be. If I live in the south of Italy I know I should be idle and worse. I
want to live here. Do think over this and send me over the
architect.[18] M. Bonnet is excellent and is ready to carry out any
idea. I want a little chalet of wood and plaster walls, the wooden beams
showing and the white square of plaster diapering the framework--like, I
regret to say--Shakespeare's house--like old English sixteenth-century
farmers' houses. So your architect has me waiting for him, as he is
waiting for me.
Do you think the idea absurd?
I got the _Chronicle_, many thanks. I see the writer on
Prince--A.2.11.--does not mention my name--foolish of her--it is a
woman.
I, as you, the poem of my days, are away, am forced to write. I have
begun something that I think will be very good.
I breakfast to-morrow with the Stannards: what a great passionate,
splendid writer John Strange Winter is! How little people understand her
work! _Bootle's Baby_ is an "oeuvre symboliste"--it is really only the
style and the subject that are wrong. Pray never speak lightly of
_Bootle's Baby_--Indeed pray never speak of it at all--I never do.
Yours,
OSCAR.
Please send a _Chronicle_ to my wife.
MRS. C.M. HOLLAND,
Maison Benguerel,
Bevaix,
Pres de Neuchatel,
just marking it--and if my second letter appears, mark that.
Also cut out the letter[19] and enclose it in an envelope to:
MR. ARTHUR CRUTHENDEN,
Poste Restante, G.P.O., Reading,
with just these lines:
Dear friend,
The enclosed will interest you. There is also another letter
waiting in the post office for you from me with a little money.
Ask for it if you have not got it.
Yours sincerely,
C.3.3.
I have no one but you, dear Robbie, to do anything. Of course the letter
to Reading must go at once, as my friends come out on Wednesday morning
early.
This letter displays almost every quality of Oscar Wilde's genius in
perfect efflorescence--his gaiety, joyous merriment and exquisite
sensibility. Who can read of the little Chapel to Notre Dame de Liesse
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