20th February 1938

20th February 1938

Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, Restaurant Walterspiel, Munchen to 27 Queen Square, Bath

Dear Madeleine!

Thank you awfully much for your letter and the Valentine. It is a charming custom to send Valentines. I am sorry I can’t get any here. Besides it is much too late now. We are here in Munich now and are very busy enjoying life. We arrived the 3rd and are staying here till 2nd March because in Lent we are not allowed to dance. I am very busy going to parties. Today we are giving a fancy- dress ball for 140 people. The next four days are big balls too, and cocktail parties and tea-parties. It is such fun to go dancing. I wonder how much of my feet will be left when I go home to Sarvar. Mammi is here too and Muck and Baby. Baby is having sewing lessons but she can’t work in the morning when she was dancing 5 or 6 hours in the night. I do hope our party will be a success, but I’m afraid we have not got enough boys. 16 said they could not come. I am going as Lady Blakeney, you know, the wife of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Baby has got a costume of the Charles I period and Muck goes as a Celtic woman with a big reddish blonde wig. She looks awful with it. I was twice at the opera and saw Margarethe by Gounod which has a most wonderful music. Do you remember Jeanette Macdonald singing parts of it in “San Francisco”. And then I saw a new German opera “Schwarzer Peter”. It is rather stupid and for small children, but the music is nice. I saw a couple of films here but they were all German. I am very sorry they don’t give English or American films here. I hope your “Living Bridge” went off all right. I go skating very often. It is such fun to watch all those clever children in the ice rink. But I always feel ashamed of being so heavy and clumsy compared to them. Ludwig was out last Sunday and I am awfully proud to have got such a smart soldier-brother. I was skiing yesterday for the first time this year. It was great fun and I fell a lot, but I was lucky and neither broke my legs nor my neck. I feel rather stiff however. I am just waiting for the hairdresser to do my hair. I am going to have two beautiful shoulder long curls. The whole day

we were busy preparing things for our ball. Muck and I hope to go and see Papi’s two unmarried sisters for some days after carnival. And I hope there is enough snow left till then that we may go on skiing.

I am already quite nervous about the ball tonight. It is so difficult to keep smiling and talking polite conversation the whole evening. Brrrrr-I am so shy and nervous about it all. I am very proud because I danced off some of my fat. I must stop now as my hair is all gone dancing too. And I cant think of anything interesting to write to you just now. Good-bye for today and here is my fondest love all for you.

Loll