LETTERS: to Kenneth Macpherson
NANCY CUNARD:
LETTERS TO KENNETH MACPHERSON
ABOUT NORMAN DOUGLAS
Twenty-three letters – 19 typed and 4 autograph – and one 3-page corrected typescript, from Nancy Cunard to Kenneth Macpherson. The letters begin on March 2, 1952 – shortly after Norman Douglas’s death in February – and continue through Christmas Day, 1954. In nearly all of her letters, Cunard writes about her and Macpherson’s mutual friend, Douglas, as well as her work on Grand Man – her literary tribute to him.
Cunard did not use personalized stationery, instead, she indicated her whereabouts at the time of her writing by typing her a heading centered at the top of the first page of each letter. Most of her letters were written from her home in France: “Lamothe Fénelon, Lot, France,” and while she consistently includes the dates on which she wrote the letters, she often chose not to include the years. She typed on plain half- or full leaves of paper, and her ALS were also written on half-leaves, lined and unlined. She frequently made corrections to her typed letters by hand, and often added brief autograph post-scripts to her letters. She signed all of them, “Nancy.” Cunard is an expressive writer whose personality is manifest in every letter she writes; her enthusiasm for her work is palpable.
Cunard’s letters construct a timeline of her work on Grand Man. Her letter from August 27, 1953 informs, “Two days ago too I finished my writing (though not the whole of the book, for there are yet the reviews of Norman’s works to be ‘fair-copied’), and am now revising rapidly, and will be sending off the typescript to London in a few days.” Though she also confesses, “It has been very difficult to finish my last three pages of ‘reminiscing’. I have spoken of Tuoro…How to end NOT on a ‘dismal’ note…the ‘handling’…And this is what you have done so well, the right tone it all has. Norman would have been very pleased indeed, I think” (ellipsis hers). A couple of weeks later, on September 15, she adds, “To re-write: that is exactly what I am at these very days – re-shaping all Part 7, abbreviating, taking out quotations (although I will argue when in London about these valuable opinions being allowed their own, if separate, room!) I think I told you my ‘Letter to Norman’, now entirely finished, comes to 145 pages of REMINISCENES. Here is my author’s foreword, and if that does not make all clear I will not EAT but TEAR UP the publishers hat.”
Macpherson also busied himself in writing about his own memories about Douglas, to which Cunard effusively responds:
Your LOVELY, fresh, gay and happy pages about darling Norman have JUST come, and I have devoured them and write at once to tell you how very very pleased I am to have them; thank you dearest Kenneth, and believe me when I say how excellent I do think them. Oh that voice of Norman’s – it rings in our heads, and you have caught it and given it out again quite admirably. And the little jokes! This has a sort of lambent character of its own; invaluable, unique. The suddenness of Norman is here and the kindliness; and the picture of him goose-stepping (I had forgotten that!) and then with all his pocket-attributes, is unforgettable, really creative.
She then goes on to talk about her own book, and the opinion a friend of hers – the novelist Irene Rathborne – had of it:
she said the amount of work I have done, and the research and reading (of all N’s works) really comes to something very like….now I cannot remember the expression, whatever has to be done by someone going in for a literary degree! Swot! I could not tear her away from “Grand Man –Personal Memories of Norman Douglas” – I have called it that, and hope I may be allowed this title, as it is exactly the impression I want to convey: he was a GRAND man! Just that. She said it was extremely lively and full of bright shining things and that she thought the publisher would ‘lap it up’. (I wonder!) Particularly the personal reminiscences part, the 145 page Letter to Norman….
By November 3, 1953, and writing from London, Cunard proudly announces that Roger Senhouse of Secker and Warburg agreed to publish her book: I came to get my book published and to my joy Roger has said that he will do it with ‘delight’. And also Warburg has poured out compliments.” She discusses some design decisions she and Senhouse had talked about – printing a full-page of Douglas’s book titles, photocopies of handwritten letters by Douglas, photographs, etc. – and anticipates a June, 1954 publication date (the book was not published until August 5, 1954). She also continues to be inspired by Douglas and his legacy: “Norman is inexhaustible. I still feel that a great garland could be hung around him.”
