write yourself of
course--I do not mean that; but some one else.

R. L. S.

TO W. E. HENLEY

_La Solitude, Hyeres, September 19, 1883._

DEAR BOY,--Our letters vigorously cross: you will ere this have received
a note to Coggie: God knows what was in it.

It is strange, a little before the first word you sent me--so
late--kindly late, I know and feel--I was thinking in my bed, when I
knew you I had six friends--Bob I had by nature; then came the good
James Walter--with all his failings--the _gentleman_ of the lot, alas to
sink so low, alas to do so little, but now, thank God, in his quiet
rest; next I found Baxter--well do I remember telling Walter I had
unearthed "a W.S. that I thought would do"--it was in the Academy Lane,
and he questioned me as to the Signet's qualifications; fourth came
Simpson; somewhere about the same time, I began to get intimate with
Jenkin; last came Colvin. Then, one black winter afternoon, long Leslie
Stephen, in his velvet jacket, met me in the Spec. by appointment, took
me over to the infirmary, and in the crackling, blighting gas-light
showed me that old head whose excellent representation I see before me
in the photograph. Now when a man has six friends, to introduce a
seventh is usually hopeless. Yet when you were presented, you took to
them and they to you upon the nail. You must have been a fine fellow;
but what a singular fortune I must have had in my six friends that you
should take to all. I don't know if it is good Latin, most probably
not: but this is enscrolled before my eyes for Walter: _Tandem e nubibus
in apricum properat_. Rest, I suppose, I know, was all that remained;
but O to look back, to remember all the mirth, all the kindness, all the
humorous limitations and loved defects of that character; to think that
he was young with me, sharing that weather-beaten, Fergussonian youth,
looking forward through the clouds to the sunburst; and now clean gone
from my path, silent--well, well. This has been a strange awakening.
Last night, when I was alone in the house, with the window open on the
lovely still night, I could have sworn he was in the room with me; I
could show you the spot; and, what was very curious, I heard his rich
laughter, a thing I had not called to mind for I know not how long.

I see his coral waistcoat studs that he wore the first time he dined in
my house; I see his attitude, leaning back a little, already with
something of a portly a