| Description | Dear Signor
This will reach you on Xmas-day with many affectionate wishes to you & (may I say?) Signora Mary for the season & the coming year. It was very kind of you my dear Signor to write again & bid me come to see you in your Brighton home - that would indeed be pleasant! but I am sorry to say the fact that I am often prevented from working by the darkness here does not liberate me from a life to which I am tied down by so many other strings - holidays at this time are not within my reach. I am grieved to hear that you have not been feeling as well as you would like lately but I am sure that in the main you are not in an unsatisfactory condition because you are cheery about your work - that is the great sign & test that you are in fairly good trim. I am delighted to hear that you are pleased with your Eve to which I much look forward. Val has not begun his new Eve yet. Well may you ask: why 'Eve'?! There are really pretty bits of fleshpainting about his first picture of that name - indeed except for a wholly realistic tangle of flowers painted out of doors & but for the patent fact that he has been mastered by his material instead of mastering & controlling it himself, the whole aspect of the work would be decidedly pleasing but it is simply amazing that the dear old boy (such an intelligent fellow too) should offer us that by the side of the Bible & Milton - a painted Eve should carry her whole legend with her. But we need not tell one another this. I am very glad you liked my address; it cost me infinite labour. I had a capital audience - crowded & silent.
Yours always aff'ly
FL
P.S. Don't let me catch you talking of resigning!! |