In the train to San Francisco, 25th February, 1933
Beloved Mamma,
Bill Browne tells me that by posting this to catch the Aquitania it should arrive about in time for your birthday, so this is to wish you many happy returns of the day. Birthdays do seem to be slipping past in my absence, but with any luck I shall be back for Biddy’s.
I wrote last from Riverside, saying I would send you some literature about it, which of course I didn’t do, but I have a small booklet in my case, and it may say something interesting.
I shall probably get some mail in San Francisco so I shall not finish this till we arrive. I find my kind, faithful family have always written to me at every place now, and it’s such fun getting your letters; by the way, I’m awfully glad the Cousin (The Holiday Cousin, a magazine produced every holidays by the family) is being kept up. I wonder if the summer number ever got to Maurice Johnson. I should appreciate some information about that.
There isn’t an enormous amount of news, but I expect I shall write volumes before I get to the end of this. The train jiggles horribly so I shall shortly avail myself of Hallen Viney’s offer of his travelling typewriter, because I think that’ll make this more legible. If I ever come on another trip like this, a machine of that nature will be indispensable. There are about 5 altogether, and train journeys are used to do arrears of business. The carriage has been echoing to the tip tap of the keys nearly all day. For some reason we have come by day instead of by night, which is a comfort in many ways, in that it doesn’t entail dressing and undressing and lugging about of suitcases in congested areas, but 12 hours is a good long journey. I think the idea was for us to see the scenery, but we’ve been so busy sorting photographs, and doing various jobs, that we haven’t seen an awful lot. We’ve had a photographic General Post and two of us have spent the whole afternoon sorting negatives and collecting a vast order for 400 odd prints for the whole team, which we hope to wangle at a reduced rate.
Talking of wangling, I’m so sorry Mrs Punshorn (?) is dead. She really did seem perennial. Do you remember your amusement years ago at Mount Grace when Ray Cooper Abbs wanted permission to do something, and said, “I’ll try to wangle Auntie”? I wonder what will happen to the house.
This is all rambling. What have I been doing? I think I’ll skip rapidly over the house party which was a 5 day one and accommodated 500 people, including many of the big men of Los Angeles, many of whom were changed.
It, the HP, ended after breakfast on Tuesday, February 22nd, and I spent the afternoon up above the snow-line with a girl from Pennsylvania, and then motored into Los Angeles to the final wind up meeting of the campaign. There were about three thousand people at it, and a good many big noises of the business world spoke. After it was over some of us were taken out to stay with a good lady in Hollywood. She had a four-roomed bungalow, and in spite of the fact that she already had a daughter and a friend living in it, she put up Marie Clarkson and me in the only two single rooms and slept in a double bed in the verandah herself with the friend, while the daughter was parked on the drawing room sofa. In addition to this she had Reggie Holme and Roy Richardson in to every meal as they were sleeping in the home of some impecunious neighbours who couldn’t afford to feed them. So what with one thing and another the house was kept fairly full. I need hardly say that she had no servant at all and what housework she didn’t do herself was done by all the stray young men in the adjoining houses, who have nothing else to do as they are all unemployed. I don’t mean that they were navvies or shop keepers, but no one has any work over here, and people of the young man about town standing are either doing jobs as lift boys or chauffeurs, or else living on charity. It really is the most surprising state of affairs. One of these youths spent the whole of yesterday morning cleaning the windows, an operation which lasted six times as long as even the slowest tweeny would take, owing to his aristocratic temperament impelling him to draw pictures on all the panes before he cleaned them.
We spent our first day of leisure on the beach from about twelve noon till three pm. Breakfast not having begun till 9.45, it wasn’t washed up till 11.30, and it was considered too active to consider having lunch, so we just didn’t have any, but after basking on the beach and taking a cup of tea off one of Mrs Hosmer’s (our hostess) friends we went home and prepared an eggish meal about six. We then all went to the film of Cavalcade, free through the influence of one of the movie magnates, from which we emerged, pale and trembling with patriotic sentiment, to the disgust of the male members of the group who had to escort us in a very pulpy condition to a drug store where we recovered on coffee and ice cream sodas. We were not unnaturally the only people in the theatre who stood up for God Save the King at the end and I think the Americans thought we were very peculiar.
Yesterday we stayed in bed till eleven am and shopped during the afternoon, and this morning we left for San Francisco, which we shall get to in an hour. So I think I shall stop for the moment and go and play games with the others at the end of the carriage. I don’t suppose there’ll be much chance of that during the immediate future.
By the way, what’s going to happen about China and Japan going to war? Are we going to be lugged into that? It really is more than I can bear if we go and have another war.
Next day
We played Clumps and various talking games after that till the train got in, and I found your letters waiting for me. How terrible about Auntie Molly. I do hope she’s all right by now. How amusing Lisa going to the Guildhall meeting. I gather from the fact that she wonders what I got out of it that she didn’t get much herself. I don’t think one does the first time at any of those enormous meetings because the whole thing has to be outlined very broadly, but it’s nonetheless true.
I’ve got to preach single handed in a church this morning. So I must stop and think what I’m going to say. I hope you’ll have a nice birthday.
Luff,
Maria
English