Letter from Frances Hodgkins to Jane Saunders
Date
30 Dec 1937
See transcription
Catalogue number
FHL259
Date
30 Dec 1937
Transcript
Sat?
Sunday?
Monday ?
I don’t know?
This is not a cat quite up to our standard but it is a cat & therefore a friend of ours. One reason I want you to delay your visit to the South is that I shall have a Chinchilla Persian Kitten wh I know will make you covetous.
I have a mouse coloured velvet covered chair sent me which it will sleep on & claw I feel I am in for trouble but am too weak to refuse the kitten. What would you do? Also I may have to give up 3-4 hours a day playing with the silly thing. Dear Jane I am still here at Worth [Matravers] My Christmas in Wiltshire was a sad fiasco owing to a serious outbreak of foot & mouth disease on my friends’ farm. The farmer had to slaughter & afterwards burn his entire stock a valuable herd of 150 cows as well as 470 pigs many cats wh I knew well & dogs. It was a sad affair & cast a gloom over the village. No Christmas party for us.
You sounded terribly tired & afflicted to the very marrow with too much of everything. I think it is brutal the way they work you – you settling sweets in an icy draught. It makes me savage I wish I could offer you the succour you speak about “wh cuts thro’ to the soul” but this farm of mine isn’t fit for you to rest in in its present state of neglect. Things went to pieces during the wife’s illness & the farmer has shut up the house & gone away for a bit. I have been alone in the house – outside thick fog for 4 days & a biting cold. I have fed sea gulls, crows, starlings, blackbirds & sparrows & a fat robin on the lawn. (Do you remember the lark nightingale in the tree on the Winlslow Rd?) Amy Krauss away with friends & sisters & eating turkeys by the dozen – or so her letter sounds. Of what a rambling pedestrian sort of scribble I am writing – cold hands – hot head, wishing, like you relief from my tangled & tiresome evolvments & no help in sight. One thing is certain that you have surmounted all your worries & thrown a lovely Christmas party with or without the housekeeper. Being a genius – unshatterably plucky and an artist. You moan after a quiet shell but you never creep into it I notice like I do. And now to come to the real point of this note wh is to thank you for the very lovely & unexpected present of a red scarf [made by a Northumbrian fisherwoman] in a pink box. So simple & yet so un-ordinary. The magic of your clever fingers began to work directly the parcel was handed in to me. I absorbed it all – pink paper, twine printing, size, space, giving pleasure making one feel well & happy & nice. Then the scarf & I said to myself “You poor fish that the fisherman has netted” & then I tied it round my neck & went upstairs to look in the mirror & it looked lovely. I shall wear it in London next week. I have to go up on the 3rd for at least a week.
I would love to hear from you when you’ve time & strength. Love Frances
Sunday?
Monday ?
I don’t know?
This is not a cat quite up to our standard but it is a cat & therefore a friend of ours. One reason I want you to delay your visit to the South is that I shall have a Chinchilla Persian Kitten wh I know will make you covetous.
I have a mouse coloured velvet covered chair sent me which it will sleep on & claw I feel I am in for trouble but am too weak to refuse the kitten. What would you do? Also I may have to give up 3-4 hours a day playing with the silly thing. Dear Jane I am still here at Worth [Matravers] My Christmas in Wiltshire was a sad fiasco owing to a serious outbreak of foot & mouth disease on my friends’ farm. The farmer had to slaughter & afterwards burn his entire stock a valuable herd of 150 cows as well as 470 pigs many cats wh I knew well & dogs. It was a sad affair & cast a gloom over the village. No Christmas party for us.
You sounded terribly tired & afflicted to the very marrow with too much of everything. I think it is brutal the way they work you – you settling sweets in an icy draught. It makes me savage I wish I could offer you the succour you speak about “wh cuts thro’ to the soul” but this farm of mine isn’t fit for you to rest in in its present state of neglect. Things went to pieces during the wife’s illness & the farmer has shut up the house & gone away for a bit. I have been alone in the house – outside thick fog for 4 days & a biting cold. I have fed sea gulls, crows, starlings, blackbirds & sparrows & a fat robin on the lawn. (Do you remember the lark nightingale in the tree on the Winlslow Rd?) Amy Krauss away with friends & sisters & eating turkeys by the dozen – or so her letter sounds. Of what a rambling pedestrian sort of scribble I am writing – cold hands – hot head, wishing, like you relief from my tangled & tiresome evolvments & no help in sight. One thing is certain that you have surmounted all your worries & thrown a lovely Christmas party with or without the housekeeper. Being a genius – unshatterably plucky and an artist. You moan after a quiet shell but you never creep into it I notice like I do. And now to come to the real point of this note wh is to thank you for the very lovely & unexpected present of a red scarf [made by a Northumbrian fisherwoman] in a pink box. So simple & yet so un-ordinary. The magic of your clever fingers began to work directly the parcel was handed in to me. I absorbed it all – pink paper, twine printing, size, space, giving pleasure making one feel well & happy & nice. Then the scarf & I said to myself “You poor fish that the fisherman has netted” & then I tied it round my neck & went upstairs to look in the mirror & it looked lovely. I shall wear it in London next week. I have to go up on the 3rd for at least a week.
I would love to hear from you when you’ve time & strength. Love Frances
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