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lately whether the time has not come to put off corruption & to put on incorruption. It is odd how distasteful the idea of incorruption becomes when one regards it as a practical alternative.

In other words I have been enjoying bad health since the 17th. of March - the day of that odious saint who turned the snakes of Ireland into Irishmen. When I thought I had made good against my third trial, - a particularly poisonous bout of flu - there came a fortnight of Nor East winds in London which filled up the cup a fourth time. Now I am happy, tucked up in my own comfy little bed, looking out on my own green hills, & listening to Henry as he 'honks' majestically over the love songs of the whaups, & the pee-wees, & the cushies & the cockpheasants. But I suppose all this comes under the heading of corruption: even so; I am content with it.

My little doctor is very strict, but very cheerful, & we are both pretty confident that I shall be back in town before Ascot, & able to wear the nice new old-world clothes, which I ordered from Messrs Poole, as the right thing for one of buckish tendencies,

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who is at the same time a dweller in that region of gay severity which men call Belgravia.

Get Susie to forgive me for my neglect (so far) of her brother-in-law's eggs.

Anthony Trollope is a great writer.

Curtis, Philip Kerr & most of their really high souled companions (not Bob Brand & Dougie of course: who would call them high souled!?) are really, in human form, the same things as military gentlemen use to make smoke screens with. Curtis, I'm sure, blew a smoke screen in the face of the howdie who usered him into the world, & he has been blowing them ever since in every quarter of the globe.

Yours, F.S.O.

P.S. you have a friend called Baring whom - from what I have heard of him - I regret I don' know. He writes books which I am ashamed to say I have never read.

Would you mind sending on a p.c. to our mutual friend Wilson of Bupus's the names of two suitable for my order of intelligence (if B. has ever struck so low a note); & tell him to send here & charge to my account? In that way a fraction of the retailer's profit will return to my own coffers. Who said the Scots were not a careful race?

F.S.O.