Well, this is no time for writing letters, with so many things to do, & so many books to read (me little friend Harold has just brought out a new book on Communism) & one of the greatest fights in Trade Union history on at this moment. For you must know that Mr Baldwin in a laudable endeavour to further Peace in our time, O Lord, has brought in a Bill calculated to make every labour man in the country see red; & as the Times report of the first day's struggle (yesterday) took up about three pages of small print, it took some reading. Of course the Bill is sure to get through, but it is a pretty brummy thing all the same. Still, I don't suppose you're interested, & Daddy knows all about it already. So I shall proceed to answer your two letters of dates March 27 & March 13, duly received & held under consideration. I have also had a charming letter from Auntie Ada which ends with the noble hearted injunc- tion "Please don't bother to answer this just tell your Mother if it reaches you." So you might convey the desired in- formation, & say I was very glad to receive same, & find out the address of Alan's brass shop, which please transmit.

  She also says “Has anyone told you that the Beaglehole grandchild is very like you its true I saw her photo yesterday” Well, I ask you. “Has anyone!” What strikes me about this chorus is its obvious foolishness. If you must have children, why not strive for individuality in their appearance. Handsome as I am & lucky as the child is to look like me, if it must look like some-one, I think it ought to be encouraged to cultivate a face of its own. Anyhow I looked long & intently at the photo you sent, & I'm dashed is I could see any resem- blance in the kid to anything at all except other babies. Which doesn't seem to be much of a distinguishing mark. It was a good picture of you though; I must say you look healthy & merry & bright enough, as if the arduous study of modern languages weren't bearing you down too much. You would have got some good practice at University College this afternoon, when one of the historical mobs from Paris gave an address on Historical education or metho- dology or something. It lasted for more than an hour & I made out about four words, not counting repeats. However that's by the way.

What you say about the French dictionary is all bosh. I distinctly remember that one cover was only hanging on by a very tenuous thread — You needn't think you can put anything like that across me. I note your remark about argument & K's wedding. The trouble about that sort of thing in our family is, everybody gets so excited; now & all you want is a little calm & silence & deep thought & organisation, & then you can do things in the minimum of time when they're wanted. In short, I can see that you felt the need of my presence very deeply, but no doubt you have got the Unhappy Couple well married by now, & I am all in a froth to hear full details (I don't think). What do you want to go round inspecting churches for, anyhow? What's wrong with the good old Full Gospel Blood of Christ Mission, late Unitarian church? Still it must have been a great day for old Jim Thawley, the Kitten on the keys. No doubt he chucked it in as discount on your month's bill. Or why not get married down the garden, the scene of so many happy hours & heroic contests, or the in the front room, which was good enough for old Joe, or even in the tool- shed. Or you might have had it on the front lawn & given the slums a treat. — My word, if Auntie thinks your frock too short she ought to see some of the frockettes here; she would just about turn up her toes. I think personally it is no more than hygienic & you could do with it a lot shorter — why not show good legs if you've got 'em, as you have. I don't think Auntie's frock ought to be more than two inches below the knees, anyhow, if that.

Now I ask you what's the use of my getting off good sterling jokes if you're going to take them seriously? Daddy had me quite bogged for a while as I cast my mind back over the pre last three months to see what he was driving at. WEDDING PRESENTS! Cripes, don't you see the whole point of the business? "Mother reckons it might go in beautiful editions of books" etc — Well, what else would it go in? While if you wait, & some pred- atory woman gets her hands on the cheque, devil a bit of it I'll ever see, & little enough will be put to any really useful purpose. Of course if by the usual necessaries of a home you mean washing-boards & sewing-machines & mangles & doormats & bootscrapers & stuff for me to clean the windows with & bootpolish for me to polish the boots with & brasso for me to clean the taps with — well, there you are & if you want to promote efficiency in the house & victimise me go ahead. But remember that a thing of beauty is a joy forever; & wives however much they pull faces at new books have been known to read those same books in the past with considerable enjoyment, & even to kick up a fearful row if there's nothing in the house for them to read, except Gibbons Decline & Fall; & what wives have done in the past, they may do in the future. I do not particularise, either on the past or the future. Daddy's book of NZ girlhood duly noted. Thanks for postal notes. I am sending out Walton's Lives in one vol. I remember Daddy was after a handy copy of that a good while ago. 4/6 this cost, Methuen 1895. Books read duly noted. The R.H. Murray Daddy mentioned has written on political theory — he is a bit muddled-headed, in my opinion. The colour of the house sounds all right, if it can stand the W'gton air. I think you might have tried a bright red all over, as a method of heralding the Revolution. Still failing that, white & green is a nice respectable combination. I was very pleased to see you had a visit from Mrs Lysaght — she is very decent, I think; I had a letter from her a week or so ago about her Xmas card. Those cards have been a great success all right, I must tell Berrie. But it isn't an original; it was the same sort of thing as yours, a printed reproduction, very like a woodcut. I had a letter from Mrs Hooper last mail too — please tell her, & that same will be answered in due course, which means anytime in the next 6 or 8 . months.

