P.S. I send the “Affirmatives” in your birthday parcel for Daddy. 3 bob's worth X X 21 Brunswick Square London W.C.1 7/2/28 My dear Mummy,

Since I got my mail on Saturday I have been walking round on air — I can't say how glad I was to get two whole pages from you, written furthermore in ink, & to hear how much better you were. Times are indeed looking up; & I hope your spell of sunshine both natural & physical is keeping up, & that it won't pass with the summer. Apart from all this good news things have been going pretty well with me for the last few days; however I had better make my usual valuable & illuminating comments on your letter before I proceed any further. I suppose you are walking around now like a giantess refreshed & dazzling all Wellington with your glorying. And talking of walking, I suppose you got that Cuala Press picture of the tramp all right? — you didn't mention it, but as Erasmus turned up I suppose the picture of my future did likewise. I am very glad you both liked the Christmas & the books &cet cetera — though I don't know why you should be so indignant at getting more than one present. Some people will growl at anything. I never growl because people give me too many things, do I? Then why can't you thank God humbly for whatever he decides to send you, per me, his humble servant, & let it go at that? On second thoughts, it seems to me that perhaps I have got your meaning wrongly, & that when you say, why two? you really think there ought to have been three. This is more understandable, but it would be a very rude thing to say, so I have got you either way (a) on grounds of theology, which is very serious, as you can see by studying the prayer-book controversy (b) on grounds of social etiquette, which is still more serious, as you will realise if you study up the usages of the beau monde a bit. I think the best thing you can do is to read your books & look at your pictures & think what a fine day it is. I shall pass on your favourable opinion of the woodcut to Mcf. We have been laughing at the contrast be- tweenbetween Sydney letters & WgtonWellington ones. In the former I am the also ran — “the verses too are” &cet cetera; now Mac gets honourable mention after the dinkum wreath has been awarded. I haven't seen him for a bit but he is coming down to London some time this week. Also I am glad the Post letter was such a success — only two misprints too! Father Isaacs must have been pretty stirred to make all that song about it. I am all excitement to hear what Father Hooper thought. I got a letter from Peter Fraser last night too, the bloke I put in Parliament to represent me on two occasions, & a literary critic of no mean order. He must have sat right down to his typewriter & driven it off in the heat of the moment “Dear Mr Beaglehole” he says — mark that! “Dear Mr B. Please accept my congratulations & thanks for your splendid letter in the ‘Post’ last night” &cet cetera &cet cetera “It is really a fine letter … It will do a lot of good in dispelling prejudice. With Kindest Regards” & so forth. His spelling on the typewriter seems to be as wonky as mine. Now I ask you could a bloke wish for a finer tribute than such words, written on House of Representatives paper? I notice by the way he gets his stationery in the fashion of all great men, & pinches it from his place of business. It's a pity I have such a thirst for uniformity in the size of my the writing paper I send to you, or you would certainly get Institute letters every time. These public institutions generally have so much better taste in that respect than private individuals. Well, you might get Daddy to ring up Peter (who is also his representative) & say I have received & appreciate his tribute, that I have passed on his kind regards as requested to Mr Campbell, & that in due course a letter will arrive for him with instructions on how to win the next election, & what to do when he becomes Minister of Education, Foreign Affairs, & Imperial Administration. There is a great demand for that confounded letter over here, & after scouring London yesterday I was only able to raise three copies, so I should be obliged if you could get hold of two or three more. But don't let anybody break his neck over it, except possibly Ern.

