[No surviving envelope]
Letter 40.
I have just one sheet of air mail paper left: I hope I shall not forget to provide myself when I go up tomorrow: for this week I spend Wednesday and Thursday nights in town, havingChurchill Club, TheMilton talk for;a3 MiltonMilton, JohnTSE's Churchill Club talk on;a5 and the Churchill Club tomorrow night – my last public engagement for this year, and I hope for some time to come. WhenBritish Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)TSE declines Christmas broadcast for;d5Siepmann, Charles Arthur
I was very glad to get your report of October 21, with such a satisfactory account of your lodgings. It sounds quite rural, but I suppose is really semi-suburban. I hope that the bicycle will prove a success; I am sure you have no difficulty, but your muscles will ache for the first week or so. And I only hope that the landlady will not take such a fancy to you as to intrude upon your privacy: otherwise she sounds as good as one could expect. I don’t believe that you get as good food as I do, or have so much milk and eggs: the chief thing I envy is perpetual orange juice. The marmalade, by the way, is excellent, and the liver paste very tasty – that is gone, because it doesn’t keep, and had to be eaten quickly once opened. INason, Margaret ('Meg') Geraldine;a7 wish you could send something nice to eat to Meg (though I fear she never eats much, for fear of getting fat), as I can’t think of anything to send her as a return gift for her very rich birthday cake.
IPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle)sends photograph of EH portrait;f7 have received from Dr. Perkins (for which I must write to thank him) aHale, Emilyphotographs of;w7of EH's portrait;e8 photograph of your portrait. It is a very fine reproduction; but now that I have a good opportunity to examine it carefully for the first time in my life, I don’t think it a very good portrait. An outline of it has come off on the thin paper envelope around it; and, curiously, the dim outline looks much more like you than the portrait does. I think the nose wrong, for one thing. YouHale, Emilyphotographs of;w7in sailor suit;e9 have no first rate photograph: the only one I really like, and have on my desk, is a little girl in a sailor suit. But I shan’t tell Dr. Perkins that I don’t think it a good portrait: it was sweet of him to send it, as a Christmas present.1
1.TSE to John Carroll Perkins, 26 Dec. 1944: ‘I was very much touched and pleased by your sending me a photograph of Emily’s portrait before Christmas …
‘Now I am not sure that I consider the portrait itself quite satisfactory or adequate as a portrait: but I am happy to have the photograph as a reminder of the portrait itself, which I remember so well hanging over the fireplace in the drawing room of the Hales’ at Norfolk Road.’
1.MargaretNason, Margaret ('Meg') Geraldine (Meg) Geraldine Nason (1900–86), proprietor of the Bindery tea rooms, Broadway, Worcestershire, whom TSE and EH befriended on visits to Chipping Campden.
3.DrPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle) John Carroll Perkins (1862–1950), Minister of King’s Chapel, Boston: see Biographical Register.