Hugo Schuchardt Archiv

87 Banbury Road
Oxford
July 16. 1892

Dear Prof. Schuchardt,

I was delighted to see your handwriting once more; but very sorry to learn that your health is still not all that it might be desired. I have not been very well this last year, and as for my wife she is hardly ever well here: it is a very bad climate |2| at any rate for us. Our girls – we have two, and that is all we have alive – are very well here. Myvanwy is just now home from College (at Bangor) and the other still goes to the High School here. They are both taller than their parents. They are both rather fond of French and German but they are very poor scholars in Welsh.

As to Basque I am sorry to say that I have not |3| studied the language at all for years: in fact I never got very far with it. I should however be glad to visit the Basque country. I fear, however, that I cannot do so soon: at any rate I cannot see my way to it at present. I have a treatise in hand on Manx phonetics which I want to finish in connection with the oldest Manx text which is now ready in type.¹ I fear this will keep me from being able to go anywhere |4| this summer except to the Isle of Man. There I have to try to get answers to my queries on phonetics, and that chiefly from old men and old women who have lost their teeth and a good deal of their hearing: the language is dying out very rapidly. I do not know much about Prince L.L. Buonaparte’s MSS.² but a friend of mine is one of the executors, and he is desirous, if possible, of selling the whole library in a lump. Perhaps you would like to communicate with him (address – Dr. Isambard Owen,³ Savile Club, Piccadilly, London).

My wife unites with me in kindly remembrance to you.

Yours truly
John Rhys