I think I exhausted my stores of advice & comment on the matter of Joan's love-affairs in my last letter. As they have turned out so well I gather she anticipated my advice & went to Frannie, or that Brian Benjamin got busy in a quite epoch-making manner. He must indeed to have put it across Auntie Laura so successfully. I don't remember the aphorism of Frannie's you quote as reported by me, but I am willing to admit it. After all it was I suppose love of a sort that brought her & Keith together, at least after the compelling power of Father Johnson's pulpit oratory had done its work, & that was a strange trick if you like. I'm sure Auntie must be all tied up in knots of emotion. You say a letter of congratula- tioncongratulation from me to Joan would be quite in order, but I always thought it was in bad taste to congratulate the woman in the case? I know that logically it is the correct thing to do, & of course I shall do so, as any woman deserves to be patted on the back at the end of a long stern chase that she has successfully won. I herewith recommend Man & Superman, & Mencken's In Defence of Women, both for Joan & Auntie Laura; in fact I may send them out in a nice suede binding for a wedding present — My God! I was forgetting that fly in the ointment of other people's love affairs. Still, no doubt, as I shan't be asked to the wed- dingwedding there is no obligation on me to rush forward with unasked-for favours; & I always think that in these things a spirit of true modesty is the one most to be admired. He certainly has a name, this cove, Brian Benjamin Randle. You don't say anything about him, age, colour of eyes, size of neckband, height, weight before falling in love, weight after falling in love, profession, financial standing &cet cetera. I should like to point out to all concerned that these two last things are most important in considering matrimony as a practicable prop- ositionproposition; & that if all young fellers had as much sense as I have they would do their best to escape their fate by having neither. Look at me — 27 in June — & sailing along with neither wife nor child, house nor home, care or sorrow, & my only impediments a pair of horn-rimsed & collections of books scattered all over the world & left till called for. I suppose Brian Benjamin Randle committed the fatal error of going in for the law or the hardware business or financing elections for the Reform Party, so that now he is stuck in the mud & can't get out. Terrible business. Well, well, looking at it in a sporting spirit & not with the sentimentalism of a supporter of lost causes, I suppose I must shake hands with the winner, & I shall endeavour to do so by this mail. I might even manage to turn out an epithalamium — Randle, handle, candle scandal, dandle. It all seems to follow on logically.

Thanks for DrDoctor Bennett's cobber's letter. If the stuff is so important as she seems to think it is, which it probably isn't, the job might be worth doing some day, though I don't see myself wading through papers for 3 years, like Mrs Bright. She makes me laugh too “Now I could not let a stranger go through these diaries” — how the devil does she think a man is going to make a book out of them then? Some people are pretty batty. I should think the best thing to do would be to give them to some cove work- ingworking on the history of the Pacific, if there is any such, or ask the advice of the Halburgh Society about printing a seel selection. But unless she keeps me for a year I don't see how I can do much of them — if I get a couple more years here I have too many other books to write. However we shall see if & when the old girl writes to me. I see she talks of having me down to stay, so she is evidently a bit of a plate, & I gather her old man made something out of the niggers. — In re books by other & less important people — yes, I shall send out Garnett's book, the 3/6 edition, I suppose Daddy wants. I also picked up Gosse's Life of Swinburne for him for 5/- the other day. These things will probably catch a slow mail some time. I'm dashed if I know how much he owes me for books, but I believe I discussed the matter at length & with lucidity in my last letter. I think the prices are marked in all the books I have sent out — when not so, they may be taken as birthday presents. And as far as Captain H.Hobson goes I am much gratified at the keen business instinct he shows. I never thought it possible that the rest of the family would fork out for copies, but here I have a letter from Keith from which I gather, in spite of his coy way of putting it, that he is ready to take ½ dozdozen copies to fill up his own spare shelf room & a few more for free distribution among the electrical branch of the railways. Well, I always did think that the N.Z.New Zealand railwaymen ought to know more about the history of their own country, & if they can only be induced to take a passionate interest in Captain Hobson it may help to avoid the next strike & then I should be rewarded. It might help to solace the long night-watches for the firemen on the limited's run from W'gtonWellington to Auckland. A wonderful purifying & uplifting power is the influence of a good book. It reminds me of a remark of Henry Adams, whose “Education” I am now reading — now, confound it, I can't find it; but it was something about weak minds & history.

