BIB_ID
106754
Accession number
MA 9994
Creator
Ouida, 1839-1908.
Display Date
Florence, Italy, 1880s?.
Credit line
Purchased as the gift of Alice McNinch Landon (Mrs. Harold M. Landon), 1974.
Description
1 item (14 pages) ; 19.2 x 14.5
Notes
The letter is undated. Ouida moved to Italy in 1871. One of the books she mentions in the letter, "La Gileppe," may refer to Ernest Candèze's novel La Gileppe, les infortunes d'une population d'insectes, first published in 1879, suggesting that the letter might have been written in the 1880s.
Ouida does not list a place of writing at the start of the letter, but mentions that she is writing from Florence in the body of it.
Transcription available in the collection file.
Previously accessioned as MA 3273, part of a collection of letters related to the Storys.
Ouida does not list a place of writing at the start of the letter, but mentions that she is writing from Florence in the body of it.
Transcription available in the collection file.
Previously accessioned as MA 3273, part of a collection of letters related to the Storys.
Provenance
Purchased from the New York dealer John F. Fleming, 1974.
Summary
Saying that she does not understand what books Tauchnitz might have sent, but that the Marchesa should bring to Florence whichever ones she doesn't want to keep and she will take care of returning them to Leipzig; adding that she sent Cressida (the Marchesa's daughter) three French books yesterday and thinks that they will please her; commenting "La Gileppe is one of the cleverest things ever written;" describing the weather and her state of mind: "These last days it is frightfully hot, and even these big and shady rooms are Vapour baths. The evenings are cool & I take long drives from 8 to 11 under the moon, - still I am thirsting to be gone. There is not a soul here and it is a waste of life altogether;" passing on an inquiry from her mother about the Peruzzis' dog; sending greetings to the Peruzzi children and to "Sig. Peruzzi if he will accept them;" adding "Please put only Ouida on my letters & teach yr. children to call me so;" commenting in a postscript on the books she has sent for Cressida: "Of course you will judge if you like the books for her ; but they are all harmless. I do not think a clever girl of her age should be restricted to what are known as 'girls books.' They cannot satisfy her;" sending along news from London; listing the books she had asked Tauchnitz to send, including several by Frances Mary Peard (Unawares, Mother Molly, Cartouche, and One Year), Holmby House by G. J. Whyte-Melville, and A Dove in the Eagle's Nest by Charlotte Mary Yonge.
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