Dearest Gladys - I was so glad to have your letter - I hadn’t heard of you for such ages, except through Dorothy. How awful it all is - and will be worse of course. One dreads so those lists of casualties…
Fortunately I am + have been very busy settling all these children into the house. With the innumerable problems that
arise - but with the aid of my perfect + absolutely indispensable Irish cook + the house-carpenter we are getting it wonderfully straightened out and settled down + I am getting used to the noise - it’s only the smell in the dining room that I find hard to bear!
The isolation is going to be very depressing + I shouldn’t wonder if we took a little flat in London later on. But like everyone else one is waiting for the first air-raid…. Meanwhile I have found
both solace + amusement in reading. What a good book the Prince Imperial is! - do congratulate Constant from me, it should surely do well - too good for a best-seller, but the Book Society recommendation ought to do a lot for it + the intelligent reading public will love it - as I did. Then I enjoyed Harold Nicolson’s little book, and read (at his advice) that wonderful letter of Thomas Mann’s. It helps I think to read anything that strengthens ones belief that this war is really a crusade against the forces of evil. If I didn’t believe that, I should die of gloom. But I do, don’t you? Do get + read Thomas Mann “The Coming Victory of Democracy.” (Secku? 2/6) And wasn’t that a good letter the Times from one Wilfred Trotter, called “The Mind in War”?
The only problem that really worries me at present - and must also worry you - is what can we do with our young daughters? The bottom of their little world has dropped out - they are bored, unhappy + désoeuvrées
- and yet I don’t think we can let them, at 18, go off alone to join one of these Womens’ Armies - Do you? Dorothy suggested P’s learning to type + shorthand + then she might get some voluntary office job - Quite a good idea, but of course like most war work it entails living in London, and how can we tell yet about that? Then, I am [longing?] myself to do something to help with the war - but it is different for me as I know I am being of use here. But I do find an idle restless unhappy daughter in the house a problem! What do you + Constant think we can do? If only the young weren’t so terribly secretive! Of course they tell each other everything. Perhaps we were the same.
I shall probably be in London next Thursday, seeing Nancy off. She is flying to Alexandria. Let me know if there is a chance of our meeting.
All love, dear Gladdy
Antoinette