Dowlais Rectory
Glam
March 29th 1914
My dear Juliet
Your letter was such a pleasant surprise; it was very nice of you to find time to write to me. I much appreciated the Greek on the off side!
So you have been to see the flat. I saw it when it was full of Mrs Prangley’s furniture, I expect it looks very different now. Your news of my armchair grieves me deeply, I had a lot to do with the choosing of the armchairs and tried each one before it was bought and I thought I had chosen comfortable ones. I see I shall have to make use of the couch and keep the armchair for visitors! Arthur has had quite a lot of visitors, Mela hasn’t been yet, has she? Perhaps she and Kathleen will go some day. All the others have been. I am very glad to hear that the best man approves of the flat etc.
It is time now for the bridegroom to begin to feel nervous. I get very nervous at times and wonder how I shall get through it all. My wedding dress arrived yesterday. I wonder what you will all think of it. It is of white satin and my veil is of tulle. One of the women told me last week that when Irene received her present from them she couldn’t make a speech because she was crying. I hope that was not a hint to me that the proper thing to do is to cry! I don’t feel like crying and the only point about it that I can see is it does away with the necessity of a speech! The present is a case of fish knives and forks and servers. Very nice things to have and a very sensible thing to give.
Geoffrey, Rene’s little boy, has been staying with us. He is a dear baby and we should have liked to have him up on the day of the wedding but the house will be too full. He is Arthur’s god-son and very fortunately Arthur came down for a weekend whilst Geoff was here so they met.
I wonder what you will think of the bridesmaids’ dresses. I like them very much and so do all here. The two shades are very pretty and the dresses are very prettily made.
This is an awful rigmarole of “wedding”! But I talk and write and think of nothing else just now. I hope you are not all very tired of it. Poor May and Kathleen get nothing from me but “clothes”. They must be very weary of them.
When do your holidays begin? I suppose you go home for Easter. I hope you have had a nice term, Spring terms can be very horrid.
Last week I made curtains for the flat bedrooms, I hope they will look nice when they are up. We are putting pink ones in the pink room and blue ones in the blue room. I wish these next few days would hurry up and go. I want Wednesday fortnight to come now. Things are ready and it is stupid to have to wait. I suppose Arthur is on his way back to London now, I wonder how he liked hearing his banns read. I haven’t been to hear mine.
We hope to have Mrs Hayward and Mela down for the 15th but just at present neither is certain whether she will be able to come. Mrs Hayward may be going to Italy before Easter and in that case we shall not have the pleasure of having her here.
Have you done any theatres lately? I haven’t been since I went to see “Quality Street” and “Peter Pan” just after Xmas. Mother says I spend all Sunday writing letters so I suppose I had better stop. But there are so many other things to do in the week that one welcomes Sunday and gets all one’s letters off.
With love.
Yours affectionately
Mary C Williams
