Frances Jennings to Elizabeth Lawrence 459 



I want to reach the sea and hear talk of the sea. The man here (above 

 Stoke Edith) tells me that the hawkers and gypsies many of them used to 

 make tnrf huts on the common above. They dug a hollow in the ground 

 and piled a wall around of turf, and gradually made it round, and had a 

 little hole in the top for their smoke to escape, and the grass grew all 

 over the top and cast off the rain, and they had a little fire in a corner 

 inside. Now they are driven away. I want to try and sleep a night in a 

 manger and put up in a kiln some days and nights. I find it is a long 

 way I have set out into. 



My journey so far has been alongside the wall of the Sussex Hills. The 

 northern border of the New Forest, across Salisbury Plain, into the Cots- 

 wold and now into what might be called Apple-land ; of what is coming I 

 am in ignorance. Lately I've slept some nights on people's hearths and 

 nursed the fire asleep (i. e., into darkness). In one village they called me, 

 " Princess," but usually I am " The Tramp-woman," " The poor woman." 



I hear some queer tales of men whose loud singing can be heard miles, 

 of a shepherd called Basil, more than six feet tall, who, going down a 

 steep hill, fell, standing on his head — of people so fat that they are moun- 

 tains — and so old that they never die, and so strong. And at each farm 

 I am told their milk is the richest and sweetest, and that their clay makes 

 the best apples, and each woman tells me how she is beautiful more than 

 all the rest ; and it's all truth. 



The woman I am staying with at present wears a strange sea-green 

 glass snake at her neck, it is black and white, and sea-green, and seems 

 Egyptian in a way. Another one I stayed with, dressed in black, wore at 

 her neck a great silver Bee, with wings as beaten petals and scales. 



This farm is called " Hazel," and many springs of water burst out about 

 it, and the master of it has the blackest brows above his eyes, and a grand 

 lot of words. I feel you are my friends and remember the smallest details 

 of your kindness to me. I hope I shall see you again and hear of you. 



Frances Jennings. 



Received February 13, 1913. 



