8 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, S.W. 3

FLAXMAN 8560

2.

Still, that's how it goes. — Our Wilson Knight is writing to the Times Lit, furiously this week, about aged professors taking his findings without acknowledgment. I would like to cable him to take over all Shakespeare reviewing for our last number, but if I did, then we could not review his books, and they have to be.

Did you ever know Robert Graves? I ask because in a recent book of Collected Essays, some of then very tiresome, he has a most enlightening paper on the sources of the Tempest. He combines so to speak the Wilson Knight, antropological and religious approach with the imaginative. And in a paper on the Sources of The Tempest in a book called The Common Asphodel, he picks on Claribel, rather as you did. He says she is Clara Isabella, the Infanta.

Stop Press — O! hear from me friend on The Times that there is great to-do about the bringing on of the Quayle baby in Henry 8 at Stratford....it is illegal, you know, to have very small infants on the stage! Not before 3 or 5 years or something like that, and this was only 1 month....all the various societies for Protection of Children etc are up in arms about it. BUT, you see, it was a Royal performance, the King was there, and the King can hardly be called as a witness!

I now come to the main purpose of this letter, which is to enclose your own Delia Alton corrected proofs back to you.

All very best greeting, and I long to hear when and where the wedding is to be.

Love,

Perhaps it should be done on two planes, with the party going on, like the Dumb Show in Hamlet, and the actors acting, on another level. Or have two sets of actors.

But as it was, it was a sorry affair.

I go to Eckington to-morrow, and plan to stay till just after Whitsun.

Voules seems to have enjoyed her holiday immensely, she talks much of your kindness, and I don't think I have ever seen her look so well.

All very best wishes, and love,

BRENDIN PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.
LIFE AND LETTERS

Editor: ROBERT HERRING

10.7.51.

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Hilda,
Our letters crossed - GOOD!

But now I send a note to say I am not only **shocked**, but
RATTLED at the letter from the publishers you sent.

If the duelling days weren't over, I would like to go over
and challenge him.

For why? For this - first, you **don't** write to anyone like
that. Not to **anyone**, understand ? Secondly, not to a woman or
a lady - and I swear to you, some kind of chivalry still
holds good. One just doesn't talk that way.

I am particularly upset, because Covici Friede had always
seemed to me one of the more enlightened publishers. But
ALL publishers are devils, parasites, and seem alone in
their trade in thinking they can go outside their trade -
which is making money - to criticise those who give them
their wares, which are heart and soul.

I always thought myself that The Sword was a "difficult"
proposition. But how ANYONE can say that "the events you
indulge in" - my dear Hilda, they were the **raids**; did you
indulge in them very much, or did you face them and surmount
them? And **were** the events so fragile ? FRAGILE, I ask you!

And if the reader IS left, as he says, in a vacuum - mightn't
that not be a bad thing? It shows how we felt.

Of course, that is what you are up against. The whole letter
when I read it reminded me very much of having tea with
Marianne, and then at the end she said "Of course, it is such
a pity there is such **resistance** to L. and L. in New York".

I hadn't got the clue then, but this publisher's remark re
"delusions" gives it - guilt; "illusions" are "delusions".

DIRECTORS: ROBERT HERRING B. R. BAYLIS

Please excuse my using up old office paper -

Editor: ROBERT HERRING

31.10.51.

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My dear Hilda,

I have just returned from Stratford, and thought you well, like, perhaps, an account; for you, hardly less than W.S., still seen a presiding deity there.

But first I am so sorry to hear of your door jamming again! How trying and upsetting. I am glad Bryher was there.

Stratford - I took Tom. The management at the Swan's Nest took it quite for granted, and there was no question of shutting him up or putting him in an outhouse. When I arrived, they solemnly asked if he had had his lunch, and when I said I had his own diet, they did not charge one penny!

My table in the dining room was by a window and that looked over the garden, so at mealtimes, he just sat under the window in the garden. The rest of the time he was with me. It could not have been simpler.

At Hall's Croft, the custodian asked him in. I went over the house and when I came down, it gave me quite a turn, Moddom, to see him lying by the open grate, he fitted in so well, as if he had been there centuries.

