January 21st.
Dear Ginger,--I'm feeling better. As it's three months since I lastwrote to you, no doubt you will say to yourself that I would be a poor,weak-minded creature if I wasn't. I suppose one ought to be able to getover anything in three months. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I haven't quitesucceeded in doing that, but at least I have managed to get my troublesstowed away in the cellar, and I'm not dragging them out and looking atthem all the time. That's something, isn't it?
I ought to give you all my impressions of London, I suppose; but I'vegrown so used to the place that I don't think I have any now. I seem tohave been here years and years.
You will see by the address that Mr. Faucitt has not yet sold hisinheritance. He expects to do so very soon, he tells me--there is arich-looking man with whiskers and a keen eye whom he is always lunchingwith, and I think big deals are in progress. Poor dear! he is crazy toget away into the country and settle down and grow ducks and things.London has disappointed him. It is not the place it used to be. Untilquite lately, when he grew resigned, he used to wander about in adisconsolate sort of way, trying to locate the landmarks of his youth.(He has not been in England for nearly thirty years!) The trouble is, itseems, that about once in every thirty years a sort of craze for changecomes over London, and they paint a shop-front red instead of blue, andthat upsets the returned exile dreadfully. Mr. Faucitt feels like RipVan Winkle. His first shock was when he found that the Empire was atheatre now instead of a music-hall. Then he was told that anothermusic-hall, the Tivoli, had been pulled down altogether. And when on topof that he went to look at the baker's shop in Rupert Street, over whichhe had lodgings in the eighties, and discovered that it had been turnedinto a dressmaker's, he grew very melancholy, and only cheered up alittle when a lovely magenta fog came on and showed him that some thingswere still going along as in the good old days.
I am kept quite busy at Laurette et Cie., thank goodness. (Not being aFrench scholar like you--do you remember Jules?--I thought at first thatCie was the name of the junior partner, and looked forward to meetinghim. "Miss Nicholas, shake hands with Mr. Cie, one of your greatestadmirers.") I hold down the female equivalent of your job at theFillmore Nicholas Theatrical Enterprises Ltd.--that is to say, I'm asort of right-hand woman. I hang around and sidle up to the customerswhen they come in, and say, "Chawming weather, moddom!" (which isusually a black lie) and pass them on to the staff, who do the actualwork. I shouldn't mind going on like this for the next few years, butMr. Faucitt is determined to sell. I don't know if you are like that,but every other Englishman I've ever met seems to have an ambition toown a house and lot in Loamshire or Hants or Salop or somewhere.Their one object in life is to make some money and "buy back the oldplace"--which was sold, of course, at the end of act one to pay theheir's gambling debts.
Mr. Faucitt, when he was a small boy, used to live in a little villagein Gloucestershire, near a place called Cirencester--at least, it isn't:it's called Cissister, which I bet you didn't know--and after forgettingabout it for fifty years, he has suddenly been bitten by the desire toend his days there, surrounded by pigs and chickens. He took me down tosee the place the other day. Oh, Ginger, this English country! Why anyof you ever live in towns I can't think. Old, old grey stone houses withyellow haystacks and lovely squelchy muddy lanes and great fat trees andblue hills in the distance. The peace of it! If ever I sell my soul, Ishall insist on the devil giving me at least forty years in some Englishcountry place in exchange.
Perhaps you will think from all this that I am too much occupied toremember your existence. Just to show how interested I am in you, letme tell you that, when I was reading the paper a week ago, I happened tosee the headline, "International Match." It didn't seem to mean anythingat first, and then I suddenly recollected. This was the thing you hadonce been a snip for! So I went down to a place called Twickenham, wherethis football game was to be, to see the sort of thing you used to dobefore I took charge of you and made you a respectable right-hand man.There was an enormous crowd there, and I was nearly squeezed to death,but I bore it for your sake. I found out that the English team were theones wearing white shirts, and that the ones in red were the Welsh. Isaid to the man next to me, after he had finished yelling himselfblack in the face, "Could you kindly inform me which is the Englishscrum-half?" And just at that moment the players came quite near whereI was, and about a dozen assassins in red hurled themselves violentlyon top of a meek-looking little fellow who had just fallen on the ball.Ginger, you are well out of it! That was the scrum-half, and I gatheredthat that sort of thing was a mere commonplace in his existence.Stopping a rush, it is called, and he is expected to do it all the time.The idea of you ever going in for such brutal sports! You thank yourstars that you are safe on your little stool in Fillmore's outer office,and that, if anybody jumps on top of you now, you can call a cop. Do youmean to say you really used to do these daredevil feats? You must havehidden depths in you which I have never suspected.
As I was taking a ride down Piccadilly the other day on top of a bus, Isaw somebody walking along who seemed familiar. It was Mr. Carmyle. Sohe's back in England again. He didn't see me, thank goodness. I don'twant to meet anybody just at present who reminds me of New York.
Thanks for telling me all the news, but please don't do it again. Itmakes me remember, and I don't want to. It's this way, Ginger. Let mewrite to you, because it really does relieve me, but don't answer myletters. Do you mind? I'm sure you'll understand.
So Fillmore and Gladys Winch are married! From what I have seen ofher, it's the best thing that has ever happened to Brother F. She is asplendid girl. I must write to him...
Laurette et Cie..
London