Chipping Norton
Sunday afternoon
Dec 2nd 1877
My own darling Eugénie,
It is with peculiar pleasure that I sit down to-day, the eve of your birthday anniversary, to wish you many many happy returns of that day, may God grant you long years of happiness my own precious Eugénie and as the years roll on, if He should spare us both, may you feel that your husband’s love is indeed to you all that you hoped for and all that it should be to you.
I feel, my darling, totally incapable of saying, on paper, all that my heart’s fondest aspirations bid me utter but, though my pen may be but an unworthy index to my thoughts, yet I know that my Eugénie will not fail to credit her lover with all the loving wishes he would fain pour into her ear, again then, my love, I wish you every happiness that may be for your welfare, and as we grow old together may you ever realise that the lover of to-day, dear though he knows he is, grows, as the husband of the future, yet dearer year by year.
I hope you will receive this on Monday evening together with a little packet, posted last evening on account of registration, containing a pair of earrings, please accept them, my darling, as a slight remembrance of your birthday that eventful birthday so soon to followed by the event of your life – of our lives – your wedding day.
I am pleased to hear that Charlotte had a pleasant journey give her my best love and tell her that I am so very busy that I must ask her to excuse me for any seeming neglect in not writing to her.
I was not aware when I wrote the hurried postscript to my last letter that George’s engagement would be news to you both, I told him when I wrote that you had anticipated the event, dear, and together with you I am very pleased at the prospect of his having a nice wife and one, I think too, so suited to him, I am glad to find he proposes coming down to spend one evening with me this week.
I am writing this letter in the dining room, for I am living there to-day, Alfred Hitchman and Mr Rawlinson have both been in and Willie Bliss and his wife looked in yesterday, they all seem pleased with our house and I think I am rather proud of it myself.
I heard of a housemaid the other day through Miss Lyndon and, though she is rather young, she spoke so very highly of her that I wrote and asked her to engage her, this I hear this morning she has done so we are at last suited, however she will not come till 24th inst just before we return.
I am very glad to have got through the worst of the moving it has been altogether rather a worrying time but I think I shall be amply rewarded when I bring “my little wife” to her home!
The piano was got upstairs yesterday, quite safely, I superintended and it was a very heavy undertaking the stairs being winding, steep, and none too broad, I was thankful to see my darling’s wedding present safe in the drawing room, fancy, love, in one short month you will have played upon it I hope!
I have not hung any of the pictures yet with the exception of your likeness, temporarily in the breakfast room, and I think I shall leave them till you come. Everything we ordered is now in with the exception of the china & glass would it not be well to have that sent off immediately after Xmas so that you could see about it when unpacked?
And now good-bye, I shall think very much about you to-morrow.
With fondest wishes
believe me ever your own affectionate
Julius Sladden
To my darling
Eugénie,
With all fondest wishes from her own true lover
Julius Sladden
Dec 3rd 1877
