For your two letters of 28, 29 June, many thanks. I really can’t write and congratulate H. on that! How awful!
And to think that, if Lionel [the recipient of the “blue”] had been “vowed” to the B.V.M. in his infancy, he’d have worn nothing but blue and white, anyhow, till he came of age!...
Objecting to my having enclosed the phrase “honest broker” in inverted commas, he continues:
Lady Y., you may remember, said:
“Good beobles, we come here for your goots.”
“Ay,” they replied, “and for our chattels too!”
I don’t want your chattels; but I am convinced that I came to England for your goots and to save you from degenerating into a lady novelist. The worst of it is that Lady D. agreed with you.... Seriously, however: suppose Winston were to use a perfectly commonplace metaphor, to say, e.g., that he had ordered the Gallipoli expedition off his own bat. Would that for all time raise those four words from the commonplace to the exceptional? Could you never employ that phrase except in “quotes”?...
Be sensible. Do not fight against your rescuer. Let me, when I receive the Royal Humane Society’s medal, feel that my gallant efforts were not in vain, that I succeeded in saving your life and soul!...
P.S. An invitation to the ... Oppenheim wedding has just arrived. Like the man who answered the big-game-hunter’s advertisement, I’m not going.[15]