1021 DOCKS OPERATING COY. R.E. C M. F.
Dearest Heart,
I should write an ordinary letter but I’m too impatient for this to get to you. So I shall send a lot of these still and try to write, patiently, an ordinary one. Air Mail is off, apart from this kind, which are excellent indeed. But if I start now, with ordinary letters and send them regularly they’ll get there -one after the other once the initial delay is overcome. I did send one, airmail last week with postage stamps. That will go ordinary so I’ve started. Good. Meanwhile I can’t resist sending one of these, supply of which is really one a week but I’m cheating as I have them two thousand at a time.
I am charmed by your stories of this son of yours, but come clean, mother of Dickie, how much is truth and how much propaganda? It seems too good to be true. The long slender hands, the roguish look, the smile of August 23rd., the talking to the berries, the general good taste, good form, good manners, brilliant intellect and magnificent poise of the child seems to be propaganda-tinted. I expect he’s quite different, or, is he? Being yours he has every chance. I’m that intrigued, as they say. Head like a little brown nut, said Mrs. Anderton. Well. But you have obviously become a brilliant mother, and this routine and discipline and regular feeding and cleaning will not only be making him fit and well now, but will give him a constitution which will be a treasure for seventy or eighty years. Great work, you’re a good person. At everything. Especially at writing letters. They are a delight, and having a whole library of them as I have had, I can feast and feast again. I love the description of Dickie smacking his lips in a charmingly rude manner after taking his fishy vitamins, and of his point of view of the services of a well managed dairy and that’s magnificent, by the way, they all say a baby so fed has a much better physique, He’ll be fit, all right.
You liked the sonnet. That is good. It has blemishes, I have not the gift of verse, but feeling as I did, verse was the only outlet. And I will admit that Dickie has made me produce the only passable expression in the verse form. He may inspire much yet.
Your dear mother, needing morphia to rest her after the busyness of the birthday. She is a pet, and I appreciate and feel so deeply grateful for her and for the fact that she Is with you. I carry a shot or two of Morphia always so that I can ease anyone who gets badly hit. Its a consolation to have such a solace always in your pocket.
The situation here is easy now, and the somewhat anxious days are passed. All goes well and everyone is in good form. We move again soon I suppose, from sandyness to streets and villas. But the mail will follow us as dutifully as a cocker spaniel.
So you and Dickie both well? I admired your few words of description, the slippery soapy Dickie. All this means
Just been told to pack for a provisional move, so my letter writing is curtailed, and off I go, nothing at all desperate but rather an odd job.
Maybe I’ll have time for some quiet writing this evening, then I’ll send a really letter.
I shall also read through the whole batch of letters and see what they’re all about again, perhaps I missed a page – I wonder. Not such chance. How sweet of the Jeavons, the Ellens and all to send you flower and cream. I love them all for loving you.
Live on your sweet lives in the quiet of our English Autumn, Dickie, looking at you with his wide eyes, you looking at him, and then the busyness of meal times, not the essential quietness of meal times, and the busyness of bath and changing. Gentle walks, with Candy, and the berries out and the leaves falling and the country settling down to rest after the ardours of Spring, and Summer.
Now I must away, so God bless you sweetest, be happy, write and I’ll write too. Sorry to waste this space, I was disturbed in the middle. Oh I don’t think he’ll be thirty feet at the age of ten, they do slow down.
God bless you dearest heart, all my love to you, and my son, to whom whisper the message at supper time.
Ever your own…