But I am writing you in the key of _mere_ lamentation--which I didn't mean to do. Strange as it may seem, there are times when I am much uplifted--when what _may_ come out of it all seems almost worth it. And then the black nightmare holds the field again--and in fact one proceeds almost wholly by those restless alternations. They consume one's vital substance, but one will perhaps wear them out first. It touches me deeply that you should speak tenderly of dear old London, for which my own affection in these months _s'est accrue_ a thousandfold--just as the same has taken place in my attachment for all these so very preponderantly decent and solid people. The race _is_ worth fighting for, immensely--in fact I don't know any other for whom it can so much be said.... Well, go on working and feeling and believing for me, dear Lily, and God uphold your right arm and carry far your voice. Think of me too as your poor old aching and yet not altogether collapsing, your in fact quite clinging,
/# Mr. Walpole was now serving with the Red Cross on the Russian front. #/
/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W. February 14th, 1915. */
"When you write," you say, and when _do_ I write but just exactly an hour after your letter of this evening, that of February 1st, a fortnight ago to a day, has come to hand? I delight in having got it, and find it no less interesting than genial--bristling with fine realities. Much as it tells me, indeed, I could have done with still more; but that is of course always the case at such a time as this, and amid such wonderments and yearnings; and I make gratefully the most of what there is. The basis, the connection, the mode of employment on, and in, and under which you "go off," for instance, are matters that leave me scratching my head and exhaling long and sad sighs--but as those two things are what I am at in these days most of my time I don't bring them home _most_ criminally to you. Only I am moved to beseech you this time not to throw yourself into the thick of military operations amid which your want of even the minimum of proper eyesight apparently may devote you to destruction, more or less--after the manner of the blind _quart d'heure_ described to me in your letter previous to this one. I am sorry the black homesickness so feeds upon you amid your terrific paradoxical friends, the sport alike of their bodies and their souls, of whom your account is admirably vivid; but I well conceive your state, which has my tenderest sympathy--that nostalgic ache at its worst being the invocation of the very devil of devils. Don't let it break the spell of your purpose of learning Russian, of really mastering it--though even while I say this I rather wince at your telling me that you incline not to return to England till September next. I don't put that regret on the score of my loss of the sight of you till then--that gives the sort of personal turn to the matter that we are all ashamed together of giving to any matter now. But the being and the having been in England--or in France, which is now so much the same thing--during at least a part of this unspeakable year affects me as something you are not unlikely to be sorry to have missed; there attaches to it--to the being here--something so sovereign and so initiatory in the way of a British experience. I mean that it's as if you wouldn't have had the full general British experience without it, and that this may be a pity for you as a painter of British phenomena--for I don't suppose you think of reproducing _only_ Russian for the rest of your shining days. However, I hasten to add that I feel the very greatest aversion to intermeddlingly advising you--your completing your year in Russia all depends on what you _do_ with the precious time. You may bring home fruits by which you will be wholly justified. Address yourself indeed to doing that and putting it absolutely through--and I will, for my part, back you up unlimitedly. Only, bring your sheaves with you, and gather in a golden bundle of the same. I detest, myself, the fine old British horror--as it has flourished at least up to now, when in respect to the great matter that's upon us the fashion has so much changed--of doing anything consistently and seriously. So if you should draw out your absence I shall believe in your reasons. Meanwhile I am myself of the most flaming British complexion--the whole thing is to me an unspeakably intimate experience--if it isn't abject to apply such a term when one hasn't had one's precious _person_ straight up against the facts. I have only had my poor old mind and imagination--but as one _can_ have them here; and I live partly in dark abysses and partly in high and, I think, noble elations.