After the reception, we got the bride and bridegroom quietly away by the back door, having incarcerated all the newspaper reporters in the little drawing-room.

And now, dear Mother, I must tell you…

Dear Teddy,

Well! We have had our wedding-quite a red-letter day in College history! Miss Lydgate, Miss de Vine, little Chilperic, and yours truly were bridesmaids, with the Warden to give the bride away. No, my dear, we did not array ourselves in fancy costumes. Personally, I thought we should have looked more symmetrical in academic dress, but the bride said she thought ‘poor Peter’ would be quite sufficiently harrowed by headlines as it was. So we just turned up in our Sunday best, and I wore my new furs. It took all our united efforts to put Miss de Vine’s hair up and keep it put.

The Denver family were all there; the Dowager is a darling, like a small eighteenth-century marquise, but the Duchess looked a tartar, very cross, and as stiff as a poker. It was great fun seeing her try to patronise the Warden-needless to say, she got no change out of her! However, the Warden had her turn to be disconcerted in the vestry. She was advancing upon the bridegroom with outstretched hand and a speech of congratulation, when he firmly took and kissed her, and what the speech was to have been we shall now never know! He then proceeded to kiss us all round (brave man!) and Miss Lydgate was so overcome by her feelings that she returned the salute good and hearty. After that, the best man-(the good-looking Saint-George boy)-started in, so there was quite an orgy of embraces, and we had to put Miss de Vine’s hair up again. The bridegroom gave each bridesmaid a lovely crystal decanter and set of cut glasses (for sherry-parties, bless his frivolous heart!) and the Warden got a cheque for £250 for the Latymer Scholarship. which I call handsome.

However, in my excitement I am forgetting all about the bride. I had never imagined that Harriet Vane could look so impressive. I’m always apt to think of her, still, as a gawky and dishevelled First-Year, all bones, with a discontented expression. Yesterday she looked like a Renaissance portrait stepped out of its frame. I put it down first of all to the effect of gold lame, but, on consideration, I think it was probably due to ‘lerve’. There was something rather splendid about the way those two claimed one another, as though nothing and nobody else mattered or even existed; he was the only bridegroom I have ever seen who looked as though he knew exactly what he was doing and meant to do it.

On the way up to Town-oh! by the way. Lord Peter put his foot resolutely down on Mendelssohn and Lohengrin, and we were played out with Bach-the Duke was mercifully taken away from his cross Duchess and handed over to me to entertain. He is handsome and stupid in a county-family kind of way, and looks rather like Henry VIII, de-bloated and de-bearded and brought up to date. He asked me, a little anxiously, whether I thought ‘the girl’ was really keen on his brother, and when I said I was sure of it, confided to me that he had never been able to make Peter out, and had never expected him to settle down, and hoped it would turn out all right, what? Somewhere in the dim recesses of his mind, I think he has a lurking suspicion that Brother Peter may have that little extra something he hasn’t got himself, and that it might even be a good thing to have, if one didn’t have to consider the County.

The reception at the Dowager’s was great fun-and for once, at a wedding, one got enough to eat!-and drink! The people who came off badly were the unhappy reporters, who by this time had got wind of something, and turned up in battalions. They were firmly collared at the doors by two gigantic footmen, and penned up in a room, with the promise that ‘his lordship would see them in a few moments’.

Eventually ‘his lordship’ did go to them-not Lord Peter, but Lord Wellwater, the F.O. man, who delivered to them at great length a highly important statement about Abyssinia, to which they didn’t dare not listen. By the time he had finished, our lord and lady had sneaked out of the back door, and all that was left them was a roomful of wedding-presents and the remains of the cake. However, the Dowager saw them and was quite nice to them, so they tooled off, fairly happy, but without any photographs or any information about the honeymoon. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe anybody, except the Dowager, knows where the bride and bridegroom really have gone to.

Well-that was that; and I do hope they’ll be most frightfully happy. Miss de Vine thinks there is too much intelligence on both sides-but I tell her not to be such a confirmed pessimist. I know heaps of couples who are both as stupid as owls and not happy at all-so it doesn’t really follow, one way or the other, does it?

