Part 6

Lathom joined them on or about the 28th of December, and spent the Jour de l’An in their company. I believe that Mrs. Harrison wrote several letters to Miss Milsom from Paris, but these I have been unable to secure; in fact, I am informed that they have been destroyed. I visited Miss Milsom (see my statement No. 49), and questioned her as tactfully as possible on the subject, but could only get from her a rambling diatribe, full of the same demented prejudice she has always displayed against my father, and, in the absence of any direct evidence (such as the original letters would have afforded), I feel bound to ignore her remarks. Indeed, it is obvious that nothing which Miss Milsom says _later_ than April, 1929, is of any evidential value whatsoever, and that _all_ her statements, without exception, must be received with extreme caution, except in so far as they tend to prove the influence exerted, consciously or unconsciously, by her upon my stepmother.

Mr. Munting, who spent the Christmas season with his family and in the company of his fiancée, not returning to town till the 15th of January, has handed to me the only letter which he received from his friend during this period.

26. _Harwood Lathom to John Munting_

POLPERRO 4th Jan., ’29

DEAR MUNTING,

How are you? And how did the season of over-feeding and Christian heartiness leave your soul? Did honourable love survive the domesticities? If so, I swear that you and your intelligent young woman are either gods or beasts. Gods, probably—with that dreadful temperateness of the knowledge of good and evil, seeing two sides to every question. You will analyse your bridal raptures, if you have any, and find the whole subject very interesting. You will have, Heaven help you! a sense of humour about the business, and your friends will say how beautiful it is to see such a fine sense of partnership between a man and woman. A copulation of politic tape-worms! But where is the use of being offensive to a man who will allow for my point of view? I hate being allowed for, as if I were an incalculable quantity in an astronomical equation.

Having (thank God!) no family, except my aunt at Colchester, I escaped good King Wenceslas and departed for Paris, where everything is jejune enough, and the weather just as snow-bound and bitter as in our own happy island, but where at least the stranger is not sucked into the _vie familiale_. I found the Harrisons dismally vegetating in a highly respectable Anglophile hotel, and toted them round the usual stale shows, getting my pleasure from their naïve enjoyment. Or, at any rate, from _her_ enjoyment; the old boy was as peevish as ever, and brought the blush of shame to my cosmopolitan cheek by walking out of a cabaret in the middle, trailing his wife and friend after him in the approved barn-door style. Being too wrathful for speech, I said nothing, and had the pleasure of sitting out a family row in the taxi afterwards. _La belle Marguerite_ was actually quite as shocked as he was, poor child, but thrilled to an unregenerate ecstasy nevertheless. She has the makings of a decent pagan soul if one could teach her. However, I needed to do no teaching. His vulgar disgust (with which, if he had had the elementary tact to leave her alone, she would have agreed) drove her into an excited opposition, and she argued the point with an obstinacy and wholeheartedness which it was a pleasure to listen to. I wouldn’t be appealed to—I didn’t want a row, and besides, she will learn nothing except by arguing it out for herself. In fact, I apologised and said, in effect, that an artist became rather blind to the proprieties, legs, as the bus-conductor said, being no treat to him. In fact, I controlled myself marvellously, and—went away and walked about in a fury all night!

After that we did picture-galleries, and I had to listen to Harrison’s lectures on art. Never have I heard—not even in Chelsea—so much jargon applied over so grisly a substructure of ignorance and bad taste. The man ought to be crucified in the middle of all his own abominable daubs. You would have enjoyed it, I suppose, or made copy of it.

We saw the New Year in with dancing and the usual imbecile festivities. Mrs. H. thanked me with tears of excitement in her eyes—it was pathetic—like giving sweets to a kid. Even H. was a little moved from his usual grimth. I procured him a partner—no! I didn’t hire her, I knew her—a decent little soul who used to live with Mathieu Vigor and is now, I believe, Kropotzki’s _petite amie_—and she trundled him round in the most amiable way. He emerged from the fray quite sparkling (for him!), and solemnly led Madame out for the next dance! That didn’t go so well, because he found fault with her steps, so I pushed him back on to Fleurette, who could dance with a kangaroo, I think, clever little devil.

