Crosby Hall, Cheyne Walk,
London, England.Dear Miss Turner,
You[r] nice letter just came and I'm answering it at once in hopes this letter will get off on the Aquetania. I am sorry to hear you've been spending time in the hospital and I hope you are feeling much better by the time this reaches you. Chrissie told me she had heard you were having an operation, and we have both been concerned. She will be as glad as I to hear you are coming abroad, and I'll see her soon to tell her. She is as busy as I am, but we manage to meet occasionally. Dr. Boycott, with whom she is working is an unusually fine person, and she is fortunate to be working with him and Price Jones. I'm still occupied with experiments as ever but will be through with them within two weeks, and in the meantime have one paper nearly ready for publication. I hope to finish two others before leaving in July.
I have decided to stay on in England, and am taking a car with a very nice American, who is living here, and two others who are coming in July. We will have the car from the first of June, and plan to see country near here as much as possible in June, meet the other two at Plymouth, and by that time we will have planned an itinerary. As I've seen little of England, and nothing of Scotland I'm eager to go as far as possible and see as much. With conditions as they are now, I've no idea when I'll come again, so am staying as long as possible. I have a reservation on the Pennland, sailing about August 26th. I'll be interested to knowhow you like it coming over. From your plans I doubt if we'll meet during the summer, but I'll anticipate seeing you as early as possible inthe [sic] fall. I'm sure you and Charlotte will have a most enjoyable summer. I'll never cease to be grateful for the perfect summer I spent with you. Have I told you that when I returned Dr. Chick hardly knew me? She has spoken of it several times during the year. Of course I was tired, as I had just landed when I met her here last June, but I did not realize quite how improved I was externally by the summer vacation with you.
It has been a real opportunity to work at the Lister and I've enjoyed it very much and the associations equally. Dr. Korenchevsky is a very good pathologists, [sic] and very accurate and critical; and I've enjoyed working with him. Of course the year is all too short and there are many things I still hope to do and several laboratories I want to visit this next month. Still you just have to keep steadily at research to get anything accomplished, and I'm glad I have done this. Being in London is a liberal education, and I've had rare musical treats, seen excellent theatrical performances, several national celebrations, visited the National Gallery several times. I've not seen the Tait and the Wallace collection yet, but will before I leave. I did visit the French exhibition and have just seen the Royal Exhibition. Chrissie and I went to Lincoln one Sunday, to Oxford for a week end, where we attended a meeting of the Society of Experimental Biology, and met the Americans you knew in Copenhagen. They are going back to Copenhagen and Dr. Keyes is to work with Krogh again. They were eager to start as soon as possible and I think they would both be happy to live in Copenhagen. There were a number of excellent reports, especially on tissue culture work from Strangeways Laboratory. Dr. Keyes gave an excellent account of his work on the structure of the gill membrane. In brief he found that the regulation of the osmotic pressure of the blood in certain fish in salt water is via the gills, and found two sets of epithelial cells, the usual type and a special type similar in certain respects to the HCL secreting cells in the stomach. In sea water these cells evidently remove the excess of chlorides from the blood and excrete them. This work was done in conjunction with one of the Strangeways research workers. I understood Dr. Keyes to say that Schaeffer was to work at Copenhagen, too. So you should find a galaxy there when you reach Copenhagen. Isn't Charlotte excited? I am glad you are going back to Freiburg too, and I hope Charlotte loves every thing there as much as I do. It is a rare place, and I am thankful to have lived there and with the Herr and Frau Professor.
Chrissie and I also went to see Lincold [sic] one Sunday, taking an excursion trip. So I have now seen Salisbury, Ely, and Lincoln, and I expect to see the majority of the finest of the English cathedrals during the summer. Did I write you that I spent a week with Dr. Chick, her sister and the Boycotts at Easter in Devonshire? There we walked, on the cliffs, on the rocky shore, and across moors, picnicked on the beach, and on the terrace of a most interesting house, and had tea with the Boycotts and with another friend who were occupying beach cottages part of the time while I was there. That was another delightful experience and I enjoyed every minute of that vacation. I surely told you that I went to Wengen for three weeks at Christmas. It was good to see the sun, and it really shone most of the time we were there.
This last week end I went to Oxford for the races" [sic] It was "Eights week", and the brother of one of the assistants who worked with me the first part of the year was in the first crew. The family invited me to go for the Saturday races, and it was a real experience, usually reserved for the young, but nevertheless much appreciated by the middle aged! We motored through lovely country, arriving about noon. We were entertained at dinner in the boy's "digs", with the best food I've ever eaten in England, then walked to the river, and were permitted to sit wherever we pleased on the "barge". The latter slightly resembled a houseboat. The main deck has quarters for the crews, a lounge where tea was served, and little else. The top deck is the place from which you view the crews and the end of the race. We spent part of the time aboard; then, to see more, were rowed across, or rather punted across, in a flat bottomed scow by a most inexperienced lad. I expected to find myself in the river at any moment, as there were about ten people standing, and as the river was high and we swayed considerably. However we had no mishaps in four such crossings! We walked up the tow-path and almost saw one of the "bumps". The point of these races is for the boats to start at a certain distance apart; and, between the start and end, for one boat to bump the one ahead. The one "bumped" then loses its place to the other. In this way the successful boat gets nearer and nearer to the head of the group in the course of about five or six days of the races. The setting was really more exciting than the race! This is my most recent dissipation.
I really have not heard any one mention the congress in Rome. I'll try to get news this week and write you again as soon as I possibly can. English people are staying at home with a vengeance and "buying Bristish" [sic] in a most patriotic fashion. It is amusing at times, most annoying at others. I am curious to see what our own advertising looks like, after seeing the British kind for a year. The latest is "Help the Empire lead the world to Prosperity". It surely is an education to travel, and a greater one to really live in a foreign country for a year.
Your plans sound most interesting, and I see no reason at this range why you can not do any, or all of what you plan, as far as conditions are concerned on the continent. A number of people went from here to Italy and to Sicily for the spring vacation - - - about six weeks - - - and had no difficulty anywhere. Prices are amazingly low, as customers are pitiably few. As in Switzerland at Christmas, the best hotels are almost empty, and prices are reduced everywhere. France, then Switzerland are the most expensive spots, but even these countries are doing all they can to get tourist trade. Hitler seems to have subsided temporarily, and at present everything at Geneva seems to be at a stand still. Here it is about taken for granted that Germany will not be able to renew reparations payments and that it is best to wipe out debts. France holds out for the last centime and in the meantime is becoming almost hated here, and I judge dreaded by the nations she is supporting in the hope of keeping Germany throttled. It is appaling [sic] to me such a state of affairs fourteen years after the end of the world war.
Now I must run to the nearest mail box if you are to get this[.]
With much love,
Myra Sampson.[Myra Sampson was a professor of zoology at Smith College from 1909 to 1955.]