2110-7-10-11

[unidentified] Nearing Venice

Pfo "Ausonia"

June 2nd 1935

Dear John

I ought to be home by the time this reaches you - but with some holiday leisure still available, I feel I must write & tell you how your "Oliver Cromwell" has kept me absorbed during this voyage. In the rush of London I never could get it read, but slipping past the Greek Islands & up an oily-smooth Adriatic I have been able to & oh! I have enjoyed it.

I don't know how you manage to write with that double stand point of the complete contemporary & the later seer. I can almost see you yourself moving among those Cromwellian parliamentarians so

[ST: below is hand-written sidewarys at the top of the letter, presumably an addendum to the end of the letter added later]

new one - & never was a Peerage more finely earned. No Grocery about.

Yours Loving & every hungry for you company & Zoo-zoo's Böse Reid

vivid do you make them to us - And when I shut the book I have a feeling you must still be in connection talking with Oliver helping him - to clear the issues - understanding his dilemmas merciless & yet merciful to his mistakes, & at all times capable of sharing his spiritual conflicts. To write such a biography you must surely in a sense almost become the man you are writing about don't you? & yet how far off you have to stand for your final judgments. And now you are off to understand & interpret a whole great Country to itself &

to the outside world - embodying there the King's Grace. How I enjoyed that book too - which I read on the voyage out. It was a strange experience being on the high seas for the Jubilee - quite out of touch with it all - to receive when I got to Cairo air mail letters from Arthur & all the children, including Harry, lyrical about its beauty & significance & the particular beauty of the Queen. They came before all the gush of the papers & were so real & immediate I could not help sending emotions from them to Catherine Colville - & she showed my letter to the Queen who was so moved by it she kept it & sent me such a nice message about it. Saturdays Times which I got at Brindisi speaks of the King having a slight chill. How one trembles at any illness for him & realises afresh his irreplaceableness to us. Its been a change being in Cairo but a very hot & rather an anxious one. But Katie & her baby are well & don't seem to mind much both being in a sweltering hot hospital with not much air inside & hot winds blowing round it. But I shall be thankful to get them home out of the prickly heat & flies. The marriage I feel is quite a happy one & Pascoe much come on & mellowed by it - & beautifully unclumsy with his very truly delicious little baby. When shall I see you & Zoo-Zoo I wonder. I do so want you to come to Nannan for a few days fishing & I'll feed you exactly according to Plesch's regime.

Dear John I call you by your old name still - tho' I love the

[ST: letter ends at the top of the first page translation added to the end of transcribed page 1]`