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The Shiffolds. - Is alone here until Wednesday, since Bessie is in Cambridge; she hopes to see Caroline in London during her return, and seems well, apart from a cold. The weather is 'beautiful again today, and the woods are full of bluebells'; this is the best time of the year here, before the trees are fully in leaf.

They are currently 'very anxious about H[enry] Fletcher's wife', whom they hear from Mary Fletcher to be dangerously ill: if she can 'get through this crisis' she may 'get fairly well again'. Sturge Moore, the poet, and his wife are coming to the Shiffolds for two days on Wednesday; then Moore's brother [George], the philosopher, comes till Monday. On Saturday night, Denman is bringing Tovey over in his motor-car, and Arthur Dakyns will also be here. So on Sunday they will be 'quite filled up', with four guests, but he thinks they can manage.

Expects to be in town one day next week. Will try to see Pelléas et Mélisande if they perform it a second time. Hopes his father is well. Wonders how she thinks Henry James was looking when he came to lunch: does 'not think he looked at all well at Eastbourne'.

The Shiffolds. - Encloses Withers' letter [re the will of Florence Cacciola Trevelyan; see 12/171]: it is 'a great relief that the whole matter seems really to have been wound up', and he and Bessie are 'very grateful indeed' for his father's help throughout. They were glad to hear better news of his mother, and hope she 'will soon be really well again'. Julian has been 'doing very well' recently, and they think he has 'really made some progress'.

Is just starting a journey to Camberley for the funeral of the wife of his friend Harry Fletcher: she 'died of consumption after a long illness of three or four years'. A grand-niece of Emerson, she 'was a person of a good deal of originality and force of mind and character'.

Bessie is very well, and sends love.

The Hague. - Hopes this letter will 'be in time to say goodbye' and wish Bob good luck in his travels; calls him a 'lucky man, to get out of this wind' to places where the 'sun can warm as well as light the world'. They [he and his wife] look forward to 'seeing the East from at least three new points of view when you three articulate-speaking mortals [Bob, G. Lowes Dickinson and E. M. Forster] come back'.

Wonders if Bob has had the chance to look at the book by Loti [Un Pèlerin d'Angkor?] (this returned safely, Bob should tell Elizabeth); Angkor has had the 'same fascination' for Fletcher as Loti felt, 'ever since I first read about it in Ferguson [James Fergusson?]'. Bob should go there if he has the chance, though Fletcher imagines it is 'pretty inaccessible'; and 'if the Buddhist priests have advanced to the sale of picture post-cards', he should send Fletcher as many as he can.

Has come to the Hague for a few days before 'the autumn session' begins, and finds the town 'nearly as fascinating' as he remembers it from the tour he and [his sister] Mary made eighteen years ago, though the 'perpetual buffeting of the icy east wind, mixed with dust & dead leaves' does not make 'strolling & sketching' very enjoyable. Good to be in a large town where 'you can walk at your ease down the middle of the streets without having to jump away from the engine-bonnets of a thousand cards. It reminds one how blessed existence was... in the pre-petrol days'; suppose Bob will 'recapture' that in Canton. Objects, however, to the 'plate-glass casements' replacing the 'original sash-windows divided with bars into many panes' everywhere; calls the change 'perfectly disastrous to scale & texture & cheerfulness', and adds a sketch of the two window types. His hotel is 'built of bells. They ring all the time in every direction'.

Sends his love to Elizabeth, and asks Bob to 'tell her to come to us whenever she can & will during your absence'. Adds postscript about how much he was 'carried away by The Bride [of Dionysus], calls it 'the best libretto' he has ever read.

4 Weller Court, 66 Ladbroke Road, W.11. - Has read the "Homeric Hymn" [to Demeter, in this year's "From the Shiffolds"] and likes it very much: it seems 'specially welcome to have just one continuous poem, among so much that is scrappy (my own mind, I fear!) - nasty, brutish, & short'. Sends best wishes for 1950: never finds anything as good to 'even the balance' for the poems, but perhaps she will one day. The bookshop where she bought Bob's "Translations from Latin Poetry" for Harry [her brother?] said they had had quite a demand for it.

52 Campden Hill Square, W.8. - Has been 'charmed' by Bob's "From the Shiffolds"; can hardly choose which of the poems are his favourite. Sends in return some of his 'holiday sketches which have been reproduced from time to time'; uses an Ancient Greek quote and asks Bob if he has it correctly. Would prefer to send some of his own work, but it all 'went west in the Grays Inn blitz of '41 with 'so much that mattered infinitely more'. He and his wife send best wishes to the Trevelyans,