Typed letter signed : London, to Dr. Baldwin, 1897 Nov. 28.

Commenting on the typed instead of handwritten letter; saying "It looks cold and cruel to be writing you, especially after so long a silence, in this way; but you are a man of conspicuous imagination and insight, and I always trust you to enter fully into the causes and realities of things. It is only with the aid of this machinery that I contrive to continue to cling at all to whatever may save me from the disgrace of forfeiting every claim to the name of correspondent. (There, for instance, is a sentence I couldn't possibly have turned out except by thus precipitately ticking it.) My last direct word from you was the sorry sign that you gave me from London -- while I was at Bournemouth -- as long ago as last July. I lost you so much then that I am afraid, my silence aiding, you may even have felt as if you have lost me. But, bless us both, you will never do that; and you would uncommonly little fear it if you knew how, since then, I have caught at every scrap of information about you that has floated my way. Sidney Colvin has given me some; Mrs. Jack Gardner has given me more -- this last within a few days. She told me of her carrying you off to Asolo; but the news, altogether, isn't at all as good as I could wish it. They tell me you are over-worked and over-tired and over-done; which, with all I know of your incorrigible habits, I can but too easily take in. One's only comfort about you must be that you contain some ineffable principle that makes you ride to the winning-post the broken-winded (as it were) horse. I wish this were to tell you that I am coming straight down to make you waste a little time. But even if it were you wouldn't, after all my perjuries and perfidies, believe me: so I won't attempt, on that article, to say more than that I am coming -- as soon as possible!" commenting on news of mutual friends and offering his sympathy on "... your loss of your good Duchess [of Teck] -- in whom I took at any rate the comfort that she was a link, for you, with this country. I hope, at any rate, that her daughter will continue so. I believe, moreover, that if you had only been here the poor lady wouldn't have succumbed. But I talk, verily , of what I know not. What I do know is that I should like to put my hand on you. Pazienza! Give my love to your wife, please; and tell her that even -- or particularly -- when I am troubled with the sense that you are much spent I take refuge in my strong impression of her reserves and packed-in vaults of monometallic bullion -- all pure gold! I send my blessing to your children -- the heirs to that (I won't say patrimony, but) matrimony!"