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47.12.09 (513w)
TO KATHERINE T. MARSHALLDecember 9, 1947
London, England
I sent you a schedule of engagements for this week but since then several additions have been made. Friday I believe the Duchess of Kent is coming to lunch as I did not accept her invitation for dinner. I have just been told that the dinner tonight with the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and Lady Burghley and myself has been added to by the presence of Queen Mary and the Princess Royal. The Churchills come to lunch today.1
A large envelope coming from Leesburg arrived the day before yesterday and produced no letters from you, only letters to you and to me and replies. I am looking forward to your first letter from Pinehurst.
I resumed walking to the office this morning as the weather has cleared somewhat, though I notice fog is called for tonight.
Yesterday evening I returned directly from the conferences to the house and had a total of 15 minutes to freshen up and to eat a buffet plate dinner with Nancy and Sonia Dill and then get them to the theatre by 7 o’clock.2 The playwright, A. P. Herbert, met us and we were ensconced in the stage box with a little sitting room behind, drinks and so forth. It was an operetta—“Bless the Bride”—and really lovely. Between the acts Herbert had his wife and the great producer Cochrane and the others connected with it brought over, but none of the actors. Cochrane, you probably know. He was with Richard Mansfield for several years.3 We took the Dills directly to their apartment declining an invitation from Herbert for supper at the Savoy. I did not wish to stay up so late.
GCMRL/G. C. Marshall Papers (Secretary of State, General)
1. The Duchess of Kent was the widow of Prince George, Duke of Kent and the younger brother of Kings Edward VIII and George VI. Prince Henry, the Duke of Gloucester, was married to Lady Alice Christabel Montagu Douglas Scott. Her sister Mary was Marshall’s friend Lady Burghley. Lord Burghley had been governor and commander-in-chief of Bermuda between 1943 and 1945, whom Marshall had visited in 1944. (See Papers of GCM, 4: 370 and 379.) Lady Burghley had divorced her husband in October 1946. Queen Mary was the widow of King George V. The Princess Royal was Her Royal Highness Princess Mary of York, the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary.
2. Nancy was the late Field Marshal Sir John Dill’s second wife and Sonia his stepdaughter.
3. The popular musical Bless the Bride had opened at the Adelphi Theatre on April 26. Captain Sir Ernest Cecil Cochrane was a dramatist and producer. Richard Mansfield (1857–1907) had been a leading Shakespearean actor and theatrical manager. In 1905, when Katherine Marshall had been an aspiring actor, she had been offered a place in Mansfield’s company, but illness ended her career. (Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Education of a General, 1880–1939 [New York: Viking Press, 1963], pp. 265–66.)