Manila,
April 20th, 1947

Dear Claudia,

                 I don't seem to write to anyone but you and Lee. It seems no time at all since I wrote, but I know it was before my girl disappeared which is two weeks now. We got her the day after and kept her on. Maude's party to be introduced to the wives went off very well, but I forgot to invite a wife that came on the boat with her! I didn't know she had come. And nobody ate anything, though I thought it was good. Just spaghetti and tomato and avocado salad, and peach melba. When I mentioned it to one young girl afterwards, she said everyone was just too polite, that she would love to have had more, but didn't like to be the first one to get up and get more. How dumb, I think it's much more polite to eat a lot. I was in a pickle, as I had never served hot food at a party and had only my big trays with banana leaves, but I put the plain spaghetti in them anyway, and the sauce in two square pyrex dishes, and of course the salad always looks lovely in the trays. I shall miss all my banana leaves.

Maude looks fine. More stylish than ever, and seems very cheerful and nice, and full of questions about the family. I have seen her twice since at parties, but she was a little bit Maude-ish I thought, and told me not to come to see her until this week, as she was going to be so busy. Not that I can go anyway, since she lives such miles away. She had a big cocktail party on Saturday night for one of our men who is leaving, and the place already looks much improved, with just the addition of some posters, flowers and a few lamps - and the furniture moved about. She has brought out some very dazzling American clothes - something very odd she had on at her party, it was long and appeared to be baggy, and had full draped sleeves or something - anyway it had an awful lot of material in it, and looked most odd I thought - and when dressed up she does her hair right on top her head in a cow pile. It is very becoming to her, but I wondered if the English wives got a shock. The English women here as usual dress in the most uninspired way.

We seem to have had a flood of parties, for this man for one thing, and Saturday afternoon I had to go to a surprise birthday party for Betty-Marie. Never saw such an array of gifts - worse than Christmas. I made her a skirt - one of those that tie in the front, and therefore the fitting isn't as tricky as it might be - and bought enough extra for her to make a sun top. She seemed thrilled, and Mrs Danks as always blurbed on about my being smart, but I hinted in every way possible for her to try it on, and nothing worked, so it wasn't very interesting for me. Pat Sanguinetti was also invited, and we were saying again how strange we thought it that we should be invited to their most intimate parties so to speak. You know we went to the Dank's wedding anniversary party and I thought we might be one of a hundred of their quests, but there weren't over thirty people, and after all Pat says she hasn't even seen them half a dozen times. It suited me fine, as Pat now has a car, and Phil and Jack came to pick us up and it turned into a cocktail party which seems to be the style with tea parties here, or has been with the three I've been to. I think I told you before what a very nice house Betty-Marie has on the Pasig river. It is a really enormous sitting room, furnished as a dining room in one part, and three different sitting places in the other three corners - sofas, tables, chairs and every thing, just like furnishing three different rooms.

Yesterday again we were to have had cocktails at the Sanguinettis for Bill Williams, and curry tiffin at our mess with the lovely pool - but Hugo woke with a temperature of 104. I was simply frantic, and after running across the street and phoning the doctor I thought maybe I had shaken the thing up backwards before I put it in the mouth and began to think how mad the doctor would be, but no, it shot up within half a second, though the thermometer is a three minute one, and before the doctor had come, nearly two hours later, it was more than 105. I almost knocked the doctor in the head when he came in saying, "Well, it looks as if we will have to get a new mother" then he added "or a new doctor" which is what I had been thinking. But he was very careful about his examination and thought of everything in his past experience to tell me so I wouldn't worry, and could prescribe nothing but aspirin, hot drinks, and plenty of blankets. After two doses of this, four hours apart, the temperature was still 102, but he slept fairly well, and this morning it is below normal. Isn't it something. The doctor was here before daylight this morning, and said that was just what he had expected as he had lots of similar cases, though none of them had had such a high fever. Some diarrhoea developed later, but that is the only apparent thing you can put your finger on. Hugo is his old self now, and talking me to death which makes writing difficult. I wouldn't give it so much thought, but after all this sort of thing to a lesser extent has been going on since the beginning of March. A series of doses of sulphur over last weekend had brought his fever down to normal, and I took the child to the doctor's office last Tuesday so he could see his ears and nose really thoroughly, and he was said to be perfectly all right, and could swim or anything. He never has said otherwise, which seems so casual. The day of Maude's party he went to bed with 103 temperature, and that was the start of that sulphur, but he had had a previous lot two weeks before. The drug always brings down the fever and he is all right for the best part of a week, and then back he goes with a temperature again. I don't know what to think. The doctor says this bears no relation to his previous sickness, and I hope he is right, but he hasn't been well from the last one long. Even last Sunday we were home all day because we didn't want Hugo to swim.

