Pièce 208 - Letter from Janet Trevelyan to Elizabeth Trevelyan

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Hallington Hall, Newcastle-on-Tyne. - Thanks Bessie for her letter after Eleanor Acland's death: feels 'terribly bereft' even for herself, as Eleanor was 'such a strong tower of friendship in any trouble', but it is hard to bear the thought of 'all those poor men left desolate'. She had been intermittently ill all year, had her appendix out at a nursing home in Exeter, and seemed to be recovering, but was taken ill suddenly in the night with a blood clot in the heart and died in twenty minutes. Only Maisie, and her 'devoted secretary', were with her: Francis was in London at his mother's. Eleanor's young daughter died nine years ago; believes she had 'come to feel that death would mean reunion', so hopes that there was a 'ray of light' for her in her last moments; her husband and sons only have 'their manhood. Poor dears!'. Humphry is very happy in Labrador: his spine trouble seems to be quite over, and he does very heavy work but says he is 'strong as a horse'. He is 'also choir-master, play-producer, lesson-reader in church, house-painter, partridge-hunter and many other things'; has a room in the 'little hospital at North West River' and is one of a 'community of about thirty people and some children, all of English stock'; communications will now become difficult as the sea has frozen.