Box 1

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"Canon Dimnet asks me to send you his good wishes. I received on Sept. 23 a card from him written in Avignon on July 25. He said he was returning to Paris as soon as he could get a permit and asked me to write to him 'about mid-August' at the Chanoinesses. There was no further news - he did not say how he was..."

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"Dear Miss West, You will be glad to hear that I have had another message from the Canon. It is dated '11.16.42' which I take to be November 16, in answer to the message I sent him (of which I sent you a copy) last August. One can read between the lines of 'rheumatism and worse' but 'certitude is the best remedy' shows that his spirit is unchanged..."

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"I on August 13 wrote to Canon Dimnet: Delighted have news. Barbara, Ruth, Rebecca, self, well, working; send heartiest greetings and confident hopes for happy future our countries and friends meeting. Love. Pearl Adam. Please excuse the familiar use of Christian names; 25 words is so little, and there is less danger of confusion than with surnames. Have you happened to see Thomas Kernan's 'Report on France', published by Lane this year? A friend sends me this extract..."

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"Dear Miss West, Please excuse the hasty method of enclsed[sic] slip - I wanted yourself and Miss Gray and Miss Anderson to know exactly the greeting sent to the Canon. Twenty-five words are a scanty ration; and when one sits down to compose a message there does not seem anything in the world which it shall be at once permissible and possible to say!..."

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"Dear Rebecca, I think often of you - especially now when I definitely plan to go to England. I hope very much that I may see you there - I arrive at the Hotel Mayfair, Berkeley St. W.1, on July 24th and plan to stay until August 7th. I am here in Maine until July 15th. I don't like to start in statistics, but I am cowed with travel agents who say that one cannot change a date at all..."

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"Dear Rebecca, I wonder how you are, and I hope well. The same for Henry. It must be the height of spring, or even the beginning of summer, at Ibstone House. That lovely view of the hills and the garden in the foreground. ... I had a letter from Arthur Stratton yesterday. He says that the galleys of his book, 'The Great Red Island' (Madagascar) must by now be in your hands, sent by Scribner's or by Macmillan in London with a request for a comment from you for the dust jacket..."

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"My dear Rebecca, Arthur Stratton told me some time ago that you sent your Ford rights[?] to me. I was pleased, too, that Arthur may meet you in London. It is actually a number of years ago that he told me of his great admiration for you - it is the fulfillment of all this time and all these thoughts that you should [...] to converse together..."

Scope and Contents "My dear Rebecca, Your letter, save for the news of your illness, brought joy to me and to a number of others. I hang my head to have let it go unacknowledged for such a long time, long enough for me to have written to Arthur in Istanbul, for him to have answered by return, and for me to have told the gist of them to his sister, Barbara Bolling, and my son Tim in Washington. I am delighted that you priase the book so highly, and thank you warmly for writing. I am distressed to hear of your...

Scope and Contents "My dear Rebecca, I think of you often. I wonder how you are, what you are doing, how you look, whom you see and everything. You won't believe this concern now that so long a time has gone by since I received the notice of your new address. At that time I was going to write at once and hoped to have news of you, but shortly after that I had a great grief in the death of my youngest son, Jack. He was thirty six, had a wife and two small boys, and committed suicide. You have had grief with a...

Scope and Contents "My dear, dear Rebecca, Your wonderful letter gives me the feeling that I have just seen you, and that I am at least slightly aucourant with what you have been doing and feeling in the last year. Every word is of interest. I am shocked that you should have had wearying legal business to hold you a sort of prisoner in London when you wanted to be free. I hope that all those affairs will arrange themselves according to your wishes. It is rather a stickler to have legatees waiting for your...