48 Lower Swanick.

Friday.

Dearest Bronio,

We nearly wept over your letter (the real one
I mean, not the little typed bit). We come
back on Monday, and I will phone. For reasons
I will explain when we meet, I too am feeling
a little bustled, but though I am still not clear
of colitis, I don't know if I told you that that
four month's illness of Bill's left me a bit
low) I'm as fit as I've been in years. The idea
of you struggling to write handicapped as you
are is far from comforting.

The rest when we meet, and , in the meantime
all our sympathy and love. R.

Durham Leys Cottage,
March Baldon,
Oxford.

June 28th.

My dear and much-missed B--- R---, London seems to have lost
about half its population since to the great big beautiful
G.O.C., and we were as glad, as surprised, (you're no great
shakes at letter writing, any more than us) to get your two
letters: for your name constantly crops up in daily conver-
sation and we had wondered which way the balance was tipping
in your American experiences. There would be much that you
would loathe, but novelty can make up for much, and leaves
little time for the thought that may lead to "metaphysical
depression"; and one hopes, too, that you may be having
a large measure of the adulation and appreciation which is
your right, and which a little cushions the angles of life.
We simultaneously expressed a wish that we had been with you
in the Spanish cafes, sitting in the sun and soaking it up
along
with the liquids of the country.

We have been a bit of a mess since you left. Two goes
of flu each since Christmas thoroughly disorganised all
programmes, and the book to be inscribed to you somewhat
further threw out Bill's calculations. He dedicates it to
you with peculiar pleasure; for it has cost him more trouble
than any book he has ever undertaken: but now that he is
done with it he is satisfied, and feels that it is as well
done as it was in his power to do it. It was extrmely dif-
ficult, as who should know if not you ? but it has made
an excellent two volumes now it is complete. It should be
out about the middle of next month, and Bill asks if you
would like it posted to the Faculty Club, University of
California etc. or to Oberbotzen (in which case please
send the address: I have it, but would like it confirmed),
or would you rather wait for it until you come home ?

The Procreant hymn is just out; and makes a very nice
book. I do not think it is going to be sent out for review.
The first volume for Chapman and Hall is on the verge of be-
ing finished. Torquemada goes strong. We are in this remote
spot until the Autumn. As to our flat: we shall not leave
England before Christmas: we cant: so you will not have our
rooms (unless you can wait for them till January) but we
shall have the priceless pleasure of your company (in and out)
for at least three months.

Your letters are so warmly affectionate, that I think
you would be pleased at the frequency with which you *merry*
*larissa* intrude into the lives of the small circle common
to you and to us: you have touched these lives so vividly and
at so many points: you could not be more often in our minds
if you were in England. Gwen is well, Matty is up and down,
but always festive. Montone was an utter wash out; her part-
ners a couple of bad hats. Ella we hear is as well and as
charming as ever, but we have not had the luck to see her.
Barbara has been in Paris for the last three months: Henry
is as he always was.

Now Bill is ready to dictate, so, adios, and we shall
look eagerly for your return in the Autumn.

Give our love to Elsie when you write, and let us know
about the book.

Thursday.

48, Upper Mall, W. 6.

Dearest Bronio, I ought to have written to you so long ago, but, as Bill's mumps have developed, he has needed a good deal of day and night attention. He has not had more than a couple of hours continuous sleep for a fortnight, and between drugs and pain is not even able to read to himself the last two days. Poulticing having failed, we tried leeches today, but the whole face is by now so exacerbated that we wont know till to-morrow whether this treatment has succeeded. It was a sinister business: Fatty Arbuckle and Mae West ran each other very close for expansive capacity. You would have grieved to see him struggling with last weeks reviews: sitting cross-legged in bed, looking like a Buddha with very bad toothache, and murmuring after each hardly elicited sentence "How's that, mumpire ?" He has had to cry off reviews this week.

Now to equally material but less painful matters. I find I paid you 50£ in December. That (as I remember it) was for the time when you were in Tamaris and I did no work for you. Another 50 on March 30th. for the previous six months. That leaves another six months and a bit of October (for which I think I got 6.7% - but I cannot put my hand on the notice). Only one month was I paid at the lower rate (£9.15,

instead of £10.16.8.) If I paid you £60, this
leaves me with an illegitimate rake off of about
£10. This does not seem fair, but you seemed to
wish something of the sort to happen. And do you
mind if I pay on the installment system ? The
enclosed £20 will produce none of those deplorable
red figures which one does so not want to see.
Its purely silly to ask, because you would say
yes to anything, bless you.

I'm glad you did not come down here: it is too risky.
But I do hope I'll see you sometime soon.

Bill sends his love: we both so feel for you and
the grey difficult disorientation of your life.

R.

Any nice sunny day that you and I were free, I would
come complete with helmet and rubber coat....