Well, about our trip to Derbyshire. We did about 375 miles on our bikes & got in four days' good hard tramping — we were away eleven days in all. If you deduct about 50% from the descriptions in that L.M.S. book I have sent you for literary style & 50% for lack of propor- tion & 50% more for general cussedness you will get a fair idea of what the country described there is like. For “magnif- icent” read “pretty”, when it says “wild” think of Happy Valley & you will have a scale of values to go by. I have sent you a swag of postcards too, both of what we saw & didn't see, & a few snaps, the product of my skilful hand & that of my companion. I left here on Thursday April 15 & cycled out to meet Lorrie at Harpenden where he works at an agricultural experimental station, 25 miles north of London. We then rode up to Buxton, which we reached after a cruel ride against a head-wind most of the way on Sunday. We left our bikes at the Railway Station there & put in our four days all over the Peak District, in Derbyshire, & Yorkshire I think, arriving back at the Buxton on Thursday; whence we came back to London in a pretty wide sweep, putting in an afternoon & evening at Cambridge on the way to have a look at Jack Yeates & the place gen- erally, & arriving here on the Sunday. By jingo! it was a good trip, & a great relief to get into the open & look rough again. London is all right, but a terrible place for getting soft in, especially in the winter; but by the time I got back I was feeling pretty fit, & have been the subject of universal admiration ever since. You will see from the my snaps that I am not exactly fading away. We slept out every night in a dinky little tent of Jack Yeates, for which see photo; it is just 6x6, & holds two comfortably, three at a squeeze; the poles come apart into two sections each, so that you can strap them on to a bike or shove them in a swag, & they are very light bamboo; the pegs are aluminium, & there are only two ropes. So you see that the torte ensemble (Fr) is about as handy as anything could be. The trouble about camping out in this country at random is that there are is hardly any running water — we were lucky on the whole, & got some very good spots, but several times the only moisture we got in the evening & the morning was from oranges & apples. (You will be pleased to hear that it was largely a fruitarian trip). This may have been the real reason for the terrific speed with which we hiked into Nottingham one morning, which city will in the future base its chief claim to fame on the fact that we consumed several cups of liquid in rapid succession at a coffee-stall in the square there on our way to Mel- ton Mowbray, famous for its pie, where we had lunch. But what chiefly impressed us was a magnificent custard tart, on which we made considerable inroads. We did a good deal of trespassing, partly necessary, partly on principle — in fact whenever we saw a signboard saying Trespassers wd be prosecuted we hopped over the fence. So that we got more or less used to interviews with keepers or other hirelings in the morning as we breakfasted or packed; but as we were extremely, nay exceptionally tidy trampers & also very well-spoken lads we didn't come into any violent conflict with anybody. In fact one bird (I think a minion of the Duke of Norfolk) finished up by telling us all his troubles, with which we sympathised with our usual open-hearted camaraderie, & then went & disturbed all his blooming grouse. Grouse appear to be the most important thing in England, the peak & apex up to which the whole of western civilisation works; so it was a pity that the only time we got near a sitting bird & found stones handy we couldn't get near the brute. There are miles & miles of moors with nothing but heather & grouse (much as that ass Cullen wants to see the National Park, I suppose) from which everybody is strictly warned off. There appears to be a Tramping, or Ramb- ling, as they call themselves, Club at Sheffield which tramps this country a lot, though — I have seen their sylla- bus, a most flash affair, a regular little book, which contains some good dope on trespassing & keepers & so forth. We seem to have touched on most of the ducal properties in that part of England. But says our keepers, scarcely a gentleman shoots his own sho moors now; Oh, its terrible; they let them out to rich men from Sheffield & Manchester — just workmen, as you might say. So apparently there is still a considerable difference between the landed gentry & the lower orders, when the cotton & steel-kings are classed as “just workmen”.

There are a few other things on the moors except grouse — one or two footpaths over which the public have a right, & on which a footpath preservation society has to put a notice-board to say so, lest the dukes grab it them again, & Druidical circles & cairns & rocking-stones (so-called) & entrenchments (marked on the map, but somewhat prob- lematical) all of which are classed as ancient mounu- ments & all of which we pursued with unwearying enthusiasm. We finished up our first day's tramping by climbing Kinderscout, the highest hill in the district, (see C. E. Montigue's The Right Place) mainly in mist; on top it is the funniest hill I ever saw, all peat-bog of various softnesses, split up into big hummocks & islands of all shapes with canals of soft mud between them.

