I owe you an answer to two letters--especially to the one in which you
announce to me the birth of your little Israelite. I bid him the most
affectionate welcome into this world of care and I hope that by this
time he has begun to get used to it. I am too delighted to hear of
Alice's well-being, and trust it has now merged into complete recovery.
Apropos of the Babe, allow me to express an earnest hope that you will
give him some handsome and pictorial name (within discreet limits). Most
of our names are rather colourless--collez-lui dessus, therefore, a
little patch of brightness--and don't call him _after_ any one--give him
a name quite to himself. And let it be only one.... I have seen several
times the gifted Sargent, whose work I admire exceedingly and who is a
remarkably artistic nature and charming fellow. I have also spent an
evening with A. Daudet and a morning at Auteuil with Ed. de Goncourt.
Seeing these people does me a world of good, and this intellectual
vivacity and _raffinement_ make an English mind seem like a sort of
glue-pot. But their ignorance, corruption and complacency are strange,
full strange. I wish I had time to give you more of my impressions of
them. They are at any rate very interesting and Daudet, who has a
remarkable personal charm and is as beautiful as the day, was extremely
nice to me. I saw also Zola at his house, and the whole group are of
course intense pessimists. Daudet justified this to me (as regards
himself) by the general sadness of life and his fear, for instance,
whenever he comes in, that his wife and children may have died while he
was out! I hope _you_ manage to keep free from this apprehension.... I
return to London on the 27th, to stick fast there till the summer. I
embrace Alice and the little Jew and am ever your affectionate