Letters to a Friend Read online

  Edward Field (on the right) and Neil Derrick

  in New York in 2008

  LETTERS

  TO A FRIEND

  DIANA ATHILL

  W. W. Norton & Company • New York • London

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Edward Field’s Introduction

  THE LETTERS

  Postscript

  INTRODUCTION

  These letters belong to my dear friend Edward Field, to whom they were written. He kept them and decided that he would like to see them published. Usually when someone’s letters are published the writer is dead. In this case there was a problem: Edward is six years younger than I am, but since I’m ninety-three that doesn’t make him young. If he waited until I was dead he might be dead too.

  From his point of view, therefore, the sooner the letters were published the better. From mine, once I had reread them I knew I would like them to be in print. This was because they record something precious to me: a friendship that has given me, and still gives me, much pleasure.

  An important gain from being old is that one ceases to be a sexual being (though this may be less true of men than it is of women – indeed, in some ancient men a sort of freakish sexuality seems to intensify). For me, anyway, age has brought the end of it, so I have become free to love men without wanting to go to bed with them, which is surprisingly delightful. Having someone congenial to share experience with makes things more interesting, funnier, sometimes easier to bear. It is the essence of a friendship, and once past middle age one doesn’t often find a new person to add warmth and colour to existence in this way. Getting to know Edward and his partner Neil Derrick in the early 1980s was an extraordinary piece of luck.

  Edward is a poet who lives in New York with Neil, who writes prose. The nature of their life together is partly determined by the fact that in 1972 Neil was diagnosed with a brain tumour, the removal of which left him blind. Their friends marvel at the stoicism with which Neil endures his inevitable lack of independence and the generosity with which Edward makes light of being depended on. Between them they divest the situation of anything unusual or poignant, becoming just two people whose company is exceptionally enjoyable; but when one stands back and looks at them from a distance one sees two different kinds of heroism which happen by great good fortune to interlock, and the sight does one good.

  I am a bad reader of poetry. When it is complex, greatly condensed and obscure I don’t like it because I believe that the purpose of language is communication. If something which has to be expressed can only be put on paper to the satisfaction of the expresser in what amounts to code, I am prepared to take other people’s word for it that it is beautiful but I don’t want to read it. At the same time, however, no one can be quite unaffected by the surrounding intellectual climate, which means that often I find that poems I can understand leave me feeling that anything so easy can’t be much good. It was therefore a wonderful surprise when I found that I loved Edward’s poems. Their character can best be explained by one of his own accounts of his approach to poetry:

  The main thing for me is that I’ve always wanted my poetry to be understood by anybody . . . I don’t see why poetry can’t be as readable as prose. In fact, it seems to me that poetry should be easier to read than prose. A poem is short, usually, and the lines are broken up into nice little segments that clarify ideas. I make it even easier with my narrative style . . . The whole point of poetry for me is subject matter, saying what I have to say, saying what has never been said before, what’s not polite to say.

  It is not surprising that he welcomes a recent development in American poetry which first emerged in California and has been labelled ‘Neo Pop’ – and which was influenced by his own work. ‘Vulgar, funny, dirty, sassy, Neo Pop doesn’t aim at tightness, though the expression is often succinct and precise. Nor is it obscure, it speaks right out, plainly and directly, in the language we use.’

  That last sentence is an exact description of Edward’s own poems, and I suppose I was drawn so quickly into friendship with him because he is a person who ‘speaks right out’, and is at the same time loveable (of course ‘speaking right out’ would not be a recommendation if the person were horrid!). An open nature invites an open response: right from the start I knew that to Edward I could say anything, and this it was that made these letters fun to write. It also makes them a true portrait of a happy relationship – from which, being still around, I have been able to remove things hurtful to other people (there were very few) and to which I could add explanations when it seemed necessary. For these reasons, although I know it may seem odd to allow this publication while I am still alive, I am happy to do so.

  My interventions: when only a few words seemed necessary I have inserted them in the text enclosed in square brackets. When more is needed, it comes in italics after the letter concerned. I should also explain that neither Edward nor I can produce explanations for the long gaps between letters that sometimes occur. Too much time has passed. Every year Edward and Neil would come to Europe, usually to London, for long visits, during which – no letters. And in between those gaps we were both leading full lives, so that weeks and weeks could pass without our having time to write – although sometimes we would call each other. Also I suspect that occasionally – very occasionally – a letter has been lost. Looking at the correspondence from the outside, so to speak, as I can now do, I am struck by how little the gaps mattered. They never seem to have diminished the friendship.

  When the question of this book’s title arose, and someone remarked that it almost amounted to the story of my life during the years it covered, it occurred to me that perhaps, without realizing it, that was what I had been doing when I wrote these letters: because I hadn’t got a book to write, my book-writing energy was going into them. Whereupon its title became evident. My first book, way back in 1962, was written (at least partly) to explain myself to someone I loved, so I called it Instead of a Letter. In England, these letters are Instead of a Book. In America, they are Letters to a Friend.

