Decca, p.75
Decca, page 75
Sorry to bother you with another letter so soon; I suppose the reason is that I feel somewhat wounded that you didn’t like anything about the book, esp. the CRC bits, & the whole chapter about Mississippi.
Let each stand in his place, much love, Decca121
To Maria Temechko122 Oakland
September 15, 1977
Dear Maria,
Many thanks for that marvellous schedule. In case I don’t actually survive it, I thought I should set forth my funeral plans in the certain belief that Knopf will be fully capable of carrying them out. However, I do think (and am sure Bob Gottlieb will agree) that the expense, which will be considerable, should be shared with Simon & Schuster? As the Amer. Way of Death is still selling quite briskly I feel this matter should be decided in some sort of joint meeting, with my agent Scott Meredith being the final arbiter; as of course I do not intend that one red cent (so to speak) of royalties from A Fine Old Conflict shall be deflected from my children’s inheritance. (I mention the children in this context, rather than Bob, because you know how these things go: in no time he’ll have married some scheming young chick who’ll try to cut out my children, such is la bloodie old vie …) So here goes:
i. “Pick up at the hotel” (see your notation for Sept. 21, Pittsburgh), or “Friday, Sept. 23: Anne Schwartz will pick you up at your hotel.” Poor Anne! But perhaps the porter will give her a hand, I mean I know I’ve gained weight over the years. However, pick up at hotel is fine except for such appointments as (see your list for Sept. 29, Boston) “Good Day, WCVB/TV—live [your italics]. Until 10:00.” I mean I don’t suppose WCVB/TV will actually notice the difference? As long as Anne, or Caroline or somebody, has picked up at the hotel and swiftly complied with Instruction #2, which follows:
2. Contact Howard C. Raether & get him to spring over with finest trocar plus a Natural Expression Former; Benj and also Bob Gottlieb know the expression needed, a sort of huge wink. Actually, Howard C. Raether could do all this on the Good Day show, WCVB/TV? I bet they’d love it; also, he can do the brief autographings following talks—actually he’s a terrific chatter, so he can do the talks, too.
3. I do hope you will give considerable thought to the casket which, as I’m sure you realize, should reflect one’s station in life. The question is, what is my station in life? If Gottlieb thinks he can get away with one of those cheap pine boxes, tell him he’s got another think coming. Anyway, do be looking out some nice samples for the liner; not yellow (jaundice) or red (scarlet fever), more likely a soft grey-mauve, for FATIGUE.
4. I’m sure your nice travel agent, “Sun & Fun Tours, Inc” will cheerfully issue tickets (billed, of course, to Gottlieb) to the 70-odd people who came to my 60th birthday party—Bob’s got the list, plus everybody in my address book from London to Wetumpka, Alabama.
Again, thanks SO much for everything—I can hardly wait,
Much love, Decca
To the Duchess of Devonshire
Oakland
November 23, 1977
Hen, your telegram.123 I was amazed, as had expected it to be found 100 years hence mouldering in a trunk like the Bride at Minster Lovell.124
Obviously I’m incredibly pleased. Yet there is, it seems to me, a certain amt. of Unfinished Business (an expression from agendas, Hen—but I expect you know that from the Royal Bantam Club etc.). I suppose what I really want to know now is whether, from your point of view, true friendship is still possible—as perhaps in your mind the scrapbook thing was only a small part, the major point being that you loathed my book & the BBC film? I’ve no way of knowing if this is so, so please say.
As for me, 18 May (date of that horrible evening [on] Chesterfield St.), marked the beginning of what seemed like an interminable & incurable illness, or a sort of non-stop condition of mourning. At least, with the scrapbook find, convalescence is now setting in.
I’m going on a dig, in Egypt! Next March, a place called the Temple of Mut (Luxor-Thebes, I’d no idea where these were until I looked them up on a v. inefficient map). I do hope that Mut doesn’t turn out to be an early version of Mitford, hence yet more Mit-industry. No, Hen, I don’t think so judging by pix of Mut, a goddess with v. slanting eyes.
But the major archeological find of recent years was, to me, the one at the Temple of Henderson.
Not much news otherwise….