Villa Auguste,
Tamaris-sur-Mer,
(Var), France

July 28, 1932

My dear Rosky,

We were delighted to receive a day or so ago an invitation to subscribe £10 on Bill's play because that means that things are moving. I need not tell you that two £10 shares are being booked, one on mine and one on Elsie's name, and I am only sorry that present conditions do not allow me to subscribe on any larger scale. I shall be very happy indeed if Peggy-May appears on the boards by October.

The books arrived here. I am awfully sorry you had all the trouble with them, but they are indispensable for me and I tried several times gently hinting to Fred that he should them off, but he did not take the hint. Since they library books from the London School of Economics which must on no account be taken from the building, I was not able to get the school porter to send them to me - it would have meant too much complication. I am very sorry you had to come back to London to do it. My thanks and apologies.

I think I will be quite frank with you over Elinor's latest exploits here. After having arranged with Agnes Drew to dispatch her luggage to London, and after having taken my advice (which was the only sensible advice of course, since I gave it) to take the luggage with her as passenger luggage, she left it at the last moment for no reason whatever in the Station at Toulon. Lola and Rosa had about two days work sending

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it by petite vitesse. I had advised Elinor not to send it by petite vitesse, knowing how much trouble it gives on both sides. Of course, it does not give any trouble if you leave it to other people to do. Now she has crowned everything else and has put me in a very difficult position, for Drew writes to me that she has charged her 18/- for "taxi and porters". Since I paid the taxi in which Drew's luggage was taken to Toulon, as well as the porters, I naturally cannot allow that and I am sending Elinor 18/- and asking her to return the money to Drew. I would not have mentioned the whole thing to you at all, but I have to do it because you will hear it from the other side. Now since Elinor has shown a considerable amount of absentmindedness in this whole affair - I am absolutely sure that she forgot I had paid for the taxi, or interpreted the thing from a slightly different legal point of view - I am afraid that she might also give some interpretations to the whole affair which would be distinctly at variance with my view of it. After all is said and done, the whole affair does not matter two farthings as between you and me, but I simply could not let Drew pay the 18/- over and above the unnecessary large sum which she will have to pay because the things went by petite vitesse and were not simply taken.

I believe in getting things clear, but I should like to tell you that I am in no way occupying my mind with this affair any further, and I hope that it will be completely

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ended with that. But I want Elinor definitely to accept the
18/- from me but also to return 18/- to Drew, and I may have
to ask you tactfully to see or manage that this is done. I am
dictating this letter to Lola, but since she has been in the
whole thing from beginning to end and had part of the work in
sending the luggage, and has very definite views on this affair
she is not an outside person. Incidentally, though you need
not tell this to Drew, Elsie and I are blessing the day when
I decided to change my research assistant.

You probably have received the notice from the School of
Economics that you have been reappointed as my half-time
research assistant. Will you please continue reading and
excerpting the books the list of which I have given to you and
of which I append one or two. I have received all you previous
excerpts. Please send them off immediately after you have
typed them.

Elsie joins her love to mine

P.S. I have to enclose the letter to Elinor to you and ask you
to forward it. I should be grateful if you would read it,
though of course you needn't if you do not want to.

September 9th, 1932

My dear Roskie,

I was delighted and thrilled to see the little puff in the Dramatis Personae column of the Observer. Little, and yet so very important. No doubt a purely personal, selfish and self-conceited element comes in: I was telling you that the Observer would not mind it leaking out that Torquemada is the author of Cold Blood and I still think that on the bills of Cold Blood, Torquemada ought to figure one way or another.

You know that I do not suffer from undue optimism, but I cannot think now how the Blood can be kept off the boars. The onrush of journalistic interviews etc etc about which you complain in anticipation is one of these plagues which we endure with great pleasure, I should say, though not without some squirming.

Now comes the other side of the medallion. I am in considerable throes about my own work. It is these beastly American lectures which somehow have got rather out of hand and into a rather bad mess. I hate the idea of interrupting into the Joyous Progress with a squeal of anxiety and an S.O.S. But if possibly you could devote some time to your two old friends - B.M. and his manuscripts - I should be extremely grateful. It is partly a matter of surgery and you know that nobody's scalpel works quite as well as yours; and partly a matter of general advice. Both Lola and myself have gone a little stale on the matter, and it will be very nice to have some third mind. I am writing this in advance to prepare you for the worst. Of course, I expect you will not be busy with real work, but I am certain you will be very much in the whirl of great events, and normally I would not bother you about my affairs at such a moment. In any case, if you could let me know (the return of post or thereabouts might still reach me here) how you will stand for time and detachment of mind, I should be very grateful. I am very glad in any case that we shall be there at the first night, though I cannot imagine how the thing can be rigged up before the first of October.

Love for both from two,

Yours ever,