10th June 1936 - Mary to Terrick

Old Vicarage School
Richmond

June 10th 1936

Darling - Thank you very much for the effort it must have cost you to remember to write to me when you'd only seen me the day before!  actually, it's the best time of the week to send me a letter - because I can answer it on my free afternoon now.

At first thought I was a bit disappointed about your dance on the 27th - but I rather hope the cast will arrange a bit of a party after the last performance - so perhaps we could both meet after everything's over & go home.  Do you mean it'll be a political struggle and strife in the future?  Because it makes me feel a bit apprehentious, when I think about it - and also makes me quite certain that we oughtn't to live in Richmond - we should have a most miserable time - or rather I would - unless I could ever make myself feel strongly enough to overcome outside criticism.

I looked in Miss X's Richmond and Twickenham to see if there were any flats advertised in those roads we looked at - but only one is mentioned.  There were one of two others that sounded nice up in the same direction and they all ranged from 22/- to 27/6 & 30/- - so it ought to be fairly easy when we want one.  The most expensive ones were 35/- but they sounded too large for us anyway.  It puts me off a bit when they say "newly decorated" - because it would be so extravagant to put our beautiful white & peach paint over the top!

I should love to see your famous chairs that I slightly turned up my nose at.  Weren't they somewhere down Tottenham Court Rd?  if so, I'll meet you outside the Dominion Cinema at about 5.30 - 5.45.  Would that do?  I should also like to find the picture shop called "Challenge ??" somewhere near Russell Square

It seems rather hard on you, having to come all the way down to Richmond afterwards - what about seeing "The Dream" on Saturday afternoon - or are you booked up that day?  It looks as if it's going to be awful for me these weekends - here all Sunday mornings and back on Sundays after tea - Grannie's away.  Find out, if you can, the weekend which will be most booked up for you in the next 3 - because I think I shall ask Auntie Bee if she'll have me - although Sunday rehearsal is a drawback.  Helen Dick offered me half her bed this Saturday - but if you're busy there's not much aim - is there? Flip is a curse! - Also, one day I'd very much like to try and get a copy of the entry in Lambeth Parish Church of James Ormiston's marriage in 1798.  Couldn't you help me?

Thank you so much for taking my camera to Kodak.  Did you point out how stiff it was to close, too?

Today we are making fudge to sell to the children, to get money to buy Folk Dance records.  Patricia has just got a wonderful book of Scottish dances and reels - & we're going to start learning an "eightsome" next week - & when we're fairly good, we're going to invite the London Representative to come down and help us!!!  - I think she's a plan "Miss Law" - but we were very tempted to invite Lady Mackintosh of Mackintosh - or even Mrs Magregor of Magregor!  We're going to invite you & P. Wilson-Dixon & Helen over one evening to join the staff in one!

This evening we've got a lecture on architecture for which we're charging 1/- entrance to send to Sydney Carroll for the Open Air Theatre.

What a life!!

- Oh darling, I'm longing to see you again - I haven't forgotten my strawberries & cream yet!

- I am now going upstairs to write our decorating scheme in my book.

All my love always - in spite of the "struggle & strife".

Mary  xxx

P.S. At the beginning of the summer hols - when I've got a lot of money - I'm going to buy that book on Birth Control - if you'll go into the shop for me and ask for it?

9th June 1936 - Postcard from Eileen to Terrick

The "Hindenberg" has just flown by.

I've just been driving along the Poppelsdorfer Allee and thought of you!  We came here from Koln this afternoon and had tea at the Petersberger Hotel on the top of one of the "Siebengebirge".  Do you know it?  This view of the Drachenfels is taken from it.  This afternoon we were in Alberts Old Corps house & this evening he had a practise bout at fencing.  It was not interesting.  he hadn't done any since he was here last 7 years ago.  His fencing master is coming to dinner with us today.  We are touring a part of the Moselle tomorrow, Tuer, Koblenz & Waldesch.

