1224/5 Shipworking Sections R.E. CM.F.
No. 205

Dearest,
A little intermediate letter, announcing the sending of a Thing which is aimed at Good Housekeeping unless you think anyone else will take it.    It is written for no reason, other than being a vagrant idea come from I know not where and written on the unlikely chance of making a few baubees for you to spend. Do with it as you wish.

 I did some novel last night and have finished Chapter 2. I hope to get   it revised this evening and posted off to you. It will get easier as it goes on.   Its difficult not to seem dull, to me and us its so ordinary my only hope is that it will be fresher to the layman and laywoman.

 The Christmas flurry for Posties in England has sent our mail all off colour, the local post services being rushed and full up we have none, and the last from you came on Christmas Eve, so it is a bleak week, but several should filter through soon. But a Host of papers and spectators and Listeners have come, bless you, all together.   So I am happy with Janus.

 No news.    I write a little but my room is cold I am seeking an electric fire to put in.    Its hard on the fingers, though the old familiar dressing gown is a comfort.

 Dentist this morning, he is finishing off little stopping Jobs and soon I’ll be fine for a long spell.   He admired your drawing of Dickie’s teeth and aged him at 14 months by them. Two nights ago I had the thrill of Aida again, but after singing gloriously all through the tenor went a semi-tone flat on his last final and ultimate high note!   An awful event.   However the spectacle and the music and the triumphal march and the dancing and the rest of the show was very very good.   Allan came and actually lasted three acts, when he said Good night and went home.

 Your little boy, how does he?   Lanave and I are looking forward to the photographs so that we can paint the miniature for the alabaster   moulding, it will be exquisite, I think, on your dressing table, on a little wooden easel.

 The problem about the Guitar is not buying it, that is easy for about ten pounds (prices have soared here) but the packing would be a formidable task.   We can’t send things home with people, even when we know someone is going home.   That’s very difficult and naughty.   Its a tricky business, sorry though I am for Mrs F’s daughter.    I had an airgraph from her, by the way, and she mentioned it there.   Difficult.   Also from Mummy Hanson came an airgraph, bless her.

It will be good to have your Christmas news, of the Crofters and Dickie’s Christmas.   Will he be Father Christmasable next Christmas?

No news, dearest, so this is short.    But there is much love with it, and maybe some novel will come by sea mail with this post. Be kind to it when it does come.    If this Thing, called Chivalry, is a wash out, tear it up.    If you like to hawk it, hawk on.

Bless you, and my son Dickie.
Ever…
David
Dear me, I am blessed- to have so lively, loving, so warm & so sweet a home with my place kept there for me!

1224/5 Shipworking Sections R.E.   C.M.F.
No. 204

Dearest,

Hullo to you and Dickie.     You go back to Great Alne today, after your week at the Croft.    Good.  I expect you had a good time and there would at least be a rest from the cares and toils of household management and food to eat you haven’t had to buy or cook or think of.    And how did Richard behave as a guest?    He will soon be getting the idea that there are others places beyond his own home and village.   I am anxious to learn what the mysterious Toy was.    Something mechanical, I bet, maybe a baby baby-Austin!    There will be a letter soon, there has been an air mail lull since Christmas Eve when two came from you, but today Postie brought a bundle of Spectators, Listeners, the English Review and a Nineteenth Century, and a letter from Careless giving the November balance sheet, a black credit of £46.    The Captains pay is coming in now I see. Good.   You lose a shilling a day I’m afraid.   You’ll have got a new book. An example of The Higher the Fewer.

No news, a dull period of after-Christmas.    We had-a pukkah parade on the main square yesterday when all my braves stood in serried ranks looking their best and all the officers and we inspected them and they marched past.    As one goes along our lines one gets violent clouds of strong garlic alternating with very sweet hair oil. Its odd. But they love a pukkha parade, try so hard.

I don’t suppose Mr. Kelly could get us a copy of Trevelyan’s new Social History?    Its a savoury idea.

What am I to do with my 4th.C. B.C. little pots!    they are such a responsibility.    Oh dear.

Oh, the little plays. Could we call them “THE KING’S MESSENGER and other plays for Children’s Theatre”?   We would have to switch them round to put the K.M. first.    The best idea I have got yet.    Dignified sort of.   Mean altering the Introduction to read the right way round. Difficult.

I have been battling with the book, or Battling with the Book. You would have recognised the symptoms had you been here.    Periods of Sitting about near my desk, sulkily, periods of sitting at my desk, reading anything, the more inapt the better, periods of staring at people like poor uncomprehending Derek, with glassy eyes, periods of sitting in uncomfortable positions and occasional Despair.    But we have started again and are getting ready for a Piece.    The trouble is that my own military experiences, as a Transportation officer are so dull and Base that a narrative would be damned.    So we must observe and flitter about.    But one has to start as a soldier.    I have to wean the story soon, maybe in this chapter, as painlessly as possible from narration in chronological order to chitter chat.    I think columnar style is the thing.    I don’t Know!    Poor David sensa la sua Betty.    Povera Betty sensa il suo David.    Povere le due.   Which is all very grammatical.

It will be interesting to see what Ivy pays us for the Roman Holiday.   Hope she is generous.    I must make more money for the family. How flat my letter is when you have not delivered one to inspire me. I’ve no Dickie and Candy to inspire me.  Solo, Io.

I have many fine things in the post coming, the pictures of Dickie, the Christmas Book from you, a pipe from MAMA, from Uncles Dunhill and Parker, and a lighter from Auntie Edie via Momma.    And letters from you passing in excellence all pictures and things, be they never so rare.  I have imposed on myself a two week’s absence from Bridge, I was playing too much.  My little Welsh dentist is keen and will make a four here for the others so I can do without and not spoil the sport of the others.

On Boxing Day I had a second Christmas dinner, at H.Q. where for some reason or other, probably because the Colonel likes me as a sort of a jester, I was the only guest at the H.Q. feast. Very nice, too and we played Games of Chance, Pontoon, Poker, brag and Slippery Sam and I cleaned up all the poker chips and made about two pounds ten so it was a goodly evening.    Odd, going.

