The following refers to a manuscript diary of Mr. Benson's and to the privately printed _Letters and Journals_ of William Cory, author of _Ionica_.
34 De Vere Gardens, W. September 25th, 1897.
Send me by all means the Diary to which you so kindly allude--nothing could give me greater pleasure than to feel I might freely--and yet so responsibly--handle it. I hope it contains a record of your Hawarden talk--of which you speak.
I shall be very glad indeed of a talk with you about W. Cory--my impression of whom, on the book, you deepen--whenever anything so utterly unlikely as articulate speech between us miraculously comes to pass.--I am just drawing a long breath from having signed--a few moments since--a most portentous parchment: the lease of a smallish, charming, cheap old house in the country--down at Rye--for _21_ years! (One would think I was _your_ age!) But it is exactly what I want and secretly and hopelessly coveted (since knowing it) without dreaming it would ever fall. But it _has_ fallen--and has a beautiful room for you (the "King's Room"--George II's--who slept there;) together with every promise of yielding me an indispensable retreat from May to October. I hope you are not more sorry to take up the load of life that awaits, these days, the hunch of one's shoulders than _I_ am. You'll ask me what I mean by "life." Come down to Lamb House and I'll tell you. And open the private page, my dear Arthur, to yours very eagerly,
34 De Vere Gardens, W. 1st December, 1897.
It's too hideous and horrible, this long time that I have not written you and that your last beautiful letter, placed, for reminder, well within sight, has converted all my emotion on the subject into a constant, chronic blush. The reason has been that I have been driving very hard for another purpose this inestimable aid to expression, and that, as I have a greater loathing than ever for the mere manual act, I haven't, on the one side, seen my way to inflict on you a written letter, or on the other had the virtue to divert, till I should have finished my little book, to another stream any of the valued and expensive industry of my amanuensis. I _have_, at last, finished my little book--that is _a_ little book, and so have two or three mornings of breathing-time before I begin another. Le plus clair of this small interval "I consecrate to thee!"