4th August. I have got a lot to erzähl [tell] about the Oxford Group. Annemarie2 said could she come here, so I said yes (I was alone) and she came needless to say with Mr [Reginald] Holme & Miles Phillimore.3 They arrived for lunch and made an onslaught which lasted till 10.45, trying to persuade me to go back to Oxford with them for the weekend. It was a very special weekend with very important people, and Frank [Buchman] had said would I come etc. I did not want to go in the least but as I was alone here I had no reason. When they saw I was set against it they tried a sort of mixture of flattery (‘you could change the world’) and blackmail and threats (‘you are afraid of being converted. You are not a revolutionary if you don’t give us a fair trial’). ‘Why not?’ is the answer I think!!
Anyway it ended with a Quiet Time. I did not write anything on the bit of paper they gave me although I thought of lots of jokes. They all read out their guidance and it consisted mostly of God saying he wanted me to go to Oxford. In the end they went off in despair. I suppose Frank had told them to bring me back. But during the day I got a terrific nausea for the whole silly affair, and when they said Frank had changed the world and prevented industrial disputes etc I asked how long he had been at it; they replied since 1921, so I said that was as long as the Führer, leaving them to make the comparison. I said in order to change anything properly in the modern world you had to have a political organization and several thousand people willing to give their lives and some machine guns. I said why the hell didn’t Frank stick to America and try and change that, because the industrial disputes there were the horror of the whole world.
They were very hurt and made all kinds of lame answers. 6 August. So then I said you will never get me for your sort of ‘revolution’ because I am a realist and we must have a framework first in England. Miles Phillimore, ‘We are realists too, and after all when I had been in New Zealand a year, the Prime Minister said “the Oxford group is the only policy for the world”.’ And what difference has it made him saying that?
But the thing that makes me angriest is when they harp on the fact that Frank said publicly ‘thank God for Adolf Hitler’. They tell one that as if it were gleichzeitig [at the same time] very brave and a terrific compliment for the Führer.
I am sorry for all this boring outburst but I longed for you to be there at the time. Although I am really fond of Annemarie I shall not lift a finger for her to see the Führer while she is with that ghastly Frank.
It is so lovely and calm here with Kit. We don’t even ride, but just lie in the sun and listen to the wireless, and fish, and row in a tiny little boat he has brought. I am so happy. At the end of next week Vivien4 & Nicky5 come, and then it will be less peaceful. The boys are coming too and I am perfectly dying for them.
This letter has gone on so long it must be a birthday letter now darling, so many happy returns, and I enclose the usual dull-but-useful.
I wish you were here. Kit wants you to come & bring the Princesses Wrede6 with you!!
All love, Nardy
P.S. Miles & co kept being guided to use my telephone for trunk calls! They all ring up nearly every day but I say I am away. They are nothing daunted by my firmness. Of course they are mad to get to see the Führer. But then who isn’t?
Darling Nard
Thank you so much for your letter. It arrived just after I had posted my letter to you, with the photo
I quite forgot to thank you for the lovely photos of the boys, I was so pleased with them & I shall stick them in my family book when I go to England.
Erna is most terribly aufgeregt [excited] about ‘Entartete Kunst’,1 she says that the artists in it are the only good ones in Germany today and the whole world envies Germany for them. She has stopped working in her shop because her brother is afraid the SS will come & smash the windows if she is caught selling reproductions of modern pictures (that sounds unlikely doesn’t it) and she sits at home in Solln all by herself getting aufgeregter & aufgeregter. I spent a whole afternoon & evening with her & she didn’t speak of anything else at all, just a torrent of Aufregung [excitement]. She goes to the exhibition every day, & she says that all the really artistic people in Munich are freu-ing [enjoying] themselves like anything because they say, never before have we had a chance of seeing all these wonderful pictures collected together in one Ausstellung [exhibition], & they go every day, & noch dazu [what’s more] the entrance is free. She says all the Americans come to her & say ‘If only we could have this wonderful collection in America, wouldn’t they let us take it over?’ I asked Erna to let me go to it with her but she refused but at last I persuaded her & we went, I feel I learnt quite a lot by it. She has small pictures by two of the artists, which they gave her themselves, hanging in her house, in fact she has three pictures by Nolde. [incomplete]
Darling Boud
I have been wanting to write to you for ages but I didn’t know your address, now Muv has sent me the Dieppe one & says it will find you. I hope it will. Do write to your Boud soon.
I did envy Blor & Tiny going to see my Boud, I do hope I will soon. I hear you had a tooth out without anaesthetic, poor Boud how awful. How is the baby, I hear you can feel it kicking already. It is so exciting, I do envy you. I think I really must have a darling little Bastard, it would be so sweet & I should love it. Do you hope for a boy or a girl? What will you call it?
Clementine [Mitford] & I went with the Führer to Bayreuth for the festival, we were there ten days, it was lovely. Kukuli von Arent1 was in Bayreuth, & she hadn’t heard about you, she was perfectly amazed when I told her & kept on saying ‘Aber die Decca war doch so nett! Sie war doch so lustig und reizend!2 Do you remember when the two SS men here called you ‘die lustige Kommunistin’? Clementine went to England from Bayreuth, & I returned here. I have seen the Führer a lot lately which has been heaven, only now he has gone back to his mountain for a bit.
I do hope you are having lovely weather for your motor tour. We have been having a heat wave here for a week, but today alas it’s raining. The other day when it was boiling hot I found a secluded spot in the Englischer Garten3 where I took off all my clothes & sunbathed, luckily no-one came along. While I was lying in the sun I suddenly wondered whether Muv knew I was sun-bathing naked, like when she knew that you were bathing naked, & I laughed till I ached, if anyone had come along they would have thought me mad as well as indecent.
Well Boud pray write to your Boud as soon as you get this, she does so long to hear from her Boud.
Best love from Yr Boud
Darling:
I have got a lot to erzähl [tell] about a wonderfully typical day I spent at Schwanenwerder yesterday. After discovering that the people I have come to see are all away, I rang up Magda on the chance and she asked me to come at once. Kukuli was there, radiant after spending a week with her loved