%images;]> magbell-03900607 Letter from Mabel Hubbard Bell to Alexander Graham Bell, July 22, 1895, with transcript: a machine-readable transcription. The Alexander Graham Bell Collection. Selected and converted. American Memory, Library of Congress.

Washington, DC, 1998.

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The Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Copyright status not determined; refer to accompanying matter.

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1998/12/21 0004

Letter from Mrs. Alexander Graham Bell to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. Paris, France. (Postmarked July 22, 1895) My darling Alec:

I am going to cable you to sail not earlier than August 12th. I wonder if you will guess the reason why? I want you to yield to my wishes on this point and then I will be satisfied the rest of my life. You see you came the wrong time to Italy and I went home the wrong time. Now please come the right time this time and then I will nevermore be bothered with any tantalizing “perhaps”. I don't believe that you ever realize what a comfort my going to Philadelphia has been to me every day since that time. It eliminated much of the dreadful “perhaps” from my life. You coming now will destroy the remainder. But for that visit I would have been a dissatisfied woman to my life's end. I can accept things philosophically when convinced that there is no help for it, there must be, but I must be convinced first that I have exhausted every resource. I would a hundred times rather try and fail than not try at all and torture myself afterward with the thought “perhaps if I had tried I might have succeeded”. This is my last stone left unturned. Let me turn it, if in vain I will submit.

I want you here about the 18th or 19th, the 20th would I think be better.

Please destroy this as soon as you get it please. There's no tell ing what might happen to it if you don't.

0005 2

The children are very well and happy. Marie Duncan is with me most of the time and Papa authorizes me to spend $2500 in house furnishing for next winter.

I want to go to Beinn Bhreagh more and more all the time, but if I do what is to become of the children. They don't want to go to Mrs. Somers and Elsie doesn't care so much for college any more. Perhaps she is hearing too much about what she calls her beaux yeaux, but of course I haven't spelt it right.

Nothing in special to tell you. Paris feels more like October than mid summer. I went over Mrs. Pulitzer's house with Miss Duncan this afternoon. Mr. Pulitzer abhors noise as much as you do light and his room was padded six inches thick with straw covered by thick stuffs and a deep double window built inside. Ten thousand franc went to silence that bedroom and he occupied it just a fortnight. I believe Mr. Pulitzer dragged his wife across the Atlantic almost by the hair of her head. I am a pretty fortunate woman after all to get you my dear and I only hope our Elsie will get someone to love her and be as good to her as you are to me.

Ever your own.