Scope and Content
"Once more I am back in the Castle, for a few weeks, and tackling the pile of correspondence which has accumulated during the summer. I think I sent you a postcard from Lake Garda, where I spent the month of August ... a really beautiful place. The flowers and foliage were a constant delight, and my Italian friends have a yacht in which we plied up and down the Lake, visiting the charming little ports dotted around the shores of the Lake. My god-daughter Patricia Stavert came and joined us for a time. We drove over to Verona one evening for the Opera in the Roman Arena. It was wonderful to be sitting there under the open sky in the arena which was built in the first century, and must have witnessed gladiatorial fights and heaven knows what else besides. but there in no record of any Christian martyrdoms there. I returned to Verona later for a few nights. But after I left Garda I went up into the mountains to stay with my friend Roy MacGregor-Hastie, who bought a mountain side two years ago, and is busy constructing a house out of a pile of stones which were once probably a shepherd's cot. He found there in the ruins a beautifully carved statue of S.Anthony (possibly the work of a local craftsman 100 years ago) which he has placed in a niche over the front door. The scenery all round is magnificent. Actually, he is at the very end of Italy: the roads end at the village: it is then a case of mules to the Swiss border 48 hours away. Roy is a prolific writer ... mainly biographies ...two or three of them are in paperback - one on Mau-se-Tung (The Red Barbarians), and one on Mussolini (The Day of the Lion). He comes to England every winter, and I am expecting him here for a couple of nights next month when he arrives with his car at Dover.
After leaving him I went to Verona, and started a tour of some Italian cities I have hitherto not visited ... Vicenza (the city of Palladio), Mantua, Cremona, Pavia ... and so to Milan, where I have several friends. It happened that two of them were driving to Genoa, so I went with them, and from there by train to Menton, where I stayed a few days with my cousins, and then up to Paris. A short visit to my beloved Normandy, and so back here again. But I leave again on December 5th. for Antwerp, Curacao, Costa Rica, Jamaica and Florida ... back here sometime in March. Apart from Curacao, which I visited on my voyage to California and Vancover three years ago, I have not visited the West Indies, so I am looking forward to it very much. I like returning to my quarters in the Castle, but these grey skies soon make me long for the sunshine, and I am quite ready to be off again after a few weeks!
Nothing much has happened here this year. My neighbour Sydney Crouch made a wonderful recovery from his operation, and is going about as usual. He has even taken a part time job at Wellesley House, a local prep school here. The cliff question is still in abeyance, but there is to be a meeting about it next month. Our maintenance charge has been doubled, but I find every time I return to England from abroad that prices of everything have risen ... it is a steady spiral. I am not surprised that so many people now are looking for places abroad to live. Incidentally, Mrs.Fantle and her mother and husband all packed up during the summer, sold their houses, and have gone to live in Spain. I have a letter from Mrs.Fantle (she now calls herself Mrs.Grant), and she says they found the tourists in the summer a nuisance. Altogether she does not sound too happy. Nothing would induce me to live in Spain, especially that southern part, which is packed with English who have gone to live there for the cheap wine and sunshine. One cannot live on that alone.
My second cousin-twice-removed Anne Waddington and her husband, who is the Medical Officer for the North Riding of Yorkshire, came here last weekend. He is the heir to his uncle, Lord Uvedale. I think I must have mentioned them to you. They have a lovely old Georgian house in a lime grove in a village near Northallerton in Yorkshire. Her sister, Christine, married a young baronet, Sir Robin Norbury. They live in Winchester, and I am due to go to spend a few days with them sometime next month. I shall not be able to get up to Hoscote until next year. It is really quite a business fitting everything in. I suppose the time will come when I settle down, but I don't think it will be in Kingsgate Castle somehow! More like somewhere abroad.
I have just looked at your letter of June 26th. I was glad to have your replies to my questions. Your letters certainly give me a lot of news, which I am always delighted to receive. Did you see, by the way, that Sir Anthony's grand-daughter married a Russian prince some time ago? I remember her as rather a shy girl. Her brother died at the age of 30 - he was in the Navy. But he left several children, including a son ... so there is still a link with Ampthill.
Do you ever have news of the Du Sautoys? How strange it is that these families, which were so eminent and apparently solidly established, in Ampthill when I arrived there in 1933 (the Russells, the Wingfields, the Du Sautoys) have all faded away, with not a trace behind!
I shall look forward to hearing from you soon, and hope you are keeping well.
Yours sincerely,"