.

13 October. And of course in the morning he phoned and orided me for letting sentimentality ort the better of cynicism, in my note. And invites me to go out to dinner with him tomorrow evening after our housewarming party. Oh how foolish one is!

14 October. Began to feel sick inside at the prospect of the party, but it went off well. The Anteroom redecorated, clean and cream-washed – new pictures (in the hideous gilt frames still) – new curtains, flowers, plates of food and surprisingly strong drinks. Starky came early and I spent most of the evening with him, not managing to have a word with Rob Long (Admiral Morse’s handsome, conceited Flags). S. is no good socially, he is gauche and rather ineffectual but so sweet. We went to dinner at the Fleet Club and it was quite a successful party – we seemed rather divided into couples and this increased as the evening went on. S. and I danced and then went to his Mess when the others went home. And there was the same good thing between us as we had the evening of Mac’s party, and which I felt we had lost in our meetings since then. He goes back to the UK either on Wednesday or next week, so I suppose I shall go all through it again, though I don’t think I can run into Navy House with any more notes.

15 October. Went to the 22 Club with Captain Heaven (Jimmy) where we bathed and sat in the sun. Then a pleasant drive round Naples – layers of white and pink houses and the bougainvillaea still out. Then tea at the RASC Mess and walked round the garden which is lovely, green and neglected with green oranges on the trees, wild cyclamen, roses, pink lilies, palms. A pleasant, nostalgic place. It got very cold at twilight. At 7 we went to the Open House to a concert. The old Grieg Piano Concerto. Gordon and this time 2 years ago and now this.

17 October. Starky and I went up to the Orange Grove, drank and talked a lot, danced a little and a little love and more talk and he thinks I am in love with him. Because I call him darling – ‘but you say it so many times’ – I suppose I must in a funny kind of way. Our relationship is physical and intellectual, but not, repeat not cultural. He has awful manners.

18 October. We drove to the foot of Vesuvius. The road is very bad in parts, but improves suddenly winding up. Very pretty woods with a view down over the Bay. We got a guide and long sticks and plodded up through the ash and lava. Starky raced ahead but came through the ‘mountain’ test very well, carrying my hat and bag for me at the end. We looked into the crater and then came down hand in hand and hysterical with laughter as I kept falling down – my legs got covered with scars. The ashes are still quite hot but it is very cold on top. We drove back in the dark rather silent – I thinking the day was ending and it was our last meeting, but they came in for a drink and afterwards Starky and Mac called for me and we had more drinks. He’s funny when he’s slightly drunk. Bold and rude and rather sentimental – makes me feel very maternal! We had dinner in the Mess and then went on to a party at the flat of some Italian girls where some of the Cypher boys were. One has cold hand like a corpse. Ian Macintyre and I talked about Chaucer and Tchekov. Then we moved up to Mac’s flat and continued the party. I spoke French and even a little Italian to the girls. I enjoyed myself though I saw little of Starky who seemed rather drunk and kept ruffling my hair. It was a cold stormy evening and the balcony was not very inviting – nevertheless I had a few conversations there, one with a Russian, one with Mac, who accused me of ‘talking big’ when I said that Starky and I would soon forget each other, and one with Starky himself. We had a ridiculous goodnight outside the Wrennery at 3 a.m. – me saying ‘Thanks for a lovely volcano’ and him ‘Excuse me for kissing you goodnight with my glasses on’.

23 October. Starky phoned quarters just as I got in from the office and suggested coming round for a drink and to say goodbye. I washed my hair, did my face and changed into blues. He came with Jack Fisher soon after 9 and we went into the blue and gold room. I didn’t like him at all – he was rather rude and silly and I got to feel more and more low, finally saying can’t we go to the Fleet Club and be madly gay or something, but it was too late. Still we did go out in the end – drove up to the Monastery in the car. It was too dark to see much, but we talked and he was much nicer and we really said goodbye. But without much hope or wish for the future. It isn’t, as we said, that one’s cynical, it’s that one knows from experience how these things peter out. I feel that it’s a good thing that he is going.

