That’s all for now-to work.
Much love, Soo
Darling Susan,
Well I noted the interview-someone sent it. Made me shriek in spots (je suis communiste-I bet I never said that),1 and I also noted a slight Generation Gap between you & the interviewer? I can see you muddled her up fair.
The Sir O. hoop-la has made nary a ripple out here, but someone sent me C. Cockburn’s2 review of his book-not exactly what you’d call a selling review. Do tell about the book.
Tud was a pure Cuddum when he used to come to see us at Rotherhithe St. Esmond adored him. (The only one of our family he did.) And don’t you remember how he used to say Diana was silly and so on? But of course he adored the Boud, in some ways I always thought she was his Favourite Sister.
Well Susan a lot of people are coming to dinner so I’d better start cooking it. Goodbye for the present.
Much love, Susan
Dereleeng
Would it be a good idea to go to you & Nard for Christmas, or would you really rather I went later on in January? I always slightly dread journeying around that time as it’s just when the snow comes but of course if it looks bad I will just take a train.
Please no presents. I will arrive-if by car-laden with household goods for your store cupboard. I have bought two 5-kilo drums of soap powder for the laundry machine, they cost 20 Frs each drum, but I got them cheaper, 16.40 each. Then I could get a first-class soap powder for the washing-up machine called Dish Wasch but I have no idea if this can be had in large quantities. Bird seed & maize, of course, & would you like some packets of envelopes? They are the same as this one & are 90 rappen for 100! Just ask Marie if she wants things like floor clothes [sic]-which always wear out-& loo paper, the very soft, 90 rappen for two rolls. And ask your daily how many kilos of soap powder she wants.
Much love from Woman
Dearest Hen,
Pity about those Conservatives, if I’d known it was for them I should have ordered up something v. different,1 such as one of those wartime receipts I found at the Isle that say ‘Soak several biscuits in water overnight, squeeze out, spread thinly with jam and bake.’
Benj went to dinner at S. Head’s2 the other night. ‘What did you have?’ ‘The first course was cold toast, the next course was soup, and at midnight we had salmon.’
Well Hen come to think of it there are masses of people coming to dinner here, so I’d better start the cold toast, goodbye for present,
Yr loving Hen
Darling Debo:
It’s Tom’s birthday & he would be 60 which seems completely incredible. When I thought about it I couldn’t help crying. Not only do I long for him to be alive for himself but also selfishly for me. Kit is such a strange person when it comes to his sons & I know Tom would have been someone he would have listened to. One hasn’t got a single male person to rely upon as a result of all these vile wars, so the ones who are left just do as they please which is often highly dire, eh. I have got so much to tell you that I must see you before we are much older.
All love, Honks
Dereling,
I couldn’t go to Mémé, I was terrassée [knocked out] with frantic pain in the leg & poached egg eye & fearful tummy upset + headache so I must be breaking up I think. This morning the leg is better, the tummy, now quite empty, is quiet, the eye must be seen to be believed & the head aches but less. But I can’t go up I feel awful. What can it be? Come on Doctor, I had only eaten roast rec the day before so it can’t be poison. I did crawl to the street to try & go but I couldn’t, I feel awfully guilty. I had to put off Geoffrey too. No fever.
John [Sutro] telephoned. He had rung up the hospital & they said ‘as well as possible’.1 I suppose they always say that. Gillian [Sutro]’s brother died of it.
Love, N
Darling Debo:
I went down to Versailles yesterday & stayed three hours, & poor Naunce had had a truly dreadful morning in pain, unable to read let alone write. While I was there of course we laughed & she cheered up completely & said the pain almost went away, & she even looked different. One of the things that kills one is that she’s got nobody to sort of take the Dr for example in hand, when one’s ill one has no energy even to telephone. Anyway she seemed relieved when I said I would, or rather when I tentatively suggested I might, & agreed quickly. I’ve just got him on the telephone & he says she can take up to five aspirins a day as well as the Veophan-she didn’t dare take even one, there’s Muv for you! I do hope she will, & I think she certainly will because pain soon shows one the way.
