XCII
Richard Haven to Verena Raby
My Dear Verena, you have hurt me this time. I never thought you had it in you to do so, but you have. You tell me to tell you something “candidly.” Now, when have I ever done anything else?
As for the Church, I don’t think this the best time to give it spires. It is not architecturally that it needs help, and I never thought so with more conviction than when, at a State banquet the other night, to which I was bidden, I saw a Bishop in purple evening dress. He looked an astonishingly long way from Bethlehem.
As for the cinema scheme, it is ingenious and might serve; but I think I should wait a little until the present fermentation subsides. You would never get a Picture Palace manager to put it on now, when every one is thoughtless and lavish with money and only excitement is popular. I remember seeing an Italian cinema audience go wild over a film about Mameli, who wrote their national song and joined Garibaldi; but that was just before a war—with Turkey—and not after. Before a war you can do wonders with people; but after—no. It is then that the big men are needed.
I don’t often send you anything really wicked, but the temptation to-day is too great to be resisted. You are fond, I know, of those lines by T. E. Brown called “My Garden.” Well, in the magazine of Dartmouth Royal Naval College some irreverent imp once wrote a parody which I can no longer keep to myself. By what right an embryonic admiral should also be a humorous poet I can’t determine; but there is no logic in life. Here is his mischief:—
—That of course is sacrilege, and I haven’t the heart to add anything serious to it.
Here’s a nice thing said recently by an old French general, retired, in charge of the Invalides Hospital. “Heroes—yes; a hero can be an affair of a quarter of an hour, but it takes a life-time to make an honest man.”
Morpheus calls.
R. H.