I was as charmed as usual to get your letter, & on a Wednesday instead of a Friday. I was going to say Daddy's letter, but it would not be fair not to give your pencil note & literary extracts honourable mention. I was not too merry to learn that you were having such a rough spin; but I suppose you will be all the better for a period under the skilled hands of Joan, who must be quite the little nurse by now, banking on the sick, the maimed, & the halt as they all do, & keeping you as ill as long as possible in order to make money out of you. I shouldn't be surprised myself if she has your appendix out before you get this, or you may even have lost a limb or two — but I was forgetting, that is Stan's speciality; Joan can only poison & tip you out of bed. Just as well there aren't any darling young male doctors buzzing round, house-surgeons, boy- healers, & the like, or there would be the devil to pay. Well, well. I hope you will come all right through even the experience of having a trained nurse in the house. Why didn't you get somewhaone of mature experience like Mrs Kilfoy? But perhaps she is too much of a specialist, & doesn't take on ordinary cases. We're all specialists nowadays, even historians; every cock crows triumphantly on the dunghill he has heaped himself. That's about all most historians heap up too. I say nothing about medical specialists.

Of course your literary extracts were as appropriately chosen & as powerful as usual. Oh yes, the Edgar Wallace might be a description of me, except that my present goggles are not black, but a charming imitation tortoiseshell, & that when I walk along the Strand I don't do so aimlessly, but with grim & steadfast determination. And I don't stray out of King's, when I come out, which is as exactly as infrequently as I go in, I do so with speed, regretting that I have wasted so much time. Still otherwise it is all right, anyhow as far as the books are concerned; & as there seem to be the shadowy adumbrations in the air of a campaign by my confounded female friends, perish their souls, to make me buy a new hat & coat, I suppose the rest is all applies too. I've learnt one thing; when a girl starts to come the maternal over you & enquires how the buttons are hanging on your coat, it's time to run for shelter. I think I had better have my old Spikes over, with relevant articles on clothes etc, & other such topics. The Jasserand is also very nice.

Blast! Out goes our gas again! If we run it at all during the day, it costs us about 5/- a week to keep warm; while people with coal fires get enough coal for a fortnight for 1/6. Do you wonder that Londoner's prefer their fogs? Gas seems to be a lot more expensive than it was this time last year, too; or the boys are not so hardy as they were. Anyhow, thanks God it's not so as wet as it is cold, or I should do all my work in bed. And it hasn't snowed yet either, so apart from expense, we're not so badly off. There are too many expenses in this life — I came home tonight to find I had lost my fountain-pen somewhere somehow during the day, a fine state of affairs. Bang goes a quid, I suppose. Good excuse for not buying a hat, though. It is a fair cow, whichever way you look at it. Not much use looking for a fountain-pen in London. It may just possibly have fallen out of my pocket at the P.R.O. in which case all will be well; if not, it is a case of farewell a long farewell. (Shakespeare) This borrowed one is a fair devil for eccentric behaviour; but still perhaps it is not in too good taste to criticise it.

Now to come to Daddy's contribution. I have no sarcastic remarks to offer on this occasion, so he can aban- don that pleased adventurous thrill. By the way, though Montagne (if he means the same one as I do) is not a young man, but an old one, at least in the body if not the spirit. He had to dye his hair even to get into the army; & is now chairman of the board of directors of the Manchester Guardian, I believe. You see I always pick someone much older & more experienced than myself as a guide through life — I don't trust these young men. Thanks very much for the woollen scarf announced through Daddy; it has not yet turned up; I have two others as a matter of fact both from the same skilled hands, but why I should give them away I don't know. Still I shall see; no doubt there is some resident of this rich & fortunate city who would appreciate same, as well as all old & despised coats.

For information re Wake Arms I also thank all con- cerned; but it looks as if the Scaring concern has hopped it. I don't know that I shall have the courage to enquire again, anyhow; me spirit's broken when it comes to pubs in Epping Forest. They don't give away beer in this country evidently. Shame on them, & for selling what they do sell, though I haven't bought any. — It looks to me as if Daddy's scheme is to get on the right side of this new general manager of Sharland's & get him to wangle a pension for an old & tired servant of the firm. Perhaps with a new bloke the dibs will come in a bit faster. What is Daddy so modest about his letters for? They are the goods so far as I am concerned. That I think concludes my remarks on your last, except to say that the Chloral Society is about as mad as a meat-axe to do stuff like Aida. God Almighty! And I believe I have al- ready expressed my feelings on that score. I see a cove is going out from England to conduct them, I hope he'll put in the boot. If he does he will get the sack, I suppose. What is old White going to do now? Rub along on teaching competition-winners, I suppose. Thanks also for extracts in last letter. I look forward with eagerness to the day when my photograph too will appear in the Dominion as a Distinguished Young N.Z. Scholar. As for the Bible in Schools tripe, well, it's nice to see the press compelled to lick the dust occasionally

By the way I had a letter from Auntie Nancy last mail, unexpected but none the less pleasurable. Please thank her very much for same & all the information therein contained. Her remarks on the wireless made me chuckle somewhat. I certainly shouldn't get a set if I were you till you can hear ZLO, Sir Henry conducting. I send you out a list of the concerts.