24 October. Two years ago tonight – if Gordon hadn’t said ‘In a queer kind of way I’m in love with you’ I shouldn’t be in Naples now. Told at dinner that Starky isn’t going for four more days. Oh dear, I don’t want to see him again – and yet I do.

26 October. I am trying not to feel low, knowing that he may still be here but not liking to find out. If only he would really be gone! Last night I went out with Jimmy and Morag and Bruce. We started at Jeni’s, continental atmosphere, a man playing a mandoline and singing Italian songs – the sort of place to go to with somebody special to talk and gaze into their eyes! Dinner at the British Officers’ Club, then to the Churchill, loud band, good dancing and many gins. Then to the Fleet Club. All through the evening I could feel the pain of missing Starky and even though I know it won’t last very long it still hurts. Tonight I don’t know whether to go to an American party with Doriel or stay in and go to bed early. Parties and drink are a bad thing when one has a little misery lurking somewhere. Better to bear it with dignity. If I’m not careful I’ll begin hating myself again. Not that it really matters but I must keep myself in hand.

31 October. This evening I’ve actually done some Italian – written
exercises out of Hugo. If only I could go on with it – it is so
satisfying. On Sunday I wrote a letter to Starky, quite a good one,
which will no doubt be beyond him – he will pounce on the delicate
sentimentallity and miss the rest – or will he?

2 November. At 2.30 started out with Morag for our weekend in Ischia. Sat in the saloon of the ferry for about half an hour but then had to rush to the side. Spent the next hour leaning over the side being sick and trying to keep my balance as the boat rose and fell in the waves. One wave came right over me and drenched me. Also a dead body floated by but luckily I didn’t see it. Also being sick was a beautiful young man in an elaborate Italian uniform. How many of them have large melancholy eyes that gaze soulfully at you! I arrived in Ischia, my hair wet and tangled, my face green, which had been so glowing and peach-like when I started off. Early to bed but I dreamed, which I don’t in Naples, muddled dreams about Starky. And I looked at myself in a wardrobe mirror and saw I was wearing red plus fours or turkish trousers.

3 November. We walked a little round the island – everything is so beautifully green now. Oranges and orange blossom with shining green leaves, lemons, vines, bougainvillea, mild sunny air – I wore no stockings. We walked to the ruined castle and came to a ruined chapel, the altar with plaster cherubs etc. still distinguishable, also little side chapels and arches all ruined. ‘Sentimental delight in decay’ … how happy I felt, so different from the artificail life in Naples. After tea we went down to the shops and I bought a basket in the shape of a heart, which I shall use as a workbasket.

5 November. Smooth crossing back. Four letters awaiting me in the office. One from Starky. Iain now!

15 November. Tea at British Officers’ Club with Jimmy. Elizabeth Ann was there with a pongo. Whole atmosphere very British.

16 November. Party in Maclaine Clarke’s flat. Didn’t feel like going – sticky beginning but not bad afterwards with Cypher boys. Harry would keep asking me if I missed Starky and enlarging on the merits of his character. Well, it made conversation. Of course it was too cold to go out on the balcony and nobody did. Isn’t there an Italian saying about there being no greater misery than to remember past happiness when you are unhappy? Not that one could apply it exactly, but there were other parties and other people. Once upon a time. And other conversations. Harry tried to persuade me to go to the CHQ New Year’s Eve Party – said he was sure Starky would have wanted it – just as if I were Starky’s widow! Came home with a splitting headache and sat on my bed for about 10 minutes just doing nothing, with my coat on.

17 November. Dinner at Jimmy’s Mess and 22 Club dance – in splendid form, even dancing quite well. I no longer have an ache of misery. Oh how soon one forgets…

19 November. Drove with Jimmy all along the sea front through Posilippo down to Bagnoli – lovely view of Ischia in a golden mist. Tea at the British Officers’ Club, supper at the Mess, Jimmy, Tony, Auriol and I. The Major was there with a friend called John Baxter, a John Gielgud type, a mouth like Gordon’s but blue eyes. Madly gay at the Churchill. To the 22 Club and back to the Mess. Driving in the dark in Naples is so pleasant, especially up the roads to Posilippo, the headlights of the car pick out all sorts of exquisite things, a pair of urns set on a gateway, corners of buildings, avenues of trees, grey, deserted streets.

