5, Brunswick Gardens,
London W8

Monday January 3^rd, 1966.

Dearest Machi and Den,

When we called to get some news of Denden, there was already a long letter at Claudia's which we found out when we phoned her right after our call to you. But it was fun to hear your voice, Machi, though a pity to miss Denden's by so little, and I hope we didn't scare you to death. I thought maybe you were used to international calls by now. We simply couldn't get a line for several days after Christmas. We didn't think far enough ahead to book a call, which is what you have to do. We wanted to get through when Ellen was here on Christmas night. Harry and Michael got on famously. Harry and Sybil had their lunch with daughter Gilda, but were back well in time for ours, which was scheduled for 9:30pm, Hugo being certain he wouldn't get off a moment early, but in the end got here at 7:30 which was nice, but the turkey couldn't get done any quicker. Anyway, Ellen got Michael away by the hardest at 3:00am or so, Harry and Sybil seeming not a whit ready for bed, but my three having gone about two.

Our presents weren't opened until everybody got here, and we'd had dinner, and as everybody brought everybody's presents here, we had quite a session of opening. The girls' suits fit fine. and I was very pleased that Ellen seemed really thrilled with everything. I had got her queer stockings and a slinky sweater. I have been working on lamp shades for Jennifer and Hugo, one of their presents being stands of that white porcelain goddess and I couldn't afford to buy shades - the kind Hugo wanted, like ours, being £6 each. I've nearly finished them unlined, and of raw silk, but I am learning quite a bit, never having made shades before, and needing some to replace those I brought from Shanghai. Lee got an electric blanket, and seems intrigued with a pedometer - tells how many miles he walks a day - much more than you'd believe possible. Phil gave me a very attractive amethyst ring, Hugo a copper and black steel parsley grater (very handsome) and Lee lots of good liqueurs. Claudia sent two red trays and a big black bowl, very Japanese in feeling, with suggestion that I use it for Nip meals.

We all went to Ivor's church for a 9:15am service. Jennifer, Phil, Lee and me in the next to the front seat, a coloured man in front of us who sang very well, but very loud, and slightly ahead of the priest who was standing up on the balcony at the back, where Hugo was also (and the organ). There were two men on the other side of the pew, both to do with the church, and the old feeble minister with a young man who rushed about getting him his glasses and all the things he kept forgetting. Here was this lovely church, beautifully warm, beautiful flowers - even a sermon - and we were the only people there. Hugo even sang a few bars of a solo during the communion. He and Jennifer had to be there the next morning early too. I think I told you wrong about what money he gets. It's £2 a service. He is playing for another wedding this month. He has also borrowed a violin and plays sonatas with Joan BT who it seems is much impressed with his playing - he hasn't played for years of course.

Phil is in the garden putting down the peat. I am just off to measure Lee's bed for a day bed cover. I got something nice in the sales and could get much more if he'd want me to. He does want me to paper it, now that he has at last finished the partition. He finally admitted he was finding it much too expensive, and I would like him to fix it all up and rent it, so as to live free here while we are away. I told him he'd have to get on with it and allow me to do my part soon as I wasn't going to be working up to the last moments. However it in all uncertain because his lease may not even allow him to sub-let. I have just returned, and he has done a very good job of it - but sho' took his time.

Lee is home on this Monday because he took off an extra day today, having driven down from Scotland last night, arriving here at 9:00am. I haven't got all details but he said the weekend was great fun. He was on an all-in tour, leaving here at three on Friday, New Year's Eve, on a coach - organized by the same men who did the water-skiing in the summer. I am so thrilled it was a success. He came in on Thursday night when Ann Usbourne came by to see us. Her mother phoned the night before and said she'd like to come by, which I thought very sweet of her. She isn't wildly enthusiastic about Paris, but is going back until September. Her sister returns from California in March I think it is. They had a very nice large family Christmas with one of John's brothers. Paula is still desperately looking for a house to buy, but I don't know in what part she is looking.

Jennifer and Hugo have been to lots of parties, and we often see them either to lend the car, or sometimes to dress here, which is usually nearer to where they are going, and Jennifer can come this far on scooter, with clothes, and change. New Year's Eve Hugo had to change here because he borrows Phil's evening clothes. We spent the evening having dinner with Bill and Yvonne Gooch. I would never have chosen that particular night to ask just one couple to dinner - but it was very enjoyable and Phil liked Bill much better than usual, and we stayed until after twelve to drink in the year with champagne. Indeed it was after one when we left, and yet the street up to our house was a traffic block!

