Here I am, back in the dock office, leave over & done with. A very nice rest it was too, no not rest with Cliff, he’s the very epitome of unrest. But he’s so boyishly nice & so friendly. Yet I’m quite glad to be back again. We spent Thursday & Friday at Gragnano & left, with a slow & sad leave taking, at 1030, met the 2 sisters in the club at Naples, & drove off after lunch & arrived at my mess at 8o/c. They then went onto their little post. I have a little flower presented to me by Galti – Agata – pressed in War & Peace. They are an  people, charming to a degree yet so stupid over their own affairs. I’m playing with a serious article, for the Spectator or the Ninteenth Century. I am sending some material I bought in Naples, some print material for a frock, 4½ metres, and 2 of a mustard yellow stuff which I thought would be all right for a shirt-blouse, with stupid buttons and a gay collar.  If the mustard yellow doesn’t mean too much to you, give it to Mother Anne if it is good for her, whichever of you it suits the best.  I’d love her to have it but I don’t like anyone, not even Mother Anne having things if you don’t.  I leave it to you.

                        Today I wrote off a little Man. Guardian article, or B’ham Post called something about Giardino degli Aranchi, it will come on one of these letter cards. Glad they have bought the painter.  The Scultpor turned up in one of Allan’s Guardians, Feb. 16 if you can get a copy for filing, not if its a nuisance. Reads quite all right.  I’ll try some more, nice if they become regular to me, or me to them.

                        I was very charmed, touched and moved by your news in the sweet letter which awaited me yesterday that Dickie knows my picture. Its disturbing that, very.  Bless the lad, and of course the picture will approve of what he does. We must have Lanave’s which is ready for sending now.  It’ll take quite a while, coming by M.P.O. (Military Forwarding Officer) but it should make it in due course. Glad you liked the pictures I sent.  This is good anyhow. And I pray Dickie and you do like the me it shows. He’ll not help but notice it anyhow. And the poor man falling on his head.  Maybe he’ll be more like his father now. Poor you, the sickening thud of it all. And bruised.  The first of many I expect.  It is startling how many people write to me and sing his praises, Uncle Fred and Jessica Thirlby, now Margaret Young full of priases and Bobby too. And they seem so sincere. D said lovely things, everyone does, not conventional ones I begin to believe them almost.

                        I can picture the walk you took with Fred and Jess, and the caper you didn’t cut – silly – and the field we found the rook – I remember it all so vividly, in enamel as it were, and the scent of those walks. Goldy-ears must have loved it.

                        The mouse.  Do you think that the Hound pays the Mouse to haunt you so that she can cohabit with you ? Or is the mouse, just ussish. Was I cross about a mouse, oh dear I’d not be cross now.   The Jeavons-Bowen bew up indeed ! I Believe you can’t give tenants notice in war time, don’t they know that ? Cliff was six months with a law-suit getting someone out of his house. I always felt those strawberries were vicious.  Such a nice letter from Bobby, who is so apart from the, war that he addressed me as in 104 Coy., and it went through R.E. Records, but arrived.  He sings your praises and our son’s, most loudly.  I also heard from Mrs. Proctor and D who sent me Alice in Wonderland, brilliant woman, and Mrs. Carter, full of’niceness and sure “that Peter is safe whilst I am with him.  Sprlng-cleaning the sunroom and kitchen and all that, you dear.  Oh dear.

                        Glad the confetti arrived safely and is all right. You shall have more.  So many sweets here and rich cakes and luscious delicacies, and I saw a woman, not old, fortish, drop dead of starvation in the Coursa Umberto in Naples, one of the main roads !  The children are ragged and lean and peaky and the poor wretched with no succour, and the food the allies import in whole convoys is black marketted. They are incorrigible, these Italians.  They establish a Black Market over everything and have no sense of fair play or justice among themselves.  They love beauty and music and culture and let their poor die on them and their horses drop dead in the shafts.  They beat them to the last yard.  I had a violent row with a fat lazy man in Naples with four people on his littlfc cart and his starved courageous pony struggling on.  I made them all get off and threatened him with prison.  But they’d all get on again when they were out of sight.  This is silly and nothing to do with us, it mustn’t be let.

                        I couldn’t listen to the broadcast on Saturday as I was travelling, and I bet you forgot ! We have so often. Nice of Bertha to do it. Hows money ? The rent all paid and dandy ?  I’ll try and make some more with little twiddly things if I can. You manage wonderfully.  In every way you are pretty wonderful.  Bobby said such nice things about you. And Mother Hall comes the week after Easter, it will be such a thrill for her, bless her, she’s so fond and sweet.  She’ll be captivated with the son and heir.  I’d like him I expect.  It is obvious that he likes you and your home  Where will the portrait go ? in the sitting room ?  Or on the stairs ?  Or in the cupboard under the stairs ?  Its a problem.  Its framed already he’s let me have such a fine one, the dear silly impractical man. Let me know how the Italian prisoner likes his news of home, it was a touching business. Might write it up.  Its bed now, my love to you and my son !