Letter from Emelia Gurney, London, to Mrs John W. Field, 1886 September 12 : autograph manuscript signed.

Acknowledging receipt of the photos they sent of their house in Ashfield and asking questions about it; saying "I wonder whether the 3 in one windows are the bedroom - I wonder what part of the house that arch opens into - it looks rather isolated - What a lovely calm lawny landscape with range of hills you send me as perhaps the view from Piazza - It looks all very peaceful & sweet & for the summer months the very nest for you - but now in another month you will be thinking of returning to Washington & I fear will be dreading the journey - Often have I thought of our journey together from Liverpool to London - do you remember it? & especially of a little journey under ground to the East and to see the Hertford pictures & your remonstrating with 'John' on some delinquency of his, & his pointing with his air espiègle to the notice printed in the carriage 'Wait till the Train stops!' - How we like to live over little incidents as the sands of Life are flowing fast thro' our hour glass! Now I am picturing dear Kathleen with you amusing you with all her adventures & kindling your hearts with her own! What a happy time it has so far been for her in America! During the last 4 weeks I have been intending to write but have been literally demoralized with absolutely unceasing neuralgia - or rather what it has been at last pronounced rheumatic gout in the jaw resulting from having run down as the saying is - the pain has much diminished since gout medicines were given! & I am beginning to stir from absolutely vegetable life into some efforts at least towards animalism & out of this department of the 4 Kingdoms I now stretch forth my hand to wards you my dear dear friends - this lonely silent Sunday Ev'g - a Salvation army little crowd sang their songs & preached their preachment 1/2 an hour ago but have now dispersed leaving me all the more conscious of the succeeding silence - I am now thinking of the awfulness of dear Mrs. Perkins's silence - a letter of K's to Geraldine told me of that terrible catastrophe - will she be able to receive that shock with anything like the same faith that upheld her when her sister vanished from her side? I don't know, but I feel as if the union had been less completed between husband & wife than it was between sister & sister, & therefore as if the wrench w'd be so much more terrible - You will let me know when possible, what you hear of or from them - Not to have been permitted any watching over the last hours seems to me the bitterest & most enduring grief;" saying she has sent the photographs on to Aubrey de Vere as she requested and sending her love to them and to Kathleen.