1 Note address 39 West Hill
2 St Leonards on Sea
3 Tuesday
4
5 Dear E.C.
6
7 Thought you were going down to the Isle of Wight from the 28th to the
831st, & you said perhaps you come & see us here! "Anyhows" that’s
9you how I understood it. I can’t come up to town dear old man ‘cos
10I’ve got Alice Corthorn arriving today to spend a week with me here.
11I came down because she needed a holiday & it would have been an
12expense getting her up north & then sending her down again if it
13doesn’t suit. I’ll try & have a look at you at Millthorpe if I can
14before I leave England. It would be beautiful all my life to think of
15having seen you there. I’m not sure about my getting married yet, &
16that’s what keeps me so unsettled. If I don’t I shall go to Italy
17for a long time; if I do I shall have pretty quickly to go out to the
18Cape. Each mail I wait for with uncertainty, not knowing what it will
19bring forth.
20
21 I did have a splendid time up with Mrs Walters. Those moors are the
22best things I’ve seen in England. No, dear, it wouldn’t have done
23ever for me to marry Bob. He’s too good. If I marry it’ll be the
24type of man most removed from our divine Bob, a man compared to whom I
25shall be a saint!!! A sort of small Napoleon! I don’t know why it is
26those natures allways draw me. Not the man of thought & fine-drawn
27feeling like Bob & Ellis & Karl Pearson, intensely as I love them; but
28the wish to marry comes towards the man of action the philistine with
29me. There are only three men I’ve ever thought I should like to
30marry & they’ve all been of that one type, men I felt needed me for
31their moral education! It’s very funny. If it’s right I shall
32marry this man though I know life will not be very easy with him. But
33if it’s not right I shan’t. So the world wags on. I hope Alice
34will have a nice week here. She needs rest & change, & love so sorely.
35
36 Ed do you know, if ever it comes your way I think you would like to
37see my friend Mrs John Brown of Burnley. She’s developed so
38wonderfully in the last few years. If I come to Millthorpe it would be
39partly that I may ask her there for a day, & a wish of her life will
40be realized.
41
42 With my love dear old brother, I’m always your little sister
43 Olive
44
45 After next Tuesday I might come up to Mill thorpe. But I can’t make
46any plans till I know more of my future. I’m sometimes afraid that
47the desire to have a child weighs very heavily with me in making me
48
49 ^willing to marry. And it’s wrong to want anything so much. This
50friend of mine wants me so much to have a child & that’s one great
51bond between. No other man I’ve ever known has the same feeling
52about having children.^
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