| Description | 31 May 1893
2 Holland Park Road, Kensington
Dear Mr Quilter
I owe you apologies for my too long delay in answering your letter of the 24th inst; my secretary being away on sick leave the whole of a heavy correspondence falls now on my busy hands and some of it inevitably suffers delay. I was, I may add, unwilling in a matter of such importance to say simply that I had - as is in fact the case - already thrown in my sympathy with another candidate, and was desirous to tell you that whatever might be my dissent, in respect of [-] or method, from anything in your writing which has come to my knowledge, and when you were good enough to call here not long ago I explained to you with entire frankness my reasons for seeing so little of contemporary criticism (and [entirely?] except by accident where I am myself concerned). I should not have suffered such dissent to blind me to, or make me silent on, the vigour earnestness and directness as well as literary ability with which you have as far as I have been able to see, upheld your views, and the advantage you possess of joining to a wide and prolonged study of your subject a constant and concurrent practise of painting. That any lack of sympathy in respect of my own work (and those things always reach one's ears) would never for a moment bias me on such an occasion as the present you do me, no doubt the justice to assume.
I am
Yours truly,
Fred Leighton
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