  Diana Athill

  London, 2011

  EDWARD FIELD’S

  INTRODUCTION

  When I wrote to Diana Athill in 1980, asking for her help in reviving the reputation of my friend and her author, Alfred Chester, who had died a decade before, I didn’t realize it would be the beginning of a thirty-year correspondence. And I couldn’t have foreseen that she would become such a significant person in the lives of my partner Neil and me.

  Alfred Chester, who had brought us together in this posthumous way, was one of the inescapable figures on the literary scene of the Fifties and Sixties, with his pudgy, eyebrow-less face, ratty red wig and manic energy. But he burned out quickly, and after his death in Jerusalem in 1971 he was forgotten. He had been a good friend to me, and by 1980, when I wrote to Diana about him, the injustice of his literary annihilation provoked me to consult with her how to remind the world, or at least the literary and publishing community, what an original, even unique, writer he was.

  Diana agreed with me, and wrote a terrific memoir that was published as an introduction to a reissue of his novel The Exquisite Corpse, and she later included it in Stet, her memoir of her career at André Deutsch, among portraits of her most memorable authors. Even with the good reviews his books got, her sticking by him, considering their minimal sales, was proof to me of her courage and independence. So I had considerable respect for her in advance of our meeting.

  This took place shortly after our correspondence began, when Neil and I stopped off in London. The impression of her I had gotten from Alfred was a typical English spinster out of a Barbara Pym novel, though with an erotic life that thrived in Mediterranean climes. (Was I wrong! as
readers of her confessional memoirs well know.) But more crucial to the picture, I knew that when Alfred went crazy he turned to her for help, and she brought her sensible nature to bear on the problem of What To Do About Alfred. Though by then, little could be done to halt his downward slide.

  The reality, when we finally met her in the cramped, cluttered offices of André Deutsch, was . . . love at first sight! Or was it Awe? The way she stood, the almost Roman head, the formidable jaw, especially the clear blue eyes that took everything in: imposing. To the manor born. Neil imme­diately said ‘county’. If she had really been, as reported, an undistinguished-looking young woman, the person confronting us was quite the opposite – she must have grown into her looks and style. Nowadays, like me, she confesses she likes her old face better than her young.

  To our American ears, the variety of accents in Britain is endlessly fascinating, and hers is one of those that to us speaks of country houses, horsemanship, the Empire, and the Ruling Class – it’s not heard much any more, though Tony Benn is the closest example Neil and I have heard during our many stays in London. Having a conversation with Diana became a challenge to me almost from the beginning to try to imitate her wonderfully structured sentences, the clarity of her speech – but I can only approximate her syntax and language. And the same goes for her writing. She writes like that because she speaks like that.

  We saw her more often after her retirement, when we would make the long bus ride or walk up the steep slope of Primrose Hill to the house where she lived with Jamaican playwright Barry Reckord on the top floor, with a view over the greenery of the park. After ringing the bell, I’d leave Neil on the top of the front stoop (he’s lost most of his vision and steps are his number one horror) and wait below in the front garden for Diana or Barry to lean out of the top window and throw down the keys to the front door. Then it was another climb to the attic flat, so that by the time we arrived we were quite warm enough – luckily, for their flat lacked central heating and had to make do with a gas log in the sitting room which sent out nothing more than a few rays of warmth [Nonsense; it was a very superior and efficient gas-fire. DA]. For an American this was simply inconceivable. But it was somehow tolerable for this sturdy daughter of the famously damp isles of Britain who had spent much of her youth in a drafty manor house. I think that Barry stood it by being cosseted with duvets, electric fires, and a huge television opposite his bed where he spent more and more of his time.

  Besides her unconventional relationship with Barry, which was somewhat in the tradition of the British upper classes, Diana displayed as an editor an uncommon sympathy for the more ‘difficult’ of her authors, getting involved with them beyond the call of duty – among them Alfred Chester, as already mentioned, along with seemingly unstable figures like Jean Rhys, the black panther Hakim Jamal, and the Egyptian exile she called ‘Didi’. Authors as a breed tend not to be provident, sober, thrifty or wise, and in dealing with them, being sensible most emphatically is a virtue. This salient quality of Diana’s was called upon alarmingly often. She was always there to rescue, give them a bed, a handout, or connect them to needed help. (I myself have relied on her stability and good sense over the years.)

  In another area she joins her authors in defying conven­tion, by revealing in her writing intimate details of her life that people of her background Don’t Do. In this we are on the same page, for my poetry is nothing but self-revelation.

  When her long, marvellous letters arrived, I’d read them aloud to Neil – they were An Event. No question of tossing them out – they soon had an accordion envelope of their own. And as they accumulated, one day – it was in 2003 – we both said, these must be published, and we started typing them up. Neil may be blind, but he is an expert typist – in fact, we met in a typing pool when working as temps. So he sat at the keyboard and I dictated them to him, enjoying them all over again. It was a huge job because there were a lot of them, and a lot of them were so long – pages and pages of tiny script. She had deliberately improved her handwriting, Diana told me, but I couldn’t help noticing how the writing loosened considerably on the second page, and by the end of the final page revealed a schoolgirl enthusiasm. More evidence of her recklessness under that sensible exterior!

