Monday
Chiswick
My darling,
Many many thanks for your two letters, one of which was delivered here on Sunday (a delightful surprise) and the other one reached me today so I’ve done very well.
Let’s deal with the most unpleasant aspect of things first – Mother’s very discourteous treatment of you, to put it very mildly indeed. It’s not for me to say it won’t happen again – that is for you to make certain of because the same position would most certainly never arise again in the future if I was home! It’s a lousy trick and I’m more surprised at Bert making the suggestion than I am at Mother’s acceptance. He must have known she was going to you. When I told Jack about it he was jumping wild and said quite a lot of things. Dot is also convinced that Mother would never have sent the chicken, pudding and cake just for them! Those things only came because I’m here, they say! Jack’s got Mother weighed up alright. Anyway, that’s getting away from the subject, on which all I can say now is that after all the trouble you took for her sake this should have happened. You were right not to press her to come to Crosby. That would have been an impossible situation. Now let’s leave that subject. You know well enough what my feelings are on the subject.
When I read your description of the fort I was almost as eager to see it as Michael must have been. It certainly seems to be a real smasher and I’m really looking forward to seeing it. Do make him take care of it because it should last him for years, and even then be welcome by some other youngster. Your serial letter with all its air of Xmas preparations, the excitement of the children, their unnatural desire for early bed, their anxiety for you to go to bed and, finally, their sleeping late, brought so many vivid pictures of home. It was the next best thing to being home. I’m so glad that your cunning in timing your visit to Dave’s was well rewarded! I’d a lovely vision of Stella, slightly muggy, bashing about Michael’s room with an outsize fort! Did you manage to stay awake until Wendy got to sleep? What a business it always is! And if I remember rightly, Michael has slept late on Xmas morning before, hasn’t he? I’m so glad he did remember the fort before the actual day. Your picture of the difference between the two of them – Michael with his battered old car and Wendy sampling all her presents – was just perfect. I could see them so perfectly. In many ways I agree with you about Michael getting the bulk of presents. I was very conscious of that myself and had the “ghost” walked two days earlier I would have given way to a very great temptation. In Pontings I saw several of those really lovely boudoir dolls – the big ones which last for a lifetime. If we could have got back the money you had spent on the other doll it would have been worth the extra for the pleasure that Wendy would have got from this. They were two guineas each, which is a lot but which is really very cheap when compared with the prices asked and paid for some of the wooden toys here.
It’s nice to know you liked all the presents and I do hope you like the jumper. If you don’t like the colour, or if it doesn’t fit properly, don’t hesitate to send it back to me and I will try to change it for you. My letters to the children probably meant more to you than to them for they had too many distractions at that time, but I wanted them to feel, if possible, that I was really thinking of them just then – a very difficult thing for children to realise most probably. I certainly was haunting home on Xmas Eve and Xmas Day, more than ever.
By now you will be safely home again, better for the break and with some of your sexual urges assuaged by the best endeavours of five husky Yanks! You must show me some New York nudery when I come home, sweet. I’m alway willing to learn!
Oh, angel, there’s so much more I wanted to write to you but I have day-dreamed the time away over your letter. Such a dear, delightful letter it is and quite the nicest you have written for months. I’m all happy and contented in my mind now, counting the days, like you, to leave. What of vapours, angel? Did they materialise?
One thing I must add is that I didn’t go to the zoo after all, yesterday. On Saturday night I saw some tickets in the Crypt for an All American Star Show. I think I mentioned it in my last letter. Well, here’s the programme for you. Never have I laughed so much at one show. It was the best thing I have ever seen or hope to see for a long long time. The stories and wisecracks came fast and furious, as you may imagine. One fellow told the story of the circus elephant which broke loose in a small American village and began to tear up a woman’s cabbages and eat them. She rushed off to the Sheriff. “Sheriff, there’s a strange animal in my cabbage patch pulling up the cabbages with his tail,” she cried. “With his tail? What’s he doing with them?” “Oh, Sheriff, it’s no good. If I told you you wouldn’t believe me!”
And then there was the hotel where rooms were known by letters instead of numbers. The porter was instructed to call the honeymoon couple in room B for breakfast. “Oh, letter B,” he called. “Letter B.” And then in exasperation, “Let ’er be!”
Like them? I did, and hundreds more I can’t remember.
Bye now, angel mine. Those Yanks have nothing on me! I do love you, precious.
Ever your own,
Arthur X
Cover of the programme for the ‘All American All Star Performance’ at the London Palladium, 27 December 1942
Running order for the London Palladium show ‘All American All Star Performance’ of 27 December 1942, including Debroy Somers, Millie Jackson Girls, Freddy Morgan, Eddie Ready and Joy, Ben Lyon, Kay Francis, Teddy Brown, Bebe Daniels with Matt Heft, Vic Oliver, The Two Valors, Charlie Kunz, Kay Francis, Martha Raye, Carole Landis, Mitzi Mayfair.