_To Arthur Christopher Benson._
34 De Vere Gardens, W.
December 28th, 1896.
My dear Arthur,
Your generous letter has, this wild, mild, soft, sombre morning, made me
feel as if I were standing beside you, with my hand on your shoulder, in
an embrasure of one of the windows--at that fine old Farnham Castle that
I have seen (years ago)--that look out on the noble things you speak
of. And the communication in question is worthy, exactly, of the
_things_ in question; and grave and handsome and interesting and
touching even as they are. "Burn" it, quotha!--it _wouldn't_ have burnt,
I would have you know: it would have flown straight up the chimney and
taken, unscathed as marble, its invulnerable way to the individual for
whom it had just been so admirably winged. You say to me exactly the
right things, and you say them to exactly the right person. I can't tell
you how glad I am for you that you have all that highest sanity and
soundness (though it isn't as if I doubted it!) of emotion, full, frank
and deep. If there be a wisdom in not feeling--to the last throb--the
great things that happen to us, it is a wisdom I shall never either know
or esteem. Let your soul live--it's the only life that isn't, on the
whole, a sell. You have evidently been magnificent, and as I have my
hand on your shoulder I take the opportunity of patting you very
tenderly on the back. That back will evidently carry its load and be all
the straighter for the--as it seems to me--really quite massive
experience. I rejoice that the waters have held you up--they do, always,
I think, when they are only deep _enough_. And all your missings and
memories and contrasts and tendernesses are a part--the essence--of the
very force that is in you to live, and to feel again--and yet again and
again; when, at last, to _have_ so felt will be the thing in the world
you'll be gladdest to have done.
I don't know, in spite of your compliment, whether I _am_ much like
Gray, save in the devil of a time it takes me to do a thing. What keeps
me incommunicative, however, is not indifference, but almost a kind of
suspense, a fear to break--by speaking--the spell of some _other_
spectacle--other than that of my own _fonctionnement_. But I respond to
the lightest touch of a friendly hand, I think I may say; and I haven't
the slightest fear of breaking any spell in saying--to you--that I seem
to myself just now (absit omen!) to _fonctionner_ pretty well. I am as
occupied and preoccupied with work as even _my_ technical temper can
desire, and out of it something not irremediably nauseating will not
improbably spring! I never had more intentions--what do I say?--more
ferocities; I am sitting in my boat and my oars rhythmically creak. In
short I propose to win my little battle--and even believe, more than
hitherto, that I may annex my little province. It will be as small as
the Grand Duchy of Pumpernickel--but there will be room to put up a
friend. Therefore you must come and stay with me there; in fact I give
you rendez-vous on the battlefield itself, the moment the day is
declared. I mix my metaphors--but it all means that it's _all_ a fight
and that the only thing that changes is our fighting train. Let us then
fight side by side, never too far out of sight.
How I congratulate you on the value of your friends; I mean the
particular Davidsons. I don't know them, but I like them for liking you.
I think I have a strong sense, too, of the beauty and charm of many of
the conditions in which you are engaged and which have a really
decorative effect--so that the aesthetic sense too is pleased--on
everything that makes you minister to the confidence, my dear Arthur, of
yours very constantly,