Item 177 - Letter from Donald Tovey to Elizabeth Trevelyan

1 item

Kensington Palace Gardens, W.8. - Thinks he is returning to Edinburgh on Friday, after getting a fortnight's leave. Grettie is making 'a splendid recovery, hampered only by her abominable relations': after seeing Aunt Jane, she is going to Edinbugh and 'meeting another aunt whose daughter has gone violently off her head'. Tovey can do nothing; [Grettie's sister?] Jessie Hanson, whom Bessie met in Edinburgh and whom Tovey calls 'a bad cheap copy of Grettie', is with them all the time and encourages 'that morbid vein of insolence' which the doctors recognise as the commonest symptom. Grettie is all right after a day or two alone with him, but she cannot get that. They have been seeing things in London: [Arnold Bennett's] "The Title", which was very good, the National Gallery, and Hubert Cornish. She is 'first-rate' with his friends, as she is with her family; it is just that with her family she is 'simply horrible' to Tovey, and writes 'dangerous letters to doctors etc'.

Pencil annotation giving precise date.