Letter from Ursula Valentine to her husband John Valentine

Letter from Ursula Valentine to her husband John Valentine

Writes of receiving his letter describing his lone walk amid moors and glens. Reports on what she is reading and her gardening activities. Mentions Attlee's speech and Churchill going to see Roosevelt. Concludes with domestic issues.

1941-08-15

Four page handwritten letter

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EValentineUMValentineJRM410815-01

[underlined] No 5 [/underlined]
Friday.
Aug. 15th
My darling Johnnie,
Today came your letter describing your lone walk amid the moors & glens on your free half day. Goodness how I long to be with you & share your free time, altho’ of course if you survey the matter in the cold light of reason I couldn’t in any case go wandering over hills & moors with Frances in the pram, so perhaps its just as well that you are free to go on your own. Do you really think about me so much? And so pleasantly? It’s very thrilling to me to think that you do so. Of course you are nearly always in my thoughts too, sometimes as a subconscious glow of happiness & security, sometimes in particular memories, full of love & laughter & sometimes with a fierce passionate longing
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to be with you again and for always. Yet it seems somehow strange & wonderful that you should think of me so much too. One knows oneself so well that it hardly seems possible that another & so much admired human being could find that self interesting & much loving. However it is so, and thank God for it.
I have forwarded “Gone with the Wind” a couple of days ago & am, now reading “Wuthering Heights” which, I must admit, has not yet succeeded in making itself at all real & actual to me, as “G w t W” did from the very beginning. The characters are all so preposterously wild & unruly, they all need a thorough good spanking. However perhaps it will improve, or I get into it better.
Yesterday evening I spent a back breaking hour removing dandelions from
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2.
the [deleted] back [/deleted] front lawn, which now looks quite bare & lost without them. They [underlined] were [/underlined] beauties, with roots 6 or 7 inches long. I saw old man Lilley in the town yesterday & asked when he was coming to do some more gardening. He said he was so busy, tho’ he was standing gossiping outside a pub at the time. He said he’d come this p.m, but its pouring with rain today so maybe he won’t. I want to have both lawns cut, as well as heaps of other things.
Did you hear Attlee’s speech yesterday at 3 pm? Probably not, I suppose. It was certainly pretty dramatic on Churchill’s part to go sailing about on the Atlantic like that chatting to Roosevelt – characteristic of him. I’m very glad they’ve
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issued some sort of peace aims, even if they’re not as specific as one would have wished. At least they are the rock bottom fundamentals on which everyone can agree.
I’ve washed & mended your socks & will post them off today or tomorrow. Are you short of them? Because I can easily send some more from your copious store. I must potter off to town now, altho’ it is pouring, while I can leave Frances with Mrs Davidson.
All my love to you, dearest husband
Yours always
Ursula
Glad you’re GB again – keep it up!