Scope and Content
"Many thanks for your letter and cards, which I am returning. The light grey shades (68 and 3245) would be best, as they go with anything, and I don't need any pockets. It is really a waistcoat with sleeves I want, but thin enough to wear under a coat or cassock without being bulky. I can't bear wearing the ordinary pullover or cardigan under a coat. But my arms feel cold without anything! I think my chest measurement is more like 40 than 42. A tape measure round my chest goes about 39, but I can swell it up to 40.
You seem to have got in quite a lot during your visit to Deal. I am glad you got to Dover Castle, and of course Canterbury. I know the second Arabesque of Debussy, but it is not a favourite of mine. I prefer the first. I am glad Stephen Davies did so well. It is nice for you having contacts in these places you visit! I am really very sorry it was such a dreary day here, but if you come in October to Deal, you must come over again and hope for better luck. Actually, we have had a very mixed bag since you were here ... thunderstorms, clouds, occasional sunshine: the TV forecaster last night prophesised a fine spell, but it has not arrived yet, as our skies are mainly cloudy.
I suggest you acquire with one of your book tokens a Penguin called VOSS by Patrick White. VOSS came out three years ago, it was a Book Society choice, and was awarded W.H.Smith's £1000 award for the most outstanding contribution to English Literature in 1957/58. The author is an Australian, and the novel is placed in Australia in the Victorian age. I enclose a review I cut out at the time, which perhaps you will eventually return. I thought it was a very unusual book. Laura Trevelyan is certainly a heroine in the grand tradition. You will feel a link with her, as she takes up teaching, and starts a school, after the death of Voss.
I did not ask Perton to resume sending the A.N., as I am going away on July 23rd. and expect to be away all August and most of September. I though I would wait until I was settled down for a time. For the same reason I think it would be well to leave the Bedfordshire diaries for a time. I have several books to get through, if possible, before I leave for Hoscote, and with visitors coming and going, that is not easy.
I don't know if I mentioned to you that when I was viewing the ruins of Pompeii (in pouring rain) last January, I ran into a young professor of History from some university in USA, a most intelligent man, and very interesting. He had a great love for England, and seemed to have travelled it from end to end. We also discovered we had mutual friends in Oxford and elsewhere. We returned to Naples together, and I went to his hotel for dinner, and we never stopped talking until midnight. He was leaving for Rome the next day, and I was going to Capri: but he promised to look me up if he came to England again: or rather when he came to England again.
In ther course of our conversation, I brought up the name of Richard Nicolls, and Ampthill, and told him all about the cannon-ball on the tomb. I suggested that it seemed to me there was a good field for research here, and that a most interesting biography could be the result. I asked him if he thought there was any biography of Nicolls ever published in USA, seeing he was the first governer of New York. He promised to enquire, and I heard from him yesterday! He enclosed a report from the New York Public Library which states "We have not found a separate biography of Colonel Richard Nicolls, first governor of New York. The only separate item listed in our card catalogue is:-
Schuyler, Montgomery.
Richard Nicolls, first governor of New York, 1664-1668.
(Order of Colonial Lords of Manors in America.)
Publications no.24, 1933, pp1-24.
I should be very much interested to see this document. I may be going to USA before long, and I shall certainly look in at N.Y. Library.
Yours sincerely,"