From Conrad

To Diana Cooper, 23rd December 1945, Barhatch, Cranleigh, Surrey.

And I got your letter about Maurice.* It was of deep interest to me. Especially as I can’t talk to Diana about him. Diana thinks writing poetry and being a Catholic (or having any religion) the two big unpardonable idiocies. So you can’t expect much sympathy about Maurice. She also thinks his novels were extremely bad.

I’ll tell you how I first knew Maurice. He stood under the gas jet in the hall of Audley Square and Claud introduced us. It must have been ‘96 or ‘97. When he had gone I said something in dispraise of his personal appearance and Claud said: ‘Well, he certainly hasn’t got the bel air.’ You must remember he had a very big brown moustache and rather long brown hair. I at once became a greater friend than Claud was and so remained. We never drifted apart or were estranged.

I always was completely at my ease with him. I think I can say like you that he was the best man I ever knew but I never had any feeling that he was saintly. I think that was because he was nervous and fussy. I think saintly people shew a sort of calm resignation at being in God’s hands, so that all must be well.

I think you were very good to him and have nothing to reproach yourself with. Nothing at all. You couldn’t pretend to be in love with him.

I dare say you judge rightly when you say you would please him with a grand choral requiem. I had exactly the opposite idea when I arranged his mass. I can’t explain why I thought Maurice would like it like that, but I did think so. There was a matter-of-fact simplicity about it.

You say no woman was probably ever in love with him. You are likely to know. I have been told that when he was in Copenhagen he was engaged to be married to a French girl. It was broken off. Natalie or Connie might know about it. What his relations to Lady Lovat were I don’t know. Were they happy? Did he in some degree bore her? Kath has implied to me that he was a burden, an incubus at times. Difficult for her to leave him as he minded her going away so much.

Then there was Mme Benckendorff.** I suppose they were lovers. It seems hard to believe, but in my old age I grow to believe that all things are possible. Then there was Nan. I saw that from near. And I was puzzled to death. I think he must have asked her to marry him. It was an enigmatic situation.

I have always thought what you told me about balls and suppers hard to understand. I suppose men never fully grasp how they can bore and throttle women. But how often they do. Or how often women complain of it. I wonder if I’ve been like other men. I can only suppose so.

Maurice was the most loved man I’ve known and he deserved it. I can’t say more than that.

I suppose he was a freak, an oddity.

I wrote my Christmas letter to Lady Norah Smith this morning. She was Graham before that, Brassey before that, Hely-Hutchinson before that. I’m always afraid I’ll write and she’ll tell me she isn’t Smith any more. O the whirligig of time! She used to live in the largest house in Hill St and drive out in a Victoria with 2 spanking bays and I think they had £13,000 a year. Now she commutes from Taplow and works in an office in London at enlarging maps. She is very talented indeed.

When Diana had in X-word puzzle: ‘Good King Wenceslaus looked out, On the feast of …’ she had no idea what the missing word could be. Religious poetry is not her forte. I’ve been here 9 weeks all but 2 days. It’s a longish visit. Diana has been very kind indeed and she has asked me back. But I am looking forward to Flora’s company for a change. There’s no doubt Diana has a sort of mental sloth. She talks rather little and she hates anything to do with the imagination – poetry, philosophy, love, religion, she can’t abide. She likes Gibbon and Miss Austen and 18th century memoirs and she likes to talk about the League of Nations and Poland and the American Loan. I don’t think modern people interest her. Her whole outlook is narrow and confined.

* Maurice Baring, 27 April 1874 – 14 December 1945 was an English man of letters, known as a dramatist, poet, novelist, translator and essayist, and also as a travel writer and war correspondent, with particular knowledge of Russia. (Wikipedia)

** Countess Beckendorff was the wife of the last Russian Imperial ambassador in London.