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Thursday, March 28, 2019

Yet another extract from Maria's letter

I think I have a headache from working on this bit. Can you translate it? Click on the image to view the entire scan.


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4 comments:

latecomer said...

Here's what I have, all but five words:

may be, a child educated at home is only half-educated, & never, during his whole [live - crossed out] after-live can he outlive his early seclusion & never will he become a man of the world. He needs the attrition of mind with mind to stimulate him to exertion & more than that he needs some regular [??] of a boy to knock him into the middle of next week, & not only to untie the Gordian Knot of of his mother's apron strings, but to clear away the cobwebs of [??] [??] & teach him that he is no longer his mother's [??] darling, but a [??]

For me, the biggest challenge of her handwriting is that she does not connect all the letters of a word, leaving doubt as to where one word ends and another begins!

March 28, 2019 at 5:24 PM
B. W. Schulz said...

The missing phrase you've marked with [??] appears to be French. Apnor translates as "the new" or "new." I can't decipher the following word.

March 28, 2019 at 6:33 PM
latecomer said...

I'm wondering now if the second word after "cobwebs" might be "indulgence"?

March 28, 2019 at 7:05 PM
B. W. Schulz said...

so we have

may be, a child educated at home is only half-educated, and never, during his whole after-live can he outlive his early seclusion and never will he become a man of the world. He needs the attrition of mind with mind to stimulate him to exertion and more than that he needs some regular stunner of a boy to knock him into the middle of next week, and not only to untie the Gordian Knot of his mother's apron strings, but to clear away the cobwebs of home indulgences and teach him that he is no longer his mother's [?] darling, but a common

March 28, 2019 at 7:30 PM

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