Love from Boy Page 20
Yesterday I dined at the White House with the family. Also present were Elmer Davis (their Minister of Information), General George, head of the V.S. Transport Command, and Mrs. Ernest Hemingway. We had a lot of cocktails first with Mrs. R. doing the pouring, then a good meal at which everyone was in fine form and we went down in the lift to the private cinema and saw ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’. The private cinema is quite something. After you’ve all got seated, great swing doors slide noiselessly together and an enormous screen descends automatically from the roof. Everything is done very efficiently and with great comfort.
Martha Hemingway is a good type. She uses as much bad language in her talk as her husband does in his books.
I was offered a Staff College Course the other day, but I said I would rather not, because I may possibly be given a more interesting (from my point of view) job, about which I’m afraid I can tell you nothing . . .
Lots of love to all
Roald
Wing Commander Roald Dahl and his literary hero, Ernest Hemingway, in London, 1944. Roald got to meet many of the great and good in the literary world while he was in Washington. He thought Hemingway “a strange and secret man” for whom he felt “overwhelming love and respect.”
December 16th
Washington
Dear Mama
It’s time I wrote you another letter.
Our warm spell broke suddenly last week and ever since it has been as ‘cold as a frog in an icebound pool—cold as the tip of an Eskimo’s tool, cold as buggery and that’s bloody chilly, but not as cold as our little Willie—’cause he’s dead poor sod.’ It has been very cold, and serious flu epidemics are raging throughout Washington and New York. Something like 25% of all employees everywhere have been absent, blowing their noses in bed. So far I seem to have escaped.
Had to go up to New York again last week. Stayed in Helen Ogden Reid’s house and met a lot of people. Had a meal with Paul Robeson who is a fantastic type. Brilliant scholar, speaks 4 languages including Russian, is a barrister and one of the best read men I’ve met. In addition he’s quite a good singer!
Noel Coward has just this moment phoned up from New York. He is coming down tonight and we will eat together, not especially because I know him, but because he wants an air passage somewhere!
You ought to get this just about Christmas time, so happy Christmas to everyone including the dogs . . .
Lots of love to all
Roald
For Alf: ‘What’ll you ’ave?’ said the butler standing there picking his nose.
‘’Ard boiled eggs you bastard. You can’t put your fingers in there.’
January 13th 1944
Washington
Dear Mama
Had dinner last Sunday with a fabulous and rather tipsy dame called Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean. Her only claim to fame is that she owns the Hope Diamond and wears it constantly and is still alive. Everyone else who has owned it has either died quickly or been killed. It’s a hell of a diamond; bright blue colour of an aquamarine and about this shape and size, and she walks around in her enormous house with this bloody thing around her neck and a small vicious dog under her arm. ‘A monkey dog,’ she says. ‘Only six in the world,’ to which a man called Frank Waldrop replied after it bit him on the finger, ‘Six too bloody many.’* Dinner of course was eaten off gold plate, but it tasted just the same and the butler who served me farted twice; at least I think it was him, unless it was Mr. John L. Lewis who was sitting on my right.
It’s really a pretty bogus setup, but on the other hand is good value because it’s like going to the circus and getting a free meal served into the bargain . . .
Love
Roald
February 8th 1944
Washington
Dear Mama
I just got a cold; the first one that I’ve had for many months, since last spring, I think. There’s not much point in telling you because by the time you get this, it will be gone—or I hope so anyway.
Last week a friend of mine in the embassy called Paul Scott Rankin went on leave. He left behind him for me to take care of, his enormous brown bulldog, called Winston. I said I didn’t mind; he looked all right. But Winston is no ordinary old dog. He is stupid and lecherous and cantankerous and all the time he grunts and snorts and slobbers. Paul said, let him sleep in your bedroom and he will be all right. He snorts all of the time, but you will find that pleasant and soporific. So the first night Winston slept in my bedroom. He snored and grunted and made a great noise all night, and I slept very little.
In the morning I took him into the embassy and let him sit in my office. But he farted continuously and with great gusto. Once he did it whilst I was dictating to the secretary, and I had to turn him out on the spot so that she wouldn’t think it was me. But he scratched on the door and I had to let him in again and open all the windows. He continued to fart regularly and contentedly for the rest of the day, and I was very cold with the windows open. Once when I went out of the room to see someone, I came back to find him sitting on top of my desk amidst piles of secret papers and red boxes which had G.R. in gold on their lids. I threw him off and he farted again.
That evening I had supper with crown prince Olav and Martha at the Norwegian embassy so while I went in I left Winston in the car. After dinner I said that I would have to go out and give Winston a walk and let him have a pee. They all said, ‘Bring him in.’ I said, ‘He farts; he isn’t any good and he has no respect for royalty.’ They said, ‘Bring him in.’ So I brought him in and he spent the rest of the evening slinking around the room casting lustful eyes in the direction of the crown princess and belching quickly. He only farted once there, and they thought it was a Norwegian ambassador, so that was all right. The ambassador was embarrassed.
