1021 DOCKS OPERATING COY., R.E. C.M.F.

Dearest,
Two letters, an airletter sent on the 3rd- 5th. Feb and a surface mail with Dickie’s drawing and his very charming letter which shall be answered as an Example of Answering Letters.   The drawing is quite exquisite, and I feel that it is a portrait and from it I do get to know him a little more, but isn’t he very good looking, such a handsome person indeed.   Will he stay with us?   Won’t he want to go and live somewhere else, posher and more gracious and spacious. Do be nice to him so that he stays; indeed a handsome gentleman.    Oh dear. So nice.   And the ghost photographs also, with a doll lying looking at your mother with a ghost dog sitting on the bed, where no real dog could go.    Its Candy’s ghost doing what Candy dreams of doing.   Nice package of post altogether, thankyou all.   Your letter was full of uneasy conscience about a mythical, – more ghosts- aunt coming to stay so that Eric couldn’t; entirely justified and proper, its not a fib its diplomacy, I understand that the neighbours are people who presume, they are that kind and the only defence apart from an impossible and frank statement, is tactful lying.   Fortunately we have between us enough Aunts, like my Malaria, for all contingencies.  Well done, squirm not.

I have been strong minded and not bought a miniature. It was 600 lire, could get it for twenty five bob with coyness.   In oil, six inches by four, well framed, of a scene from a pillared cathedral balcony, overlooking the pink roofs and white walls of a piazza in a little sunny town near here.   Also the head of an African woman with an African inscrutable expression.    I went to a little shop and got to know the padrone, a man with a workshop where cunning workmen make gold work and silver work and watched them.  All fascinating. He has in his house, to which I am invited, a reputed Raphael, chained and barred behind a grill.   He has rare things of all sorts, the real Italian atmosphere, ivories, crucifixes, little inlaid boxes, and pictures and enamels of all kinds.   Also some real stone cameos. But I looked and bought not.   I shall go again to be tempted.   And tomorrow I go to the studio of a man who came to the Mess, the interpreter brought him to see me, a real and a famous artist.    A plump blue suited little man like my Uncle Fred, but a real hundred percenter.    I toyed with the idea of a portrait and he offered to do one for 6000 lire, which is fifteen pounds and very cheap, but I shall not spend all that yet.   We’ll have portraits painted later in Italy for Dickie to have. “The old man just before he went the cropper” and “My Mother, rather sweet wasn’t she”   He can hang them in his library and show them to his grandchildren and feel hurt when they laugh at the old fashioned couple who are so obviously stuffy and inhuman and have none of the brilliant feelings, emotions and wit they have.

Peter goes on leave tomorrow, to Napoli.   I can’t go because of this application, which has passed the O.C. and, with some hiccupping the Colonel and is now being pushed through Sub Area to District. From there it goes to Corps, to Army H.Q. and then, battered, dog-eared and late for the closing date I expect to Allied Forces H/Q. The thing is I am A1, and the announcement says applicants should not be above Medical Category Bl.   But as should is the operative word and as I am 38 and in a shocking state of disrepair I am having it pushed ahead. I can take a week at Gragnano with Cliff after the application is turned down and I’ve had my interview if any, and it will be high spring then and grand in the mountains.

I am hunting a frame for the drawing of Richard. Its worth it. I should love to take you to these little shops, they do have good things, being a maestro here is a respectable and quite normal trade. This Maestro yesterday was just like a successful coal merchant.  Only he sketched a face of me with charcoal from his waistcoat pocket to show the size in a matter of seconds and proved he was a maestro and not a dummy. It will be interesting seeing his work in his studio.   I expect the colonel who was here last night will have his done anyhow. But the artist will have to be very clever.

D’you know, I see a fault in you, which can and must be remedied. If I were there it wouldn’t happen, oh no. You go to bed too late. If Richard takes his dinner at 2200 hours surely you can bed down then? By staying very late before going to bed, and then wasting your precious sleep time by writing to Mr. Scott in Italy you are depriving yourself of valuable sleep and rest and dickie and I won’t like it if you get poorly bad.   Can you not make a resolution and stick to it and never mind the vicious habits of your disreputable mama and go to bed and be firm and strong and resolute at 10 o’clock?   Sometimes anyhow, or make eleven a dead line for lights out and sleep? Do try. Your well being is a great concern of ours, Richard and me and if that aforesaid disreputable granny likes to doodle with her head nodding, glasses awry and stockinged legs stretched towards the fire till dreadful hours, leave her at it. Be bold, GO TO BED! If I were there…. Bye bye, dearest.. David