Letter from T. G. Hake, Heston, to W. E. Henley, 1887 June 24 : autograph manuscript signed.

Concerning Henley's "Hospital Sketches;" saying "I must say a few words more - just as I should have done if you had spoken to me what you wrote. The circumstances are that I have been talking a review of your 'alto relievo' 'Sketches' to everyone. I saw when to my surprise Alfred said it would please you if I wrote you my opinion. Fancy my being able to give you a streak of water-colour joy! I always say that the reader should contribute half towards the writers endeavour, by meeting it half way. I did more than that, you found me on the spot. The scenes you describe are familiar to me from my eighteenth year when I followed the Professor round the wards uniting two of the characters in my person. The lout and of course the exquisite. But you give features to masses, souls to breast-pins and shoulders, make foreheads and whiskers of one brotherhood. However, I need not further enlighten you on your own ideas - other than to assure you that the picture ending 'in wet-white lint brilliantly hideous with red.' sets up a dangerous rivalry with nature who has her jealous fits. She could not have made a blush nose more accurately...I am often surprised at not feeling the want of rhyme; in very many of the stanzas there is a swing that blows rhyme to the winds, but not in all, though I see how it could be done by imitating the rhythm of the most successful passages : notably, by my private ear, 'Etching' and 'Discharged." This is remarkable to me, because except in heroic blank verse I am obstinately sympathetic with rhyme...I hope you will not think I am taking the 'liberty and equality' : my remarks only aspire to the 'fraternity', hoping the missing link is not without its uses. Molière's best critic was his cook, or I should not presume - as the old woman said when asked if she liked the bishops sermon / I should like very much to read the work over with you. / It is quite a lift to me to think you cared for my opinion : I seemed to reach the fifth story and to go out on the roof! Wonderful to relate, I still feel all my old interest in 'the pomp and circumstance' of glorious thoughts - and when I ask myself whom I wish to see crowned with all the success his heart can desire, it is always you, and one or two others, Stevenson at your side;" adding, in a postscript, "I am sure you will achieve a great Death-Song, and I look forward to it. It is a grand subject but not many are 'en rapport' with its poetic aspects. I can't say all I could! - There are so many things, and I have taken them all in. It would need all of you, and me as a pick of the 'sparse' mob, to pause in utter sadness at the words, 'The smell of the mud in my nostrils / Is brave - like the breath of / the sea.' There is a pathos in it which is agonizing - when one thinks of it. Alas! for God's image.