Item 132 - Letter from Sophie Weisse to Elizabeth Trevelyan

18 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, At the Sign of the Edinburgh Review. - The only thing in her mind, apart from the fear of John [Wellcome Tovey]'s being sent to France 'instead of attending to innumerate lorries in Dunfermline', is Donald [Tovey]'s illness: he is 'very ill' and two days ago his death seemed inevitable. However, though he now mostly sleeps, it is an 'easier sleep' and he is taking some food and very occasionally making a 'Tovey joke'. Thanks Bessie very much for the young nurse [Jean Monks] she sent, who is clever, 'as it were sure footed', and harm. She herself minds very much being old; '[s]o much harm' has come to Donald as he has grown older, like 'the awful tragedy with his hands'; and now there is the 'incredible war'. Last night there was a 'monstrous travesty' in Edinburgh, when 'brutes' set upon the many Italian ice cream sellers in Edinburgh, 'wrecked their little shops and neat barrows and ill used the people'.