Sylvia Llewelyn Davies to Margaret Llewelyn Davies

Description

Letter from Sylvia to Arthur's sister Margaret, 12 June 1906.

[No original available]

Transcription

12, B[eaumont]. St. 6.10 [12 June 1906 ]

Darling,
Dr Roughton has just left – he says all is going on satisfactorily and I think he meant it. Arthur has been up in the chair for a little – he wished it – he is back in bed now and was glad to lie down again. He was very delighted (quite touchingly so) to see Hugh Macnaghten (the Eton master) who came up to see him. E.V. Lucas for a few moments and that was all I would allow. He is now writing to Jack! He does seem better today and with all my soul I am trying to look forward to all the good that may still come to him, and you help me so, dear, dear sister. I am more than longing to see the little boys – it is years.
Good night, darling,
Your Sylvia.

*

I had not realised that E.V. Lucas, that queer and, at least in those days, very attractive figure, was so close a friend as this seems to suggest. I had a last glimpse of him at the London Clinic in 1938. I was coming away from seeing (my) Margaret LD shortly after the birth of (my) George and E.V. entered the lift as I left it. I made some commonplace and I think more or less facetious remark, assuming he, too, had come to call on a patient. He looked at me in an absent sort of way and made no reply. He never left the Clinic again, but died there not long afterwards – of the same old scourge.

[AB: E.V. Lucas was one of Barrie’s closest friends, as was his wife Elizabeth and daughter Audrey. A prolific humourist, essayist, playwright, biographer, publisher, poet, novelist, short story writer and editor, Lucas – or E.V. as he was known by all – is barely remembered today, his enormous output being too lightweight, ephemeral and of-its-time for posterity, indeed like much of Barrie's own works. For more on E.V., see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._V._Lucas]