The following night I went to bed at 8:30. Phil brought me supper in bed and I slept thirteen hours. It was quite strenuous having company for six days, even if Harry and Sybil were out for both lunch and supper the day after Christmas, but on the Monday we had Gilda and her husband, plus our three again, making nine, and nine again on the Wednesday when the Bates came with their daughter and husband, and again my three. It's a good thing I had an eighteen-pound turkey, and a very large roast of beef, but my forty-eight mince pies didn't hold out and I had to make more on Wednesday, besides much cleaning up by Phil and me. Harry and Sybil left that morning.

My relaxation is a funny one. I've been around looking at the sales. Luckily I didn't want to buy anything, but I like to look. Today I did get a rather nice chair for Phil to use at his desk, as he sits so much drawing that he was making a kind of hole in our best chairs. We walked to Portobello on Saturday to ask a men what he was charging to make some screw earrings into my kind - he had mailed them to me - and he said, nothing. A jeweller's had wanted £3-10-0 each to make them into pins, and this way they can be either pins or earrings.

Have stopped for supper. Lee came in and told us a lot about his trip. I hadn't realized it was five hundred miles up there. They drove all night, stopping in a pub on the way to greet in the New Year. Thirty of them. Lee had met three of them before on his skiing (water trips), and on arriving on the Saturday morning were told to change quick, have breakfast, fix themselves up with skis and be off in time to reach the slopes before the mobs got there. Lee said in fact the twenty minutes allowed was more than doubled, but that set the tone of the holiday - a wild rush the whole time - but he thought it was fun and well worth it - though the cold must have been awful, as Claudia would verify. Nothing but log fires in the sitting rooms!

Mrs Roscoe brought her grand daughter to work again today. The three of us began to work on getting a stew made when I knew Lee was coming. I had to take the frozen beef outside and chop it with a cleaver.

Phil read my letter through and says I haven't even mentioned the party at the Shaws. I sometimes realize I really have to write my letters for Phil to read rather than anybody else. I was going to tell you about the party. It was the first time we've been invited to a dinner for ages in long dress, and it was all very elegant, and lots of fun, and when someone said "Did you know it was twenty minutes after twelve?", we didn't. There were eighteen of us - served by waiters - champagne cocktails and the first course of smoked salmon and similar elegancies served with that in the drawing room. The dining room is a gorgeous room, lit only with candles, and papered in Thai silk - it's in the basement and the stairwell down, the hall and the dining room are all in silk that shimmers - a sort of blue. There must have been eight at the main table, five each at two others, with magnificent candelabra on each table - super foods and elegant wines, and I shall be scared stiff to have her back here. Her name is Betty Shaw - her husband is a famous eye specialist, and her daughter's husband is High Commissioner in Pakistan, which has nothing to do with it, but she often has Indians of various sorts staying with her, and once she showed me movies of a trip she had out there with a picnic in the desert, and all sorts of tents for lounging, for changing, for sleeping had preceded them, and it was so unpicnified, though they did ride out on camels. I think I've told you about her Indian trip before. We don't see them very often, and I am surprised whenever they ask us. Except for three fairly young people from Australia, the other thirteen people have known each other since the 1920's. Mr Shaw said to me "Betty tells me you have been staying with the King of Siam" so maybe we are sailing under false flags!

Which reminds me. On New Year's Day we got three or four dozen flowers wired from a Vietnamese - mimosa, roses, freesias, narcissus, tulips, iris and daffodils. A man who has worked under Phil. The house looks like a garden, and smells divine, and nobody to see them but us and the Bulmer Thomas'. We asked Ruth Mary and John whom we have seen very little of lately to come to lunch, and help eat up much cold meat, but they both have bad colds. I knew she would like a few flowers, in the normal way she adores to arrange.

We asked Joan and Ivor by on the Saturday. I don't think we've seen them for several months. They were very pleased with their view in the Abbey, sitting where she could reach out and touch everyone. I agreed with Claudia that I couldn't see Victor at all, though the flag he carried was always being commented on, but I am told that on the other program he was even mentioned by name.

Joan's greatest friend is Mrs Roy Jenkins, wife of the new Home Secretary, and Hugo was at a dinner party with them last week. Roy Jenkins was apparently much struck by Jennifer and told Joan he couldn't take his eyes off her - which she told Hugo and said not to tell Jennifer, which of course he promptly did. Anyway, the reason I say all this is that she had on the shiny dress I bought the material of with Joan. I've never worn it, though I made it for myself, but it's inches above the knee and she had extraordinary black net stockings. I am to make Jennifer a gold pair of trousers. Did I tell you.

