Letters to a Sister (6 page)

Anyhow, they were all most religious & scriptural; the very porter (a black) had found the Lord. In fact, I expect the only passengers who hadn't were us and a couple of Japs who played cards all day; and one negro waiter who told M. he was Episcopalian. Everyone is very much interested in M.'s clothes
⁵⁶
; the porters and waiters etc. ask what she is. The man who sells candy on the train asked me this morning; he thought we must be coming out to do mission work, and tried to sell us religious books, though I told him we had only come motoring. They are also interested in where we come from, because of the way we talk. I like the western voice—it is attractive, especially the negro. They are very friendly people everywhere…

New Orleans
23 January, [1930]

… We got here to-day, after a very interesting few days across the old negro sugar-plantation country. It is fascinating watching the changing panorama unwind itself, as if we were seeing a film. We left Spain behind us about three days ago, in Texas; ever since San Antonio the people in shops and restaurants and streets have stopped speaking Spanish and looking Mexican, and negroes abound everywhere instead, with their nice soft southern drawl. And now we are in the old French part, of course. New Orleans is mixed French and Spanish, and American from 1803 on. We are staying in the old French quarter, but haven't seen much of it yet. It's not French in the sense that Texan & Californian towns are Spanish—I mean one doesn't hear it talked much—but one sees houses with green shutters etc. and I believe the market is very French. It is a fine city, a good deal modernised, of course.

Mexico was wonderful—I
do
wish we could have had longer there. If only they had let M. in,
⁵⁷
and if only the roads had been better. Still, we have been in it and seen it. My heart still pants after it, and I feel almost moved to take a step across the Gulf of Mexico to Tampico. However, Florida will be lovely too…

The Southern people are very frank about their attitude towards negroes—they say they can't help it, as they are Southerners. Quite an intelligent woman talked to us about it, also a nice farmer. They quarrel with their Northern friends about it, they say, so don't raise the subject. It is very queer in such nice kind people.

Very much love.
   
E.R.M.

1 June, [1930]

Dearest Jeanie,

... I quite agree about Time. Dorothy Brooke
⁵⁸
rang me up this morning and said she was wanting to start a League about it. The first rule is that no-one is hurt when told that a friend has no time to see them at present. She thought of this independently, I mean I hadn't mentioned it, so it looks as if it was in the air. At present only she, I and you belong, I believe. I expect Margaret would join. Her second rule is that we speak the truth to those who want our time, whether they are prepared to keep Rule 1 or not. (In fact, if they didn't belong to the League, I suppose they wouldn't keep Rule 1.) I must make all my correspondents join it, if possible. Shall I write an article about it? But at present I have no Time for that…

Did you hear Dr Gann on Guatemalan ruins he had found, the other day on the wireless?
⁵⁹
Very thrilling. He is organising another expedition this year to excavate further. There may be treasure hidden there, it seems. How I wish I could go & see!

Very much love.
   
E.R.M.

18 March, [1931]

Dearest Jeanie,

… Last night I went to a party at Maisie Fletcher's,
⁶⁰
and saw crowds of the young generation of Fletchers, Aclands, Trevelyans, Ritchies, etc. etc.—I felt like a mother myself. Eleanor Acland
⁶¹
was also there—very handsome still. She and her husband and her son Dick
⁶²
are going to stand as Liberals in 3 Devon constituencies next election. It would make a very nice family party if they all get in, but, being Liberals, they no doubt none of them will. I like these gatherings of relations and primeval friends and their offspring. But, dear me, what a sadly sterile family we have been ourselves! I do think it is rather a pity. I do wish Will would do something about it before it is too late; it is so much more interesting to produce some young and see what they will do. I felt quite ashamed of my egotistic, aloof life, with nothing to show for it. I think it is quite different for you, who are busy doing things for people all the time. But still, I expect it is all fancy that it is better to continue the race; anyhow, there are plenty of
people doing it, and it doesn't always work out very well, so perhaps we have acted for the best.

Much love.
   
R
.

7,
Luxborough House,
⁶³
Northumberland St, W.1
29 May, [1932]

Dearest Jeanie,

… Here are two Quandaries,
⁶⁴
in your line. The answer to both is obvious; only in the case of the baby, I should wait till the nurse was out of the room, for fear of gossip.
⁶⁵
I wonder if anyone will say they would let the baby live. It would have been more interesting if they had made it a less extreme case—paralysis of all arms and legs, as well as deformity and imbecility and straitened means, seems rather piling it on…

The Sunday Films Bill debate is very interesting to read.
⁶⁶
It always surprises me how many people there still are who consider Sunday occupations quite apart from the question of forced employment for workers. It reads very medievally when people like Sir Basil Peto begin to talk about it. He
thinks the secularization of Sunday has led to our economic evils, which were sent the world as a punishment. How interesting people are!

Very much love.
   
R.M.

Are you near Birchington-on-Sea? If so, you should take a trip to the Mysteries House, where veiled women have lived unseen for 13 years, and the
Sunday Express
man could get no answer when he called.
⁶⁷

11 June, [1932]

Dearest Jeanie,

... I will enclose to-day's Quandary and answers...
Do
be a Mr Johnston when you retire.
⁶⁸
M. should drop her ‘Sister'
⁶⁹
and be merely ‘X', as the non-religious would fight shy of a sister…

Very much love.
   
E.R.M.

P.S.… Here is a quandary which I met when out at lunch in a shop to-day. I sat at a table with an unpleasant looking woman, who took and ate 3 cakes from the dish before her. She then, instead of waiting for the waitress to come and give her her bill, as is usually done, got up and went a little way off (so that I shouldn't hear, I think) and told the waitress in
a low tone, which however I heard, that she had had one cake. The waitress gave her her bill accordingly, without coming to look at the plate, and she paid it and went out.

