Glucksburg
2 May 1888
My dear Chris & Alec:
I will write both together as I can go on much quicker.
Firstly, I want to thank you so very much Chris for your photograph and wish that I had one of myself to send in return but for that I must get round Papa to let me have it taken as I have not the money to spare.
The photo itself is very good and I like the way it is taken but I hope it is not very good of your face and body because if so Chris you must eat more and get fatter. That is the only thing what I don’t like in the photograph that it makes you look too ill.
Secondly I hope you will excuse the writing as I am doing it on my bed which is not a very comfortable position to write a letter in. I have been in bed for two weeks with my old rheumatitis but am much better now although of course am very weak after the pain. The girls have all been exceedingly kind to me during this time. I have hardly ever been alone and they are always ready to do everything I ask for and as to the flowers which are sent up to me during the day – well I am short of vases so you can imagine I have a pretty good many.
Oh Chris, is what I have heard from the Aunts today really true? – that you will be coming home this year? How glorious to see your dear old face once more. It would be jollier still if poor little Monsie could come too. Do try and come Monsie.
But Chris look here, if you don’t come before the end of August or beginning of September you will find one of the birds flown away again because I am coming back to Germany. I like being abroad and seeing a little of the world so I have a place near or in Dresden to a very nice family where I shall be a companion and speak English and will be there on equal terms with the family. Fraulein Sonderling with whom I am now with has got the place for me and so I feel quite safe if she has got it as she knows such good German families.
So next month (June) at the end I shall go home and stay for Jean’s wedding and get a new outfit and return for another year to German life.
I have found it very very slow here and should have been dreadfully miserable if Mama had not been so awfully good as to have let me go to Hamburg at Christmas and Easter. I suppose I have just got to the age when a girl does not like to be shut up in a tiny little place like this. Now I don’t mind it at all because I always think of home.
How is Maggie Chris? I always take an interest in her as I suppose I must follow my brother’s example. Do I? Has Alec been walking with the Miss Crofts along the silvery beach, and under the twinkling stars as he has once before done I believe?
At Easter I had glorious fun. It was quite different than at Christmas as I went to dances and to the theatre, and at Easter it was mostly sight-seeing. We had beautiful weather nearly the whole two weeks and so saw a great deal. I won’t go off onto details as when I do I can never stop and so will hope to tell you all personally in the summer.
I have just heard that Papa has made rather a long passage from Australia to the Cape so I hope it will be quick home.
The spring has really only just come, is it not late this year? Last week the sea was covered with large blocks of ice – seven or eight feet thick, which have been washed down from the Polar Regions and at a small village a few miles away people from all parts were crowding there to see the sight. I should have liked to have seen it. The others did but I was in bed.
When I first came here there were two girls whom I was very fond of and both left before Christmas and I have not found one other to be compared to these since – not here I mean – but now I am gong more new ones have come and seem to be very jolly. Those other two girls were so nice and I believe both will be married before the year is over because they are both tall, very pretty and fine looking girls. One even wrote to me and said that if she got married at Easter whether I would come and stay with her in the summer. I wish I could but of course I prefer to go home and as I cannot do both I must put the former off till another time. The other one, Anita, I stayed with at Easter. She comes from South America and so speaks Spanish always with her family. The other is Danish.
When I return to England I trust Edie will ask me to stay with her for a short time. Jean and her young man are as sweet as ever I believe. Mama laughs so much because they talk of furnishing a house and neither of them have the slightest idea how to do so.
Now I must end this dry old letter although I don’t think that it will interest you much but it is only to show you both that I have not forgotten you.
With much much love from – ever your loving Sister
May Elmslie
Now both of you have two of my letters to answer as you have not answered my last one yet.