rds the mode of copying: of course it is too long for any
amanuensis to attempt: and your own handwriting, dear Robbie, in your
last letter seems specially designed to remind me that the task is not to
be yours. I think that the only thing to do is to be thoroughly modern
and to have it typewritten. Of course the MS. should not pass out of
your control, but could you not get Mrs. Marshall to send down one of her
type-writing girls--women are the most reliable as they have no memory
for the important--to Hornton Street or Phillimore Gardens, to do it
under your supervision? I assure you that the typewriting machine, when
played with expression, is not more annoying than the piano when played
by a sister or near relation. Indeed many among those most devoted to
domesticity prefer it. I wish the copy to be done not on tissue paper
but on good paper such as is used for plays, and a wide rubricated margin
should be left for corrections . . . If the copy is done at Hornton
Street the lady typewriter might be fed through a lattice in the door,
like the Cardinals when they elect a Pope; till she comes out on the
balcony and can say to the world: "Habet Mundus Epistolam"; for indeed it
is an Encyclical letter, and as the Bulls of the Holy Father are named
from their opening words, it may be spoken of as the "_Epistola_: _in
Carcere et Vinculis_." . . . In point of fact, Robbie, prison life makes
one see people and things as they really are. That is why it turns one
to stone. It is the people outside who are deceived by the illusions of
a life in constant motion. They revolve with life and contribute to its
unreality. We who are immobile both see and know. Whether or not the
letter does good to narrow natures and hectic brains, to me it has done
good. I have "cleansed my bosom of much perilous stuff"; to borrow a
phrase from the poet whom you and I once thought of rescuing from the
Philistines. I need not remind you that mere expression is to an artist
the supreme and only mode of life. It is by utterance that we live. Of
the many, many things for which I have to thank the Governor there is
none for which I am more grateful than for his permission to write fully
and at as great a length as I desire. For nearly two years I had within
a growing burden of bitterness, of much of which I have now got rid. On
the other side of the prison wall there are some poor black
soot-besmirched trees that are just breaking out into b