_To Arthur Christopher Benson._
The excursion to Windsor was one of several on which H. J.
conducted Alphonse Daudet and his family during their visit to
England this spring. The "adorable cottage" was the house then
occupied by Mr. Benson as a master at Eton.
34 De Vere Gardens, W.
May 11th [1895].
My dear Arthur B.
A quelque chose malheur est bon: my very natural failure to find you
brought me your engaging letter. Strike, but hear me. I knew but too
well that it would not seem felicitous to you that I should leave a mere
card at your ravishing bower: but please believe that I had no
alternative. I weighed the question of notifying you in advance--weighed
it anxiously; but the scale against it was pressed down by overwhelming
considerations. Daudet is so unwell and fatigable and unable to walk or
to mount steps or stairs (he could do Windsor Castle only from the
carriage,) that I didn't know he would pull through the excursion at
all--and I thought it unfair to inflict on you the awkward problem of
his getting, or not getting, into your house--of his getting over to
Eton at all--and of the five other members of his family being hurled
upon you. We had, in fact, only just time to catch our return train.
Still, I had a sneaking romantic _hope_ of you. I should have liked
them, hungry for the great show, to behold you! As I turned sadly from
your "adorable cottage" and got back into the carriage A. D. said to
me--having waited contemplatively during my conference with your
domestic: "Ah, si vous saviez comme ces petits coins d'Angleterre
m'amusent!" A. C. B. would have amused him still more. Content yourself,
for the hour, my dear Arthur Benson, with "amusing" a humbler master of
Dichtung--and an equal one, perhaps, of Wahrheit. I am delighted you
have been thinking of me--and beg you to be sure that _whenever_ you
happen to do so, Telepathy, as you say, will happen to be in it! This
time, e.g., it was intensely in it--for you had been peculiarly present
to me all these last days in connection with my alternations of writing
to you or not writing to you about the projected Thursday at Windsor. I
wanted to confine myself to the pure feasible for Daudet, and yet I
wanted (still more) to write to you "anyway," as they say in the U. S.
And I _am_ writing to you--q.e.d. So there we are. I rejoice in a
certain air of happiness in your letter. Dine with you some day? De
grand coeur--after a little--after the very lively practical
pre-occupation of the presence of my helpless and bewildered Gauls has
abated. There is a late train from Windsor that would put me back after
dinner--unless I err. Your mother has kindly invited me to a party on
the 16th and I shall certainly go--if I survive (and return from) the
process of taking Daudet down to see G. Meredith at Box Hill--which has
been fixed for that day. You won't be there (at Lambeth) I ween--but if
you _were_, what possibilities (of the order hinted at above) we might
discuss in a Gothic embrasure!
Respond--respond, if ever so briefly, to yours, my dear Arthur Benson,
for ever,