October 6, 2025 • 18 mins
12 - Some Letters for Ginger. The Adventures of Sally by P. G. Wodehouse.
This romantic comedy stars a young American girl named Sally, who inherits a considerable fortune and finds her life turned upside down. The typically Wodehouseian cast includes Sally's ambitious brother, an assortment of theater people, a pair of English cousins, and, of course, an Uncle. It's jolly good fun!
This romantic comedy stars a young American girl named Sally, who inherits a considerable fortune and finds her life turned upside down. The typically Wodehouseian cast includes Sally's ambitious brother, an assortment of theater people, a pair of English cousins, and, of course, an Uncle. It's jolly good fun!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter twelve of the Adventures of Sallie. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
The Adventures of Sallie by P. G. Woodhouse, Chapter twelve.
(00:20):
Some letters for Ginger laurette A, C. Regent Street, London,
w England, January twenty first. Dear Ginger, I'm feeling better
as it's three months since I last wrote to you.
No doubt you will say to yourself that I would
be a poor, weak minded creature if I wasn't. I
(00:42):
suppose one ought to be able to get over anything
in three months. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I haven't quite succeeded
in doing that. But at least I have managed to
get my troubles stowed away in the cellar, and I'm
not dragging them out and looking at them all the time.
That's something, isn't it. I ought to give you all
my impressions of London, I suppose, but I've grown so
(01:02):
used to the place that I don't think I have
any now. I seem to have been here years and years.
You will see by the address that mister Fawcett has
not yet sold his inheritance. He expects to do so
very soon. He tells me there is a rich looking
man with whiskers and a keen eye whom he is
always lunching with, and I think big deals are in progress,
(01:24):
poor dear. He is crazy to get 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 until quite lately. When he grew resigned. He
used to wander about in a disconsolate sort of way,
trying to locate the landmarks of his youth. He has
(01:45):
not been in England for nearly thirty years. The trouble is,
it seems that about once in every thirty years a
sort of craze for change comes over London and they
paint a shop front red instead of blue, and that
upset the returned exiled dreadfully. Mister Fawcett feels like Rip
van Winkle. His first shock was when he found that
(02:07):
the Empire was a theater now instead of a music hall.
Then he was told that another music hall, the Tivoli,
had been pulled down altogether. And when on top of that,
He went to look at a baker's shop in Rupert Street,
over which he had lodgings in the eighties, and discovered
that it had been turned into a dressmaker's. He grew
very melancholy and only cheered up a little when a
(02:30):
lovely magenta fog came on and showed him that some
things were still going along as in the good old days.
I am kept quite busy at Laurette Sea, thank goodness,
not being a French scholar like you. Do you remember, Jules.
I thought at first that C was the name of
the junior partner, and looked forward to meeting him. Miss Nicholas,
(02:52):
shake hands with mister C, one of your greatest admirers.
I hold down the female equivalent of your at the
Fillmore Nicholas Theatrical Enterprises Limited. That is to say, I'm
a sort of right hand woman. I hang around and
sidle up to the customers when they come in and
say charming weather mottem which is usually a black lie,
(03:15):
and pass them on to the staff who do the
actual work. I shouldn't mind going on like this for
the next few years, but mister Fawcett 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 to own a house and lot in Lomshire or Hants,
or Sellop or somewhere. Their one object in life is
(03:37):
to make some money and buy back the old place,
which was sold, of course at the end of Act one,
to pay the heir's gambling debts. Mister Fawcett, when he
was a small boy, used to live in a little
village in Gloucestershire, near a place called syran Chester. At
least it isn't. It's called Sissister, which I bet you
didn't know. And after forgetting about it for fifty years,
(04:01):
he has suddenly been bitten by the desire to end
his days there, surrounded by pigs and chickens. He took
me down to see the place the other day, Oh ginger,
this English country. Why any of you ever live in towns?
I can't think old, old gray stone houses with yellow haystacks,
and lovely squelchy muddy lanes, and great fat trees and
(04:24):
blue hills in the distance, the peace of it. If
ever I sell my soul, I shall insist on the
devil giving me at least forty years in some English
country place in exchange. Perhaps you will think from all
this that I am too much occupied to remember your existence.
Just to show how interested I am in you, let
(04:45):
me tell you that when I was reading the paper
a week ago, I happened to see the headline international match.
