_To A. F. de Navarro._
Lamb House, Rye.
April 1st, 1900.
My dear brave Don Tony and dear beautiful Dona Mary: (not that Tony
isn't beautiful too or that Mary isn't brave!) You are awfully
exclusive; you won't be written to if you can help it--or if _I_ can;
but wonderful as you individually and conjoinedly are, you must still
taste of the common cup--you must recognise that, after all, you are,
humanly, _exposed_--! Well, _this_ is all, at the worst, you are exposed
to: to my only scribbling at you, a little, for the pride of the thought
of you. A fellow has feelings, hang it--and the feelings _will_
overflow. I am a very sentient and affectionate, albeit out-of-the-way
and out-of-the-fashion person. I _like_ to add with my own clumsy
fingers a small knot to the silken cord that, for the starved romance of
my life, does, by God's blessing, happen to unite me to two or three of
my really decorative contemporaries. Besides, if you _will_ write such
enchanting letters! The communication that (a few days ago in London)
reached [me] from each of you, makes up for many grey things. Many
things _are_ grey, in a _blafard_ English March and moist English
club-chambers: (tell me not of the pains of Provence!) Without our
gifted Jon. close at hand I should have parted forever with my sense of
colour. However, I don't want simply to thank you for all the present,
the past and the future--I want also to say, right distinctly, that if
you _can_ conveniently send me a copy of _L'Aiglon_ you'll stick the
biggest feather yet in your cap of grace. I believe the book isn't yet
out--so I shall be as patient as I am attached. You couldn't do a more
charming thing--and nobody _but_ you could do as charming a one.--I hold
you both fast and am your fond and faithful old friend,