Otherwise it was mainly heather. We got down about 9 o'clock as it was getting dark, coming down through a gully that was pretty well as good as parts of the Tararuas, & passing an empty keeper's cottage or something, we put a brick through the window on principle (but don't get alarmed, there was a hole in it already). We had a very good camping-place that night & were awoken next morning by a Here! what are you dong there! though you might have thought it was perfectly obvious. This day, being Easter Monday, we crossed over the Hope Valley, through Edale, up another hill, Mann Tor & down into Castletown, where we investigated some celebrated Blue John Caves (Queen Victoria visited them twice, with great admiration) — charge one bob — through the Winnats. You may remember I was here before with the Johnson gang in the New Year. The place was black with trippers, a large proportion of whom were doing their courting in public in the happy care-free English fashion, so we bought our postcards & I wrote one to you, showing the highly romantic castle, got a good feed (the lady who supplied same being remarkable on our trip for inviting us to name our own price — so we gave her two bob — each) & moved on; over Win Hill, another of their stem hills & up past the Derwent Reser- voir. This was where we met the keeper who proved chatty. Next day we crossed the moors & came to a very good village for tea (I don't think I explained we pa got our lunch & tea in villages & bought stuff for breakfast & supper) called Bradfield. A Mrs Glossop née Jillett gave us bacon & eggs & home-made bread & cake & a good deal of chat here — her father & paternal ancestors, she told us, had served the village church as sexton & verger etc in an unbroken line since 1300; but now al- though she had three brothers & the old man (who is was also village postman) was breaking up none of the lads seemed too keen on the job. We asked how old the church was (“Oh, its a lovely church!”) & her husband said Well, he didn't rightly know, but it was renovated in 1500. So that seems satisfactory.

We came across a good many village churches, as a matter of fact, some of them very good & most of them interesting, generally done in two or three different styles of architecture, Norman one side, Early English the other, & so forth. One at a place called Bakewell had a crowd of Vernon tombs — but personally I prefer Mary Pickford's presentment of the celebrated Dorothy to the Tudor artists. Haddon Hall was a washout. I bought a swag of postcards at Buxton to send to you to show you what I had seen & we came pelting down the road in the great state of excitement; & lo! behold! in spite of all inform- ation given in the guide-books, the Duke of Rutland on signposts stuck up in various places, announced that the place was closed, finally & indubitably, both outside & in, & suitably warned off the castle. So as they were gardeners & keepers in sight we blasted all dukes, hung over the wall a bit, & moved on. I have sent you the postcards, however, to show you what we might have seen if we had been able to get in. It would have been 2/- in the ducal coffers too, according to the scale of fees given in the guide-books. Curse the Duke of Rutland — I wanted to see that place. We saw some very beautiful country that afternoon, though — there is nothing in NZ like the spring here; the country is a dream of loveliness & even the Bloomsbury squares almost go drunk with joy. They now somewhat resemble the pictures in the pamphlets I have sent out to you.

One place we called at on the way back was Peterbor- ough to see the Cathedral — a great place; all light & air, & clean of the disgusting heaps of stone & bric a brac that make Westminster Abbey so disgusting. We camped outside Peterborough in a rook wood — it was funny how we kept running into the traditional things — rookeries, & rooks following the plough & blackbirds with their yellow-bill, & skins of stoats & weasels hung up outside farms & so on. We got the wind behind us for a few miles (of course it changed to a souther- ly the very day we left b Buxton to come back) & had a great run to Cambridge. No wonder people get to love the old Universities — I never saw any- thing more beautiful than some parts of Cambridge.

We had a good crack & two meals with Jack Yeates, who is going back home in June — he doesn't like the country; we did our best to convince him that he was committing intellectual suicide, but in vain; we camped at Grantchester, near Byron's Pool, & next morning had a look round the Old Vicarage. The photo I send is one of the garden & the back of the house; & if it hadn't got on to an inclined plane it would give you a fair idea of the place; it runs down to a bit of a river at the bottom of the garden, bordered by willows; & altogether is a place where you might live very happily. That same day we pushed against a cold wind & rain b on our last 50 miles to London. And believe me, the contrast between the English country & the average English town is appalling.

Since then I have worked & bought a book & been to two or three shows — Cosi fan Tutte (comic opera by Mozart). The Beaux Strategem at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, good racy scandalous 1707 stuff; & a violin recital by a May Harrison Mozart Bach Riger Delius, & Arnold Bax's 1st violin & piano sonata, with A.B. himself playing the piano. There's something for you. I am going to Hamlet at the Old Vic tomorrow. There is grand opera on at Covent Garden too for four or five weeks, but I don't know whether I can afford any of this. Went to Hyde Park for May Day celebrations on Sunday — rotten. Well, 11.30 pm as usual on mail-nights. I cease, but not upon the midnight.