In the previous blogpost – I described Judith’s sudden departure from Bideford to the Pyrenees. She travelled alone (and abroad for the first time) to attend to Mildred, a childhood friend believed to be on the verge of death. Here we learn how Judith’s correspondence with Mary Stella helped her while caring for her sick friend.
With friends like these…
Mildred was a difficult friend. In fact, a previous shared trip to Scotland had ended badly, leaving Judith determined to never travel with her again. Judith wrote many letters to Mary Stella at this time, but some ended up in the waste paper basket. The discarded letters were “all rage & venom against poor M. who after all can’t help her disposition”. The hotel staff covered the day-to-day nursing, so Judith’s duties were physically light but mentally taxing. “She has long ago given up any pretence of civility in minor matters which leads to emphasise her ill humour. I read aloud a good deal I find it is the best plan. It creates an atmosphere of sociability without conversation.”
Mildred’s moods probably weren’t helped by her restricted diet. From the letters I also concluded that her relationship with her mother was one of mutual disappointment.
thing to go & see.”
Vulgar cascades
There wasn’t much time for Judith to enjoy the scenery, as she didn’t want to leave Mildred for too long. She went on evening walks which gave her time to enjoy the mountains, though they never seemed quite real to her. “When I am out then – alone in these rich tremendous mountains, it comes over me that I am really in the heart of the Pyrenees & a glamour descends.” She learned all their names and those of the passes, and wondered that the local people tend not to know them. The few short excursions by charabanc with some tourists are less successful. “I am loosing my taste for waterfalls,” she wrote “& now see what was meant by who ever it was that called them vulgar.” Her descriptions remind me of the tourist excursions in E.M. Forster’s Room with a View. I wonder if it was the company rather than the waterfalls she really disliked!
“Your letter comforts me through everything”
Before the trip to Luchon, Mary Stella and Judith wrote to each other every two weeks or so. This increased to a letter every two days while Judith coped with the awful Mildred. Some of the letters from Judith are missing, and I haven’t found the letters from Mary Stella yet, but the letters reached new levels of intimacy as they shared secrets and stories from childhood. There were occasional misunderstandings; put right in subsequent letters. Before Luchon Judith had mentioned that she sometimes felt motherly feelings towards Mary Stella… which had been badly misinterpreted! Now Mary Stella writes that she has motherly feelings for Judith – which Judith accepted gratefully. She writes that she feels the need for them.
Judith described the many festivals and celebrations that took place in Luchon that summer, including the bonfire of St John’s Eve, where townspeople whirled lighted torches round their heads and held up flowers to be blessed by the priest. “I am sure it must have a pagan origine” wrote Judith, “although it is now a church festival”. By request, Mary Stella supplied her with a full history of the festival in her next letter!
As in her earlier letters from Bideford, Judith wrote that she can’t seem to express what she really wants to say to Mary Stella. Though to me, reading them exactly 100 years later, they seem extraordinarily honest and articulate. For example, Judith wrote: “My dear, I think too that had we never met we would neither of us have found what we were looking for – although I did not look as consciously as you, having decided that the only way to endure life was to submit being separate.”
Later she wrote: “I feel that I can face anything this sudden happening may bring with the thought of you to support me.”
And afterwards
Despite Mary Stella’s helpful suggestions that Judith leave Mildred in Luchon and come home to concentrate on her work(!) Judith managed to bring the invalid home by train and boat that July. Judith’s letters towards the end of the Luchon adventure are full of plans working out how to best help Mildred during such a long and uncomfortable train journey.
There was a pointed period of silence between Judith and Mildred until Christmas 1925, when Mildred returned home to Instow. Judith had discovered that Mildred “wanted to be on friendly terms” and “feeling no animosity myself” they met again. She told Mary Stella “I find it impossible to entirely cast off so old established a friendship. Where close association is concerned we will never hit it off I know & have known for ages – however willing the spirit, the flesh in that situation is obviously weak.”
Shortly after this, Mildred went abroad again, this time with “Lena her faithful maid”. Meanwhile, the rest of her family stayed at home.
Meanwhile, in Mary Stella Edwards’ journal…
I went back to Mary Stella’s journal to find out how she described Judith’s adventures in Luchon and found… nothing! Just one entry for June 2025 described a visit to a publisher, and that was it! Perhaps all her writing energies went into her letters to Judith. However, just a couple of months before, a holiday in the Lakes with Mary Stella’s family had brought the two another step closer together…. but that’s another blogpost!
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