Though Senhouse was enthusiastic about her book, she was not without frustration in her dealings with Warburg:
I never meant to suggest that the publishers were treating me dishonestly. They are just giving me the USUAL, lowest, percentage. In a way, it comes to the same thing, ‘no’ money, meaning very little money, relatively, but for GOD’s sake, do not have to impression that there is anything dishonest about it. Roger has been admirable all the way, and I adore him, and he is brilliant to work with. Ten per cent is bloody little for two years work, and one is entitled to ask for more – if one can get it! I CAN, with another publisher, for another work, later on. I can get 15 per cent, he says! (April 13, n.d, but 1953)
By July 3 of that year, Cunard says her book has been announced for July 29, and reveals, “I am sure it would never have got taken or come out at all had I not gone to London and kept at them the entire winter. WHY it has been so much trouble, god knows, for it is a perfectly simple and straightforward production.” Though she writes again on August 6 to update Macpherson, “Never a word from Roger…about THE EXACT DATE OF PUBLICATION; so I still do not know if it is out or not…What kind of psychology is this? Exactly what Roger may have wanted to prevent, he has provoked: to make ME angry. I suppose he thought he would not tell me the date so as to avoid getting ‘an unpleasant letter’ asking why it had been postponed? Tant pis.” Her book had come out the day before.
By October, it appears Grand Man was published, and Cunard wrote a series of letters to Macpherson about publishing a French translation of Douglas’s Fountains in the Sand, first published in 1912. Macpherson was Douglas’s literary executor, and Cunard’s letters are thorough and business-like. Cunard worked on the translation with Gaston Bouchoux, and she had to get permission from Macpherson to publish the book.
On November 25, 1954, Cunard writes Macpherson to thank him about his reaction to Grand Man – “It is a most beautiful and enchanting appreciation of my book! – and goes on to inform him how her search for an appropriate publisher for Fountains in the Sand continues: “Gloom is all about me! The first Paris publisher to whom ‘Fountains’ was shown was exactly the wrong kind of man; he loathed it because it was written long ago and he had no knowledge of Norman, etc. We are trying at Plon for the moment. Will let you hear what happens.”
Cunard does not limit herself to talk of her work and of Douglas in these letters; she is also an avid gossip, and frequently tells Macpherson about travel plans she’s made; many of the letters involve her trying to schedule dates on which to visit Macpherson. Several well-known writers and literary people are mentioned in her letters. She asks Macpherson to “Please give my love to Bryher,” and talks about Islay Lyons, Pablo Neruda, Cecil Woolf, Lady Ashton, Adrian Brunel, Richard Aldington (“Here is a copy of Aldington’s silly article on Norman, which you may have never seen. How cheaply written it is”, from Christmas Day, 1953), and Harold Nicolson (“whom I loathe”, Aug 6, n.d.), among others.
In Nancy Cunard: Brave Poet, Indomitable Rebel, Macpherson shares some anecdotes about how they met and what their friendship was like:
Nancy Cunard appeared for the first time in my life in 1928. After that, because we both tended to rush about in pursuit of interests and causes, she turned up or, rather, flashed from time to time in my rather stormy skies like summer lightning which omits the bellow of thunder. I met her that time by appointment at the old Café Royal in London one winter and, of course, since I love dragonflies, I loved her at sight. (345)
He then elaborated: “First and instant impression: exciting, dotty tigress-dragonfly. No: cheetah. And, of course, woman of passionate opinions” (345). He also mentions Douglas in his reminiscences of Cunard: “As her friends know, she loved Norman Douglas, my great friend, perhaps as much as she had loved George Moore.” And, “In her kind book about Doulgas, she has written generously of her good times at the Villa Touro. What she omitted to say was that she herself was responsible for so much of the laughter and joy we all shared” (349).
Macpherson was married to Bryher from 1927-1947.
These letters clearly illustrate Cunard’s personality as Macpherson describes.
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