Letter from Ursula Valentine to her husband John Valentine
Title
Letter from Ursula Valentine to her husband John Valentine
Description
Enclosing photographs of daughter Frances and talks of future attempts at better prints. She is arranging copies for all family members. Requests he lets her know what type of photos he would like. Writes that she will try and number her letters correctly and catches up with family and current news of activities as well as baby's progress..
Creator
Date
1941-09-02
Temporal Coverage
Language
Format
Four page handwritten letter
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
Identifier
EValentineUMValentineJRM410902-02
Transcription
[underlined] No 18 [/underlined]
Lido
Tuesday 2nd September
My dearest one,
Here are the photos. Barbara asks me to impress on you that these are not good prints, she was feeling weary last night & just made a print of each to see what they were like. She is full of plans about the fancy papers she is going to use to make really good prints, but in the meantime I thought I must rush advance copies to you, because they really are rather lovely, aren’t they? They all show Frances in such different moods, & are all so like her in various ways. Mother will be awfully pleased to have them I’m sure. We are going to make copies for your people, Grannie Valentine
[page break]
2.
my relations in Canada & South Africa & all the rest. Please let us know if you have any particular wishes for yourself. Barbara likes to enlarge up to enormous sizes, but it seems to me that for you its more convenient to have a pocket size; but tell me what you would like – you’ll see I have numbered the prints. You can keep any or all of these copies, though as I say they are not as good prints as can be made from the negatives. There’s one more photo, of Frances on her rug in the garden, rather like No. 6, but there was only one print of that & Barbara needs that here for reference. What a thing to have a photographer for a sister! Dorothy (our Waaf) assisted by holding the lights. She said something
3.
the other day about some of them being moved to another station – I do hope she doesn’t go, it suits me so well to have her & she’s happy here.
After the withering sarcasm of your letter 21 of Friday I am making a tremendous effort to number my letters properly. But I must point out that in fact you were better off not knowing that one letter in the N S & N was missing, you say yourself you were “blissfully ignorant” whereas now probably you fret to think you’ve lost something. However men always were hopelessly illogical, so I’ll try to number my letters consecutively.
Peter is arriving on Saturday p.m. I was hoping that you might all have been home together, but with the present rather crowded conditions perhaps its just as well that he’ll have gone
[page break]
by the time you come. For heavens sake don’t tell me that you may not get leave. I could not bear it.
I have had a surprise parcel from Mrs Howie this morning, an enormous packet of oatmeal! It is so sweet of her, & I can do nothing in return but send copies of some of these photos. Could you perhaps send Iain a nice big tin of sweets? It’s the only way I can think of repaying her for her repeated kindnesses.
Frances has only put on 2 oz this week, making her 16.9. It’s rather worrying, but she looks the picture of health so I’m not going to bother unless she continues to make such small gains, & if she does I must consider supplementing her feeds with broth & Farex & things. I [underlined] think [/underlined] I’ll ask Daphne before I start her on fancy things, it may only be the beginning of teething tho’ she hasn’t cut any yet.
Thanks for the information about Mother’s affairs. I will accordingly do nothing yet.
I’m sending off a parcel of washing, NS&N today.
All my love to you
Ursula
Lido
Tuesday 2nd September
My dearest one,
Here are the photos. Barbara asks me to impress on you that these are not good prints, she was feeling weary last night & just made a print of each to see what they were like. She is full of plans about the fancy papers she is going to use to make really good prints, but in the meantime I thought I must rush advance copies to you, because they really are rather lovely, aren’t they? They all show Frances in such different moods, & are all so like her in various ways. Mother will be awfully pleased to have them I’m sure. We are going to make copies for your people, Grannie Valentine
[page break]
2.
my relations in Canada & South Africa & all the rest. Please let us know if you have any particular wishes for yourself. Barbara likes to enlarge up to enormous sizes, but it seems to me that for you its more convenient to have a pocket size; but tell me what you would like – you’ll see I have numbered the prints. You can keep any or all of these copies, though as I say they are not as good prints as can be made from the negatives. There’s one more photo, of Frances on her rug in the garden, rather like No. 6, but there was only one print of that & Barbara needs that here for reference. What a thing to have a photographer for a sister! Dorothy (our Waaf) assisted by holding the lights. She said something
3.
the other day about some of them being moved to another station – I do hope she doesn’t go, it suits me so well to have her & she’s happy here.
After the withering sarcasm of your letter 21 of Friday I am making a tremendous effort to number my letters properly. But I must point out that in fact you were better off not knowing that one letter in the N S & N was missing, you say yourself you were “blissfully ignorant” whereas now probably you fret to think you’ve lost something. However men always were hopelessly illogical, so I’ll try to number my letters consecutively.
Peter is arriving on Saturday p.m. I was hoping that you might all have been home together, but with the present rather crowded conditions perhaps its just as well that he’ll have gone
[page break]
by the time you come. For heavens sake don’t tell me that you may not get leave. I could not bear it.
I have had a surprise parcel from Mrs Howie this morning, an enormous packet of oatmeal! It is so sweet of her, & I can do nothing in return but send copies of some of these photos. Could you perhaps send Iain a nice big tin of sweets? It’s the only way I can think of repaying her for her repeated kindnesses.
Frances has only put on 2 oz this week, making her 16.9. It’s rather worrying, but she looks the picture of health so I’m not going to bother unless she continues to make such small gains, & if she does I must consider supplementing her feeds with broth & Farex & things. I [underlined] think [/underlined] I’ll ask Daphne before I start her on fancy things, it may only be the beginning of teething tho’ she hasn’t cut any yet.
Thanks for the information about Mother’s affairs. I will accordingly do nothing yet.
I’m sending off a parcel of washing, NS&N today.
All my love to you
Ursula
Collection
Citation
Ursula Valentine, “Letter from Ursula Valentine to her husband John Valentine,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed April 25, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/19623.
Item Relations
This item has no relations.