Friday 23 September 2016

23rd September 1936 - Terrick to Mary

35 Nevern Place
S.W.5


23rd September 1936


My dearest girl,

This evening I waited till after the post came before starting this letter, in case there was one from you - and there is.  Unfortunately just as I got it Renny came in and stayed and talked.

Mummy is coming on Sunday to lunch, but not to tea because she is doing something with Aunt Aggie.  Renny said you wrote her a very nice letter.  So, if I may, I'll come home with you after Joan's dinner and then come up with you to the Regent Palace on Sunday.  I've told Renny he is expected, but he knows because Mummy had told him.

On Friday I believe my appointment with the woman at Ealing is not till 8p.m. so it will probably be too late to go to the cinema, but we can sit & have coffee & biscuits somewhere on the hill.

On Monday, darling, I could not work at all.  I felt like Mary Rose the first time she went away, as if I had been to fairy-land and could not get used to humdrum mortal ways again.  i kept thinking of the islands and the seals and the white breakers on the reefs - "perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn" - and "the grassy-green translucent wave" under the boat at Iona and our secret bay at Morar.

That has just reminded me to look up that poem that I said was Wordsworth and you thought not.  I have just got out the Oxford Book of English Verse and it has opened right at Wordsworth and only one page from the poem: "The Solitary Reaper". It goes - but I must start on a new page so as not to break it up:

"...

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring time from the cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:

..."

I think it is sometimes called "The Solitary Highland Lass".

We have been there, dear, and whatever happens no one can take that time from us.  The memories of it are crowding in on me now, and instead of waiting I think of you with your bare feet wading around the rocky points, and of you calling out at the sight of Loch Leven and Glencoe from the ridge of the Mamore Forest.

Mr May wants you and me to come with him to an evening given by the Highland Club in London where they dance reels in full costume and a relation of Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser sings the Songs of the Hebrides.  I said we should love to.  It will be sometime next month.  We may get about 48 of them to do eightsome reels in the arena at the Albert Hall.

I am having dinner with Mummy tomorrow, and then she and Renny are going to see "The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse".

Talking about "Mary Rose" have you ever read the poem Kilmeny by James Hogg the Scottish poet.  The idea is the same, the girl disappears for months:


"Bonnie Kilmeny gaed up the glen.

-----

When many a day had come and fled,  
When grief grew calm, and hope was dead,   
When mess for Kilmeny's soul had been sung,  
When the bedesman had pray'd and the dead bell rung,  
Late, late in gloamin' when all was still,  
When the fringe was red on the westlin hill,  
The wood was sere, the moon i' the wane,   
The reek o' the cot hung over the plain,  
Like a little wee cloud in the world its lane;  
When the ingle low'd wi' an eiry leme,  
Late, late in the gloamin' Kilmeny came hame!"

It goes on to a long account of the land she had been to and what had happened to her.  I can't help it I must quote: 

"She saw a sun on a summer sky,  
And clouds of amber sailing bye; 
A lovely land beneath her lay,  
And that land had glens and mountains gray;

---"  etc etc!  in fact it was Morar and the isles and the Mamore Forest where we have been together.  You must read it.

To talk sense:- I had lunch with Paul yesterday & told him about the time we had; everybody at the office says how browner I am - which gratifies me after the efforts I made  The girl from the short story class was in Fisher's yesterday waiting for her mother, so I had lunch with her there today.  She is going to S. Africa.

Did I tell you that all the firm's salaries are to be considered in October?  There may be a rise in it somewhere.  The thought of a rise brings me to sense again:- the practical job of making dreams become - I won't say true, they are, we know that - but permanent.

Goodbye my dearest.  I am just getting used to not having you at my shoulder to show things to and smile to, but I am looking forward to Friday.  I'll ring you up from Ealing & let you know when I'll be at the Richmond.

All my love and myself.

Terrick  xxx

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