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 you pleasure to learn
that Mrs. Harrison, at any rate, is not out for my scalp. She has read
_Deadlock_ and is disgusted with its coarseness and cynicism, How do I
know? Because I was in Mudie’s when she went in to change it. The girl
said, no, it wasn’t a very nice book and she was afraid at the time Mrs.
Harrison wouldn’t care for it, and would she like the latest Michael
Arlen? Which she did.
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 psycho-analytical 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. Pre-natal influences and childhood fears have gone out with
compulsory Greek.
_A Don who encountered a Mænad_
_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 æsthetics, 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!
Yours, while this machine is to him,
JACK
On looking this through, I seem to be rather in a scolding mood. But
it’s only because I think so highly of your stuff that I don’t want you
to get sloppy and psycho. That kind of thing is all sentimentality,
really. _Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner; tout pardonner, c’est
tout embêter._