.MTQ1MQ.MTI1ODcz

ticket sales. It's not just one of those flag-waving-things. A busload of young people came and parked out in front of the theater that Saturday I attended the play, the passengers, from out of town, also attended. Even the audience was great that day, only applauding at the proper intervals instead of 1. The actors as they appeared. 2. Every punch line or ringing statement, both of which crimes I trace to those awful radio/tv studio "warm-ups" that have conditioned people who don't ordinarily attend the real theater. But I'm probably too much theater-conscious after seeing plays for more that fifty years (when I had the price, which nowadays is just plain awful, yet are a heluva lot more justified than movie prices). I never see movies at cinemas here anymore. Imagine, former 25-cent joints charging 3 bucks & up!

   I've been re-reading GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT, the book by Robt. Graves, which you gave me.  While living at Maidstone, the BBC-tv had a semi-documentary on WW-1 about the Somme, where so much incompetence on the part of generals was exposed, and where so many lives were lost needlessly.  BBC never hesitated to criticize govt. when it wanted to.  Mrs. Harris' brother (my wife was engaged to him) died in that awful long siege.  He'd been rejected early in the war because of a childhood injury, was gladly accepted in the latter part of the war as a stretcher bearer.  Was actually blown to pieces.  He that came from a large family that never knew any of even small luxuries, barely ate regularly.  I met his mother and father.  The mother was of a genteel family that came from Whitstable (famous for oysters).  She had to "go into service," where she had the misfortune to meet the tall man Gates, who was a gardener on a rich man's estate, and married him thereby entering a lifetime of drudgery and poverty (but my thoughts on this - similar to my wife's - must remain confidential).  In            A VILLAGE GIRL, the authoress, who must have come from around Maidstone, doesn't dwell on the real horrors of "going out to service," which was the fate of so many poor girls, which also contributed to the ranks of prostitutes, because of the conditions of such employment.   We've had parallels here in the mining areas - Woolworth Stores, the silk stocking industry for a few, that paid girls so little in past periods.  I'll be buying another copy to send away to England to a cousin of my wife,  who is another Village Girl.  I recently won 125 bucks in our union lottery, to which I pay 1.00 monthly.  The little Italian, Jiamp, who came briefly the day you moved from Green Street, won 1,000 dollars in that same drawing, he being only one number away from my number.  He's still working on the RR, a bro.-in-law of city fireman you know. 

Regards, Mead P.S. Boughton as a village began under the Normans as Bocton Monchesney, [handwritten in left margin] P.P.S. I trust the Listener come to you regularly. I ordered it for you last Oct. The Longshoreman's strike delayed many issues.