Because I feel full of the milk of human kindness, I’ll concur in your judgement of Nachman. He bores me & always will – but that, as I think I told you, is because he never laughs at me – it casts no slur upon his character or intelligence. Lois is another matter altogether.
Thursday 17 August I had a letter from Sir Robert Waley Cohen, asking me to spend a week with him at Honeymead, from Sept 15th–21st. He says, graciously, that if I am not well enough to ride I can follow the hunt in the car. (what? what?) (Note the delicate manner in which he assumes that I can ride (as a matter of fact I can – but he has no reason to know that). Obviously all the Best People do ride, & if he didn’t think I was one of the Best People, he wouldn’t have asked me to stay – which makes me laugh a lot – but I think I shall go – it will spare me the threatened visit to Paris – and I shall love writing and telling you all about it. It will be a new experience. I have known Sir Robert and his two sons for many years (they have filled the ground floor of the Great Portland Street Synagogue on Yom Kippur while Mummy & Sophie Tucker & I have been filling the gallery, ever since I can remember) but I never suspected him of this pukkah strain. I shall never be quite the same again.
Saturday 19 August It was nice of you not to be sceptical about the Monna Lisa comparison. (Monna was a 13thC. Florentine abbreviation for Madonna – in fact an exact translation of m’lady – and so although I know all about how the vulgar herd spell this (conjectural) name for Leonardo’s Gioconda, I stick to Monna which is pedantic but Right.)
Tuesday 22 August Hamish came to see me on Sunday – (Charlotte is back in Edinburgh). I told him politely, but with a subtle inflection of enquiry in my voice, that Charlotte had written to me. He gave me a long and involved explanation of this phenomenon – (his story is that she got so tired of the sound of my name (!) that she got quite nasty about me. Hamish explained to her, with dignity, that he and I were on a Higher Plane – and finally brought her to see me – whereupon she was immediately reassured – one look at me was enough to convince her that here was no rival for her charms – and her letter was a subtle (?) tribute to her restored faith in Hamish – and her Absolute Confidence in me). It was a good story, told in Hamish’s inimitable voice & enlivened by Hamish’s inimitable mannerisms but I doubt if we’ve got to the core of the matter, even now.
Wednesday 23 August I wish I were a Cabinet Minister, Gershon – I’d have been so clever – nothing like this could ever have happened.3 When Italy attacked Abyssinia, I’d have put two nasty, bristling battle cruisers across the Suez Canal (strictly illegal, of course – but oh! what a gesture) and then I’d have cocked a snook at Mussolini (I never liked his face anyway) and I’d have written a rude note to Hitler saying that I knew all about why he was holding Mussolini’s hand – so as to keep his mind off Austria.
And now look what a nasty mess we’re in – all because no-one thought of including me in the Cabinet. It gives rise to ‘thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears’.4 Ah! well, let’s eat, drink & be merry for tomorrow we die – tis a maxim tremendous but trite.
As a matter of fact, I’m frightened. I just wanted to tell someone I was. Let’s not mention it again. You’re not thinking of sprouting into a handsome territorial, or anything, are you? don’t – darling – (not that I really think you would – but I’m being Forward and, (I hope) appealing, just in case you had considered it).
My aunt is clucking helplessly. Jean keeps on expecting a wire announcing her instant mobilization. My father prophecies a cataclysmic collapse in Germany, after which everything will be All Right. (He believes the Russo-German pact to be a wild clutch at a swirling-away straw by a drowning Fuhrer.) I go out & stir up rabbits – I prefer rabbits to political arguments. What’s done is done. She wept because she had no more to say.
Dear me, this is a very unsatisfactory letter. The truth is that I want to be comforted.
Friday 25 August In case of war I think my mother and the children will stay here. Dad will go to London to see in what way he can be of use, and I have written to Leslie HB’s5 secretary asking her advice as to what kind of job I’m fitted for. Don’t worry, I don’t intend to offend the aesthetic sensibilities of my friends or the nation by blossoming forth as a WAT Or a WREN Or a WAAF or even a land-worker.
My father doesn’t think there’ll be a war. He bases his belief on that old saw about right triumphing in the end – and also on a conviction that the Führer is played out.
Dicky is getting more and more insufferably insolent. I’d like to beat him hard. I wish you were here to do it for me – as a matter of fact I wish you were here – (but that is a forward admission, & quite by the way). There’s a sort of heat-vapour of suppressed hysteria in the house – which makes me feel I want to scream & scream. It is no-body’s fault – but it’s Hellish. Your letters are the only things that happen, to make me smile.
I blush, Gershon, I really do, to think of the number of letters from me which will await you on your return from Liverpool. (Though I am forward, I am not brazen – yet.)
Saturday 26 August Old Sir Robert, my-host-that-was-to-have-been, thinks that his house party on Exmoor will probably have to be cancelled – so it looks as though I shall not follow the hunt in a car – with the dowagers – after all. I shall, by then, probably be immured in some ‘destination unknown’ with the War Office.
And what of Ismay’s wedding? I fancy that in the event of War, she will be gathered to her Charles’ manly bosom sooner than either of them expected. But I’m not going to talk about war any longer – I’m tired of it – and you must be too, by now.
I’ve just been downstairs listening to the news. I think the suppression of Neville Henderson’s6 message from Hitler is very sinister. I hope we’re not going to have another Munich – but I don’t think so. Chamberlain (silly old cockerel) wouldn’t dare do it again – but you know the old saw: ‘If at first you don’t concede, fly, fly, fly again.’ (This is not original. I shouldn’t like you to think I am cleverer than I am.)
A heartening sight met me in the drawing room. Lionel – plunged deep in knitting. He offers no explanation of this phenomenon. He just sits, all wrapped up in yarn – knitting frenziedly – only coming out of his reverie occasionally to make trenchant comments on the news. Dicky is now not on speaking terms with anyone in the house except Lionel. He refuses to wash or brush his hair or change his clothes – or wear the requisite amount of undergarments. He goes about in a navy polo-jersey & navy shorts and Wellingtons – in & out of the house – his hair standing on end in wiry tangles. Occasionally he tramps about intoning a tuneless trill of sound – or murmuring ‘What the bloody Hell’ to himself in an aggressive manner. Otherwise he holds no communication with man or beast. Yes, Gershon, we are an odd household.
Dad is certain that there will be peace with honour. Well! if he’s right, we shall meet again at Ismay’s wedding in just over a fortnight, sha’n’t we? If he’s wrong – ‘Quoth the raven “Nevermore” –’7 or quite possibly, at any rate – but this is vapouring. Take no notice of it.
Monday 28 August I had an agitated letter from Joyce by the same post as your two. If there is a rent in the clouds – she is coming up here at once – otherwise she will be evacuating school-children for her Country.
I liked the fatherly touch about ‘one oughtn’t really to worry about individual skins’. Of course one oughtn’t, mon cher, but one does – and the more shocked one is by the unethicalness of worrying, the more one worries, because in addition to worrying, one worries about one’s own shortcomings which make one worry – if you see what I mean – and I shouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.