The six thirty bus leaves half an hour before the seven o’clock, which is a splendid thought, or if you are unfed on the train, there would be time to eat first. Again one might eat here. I can see no reason why unkind fate should make me do something else on Thursday, I have every evening free for U.F. to interfere. I shall struggle against any possible intrusion into my programme. If everything is kind, and if you are kind and the train driver is kind, we shall hear the Halle orchestra then on Thursday and Yoiks for that.

                        A shrewd and a cutting blow, that remark of yours in this letter….”But you are always so busy”. As a matter of fact I was so lazy yesterday, too lazy to write even to you, too damnably lazy to be sane. I spent the morning reading the Sunday Times and Hakluyt and cleaning my shoes and filling my pipe and yawning and, like Alice, Sitting like anything. After lunch I snoozed and then went up to the nice kindly restful Brookes and had tea, played pingppong violently with Arnold and his Oliver and Colin, had supper and sat again until I cycled home and to bed. A fruitless day, but as I had had three shows last week and two evenings of rehearsal I was a spent torch. I am now recuperated and have been battling all day over a story and now, just as it is working itself out, I have to go to have tea with Frank Sadgrove and on to a Fantasticks rehearsal. More rows, with the comedian this time, but only a spot of temperament of his. I think all will end well. I am disatisfied with myself these days, you may be able topull me round. I cannot get going, on anything. Life seems chaotic and purposeless and I am adrift. I can’t get a clean wind, either to tack against with my teeth set or to sail with with taut sheets. Its strange. Hence my diffidence and restraint generally. It will work out. A findamental change is indicated. This type writer will type i’s for o’s and u’s. Its a strange one.

                        Dear dear, Thursday is Christopher and Phyl’s wedding day !!! I am sensible about this business now, and see that it is inevitable, fate, Life, for the Best, suitable, natural, proper, sensible, wise, apt, just, fitting, significant, and altogether comma il faut. At the same time…. there is a damnable feeling of being left out of it, and a sort of mild spiritual flatulence. I have blessed them both, wished them well, sent them my greetings and told them that I’m very pleased. And yet…. heigh ho, the wind, and the rain.

                        Don’t say Tomorrow and tomorrow like that, It may sound exciting and fertile to you, but it reminds me at once of Macbeth’s dreadul dispairing lament,

…..Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
Towards the last syllible of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way
To dusty death. . . . . .
Life’s but a poor player who frets and struts his time upon our stage,
A tale told by and idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying. . . . Nothing. !

C’est le migraine, et ca passe, n’import.

                        Who is La Fabiola by, and where is the picture ? Would you find out from me at the School ? I ought to know, its my greatest treasure that picture, and I am ignorant. I believe it is Spanish.

                        Mon Dieu, its inexpressibly comforting to have so warm and loyal and abundant a friend as you. Only all the while I feel guilty, honestly, not, modestly and coyly speaking. God in Heaven, as I am now, purposeless, drifting with no bite to the sails, I am a sorry barque, whilst you need a cutter, clean and trim, with a fresh wind on the quarter, lilting and sparkling along, hard over, halyards singing, foam curling away from deep bows. Perhaps I am wrong, and yet were I a rat I would think about packing up my suitcase and giving a week’s notice. Ought not I to say, Betty, you swift keen person, look elsewhwre, to fresher fields and more promising, more definite vistas.” I won’t say it, I’m far too questioning of everything at the moment.

                        Fear not, suddenly I shall get the wind I am waiting for, and then all will be enthusiasm and brightness again and zest and eagerness. Bobby, bless the man, has sent me a poem as a present, an exquisite thing, called Winter Aconites. Look them up before Thursday and we’ll read the poem. Its delicate and gossamer lovely. He is a grand friend, and is not loyalty the greatest of virtues ? Remember Rupert Brooke….

So for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,
And the high cause of love’s magnificence,
And to keep loyalties young, I’ll write those
names Golden for ever, eagles crying flames,…. ?

