Letter from Frances Hodgkins to Rachel Hodgkins
Date
19 Sep 1895
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Object Detail
Date
19 Sep 1895
Transcript
Cranmore Lodge Sept. 19th, 95
My darling Mother
Just a few lines to go by today’s mail tho’ there is very little news to give you. You seem to think from your last letter that we have got influenza in the house but I can assure you Mother dear, we are all in the best of health, and please don’t worry yourself about that and cut your holiday short and come home on our account. Bert has bought a safety bicycle for which he gave £30 I believe and is tremendously proud of himself. I feel very tempted to learn but Bert is a perfect Turk and won’t let anyone touch it. Father with his usual youthful enthusiasm tried it and you may as well make up your mind to a cricked back or a dislocated shoulder, for he certainly will have one or the other before he is done.
I had a letter from Miss Holmes this morning enclosing the welcome £2-10. Now that I have got the money I must tell you that when the picture left Dunedin it had only £2-10 marked on it and either thro’ some mistake of the framemaker’s or a mixing up of labels or perhaps one of Father’s muddling directions it had got changed to £3.10. Anyhow when Miss Holmes offered £2.10 I was more angry at the principle of the thing than at the actual loss of the Guinea. But when I told Dr Scott, he strongly advised me to close with Miss Holmes and he rather enjoyed the joke against Miss Holmes and my getting the full value for my picture after all for in the first place he had advised me not to put more than £2.10 on it. Miss H. said something about an operation on the Bab’s foot, poor little darling, I hope it wasn’t a very painful one, it must have been very trying for poor old Sis, but anyway she has the consolation of knowing that Babs could not have walked without it.
Alice McG. Is still in bed, and no further developments have shown themselves. May has sprained her ankle but the young man being something of a vet on his native heath, bandaged it up in the most approved medical fashion and it is now on the mend and May on the sofa. I went over to see her last night having heard he was safely in the country. I found her hemstitching long lengths of calico against the wedding and she showed me several miles of it that she had already done, and among other things she showed me his first letter which she insisted on my reading. She is very happy and I think she is very fond of him in a way. She calls him Sonny and Little Frank but the world calls him it. It is hardly a romantic attachment, on her part at least and she gives herself away so by telling absurd stories about him, and as everyone hasn’t such a keen sense of the ludicrous as she has, she only succeeds in making him look foolish.
Frank is waiting for this letter so I must hurry. Goodbye, dear old mother, with heaps of love to yourself and dear old Sis & Will ever your loving daughter Fanny
My darling Mother
Just a few lines to go by today’s mail tho’ there is very little news to give you. You seem to think from your last letter that we have got influenza in the house but I can assure you Mother dear, we are all in the best of health, and please don’t worry yourself about that and cut your holiday short and come home on our account. Bert has bought a safety bicycle for which he gave £30 I believe and is tremendously proud of himself. I feel very tempted to learn but Bert is a perfect Turk and won’t let anyone touch it. Father with his usual youthful enthusiasm tried it and you may as well make up your mind to a cricked back or a dislocated shoulder, for he certainly will have one or the other before he is done.
I had a letter from Miss Holmes this morning enclosing the welcome £2-10. Now that I have got the money I must tell you that when the picture left Dunedin it had only £2-10 marked on it and either thro’ some mistake of the framemaker’s or a mixing up of labels or perhaps one of Father’s muddling directions it had got changed to £3.10. Anyhow when Miss Holmes offered £2.10 I was more angry at the principle of the thing than at the actual loss of the Guinea. But when I told Dr Scott, he strongly advised me to close with Miss Holmes and he rather enjoyed the joke against Miss Holmes and my getting the full value for my picture after all for in the first place he had advised me not to put more than £2.10 on it. Miss H. said something about an operation on the Bab’s foot, poor little darling, I hope it wasn’t a very painful one, it must have been very trying for poor old Sis, but anyway she has the consolation of knowing that Babs could not have walked without it.
Alice McG. Is still in bed, and no further developments have shown themselves. May has sprained her ankle but the young man being something of a vet on his native heath, bandaged it up in the most approved medical fashion and it is now on the mend and May on the sofa. I went over to see her last night having heard he was safely in the country. I found her hemstitching long lengths of calico against the wedding and she showed me several miles of it that she had already done, and among other things she showed me his first letter which she insisted on my reading. She is very happy and I think she is very fond of him in a way. She calls him Sonny and Little Frank but the world calls him it. It is hardly a romantic attachment, on her part at least and she gives herself away so by telling absurd stories about him, and as everyone hasn’t such a keen sense of the ludicrous as she has, she only succeeds in making him look foolish.
Frank is waiting for this letter so I must hurry. Goodbye, dear old mother, with heaps of love to yourself and dear old Sis & Will ever your loving daughter Fanny
Pages
7 pages
Sender's address
Cranmore Lodge
Institutional No.
MS-Papers-0085-04
Credit Line
Letters
from
Frances
Hodgkins.
Field,
Isabel
Jane,
1867-1950
:
Correspondence
of
Frances
Hodgkins
and
family
/
collected
by
Isabel
Field.
Ref:
MS-Papers-0085-04.
Alexander
Turnbull
Library,
Wellington,
New
Zealand.
https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22310185
https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22310185