ENPages
page_0001
15, COTTESMORE GARDENS, KENSINGTON, W.8.
27th March 1919
My dear John,
Many, many thanks for sending me the enclosed. I have read it with the deepest interest. It fills up perfectly for me a period of Raymond's life about which I knew but little, all his time at Oxford and his early years in town, and it is written in a manner that expresses the soul of friendship.
page_0002
I think our respective views of him are not very wide apart, and it amuses me to see that in some places our words coincide. I mean words like "stateliness", "ribald", "whimsicality." I had a notion that he was rather more popular than you allow, and I did not know that he inspired awe in younger men. But I did not often see him in the society of these, and am not a competent judge.
page_0003
It is a good thing to get down a faithful record of him like yours, for it is to me an appalling thought that such a combination of physical and mental gifts should pass into oblivion as though it had never been. Even the best verbal reconstitution of him must be a feeble thing to those who knew the living man - But I doubt if a better representation of what he was in daily speech and act could be put together than yours.
Ever
A.S.
Austen Smythe.
