INTRODUCING SHE-EVELYN
John Herbert Maxse was a friend of Evelyn Gardner and Pansy Pakenham. Don't ask me who he was in any detail - I don't know. And I don't think it matters. In this context he was simply a conduit.
She-Evelyn and Pansy both wrote letters to Maxse, who was about to travel to India in pursuit of his military career, when the correspondence began in 1926. The letters of both She-Evelyn and Pansy are now held at Columbia University, New York, and were seen by Martin Stannard and Selina Hastings when each was putting together their 1986 and 1994 biographies of Evelyn Waugh. Additionally, Philip Eade quotes from them in his 2016 biography, more so than from the 19-page document, written by She-Evelyn in 1975, that his earlier biographers did not have access to.
But there is a lot of detail in the letters that is of great interest in itself and which has not yet been published. (Please see the important note about copyright at the end of this essay.)
The first letter I've seen was written on a typewriter in July or August of 1927, by Evelyn Gardner. When She-Evelyn talks about 'we' in this letter and the next, she means herself and her sister, Mary, who will go on to marry the Alan (Hillgarth) also mentioned below.
What else do you need to know? Barry (Gifford) was She-Evelyn's boyfriend at the time. Brockenhurst is a village in the New Forest about ten miles from Southampton. In April of 1927, He-Evelyn had written in is diary, 'I have met such a nice girl called Evelyn Gardner.'
Evelyn Gardner, Portrait of olivia Wyndham. 1928.
Such a nice girl? Ever such a warm, modern and effervescent girl, as you'll see.
East Boldre Vicarage
Brockenhurst
Dearest John,
You are a pig not to have written to me and I am only writing to you now because I want to show off my typing. It takes me an hour to write a letter and I think I’ve burst the type-writer! (this is not due to my emotion at writing to you, but because I don’t know how to use the damn thing!) The play is being vastly improved by Alan. And we have nearly finished Act 2.
You are coming to my birthday party aren’t you? I have heard from E. Waugh who has been riding his landlady’s bicycle near Oxford!
We are forming a secret society, will you join only you mustn’t tell a soul. If you tell anyone it will spoil the whole thing, and I think it is going to cause us a great deal of amusement.
I have been amusing myself by making up poetry about the Dean of St Paul’s and I didn’t use the obvious rhyme.
We spend our spare time playing rugger with the Dutch cheese. So you see even play-wrights have their pastimes!
We have got Barry's dog here, he has just eaten the intestines of two lobsters (which he stole).
Mrs Nicholson has broken her leg and I am going to her on the 10th til the 15th then I go to London, for God’s sake come and see me as soon as possible, London in September is bloody. We are going to sail in the Solent so if you hear of a sailing accident you’ll know we’ve gone out without Alan. We have got a dinghy with a red sail.
One has very queer dreams here. I dreamed one night that I swam to the Isle of Wight, and later that a German Prince wanted to rape me. He was prevented by Uncle George’s much-improved wife (I don’t mean that she was improved because obviously she couldn’t be.)
Are you immersed in Infantry Warfare? The pictures of some of the people are very trying, I hope you aren’t being ordered about by them.
Come here if you want a bath or a bit of cheese or lobster which has not already been destroyed by one of us.
Best love from
Evelyn
Full of character, wouldn't you say?
I suppose the obvious rhyme referred to is 'balls'.
And full of word-pictures. She-Evelyn is a writer, that's appropriate to acknowledge, more than perhaps has been up to now.
The second letter, probably written in August 1927, is also typed.
Dearest John,
I am glad you like the GARGOYLE, I am going to belong to it, the subscription for the rest of the year ought to be quite small. I don’t think you can have seen the side to it I have, probably your companions were too respectable.
Pansy is coming here on Saturday. I am sorry you have been having such a bad time about her, but I think it is best on the whole to make it pretty obvious what you feel for her. If you weren’t going to India, I should say don’t see her again. But it is such a short time now. It is really the best thing for you. And you have shown real wisdom in having the courage to do it, I must say I admire your strength of mind.
I leave here on the 10th and go to 8 Hill Street for the night of the 15th. Then we settle in Sloane Square.
You wouldn’t recognise my third act, it is quite altered.
Mary and I are going to write a book of short essays called “Other Peoples Wives”. I have already started on Mrs Inge. I have to make her seemingly unrecognisable and yet leave the reader to wonder if it isn’t really her. Anyway I am enjoying myself immensely, as I loathe the woman.
