make money by it: Arnold Bennett, Priestley, Galsworthy, for instance: but the
remainder sink into the joyless slums of literature – just for lack of those experiences,
those memories, which you and I have by the double handful.
Side note
(1 in 10,000. These are among 60,000 new
books published in England annually.)
Memories, pre-eminently. There must be a mind to grasp and retain details: as
e.g. what you now tell me of a certain impatience, on both sides, existing between
you and that soft-skinned pussyfooted collection of pseudo-autocrats, the
Secretariat. I've known it for long, from little things you've dropped, any time this last
thirty years. Do you remember once remarking, quite in parenthesis, during one of
our “ollopings” in Sisseri, on one of those pink and plastered popinjays in the
Secretariat, who had got off some unoriginal quip or other, was pleased with it, sat
back, rubbed his soft hands together, and congratulated himself on having written a
“masterly minute”? Well, see 25 years later, Maga, January this year, page 40.
These things stick. See also page 19, bottom of pink column, where is reproduced
IMG 0387
your dictum that if the soldier takes an interfering hand in politics, he gets it in his
neck. That, I think. you said at Nizamghat, in the period of the unspeakable Bally:
though apropos what, I can't quite remember.
Anyhow, not to labour the point, it is that these things stick: memories are
invaluable: and you and I – you, particularly – possess stored up material under our
hats, ready for a lifetime's writing, let alone our remaining years. But I won't for a
moment suggest that it's easy. No worthwhile thing in this life ever was easy: for if it
were easy, it wouldn't be worthwhile.
I'm fully aware that I'm risking a rap on the knuckles for saying all I've said: and
it's quite inadequate for me to apologise, in advance, for having done so. But I've
long had a mental vision, in your case, of what you've now put into words: when you
speak of the immense mass of material at your command, and say “Perhaps I will be
so overwhelmed that I will do – nothing”.
IMG 0388
Exactly. L’embarras du choix – which quills over here incorrectly quote as embarras
de richesse. And here, I think, is one of the ways in which I can help you.
If I go on talking, this screed will finish by being too bulky for airmail. Will you drop
me a line, giving me a sure address to which I can write in the next few months? This
will presumably be my last chance of catching you in Nepal. And, if you can add a
postscript giving me at any rate provisional absolution for anything apparently
meddlesome I've said in this letter, my thanks will be twofold.
- Yours very sincerely
- Yours very sincerely
- L. A. Bethell
- L. A. Bethell
