Seward House
Badsey
22 Dec
My darling
This is to greet you on Xmas morning. May some of the peace of Xmas reach you in spite of your surroundings and the present anxiety.
Xmas has a spiritual joy of its own which even this war cannot touch, it even increases it, for if there had never been a Xmas Day, we poor mortals would be deprived of the Hope we have that there is a life beyond the grave.
Our time together has been very sweet and will be a happy sacred memory to look back to in the midst of hard work and trying circumstances.
What you told me one night about yourself troubled me because I feel I have perhaps been too unreserved, in my desire to make you happy. But you will forgive me when I tell you that it is because I love you, and no one else in this world ever has or ever shall have that which will one day be all yours.
I am proud of my soldier lover but I am prouder still of “my man” – who, in spite of great temptation, overcame.
I am confident that it would be wrong for us to marry before you go abroad, and if I am never to be your wife I shall live happy in the knowledge that a good man gave me his love and the best and purest love of his nature – no earthly love will ever again attract me.
I was in a tantalizing mood when I said to you in the library that you might fall in love with someone else. I don’t really think anything so despicable and could have bitten out my tongue after saying it.
All my heart’s love, Love of my Life. God bless and keep you strong, “strong in the faith which is in Christ Jesus” –
Is the Xmas wish
of
your own little girl
Mela