It always seems to be a Sunday. For weeks now we have wanted to go on a long picnic to where one shoots the rapids. This Sunday it was called off because the Sanguinetti's had to give the party to Bill Williams as he is the man who took over from him. Every other time it has been cancelled because of Hugo, which would have been the case again yesterday. This man Williams is spending August in Jersey to see if he fancies retiring there. I feel it is awful to fuss about the weather when it isn't too cold but really I've never felt such weather in my life. It has rained a few times, last night a real downpour, but instead of cooling it off it seems to make it worse. It is beautiful while the rain is actually falling, but then it gets like an awful green house - the very most jungly kind. I can understand it when the sun comes out and steam rises from the ground but in the dead of night even it just gets so you can't breathe, and when I have on a backless dress I can run my hand across my back and it is just plumb wet as though I had been in a shower. And I have prickly heat for the first time in my life, and it is much worse than I anticipated. After all Phil is always covered with it, and seldom mentions it, but I feel like mosquitoes were biting me the whole time.

The servants say this last bout of fever of Hugo's was from the first rains. It may well be, as it doesn't seem to be from anything else. They say he shouldn't go barefooted. Wilfrid Wooding arrived last week, and we have enjoyed seeing him even though Phil doesn't know whether to be mad at him or not. He really is an interesting man. He just knows so much about so much. His wife comes by boat. He talks about her all the time, and is thrilled, and so must she be. A girl who has never been out of England, and always worked. They came on the Queen Elizabeth. As soon as he lit up here he bought a Stromberg-Carlson, stacks of records, and a Buick, and then went to bed sick, and every day she went out and bought things all day, and came back to the hotel with a new suitcase to hold them. I am wondering what she will be like. I mentioned Nora Price to him, and he said yes, he had treated her very badly really, but when he asked her to marry him, she had said she would if he didn't see anybody on leave he liked better. He said that gave a person no dignity, and he came back from leave to tell her he had found two or three he liked better. Machi reminded me that Nora said Wooding had wanted to marry her.

He is very pleased with his houses and has said nice things to other people such as he hopes it will look as nice when he has it. He is a close friend of Steve's, yet the poor Sanguinettis who have never set eyes on him and are just nice and offered to put them up, have them sort of indefinitely, because I don't even know when we are going, and the first night W. arrived the Sangs were having a dinner party and their table won't seat but six so he suggested to Steve that he might have Wilfrid for dinner, and Steve said well he would have to take him to the club as the house wasn't in order yet. Maude! Yet the house has had visitors ever since Steve moved into it some eight months ago.

I am just dying of heat. Every hair seems to stand right up, specially on my arms. A queer sensation. I even had to take off my watch it felt so hot. There is thunder all through the air which gives me a headache. It has been like this for three days.

I bought Beethoven's Eroica as an anniversary present to each other. Toscanini plays it, and it is gorgeous except that it is recorded from an actual performance, and the records stop in very queer places. The man here says I must carry all my records as personal hand luggage or nothing will keep them from breaking. They sometimes have a hundred percent breakage from the factory. It seems to me I say something about that in every letter. I keep thinking I ought to buy some native things before I leave, or I know I will be sorry, but I hate to pay the prices. I want one of the luncheon sets of straw, but they are eight pesos now. I was also thinking we ought to get ourselves filipino costumes again, they are about the nicest kind of all, pretty and no trouble - but maybe no one will ever want a fancy dress again.

I had my wash amah sewing for me this past week, and she brought in her sister to do the washing. The girl is quite good. She made Hugo three sunsuits, and finished up the ones I started at home, and we got all my started things fixed, torn sheets mended, Phil's shorts smalled, and all that sort of thing, and I got desperate with only one handkerchief which has been my state for months, and bought a yard of white and she hemmed them and put lace on them all on the machine. Never thought I would make machine made handkerchiefs! I made a cotton evening dress to wear to St. George's night cocktail party for Phil wanted a long dress, but now he wonders if it is too formal. The absurd part is that if I cut it short it would be exactly like the clothes I wear in the house, or to the club. But as soon as you get the length on, the bare back looks formal.

