CORNFORD, Frances (1886-1960). Poet.
Two Autograph Letters, signed, to Jane Bussy [addressed to her in Nice].
In her search to find a “Treasure” of a “cook/housekeeper” and gardener Frances Cornford contacts an old friend of the family, Miss Bussy, “most tentatively and humbly” to ask her help in ascertaining whether the Mercardier family (from France) would be good employees. The reason for this becomes clear at the end of the second letter when Cornford writes “it must be a most lovely thing to be bi-lingual like you”; she confesses that she has only a little french herself, “I’ve scarcely spoken it colloquially since we had a little French Swiss maid who departed when I was 16…” Detailed and kind letters that reveal glimpses into the Cornfords’ household at the time of this letter.
“Somehow I can’t imagine a man deliberately wanting to leave Antibes,… We live just outside Cambridge in a rambling house with a be-treed and at present neglected garden. We like it and so do the married children and grandchildren…” She expresses concern that despite the Mercardiers’ enthusiasm for the post(s) they would be unhappy leaving the pleasant climes of the South of France: “unless they are an extraordinarily exceptional family I can’t believe they’d be happy (though she does sound a dear). Think of the poor child, for one thing, at an English Elementary School - and she’d have to walk or bicycle nearly 2 miles to reach it, and if they were unhappy of course I’d be unhappy too…” She asks Miss Bussy whether she might sound them out on several points, including the inevitable fluctuation in house guests/residents: “would [she] stand the unexpected waxing and waning of my family (with married children living at home, and then not living at home and then coming on visits and young friends suddenly appearing for weekends…”
She adds a very thankful post-script: “I haven’t managed to say this half as warmly as I feel it. You are kind.”
Very good condition.
