21 Avenue de la Gde Armée
Paris
9th April 1901
My dearest Husband,
You will be expecting another letter from me, so I will write before going out this afternoon. There has not been much time for correspondence as I want May to see as much as possible, so we are out nearly all day. We were very much afraid we were going to have a wet Easter as the glass did not look at all promising however on Sunday morning the sun was shining brightly & we were glad to discard our jackets & mantles, as it was quite hot, indeed quite an ideal day.
We went to half-past eight communion at the English Church, there must have been nearly two hundred communicants I should think & the church was beautifully decorated with white flowers. We intended to go to morning service at the American Church, however when we got there, we found that the service began very much earlier than I thought & was nearly over, so afterwards we looked in at two Roman Catholic Churches which were both crowded to excess & afterwards went back through the Parc Monceau to déjeuner. In the afternoon we took the train to Auteuil & went to the cemetery to see Father’s & Mother’s graves, the latter is in rather a bad state & is to have a new cross, the stone has crumbled so much; Joe had not let the work people start the work however, as he knew I was coming over.
We took a tramway from Auteuil into the town & finding it was still early went to the small new hotel in the Champs Elysées, the Elysée Palace Hotel to have some tea, Fannie Joe told us that was the place to go if we wanted to see all the well-dressed swells on Sunday afternoon; it is a most lovely hall, splendidly furnished by Maple & Co, & May quite enjoyed seeing the people & the lovely dresses there & we both thought Ethel would have liked it too. Then we went again to the English church for evening service at five o’clock; the grand procession, vestments etc would scarcely have suited you, but I told May it must make her fancy herself back at S. Stephen’s.
We were to have lunched at Joe’s yesterday, but Fannie was ill in bed again, so he came round to put us off & so instead we went round after dinner yesterday to have a chat with Joe & saw Fannie in bed for a little while, she has slight congestion of one lung, following on two attacks of influenza. It is difficult to understand their talk of poverty when one sees the luxury, one may almost say, splendour, of their apartment & I fancy that two servants are still kept, at any rate I could hear voices in the kitchen.
I must reserve further news for Kathleen; I hope you are all getting on all right without me, I expect by the time Saturday comes I shall be quite glad to be at the end of all my travelling & be quickly at home again. May will go back to Orléans tomorrow about midday & I start for Bourg at two o’clock; I think of stopping Thursday night at the Hötel Britannique, Avenue Victoria. My love to Kathleen, I must write to her next time, as it is getting late and we want to go the Louvre.
With much love to all
I am
Your loving wife
Eugénie N Sladden