Of news there is none, though tonight I guiltily confess that I am going to Aida again, after dinner which is due now.    I am a bit reckless over this opera business, but it is a treat.   Your mother, by the way wrote a particularly charming letter for Christmas which delighted me, with her talk of you and of your son.   Thank her and say I shall write back.     You will be seeing Christopher very soon. – Have they told him about Bedford Modern yet?   We can have a good line of propaganda to spur him to better literacy the coming year when he knows though- they’ll take him anyhow, who wouldn’t.    I’ve got a new ribbon and its time it was put in, its going in for the New Year. 1945! What now! We have the same ideas, bless us all….

And bless you & bless Dickie & Candy.
I do love you
Ever  David

Shipworking   Sections   R.E.    C.M.F.No. 202…Christmas Day 1944

Dearest Heart,

All this day you have been with me.    It is now about six o’clock and an idle hour before our own Christmas Dinner.    The fireplace is working well now after some reconstruction and three of them sit in front of it and two are out visiting, Derek his New Zealand hospital, where I consistently refuse to go because nurses are dull and complicate life anyhow, and Twiggy Branch with his Italian family.    So I have the chance to do what I have wanted to do all day, – write to you and thus be as near as distance allows.

It has been a good Christmas because yesterday I had two letters from you, very dear letters, with one from your Mother and one from D Sadgrove saying she had been able to do my proxy purchasing for me in the matter of a pigskin handbag.    I would trust no one else I think, But D has taste and discrimination and can understand how things suit people, and I expect she has done the right thing and pleased you and thus made me happy. My request was simple, nothing but the very best, because it was for you.   And the silly little collection of pretty things I know you will love, and like so many really good things, they are useless.

Did you have a happy Day? I expect so. This afternoon we sat around the fire with mighty logs on it and listened to the King on Derek’s just-obtained radio, very   good he was, dear man, and so common place and solid and thoughtful.    It was a touching affair, I think we all looked deeply into the burning logs and thought our thoughts and remembered you people at home, even though we are so careful not to be silly or consider BBC Christmas tie-ups as anything but a lot of nonsense. But there you are.    I thought of you, and your good Mother, and Fred and Jess, and Candy, her nose twitching in sleep before the fire, and tried to think of that son of mine.

Can you conceive what it is like not to have ever seen him? It must be very difficult   for you, who knows him so utterly.    But all these glowing descriptions, – your Mother sent a very fine and a very moving pen-picture of him, and your story of Candy and the Teeth nearly disturbed me, it was so poignant – yet I find it hard to believe it, because it is so much what I would ask of God.   Mother, whose letter came today, on Christmas Day itself, with typical Mother efficiency, talks much of him and of the new polyphotos and maybe they will help.  I am certainly awaiting them eagerly. Yet I have not seen him, nor folded and unfolded a hand of his, nor seen him laugh, which they say is akin to the noise of angels.  Nor has he looked at me and shown that he considers me at all. I do not complain nor reproach Life or Circumstances, greater will be the pleasure when we do meet, us two, the big and the small, the partly used and the original, but it is odd, and I wondered if anyone can understand what a great ignorance it is, not knowing one so important.    Bless you for your loving care in explaining our miracle to me and for all you do with him to further my cause, – to win and keep a place in his heart. And bless you, for my love for him and deep interest is all an integral part of the love I have for you and that you have for me.

I loved his query about Candy’s teeth.   He must have thought, ah, teeth, I wonder if Candy has any?   Or even, have glimpsed them as Candy mouthily settled down in her rest, and then, seeking guidance, had the miracle of Candy’s teeth shown to him. An event, of very great importance. And a very important part of this Christmas, all that that letter and incident implied. I loved too, your picture of Michael Fitzgerald, in tweed with a rugger ball under his arm.  Your Mother says that Richard will be a slender person, and has a straight back, fair curly hair, blue eyes, and a good smile, which she is generous enough to say is like my own. To have ones smile inherited is surely a mark of signal favour by God! Oh now stupid I am to take all this so seriously, but it does seem to be the salt and savour of life.

But Christmas. Yesterday, Christmas Eve, I went to Aida with the Colonel and the Adjutant. It was an amazing show, a full chorus of several hundred brought specially from Rome, and wondrously dressed, all in colours and raiment new.    The stage sets were brilliant, too, and the singing and orchestra was startlingly good.  It is a tremendous spectacle, you may know it, you’ll know Celeste Aida, the opening Tenor song. There was some fine dancing too, and some wee bambini, coloured black, slave children, did the most touching ballet, and one, the smallest, only ankle high, always got his right or left mixed and caused delicious confusion in the dancing and prancing rings and squares. It was very very good.   Not like the intimate Piccini opere, of course, but a fine “show”.  I am taking Allan on Friday and Johnny Feaver, my second-in-command who is called beetle by his two boys (9 and 7) and who is akin to your and my Uncle Freds in niceness and sheer Englishness.    Dear Beetle.   He is so loyal and does so much good work for me and would never fail me or by a word or the flicker of an eyelid disparage or be disloyal to, me.

Then we went home and after dinner we played Bridge but I came up to this room at nine and wrote half a dozen pages of Chapter 2 of the book.  (“Young Men at War”    or “At The War”?)  and then to bed, starting again War and Peace which I have required from Johnny Fawcett’s room. This morning came bright and clear, and I bathed luxuriously and carolled carols and gradually we all began getting up and fooled about and had as* much Christmas spirit as we could get, and I gave Derek, the boy that he is, his Parker pipe, and he is touched and charmed and very thrilled. We had TWO eggs for breakfast at   nine o’clock and bacon and then arranged the dining room as a bar and the Ante-room with little snacks on dishes on plates.   Then to the Lines to see what was going on and to check up with the Men’s dinner and so on.    Back to the Mess at just before eleven the Colonel, Adjutant, Billy Baynes and the group R.S.M came and had their Christmas drink and a nibble and then all the thirty six of our British N.C.O.s came over and drank beer and whisky and we all talked and shook hands and teased and had a High Old Time. The Colonel went and then we went over to the Lines, and   went round the Corporal’s Mess to see their dinner and gave out cigarettes and I shook hands with all of them, wrist achy work, and then to the Sappers Mess and hand shaking, cigarette giving out, and the cooks came in  and were clapped and congratulated, and then with final cheers and High Jinks we left there and to the Sergeants Mess, where was, oddly enough, a nicely tipsey British sailor (R.N.) and two Americans.   We had drinks and over to the Mess for sandwich lunch and bridge and the Kings speech and here I am, soon be din-din downstairs.

