The Love-Charm of Bombs (73 page)

‘I’m not English’: ibid.,
ch. 11.

‘I had no idea’: ibid.

‘a resolute profile’: ibid.,
ch. 4.

‘real pleasure’:
EB to William Plomer, 17 August 1936 (
The Mulberry Tree
).

‘fallen utterly in love’:
Sean O’Faolain,
Vive Moi!
, 2nd edn (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993),
p. 302.

‘I find so much’:
O’Faolain to EB, undated (EB HRC).

‘love to run down’:
O’Faolain to EB, undated (EB HRC).

‘I am, we are’:
EB to Humphry House, 1937 (private collection).

‘at one time suffered’: May Sarton,
A World of Light
(New York: Norton, 1988),
p. 203.

‘as synecdoche’:
Julia O’Faolain, introduction to O’Faolain,
Vive Moi!
,
p. xii.

‘Here
was a’:
EB, ‘Bowen’s Court’, 1958,
People, Places, Things: Essays by Elizabeth Bowen
, ed. Allan Hepburn (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008).

‘so complete was’:
EB,
B’s C
,
p. 401.

‘I met some’:
EB to William Plomer, 5 June 1938 (
The Mulberry Tree
).

‘He likes her!’:
O’Faolain,
Vive Moi!
,
p. 309.

‘dropping his head back’:
EB, ‘Bowen’s Court’ (
People, Places, Things
).

‘loveliest novel’:
O’Faolain,
Vive Moi!
,
p. 312.

‘later misremembered this’:
ibid., p. 301.

‘an unfair test’:
O’Faolain to EB, 22 April 1937 (EB HRC).

‘the kid and the cad’:
O’Faolain, ‘A Reading and Remembrance of Elizabeth Bowen’,
London Review of Books
, 4 March 1982.

‘eloquence was to rush’:
EB,
B’s C
,
p. 265.

‘the chivalric element’: ibid.,
pp. 49, 219.

‘were bought, to’: ibid.,
pp. 219, 279, 278, 208.

‘Alan had telephoned her’:
see EB to Isaiah Berlin, 30 September 1938 (Isaiah Berlin archive, Bod).

‘wants to meet you’:
EB to Virginia Woolf, January 1939 (Monk’s House Papers, University of Sussex).

‘the man with the Irish’:
Virginia Woolf to EB, 29 January 1939,
The Letters of Virginia Woolf
, ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanna Trautmann (London: Hogarth Press, 1975–1980).

‘Virginia’s exquisitely, delicately’:
O’Faolain, ‘A Reading and Remembrance’.

‘lay-abed, passion-sated’:
O’Faolain,
Vive Moi!
, p. 310.

‘In a 1940 account’:
see O’Faolain,
An Irish Journey
(London: Longmans & Co, 1940).

‘Tradition has been broken’:
O’Faolain, ‘Irish Blackout’,
Manchester Guardian
, October 1939, in Wills,
That Neutral Island
,
p. 80.

‘in the heart of the’:
EB, ‘Summer Night’,
Collected Stories
(London: Vintage, 1999).

‘that was at least aware’:
O’Faolain to EB, 22 April 1937 (EB HRC).

‘one’s own point’:
EB, ‘The Big House’,
The Bell
, October 1940.

‘when the best restaurant’:
Virginia Woolf, diary, 6 May 1934,
The Diary of Virginia Woolf
, ed. Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew McNeillie (London: Hogarth Press, 1977–1984).

‘gargantuan stories’:
EB,
The Shelbourne
(London: Vintage, 2001), ch. 7.

‘a happy lunch’:
O’Faolain,
Vive Moi!
,
p. 310.

‘I was able’:
EB, report, 9 November 1940 (
Notes on Eire
).

‘expressed complete surprise’:
see Patricia Craig,
Elizabeth Bowen
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986),
p. 101.

‘the very thought’:
O’Faolain,
Vive Moi!
,
p. 311.

‘She is an Irishwoman’:
O’Faolain,
The Vanishing Hero, Studies in the Novelists of the Twenties
(London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1956), p. 170.

‘
Come Back to Erin
’: EB, review of
Come Back to Erin
by Sean O’Faolain,
The Bell,
December 1940.

‘To be here’:
EB to Virginia Woolf, 5 January 1941 (
The Mulberry Tree
).

7:
‘How we shall survive this I don’t know’

‘This morning at 8am’:
HS to PdeM, Monday 17, otherwise undated (HS PdeM).

‘My darling’:
HS to PdeM, undated (HS PdeM).

‘The Azores would have been’:
PdeM to HS, 11 October 1940 (HS PdeM).

‘If England fights’:
PdeM, ‘Bruchstücke aus dem Prolog zu dem unvollendeten Buch “Den ganzen Weg zurück. Aufzeichnungen aus Deutschland 1945–1949”’, in Bernt Engelmann
(ed.),
Eine Pen-Documentation, Literatur des Exils
(München: Goldmann Wilhelm, 1981).

‘it would have seemed like’:
HS,
DaB
, p. 123.

‘I have not much faith’:
HS to PdeM, undated (HS PdeM).

‘We must’:
PdeM to HS, undated (PdeM Mon).

‘I know that England’:
HS to PdeM, undated (HS PdeM).

‘wherever you are’:
PdeM to HS, 22 October 1940 (HS PdeM).

‘the only person’:
HS to PdeM, undated (HS PdeM).

‘the Spiel faces’:
PdeM to HS, undated (HS PdeM).

‘It happened to me’:
HS to PdeM, undated (HS PdeM).

