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Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes Bliss, March 15, 1935

Finance Ministry

Budapest

15.III.35

Elisina has had a letter from Edith Wharton, Dearest Mildred, to the effect that your mother has died. I don’t know where she got the news from, or whether there may not be some mistake, but in any case I want to write you at once and tell you that I am thinking of you.

I’ve been wanting to write one of those tomes with which I afflict you from time to time, but things have been changing here so fast that it’s difficult to start weaving a pattern, as it were, because some new turn of the wheel jerks the thread out of one’s hand. Ever since last Autumn when that event at Marseilles took place.Alexander I, king of Yugoslavia, was murdered in Marseilles, France, on October 9, 1934. However, I shall not be able to withstand the temptation long . . .

We’ve had an anxious time these months. Elisina’s son GeoffreyGeoffrey Herbert Grant Richards (1906–1983), Elisina Tyler’s son by her first husband, Grant Richards. was terribly smashed up in a motor accident in Oct., very nearly bled to death, had a cracked spine and escaped by a miracle being crippled for life. Then Charlie R.Charles Geoffrey Grant Richards (1902–1959), Elisina Tyler’s son by her first husband, Grant Richards. caught pleurisy and pneumonia and there was a scare lest it be TB: he was in a nursing home for a time—and is now on a mountain top in the Tyrol, where Elisina has just been with him to settle him in. He’ll be away from work for months, but it seems there’s good hope that he’ll entirely recover. This puts an end to Elisina’s plans to go to America this spring, as she can’t face the idea of being far away from Charlie until he’s quite set up again.

Here, every sort of trouble, but interesting. Hayford’s old father keeps everyone on the jump, and H. is unable to devote much time to our poor Vol. III,L’art byzantin. which only needs a few weeks of consecutive work to finish it.

Much love, dearest Mildred.

R. T.

 
Associated Places: Budapest (Hungary)