/# This refers to the loss of a fine old mulberry-tree that had stood on the lawn at Lamb House. #/
/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W. January 6th, 1915. */
It has been delightful to me to hear from you even on so sorry a subject as my poor old prostrated tree; which it was most kind of you to go and take a pitying look at. He might have gone on for some time, I think, in the absence of an _inordinate_ gale--but once the fury of the tempest really descended he was bound to give way, because his poor old heart was dead, his immense old trunk hollow. He had no power to resist left when the south-wester caught him by his vast _crinière_ and simply twisted his head round and round. It's very sad, for he was the making of the garden--he was _it_ in person; and now I feel for the time as if I didn't care what becomes of it--my interest wholly collapses. But what a folly to talk of _that_ prostration, among all the prostrations that surround us! One hears of them here on every side--and they represent (of course I am speaking of the innumerable splendid young men, fallen in their flower) the crushingly black side of all the horrible business, the irreparable dead loss of what is most precious, the inestimable seed of the future. The air is full of the sense of all _that_ dreadfulness--the echoes forever in one's ears. Still, I haven't wanted to wail to you--and don't write you for that. London isn't cheerful, but vast and dark and damp and very visibly _depleted_ (as well may be!) and yet is also in a sense uplifting and reassuring, such an impression does one get here after all of the enormous resources of this empire. I mean that the _reminders_ at every turn are so great. I see a few people--quite as many as I can do with; for I find I can't do with miscellaneous chatter or make a single new acquaintance--look at a solitary new face save that of the wounded soldiers in hospital, whom I see something of and find of a great and touching interest. Yet the general conditions of town I find the only ones I can do with now, and I am more glad than I can say to think of Mrs. Lloyd and her daughters supplanting me, at their ease, at dear old L.H. I rejoice to hear from you of Beau's fine outlook and I send him my aged blessing--as I do to his Father, who must take good comfort of him. I am afraid on the other hand that all these diluvian and otherwise devastated days haven't contributed to the gaiety (I won't say of "nations"--what will have become, forever, of that? but) of golfers pure and simple. I wonder about you much, and very tenderly, and wish you weren't so far, or my agility so extinct. I find I think with dismay--positive terror--of a station or a train--more than once or twice a year. Bitter moreover the thought to me that you never seem now in the way of coming up....