Item Edwards MSS 2.3.30 - Letter with drawing of carving on the Via Augustales, Pompeii

3 pages

Handwritten letter with ink drawing of carving:

• [on drawing] 'Corner of the Via Augustales Pompeii. May 14th 1891. A.B.E. Saville Villa. August 25th /91. My own darling one - Tomorrow will be thy birthday, + a littly sketch is all a poo' Owl has to send thee - but Owl thinks that perhaps a wee littly sketch from Pompeii, done from the one made when poo' Owl was such a very very poo' Owl, will please thee more than a more valuable gift. My precious one, I am so glad thou art in a beautiful place for thy birthday, + getting fine air, + mountains, and good walks - even though thou art far distant from thy poo' poo' Owl. God bless thee my own oney - + I hope thou wilt have many, many birthdays, + happy years between each, + that thy Owl may live ~~thee~ to give thee less anxiety + more happiness for the future. I have walked to the end of the promenade this morning, + back, before luncheon - the first time I have taken a real good walk so early. It had been pouring in torrents all the morning, + I thought, as it was then holding up, I had better make the most of it. I felt all the better for it, + ate a capital luncheon when I came in. ' I enclose a very satisfactory letter from Petrie - satisfactory both as to the [?] + the Haworths. I [?] hope he will stick to it (woodside, I mean) + not put it off till he has no time left for it. I tried, in writing to him, to let him see by a sort of sidelight, that I deemed it of real importance - + yet not to make too much of it. I did not want to make him feel the painful weight of obligation - + yet I tried that he should gather that I was grave about it. He is so very sharp, that I fancy he wd. not fail to seize a shade of meaning, however slight. He has returned Goodyear's cutting, so I now send it to thee - but I want it back for the Haworths, who have not yet seen it. Baby's little drawing of the tablet is very good - very good indeed. I am sure the oney could draw well with a little teaching + application. How curious the recumbent figure in the "pinked" shroud is, at the bottom!' (ink note)

Copyright Griffith Institute, University of Oxford