22 March 1922

Victoria Palace Hotel, Paris

Dear Ida
   I have received your letter & the one for Mrs M. [Maxwell] I shall send it on. I am simply astonished that you should consider such a woman as our tenant. My dear Ida! I asked you to stay up there in our interests because I did not trust the people to know what kind of tenant would be suitable. You say to me a ‘horrid coarse dirty looking woman who might leave the house in a disgusting state'. To Mrs M. ‘I didn't much like her.' But consider what a horrible breach of faith & even decency that is with Mrs M! What are you thinking of? As to my not being responsible - nonsense! Of course I am by any honourable canon responsible. . . ‘Not even gentlefolk' & knowing that little woman you entertain the idea of letting them have it.
   I feel too bitterly ashamed to write about it any more. I would not have believed it. Either your letter to me is a greatly exaggerated account or yours to Mrs M. is a shamefully understated one.
   You have NOTHING to do with letting the house for a year, or selling it. Your one affair was to let it to SUITABLE tenants until June 27th. Thats your whole concern. You are not there as Mrs Ms agent. Nothing else is any concern of yours. .
   The Swiss affair is simply maddening. What have they to do with us? We are not responsible after Jjune. Why worry about them & whatever they may intend. Its simply confusing. Again I say if you can get P.Gs [paying guests] leave it at that. If you cant get them you'd better leave the place as soon as the chauffage can be left safely rather than make these muddles.  [To Ida Baker, 22 March 1922.]