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Two documents · written in the same decade · neither writer knew about the other
Use this artifact for Seeing the contemporary line from two angles at once: Eleanor discovering the record and James finally understanding it.
Best after Vol. X, once the present-day custodians matter to you as readers, not only as archivists.
Where next Read Matilda’s letter in full, then return to the family tree and trace who finally answered it.
MSS. Hale-Marsh X, item 7 · June 2019
Eleanor Voss
to her father
Written six weeks after David Voss's death, while Eleanor was clearing his house. Sent to his address, which no longer received messages.

Dad,

I found the shoebox. I've been going through the house for three weeks and I found it this afternoon on the second shelf of the spare room bookcase, behind the Ordnance Survey maps. Nike box, size 10. I don't know whose shoes those were.

I looked through everything. The medals. The photographs. The diary with the Latin I can't read and the drawings I can. And the conveyance — I know you knew what it was because you wrote Property: keep on the Post-it note on the back.

At the bottom of the conveyance, there's a note in a different hand from the 1640s. You knew it was there. Did you know what it said? Did you know about Halecroft?

I've been sitting with the shoebox for two hours. I decided to wait. I don't quite want to know yet in the middle of your house when you're not here to hear it.

The job at the Bodleian is still open. I've been not-applying for it for three months because Oxford seems like a statement and I'm not sure I'm ready to make it. But I think I'm going to apply.

I think you would have liked me to apply.

I think the shoebox wants me to apply.

I miss you. The house smells like your books and your tea and I keep expecting to hear you coming downstairs.

Eleanor

MSS. Hale-Marsh Finding Aid, item 3 · 2001, annotated through 2024
James Marsh-Hale
his finding aid entry
James's personal annotated copy, found among his papers donated to the Bodleian in 2023. The final two sentences were added in February 2024. Written slowly. In recent ink.

MSS. Marsh-Hale 3, item 7. Matilda's letter. Single document, mounted between glass plates. Physical condition: fragile.

The text is in late Middle English, consistent with a date of c.1390. Central section damaged by water and not currently legible.

Significance: considerable. The document is the only surviving text in Matilda of Halecroft's hand. It appears to have been placed deliberately in the deed-box and found and replaced on at least two subsequent occasions without its contents being fully known.

Recommendation: multispectral imaging of the central section is strongly advised when resources permit.

— James Marsh-Hale, March 2001.

Annotation in different ink, added later: I waited twenty-three years. I should have pressed harder. E.V. found it in 2024.
She was writing to Eleanor. She always was.

Final two sentences · February 2024 · three weeks after the imaging results

✦   Matilda's letter — read in full   ✦

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