including letters written to his wife Marion and some other correspondence
4 March, 1942
Dearest Mog,
It may be against the rules to start your last letter as you did but I am glad of it.
Even if the 36 hour shift does not commence this month I should be due for some leave in April and I will come then.
I took some drawings to the Leicester Gallery yesterday. They were very nice and liked them and asked me to bring some paintings for them to see as soon as I have about a dozen. I will do that when I have enough really good ones. I will have a show there yet.
I did a very good drawing yesterday morning but a really terrifying one – full of atmosphere and different to all the other. Not exactly well handled but it does say something. I have completed the backcloth for the Pirandello play in two days. Bill is having trouble with the Lord Chamberlain over his play. About a dozen lines will have to be cut. Perfectly stupid because they have left in far more suggestive lines than they have cut.
Also no one likes the play except myself, the producer and the girl who is playing the lead. Which naturally makes us determined to put it across. I will let you know the dates later on because you must come and see it. Bill is not particularly well and is still at home. The doctor says there is a suspicion of TB but don’t let Bill know I have told you this. Anyway, I think he should find out about it for certain.
I will be able to send you an extra pound next week as I have started on the little job I have and will finish it by then.
Tell Julian I will send him some more chocolate soon. Love to you both,
Clifford
7 March, 1942
Saturday
Dearest Mog,
Here is the pound extra I promised you. I had hoped to have sent more but a deal didn’t come off, however, I expect something else will turn up. I am always trying. The funny thing is that when I don’t try, I have more luck, like the couple of quid I made this week. No effort at all.
I have not been able to get any coke, coalite or coal, and it’s still bitterly cold. Serves me right I suppose.
Bill is much better. I will send some chocolate next week. Hope to have six bars by then. I can only get two a week.
I have got a good painting in my head and I am going to stretch a canvas and hope to start it next week. There are rumours now that we will be compelled to do munition work on our off days. That will be hell but it hasn’t happened yet, so I must hurry.
Please don’t say things to me about not sending you money, because I always will when I have it, and I will make it somehow.
Love to you and Julian,
Clifford
On the 9th March, Bill wrote the following letter to Marion:
9 March, 1942
Dearest Marion,
I expect Cliff has told you that I’ve been ill: bronchial trouble, and I’ve been rather down and out with it. Temperature, sweats, no energy, depressed and all the rest of it. That is the only reason your letter has not been answered. Dumps stayed with me for a week and was an angel. She went back to Wadhurst on Friday. I’m feeling better but haven’t yet ventured out; this winter has really done for me! I expect you’ve forgotten what you wrote to me, but you do ask me whether I think you’re doing the right thing. I do and I don’t! Now let me at once say, and I know that you will sympathise, that I’m in a hell of a position. I love you both and whatever I think I cannot take sides. I would hate to think of the marriage being busted, principally because I can see no reason why it should be. If you had ceased to care for each other then it would be different, but neither of you have: that I am quite certain about! I could so easily tell you what I have in mind, it is so difficult to write. So – yes- if your behaviour is part of a plan – excellent, keep it up! But if au fond you are really serious, then -no-decidedly not -you are not doing the best thing for both of you.
Dear Marion, to me it is a simple problem. Do you still love and want Clifford? Be guided by your answer. But, my dear Marion, you know me so well by now. Most of my actions are guided by sentiment, I am a sentimentalist, I have my own ideas as to how this “crisis” will end. I know I shall be right! And my dear, can’t share a person with another. What Cliff has given (and does give) is yours and yours alone. He can’t give that to anyone else! This is a bloody letter. I just can’t say what I want to say, except that I am rather upset because you seem so serious over this “affair”, and I don’t believe you have any cause to be. It is like a piece of paper thrown on the fire which makes a great blaze while it burns, and then is gone – a few ashes left, chucked with the cinders into the dust bin the next day. I would not dare tell Clifford this!
Oh, my dear, if only you were here, I could tell you so easily what I think.
Anyhow, burn this letter. Don’t be miserable, because you haven’t really the slightest cause to be, and always think of me as your most sincere and devoted friend.
Bill
The habit of years broken twice in one letter. Two words underlined!
PS Did you know that me eldest brother’s wife was attacked about a week ago in a Met train by a man who pinched her money, savings bank book, cheque book etc. and that she died the next day. How dramatic to have a murder in the family! As for her, I had no opinion of her at all. I can’t see why she existed, but my brother was devoted to her. I am terribly sorry for him, a great blow at his age – he is even older than I am and is past 60. A ghastly business really. I wonder what he will do in the future, saddled with love, furniture etc.
Must stop! Writing this letter has quite exhausted me.
Celia Franca as The Daughter of Darkness
Letters to Marion
11 March, 1942
Wednesday
Dearest Mog,
Thank you for your letters – the second one came this morning.
For the first – you praise what little I have done far too much; but you know I will do better. I have a very, very long way to go.
