On board S.S. Tamaraire, December 14^th 1946

Dearest Claudia

I was so glad to get your letter of December 1^st, which arrived the day after I came up to New York but which Hugo brought the next day. I expected to have two free days before Hugo arrived in time to get the train for San Francisco, but I was greeted in New York with the news that I was to get a Barber-William freighter the day after tomorrow. Stores were closed before I got out of the office, so that left me one day to do everything, and I phoned home to have Hugo sent up the next day and spent a most frantic day myself trying to get myself three pairs of summer shoes, a bathing suit for myself and Hugo, get my machine, buy records, and see Etta-dear, George Dix, Charles Weatherill - a man I owed $10.00 to, and meet Hugo, and get my boat ticket from way down town! I was up quite late with friends from the office - the Adamsons. They took me to supper at a grand (in the sense of very good) Italian restaurant, and the proprietor gave me two recipes on how to cook chicken and the spices to go with it - with many gesticulations.

But even getting to bed late, I didn't sleep for thinking of what had to be done the next day. The shoe problem was awful. I had thought New York would be so full of clothes for the south - but I did get what I wanted after many hours. Hugo arrived in great form and spent an hour in Macy's toy department while I got the shoes, finally, and two lengths of cotton. The awful sadness is that the trunk with the summer clothes is still between New York and Va! so I have little more than I left Edinburgh with. Isn't it too awful. I have plenty of material, now in the hold, and I certainly would have made every effort to get it made, had I thought the other things wouldn't finally turn up, and if I'd known I had this horrid long trip.

They wouldn't tell me in the office how long it was going to take - between three and four weeks, he thought. Now the captain says it will be forty days. I feel rather frantic. I'll never get there. Phil will be having a fit. Last week he sent the very long cable asking what on earth had happened to me. He seems not even to know I went to Trinidad. And from your letter I am surprised you don't seem to have heard of our continuous breakdowns in Puerto Rico. I thought I'd written in great detail about changing planes three times - once even going for an hour and springing an oil leak and having to dump 2,000 gallons of gas before we could land. And spending the day practically in the hotel in Puerto Rico in woolen suits and furs (was it hot!) and having to borrow ten dollars from Eisenhower's chief of staff (during the invasion) and Admiral Stark's chief of staff. The one man told the other to give it to me. I only had three, and they said that wouldn't even see me from the airport.

But to return to New York - I hadn't anything like done all these thing by 4:00pm, when the glad tidings came that the ship wouldn't be leaving for another day. Eventually it was two days more, and I saw all the people and got Hugo bathing trunks and three pairs of cotton pants - no - cotton sweaters, and the four I got for the tanker are almost used up. It's bad enough on board, but we shall arrive in Manila in rags. More baggage complications too. Most of the freighted stuff from England and Jersey had been sent on to California in bond. I hate to think when I'll see that. Phil left his right in San Francisco, yet it was three months reaching him.

I have my radio and machine right here in the cabin with me. The sewing table I wanted from Singer, of which there were plenty in Charlottesville so I thought I'd wait and buy in California, I couldn't get at four New York stores. I propose using the machine on board. Might as well settle down for life - for forty days - and I have hopes of using the gramophone too. The plugs have to be changed in both cases - but the radio man still has to see if the radio can be used on direct current. I do hope so. I have heaps of records I got the last night in New York and it would make things much nicer.

The worst one-and-a-half hours in my life were spent just before I came on this ship. We were being picked up at 6:00pm and at 4:30 I phoned Mr Weatherill (Bernard Weatherill) to ask him to come to see me as I couldn't leave Hugo who was asleep after a violent tummy ache. I hoped, casually, it wasn't an appendicitis attack, and Charles had fits and said I was to see a doctor immediately. Well, I was a bit nervous and kept thinking how everyone always said I was too casual - so I did wake him up and took him into the hotel doctor. His temperature was slight, but he was sore in the wrong places - and that young man wasn't prepared to say it wasn't his appendix, so he shot me up to a specialist, on Park Avenue. All this time Charles kept ringing me asking how he was, did I need money - called the man in the office, who phoned me - and you never heard such goings on, and by this time it was well past 5:00. This specialist wouldn't say either - finally said go if there is a doctor on board, otherwise don't. I arrived back at the hotel to find the man collecting my luggage and waiting for me. The firm man phoned to say there was no doctor on board. He had no idea when he could get me off from any port in the country, but it was something I must decide for myself. I was sitting in that phone booth just wondering what on earth to do when the original doctor came up to ask what I was going to do. Hugo seemed fine at this point - I realized the doctors found nothing special wrong, but weren't prepared to say it wasn't an attack - and I came. Never again will I get excited for no good reason. All that happened was $20.00 in doctors' fees, $2.00 for taxis, and ten years knocked off my life! Hugo had an enormous apple and a ham sandwich as soon as he got on board. What a life! If I ever leave Phil again, or let him leave me, I hope someone knocks me in the end. Everything seems to go wrong.