20 November. Went out to dinner with Colonel Mote, who belongs to Claims and Hirings – a lovely Mess above the orange grove with a garden full of statues and a glorious view. All in the dark with twinkling lights. Had a rather queer dinner – fish after meat. A charming lot of people – a Brigadier like Charlie Chan and an amusing Scots Major in a kilt.

A description of me – somebody said to Jimmy – ‘that very blasé Wren officer with a perpetually bored expression’ – and he said ‘Yes she was born like that. It’s rather fun!’ I told Cynthia and she gave me another description – ‘the girl with the fascinating eyes’.

21 November. Had an airgraph from Gordon, so funny and sweet it brought a sudden rush of tears to my eyes. Oh how much my own sort of person he was and is … please can’t there be somebody like that again.

22 November. Worked very hard, did [censored] 213 letters, a lot for Naples, but how unlike the weeks before D Day. Had dinner at Jimmy’s Mess. The Major came in with lipstick on his face.

23 November. Why doesn’t Starky write. But how quickly I forget those bright brown eyes, that sweet smile, that uncertain gauche social manner, those umbrageous remarks. But the blister from Vesuvius still throbs on my heel and I go to sickbay every day to have it treated. And look sadly at my whites packed away in my suitcase, even try on my white hat for a moment.

24 November. Tea with Auriol, Morag and Margaret who are all going to Alex. By train to Taranto and then by sea. I rather envy them the amusement of the journey and feel almost provincial and stay at home here in Naples.

30 November. Went back to work which was very boring as usual. Oh how I am wasting my life in some ways. In the evening we tried to go to Positano in a large American Ford V8. I like driving through the suburbs of Naples to look inside a lighted restaurant where you will see no British or Allied officers, to watch people queuing at some little cinema, to peer inside a flat, to see groups talking on street corners and to drive down the kind of places where you might get a knife in your back. Nothing is more deserted and Chirico-like than a Naples street at night – grey shuttered houses, dark, silent, mysterious, sinister.

Out of Castellamare the car broke down so we went into the sergeants’ mess and had drinks (which went straight to my head) and cheese sandwiches. Then back to our mess where we cooked bacon and eggs and coffee.

2 December. Positano in the evening. Drinks at the Miramar, dinner at Bucca di Bacco (soup, squid, steak, omelette). Dancing at Caterinetta. Rich, idle Italians playing cards all night and sleeping all day.

6 December. Positano, Amalfi and Ravello, which is romantic at twilight. Cypresses, olives, an orange grove and a church which is, I believe, Byzantine. Would like to stay there sometime. I believe it has associations with Wagner and Cosima von Bülow. It is a honeymoon spot.

20 December. Vicky’s cocktail party. Talked to B.S.O. Astley-Jones, Major Macleod, etc. Went to Robby’s party. Lovely food but oh the strain of cheesing.

25 December. Breakfast in bed – opened my stocking from Auriol and books from home. Waited on Wrens at dinner then had our own. In the evening went to a party at Admiral Morse’s villa, quite enjoyable but I am never at my ease there, feel Jane Eyre-ish and socially unsuccessful. Danced with Flags and Astley-Jones, both doing their stuff – charm, etc. How artificial it all is. I wonder if they feel it.

29 December. Went to Chiefs’ and P.O.’s dance at the Fleet canteen. Very enjoyable, many good dancers. Met a man who had been at Westcliff.

31 December. CHQ dance. Cyclamen chiffon, agonising stiff neck and the magic of ‘Long Ago and Far Away’ sung by dear Edward Astley-Jones while he danced with me, oh so cheek-to-cheek.…

24-25 March 1945. Rome. Went up by Cassino. Country lovely – brilliant green grass, yellow-green trees, blossoms, cypresses as one gets further north. Villages on hills, grey with a church spire or cupola – but ruined with sightless windows. Cassino – literally nothing standing. Out of Bounds notices in English and Polish. Little white wooden crosses mark the graves.

Frossinone – much bigger but horrifying damage. Like the Blitz but more desolate.

