O.V.S.
Wednesday 6pm
Dearest Dear - Thank you for your very nice letter - I was the only one to get one at breakfast this morning & everyone was most envious! The photograph isn't too good - you'd combed your hair down too straight. It looks so much nicer when it curls!
Haven't you got time to have another one done? I should hate them to think your hair could only look like that!
I'm glad about the new glasses - we'll try them out properly at the pictures on Friday - unless you've been before then. I also had a good idea about the bulb - unless you've got a new one already. Why can't you use one of those we keep for the titler? It's wasted most of the time in its box - you might just as well be using it. I can't think why it didn't strike us before. I don't suppose Imperial Airways really take much notice of those forms - it's usually mostly formality. I should think they either remember you or make a few notes afterwards. I broached Miss X about Joan's wedding - but I can't be spared as it's so near beginning of term - & I couldn't honestly make out she was a very near relation!!
But I'm glad you're going (the Poly will start getting a bit suspicious about your free afternoons!) - and you can give me full details in the evening - so mind you get as much information as possible! (You'll probably have to answer some "leading questions" from your mother as well!!)
I'm looking forward to my birthday now - I'm on duty on the Tuesday instead - but there's a half term in June which I'm going to be free for (about the first time since I've been here!) - as Freeth is doing it instead.
Today has been tremendously wearing. My family would never recognise me if they could see me working from morn to dewy eve! It seems quite different somehow - knowing exactly what has to be done and that you're responsible. Instead of being asked to do odds & ends here and there when you've just settled to something else. It was awful at home this hols. It gets more and more difficult to do things just because family ties demand it. When for 8 months of the year one is treated like a knowledgeable and responsible person - with an opinion that counts for something - it is most wilting to discover one is hall-marked "inefficiency" immediately you get home. It's quite natural, because there's nothing very much I do properly at home - so that I'm now growing to look on it as a holiday where I'm really not interested enough to join in with the lives of the occupants of the house. I always feel much happier here.
Grannie is looking forward to her birthday luncheon on the 1st - can we give her something between us? - because I can't think of anything she really wants. I ran over to see her yesterday - & she asked if you had the photograph of me sitting on a stool taken at the same time as those with the twins in the garden. I'm not sure whether it was one of those three Mummy gave you - but if not I said I was sure you'd like Grannie's copy (so you'll jolly well have to!) She thinks it's the nicest of me & would like you to have it - so there'll probably be a nice formal & slightly embarrassing presentation of it on the 1st!!!
I'll be at the office by 6 on Friday - you'll be back in the afternoon - won't you? Let's go to the pictures first & eat afterwards. I don't know if I can last till then without seeing you. I'm afraid I make life more restless for myself by seeing so much of you - it's a bit worrying - but I do see more than ever that having lots to do is the best way to get over it!
One Thursday you must come to the Shakespeare rehearsal - because I don't do anything - and I could talk to you all the time! (This, of course, is just another excuse!)
- Oh - but why should I be ashamed of myself when I have the greatest and most glorious of all excuses for seeing you for ever and ever more - every week and every day and every hour - because I love you so dearly - and you love me.
Mary
Friday 21 April 2017
Thursday 20 April 2017
20th April 1937 - Terrick to Mary
35 Nevern Place
S.W. 5
20th April 1937
My dearest,
Last night I was showing Renny those three photographs of you that your mother gave me and which I took out of their frame. They made, as they did when I first saw them, a tremendous feeling of tenderness for you well up inside me. It is just a littler edition of you now:- such a loving, lovable little girl who is too good for anyone like me or anyone else. Heavens, I am lucky!
Yesterday I got a letter from home saying that Daddy was sending Renny and me new Revelation cases with our initials on them, and this evening they have come. Mine is initialled "G.B.H.F"! I shall ring up the Revelation people tomorrow & get them to change it, but I very much suspect that the fault is in my father's terrible writing. It may be though that he ordered it verbally in Harrogate and the salesman took down G.B. instead of T.V. which certainly sounds similar.
Another thing that happened last night is that I got a letter from Joan asking you me and Renny to her wedding at 10.15 am on Friday 23rd at Hampstead Parish Church. Renny can't com but I asked off this morning. Joan also rang up and enquired whether I could come. I told her definitely about myself but didn't promise for you. Will you come? It would be great fun. I think I'll ring you up and ask you.
I have got my new lenses which seem very good. At the moment I see better with my left eye than with my right but the optician says my eyes have to accustom themselves to the new lenses.
On reading through the details for applications for the Imperial Airway job I see that I have to have passed either Matric, or School Cert with 5 credits including English, Maths & a Modern Language. I didn't go in for Matric but I passed School Cert with a fair number of credits though I don't know about five - but Maths quite definitely was not one of them. I only got 33% - I have written home to ask if they have the Certificate there.
I got my photo from Selfridge. Here is one but isn't it awful. I wasn't quite ready & was just going to smile, hence the lazy lip.
Goodbye, my little darling. I wish you were the size you were in your old photos so that I could pick you up in my arms and rock you.
I love you very much.
Terrick XXXXX
S.W. 5
20th April 1937
My dearest,
Last night I was showing Renny those three photographs of you that your mother gave me and which I took out of their frame. They made, as they did when I first saw them, a tremendous feeling of tenderness for you well up inside me. It is just a littler edition of you now:- such a loving, lovable little girl who is too good for anyone like me or anyone else. Heavens, I am lucky!