 Yesterday morning I visited Lanave and we drank wine and talked and he went all very very stupid and gave me the rarest of Christmas presents.    Two things which are at once a Responsibility.    One is a perfect unchipped sandstone bowl, just under three inches in diameter, with a handle which is genuinely Fourth Century B.C.! The other about the same size of black pottery, is a lamp, but older than the other, both were dug up in Lanave’s garden and are of some civilization prior to the Roman.    The lamp is like this, the bowl like that. Oh how I can’t draw.But they are somehow very charming and dumbly eloquent of other days and other ways.   What shall I do with them?    I can’t pack then to be sent home.    I’ll pack them here carefully and bring them, but they are museum pieces.    You will love them and they are yours of course. Best antiquities in Great Alne anyhow.   They must have a little glass case I think, Lanave used them as ash-trays!!!  That’s how he knew I loved them. So there we are,    something else for Richard in the fullness of time, and may that time be full indeed.

As I have said  above I have started having a go at the second chapter of the book,  about Scarborough still.  I think being disturbed as I am about it being too narrative is inevitable and needn’t worry me, because I can gradually break away into this and that talk. We must be a soldier first before doing soldiery things.   I’ll send it off very soon and then get down to it in the New Year.

So we have sold about nine Things to each of the papers who do us you think.   Obviously we must do more and keep it up.    I’ll try. I’m glad you are taking steps to get some furniture. By talking to this man and that you will maybe get something from a sale, they go to them and they’ll deliver it. A good old fashioned sofa is the thing, four seater even, and matching doesn’t matter,  I should spend twenty pounds now and twenty then, or more if you think it necessary, it is essential after all.   Maybe the Men’s Club or the W.I. would take the old chairs.  I authorise you to do as you think best.  Even buy new ones but second hand would be better. If you let sale-going people know they might deal for you.   People don’t buy chairs and settees a lot at sales, people usually have them. It’s little things   they want. I think the sooner you buy them the better it will be a rising market.   New ones would cost a hundred pounds or more.

The car, sell it.    The cost of getting it going would be as much as buying one through Frank Sadgrove.   We shall need one but not immediately. Let the market settle down, which will take a year or so.    I suggest letting Jim have it.    Try for a fiver and then if that’s no good, let it begone and save the problem.    There isn’t a great deal of it that is valuable.    It has not been a bad buy, the twelve pounds ten was well spent indeed.

Lanave is eagerly awaiting the pictures of Richard to paint the miniature for me on my Alabaster frame, on parchment already for it. He even had an oval piece of glass cut for it!!

The men were nice today, bless them, and so friendly and shook hands so hard.   We have palm fronds, ten foot high, all over the Mess and greenery on the tables and we do our little best to make it Christmas.    And next Christmas?   Who dares think of that. Richard need not   have any modem nonsense about no Father Christmas I hope. It’s an illusion and a fantasy which has lasted many years and has done no harm to many generations of children.    There is no disillusion in finding out the Truth, it comes gradually and one keeps it up for parents’ sake for quite a while.

D’you remember how once you feared we should never have a child? It might be good to think of that now, that you have the child you have got!    It will show, perhaps the value of prayer and Faith.    I cannot conceive of a happier mother for a little boy in his senses, and I am led to believe that my little son is in his sense well enough.

My deep love to you, dearest, this Christmas apart.    For your sweet letters more thanks than I can give, and may you be happy.
Ever your David XXX
A HAPPY NEW YEAR- with ME with you& Dickie & CANDY XXXXXX
Dearest Dickie;
My love to you. I always have you on my mindm& know so much about you. Love Candy well, she is true.
Bless you  Daddy

* Continued….Christmas day letter, 1944….

1224/5 Shipworking Sections R.E.  C.M.F.
No. 201

Letter received from a Sapper asking for an interview- what a life,
“Sir, Nearly six months ago one day I find a family here in X…….
So and so they have a daughter and untill now we are engaged with that girl.
I asked my parents in Beirut and they are saying allright.
Please sir what do you think because you are my second father
if have you permition or no yet I don’t know.
Waiting answer
Your servant,
Thirity Dertipanian.”

That has been used in a Thing  just written and which will be   posted as soon as the  Colonel can agree with me that its harmless from the Military Information point  of view. I  think,  too, I think, I’m due  for another patch  of novel,  or  book let us  call  it,  its  been brewing up, but if  I’d have written anything  before  this  it’d have been wrong.  Getting that feeling again.     I may even after this do a wollop.   Hope so.

Such a jolly letter came yesterday from you, which lighted up  the whole day and made it radiant.  It was about  the Erskines being with you  and Dickie’s  Hot water  Bokkle   song,   and you doing  the  milk round  and the   pen  ran  out   –   I   know  –   and  you reciting at the W.I.,  and Mrs. F  and her gets-up,  and the Curse  of the writers Life- the Title.  What about YOUNG MEN AT WAR. That is   quiet   and  dignified   and  sort   of good   natured,  but  we   aren’t  all  young  men,   yet   in  the  army  we   are.   I don’t   know.     Keep that for the nonce.

How fares   the young one, the Lodger  as  Mary called him in her airgraph which I  answered with an air letter. I sort  of  said I d take her on but  strongly  advised her,   as  an  elderly admirer  and  friend  of the family,  to have  nowt   to do with us, I  don’t  know   if  I  need   anyone,  if  I  can’t  do as well alone  if  I weren’t  so blamed  lazy  and will-o’-the-wispish.

