From H. E. Litchfield to Emma Darwin [5 June 1875]

Dear Mother.

I'm very curious to get a letter & hear how you have all settled down. Effie said again, she hoped now you wd stay a good long time. I wish you wd stay to receive old Ponts there when we could all come down upon you like Vultures. I hear my letter was treated very scornfully by Miss Martin at the [Corwll] & I have got a solemn letter from old StorrasQQQQ in answer to it, saying especially that he understands the words unsectarian to mean a personal guarantee for reasonableness, wh. appears to me rather a peculiar meaning to give the words. I feel very hopeless abt working with her for she shows such extraordinary small & mean spite. There are some things women do which no man wd have the face to think of. It is a fact that she employs every small means of persecution she can against the teachers in the Coll. who have come in through the Tansley connection. I know that at least 3 of the teachers she has disgusted are first rate. Then she is so essentially false. For a lng time I thought it was only inaccuracy & a very hot temper, but I can't explain it so now—

I saw [Sopha] & Hope yesterday & Uncle Ras. He says it is perfectly easy to understand the Ricardo experiment, that all you have to do, is to make a vacuum with the palm of your hand & that that has been done— I wish Geo could try again. Also I had little Emily Thorley & had a nice lunch, she neither scolded me retrospectively nor prospectively & looked well & cheerful.

Today we dine with M^me [Bodichon]. She seems to be deeply in love with us. At least it is with Richard & I'm thrown in, tho' she is very friendly with me— If we can manage it I think I shall try & go to Hamlet. but we are quite full next week. One lark being the party at the Coll of Surgeons. wh. will amuse me I think.

I suppose tho Franki will work like grim death at the Acad. tomorrow. I think Miss Martin will probably arrange for his lecture to be a failure– –but I shall tell him I w^d. never have asked him if I'd known what a kettle of boiling water it wd be by now.

Isn't it just jolly hot— Everybody is scrimmaging with their maids. Laura hardly dare leave her house for fear they shd come to blows.

your | H.E.L.