The Waldorf Astoria, New York, January 3rd, 1933
Dearest Family,
I should like to be able to write to you all separately, but I really don’t think it’s feasible, so I must do another general news bulletin. To begin with, thank you all most awfully for your letters, Daddy, Mother, Val and Nora, and Biddy and Val for the cable. The monstrous people at Gramercy Park never forwarded it to Lucerne, where I was at Christmas. So I didn’t get it till yesterday, but as by then I’d stopped expecting one it was all the pleasanter, and I laughed ‘earty.
GUESS who’s just walked in! No? Well I’ll tell you. Joy Fraser. She and Jock are here on a business trip, and they saw my name in the paper this morning. So she dashed round here to see if it was really true, and I’m going out to lunch with them. She’s sitting in my room here now, while I write this and sends you her love, and Jock’s.
But I’ve been talking to her so long that there isn’t much time. So I must quickly tell you about Mr Ford’s Barn Dance. We got to Detroit and were taken out to Dearborn, about 12 miles away, in motor coaches, in the evening of the 30th, and then we all dined in the inn, and were taken in more motor coaches to the Ford Works.
The Barn Dance wasn’t exactly in a barn, but in a building used for exhibitions and there were veiled bits of motor cars hidden under dust sheets at the end of it.
We then danced old fashioned waltzes and quadrilles till 12.0 midnight. We (the team) had been asked to come half an hour early so that we might learn some of the steps from the dancing instructor, and the first set I was in was with Henry Ford himself – call that nothing! There were lots of Detroiters there and they were fearfully interested in the spectacle of the missionaries in evening dress, dancing quadrilles. There were two Scotchmen with us, in kilts, so we got up a specimen of some reel, and danced it to the assembled guests, and they were thrilled.
The next morning we were taken to the old world village and driven to the Posting House in four wheelers, and saw the laboratory where Edison invented the electric bulb, and all the instruments he used – and the first telephone, and goodness knows what all. Some of us, not me I’m sorry to say, saw the chair that Abraham Lincoln was murdered in, all covered with blood stains. It was sent to Edison the same night in a case, I believe, and has been there ever since.
Then we all had our daguerreotypes taken by the original tin type process. I want to send mine back to Henry Ford to get him to autograph it, and then I’ll send it to you. We made ourselves into groups for the most part, and arranged our hats and scarves to look as much like 1860 as possible, and my group was old Bill Pickle the ex-bootlegger who comes into For Sinners Only and is now 83, Kirstie Morrison, Eleanor Forde and Alan Thornhill, who by the way is Gurney McInnes’ (not sure I’ve got the name right, very difficult to read) second cousin. Isn’t it absurd! If I don’t come back he’s going to ask you all over to lunch to give you news of me, and all of us, so I do hope you’ll be able to go.
That same evening was New Year’s Eve and we had a meeting and a New Year’s Eve service. I went to bed till 11.30 and then got up to see the new year in, and we sang Auld Lang Syne in the proper way, and I thought of all of you doing it. Actually you were singing it, if you were, at 7.0’clock just when we were going to have dinner. Sir Walter Windham then led us all to a milk(?) and sandwich party, at which we all shook each other warmly by the hand and sang ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’.
The following afternoon, Jan 1st, we left by the night train for New York – arrived in the morning and had an enormous meeting of 2300 people in the evening, as a result of which, as I say, Joy arrived this morning to see me.
I’ve been smitten with remorse at never having gone to see the Hasletts while I was in Montreal, by the way. They simply went clean out of my head until after I’d gone.
Later
I’ve just come back from lunching with the Frasers who were in great form, and we’re leaving for Briarcliffe, which is where the house party is going to be, at 4.00.
I enclose some Fordiana.
Love from Mary
Happy Noo Year
English