Hall's Croft is lovely inside. It gives you very much the feeling of a successful up-and-coming Elizabethan, able to build on, and extend, and put in an elaborate carved staircase - quite different from the Birthplace, and a step on from Mary Arden's. To me, its interest was in giving me an idea of what New Place must have been like, as being also the home of a successful Elizabethan. They have furnished Hall's Croft with period stuff, and his dispensary they have filled with period jars, pestles etc. The garden is lovely.

When I went to the theatre, I took Tom and left him with the cloakroom attendants. I figured that that was better than leaving him at the hotel for three hours or so. I went to five performances, intending to take him a quick run in the intervals. But save for the first performance, I went to, that was not necessary.

The attendants said he was as good as gold, and from our second visit on, they gave him the freedom of the theatre, and took him out on the lawns themselves. When I came out in the intervals, I would find Tom holding court in the foyer! He pretty soon got to know I was in the dress circle, and would be waiting upstairs. It was a bit uncanny, in that theatre we know so well, seeing my own dog so at home, and the staff loving him so. I think it may be said Tom is an initiate now, and probably the first Alsatian who has attended the Shakespeare Festival as a participant.

They have altered the inside of the theatre a good deal. First, they have done away with those mahogany turrets which were each side of the stage, and cut it off so from the audience. Next, they have pushed the stage out into the auditorium - about 12 or 16 feet, I should say. Most of the action takes place now well in front of what was the old proseennium.

To increase the 'intimacy', they have extended the dress circle which was perfectly flat; you may remember, by putting as it were arms, which contain loges in the French manner, three each side, springing towards the stage.

All this makes the atmosphere much warmer and the actors much nearer. They have also lightened the decor, which is now cream walls with bright red drapes, and red-shaded lights. All much gayer and less intense. The stage lighting is more varied and subtle. The carpets and curtains in the auditorium are now red with metallic patterns of stars glinting up, and, finally, they serve suppers AFTER the show.

The company has been acting there since March - eight months, and you cannot imagine what an effect that has on team-work. Also, they only did five plays. Four of these were the histories. They had thus been able to cast accordingly. Even the smaller barons and such people as "me cousin Westmoreland" were played by quite good actors - of the calibre of Edith Evans' leading man in *Daphne* and so on. And for the supers and soldiers, they had got *men*, not chorus boys. So the whole thing was pretty stalwart and gained accordingly.

There were no stars - or else there were five, according to how you looked at it. Redgrave was Richard 2. and Hotspur, but in Henry V. was only the Chorus. Similarly, the actor who was Prince Hal - King Henry was only Ferdinand in the Tempest. This is a young Welsh actor, Richard Burton, who rose to fame again via Evans in a film and also in "The Lady's Not for Burning." Like Gielgud, he is O.U.D.S, and he is 25, so the perfect Hal and Henry. His wife played "the lady speaks some Welsh" in Henry 4,

Editor: ROBERT HERRING

2.

and there was a whole scene written in for her - IN Welsh. By the actor who played Glendower, a very fine actor, who has also acted King Lear IN Welsh, in his own translation. Atop this, there was Antony Quayle as Falstaff, and Harry Brown as Bolingbroke-Henry 4.

You have, I know, Hilda, seen Harry Brown often. He is one of those 'reliable' actors. His forte is declamation and wearing armour. He was Harry Richmond in the wartime Richard 3. we all saw. Now, you can imagine what an effect it had when he was Bolingbroke in Richard, and Henry in both parts of Henry 4. WITH the same Falstaff and the same Hal-Henry. All the nobles, too, were the same - Northumberland, Gloucester, Norfolk etc.

Now to see these, night after night, in the different plays, made it not only easy to follow but MUCH more dramatic. And one got the development of character to such a pitch that one simply HAD to go down to the river and ask the swans HOW this man, this Shakespeare, had been able to do so much - to think so much, to see so much.

These four plays, Hilda, acted night after night by the same cast, became one enormous experience. I am not exaggerating when I say that people were sitting bolt upright in their seats at some moments, and at others, notably Prince John's betrayal of the rebels, gasped in horror.

