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WELLESLEY COLLEGE WELLESLEY, MASSACHUSETTS
5 April 1920
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
My dear Mr. Buchan -
I am taking the liberty of writing to tell you what very great pleasure I find in your writings. No doubt you have many many such letters, especially in regard to Greenmantle and Mr. Standfast, but do so many come, I wonder, about your short stories. Only two of these have come into my hands, - The Companions of Marjolaine which swam into my ken when it was published in the Atlantic some years ago and has remained as the one exquisite and luminous creation in the vacuity of magazine stories; the other, Full circle has brought a golden joy, I scarcely dare try to tell you how beautiful it is to me. The art is so perfect, the matter of it so alluring and the humour, the wisdom, the serenity - I hope you won't think this absurd. I am not given to rhapsodies.
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Full circle has another pleasure for me, a hope that you will write more of its kind. I had heard that the war had drawn you away from such literature.
This is not belittling my enjoyment of Greenmantle and its sequel. They are far and away the best of their kind. My son, aged ten, reads and rereads them. I had read him several of the pre-Malory versions of the King Arthur story about the time he first had Greenmantle. He said, "Please get me another book like King Arthur and Greenmantle, something with spirit and sting to it." We have read some parts of your history of the war together and mean to do more in the summer vacation.
Please accept my sincere gratitude for the abiding pleasure you have given me and my family in these delightful stories. We shall watch eagerly for the ones to come.
Yours very truly,
Mary Bowen Brainerd
