2110-7-10-9

Government House. Ottawa.

25th May, 1936.

Dear Caroline

I am writing early in the week, for we are going on tour tonight to Western Ontario, and will not be back until Saturday evening. We are enormously looking forward to your arrival on the 25th June. We shall be in Quebec until about the 10th July; then you will come on tour with us in the Maritimes, which will be very pleasant. We go West about August 6th.

I have not much further news. My fly bites have abated, and I looked fairly respectable when I addressed the Royal Society on Friday night.

We had a very pleasant tea-party with the Prime Minister at his country house on Saturday, and a long walk. We have the Arthur Murrays (Elibank's brother) here for a few days, and for the weekend we had a most delightful French-Canadian couple in big business, and this forms a most valuable trait d'union.

My mother is really wonderful, and I think is enjoying herself enormously. Nan is too thin, and I am going to have her veted by the doctor today. I think she may have too low a blood pressure.

Alastair has got a young Eton friend, called Alastair Campbell, coming to stay with us, and is off to meet him in Montreal today. The weather is warm, but with a pleasant wind, which keeps

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the flies off. The real gruelling heat will begin next month.

As I expected, the President of the U.S.A. cannot manage June 8th because of Congress. It is now proposed that he should come to us at Quebec, which would be in many ways better, for it would emphasise what he wants emphasised, that his visit is less an official than a personal visit to myself. There are apparently many things he wants to discuss with me, and heaven forbid that I should discourage that, for our relations with the U.S.A. are the most important things in the world at this moment.

My brother Walter arrives in New York on the 4th of June, and my sister and mother may possibly go down to meet him there. He will have three weeks here and then take them home. He finds it very difficult to get away, which is the Nemesis which follows being a local Pooh-bah!

Alice seems to be quite well and enjoying herself, and Billy to be busy and cheerful. John is quite his old self again, and greatly beloved here, especially by old men, to whom he is exquisitely polite.

Much love. John