It didn't seem to mean anything at first, and then
I suddenly recollected this was the thing you had once
been a snip for. So I went down to a
place called Twickenham, where this football game was to be,
to see the sort of thing you used to do
(05:05):
before 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 the ones wearing white shirts, and that the
ones in red were the Welsh. I said to the
man next to me, after he had finished yelling himself
(05:26):
black in the face, could you kindly inform me which
is the English scrum half? And just at that moment
the players came quite near where I was, and about
a dozen assassins in red hurled themselves violently on top
of a meek looking little fellow who had just fallen
on the ball. Ginger, you are well out of it.
(05:47):
That was the scrum half, and I gathered that 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 your
stars that you are safe on your little stool in
Philmore's outer office, and that if anybody jumps on top
(06:09):
of you now you can call a cop. Do you
mean to say you really used to do these? Dare
devil feats? You must have hidden depths in you which
I have never suspected. As I was taking a ride
down Piccadilly the other day on top of a bus,
I saw somebody walking along who seemed familiar. It was
mister Carlyle. So he's back in England again. He didn't
(06:30):
see me, Thank goodness. I don't want 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. It makes me remember, and I don't want to.
It's this way, Ginger, let me write to you because
it really does relieve me. But don't answer my letters,
do you mind. I'm sure you'll understand. So Fillmore and
(06:53):
Gladys Wench are married. From what I have seen of her,
it's the best thing that has ever happened to Brother
f She is a splendid girl. I must write to him.
Laurette A, C. London, March twelfth, Dear Ginger, I saw
in a Sunday paper last week that the Primrose Way
had been produced in New York and was a great success. Well,
(07:16):
I'm very glad, but I don't think the papers ought
to print things like that. It's unsettling. Next day I
did one of those funny things you do when you're
feeling blue and lonely and a long way from everybody.
I called at your club and asked for you. Such
a nice old man in uniform at the desk said
in a fatherly way that you hadn't been in lately,
(07:36):
and he rather fancied you were out of town. But
would I take a seat while he inquired? He then
summoned a tiny boy, also in uniform, and the child
skipped off, chanting mister Kemp, mister Kemp. In a shrill trouble.
It gave me such an odd feeling to hear your
name echoing in the distance. I felt so ashamed for
giving them all that trouble. And when the boy came back,
(07:59):
I slipped upens into his palm, which I suppose was
against all the rules, though he seemed to like it.
Mister Fawcett has sold the business and retired to the country,
and I am rather at a loose end Monk's crofton
whatever that means much Middleford Sellop slang for Shropshire, England,
(08:20):
April eighteenth. Dear Ginger, what's the use? What is the use?
I do all I can to get right away from
New York, and New York comes after me and tracks
me down in my hiding place. A week or so ago,
as I was walking down the strand in an aimless
sort of way out there came right on top of me.
Who do you think Fillmore? Arm in arm with mister Carlyle.
(08:45):
I couldn't dodge in the first place, mister Carlyle had
seen me. In the second place. It's a day's journey
to dodge poor dear Fillmore. Now I blushed for him, Ginger,
right there in the strand. I blushed for him. In
my worst dreams, I had never pictured him so enormous.
Upon what meat? Doth this our Fillmore feed that he
(09:07):
has grown so great. Poor Gladys when she looks at him,
she must feel like a bigamist. Apparently Philmore is still
full of big schemes, for he talked airily about buying
all sorts of English plays. He has come over, as
I suppose, you know, to arrange about putting on the
Primrose way over here he is staying at the Savoy,
(09:29):
and they took me off there to lunch, whooping joyfully
as over a strayed lamb. It was the worst thing
that could possibly have happened to me. Philmore talked broadway
without a pause, till by the time he had worked
his way past the French pastry and was lolling back,
breathing a little stertorously waiting for the coffee and liqueurs.
(09:50):
He had got me so homesick that if it hadn't
been that I didn't want to make a public exhibition
of myself, I should have broken down and howled. It
was easy of me ever to go near the Savoy.
Of course, it's simply an annex to Broadway. There were
Americans at every table as far as the eye could reach.
I might just as well have been at the astor well,
(10:13):
if fate insists in bringing New York to England for
my special discomfiture, I suppose I have got to put
up with it. I just let events take their course.
And I have been drifting ever since. Two days ago.