Luckily I saw Henry 4 Pt 2 at a matinée, followed by Henry 5 in evening. But if it had been Richard 2. at matinée and Henry 4 Pt 1. in evening, I don't think I could have stood it.

I don't see how Shakespeare kept it all in his mind without going quite ravers. However he did - by writing other plays meanwhile. You know, if he weren't like you - with a marked gift for slapstick - one simply could NOT take what he gives.

One result of playing all four plays as one was that, to start with, Falstaff is kept in his place. The whole thing has the permanent guilt of murder, atonement, usurpation and so on. But as well as that, one can see that the very unbending vigour which

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DIRECTORS: ROBERT HERRING · B. R. BAYLIS

enabled Bolingbroke to become King, was also the thing his son
could not stand - rather as the Prince of Wales in our day re-
volted against George V's strictness. But the interesting thing about
Falstaff being played in perspective is that one sees that Hal
wanted advice, had a feeling for kingship, that Falstaff gave him
the philosophy and also the acceptance of life which his own
father was far too busy justifying himself, to be able to give.

Similarly, Richard 2, I have usually seen played as a role all by
itself, a sort of lesser Hamlet, very lovely, but a star part with
no connection with anything else. At Straford, knowing what they
were going to do, one was given a Richard very kingly, too kingly
as the clouds were coming, and with every speech he made one
wanted to yell out "DON'T make another, it's hastening your end".
I think before I had always felt Shakespeare was merely enjoying
himself in Richard's speeches, but this time I saw that he DE-
LIBERATELY used his own magnificent gift of tongues to make him
a bore - that final call for the mirror, after Richard had wrung
ALL the withers, is a sort of parody, or at any rate a way of
saying "You see, this is WHY he had to go. His irresponsibility
was intolerable, his playing with words no good".
This not only prepares us for Bolingbroke's boredom, but also
for young Hal's musings (a touch of the Richard tar-brush) and
of course for the later saintly Henry 6.

It is quite wonderful, how one can see it all, when the plays are
played in order. Redgrave was a fine Richard. He did something I
have rarely met. His performance did not make one 'identify' one's
self with Richard. He created a tiresome, winning, boring monarch
of whom one felt, as one disliked it, "This is ME" in one aspect.
And his performance lingered in the mind, so that it grew when
people, in the later plays, referred to Richard as that "lovely
rose". AND - mark this - one didn't notice it was he playing
Hotspur.

They used a permanent set, it was not scaffold, but it was frame-
work, a sort of framework of the Elizabethan. It allowed of many
levels and lightings and was most dramatic, especially in the
battle scenes - and the actors went all out, leaping and running
and Hotspur burst into blood when he was slain (though the swords
remained obstinately clean).

Editor: ROBERT HERRING

3.

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The women didn't have much part, and with the exception of Burton's Welsh-speaking wife, it was as well they didn't, as their few appearances as mourning Duchesses etc revealed that awful Roedean, R.A.D.A accent.

WHY is it no English woman can be tolerable to listen to, vocally, until she is 40? On the stage, I mean.

The Moranda was worse than the Perdita Bryher and I saw.

The Mistress Quickly and Doll Tearsheet were quite appalling. Fussy, ill-pitched, ill-timed. I detect here Puritan feeling against "Such women" existing. Consequently, our "naice ladies" of the stageparody them.

What they forget IS that the Boar's Head was NOT a brothel, but the sort of tavern which, in the days when there were no night-clubs, a Prince of the Blood Royal might be expected to go to - i.e., the Savoy, the Embassy.

Mrs Quickly makes a great deal about having " no swaggerers" and that Doll must behave herself.

I think the actors are wrong in making that scene so set in a pub of ill fame - I am sure the Boar's Head was NOT It stands to reason that Hal would either go to a pub with no fame, or else to one with a good fame.

This idea that 'gaiety' goes along with 'depravity' comes simply from the fact that actors don't know their history. The Boar's Head WAS to Hal an escape from the Palace, but it wasn't the Stews. It was the wrong side of the river, to start with, and as I say, a tavern a hostelery, the equivalent of our Savoy or Berkel-et the other.

