January 3rd 1967

Dear Machi and Den,

Today I got up with the one thing on my mind that I'd write you, and here it is a quarter to four and I've done nothing else but write off a few notes of thanks and condolences, and besides that just the usual interruptions and getting of a decent lunch (pigeons in red wine). There is no day by the time I stay in bed in order that Phil will stay late, get his breakfast, &c. Just now ran to get four large suitcases belonging to our last tenant, and up to the flat to collect pots of flowers his wife wanted driven to Ireland in his car. They themselves left from here to Venice for Christmas, and he comes back via London to drive the car to Ireland.

All that was an unnecessary amount of writing. I wish I knew why my letters often have a shadow. Also you have to hit them very well indeed, and I don't. Machi your delightful letter to Ellen was missing for a week. Ellen left it Christmas day and I searched for it every after, and then found Hugo had put it in his pocket, and he was off in Hereford. They stayed with an uncle who seems to have a most remarkable wife who cooks all the time. Fourteen were staying there, and she serves really fine meals with several courses, plus breakfast with such dishes as grated apple, raisins and nuts, which comes out looking like porridge, and Hugo says is very good though it doesn't sound it, does it. And during these days of elaborate meals she was also getting all the food ready for a New Year's Eve party for sixty.

We had a very fun Christmas I thought, beginning with the kids here for champagne (left from Hugo's wedding) while we decorated the tree (about two feet high) and I had made a large spaghetti. Hugo, Jennifer and Andrew were three of the congregation of six at the morning service to which I would have gone but it meant leaving Phil with no tea or breakfast, and he hadn't seemed as well as usual. In fact when Susan was over on Christmas Eve she wanted me to phone the doctor. It was a bit hectic for him, with lunch being eaten late by us, for I'd been to a cocktail party, and Susan and small girl arrived, and Sheila and her mother bearing gifts, and Lee turning up later than me from the party - but anyway the next morning Phil announced that he was better again.

I will go on about that. Wednesday I did get the doctor and he said he didn't think it was anything Phil had or hadn't done, and he read a bit of the report Dr Nicholson had sent him when he first reported on Phil after his leaving the hospital. There in black and white he said it was possible that Phil would have a re-occurrence of the pain and fever - perhaps more than once during the six months' convalescence. (He had had a very bad night with a pain so acute he couldn't sleep well, and of course we both thought he must have had another attack, but Dr Glass said no, and there was no cause to worry.) When he came back next he said he had talked to Nicholson about it, and he said "Very interesting". Apparently they are only just finding out some of these things, and one of them is this re-occurrence. It also happens after a heart operation. some strange matter is running around in the blood stream. Dr Glass said he hadn't told us before as of course it might not have happened. He was running a fever and had to stay in bed all week. Towards the end of the month he will go for another cardiogram. He is feeling himself again now.

To return to Christmas day, they all turned up soon after one, and we opened the many presents to mulled wine, and this took a couple of hours. It looked like a shop up there with so many packages - every one outdoing themselves in doing them up. Hugo arrived with a car load himself, all in different colours, some of which went on to the Bulmers, but largely presents from himself to Jennifer, though there were three for me, records, a large oven baster and a steel butter or sauce, saucepan. It was a wine and cooking Christmas for Hugo. I gave them china casseroles, poultry shears, and other utensils from a French shop, the Bulmers three different kinds of famous wines. Jennifer had got him a very special book he wanted on wines, and Phil paid a rather large bill he had for again, special wines. He is building up a cellar. Ivor started him off, he himself being a connoisseur, and his wedding present was a book on wine. Lee's was a car Christmas - gauges, chamois for cleaning and a compass which he had asked for - again I can't think why.

Ellen had made all her presents - most unusual work too - done with a soldering Iron. Jennifer and I got earrings and the boys cuff links, and Phil's was a very pretty tile in shades of brown and orange with a cute large bug. She is going to pottery classes. but I don't know whether she does the soldering there. Lucy was very good. Both girls put on their new dresses for dinner. As usual I was quite appalled at how much Michael and Lee could eat. The second helpings were bigger than the first, and the eleven pound turkey only did a hash for three once, and more hash for seven two nights ago. There was a big pan of roast potatoes, a huge dish of candied sweet potatoes, masses of frozen small beans and a large dish of corn, besides the usual Brussells sprouts - and of course Mrs Roscoe's plum pudding and mince pies. A few potatoes and a small handful of sweet potatoes were left. Mrs Roscoes's pudding is very good - rather crumbly, and I'd poured brandy two weeks before, but she told me later she had bought one of the minute bottles of brandy when she made it. At a quarter to eight I sent Phil to bed and told everyone to go, but it took an hour for them to gather themselves and their things and depart. Phil went sound to sleep right in the next room long before they got off.