I crossed on the 2nd, and came down here for warmth and sunshine (what a hope!). The place has been ruined, of course, by “artistic” tourists, and is lousy with Ye Olde Potterye Shoppes. The brave fishermen dangle around in clean blue jerseys and polish up the boats in the harbour, while they long for the film-season to start again.

I shall be back in Bayswater some time next week. I hope your sense of humour is feeling robust, for I am in a foul mood and nothing pleases me.

Yours ever, LATHOM

27. _John Munting to Elizabeth Drake_

15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER

[The opening sheets of this letter are lost, but the date is evidently some time in January.]

* * * * *

. . . proofs coming along at express speed, I am enjoying a magnificent illusion of importance and busy-ness. The novel will be out before the _Life_, which is being held up considerably by copyright bothers over the plates. All the better, as it is a mistake to bung two books out right on top of one another.

I am feeling a great deal more sympathetic with Lathom just now. The earnest Harrison has transferred his attentions, for the moment, to me, because, as a literary man, I can, of course, tell him exactly how best to prepare his fungus-book for the press. He comes teetering in at my busiest moments to discuss points of grammar. I tell him my opinion and he contradicts it at great length, pointing out subtleties in his phrasing which I have not grasped. At length I either tell him that his own original idea expresses his personality best, or fall back on _The King’s English_ if the error is really too monstrous to let pass. This works all right for a time, and he carries the book off with much gratitude—returning later, however, with the demurrer to Mr. Fowler carefully written down on paper. I once made the foolish suggestion that he should write to Fowler and thrash it out with him direct; this was fatal, as I had to listen to (_a_) the letter; (_b_) the reply; (_c_) the rejoinder—so I now fall back as a rule on the phrase about expressing personality. There was also a dreadful day when a water-colour picture of fungi came out too green by three-colour process. Lathom and I suffered dreadfully over this abominable toadstool, and were at length forced to go out and drown the recollection in Guinness.

All the same, I try my best to be helpful, because I am the only person who can enter into Harrison’s interests, and he has really written a very entertaining little piece of work, full of odd bits of out-of-the-way knowledge, scraps of country lore and queer old-fashioned recipes and things. He must have made extraordinary good use of his holidays, and there’s not a plant or animal in the country fit for food that he doesn’t know the last word about. He has made a wonderful collection of botanical diaries, which ought to be of considerable scientific value, and he brings a really scholarly mind to his rather unscholarly subject. His water-colours, though too prim considered as pictures, make really rather attractive book-illustrations, and his drawings of plants and fungi are beautifully accurate in line and colour—far better than the stuff you find in the usual text-books. And, indeed, the vagaries of the three-colour process are enough to make Job irritable. I told him that he should take as his motto for the book the famous misprint in the Bible, “Printers have persecuted me without a cause”—which pleased him.

Profiting by my position as literary guide and mentor, I have (with colossal tact) persuaded him to let the famous portrait be shown. We got round to it by way of cookery, oddly enough. I said that cookery was really a very important creative art, which was not properly understood in this country, being chiefly left in the hands of women, who were not (pardon me, Bungie) as a rule very creative.

That led on to a general discussion of Art, and the yearning that every creative artist feels to obtain a public response to his art. And so, by devious ways, to Lathom and his picture. I said that, while I entirely understood Mrs. Harrison’s quite natural feeling that to exhibit her portrait would be, to a great extent, exhibiting herself, to Lathom it was, of course, quite a different matter. It was his work, his handling of line and colour, for which he wanted public recognition. But I admitted that a woman could not be expected to appreciate this point of view.

