weekâs hotel bill this morning, much steeper than Iâd anticipated, what with assorted lunches and dinners and a 12 per cent surcharge added for tips. I just took it up the street to Deutschâs, to Mr. Tammer, their accountant. Heâs a solemn, bespectacled gentleman who gives you a sudden warm smile when you say hello to him. Heâs got all my âadvanceâ money in cash in the office safe and heâs doling it out to me weekly. He gave me cash to pay the hotel bill and ten pounds, which is my Allowance for the week; when I run short I dip into my brotherâs hundred. I had ten of the hundred with me for him to change into pounds, and he got out all his charts and machines and figured the latest exchange rate very tensely and meticulously, God forbid he should cheat me out of fifteen cents.
There was a letter for me at Deutschâs which intrigues me, itâs from a man I never knew existed. Nobody I corresponded with at Marks & Co. ever mentioned him.
Dear Miss Hanff,
I am the son of the late Ben Marks of Marks & Co. and want you to know how delighted I am that you are here, and how very much my wife and I would like you to dine with us.
I do not know where you are staying so could you please ring me at the above telephone numbers? Thesecond one is an answering service and any message left there will reach me.
Weâre both looking forward to meeting you.
Sincerely,
Leo Marks
The secretary who gave me the letter told me he called and asked where he could reach me.
âBut we never tell anyone where youâre staying,â she said. âWe just ask them to get in touch with you through us.â
I took a very dim view of this and went into Carmenâs office to straighten it out.
âCarmen, dear,â I said, âI am not the kind of author who wants to be protected from her public. Any fan who phones might want to feed me, and I am totally available as a dinner guest. Just give out my address all over.â
She said there are at least two interviews to come and sheâll make them both over lunch. Some interviewer asked me if I planned âto buy silver and cashmere hereâor just books?â I said I planned to buy nothing over here, everything I see in a shop window has a price tag reading âOne Day Less in London.â
Off to Parliament.
Midnight
IâVE BEEN TO THE OLD VIC, shades of my stage-struck youth, walking into that theater was a thrill. Nora andSheila and I saw Mrs. Warrenâs Profession. The theater has the atmosphere of the old Met in New York and the Academy of Music in Philadelphia; the audience files in with a kind of festive reverence, like people going to church on Christmas Eve.
Sheila had trouble parking the car, she got to the theater three minutes after the curtain was up and was promptly shunted off downstairs to the lounge to watch the first act on closed-circuit TV, you do not trail down the aisle after Mass has started.
Iâll never understand why they did Mrs. Warrenâs Profession in turn-of-the-century costumes. Politicians and businessmen donât own whorehouses any more? Poor girls are not expected to starve virtuously rather than eat unvirtuously any more? Moral pillars of society donât keep mistresses in country cottages any more? Who does such a play as a costume piece belonging to some other era? Bernie Shaw would have a fit.
I asked Nora about Leo Marks, she said she only met him and his wife a few times but âthey seemed a nice young couple.â She said heâs a writer.
Iâm sitting here eating vitamin C, think Iâm getting a cold. Tried reading Mary Baker Eddy once, shouldâve stuck with it.
Saturday, June 26
It finally turned sunny and warm, thank God, so I could wear a skirt for PB. (Headline in the newspaper read ENGLAND SWELTERS IN 75-DEGREE HEAT.) Wore my brown linen skirt and the new white blazer, and he beamed and said, âYou look charming,â