2110-3-9-2

11A PORTLAND PLACE, LONDON, W. 1.

11 Jan 1921

Dear John,

How are you? And how are your amiable consort & your agreeable brood? May the New Year increase your substance & at the same time lighten your burdens: in other words, may you find some means of transmuting the major portion of your principle income into capital increment so as to escape taxes. And I also wish you well in a spiritual sense. May the practice of virtue become a pleasure to you, instead of the pain it is to all natural & unperverted men & women. May you retain your joy in intoxicants & also your discrimination thereanent: for though it is better to rejoice

in meritorious juices it is a mere vanity to be reduced to my senile condition in wh. the want of merit is always the uppermost thought & drunkenness no compensation for a harsh or fiery debauch. May you in fact have every blessing that the heart of a young man of 32 can legitimately or illegitimately crave for.

Will you do something for me? Why shd. you? For I have sponged on your good nature since our acquaintenance began & there is a huge debit balance.

Moreover Susie views me with suspicion, if not with contempt, upon the grounds that I was neither born nor married into the inner circle of those Whig families whom successful depredations upon the public purse, even more than the great war, have

reduced us to that condition of financial exhaustion wh. daunts even the financial genius of an Austen. I say to him at times - "Get busy dear Austen or the Whigs must starve": whereupon Austen immediately becomes grave: there can be no doubt that he fully realises how much is at stake.

But to return to my enquiry.

Will you some day - oh! any time - will you ask Mark to come & stay a week end with you?

In the tented fields of Picardy, I fancy he formed a misleading picture of the higher intellectual life as practised in normal times by our civil population. He looked forward to release from the cramping atmosphere of a cavalry mess. And lo! having got his freedom, I have a suspicion that he has found - in the society of Bob Brand⁺ & the financial Hebrews - a certain disillusionment.

[in margin:] + this is only blague. The admirable Robert has no part in it.

It is bad for the young to become disillusioned. For to them illusion is the truest thing in life, & if they entertain it not they will starve on dead sea fruits.

Where can he hope to recover his illusions so well as in an academic grove over which a great Whig Lady & an incomparable man of wit & the world hold sway?

He is strangely indifferent, I regret to say, to virgins. La Femme de trente ans, with the intelligence of the heart, is what his soul seems to desiderate. I am left puzzled. It never took me like this. But the war has upset even heredity.

This is a vile pen. Mark must have been writing with it: he writes flat & I write sideways so that a common pen is no use to us. I am staying home for a few days with my offspring en route for Checkendon. I hope soon to be settled there & to see you both again.

Yours ever

F.S.O.

IIa Portland Place, London. W.1. 11. Jan - 1921 Dear John, How are you? And how are your aimiable consort & your agreeable brood? May the New Year increase your substance & at the same time lighten your burdens: in other words, may you find some means of transmuting the major portion of your princely income into capital increment so as to escape taxes. And I also wish you well in a spiritual sense. May the practice of virtue become a pleasure to you, instead of the pain it is to all natural & unperverted men & women. May you retain your joy in intoxicants & also your discrimination: for though it is better to rejoice in meritorious juices, it is a mere vanity to be reduced to my senile condition in which the want of merit is always the uppermst thought and drunkenness no compensation for a harsh or fiery debauch. May you in fact have every blessing that the heart of a young man of 32 can legitimately or illegitimately crave for. Will you do something for me? Why should you? For I have sponged on your good nature since our acquaintance began, & there is a huge debit balance. Moreover Susie views me with suspicion, if not with contempt, upon the grounds that I was neither born nor married into the inner circle of those Whig families whose successful depredations upon the public purse, even more than the Great War, have reduced us to that condition of financial exhaustion which daunts even the financial genius of an Austen. I say to him at times "Get busy dear Austen