I sympathize with every word you say in your letter, about Nicholas
Nickleby, and about novels generally. Normally I only care for a novel
if the ending is good, and I quite agree with you that if the hero has
to die he ought to die worthily and nobly, so that our sorrow at the
tragedy shall be tempered with the joy and pride one always feels when
a man does his duty well and bravely. There is quite enough sorrow and
shame and suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for
meeting it unnecessarily in fiction. As Police Commissioner it was
my duty to deal with all kinds of squalid misery and hideous and
unspeakable infamy, and I should have been worse than a coward if I had
shrunk from doing what was necessary; but there would have been no use
whatever in my reading novels detailing all this misery and squalor and
crime, or at least in reading them as a steady thing. Now and then there
is a powerful but sad story which really is interesting and which really
does good; but normally the books which do good and the books which
healthy people find interesting are those which are not in the least
of the sugar-candy variety, but which, while portraying foulness and
suffering when they must be portrayed, yet have a joyous as well as a
noble side.
We have had a very mild and open fall. I have played tennis a good deal,
the French Ambassador being now quite a steady playmate, as he and
I play about alike; and I have ridden with Mother a great deal. Last
Monday when Mother had gone to New York I had Selous, the great African
hunter, to spend the day and night. He is a perfect old dear; just as
simple and natural as can be and very interesting. I took him, with Bob
Bacon, Gifford Pinchot, Ambassador Meyer and Jim Garfield, for a
good scramble and climb in the afternoon, and they all came to
dinner afterwards. Before we came down to dinner I got him to spend
three-quarters of an hour in telling delightfully exciting lion and
hyena stories to Ethel, Archie and Quentin. He told them most vividly
and so enthralled the little boys that the next evening I had to tell
them a large number myself.
To-day is Quentin's birthday and he loved his gifts, perhaps most of all
the weest, cunningest live pig you ever saw, presented him by Straus.
Phil Stewart and his wife and boy, Wolcott (who is Archie's age), spent
a couple of nights here. One afternoon we had hide-and-go-seek, bringing
down Mr. Garfield and the Garfield boys, and Archie turning up with the
entire football team, who took a day off for the special purpose. We had
obstacle races, hide-and-go-seek, blind-man's buff, and everything else;
and there were times when I felt that there was a perfect shoal of small
boys bursting in every direction up and down stairs, and through and
over every conceivable object.
Mother and I still walk around the grounds every day after breakfast.
The gardens, of course, are very, very dishevelled now, the snap-dragons
holding out better than any other flowers.