The  Parker  pipes  came   in good   order  except   one  had had  its stem snapped  by Postie   somewhere   or   other.     I have   sent the   broken   part back with a hopeful and grateful letter.  The unbroken  one   I  am letting Derek have,   and I’ll have  the Dunhill,   sorry dunhill  and the   other Parker when  the  new   stem comes   if  it  does,   I  think they’ll  play. The  Heffers  Arabic   book came,   a  very  suitable   one,   just   the  right  dialect for  these  people,  which is  where Heffers  are  so  very  clever,   they have an expert   in all  these subjects  on tap.

Christmas   soon.     The   sergeants are coming over at   eleven – we breakfast at nine and drinking with us until noon – the Col and Adjutant and the Imperial Party call then as well.   At  noon we watch the cherries   -local nick-name   for  them,   from Arabic  Askari  –   soldier  –  have their  turkey  and  plum pudding which they consider   some   sacrificial Christian Ju-Ju and give   them cigarettes  fruit  and  sweets each,   and  then drink  in the   Sergeants Mess.     A quiet   afternoon by the fire though others go a-drinking   still,   and dinner at   seven thirty and just us   six. Maybe   some   Bridge afterwards and so Christmas Day.     If fine I’m taking the day off on Boxing Day and going in the morning to St.  Eremo to play with piccolo Tito and spend a civil day there with them all.  Depends on the weather.  Tomorrow to Aida – with the Colonel.   Poor  pet  he  and  I  do  go about  together  and I have   his  ear   and he   asks  me   such   funny things about  the  group.     Sort of the Adjutant’s intimacy without the boredom and phiniquettyness   of   being the Adjutant.  A nice   arrangement.

The turkey is  tinned. Sounds   like   an exercise in a foreign language.  Tricky one too. Dear,  I  do  like  you  and the   idea  of you  and  the  essential youness  of everything you do  and have  about  you. You are so wondrously generous in the way you subjugate yourself and develop yourself along the path of the light of  our  oneness.  No-one   has   a   richer  home   life  than  I  have,   and no  one  has   an easier  kind  of   separation,   so  near   are  you to  me.

You are   anxious   about us going   places   like Greece,  Its most unlikely. Shall I let you into a very close family secret?   Our men are not armed.  The officers  and N.C.O.’s  are  but  as a unit we  are-  er  non combatant,  combatant,   like  Christopher  Harris would like  to  be.   Its not  that   our  boys wouldn’t   fight  –  in  a bloody Guerrilla way,   and  on their   own,   but   they   might   fight   at  the wrong  time,   and  anyhow   its   all political  and has  to do with Higher Policies   in the  Colonial  office.   So we are very very Base,  hough I challenge anyone to call us base.  So have no fears.  We are a restful unwarlike crowd. Not much martial glory possible for us, but you may not mind that. I don’t, much. I’ve had my few little moments with the Old Brigade.

A touching picture you conjure up,   of Richard visiting a la Chris in the mornings. Oh dear. He’d not doit I expect if I were there and he’ll be   too old and magnificent   before   long.  Oh dear. Nice  thought, does he come in restful or Unrestful.   Does he sing then,  or burrow or what and What About  Candy?  I mean, Candy and Beds?   I don’t  know.

1224/5 Shipworking Sections R.E. CM.F.
No. 200

Dearest Heart.
Isn’t it naughty of people to call us the Shipwrecking Sections because we aren’t. How are you?  No news and no letter since the day before yesterdays nice one, but I want to write to you so will. I sent off a lot of Bertha Play stuff yesterday to her for you via her. Her preface which is charming and very sweet and the introduction newly done, slightly tidier, scrap the old one.    Title still to think of, I have put PLAYTIME at the top but that’s no good. Forget it and scratch it out if Bertha hasn’t.   Must get a good one.   Peacock’s Pie is the sort of thing.    Something gayish.   Plays for Richard is too family, Titles are the devil.   Like women, you excepted.

Oh, will you take a piece of paper and write in the middle this brief legend ..FOR MY SON RICHARD. Its brief but means a hell of a lot, doesn’t it!   Then put the page in the forefront, after the title-page, of the sheaf of papers we hope Capey may make into a book.    He may as well have a book to his name, sort of blooding him into the family.    Seems suitable, kind, do you agree? It would please me if he doesn’t mind. The title page I’ll send you. Bertha has the introduction to send on and the preface, and various notes and she will send you some scripts, you have others and the balance I’ll send from here when they have come from Bertha and been edited- her ideas crossed with mine- then you’ll have the whole issue. There’s no rush because we want the film folk to make what move they’re going to make before we sign up with Jonathan,   They may have special Claws about Rights.

You know my little alabaster frame I picked up from a blitzed ducal mansion at Leghorn? Lanave has it and has some very old parchment. He is trying to get the right thing to paint on the parchment and then he’ll frame it in the alabaster.   The light will shine through although its half an inch thick.   He says its a lovely thing.    His idea now is to wait and see what polyphotos are like and if he can get Dickie from them properly he’ll paint a tiny St. John and the lamb picture of Dickie for the frame, all in keeping.   The colouring he’ll have to guess.    Eyes are blue I gather and hair like the whisp I have?   He is keen on trying but won’t use it unless it comes off.    If it fails he’ll do me a child St. John with the lamb and the cross, you know the classic design.    I bought a little wooden box yesterday from Pompeo but was doubtful, and showed it to Lanave, he said the picture on the lid is printed-fake and the box is not old but a Firenze industry making pseudo-antique snuff boxes, so Derek has blissfully bought it. His wife will be very thrilled and content with the second-rate, not like you. So I’ve done well, he’s happy, we haven’t got a fake, and everyone is happy. I looked at your silver engraved oval box with the amethyst lid again last night. Took the Colonel there to help him buy something for his large lady,   He nearly bought it, but found the price too much. I am sorely tempted.    He bought a very charming six inch oval alabaster profile of Dante in a Sheraton type frame for a fiver, which is a good thing and pleases him and he relies on my judgement and he’s happy.    That’s why I didn’t press him to have the engraved box its too lovely. Oh dear. Pompeo will come down a lot for me. He’s selling it at the weight of the silver.