We want Alan to write “Other Peoples Husbands” but I don’t suppose he will.
I do wish you got back before the 24th, London is going to be very dreary. Write me a line if you have time. We have been re-reading 'Pride and Prejudice', it is wonderful.
Much affection and blessings,
yours ever,
Evelyn
As indicated in this letter, She-Evelyn was about to lodge with Pansy Pakenham, who was engaged to the painter, Henry Lamb, a married man who was awaiting divorce from his first wife.
Clearly John Maxse was keen on Pansy as well, at least that's how I interpret She-Evelyn's remarks about how he should or should not proceed.
It seems that She-Evelyn's typewriter didn't make it to London, because subsequent letters, written from various addresses, are hand-written.
10.10.1927
54 Sloane Square
Dearest John,
Just a letter to cheer you on your way.
Mary is doing marvellously, she has had very little pain, and the wound is healing splendidly.
Alan and I had an awful time, waiting for the result of the operation! We tried to tell each other funny stories, but each story seemed to trail off in the middle.
Pansy is well, but I wish Lamb would come back, as I think she is lonely. I have had 2 postcards from him, he was at Cwallon (?), and has gone on to Paris, and I hope he’ll be back in about a week.
I went to the ‘High Road’ with the Drafe family on Saturday, it was frightfully Lonsdale-ish, very highly polished, snappy and epigrammatic, but the plot very thin, and I considered the acting saved it. I do hate English plays as a rule.
The dinner beforehand was rather grim. Charles’ aunt who was there, I considered a bitch. Very narrow-minded and a super Conservative. I couldn’t stand it, and announced in a loud voice that I was Labour. “Of course all very young people are labour,” she replied. “It’s a sign of their extreme youth.” “Any lady with a head is,” I said snappily and that shut her up.
She then proceeded to say how iniquitous it was that Iris Stunt should stand for parliament. I hold no brief for the woman, but I couldn’t stand the old bitch, so I said that “Morals had nothing to do with politics.” So you see, John darling, dinner wasn’t a success, and that is my last effort at respectable dinner parties. It’s no good, I can’t do it.
Mummy is back, furious with me for not having told her about the op: but as I never opened my mouth she calmed down after a bit.
I went out sailing on the Thames with Inge, yesterday, and he said of all the friends of mine he’d met, he liked you best.
Well, bless you my angel. I hope you’re not getting muddled up in any rape-parties!!
Much love, from Evelyn
Can that really say 'rape-parties'? I'm not sure. Just as I'm not sure the name of the place that Lamb was before he went to Paris.
Nor do I know what sort of operation Mary was having. Apparently, she had a number of affairs in-between husbands, the second of which was the above-mentioned Alan.
In any case, I hope this is setting the scene. She-Evelyn was a spirited woman who could express herself vividly. Remind you of someone else called Evelyn?
19.10.27
54 Sloane Square
Dearest John,
Evelyn Waugh is back in London, and we had a great party consisting of him, Byam-Shaw, Dudley, Pansy and me. Evelyn very sweet. He presented me with Bottomley’s Ballad of Maidstone Gaol, which is really ridiculously quite unintentionally funny.
Mary wrote you a letter just before she was operated on, to cheer you on your way, but everyone forgot to post it. She has had a marvellous time, comes out of the nursing home tomorrow, having been in under a fortnight.
Barry is back from staying with the Eskers, they never offered to take him shooting tho’ they went themselves. The manners of these ill-bred b______s! He was pretty rude to them, I believe, quite right too.
Evelyn Waugh is going to become a carpenter and went to the School of Arts and Crafts for his first lesson today.
I haven’t been frightfully well, so I’m afraid this letter is more than usually dull, but I do feel so dreadfully weak, for no reason at all, except that my entire tummy is adhered together, and the doctor seems to think there is no way of breaking the damn adhesions. Pansy and I have bloody colds.
Darling John, I do hope you are all right, and that it is even better than you expected, that the general is a pinkle-wonk, and that the job is really interesting.
Bless you, from Evelyn
As before, full of word pictures. Poor Barry never got to go hunting. No mention of Barry's dog or the lobsters this time. He-Evelyn was back on the scene though. And about to become a carpenter?
Not just word-pictures but word-mysteries. What is a pinkle-wonk?
The Dudley is Dudley Carew, who Evelyn Waugh had been a very close friend of at their school, Lancing College.
