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

wearing blue beads against the evil eye, and everything including hair-cutting, bread-baking and furniture-making going on in the street. The watersellers have lovely water containers with luscious flowers, ladies and landscapes painted on the back, and a long tube through which water comes out ice-cold. I feel I must have one but Daddy is difficult and suggests it is too heavy to carry back, he was very reluctant too to buy a glass of water so I could snap him and now I’ve gone and let light into the camera by pressing the open button by mistake, I’m so miserable! Just when I’d taken a stunning picture in a Moslem cemetery, with children’s graves with stone fezes on, and the father with a stone turban! I don’t know what to look at next, as I’ve never seen Turkish architecture before and everything is different – a bit like Spanish I suppose. I think it’s lovely in the mosques, the big ones are so empty and quiet and when you’ve taken your shoes off you shuffle over very old very soft lovely Turkish rugs with a green one here and there, grass green really, then there are very wide alcoves near the windows where people sit for hours mumbling over a Koran looking completely peaceful and it’s so noisy outside. Travel description! We’re going up the Bosphorus by boat this afternoon as there are some ancient fortifications and I know Daddy would like these. He calls the whole place Constantinople, and wants to trace the walls, and I feel it’s his turn.

      Still wondering about 10 o’clock feed – hope all went well!

      much love Ma X

      

       [St Deiniol’s]

      [1974]

      

      [incomplete]

      

      Daddy is bearing up very well really and I notice he keeps looking at the map, and working out the distances.

      Poor Mary^* has been called up for jury service, just as she’s going to take her 2 weeks’ holiday: admittedly she was going to spend it typing out 3000 envelopes to all the polytechnics, but she wanted to do this. I’m trying to get her to ask for a postponement, and I’m sure Rawle and everyone else will suggest the same thing. Certainly she’s showing amazing energy, but the publishing business seems a bit difficult on one’s own. I wonder how all these little presses manage – but then they do get grants from the Arts Council.

      I see the Tories say they’ll peg mortgages at 91/2 per cent, but I shall have to read the small print carefully – I’m not sure it’s not part of their obsession with getting council tenants to buy their houses on the grounds that all house owners are bound to vote conservative – but it does madden me that you and Valpy and of course 100000s of others have to pay so much at the beginning of your lives.

      As for me I shall stay in my foul old nest till the time comes for me to put my head under my wing for good.

      Back on Monday, Tues: Miss Freeston and Sainsburys! (A kindly minister asks if Daddy and me would like to come into Liverpool and see the big Marks and Spencers!) I don’t mind that, but can’t bear the idea of Puerto de las Reinas. Longing to hear about Paris – much love from us both xx Ma.

      

      P.S. I read Criticón^* last thing as a treat! – The Natural Man is getting quite critical and sarcastic! –

       [St Deiniol’s]

      [postcard]

      22 August 1974

      

      Got your lovely letter, proudly put by silver plate, gong and visitors book in the Gothic hallway, lovely here and you’re now allowed to make tea all the time in a Somerville-like pantry as well as general tea at!!, 4 and 10. Plenty of tec yarns in the yellow drawing-room for Daddy and we’ve got the rules for croquet out of the encyclopedia. I only wept once when Daddy didn’t appreciate light through stained glass on Gladstone’s Boat of Death where he lies in marble with Mrs G. Marvellous about the drier. Many amiable lunatics here, chatted and bowed to by Daddy. Best love in Paris, imagining you in Louvre XX Ma

      

       [postcard from Alderney*]

      20 July [1978]

      

      I’m afraid this won’t get to you in time but you will know I am really on summer holiday when I tell you everything including my ears and my shoes are full of fine white sand. Lovely here and they still go out to milk the cows in the fields. Boat comes in from Guernsey today with new supplies, big excitement. Mike has an outboard engine with a string, which actually starts! This seems unnatural –

      Much love Ma. X

      

       [25 Almeric Road, sw11]

      [1979]

      Dearest T and T^**

      All well here, sun and rain, drainpipe working well, your geranium is coming into bloom. Ria says I am not to make a fuss about my Travel Arrangements, but I am v. worried. Paul Bloomfield’s tea-party was very mad, not to say macabre, cake made by mad daughter, I was asked there to meet a silver-haired man in Olympic track outfit and sneakers, he is called Lindsay Anderson and seems to be something to do with films, perhaps Terry wd: know who he is, – the good news is that Mary’s landlord offered to sell her the flat for £10,000, £30 ground rent – Mary’s bank manager she says actually rubbed his hands – of course he says it must be done through a bank loan, so that the ‘excellent investment’ as he calls it, will actually belong to the bank – she is working hard at herb drawings and is well, came here to lunch to draw herbs &c – I want to give a party in the autumn, for all these Hampstead people who’ve asked me out, but Mary says yes and I could ask the S——–s (who are absolute death) and the vicar (with pectoral cross, guaranteed to wreck any party) &c. – do you think she’d be hurt if I suggested 2 different parties, I’d be glad to help with both of them? I don’t say my acquaintances aren’t awful, but they are differently awful, and I had hoped to give them something hot to eat and even sit down, do advise.

      Two calls asking to buy frig.

      Mary says my book-jacket for Offshore is terrible – as you know she usually praises everything. Gloom.

      Virginia Surtees rings up very madly and says we must all unite to stop the M——–gallery (he’s just sold this lovely Burne-Jones) as he is only a hairdresser who has married one of his wealthy clients and knows nothing about pix; also I’ve got to go to lunch to meet the Director(ess) of Jewels at the Bmuseum – I know nothing about jewels and care less – and now I owe her 1 dinner and 1 lunch, it’s all so hopeless.

      Don’t know if this article would be of interest – prob: not as you’ve finished it long ago – dreaded name of Ackermann appears!

      I was knocked down by a bus queue and have a round bruise on my arm, just like the mark of Cain,

      much love ma

      

       76 Clifton Hill, NW8

      [postcard]

      [April 1983]

      

      It was a lovely Easter and like all inhabitants and visitors to Theale we hated to go, but as you stood waving goodbye in the doorway in your brown corduroy pinny you looked, we all of us suddenly felt and said, very pretty, and a good deal better^* – much love and thanks to you and Terry XX Ma

      Have not prepared anything for anywhere – feel I’m going rapidly downhill.

      P.S. Rosa Moyesii. I don’t know who Moyes was, a Himalayan explorer I daresay.^**

       76 Clifton Hill, NW8

      11 May [1984]

      Love