Sylvia Llewelyn Davies to Dolly Ponsonby - 1903

Description

Letter from Sylvia to Dolly Ponsonby while recovering from Nico's birth, 26 November 1903.

[NOT IN MORGUE]

Transcription

[NOT IN PETER'S MORGUE]

23 Kensington Park Gdns,
Sunday [20 December 1903]

Beloved Dolly,
I was so delighted to hear from you & how splendid to think you a will have another baby to play with sweet Elizabeth – please a son with your eyes! It is dreadful to be so sick – you poor dear – it isn't all joy is it?
My Nicholas is a dear creature, so fat & well – & very like George was at first – however they seem to alter every day. I am stronger now and longing to get up – Five sons Dolly, think of it!
We are thinking of of living in the country now there are so many to bring up – perhaps at Berkhampstead which has a very good school & near my sister Trixie & not far from London. We have heard of a nice old house, but course we can settle nothing till I am well enough to look about.
We often talk about you, you dear pretty Dolly. Write soon as I so enjoy hearing from you.
Your Sylvia.


[AB: Sadly no comments from Peter as he'd apparently passed this letter on to Nico and then presumably forgot about it. The nice old house was of course Egerton House, a fine, large Elizabethan house about which Peter writes evocatively in his comments following Arthur's letter to Margaret, 5 July 1904.
Despite the protests of many, the house was torn down in the early 30s to make way for a cinema. Peter wrote to Mary Hodgson in 1953, "Oh dear oh dear, I passed through Berkhampstead the other day and it was almost more than I could bear to see that horrible cinema on the site of dear Egerton House, and the lovely garden turned into a loathsome concrete car park."]