  A query to Diana suggesting publication brought the sobering reply that it simply wasn’t appropriate, not while she was alive. Yes, discouraging for a moment, but it was such fun hearing them aloud again that we kept going back to typing them up whenever there was time between other literary projects. Surely, she would Come Round.

  Transcribed and collected, it was clear that these letters were more than a journal – they were an intimate portrait of her life. Perhaps she allowed herself such revelation by casting them as letters to us. Diana has a physical need to write – her letters demonstrate that. They are full-blown literary works.

  I must confess that I often felt overwhelmed by them. I couldn’t ‘answer’ them except by devoting hours to it, and once begged her not to write such intimidatingly long ones. So I sometimes let the correspondence lapse until Neil and I felt a physical need for another letter from her, and I finally rallied my forces and replied.

  Many friends in my own age group, known as “OAPs” (for “Old Age Pensioners”), resisted com­puters, no matter how I argued their benefits. And it happened that about the same time Neil and I started working on her letters Diana found it almost impossible to find typewriter ribbons any more. So the next time we were in London, I was able to convince her to switch, especially since I was there to help her with the transition. I located a ‘learner model’ (meaning a cheap clunker) in the Queensway Computer Market, near where we were staying, and taught her the rudiments – then decamped to New York, leaving her to struggle on her own. Motivation had a lot to do with it. The computer was necessary to go on writing.

  Although there were still some ‘real’, written, letters, when she was in her cottage in Norfolk or when that clunky computer ‘grounded’ her, from then on her letters were e-mails. And it was with a sense of disappointment when, in our transcription, we reached the e-mail phase, which I had also saved. We no longer reread them, since I merely transferred them to the master file. Actually, they didn’t seem to me to be any different from her written letters. With her extraordinarily clear mind, she composed her sentences in her head as before. I doubt she ever revised, as I did, extensively, in all my e-mails to her, as I did in my poetry. But here again, I was trying to match her standards – effortless for her, a struggle for me.

  In 2010, seven years later, Neil and I finished transcribing. This time, when we sent the letters to her, Diana’s editorial eye overcame her scruples and she agreed with us that they should be published. As a book they cover her final years at André Deutsch, and how she coped with the difficulties of retirement and Barry Reckord’s failing health, and emerged in her nineties as a famous writer – ‘the doyenne of English letters’, as she was called in a Guardian interview. It is a role that suits her marvellously.

  One presence has hung over our friendship from the beginning: Alfred Chester brought us together and he remains very much alive for us still. We never stop talking about him. By now, our ‘conversation’, as revealed in the letters, has lasted thirty years. But since Neil and I typed them up, we have only exchanged brief notes with her and it feels that the ‘historic’ correspondence has finished – ‘completion’ hangs over it. It’s not that our friendship is any different – it’s as strong as ever. But now e-mail, whatever its limitations, seems appropriate.

  Edward Field

  New York, 2011

  23 JULY 1981

  Dear Mr Field,

  Alfred’s letters arrived yesterday when, as it happened, I was spending a day at home so that I was able to read them straight away; then lie awake most of the night thinking about him. What an old cat among the pigeons of my quiet mind!

  I shall wait until André Deutsch gets back from New York next week, before letting you have our decision,
but straight away I can warn you: don’t be hopeful. Alfred’s work never made the mark it should have done in this country . . . I guess it would be impossible to persuade booksellers to stock them. André may feel that we could get away with it, but I doubt it. So, as I say, don’t expect anything good from my next letter. [I was the editorial director of André Deustch Ltd from 1952 to my retirement in 1992.]

  They are marvellous letters – and thank god for you, being there for him to love and trust. In me they awoke the most painful feelings because I have always felt that I betrayed Alfred because I was frightened by madness. The first time he came to London after settling in Morocco – or the first important time – was when he brought Dris [Alfred’s boyfriend] over to have his foot treated, and that was fine. How deeply I regretted that I couldn’t afford Dris’s brother, when he suggested sending him over (because he was so shocked to see a friend of Alfred’s washing her own dishes – in fact he took over and did them, bless him). I think that was the first time I saw Alfred without his wig – though there may have been another cheerful visit on which that happened. I thought he looked so much better without it. Should I, or should I not, mention it? Then I decided that naturally how people reacted to its absence must be of importance to him (I hadn’t yet read his last writings so didn’t know how important the presence or absence of that ghastly wig was) so I said how good it was to see him without it and that he looked very impressive – which he did – and he seemed to be quite pleased about that. After that occasion, I remember, it seemed to me that Morocco was a marvellous thing in Alfred’s life. He had talked a good deal about the Moroccan attitude to sex, and it seemed that here was a place where he could be easy and happy sexually, and could let his wig go, so surely it would make him better (I didn’t then know anything about his madness, but still I must have felt worried about him or why that feeling that he needed to be made better?).