Rome [Roma]. Friday Dearest Father. I came in late yesterday from Tivoli and rushed to my Times to see the account of your dinner. Your speech was very badly reported and I rather hope I may get a fuller report of it from you, but it seems to have been a very important and interesting occasion. You were a person, weren't you! I do congratulate you on the success of it and I very much wish that I had been there to see and hear. I thought of you on Wednesday night too when I was dining with the Filippis. Mine was a very pleasant dinner party too. It had been arranged so that I might meet Monseigneur Duchesne, the head of the French School, an old acquaintance but it so happened that we had not met this time. I sat by him and we had a charming talk about the Fathers of the church. He is writing a great ecclesiastical history and he told me many things that were most interesting about the early story of my sects and churches in Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. I, on the other hand, told him what the place looked like in which St Gregory of Nazianzos had lived. So we enjoyed ourselves very much and Sir Foster Cunliffe was there; I dine with him tonight. My camera has not yet come - I do hope it will arrive before I go to Spalato [Split] where I shall need it very much. Meantime I have borrowed Eugénie's and I spent Wed. morning in photographing architectural ornament in various parts of the town. Lady MacKenzie came with me and was very nice. In the afternoon I worked at the same job in the Forum, delightfully peaceful it was. I would like to spend all my time working in the Forum. Then Eugénie and I had a young and learned German to tea - learned, but strangely attired, for he had put on in our honour an evening shirt and waistcoat, black trousers and a black smoking coat. Yesterday I went with Miss van Demen to Tivoli and worked all day at Hadrian's Villa which I understand at last. Did I tell you that on Tuesday E. and I went to hear a lecture of Boni's? The king was there and all Rome and it was extremely good. I was delighted to see my dear Boni having such a real and well deserved success.
Now I am going to a lecture of Haseloff's on the Medieval Forum - I can't think what he is going to say, except that there was nothing to be seen in the Forum in the Middle Ages, which won't after all take him an hour. If you could guess what a lot I've learnt this last fortnight you would be surprised. The thing that really gives me the greatest - almost childish - pleasure is having got hold of ornament. I just look at a thing and know who made it - more or less! Your affectionate daughter Gertrude