Dorothy Richardson : Online Exhibition

Constantine Bay.
Padstow.
Feb. 22nd ’35.

Dear Kot,

Now that your miracle is in a fair way to be accomplished, I still find it difficult to believe. Partly because just now I can register things only mentally. I see the light on the sea & the gulls vol-planing down the wind, but there is nothing in me that answers. I am glad to find, however, that I do feel grateful to you for all you have done & are doing. I hear you talking & booming, & I feel grateful. And I will do my best not to create difficulties; extra, special, frilly difficulties, beyond those that stand there & stare at me. Such as, for example, the fact that I cannot pay D. £3, let alone £300, or whatever it is he asks (you have the detailed account) save by passing on what is paid to me; that some definite arrangement must be made in regard to the American rights, which will in the long run be more valuable than the British; (they are mine & not D’s); also in regard to translation rights. Incidentally, if the re-issue is to wait for a whole year after the appearance of the new book &, meanwhile D. is to cease publication, there will be a big gap – for Heaven alone knows when I’ll be able to finish the book.

I will write to Mr Cohen in the course of a few days.

Pray for me Kot, with or without shawl, & send strengthening thoughts.

Dorothy.

Also n.b., when you go out to lunch on

[page 2]

Monday, please drink your coffee to my health, I mean drink my health in coffee, & the health of volume XI. For I hear that both, on that day, are to be gravely toasted in New York at a luncheon which is to precede a discussion of Pilgrimage. I will undertake, for my part, to blush, at two o’clock precisely. Genuinely, & not merely as a result of standing, myself, glass in hand, as I am, in social honour, bound to do. For, if you can believe it, a reader of mine who wrote to me for the first time a few weeks ago, asking where certain volumes could now be obtained and, in response to my answer, told me of this literary meeting, has ordered Fortnum & Mason, in Piccadilly, to send a “toast” down here so that I can, in a sense, be at the party. Now is that not American, and charming? The little note I sent was merely to the point in question; no word, naturally, as to any personal circumstances. So this fraternal wine is just an enchanting gesture. We shall don velvet coats & have a jar of wild flowers on the table. So don’t forget.
D.

Notes

• Kot was in the process of negotiating a contract with Dent and the Cresset Press for the publication of Clear Horizon, the eleventh chapter-volume of Pilgrimage. Richardson hadn’t yet finished the volume, and was worried that she would not be able to find the time. 'D.' is Gerald Duckworth. She is still worried about her debt to Duckworth, and the complexities surrounding the British and American rights.