That evening I locked him in the kitchen. In the night he broke down the door, after relieving himself on the floor, and came rushing upstairs to the bathroom, where he shat hugely and decisively in the middle of my pink bathmat. I did not sleep much that night either.
The next day at the embassy was very much the same as the one before. Then in the evening I was dining with Carlos and Maria Martins, the Brazilian ambassador and wife, so I took him in. Now Carlos Martins is a great connoisseur of food and wines, but with Winston lying underneath the table during dinner, he was not able to smell either the bouquet of the wine or the aroma of the food. He smelt only the smell which this wretched dog was making below. Carlos said after dinner, ‘Winston makes much bad smell, eh?’ I said yes he did, he was constipated. Then the next morning, completely exasperated, I took him to a luxurious and expensive dog’s home and told them to keep him until Paul came back. Never get a bulldog . . .
Much hard work here.
Lots of love to all
Roald
March 29th 1944
Washington
Dear Mama
Not much news here except that spring is on the way, and the Japanese cherry blossom will soon be out along the streets of Washington. The weather is warmer, and people are beginning to dread the summer once more.
Went to have dinner with Mrs. Bloody Hope Diamond, as Alf calls her, again last Sunday. This time everything was gold. All the plates, all the knives, forks, spoons and salt cellars etc. etc. Somehow I didn’t notice it at first, and just picked up my knife and started cutting my meat. I said—‘Good God, this knife’s blunt as hell.’ ‘Of course it is, you bloody fool,’ said Mrs. McLean, from the other end of the table, ‘it’s gold.’ By then I’d bent it almost double, because it was so soft, and I caused considerable surprise by asking the Butler to get me a steel one which would cut. I’ve seen some foolish things in my time but never anything more foolish than a bunch of dopes trying to cut up their pieces of rather tough beef with blunt soft golden knives. And I couldn’t put one in my pocket because there was a detective hanging around the room with
one hand in his pocket . . .
Lots of love to all
Roald
August 25th
Transcontinental and Western Air Inc
Kansas City
Missouri
OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
Dear Mama
I’m not the president of TWA, but I’m sitting beside the swimming pool of the president Jack Frye, and it is very fine here in the sun, but difficult to write lying on my back. Every now and then I will gently slide into the pool and cruise around a bit to cool down then come back and lie on my back again.
Went to New York last week to see the doctors who took lots of pictures of my back and who didn’t seem to know very much about it at all. No results really, but I think it’s getting better slowly. Then popped out to Long Island for a day staying at Millicent Rogers house. Fantastic business. There also were Cecil Beaton, Schiaparelli (I call her shocking) and many other equally strange and rustic types. Women with ruby necklaces and sapphire necklaces, and God knows what else sauntered in and out and down below amidst miles of corridors. There were swimming baths, Turkish baths, colonic lavages, heat treatment rooms and everything else which is calculated to make the prematurely aging playboys and play women age a little less quickly. I didn’t like it much.
Must drive into town right away to get this letter to the man.
Lots of love to all
Roald
September 30th
Dear Mama
I found my old pen so now it’ll be a hippopotamus walking across the page instead of an underfed spider.
That was terrific news about Louis and Meriel, but I think someone might have told me a bit earlier, when it happened (one day after my birthday, wasn’t it?). I’ve never been an uncle before, and I think that all in all it’s a pretty fine show. I would like to see Louis handling the baby. Tell him that he better lay off and leave it to Meriel because I do not wish to have any of my nieces or godchildren dropped upon the floor. Tell them also that if he wanted to, he could make a drawing of her and send it to me. My christening present will have to wait until I can bring it home, but that’ll be sooner or later. I am much honoured at being a godfather and an uncle.
Furthermore the child has Norwegian, French and English blood and should therefore be a whizzer. Tell Louis that I will write to my niece in a few days’ time. As a matter of fact the telegram came last Thursday when I was in New York, and my secretary phoned it through to me. I gave her the reply and told her to send it off. Who are the other godparents, with whom I shall have to grapple in regard to the sexual and religious life of Policarp? All, I hope, well-qualified and broad-minded persons . . .
I’m trying to write another story, but there’s not much time and it’s pretty distracting here. Did you get the last one They Shall Not Grow Old. They seem to like it up in New York, and keep telling me to write a novel. I tell them in five years perhaps . . .
Lots of love to all
Roald
November 10th
Washington
Dear Mama
There is a large bridge near my house, which was designed by Theodore Roosevelt, and on each corner there is an enormous bronze statue of a bison. Now someone has painted the prominent personal organs of these bison bright red, so that everyone who crosses the bridge stops and roars with laughter. It is a very fine sight and I don’t know who’s going to take the paint off. You can’t really have a fireman or someone leaning a ladder against the animal, ascending it and solemnly scraping the paint off the penises. A crowd would gather and laugh at him, and photographers from a bawdy newspaper would get a wonderful photograph.
I don’t know why I tell you this, except that I’ve just driven over the bridge and arrived here at my office, and it really was a very fine sight.
