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Verena in the Midst: A Kind of a Story

Chapter 178: CLV Richard Haven to Verena Raby
By E. V. Lucas
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Essays, Letters & Speeches

About This Book

Presented as a sequence of letters, the work follows the responses of friends and relatives when a woman at her country home sustains a spinal injury and must remain flat for a long recovery. Correspondence records medical opinions, practical arrangements for nursing and household care, visitors and neighborhood support, and small domestic consolations such as reading aloud, recorded music, and an adapted form of solitaire. Through exchanges of news, requests, and observations, the letters map family connections and local characters while illustrating how community, resourcefulness, and affectionate concern reshape daily life during enforced convalescence.

CLV
Richard Haven to Verena Raby

My Dear, the news is terrific and I sent you a telegram at once. I am rejoiced, and yet—what is to become of me now? I had formed habits of talking to you every day which I greatly prized and now they are to be broken. The young doctor is certainly a gift from heaven and I should like his permanent address. As to Miss Power, I have not any intention of giving her the sack but if she sends in her resignation I must accept it. I think, however, that you make a mistake in demobilizing the staff so rapidly. These things are best done by gradations and I, for one, intend to remain on duty for some little while yet. I hear so many things that have only half their flavour until they are passed on to you. You will therefore oblige me by issuing a reprieve in so far as my poor pen is concerned and allow it to continue in your service. The moral seems to be: When one is really ill, present one’s regular doctor with a fishing rod.—Yours ever,

R. H.

P.S.—I was writing about “Father-Love” the other day; and now here are some lines of a small boy in praise of his mother, which recall the day of Solomon. The last line—after so many exalted attempts!—is very sweet?

MY MOTHER
My mother stood in the candlelight,
With a red rose in her hair,
And another at her throat.
Her face is delicately molded,
With coal black eyes that seem
To smolder, like fire far into the night.
Her cheeks are a gorgeous red,
Her lips curved in a smile
That seem like the morning dawn itself.
Her neck is soft and slim
Like a swan floating down o’er the river.
I love her, for she is my mother
And I love no other.
She shares my joys and sorrows, my mother—
Her heart is kind and true,
Her hair is black and glassey,
I can’t describe my mother’s beauty.
Edward Black.