Little Jeffries face was so broken out it reminded me of Japanese children in the old days, so we got Dr Glass' wife who is a baby doctor to come and see him on the Tuesday. Sunday when they brought him by on the way home from Hereford, his complexion was lovely again. They stayed for supper, and Lee, and John Robinson, plus Sheila. I am surprised how she comes so often just at meal time. Wallace was here to see Phil too, but luckily wouldn't stay for supper. Today I've only been out of the house to mail letters, but right now I shall walk down the road and do one or two things. I went to see Susan yesterday as she is very tied to the house with mumps, and her mother's old housekeeper who has been in bed with a cold, three flights from the kitchen. Still, Susan phoned me twice in the afternoon to ask questions about fudge, so she can't be dead beat. Francis was very naughty yesterday. I hope she doesn't lose her attractiveness. Maybe it's the mumps.

I have now got back. I gave Phil some oil paints for Christmas, but he wanted more colours. He hasn't done any yet. I suddenly decided the day before Christmas that all my presents were too much for a sick man - being a dressing gown I'd made, slippers, and scales with a big reading face like Claudia gave Pinkie, so I dashed out for oils, and the man suggested paper treated for oils, and even a palette with the hole for your thumb and everything, but of treated paper, so you throw it away at the end of the painting session, so he really could even use it in bed. I saw a picture of a street by Utrillo, and before I saw his name I was thinking how much it looked like some of Phil's streets!

On New Year's Eve we were saying to each other how nice that nothing or anybody would be disturbing our evening, and almost at once the door bell rang. It was a Vietnamese we thought was in Vietnam. Last New Year he sent Phil that bunch of every spring flower that is available in the shops. He brought along a cute girl of twenty-two - about as big as a minute, his fiancée. Phil was a sort of go-between when his wife was discovered with a French boyfriend in Paris some years ago. She asked Phil to beg her husband not to give her up, but he said that in Vietnam they couldn't put up with things like that. She was one of the cutest girls I've seen, and it was she who suggested I try Vietnamese clothes. I made a wool one this winter and wear it a great deal. Denden, she also gave me those blouse lengths. White lawn. I haven't done mine yet. My two linen blouses from Shanghai have perished, so I really would like to have it. The Chows have also been in, that same afternoon, and another day last week. He phoned Phil this afternoon - on his way to Paris, Chicago, New York, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and back to London in a month.

Both Mrs Chow's daughter and Susan wanted to learn to make my fudge so I felt it was a success. But Susan's didn't harden last night. People don't understand that the goodness of it depends on how it's cooked.

Ellen was coming to spend a day when Michael was away, but she was so busy laying a floor on the kitchen that she didn't. I was so glad to think she was working on the house. Michael seemed almost surprisingly thrilled over the mixer, and also a lamp I had made of a cider bottle filled with beans.

We had all the carpets professionally cleaned, except Phil's room where he was in bed. It looks very nice, except for the stairs, and they are coming to do them tomorrow after I complained. It was a pretty awful upheaval with lots of the furniture out of place for two days. Phil's orange chair came up very well. It all cost a lot - £16.

I believe that's about all that's happened to us. I talked to a very interesting boy from Tibet at a cocktail party. I hope he will come to see Phil sometime. It's difficult to take in about Buddhism in the midst of a large party in a very small room. I always have a strong feeling I've told you everything before. Maybe it's because in bed I sort of recite letters to myself. Ellen tells me she took a letter to the post office but it was shut. Doesn't seem to keep stamps in the house. I hope you have had it before now. I'd love to see Joan's angels. It was very very kind of you to send a letter present to Lee. I hope he has written. You certainly mustn't give me anything. You gave me such a lot when we were home. I do want you to buy some sheets from my account though.