It's really this forty days that's getting me down. I think I shall be bored stiff. There are seven passengers and the captain at one table. A girl from Scottsville, Va with a two-year-old child at the table with me and so I've seen very little of the others. She's very nice, but a real country-town girl. There's a hard, but nice American woman, about forty, with a dog, an attractive man with a very blonde, stylish and stand-offish wife, with fourteen canaries, and a foreign-accented charmingly smiling wife of early forty with an American old grandpa for a husband - a young Jew with bottles of perfume he's going to sell in Manila, and a mother named Loyd, going to join her daughter married to a Ronny Stewart in the Union Insurance. Pinkie may know the family. Her sister is a Mrs Hazlett, whose daughter Rita (red-headed) married in the navy and is now Lady Ashby. I knew Rita's sister Nina, married to our Claude Millett, and I always understood there was Portuguese blood about, but this aunt doesn't show it.

Sunday 15^th.

I didn't realize we had sailed on Friday 13^th. I usually consider that my lucky day. What a pity the new maid seems so dumb. I was surprised that the clothes Britain can make were so poor. And short. Clothes here are much longer, but I notice Joan's are longer than anyone else's.

How noble of you to go down to see Lee. It always seems a business - and what a shame Mr A.B. seemed giggly. I think he is rather shy, and perhaps his deafness makes him more so. Lee's letter to you was certainly a scream. The reports of him do sound more encouraging. I reckon his trouble is shyness too. I have begun to be worried about his Christmas presents - whether they will reach him in time and whether he will be bored with them. Hugo has had such a Christmas already. It seems awful. Liz and Sue each gave him $5.00 and he spent it all in New York. And Martha and Alice who came to lunch the last Sunday I was home brought him a complete stocking and then some. Luckily - candy and nuts and everything, for I'd never had had time. These are being kept for Christmas Day. Miss Sherrill sent me a hat! I was surprised as we were never very intimate. Alice tells me she wants to visit me in China too!

I wore the hat (which was designed to wear with my new hair-do which is on top) on a very gala evening in New York - with General Royal Lord (have you ever heard such a name) from the Trinidad plane. We sat next to Joan Crawfurd at the "21", danced at El Morocco and had pink champagne at $23.00 a bottle. Isn't it appalling! He seems to be rolling in cash (is not a Jew) but he is president of something called "World Wide Development", and most of them are Jews, and were the biggest toy manufacturers, or the biggest paid man in the film industry &c. One of them gave me one of these new pens you write with for years - and to my deep distress I lost it in the excitement over Hugo's appendix. Lee's full commentary was "Claudia took me out". That sentence seems to be in the wrong place. I dashed out to a life-boat drill.

We went to see Etta-dear and Mrs Wells, but Hugo was disappointing and kept saying "But there's nothing to do", so I didn't stay long. I resolved then not to take him to lunch with George Dix and stuck him in another toy department. George is working in the British-American art center. He is still very social and knows everyone. Had been to dinner with the Rathbones and was thrilled over Marlene Dietrich. That night was dining with the British ambassador, who invited him to Washington for the week-end. He is taking Henry Moore - the British artist and sculptor - to Gordonsville for Christmas.

In the end I got my radiogram from Gill's. It is very nice. I traded Hugo's snow-suit for an old trunk from Joan, and my packing was awful, and I occasionally have nightmares about everything being broken. I'm surprised how warm it is already in forty-eight hours. Hugo is in summer clothes. We have hit the Gulf Stream. We pass the Bahamas, Haiti & Jamaica. Right back where I started from. Really, it's maddening.

17^th. Nothing's happened, except I can't use the gramophone, or machine either.

Love, Mollie