December 28 Sunday – Sam felt ill from all the dining over Christmas and went down to Ventnor, a resort on the southern coast of the Isle of Wight [MTL 5: 539n2]. There he “hunted up Miss Florence”—Florence Stark, not further identified, but perhaps a friend of George Fitzgibbon, because Sam mentioned her in his letter of Dec. 30.

“She is a most attractive & very natural & girlish sort of girl. (I hate artificial girls)” [MTL 5: 539]