2110-8-5-2

BANKHEAD BALERNO MIDLOTHIAN

Telephone: Balerno 2214

13th March 1937

My dear John,

Very many thanks for your last letter with the details of your trips taken & in store & news of yourself, Susie & the family. Next time I hear from you will probably be after Washington & I hope you will enlighten me as to the real point in the struggle between the President & the Supreme Court. You will have a great time there, that's one thing certain.

Winter has come late but strong. For more than a fortnight the wind has been in the East & snow has fallen in driblets & melted sometimes through the sun coming out & then lightening up at night. No low registers on the thermometer but 4-6 degrees pretty regular. Now we have had 2 and and all enjoying a third day's blizzard & the drifts are pretty bad in places. You can think of me in American gum boots, waterproof trousers, my old army coat with the seal-skin inside a waterproof on the top of that & a battered Homburg boring through the blasts to

the train at Balerno Station & the funny little railway. That funny little railway supplied unstaling entertainment for Sir George Adam Smith's American grandchildren when on a visit in the summer of 1935 ^(riding on the Engine plate from Currie to Balerno & back). But it corkscrews along & flings one about (when buses fail through ice or strikes) & I prefer it myself, because I can read.

Alec Maitland has been far from well - influenza to begin with & a consequential fainting seizure that caused grave anxiety. But he is on the mend and, after lying up, rest & change, is expected to come all right again. Another old friend of mine, Pat Keith Murray, nearly died of heart & is to be kept in bed and fed for a month. These sort of things are very distressing & it doesn't make it more cheerful to have mumps in the house, that ridiculous, childish but madden[ing]ly infectious ailment. Poor Nina! to get it at her age just 13 months after measles! How was it avoided in a family of 10 in her childhood? First our Helen got it, then Nina 2 days later

BANKHEAD BALERNO MIDLOTHIAN

Telephone: Balerno 2214

then Rachel Leatham who had spent the week- end, before symptoms showed in any one else, finally, Helen Leatham, who was only in at tea on Sunday (same week-end) is showing some signs at the last possible date & will probably be sent here to work it off. Nice for my household!

I must just keep humming Schubert's Glauben an den Frühling. I am looking forward to your "Augustus". He is rather a shadowy figure to me: I remember Viktor Rydberg's admiration (as opposed to J.C.) in his Romerska Kejsare i Marmor & his allusion to the mild expression & calm nobility of the Emperor's features.

On a re-perusal of Konrad Heiden's Geburt des dritten Reichs & the writings of Gunther & Wheeler-Bennett I find my detestation of Hitler & his gang intensified. What an indictment of a slave people of idolaters! The "Dispat[c]h"

of all papers had banned a short time ago a letter Thomas Mann wrote to the Dekan at Bonn when they cancelled his honours. It did one good to read it, but it does not allay one's fears. Thank God we are all awake at last & I hope the U.S.A. will awake too to the fact that it is only by sticking together that decently governed folk can pursue their liberties.

Immense flocks of waxwings recently observed were harbingers of this N.E. storm. I don't mean that they move like red-wings or fieldfares but their little parties are so ubiquitous (Moray, St Andrews, Cockburnhill (12 seen on 27th ult.), Peeblesshire, Borders etc. etc.) that one feels they must have crossed from Norway in large packs. They find their living in the hedgerows feeding off berries & haws. Talking of Peebles I hope you have good news of your mother, Anna & Walter.

No more just now. May the Lord prosper all your doings. The slightly biblical note is due to daily journeys in my little train with R.E. Prothero (?now Lord Ernle)'s "Psalms in human life" in a pocket size presented to "Alexander, Lord Kinnear" by G.W. Prothero (Professor?) in Oct. 1908 - a very admirable work in itself and as a stimulus to the study of history. Love to Susie. Yours ever

Stair A. Gillon.