I face my study window as I write, Bertie. Slate-coloured clouds with ragged fringes are drifting slowly overhead. Between them one has a glimpse of higher clouds of a lighter gray. I can hear the gentle swish of the rain striking a clearer note on the gravel path and a duller among the leaves. Sometimes…
Continue reading XVI. OAKLEY VILLAS, BIRCHESPOOL, 4th November, 1884
Do you think that such a thing as chance exists? Rather an explosive sentence to start a letter with; but pray cast your mind back over your own life, and tell me if you think that we really are the sports of chance. You know how often the turning down this street or that, the…
Continue reading XV. OAKLEY VILLAS, BIRCHESPOOL, 3rd August, 1883
You write reproachfully, my dear Bertie, and you say that absence must have weakened our close friendship, since I have not sent you a line during this long seven months. The real truth of the matter is that I had not the heart to write to you until I could tell you something cheery; and…
Continue reading XIV. OAKLEY VILLAS, BIRCHESPOOL, 15th January, 1883
When I wrote my last letter, my dear Bertie, I was still gasping, like a cod on a sand-bank, after my final dismissal by Cullingworth. The mere setting of it all down in black and white seemed to clear the matter up, and I felt much more cheery by the time I had finished my…
Continue reading XIII. OAKLEY VILLAS, BIRCHESPOOL, 12th June, 1882
When I had made all those dispositions which I described with such painful prolixity in my last letter, my dear Bertie, I sat down on my study chair, and I laid out the whole of my worldly wealth upon the table in front of me. I was startled when I looked at it,—three half-crowns, a…
Continue reading XII. OAKLEY VILLAS, BIRCHESPOOL, 5th June, 1882
Birchespool is really a delightful place, dear Bertie; and I ought to know something about it, seeing that I have padded a good hundred miles through its streets during the last seven days. Its mineral springs used to be quite the mode a century or more ago; and it retains many traces of its aristocratic…
Continue reading XI. OAKLEY VILLAS, BIRCHESPOOL, 29th May, 1882
My dear old chap, things have been happening, and I must tell you all about it. Sympathy is a strange thing; for though I never see you, the mere fact that you over there in New England are keenly interested in what I am doing and thinking, makes my own life in old England very…
Continue reading X. CADOGAN TERRACE, BIRCHESPOOL, 21st May, 1882
I have some recollection, my dear Bertie, that when I wrote you a rambling disconnected sort of letter about three weeks ago, I wound up by saying that I might have something more interesting to tell you next time. Well, so it has turned out! The whole game is up here, and I am off…
Continue reading IX. THE PARADE, BRADFIELD, 23rd April, 1882
I am writing this, my dear Bertie, at a little table which has been fitted up in the window of my bedroom. Every one in the house is asleep except myself; and all the noise of the city is hushed. Yet my own brain is singularly active, and I feel that I am better employed…
Continue reading VIII. THE PARADE, BRADFIELD, 6th April, 1882
Well, you see I am as good as my word, Bertie; and here is a full account of this queer little sample gouged out of real life, never to be seen, I should fancy, by any eye save your own. I have written to Horton also, and of course to my mother; but I don’t…
Continue reading VII. THE PARADE, BRADFIELD, 9th March, 1882