The Income Tax people have written to say that are sending you a cheque, or Careless, for £22. 19. 3d for overpaid tax for 1943/4. That’s nice of them.    Tell Careless to watch out for it. The reference if it doesn’t come is: Asst. No. W. 93/D60327. A good thing that, twenty three quid towards a new settee.  (Not a silver box). Oh dear, why do beautiful things haunt one, especially when one has someone also beautiful who would love it.    I do try hard, and go round a long way on the way to the docks to avoid Pompeo’s shop.

I have written to the Head about Chris and told him to take him even if his handwriting is wobbly because his batting is straight and if he is moithered about history he’s clear headed about life. He’ll take him all right, tell Marjorie to have no fears. Nice if you and I could repeat an earlier expedition and take him to Bedford next September!! Chris with a silly cap on the back of his head will look charming.

Has Dickie passed the thirty inch mark yet?  I have the marks on the wall to stretch as necessary.

Got War and Peace complete from Pawcett who lifted them last winter in my teeth and now confesses it is beyond him.    Good. Good. My dentist has been in hospital and has lifted for me a charming book on Shakespearean rogues and vagabonds etc. Nice of him.  Sweet in fact.

Your picture of Dickie gives me endless pleasure, I look at it every day and often sit and gaze at it, ruminating.  I think he will turn one of these days, wink and say “Howde, Pop” or something. Is his voice very shrill?  Any Warwickshire drawl in it. Wish you could make a gramophone record of him!  I’d swap my Carusos and Melbas for it.

Silly letter, but then I feel happy and need to be with you. Quiet evening in this evening, may play a little bridge. We’ve quite a hot school here. Very Culbertson.

Oh dear, I do love you. As much as ever Solomon loved.- Ever David.

My letter to the Croft went the day before yours about the Posts etc. came. If I wrote specially it’d look odd! You thank them for me! I’ll back you up.

1224/5 Shipworking Sections   R.E.    C.M.F.
18 Dec 44 (guess!)

Dearest,
Did you know about Noah and the leak in the ark?    He told one of the dogs to put his nose in it, and the dog did, hence the wet cold nose of the dog.    But it still leaked so Mrs. Noah put her elbow in the hole, and hence the cold elbow’s of women, then, I think, she must have put her feet in it, – that from experience.   Finally Noah sat in the hole and that is why men like to stand in front of fires with their coat tails up.     I can’t vouch for that, but the colonel told me.

No letters by air for four days, no five days; probably bad weather your end, nice here.   But perhaps they’ll be one this morning. The Colonel and Major Baynes (2 i/c Group) and the Dock Superintendent, – none other than Cliff Grainger – all the Big Shots – dined with us on Thursday. (15th)    Our Italian cook worked miracles for dinner and we had some rare red wine from Naples area, and afterwards played Bridge and Table-tennis and all went very well,   Old man was touched and made searching, enquiries about our cook.   This is all important because this Mess was once a cross between a drinking den and a brothel, and infamous for the goings on.    Now we have prestige and manners and no women ever and the undesirable Majors of other companies have been thrown out and we have a new system for Mess drinks and flowers on the table.   So that is the end of a long battle.   The other one is nearing the end; the cleaning up of the Mens canteen accounts which has been a racket for a year. I think I am pulling it off without getting four officers court-martialled, it was slackness and not dishonesty on their part. Tricky business though. However, the air is cleaner all round.

How dull is all this.     Letter from Bertha re the play book. She is playing, but has suggestions re the balance of introduction and preface and this and that, I’ll deal with her until she sends the full bundle through to you. We must not sign anything yet with Cape because she thinks these film people have bitten so hard that they’ll be landed, and then we must be free to give them juicy rights for juicy fees.

Stupid me; went to La Boheme last night at the Piccini; an all Italian production.   The Mimi who played here last winter and my first love, Anna Farone, sixteen stone, but so wistful and naive a Mimi: how they do sing, in Dolce Fiancuilla!   Tonight I go to the other production at the Ensa, all Italian, but British sponsoring and British audience. A slicker production and a better team but not such brilliant individualists:

This typewriter is silly about odd letters and spelling!  But it can do à and é and even ò and ì, ì is nicer than i, sort of continental and risqué or is it risquè. Silly éè.

Postie has come in with one from Mother, but he is holding yours back for a day.   Mother very gay.   She had just got the polyphotos and is most excited about them, she likes Dickie and says he’s intelligent and pleasant.   She sounds very well and gay and has a cockerel for Christmas she thinks. Also a pipe. Say NOTHING ABOUT MY DUNHILL AND PARKERS. Also a lighter from Auntie Edie, in the post they are.   Dear me.   So the 1945 resolution to Give Up Smoking is done for.

This should get to you before Christmas.   I’ll send another to 57 Woodthorpe Road as well, in the hope that it will be there for the DAY.     I’m very glad you’re going there, although the village will miss you.   Candy will like it; a nice suburban walk with well dogged trees to sniff, even though she’s not that sort.   Can you get Uncle Fred to get a local bee-hive-maker to make a bee hive for you?   Or two, if you want them to mate?   Or one or whatever they like best. Something really comfortable.    I think men who grow up among bees are nice men; your Uncle Fred, par exemple:   I’ll pay, I’ll write about them. I’ll also try to get bee-minded and learn all about grafting them. I’ll eat the honey and Dickie shall have milk and honey:   he’ll like bees.   Candy must Learn a Few Lessons, but she will.