But actors are funny. It expressly states in Henry VI that Hal and Poins are going to don jerkins to deceive Falstaff, yet when they did this scene at Straford, all they did was to don aprons over very striking regal doublets!

All the talk is of Bardoch's nose - yet they painted his face red to match, so that it did not stand out at all.

THE TEMPEST. for reasons best known to themselves, they set UNDER the ocean. It was very lovely, all sea-green and watchet. I don't know why the island had to be submerged, it made nonsense of the wreck, but the effect was lovely - UNTIL a guauze curtain went yu with a six-inch hem.

The accent was on fatherhood. Just as in M.N.D. I feel Theseus creates the lovers to split and ease his guilt, so in this production of The Tempest, Prospero is made a mystic figure, the UNK of Ferdinand and Miranda.

Prospero (Redgrave) was made up as a Michelange Sistine GOD, and here his height helped (it had been against him in Richard, where at certain moments Guinness's slighter frame had more easily been an alphabet to pathos). He played it as not liking, as usual, almost, by his magic powers, and it being too much and go as to whether it were Ariel or Caliban - the Ariel was the best I have seen; not a sub-Puck, but a young man. He wore a pair of trunks in the shape of a shell, and nothing else. His body was powdered green; not painted, but powdered. His eyelids were red, and he had a Grecian profile and close-curled gilt hair. His voice, a deep tenor. He had arranged the fights in the Histories, and that came out in his movements. He had a habit of leaning against trees till he seemed to come out of them - and he bossed Prospero. Also, he did NOT make flying leaps off-stage.

Caliban was equally good. His feet were clawed, turning to greaves on his legs (there was a Jacobean touch all through). These turned into fins at the back, ending as sort of bat-wings round a quite straight Negro head. There was no pantomime ape-costume. His chest was bare, which was terrifying, a quite human chest, and then a stomach of leopard skin, and the hands of a bear. He spoke in a high tenor, all frustrated zoology.

He, Ariel and Prospero emerged from all sort of unlikely places in holes in the stage. Prospero's magic robe was, if you can get what I mean, a sort of coral-reef in being, stuck with bits of fins and skeletons of fish. It was tendered to him by two rocks, who at that moment turned into crustaceans. The stage was littered with queer little rocks which suddenly scuttled away or branches of dead rock-trees that detached themselves. It sounds all very "Where the Rainbow Ends", but it wasn't. It was the embodiment of "the isle is full of noises". BUT - there was that folded six-inch hem, which suddenly ruined all illusion.

Also, on the wreck, Gonzalo etc all solemnly swayed to give the idea of storm, but the ship and its figure-head remained quite still.

Editor: ROBERT HERRING

4.

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However, to be fair, we did have the whole of the masque, with all
possible stage machinery. Ceres and Juno and all rising and
dropping, and the most lovely stage setting you can imagine.

Not a line was cut in any of the plays. I thought the actors
were getting a bit tired, one or two shows ran 30 minutes later
than they were supposed to. I think this is partly the effect of
Gielgud taking, as Bryher and I noticed, a speech to its slowest
possible, out of sheer technical interest.

Once or twice Redgrave slipped into quite a good imitation of
Gilegud. But I noticed that if anyone in lesser roles imitated
him, he snapped back and became himself again. That was interest-
ing because although he has a style of his own, he is less styl-
ised than Gielgud. Consequently, when he is being most Redgrave
one is least conscious of him.

There was one nice slip. Ferdinand is upbraided by Prospero about
'dalliance' with Miranda and makes a rather preposterous speech
about the virgin snows around his heart abating the ardour of
his liver.

I don't know if Burton were tired, or merely was saving himself
for his later Prince-Hal-Henry roles. But he chose the second of
ways of being perfunctory, and instead of rattling through it
casually, gave it an emphasis like a car rattling down hill with
the brakes off, ending up on a rather high heroic Welsh note
"LIVER!", always a difficult word.

