![\"1956](\"http:\/\/wepidgeon.com\/pidgeonpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/1956-MM-DD-WEP-Romania_0081.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
My darling Dorothy,<\/p>\n
I got a letter from you this morning dated 29th<\/sup> Oct. That is a week ago and you called me a big monster because I hadn\u2019t said I hadn\u2019t got a letter from your affectionate heart. Please forgive me if I have not mentioned the joy they gave me. I am sure I must have done so. To tell the truth, it is only since I got to the Paris address that I have been getting anything. I know it is not your fault. I had one letter in Romania. One you had written just after the beautiful letters I picked up at the Hotel Austria. So you will forgive me. I asked them to mail my Romanian mail to Paris \u2013 but nothing has arrived so I guess everything is just any old-how in the east. I don\u2019t suppose I\u2019ll ever get the beautiful books they were to have forwarded. All the mail goes or did, through Hungary, so you can imagine that the chances of receiving anything at all are pretty hopeless.<\/p>\n Roley has just been sent to Hungary, much against his wishes. However, he has arrived at Vienna as the border is about to be closed again \u2013 So I guess things may be alright for him. I took the liberty of getting him to put me on the phone to Robert Edgley & asking him to see what he could do for him in the way of local information, etc. I am leaving for London at 8am on Wednesday. I was to have gone\u00a0on Friday but McNulty sent me a cable from New York to say that he will probably be there till the 18th<\/sup>. As I would like to see him, I thought I\u2019d leave a little later for London & fly direct if I can. You have had a couple of pretty mad \u2013 but, I assure you, earnest letters from me. If anything in them has distressed you in any way put it down to tired and excited ramblings. I want you not to think I am lurching all over the city. I am not. There is a lot to do, and see, and perhaps I cannot cope with it all without an occasional savage outburst \u2013 Giving the theatre of the brain a flutter \u2013 if you understand \u2013 Not that I didn\u2019t mean a word of my love making \u2013 but perhaps then it would have been more obscene \u2013 and not so beautifully obvious. Anyway I meant every word of it and you have to like it or lump it. Roley got me into a Christian Dior parade the other afternoon. I went alone & had to flash my passport to get in. Got stuck behind three rows of chairs & without a cigarette the two hours of so\u00a0called parading became even more murderous than conceivable \u2013 because I couldn\u2019t get out. All but one of the models looked like creatures from Buchenwald concentration camp. Pin stick limbs, but interesting faces. Very much like Nefertiti because the wizard profiles were capped by flat top haps like Romanian Astrakhan shepherd hats. All the winter clothes were finished off with these type of hat.<\/p>\n I thought some of the winter type coats very nice. Quite your line. I understand your taste, but I haven\u2019t got the money to risk a failure. I should like to have seen you, with your very forthright walk, modelling one or ten of them. The walk you wear when I first remember you running down the side of the pool at Dee Why the day you took off and sat on my costume, and took the little Dutch monster with you into the pool. Your little eyes were so purposeful and your behind wagged as if you were just about fifteen and it hadn\u2019t sat on a hat or swimming pants or even a box of delights for twenty or thirty six years. I think it was on Feb the two-th of something. But it was a wonderful day, because I met you when you got off the bus and you were wagging it from work. I remember Christine saying you were a nice girl. But I had no idea that should agree so seriously with her. I thought she was right, but didn\u2019t realise that I would be so convinced of it later. In fact I never thought then that I would be in love with you \u2013 I suppose I was, but wouldn\u2019t admit it even to myself \u2013 because how could I, when I was, oh \u2013 well \u2013 you know, I loved Jess too. And it\u2019s because I love you I can now say that. You understand now.<\/p>\n Roley has a musical merry-go-round that makes everybody who sees it want to cry because it is so wonderfully static & old world. And all the four figures who are seated on alternate donkeys and rabbits have their tails dropped off with age and the mange of neglect. With the inevitability of last year\u2019s newsreels, the dear little clown clothed figures trace their fixed and inevitable course, centrifugally around the music of a tinkling and pass\u00e9 empire of France. They wear pantaloons & red velvet bows \u2013 cockades and pointed vermillion shoes. One of them, who wears a little peaked donkey hat with a feather in it is so like Graham, I could weep. Some of the horses they are not horse, but they had almost the privilege of being horses, are without tails and hooves. They are dusty, but are ennobled with age and affection. The base is ancient pink & contains the most sentimental music it is the pleasure of any cavalier to ride to. I have just wound it up. And all the figures go la-de-da-de-la in an inevitable circle with Graham, not the most elegantly dressed, riding on the only horse with a tail, in poised and delicate finality.