Less than a week later, She-Evelyn wrote again:
26/10/27
54 Sloane Square
Dearest John,
I can’t make up my mind whether it is better not to write at all, or to write a dreadfully dull letter, so I am doing the latter. What I mean is, I’ve got the remnants of a cold and I foresee that this is going to be platitudinous, heavy, uninteresting, long-winded, pointless, in short, bloody.
Last night I went to see ‘Crime’ with Evelyn Waugh, it was deliciously blood and thunder and sloppily sentimental. The hero was a white crook, a second Raffles, who gave his life for the movement, and he had marvellously waved hair. He was a super-man, I’d have done anything for that man. I’d have been seduced by him any day. But nobody in the play seemed to want to be. Very odd. Evelyn and I sat with our eyes goggling out, he liked the villain best, I must say I had rather a weakness for the villain’s straw hat. However, he was ‘bumped off’ pretty early on.
I think it is the duty of all American dramatists to show up this iniquitous ‘third degree’ system. Apparently, they hit and torture their witnesses into confession. If I were a witness, I’d confess anything sooner than go through with it. I believe they even starve them. In fact, I think one should start an anti-third degree league and go over to America and show what decent straight English women think about it!!!
Having got all that off my chest, Pansy is in extraordinarily good looks, and has got rid of her cold. Lamb comes back at the end of this week. Barry and I have quarrelled, at least he quarrelled with me, but don’t mention this when writing to Pansy, as she doesn’t know. I really can’t understand B’s attitude. But I expect he’ll be all right, when the Rauce goes away.
Bless you dear John, write to me sometime. Much love from Evelyn.
Again a fascinating picture. This time of the Evelyns sitting together in a theatre, goggle-eyed. In his childhood, Waugh had been a Raffles fan, and for a while his nickname had been Wuffles.
Reading between the lines, poor old Barry is about to be given the boot.
November 1927
54 Sloane Square.
Dearest John,
I’m afraid I have been very bad about writing lately, but I haven’t been awfully well, and also, Mummy has been told about Mary and Alan, and the rows which have ensued have been tremendous.
I refused to see her for some days, and in consequence she is grovelling now, and when I did see her begged me to use my influence with M. against what she calls ‘this sinful step’. She is an impossible person to discuss anything with, because unless you agree with every word she is furious. The great thing is to say "Quite”, to every remark she makes.
The whole thing is very tiresome, but I dare say if I felt well, I should think it even funnier than I do.
At the moment I long to get away from everybody I have ever seen.
My play is in the hands of the typist and Alan has written to Duff Taylor about it. But the more I think about it, the more I realise how incredibly ‘young’ and amateurish it is.
However, my next one will be an improvement, I hope. But at the moment I don’t feel well enough to start it.
I am so glad to hear that the General is a Poppet, you ought to make him a Bug-tunic(?). Pansy is flourishing. Lamb is drawing me and the children. As Mary has asked him to he is talking of painting me.
Much love from Evelyn
Nothing about He-Evelyn there, but he is about to propose marriage, so he'll be back. First, news of an extraordinary party.
54 Sloane Square
21.11.27
Dearest John,
This is to wish you a good Christmas.
I do hope things are all right and that your General or Colonel or whatever he is, has turned out all you expected him to be!
Here we go on in the same drab way! Alec Waugh is back, he is going to live in New York for a bit. I believe he’s signed a good many contracts over there.
I went and dined with the Waugh family on Monday. Old Mr Waugh is a complete Pinkle-Wonk. He wears a blue velvet coat at dinner, just like papa did, and talks about the actresses who were the toasts of his young days. I like that kind of thing. There was a boy at dinner who was supposed to be a kleptomaniac. I can assure you that I didn’t allow my gold cigarette case out of my sight for a minute!
Last night I dined with Alec and Evelyn and a party at the Ritz. We went on to the Gargoyle and an awful old woman in the party insisted on leaning her head on Evelyn’s shoulder and holding his hand. Poor Evelyn simply didn’t know what to do about it. Afterwards we came back here, and woke up Pansy and drank coffee and sherry! Pansy is flourishing and Lamb has got a new flat. Mary is getting him to draw Alan and me and the children, and he has promised to paint me sometime. Bobby is back for a week, completely drunken, but I haven’t seen him. Barry has taken a flat in London, a very good thing, as it means he will only see the Brookes for business. The Rawes play has been accepted by Guy Newall and is to be produced in April. I believe the plot is thin, but the dialogue very good. I have met the head of Alan’s Bolivian Expedition. He is the most amazing man. In a way he reminds me of Napoleon, which you will consider fantastic, but his personality is so dynamic, and you feel that whatever happens he will get what he wants. He is a man of one purpose, and when he looks at you, you think he has discovered every weakness in one glance, and I am sure he has. He would have interested you. A real leader.
