DBB.c/o. Â Friends WVRC
6TH Dec 1919 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 53 Rue do Rivoli
Paris
Dear Pere,
   Thanks for your letter & cards enclosed, of the 4th. I received it this morning (Saturday). It is now the afternoon & I want to get some letters off this week-end.
   When I come home at Xmas I may go up to f60.00 (ie about £1.10.0 at the present rate) for a pair of boots, so will you consider the best place to go to. Boots are extremely dear here (also will you ask Eddie to get me two shaving sticks & two big tooth pastes)
   Also will you buy me “Songs that never grow old” published by Syndicate Publishing Co. – perhaps a little expensive: & “The Globe Piano album No.1.” which is cheap enough but of which there may be a copy about at Tudor or at Edith’s. I want it because it contains some pieces other than are in that other piano album I had. Note that it is the Globe piano album & not song album that I want in this case.
   I should like eggs certainly, but also different kinds of fresh green salads etc.
   Last Sunday Charles & I & Moon(?) went to the Y. -22. Rue de Naples. The concert was not so good, but a girl sang the cigarette song from Carmen with its delightfully catching refrain:-
   “Si tu m’aimes, je ne t’aime pas:
   Si je t’aime, prends garde a toi!!
=  “If thou love me, I love thee not:
   If I love thee, beware!!”
   Sunday night till Monday afternoon Charles was off to Calais re buying some books for the library.
   Monday night he & I, Mark Hayler & Milton Davis went to a large Vegetarian Dinner in the Rue Poissoniere. We were in conversation all the time with two French young ladies who sat on either side of me, with Charles opposite. The dinner was not up to much even for 4.50, but the ladies were interesting. Afterwards there were speeches but we had to leave at 9.10 to catch Charles’ train at the Gare de L’est.
   Tuesday night I read the Nation.
   Wednesday night I went to my little Professor, & we had some piano & French.
   Thursday we had our At-home. Miss Fletcher, two American chaps & I got at a game of 500 – something like Bridge, in which she & I had the luck. We were opponents, but I carried the day. Out of our conversation sprang an arrangement to go & see some vegetarian(?) dancing next Tuesday given by the pupils of Mr. Duncan – a lover of Greek simple life.  I came across these people at the Monday dinner. They wear home spun bath towel sort of robes, & sandals, & long hair –such splendid cranks. How she will like them I don’t know. But she is one of those daring individuals who will do anything once, & likes to be treated as if she were a boy.
   Friday lunch time she & Miss Simms were at Sevres so we had one of our old gay meals.
   In the evening Mark Hayler & I took advantage of some “Faveur” tickets & went to a little theatre (the Nouveau Lyrique)on the Boulevard Clichy, between Pigale & Place Blanche. It was a small theatre so that for our f3.00 we sat in the orchestra stalls almost up against the stage. It was a little Operette with delightfully light music. The good humour of the actors & actresses & “danceuses” made it quite as success, though the technique was not always great. Altogether it was a great joke. I have never seen a ballet from quite so close before. When the girls danced along the front of the foot lights they could have jumped on to our heads. The youngest of the “danceuses” was a fairy, than whom Pan himself could scarsely have invoked a daintier. But why must they pencil their eyes & powder their faces until they appear more like nocturnal sprites, instead of the healthy girls they ought to be? I will always maintain that it is the wretched camouflage which is demoralizing, or which tends to such, in these amusements, & not any approach to the nude at which they may make pretence.
   This morning Miss Elder, Miss Flickinger & Dorothy Brown with others left for USA.
   Love to all. DonÂ
(Mac. Has come to London & I have asked him to call on you. DB.)