Love 

Eileen

Will send Rennie a card from Heidleberg

4th June 1936 - Mary to Terrick

O.V.S.
Thursday 3.55

Dear Terrick - having an odd moment between my children's departure and the tea gong (Miss X being out) I thought I'd write you a letter.  I may not have time to finish it - but that won't matter - one of the nicest things about a letter, to me, is the look of it's envelope.  You know you often say "I'm sorry I didn't write to you, but I didn't have time" - & I do, too, sometimes - well, I've been thinking to myself just lately it isn't time you need to write the kind of thing that would make the whole day seem like it does when I'm going to see you in the evening - but just "kindness".  I don't suppose you quite understand yet.  But if, say, when you hadn't seen me for 24 hours you just wrote either 
(a) "I still love you"
or (b) "Have just seen marvellous bedroom suite for 6¾ d
or (c) "Party last night great success"
on the back of a bus ticket & posted it to me - it would quite equal half going to the pictures with you or ⅓ going to the "Continental" with you.  So you see, two of them (provided they were on two successive dates) would save you the price of a whole evening's outing - and three of them (provided they were on three successive dates) would save you a whole evening's entertaining!  But I feel you never think it's worth writing unless you've got an hour to spend concocting a super letter - whereas it's worth 40 times more than you can possibly imagine - just because I know it's written when you hadn't got time - but made it specially for me - any more weeks with you in the distance all the time will be almost unbearable- it seems so much worse now I'm really and properly engaged to you - & weekends come all in one lump - so it seems a frightfully unbalanced existence!

I love you so very much - and Tuesday evening was magnificent.  Thank you ever so much for taking me.  Have you heard how your mother is?

Mummy wants to know the cheapest return fare to Norway for Ken's wedding Aug 6th.  Can you find out? - & I think they said you went to Oslo.  We say J. Eastman's baby yesterday - He's lovely now - frightfully big & brown with lovely blue eyes.

- I must stop because I've got a frightful lot to do - Patricia says I don'[t plan my life well enough (because I said I hadn't time to play tennis with her this evening!) - but I'm afraid she's quite right.

- All my love, my very dearest dear, I long terribly for Saturday - could we lunch together at 2 1.45, or is that too early? I suppose you don't want to look round any rooms now - do you?

Yours always

Mary P  xxx

P.S. I hope the social goes off well tomorrow - remember my better points when you gaze upon your communist women!

22nd May 1936 - Mary to Terrick

O.V.S.
Thursday evening

My dearest dear - these days drag by in a flash.  Half of me is too rushed to do anything I want to properly - and the other half misses just the look and sound of you so badly that, if I think, I can feel my heart inside me get tighter and tighter with aching and it presses against the back of my eyes - until I have to think my hardest about something else, in case I cry (and it doesn't even help to say there's nothing to cry for) I'm afraid I'm a bit of a weakling - but it's something to explain it to you - because more and more I come to realize that men's and women's feelings in love are very very different - so one of the safest things to do first is to find out and understand what the other person feels, so that you can fit in.

It's strange what a vivid picture I have of how we'll treat each other when we're married.  It's much more me coming to live in your life than you mine - but they're very separate lives, all the same.  I hope, in some ways, they won't be quite as separate as I picture them, but I'm quite convinced the most ideal kind of friendship between two people is one that doesn't make too many demands on the other - and yet has a limitless fund of interest in the other.

Darling - it would be one of the most wonderful things if you had a room in Richmond (and, from the look of the advertisements in the local paper, it ought to be easy to get one) - but Fulham and the Finance Committee worry me a bit.  Not because (and this will always worry me more) I can make myself care very much bout people being unfairly turned out of their homes in Chelsea - but because I have got so used to thinking of you as encased in a layer of magnificent ambition for the good of mankind; that if it was through me that it got broken, it would break my heart too.  So, if there's the slightest chance of your coming to Richmond and spoiling one of the tings I love best in you - I'd much rather you stayed where you are - and if ever afterwards an occasion ever arises when you want with all your heart to do something for me - and yet it means leaving one of the best parts of yourself behind - please, please, just explain to me and don't do it.  Because I'm such a selfish person sometimes, and I'm always sorry for it afterwards.

I loved going to Aunt Mildred's - and would have liked to have written & thanked her (specially as it was their last bottle of champagne!) - but I thought perhaps it might have looked a bit silly.

Miss Cross took us for a lovely picnic yesterday - But she drives so badly she gave me the willies all the way.  We saw her cottage and she's rented it for 3 years at £45 a year.  It's in most wonderful repair and much nicer inside than out.  It's not really at all picturesque but really very nice.  She bought a Dalton's weekly which I looked at - it simply makes your mouth water - cottages & flats by the million - a flat in Elleker Gardens, Richmond for 17/- a week!

I have had "The Bride's Book" sent me by the Evening Standard - it's really quite nice with heaps of nice useful hints as to how to get stains off furniture and clean carpets and blank pages to put in your own hints and recipes etc: I'll show it to you on Saturday.

We come back to school next term on Sept 22nd - so if you could wangle yours on the 14th - we could go to Wensley (if they ask me) - on Friday Sept 11th for a week - which would be lovely  - or anywhere else with you would be wonderful.

