2110-5-11-22

[image: letterhead ship ensign red with white star]

On Board R.M.S. "Majestic".

29.iii. 32

My dear John,

I am fated to go on my holidays & voyages with you - and a very kind fate too! I have just finished Sir Walter Scott, & hasten to tell you what a great piece of work I think it is, & how I gobbled up every morsel of it.

You will have had by now much greater praise than mine can be, but no greater appreciation. The touching chapters are masterly & original, on so well worn a theme, as it seemed until you made

all the rest look like farthing dips. My own Scott reading was all too early - it has ebbed away & left mere pools of memory, but I shall now start again, with a new mentor. I think no living man, save perhaps Barrie, could have begun on such a programme of sympathetic criticism & insight as you have brought to so successful a conclusion.

Yours ever

JC Stamp

[ST: Sir Josiah Stamp]