Lady Grace R. Osler to Wilburt C. Davison
Transcription
[1]
July 29th, 1926 Oxford
Dear Jonah,
I am afraid I have never thanked you for your letter and the cutting you sent me weeks ago. I have been very careless. Almost more important than that is the fact that until now I have not written to offer you a word of sympathy and the sad loss of your chief. I am sure it must mean very much to you after these years of such close association with him. I was
[2]
shocked to hear of Dr. Howland's death. I did not know of it until it was too late to be of any use to Mrs. Howland. She had already left. It must have been a most dreadful shock to her & being away from home and her own people added to the misery. Some one said that Dr. Barker came over from Switzerland or wherever he was but I do not know if that was true.
All kinds of of tragedies have happened. Have you heard of Sally Emmons death?
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Bob is so reserved & reticent he may not have written. Please not speak of this detail to anyone but your wife for I do not know if it has been in the American papers - & probably only under a confusion of the name. She was spoken of as "Emmins [B]?". She committed suicide. Isn't that an end of such a career? No people can understand & appreciate about it better than you two. Perhaps you know they had a villa on Florence & had moved out all their things from London - even a motor. Bob was there from October to
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February when Sally went to Taormina in Sicily and stayed until May. Bob was working in London for the R. C. P. membership & watching his poor mother who still lies perfectly helpless at Hamble. About June 12th he was cabled for & dashed off to Florence. Found she had been dead 24 hours - dying in the Hospital. It seems she was mixed up with the son of hotel keeper at Taormina with whom she had a row in her own villa in Florence - bought a pistol which the servant got away from her. She then drank some stuff she had ready. She lived 12 hours
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and died in the Hospital. It was simply ghastly for Bob. He has only talked to his father once about it - his sister is over here & she & he are having a wonderful time together. I have been down & found him very pathetic looking but cheerful. He blames himself for being so much away from her - but she was impossible at times & I think he was right to keep on with work. After this exam he is going to Scotland for a visit with his friend Mac Intyre & then into the West London Hospital. I think he means if possible to become associated with it - & practice
[6]
in London. I had an Italian paper sent me and got my information from that & from what Mr. Emmons told me. You will please keep all this to yourselves. I know Atala will be interested. I love your article in the Osler Memorial Volume also Penfields'. They aroused such memories!! Oxford is agog over the coming of the British Medical[strikethrough] Association next week. I am having the Schafers from Edinburgh & the Mc Craes from Philadelphia to stop & many others pouring in as usual. My love to you both.
aff. G. R. Osler
[7]
Tia Buringaria[?]
Cunard Line
Southampton
Dr. Wilburt Davison
Johns Hopkins Medical School
Baltimore Maryland. U.S.A
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