Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory, New York, New York, 1967 February 18: autograph manuscript signed.

BIB_ID
450873
Accession number
MA 23840.387
Creator
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer, 1927-2013, sender.
Display Date
Delhi, India, 1967 February 18
Credit line
Gift of James Ivory, 2021.
Description
1 aerogramme (2 pages) ; 26.7 x 20.3 cm
Notes
Probably written before Jhabvala's letter to Ivory mistakenly dated February 17, 1967.
Aerogramme addressed to Mr. James Ivory, 400 East 52nd St., New York, 10022, U.S.A., postmarked February 18, 1967.
Provenance
James Ivory.
Summary
Telling Ivory "how marvellous it is for us to have Ismail here" and wishing Ivory was there as well, how "I keep pointing out the very tree to him in the garden under which you would be sitting if you had come. Looking contemplatively up at the leaves and wondering when it's time for lunch"; saying she longs to take a walk on Connaught Place "in my paper dress," but neither Merchant nor Jhab will accompany her; describing Merchant arriving "looking very brisk & nautical in a blazer & blue striped shirt, & immediately started swearing about India ... about how dirty everything was, how slow, how listless, how poor-- how the telephones didn't work & the telegrams didn't arrive (true: there's a telegraph strike on) ... I think he feels bitterly disappointed & frustrated by this reality-- having this past 2 years kept this golden, glowing image of Mother I. [i.e. Mother India]-- & now what does he find?"; adding that this disappontment is exacerbated by the fact that there has been a drought, and in a season where Delhi normally looks "absolutely at its best," "everything is looks brown or grey, & withered & parched, & there's an ugly haze over the sky"; relating Merchant's energetic efforts on behalf of "Shakespeare Wallah" with executives and censors; announcing that the Delhi charity premiere of "Shakespeare Wallah" will be on March 7 and Catherine "and a posse of other high-powered ladies are in charge"; describing Merchant's various trips, to Bombay to secure the Liberty Theatre for "Shakespeare Wallah," then to Agra "to buy off Bansal, who's there for his son's wedding"; musing over Merchant's "curiously disgusted" reaction to the extended Bansal family-- "27 people all living together, he kept saying-- & they kept wanting him to drink beer & eat sweets & he said they stank ... I don't know why it affected him so strongly: have his senses become too delicate in America?"-- and why Ivory wouldn't have the same reaction "because it isn't yours, & you have no stake in it, & will never have to really live here"; describing how grateful Jhab is for the Pentel pens Ivory sent him via Merchant, and how that gratitude has led him to refrain from pestering Merchant for financial accounts for two days-- which are now up; asking if Ivory wants anything from India, "apart from miniatures & Moghul chests."