Well so much for all that. Let me think, what's been happening in London. The weather hasn't been so bad on the whole, cold but not excessively wet for London, & the crocuses are beginning to get above ground again. We haven't had any more floods or snow falls. Hay is dead & buried, & I see that Coates worked off a lot of French on the occasion, beau sabeur & bonhomie & such-like — he must have been taking lessons. I got a cheque from Cook's the other day for £1-12-5, about ¼ of what we reckoned was due to us for the tickets to Bude- pesthBudepesth we didn't use last summer. However it was a great stroke to do that, apparently — the bloke in the Bank said to me this morning “What! have you been getting money out of Cook's? It's like squeezing blood out a stone!” So I may turn out to be a financial genius after all. However 2 dollars each after all this time is quite a pleasant windfall. I have finished my second chapter, bar the notes, & put in a few days cleaning up things in the P.R.O.Public Records Office And here I a come to an incident which I cannot tell you about, even on paper, without a modest blush. I lent my to Laski, as he said he'd read the thing through, & when I stuck my head in the door to get it back yesterday afternoon he said “Beaglehole, that's a corking piece of work!” And much more to the same effect, with a good deal of enthusiastic swearing. Finishing up with the remark that any publisher would take the book on the strength of his reader's report on that chapter alone. He then pointed out a few things that could be improved on, & I was yapping to him generally when he suddenly said By the way, have you seen the new Keith? (nothing to do with Keithles' being born again but A.B.K's Resp.Responsible GovtGovernment in the Dominions. I said yes & he told me he reckoned some of it was quite libellous in character; also he asked me if I had it, which I hadn't; then how about taking his old edition off his hands? I nearly fell over backwards: Because the new edition is 73/6 & the old not much cheaper. So I thanked him with due emphasis & asked him to write his name in the book (it is a hefty 3 vol.volume thing) On which he put the following “J.C.B.John cawte Beaglehole Amies Amicus H.J.C. 6/2/28”. My oath! I nearly burst, I swelled up so much. I daresay one of the more learned of the family or its connec- tionsconnections will translate the Latin for you, I being much too retir- ingretiring. As it's only two words, Ern might make a fist of it. If not, you can apply to me by return mail. — I don't know whether I told you that little Harold is interesting himself on my behalf in the Rockefeller business, too — Newton seems on the whole to be getting a trifle thrown in the shade. Which reminds me of a remark he C. made in a lecture on Voltaire, talking about equality & the varying regard in which men are held by their fellows “For instance, if Mr John D. Rockefeller came into this room I think I personally could stand here with my withers completely unwrung; but if I took him down to the Stock Exchange & there was a sudden lull in in the business & I announced that “This is Mr John D. Rockefeller” quite a number of men would feel as if they had just partaken of Holy Communion.” I went down to the Lasleis' a couple of Sundays ago & heard a lot more talk & yarns about the Sacco-Vanzetti business, & CalCalvin Coolidge & President Lowell & other dis- tinguisheddistinguished morons & criminals. Met a Yank playwright there, too, Beherman, the author of The Second Man, for which vide Punch. He had a much lower opinion of the two actresses in the play than Punch had. But apparently it is impossible to sack them, because they married into the aristocracy, & are HonHonourable Mrs. in civil life. He was an interesting bird. You can pick up a lot of firm information in that house. A lot of good books he has got too. Little Harold recited that poem of Sassoon's I told you about, about Birkenhead, Beaverbrook & CoCompany — it was certainly a classic example; with a last tine something like this — “We say your name & then expectorate” It was Simon who gave the legal opinion that there were seven distinct libels in it, each worth £10,000.

I haven't been to many shows or concerts lately. I have read one or two books, though — The Mayor of Casterbridge, & a book by William Cather “Death comes for the Archbishop” which is worth your attention. I am reading the Education of Henry Adams now — it is pretty good, in fact if it is all up to the level of the first four chapters & I shall send a copy out. Haven't read any more Jane Austen yet; but I have bought Chatto & Windus' complete Rabelais for 6/- as a makeweight against any undue refin- ingrefining influence she may have on me. — The usual gang have had the usual meets — Smithie's education proceeds apace, but Crumpie the fat girl is quite a hopeless case. Smithie & Ross had birthdays last week so they took Helen & de K & me out to tea in Oxford Street on Saturday afternoon & done us proud — we are giving them a regular party to-night, with all appurtenan- cesappurtenances & one or two extra people. It looks as if Ross will get that S.South African job, by the way — I hope he does; it will suit him down to the ground for a couple of years, after which he is thinking of moving on to N.Z.New Zealand & Australia for a bit, to complete his education. He's a bright cove.

Well, well, it's time I drew to a close, as it seems my ink is doing. I haven't got my proofs from Mr Fay yet, so I can't give you any up to date information on that subject. I could do with a couple of weeks roaming round in N.Z.New Zealand now — Daddy is right enough about the hills & the sea — I haven't seen anything to touch it since I left home. It's a terrible choice to have to make, to stay here or in N.Z.New Zealand I appreciate very much indeed what you both say about my staying away longer than I thought at first it would be, even though I am quite uncertain how even the near future will turn out. It would indeed be very hard to reply to those bits of your letters, so I shall not try; I understand what both of you feel, I think; & I think that you know in many ways it would be very hard for me not to come go back as soon as possible. I only wish I could do something to justify the things you say. Some time, if need be, I shall try to write you a letter on about this subject. In the meantime, pending further develop- mentsdevelopments, I send you both very much love

Your son Jack