Life of Octavia Hill as Told in Her Letters

by Octavia Hill

Dear Miss Hill,

I write just a little greeting to you, as one of the many friends who are thinking pretty often of you, and longing for the time when you may come back, revived, to all the folks who need you here.

I wished so much for you to go, that I can’t be sorry, for a moment, that you are gone. What I hope now is, that you may have a delicious sky above you, and hills and green plains on each side, and a few unexpected roses, and the promise of anemones and violets before long; and that you are already feeling, as it were, in a new planet, and as if everything had happened about forty years ago. Distance and time are more like each other than might be supposed.

Don’t, of course, think of answering any note of mine. I shall hear of you, I hope, from Miss Miranda.

Yours sincerely,

Edward Clifford.

14, Nottingham Place,

January 27th, 1878.

Mrs. Hill to Octavia.

My own dearest child,