2110-7-6-11

Copy

Government House, Ottawa.

Nov. 20, 1936.

My darling Baba.

I got a dear letter from you and was so distressed to hear that you had got a cold. I was a little nervous of your going to Moor Green as changes of atmosphere are apt to give it one.

Who do you think I have just said goodbye to? Fanny Williams. She motored up from Vermont through a snow storm with Mrs. Walworth Smith, a cousin of Tuffs and they stayed here. Fanny had proposed to come and stay at the Hotel here and come and see me, but I vetoed that at once and asked her to come for the night, and they were such delightful guests, and got on so well with Eric Mackenzie and the A.D.C's. John had never really met Fanny before and was charmed by her and they had great talks about books and American politics. We had a marvellous time on Sunday, we went up into the woods and walked up and down hills over dry snow (like icing sugar) and crackly leaves till we got to a hut where we had tea. One of the girls we met there had been at the R.A.D.A. and is much looking forward to meeting Alice. The air was marvellous, we were shown a vista of violet hills and told that there were no towns between us and the North Pole, also that a (quite harmless) black bear

[Nov. 20. 1935)

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had been nosing round for any left over scraps of bacon. The sunset was magnificent. There is so much more mauve and purple in the sky than there ever is at home, and it is really very lovely as a background to the black tree trunks.

I am struggling with the addresses of the Montreal and Toronto Canadian Women's Clubs and I feel quite sick when I think of either of them. In a moment of altruism I said I would take over the speaking in the women's club to relieve John as he is so snowed under by requests to speak but oh dear I don't know how I shall get away with it!

Alastair and Beatrice have taken up skating and go to the Minto Club most mornings , and I am having a young people's party and a little dance tonight. Nothing was communicated to the Press about this, but it got about in Ottawa that this was happening and so many unmarried females wrote their names down at Government House that the queue of cars stretched from the door to the gate!

I thought perhaps you would keep my letters numbering them 1. 2. 3. 4. and so forth and I would get them inexpensively bound, as I find I can't somehow write a diary, there isn't time - or rather there isn't the energy somehow! This is a very interrupted life, and if one is attempting to write anything in the way of authorship one has rather to to concentrate on that.