Yesterday I got a letter from home saying that Daddy was sending Renny and me new Revelation cases with our initials on them, and this evening they have come. Mine is initialled "G.B.H.F"! I shall ring up the Revelation people tomorrow & get them to change it, but I very much suspect that the fault is in my father's terrible writing. It may be though that he ordered it verbally in Harrogate and the salesman took down G.B. instead of T.V. which certainly sounds similar.
Another thing that happened last night is that I got a letter from Joan asking you me and Renny to her wedding at 10.15 am on Friday 23rd at Hampstead Parish Church. Renny can't com but I asked off this morning. Joan also rang up and enquired whether I could come. I told her definitely about myself but didn't promise for you. Will you come? It would be great fun. I think I'll ring you up and ask you.
I have got my new lenses which seem very good. At the moment I see better with my left eye than with my right but the optician says my eyes have to accustom themselves to the new lenses.
On reading through the details for applications for the Imperial Airway job I see that I have to have passed either Matric, or School Cert with 5 credits including English, Maths & a Modern Language. I didn't go in for Matric but I passed School Cert with a fair number of credits though I don't know about five - but Maths quite definitely was not one of them. I only got 33% - I have written home to ask if they have the Certificate there.
I got my photo from Selfridge. Here is one but isn't it awful. I wasn't quite ready & was just going to smile, hence the lazy lip.
Goodbye, my little darling. I wish you were the size you were in your old photos so that I could pick you up in my arms and rock you.
I love you very much.
Terrick XXXXX
Wednesday 5 April 2017
5th April 1937 - Mary to Terrick
Dunally
April 5th '37
Dearest One - it's the most perfect thing to feel as close to anybody as I do to you. As each day goes by more & more do I feel that we're wasting time - everything would be worth twice it's present value if we were together. Every two minutes I want to look up and say "Terrick" and for you to say "Yes?" - and then to ask you the hundred & one things that nobody else would know the answer to.
This isn't "love" - it's just "incompleteness" - you can understand people getting fat with contentment when they suddenly find the empty places of their souls filled up - the smallness of their minds absorbed in something greater and their bodies made whole. it's a state of idealism which I am sure could so easily drug it's addicts and blind them to it's possibilities. I have go to remember so consistently, darling, that life can't be lived by running my fingers through your hair or polishing your shoes. It's very difficult for womankind to keep any part of herself her own - since her whole instinct is to merge everything with a being stronger than herself where it becomes swallowed up. Perhaps in the majority of cases it's only a passing phase - & the trouble starts when she tries to emerge. You'll keep me bright & sane, darling won't you? - I'm not always a fool - and I feel that under a nice, steady platonic, dispassionate guiding influence, I might even aspire to intelligence!
I don't now whether any of this is sense - I never do - but there's something I want to say behind it all - and it helps to try.
I have written to your father and asked him about my photographs - have you written to your mother about the rug? - I see it measures (?)7" x 54" so it's quite a good size.
I can have the car tomorrow so I'll be outside the office at 1.30 if that's O.K. with you & we'll go straight off to Bowman's. Then I'll find something to do in the afternoon & meet you at 6.
After that I don't care what we do - wander round the Marble Arch holding hands if you like - I love you so so much that a good dose of sitting and just looking at you would suit me nicely - and be awfully cheap!
- My dearest dear - noone knows how tremendously lucky I am -
Your
Mary Pleasant
April 5th '37
Dearest One - it's the most perfect thing to feel as close to anybody as I do to you. As each day goes by more & more do I feel that we're wasting time - everything would be worth twice it's present value if we were together. Every two minutes I want to look up and say "Terrick" and for you to say "Yes?" - and then to ask you the hundred & one things that nobody else would know the answer to.
This isn't "love" - it's just "incompleteness" - you can understand people getting fat with contentment when they suddenly find the empty places of their souls filled up - the smallness of their minds absorbed in something greater and their bodies made whole. it's a state of idealism which I am sure could so easily drug it's addicts and blind them to it's possibilities. I have go to remember so consistently, darling, that life can't be lived by running my fingers through your hair or polishing your shoes. It's very difficult for womankind to keep any part of herself her own - since her whole instinct is to merge everything with a being stronger than herself where it becomes swallowed up. Perhaps in the majority of cases it's only a passing phase - & the trouble starts when she tries to emerge. You'll keep me bright & sane, darling won't you? - I'm not always a fool - and I feel that under a nice, steady platonic, dispassionate guiding influence, I might even aspire to intelligence!
I don't now whether any of this is sense - I never do - but there's something I want to say behind it all - and it helps to try.
I have written to your father and asked him about my photographs - have you written to your mother about the rug? - I see it measures (?)7" x 54" so it's quite a good size.
I can have the car tomorrow so I'll be outside the office at 1.30 if that's O.K. with you & we'll go straight off to Bowman's. Then I'll find something to do in the afternoon & meet you at 6.
After that I don't care what we do - wander round the Marble Arch holding hands if you like - I love you so so much that a good dose of sitting and just looking at you would suit me nicely - and be awfully cheap!
- My dearest dear - noone knows how tremendously lucky I am -
Your
Mary Pleasant
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