Then one hears the drums rumbling & one knows that is the end of the dance & goes hopelessly back to the doorway hoping for the other chinless horror to turn up & of course he doesn’t so one scrams thankfully off to bed.
Yesterday one young man told me the same funny (?) story three times. At least I think it was the same young man but one can’t possibly tell.
Well dear, Family Life seems to go on in the same old way & I never see any of the sisters except sometimes Bobo, & the boredom of Wycombe is absolutely unbelievable. One never dares ask any of one’s friends for fear of the family taking against them & being fearfully rude ‘like only Mitfords can’. Bobo has just come back from Germany. She is going back again soon. I wish I was going with her. I should at least be able to go every night to listen to the band with the man I love in it. When she goes I shall be absolutely alone again which I hate so. There isn’t anyone to talk to because you know how the parents simply don’t listen.
Pam comes over sometimes which is awful. When Derek comes too it is worse. I never see Diana & very seldom see Nancy or Tom. So altogether it isn’t much fun. We have got to be at Wycombe for three months now. Lord only knows what I shall find to do all that time.
Everyone does the same old things here. Farve goes off to The Lady & the House of Lords & Muv paints chairs & reads books called things like ‘Stalin: My Father’ or ‘Mussolini: The Man’ or ‘Hitler: My Brother’s Uncle’ or ‘I Was In Spain’ or ‘The Jews – By One Who Knows Them’ etc etc etc. I haven’t read a book for eight months now.
I never can remember what jokes you’ve heard & what you’ve missed, but I know you can’t have heard this one. It’s a summing up of the Fem’s character by Bobo & me. It goes like this ‘Nelson, bread of my life, meet me tonight without any doctors or any medicine under the kitchen table’.1 You must say it’s a wonderful summing up. Well dear, hotcha.
Love from Yr Hen
Dear Henderson,
Thanks v. much for amusing letters
Have you been to any more dances? I gather from your letters that you more or less loathe most of them, I must say deb dances aren’t the cheeriest form of entertainment. But it seems all the more marvellous when one doesn’t have to go any more; Esmond says that’s the same as being at a public school or remand home, that always afterwards you think how lucky you are not to be there still. Anyway I expect next year it really will be more fun; I call the middle of July an extraorder time to come out, you might have liked it more if you had come out at the beginning of the summer.
Couldn’t you cheer off abroad somewhere, e.g. to Italy with the Rodds, or Germany with the Boud? Or even France with your Hen. Where are you all going to be in the winter – R Gate or the cottage? Your Hen will be in London then, we are coming back after our Tour to live there for a few months while your Hen has her baby etc. Shall I call it Henderson, or even Hon Henderson & everyone’ll think it’s the Hon(ble) Henderson. Did you know your old Hen was in pig.1 Yes dear, you had better be training as a young midwife, as soon as possible. I hope you will be its Henmother (Honnish for Godmother) anyway. Do write to your Hen & say if you are interested about it. Your poor Hen never stopped sicking up all her food for about three months on account of it, which was so cheerless.
Peter R[amsbotham] & George Howard have sent us an absolute mass of phone records which is such bliss of them. Do impress how grateful I am if you see them, there’s such a terrific lot.
Love from Henry
Darling Susan,
Thanks for yr. letter. All is oke now really, but Susan I must just remind you of a few things you seem to have forgotten! Susan how can you say you & Rodd were pro Esmond & me living together when you wrote saying how unrespectable it was & how Society would shun me, & Rodd wrote saying how French workmen would shun me. In fact what you actually wanted us to do was to come home to England, in which case I should have been caught by the P’s1 & narst old Judge & altogether teased in every way. So what you were really against was both us getting married and us living together not married. Do you admit, Susan. Do you also admit it was a bit disloyal just as I was thinking you were the one I could count on to be on my side through thick and. Anyway it’s all such ages ago now I expect you’ve forgotten a bit what you did do, &, as you say, now we are married there’s no point in [illegible].
I am going to have a baby in January (1st to be exact, oh Susan do you remember poor Lottie’s2 agonies, & I expect it’s much worse for humans), yes Susan some of us do our duty to the community unlike others I could name. Shall I call it Nancy? I think skeke [hardly] as I have a feeling it’s going to be a boy, & being called Nancy might prove a handicap to it throughout life. I do hope it will be sweet & pretty & everything. Goodness I have been sick but I’m not any more now.
The bathing here is absolute heaven, we go to Biarritz nearly every day. Well Soose. End of paper.
Love from Susan
Darling Sooze
Oh thank goodness what a weight off my mind. Well Susan now I know that all is OKE I am sending you a) a narst little diamond ring as I know it is nice to have things of popping value even if only for a few pounds & b) which you will like much more Busman’s Honeymoon1 which must be the funniest book ere written. And I daresay some cash will be forthcoming in Jan. when needed. Susan fancy you with a scrapage. I don’t think you are fit to bring one up after your terribly awful behaviour but what luck that you will always have dear old aunt Nancy at hand to advise & help.
Love from Sooze
Dearest Henderson,
It WAS lovely seeing you & Blor, you can’t think how terribly pleased I was you could come. I only wish you were still here, it seemed such an awfully short time.
I do hope you weren’t bored & I didn’t talk about Esmond all the time like Woman does about Derek, but you know it seems such an AGE since he went, however he’s coming back today for certain.
I think I only really realized, from seeing you, what things had been like at home; it is so extraorder how people can make themselves so miserable when there’s nothing to be miserable about, & of course I’m dreadfully sorry they were so unhappy. It seems such a tease that one can’t be what one likes without causing all that misery. The more I think of it the less I can understand it.
Best love from Squalor
It’s early Spring in January, because I’m in pig.
Darling:
I would have written ages ago, but we are having a heat wave of terrific proportions and it is really boiling and I spend the days in a pair of bathing pants and a shirt. I am reading Mein Kampf.1