I drifted here. Mister Carlyle invited Fillmore, he seems to
love Fillmore and me to Monk's crofton and I hadn't
(10:34):
even the shadow of an excuse for refusing. So I came,
and I am now sitting writing to you in an
enormous bedroom with an open fire and arm chairs and
every other sort of luxury. Fillmore is out golfing. He
sails for New York on Saturday on the Mauritania. I
am horrified to hear from him that, in addition to
(10:56):
all his other big schemes, he is now promoting a
fight for the light weight championship in Jersey City and
guaranteeing enormous sums to both boxers. It's no good arguing
with him if you do. He simply quotes figures to
show the fortunes other people have made out of these things. Besides,
it's too late now anyway, As far as I can
(11:16):
make out, the fight is going to take place in
another week or two. All the same, it makes my
flesh creep. Well, it's no use worrying. I suppose let's
change the subject. Do you know Monk's Crofton? Probably you don't,
as I seem to remember hearing something said about it
being a recent purchase. Mister Carlyle bought it from some
lord or other who had been losing money on the
(11:37):
stock exchange. I hope you haven't seen it anyway, because
I want to describe it at great length. I want
to pour out my soul about it. Ginger, what has
England ever done to deserve such paradises? I thought, in
my ignorance that mister Fossett's Sissister place was pretty good,
But it doesn't even begin. It can't compete. Of course, course,
(12:00):
his is just an ordinary country house, and this is
a seat. Monk's Crofton is the sort of place they
used to write about in the English novels. You know.
The sunset was falling on the walls of g Blank
Castle in b Blankshire, hard By the picturesque village of
h Blank, and not a stone's throw from the hamlet
(12:21):
of j Blank. I can imagine Tennyson's Maud living here.
It is one of the stately homes of England. How
beautiful they stand, and I'm crazy about it. You motor
up from the station and after you have gone about
three miles you turn in at a big iron gate
with stone posts on each side with stone beasts on them.
(12:44):
Close by the gate is the cutest little house with
an old man inside it who pops out and touches
his hat. This is only the lodge, really, but you
think you have arrived, so you get all ready to
jump out, and then the car goes rolling on for
another fifty miles or so through beech wood woods full
of rabbits and open meadows with deer in them. Finally,
(13:04):
just as you think you are going on forever, you
whizz round a corner and there's the house. You don't
get a glimpse of it till then, because the trees
are too thick. It's very large and sort of low
and square, with a kind of tower at one side
and the most fascinating upper porch sort of thing with
battlements I suppose in the old days you used to
(13:26):
stand on this and drop molten lead on visitors heads.
Wonderful lawns all round, and shrubberies, and a lake that
you can just see where the ground dips beyond the fields.
Of course, it's too early yet for them to be out.
But to the left of the house there's a place
where there will be about a million roses when June
comes round. And all along the side of the rose
(13:47):
garden is a high wall of old red brick which
shuts off the kitchen garden. I went exploring there this morning.
It's an enormous place, with hot houses and things, and
there's the cunningest farm at one end, with a stable
yard full of puppies that just tear the heart out
of you. They're so sweet, and a big sleepy cat
(14:07):
which sits and blinks in the sun and lets the
puppies run all over her. And there's a lovely stillness
and you can hear everything growing and thrushes and blackbirds. Oh, ginger,
it's heavenly. But there's a catch. It's a case of
where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile, at
least not exactly vile. I suppose, but terribly stodgy. I
(14:31):
can see now why you couldn't hit it off with
the family, because I've seen em all there here, Yes,
Uncle Donald, and all of them. Is it a habit
of your family to collect in gangs? Or have I
just happened to stumble into an accidental old home week.
When I came down to dinner the first evening, the
drawing room was full to bursting point, not simply because
(14:53):
Fillmore was there, but because there were uncles and aunts
all over the place. I felt like a small lion
in a den of den Daniels. I know exactly now
what you mean about the family. They look at you.