I haven't had time to clip much into my "English in Love" - but I'm frightfully thrilled with it.  Than you so much.

It's Walton Regatta on Saturday - I was thinking we might buy the Richmond & Twickenham Times & meet for lunch at 1.30 - & look at rooms for fun in the afternoon.  But I suppose it would be nicer to go down to watch the racing in the Dinghy (if it's warm)

- Oh - my very own dearest dearest dear you seem such a long long way away - and I don't seem to be able to see nearly enough of you - I suppose you'll be too busy tomorrow evening to ring me up? - that would help Saturday to come a bit nearer. - If not, Saturday morning before 9 is best.

I love you so very very much.

- If I could see you for 10 minutes it would be all right - but I suppose I can wait.

Mary Pleasant   xxx

9th May 1936 - Terrick to Mary

35 Nevern Place
S.W.5


9th May 1936

My Darling, 

How hot it is!  I have just come back from a Socials Committee and made up my accounts.  We have done well, and are getting up a dance for Saturday 27th.  That means that I shall come and see "As You Like It" sometime during the week.

A funny thing happened today.  I sat all day in the Conference Room & just knocked at the door of the Administration next door and put my head in whenever I wanted something.  Stonelake mentioned to Ashe that I knocked on the door but did not dare say that I put my head into the room.  Ashe said "Good Lord, he mustn't go into the passage at all.  He must thump on the wall between the rooms when he wants anything".  So I did all day, but I told Stonelake that at about 6p.m. long after Ashe would have departed I wanted to come into the administration to get some papers for tomorrow that no one else knew how to collect.  Stonelake said O.K. in any case if I saw Ashe in the corridor as I came out of the conference room I could go back but he always leaves the office before 5.  So I did it.  I was in Administration collecting my things when the door opened and who should come in but Ashe.  Stonelake went scarlet and I felt I did too.  I haven't felt like it since I was caught wandering about one of my prep schools in the dead of night.  Ashe only said: "Well how is the pariah?" and asked Drew a question and went out again, but I bet there will be trouble tomorrow for Stonelake.  He is going to get in his say first.  Isn't it foolish!

Darling, in that second-hand shop I was telling you about I have just seen some wonderful chairs, table and sideboard in natural oak.  Also the chairs I was telling you about have got arms - like this

only it leans back not forward as I have drawn it.  I wish you could see them; couldn't you come up before the shop shuts on Friday?  And then we could go back to Richmond together to "Midsummer Night's Dream".  They are also selling off a manufacturers stock of carpet at 40% his price.

I took your camera to Kodak, after haggling a bit and saying it was our fault the assistant at length took the camera behind the scenes to an expert, and then said they would keep it till Saturday and see to it.

I have just heard form the Poly Friendly Society that they will pay all my dentist's bill & 15/- of the 18/6 of my optician's.  Wonderful, isn't it!

Let me know how soon you can come up on Friday.  I'll probably spend the early afternoon at the Museum or the Records Office.

It was wonderful hearing from you yesterday evening.  I wish you were here now.

I have all sorts of dreams of us two in the future when I am travelling in the bus.  Probably not at all the type of future you would like - too much struggle and strife (not between us) attached to it.

I must stop now and write to a man about a dance band for a dance.s

All my heart and the love in it.

Your

Terrick

7th May 1936 - Terrick to Mary

35 Nevern Place
S.W.5

7th May 1936


Darlingest, 

The film is nearly perfect!  The processor describes it as "slightly over-exposed" and "overexposed" and it certainly is in bits, but not, as far as I can see very seriously.  Your dress has come out a dazzling white and the white round the dining-room window is rather glaring, & the washing, but I think that with a full size picture it will look all right.  All the longer shots look perfect, though one can't tell without projecting.  The scene in the consulting-room looks marvellous.  There is not sign of the outdoor world in it at all.  I should think that with the two ends of the ping-pong tables we might do without interior shots for quite a time.

I was very surprised that the film was over-exposed.  I would have bet a pound that it would have been on the under-exposed side.  I was particularly afraid of the green ping pong bat.  Remembering how black the grass had come out in the scene of Inge rolling over and you pouring out the water jug, I felt sure the board would be too dark.  It is just right.  I am crazy to see it projected.

I spent this afternoon in the Public Records Office, a fascinating place.  One of the books I asked for absolutely floored me: (a) it was a manuscript in old-English writing (b) it was in Latin (c) every other word was abbreviated unrecognisably.  I gave it up and concentrated on the stuff that had been translated and printed.  One interesting new line of inquiry that I found was that a place called Church Staunton somewhere in the diocese of Salisbury was once called Staunton FitzHugh because the FitzHughs had been lords of the manor.

