Arthur's notes to Margaret, 2 December 1906

Description

[From Peter's Morgue:]

(Notes in Margaret Ll.D.’s handwriting, of conversations with Arthur. I think they were written immediately after the conversations had taken place, sometimes from recollection, and sometimes perhaps from Arthur’s pencilling which may have been rather illegible. These notes are occasionally difficult to follow).

Dec. 2.

I don’t see much of you – but it isn’t any good – and you are giving inestimable help downstairs.

I think I’ve seen the last of the quacks today. I do it because if it is no good, Sylvia may not think afterwards I have not tried everything.

He wants me not to have morphia. I shd. have had it this afternoon if he had not been coming – I’m really so bad inside – (not so very bad).

I wrote to Hugh Macnaghten today (about George going to Eton) – I think Sylvia wished it. To me the balance is pretty equal.

I think it will be best for Sylvia to leave as soon as possible and with George and Jack away, she will like to be in London I’m pretty sure – a small house in London. I can’t talk about these things to her now – she doesn’t like it.

Her ways may not be quite understood by our family.

Father wd. not understand. I told Crompton and he agreed all must be left to her to manage.

[Peter's comments:]

There is no indication, in any letter or note I have, of any financial obligation expressly undertaken by J.M.B.. Yet it is difficult to see how either Eton for George or a house in London, or indeed any future arrangements at all, can have been contemplated without some such undertaking. This is a mystery I can’t solve, and about which one can speculate as much as one likes but always inconclusively.

I wish the difficulty the Davies family were thought by Arthur to have in understanding Sylvia’s ways had been more elaborated. Crompton, I fancy, understood them pretty well, and I shd. think Margaret, but perhaps none of the others.