Mrs Green

When Richard visited his mother, she described a ‘bonny' Mrs. Green who was dying of TB. She wanted to meet Richard and ask about painting. He did go to see her and struck up a correspondence.

"The room was very different from Mother’s. It was light and airy and had a view of landscape from a low window. There were flowers given her by other patients, a gramophone and a print of a Van Gogh landscape. But it was rather like a pet canary’s cage and the wounded bird was lying in the bed her thin arms stretched out over …

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When Richard visited his mother, she described a ‘bonny' Mrs. Green who was dying of TB. She wanted to meet Richard and ask about painting. He did go to see her and struck up a correspondence.

"The room was very different from Mother’s. It was light and airy and had a view of landscape from a low window. There were flowers given her by other patients, a gramophone and a print of a Van Gogh landscape. But it was rather like a pet canary’s cage and the wounded bird was lying in the bed her thin arms stretched out over the bedspread ending with hands that looked rather large and long. But her face, though emaciated and her hair cut short like a boy’s, was certainly bonny.

In one of my latest letters to her I told her I was painting a small portrait of her from memory. I wasn’t at all sure what her reactions would be but she seemed to feel nothing but pleasure at the idea and expressed the hope that when I came again I would bring it to show her. She perfectly understood my feelings about it as she must have known that we would not meet again. Not long after this I had a letter from Mother, who had gone home again, telling me she had heard from another patient that Mrs, Green had been removed from the sanatorium as she was an ‘obstreperous patient’ to a nursing home where she died shortly afterwards."

See entry in memoir . . .