Of course, it's all right for me because I am
snowy white clear through. But I can just imagine what
it must have been like for you, with your permanently
(15:14):
guilty conscience. You must have had an awful time. By
the way, it's going to be a delicate business getting
this letter through to you, rather like carrying the despatches
through the enemy's lines. In a civil war play. You're
supposed to leave letters on the table in the hall,
and someone collects them in the afternoon and takes them
(15:35):
down to the village on a bicycle. But if I
do that, some aunt or uncle is bound to see it,
and I shall be an object of loathing. For it
is no light matter my lad to be caught having
correspondence with a human Gimpson weed like you. It would
blast me socially, at least, so I gather from the
way they behaved. When your name came up at dinner
(15:57):
last night, somebody mentioned you, and the most awful roasting
party broke loose. Uncle Donald, acting as cheerleader. I said
feebly that I had met you and had found you
part human, And there was an awful silence till they
all started at the same time to show me where
I was wrong and how cruelly my girlish inexperience had
deceived me. A young and innocent half portion like me,
(16:21):
it appears, is absolutely incapable of suspecting the true infamy
of the dregs of society. You aren't fit to speak
to the likes of me, being at the kindest estimate,
little more than a blot on the human race. I
tell you this in case you may imagine you are
popular with the family. You're not, so I shall have
(16:44):
to exercise a good deal of sneaky craft in smuggling
this letter through. I'll take it down to the village
myself if I can sneak away. But it's going to
be pretty difficult, because for some reason I seem to
be a center of attraction, except when I take refuge
in my room. Hardly a moment passes without an aunt
or an uncle popping out and having a cozy talk
(17:05):
with me. It sometimes seems as though they were weighing
me in the balance. Well, let em weigh. Time to
dress for dinner now, good bye, yours in the balance,
Sally p s. You were perfectly right about your uncle
Donald's mustache, but I don't agree with you that it
is more his misfortune than his fault. I think he
(17:28):
does it on purpose, just for the moment. Monks Crofton
much Middleford, Sallop, England, April twentieth, Dear Ginger, leaving here
to day in disgrace, hard cold looks from the family,
strained silences. Uncle Donald far from chummy. You can guess
(17:48):
what has happened. I might have seen it coming. I
can see now that it was in the air all along.
Fillmore knows nothing about it. He left just before it happened.
I shall see him very soon where I have decided
to come back and stop running away from things any longer.
It's cowardly to skulk about over here. Besides, I'm feeling
so much better that I believe I can face the ghosts. Anyway,
(18:11):
I'm going to try see you almost as soon as
you get this. I shall mail this in London, and
I suppose it will come over by the same boat
as me. It's hardly worth writing, really, of course, but
I have sneaked up to my room to wait till
the motor arrives to take me to the station, and
it's something to do. I can hear muffled voices the
(18:31):
family talking me over, probably saying they never really liked
me all along, Oh well, yours moving in an orderly
manner to the exit, Sally, end of chapter twelve. Read
on January twenty ninth, two thousand nine, in San Diego, California,
Chapter twelve of the Adventures of Sallie. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
The Adventures of Sallie by P. G. Woodhouse, Chapter twelve.
(00:20):
Some letters for Ginger laurette A, C. Regent Street, London,
w England, January twenty first. Dear Ginger, I'm feeling better
as it's three months since I last wrote to you.
No doubt you will say to yourself that I would
be a poor, weak minded creature if I wasn't. I
(00:42):
suppose one ought to be able to get over anything
in three months. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I haven't quite succeeded
in doing that. But at least I have managed to
get my troubles stowed away in the cellar, and I'm
not dragging them out and looking at them all the time.
That's something, isn't it. I ought to give you all
my impressions of London, I suppose, but I've grown so
(01:02):
used to the place that I don't think I have
any now. I seem to have been here years and years.
You will see by the address that mister Fawcett has
not yet sold his inheritance. He expects to do so
very soon. He tells me there is a rich looking
man with whiskers and a keen eye whom he is
always lunching with, and I think big deals are in progress,
(01:24):
poor dear. He is crazy to get 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 until quite lately. When he grew resigned. He
used to wander about in a disconsolate sort of way,
trying to locate the landmarks of his youth. He has
(01:45):
not been in England for nearly thirty years. The trouble is,
it seems that about once in every thirty years a
sort of craze for change comes over London and they
paint a shop front red instead of blue, and that
upset the returned exiled dreadfully. Mister Fawcett feels like Rip
van Winkle. His first shock was when he found that
(02:07):
the Empire was a theater now instead of a music hall.
Then he was told that another music hall, the Tivoli,
had been pulled down altogether. And when on top of that,
He went to look at a baker's shop in Rupert Street,
over which he had lodgings in the eighties, and discovered
that it had been turned into a dressmaker's. He grew
very melancholy and only cheered up a little when a
(02:30):
lovely magenta fog came on and showed him that some
things were still going along as in the good old days.
