memory. I believe mine is the more
faithful portrait of him, but that is for my readers to determine.

FRANK HARRIS.

NEW YORK, December, 1915.

H.M. Prison,
Reading.

DEAR BOSIE,

After long and fruitless waiting I have determined to write to you
myself, as much for your sake as for mine, as I would not like to think
that I had passed through two long years of imprisonment without ever
having received a single line from you, or any news or message even,
except such as gave me pain.

Our ill-fated and most lamentable friendship has ended in ruin and
public infamy for me, yet the memory of our ancient affection is often
with me, and the thought that loathing, bitterness and contempt should
for ever take the place in my heart once held by love is very sad to me;
and you yourself will, I think, feel in your heart that to write to me
as I lie in the loneliness of prison life is better than to publish my
letters without my permission, or to dedicate poems to me unasked,
though the world will know nothing of whatever words of grief or
passion, of remorse or indifference, you may choose to send as your
answer or your appeal.

I have no doubt that in this letter which I have to write of your life
and mine, of the past and of the future, of sweet things changed to
bitterness and of bitter things that may be turned to joy, there will be
much that will wound your vanity to the quick. If it prove so, read the
letter over and over again till it kills your vanity. If you find in it
something of which you feel that you are unjustly accused, remember that
one should be thankful that there is any fault of which one can be
unjustly accused. If there be in it one single passage that brings tears
to your eyes, weep as we weep in prison, where the day no less than the
night is set apart for tears. It is the only thing that can save you. If
you go complaining to your mother, as you did with reference to the
scorn of you I displayed in my letter to Robbie, so that she may flatter
and soothe you back into self-complacency or conceit, you will be
completely lost. If you find one false excuse for yourself you will soon
find a hundred, and be just what you were before. Do you still say, as
you said to Robbie in your answer, that I "attribute unworthy motives"
to you? Ah! you had no motives in life. You had appetites merely. A
motive is an intellectual aim. That you were "very young" when our
friendship began? Your defect was not that