![Letter from Frances Hodgkins to [Isabel Hodgkins]](https://completefranceshodgkins.com/records/images/xlarge/1535/c761458c15f0ec2227540bfaff9ee4774745fdf0.jpg)
Letter from Frances Hodgkins to [Isabel Hodgkins]
Date
25 May 1892
See full details
See transcription
Object Detail
Date
25 May 1892
Transcript
(Fragment) (c. 25 May 1892)
take her mind off her worries. The Yellow Pup was bitten to death by some brutes of greyhounds last week and that seems to have upset her very much.
Tottie Stephenson and Mr Burnes are at last publicly engaged, & as you may imagine it has hung fire too long for it to create any surprise. It is another of those cases showing a man wants three years to make up his mind whether the girl is worth having or not. I daresay you have also heard rumors of Alice Spence’s engagement to Mr McGowan. It is quite untrue. It has been almost indecent the way people have talked about them and coupled their names together. I was at an afternoon tea there the other day and the two Sises (or the Misses Sise) rushed up to her and asked her if it was true and Alice was too embarrassed to snub the little wretches as they deserved.
Ada Rattray asked me if I would join the Savage Club. I would like to most awfully but Mother doesn’t seem very keen about it. May hasn’t been proposed after all tho’ she is very anxious to become a member. I am going to stay all night with the Dymocks and go with them to a meeting at the Rattrays on Tuesday. It is to be held alternately at their house and at the Ritchies and Mrs McKenzie.
Bert has been very unwell these last few days but seems better today. We are enduring all the discomforts of house cleaning and we have been living in an atmosphere of dust and furniture polish for the last few days, but the radiant reflections that now appear on all sides quite reward us for our trouble. Did I tell you about the Lecture on Ancient Statuary Prof. Sale gave in aid of Art Gallery Fund. It went off splendidly and the dem’d total raised was £30, which as the Mayor said in his speech, would buy a “few good pictures”. I collected nearly £4. One place I went to I discovered my little washing girl on the walls. They gushed a bit when they heard I was the artist and next day sent me 10/-. Wasn’t it handsome of them! The lime-light views were splendid but in spite of their beauty when the gas was turned up, several people were found fast asleep. The lecture was too long, so when Father got up to make a few remarks nobody listened, but poured out in a mass, and he was left on the platform with his neat little prepared speech with several apt quotations in it echoing round an empty building. It was very funny but it took him some time to see the joke. I am going to a high tea at Joachims tomorrow. I will take care this time not to wash my head immediately before starting as I did that last never to be forgotten evening. I went to call on the Bishops yesterday with Elsie Royse. Their dance was a very muddled affair, bad floor, worse supper and a very motley crowd. I am going up the Valley again tomorrow to do some sketching. The Rattrays, Dinah McNeill, the Scotts and Nellie Hagfitt & Mrs Stilling came up today. You see my news has come to an end when I have to fall back on the visitors hasn’t it? So I will stop before I write any more twaddle. So goodbye, dear old girlie With best love to everybody, ever yours most lovingly Fanny.
take her mind off her worries. The Yellow Pup was bitten to death by some brutes of greyhounds last week and that seems to have upset her very much.
Tottie Stephenson and Mr Burnes are at last publicly engaged, & as you may imagine it has hung fire too long for it to create any surprise. It is another of those cases showing a man wants three years to make up his mind whether the girl is worth having or not. I daresay you have also heard rumors of Alice Spence’s engagement to Mr McGowan. It is quite untrue. It has been almost indecent the way people have talked about them and coupled their names together. I was at an afternoon tea there the other day and the two Sises (or the Misses Sise) rushed up to her and asked her if it was true and Alice was too embarrassed to snub the little wretches as they deserved.
Ada Rattray asked me if I would join the Savage Club. I would like to most awfully but Mother doesn’t seem very keen about it. May hasn’t been proposed after all tho’ she is very anxious to become a member. I am going to stay all night with the Dymocks and go with them to a meeting at the Rattrays on Tuesday. It is to be held alternately at their house and at the Ritchies and Mrs McKenzie.
Bert has been very unwell these last few days but seems better today. We are enduring all the discomforts of house cleaning and we have been living in an atmosphere of dust and furniture polish for the last few days, but the radiant reflections that now appear on all sides quite reward us for our trouble. Did I tell you about the Lecture on Ancient Statuary Prof. Sale gave in aid of Art Gallery Fund. It went off splendidly and the dem’d total raised was £30, which as the Mayor said in his speech, would buy a “few good pictures”. I collected nearly £4. One place I went to I discovered my little washing girl on the walls. They gushed a bit when they heard I was the artist and next day sent me 10/-. Wasn’t it handsome of them! The lime-light views were splendid but in spite of their beauty when the gas was turned up, several people were found fast asleep. The lecture was too long, so when Father got up to make a few remarks nobody listened, but poured out in a mass, and he was left on the platform with his neat little prepared speech with several apt quotations in it echoing round an empty building. It was very funny but it took him some time to see the joke. I am going to a high tea at Joachims tomorrow. I will take care this time not to wash my head immediately before starting as I did that last never to be forgotten evening. I went to call on the Bishops yesterday with Elsie Royse. Their dance was a very muddled affair, bad floor, worse supper and a very motley crowd. I am going up the Valley again tomorrow to do some sketching. The Rattrays, Dinah McNeill, the Scotts and Nellie Hagfitt & Mrs Stilling came up today. You see my news has come to an end when I have to fall back on the visitors hasn’t it? So I will stop before I write any more twaddle. So goodbye, dear old girlie With best love to everybody, ever yours most lovingly Fanny.
Pages
6 pages
Sender's address
Cranmore Lodge
Institutional No.
MS-Papers-0085-01
Credit Line
Letters
from
Frances
Hodgkins.
Field,
Isabel
Jane,
1867-1950
:
Correspondence
of
Frances
Hodgkins
and
family
/
collected
by
Isabel
Field.
Ref:
MS-Papers-0085-01.
Alexander
Turnbull
Library,
Wellington,
New
Zealand.
https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22561841
https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22561841