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- 22 November 1918 (Vervaardig)
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1 item, paper
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Letter to Ruth Mallory written from France
Was glad to hear about her recovery from pneumonia.
He was getting impatient to know if he would be home in a matter of weeks or months. Was hoping for sometime before term started.
They were to move the following day as the French needed their line as they were building a bridge. They would not be moving far - a few miles outside Arras in the unstrafed countryside and he would be much happier.
Expects she is spending time reading in bed and wonders what she is reading. He had just finished Bleak House which was very long and not all of it very interesting. When Dickens was good he made the most convincing and lovely people. He loved his characters himself and that was a great charm. There were at least 50 characters in Bleak House and of those Dickens only really hated one and mildly disliked half a dozen or so. Wished Dickens was a more careful writer but he poured it all out from the fulness of his observation and experience. He could never quite get over his Victorian weakness for easy sentiment. He didn’t know if his best characters, the shoddy dingy servile, crowd interested him.
He was reading Beaumarchais’s play Figaro which was splendid and reminded him of Mozart’s music. Beaumarchais was one of the great men and he wanted to get hold of an autobiographical book, Mémoires.
An allotment of Paris leave was going begging and he had put in for it. If he wasn’t released before 29th he would console himself by going to Paris and spending his evenings in theatres and concert rooms and his days in bookshops. Wishes she could be there too.