n will stand
still upon Leicester Square and the Moon on the Valley of Wardour St.
For then will assemble the Grand Commemorative Meeting of the Junior
Debating Club. The Secretary, Mr. L.R.F. Oldershaw, will select a
restaurant, make arrangements and issue the proclamations, or, to use
the venerable old Club phrase "the writs." When this gorgeous
function is over, you must expect a colossal letter. Everyone of the
old Brotherhood, scattered over many cities and callings, has hailed
the invitation, and is coming, with the exception of Bentley, who
will send a sensational telegram from Paris. The fun is expected to
be fast and furious, the undercurrent of emotion (twelve years old)
is not likely to be much disguised. As I say, I will write you a
sumptuous description of it; it is somewhat your due, for the thing
is, and always will be, one of the main strands of my life. . . .

None can say what will occur. It is one of those occasions when
Englishmen are not much like the pictures of them in Continental
satires . . . there is more in this old affair of ours than possibly
meets the eye. It is a thing that has left its roots deep in the
hearts of twelve strangely different men. . . . And now that seven of
us have found the New Life that can only be found in Woman, it would
be mean indeed not to turn back and thank the old. . . .

11, Warwick Gardens, W.

. . . This is the colossal letter. I trust you will excuse me if
the paper is conceived on a similar scale of Babylonian immensity. I
cannot make out exactly whether I did or did not post a letter I
wrote to you on Saturday. If I did not, I apologise for missing the
day. If I did, you will know by this time one or two facts that may
interest you, the chief of which is that I am certainly leaving
Fisher Unwin, with much mutual courtesy and goodwill.

This fact may interest you, I repeat: at this moment I am not sure
whether it interests me. For my head, to say nothing of another
organ, is filled with the thundering cheers and songs of the dinner
on Saturday night. It was, I may say without hesitation, a breathless
success. Cholmeley, who must be experienced being both a
schoolmaster, a diner out and a clever man, told me he had never in
his life heard eleven better speeches. I quite agree with him, merely
adding his own. Everyone was amusing and what is much bette