Yr loving Hen
ps. I should love to have details of the Find, if possible set forth in proper Archeological fashion including use of such up-to-date data as X-ray technology used by the diggers. In any event, The Great House of Henderson Shall Suffer Wrong No More, don’t you agree?
But actually, Hen, I can’t say how delighted I was to get the ‘gram. And to think it might be the prelude to Peace Talks.
To Michael Barnes and Clare Douglas
Oakland
November 30, 1977
Dear Mike & Clare,
… Another odd bit of family news: whilst I was in NY I was interviewed by Catherine Guinness, Diana’s grandchild…. She seemed like a nice, moony sort of kid, is working for a mag called Interview got out by Andy Warhol. She just sent mag with the interview in it (the interview is unexceptional) prefaced with this:
“… I received a letter from my father, Jonathan Guinness from which the following is an extract: ‘I await your interview with Decca, literally, with bated breath. She’s a very tough cookie, a hardened and intelligent Marxist agitator who knows very subtly how to play on her upper-class background so as to enlist residual snobbery (on both sides of the Atlantic) in establishing Marxism. But this leads to problems of identity; to an ambiguity as to what is real and what is an act. All this was very evident in her TV appearances here. Bob Treuhaft came over better; at least he is what he is, he is in one piece, so to speak, the bright Jewish boy with his ready-made ‘red diaper’ principles, seeing (e.g.) Chatsworth from the outside with the healthy irony of the social historian. Of course you had fun with her on the Island [C. came to Inch K. when she was 7 with nanny & sister to stay with my mother] when you were little, didn’t you? And there’s no doubt that she has all the talent and funniness, rather as Milton’s Satan still had a lot of the charisma of the angel.’”
I bet Jonathan won’t be best pleased that she quoted this letter? …
Toughly yet angelically yours, Decca Bright Jewish boy sends love.
To the Duchess of Devonshire
Oakland
December 8, 1977
Dearest Hen,
Thanks for yours of 29 Nov, which crossed my p.c.—sent in usual fit of paranoia, thinking mine was lost in the post as does actually happen sometimes.
I must say the account of the Find is very strange indeed. In other words it was there all along?125 suppose just after you had convinced yourself that I’d pinched it, you just stopped looking. What about the photo of Muv with sheepdog on Isle, subject of 3rd Degree in London—was it there? If so, had Madeau made two copies, not one as she told you? If not, was the copy I’ve got given to me by you, ages ago? Because while I agree that the Find is, in itself, a great lifting of weight as you say, the above points were jolly weighty from my pt. of view, having been cast into considerable gloom over it all.
Egypt: Well might you ask, because it’s absolutely not my speed. It came about as follows: We met a fascinator called James Manning, foremost Egyptologist (not that I’d have known that, knowing absolutely naught abt. Egypt, but he is) who was here with the Tutankhamen exhibit now being trotted round America. He was telling about his excavations at Temple of Mutford & did make it sound pretty riveting; he kept saying do come on the dig & I said no not at all my sort of thing. Got home to find a letter from a Kraut mag. called GEO offering to send me anywhere, all exp. paid plus fat fee—so greedy as I am I said how about Egypt & they said done. However the more I think of actually going the colder the feet—or rather the hotter, temps. are 100 & up & I loathe hot climes. Oh dear. Dink gave me a book she’d bought for Chaka called “An Alphabet of Ancient Egypt,” it’s incredibly good (recommended for ages 7 to 10) & I already know how to write Tutankhamen in hieroglyphics. So far, my only research tool. So I think I will go…. J. Manning is sending the unpublished memoirs of 2 doughty Victorian Lades who went to Egypt in the last century, dug about without a clue as to what they were looking for & thus mucked things up for fair; I think I’ll cast my article for Geo in vein of those Vict. ladies. What sort of shoes does one get? I was thinking of sandals (sandals, naught but sand there) but people say that’s hopeless, boots are the note.
Woman’s birthday126 bash sounds amazing, fancy her & Derek walking into the sunset in the Golden Years; or Diamond more likely, I suppose, knowing him.
Much love, Yr Hen
To Pamela Jackson
Oakland
December 8, 1977
Darling Woman,
Yes Debo told me about the photograph book being found; apparently it was there all along. Very strange.