I am kept quite busy at Laurette Sea, thank goodness,
not being a French scholar like you. Do you remember, Jules.
I thought at first that C was the name of
the junior partner, and looked forward to meeting him. Miss Nicholas,
(02:52):
shake hands with mister C, one of your greatest admirers.
I hold down the female equivalent of your at the
Fillmore Nicholas Theatrical Enterprises Limited. That is to say, I'm
a sort of right hand woman. I hang around and
sidle up to the customers when they come in and
say charming weather mottem which is usually a black lie,
(03:15):
and pass them on to the staff who do the
actual work. I shouldn't mind going on like this for
the next few years, but mister Fawcett 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 to own a house and lot in Lomshire or Hants,
or Sellop or somewhere. Their one object in life is
(03:37):
to make some money and buy back the old place,
which was sold, of course at the end of Act one,
to pay the heir's gambling debts. Mister Fawcett, when he
was a small boy, used to live in a little
village in Gloucestershire, near a place called syran Chester. At
least it isn't. It's called Sissister, which I bet you
didn't know. And after forgetting about it for fifty years,
(04:01):
he has suddenly been bitten by the desire to end
his days there, surrounded by pigs and chickens. He took
me down to see the place the other day, Oh ginger,
this English country. Why any of you ever live in towns?
I can't think old, old gray stone houses with yellow haystacks,
and lovely squelchy muddy lanes, and great fat trees and
(04:24):
blue hills in the distance, the peace of it. If
ever I sell my soul, I shall insist on the
devil giving me at least forty years in some English
country place in exchange. Perhaps you will think from all
this that I am too much occupied to remember your existence.
Just to show how interested I am in you, let
(04:45):
me tell you that when I was reading the paper
a week ago, I happened to see the headline international match.
It didn't seem to mean anything at first, and then
I suddenly recollected this was the thing you had once
been a snip for. So I went down to a
place called Twickenham, where this football game was to be,
to see the sort of thing you used to do
(05:05):
before 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 the ones wearing white shirts, and that the
ones in red were the Welsh. I said to the
man next to me, after he had finished yelling himself
(05:26):
black in the face, could you kindly inform me which
is the English scrum half? And just at that moment
the players came quite near where I was, and about
a dozen assassins in red hurled themselves violently on top
of a meek looking little fellow who had just fallen
on the ball. Ginger, you are well out of it.
(05:47):
That was the scrum half, and I gathered that 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 your
stars that you are safe on your little stool in
Philmore's outer office, and that if anybody jumps on top
(06:09):
of you now you can call a cop. Do you
mean to say you really used to do these? Dare
devil feats? You must have hidden depths in you which
I have never suspected. As I was taking a ride
down Piccadilly the other day on top of a bus,
I saw somebody walking along who seemed familiar. It was
mister Carlyle. So he's back in England again. He didn't
(06:30):
see me, Thank goodness. I don't want 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. It makes me remember, and I don't want to.
It's this way, Ginger, let me write to you because
it really does relieve me. But don't answer my letters,
do you mind. I'm sure you'll understand. So Fillmore and
(06:53):
Gladys Wench are married. From what I have seen of her,
it's the best thing that has ever happened to Brother
f She is a splendid girl. I must write to him.
Laurette A, C. London, March twelfth, Dear Ginger, I saw
in a Sunday paper last week that the Primrose Way
had been produced in New York and was a great success. Well,
(07:16):
I'm very glad, but I don't think the papers ought
to print things like that. It's unsettling. Next day I
did one of those funny things you do when you're
feeling blue and lonely and a long way from everybody.
I called at your club and asked for you. Such
a nice old man in uniform at the desk said
in a fatherly way that you hadn't been in lately,
(07:36):
and he rather fancied you were out of town. But
would I take a seat while he inquired? He then
summoned a tiny boy, also in uniform, and the child
skipped off, chanting mister Kemp, mister Kemp. In a shrill trouble.
It gave me such an odd feeling to hear your
name echoing in the distance. I felt so ashamed for
giving them all that trouble. And when the boy came back,
(07:59):
I slipped upens into his palm, which I suppose was
against all the rules, though he seemed to like it.
Mister Fawcett has sold the business and retired to the country,
and I am rather at a loose end Monk's crofton
whatever that means much Middleford Sellop slang for Shropshire, England,
(08:20):
April eighteenth. Dear Ginger, what's the use? What is the use?
