Letter from George Wyndham, Dublin, to W. E. Henley, 1901 February 10 : autograph manuscript signed.

Congratulating Henley on his poem; saying "Why did I not wire? God & the West of Ireland know. It went right home. I must premise that in [illegible] I did not procure a copy of the morning Post until Monday last. That day I cleared the decks of office-work for a rush into the West. But that evening I read it - I was moved & lifted & stretched & appeased. That night I read it through to my wife in bed twice aloud with all the sonority at my command. And she felt as I did. You have done it. You will ask yourself why such a poem is read by me & no word said for days;" relating the details of his trip to Galway and the people he met with on that trip; describing, in detail, his walk along a "piece of Roman wall" saying "We drove all day; descended to walk up crags to survey the scene, a maze of rock & walls; a lace-work of sea-indentations, islets & promontories. The sea on one hand, the bog & mountain on the other & between a fringe on which humanity is huddled to exist by seaweed. That is what brought them there. They manure with it, the starved soil that has given potatoes for 50 years...From there they extract the potato. Some wild colts & lean cattle roam like goats over the intricate [illegible]. They burn the seaweed into kelp & they eat it. They can't talk English & scarce understand it. They weave their own clothes of thin & dirty flannel, sere as canvass. The women toil over the slippery rocks laden with creels of seaweed. The men lean & loaf & look with soft idle blue-eyes at the sea. The place is a beautiful, stagnant desolation. The problem is can you make the men fish; can you make the women work at Lace, hand-made curtains & tapestry? If you can, you may some day build up life : If you cant, they must go. But there they are, dreaming & singing & drinking : making 'pot-sheen' & hitting each other on the head with the stones that abound...We travelled for 15 hours, talking, planning, inspecting, buying a pony to breed from, appraising lace work, speaking to hastily summoned village meetings; giving priests lifts on the car, etc.;" continuing to describe the depressed West of Ireland and the meetings he held with local officials; adding "If one could turn the river of Imperialism into this back-water spawned over by obscene reptiles : if one could change these anæmic children into full-blooded men!;" continuing to comment on the problems he sees with Ireland and relating the meetings he had when he returned to Dublin and the tasks he faces in his daily routine; concluding "That is the round of my life 'so now you know!;" adding, in a postscript, I see that Broderick has published 153 pp. of Despatches upon the principle that 'too much pudding chokes a dog."