Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [169]
QUAI VOLTAIRE.
Your letter was tiresome. Such yammering. And it isn’t flattering to be called a poison in the blood. It’s the equivalent of being called a stomach-ache. If you can’t write more sensibly, don’t write at all. Quant a moi, je m’amuse. Pas follement. But sufficiently, sufficiently. Theatres; mostly bad; but I like them; I’m still childish enough to feel involved in the imbecile plots. And buying clothes; such ravishments! I simply adored myself in Lanvin’s looking-glasses. Looking at pictures, on the other hand, is an overrated sport. Not dancing, though. There’d be some point, if life were always like dancing with a professional. But it ain’t. And if it were, I dare say one would long to walk. In the evenings a little pub-crawling in Mont Parnasse through hordes of Americans, Poles, Esthonians, Rumanians, Finns, Letts, Lapps, Wends, etcetera, and all of them (God help us!) artists. Shall we found a league for the suppression of art? Paris makes me long to. Also I wish one met a few more heterosexuals for a change. I don’t really like ni les tapettes ni les gousses. And since Proust and Gide made them fashionable one sees nothing else in this tiresome town. All my English respectability breaks out! Yours, L.
QUAI VOLTAIRE.
This time your letter was much better. (My only poem, and an accident at that. Rather good, all the same.) If only everybody would realize that being miserable or jolly about love is chiefly a matter of fashion. Being poetically miserable is an old fashion, and besides, the rhymes don’t justify it in English. Cuoredolore-amore; you can’t escape it in Italian. Nor in German; herz must feel schmerz and liebe is inevitably full of triebe. But in English, no. There’s no pain connected with English loves; only gloves and turtle doves. And the only things that, by the laws of poetry, can go straight to Englishmen’s hearts are tarts and amorous arts. And I assure you, a man’s much better occupied when he’s thinking about those subjects than when he’s telling himself how wretched he is, how jealous, how cruelly wronged and all the nonsensical rest of it. I wish that idiot Rene would understand this. But unfortunately cceur rhymes with douleur, and he’s French. He’s becoming almost as much of a bore as you were, my poor Walter. But I hope you’re now a reformed character. I like you. L.
QUAI VOLTAIRE.
Suffering from a cold and intense boredom, only momentarily relieved by your letter. Paris is really terribly dreary. I have a good mind to fly away somewhere else, only I don’t know where. Eileen came to see me to-day. She wants to leave Tim, because he will insist on her lying naked in bed while he sets fire to newspapers over her and lets the hot ashes fall on her body. Poor Tim! It seems unkind to deprive him of his simple pleasures. But Eileen’s so nervous of being grilled. She was furious with me for laughing and not being more sympathetic. I took it all as a joke. Which it is. A very mild one, however. For really, like the Queen, we are not amused. How I hate you for not being here to entertain me! One can forgive anything except absence. Unpardonably absent Walter, goodbye. I have an envie for you to-night, for your hands and your mouth. And you? Do you remember? L.
QUAI VOLTARAIRE.
So Philip Quarles is going to settle in the country and be a mixture of Mrs. Gaskell and Knud Hamsun. Well, well