Hugo is having a birthday party, and we are doing the entertaining that we have put off, so this and next week are going to be pretty awful. Four people to dinner five different times, a family of five to lunch on Saturday, and twenty to supper one night. I lose sleep when I think of it! After that I must start to pack. Phil says the sooner he goes the better. And I have to go by myself from Hong Kong to Shanghai which is a very great sadness. Phil may not arrive for a month. Our chief engineer (no, Rogerson is that, but the no. two) has been transferred to Rio. Mrs Rogerson gave a huge party for them. She is very pretty (Mrs Rogerson) but whiney and dull. Anyway I talked to the man about his packing, and found he had put everything into cartons (as I did at home) and then into pump cases, which the company will crate shut for you. So I now have two in my garage. They are seven feet long and look not unlike coffins.

Wilfrid has his old boy coming back to him, so now I am worried about jobs for my servants. I don't dare tell them, as they might walk out looking for something more permanent. Our oven has finally come. It is still a kerosene stove but bigger, and the oven has a gauge, and things brown. My cookie sheet is still too wide.

Amazing how much one can write about nothing. Your letter to Nich was so interesting, and amusing, but poor England, and poor you for that matter. Mrs Abraham lives in Gloucestershire, just across the Oxfordshire border. It is the Cotswolds. I think those houses are adorable but I have heard that is a chilly section. All the part I know there is very hilly. Burford high street is practically perpendicular but that's what makes it so cute. But your house was certainly far from thrilling. I have heard wonderful things about Dorset. Of course that is where Dick lived, and Tubby, and Dick was always talking about his place there, but it is funny, for they have sold, and live somewhere entirely different now. Cheltenham is very near Burford - the next bus stop or so, though I never went. The prices you mention sound appalling. The Platts have what I understand is a very large house with huge walled garden, in a very stylish part, and on a main line to London, and they paid £7,500. It is steam heated too. I imagine they spent a certain amount, as Jimmy wrote me they had put in an extra bath and I forget just what. Someone told me she went by there at eleven one morning, and Hope was having breakfast in bed. One of the things Jimmy was so emphatic about her giving up! I see the first prices you mentioned are less than that. I know everyone thought they were spending an awful lot. William Henry Bell paid £6,000 for his actually in the suburbs of London, very modern, and a nice size, but she had been through twenty houses over a period of six months before she found this. The house you didn't see does sound attractive. Hope said when she first saw her house she said to herself it wouldn't do, it was too ugly, but she adored the garden, and apparently dozens and dozens of trained and untrained fruit trees.

Phil is very late getting home these days. It is six and he has just arrived. We were to have gone with the Sangs to see a movie called Carnegie Hall - supposed to be full of wonderful music, but Phil thought it a mistake to leave Hugo. When his fever was so high yesterday, the doctor said he might have convulsions. Phil was terribly good with him. He just carries on and won't stay under the covers for me, and I feel so sorry for him too, because I loathe being sweated out like that. I spent a large part of the afternoon fanning his face so he could sleep. Today he is as bright as a lark.

I will stop and go have tea with Phil. I hate having tea so late for then Phil won't eat at dinner. He gobbles tea. I am feeling discouraged about my figure. My waist line is bigger by more than an inch, and my behind is unspeakable. And so many clothes I can't wear. I was exercising, but vaguely, and it seems just too hot. I should think this awful heat would make you thin. The only hope is that I very often get bigger and small down again, but I've never been this big before. Even my brassieres are too small. My bust is as big as it was when I was young, which is a good point for wearing naked dresses.

I haven't heard from home since the time when they were all sick. I hope nothing else has gone wrong. It seems to be a bad time for the family, and England. I know you must be tied hand and foot. If you leave as soon as term starts you will indeed have a business getting ready. I wish I could help you. Phil sent off the second draft to Machi, or anyway has brought it. Lots of love to you all. I have finished the animals for Hugo's birthday. The snake is quite realistic. It is about four feet long.