Rome itself, wide pavements – magic twilight (as I first saw Berlin in 1938). Trees coming into leaf in the streets, flower shops full of fruit blossom and other more exotic things, double anemones, carnations, freesias, violets, irises and funny orange and blue things, tall and spiky, a cross between an iris and an orchid, hardly real. A fountain in the form of a boat in the Plaza di Spagna (in the moonlight you can’t see the bits of paper and orange peel in the water).

St Peter’s. Vast and unchurchlike. Marble in various colours. Nice Holy Water basins, white cherubs and yellow Siena marble. It was Palm Sunday and outside they were selling palms and little palm crosses and everyone carried sprigs of myrtle. All the pictures behind the altars were veiled in purple. We went up on the roof – the Tiber a yellowish brown – lovely bridges with figures. Palazzo Venezia looks good in the distance, flying statues on the corners – figures everywhere stand out against the sky. Peered into the Vatican City in the hopes of seeing carpet slippers slopping up and down the backstairs. Hens on the roof.

Lunch at the Officers’ Club in Pincio Gardens. Tender green cypresses, brown and cream buildings. Lovely greeny fish fountain in Piazza Berberini.

Ideas for Naples Poems or Stories

The Major’s Arienzo girl, no longer in her first youth, waiting for him to come back off LIAF in that cluttered salon. Palms in front of the windows – the orange tree that never has any fruit. Then the mimosa. Will he ever come back?

The Officers’ Club at Capua. The room with the little baroque birds, bad food lacking salt and half cold, the sweet spumante and too many drunken majors.

The Royal Palace at Caserta – like a railway waiting room at one of the bigger stations. Enormous chandeliers with very little light coming from them. Huddled groups of people talking and drinking. (All very like Henry Green’s Party Going). Marble busts, rather vulgarly ostentatious. Red and gold sofas, very long. Oh, if a romance should begin here and flower!

The Opera House on an April evening during one of the intervals. The dusty plants where we stub out our cigarettes show young green leaves and even buds of flowers. If this can happen, anything can. Upsetting, because one cannot help drawing comparisons with the heart.

Lying awake and seeing dawn come to Naples, hearing the birds singing. One’s thoughts so limited to that narrow life that is Naples and seems to be the whole world until one thinks of a map and Naples on it.

The suave elegant Rags and the Acting Third Officer in ill-fitting white dress talking on the terrace of an exquisite villa in the moonlight.

The white and gold Lyons Corner House-like atmosphere of the British Officers’ Club.

The haunted feeling of places, and objects too, in villas and houses now taken over by the military – the 22 Club for instance.

London, S.W.I.

7 November 1945

It was very nice of you to write and I appreciated your letter very much – it was a very miserable time for me [her mother had died in September], but I feel much better about things now that I’m away from Oswestry.

I am still in the WRNS waiting to be demobilised really, but in the meantime hanging about at WRNS Headquarters, doing a little, very dull work which calls for very little intelligence. I earn quite good money though, which I suppose is something, and am also in London which I wanted to be. I think I shall be a civilian again by the end of this year or early next. We have given up our house in Oswestry and my father is living in a hotel, Hilary and I have taken a flat – in Pimlico, not a very good district, but perhaps we shall raise the tone. It is on the corner of Warwick Square and really quite nice. Anyway we are so lucky to get anywhere at all, as it is practically impossible to get flats and you really can’t choose at all. It will be nice to have a place of one’s own and I think I shall be much happier then. If I can get a nice little job to earn me a bit of money I shall then settle to writing again and see if I can get a nice novel or something published. But I don’t really want to end my days in London, would prefer Oxford or the country. I suppose it is better than any other town though and as one’s nerves are a bit frazzled after six years of war life is difficult anywhere. You know, one is bad tempered and irritable, could nearly cry because a bus doesn’t stop when it’s too full, would rather go without things than queue for them, and now that the war is over one doesn’t seem able to put up with things so easily.

I had a letter from Jock yesterday, he seems much happier and is enjoying the sinshine – oh dear what an unsuitable mistake to make – of course I mean sunshine.

Do write sometime or get Elsie to, and be sure and let me know if you are coming over.

108 Cambridge Street

London S.W.I.

