BCARS
Add Mss 412, Box 6 File 3
27 November
Thank you so much for your letter of Victoria news which you wrote me some time since. I should have acknowledged it sooner, but I have’nt and I’ve no excuse to offer, and I’m very sorry, and that’s all I’ve got to say. I dont know if you’ve got anything, but please not to be very angry & I wont do it again.
Jack told me that Mrs. Snowden & Miss Barnard had started people cycling; by this time I suppose you are also hard at it. I quite understand what you said about the men on bicycles you used to see riding in your youth with pained and anxious expressions on their faces. The reason was that if anything happened, no matter whose fault, they were sure to have it given against them. I sympathise with them now, though I used to hate them. I believe I have no lost the expression of anxiety, though I still have the sense of it. I noticed the same thing on the face of the bicyclist as you did in your youthful & observant days. I started the cultivation of a careless “insouciant” kind of look, combined with a smile which was meant to beam serenity on everything around, and I believe I have now succeeded – now & then a sort of conscious spasm comes over me that I am looking like a man whom the photographer has just told to “smile & think of ‘er” but I believe its better than the former agonised look, especially when one occasionally throws in the superfluous & unnecessary waving of a pocket handkerchief as a further proof of how completely one feeels at ease. Please excuse all this, but cycling has now become a romance and I offer you the above suggestions for your own use and without any charge.
Please tell Jack that I’m sorry I have not found anyone going out to B.C. So I have told Mr. Atkinson he must just send the clothes out by Parcels Post.
You will be sorry to hear that the Seymours have lost their second daughter at Malta – poor girl she was only 22 – and there would be no possibility of Sir Michael being able to leave the Levant at this moment.
I am again living in London for the winter in Egerton Gardens. I dont like it, especially when I think of Dutchet and the summer time. I bicycle in the morning when fine enough, which is daily becoming more & more doubtful.
I hope your people are well, please give them my kindest regards & with the same to yourself. Believe me, yours
ever sincerely Harry Stanhope
Back to 1896 Correspondence
This collection of letters has been digitized from an earlier transcription project and is for informational purposes only. This transcription has not been verified against the originals. Researchers interested in these letters should consult the original documents housed at the BC Archives.