March 27, 1908
Canadian Pacific Railway
Atlantic Service
R. M. S. Empress of Ireland
My dearest Kathleen,
I never supposed that the programme I mapped out for myself when I wrote to you from Liverpool was too ambitious. I believe I made out that eating and reading would be my two chief occupations. If I had only known. For some days I neither eat nor read but just existed. Do you remember when people used to ask awkward questions about my plans for some future day when I hoped to be spending it at the Grisewoods’ or somewhere? I would say I was just going to exist. I will not joke again about merely existing, it is much too serious when one comes to do it.
From all of this you will gather that we have had a most hopeless time or rather I have and that is what chiefly concerns me. It has been rough all the time, very rough some days, and until today (Friday) never calm. I have done enough fasting in a week to last a dozen Lents but am picking up rapidly now; but as we land tomorrow I am afraid I shan’t be able to catch up again. We are a day and a half late as it is, which is bad for a mail boat.
Nearly everybody seems to be going to B. C. and quite a lot of them to our part of it. I haven’t got to know scarcely anybody, but it was only yesterday that I started to sit up and take notice.
This is a most comfortable boat when it keeps in its normal position and is neither trying to soar to heaven or plunge down the other way and the various sitting rooms are most palatially furnished and if only it was calm I can imagine a week on the sea might be made very enjoyable if . . . (you can fill in the rest of the sentence).
It is rather interesting talking to people who have their own special places in B. C. We all think our own district is so far the nicest and are all so sure that we shall come out really well in the end, but I expect it will take some little time and it won’t be all plain sailing. I feel that I ought to warn you that you are doing a very momentous thing when you decide to give up England and come with me; but you have at least three good people at home to do that for me, so I don’t think I need do much warning. I wish you were here now, Kathleen, I could do all the warning that was necessary so much better; and also in the drawing room here there is an open fireplace with a fine soft rug in front of it, and I should so love to see you kneeling on it.
Please write to me often, though I am afraid you don’t like letter writing, but I think about you so much and do want to know all you do; and sometimes, dear, you can tell me what you think. The Hounds are at Eyford today, that is my last landmark, so to speak, of your doings. I hope to be back at my ranch in a week and am getting quite keen to see it and everything on it again. I believe I feel more as if I was going home than I do when I go the other way, for I really am fond of the place. What should I feel like if you were there too?
Yours always,
Robin