Unfortunately, Lathom, who is one of those companionable blighters, has gone and struck up an acquaintance with the Harrisons, and yesterday evening I was hauled down to see them. Apparently Mr. H. goes in for dabbling in watercolours, and wanted Lathom’s advice about some lighting for his studio. Lathom grumbled a good deal, but I told him it was his own fault if he would go about being so chatty.
I didn’t think much of Mrs. H—she’s a sort of suburban vamp, an ex-typist or something, and entirely wrapped up, I should say, in her own attractions, but she’s evidently got her husband by the short hairs. Not good-looking, but full of S.A. and all that. He is a cut above her, I imagine, and at least twenty years older; small, thin, rather stooping, goatee beard, gold specs. And wears his forehead well over the top of his head. He has a decentish post of some kind with a firm of civil engineers. I gather she is his second wife, and that he has a son en premières noces, also an engineer, now building a bridge in Central Africa and doing rather well. The old boy is not a bad old bird, but an alarming bore on the subject of Art with a capital A. We had to go through an exhibition of his masterpieces—Devonshire lanes and nice little bits in the Cotswolds, with trees and cottages. Lathom stuck it very well, and said they were very nice, which is his way of expressing utter damnation—but Harrison didn’t know that, so they got on together like a house afire.
They’ve got an appalling sitting-room, all arty stuff from Tottenham Court Road, with blue and mauve cushions, and everything ghastly about it—like Ye Olde Oake Tea-Roomes. Harrison is fearfully proud of his wife’s taste, and played showman rather pathetically. They keep a “lady-help”—they would!—a dreadful middle-aged female with a come-hither eye. She cornered me at the front door the other morning, just as I was popping out for my daily dozen round the houses. She was prowling round the hall in rose-pink pyjamas and a pale-blue negligee, pretending to take in the milk. I dawdled on the stairs as long as I could, to give her a chance to run to cover, but as she appeared to be determined, and the situation was becoming rather absurd, I marched out, and was, of course, involved in a conversation. I made myself as repellent as I could, but the good lady’s curiosity would take no denial. Last night was like a friendly evening with the Grand Inquisitor. I told her all she wanted to know about my income and prospects and family, and Lathom’s ditto so far as I knew them, and by that time she was chatting so archly (lovely word!) about the young ladies of the neighbourhood that I thought it best just to mention that I was engaged. That worked her up into still greater excitement, but I didn’t tell her much, Bungie, old dear. I’ve got a sort of weakness about you, though you mightn’t think it, my child, so I said nothing. Hadn’t I got a photograph? No, I didn’t approve of photographs. Well, of course, they were only mechanical, weren’t they? Hadn’t Mr. Lathom painted a portrait of my fiancée? I said that, though I had few illusions about any of my belongings, I couldn’t expose you to the ordeal of being painted by Lathom. So she said how like a man to talk of his belongings, and she supposed Mr. Lathom was very Modern (capital M). I said yes, terrifically so, and that he always painted his sitters with green mouths and their noses all askew. So she said she supposed I wrote poems to you instead. I replied that poems to one’s fiancée were a little old-fashioned, didn’t she think so, and she agreed, and said, “What was the title of my next volume?” So I said at random “Spawn,” which I thought was rather good for the spur of the moment, and it rather shut her up, because she wasn’t quite sure of the right answer, and just said that that sounded very modern too, and she hoped I would present her with a copy when it was printed. Then I got reckless, and said I feared it never would be printed, because Jix had his eye on me and opened all my letters to my publishers. You’d adore these people, my dear—they are like something out of one of your own books. How is the new work getting on?
I must stop now, old thing: I’ve been quill-driving all day on the Life, and I’m just about dead. But I had to write you some sort of yarn, just to show I hadn’t been and gone and deserted you.
Yours, Bungie, if indeed anything of one’s self can ever be anybody else’s which, as an up-to-date young woman, you will conscientiously doubt, but, at any rate, with the usual damned feeling of incompleteness in your absence, yours, blast you! yours,
6
The Same to the Same
15a, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater
Dear Bungie,
Yours to hand, and your remarks about middle-aged spinsters noted. I will try not to be (a) catty; (b) mid-Victorian; (c) always imagining myself to be truly run after. I did not know I was all those things, but, being a modern woman and a successful novelist, no doubt you are quite right. Also, of course, you are quite right to speak your mind. As you say, married life should be based on mutual frankness.
In return, may I just hint that there are some sides of life which I, as a man, may possibly know more about than you do, merely through having lived longer and knocked about more. I assure you I can size up some types of people pretty well. However, it may give