305 ORPHANAGE ROAD
ERDINGTON
BIRMINGHAM
November 23rd. 1936

My Dear Betty,

That was a happy peaceful evening, and I enjoyed it immensely. I hope the verdict on my presentability for a companion for you was favourable, Horrible if the verdict is unfavourable!

I took a bus after all, that tram decided to roost for seven minutes and I couldn’t bear sitting caged in a tram all that time!    A bus came along and as I descended a kindly Midland Red pulled up and so I was home in great style in record time, and was in my room by half past eleven, or soon afterwards.  And so peacefully and contentedly to bed, after an interval of reading Hakluyt.

I do hope all will be well for Thursday evening,  and I shall try to have nothing on at all, so that there will be no waste of time whilst you sit in Pattisons.    It is the night before the Dairy show and I might have to hold a final rehearsal, but I am planning things to avoid it.    The excuse is that it is wiser to give the kids a free night before the show for them to go to bed early.    Of course, what we ought to have is a week-end at least, these evenings ending at ten thirty are most tantalising.

Victor is broadcasting a composition of his own on Thursday at a quarter to eight, and we can listen to that. He’s conducting the Philharmonic who will play it.    I’ve seen the score and heard bits of it on the piano and it sounds most exciting.

And at that point Arnold called for me to go to the Heraldic Exhibition, so I had to stop! This is written later, at the dairy, in between rehearsals. So it’s not a proper lettert after all! I’ll write properly later, &, all being well, we meet on Thursday. Speed the dayYour David
You are a grand person, aren’t you!

305 ORPHANAGE ROAD ERDINGTON BIRMINGHAM 10th.   November.   1936

My Dear Betty,

You see, you have such glorious enthusiasms, and where are mine ? Ou est les neiges d’Automne ? Are they fled, am I placid and unenthusiastic ? Or is it my slight distemper of these days which drains me ? I have just been to the doctor, for the first time for ten years, and had a sherry with him and he prodded me and says that I have just missed Pneumonia this last fortnight, by the skin of my teeth ! I felt ashamed of going, it seemed so feeble to go to a vet, but he assures me that it was worth it. He has given me some dope, foul stuff, blast his eyes, and is seeing me on Saturday, so I should get my verve back again. Anyhow, I’m all right now, and have cured myself which is a nice thought. Its so damned undignified to be ill or below par, so unnecessary and feeble. I hate it.

This week is a Hellofaweek. I have the Fantasticks performing on Saturday and the other woman in the old troupe has chucked us. Someone has been found, but with six days to learn all her lines Ye Gods, this is a grand life. Then my Happy Health Hunters perform in a sort of a way next Tuesday, which means rehearsals tonight, Friday and next Sunday. On top of all this the Dairymaid goes to Press on Friday and it all has to be written by then !  If we meet this week it’ll be a miracle. Perhaps on Sunday, I don’t know, we’ll see. If before I’ll let you know. Its getting increasingly difficult not to have one blissful evening with you about the place, its all very dangerous, but is it, no. I don’t know, I’m all upside donw now anyhow, (and the typewriter is catching the complaint).

You are doing things ! I will, too, though I don’t seem to be doing anything these past few weeks. Is it that I am decadent ? I wonder. A remark of Galsworthy’s is pleasant, – Its advice to a young writer…”Stick to it and don’t be discouraged, – all   creative work comes in gusts and fits and puffs and starts.”

And its not very very wrong to be thrilled about your own work. So long as you are sure that it is good, then be thrilled and on the wings of that exultation go on.

Oh dear, you do ask a lot of Life, don’t you ? You expect so much, and thus you will get it, and if I can help you I’ll be…well…as fully repaid as you. I am a timorous beastie. “Dans l’amour il y a toujours l’un qui baise et l’autre qui tend la joue”. That is frightening. But I am in no mood for fundamental philosophising, and I am grateful and  exhilarated and impatient for your warmth and kindliness and cosiness. There’s a sort of a restfulness when we are together, but we must not run on like this.

