Letter from Emelia Gurney, London, to Mrs John W. Field, 1887 January 28 : autograph manuscript signed with initials.

Expressing her disappointment that the photograph of St. Peter she sent her had not yet arrived and expressing her concern for Mr. Field's suffering; saying "Your dear letter shews the prologation of the same state of suffering with yet such symptoms of healthy restorative power in the dear man - I remember having had Dr. Pope at Washington & thinking him so skilful in his choice of medicines - sometimes they acted like magic - We are so mysteriously made & The Life is so in our life that any moment it seems to me an inrush of That might come like a hightide & lift out of the suffering of disease - perhaps medicines just remove impediments in our machinery to the reception of the great Motive Power - Tiny signs of Spring afar off are making themselves felt here to our longing eyes & little birds perceive them & answer in caressing tones to them! so different from the matter of fact kind of chaffering & bargaining that they made over their worms in the autumn - I like to think that on some days you will now be having open windows & that little breezes will be able to come in & play around the beloved Sufferers face - & dearest Head Nurse you must go out for a little drive & inhale the sweet air;" relating the illnesses of friends and describing two young women in her care; saying "One young bright fair woman is absolutely heart broken from the infidelity of her husband - her love is gone from him - he has so sunk - & yet she will not leave him feeling he w'd sink lower into perdition if she did...Then I have a middle aged daughter of 40 on hand whose little old mother is a petty tyrant & endeavours to coerce & circumvent & there's not money enough to live apart. They have separated for 2 months & now I am their go-between to try & settle a modus vivendi - these are my meddlings you see dear friend - & if I c'd write a minute journal every day it really w'd be interesting because so many tragic & comic parts of human nature are revealed - if I by a fairies wand c'd be gifted like Henry James - with a subtle delicately fine pointed pencil I s'd like to paint deeper & more intense heart springs than he does - springs that come from Mount Zion - from the divine heart - that falling into poor little oppressed human ones become either muddy or stagnant or sparkling or a mixture of all three owing to the earthy soil & its narrow pressure - & the necessities it imposes upon the heavenly element that wants to have its way up to its own level again - Did you see Sir Stafford Northcote when in America - I think he was admired & liked at Washington - What a tragic end - how to be envied - at the feet of his Chief who had been obliged to sacrifice him for his party's sake - it is what anyone w'd have chosen for his story's end in imagination I think - & how blessed for him to have bade adieu at his office saying I am glad to have finished all & to have left no arrears - How one w'd like to be able to say that on the eve of ones death - it carried one to the thought of our Master saying 'I have finished the work Thou gavest me to do!' - Who but He c'd taking such a wide deep range, say that! He must forgive our failures in that & help us out of them into more abundant Love for our fresh start beyond - Oh! What a 'screed of doctrine!' it will need all of yr patience & loving kindness;" adding, in a postscript, "CES very nicely I think."