Of course now that that obstacle has been removed (or rather found!) I’d love to see you again. But you must realize that it is pretty impossible to rub out of one’s mind your original accusation, and all that followed from it. All that business about borrowing—once & for all, to borrow something means to take it with permission of the owner with promise to return. Doesn’t at all apply to swiping a huge scrapbook, size of a table as I remember it, smuggling it past everybody at Chatsworth, and using photos out of it, which I was accused of doing….
I’ll be coming to London in March for a couple of nights. Perhaps we could meet on neutral ground? …
Much love, Steake127 [also Geriatric—60 last Sept. II!]
To Ann Farrer Horne
Oakland
December 12, 1977
Darling Cystling,128
Thanks awfully for yours of 4 December, just rec’d—not too bad, considering Xmas is at our throats with consequent total disruption of the posts? …
P. Toynbee: It would take a book to describe that odd character & luckily for you there are, several, written by him. Get: Pantaloon, a v. long novel in verse that describes his childhood & which I thought totally riveting although novs. in v. are not usually my speed; and Friends Apart, which while purporting to be about Esmond & another friend of P’s, both killed in the war, is actually v.revealing about PT
Other PT data: He is one of 3 sons of Arnold T. I never set eyes on the other two. The one Philip really loved committed it after Esmond & I had come to America, P. wrote to us about that & it was a perfectly beastly moment in his life. The other brother is a painter; he & P. loathe each other & have an incredibly squalid nonstop row going about inheriting old Arnold’s dough; I can’t remember all the details as you must admit other people’s rows about dough are a bit tedious? Although since Philip got born-again Xian I fear I have a sneaking sympathy with his rotten brother, who doubtless thinks (& perhaps rightly) that P. will squander all on his mad Xian schemes.
… He’s actually frightfully funny when in a good mood; as you said in yr. letter, affectionate, opinionated, ruthless—all v. good qualities, don’t you agree? …
Your question (“what’s Philip really like”)129 reminds me of same posed to Philip by Michael Barnes. According to Philip, MB rang up & said “Could you tell me in a nutshell what Decca is really like?”; PT roared, said NO. Nutshells don’t work when describing old chums….
Fondest love …
Yr Sister
Yes isn’t Orphan Island130 marvellous? I just re-read it ‘tother day. After I’d chosen it as the book I’d take in “Desert Island Discs”131 I got quite a lot of letters (out-of-blue fan letters re the programme) from people who said they’d found it in a library & loved it. It was one of the first full-length grown-up books I’d read as a child, so it made a huge impression.
To the Duchess of Devonshire
Oakland
February 25, 1978
Dearest Hen,
Just got back after 2 weeks away to find yr letter….
About the things you minded in book/television programme: no, don’t write them down if you’d rather not. Anyway, you said some of them when we met in Manchester
But I might as well say some of the things I minded. Principally, I suppose, that you took everything amiss & the opposite of the way it was intended; e.g., Bob and the lordly dinner. You said I’d made out that Bob felt he was made to feel small when you’d done all to welcome us. In fact any ordinary reader would note that it was a joke Bob had told on himself—not at all the construction you put on it. Perhaps all dates back to Hons & Rebels? I had sent advance copies to all of you, but the only ones who wrote back were Nancy & Muv, both v. complimentary, so there you are. In fact Muv read bits of it at Inch K, in manuscript, & made corrections which I incorporated…. Otherwise, in her letters to me she was v. pro the book; I can hardly believe she was dissembling, not like her. I mean, did she complain about it to you? I know she loathed Nancy’s essay on Blor, which I must say was a bit of a killer & not very daughterly. In Fine Old Conflict I did try to explain Muv a bit more, but I suppose you loathed that part too. When she was dying at Inch K, I got a t.gram from you saying MUV SAILING ALL SISTERS HERE—one of the better typographical mistakes for FAILING. Now we are all pretty much sailing to same destination, I was v. glad that Muv & I did make up, & I tried to put that in the book. Also (in both books) tried to explain the Boud a bit; a near impossibility to get her down as she really was, so no doubt I failed. To this day sometimes I dream about her, arriving fresh from Germany in full gaiety, all her amusingness, etc.—but Hen don’t you see how awful it all was?
