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