Scope and Content
"Now at last I am catching up on my correspondence. I found your letter and card here in the pile the Porter brought round on my arrival on Aug. 12th. I left the yacht and my three friends at Cannes, and returned by air from Nice, as I had to get back by the 14th when my cousins from Yorkshire were arriving for a week. I may have told you about them - my only relatives in England. My mother's cousin Christina (now 85) married a doctor called Waddington in Selby. They had three children, Dick, Anne and Albert. Anne (now 50) never married, but is a pianist of some distinction in the North. She plays on N.Regional sometimes, and gives recitals in Selby Abbey, and has played with the Halle Orchestra under Barborolli. Lately, however, she has had to neglect her music in order to look after her parents, to whom she is completely devoted. Dick has two daughters, Anne (20) and Christine (18). Albert has no children. I had heard of these relatives at Selby, but never seen them until they turned up at my mother's funeral in 1942. After that, I visited them often when I went up to Yorkshire to see my father. Anne came to Ampthill twice when I was living at S.Joseph's, and she came frequently to Richmond. But she had not visited me here - so I invited her, and she brought Anne (20) with her to help with the driving. In order that they might have a bedroom each, I went to sleep in Frank Jackson's flat round at the front facing the sea. I think I mentioned him when you were here. He bought a flat last January, was a Capt. (regular) in the Cheshire Regt. and is now E.Kent representative for Schweppes. He is 27, and a very charming and handsome young man. I suppose it was only natural that he and young Anne should pair off together - he took her out in his dinghy, he took her to the pictures, he took her dancing - and now it seems a romance has begun! At any rate, a correspondence has begun, and Frank is going up to Selby for a weekend next month, and I am accompanying him. The two girls, Anne and her sister Christine (18), are invited her for a Christmas Ball in the castle on Dec.28th. After that, we shall see! So far from ending my days as a lonely bachelor, it seems probable I shall be in demand as "baby-sitter" to my cousin four times removed! However, it will be a good thing if they make a match of it, as he certainly needs a wife, and she has the qualities he admires - commonsense, reliability, sincerity - as well as being very attractive. She is a Wentworth Woodhouse School of Physical Training with the idea of becoming a games mistress - though she is very far from the leathery, red-faced, hockey-playing type one usually thinks of as games mistresses. She is blonde and petite.
Well, now to your letter. Many thanks for all the literature re Woburn Abbey you sent, also the Beds. magazine. I think I ought to return the booklets with your initials on, as you are sure to want to read up for future visits, and the bigger booklet is really the one I wanted. I have read them all. I wonder when I shall be to see the Abbey. Not, I fear, until I have a car of my own again, and I don't know when that will be.
And it looks as if your next visit here will have to be fitted in during your next Whitsun holiday: as I have engagements in London all next week (including Son et Lumiere at Greenwich) and you start again on Sept.10th. If only one could be sure of fine weather in April (and it sometimes happens) you have a fairly long holiday then. But we shall see. I have never visited Chatsworth or Haddon Hall: one day I should like to do a tour of England and Scotland just doing the big houses now open to the public. Have you been to Luton Hoo? I believe it has a wonderful art collection.
My yachting trip with my friend George Petrie and two other ex-Naval men was very enjoyable: a route we have taken several times before - Portugal, Gibralter, Malta, Corsica, Cannes, Villefranche. At Malta we were moored almost next to the Duke of Windsor's yacht. They seemed to be having gay parties continuously. Corsica (my first visit) was really lovely, and we had to stay there several days for various reasons, so I was able to absorb it. The others should be back in Ramsgate any day now.
We have had a lovely day here today - tea out on the lawn - but I did not bathe, as a large harvest of seaweed has arrived in our bay, and I don't like swimming in seaweed soup!
Yours sincerely"