2110-2-1-20

The Sanatorium Mundesley on Sea 23 Dec. 06

My dear friend John Buchan, I have very kind feelings towards you, although you have tried to pull my leg. It is never very difficult to do this, but at the present time (owing to my secluded & gossipless life) it is so easy that there is no credit in doing it.

You told me to buy a certain book called a Lodge in the Wilderness & I did so; but when it arrived I was engaged in reading the life of the late Mr Cobden - not for the first time I beg to state - and so the work of fiction had to wait its turn.

[Let me recommend you to read the two green volumes: Mr C.

was a very great man; but like many great men he is acclaimed for the least great thing about him. The thing he did was rather absurd, but the manner in which he did it is prodigious.]

This howerever is a digression. You will remember perhaps that you told me in the demurest way that you "had been interested" in "the Lodge". Well so was I, when I read it; but then I only read it. If, like you, I had written it I shouldn't have been so demure. I should have exulted a little, even as I was seeking to pull peoples' legs.

I suspected you before I had finished the prologue. The use of a word on p. 39, the misuse of a word on p. 114, a phrase on p 257 which I resent anyone appropriating because I learnt it from my nurse - these

were to me as the bits of string, & the giblet soup, & the finger marks on the birthday cake were to Sherlock Holmes. They proved you guilty of having written this work of fiction, & you shall hang for it even if you are innocent.

The matter that really intrigues me is - had you an accomplice? I should like to prove myself a complete S.H. by determining this point; but I confess I am puzzled. Please tell me some day.

As for the book: - In the first place I wish you wouldn't laugh in your sleeve quite so much. It distracts the reader. After a little he is apt to wonder whether perchance you are laughing at him occasionally, and this let me tell you a reader resents most frightfully.

But this is all the evil I have to say. I enjoyed the book immensely. The country is gorgeous. I wish Mr Carey would ask me there at the end of next month to complete my cure. High-up places delight me providing they are flat or rolling; but I have no taste for your pinnacles. Musuru would suit me in every respect; but especially the trout fishing and the gillie mounting guard with an express. What about snakes? All the time I was waiting for a snake story, but it never came. Surely they came crawling in from the verandah when Mrs Deloraine sang, & Teddy of course slew them as they were about to bite Mr Wakefield & the Duchess.

But this is frivolous. How did you ever manage to conjure up this picture? Were you ever there, in that high up place? Or is it merely the richness of your Baconian imagination? Anyway it filled me with joy & hope & life, & this beastly grey sanatorium faded out of sight while I was reading about it.

You know I can't help thinking you rather a waster (in the Daily Mail sense). I mean, you treat so many good ideas as the otter treats the salmon - biting a bit out of the shoulder & leaving the rest to the carrion kites. Of course this is very magnificent & exuberant, but it is wrong. The Lord didn't mean ideas to be wasted any more than bread. For an example - your splendid double diary. That was too good a notion to deal with in so cavalier a fashion. (It reminds me somehow of Heine's Jew in the fried fish shop.) But now you've used it - when you didn't really need it - & you can't use it again; nor can any other self-respecting man till you're dead & buried & the time is ripe for plagiarism.

As to your discussions I won't enter upon them for if I did I should want to discuss & that would be a bore. I read 'em all & (except Mrs Deloraine's discourse on Art) carefully & slow, sometimes with a chuckle, but always with sympathy. Mr Wakefield, the Duchess & Lady Flora generally say things I approve of. Being