Sylvia Llewelyn Davies to Margaret Llewelyn Davies

Description

Letter from Sylvia to Arthur's sister Margaret, 2-5 November 1906

[No original available]

Transcription

Egerton House, Berkhamsted.
Nov. 2. [1906]

Darling,
Crompton is in your chair tonight – I wonder if he thinks it is hard! He is staying here till tomorrow sometime – I am afraid not for longer. J.M.B. has a cold and is not to be here by his usual Sat. train.
Arthur seems to stand the daily train and work without being too tired in the evening. The eye looks about the same to me, but he thinks the swelling a little less.

Nov. 5.
You see I left off as usual, but now for another start and this time will post it. However you had two letters this morning so you are not so badly off. I feel I ought to write often and often to so dear person – you can’t think what a comfort it is to think of you and how I love to see in your handwriting – “what news of all my little boys?” And if I don’t answer I ought to be beheaded and behearted. They are all well and today J.M.B. comes with fireworks – I shall have a good look at them before they are lighted – Jimmy is sure to light them at the wrong end.
George may have to wear specs later on, but it is not certain – we will hope not. He is to be looked at again after Christmas.
Here is the food list Arthur’s doctor gave him – it is not anything new and the beer was impossible and has been given up.
Return it please, by M.
Mama comes on Wed. for a few days – Dodo and Malcolm for Monday night and Stanley Leathes for a night. Arthur likes to see people but he has been wonderfully cheerful. He is better inside.
We had a fine walk all over the common on Saturday and the sun was quite hot.
When will you come again? But we mustn’t be greedy.
Loving S.

Peter's comments:

I don’t know whether to be glad or sorry that so few of Sylvia’s letters have survived. They would have been nearly unbearable, at any rate from now on. She seems to me to have had little real hope from the very beginning, and her ordeal was surely the worse of the two.

What a lot of people used to come down to Egerton House. Stanley Leathes was an old Cambridge and perhaps Marlborough friend. Dodo and Malcolm Macnaghten – strange how such old friends should have passed so utterly out of our lives.