Letter from Thomas MacGreevy to George Yeats. 28 November 1926.

[p.1 recto]

at 15 Cheyne Gardens,
London, S.W. 3.
28th November, 1926.

Dearest George,

No I haven't a thing to send only chat not a poem finished since though three new ones waiting to be done as well as ½ a dozen that are waiting these three months. My editor goes to Paris tomorrow and I'm hoping he'll bring me back the offer of a small job there — its not impossible. If he doesn't I think I shall stop conoozing early in the New Year and hold on in London doing reviews or else go to Paris and do them from there. I have arranged with the Nation that if I do go to Paris they'll still send me books for review. If the franc were stabilised at 100 it would be well worth my while going financially and I want to go before Billy leaves or else I shall be alone and without the chance of getting at anyone. He knows lots of intelligent students who are glad to talk to a more or less intelligent foreigner, though they are all of course on the young side and I rather tire of very young men. People should be over 25. It would be awful to be enduncaned in Paris without any other nest to fly to. Alan isn't awful to me when he is not at a party. At a party, dinner table, anything at[p.1 verso] which more than two or three are assembled he is intolerable. Dolly was very taken with you, surprised by you too, but very approving. Hester had a gramophone for her (as well as the new 6 guinea Pekingese who was adorably adorable but died of distemper last Wednesday). The gramophone is called Titti pronounced your way, and Titi — is it one i or 2 — is goodnighted like Ching and Anatol, the cuckoo in the clock, and Michael — the stone statue in the garden. A real mad house in the matter of pets this. Dolly hasn't been well. The Doctor came yesterday and confided to Hester that her heart is slightly less strong than it should be, not, he seemed genuinely to think alarmingly so however. She has been having fits of giddiness. However she seems much better and may go out for a bit tomorrow.

I hear Roger Fry has eloped with Mrs. Boris Anrep. Isn't it unpleasant? He does look such an ugly creature. And she has left two young children with Anrep. Well, well. I heard it from a rather pleasant and intelligent Mrs Adeney who is married to one of the Bloomsbury painters, a nice man I thought. Do you know them? They live next door to the Carswells and seem to know everybody but are not a bit Viola Tree cum Raymond Mortimer as in Cambridge. The combination of good taste and unaffectedness seems such a miracle after a certain stage of sophistication is passed. But I didn't now I come to think of it care for her clothes. Thursday night Mrs Shakespeare & I had a spree. We dined at her club and drove in (taxi) state to the ballet where I had booked stalls! (They are not to dear this season) Spread out on a couch in the [p.2 recto]vestibule was Fay Compton all in white, silk ermine, powder &c. looking 19 and waiting for Ivor Novello who appeared a few minutes later, and they took the house like the Belgian Crown Prince and his bride. Great satisfaction in the pit and to me. I like these things well done. So much better than poor Mary Regina who was doing a turn for charity at the Chelsea Palace yesterday afternoon and whom I saw for the first time since before the war. No she won't do. Jamais

I owe a letter to Lennox. I had a talk with Eliot on the phone & he said he wanted to see me during the week following and I meant to ask him to give half a page to Portrait but a fortnight has gone & not a word from him. Mrs. Adeney suggested that Mrs. Eliot's trouble was "head." God help him if that's true. I believe he sees practically nobody and I am diffident of pressing for an interview though there are half a dozen things he could advise me about, re France &c. One must only wait. Did Lennox tell you Gordon Craig had a long attack on me ^{in "The Mask"}for not praising that "pretty English Rose" Margaret Morris in a review of a book of hers I had in "The Criterion." I felt quite exalted when I saw about it in an old Times Lit Supp. a week ago, but then I got it and 'twas no bloomin good. It would be amusing to have an argument with such a pot as G. C. but it appears he hasn't seen the Morris book and doesn't know her dancing and [p.2 verso]grouses only because she is not praised for being English (I have heard as a matter of fact that she is a Jew but don't know whether its true. Eliot thinks she is). He does 2½ pages of my iniquities. I sent it to Eliot but said I saw no reason for taking any notice of it myself but would take it on if he thought it necessary. What I'd like to do is send my love to G.C. and tell him have sense but that, so tiresomely, isn't the way things are done.

Dulac asked Constant Lambert to bring me round and Constant bravely did his duty and passed on the message. I let him go there to-day though. I really couldn't seem to be under ever so much of a compliment to him. I shall offer myself direct some day. Constant is rather at a loose end since Osbert Sitwell went to America and after being as offensive as he could be is now all effusiveness all round, but except for Hester who can be seduced into offering tea to anything in trousers we've had enough. Even Hester only gives him the free teas he puts in for shamelessly, with reluctance. Maurice Lambert and his bride are spending this week-end at Ipsden! Mrs. Reade was up and she dined me at Janet Cunninghams (yes the worst happened she let out that you had been over) and a huge party of us all went to a dreadful business at the Lyric Hammersmith first night. Then Bay (?) dined lunched with me at the Rendezvous and we had a good jaw about Jawrgione & 'Erb. I didn't much care for Miss. Cunningham but I called since and found her much more sympathetic and quite easy. She didn't mind about your not going out. She supposed you were tied up with people re Lane pictures and Mrs Reade judiciously made it clear that you [p.1 recto]had had a ghastly time and hated London and fled from it to her the first free moment you had. I'm so glad Michael is going to be quite well in the matter of the car. My love to them both and yourself and W.B. Eliot told me give WB his love which I did and W.B. said O down there like that. I hear Omar Pound is in hospital, but is doing well.

Adios

Tom.

Let me recommend you to try whether you could bear a gramophone. Dolly's is a delight to us all. You could pretend yours was for the nursery — some of the records could be and Michael would adore it.