MONK'S ORCHARD, UPTON,
Jan. 23, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I have just heard the disheartening news, and I
write to say that I am sorry toto corde. I don't yet know the full
extent of the calamity, the length of your exile, the place, or the
conditions under which you will have to live. Perhaps you or Nelly
can find time to let me have a few lines about it all? But I
suppose there is a good side to it. I imagine that when the place
is once fixed, you will be able to live a much freer life than you
have of late been obliged to live in England, with less risk and
less overshadowing of anxiety. If you can find the right region,
renovabitur ut acquila juventus tua; and you will be able to carry
out some of the plans which have been so often interrupted here. Of
course there will be drawbacks. Books, society, equal talk, the
English countryside which you love so well, and, if I may use the
expression, so intelligently; they will all have to be foregone in
a measure. But fortunately there is no difficulty about money, and
money will give you back some of these delights. You will still see
your real friends; and they will come to you with the intention of
giving and getting the best of themselves and of you, not in the
purposeless way in which one drifts into a visit here. You will be
able, too, to view things with a certain detachment--and that is a
real advantage; for I have sometimes thought that your literary
work has suffered from the variety of your interests, and from your