Dear Henri Heine,
Thanks for your letter, I did like getting it. I expect you are at Castle Howard now. If so will you ask George1 what was in his Greetings ’Gram that Nancy brought out with her among my letters? I opened it & saw some message about Dolly2 but I didn’t really take it in as I was so busy reading all the other letters, & now it’s lost. Anyway tell him that jokes about Dolly are rather ‘vieux jeu’ [old hat] now, & give him my love!
Well here’s a description of Esmond which you ask for. He has got blue eyes & beige hair about the colour of mine and he talks rather like Michael Farrer3 only with a slight cockney pronunciation – for instance he says riowd instead of rood for rude. Also he can do awfully good imitations of people like Winston Churchill4 & he talks French so well you’d take him for a Frenchman, because once a Frenchman said to him ‘vous êtes Alsacien, Monsieur?’ which proves it. (He is frightfully good at languages altogether & has already learnt enough Spanish to talk in quite easily, but your poor old Hen can hardly speak a word.) I expect you know most about his doings such as scramming from Wellington etc from seeing it in the papers so won’t bother to tell you. Didn’t you guess slightly what your old Hen was up to in London the week before I left, for instance when I hurriedly rang off when you came into the room one day & you asked me why I did & I was cross?
Now dear about my clothes; it’s very cheery & Hen-like of you to say you’ll get them for me etc in fact you are the only one to have made a nice suggestion like that. I’ll tell you what though; you know my Worth satin dress that’s been dyed purple? Well I don’t suppose I shall need a dress like that for ages by which time it’ll be out of fashion; so I wonder if you could very kindly try & sell it for me? Being Worth & just newly cleaned & dyed it might fetch quite a lot. I suggest you should take it to Fine Feathers or somewhere & try & get about three to five pounds for it. It would really be most Beery of you if you could dear & I would be grateful. I don’t actually need any of my other clothes at present but when the hot weather comes I’ll write to you for them.
I wonder if you could write me a really delicious long letter telling among other things exactly what account the Rodds gave of their visit out here. Rodd wrote me a long & incredibly boring letter with points numbered 1), 1(a), 2), etc!!! about how silly it was of me not to come home & I think they were rather cross because we were not impressed by it! I had a letter from Boud the other day in which she said ‘Nancy says Esmond adores publicity’, which seems to me to be absolutely incomprehensible considering we spent the whole time in St Jean de Luz frantically trying to escape reporters; so if everything she said has been as untrue as that I wish she’d never come out here. Not that it matters, but it seems so stupid of her. Do tell me any other bits of fascinating gossip that you have heard.
Well Dear I long to see you; we may be coming to England about the end of Sept so I’ll see you then.
Love from (Stone) Henge
P.S. Your letter was much the nicest I’ve had for ages.
Darling Nard
Fancy you being in Berlin again, I was so surprised to get your letter. I imagine the Führer is there isn’t he?
Do come here for the weekend, everyone has been asking when you are coming, it’s such ages since you were here. The Baroness1 would be so thrilled – you know how she hates me & adores you.
I think I gave the impression that our conversation about the party was more important than it was. Only he said very emphatically, & enlarged upon it quite a lot, that he thought it might have proved a fatal mistake in England to call them fascists & Blackshirts instead of something typically English, and suggested that if he had been starting a party in England he would have gone back to Cromwell & perhaps called his SA ‘Ironsides’. I thought that rather a sweet idea don’t you.
Well let me know when & where you arrive & I will meet you in the car.
Best love from Bobo
P.S. Have you seen Frau Doktor [Magda Goebbels]? She really wrote such a sweet letter about Decca.
Darling Boud
Thanks so much for your letter, I was so pleased to get it.
About Esmond’s feeling for fascists (actually I prefer to be called a National Socialist as you know) I will explain how I feel about it, & I don’t really see why he should feel any different. I hate the communists just as much as he hated Nazis, as you know, and it naturally wouldn’t occur to me, nor would I want, to make friends with a lot of communists, if I had no reason to. But I don’t see why we shouldn’t personally be quite good friends, though politically enemies. Of course one can’t separate one’s politics & one’s private life, as you know Nazism is my life & I very much despise that democratic-liberal-conservative-English idea of walking about arm-in-arm with one’s opponent in private life and looking upon politics as a business or hobby; but I do think that family ties ought to make a difference. After all, violent differences of opinion didn’t prevent you & me from remaining good friends did they. My attitude to Esmond is as follows – and I rather expect his to me to be the same. I naturally wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him if it was necessary for my cause, and I should expect him to do the same to me. But in the meanwhile, as that isn’t necessary, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be quite good friends, do you. I wonder if he agrees.
As to me turning against my Boud as you say, how could you think I would. On the contrary I was one of the very few who always was on your side, all through. The only other ones who always stuck up for you, & who I never heard say anything against you or blame you in any way, were Diana & Tom. (And Muv of course, but that was a bit different.) I am longing to see you & tell all about the different attitudes, I expect you are longing to hear too aren’t you.
I hear from the old boy that the judge says you can marry, that is good news.
Oh dear I would love to see you & have a good chat – there are so many things one can’t really ask or discuss in a letter, if one did one would spend the whole day writing.
Mrs Ham is coming on Friday, it will be funny having her here & showing her round, somehow the idea of the Wid in Munich is so incongruous.
I wonder what you do in Bayonne all day, & what it’s like. Does Esmond speak French well.
By the way I think the only person who thoroughly enjoyed the family crisis was Mrs Ham. She used to come round to Rutland G about five times a day to see one or other of the family, she always insisted on seeing each of us alone so as to get all our individual slants on the affair. Do you remember she used to call you the ballroom communist?
Well Boud do write again at once, I long to hear from you. I plan to return to England about the 25th April & stay for the coronation.1
Do you remember P. Nevile’s ridiculous demonstration for Edward VIII?2 If I didn’t think him so odious I should really be sorry for him. He must be congratulating himself, by the way, on making quite a bit out of your affair. I should claim it if I were