1 A letter from
Hugh Spender
will be forwarded
tomorrow. I believe that
I am responsible for
the rule about
the promotion of staff
officers. This is
bad luck on the
others! Nov 5 . 1915 If the p were here she would pretend to
tremble, for the b w is still growling fiercely at his mail of yesterday. Luckily there were other
letters, & as these have to be answered—which is hardly the case with the scrap ! — I shall cut
this down. I have had a certain amount of intercourse with Gen Nugent lately. We are both pretty grim
& kind of walk round each other, but there has been no outburst yet. It will come, & may
clear the air. Everyone else nearly has had one. He is
not in the best of tempers as he & the new Gen' 2 Allenby are not much in the way of friends,
quite au contraire I believe! A characteristic
outburst occurred yesterday at teatime when there
was only Indian tea. We all very busily
made conversation but the China tea could
not be suppressed & came up like a volcano
every now & then. I saw H P yesterday & and begin to think he
may not be sorry to go. If it is that he
realizes that he is unfitted as I hope, it is
all right, but if it is simply that the trench
life does not appeal to the inner man as
those with him think, well...! It is almost time for Chichester to come back 3 but really I do not expect him, tho' I think it
would be a good thing for him to come & be found
out. Otherwise he will have some well thought
out excuse to veneer his position in Ulster later. I have written to Col Wallace saying I
hoped Rex would go to his new battalion as I
did not want him out here till the spring.
Rex I know would not stand the winter in
the trenches but when next spring comes he
must of course take his chance. The service I think is excellent &
Col Russell ought to be pleased at this
form of flattery which Richardson has also
adopted. 4 Russel is not quite well & it says
much for his manners that he is just as
nice as ever. As you give me no length of visit to
Rugby this letter will go to 29 to a very
very spoilt p r. I am longing to hear the result of your
visit to Reading & to know whether you have been to
Lady Carson's or not yet, & what you are
going to do , but I am notimpatient for
a decision only to know the decision when made
which need not be for another month. Still a little love left for a very very spoilt
p r from the B W. W.BSpender P.S.Note that Walter M's letter>is for certain. I think I should have
liked the spectator but it's not quite fair on your perhaps.