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

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      My ideas of Officers’ Messes are based on lurid films and novels by P. C. Wren which I read under the bedclothes at school. They include quarrels of honour, with cards and glasses all over the floor, and horses jumping on, and off, the table, and also jackboots and being roasted alive by Roundheads. I do hope you are enjoying yourself. I suppose, however good and broadminded you are, there is some satisfaction in being an officer and superior by profession to so many people. Have you a comic batman, I wonder?

      You will be pleased to hear that I haven’t been to any films at all lately as I have a vague feeling that it is wicked, and I expect I shall gradually lose the habit and be able to despise films as you do, though I suppose not with the same fine scornful profile.

      Rawle^* is coming up to London on Saturday to get made into an officer – then we shall have to go through this saluting trouble all over again – but I believe I am a 2nd lieutenant now too as we have our own tasteless rifle corps to defend the Ministry against assaults and I seem to be embodied in it,

      much love,

      Mops.

      

       Ministry of Food

       Great Westminster House

       Horseferry Road

       London, sw1

      29 June [1940]

      My dear Ham,

      How dare you resent anything to do with the rustics of Herefordshire? Little do you realise that my grandfather, the bishop, was curate of Kington in Herefordshire and I have spent my holidays there ever since I can remember, and it is in fact the only part of the country I can bear and the only part that makes me placid, with fat horses, fat haystacks, fat rustics and a happy lack of anything famous or distinguished. It is odd that you say that there are some trees that you take to be limes, there are some just outside our cottage, a kind of avenue, green as you say and charming, and one of our few discussions there – there aren’t many subjects of conversation, you see is the great question of whether they are limes or not. Somebody always suggests hornbeams towards the end of supper. Well, everyone here says

      1. That Liverpool docks have been reduced to ashes.

      2. That Chamberlain, Col. Lindbergh and Laval have got together and are arranging peace terms.

      3. That the Germans are arriving in motor launches and amphibious tanks on July 2nd.

      4. That Halifax is to be dismissed and replaced by Lord Strabolgin. I want a dog more and more. I suppose the price of Pomeranians has gone up as all the dogs have been shot in Germany, but after the war I shall save up and buy one nevertheless. I have got into the frame of mind, you see – I don’t know why – when I think the war will possibly come to an end one day.

      I hope you come to London soon, through the agency of Cyril Falls or any other way,

      love,

      Mops.

      

       Ministry of Food

       Great Westminster House

       Horseferry Road

       London, sw1

      8 July [1940]

      My dear Ham,

      Thankyou very much for your letter, and I would have answered your first one before if I hadn’t thought you wanted me not to – and I am very nervous of saying anything where people’s feelings and sensibilities are concerned, which often makes me appear even stupider than I am.

      I don’t know exactly what you feel about me. I have always been very fond of you and very proud on the occasions when you broke your three silences and spoke to me, and I have always looked forward to seeing you when you come up to London. I hope I shall again. I don’t know whether Oliver ever told you that ever since I broke my engagement^* I have been mixed up in a rather stupid and unsatisfactory way, I suppose, but it is the only thing I can do, it goes on and on and it makes me appreciate my friends all the more.

      Oliver has left the flat to go and stay with Kate, and in the meantime Mrs B. gave an amazing party at which your sister was a tower of strength with the coffee, wine and cutlets and there was a strange babel of languages – Mrs B. pre-eminent in a torrent of mixed French and English, easily drowning the harassed player at the piano. Jouky was present, but did not sing.

      I had a dreadful time at Guildford on Sunday with the L.D.V’s.^* The colonel lent me his very large horse to ‘see the fun’ – i.e. 50 men crawling about on a parachute scheme in the height of misunderstanding and confusion – but it bolted and scattered the people disguised as Germans – the colonel however referred to me afterwards as ‘the little secret weapon’ at tea-time.

      I have never been to Somerset. What is it like?

      love,

      Mops.

      

       16 Avenue Close,

       Avenue Road, NW8

      20 July [1940]

      My dear Ham,

      Thankyou very much for your letter. It is difficult to follow you in your rapid course through Devon and Somerset but I hope that wherever you have pitched your tent now you are comfortable and at ease. I am sitting in the Breakwells’ flat and Mamma is lying back on the sofa which is draped with an Indian carpet and telling Oliver he is repressed – she has just been appealing to a bus-load of people to throw away Oliver’s stick, to show that she doesn’t believe in the Guards and that French people are understanding and sympathetic.

      I have nearly got the sack from my office but I had a last-minute reprieve and I am being protected by the Editorial Officer who is prepared to swear I am indispensable. Meanwhile I am sitting everyday and answering letters to the minister threatening to strangle him if the writers aren’t immediately given more tea.

      Raven is in the Field Security now which gives him an excellent excuse for stopping all conversation as subversive (’it’s my job now, you know’) and talking about himself and his latest, and quite dreadful, French girlfriend – supported violently by mamma, of course.

      We had our very last champagne party before the invasion the other day – I wish you had been there, as I am all for celebrating, and fiddling while Rome burns,

      Hugh and Oliver send their love and Hugh adds that he owes you half a crown,

      love,

      Mops.

      

       Ministry of Food

       Neville House

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