Page:FM Bailey letters from LA Bethell.pdf/20

Letter 12, 20th January 1938    I have just been to the Foreign Office, to make a formal protest against Mussolini's excluding Maga from Italy – part of his new anti-British campaign of pinpricks – and have pointed out that we are quite non -political. They are going to make a ‘preferential’ case of it (a good commentary of the standing of Maga in high places) and the despatch on the subject goes off by this evening's diplomatic bag. There's a joy in feeling that we can get consideration for which the ‘Times’ pleads in vain!

IMG 0376

I still keep up with the “Sphere”, so if there is anything striking about your winter shoots (rhino, if you can manage it: tigers, these people, quite wrongly, view as “visual jeu”) which you can photograph, do send the prints along, and I will put them to Percy Horne, the Editor. By the way, if by any chance you're getting a new camera, do try the LEICA. I had a good look at one the other day, and was particularly struck by the fool proof distance focusing, worked on the principle of a kind of automatic Barr & Stroud miniature range finder built into the body of the camera's structure.

===

Malcolm Burr, Nagaroff’s translator and close friend, has just been in for a talk. N. now has a job as consulting mining engineer somewhere round Jo’burg. I doubt if we shall ever see him back in England again.

===

Best luck Bailey. Write whenever you can.

I've framed your “dorje” Xmas card – the most unusual picture I've had for many a long day.


 * Yours very sincerely


 * L. A. Bethell

=
===================================================================

Letter 12, 20th January 1938

IMG 0377

TELEGRAMS, MAGA, LONDON

TELEPHONE 10663 CENTRAL

37, Paternoster Row, E.C.

20 . 1 . 38

My dear Bailey,

Very glad to get your letter of 11th from Calcutta, though sorry to hear that Mrs Bailey is ill. The white people were never meant to live in the really damp hotspots of the East. They have their own bugs – a peculiarly virulent form, against which we have little defence.