10 Selwood Terrace Kensington S.W. June 28th
My dearest Sis
AN.Z. budget has just come in and it was real you getting your letters and photos. How well the chicks look and growing so tall. I notice a difference even in this short time, little Baba more like you than ever. You do not give a very cheerful account of your domestic affairs. Servants are a sad trial, and you seem to get more than your share of worry and annoyance from them. Then poor Jessie, what a fright you must have got, what possessed her to make a bonfire of herself in that very unnecessary manner. You will have a very busy winter with your house so full. I do hope you will get a decent girl who is some comfort to you.
Frank had been a sad source of worry and expense to you all. I have been puzzling my brains thinking what you would arrange to do for him. It is only too evident that the boy is utterly incapable of helping himself and the only thing left to do is to keep him out of further mischief. I have written to Willie insisting on my sharing the expenses and I want him to use whatever money he has of mine in hand. I cant bear to think that I am having this splendid trip and spending my money entirely on myself while an unfortunate brother the other side of the world is being supported by the other members of the family. I can earn money and he can’t so it is my duty to help him. It is very hard that Willie should start married life hampered with such a charge, for it seem to practically amount to this that Frank will never work as long as Willie will support him. Poor old Mother write most sorrowfully about him. I am so glad to think she is with you. I like to think of her sitting up in that bright window watching the shipping. Oh! The contrast between your window and the one I am sitting in front on now. Nothing can be more hideous in the world than London back yardom sooty clusters of chimney pots and an indescribably look of grime over everything. I shall be very glad to leave this poky little room. Miss Robertson takes it from me on the 1st. I have had quite as much as I want of London (and Mrs C. Smith) if ever I come back to work I shall get on the other side of the river. She is altogether too energetic for me & nearly kills me. She is most awfully kind but a little too bossy and unless you fall in with her views & ideas she is a bit tiresome. I think poor Molly Sale must have rather a lively time of it. She is going home in Sept and I fancy it is high time. Molly is engaged to young Leslie Williams who is a present in London and they are having a very happy time together. Molly is a nice girl, rather headstrong & lazy but a very good sort. She has no particularly talent and I fancy is somewhere a disappointment to her ambitious relative. Mrs Smith bicycles a lot tho I really think she is getting too big a girl for that kind of thing – it is a marvel to me she is not run over. She rides in and out of the trafic in the most reckless manner generally. When I am with her I hug the shore, otherwise the gutter, it is a sight sometimes when there is a block in Picadilly to see the cyclists hanging on like limpets to the bus wheels. The things is to ride slowly. The perfect control of the London trafic is wonderful. You never see an accident or an unruly horse, it is like a marvellous mechanical toy to see the tide of vehicles moving at an even pace thro some of the crowded thoroughfares and every now & again a policeman stops the works to let the congested trafic of the side streets relieve itself in & out between the horses feet move an army of workers constantly sweeping & cleaning the streets – it’s a wonderful world this London but a cruel place for those who can’t afford it. There is such lavish display of wealth on all sides and it is hard to live a quiet & contented life in the midst of so many distractions. I feel I have benefited much by my 2 months with Mr Borough Johnston, he has been most good to me and I have learnt much from his pencil work. I am going to his studio tomorrow. His painting is a long way behind his pencil work, it is very correct & academical he says he would give much to possess what I have in my work & which I don’t dont value, his is knowledge and mine is instinct – none of the water color work I have seen comes up to yours either in color or strength. You would be surprised at the low level of the water color work lots of things in my line little figures & genre subject are exquisitely painted but for any important work it falls a long way short. Arthur Melville whom Dr Fife admires so much is a strong painter, at first sight you laugh, then our of a chaos of blots comes wonderful form & color & you finally end by admiring very much indeed.