‘I cried about Benjamin’:
HS, ‘Ein anderer Stern’, in
Der Mann mit der Pelerine und andere Geschichten
(West Germany: Gustav Lübbe Verlag, 1985).

‘only once or twice’:
HS, diary, 3 December 1940 (HS NLV).

‘The Greeks are driving’:
Virginia Woolf, diary, 8 December 1940,
The Diary of Virginia Woolf
, ed. Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew McNeillie (London: Hogarth Press, 1977–1984).

‘Paris is so young’:
Harold Nicolson, diary, 25 December 1940,
Diaries and Letters 1939–45
, ed. Nigel Nicolson (London: Collins, 1967).

‘the still smouldering ashes’:
Cecil Beaton,
Self-Portrait With Friends: The Selected Diaries of Cecil Beaton
, ed. Richard Buckle (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979),
p. 79.

‘to see Chaplin’s’:
HS, diary, 3 January 1941 (HS NLV).

‘Milan is at once overwhelmed’:
HS,
Die Früchte des Wohlstands
(München: Nymphenburger, 1981), p. 19.

‘an impertinence’:
HS, diary, 2 February 1942 (HS NLV).

‘he is hit by the smell’:
HS,
Die Früchte des Wohlstands
, p. 198.

‘the desolate ruins’:
Virginia Woolf , diary, 15 January 1941 (
The Diary of Virginia Woolf
).

‘The firemen in particular’:
see Juliet Gardiner,
The Blitz: The British Under Attack
(London: HarperCollins 2011),
p. 268.

‘a new phase’:
‘A New Phase in the Air’ by our air correspondent,
Spectator
, 24 January 1941.

‘to intensify the effect’:
Hitler, in Gardiner,
The Blitz
, p. 267.

‘far better than most of us’:
Winston Churchill, speech, 9 February 1941,
War Speeches, 1939–45
, compiled by Charles Eade (London: Cassell & Co, 1951–2).

‘unless Germany can’:
Harold Nicolson, diary, 11 February 1941 (
Diaries and Letters
).

‘the worst attack so far’:
HS, diary, 20 March 1941 (HS NLV).

‘fairly over the country’:
in Gardiner,
The Blitz
,
p. 331.

‘Virginia Woolf had been taken’:
see Woolf, diary, 25 January 1915 (
The Diary of Virginia Woolf
).

‘emporium of cakes’:
C. E. Pascoe,
London To-day: An Illustrated Handbook of the Season
(London: Sansom Low & Co, 1885).

‘a piece of good old’:
HS, diary, 16 April 1941 (HS NLV).

‘in a single night’:
see Gardiner,
The Blitz
,
p. 341 and Gardiner,
Wartime: Britain 1939–1945
(London: Headline, 2005), p. 339.

‘the real blitz’:
GG, Blitz notebook, April 1941 (reprinted in
Ways of Escape
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982),
ch. 4i).

‘one’s first corpse’:
GG to Marion Greene, 18 April 1941, in Richard Greene,
Graham Greene: A Life in Letters
(London: Little, Brown, 2007).

‘I’ve been leading a chequered’:
GG to Anthony Powell, 6 December 1940 (
A Life in Letters
).

‘for someone like me’:
GG to Mary Pritchett, 18 March 1941 (
A Life in Letters
).

‘Do you ever
really
’:
VG to GG, 4 April 1941 (VG Bod).

‘dreadfully bewildered’:
VG to GG, undated (VG Bod).

‘bandied about among strangers’:
GG to VG, undated (VG Bod).

‘She has the thin end’:
GG to Mary Pritchett, 18 March 1941 (
A Life in Letters
).

‘very young and not at all’:
Goronwy Rees to Dig Yorke, in Jenny Rees,
Looking for Mr Nobody: The Secret Life of Goronwy Rees
(London: Phoenix Giant, 1997),
p. 114.

‘suffer
one single
’: Rosamond Lehmann to Dadie Rylands, 7 February 1941, in Selina Hastings,
Rosamond Lehmann
(London: Vintage, 2003),
p. 214.

‘rejected and isolated’:
Rosamond Lehmann, interview in ibid.,
p. 213.

‘his rota of ridiculously’: ibid.,
p. 215.

‘your perfect goodness’:
Rosamond Lehmann to HY, 19 June 1943, in ibid.,
p. 215.

‘One writes for about’:
HY to Rosamond Lehmann, 21 June 1943 (RL KC).

‘an eccentric, fire-fighting’:
Rosamond Lehmann, ‘An Absolute Gift’,
Times Literary Supplement
, 6 August 1954.

‘these times are an absolute’:
HY to Rosamond Lehmann, 14 March 1945 (RL KC).

‘slipping his identity’:
Rosamond Lehmann,
The Echoing Grove
(London: Collins, 1953),
p. 14.

‘old, stuffy, solid place’:
HS, diary, 18 April 1941 (HS NLV).

‘wave of defeatism’:
Harold Nicolson, diary, 21 April 1941(
Diaries and Letters
).

‘This war is going to’:
HS, diary, 23 April 1941 (HS NLV).

‘very sad war news’:
HS, diary, 27 April 1941 (HS NLV).

‘not only reassured’:
Churchill, speech, 10 December 1942 (
War Speeches
).

8:
‘So much else is on the way to be lost’

‘this time she believed she would not’:
for a discussion of Woolf’s suicide see Hermione Lee,
Virginia Woolf
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1996),
pp. 757–67.

‘a great deal of’: EB to Leonard Woolf, 8 April 1941,
The Mulberry Tree: Writings of Elizabeth Bowen
, ed. Hermione Lee (London: Vintage, 1999).