This letter was stamped with censor number 10199 instead of the 14529 Dick had been using in Nightingale Wood.
As usual
Tuesday 30th May
Chotie Darling,
Very many thanks for your letter. Sorry I haven’t been able to write you before this, but I’ve been pretty busy as you can guess. However, things are much easier now, and I have plenty of spare time.
I’ve just been to the local baths to get things teed up for the boys this afternoon. Envious?
You seem to have enjoyed the ‘Fair’ ‘do’ – even though working under forced labour, as it were.
The leave question is off I’m afraid – as I can’t get off at all at the moment – ‘we anchor in hope’, as the prophet has it.
Diller sent me a film book cutting of ‘San Luis Rey’. Akim Lamiroff is having a crack at Uncle Pio. I also learned quite by chance that the book won the all nations Pulitzer Prize Novel of 1927, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. I think Uncle Pio is one of the fullest-drawn characters in modern literature. It was also filmed in the silent days with Lily Damita, etc*.
Haven’t had the time to read much recently – only Rutland Boughton’s ‘Bach’, which I found good if only because he places this extraordinary genius in his proper place in the history of music and avoids eulogising him to excess**.
I’m afraid I forgot all about giving you the train fare on our last meeting so I’m enclosing a cheque which I hope will cover it OK. I’m sorry I can’t send cash but I simply haven’t got it.
Don’t seem to have had a letter for ages – but then I can’t grumble, being such a poor correspondent myself.
No news from this end, of course. The old security racket, again.
Weather here has been really wonderful of late. I’m beginning to get quite brown again. I imagine I’ll get brown enough before I’ve finished this Summer.
Well, Darling, I’d better dry up here.
Hope you can cash the cheque without too much trouble.
All my love, Darling
Dicker.
* ‘The Bridge of San Luis Rey’ – film made in 1944 starring Lynn Bari, Akim Tamiroff (as Uncle Pio) and Francis Lederer. A rope bridge over a gorge in the Peruvian Andes snaps, sending five people plunging to their deaths. A priest sets out to find out more about the life of each of the victims. The 1929 film was directed by Charles Brabin and starred Lily Damita and Don Alvarado
*’Bach, The Master’ by the English composer Rutland Boughton, written in 1930.
© Chotie Darling
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