I do all I can to get right away from
New York, and New York comes after me and tracks
me down in my hiding place. A week or so ago,
as I was walking down the strand in an aimless
sort of way out there came right on top of me.
Who do you think Fillmore? Arm in arm with mister Carlyle.
(08:45):
I couldn't dodge in the first place, mister Carlyle had
seen me. In the second place. It's a day's journey
to dodge poor dear Fillmore. Now I blushed for him, Ginger,
right there in the strand. I blushed for him. In
my worst dreams, I had never pictured him so enormous.
Upon what meat? Doth this our Fillmore feed that he
(09:07):
has grown so great. Poor Gladys when she looks at him,
she must feel like a bigamist. Apparently Philmore is still
full of big schemes, for he talked airily about buying
all sorts of English plays. He has come over, as
I suppose, you know, to arrange about putting on the
Primrose way over here he is staying at the Savoy,
(09:29):
and they took me off there to lunch, whooping joyfully
as over a strayed lamb. It was the worst thing
that could possibly have happened to me. Philmore talked broadway
without a pause, till by the time he had worked
his way past the French pastry and was lolling back,
breathing a little stertorously waiting for the coffee and liqueurs.
(09:50):
He had got me so homesick that if it hadn't
been that I didn't want to make a public exhibition
of myself, I should have broken down and howled. It
was easy of me ever to go near the Savoy.
Of course, it's simply an annex to Broadway. There were
Americans at every table as far as the eye could reach.
I might just as well have been at the astor well,
(10:13):
if fate insists in bringing New York to England for
my special discomfiture, I suppose I have got to put
up with it. I just let events take their course.
And I have been drifting ever since. Two days ago.
I drifted here. Mister Carlyle invited Fillmore, he seems to
love Fillmore and me to Monk's crofton and I hadn't
(10:34):
even the shadow of an excuse for refusing. So I came,
and I am now sitting writing to you in an
enormous bedroom with an open fire and arm chairs and
every other sort of luxury. Fillmore is out golfing. He
sails for New York on Saturday on the Mauritania. I
am horrified to hear from him that, in addition to
(10:56):
all his other big schemes, he is now promoting a
fight for the light weight championship in Jersey City and
guaranteeing enormous sums to both boxers. It's no good arguing
with him if you do. He simply quotes figures to
show the fortunes other people have made out of these things. Besides,
it's too late now anyway, As far as I can
(11:16):
make out, the fight is going to take place in
another week or two. All the same, it makes my
flesh creep. Well, it's no use worrying. I suppose let's
change the subject. Do you know Monk's Crofton? Probably you don't,
as I seem to remember hearing something said about it
being a recent purchase. Mister Carlyle bought it from some
lord or other who had been losing money on the
(11:37):
stock exchange. I hope you haven't seen it anyway, because
I want to describe it at great length. I want
to pour out my soul about it. Ginger, what has
England ever done to deserve such paradises? I thought, in
my ignorance that mister Fossett's Sissister place was pretty good,
But it doesn't even begin. It can't compete. Of course, course,
(12:00):
his is just an ordinary country house, and this is
a seat. Monk's Crofton is the sort of place they
used to write about in the English novels. You know.
The sunset was falling on the walls of g Blank
Castle in b Blankshire, hard By the picturesque village of
h Blank, and not a stone's throw from the hamlet
(12:21):
of j Blank. I can imagine Tennyson's Maud living here.
It is one of the stately homes of England. How
beautiful they stand, and I'm crazy about it. You motor
up from the station and after you have gone about
three miles you turn in at a big iron gate
with stone posts on each side with stone beasts on them.
(12:44):
Close by the gate is the cutest little house with
an old man inside it who pops out and touches
his hat. This is only the lodge, really, but you
think you have arrived, so you get all ready to
jump out, and then the car goes rolling on for
another fifty miles or so through beech wood woods full
of rabbits and open meadows with deer in them. Finally,
(13:04):
just as you think you are going on forever, you
whizz round a corner and there's the house. You don't
get a glimpse of it till then, because the trees
are too thick. It's very large and sort of low
and square, with a kind of tower at one side
and the most fascinating upper porch sort of thing with
battlements I suppose in the old days you used to
(13:26):
stand on this and drop molten lead on visitors heads.