Ask Uncle Fred if he doesn’t agree that the Barn and sheep shearing chapter in Far from the Madding Crowd is not one of the very best pieces of English prose and descriptive writing.   I want to learn it by heart;

I’m very excited about the Blunden book and mystified about the one out of print.   I know its just what I wanted but can’t think what it is.     I think a lot of our river walk, at the time I always loved it but never realised just what a deep impression of you and home, all things good and worthy it represented.   I have a photographic memory of it, the sharp bends and the railway line and the field where the bull showed off so beautifully once, and the reeds and sticks being thrown in for a not-too-cold-watery spaniel and her ruses and explanations, and the sows in Spencers orchard and the way home.   Dear me, I have memories of it all, and Candy’s famous hole in   Mill Walk.
And other memories as well. Yet the fact that all this is still there, & that serene & so full life awaits me is difficult to realise. It is, though.
My love &, if this arrives on Christmas Day, all my Christmas wishes. Bless you all. – Ever – David!

1224/5  Shipworking  Sections  R.E.   CM.F.
No. 198

Dearest,
This is aimed at Christmas, which I pray will be Happy and gay, as it should in the company of your good Uncle Fred and his folk. I’m addressing it to Woodthorpe Road, if you don’t go there, then you’ll get it later on.   Mother seemed to think you were going there. I shall ask Uncle Fred to keep this back if you do go and if it gets there before the Day.

Just read a little book translated from the Italian, in the Penguin series, called Fontemare, its rather powerful and I think, sound. It shows what Fascism is, or was, in this country.

Our Christmas will be simple enough.    The sergeants over for drinks in the morning, and then to the camp to give the men their “Christmas” – cigarettes, fruit, chocolate etc., and then to see them eat the Christian Christmas Dinner, and then drinks with the Sergeants and in the evening a little dinner of our own. I may go and visit Allan and Cliff, in the morning. Work as usual on Boxing Day. But if its a good day I’ll go out in the truck alone with a book and find some goodly piece of deserted coast and sit and think of you and Dickie and Candy.

Dickie’s second Christmas! He’ll be aware of it more next year, I’d like to be present if it can be arranged, please. I hope my little silly Christmas Box arrives per pro Mrs. Anderton, and the Proxy Christmas Box per pro D. Sadgrove and Uncle J.J.H.  They are with my love, of course.

Yesterday I went to La Boheme again, at the ENSA, and it was very dramatic because poor Rodolfo’s voice went at the beginning of Sono Poeta, and everyone was shaken, the orchestra stalled and poor dear Mimi, her third performance only, lost confidence. He sang the act through an octave lower and she gallantly got through with it, and then another tenor took over for Acts  two three and four and did very well, and everyone was so relieved and kind to Mimi who, silly girl, wore two silly little hair ribbon bows, like ears on the top of her head. Mimi always reminds me of you. Oh, that Thing I wrote, if you use it and if its not too late, page two, middle of para 3, first word of the line is Schaunard.    Change it to Colline, the philosopher.    It isn’t Schaunard the musician at all who sells his zimarra.     And add, at the end of the fourth paragraph, after the sentence ending with muff…”What they should have brought was a District Nurse, but no, – a muff.”

Thankyou.    I’ll send a special air letter with that bit in in case this is a delayed letter at Birmingham.

I’ve drawn winter undies today. Three pants and three vests woollen and not prickly, much. New Zealand made they are, where the sheep live I suppose. Talking of sheep Pietro’s wife, who is the gardener here, has one, she has one of everything, one sheep, one pair of rabbits, one goat, a few chickens and one silly quite tubular, very tame little pig.   A youth pig, who snuffles about after her in the friendliest way. She may have one bee somewhere. (She doesn’t wear a bonnet)

My private Purging goes on steadily. The biggest job of all, the Naafi racket is nearly cleaned up now. My predecessor was just damned lazy and easy going and let things slide.  Shocking state it all was.

I have just read the Tempest through with great delight. Now I’ll read As You Like it. I wish there were Shakespeare plays here, but perhaps, tis well to rest from them and read them, and the Opera delights enough. Next week is Aida, which must be seen. Still do I love my Mimi though. Oh, when we go to hear Mimi sing in Paris!

To my son my love, and a Happy Christmas to him, and to Candy and Mother- Anne, and Fred and Jessica and Maurice. Is he still half living in bachelorhood? The silly man. Tell him to mend his ways. I don’t know what to wish Dickie, he has his full bag of wishes, having you. That would content me, and it will.

No more to say, but my love and wishes, for happiness.  Bless you, my dear…
My love & blessings
Ever your
David  XXX

Find a quiet hour on Christmas Day to write. Letters mean so very much.

1224/5 Shipworking Sections R.E. C.M.F
No 199

Dearest…
CHARGE
Against No. 1, Sapper Scott Daniell R.J. of Rosemary Cottage Great Alne, Alcester,
Whilst On Active Service did, at Great Alne, on 8 December 1944 at 0800 hrs, in contravention of Section 8 Section 2 of the Army Act offer violence to his Superior Officer in that he did Strike Over the Head with a Spoon his Mother. Witness, No.2 Corisande of Cantlow.

And that would cost fourteen days C.B. and seven days Pay in my orderly room, or for an offender as hardened as the Accused, maybe fourteen Days Field Punishment.     Just shows.  Poor you.   I never hit you over the head with a spoon.   Maybe it was done friendly like.