Phil says I haven't finished because I forgot about Pattie Kemp spending two nights, and Nigel coming the night after. Pattie is very nice indeed, but I find her voice irritates me a bit (but not Phil) and she is so like her mother in being conservative that I find myself getting rather annoyed. For instance so many remarks about sleeping under an electric blanket and was I sure it wouldn't electrocute her, &c. Very conservative in her ideas of clothes too. She loved Rhodesia, calls Ian Smith her number one pin-up boy which is all right with me, but I didn't much approve of her talk about the coloured Africans, and fear if she talks like that she will just make the people who hear her feel strongly against letting the white people have such an upper hand in the country. She is prettier. Janet wrote me an enthusiastic letter about the gay time they were all having. Little Janet had three different invitations for New Year's night, Janet and a friend gave a party for or about seventy-five young things - with a famous beat group for music, and Pattie says at least fifteen gate crashers came. All well behaved - but still.

Nigel was on his way back to Switzerland from staying with his parents. He had a copy of his book - a proof edition I believe it's called, and the book comes out in the spring. He talked of movie possibilities and seemed very bucked. Audrey Hepburn has a chalet near him and he knows some of the movie people, and I think his first love is acting and he hopes he may get some this way. He is a very handsome boy - very talkative, and open about his affairs and his various girls. The girl in Jamaica whose parents wouldn't let her return to Europe has now gone to school in America so she can write to him, but he has written her off because she was too docile, and did what her parents said. Anyway the poor thing is barely eighteen now. There's a girl in Scandinavia he hopes will marry him this summer, otherwise he is taking a trip to Mexico. A funny juxtaposition.

Rosamund is having a baby. Gilda has had a miscarriage. She and her husband seem to have returned from Devon where they had summer jobs in hotels. The last we heard from Sybil they were negotiating buying a house in Devon, but now they are back, their own house rented, and they are living in one room, and Sybil is very sad about them, and Nigel says he doesn't know anything about her, or why she was at her parents a few days after Christmas without her husband, and that she is very common and looks it covered with awful make-up and false lashes.

The grocer has arrived with the marmalade oranges so I see a busy day ahead of me. I think I shall go to the Albert Hall tomorrow night and listen to Handel's Messiah. I seem to have heard very little Christmas music this year. Probably my own fault. Doing something else at night when the music is on. But it is without doubt a bit difficult. Phil looks at TV and never even studies the radio programs.

I read your letter to the family on Sunday night, Machi - the one to Ellen - and John appreciated every word. I am glad Denden didn't have to be cold at Arthur's on Christmas. Did I tell you the knife like yours costs £12 here, and everyone seemed to be buying it for a Christmas present.

 

 

January 4th 1967

Dearest Claudia,

One page got left out but it certainly wasn't worth repeating. One thing I was saying was the difference of making things for Jennifer. For instance their skirts. Ellen said "0h, it's green. Now I'll have something to wear", and I've not heard another word as to whether it fit or anything, yet I adored the cloth and wanted it myself. Jennifer ran out with hers and came back with it on and pranced around. Jennifer wore both her new dresses in Hereford, and on the phone last night Joan BT said Jennifer looked lovely in her new dress. I got out of bed to answer the phone - she wanted to know whether if she picked up Jeffries he'd ever stop crying. You know she is famous on the phone for never stopping, and Phil finally called out that I was getting cold.

Dr Glass has just been and he will make an appointment with Dr Nicholson in two to three weeks' time. Until then it's still the routine of staying indoors. The floor men haven't turned up, doggone them. Haven't wanted to go out to get the sugar for the marmalade. A sauce pan I got for the flat has just come in and Phil queries the price. Barker's sale. It was 51/9 reduced to 38/- . A very nice heavy pan, but what a price. There was nothing lower. And four cotton flannel blankets for under blankets which just plain disappeared when the girls left, were nearly £4.

I shan't enjoy anything I do until I get off a lot of letters I should have written before Christmas. Had written Maude, and today another letter wanting a reply! She will be in London the last two months of April. They sail on February 15th so are taking a long voyage. I got myself an antelope coat from Miss Pat. Very snooty. Have wanted a coat all winter. Seem to have given away most of mine. I keep fiddling with a piece of fur for a hat, but can't make anything I like.

It's ten to one so I ought to get lunch. Lots of love. Do you know of anything special Sybil would like.

Marijane