Queen’s Terrace, London
32.
Peggy dear, again, Help!
Last winter, a friend, with admirably kind intentions, betrayed both my address & our habit of summering in London, to a chance-met lady whose favourite author I appear, for the moment, to be. She wrote at once, sending me, by way of proof of her attachment, fifteen pages of extracts from my books, now writes again, begging to be visited. I feel
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strongly moved to postponement for as long as may be.
At the risk of your having heard it before I pass on a yarn that last night reduced Alan & me to hysteria. Man, at lunch-party, in conversation with damsel at his side, informs her his grandfather was killed at Waterloo. Raps she: “Which platform?” Cherishing the incident, he retails it later in the day to another lady: “Idiot!” she snorts, “As if the platform mattered!”
With love,
Dorothy.
- This letter is undated, but Richardson tells the same joke to Bryher in a dated letter of the 5th of August, 1936.