This took Proppero by surprise. His cue there is "Well", meaning
"I am glad you agree with me". But instead of saying it like
that, Redgrave said "WELL", as if to say, "What has produced this
outburst?".

It was only a split second, and I don't think anyone noticed it,
but one got such a spirit of comradeship.

The theatre was packed out, and people were sleeping overnight,

in frost, to queue for next night.

And I myself thank you both for 1945 and all subsequent.
Stratford is a bit foggy and rier-damp in autumn, but against
that it has the charm that any of THE places one wants to
go to are empty and therefore take on a different aura - }
spent a long time undisturbed in the church, and the museum
is not quite as drab when one is in it alone; I had not before
spotted Ellen Terry's death mask, and there is a bust of her
as a young girl which seems to me that Beggy Ashcroft has modd
elled herself on.

Of the various portraits of Shakespeare, one thing seems to me
to get clearer and clearer; even if they are not like him, they
are like no one else. He is completely by himself among other
Elizabethans, and I would say by seeming foreign - Italianate,
or maybe Welsh. It is odd, and it doesn't awfully matter whether
the various portraits are by people who never saw him, there IS
something as recognisable in their idea as there is in the
ring of his writing. A queer combination of questing and peace,
an expression of warmth framed in remoteness; maybe that re-
moteness gave rise to the legend he didn't exist? ( because he
could hardly be persuaded anyone else did).

It's a wonderful thing, on an autumn day, to be alone there and
gaze and gaze on that handful of portraits, some so outrageous,
and none really quite satisfactory - yet the total impression
is, perhaps, more than if one had a perfect Holbein etc of him.

Incidentally, if they think the Shakespeare Museum is the right place for Nell Wwynn, why do they sky her Lely portrait so abominably? The only answer can be that the Shakespeare Museum still think in terms of Ada Rehan!

all best Gruff and Iwe,

8 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, S.W.3

FLAXMAN 8560

2.12.51.

My dear Hilda,

I ought to be cooking, as I have Keigwin coming into
dinner to see Tom. He surprised me very much, he rang up and
said "Thank God you got that noble hound well. So few people
bother about their dogs. I should like to tell him that when
you were a pupil of mine, "pertinacious" was always the word
I thought of in connection with you".

But what I want to say is that last night I saw Orson Welles
as Othello - and, phew! It was amazing! The *English* was spoken
as beautifully as only some kinds of Americans *can* speak it, you
know what I mean. You feel you are hearing the language for
the first time. And the production made dear Gielgud seem
dry as dust and devitalised. There were faults, of course, but
in most ways it was the Othello of one's dreams. Naturally, it
got very bad notices. And naturally, it is packed out. We have
got very cynical about our critics, and if they say a show is
bad, audiences know it is likely to be good.

Next, a new Garbo joke. RITA says - and of course it is one of
the engaging things about Rita that she is apt to get hold
of an aspect, particularly if the subject is to do with sex,
that we would never think of - Rita says that Beaton is using
Garbo to get his mother out of his house! She has this from
Willie Maugham's Alan Snerle.

WELL - that is an aspect of Garbo I had never thought of! It
seems, according to Rita, that Mrs Beaton said "If that woman
comes, I go".

I find it hard to take, Beaton has two houses, so Mummy could
always go to the other. Mummy, anyway, was never all that rangé
herself. I can see that Beaton finds her a bit of a drag. She
used to be treated rather like an old nurse or poor relation,
allowed in at certain moments and so on. But I CAN'T see Garbo
reduced to being the agent to edge her out. Surely, ONLY Rita's
unk. could evolve that?

I also find that most people are slightly shocked, regard the
whole thing as "what happens, you know, when you're in your
late forties, but at least be quiet about it".

This, too, was an angle I hadn't thought of. But then, I never

seem to think,

Bryher is flooding me with turkeys, CARES, books. She should be stopped. Every mail, it is some new gift.

My Welsh-ness is working over time, I begin to get frightened. When I went in to see Rota, she jumped out of her chair, said "But I had just told the girl to ring up and see if you were in London".