As I had foreseen, Harrison took this as an indirect criticism of his wife, and promptly reacted against it. She was not, he said, like the ordinary woman. She had a remarkable gift for artistic appreciation. He felt sure that if he put it to her in the right light, she would see that it was not a personal question at all. Indeed, she had made no objection herself—it was he who had been afraid of exposing her to unwelcome notoriety. But it should be made quite clear that the painting was the important matter, and that the subject had no personal bearings of any kind.

It was very odd, Bungie, to see him reassuring himself in this vicarious way. And it was still odder that I had a feeling all the time as if I was doing something unfair. His attitude about the thing was preposterous, of course, but I have a queer feeling about Mrs. Harrison. She isn’t so stupid that she can’t see Lathom’s point of view. It would matter less if she were. It is that she is clever enough to see it and adopt it when it is pointed out, and to make it into a weapon of some kind for something or other. Not knowing that it is a weapon, either; practising a sort of ju jitsu, that overcomes by giving way—good God! what a filthy bit of obvious journalese metaphor!

Anyhow, Mr. Harrison worked off my little lecture on the creative artist with great effect under my very nose the same evening, as though it was all his own work. Mrs. H. started off with her usual lack of tact by saying: “I thought you said,” and “I don’t want to discuss it,” but, catching my eye, resigned herself to listen graciously and give consent. So the Hanging Committee is, after all, to have the happiness of gazing upon the portraits of Mrs. Harrison and Miss Milsom—blest pair of sirens—and I hope they will be duly appreciative. Lathom is pleased—and so he damn well ought to be! I hope it will calm him down, for what with the portraits and the fungus-book and one thing and another, he and I are both getting into a state of nerves.

_I want peace and quiet._ Damn all these people! Thank Heaven I’ve got the proofs to see to, because I’m in no fit state to write anything. My ideas are all upside down. I can’t focus anything. I suppose it’s just the usual “between-books” feeling. I am going to take a few weeks’ lucid interval and read astronomy or physics or something. Personally, I’m dead sick of the blasted creative instinct!

Yours all-of-a-dither, but still devotedly, JACK

28. _The Same to the Same_

15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER 1st February, 1929

BUNGIE, MY DARLING,

What, in God’s name, are you going to do with me if I get jealous and suspicious? Or I with you, if it happens that way? I ask this in damn sober earnest, old girl. I’ve got the thing right under my eyes here, and I know perfectly well that no agreement and no promise made before marriage will stand up for a single moment if either of us gets that ugly bug into the blood.

You remember—months ago—I passed on a cheerful little matrimonial dialogue that took place by the umbrella-stand. To-night we had the pleasure of hearing the thing carried on to the next stage.

Harrison had the brilliant idea of inviting Lathom and me to dinner to taste his special way of frying chicken. Well, there we all were—Miss Milsom frightfully kittenish in a garment she had embroidered herself with Persian arabesques. (“I don’t know _what_ they mean, you know, Mr. Munting. Probably something frightfully improper! I copied them off a rug.”) Harrison who allows nobody to penetrate into “his” kitchen when he’s working out a masterpiece, was frying away amid a powerful odour of garlic. No Mrs. Harrison! We furiously make conversation—enter H.—gives a black look round, and disappears again. I count the things on the mantelpiece—two brass candlesticks, brass door-knocker representing the Lincoln imp—two imitation brass mulling-cones—ill-balanced pottery nude—quaint clock and pair of Liberty nondescripts. Front door goes. Kitchen door in the distance heard to burst open. “Well, where have _you_ been?” Awful realisation creeps over us all that the sitting-room door has been left open. I say hurriedly: “Have you read the new Michael Arlen, Miss Milsom?” We are all aware that a prolonged cross-examination is proceeding. Lathom fidgets. Voice rises to appalling distinctness: “Don’t talk nonsense! How _long_ were you at the hairdresser’s?—Well, what _were_ you doing?—Yes, but _what_ kept you?—Yes, of course, you met somebody. You seem to be meeting a lot of people lately!—I don’t care who it ‘only’ was—one of the men from the office, I suppose—Carrie Mortimer? nonsense!—I shall _not_ be quiet—I shall talk as loudly as I like—Did you or did you not remember——?” Here I grow desperate and turn on the gramophone. In comes Harrison, putting a good face on it. “Here’s the wife, late as usual!” We sit down to dinner in embarrassed silence. I murmur eulogies on the chicken. “Over-cooked,” says Harrison, shovelling it all aside and savagely picking at the vegetables. After this, everybody is afraid to eat it, for fear of not seeming to know good food from bad. “It seems delicious to me, Mr. Harrison,” says Miss Milsom, profiting nothing from long experience. “Oh,” says Harrison, sourly, “you women don’t care what you eat. It’s overdone, isn’t it, Lathom?” Lathom, quite helpless with rage, says in a strangulated voice, that he thinks it’s just right. “Well, you’re not eating it,” says Harrison, gloomily triumphant. By this time everybody’s appetite is taken thoroughly away. There is nothing on earth the matter with the chicken, but we all sit staring at it as though it was a Harpagus-feast of boiled baby.

