ENPages
page_0001
CHURCH OF THE ADVENT. RECTORY.28 BRIMMER ST. BOSTON . . . . . . . .
Sept. ix . , + 1917.
Dear Major Buchan:
A slip, "with the Author's compliments", in "The Battle of the Somme", just received, (though I know it is a formality) gives me an opportunity to thank you not only for that but for all the pleasure your earlier writings have given me. So few men combine story-telling with style, that I rejoiced over "Prester John" and "The Watcher of the Threshold" as over treasure-trove. The Ashtaroth story, in "The Moon Endureth", has been retold in camp, school, and common- room with great success. As for "Greenmantle", it is quite the best thing of its sort I have ever read.
The purpose of this letter is to ask whether, in writing "The Company of the Marjolaine", you had any definite information as to such a plan for setting up Charles III. in America.
page_0002
Some of us, Americans of ten or eleven generations, and ultra-Republicans, still cherish a Platonic Jacobitism, and like to remind ourselves (now more than ever) that it was against a German usurper our fathers rebelled, and routed his Hessian hirelings. (Perhaps a Highland grandmother helped, with me!) Recently, I discovered a political caricature (c. 1770-5) engraved by Paul Revere, representing a New England yeoman turning his back on irate George III., and gazing wistfully towards Italy, where a stately figure, evidently intended for the Count of Albany, was looking westward. The legend spoke of a "rightful" king. So your vividly convincing story has some documentary basis.
I found in a country-house the other day two miniatures of the young Stuarts d'Albany, reverently preserved.