What should I have done? Got up and intervened, in time to make her pay for the cakes? Told the waitress later, when I paid my own bill? Or said nothing at all? The third is (as you will guess) what I did do. The situation was not complicated by fear of being suspected of having taken the two other cakes myself, as I go there often and they know me quite well; if I had been a stranger to them, I should have mentioned it, I think. As it was, they lost their money and the thief got off.

What would Mr Johnston advise? The obviously easiest line is not to make a scene or interfere—though of course I should interfere if it was a question of more money than that, or objects of more value. But I don't like to see shops cheated, even of a few cakes, and I never like to see thieves get away with it.

7,
Luxborough House, Northumberland St, W.1
23 July, 1932

Dearest Jeanie,

… I met a film king, very fat, with a large cigar, who wants to film
Orphan Island,
but I don't expect he will. If he does, he will increase and concentrate on the love interest; he seems also to think the clash between 19th and 20th century very important, and that he must introduce a very modern girl who comes to the island. As a matter of fact his scenario would be very different from mine, but I said he could do what he liked. He said (looking very common) that it was very sad how vulgar popular taste, both in films and newspapers, was. I said (in effect) ‘it is people such as you who make it so, by your pandering to it', but he thought not. The public will have their Barney case
⁷⁰
etc, he said, and a news
paper has to be vulgar before it pays its way. I suppose the remedy is to forbid any of them to be vulgar, then the refined ones wouldn't have to suffer competition. But, as to films, I don't know if he's right…

[The end of this letter is missing.]

7,
Luxborough House, Northumberland St, W.1
7 September, [1932]

Dearest Jeanie,

... I am
so
glad you like my book.
⁷¹
What is the Church history you have been reading? It was a very stormy and interesting time in religion. The worst time for the Church was the Commonwealth, when all the sects broke out, and the Anglican service was forbidden. And the worst of
that
was that the Church returned, at the Restoration, more persecuting than ever, and gave the Conventicles a far worse treatment than they had ever had themselves. And the Papists too. And then James II came in, and wanted to persecute everyone except Papists, and made them hated worse than ever. And the poor Quakers, beaten and cropped and imprisoned by everyone. The one thing no-one thought of, but a few Congregationalists, was toleration. But it is all an interesting story.

I see Inge has been lecturing
⁷²
on the attraction of Catholicism (Roman and Anglo-) and on how many literary people in England become R.C. He says, what everyone says, that the Church is losing more adherents in R.C. countries than it is gaining in Protestant ones. It would be curious if, in another century, England should be the great R.C. country, surrounded by a heretic continent! It is just possible, I think.

But England will always have plenty of heretics of her own, if so, both Protestant and other…

Very much love.
   
E.R.M.

7, Luxborough House, Northumberland St, W.1
25
September, [1932]

Dearest Jeanie,

… Yes, I think Germany does well to turn on us. But our Note in reply was unsatisfactory.
⁷³
However, the leading articles in both the two important Sunday papers to-day take Germany's side; the
Sunday Times
even takes the unusual step of commenting adversely on the remarks of its own Geneva correspondent about the situation—Wickham Steed, who is, I always think, rather a dangerous man, and who says to-day that any disarming would mean war, probably! Just what they used to be saying before the Great War. Apropos, I enclose a rather good picture of the man who suggested disarming at a Disarmament Conference. I'm afraid he is shrinking so small with shame that he will soon shrink quite away. There are some other jokes on the same page, which I throw in gratis, but that is the best…

I have just been reviewing a Life of Mary Kingsley.
⁷⁴
She was a most charming adventurer in West Africa—went exploring and trading in the 1890's, all alone, among cannibals and traders, and never shot wild beasts, as she didn't think it ladylike, but let them out of snares instead and then ran. You should read it sometime. She is not, I think, quite just to missionaries. She disliked the hymns they taught the blacks,
with such refrains as ‘A little talk with Jesus, Makes it right, All right'. Also she didn't think they understood West African negroes, and they forbade polygamy, which annoyed the wives, who didn't care to run the house and husband all alone. How complicated missionary work must be!

… Very much love,
   
E.R.M.

7,
Luxborough House, Northumberland St, W.1
   24 November, [1932]

Dearest Jeanie,

... This is not another letter to be answered, but an answer to yours, and to enclose a cutting about the Buchmanites at Oxford which may interest you, and show you how right I am not to approve of them. I have heard worse tales than this from those who have been at the meetings. I believe it [public confession of sin] does
not
replace sin, but encourage [s] it, as they want new things to confess and make a stir with. I don't like all that laughter, it is affected.

Shall I write a novel about it, after attending some meetings? No, you will reply, suspecting nasty cuts. But there would be none of those; I should treat it very respectfully, though with some regret. My hero or heroine, seeking religion, would try it, but retire after a time, debauched by and the worse for the experience. But I should need to know plenty about it first, and, in learning about it, I might get converted and stay to pray, you never know.

As to the obscenity, of course the obscene will be obscene anywhere,
so long as they are allowed to be.
The trouble is, the Groups do not only allow but encourage it, at least they did. There was some trouble about it, and they may censor the confessions more now, perhaps…

Much love.
   
E.R.M.

Between this letter and the next—written more than a year later—there is a gap in the surviving correspondence. During this interval Rose finished her short Life of Milton, travelled in the Basque country (the setting for her satire on the Oxford Group, ‘Going Abroad'), and compiled her anthology ‘The Minor Pleasures of Life'. At this time she also started writing the ‘Marginal Comments' column for ‘The Spectator'. Rose was a loyal supporter of the League of Nations, and her pacifist sympathies were much in evidence at the time of the Abyssinian crisis.

Sunday [probably during May, 1934]

Dearest Jeanie,