The Grove School
Highgate N
Sunday March 12th /16
My darling Mother
Thank you so much for your lovely long letter which I was so pleased to get.
It is so nice to have a really nice day at last with the snow all melted and the sun out. I hope the weather will be really nice to you now after having kept you in for so long.
I am very sorry to hear about poor Norah; it is dreadfully sad for Aunt Edith. They do seem to have been unfortunate lately. I hope you will be able to manage all right without Ethel; if you can't, you must send for me! It is rather a pity in that way that my holidays are not earlier, though really I am glad, as I hoped they would fit in fairly well with Kath's. I must work morning and afternoon next holidays, I think, or else morning and evening.
Yes, Miss Lacey is much better and has really been quite careful of herself on the whole.
No, we have no lack of food, we can eat as much as we want. I think personally she would find it more truly economical to give us a little more meat as then we should eat less, one has to eat such a heap of this vegetarian stuff, especially in the cold weather which we have had lately.
I had a very nice time yesterday. I met Kath at 1.45 at Tottenham Court Road, and it was such a horrible damp cold day that she thought the only to do was to go to a theatre. So we went to see "Peg o' My Heart" at the Globe Theatre. We tried to get in to "Romance" but the Pit was full, so we had to try elsewhere. We liked it very much, and Moya Mannering as "Peg" was perfectly charming. The piece is an amusing comedy about a very delightful Irish girl who is a "poor relation", and how she lives for a month with her very stiff and starchy and thoroughly awful relations, and what a time she give them. There are two dear dogs in the play; one of them was rather like Wipers. After the play we met Jack for tea at Alan's.
I am going to Sydenham for the weekend of Kath's birthday, and we are going to do another theatre. Awful of us in war-time, isn't it? But I am classing it with what Miss Lacey calls "healthy recreation which does you good and stimulates your work" - I don't know whether Miss Lacey herself would class it as such.
Last Wednesday I went to a Students' Chamber Concert at the Royal Academy of Music; Vera Jones has singing lessons there, and had two tickets given her for this concert. Miss Lacey told her she might ask anyone whom she liked who was older than her, and she very kindly asked me. The concert was a good one, especially a song by a young Welsh girl, and a violin concerto by a child of fourteen.
I hope to goodness the tribunal won't be such fools as to let off the twins. I would dearly love to be at home to see them go!
My show pupil's name is Eileen Nicholson; she learnt with a governess before, I think.
Bluebell enjoyed the dance very much indeed. Yes, she has grown up a very pretty girl, and will look very nice I think when she puts her hair up.
How very nice of dear old Boo to send us all something: the little silk shawls sound very pretty. I wonder what yours will turn out to be. Where was Mela’s last letter posted from? I suppose it is too soon to expect one to come through from Mesopotamia yet.
It is continually in the papers that German prisoners all declare the Kaiser is having his last fling; I only hope it is true, it does seem they are really getting desperate now. Miss Lacey was telling us the other day that the Kaiser is calling together a meeting of the Princes of Germany to consider the terms of peace - what sort of peace I wonder! Miss Lacey is quite cheerful about the war which is a good sign as she is a confirmed pessimist in many ways.
Joyce had such a very nice letter from her French correspondent, she must be a nice girl I think. I hope I shall like mine as well, she has not written yet, but I hope I shall hear before long.
We had quite a good meeting of the Debating Club last Friday; the subject was "That Macbeth was cleverer than Lady Macbeth". The opposition won by a large majority; I was on the winning side.
We have all had to squash together in one room today as there is scarcely any coal left, and although a new lot has been ordered in for ages it hasn't come yet. I hope it will come tomorrow or we shall be without any fires. It is lucky that we cook by gas.
Please thank May very much for her letter, and will you tell Det I will write to her soon to Deal.
With much love to all.
Your affectionate daughter
Juliet E Sladden