Sunday
Last Friday was Bobby’s party: My God! It was the most disgusting affair!
Everybody except for Dudley, myself and Anita Porterfield became quite, quite blind. And then there were two revolting women who were Lesbians, and one tried to make up to me! I can’t tell you how awful it was. It ended by Dudley and me forcibly turning everybody out.
I am never going to a party again, and Bobby is a little _____. He behaved disgustingly and got tight again the next morning and was sick all over Dudley’s flat. Revolting! Don’t mention any of this to Mary, if you happen to write to her.
The really funny thing was that Evelyn got a little tight too, and was furious because I wouldn’t let him take me home.
When I got back, about 1.30 the telephone rang and a small precious voice said, “Is that Miss Gardner?” “Yes.” “What I want to say is Hell to you!” and clang went the receiver. I did laugh so much. But the ghastly thing is that Anita Porterfield who leased the flat at which the party was given has been told that she must turn out tomorrow! the people opposite complained and said that poor Anita was either the owner of a low nightclub or a brothel!!! It would be very funny if it wasn’t tiresome for her.
But never, never, again!
Evelyn apologised profusely the next day, he is so sweet.
I have just had your two letters. My dear, it’s perfectly all right. I have plenty of steady, serviceable friends, as well as what you call the brilliant ones. I suppose you count Evelyn amongst them, but I am sure he would never give up my friendship, lately we have become such terribly good friends, and in such a good place, because I know he would never make love to me, and everyone else does, it’s such a bore.
The play should be finished next week, and then I hope Alan will get hold of Duff Taylor and show it to him. Personally, I think it very, very bad, and incredibly weak, and futile, and I can’t think how anybody could produce it and I’m sure they won’t!
Best love, darling angel.
many blessings,
Yours ever, Evelyn
Second use of the word 'pinkle-wonk'. I think this word may have been She-Evelyn's own invention. Google 'pinkle-wonk' and the only other use of it is in a 2009 novel which may have been aware of the Waugh literature. That She-Evelyn referred to Arthur as 'pinkle-wonk' has been pointed out in the Waugh biographies.
I think 'Bobby' is Cecil A. Roberts (not the novelist Cecil Roberts), he crops up several times in He-Evelyn's diary of 1927, usually drunk. On the 20th of November, just after the party, Waugh comments 'I think Bobbie is bound to die of drink soon.'
Waugh doesn't mention the phone call to She-Evelyn in his diary. He uses the motif in Vile Bodies though. But that's getting ahead of ourselves.
On December 13, Waugh noted in his diary: 'Dined with Evelyn at the Ritz. Proposed marriage. Inconclusive.' I imagine She-Evelyn would have been a bit taken aback. After all, this was the friend who she could rely on 'not to make love to her'.
But within the next 24 hours, She-Evelyn had said yes to the marriage proposal.
Now Pansy Pakenham had also been writing to John Maxse, since August 1926, but I've only seen the letters beginning from 1928. However, in Philip Eade's Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited, he quotes from the letter of 29 December, 1927:
'After all these toughs and cavemen that make up her usual clientele, E. Waugh seems like claret after whisky and seems to be kind and bracing at the same time.'
According to Philip Eade, Pansy had been instrumental in persuading He-Evelyn to take the plunge when he did. And he quotes Pansy again:
'I was greatly in favour of this as I thought E. Gardner had lost her nerve about marriage and that if she didn't do it at once she would let it peter out out of sheer funk.'
Back to She-Evelyn:
54 Sloane Square
January 1928
Dearest John,
I am so glad your Indian life proves amusing, and that the people interest you. Your general sounds charming.
Here life meanders along. Evelyn and I are very much annoyed at being prevented from announcing our engagement: and Evelyn detests mama. I suppose things will become simple. But it is very annoying. We want to get married in April, but I do not see much hope of it before June. May is such an unlucky month.
My play is in the hands of George Hayes who is going to show it to Haynes Ltd and Leon. M. Lion. He thinks it is likely to have a commercial success. Which is, after all, what I want. It has been vulgarised and cut and written down since you saw it. I am quite certain I shall never write anything good.
Evelyn’s book on Rossetti is finished, it is to be called ‘The Last Born of Eve’ and is being dedicated to me, which naturally pleases me very much.