When I came out I would have come down to Richmond but by the time I had got the film from Selfridge - it was only just ready - it was after five, and as I have to be at a political branch meeting at eight in Chelsea and have dinner I should not have had much time with you.

Tomorrow I am catching the 10a.m. coach from King's Cross arriving at Luton at 11.30, then on to Bedford and Eaton Socon (the parish where Begwary is).  In the Victorian History of Bedfordshire the house is described as "a very dilapidated half-timbered structure, the bricks between the framing being laid in herring-bone fashion, while the windows are filled in with double-hung sashes and the walls covered on the outside with plaster.  The roof is of slate, and the building is partially surrounded by a moat". It sounds attractive doesn't it.  Referring to the "ancient manor" the county History says: "It's site is probably marked by 'Begwary Farm' in existence to the present day".

What is the number of you car? & did your mother come up in it?  Oh, no of course she didn't, I remember now!  But as I was coming from the Records Office I saw a car the exact double of yours in (I think it was) Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Write to me, dear.  I have now one hundred and sixty-seven letters and cards from you, including ¾ of one that you tore up.

I am so sorry that I shall see so little of you this week-end.  Can't I come to the Shakespeare Society party?  You didn't seem very anxious to have me.

When I rang up your mother to ask if I could borrow a camera, she asked me for the number of this house as a letter had come for me addressed care of her - obviously as a result of the announcement. It arrived to-day marked: "Personal. Please Forward".  I was a bit mystified at the stress laid on it, but I wasn't when I opened it.  It was from some birth-control people soliciting my custom!

Three people in this house have now congratulated me.

I have got the super reel.  Unless you particularly want to be present I will wile away the long Sunday without you by stringing together the odd films.

I wish you all the best for to-morrow morning.  I didn't know you were going up so soon.  You can tell me how you have got on when I see you at about 8 in the evening  I don't think I'll be later than that, but you can understand that after trying so long to get up to Begwary, Eaton Scoton and the other places, when I do I don't want to have come away without seeing anything.

Goodbye till tomorrow, darling.

All my love

Terrick

6th May 1936 - Terrick to Mary

35 Nevern Place
S.W. 5

6th May 1936


My Darling, 

Well, are you thinking of me less?  I expect you are now thinking of me a lot less than I think of you.  Still I shall have plenty of opportunity after midday tomorrow as I have got a holiday from then till Monday morning.  On the other hand perhaps that won't make much difference to the amount I think of you.  You see I already think of you in all my unoccupied moments.  The catch is that I am seldom unoccupied.  From one minute to another I am always engrossed in one of a few things.  Travelling in buses & tubes and lying in bed, eating and talking to people who do not interest me I think of you.

Tomorrow afternoon I shall go to the British Museum.  On Friday I am going to Begwary (the way the present directory spells Beggary) by bus; Green Line to Luton and local buses to Bedford and beyond.  I shall stop in Bedford and look up something in an index of old wills that they have there.  I have rung up your mother and asked her to lend me one of her cameras, so Jill is bringing it up to Raeburn House tomorrow evening, then I can take a photograph of the old house if it still exists and send it to my father.  The directory of Bedfordshire mentions the hamlet of Begwary but funnily enough gives no list of inhabitants.  If it is deserted I shall plant the FitzHugh standard there and take possession under the banner of the hoggets and shirlings.

Renny rang me up today, he wants to know for certain if he is to come down this week-end and if Bodil is coming.  I told him I would ring you up tomorrow and find out.  He wants to come.

I am very tempted to get a Dekko film camera, giving our present one in part exchange.  There is so much more that one can do with a better lens and with different speeds etc.  On the other hand a better lens will mean that a light meter will be absolutely necessary.  At present we can be pretty certain of being right if we have the aperture full open, but with 1.9 lens we should over-expose if we did that, & we should have to guess the other stops if we had no meter.  Also I should have to wangle our titler to suit a different camera or get another one.  My dealer would allow me 50% on our present titler.  What tempts me to do it now is that Dekkos have just gone up by £1 and I can get one of the pre-rise ones.  I could pay the difference between cameras by instalments. 

Just now I am collecting silver paper to make light reflectors to save paying 7/6 each for them.  I am funny in one direction I plan to spend one & in another, quite independently, I try to save it.

It is hot!

I find that my short story classes this term are on Thursdays so that will fit in nicely with your Shakespeare.  This day last year was Jubilee Day.  The weather has been rather the same hasn't it.

I'll ring you up tomorrow some time in the morning.

Goodnight my dearest of dears.

Terrick    XXX