I am spending a dark, cold, dripping Sunday here--with two or three other amis de la maison; but above all with the ghosts, somehow, of a promiscuous past brushing me as with troubled wings, and the echoes of the ancient years seeming to murmur to me: "Don't you wish you were still young--or young again--even as _they_ so wonderfully are?" (my fellow-visitors and inexhaustibly soft-hearted host.) I don't know that I particularly do wish it--but the melancholy voices (I mean the _inaudible_ ones of the loquacious saloon) have thus driven me to a rather cold room (my own) of refuge, to invoke thus scratchily _your_ fine friendly attention and to reassure you of the constant sympathy and fidelity of yours, my dear Arthur, all gratefully,
/# For several years past H. J. had received a New Year greeting from three friends at Cambridge--Mr. Charles Sayle, Mr. A. T. Bartholomew, Mr. Geoffrey Keynes--none of whom he had met till he went up to Cambridge this month to stay with Mr. Sayle during May-week. It was on this occasion that he first met Rupert Brooke. #/
/* Reform Club, Pall Mall, S.W. June 16th, 1909. */
I want to send you back a grateful--and graceful--greeting--and to let you all know that the more I think over your charming hospitality and friendly labour and (so to speak) loyal service, the more I feel touched and convinced. My three days with you will become for me a very precious little treasure of memory--they are in fact already taking their place, in that character, in a beautiful little innermost niche, where they glow in a golden and rose-coloured light. I have come back to sterner things; you did nothing but beguile and waylay--making me loll, not only figuratively, but literally (so unforgettably--all that wondrous Monday morning), on perfect surfaces exactly adapted to my figure. For their share in these generous yet so subtle arts please convey again my thanks to all concerned--and in particular to the gentle Geoffrey and the admirable Theodore, with a definite stretch toward the insidious Rupert--with whose name I take this liberty because I don't know whether one loves one's love with a (surname terminal) _e_ or not. Please take it from me, all, that I shall live but to testify to you further, and in some more effective way than this--my desire for which is as a long rich vista that can only be compared to that adorable great perspective of St. John's Gallery as we saw it on Saturday afternoon. Peace then be with you--I hope it came promptly after the last strain and stress and all the rude porterage (_so_ appreciated!) to which I subjected you. I'll fetch and carry, in some fashion or other, for _you_ yet, and am ever so faithfully yours,