Our place really looks very jolly now; I wish you could come and see it. The Picasso is over the studio fireplace and the famille rose jar is in my sitting-room, and so are the etchings. They give my surroundings quite a distinguished-man-of-letters appearance. I wish I could get rid of this damned Life and get back to my own stuff, but I’m being too well paid for it, that’s the devil of it. Never mind—I’ll pretend I am the Industrious Apprentice, working hard so as to be able to marry his master’s daughter.
Glad the book seems to be working itself out amiably. For God’s sake, though, don’t overdo the psychoanalytical part. It’s not your natural style. Don’t listen to that Challenger woman, but write your own stuff. The other kind of thing wants writing (forgive me) fearfully well if it’s to be any good, and even then it is rather dreary and old-fashioned. Glands, my child, glands are the thing, as Barrie would say. Prenatal influences and childhood fears have gone out with compulsory Greek.
A Don who encountered a Maenad
Was left with less wits than the Dean ’ad;
Till the Dean, being vexed by a Gonad,
Was left with less wits than the Don ’ad:
This shows what implicit reliance
We may place on the progress of Science.
Talking of Science, I have brought up all standing by Nicholson’s book on The Development of English Biography. According to him, “pure” biography is doomed, and we are to have the “scientific biography,” which will in the end prove destructive of the literary interest. There are to be nothing but studies of heredity and endocrine secretions, economics and aesthetics, and so on—all specialised and all damned. This is where I get off: I only hope this infernal work will get itself published before the rot sets in. So back to the shop, Mr. Keats!
7
The Same to the Same
15a, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater
Darling old Bungie, old thing—
All right, damn it, no! I don’t want to hector and lay down the law. You carry on in your own way, my child, and don’t pay any attention to me. I quite see what you say about taking things for granted—so we’ll lay it down quite clearly for future guidance that, although I am always right, I must never be so ex officio and because I am a man and a husband. No doubt it is irritating. I hadn’t quite looked at it from that point of view, but possibly there is something in it. Signed Jacko, the almost-human Ape.
Making a strenuous effort to adopt this feminine viewpoint, I am beginning to wonder whether my neighbour goes quite the right way to assert his position as head of the household. I fancy he must have read somewhere that women like to be treated rough and feel the tight hand on the rein and that sort of thing. Unfortunately, nature did not design him for a sheik part, having made him small, dry, and a little bald on top.
We were just starting off to dine with Lambert the other night, and were waiting in the hall for a taxi, when Mrs. H. came in, rather flurried and very wet. She was hanging up her waterproof, when Harrison came charging out on the landing and called down:
“Is that you, Margaret? Do you know what time it is?”
“I’m sorry—I won’t be a moment.”
“Where on earth have you been?”
“That’s a secret” (in the tone of voice of someone who wants to have the secret teased out of her. She was laughing to herself, and had a fattish parcel tucked under her arm).
“Oh! I suppose it’s all the same to you if the dinner’s uneatable.”
Evidently no interest was to be taken in the “secret.” The next effort was along the lines of cheerful common sense.
“Why didn’t you begin without me?”
“I don’t choose to. This is my home—or supposed to be—not a hotel” (in a tone of peevish protest).
She had gone past us up to the first-floor landing, and, like the Wedding-Guest, we could not choose but hear.
“I’m sorry, dear. I was getting something for tomorrow.”
“That’s no excuse. You’ve been chattering to some of your office friends in some teashop or other and forgetting all about what you were supposed to be doing. No, I don’t want any dinner now.”
“Oh, very well.”
He came running downstairs then and saw us. I think it gave him a shock, because he pulled himself up and smiled and said something vague. Then he turned and called up the stairs again:
“All right, my dear, I’ll be up in a minute.” His eyes were unhappy. There’s something wrong in this house—something more than a little misunderstanding about dinner time. I shouldn’t wonder if she gives this man a devil of a time—probably without meaning it, that’s the rub. Lathom, who is at the chivalrous age, was all for youth and beauty, of course, and wanted to hop out and sling the old boy into his own umbrella-stand, but I told him not to be an infernal ass. Why shouldn’t the woman come home in