Well, thank goodness election is over, with the expected and correct result. I’ve seen a lot of Henry Wallace recently, and everyone is wondering what his next job will be. Something in the cabinet, I think. He’s in fine form, and going very strong. On election night I went to Evalyn McLean’s. There were about 60 people to dinner—‘just a small party’ she said. I saw that she wasn’t wearing the Hope diamond. She had another stone about the size of a garden roller around her neck. ‘Where is the Hope?’ I said. ‘Tonight,’ she answered, ‘I put it down here,’ and she pointed down into her strange and padded bosom. ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Well, because it’s safer there. Twenty years ago it could’ve been the least safe place of all!’ And she roared with laughter and turned round and repeated the story to a couple of Supreme Court judges and an ambassador. She’s a very peculiar woman . . .
Lots of love to all
Roald
November 23rd
Washington
Dear Mama
Today is Thanksgiving Day, and no one is doing any work except us. The streets are quite empty, but it is lovely weather, warmish with the yellow sun.
Last Saturday I dined with President Roosevelt and Mrs. R. Lots of fun. There were only about six people there. The Pres. was wheeled in while we were knocking back a cocktail in the Red Room, and with him, in front of him bounced his famous Aberdeen terrier Fala. He looked fit and very hearty and was obviously feeling good after his election success.
At dinner I sat next but one to him, and talked a lot to him. Dinner is his great time of relaxation, when he tells jokes and reminisces about his ancestors, and once when he told quite a good one he looked at me and said —‘I told that one to the King.’ I said, ‘Oh.’
Anyway, we all told jokes, and everyone laughed and a good time was had by all. But the president is dieting. He had a little clear soup. And just a tiny piece of roast duck, and a spoonful of water ice. That was all. He said to me—‘You are looking very well today.’ I said, ‘I’m feeling lousy.’
. . .
Lots of love to all
Roald
January 8th 1945
Temple
Texas
Dear Mama
Deep in the heart of Texas. Where the deer and the antelope roam. Cowpunchers and cattle ranchers and hillbillies and steers and bulls and cows and cowpunchers with piles because they’ve lived too long on a horse and miles and bloody miles of prairie and cowpunchers and cattle ranchers and hillbillies and steers and bulls and cows. And nice warm weather like April in England.
By the time you get this you’ll either have a telegram telling that I’ve had the operation, or I won’t have had it. I’m certainly being well looked after. Dr. Scott, who is a great friend of mine, is head of this huge Scott White clinic, and the town is more or less built around it. People come from all over America to go there. At the moment I’m staying in his house with his wife and two children, a very fine house with everything one wants everywhere. Yesterday and the day before, I went to the clinic for examinations and X-rays and as Arthur Scott was with me, there was no waiting anywhere, just one thing after another and with great speed and efficiency. Tomorrow I go in for final X-ray and it rather looks as though I’ll have to have an operation, on the base of the spine which will keep me in bed for about four weeks. It’s just something pressing on a nerve somewhere. But they are going to make absolutely sure before they do it.
I flew down here about four days ago. At least I flew to Fort Worth Texas, which takes about eight or nine hours from Washington, then Arthur S. fetched me in the car and we drove to Temple, about 150 miles. 150 miles is nothing in Texas. People drive that far just to go out to dinner in the evening.
The animals around here are deer, antelope, coyotes and rattlesnakes. That’s about all. The men go out and hunt deer; and there is much venison eaten; but it isn’t as good as Norwegian venison. They don’t hang it up at all before eating—so it doesn’t have that marvellous high taste . . .
Lots of love to all,
Roald
As I said if you have
n’t had a telegram before you get this I shan’t have had my operation.
[undated]
Temple
Texas
Dear Mama
I’m sitting up now, so I can write you a letter. I’ve been in bed now altogether two weeks and three days. I went in on a Monday and had a Lipiodol injection into my spine so that they could take some X-rays. That took a little getting over and gave me pain in my bottom and down the legs, but they operated on the following Thursday, at eight in the morning. It took them about two hours. I had a marvellous surgeon called Charles Simpson, who does brain operations as well—also there were about four other doctors in the room, one a bone grafting specialist, because they thought that they might have to take a bit of bone out of my hip and graft it to the spine; but luckily they got it done without that. The operation is called an intervertebral disc—it’s where a piece of the cartilage which separates the vertebrae in your spine gets squashed inwards and presses on the nerves in the spinal column. I have had marvellous attention, because I am a great personal friend of Arthur Scott. (The Scott of Scott and White.) This is a hospital with about 300 beds, and specializing in every kind of work. It’s for poor people as well as rich, and you pay according to your income. All the doctors, including the surgeons, have a fixed salary, so they treat everyone equally well—rich or poor. The only thing is that you can hire and pay for a good private room if you can afford it. I’ve got the best room in the place, with private bathroom and lavatory, and wireless and telephone, and a special 8 foot long bed! The nurses are very fine and always at your service.
My wound has almost stopped hurting now. It took some time because it was pretty deep; and they cut through a lot of muscles. This morning I stood up and walked a few paces, and everything was fine except for considerable pain in the nerves in my bottom, which they say is the Lipiodol, which they injected into my spine, which they will draw out again soon . . .