I sent a particularly dull letter to you yesterday, because I had not heard for about a week and the inspiration had ebbed.   Now I have a letter and could write for pages and pages and find it hard not to. Your letter was about the spoon; Richard’s vocabulary, Eileen and you in Stratford and selling cards to Ireland, the horse problem and so on.   Yes he shall have a horse in due course, for the feel of a horse’s neck between your young knees and the scent of him and the creak of the saddle and the rhythm of trot and canter and the ripple of the walk, and the lovely view of fields and hedges from a horse’s back is very beautiful.   Encourage him to like horses.   I’ll ride with him and make him ride well, and we’ll canter too, and tend the horses after and come in with hunters appetites, and you shall ride.   Damn it; Sarah and Mary and Mother Anne shall ride. And I would like a pony and trap someday. A shiny varnished trap whose wheels will flash in the sun.   And I love his vocabulary.     Bless us all, I’m silly taking any notice of one insignificant child, there are millions about and its nothing to make a song about…. much. A lovely letter, really charming, came from Marjorie, bless her heart.   I know how hard it is for her to find time and energy to write, yet she has. She says of your son, “…I think he (Richard) is the most perfect baby I have ever seen.   Christopher was a good specimen but Richard beats him…….. you have every reason and right to be a proud father.” That from her is shattering.    And she is so nice about Christopher and thanks me for writing to him when its I thank him for his very fragrant and touching   friendship,’   She is sending him to Bedford Modern next September and is anxious about his getting in – examwise.   I’ll tell her they’ll take Christopher if he was dumb and stupid.   It is character and kind of person a good school wants, mere academic proficiency is necessary only for fee catching scholarship hunting places.   I’ll write again and second my recommendation and get an assurance that he can go.   I’d like to be there to take him myself.   I am fond of that boy and if our son is at all like him, candid and with Faith, then we can be happy.   I am writing to Marjorie.

I love the Troy Horse, you and J.J.H. are planning.   I wonder what the great mystery is at the Croft.    Oh; have you seen the Emmet drawing in the Punch Annual for 1945 of the wrapped up engine! What about a rocking horse with spots on for Richard? The teeth plan is very impressive, a fine array of biters, the but the poor dear, how they must make him want to hit people with spoons. Your last paragraph is about the book, and I am now encouraged to go on. And shall do so. Johnny, always difficult over titles and Penguins doesn’t like Parrots and Monkeys. Think out another, he has such a high standard for us, demure and sort of Oxford University Press. He is a Good Influence I suppose.     A letter from Bertha too about the play-book.    Coming from Jonathan it might please Harrappy more.    I think we’ll go on with them. Bertha is very helpful and enthusiastic.    I don’t think she wants a cut out of them, she made good business from them on the stage out of all proportion to the fees she paid, she admits that, and will get advertisement out of them.    She’s sent a charming preface for my approval.    She says she’ll drop out of the dedication In favour of Richard who deserves it better. Nice of her.    Nice of everyone. Letter from Jack Lawrence too, nice and chatty and Kiplingesque almost.   He’s changing into an Imperialist I think!      I love you and your son and all about us.    I’ll do more book now your letter was so nice and encouraging and I believe it.    Bless you and happy may this Christmas be for you and all of you.     Bless us all, write often, your letters make me thrice the man I am without them.

I wondered if that first chapter was not too narrative.     but perhaps it is best to start that way, make me a soldier first and then play about. I want to keep it from being narrative and make it chatty.    This and that. I’ll go ahead, bless you.   And richard-Dick shall ave is orse. Cloppity-clop. And Christopher at Bedford Modern will be nice.   He’ll do well and like the sane balance between scholarship and citizenship which is the secret of a big school’s success.   And you and I shall weave tales and tell them. Bless us all.

                                             Ever David.

I am sending final copies of Preface, dedication & Introduction. Don’t send anything off yet! Also I may send some Bertha Waddell alterations to two of the plays. Silly I am, you can’t have all the plays yet! ! !

1224/5  Shipworking Sections R.E. C.M.F.
No. l95

Dearest,
Two letters from you on Saturday, the 1st. and 3rd. of December and very fine letters they were written with your own pen, and the writing nice and small again.    Makes a big difference, that, because I am greedy. It was a nice haul, one from Mother full of fun, and from Bertha, about enquiries for filming some  of our plays, and from Gwen, oh, sweetly gwenny. Saith she…”…been to Gloucester to hear a lecture on dehydration, it was interesting.    I wonder if you have much of these dried foods…..” Oh dear, yes, we do, have had dehydrated meat and potatoes and cabbage for a long long time, bless us all, Heard about the cargo of 10,000 Yanks in a 5000 ton ship, with 3000 tons of cargo as well? Didn’t sound possible until someone uncovered the tween deck of No. 2 and there were ten thousand yanks, little tiny ones, about one foot six inches high. They had been dehydrated.  How? Taken the wind and the er..water out of them and there they were. Shame, Allied Relations Must be of the Best.    But there you are.  I wander. Sorry. Your good letters…

You had walked, you and your son, to Edwards the Post together and you told me that he is quite a likeable person.   Has his own opinions too, you say, and says No No!     What happens then?   What do you say Yes Yes!    or “I beg your pardon, sir!”     You and he and Candy called at J.J.H.’s and fetched the Times and a bone wrapped in paper.    A nice trio I am sure, oh dear, that in a wintery Great Alne evening with wood smoke as well,      I go on making pictures of you three, bless us all.

Mary Hanson. I would like very much to have her but is it fair on her?     Mummy thinks I shall be an Established Writer afterwards. I wonder..  That is my wish, it is as a matter of fact, necessary, without any micky-the-mouse, we have got to be.    Do you think it makes it more Business-like and efficient having her?   Let us make a list of questions.
1/ Does it Help?
2/ Do I need someone or is it (a) a pose?
(b) a ruse to make me work ?
3/ Shall we have enough real work for a first class intelligent girl to do?
4/ Can we afford to pay her what she would get in the open market?
5/ Is her interest in the work and nearness to her home a compensation for loss in  money made?
6/ Is she on a good thing, i.e. shall we develop so that it will be in due course an important and   worth while job?
7/  Is she prepared to take the gamble?
8/  Do you think having someone there is an incentive and an Aid to Work
9/  Am I better without?
10/  Am I a humbug and she Taken In?

 En bref, I say yes, after our two periods of 61 days leave when we Open Up the Shop, she can come, and after all she is able to become one of us, and generally frillip around with us. Your job may develop, who knows?            In principle I like the idea and I think she will, as she did, develop our “atmosphere”.     If she’s came, as the years pass, she can have a really good job, travel included. But there again, is it practical?   It is for me to decide, and I think the answer is this. If she is prepared to share the risk on the future we take, and if she is prepared to follow our fortunes, and If you are convinced that I am not a humbug (and really did go to Africa and Salerno) I am all in favour. The only reason I hesitate is that I want to get my finances on a firm basis, and it is a good thing to keep “overheads” at the lowest. Mary, bless her, is an overhead. She must be reconciled to being my little Overhead.    In business it is often foolish to avoid overheads which earn their own keep and more.  How I ramble.   Yes, I want Mary please, and we’ll make her job one envied of others.