One last thing: you say you didn’t wrongfully accuse me. In that case, I don’t know what the horror-evening in May was all about, when you were being more like a cross-examining prosecutor than a Hen.
Anyway, I’m longing for 8th March….
Much love, Henderson
To the Duchess of Devonshire Luxor, Egypt
March 14, 1978
Dearest Hen,
If this arrives (a bit like throwing bottle with message in sea) do note arrival date; everyone says you can’t post letters out but oi doiter.132 It’s just a line to say how v glad I was to see you in London, & to tell a bit of Luxor news & views. To wit: Turns out that my original friend here, J. Manning, is at daggers drawn with all his colleagues (professional jealousy sort of thing, you know how that can go) & the awful thing is I’m getting more & more pro the colleagues. Intrigue abounds. The real life saver is E Lessing,133 the Viennese photog. who’s doing the picture part of GAY-O134 article. He’s so nice, one’s age I shld judge but far spryer (well it wouldn’t take much, you’ll say), v. civilized, knows Egypt & speaks a bit of Arabic, so that’s all OK.
Hen the digs. I have to drag myself away from the intrigue, which is far more interesting, to Digsville as that’s my job here. E.g. yesterday I went to see a charming middle-aged couple, both Egyptologists officially assigned. They were herding pots when I arrived, piecing things together like a jigsaw puzzle into some not very pretty, in fact rather ordinary roundish jars. I had a long interview with them. For 8 years they’ve been working on their major find: The “Treasury,” unique, they said. So they told at great length all about it, how they stumbled on it etc. At end of interview I said I’d love to see the Treasury. They were simply amazed: “But you passed directly by it coming here!” Which I had, so we went to have another look. Hen it’s a field, size of a large paddock, of drear flagstones with a few round things in the middle. EIGHT YEARS. Oh well. I’ve long since concluded that Egyptologists are a special breed of madmen like Paranoics or Schizophrenics; yet they are v. agreeable despite all.
I think I’ll call the article The Diggers & the Dug, with me concentrating on the souls of Egyptologists & E Lessing taking lovely photos of the Dug (Pharaohs, etc).
The Temple of Mut (supposed to be my main concentration as that is where J. Manning & Co. are working) is a sea of sand & rubble with a few scattered headless sphynxes about the place.
However the hotel (Winter Palace) is bliss, Swiss-Victorian in looks, huge marvellous gardens….
We didn’t get down to very substantive talk in London; but perhaps you’d rather not? For me, there’s still a rather deep shadow cast. Ditto, Bob, who says that evening last Spring is only about the 2nd time he’s ever seen me cry….
Much love, Henderson
To Comrade E135 Oakland
May 18, 1978.
Dear A——
Thanks so much for your interesting letter
Just some general answers…. I think the Party in NY is a lot more rigid than out here. In Calif, lots of comrades still in CP remain close & much-loved friends of ours—I don’t think that would be true in NY I think the NY CP is far more factional & prone to see enemies under the bed than the Calif. CP; I always used to think those bitter factional fights were due to the awful weather in NY, so freezing in winter & hot in summer that it made everyone bad-tempered; but I fear Marx would not agree, as he said geography has little to do with politics….
Re failure of Party press to review my book… [It] was tossed around like a hottish potato. Eventually Mickey Lima after long pondering did write a review, but the National Leadership squashed it…. Now, I do think it’s a bit ridiculous, in fact one might say cowardly, to duck reviewing these books—for my part, I should welcome a critical review or even a total blast more than this deep silence….
I guess what I try to do, mostly, is write things that I hope will be useful in the struggle—e.g. the prison book, which I could never have done had it not been for some understanding of the class nature of crim. justice system acquired in the CP.136 Before that, I did one on the Trial of Dr. Spock (enclosed herewith). I realize that often I get absolutely besotted by trivial subjects which haven’t got much to do with the class struggle, but I fear that is a fault of character. See enclosed pieces in New York, re the Sign of the Dove! But I can’t help loving that sort of thing, the joy of the chase.