I had written to Keigwin, but missed him, because he was in London, and he rang up, using my own words at me, "You'll think me very casual", though he had not had my letter.

Last week, in Sheffield I saw a stainless steel spade. Stainless steel is scarce now. I bought it as a Christmas present for George. He had broken his own the very day I bought this one.

November is usually a bad month for me. But this year has been bad all along. IF things go well in my bad month, perhaps we are or I am, getting into a new cycle?

DO tell Bryher how wonderful the Orson Welles was. I had always been a little allergic before. But the vibrant crystal clarity of the speech was so astounding, so unaffected, so felt.

I still think that last scene is intolerable.

My love, and my looking forward - I have Voules to lunch on Tuesday, so send across your best disinfecting prayers!

ECKINGTON

Sunday, 25th.

My dear Hilda,

I feel I must write to you to say I am thinking of you whilst
THE Visit is on!

I've no doubt it will be a triumphant success, Bear at his most courtly,
almost kuess die Hand, and probably Elsie and Edith will have a terrific
get-together over nail varnish and hair-dos. But, O, I can't see - well,
the staircase for one thing! And I can't see Edith in the library - I
can't really see' her there at all. YOU have seen her in Switzerland,
but I have only ever seen her up here or in London.

What I can see is Edith being very charming, very grateful. It is just
her physical presence in Kenwin I can't envisage.

You must let me know ALL. From here, it seems one of Bryher's wildest
games - and as we know, we who wait in apprehension, the wildest ones
usually come off quite well!

Meanwhile I am also being staggered by the Cecil Beaton - Greta Garbo
affair. You have heard, I imagine? I don't know how much percolates into
the Swiss papers. But here it is headlines all the time, even in the
Sheffield papers. She came over to stay with him, more than a month ago.
First in the country, then in London. They went to first nights, to Lord
Kemsley's election party at the Savoy (Garbo looking ravishing). It was
announced that Beaton had proposed to her in 1947, and been turned
down; that he was going to propose again.

Now they have gone off to Paris together, she still going around as
"Miss Harriet Brown", surely the best-known alias in the world. WHAT
made her think of that name - the improbable, rather Jane Austenish,
Kate Greenawayish "Harriet" accenting so strongly the oddity of that
very ordinary "Brown".

Everyone knows who Harriet Brown is. One would think that if Garbo
took off her dark specs, said "Yes, I AM Garbo, so what?", no one would
believe her or bother. That may be the point, for one of the things I
find so fascinating is that Garbo, with her wish for privacy, should
team up with Beaton, to whom publicity is the breath of life.

Anyway, they flew to Paris. The plane was held up an hour at Northolt.
Garbo sat in a corner, saying "I do not wish to speak to anyone, please."
Beaton said "Do let Miss Brown alone. You know how she dislikes being

questioned. How long are we staying in Paris? Ask Miss Garbo!"

He was wearing a bowler hat, fur-collared coat, tight drainpipe trousers
and spats. That seemed to me very extraordinary.

Anyway, from Paris they go on to Capri - really, what that island accepts! -
where Garbo has rented a villa for two years at £2,000 a year.

I hope all this doesn't bore you, but she is after all OUR Garbo and I
am presuming that the Swiss papers don't give the full details. I imagine
they merely say "Greta Garbo, vedette d'avant guerre, voyage avec M. Beeton,
l'homme qui fait des photographes pour la Famille Royale d'Angleterre".
IF that.

Well - so Garbo has her villa in Capri. And perhaps, having stayed with
Beaton at both his houses, she asks him back to hers? Return visit.

But it all seems to me curiously bald and blatant, and I am old-fashioned
enough to think it very odd, if they are not yet married, to trail around

in such an ooze of limelight - limelight which COULD have been avoided.
Garbo has often been over in London, and everyone has respected her wish
to be left alone.

I am wondering what Beaton himself must be feeling. Either on edge at
fighting a losing battle or else in theseventh heaven. You will apprec-\iate, that I know Beaton - indeed, when he went to Hollywood, it was al-
ways understood that he send me back as many photographs of her as
he could beg, borrow or steal.