How shall we do anything this week ? Its doubtful if I shall be free in the evenings at all, but on Sunday we might do something. If the Dairymaid is finished I shall have it to myself. If not I have promised to spend the day writing with Eileen. I’ll write to you on Friday evening, no, half a minute, we could meet on Friday again after my rehearsal! That’s a possibility. I’ll let you know on Friday morning. If possible I’ll meet you as last week and then we shall see. Good.

No more for now, write when you feel like it and you don’t bore me, as you keep on feeling. My god, don’t think I’m borable or priggish or tired. Hell, you aren’t the only young one ! I won’t be old. I’ve got a lot to do in the next ten years and only by being young and enthusiastic and plodding exuberantly can I do it, I shall. Help me Betty.    Can you cook ? I can, a bit.

Things will happen.
Forgive me now,
Lots of love, ardent enthusiastic young lady, from your

305 Orphanage Road
ERDINGTON
BIRMINGHAM
– – – – – – –
NOVEMBER 3rd. 1936

Dear Betty,
A very fine letter, and a great joy to me. I wished you were on the telephone on Sunday, because my plans went awry. On Saturday I woke up with a raging temperature and a limpness of spirit, which spelt fever unless I was sensible. So I cancelled all engagements, which sounds very grand, and sat about in my fluffy dressing gown and read Pepys and listened to the radio. If you had been on the telephone or wireable on the Sunday, when I was almost fit to be seen, we could have foregathered. But perhaps my cure was swifter in solitary confinement.

“Hating to see a man kicked when he is down” is not the private dislike of the Socialist party, surely ? It seems to me that the under-dog suffers more in either the socialist state or in the dictator’s state than in the democratic one. For one thing, in the socialist regime there are more underdogs, and kicks seem to be free and plentiful for both men who are up and men, who are down. Surely the ideal is the maximum freedoms for the individual, and in Russia, (the only example of the completely socialist state) there is less freedom than in any country in the world. The individual dare not show the slightest indication for a will of his own, or it is a case of “off with his head, said the Red Commissar”. Underdogs do get kicked, that is life, nature, red in tooth and claw and all that. But he is kicked less, I feel, in a state organised along constitutional and democratic lines than in any other, I admit that to the fellow down on his luck who lacks vision or imagination, a socialist state is desirable, because he thinks that the people who are not “down” will take his place and he sees himself as up, without any effort on his part. But England has been envied for centuries for its freedoms of the individual, and that springs, I think, from democracy and constitutional government. Any hunted man will seek refuge in this country, and finds it, and you can say what you like, think what you like and, so long as you don’t interfere with other people, do what you like. Here the Government respects and protects the individual and pursues the true function of government by being of the people and for the people. In fascist and socialist states the Government is like a medieval king, it rules the people, and makes the people do what it deems the best thing. Their feelings count for nothing, and the slightest criticism is squashed ruthlessly. Is that not so ? Observe the censorship of the Press in Russia and Germany.

But enough of this, I don’t know I’m sure, only I can’t see how a socialist state would make you or I better off. Here the artist can follow his own inclination, and no thinking person with any intelligence wants to be a member of a single minded many headed mass of people. Humans are not sheep. Fascists and Socialists make them so, and have pretty fierce sheep dogs to worry anyone with any ideas of his own.

Monday, Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday evenings, and afternoons are reserved for the Dairymaid this week, because I did none this week-end, and the whole job must be done by the tenth of the month. About Friday I will see, and by then I shall not creak and wheeze. I am drinking a Guinness a Day to back myself up. I miss the country air of the cottage I think. Oh for a thousand pounds for a novel, and a trip round the world, pottering about the place in the sun.

This is a brief letter, because I’ve got my Carla Beck ad. to write before lunch to catch the post for Yorkshire and it is nearly noon. So excuse more but believe that given the leisure I would write for hours and hours. We’ll do something this week.

Meanwhile my love and I’m looking forward to seeing that new frock.

Have you read National Velvet ? Its superb.