October 6, 1908 Kitebrook
Moreton in Marsh
My dearest Robin,
I know you will be glad to hear we have been able to arrange things sastisfactorily. At least we hope it will work all right. We are to remain here until next summer. You can’t think how glad I am, but I am horribly afraid too, for Geoff is coming here to hunt when he leaves Cambridge and I don’t know how we shall get on then if he has any more of these high-handed attacks. We must hope for the best, I suppose, and anyway it can’t last long if he carries out his present intention of going abroad in February. Where he means to go or what he will do he does not seem to know. He only says he shall go “abroad” for eight months. He told us the other day he should come down for a few days before he goes back to Cambridge, but I suppose he has changed his mind as we have heard nothing from him and I think he goes back the end of this week.
I meant to have started my hunting season yesterday, but it was so hot that I have put it off for a bit. On Sunday the thermometer was nearly 90° before breakfast, as high as it has been at that time all the summer. Mrs. Warden says the heat is caused by a comet thirty times as big as the earth which is coming straight for us at the rate of fifty thousand miles a minute or something like that. Her figures vary with the day! It ought to have hit us the day before yesterday, I believe. As far as I can gather the whole story was invented by Mr. Tremlett, for everyone who has heard about it seems to have got it from him and even the Daily Mail does not mention it. [Mr. Tremlett may have been thinking of Halley’s Comet, which was due to appear in 1910.]
Mr. Armrod or rather Miss Mortimer has given up Little Barrow and Mr. Tremlett is off to Rhodesia almost directly.
Last Saturday we went to a concert in Cheltenham to hear Mme. Tetrazzini. I am afraid we neither of us appreciated her quite as muich as we should have done. She was certainly wonderful, but not exactly pleasing; at least her high notes made me want to howl like a dog, just as an excited violin does.
The Moreton horse show is this afternoon. I should think they have never had such a fine day for it. We are going down to see Mr. Warden carry off the prize for heavyweight hunters! He seems quite confident about it.
How funny coming across “La Poupée” under a different name. I saw it in London when it was revived some years ago and thought it very amusing. I have had the music too on the pianola. [The references in this paragraph and the following two are to Robin–September 11, 1908.]
I wonder what you have decided about the oiling or staining or painting. I expect your next letter will tell me. I am certainly anxiously looking out for those photographs too of the house finished. I suppose you have got “me” by this time, I hope it wasn’t a terrible shock! Perhaps you will think it a good likeness, some people do–when they get used to it!
I wonder very much if I am going to like Daphne. I have scarcely seen her since last winter and of course I did not know her much then. I have liked her very much some days and not at all on others, but I shall not “dislike her intensely” as you put it, for I always recognise those people at once and she is not one of them! I expect I shall see a good deal of her this winter as our roads home from hunting will often be in the same direction, though of course it doesn’t follow that we go together (vide Miss Lawrence). By the way, the Lawrences are going to Bournemouth for the winter. Mr. Style has ordered them to go away, as the younger one is delicate. I don’t know who has bribed him to say so! That charming romance seems to have ended in smoke, for since Mr. Eustace sold her his horse, report says he has ceased to notice the lady.
I hear from Hawker that Blackbird fell down at exercise the other day and cut her knees badly, so I am afraid that won’t have increased her value.
Mr. Warden says my new horse will probably go mad, as it’s by the same horse as one they had a few years ago which went mad, so I am likely to have an exciting season. I wonder how it will take it! It rejoices in the name of Utility. At least, Hawker said it was always called the “utility horse”, as it was always ready to come out when required, so I feel bound to stick to that as they say it is unlucky to change!
I have not thought of a name for your foal yet–my brain is slow. I do hope it will win that cup. Mind you send me a photograph of it (the foal, I mean, not the cup). Mr. Barnsley is showing an awfully pretty little one at Moreton today. [The letter in which Robin asks Kathleen to name his foal is not extant.]
We are going to Leamington next week and then to London. After that I suppose we settle down for the winter. It is a comfort to think we shall not be spending our time settling into Maugersbury Dower House! Mrs. Grisewood told us the other day that Miss Hewitt was going to live there. It was almost too much for our gravity, as we had hardly got over thinking we were!
Ever your loving
Kathleen