What I find peculiarly interesting is that, knowing Beaton as I do, it
throws such a new light on Garbo. Of course, the Garbo we knew was only
the screen projection. But I still find it odd.

The papers all refer to "the grey-haired Mr. Beaton" and the "near fifty
Mr. Beaton" and, what surprises me is that I find myself thinking "My
dear Cecil, it's a bit late in life to think of marrying" - though he
is really not quite a year older than me.

I do know one thing - she can be assured of his devotion. But it does
seem to me the queerest quirk in the world that after Mauritz Stiller,
after George O'Brien, after Stokowski, it should be - Beaton she teams
up with!

I can see him with Dietrich, with Lillie - 30 years ago, these were the
women, and Garbo too, he and I could never stop talking about.

You'll think me the most awful old gossip and perhaps, see above, the
"non-haired and that grey" Mr Herring IS in his old age, getting gossipy!
But you must admit it DOES seem an unexpected running together of two
strands!

They were at the Duff Coopers party for Princess Margaret, I see. I don't
imagine Margaret has ever seen a film of Garbo.'s, she is too young. That
too, is an odd thought.

And now we get on to Princess Margaret. Yes, I AM becoming a gossip! What
CAN the French have thought of that strawberry coloured outfit she
wears? They can have no idea, the average Parisienne, that English Royalty
are not allowed to wear black, and have to choose colours that that show
up - but a pink coat in Paris, IN November!

And then Maggie doing all the things we did once, but thought aren't done
any more - the Eifel Tower! It gave me quite a shock to think that she
was 21, and simply because she was an English princess, had never been
up the Eifel Tower before. And then Maxims! And smoking cigarettes in a
long black holder! And going to dress shows with auntie - Marina - her-
self once a mannequin! My imagination, as they say, hoggles.

And then, did you see, that at the Dior dress show, the Duchess of Windsor
was there, but left after 20 minutes. Well, now - what? I imagine she is
not allowed to meet Margaret, but all the same, she should either not
have been there or Maggie shouldn't have been, and as she was, surely to
leave BEFORE royalty is almost leisé majesté?

But no doubt I am wrong and old-fashioned, for no doubt at one time Prin-
cess Margaret would not have been allowed to meet the Court photographer
and his unmarried girl-friend, which is how we now have to think of OUR
Garbo.

2.

Whilst on this Peg's Paper level, DID you not like Princess Elizabeth's
gesture of bringing her Mountie escort back with her on leave? And that
they, great toughs, were so tired out by the Tour she had survived, that
they fell asleep during a film show on the ship on the way over?
I suppose that was arranged, the falling asleep, but it was a nice touch
all the same.

I also liked the extraordinary transfiguration she made of herself in
Washington - did you see *that*? Hair knotted in a brisk American woman-
executive bun, all scraped back, a new make-up, and a severe and very
becoming suit of men's tie-silk, olive green?
I thought that was the best answer to Margaret's " I see no reason why
I TOO should look like a suet pudding."

Don't think me too dotty, Hilda, writing this sort of Woman's Page. It
may well be of course that living up here, surrounded by animals, I
take on their tinge and begin to think human beings behave very oddly.
I hope not. Anyway, I go down to London the day after to-morrow.

And while I am there, would you tell me how I am off as regards bringing
you out for Christmas any Culpepperly? Do you need creams, lotions?
And also, typewriter ribbons?

Tom is very worried to-day as BOTH the indoor cats, Carmen and Peep, have
been out all day and show no signs of coming back, although it is pelting
with rain. Tom regards cats as his sheep, won't go to bed till he has
made sure they are all in. He is upset that they are not about. I think
it is because I have begun packing, and the cats have gone out to resume,
so to speak, their old ways when I am not here.

