56

36 St. George’s Drive

S.W.1

Thanksgiving Day

Dear Blanche and Lawrence,

I do hope this will reach you by Christmas, and that you will have a very pleasant one- the last, I hope, that our troops will spend fighting on the Continent. (We always call that fort of Europe across the English Channel “the Continent.”) This is America’s day here ad the American flag is as usual flying on the abbey and there is a ling concert at the Albert Hall to-night, our massed bonds and yours. I should like to go, but I will hear it on the radio instead. Turkeys are very scarce here and pumpkins are “non-est” so it is just as well that English people don’t hold Thanksgiving Day, but we have harvest festivals instead- the church decorated with fruit and vegetables-and in Scotland there is always a dance in the barn (mainly for the servants) with the last sheep on a pole and tied wild ribbons. We are all well. Frances and Charlotte are still in the country and Charlie is going down for Christmas. Andrew C. is still in Persia and he was in Cairo lately. He said that after 2 years in Teheran and Bagdad Cairo seemed quite European. You would see in the paper that Lord Mayor who was the chairman of the Commission to the west Indies that Charlie was with, was killed in Cairo by fanatics. It was very sad.

I once spent a whole day in the Balond of Walcheron on the coast of Holland. Morris is over there somewhere now. It was such a pretty flat place with cows in lush grass and tall church shires. It seems difficult to think of it as a battle-ground. I remember we climbed “Lang Jan” at Middleburg a very high church tower and from the top of it you could see nearly the whole island. It didn’t seem like on island for there were so many canals and miners and waterways that you could hardly tell which was Waleherem and which was Holland. I remember some small Dutch rays accompanied us uninvited up the long winding stair of the truer or I don’t believe we would ever have reached the top it was so dark and gloomy made one think of murders and things. They kept encouraging us in Dutch.

John has a ground post now for a short time. He has gone to Malta as Personal Assistant (whatever that may mean) to the A.O.C. Malta, Air Vies- Marshall V.B. L.; and Andrew Y. is quite better now and will be going out again soon if be heart gone already.

I am just round the corner from Downing Street, my office is in Whitehall, but I don’t often go into it so blasé does one become. Though I do see a good many interesting things and people.

The shops are gay for Christmas but there is not much variety of things yet, and practically no Xmas cards so I send these apologies for cards instead. Everything is going into the war effort, but we are well off, really. We are to have ice cream again soon, anyhow in spring and as long as English people have plenty of holly and mistletoe they don’t mind anything else. Xmas is held here as a religious festival more than as a holiday and the principal decorations are evergreens, and holly, and everyone has a piece of holly somewhere, on the bonnet of his car or on his office desk, or at least in the Christmas budding. In Scotland, as in France of course the holiday is New Year’s Day and everyone pays calls still, on all their neighbors and friends.

Now I must close. I hope Virginia is still at the school near you. I am not going away at Christmas this year we are making such a short break in our work. I don’t know what you read in the papers but London is going on just as usual and are we down hearted. No!

It was lonely here when Paris was free. French people put out their flags and it was almost like an armistice day. The French people here- there are so many- were so pleased. I didn’t realize till then how much they had minded not being able to hear from their own country- they are so self-possessed and in a way reserved until I saw the difference that came over then when they saw France being gradually freed again. They just let themselves go. We put the Marseilles on on the gramophone and played it out of the window and put on the emblems we had bought on the French day not long before. But I’m afraid it will be a very changed France for a time.

I’m sure it wont take long to get Japan out of the way once we can all join in.

Now as I said I must close and again wishing you all a Merry Christmas.

Yours sincerely

Mary Y..

P.S. London is really rather fun just now, in some ways with all the Allies, not to say Americans. I wish you could all be over here for a time.

P.S. IF any of your American friends sons are in London tell them to call on Charlie at the Colonial office Downing ST. in the first place. My do tell me if anything I write you is censored. I am never sure. M.Y. the blue-friend censor!