2110-4-2-21

Studley Vicarage Oxford 7 Dec 1922

Dear Colonel Buchan

I do no know that I have ever had a gift which has filled me with so deep a pleasure. It is indeed more than pleasure, however deep. But I cannot express it, whatever it is, without seeming insincere in the language I should have to use. So I shall not try. Your very remembrance of so humble a neighbour as myself really makes me proud. It makes me proud that you think - as you must think, or you would not have sent me your History - and I shall read it & appreciate it, as I truly shall. Then, further, there is the value of the work, for which I can make no return. I really am grateful - most grateful. In a week I shall be having a short respite from my coaching work, bar Christmas. Your volumes will fill the days - & nights too - & you have added a delight to a holiday which I long to begin today. I would beg that I may indulge myself again in trying to voice my appreciation when I have reached the end of Vol. IV. rather than now, while I have only so far read your inscription. Yet I am already confident of what I shall write then.

You have perhaps wrought more than you thought. You have saved me - & others - myself much, others a little. I was going to spend my Christmas holiday in trying to write things myself. I shall read your history instead. It is everbody's gain.

Really you ought to know what people think of you - I mean, the good they think. We often know the bad. The good is too oft interred in our own bones. The other day I read a letter from one who had been reading Stanley Weyman's "Ovington's Bank", which

read, if you haven't yet. Said he - "It's odd, but there are only three novelists I always anticipate with longing, & lay down with satisfied & complete gratification - Buchan, Weyman, and Wodehouse - & each how different from the others! Walpole irritates me: Galsworthy I've tired of: & I'm fed up with Bennett et id genus omne. Some pall, & others appal ..." I agree.

It is tremendously good of you,

Yours sincerely

J.Kinchin Smith