<\/p>\n You know what the trouble with me is, I am not doing enough work. I\u2019m building up & am near explosion point. The absorption rate is high & I guess, apart from the London galleries, I have seen almost every picture worthy seeing or which has been reproduced. The Louvre gives me the flaming horrors. I have been there four times without decently seeing a picture. It is so dismally dark. So is Paris this time of the year \u2013 Gives you the thing. Spent another quid having a look at Odilon Redon<\/a> exhibition (plus catalogue) this morning. Only vaguely knew of him. Beautiful lovely work. So many of the masters are disappointing in the original. By and large, you could give me the early Italian and or Christian painters for my cup of tea.<\/p>\n This is becoming a long letter, my darling and is like my reactions to all external stimuli. I like getting letters from you but I would rather be home. I find the idea of spring hard to conceive. Really the weather here is the end! I\u2019ve seen the sun twice. They tell me the grey of London is worse.<\/p>\n Please don\u2019t expect much from me from London. I shall write only when I madly need you. Not that, that wouldn\u2019t be every day I could make it. But I have had sending news reports, and would as soon be home. The winter 1956 timetable says my plane will get in at 7.20pm on Nov. 25. I do not want you to meet me. I would really much rather get a cab from the city and walk into my home with my people there. I do very really mean this. I would rather kiss you in Northwood than in Mascot or Sydney. I can take you both together in my arms at home. Please let me come home alone. I don\u2019t want anyone else to help me see you all for the first time after all this much of the world. I don\u2019t mind that vulgar Trellie being there. Will you please get this into your thick head? Also, please don\u2019t write any letters I would miss. I can\u2019t stand it. Save your affection up for my arrival. The letter I got today was dated Mon 29 Oct. That is a week\u2019s delay. So don\u2019t write anything I wouldn\u2019t get by the 18th<\/sup>. I might have to go to Zurich by train. Anyway, I\u2019ll let you know pronto. Seems very sad that the last letter I\u2019ll get from you will just about answer this. Please tell me you love me. Tell Graham I\u2019;; send a post card from London, or Calais, or Folkestone. Tell him I\u2019ll only have about half an hour to nick up the Eiffel Tower. Tomorrow I\u2019ll be awful busy. I love you, and miss you, my dear wife.<\/p>\n Bill<\/p>\n P.S. That letter from Orasul Stalin \u2013 Stefanie registered it \u2013 I didn\u2019t tell her to \u2013 perhaps she had no faith in the post.<\/p>\n P.S.S. No man in his youth would be so dependent on a fickle \u2013 unpredictable woman \u2013 and what is more \u2013 shall not be! XXXXXXX<\/p>\n Roley got me into a Christian Dior parade the other afternoon. I went alone & had to flash my passport to get in. Got stuck behind three rows of chairs & without a cigarette the two hours of so called parading became even more murderous than conceivable \u2013 because I couldn\u2019t get out. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[280,1999],"tags":[1538,1540,1028,1403,1543,1535,1537,282,495,1448,1542,1541,1229,1536,1079,204,1406,1539,1332,334],"class_list":["post-3015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1956-cultural-exchange-trip-to-romania","category-paris","tag-buchenwald","tag-christian-dior","tag-clarence-sydney-mcnulty","tag-dr-robert-edgley","tag-eiffel-tower","tag-embassy-church","tag-hotel-austria","tag-hungary","tag-london","tag-louvre","tag-merry-go-round","tag-nefertiti","tag-new-york","tag-odilon-roden","tag-paris","tag-rembrandt","tag-roley-pullen","tag-romanian-astrakhan-shepherd-hats","tag-stefania-rotaru","tag-vienna"],"yoast_head":"\n![](\"http:\/\/wepidgeon.com\/pidgeonpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/1956-NEG-9_029-1956_214.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"1956](\"http:\/\/wepidgeon.com\/pidgeonpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/1956-MM-DD-WEP-Romania_0083.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/wepidgeon.com\/pidgeonpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/1956-NEG-9_031-1956_216.jpg\")
<\/a>![](\"http:\/\/wepidgeon.com\/pidgeonpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/1956-NEG-9_027-1956_212.jpg\")
<\/a>![](\"http:\/\/wepidgeon.com\/pidgeonpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/1956-NEG-9_028-1956_213.jpg\")
<\/a>![](\"http:\/\/wepidgeon.com\/pidgeonpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/1956-NEG-9_030-1956_215.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Wep's](\"http:\/\/wepidgeon.com\/pidgeonpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/1956-Cultural-Exchange_0062-1.jpg\")
<\/a> ![\"Wep's](\"http:\/\/wepidgeon.com\/pidgeonpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/1956-Cultural-Exchange_0062-2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"