CHEMIN DES PLATEIRES 9A
PULLY
VAUD

Téléphone: Pully (021) 3 25 26

Pully, 26th January 1948.

My dear Viola,

So many thanks for your gay Christmas card and
for your long Christmas letter that I found waiting for me
here when I got back from Barbadoes. I wrote you from there.
No, I was only in London for a few weeks, doing some necessary
business, then a business opportunity came for me to go
with friends to the West Indies from a purely commercial point
of view. I might add that I had the most lovely holiday,
but had to recommend that the firm did not proceed further
with the business side at present. Communications are still
too bad, it will be right in another year or so. I flew
straight back from Jamaica via Paris to Geneva. It was a
lovely trip, as if one were gliding on a cloud. I think
it was the bit of my trip that I enjoyed the most. No,
I don't know any Spanish, and only a few words of Italian.
My usual speech here is German, because the Swiss friend
with whom I stay is from Zurich. Then around me I hear
only French, and really feel I can't cope with more than
three languages.

I do hope you had a good time over Christmas.
You certainly had a dreadful moment mixing the dazzle with
the salad dressing, but an easy thing it is to do. Everybody
writes me from London saying things are worse than ever there.
You know, they are getting whale meat to eat but no one who
writes me has found any way of making it taste possible.
They all say rather gloomily that the dogs like it. We
are having some snow here too, and as my dogs are short
haired, they won't go out in the cold if they can help.
Then they get restless and fight each other in a rather bored
way.

All my best wishes to yourself and the family
for a very happy time in 1948.

9th April 1948

My dear Viola,

How amazingly kind of you to send me those lettuce
seeds - we are going to try them out and it will be a new kind,
our climate here is more like the American climate than the
English and usually American seeds do excellently.
Thank you
so much.

We do not have over here the Golden Rose of China
unless we call it by some other name. But we have got some
lovely plum trees in the garden and particularly a greengage tree
now in full flower.

Masaryk - it is the usual belief here that he was
murdered. Friends of mine knew him whilst he was in England on
service there during the war and said he was a very good man in
character, probably not so well gifted politically as his father
but extremely honest and honorable. The whole circumstances were
so suspicious that nobody here thought of it as suicide. Or if
they did, the whole view has changed since the war. You see,
in some many cases people were tortured by the Nazis or by the
Russians to reveal the names of their comrades that all the people
engaged on secret service work were ordered to kill themselves and
provided with the means of so doing if they were captured and it was
then considered extremely honorable.

We are all in a state of preparation here in case
anything should happen but we hope it will not - we are all so tired
of war. On the other hand, I think all Europe has learned its
lesson, appeasement gets nowhere. Or as my Puritan relatives
used to say, two wrongs don't make a right.

It must be fun watching the baby grow - I thought
she looked so sweet in the picture you sent to Hilda.

It has been pretty cold the last days here but we
think it is clearing up. The fruit blossoms just now are
wonderful.

All my love and thanks,

Hotel Minerva, Lugano, Tessin,
Switzerland, 1st July 1948

My dear Viola,

I have just received your letter of the 25th. It is so kind of you to offer to send parcels but we mercifully do not need them, there is no rationing here now of any kind ( hasn't been except for stuff in bulk for almost a year ) and food supplies are exactly as in the United States. Switzerland was very short during the war because of her geographical position but directly the war was over, she had plenty of funds and bought in large stocks so that we can have anything we want to eat. Prices are high - cost of living is about the same here as in the States, Americans have told me, but no rationing of any kind whatsoever. The only other European countries like us are Belgium and in a less degree, Portugal. Portugal wasn't in the war but has areas with many poor still, Belgium was in the war but went right ahead with a free private enterprise economy afterwards instead of socialistic experiments and is now on a high level of prosperity than she was pre war.

So do please go ahead and use the little cheque to enjoy yourself. Why not put some of it aside for the dentist in some years' time, and use the other for your garden and treats? I am only so thankful it was possible to do this.

I'm over here for three weeks with Hilda, she is looking wonderfully well except that everybody has had a bit of chill or rheumatism because we have had six weeks of rain, almost without stopping. It is unprecedented here where June is always dry and the great preoccupation is whether drought will or will not destroy the crows. It has been bad everywhere, in England, in France, here, the only place I have heard of where it was comparatively dry was an English friend went to southern Italy and wrote from there the weather was good.

It seems to have cleared a bit to-day and Hilda and I have promised ourselves a little lake trip this afternoon if the sun is still out. We take a small steamboat a couple of stations round the lake and back, just enough to be pleasant without its being too far and then Hilda might get tired.