 I’ve taken so much space with shop that I’ll make this a double letter. So some more shop. Could you get a drawing block handy, and make jolly swift little sketches of Richard?  Do them in various typical and unlikely poses, like some of my letter illustrations?    I would then write round them, in the form of imaginary letters from you to me about him.    Call it Two Year Old or some such.  It could be a hell of a good thing.  I’d do the book after, or even at the same time. A dozen or so full page drawings, and a few little twiddly ones.  The make-up would be excerpts from letters from you to me, beginning in the earliest days. Actually I’d use what you have said, and touch them up. For example, saying Marmalade would be one. We can interleave a lot cunningly. Only three or found hundred word pieces, with a drawing here and there. Make a damn good Christmas book. Think it over and see what you feel about it. He wouldn’t mind. Get the idea?

Yes, one of these fine days you shall have Purcell’s Nymphs and Shepherds.

Good about the dunhill. That will help a lot. Really, being overseas now is very different to this time last year. We have everything. The Naafi supplies Messes with whisky, and gin, in which I am not interested, and sherry and port, in which I am.  We get them at 6/- a bottle,* and we have gilette blades, good soap, Watermans ink, chocolate and sweets and fine food. Its absurd. Part of the end of the war feeling. One feels ashamed.

Fancy the C.Sc. Monitor buying something. Did you send it or did they reprint it from something else? Quite a likely market that, and quite respectable. You do have a lot of bother with all this, I’m so sorry. I should waft them around from here, but it would be so slow for rejects. I’ve sent Bertha an authority to deal for me with the film people if they bite.    They sent a bloke to see the show and he was very bucked and went away to report to the Magnates. Whether we shall get anything or two guineas or two thousand and seven and three I don’t know. Bertha is a shrewd Scotch lass in whose business instincts I have much faith.    She’d get the producing and the acting fees and me the copyright. I don’t know. A hopeful sign.

You were rose-replanting which is a nice thought, good. And a pair of pointed cut willow stakes from the Mill, good again.

A delicious story about Richard and the Loaf of bread. Helping In the House, eh? I like the animals, and the Raffle you went to. He sounds generous with his biscuits, does Candy come into the circuit? Or is Dickie only generous to the stuffed animals?

Bomb dump at Burton shaking your front door.  My dear, do be careful! Oh dear, wish you’d come out here.

I have had my feast of Opera. La Boheme on Friday was glorious and delighted me as always.  It is the perfect opera, theme and characters and music and atmosphere all combine so harmoniously, and the lovely tunes have so perfect a pattern to the finale, and its so touching, the well meaning silly bohemians fussing about with cordial and buying a little ginger muff when they should have fetched a doctor and given her brandy and kept her quiet.    They let her sing away, and they’re so well meaning and helpless, but they do just what Mimi would rather they did do. She’d have hated them if they’d been efficient and sensible. And she was so absurdly nice about the muff. The key, too, she knew Rodolfo had it all the while from Act 1, and she pretends she didn’t.    She’s the nicest artificial flower maker (that’s her story) that ever was. She didn’t come for a candle in Act 1, d’you think she didn’t know the attractive poet wasn’t in the next attic?   And that the others had gone out and he was alone?   And why did she drop the key in the dark?   Hussy. Mimi always makes me sharply aware of all that is lovely in you.    And she sings so nicely? and either plaintively, or roguishly.   You’d be a perfect Mimi.

Then on Saturday we had good old fashioned Lucia, where there is a fine old chorus (oh, the Italian idea of a lot of Scottish retainers in the middle ages was sweet, the kilts, the tartans, and the funny ways of wearing sporrans!)    and when people have a good song they come right down stage, the orchestra plays “till Ready” and they sing.   Not all one coherent realistic show like Puccini.     But the mad scene was terrific. You know, the famous Galli-Curci voice and flute effort. It was a fine show all things considered. Then yesterday (Sunday afternoon) was Trovatore, again with a big chorus and down stage singing.    It is real traditional opera, with duels and crowds and a lot of drama.   At the end it is very typical of all this kind of thing.    A trio, singing like hell. First a woman about to be burned at the stake.   Next to her her son about to be beheaded, and thirdly his lover a girl who has already poisoned herself.    It turns into a singing quartette when the bloke what has caused it all comes in and sings with them.    Its great  fun, this music and story and singing, and colour and grand jamboree of the lot.       Dinner is served… Very nice too, tomato soup -real – roast beef baked potatoes and tinned green peas, a duff and treacle and a very fire orange.    Vino with it, coffee after and a glass of port.    Its a ridiculous life I do wish I could let you share, but its strictly against the law to send Naafi home. Not worth the risk of spoiling a Promising Career.

Colonel, Major Baynes (2 i/c Group) and Cliff (Docks Superintendant) to dinner on Thursday, all the Big Shots.   heigh ho!

I must do some Things for you, I’ve an idea of one about Mimi, one about being Posted and maybe one about a journey my staff sergeant made in Egypt to spend a day with his brother.  How shall I find themes after the war?     Village life or just Things as they turn up?     How well are we getting in with Posty or Guardy?   Do we do as much as anyone else? What do other people do? Cleverer? Could we work up this style of thing into a column somewhere regularly? Sunday Times? Do they take them because, they are sorry for us or because I’m a soldier away from home or as a Business Proposition? Hard to tell. I don’t know.

You and your son, my son. My love to him, Richard-Dick of Rosemary Cottage. His growing awareness should be a good one. He’d be just as gay though in a cave with you or in a caravan. He probably has very few preconceived ideas and takes things as they come. Does he sleep o’nights now? Bless you both, and Candy.

                                    I love you… Ever David  XXX
* PART 2    (No. 196) continued from 195