So I Have Thought of You: The Letters of Penelope Fitzgerald. Penelope Fitzgerald

at all if it gives you a better holiday, only I hope Mrs Dunant never gets to hear about all the spumante. It sounds lovely and it’s a bit of luck that, after all, they were all nice. We’re longing to see you, postcards, souvenirs, sun-tan &c. I hope you won’t be completely tired of telling about it by Monday night. Amazed to hear about the sword dance.

      We have got very fond of our little house among the pines, I do like the sound of the sea at night as you know and find it very easy to sleep here. Last night the proprietor (who’s from Cordoba and wears a succession of silk suits, it’s impossible to get Daddy sufficiently tidy to live up to him) and his wife, who is very nice but speaks only Spanish; he took her to England however while he was learning the business and she spoke rapturously of the C & A. She still has some things from there. She’s from Seville, and says that all Columbus’ crew were Sevillans, though from the prisons. Maria was threatened with a huge lobster but managed to get her something else. She has been very long-suffering having to be with us and always seems to enjoy everything – the bullfight went very well as everything happened – a bull jumped out of the ring, one was objected to and had to be lured out of the ring by some enormous brown and white oxen with huge bells, and then we had one very good fight where the man knelt down &c. It was a very magnificent occasion and the mayor arrived in a carriage & horses but unfortunately Maria thinks she didn’t ‘wind on’ the film so I don’t know if any record will remain. We are hoping you will show us Holiday Snaps of Tom, Rob, &c. &c. as well as much culture. I wonder if Rosalyn is the one with the large marble-like features?

      much love and longing to see you

      Mum

      

      You will just water the plants, won’t you?

      

       Old Terry Bank

       Kirkby Lonsdale

       Westmorland

      1 August [1967]

      Dearest Tina,

      I felt distressed at seeing you disappear, we all did, particularly as Daddy said the 2 young men sitting next to you looked very rough and we wished they were a nice English lady; but I daresay you could deal with them. Now I am waiting eagerly to hear what it is like at Courcelles-Chaussy and whether the Comtesse met you, oh dear I do think you showed considerable courage going off like that.

      Meanwhile we transferred to Euston, (so sordid as it’s still all kept up by scaffolding) and had to change at Preston (antique Victorian station with Corinthian pillars in wrought iron) and catch a local to Carnforth, Maria was very patient though we had 2 nuns in the carriage who watched every morsel we ate.

      I’m now sitting in the (nice) church in Kirkby Lonsdale while Willie^* practises the organ (100 years old and painted with flowers and crowns on top of the pipes) she is playing the piece Bach wrote on his death-bed which is rather nice I think. The organist who is teaching her is a stout little man, terribly strict, who won’t permit her even to play for school services unless everything is perfect, so she has to come for an hour every day.

      The pony is called Nutty, and is in a field opposite the house, and a TV set has now been acquired as otherwise the girls were never in, but they’re asked after supper if they would like to watch, after they’ve helped with the washing-up, I can see that Maria’s amazed at this. Hoping to go to Wordsworth’s cottage this afternoon, it’s only a little way away at the other side of the lake. There are 2 nice Jack Russell terriers and an old cat, which looks nice, like a black and yellow fur rug.

      Maria and Susan are out doing the shopping, but Maria is rather cross because I haven’t enough money for postcards. I hope she soon won’t be. We’re thinking of you so much, darling Love Mum

      

       Old Terry Bank

       Kirkby Lonsdale

      2 August [1967]

      Dearest Tina,

      In the excitement of going away I don’t believe I ever gave Daddy our address, I’m so vexed as he won’t be able to write, or to forward your letter, when it comes, but then I expect we’ll be back in London by that time, especially as poor Willie has had bad news about her mother and may have to go to Norfolk to see her in hospital, but in spite of this we are having a lovely holiday so far, wonderful mild sunshine, there’s a kind of arch out of the yard at Willie’s house and you see all the hills and clouds framed through it. Of course Ria’s still in blue jeans, already very muddy, and they are going out this morning with the pony, Nutmeg, who clearly has everybody’s measure exactly, and a lovely new green bike Susan has which I daresay Ria will prefer, up the hill tracks. We did miss you very much at Wordsworth’s cottage yesterday, it was lovely and sunshiny there too, it’s built into the hillside so that you go into the front door at one level and out of the back-door halfway up the hill. Ria read out of the guide – but very firmly, and we also had Dorothy Wordsworth’s diaries, how they managed the cooking &c. I can’t think, but we saw W’s gun, sandwich box, waterproof hat, skates and the flat-irons and goffering irons and stew-pots they had, and wash-jugs and basins – but all the walking – 12 miles to see Coleridge, 2 miles to get eggs – and they often seem to have felt ill – I didn’t realise until yesterday that Dorothy was insane for the last 20 years of her life and Mary Wordsworth went on looking after her, even after Wordsworth died, she must have been a saintly woman. The cottage rent was £8 a year, their income was £80, and tea cost 15 shillings a pound, and there were locks on the tea-caddies. They had to make their own candles out of mutton-fat in candle-moulds, and yet they did all that reading and writing – Shakespeare and sermons aloud in the evening, and Coleridge came over and read aloud his new ballad – the Ancient M! – and she doesn’t say what he thought of it!

      We had a nice picnic by Grasmere and Susan and Maria swam in the lake and could see clear down to the bottom. Mrs Spyra seems far away.

      Willie and Mike fell in love with the Gorges of the Tarn and want to go and live there for a year in a quaint cottage or auberge, sending the little girls to a French school. I do wonder what you are thinking of Froggyland this time

      much love

      Mum

      

       Old Terry Bank

       Kirkby Lonsdale

      6 August [1967]

      Dearest Tina,

      To begin with, some little bits from the newspapers (obtained with

      great difficulty as they aren’t delivered here)

      

      1. Lord Robens has been more or less completely blamed for the Aberfan disaster, but sulks and more or less refuses to resign.

      2. Dymock and Oldenshaw on the Fellows have made up their disagreement.

      3. Harvey Smith’s O’Malley has been nobbled at the Royal Lancashire Show – he has twice been let out of his box at night, although Harvey had secured it with string, and ate a lot of grass in the show grounds and couldn’t jump properly next day. But Harvey S. won everything with Harvester. However it’s felt that ‘competitors’ dislike Harvey Smith so much that an unsuitable element is being brought into the gentlemanly sport. Of course we get all the Lancashire papers up here which report all this at length.

      

      Maria is snoozing after more violent exercise – long walk taking turns with the pony and a swim in the icy cold lake above the house – the old Scotch Road where as I think I told you the Young Pretender retreated during the ‘45.

      Also she had to help cook the supper and wash up! As poor Willie’s mother is dying and she had to hurry down to gloomy Ipswich General Hospital to see her, leaving everything at sixes and sevens. But Susan, the 13 year old, is managing very well, especially as Mike who has returned for the weekend is queerly strict and has inspections to see that the rooms