FROM MRS. ROBERT HENREY.

27th August 1950.

2 Carrington House,
Hertford Street
Piccadilly
W.I.

Dear Mr. Herbert van Thal,

A year ago it was in a sleeping car on my way through the Austrian Tyrol that I quite accidentally came across your remarks about my novel *Philippa* in Good Housekeeping, having bought that magazine at Victoria station at the start of my journey and slipped it into my handbag! You said I wrote like Miss Rosa Carey which I did not take ill for women novelists are apt to fall into the same sins.

Last evening flying through dark and horrid clouds from Deauville to Croydon I once more came upon your column and blushed to see how kind you are to *Matilda and the Chickens* all of whom I had left a few hours earlier on my farm in Normandy.

Being above all a housewife and therefore a natural reader of Good Housekeeping, these discoveries in your column give me a great deal of pleasure. I feel respect for you both as a publisher and a critic. I think you once described me as 'an interesting woman'. I think you are a very kind man!

Yours very sincerely,

Mrs. Robert Henrey.