1021 Docks Operating Coy.,  R.E.  CM.F.

DEAREST:
That Leave feeling, with a great difference. But its nice to have a legitimately idle week ahead.   I go to join Cliff this evening at his port and tomorrow we set off across to the other coast in his car. Vesuvio, all excited about us coming, hasn’t been able to contain himself and even here, 120 miles away, it rained mud all yesterday, ashes mixed with rain.   A Natural Phenomenon for you if you like N.P.s.    It was dark as night and on everything was a film of flakey mud.  It may make a difference to our visit to Napoli, but it will certainly be interesting in a tourist capacity. Whoah she erupts! Sort of thing your Uncle Fred would go and see too, beats Welsh mountains, they don’t bubble and squeak.    Our real destination is Gragnano, where we stayed before and where the lively little Agatha frisks and plays and a rough haired terrier goes about biting my calves and the O.C. is hopelessly gallant with the lady of the house, hopelessly because she is exceedingly nice and our sort and is crackers about her husband who is the- or was the- fencing champion of Europe and is in the war somewhere on someone’s side.    Its all uncertain because we’ve not had any contact with them since we called on our way over and they may not be there.    But we’ll end up somewhere in some Mess (as opposed to mess) and I have War and Peace, Back to Methuselah and Bennett’s City of Pleasure and intend reading a lot on a verandah if the place isn’t deep under lava, but as its a good twenty or thirty miles from old Vesuvio and is in the mountains- we should be all right. But I remember other leaves, indeed I do, oh, dear, I know what you mean about spring and the garden in your sweet letter which came this morning, sent on the fifteenth with dear drawings of Him peering over the cot and chewing it reflectively.   He is a good person.    Oh dear again.

Yes, Cerignola is not far away we may even pass it tomorrow and if we do I’ll out and find the parents and do my best to tell them about their figlio.   A Test Piece.   Yes it was Maestrangelo, sorry about the writing,    Thank nice Mr. Benfield for log splitting yet people are nice but we all are to you, I want to be always and shall try to be. Thankyou for the Timeses they are fun, and I loved your exclamation mark against Phyllis Bottome’s article on the birch and the child in the Spectator. Dickie a blonde!  Very blonde?  Why?  Permanent or henna?  Or just chamelionistic?

The portrait is still in the studio drying off while the carpenters make a mighty box, a work of art, of fine wood, double, with transverse wood for extra strength. It will take its time but come safely and in due course be there for that dreadful first reaction. But think that  Dickie-diddle-do’s grandchildren, not knowing the original except by family scandal, will perhaps like it. I think you will.  But the thing is, it’s the Me Lanave saw, the Me you want to see.

I’ve been very economical of late, not bought anything for the little soldier’s wife I run after in Warwickshire, used to have week-ends with her in London, her husbands in the sappers overseas and so am I now. But who knows how long for.

I had such a charming letter from the Andertons yesterday, very friendly and well done.  Please to thank them and say I’ll answer it in dueish course. Nice people on the whole.    But they would be ordinary people without you, that is one of the wonders of you, you bring the best out in people and make them, through being charmed with you, charming themselves, and by your zest of life and your love of life, infect them, like them, and so make them nicer still.   Lucky Richard-Dick.

I shall write to you from wherever we get to, Cliff and I shall be eager to come back because of the letters which might have accrued. Do go on taking care of yourself and taking it easy and not giving out too much and not staying up too late.  And be happy with your blonde baby and your golden dog and your blue-grey mother and our home.  I’ll be in it as large as life and very very natural.

Its half past two. I have a conference at H/Q which I pray will be short, entertainments officers, and then I pack and leave as near half past four as I can and join Cliff, have an evening there and then away in the morning to wherever we go.   The weather is good again after yesterday’s blackness but there is a reddish dust everywhere.   Odd indeed.

Yes, Dickie-duffaby will be growing up with this spring, getting aware as Nature broadens and lights up, and through the summer and Autumn he’ll be observing and by the winter he’ll be quite knowing.  Birthday on July 30th. Indeed.  Bless us all. I hope he likes his Spencer party, a report will be appreciated as the drawings and chitterchattery always is.    I love every word of your letters, never one misplaced or not written because you want to write and know that I want to read it. Get a picture done when you can.   Granny Rose will be coming soon.  What a to-do.  Bless you all, so much love there is about us, may we live well in it, giving and being thankful.   And the cause of it all and the reason of it all is you, to whom I am grateful and devoted, and whom I am eager to serve.

Things could have been so very much harder and our separation is not so bad as we are both happy and well and have the faith necessary to make it bearable,  because I am fond indeed.

Bless you my dearest…ever your own… David