Well, I’ll spare you the rest of the nightmare. The point is that _this_ time, Mrs. Harrison didn’t come in bubblingly eager to say where she had been and what she had been doing—and that _next_ time the alibi will hold water—and then Harrison will start saying that you can’t trust women, and will very likely be perfectly justified.

Bungie—I _see_ how these things happen, but how does one insure against them? What security have we that we—you and I, with all our talk of freedom and frankness—shall not come to this?

Love makes no difference. Harrison would cheerfully die for his wife—but I can’t imagine anything more offensive than dying for a person after you’ve been rude to them. It’s taking a mean advantage. And what’s the good of it all to him, if he loves her so much that everything she says gets on his nerves? I like Harrison—I think he’s worth a hundred of her—and yet, every time there’s a row, she ingeniously manages somehow to make him appear to be in the wrong. She is completely selfish, but she takes the centre of the stage so convincingly that the whole scene is engineered to give her the limelight for her attitudes.

This house is becoming a nightmare; I shall have to chuck it, but I must stay on till Easter, because the rent is paid up to the quarter and I can’t afford to lead a double life and Lathom can’t manage more than his own share. Hell!

_I to Hercules_ comes out next month. I hope old Merritt won’t be let down over it. He continues to be enthusiastic. Senile decay, I should think. Well, we’ll hope for the best. If my Press is as good as yours I shan’t complain, my child.

Your envious JACK

29. _Note by Paul Harrison_

It is unfortunate that throughout this important and critical period, from the end of November to the end of February, we should have no help from the Milsom correspondence. It seems that Miss Milsom and Mrs. Farebrother had a renewed quarrel during the Christmas period, on the subject of the youth Ronnie Farebrother, mentioned in former letters, and that as a result they remained for some time not on speaking or writing terms. Mr. Munting’s letters also contain no references to my father’s domestic affairs during the month of February—no doubt because he was preoccupied with his own private concerns.

During the last week of January, the wretched young Farebrother shot himself. This gratifying fulfilment of her prophecies of disaster seems to have driven Miss Milsom into a highly hysterical state of mind, which probably precipitated the mental collapse that followed. Her correspondence with her sister (which was then resumed) is therefore quite useless for evidential purposes. We can, therefore, only guess at the development of the situation between my stepmother and Lathom during February—the month in which my father’s duties took him away from home for fourteen days, in connection with the electrical installation in Middleshire. In view of the extraordinary incident which finally broke up the two households, it is, however, not difficult to form a correct opinion.

