Thirty-nine Autograph Letters Signed, written from an English girl, Margaret Nourse, to her mother and father [the laryngologist W. J. Chichele Nourse] in 1898, from the Sacré Coeur convent, Conflans, Charenton-le-Pont, France.

the daughter of the aurist and laryngologist W. J. Chichele Nourse. In 1913 she married the mathematician Arthur Herbert Leahy (later Professor at the University of Sheffield). All items clear and complete, on lightly-aged paper, apart from one letter, in an envelope marked 'Margarets first letter from school - Jany./98 | dropped into the fire by Will's mistake'. The thirty-nine items to her parents (thirty-seven of them to her mother), all in purple ink, total more than 230 pages of neatly and closely written text. All letters signed 'Margaret Nourse'. The Nourses were not Catholic, and appear to have sent their daughter to be educated in a French convent to provide her with 'polish'. Written in a spirited and affectionate style, the correspondence presents a case study of the educational and emotional development of a young middle-class girl at the end of the Victorian era, as well as providing an insight into the French fin-de-siecle educational system, from the viewpoint of a foreign student within it. Topics include her schoolmates and teachers, the curriculum, her uniform, French customs and religious observances, amateur dramatics (including a concert in which she performs music), trips to Paris, the climate, the usual schoolgirl concerns ('Do you know Mother, I believe I am very short for my age') and the girls' occasional 'pleasures' ('We went up and down the big alleys of the garden with the donkey and his little low cart the other day, in the afternoon.'). Margaret also responds to family news in her mother's letters. To begin with Margaret misses her parents, and finds 'everything [...] so very strange and so utterly different from home', although she takes pleasure in the 'splendid view of part of Paris from the top windows. I am told that on fine days one can see the Eiffel Tower'. In the next letter she describes how difficult she finds it to make herself understood: 'Two of the girls know and speak a little English, and two or three of the visiting meres can speak it [...] However they are all very kind indeed to me. It is a very cheerful room we are in, with plain salmon coloured walls and regular French bedsteads with white-curtains, and a French fireplace.' As the correspondence continues throughout the year we see Margaret find her feet, increasing in confidence and in sympathy with her new environment. By June she is describing how she 'had to embrace the girls all round, in regular French fashion, which I did not mind doing as they are all my friends and in a way sisters'. The letters indicate an interest in the religion of the school, and on 7 December she begins a letter: 'I have something to tell you that I am afraid will displease you and Father, but I cannot keep it any longer from you, and it is time that you knew. Dear Mother, I wish to become a Catholic. Please, please dont be angry with me, dear Mother and Father'. The letter outlines her reasons. The next letter indicates that the parents have taken the news calmly. On 18 December Margaret writes that she is 'rather surprised on receiving your letter on Wednesday, saying that you wanted me to come home after Christmas, as I had resigned myself to the idea of staying on.' Her descriptions of cultural differences can be surprising: 'Perhaps if you wrote and asked, they might allow me to have a bath on Thursdays when the other girls have their footbaths, or at any rate they would give me one bath. They seem to think much washing unnecessary here.' The following is a representative example of the style: 'The reason that I don't think the deportment class does one any good, is, that the mistress never seems to make us march so as to correct our walking, in fact we hardly do anything, but stand or sit still most of the time. This is what we do: a little curtseying, counting 12 to each curtsey, perhaps a little bowing, or sliding our feet out and back again, or waving our arms about. Then the mistress will perhaps pick out a few girls (it is a large class) to show them how to leave the room, to see that they curtsey and bow properly, and open the door in a particular manner, or perhaps she will call out the girls of one of the classes in the school, and pretend that she is the Mere Superieure and that they are coming up to receive their notes, so as to see that they make their curtseys properly. So you see the sum of the teaching at the deportment lesson is curtsey and count 12 while so doing.' Also included in the correspondence are two letters to Margaret's mother from nuns at the convent. The first (16mo, 4 pp) is dated 25 November 1897, and is written on behalf of the mother superior, describing the terms on which Margaret could be admitted into the convent; the second (8vo, 4 pp), is dated 7 December [1898], and is possibly from the mother superior herself. It begins: 'Would you allow me to add a few lines to Margaret's letter to tell you that according to your wish, we have done nothing to influence her. You required us not to say a word about religion . . . of course we were always faithful to that recommendation and said nothing, but when God himself speaks, what can be done?' Also present are two letters (1902 and 1906) from Margaret to her mother.