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4, NORFOLK CRESCENT, HYDE PARK, W. February 22 1921 Dear Buchan, I have just read your book about the twins and it has brought them back so vividly I feel I must write you and thank you for having made it possible. When I first came to London in 1910, after I had been here a week, Angus McDonald introduced me to Rivy at The Bath Club & told him he must look after me. Rivy did. He got me a room next his at the Club & for six months, off and on, we breakfasted together, generally after a game of squash & a swim in the tank, & went down to the

city. He introduced me to his friends, had me asked to balls, & generally put himself out to see I had a good time. The self education you describe so well was going on at high pressure and I well remember the amazement his comments on the books he read, and the calibre of the books themselves, gave me. It took me some time to make him out, - it was so incongruous, - & finally I realized there was no one quite like him. We used to go down to Cliveden often together where he generally spent half his time reading The Century War Book. He used to ask me countless questions about the Civil War, which I could never answer, but this fact never deterred him. I remember he used to get a step ladder & plant it in front of one of the long mirrors in The Bath Club tank. He would then perch himself on top of it with a Polo mallet in his hand, and sitting there,

quite naked, slowly swing the mallet back & forth watching his form in the glass! It is thinking about games in between times that makes the really first class player & this performance on the step ladder shows how his mind ran. I dont think he ever really gave his mind to business or really understood its basic rules. One of his Bonbright partners once told me that what Rivy liked was having a bustling day, with people coming in & out & bells ringing. I used to attempt to talk about business with him but although keen in theory he never had any flare for it. I know he never understood more than half what it was all about, when he was with his brother Arthur, & I always felt it was unfair that he should have had any responsibility. All my friends in the city feel that Rivy had nothing at all to do with the crash & when it came I only heard sympathy expressed for him. There is no doubt in my mind that he ought never to have gone in to the city. He ought, as you point out, to have been a soldier because, like Francis, he was born to be one.

Francis I never knew, beyond a bowing acquaintanceship, until he was home on his last leave while wounded. I then stayed at the Strawbridge's, near Oakham, with him for four or five days. Somehow I felt I got to know him well even in that short time. He knew I had been a friend of Rivy's and in a curious sort of way, which was entirely effortless on both our parts, we seemed to take hold where Rivy had left off. I remember one morning when I went into the bath room I found him standing there in his dressing gown. He suddenly said, "I say, want to see my wounds?" Before I could answer he slipped off his dressing gown & showed me the scars. It sounds so uncharacteristic, but he was so enthusiastic about them that I hardly

noticed the unusualness until I thought about it afterwards. This was a short time before he went out to France for the last time and he seemed to have then regained his keenness. He was as cheerful as possible & the best of company. But all the time I felt, I knew, that he thought he would be killed very soon. My wife was sitting behind him when he was reading there one evening and told me he sat looking at the same page without turning it over for the better part of an hour. He never gave an outward sign of what must have been going on in his mind. I shall never forget him because for one season I feel as if I knew him as well as I did Rivy. Your book has told me such

a lot I wanted to know that I am very grateful to you. I did not mean to write you at such length, when I started, but memories came crowding & I have just written down a few of them. Please forgive me, and thank you again for bringing the Twins into my thoughts so vividly. I shall keep your book & read it again later. Yours sincerely Robert Grant Jr