9 February 1946

Thank you very much for your letter. It came very quickly. I had an idea that I owed you one, though that would have been rather unusual, I mean, if it had been ten years ago. Yes, I ‘did start it’, even if I was inspired by you or rather the sight of you in the English Reading Room. I even got Rosemary Topping to go and look in your books when you had left them for a moment to see what your name was. Does anybody ever do that now? I suppose not, though no doubt others are doing it at Oxford. I almost envy them – one seems to feel so little now, and life was certainly exciting then, full of splendours and miseries.

I ought really to have started with facts. I am now a civilian once more and have a flat in Pimlico (rather nice, don’t you think?) which I share with Hilary, it is really very nice as we have a lot of things from Oswestry. My father has given up the house and is living in a hotel, where he is really very comfortable. I am going up to see him next weekend. He is very well, and though I feel it is very sad for him without my mother he is splendid about it. Luckily he has quite a lot of friends and interests there, which I haven’t.

I came out of the WRNS on January 11th and am on my two months resettlement leave (paid!) at the moment. I am going to start looking for a job in a week or two. Heaven knows what I shall get, but I must earn some money. In many ways I would like to go abroad but having just got nicely settled in a flat I want to enjoy it for a while anyway. We do quite a lot of entertaining in a mild way – hardly any drink and mostly foreign dishes like moussaka and ravioli, owing to the scarcity of meat! I have become quite an efficient and resourceful cook and enjoy the domestic side of it very much.

20 February

I am really ashamed not to have finished this letter before now. I have just returned from Oswestry where I found my father very well and the country looking very pleasant, catkins, snowdrops and crocuses, even early primroses and buds on the lilac. I brought my typewriter back with me, so shall be able to get on with some writing. I have done a lot of alterations to Some Tame Gazelle and may try it again, after an interval of about eight years it may be more acceptable! There is so much that I want to write now, that I hardly know where to begin. But I feel I must also have a job, not only because of earning money but because I find routine work soothing (as long as it isn’t too boring) and the best way of keeping out that Angst, from which we all suffer in some degree nowadays. Though creative work is better still.

If you haven’t read Cyril Connolly’s book The Unquiet Grave, you will wonder what I am talking about and say it is just one of my silly German words, but as I expect you have read it you will see that I am keeping up to date with all our clever young men. Not that he is young exactly – he is approaching forty, indeed, probably is forty now, is fat and given to self-pity and nostalgia. But he is clever and puts his finger on what it is we suffer from now – though maybe you don’t in the bracing air of Sweden. He is ‘soaked in French Literature’ – not my expression, but the kind of thing one would like to be!

I have no very recent news of Jock, but wrote him a long letter some weeks ago. He says he has read all of Shakespeare and all of Proust, since being back in Alexandria. I wish I could say the same. He is certainly more rewarding to write to than you are but perhaps you are more deserving. I have kept some of your early letters, though I destroyed most of the James Joyce-like ones which I never understood anyway. It is pleasant to feel that you and Jock will never go quite out of my life now – who would ever have thought it. I see that Craster has retired and is to write a history of the Library. I hope it may appear in my lifetime. I could give him plenty of material from the human point of view.

108 Cambridge Street

5 June 1946

I have so much news that I had better just fling it at you in Compton-Burnett style. Hilary and her husband have separated and my father has married again and given us a very nice stepmother of suitable age and a dear brother and sister, whom I have not met. He is so happy and it is a great relief to us to think he has somebody to look after him. It was all a great surprise I might add! Life seemed to be whirling too fast for us!

Hilary is happier without her husband – who was nice but much too cold and intellectual and logical to live with. They were not really madly in love when they married but it seemed a good thing, and of course lots of marriages of that kind turn out very well. But personally I would prefer the other thing, even if it wore off, as I am told it does. Maybe I shall be able to keep my illusions as it doesn’t look as if I shall ever get married.

I am turning into an anthropologist as I now have a job at the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, which I like very much. I work for dear Professor Daryll Forde, who is brilliant, has great charm but no manners, and is altogether the kind of person I ought to work for! I never seem to have time to do much writing – I begin to wonder whether I shall ever again send a novel to a publisher – I ought to have been doing that rather than writing to you.