I'm sure your little grandchild must be enchanting, especially just now. The nicest age of all.

I go back to Kenwin on July 15th. Shall be sorry to leave here, I know.

All my love and it will give me the greatest pleasure to think of your having some fun or getting some new plants,

VILLA KENWIN
BURIER-LA TOUR
VAUD

Téléphone: Burier 5. 37. 97

18th August 1948

My dear Viola,

A most exciting package arrived - full of gay colored clothes pins, how kind of you, they are great fun and I shall share them of course with Hilda. I shall not send them to Lugano but give her some when she comes back this autumn to Lausanne. Thank you very much for them and for *Time*, this arrived quite safely too and I read it with interest, I do see it sometimes because our dentist lends me copies occasionally but not always and I hadn't seen this one.

Hilda said you were asking about Shakespeare, and if he wrote the plays, maybe you hadn't seen that thanks to a team of American research workers, we know positively lots more about him during the last twenty years. For example, a Dr Wallace worked on London law suits about Shakespeare's time and found, just before the war, the records of a law suit in which Shakespeare was summoned as witness. This proved that he was a man of good education and considerable wealth, that he lived with a Huguenot wig maker for a time whilst in London but kept his residence in Stratford and that he enjoyed a reputation early in his career as someone of position and means. Then another American, Professor Hotson, found him cited as witness in yet another case which proved another residence of his in London. Professoraldwin of Iowa has written much to prove that he had the equivalent of a first class high school education and possibly more and that he may have been a schoolmaster. Finally two or three deeds have been discovered showing that he possessed a lot of valuable properties in both Stratford and London and was what would be considered now almost a millionaire. You must remember money in Elizabethan times bought far more and was worth much more than it is now. There is a nice little booklet giving us all the particulars about his left that are proved and I must try to send it to you. Best comparison today is with somebody who began from ordinary but by no means poor beginnings and made a terrific success in Hollywood.

I love the photograph of your little grandchild, she looks so intelligent as well as sweet and that is important too, these days ! She must be great fun to play with.

I'm joining Hilda on August 28th until September 12th at the Minerva, Lugano, then back here. We hope to have Perdita with us for that time. But oh dear, Hilda has had some sun but our weather here has been awful, day after day of rain, and we had about a hundred peaches but haven't been able to eat one, they doop off like rotten balls and lie in pulp in the showers. Some say the weather is wetter than it has been for a century and others since 1896, it is bad for the people here, the mountain hotels have had to shut and there is deep snow up in the villages in the hills. Here I am wearing my winter costume ! And it is August 18th.

All my love, it is always such fun to hear from you, I love getting your letters,

greetings,

CHEMIN DES PLATEIRES 9A
PULLY
SUISSE

8th December 1948

My dear Viola,

All possible good wishes to you for a very happy Christmas and New Year. I am enclosing a couple of little Swiss hankerchieves with my greetings, my card comes directly from London because I couldn't get it done here.

I went to London in mid November and had the luck to get away the day before the fog descended, said to have been the worst there for over a hundred years! I had a lovely flight back, with a red sunset over the snow peaks of the Juras and a perfect landing at Geneva. Next day the fog came and for a week no letters reached England nor could they send letters out to us. It was like the war again.

You were asking about which grandmother I meant, Hilda says, when I spoke of Perdita being like her grandmother. I meant Mrs Doolittle, she spent a long time with us in Switzerland and I was deeply devoted to her, she was so lovely to me always and I admired her very much. I only saw Aldington twice and knew nothing of his family. I always think Perdita has a lot of her Grandmother's ways and she adores, like her, being with people. I think her silence comes from the way they were drilled during the war.

You know Perdita

was liable to penalties including imprisonment if she told us where she
was working - I mean where the building was situated. All we knew
was that she was in London. I did know actually because of my own
war work, but I would never have told a soul, you see, it might have
been dangerous and led to bombardment of that particular area. The
enemy wanted to find out where the various war offices were situated.
Probably they knew but at any rate people with children in the war
never said a word, and all the girls like Perdita who worked in the
offices were drilled in secrecy. I've noticed ever since she seems
to find it difficult to talk freely.

It is rather misty here and raw but not like London's black fog.
Hilda is coming to us for Christmas Day dinner, I hope. We
wont have turkey, we could get one but they are dry here, in this
climate a goose is much better and our goose is already ordered but
we shall have mincemeat. And a Christmas pudding.

All possible good wishes to you and love,