I had a very happy jaunt to High Wycombe in Bucks last week. I met a very clever artist a Mrs Chas Hobbs at Mrs Inglis and she and I fraternised and I went down to stay a week with her, such a nice woman, very clever with her brush, she reminded me in many ways of you she adores old things and her house is full of old treasures oak furniture, china & pictures which she picks up in pawn shops. Old jewellery is her latest craze & she gave me a lovely rope of old Roman pearls. I got some fairish sketches , H Wycomes is a most picturesque old place, full of old historical interest. Milton’s house, where he wrote his Paradise Lost is to be seen also John Hampdens, and further away is Beaconsfield the family seat of Lord Disraeli a quaint old straggling hamlet reeking of Benjamin. The inhabitants point out with pride the lion sign board from above which he delivered his first speech when he stood as Radical member for High Wycombe. We drove one day to Penn where William Penn had his old Quaker meeting house. The old place is just as he left it before he went to America. The little white washed stone building without ornament of any kind austerely plain, stands in the heart of a most beautiful wood. The caretaker took us over the Penn house which was really a loft over a meeting house. When she heard I had come from the other side of the world she opened an old oak chest and gave me a little plate. As a piece of china it is worthless and as a relic it is as likely to have come from the Burlington Arcade as from the Penn family however I appreciate it none the less. The Hobbs are anxious I should go with them to Holland they are off to Amsterdam next month. I will probably join them there. Holland is not the best place in the world for English people to go to just now, we are in very bad odour there and they do all they can to annoy tourists & the street children are unequalled for their mischief & rudeness it is also rather a dour place. I meet a nice old Dutch thing who was staying at the Hobbs when I was there, and she asked me to stay with her in Amsterdam. She is a sister of Van Wisslinghe the owner of the Dutch gallery in Bond St who is regarded as one of the best judges of pictures in London. You see Corot & Greuzis & pictures by the best Continental artists at his gallery. She knew Van de Welden well. I went to see Miss Richmond before making my Dutch plans. She is to join me at Caudebec, she seems anxious we shld paint together, and she is certainly the only person that I am at all keen to thrown in my lot with. I think it is much better to be by yourself unless you get a really congenial companion. About the paper you enclose with reference to this Price Hodgkins. I shall go tomorrow to Somerset House and look up his will, if it is worth further investigation I shall put myself in communication with this agent. I don’t suppose there is anything in it but as you say, it is worth trying. It will be my last day in London and if I cannot manage to get to Somerset House before 1 o’clock when it closes, I shall write to Mr Arthur Shaw and get him to enquire into it for me. He is Cousin Mary’s nephew and a barrister at the Middle Temple – lately married, he is clever and has very charming manners. I dined there one night & met Mr & Mrs Blease. I found Cousin Mary a stately handsome old lady, gouty and very pleasant, not so clever as Aunt Jane but with a great deal more worldly wisdom. Her husband looked as if he had stepped out of a Raeburn canvas, so courteous & bland he is really not so blue-blooded as he looks. I got on very well with them I think & it is to be hoped made a good impression. I found she was under the impression that I was a lady of means, she quite thought that Father had left us very well off. She had always heard of him as being very prosperous. I dropped a few words in her private ear and undeceived her – they have no children and seem to be rolling – he owns an entire street in Huskisson St in Liverpool besides other properties in different counties. They have now gone to Buxton in Derbyshire to take the waters there.
They wanted me to go to Liverpool on their return there & stay with them but it mean the entire upsetting of all my plans, but I am to go to them when I have finished by studies and make it my home for as long as I like. I was sorry I did not see more of them, they were only in town for a few days. The Shaws asked me to dinner again to meet some other distant connection but I had another engagement so couldn’t go. I shall write to Cousin Mary and get her to tell all she knows of Samuel Hodgkins. She seems to have been very fond of Father & said he was very popular with all his relations, eh was very quiet & thoughtful as a boy & she seemed much surprised to hear how full of life & spirits he was in later life. I spent a week-end with Mrs Inglis at Hampstead lately & while with her called on Mr Arthur Streaton (Mr Roberts gave me a letter to him) both Mrs I. & myself were very charmed with him – he came to supper next night. He is devoted to T. Robert & expects him home quite shortly. I have posted you a linen cushion cover – will you be sure & let me know when it arrived also whether you had to pay duty. I enclosed a coral necklace for Jean – coral is worn with everything just now, it is only a small remembrance. I picked it up in an old shop in the Brompton Rd. Will you please send it on to her. I am sending her something better later on by the Rattrays. How are Willie & Jean? I am longing to hear about the wedding. The Rattrays are back again in London. The C. Hunters have asked me twice to dinner & the girls have been to see me twice within this last week but we have missed each other every time. If people will invite you to dine by wire they can’t expect you to be disengaged at an hour’s notice. I had a day in town with Mrs Leslie Harris. We lunched at a swagger place in Bond St. kept by the most beautiful (and rapid) girls in London. After all we had only cold meat & salad but we, or rather Mrs H, paid for champagne & turkey. We then went on to a Matisse and saw Julia Neilson in Sweet Nell of Old Drury. She is supposed to be the most all round beautiful woman on the English stage.
I heard from May Garden she has let Troup for some months and is going abroad with her husband, perchance we may meet in Paris. I do not supposed I shall come back to London again till I return to N.Z. I shall go wherever I can get good sketching & get a good folio to bring back with me. Mr Johnston doesn’t advise me to study under anyone, he thinks I should work alone. Oh! Sis if you were only here, what jaunts we could have together. I longed for you when I was in Bucks, the beauty of the English lanes is beyond all description. We simply don’t know what green is out in N.Z. The endless sloping fields with every imaginable & unimaginable shade of green & yellow & over all a wonderful blue haze which mellows all. Then to see the glorious masses of poppies foxgloves & countless red white & yellow wildflowers nodding at you from the side of the road – it was like fairyland to me and I began to wonder if these things really were or whether I was walking in a dream. I really think I came as near being really happy as I can ever hope to be in this world during that short week in High Wycombe – amidst such beauty one seemed to get more at the heart of things. Certainly my first introduction to English landscape made a very deep impression on me, and I only wished for one thing and that was that you might have been with me.
I mustn’t prose on any longer, the mail goes out in the morning so I must slip out and post this. Thank you so much dear old girl for all your kind letters & thoughts for me. I am nearly all right again now, but I am very much afraid I have been left with that uninteresting of all complaints, a feeble interior. Over fatigue or undue indulgence in meat brings on an attack wh. invariably means milk puddings & bed for a day or two. I have a very good prescription wh. always sets me right again (tear off this page if letter is circulated). I shall write again from Caudebec & let you know the rest of the Will. With heaps of love to you all and a kiss for the chicks. Yours very lovingly Fanny. Tell Mother I have had a letter from Maggie G. What a chronicler of small beer she is!