Bryher suggests that from Christmas, I go on to Rome. Perhaps. I can't
tell yet. Tom's due for a (let-down, a recurrence, in about a couple of
weeks - it's like malaria; it will only mean an injection or so, but
we must see how he takes it. Tom is by now almost a Case - he OUGHT to
have died, according to the rules. But I broke the rules. If this secondary
attack doesn't go too well, I shan't like to saddle George with him.
George has a great psychic feeling for animals, he is in a way better
with Tom than I am, but along with that pyschic feeling, he lacks a
certain practicality. Which is odd, as in all other ways he is so
essentially practical. When Tom was at his last gasp, I knelt (mid)September,
and beyond taking notice of me, he still knew who George was. But George
gave up, said "He's dying". I said "He can't, he's not the kind of dog
that is ready to die". I think in a way George saved him, by inducing a
wag of the tail. But, if you will allow me to say so, I think it was my
own desperate measures that did it.

George will sit up all night with him, but if the dog won't eat, his
repertoire of alternative dishes is limited. I knew that Tom liked
chocolate. Now you don't find this in any dog books, but I made - of all
things - chocolate blancmanges. Don't gludder, I too won't have them in
the house. But Tom liked chocolate. And blancmanges after all do include
sugar, flour, milk. I made Tom blancmanges and laced them with brandy.
Tom was interested - he'd got bored and suspicious of all the meals
that should Do Him Good. Invalid food! Chocolate meant he was well -
gradually I took out the brandy and made the blancmanges with beef-
stock (which he wouldn't eat by itself).

Of course, up here it is easy - if I want Tom to eat anything he doesn't normally take to, such as onions, carrot juice, herring roes, I just put it in the cats' dish, and put their food in his, and all of them think the other is having a better time, and all are happy - eating out of the wrong dishes.

This goes, too for milk. I don't know WHY cats are always supposed to like only milk. My experience is that they like it, but are mad on water. After all, with all that fish, they must get thirsty. My cats here will turn up their noses at milk, and go merrily drinking out of Tom's water bowl, but Tom can't see or smell milk without wanting at least a pint of milk a day.

I also never understand why cats are supposed to like fish, and dogs meat. My cats love meat, and Tom adores fish.

I have learnt something about Alsatian colouring which I think is not without interest - Tom looked at forrard and from above is dark, WOLF colour. But seen sideways, his flanks are light, and his plus-four trousers, so to speak, are light.

In other words, as a sheepdog, he can get away with being a Wolf among wolves, but the sheep will always recognise him. He has the most extraordinary air of confidence about sheep. I used to be terrified. But he wanders among them, rather like Queen Mary among her subjects'. Sheep respond to him. Cows don't, and he is frightened of cows. Horses he loves, I feel as rather bigger versions of himself -

O, what fun it will be, to come out this year and see those Lausannois Alsatians and *know* I can look them in the face, that dogs *need* not die, and that I've got old Amber-Eye (which is our name for Tom, he is a very black Alsatian, with owl-ish circles of honey, and two, naturally two, honey eyes - one is not now so good as the other, but he is *alive*, and) huge and healthy.

And now there has come a miaowing at window, cats have returned, a bit shamefaced, as of they have been to a Police Ball or something. Tom is licking them all over - such a ridiculous sight, all they want is to eat and drink, and while they are doing that, he is licking them all over, and then breaks off to get his ball, which *they* think is very barbaric and lower-civilisation. But Tom says "Master, life is fun". Except that he doesn't call me Master. I think he simply says "Hullo, what are we doing to-day?"

When I gave George his brother, and George kept on saying how wonderful the dog as, I went tough, said I had had other Alsatians, that I dare not have any more. George said "This strain won't die on you, it can't, you have no idea". I resisted, till George brought up a silly object of grey fur, weighing 8 lbs. Even then, he was quite different from any other dog I had ever met, so grave, so gay, so co-operative.

I think, though, the main thing was the way, when I brought him up here first, was the way my cats, some of whom are blitz-survivors, took to him. I couldn't have stood it if it had been a question of him OR them, because my loyalties were to them first. But they seemed to regard him when he was a puppy as an EXTRA toy and now that he is too big to get under the dining room table, he is still to them a toy, but a Rocking Horse, and how he loves that role. -

I shall be seeing you in a few weeks, good. Write to me at Cheyne if you will. And forgive all my burble, SO impertinent to such a poet and person as you! But a form of friendship all the same. - Robert