Barry has behaved well over my engagement, but Evelyn doesn’t want me to see him again, and I feel I ought to. Rather difficult.
I have read nothing of interest. ‘Cups, Wands and swords’ by Helen Simpson amused me. ‘The Ugly Duchess’ seems poor after ‘Jew Suss’.
Pansy has gone to Toulon, where she says it is sunny. This climate is preposterous. I hate England. I am sure the thing to do is to go to Australia, but there the people are so awful. Life is obviously impossible in this cold.
Evelyn is writing a novel which promises to be excellent and extremely witty. He has been away for a week, that is why I am so depressed and this letter is so dull.
Bless you, my dear. I wish you were in England, we all miss you so much.
Love from Evelyn
She-Evelyn is reading books. She is writing stuff herself. Her betrothed has a biography coming out and is writing a novel.
I now want to introduce Pansy Pakenham's point of view in more detail. And in her own words. Nevertheless, these are just paragraphs taken from much longer letters.
54 Sloane Square
Feb 1st 1928
To come down to personal matters you may be interested to know that Lamb got his divorce the day before yesterday. The whole thing took about five minutes and was an absolute farce but of course it is a great relief to get it off our chests, there is the usual fly in the ointment however. The six months between nil and absolute takes us to the third of July which is the day the Court starts its holidays. and as you need a judge to make you absolute we cannot get finally free til the beginning of September.
The two Evelyns are still engaged though the first fine careless rapture has died down under pecuniary difficulties and the marriage is not likely to take place until May at the earliest. He is trying to get a job at the BBC or some publisher to satisfy her mother’s ideas of a suitable profession to make some money, though he really hopes to earn his living by writing. Evelyn G is beginning to get rather depressed by the delays but she is otherwise very well. We are probably going into the country for a while on March 15th when the flat comes to an end. Evelyn is very anxious to get into the quiet green fields and God’s fresh air (though I think she will be bored to tears after a while) and I am quite prepared to agree as long as we can go to the vicinity of Poole. However, a good deal depends on what sort of a job Evelyn W. gets so I am not making very definite plans.
By the way, I have given up architecture more or less definitely and have decided to take up a literary career, rather a come-down I can’t help feeling. I have started a novel of rather high-flown and sentimental description called ‘The Old Expedient’ from the text ‘It is expedient that one man should die for the people', and the idea is that though great powers flourish and fade, almost mechanically the people go on stolidly and servilely in the same grooves occasionally encouraged and illumined by tremendous sacrifices for them by men who have fallen in love with them. The People in my book are characterised by a woman meant to be a kind of Edie McNeill. Evan Francis once said that he liked her because she represented the mob to him, However, I have only written about 6,000 words so I don’t know what it will turn out like.
I've included what Pansy says about her own novel, as it adds to the picture. The foursome of Henry Lamb, Pansy Pakenham and the Evelyns amounts to three writers and a painter.
Here is a vibrant painting of Pansy by Henry from 1927.
Henry Lamb, Portrait of Pansy Pakenham. 1927.
The next letter was written the day after Pansy's and is almost a repeat of She-Evelyn's last, though the first paragraph would suggest that at least a few weeks have passed.
54 Sloane Square
February 2nd
Deaest John,
I have been a swine about writing. I am very sorry. But, really, everything has been so depressing. Evelyn has not got a job, and so, we are no nearer getting married.
Mama has gone off to Egypt, to flirt with Howard Carter and Tutankhamun at Luxor. She fondly believes that no-one knows of our engagement, but as total strangers in the Tube, or Selfridges or the Berkeley, come up and congratulate me, I feel she must be under an illusion.
Mary has gone off to the Balearics, with A. I miss her dreadfully. She is probably going to Bolivia, or rather Lima which (as you probably know tho’ I didn’t) is the capital of Peru, whilst Alan is digging up this blasted treasure.
Evelyn’s book on Rossetti is coming out in six weeks. It is to be called ‘Rossetti; the last born of Eve’. Do get your general to order it.
My sister Juliet (who is raving mad) is in London. She insisted on being taken to the Gargoyle last night. She works in Peter Jones, and she brought 2 young men, fellow workers of hers. One was bald and impossibly dull, and the other called Juliet ‘Granny’ which was supposed to be funny. I sat listening to them with an immovable grin on my face. Whilst they made incredibly awful jokes. They thought themselves terribly fast, going to a night club, but I am being a beast, I dare say they were all right really.
