Tuesday 9.30p.m.
Thank you for your letter - it left me with a faint - very faint - feeling of instability - or perhaps a quavering doubt in my own strength - but I'm all right now - and I really can't expect you to understand why I felt it, so that's all right too.
- My 'stamp-book' days are truly over - at any rate for 3 years - but, since discussing it with King's yesterday, it looks more like 5 now!! As, to obtain an arts degree, I learn, one has to take Latin or Greek!! - Whoopee! - and as I only got as far as "Mensa", it's going to take me a beast of a time.
This freedom and leisure is magnificent - I'm simply basking in it and, I believe, really appreciating it. Yesterday & today I have spent mostly in town, pretending to shop - which I find practically as exciting as actually having enough money to buy things - even if the result proves less satisfactory!
Yesterday I spent 3 hours in Oxford Street munificently treating myself to the most gorgeous gloves and shoes and hats and evening wraps; to arrive home with a length of material for a new skirt and I doz. wooden buttons!
- Today I bought some brown material for a coat and a new brown hat - and hungered tremendously for a brown and white striped silk scarf - but remembering it was no longer any good relying on Friday's envelope I staunchly refrained.
Yesterday, too, I saw the film 'Damaged Lives' at the Coliseum. The actual film, of course, is fearfully weak and merely the bait to get hold of people to impress upon them the increasing necessity for care, cleanliness and general medical examination in the process of having babies. The second half of the film is frightfully interesting. All diagrams showing how genus that are common in the case of sexual intercourse, attack various parts of the body - and they showed us actual examples of men & women in various stages of idiocy - who, through neglect, had passed infirmity on to their children. It impressed me enormously.
The 'House-Warming' on Saturday & Sunday went off beautifully. The drawing-room floor was quite good and at 11.30pm about 10 of us bathed - (I doing so, needless to say, purely to show off!!) We got to bed about 2.0. - We had 4 men all in the camp beds in the boys room which we called the 'Dormitory' - and during the night the rest of the household were intermittently awakened by the successive collapsing of each bed. We had 14 to breakfast - I'll send you a snap of them taken afterwards if it's good. The treasure hunt was topping - good rhymes - and ended to time. The main hitch being that the Eldorado Ice Cream Man on the Hog's Back who mummy entrusted with the clues on the Thursday go the sack on the Friday!! - So we spent most of the afternoon (17 of us) driving round Aldershot trying to find where he lived.
We had a picnic lunch on the top of Box Hill which we nicknamed 'The Debauched Orgy' as we all lay full length on top of each other in about 6 sq yards, munching apples & dozing in the sun. The weather was perfect and still is, we've had a wonderful summer.
I thought you had at least a months holiday when you got back. Two weeks won't seem anything, will it? I'm glad Paul's staying with you. Has he still a slight aversion to me? Didn't we have fun that evening? - with Elizabeth - and discussing Communism in paper hats and Paul driving home - corks - it seems ages ago!
When will you know for certain what day you come home? - not until a day or two beforehand?
I don't think I quite meant giving 'cowards counsel' about "Edwy" - I really meant don't build on it's success - don't be so sure that it leaves you dangling if it lets you down - Because I know for a fact what an effect that would have on some people - but perhaps I haven't endowed you with enough common sense - and anyway I didn't think very hard before I wrote it - I just thought of myself failing in something I'd put my heart & soul into - & I had a fearful vision as to just how it would hurt me. I'm sorry.
All three of us have had an invitation to a topping dance next Friday - 9-2p.m. and terrifically aristocratic!! - am longing for it.
- Here come the family - they've been out to dinner somewhere - must run & put kettle on for cup of tea.
- Do you mind your next letter being only one page? - It's all I've got left of this pad.
- Love
Mary xxx
P.S. Would you mind post your next bulletin to Paul as:- 'Definitely no progress since February 1933'?
Thank you.
M.P.O.
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