Transcribe
Translate
Conger Reynolds correspondence, August 1918
1918-08-02 Conger Reynolds to Daphne Reynolds Page 2
More information
digital collection
archival collection guide
transcription tips
retires and shuts itself away from the world. The house usually opens directly on the street, but the front it shows to the world is forbidding. More than half the time the windows are shuttered and the doors locked. There is no front yard where the children play nor veranda where he family sits and exposes itself to the public gaze. If the family goes out of doors it is in the garden, or court, in the rear, which is thoroughly walled in so that no other family will look on the gatherings there. And the house itself is prettily furnished, though perhaps not so plainly and sensibly and comfortable as the American home. The French go in more for decoration and less for practical usefulness of furnishings. This sort of conception of the home is considerably different and not overly attractive to the American. But there is something very fine in the idea of it. The French home is a little heaven carefully guarded from contact with the outer world and you can only know about what goes on inside of it by belonging to the sacred inner circle. So, in the privacy of my well-guarded room, as I write to you at 11 o'clock at night there is utter calm and peace, - so much of both in fact that I am made almost lonesome and desolate. I wish you were here to make my privacy my family privacy. That would be something else again, I am ever so grateful, dear, for the pictures. I had some trouble identifying who was who in the picture of the three of you, but I
Saving...
prev
next
retires and shuts itself away from the world. The house usually opens directly on the street, but the front it shows to the world is forbidding. More than half the time the windows are shuttered and the doors locked. There is no front yard where the children play nor veranda where he family sits and exposes itself to the public gaze. If the family goes out of doors it is in the garden, or court, in the rear, which is thoroughly walled in so that no other family will look on the gatherings there. And the house itself is prettily furnished, though perhaps not so plainly and sensibly and comfortable as the American home. The French go in more for decoration and less for practical usefulness of furnishings. This sort of conception of the home is considerably different and not overly attractive to the American. But there is something very fine in the idea of it. The French home is a little heaven carefully guarded from contact with the outer world and you can only know about what goes on inside of it by belonging to the sacred inner circle. So, in the privacy of my well-guarded room, as I write to you at 11 o'clock at night there is utter calm and peace, - so much of both in fact that I am made almost lonesome and desolate. I wish you were here to make my privacy my family privacy. That would be something else again, I am ever so grateful, dear, for the pictures. I had some trouble identifying who was who in the picture of the three of you, but I
World War I Diaries and Letters
sidebar