Enclosure – 5-page letter to RG from Jenny in Liverpool
Page from Robert Graves diary manuscript. The diary includes 1,546 pages with 117 enclosures: letters, clippings, photographs post cards, notes, games.
- In Collection:
- 1 page : 12 x 19.5 cm or smaller
- The diary is written on quarto sheets, folded horizontally to form octavo booklets, one recto page devoted to each day.
- Robert Graves Diary, 1935-1939
- Accession Number: 1969-003, Item: Gr-1-1393
- Robert Graves Diary project URL: http://graves.uvic.ca/diary_1938-12-12_03_enc.html
- Special Collection finding aid: https://uvic2.coppul.archivematica.org/robert-graves-collection
- July 19, 2002
- Enclosure – 5-page letter to RG from Jenny in Liverpool The Playhouse. Liverpool. Dear Robert, Thankyou so very much for the two lovely letters. I am probably not half as busy as you but I still find finding time to write, a great problem. Anyway, here I am at my typwriter (which I have aquired at the cost of £2 to write a play on) and although I am feeling a bit like a very old water-colour I will tell you what goes on. Since my first letter to you everything has got better and better. I have never been so happy in my life. This must be the very best way of living. Lots of work, lots of fun, which costs nothing, every chance of being the very best sort of person, and—this is the happy thought— I get paid for it too. If this isn't luck, I'd like to know what is. In the theatre I am a minor success. My first part, that of a dumb Swede who i was the janator's janitor's wife of a l slum tenement on the east-side of New York, was, to everybody's intense suprise as it is the most insignificent part in Street Scene) a major success! I got all the notices and William (Armstrong) was delighted. Here is a picture of me. I hope you like it. But in the next part they gave me was much too difficult for me and I only just escaped being bad. It was a big part in the Priestley play Time and the Conways (about the Dunn theory of Time) and I had to be 18 in the first and third Acts and 45 in the middle Act. This is a tricky businessbeing 45 years, its easy enough in charades when everybody knows that you are only dressed-up but in a real play you have to be and thats that's whats what's so difficult. Still I did get quite good by the last week (we run plays for three weeks here) and William was again pleased. Since then I have been out of two plays which have only had old women in them and have been for a short holiday and—this is again the happy thought—I got paid for that too. But apart from this I have not been idle. I have written a children's play (this is uncommon difficult) and called it Monday Tuesday and Bert. There was a great deal of talk about them doing it up here but in the end they couldn't afford to spend any money on the Christmas play, because they only run it for matineés, and mine had three sets. Wasn't that a pity, because it would have meant nearly £100 to buy Xmas preants presents with. Still, I find that it can be made much better so I am rewriting the third Act and will try it in London next year, perhaps. Also I am writing a one-Act play as I have been so encouraged by William who thinks that I ought to be able to write a good play one day. I say “why not now??? but he shakes his head; all th same I still say "why not know?["] Apart from the theatre and play-writing I find everything just as hotsy totsy. The place that I live in is a good dream. It is just like home, in fact. It is all painted different colours and the man and his wife who run it (a most intelligent pair) have made it a lovely place to live in. They slosh paint about very happily all day long and in between times cook marvelous food for us. Some of the Playhouse people are here and the rest are Architectural students -all young. They have given me my own bottle of Tomatoe Tomato ketchup and I am blissful. Of social life up here I have partaken a great deal. The people of Liverpool I find more intelligent than the normal run in London. Thank goodness. I get asked to Wine and Food society dinners, rag and bone dances, tea parties and Sunday lunch. I eat a lot more than I should and am not retaining my figure in consequence but it dosn't matter because I have found a very good dancing school up here that will give me lessons free for the advertisment. Isn't that good? At the present moment I am rehearsing very hard indeed for Bonnet Over The Windmill (and a play with more middle-class dialogue it would be hard to imagine). All the nice characters are so tiresome that I am ver glad that I am playig the nasty one and can be rude to them all. Awfull shame they should have misinformed you about my red coat, not cloak, because it is a Flora Offna and suits me down to the knees. Who is your Liverpool Informant? One, Peter Neil and myself hope that it is nothing so dull as mere Durants Press cuttings. Perhaps a little Liverpool bird told you There is one missing from the top of the Town Hall so it might be flapping its green cast- iorn iron wings over Brittany. Incidently you would like one, Peter Neil. My one quarrel with him is that he likes Gone With the Wind, but he counteracts this, they tell me, by reading the Times Leader in the Bath bath . Query from Up-a-Gum-Tree —Liverpool[:] “Does this really excuse him for liking Gone With the Wind?” But apart from this he is far from being in any way C.3. He plays the leading parts up here and can thump his chest among the best Tarzans. Also he is scupulously scrupulously honest. ( unfortunatly unfortunately I havn't haven't exclamatoin exclamation marks on this typwriter typewriter ) Except, it seems about tooth-paste about which he has very socialist ideas about. He is often approached about his share and share alike attitude (which he substantiates by providing one tube of Macleans per Annnum and when it runs out, claims that it is the work of Someone in the Bathroom and uses someone ele 's Pepsodent from then on) But he evades all attempts of people to reason with him and by telling them that he once had a pet Jackdaw that used to peck holes in the tooth-paste so that when you sqeezed it, it shot out of an unexpected hole down the front of your dressing gown. Which dosn't prove anything really. And is a very poor excuse. I have been given, by someone in the Company, the Faber and Faber collection of poems, in which there are some very good ones of yours and Laura's. I spent the short holiday I And first with Diccon and then in London. Diccon's was Lovely but I hated London. In fact I came back here three days early on a very fast train. I am to be painted be Augustus John in the near future. David, I hear, is already playing Rugger for his 1st eleven at Jesus. He was sighted in London when they came up to play some team or other, which they beat. Jolly clever isn't he? Christmas is a-coming and the geese are getting fat. Dammit. It is bitterly cold up here and I am wearing two overcoats which makes me so heavy that I am wearing the soles of my shoes away. But I don't worry much. Theres There's nothing much more to say, except that C.N. writes me very cheerful letters and wrote to me today to tell me that Mother's exibition exhibition is very good indeed, and a great success. So as there is very little else, I wiill get back to the One-act thriller I am writing called:– Somebody Else's Shoes. Very Best Love tot yourself and Laura. I hope you are both well and Happy. Love Jenny xxxx.
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