The fact is I couldn’t have been away at a worse moment with this horrible sciatica, & then Mark. She says she’s had as many letters as a widow would. She dies to get her letters to him back, she says his Greek friends & Eddie G-H1 would send them but she fears this sister (she thought all his sisters had conked) & says she sounds a real burner of letters because of ‘no flowers’ & so on. Poorling Naunce I felt so sad at the beginning yesterday but of course she’s got terrific courage & how marvellous it is the way everything amuses her. Luckily I’d got 17 days’ worth of happenings to relate. She said she could understand Dolly [Radziwill] wanting to die to be out of pain.
The next excitement is Wife’s visit, Naunce is almost as excited as I am for it. Don’t let her resolve weaken will you.
All love darling, Honks
Dear Miss
I’m being such a bore to everybody & eating chunks of Honks’s life. If I were Sir Oz I wld be fed up. I’ve got hardly any pain now & wld see myself nearly out of the wood exc. that a large lump has loomed in the region of my liver & lights which I suppose must be seen to. Sir O very naturally wants to ship me off to London (to have a bit more of Honks’s attention) but I say no thanks, look what happened to Mark. At present lumpling doesn’t seem dangerous but the London drs would soon stir it up I guess.
Much love, N
Darling Debo:
Wife’s visit was marvellous & I love her sister.1 Of course Wife & I both collapsed towards the end but Elizabeth was game to the last. I miss them dreadfully, needless to say. We lunched with the Count [de Baglion] on their last day so Elizabeth saw four queer dwellings (counting Ferays2 as two). Is this worth putting in Guinness book of records?
Jean won’t let us near his dungeon3 when we do our tour next month. It’s only because the covers aren’t made for the chairs. But one can’t talk him into it bother him.
All love darling, Honks
P.S. Just spoken to Naunce & Col has told her he’s going to marry Violette4 & she (Naunce) really doesn’t seem to mind in the least. As I knew this was looming (or thought I knew) it was one of the things I most dreaded, but it has come so late in the day (Col is almost seventy) that she has got over the annoyance years ago, evidently, & now just thinks it rather a bore for him & also (which is true) rather silly to give up one’s freedom. Well darling it is a huge relief she’s taken it like this. How strange life is.
Dear Miss
I’ve been felled by disappointment. Did you read about a 1933 penny fetching thousands? Well you know how I’ve never spent a penny since you once told me their immense value, so reading about the 1933 one I rushed to huge heavy bagling where I keep them-was not at all surprised but highly gratified soon to see the magic figures on a particularly fresh new penny. So I was dialling Honks when I noted that it was a ½ d. DON’T! ADMIT! EET EES.
Well the tortoise. Marie & Mme Guimont1 (10/-an hour) dug her out of her igloo in MY time, destroyed the igloo scientifically designed by Y[ours] T[ruly] & woke her up by putting her in the warm kitchen. I was really good & controlled my feelings but explained to M that she must put a box full of hay on its side in the garden so that the tortoise can go in & out as she likes. That worked very well & she went to sleep again. Then, when we had 4 degrees of frost, the cats fought over the box, the hay was all over the place & the tortoise had vanished. I thought she must be dead & made such a fuss that the ladies said ‘after all a tortoise is not a baby’
. However as soon as the sun came out again there she was galloping down the path. So I’ve chucked it & left her out now. She is evidently rather tougher than I thought.
My progress continues though I rather dread next week’s tests. Naivair. I am most exceedingly feeble. Well, 3 weeks motionless!
Kay Clark’s effort is printed every week.2 Utterly brilliant. I don’t know when one can hear it. ll’ll surely be a book.
The East German Govt considers me & Wooms as their guests. Good egg. Oh how I pray I shall be all right.
A letter from Monty: ‘I give Frederick full marks (for the Thirty Years War)’.3 The dear soul says he’s not very well: ‘father & mother of a cold’. Shades of Farve!
