John Betjeman writes playfully to Camilla Russell, with whom he shared a brief, lighthearted secret romance in 1930-1931.
Pakenham Hall
Castlepollard
Co. Westmeath
2 September 1931
My dear, sweet Miller [last word indicated by cartoon drawing of miller and windmill]
Here before I leave for Ethel M. Dell in Cornwall (Trebetherick, Wadebridge) which I think you know, I must write to cheer you up. Mrs D. [Ethel Dugdale] was told by me to foster the Friendship scheme so she is double bluffing. Nothing could be better. She has no secrets from John [Dugdale, her son] and she knows I love you. Do all you can to get John to arrange nice things for the weekend after next—he’s a loyal old thing and will back us up I am sure—tell him everything if you want to. I shall be leaving Cornwall on Monday. A word of cheer from you will be welcome, you ugly little angel…
I would like to know, duckie, whether I ought to write to Catball or to ye Olde—which is the safer and more likely to escape the prying nose and metallic eye of dear old Dorothea. I hope you’re drowning your sorrows over them both. You will be able to make it an excuse for seeing me—we might illustrate it in the Architectural Review or would that look too much like love? I find myself becoming very depressed from five thirty p.m. onwards with the thought of you, I want to be with you so much. I’ve got an idea (my hat, by the way, that’s a bit of all right staying with your dear old grandfather; of course I shall be in London to see you)—take some deadlie Nightshade from ye Olde Worlde Gardeane and mixe it with some potion of henbane and hemlock and place it in a cuppe of tea prepared for Red Nose or laye it on a textile and cause her to cut her fingerres. I shall be living, until the end of September at 47 Upper Brook Street (Mayfair 3542), in the rooms of a friend of mine who is in Italy. They keep shouting to me to come to the Mullingar horse show and a bloody girl staying here whom I have skilfully avoided up till now is coming in the same car with me and the Dean [Maurice Bowra]. She is wearing ‘smart’ clothes, all wrong, and she’s damned serious and doesn’t realize how important and nice the people are with whom she is privileged to stay. Darling, I do love you so much. It is most odd that you are so much more intelligent than any other jolly girl I come across and as nice as Mrs. Dugdale into the bargain. I shall write to her by the next post and tell her to let you talk to her and comfort you, my angel. You must have someone now your Aunt has gone away, to whom it would not be a bad idea to send on my special letter. Darling in the weekend after next I shall be seeing your enormous eyes miles apart (G.W.) and we will be having our old thrilling life of hair-breadth escapes.
Circles and sticks a bird and a tree when will my Miller be wedded to me? Soon, soon. I love you, you hideous little angel. Have you washed your face child? Let me see it—
Love for ever, JB. X I have kissed this.
From John Betjeman: Letters, Volume One: 1926 to 1951. Edited by Candida Lycett Green. London: Methuen, 2006. 584 pp.