And now the second. Please don’t tell your people anything. I do not mind so much what they would think of me. What I do worry about is hurting those who have been so good to me, and who, as you say, have faith in me.
Since I last saw you I have not been happy for a moment. I have forgotten everything for a short while whist I have been working. That’s all. You remember what I used to say about happiness. In a way I never quite believed in it. But really, I was afraid because I knew that happiness must always be paid for. That is in my nature, I always knew, even when I was a boy; perhaps it is not so with everyone. I cannot say.
For that I realize you are unhappy too, and most of it is my fault, and I will never be able to forget it. It won’t make things any easier for you but it serves me right and I knew it from the start.
Last time you were here you rushed me. I don’t blame you. I would have done the same myself. I have little doubt, but I wanted more time to think.
If I did not still think of you; if I had entirely forgotten how you have helped me, as if I could. If again I were indifferent to you or even disliked you, it would be so easy. But you see, or perhaps you won’t now believe me, none of those things are true. And because of them I had never realized what it would mean to be cut off from you entirely. For that is now what you seem to feel is the only solution of the problem.
And as for not sending you any money after that cut-throat doctor’s bill is paid – well that’s balls. I’ll send it when I have it, because I want to, and that’s all there is to it.
Do you remember suggesting me living at a studio after the war and us having a place not far away? No one need ever know, you said. Far more than I deserved, but last time you had quite forgotten that. I am thinking of Julian. I am terribly worried about him. You ask me to let things go as they are for the present. Yes, of course. It’s far better. God knows what may happen before this war is over. I may get killed. Of course, I don’t think I will, but lots of them think that and it happens just the same. I saw it happen too often last year. Things have been quiet so long now, and life foes on, that one forgets.
I was looking at my dairy the other day and for November 4th, 1940, I found –
“Last night, Sunday, no raid. Slept abominably. The first raid free night for 57 nights.” And it may all start again, although not yet awhile, I think. But how can you plan?
Of course you will stay here when you come to town for a week. I want you to.
Bill’s play and the other two are being done on the 8th, 9th and 10th of April*. If you came that week, we could go on one of my nights off. I want you to see them*. Also, I hope it will be warmer by then, for I still can’t get any coal. Let me know what you think.
*Clifford designed the scenery for all three plays. Editor
Bill is much better but the doctor says he should have an Xray test at Brompton Hospital. He doesn’t want to but I think he should. I hope I will able to make him have it done; I will go with him.
Tell me how you are when you write and if Julian is well. I will send that chocolate at the end of the week. I have collected five bars of Kit Kat and will get one more, I hope, tomorrow.
Love to you both,
Clifford
21 March, 1942
Saturday
My dear Mog,
Don’t worry about anything you said to me about myself. I deserve it all – you have the right to say it.
Write soon.
Give my love to Julian and tell him I will try to get him some more chocolate.
Love
Clifford
31 March, 1942
My dear Mog,
I found the telegram from Pearl when I came in for a few minutes yesterday morning – so I sent it on to you at once. I had hoped you might have still been here – although you said you were catching an early train – but I could not get away before. But I will see you next week.
I phoned the M.O.I. yesterday and have arranged to see Dorothy Glover** on Friday of next week. It could not be fixed any sooner as she is going away for the holidays. I will be able to tell you what she says when you are here again.
*Dorothy Glover (aka Dorothy Craigie) was an illustrator, writer and theatre costume designer. She was also the mistress of the author Graham Greene during the war years and they shared a flat together in Bloomsbury during the Blitz. Greene is known to have worked for MI6 circa 1941-44 and worked for the MOI during the early part of the war. Clifford’s letter to Marion seems to confirm that Dorothy Glover worked for the MOI as well – possibly in some sort of administrative role. In 1943, Graham Greene published his novel, The Ministry of Fear, which is about Nazi espionage activities in Britain during WW2. The book was turned into a movie of the same name in 1944, directed by Fritz Lang and starring Ray Milland. Editor
Let me know about Saturday week so I can get the tickets.
I have been painting this morning and it’s coming a little better – but very, very slowly. I hope to see Mr d’Alfonseca again this Saturday at Clusmann’s studio*, then I will ask him here again and hope to do some business. It all seems very slow but I am assured it is the only way to set about it.
*Clusmann is probably the sculptor Heinz Henghes (1906 -1975), who was born Gustav Heinrich Clusmann in Hamburg, Germany. He is known to have had a studio in London at this time. Mr d’Alfonseca cannot be identified at this time. His name suggests that he was Portuguese. Editor
I hope Julian is all right and that he got on well whilst he was with Pearl, and that he socked Richard if necessary.
I will see about getting some leave and you must try to make Julian sit fairly still so that I can make a sketch of him.
Please remember that the promise I made to you about Julian is something that I really mean – for his sake, for yours, and my own.
Write soon.
Love to you both
Clifford
Press cutting from local newspaper, West London Press, about Bill’s play which mentions Clifford’s scenery. CLICK HERE to see clipping of the entire article.