Yours ever,

Letitia Martin

20 May.-Peter rang up this morning, terribly excited, poor darling, to say that he and Harriet were really and truly engaged, and that the ridiculous Foreign Office had ordered him straight off to Rome again after breakfast-so like them-you’d think they did it on purpose. What with exasperation and happiness, he sounded perfectly distracted. Desperately anxious I should get hold of H. and make her understand she was welcome-poor child, it is hard for her, left here to face us all, when she can scarcely feel sure of herself or anything yet. Have written to her at Oxford, telling her as well as I could how very, very glad I was she was making Peter so happy, and asking when she would be in Town, so that I could go and see her. Dear Peter! Hope and pray she really loves him in the way he needs; shall know in a minute when I see her.

21 May. Was reading The Stars Look Down (Mem. very depressing, and not what I expected from the title-think I must have had a Christmas carol in mind, but remember now it has something to do with the Holy Sepulchre-must ask Peter and make sure) after tea, when Emily announced ‘Miss Vane’. Was so surprised and delighted, I jumped up quite forgetting poor Ahasuerus, who was asleep on my knee, and was dreadfully affronted. I said, ‘My dear, how sweet of you to come’-she looked so different I shouldn’t have known her-but of course it was 5 years ago, and nobody can look her best in the dock at that dreary Old Bailey. She walked straight up to me, rather as if she was facing a firing squad, and said abruptly, in that queer deep voice of hers, ‘Your letter was so kind-I didn’t quite know how to answer it, so I thought I’d better come. Do you honestly not mind too much about Peter and me? Because I love him quite dreadfully, and there’s just nothing to be done about it.’ So I said, ‘Oh, do please go on loving him, because he wants I it so much, and he really is the dearest of all my children, only it doesn’t do for parents to say so-but now I can say it to you, and I’m so glad about it.’ So I kissed her, and Ahasuerus was so furious that he ran all his claws hard into her legs and I apologised and smacked him and we sat down on the sofa, and she said, ‘Do you know, I’ve been saying to myself all the way up from Oxford, “If only I can face her and it really is all right, I shall have somebody I can talk to about Peter”. That’s the one thing that kept me from turning back halfway.’ Poor child, that really was all she wanted she was quite in a daze, because apparently it all happened quite late on Sunday evening, and they sat up half the night, kissing one another madly in a punt, poor things, and then he had to go, making no arrangements for anything, and if it hadn’t been for his signet-ring that he put on her hand all in a hurry at the last moment it might have been all a dream. And after holding out against him all these years, she’d given way all of a piece, like falling down a well, and didn’t seem to know what to do with herself. Said she couldn’t remember ever having been absolutely and shatteringly happy since she was a small child, and it made her feel quite hollow inside. On inquiry, I found she must be literally hollow inside, because as far as I could make out she hadn’t eaten or slept to speak of since Sunday. Sent Emily for sherry and biscuits, and made her-H., I mean-stay to dinner. Talked Peter till I could almost hear him saying, ‘Mother dear, you are having an orgy’ (or is it orgie?)… H. caught sight of that David Bellezzi photograph of Peter which he dislikes so much, and I asked what she thought of it. She said, ‘Well, it’s a nice English gentleman, but it isn’t either the lunatic, the lover or the poet, is it?’ Agree with her. (Can’t think why I keep the thing about, except to please David.) Brought out family album. Thankful to say she didn’t go all broody and possessive over Peter kicking baby legs on a rug-can’t stand maternal young women, though P. really a very comic infant with his hair in a tuft, but he controls it very well now, so why rake up the past? She instantly seized on the ones Peter calls ‘Little Mischief and ‘The Lost Chord’ and said, ‘Somebody who understood him took those-was it Bunter?’-which looked like second sight. Then she confessed she felt horribly guilty about Bunter and hoped his feelings weren’t going to be hurt, because if he gave notice it would break Peter’s heart. Told her quite frankly it would depend entirely on her, and I felt sure Bunter would never go unless he was pushed out. H. said, ‘But you don’t think I’d do that. That’s just it. I don’t want Peter to lose anything.’ She looked quite distressed, and we both wept a little, till it suddenly struck us as funny that we should both be crying over Bunter, who would have been shocked out of his wits if he’d known it. So we cheered up and I gave her the photographs and asked what plans they had, if they had got so far. She said P. didn’t know when he’d be back, but she thought she’d better finish her present book quickly, so as to be ready when the time came and have enough money for clothes. Asked if I could tell her the right tailor-shows sense, and would pay for really inspired dressing, but must be careful what I advise, as find I have no idea what people make by writing books. Ignorant and stupid of me-so important not to hurt her pride… Altogether most reassuring evening. Telephoned long enthusiastic wire to Peter before bed. Hope Rome is not too stuffy and hot, as heat does not suit him.