Now about things as they touch me. I told Fay to fire away with his dirty work on Capt. Hobson, blast him, but asked him for a look at the proofs, which will hold the thing up a bit more & give me more work to do reading them through, but I should like to know just what monkeying he is doing before it is done past recall. Of course you can't argue with a cove on the other side of the Atlantic. I sent off my last notes & instructions to him, a mixture of stern injunction & sweet solicitude, the other day, so I hope all will go well now. The sooner the thing is out the better, so far as I am concerned, when it comes to applying for jobs & so forth. My latest ambition is to have published three books, counting that as one, by the time I am 30. I am coming to the conclusion I am cut out for a writer more than anything else, & I should like to get enough time here to do one or two more things before I settle down to the grind of teaching. I hobbled down & had a yap with Laski the other day, & told him I didn't know whether to keep on with colonial history where I found a good many things opening out, when I had finished my present thesis or hop back to political theory. He said why not combine the two? & told me he wanted me to write a book on the Idea of Empire since 1783. I told him I was quite agreeable, but wanted to do one on Sir James Stephen first. He was very enthusiastic about this. Sir Jas you must know was Leslie Stephen's father & a great man in his way, the colonial office bloke, & I should like to try my hand at biographing him. It might be a bit more interesting for you to read too than a dissertation on Governors' instructions. You had better tell me which book you would rather have dedicated to you. Laski forthwith offered to lend me a privately printed book on Stephen by his daughter; & I could get a terrific lot of help from him — he has a bug on the history of the civil service, and Sir Jas was first & foremost a civil servant. A very interesting period too; all sorts of missionaries & Clapham Sects & queer birds buzzing around. And I haven't heard of anybody working on the old man yet. If someone else does get in first I shall feel like going off my bloke. Not having been done, he would be a far more interesting cove to work over than old Wakefield. As a matter of fact, though this may be unpardonable conceit, I think I can write a damn sight better than any colonial historian I have come across over here. They can all search records, but can't write for sour apples. I speak with all the typical Beaglehole modesty, you understand. Of course, when you come to ways & means, there is the catch. Laski advised me to put in for a Rockefeller grant, which I shall certainly do, more especially as I now hear that these Guggenheim things are only for American citizens. He also advised me to put in for a librarian's job now going — the Rhodes trustees are building a Rhodes House at Oxford, which is to have a library attached, under the Bodleian. Librarian wanted, to start at £500–£700, according to qualifications, no previous experience necessary; rising to £800 by £25 a year. I don't think I should stand an earthly chance myself; some dud Rhodes scholar will probably get it, certainly an Oxford man. But I might put in for it just to waste time. Have to send in a photo & all. Curse it. Still I could afford to put you up indefinitely if you came to England, & Daddy could go round visiting poets' graves to his heart's content. The catch is of course that you have to pay 4/6 in the £ income tax in this country, to pay for the recent war. In fact I believe they are due to pay it for the next 150 years, & about £2000,000,000,000 interest into the bargain. I may be a few noughts out, more or less; it doesn't matter much. It would be a good job for writing, & nice & close to London. Another of my numerous advisers thinks I ought to go to Cambridge for a couple of years to read & write. Noone apparently thinks I should leave England. Altogether things are in a nice state of indecisiveness & suspended decision. You had better contribute your advice to the general mix-up. Apart from this business I am getting on all right. Everybody wanted me to get an introduction from Laski for Capt. Hobson, but both L & I agreed that we hated introductions, so that was all right, & I satisfied everybody except the real introduction hounds by asking him for one & telling him simultaneously I didn't want it. I have practically finished collecting my P.R.O. material, except for one lot of very important stuff I would give £50 of my scholarship for, but which seems so elusive that I shall be spared that bargain. Newton wants me to start writing immediately; but he can go blazes; I am going to do the thing in my own time & my own way. I want to get the thing it pretty well done, except for polishing, by next June, though, even if I can't hand it in then. It will mean all the more time for looking around or working on Stephen & so forth. Besides, I want to finish reading Jane Austen.