the project was to tell the whole life of the family since the grandmother's marriage in 1894, using only the letters they had written to each other — no commentary, no bridging text, nothing but the dated letters in order, transcribed by hand and lightly footnoted where a name had become obscure. she got as far as 1923. the bundle for that year ends with a letter from vienna that the great-aunt never answered.
after 1923 the family changed habits. the telephone arrived. the older generation stopped writing letters of any length. the younger generation wrote postcards. by 1940 the correspondence is reduced, in the long box on the upper landing, to a handful of christmas cards a year. there is nothing dishonest to build a history out of. there is, simply, no material.
she stopped, in 2014, at the gap. the four bundles she transcribed — 1894–1902, 1903–1910, 1911–1916, 1917–1923 — are bound now in linen thread and live on the upper shelf of the bookcase by the window in the study. they are catalogued in her hand on the front of the box. the catalogue ends, like the letters, in 1923.