I was surprised that there was even any suggestion of Denden's going to Arthur's for Christmas. Imagine, after that major operation. I am sure you enjoyed your opera more, and it certainly must have been better for you, though I know they missed you both. But what a thing. Eighteen people and no running water. Gosh. I trust so many constant visitors didn't wear you out, but of course it's so nice when people do come. Funny how they will come during meal hours though. I reckon the only plus about the operation was not having to do anything about Christmas for once. I know how it worries you having to get so many presents. We seem to give to very few people. I sent candy and pies to Joan, but Jennifer tells me she disapproves of Christmas and doesn't do anything about it, and won't keep a present until Christmas day or that kind of thing. Janet said it was fun to have real toys under the tree again. Ted and the two children came down only for the day. He is being sent to Ethiopia. She is going, but whether right at first or not wasn't made plain.

I undertook too much sewing too late, and so got myself very involved just before Christmas, and also we went to three parties which is unusual for us. Usually it seems to me people are coming here. I can't remember but two at this moment. A grand Chinese dinner at the Keswicks because the Bates were here - oh yes, the other was a family affair at the Bates' daughters. Nelson had brought the beef from an Isle of Man butcher and it was perfectly grand. The vegetables were brought from his own garden too. We haven't seen them for some years, and never the daughter's house which is a large Victorian one, and they have done everything to it themselves - literally. The central heating, plumbing, &c, and are experts in every way, reviving old ceiling ornamentation and that sort of thing. As Quita says, he's lucky to have a wife who is prepared to wait years for a decent place to live. They do one room at a time, and the dining room is still a mad hole, but you can see what the whole place was like. He has become a first class plasterer. We are just nothing in comparison. She has raised two little girls since they started, and she's so glad they couldn't afford a carpet which would be about worn out by now. They bought good under-stuff and have lived on that.

Our Christmas tree was a few branches fixed to the side board, and very adequate, but Hugo found a perfect specimen of a tree thrown out by a grocer late on Christmas Eve, so we brought it back from the Church service, and I mixed up soap and smeared it with snow in the midst of getting them all lunch, and having ourselves some particularly good mulled wine from Mrs Beaton's cook book. Hugo had to get to work by three - this was Christmas day - and Jennifer stayed and helped me. Ellen didn't come till quite late - they had stopped to see friends in this neighborhood - and I thought looked prettier than I've seen her in some long time. She has cut her hair, and arranged it straight back on top but very bouffant on the sides - and later in the evening she wore it down, about shoulder length. She said she had to cut it because it was falling out, but I don't think it can be as bad as she fears, but I think the short length very nice. Lucy was good. Sybil thought her very cute, but not looking like a baby but just a person. Ellen brought Phil and me milk bottles of the best eggnog I can remember, which I kept until we were fairly alone so I could have a lot. She also made fruit cake inside grapefruit - the peel of which was candied and delicious. She got it from your Westinghouse cook book. Hugo and Jennifer gave her a French cleaver chopping knife which amused me.

Later - a couple of hours. I left this to listen to a story by D H Lawrence, but Hugo and Jennifer soon came in - from a cocktail party nearby and they had been chased by two policemen because she was riding sidesaddle on the scooter. They say they will charge them for a mis-demeanor. A silly rule, it seems to me. Once I was scolded by a policeman for that - but they tried to get away. They finished up the stew. I ought always to have something eatable on hand. It is nice to have them around all the time though. So awful if they didn't want to come. Hugo is applying for still another job with the BBC in two days. He only applied for this lately so they moved a bit quicker this time. It is to do with arranging music appointments and this and that about players and orchestras. The job John found for him hasn't yet reached the position where they can give him a firm offer. Meanwhile he has also applied for the British Council job - teaching English in Africa - which Joan BT thinks nothing of.

Tuesday - I really must get this off and write some of my many other letters. Phil is cleaning the mess of pots and sticks outside his window, and with some of the old boards building me shelves in that underground room where the oil is stored - the only thing that won't spoil in that damp being flower containers of porcelain - but they are large and many and it will be very good to get them from other cupboards. It's sunny for a change, but not very. I will also try to make fudge to send Mrs Keswick who sent me so many chocolates. I haven't written her even, I wish people wouldn't be so polite after they come to you for dinner. Still haven't written Betty Shaw, tho' George Dix once told me there wasn't any use doing it if you didn't do so the following day. Do give Mrs Dix our love and thank her for her card. Needless to say I sent none. Hazel too, and Jeff's Betty.