30. _John Munting to Elizabeth Drake_

15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER 17.2.29

DARLING BUNGIE,

You have seen the reviews, of course! Bless my heart and soul, what has happened to the people? Of course, it was all started by that tom-fool at the Guildhall (I don’t know why Cabinet Ministers should be the only people who can sell one’s books for one nowadays)—but oh, my lights and liver! Oh, goroo! goroo! The silly mutton-headed G.P. is walking into the blooming shops by thousands and _buying_ the thing! _Paying_ for the thing. Shoving down their hard-earned seven-and-sixpences for it! Lord help us—what have I done that I should be a best-seller? Is thy servant a tripe-hound that he should do this thing? First edition sold out. Presses rolling out new printings day and night—Merritt nearly off his head and saying, “I told you so.” Blushing author besieged in his charming Bayswater flat (! ! ! !)—Remarkable portrait of blushing author by that brilliant young artist Mr. Harwood Lathom (done in a fit of boredom one afternoon when the model hadn’t turned up) being scrambled for by four Press agencies, two literary hostesses and an American lion-tamer! Everything gas and gaiters! Worm-like appeals, from publishers who turned _Hercules_ down, for the next contract but seven, and the _Wail_ and the _Blues_ and the _Depress_ and all the Sunday Bloods yapping over the ’phone for my all-important, inspired and inspiring views on “What does the Unconscious means to me?”—“Is Monogamy Doomed?”—“Can Women tell the Truth?”—“Should Wives Produce Books or Babies?”—“What is wrong with the Modern Aunt?”—and “Glands or God—Which?”

Bungie, old thing, it all seems absolutely ghastly and preposterous, but the blasted book is BOOMING—and—shall we get married, Bungie? Will you take the risk on the strength of one fluky Boomer (which may perfectly well be a Boomerang and prevent me from ever writing anything worth doing for the rest of my life), and a set of contracts which I may go mad with inability to fulfil? Because, if you will—say so, my courageous infant, and we will tell your Uncle Edward to put up the banns, and prance off hand in hand our own primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.

Pull yourself together, Jack Munting!

Bungie, I’ve never told you how jealous I was because your books sold and mine didn’t. If I tell you so now, don’t remember it against me. Parson Perry says confession is a good thing. Perhaps he’s right. I confess it now—and now forget it, there’s a good girl. Perhaps even now it only means that my wretched book is howlingly bad. I always comforted myself with thinking that I _must_ write better than you to be so unsaleable—but I’m filthily pleased and cock-a-hoop all the same.

_Pull yourself together_, Jack Munting! You are becoming hysterical. Your glands are functioning madly in the wrong places, and your Unconscious has come unstuck!

Anyhow, I’m going to have quite enough to depress me to-morrow. That crashing nuisance, Leader, has suddenly discovered that he knows the fellow who’s written the book of the season, and is coming along to “Look me up, old boy, and celebrate!”

_There was a young student of Caius_ _Who passed his exams with a squaius,_ _Ere dissecting at St. Bartholomews_ _Inward St. Partholomews, such as St. Heartholomews_ _To discover the cure of disaius._

Oh, well, I suppose one of the penalties of success is the way it brings you in touch with your friends. I had an invitation to dine from the Sheridans last week. “Such a long time since we met, isn’t it?” I will see to it that it shall be longer still.

Well, let me know about the matrimonial outlook, won’t you? I have a great many important engagements, of course, but I daresay I might be able to fit this little matter in somewhere!

Yours _pomposo e majestuoso_, JACK

PS. You need not trouble to make it a quiet one. I can easily afford a top-hat—in fact, several.

31. _The Same to the Same_

15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE 20.2.29

DARLING BUNGIE,

Glory, alleluia! Then we will be married at Easter. Curse Uncle Edward’s scruples! I could make you just as good a husband in Lent—but, as you say, it’s a shame to upset the old boy. Now that the remote prospect has really come so (comparatively) near, I feel all wobbly and inadequate. It’s like bracing your muscles to pick up a heavy bag and finding there’s nothing in it. One thought it was years off—and here it is—and there it is, and that’s that.

Well!

Well, we are going to be married at Easter.

Well—it will be a good excuse for refusing silly invitations. No time. Frightfully sorry. Going to be married at Easter, you know. A lot to do. Ring. Best man. Bridesmaids’ presents and all that. Excuse me, old man, I’ve got to see my tailor. Cheer-frightfully-ho, don’t you know.