John Munting to Elizabeth Drake
15a, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater 30th September, 1928
Dear Bungie,
Forgive me for this rotten series of scraps and postcards, but I’m a lazy devil, and there hasn’t been a place to sit down in for the last fortnight. Lathom’s things are all over the place, and when I fling myself into a chair in exhaustion, after hours of shifting furniture, I’m sure to get up with one of his tubes of Permanent Blue adhering to my pants.
This place isn’t too bad—rather Bayswatery, but there is a good north light for Lathom’s doings, and that is the essential. We have the two top floors in this mid-Victorian skyscraper, and share the hall and staircase with the people downstairs, which is rather a blight on our young lives, but I daresay we shall survive it.
Unfortunately, Lathom, who is one of those companionable blighters, has gone and struck up an acquaintance with the Harrisons, and yesterday evening I was hauled down to see them. Apparently Mr. H. goes in for dabbling in watercolours, and wanted Lathom’s advice about some lighting for his studio. Lathom grumbled a good deal, but I told him it was his own fault if he would go about being so chatty.
I didn’t think much of Mrs. H. —she’s a sort of suburban vamp, an ex-typist or something, and entirely wrapped up, I should say, in her own attractions, but she’s evidently got her husband by the short hairs. Not good-looking, but full of S.A. and all that. He is a cut above her, I imagine, and at least twenty years older; small, thin, rather stooping, goatee beard, gold specs. And wears his forehead well over the top of his