Reference
AU10/102/1/74
Title
Handwritten letter
Date free text
21 November 1956
Production date
From: 1956 To: 1956
Scope and Content
["THANET 63256" added to top of letter by hand.]
"Many thanks for your letter, with full account of the occasion at Bart's. I saw the paragraph in the Ampthill News too. I am glad everything went off so well. S.John's Amb. was in my mind last Saturday again, as I saw our old friend Mrs.McCorq. was billed to appear in Tall Story on TV. I sat up specially for it. I was quite took aback when she appeared. I should never have known her, she has become so completely changed. I saw her once after leaving Ampthill when I was in the Dorchester Hotel for some reason or other, and she looked then as I remembered her when she drenched my cassock in powder at Ampthill - dark, plump and bold-looking, like the old fashioned pantomine principal boy. I could always visualize her in purple tights and a large hat! But dear me, this white-haired lady with the thin, narrow face - could it be she? I thought her tall story was very good. Did you see her? She must have been slimming or something. But it's an odd thing about these plump women: they seem to thin down as they get older: I believe Lady P. Lennox-Boyd (who was definitely plump at the time of her marriage) has also gone very thin!
I am afraid I haven't much to relate. We are having some fine, clear days of sunshine: healthy weather, and good so long as one keeps moving. People sometimes say "Don't you find the winters trying by the sea": but I say that we have some really lovely weather sometimes - and usually when London is gasping in fog and smog. Of course I am usually abroad in the worst months, Jan. and Feb., but even so I think the sea is the healthiest climate. It certainly seems to agree with me. And living away from towns is quite different from what it used to be, in these days of radio and TV. Moreover, living in this castle gives one a cosy feeling of being in a community. Some of the flat-owners appear only in the summer: but a few of us are permanent residents, and all get along very well together. I am known simply as THE PADRE! I hope I shall be able to fix up a little chapel somewhere sometime. There are odd corners still unoccupied which could be turned to use.
I saw the Bader film at Margate: very well done, too. I must say I enjoy a good film (as much as the theatre, and it has the advantage of no tiresome endless intervals to break the flow of the drama). I thought Olivier's Richard III superb. More recently, I enjoyed an American comedy "The Solid Gold Cadillac", which had enthusiastic reviews. It is that rarity - a really witty, adult and intelligent American comedy. It's worth seeing. You would enjoy it. I see they've done "War and Peace", and that it lasts 3 1/2 hours. Well it took me 30 years nearly to read it. One of my brother curates at S.J.D.K. gave it to me for Christmas 1927. I began it, but stopped about Chapt.2. My Ampthill years passed over my head without any attempt to begin again: but last winter I really got down to it, and, with a great struggle, breasted my way through it. But would it get any readers if it were published for the first time today? I must say I found "Gone With The Wind" more absorbing and more exciting, and Scarlett O'Hara quite as real and vivid a character as Natacha Rostrov. I read a lot of history in these days, thus returning to my Oxford studies. But I find there are big gaps in my knowledge of even English history. But books are always coming out, and it's only the alarming price which stops me from buying more and more.
You don't mention Aunt Eva lately? Is she living on her own in Park St. still?
Yours sincerely"
Level of description
item