So I Have Thought of You: The Letters of Penelope Fitzgerald. Penelope Fitzgerald

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СКАЧАТЬ dear Ham,

      Thankyou so much for taking time to write what, I daresay, is your 101st letter of the day – I quite agree about the judges,^** and Michael Foot^* drifted alarmingly in his (supposedly) summing-up speech, telling us repeatedly that Walter Scott was ‘another conservative’. Also the stately corridors of the Guildhall were lined with police, as Salman R.^** claimed that a threat had been made against his life and he was in imminent danger, still there were plenty of people there and Ria and I enjoyed ourselves very much and were taken about in a car from the Collins fleet, for the last time I fear. All this is quite good for business. But now I have to write another novel.

      I’m glad that the envelope sale went so well, but now they’ll expect you to produce another brilliant notion, you’ll see.

      Tommy feels he would like a tortoise, but I suppose the spring would be the best time

      much love to you and Penny

      Mops

      

       27a Bishop’s Road

       London, N6

      26 January [1992]

      Dear Ham and Penny,

      Thankyou so very much in the first place for a splendid lunch, although I only discovered at the last moment that the rabbit was done with chocolate, in an improvement surely on the Mexican style. – And it was a great treat to meet Katharine – who may well not spell her name like that at all, so forgive me – she was so interesting, and also interested in everything that everyone else was doing, a great gift, not a very common one though.

      In respect to Wittgenstein, I do hope you liked Ray Monk’s biography – I had to help judge the Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the year before last, and I thought it far and away the best book, even though some good ones were sent in, perhaps because Ray M. is a philosopher himself, although, as it turned out, a young and cheerful one – anyway he got the prize and I am sure he deserved it.

      On the other hand, in respect to Skidelsky, I consider that Ham in fact has been singularly patient with this absurdly irritating man – I daresay he knows a lot about Keynes, but he’d have to be ashamed of himself if he didn’t. Thinking about Skidelsky, and even feeling irritated by him, is a waste of precious time. – What I should like to know is what you’re going to undertake next. If only there was someone with your persuasiveness and ruthless energy to defend the Public Library Service. Here in dreaded Haringey, to which Highgate unwillingly belongs, they’re going to close all 7 branch libraries, the music and the mobile libraries, because reading isn’t a priority leisure resource. It’s all very depressing. Last year we managed to get the closures put off and I had to go to a party with non-alcoholic champagne made with pears, at 10 o’clock in the morning.

      I so much enjoyed seeing you, thankyou once again for asking me –

      love

      Mops

      

      I take it the tortoise isn’t stirring yet

      

       27a Bishop’s Road

       Highgate, N6

      11 September [c.1995]

      Dear Ham and Penny,

      What a lovely lunch party – if I wasn’t afraid you might think me sentimental, or perhaps even feeble-witted, I could say how happy it made me to sit and talk to people I’m so fond of and to see you both again, and Janet, (this ought to be easy enough but hasn’t proved to be so at all), and then Alyson,^* who I hardly expected to come but of course she did, calm and smiling as ever, though whether she really always feels so calm I can’t tell. I enjoyed myself so much, and still haven’t said anything about the lunch itself, which, after Penny had said, as a kind of afterthought, ‘I must do some cooking’, seemed to produce itself by magic and was so delicious.

      Janet’s energy, and genuine interest in everything, is wonderful – I had thought it a merciful dispensation of nature that I like things less and less (though a few things more and more) but Janet makes me feel that’s not so, and I must try to wake up a little.

      Thankyou again, it was a Sunday to remember –

      love, Mops

      

      Just looking at the photograph of Jonathan Pryce as L. S. (he is a parent at the church school where Thomas and Sophie go) – I’ve never seen Carrington but I have seen Lytton Strachey and I think the Pryce make-up (I last saw him as Fagin) is very successful. But I suppose it’s an easy one to do. –

      

      [summer 1996 – after PMF’s 80th birthday party]

      Dear Ham –

      I’m so glad you and Penny enjoyed the party and it was lovely to see you – the last day of summer.

      By ‘one stroke’ I meant the kind of bike people used to have, with an engine you switched on when you were going uphill.

      I don’t agree that the children in my novels are precious. They’re exactly like my own children, who always noticed everything.

      As to ‘may’ for ‘might’, it is frightful, and we must do all we can to eradicate it. I think it’s American and they think it’s the subjunctive. –

      Love to you and Penny – Mops

      

      - Hibernating time now I imagine.

      

       27a Bishop’s Road, N6

       15 February [late 1990s]

      My dear Ham,

      Thankyou so much for sending me the evidence, which only confirms what I’ve always thought, that the intensely unpleasant atmosphere of Bloomsbury (which must have come close to choking poor Leonard, for example) has lingered on in what racing people call their ‘connections’. There is a Byzantine feeling, they will all end up poisoning each other. That is the moral.

      Your statement of course is surely very restrained, as there are so many things you might have mentioned – the colour photographs in the Newsletter for example – but it was better to leave it as you have, as an absolutely clear account of a deliberate decision to make you resign. They took advantage of your not being there. Their next step, I suppose, will be to elect somebody as Chairman, or President, or whatever, of the Friends, in spite of having said that they weren’t going to.

      Judging from the few societies I belong to, something like this always happens – (I think Alyson would confirm that it particularly does at the William Morris). – Another example would be the Arts Council where Lord Gowrie seems to have jockeyed Michael Holroyd off the literature panel for no reason whatever except a love of pushing and shoving. СКАЧАТЬ