Yrs to hand. When I see you appearing I shall know that I’ve had it so pray keep away-though I rather long for those wildly swivelling blue eyes I must confess.
Oh dear this letter is TOO LONG.
Love
Darling Woman
I am so sorry about the thief & your things, what a foul thing to happen. Honks tells me you have successfully wormed £400 out of poor Mr Budd for them, you must rush to Patou with it.
As for Nancy, she is the all-time worry isn’t she. The result of the tests has come through but she has not yet heard of the reaction of the specialist to them. There is something there, in her stomach, but what they don’t know, as liver & kidney are quite OK. I dread them opening up to see, better leave it if it isn’t annoying her, or do you think it could be what is causing the pain, I do wonder. Anyway it is all beastly, & she sounds very brave but low, at the same time, and no wonder.
Then, to crown everything, that wretched Colonel has had to choose that week to get married to that person he has been more or less with for ages. One simply does not know how much she minds, as she is such a private person & so desperately reserved one perhaps never will know. It must be miserable for her. I believe you are going to see her soon, that’s very good, and I am going for the weekend of 25th April, for chatting.
We are in turmoil here as the house opens tomorrow & they have just finished putting a steel rod to support the main landing on top of the stairs where crowds congregate & it might have collapsed, imagine how awful if that had happened.
Do ring up from Nancy’s, I long to hear the latest.
Much love, Stublow
Dearest Hen
Nancy-Well, she has got a slipped disc AND a lump in her stomach. The slipped disc dr says he can’t & won’t do anything re his kind of cure till a Big Lump Man has seen the B.L. So, on Good Friday the B.L. man loomed. Luckily she re-fell in love (having already fallen for the Disc Man). He looked at Everything and was mystified because the tests of last week showed the blood to be in v. good order and he says she looks so well that he can’t understand what it can be. She insists it’s her twin & calls it Lord Redesdale. She pictures it small, grey haired, in a beret & a very good cook. She told the specialist all this so he must fear for her sanity, eh.
Anyway in spite of all this AND that Col marrying she sounds v. cheerful on the phone. Honks says she gets very low, well who wouldn’t, but the minute she-Honks-goes, screaming with laughter sets in. It’s a question of ‘Silly this morning aren’t we miss?’ like the shop assistant said in Elliston & Cavell 1,000 years ago.
Well Hen, keep in etc. We are deep in the Hols here, horses horses all the way with Sophy.
Much love, Yr Hen
Darling Soo
I was deeply gratified to hear that you phoned (on your own phone) all the way from California for news of me. I call it faithful in the extreme.
I’m very well. They sawed me in half like a martyr & sewed me together again with raffia & the ghastly pain in my back has gone for good.
This is such a heavenly place. Except for two rather nasty days I’ve had a blissful time here-rivers of uninterrupted chat with yr Hen & your other sister-v. rare as far as Hen is concerned. Looked after by a nun we are all in love with-huge sunny room, marvellous food. In spite of the sawing I felt 0 unless I laughed which was agony non pareil. Even Muv wld have had to admit they’ve been marvellous with me.
That’s all. When do you come.
Much love, Soo
Darling Debo:
Thank you darling for letter, & Decca, & much phoning. Dr Dumas has got the analysis at last & of course it is cancer, but he repeats, not necessarily going at all quickly. He says they were obliged to leave a good deal behind though they did remove some of the liver. He says she ought to have ray treatment. Here is the frightful dilemma-he wd like her to go to Curie Foundation, but naturally the name of Curie may tell her everything in a flash.
After long discussion this is what we decided: I am to telephone Dr Dubrugeaud (the Versailles stomach specialist) & ask him if he knows of a good radiotherapy person in Versailles. I dread constant journeys to Paris for her, when sometimes I might not be able to take her. If he does know one Dr Dumas says we should tell her that as she still has some pain in the spine she must have heat treatment. I think that sounds plausible don’t you.
