2110-2-1-19

[Violet Markham]

Tapton House, Chesterfield. 6.12.06

My dear Mr Buchan

I have read your book [Lodge in the Wilderness] with the greatest delight & interest & I hope it will have all the successes it deserves. But I do wish you had put your name to it for there is nothing libellous or unkind about your portraiture & I want to shake your publishers for

not advertising it better. I am very sorry the Outlook has collapsed before I had a chance of reviewing the book. I have written & urged Bumpus & Bickers to supply themselves with so able & brilliant a study.

I have sent Lord Grey a copy & know he will delight in it.

I agree of course

absolutely & entirely with your general conclusions. I think the chapter on art & the Empire altogether admirable.

You cut the ground away beneath the feet of the "bloated base material" school idea. And then I particularly admired the chapter on tropical administration & all the sentiments placed in the mouth of Lady Lugard.

How could you write

a book about a country you have not seen? For I have an idea you don't know East Africa? It is a tour de force to create all that local colour so successfully.

I am looking forward so much to seeing you & Miss Grosvenor at dinner on Wednesday next [superscript Dec 12th]. We must dine at 7.30 at 69 Grosvenor Street. Will you also tell Miss Grosvenor? What an altogether charming person

your fiançée is! I fell in love with her on the spot.

So many kind fairies must have come to her christening & brought beauty charm & wits as their gifts.

Now I know her I must congratulate you once again on your good fortune. I do hope in the future she will find room to make a little corner among her