Saturday
Dover
Dearest,
Yesterday I received a letter from you which had been posted on June 2nd so it had taken just a week to get here. It is the one in which you told me of the BBC’s rejection and the sugar-coated pill from Amalgamated. I’m sorry you were unlucky with them and hope you can manage to place them somewhere or other, though all the markets are likely to be rather restricted just now and you are, of course, under the handicap of fighting a few well entrenched people, most of whom, from my experience, will have some inside “pull”. Anyway, the mere fact that you can get something other than the formal rejection from so many of these people is in itself a hopeful sign that you should not find much difficulty in placing stuff once things get back to normal in the way of space. So keep all your stuff which does not “date”, for you will find it useful for keeping markets “alive” perhaps at a time when you can’t spare time to write fresh stuff for each publication. It’s looking a long way ahead, but in a way it’s an investment.
I think I have acknowledged the bathing costume and that, with the story of Randolph Churchill (which greatly amused me) is about all there is which needs comment in that particular letter.
Your other letter, received the day before, is the one in which you refer to the £.s.d position. The navy always seem to be last in straightening out these allotments, and the army always the first. (Incidentally, did you notice that wives of naval personnel only get two reduced travelling vouchers in a given period of six months, whereas the army and RAF get three!) However, I hope you will have all that straightened out by the end of the month so that you can, if necessary, go away in early July with a fairly easy mind. If ‘Housewife’ do settle their accounts early, of course, that will help, won’t it?
Now I’ll have a look at your Invasion Day letter. You were luckier than I, for we heard the news in odd snatches and with all the inevitable embroidery when news like this is passed from mouth to mouth. It is rather like Dunkirk in reverse, isn’t it, and I feel rather sorry for womenfolk waiting at home and wondering if their boys or husbands are mixed up in it. My own feeling is one of impotence at being unable to do anything really active towards it all. It really is galling, even when one has what you call a “front stalls seat”, though I’d sooner be here on the spot than tucked away inland somewhere. It’s pretty obvious that as the campaign makes progress it will work east, if only for the obvious reason that they can’t work any further west, as you will see by the map. Eisenhower’s warning to the fishermen of Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France is, in itself, quite interesting, to say the least. No, I didn’t hear Howard Marshall’s broadcast though I should dearly have liked to. As you say, the BBC do sometimes rise to these moments of crisis remarkably well – possibly because they treat them simply. The essence of good reporting on all these big occasions is, in my opinion, to treat them quite simply and to cut out the blaring of bands completely. Any effort at conscious drama ruins the whole thing completely, in my estimation. For that reason I’d like to see how the Yanks treat it on radio and in the press. I can imagine the huge banner headlines on stories in papers like the ‘Herald-Tribune’! They’ll use poster type on it.
[letter incomplete]
Jun 101944