Oh Debo yesterday one sort of died of it all, I went over & there they were, she & Woo, she had been to coiffeur & was so pleased with clean hair but had really suffered there, & she was so brave & really looked so ill in the bright sun, yet interested in everything & laughing over Woman’s 1926 diary etc. I came away done for, it is so completely sad & frightful & I can’t bear pain for her. Poorling Naunce the unfairness of it all is too much.
All love, Honks
Wooms is being so truly wondair. I will go over every other day.
Darling Debo:
I’ve sent a letter, but this can go tomorrow. I forgot to say of course (but you knew it) I would be friends with Decca, naturally. Poor Decca I can so imagine how she’s feeling, so far off. I think June wd be better than Sept in every way, if she can manage it, because of Naunce’s book. Now I’ve had an awful idea. Do you think Naunce might blame us terribly for keeping her in the dark if finally she can’t finish her book? Do you think she might say if only she’d known she wd have (perhaps) given up Venice in order to finish it? I know she thinks it will be her best. There was a huge article in a German mag about Fred the Great & she asked me to translate it & I forced myself to do it & she rang up to say how much she was interested & how she looked forward to demolishing the silly man who wrote it (she LOVES Fred & can’t bear him to be denigrated). On the other hand it obviously is intensely frightening & preoccupying to know one’s got such an illness. What do you think?
Kit says radiotherapy is something they do do for rheumatism etc so that will be easily explained.
All love darling, Honks
Dear Miss
A slight blow has fallen-yr Hen so very very kindly suggests coming when Woman goes. I can’t possibly say no & in many ways I shall love to see her but I had counted on a good month of hard work before Venice. I’m desperately behind, you see. Also it means divorce from Honks. Also I can’t help wondering for how long? If she comes on purpose, as she almost says she will, it won’t be only for a few days. All these thoughts go round in my head, I can’t impart to any but you. It’s the work that worries me-I’m incapable of it with somebody there, I truly can’t. Oh dear oh dear. Nevair.
Woman is so perfect. When from time to time I wish to cry (it’s always over something quite silly) she puts the thing right in a minute. She took me to the dresser-I nearly died but goodness I feel better. All that grey hair (yes Miss please note) so depressing.
Last night Marie & I but not Woman were woken up by terrific screams in the garden, not a cat. It must be the hedge pigs worshipping each other-can’t think of anything else. Marie thought in her chaste & virginal way that they were murdering the tortoises-couldn’t make out if it was supposed to be the tortys screaming or the murdering pigs. Tortys pristine this morning-hand in glove.
I’ve ordered a chair like mine for Honks as a slight reward for all her g & l kindness for months. She talked of getting one but I can see she won’t.<
br />
I’ve started properly sleeping again at last-thought I’d lost the art. It was the only disagreeable thing that I never truly slept well. (Inter)
Much love, N
Dearest Hen,
Oh dear things are getting madly out of hand, plan-wise. Got yours of 9 May today and three from Nancy which more or less go as follows: 9 May, she says do come any time before end of June. 10 May, she fears it will be so dull for me because she simply must get back to work. 11 May, she says don’t come, because Marie is too tired & there’s no point in offering to help as she won’t allow.
These crossed mine to her, saying I’m arriving on 20 May & should like to put up in a hotel in Versailles. Alas, Hen, so by now she’ll have got that and I’ll have fussed her up no end.
Behind it all, she prob. thinks that what a bore having to work out the oubliettes for me & Honks, or some such. On the other hand if Honks & I turned up at same time & all was OK, & normal, it would seem like Mrs Ham’s dreamed-of death-bed scene, don’t you agree? But if I cld. stay in a hotel (& scram there quite a lot) this cld. be avoided.
I rang up Bob at work, & read out all the letters, to see what he thought shld. be done. Apart from saying with some acerbity ‘your family is v. difficult to fathom’, he thought I shld. go anyway. So, am. The pt. being, that we’ve already put off our trip to the South etc., and I’ve put in train massive arrangements in NY, or made Dinky do so; but mainly, I do awfully want to see Nancy. Later. HEN! You just rang up, so this is an ongoing conversation.
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