You must read ‘Last Post’ by Ford Madox Ford, I haven’t been so pleased with a novel for an age, as a matter of fact I believe it is the last of a series of four, but it is very good.
Tony Powell, met your brother Freddie, in a bus the other day, and told him about my engagement. Apparently, he was greatly excited.
Dear John, I miss you very much indeed. It used to be so nice if you were in London.
I think I am going to write a novel which is to be in two parts and is to be almost entirely the thoughts of a man and a girl, during twelve hours. They go back through their lives, looking at the same situations from different points of view. I think it will be too difficult to write, especially as the girl is really going mad the whole time. I haven’t dared set my pen to paper as yet, I feel so incapable of doing it adequately.
Pansy is flourishing.
Bless you, my dear.
Yours ever, Evelyn
Juliet is She-Evelyn's oldest sister. There is also Alathea, who is discussed in detail here. Though Mary was the sister that Evelyn was closest in age to.
Waugh has a book on Rossetti coming out, and is writing a novel. Pansy is writing a high-flown novel of ideas, and She-Evelyn would like to be writing a modernist novel along Joycean lines. How very literary.
And it's about to get more so.
54 Sloane Square
Feb 20th 1928
Dearest John,
Thank you so much for your sweet letter of congratulation. It was such a very nice one. You have always been such a darling about all my troubles and bothers, and now I do think there is a real chance of my being happy. The only nuisance is the money, but perhaps that will come right. If only Evelyn could get a job, but I think that will be easier when his book is out. It is now to be called just ‘Rossetti’ His Life and Works. Do get your general to order it from his library.
I am, at the moment, absolutely buried in Proust. If you haven’t read him you must at once. I have nearly finished “du Cote de Chez Swann’ and I believe there are ever so many volumes. The genius of the man and his amazing insight into the characters of these rather neurotic and decidedly sentimental and romantic people.
I met Edith Sitwell the other day. She is the most witty and charming person, you would delight in her. At first, one is seized by an absolute terror and longing to run away, this is not only due to the brilliance of her mind, but also to her appearance. She is very tall and thin and wears brocaded dresses which reach to her ankles. The curious thing is that when men are present, she is nothing but wit tinged with malevolence. But when she is alone with one, the malevolence goes, and a delightful charm and sympathy takes its place.
Mary is going to South America with Alan on March 1st she is to stay at Lima in Peru. The thought of her being away for so long is dreadful.
I think you are one of the few people, who will realize how awful it is for me. I dare say it is very good for me, because I have become so dependent on her company and on herself the last two years, but that doesn’t make it any easier, and I simply daren’t think that in 10 days she will be gone – I am terrified that she will be lonely and miserable because Lima is 3 days away from Alan. But apparently she is to come back if they cannot find a nice English family with whom she can stay. My imagination has already killed her off in an earthquake, or tidal wave or revolution!
I must say, I wish you would come back from India, you are one of the few people one goes on missing!
For God’s sake don’t go and get entangled with an Anglo-Indian woman, they are so different and so very dim, when they return to England. But I know you are too thoughtful and too cautious a person to do that.
We leave here on the 15th March, so after that you had better write to 30 Green Street, Park Lane, and they will forward it, as I have no idea where we are going.
Barry turned up the other day, despite the fact that I’d told him it would be better if we did not meet. I am afraid he rather delights in a morbid idea that he is still in love with me, which I am certain he isn’t. He is being decently paid now, which is a good thing.
Pansy is well, and deep in her novel, I have not read it as yet.
Lamb is going to paint me, or so he says, but I feel it is very doubtful.
Much love, John dear, write soon. I love hearing from you. E
What a great paragraph about Edith Sitwell, who has just gone up in my estimation.
Reading Proust, meeting Sitwell, engaged to Waugh, and best friend of budding author Pakenham. Plus She-Evelyn's own writing projects which are constantly coming and going.
But I think I'll use the move to the Dorset countryside as an opportunity to move onto a new page in order to continue this story.
Notes
1) Thanks to Columbia University, New York, for supplying copies of these letters. In their correspondence they include the line: 'Please note that the Rare Book & Manuscript Library owns only the physical objects in our collections, not the copyright to these items, and will neither grant nor deny copyright permission regarding such materials.'
2) These letters are still in copyright which will, I assume, belong to the descendants of Pansy Packenham/Lamb and Evelyn Gardner/Nightingale. If the copyright holder wishes me to remove the letters from this site, then I will do that, and replace the actual words with paraphrased versions.