Carrie and George Croome Robertson to Arthur Llewe

Description

Letter from Carrie and George Croome Robertson to Arthur Llewelyn Davies.

[No original ms available]

Transcription

Mount Pleasant,
West Malvern,
28th March, 1890.

My dear Arthur,
Your letter has indeed rejoiced me greatly. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to think that this great happiness is yours, or how earnestly I hope that it is only the beginning of a long life of happiness that you will spend together.
I wish that I could have been at home that I might have heard your story from your own lips. There is much I want to know about it as it all comes to me as a great surprise, except that, from something you once said, I thought that something was in your mind.
I need not say what great pleasure and interest it will be to me to see your future wife. Pray give her my love and best wishes and say that I hope to call on her as soon as she returns to London and to persuade her to come and see us. I know how safe her happiness will be in your keeping, dear Arthur, and what a tender and loving husband she will have, and I long to know for myself that she is all that we hope for, though that I feel sure we shall soon find her.
I am thinking with what joy your father and mother will welcome their new daughter and Margaret her first sister. I hope you will all have a very happy time at K.L. No wonder that going to Liverpool seemed banishment to you under the circumstances, but now there will always be a reason for coming up to London.
Once more, may everything good be yours!
Your loving aunt,
C.C.R.

(The letter goes on in George C.R.'s handwriting):

Once upon a time - in fact, very nearly 18 years ago - there was a little boy who felt moved to say to another engaged (masc.) that he was fortunate indeed be going to marry "such a good and beautiful person" as the little boy's aunt. And now that same long- married man has to say the like to the boy - that was. I know I can't be wrong in transferring the description. I am sure I must often have seen your future wife portrayed from infancy upwards in the pages of my weekly favourite [i.e. via George du Maurier's cartoons in Punch]. With your aunt, I look forward to seeing herself at the earliest opportunity after we get back to town; and my wishes for the brightest of futures to you both, as you know, could not be warmer or more heartfelt than they are.
G.C.R.

Arthur's Aunt Caroline (ex-Crompton) and Uncle George lived at 31 Kensington Park Gardens, where we shall shortly find Sylvia calling on them. They sound as if they must have been a delightful couple. They had no children, and both died before 1900.