To Bertha from Alice “Sally” – March 15, 1926
[Note: Bertha is 35 and living in Florence, Italy. Her sister Sally is writing her from France.]
Dear Bertha,
I report myself here. Not too enchanted with food conditions but thoroughly contented otherwise. My room is quite large with two windows opening in the place Noel Parfait and a fireplace. My bed is in a corner where it can’t get drafts, that is to say in an alcove. I have a closet with shelves, one with lots of pegs and nothing else and one that is a cabinet de toilet, so I’m told. It looks to me just like the other but has a very small table in it. The wash stand is outside.
The food is only fair and is served à la Chariot D’Or. A number of men come in for meals and I have been put at a little table with a French woman. I suppose in order to learn French. I’m not thrilled with her. There are two cats but they are French and have no sense of decency, one of them kissed me on both cheeks at first meeting. Which reminds me that Mademoiselle did that to me when I went out, and just as I wrote that, she came in to wish me goodnight and darned if she didn’t do it again. But it’s fortunately a rather priestly kiss that it to say she sticks her head on one side of mine and kisses the air and then the other side and kisses the air there.
The cat didn’t. He kissed me all over and stuck his nose in my ear and purred which is one of the thing a cat can do that I can’t stand.
Well, tomorrow I start my adventure. What is to say I pay a professional visit to the cathedral to see what I see.
By the way, I left the canvas and stretchers you had in Paris at Madame Breyer’s office per instructions from Mamma as of course, Madame _____ couldn’t have them any longer when she is leaving.
I’m cold and sleepy and I’m going to bed. Please remember everybody, the lady who knows the Coldwell’s is Mrs. Moore, she lived in Spokane once and knows people there, too, the Atwaters, Connelly’s and others.
Love and good luck,
Sally