Wonderful lawns all round, and shrubberies, and a lake that
you can just see where the ground dips beyond the fields.
Of course, it's too early yet for them to be out.
But to the left of the house there's a place
where there will be about a million roses when June
comes round. And all along the side of the rose
(13:47):
garden is a high wall of old red brick which
shuts off the kitchen garden. I went exploring there this morning.
It's an enormous place, with hot houses and things, and
there's the cunningest farm at one end, with a stable
yard full of puppies that just tear the heart out
of you. They're so sweet, and a big sleepy cat
(14:07):
which sits and blinks in the sun and lets the
puppies run all over her. And there's a lovely stillness
and you can hear everything growing and thrushes and blackbirds. Oh, ginger,
it's heavenly. But there's a catch. It's a case of
where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile, at
least not exactly vile. I suppose, but terribly stodgy. I
(14:31):
can see now why you couldn't hit it off with
the family, because I've seen em all there here, Yes,
Uncle Donald, and all of them. Is it a habit
of your family to collect in gangs? Or have I
just happened to stumble into an accidental old home week.
When I came down to dinner the first evening, the
drawing room was full to bursting point, not simply because
(14:53):
Fillmore was there, but because there were uncles and aunts
all over the place. I felt like a small lion
in a den of den Daniels. I know exactly now
what you mean about the family. They look at you.
Of course, it's all right for me because I am
snowy white clear through. But I can just imagine what
it must have been like for you, with your permanently
(15:14):
guilty conscience. You must have had an awful time. By
the way, it's going to be a delicate business getting
this letter through to you, rather like carrying the despatches
through the enemy's lines. In a civil war play. You're
supposed to leave letters on the table in the hall,
and someone collects them in the afternoon and takes them
(15:35):
down to the village on a bicycle. But if I
do that, some aunt or uncle is bound to see it,
and I shall be an object of loathing. For it
is no light matter my lad to be caught having
correspondence with a human Gimpson weed like you. It would
blast me socially, at least, so I gather from the
way they behaved. When your name came up at dinner
(15:57):
last night, somebody mentioned you, and the most awful roasting
party broke loose. Uncle Donald, acting as cheerleader. I said
feebly that I had met you and had found you
part human, And there was an awful silence till they
all started at the same time to show me where
I was wrong and how cruelly my girlish inexperience had
deceived me. A young and innocent half portion like me,
(16:21):
it appears, is absolutely incapable of suspecting the true infamy
of the dregs of society. You aren't fit to speak
to the likes of me, being at the kindest estimate,
little more than a blot on the human race. I
tell you this in case you may imagine you are
popular with the family. You're not, so I shall have
(16:44):
to exercise a good deal of sneaky craft in smuggling
this letter through. I'll take it down to the village
myself if I can sneak away. But it's going to
be pretty difficult, because for some reason I seem to
be a center of attraction, except when I take refuge
in my room. Hardly a moment passes without an aunt
or an uncle popping out and having a cozy talk
(17:05):
with me. It sometimes seems as though they were weighing
me in the balance. Well, let em weigh. Time to
dress for dinner now, good bye, yours in the balance,
Sally p s. You were perfectly right about your uncle
Donald's mustache, but I don't agree with you that it
is more his misfortune than his fault. I think he
(17:28):
does it on purpose, just for the moment. Monks Crofton
much Middleford, Sallop, England, April twentieth, Dear Ginger, leaving here
to day in disgrace, hard cold looks from the family,
strained silences. Uncle Donald far from chummy. You can guess
(17:48):
what has happened. I might have seen it coming. I
can see now that it was in the air all along.
Fillmore knows nothing about it. He left just before it happened.
I shall see him very soon where I have decided
to come back and stop running away from things any longer.
It's cowardly to skulk about over here. Besides, I'm feeling
so much better that I believe I can face the ghosts. Anyway,
(18:11):
I'm going to try see you almost as soon as
you get this. I shall mail this in London, and
I suppose it will come over by the same boat
as me. It's hardly worth writing, really, of course, but
I have sneaked up to my room to wait till
the motor arrives to take me to the station, and
it's something to do. I can hear muffled voices the
(18:31):
family talking me over, probably saying they never really liked
me all along, Oh well, yours moving in an orderly
manner to the exit, Sally, end of chapter twelve. Read
on January twenty ninth, two thousand nine, in San Diego, California,
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