J M Barrie to Mrs Thomas Hardy - 1915

Description

I am wandering about in the Highlands in such a remote parts that it has taken your letter this long to reach me -- partly because the Highlands are as bare of man this year as if it were the day before creation.... I was on the Marne in France and I saw an old lady knitting placidly by the door of her new wooden house. On the same spot she had been ill-treated by two German soldiers in the dash for Paris, and they destroyed her home. Now they are buried beneath her potatoes and she is there knitting. It grips me like a poem by your husband. I lift my hat to him. He is our great man.