Mary Llewelyn Davies to Sylvia du Maurier - 1890

Description

Letter from Mary Llewelyn Davies to Sylvia, 19 August 1890

[No original available]

Transcription

K.L. August 19th, ’90.

It is really beautiful, my dearest Sylvia; and thank you ever so much for your kindness in making it for me. I shall like to use it always, and if you had seen the shock work (nightshirt) wh. was lying on the sofa in the drawing room and wh. is now in the beautiful shelter of your bag, you wd. feel you had made a most needful and acceptable present.
I am hoping to hear soon that Arthur is with you, and that you are having a very happy time. Do one or both of you write....
Lady Hobart leaves us today. I think she has enjoyed herself and has appreciated the place. Tell A. that her fine maid thinks "Gehenna" charming! Mrs Gleadowe went yesterday. We thought her looking sadly delicate, but she was very sweet and so pretty. She rather reminded me of a certain person who I hope will soon be here.
Margt. is very busy with various local doings. She is singing the part of a page (not in costume, I trust) at the Casterton School in a Cantata; and on Thursday she has a concert for the Navvies at Hutton roof....
Theo and I are, if it's fine, going for a driving tour with Jessie to Dent and Ingleton, over the hills, sleeping at Dent. It is a scheme he has long been anxious to carry out.
I wonder if you have ever come across Gwynneth Tudor Davies who is at Whitby. Are you having some good swimming? Don't go and get drowned dear one.
My love to you both,
Ever yr
M.Ll.D.

I am expecting a van load of furniture from Crom[well] Place today, and don't know where to put it.

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Peter's comment in the Morgue:

"Gehenna" may have been a somewhat unattractive servant's bedroom at the vicarage?
Mrs. Gleadowe, whose resemblance to S. is noted by M.Ll.D., was possibly the mother of Dick Gleadowe, Winchester master and lecturer at the Royal Academy, whose name I dimly associate with the past, though I don't recall ever meeting him.
A social household, the vicarage. Blessed Victorian age, with its almost negligible income and other taxes! I think they had 3 or 4 servants, and presumably someone to drive Theodore and his mother over the hills to Dent and Ingleton, though they may have hired a conveyance. As for entertaining "navvies" with a concert — I don't quite know what I feel about that, but I should have liked to know with what songs Margaret ravished their rugged souls.
This letter was evidently addressed to S. at Whitby, where the du Maurier family, or at any rate Grandpapa, Grannie, Sylvia, May and Gerald, were, as they so often did, spending their summer holiday, and where A.Ll.D. had joined them.
Guy may have been away soldiering, and the Millars may have been elsewhere.