. . . . Mr. Penley
Olive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miss Katie Seymour
Priest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sir Henry Irving
Lord Orm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Arthur Roberts

I am working and must get on with my work. I do not feel any
despondency about it because I know it is good and worth doing. It is
extraordinary how much more moral one is than one imagines. At school
I never minded getting into a row if it were _really_ not my fault.
Similarly, I have never cared a rap for rejections or criticisms,
since I had got a point of view to express which I was certain held
water. Some people think it holds water--on the brain. But I don't
mind. Bless them.

I am afraid, darling, that this doctrine of patience is hard on
you. But really it's a grand thing to think oneself right. It's what
this whole age is starving for. Something to suffer for and go mad
and miserable over--that is the only luxury of the mind. I wish I
were a convinced Pro-Boer and could stare down a howling mob. But I
_am_ right about the Cosmos, and Schopenhauer and Co. are wrong. . . .

Two interesting points in this letter are the remark about wishing to
be a convinced Pro-Boer--which he certainly became--and the
suggestion of a possible performance of _The Wild Knight_. Perhaps
the letter was written before he had finally taken his stand (it has
no dating postmark), or perhaps it merely means that his convictions
on the cosmos are more absolute than on the war. As to _The Wild
Knight:_ it was never acted and its publication was made possible
only by the generosity of Gilbert's father. For a volume of comic
verse, _Greybeards at Play_, which appeared earlier in the same year
(1900), he could find a publisher, but serious poetry has never been
easy to launch.

The letter that follows has a more immediate bearing on their
own future:

11, Warwick Gardens,
Good Friday. 1900.

. . . As you have tabulated your questions with such alarming
precision I must really endeavour to answer them categorically.

(1) How am I? I am in excellent health. I have an opaque cold in my
head, cough tempestuously and am very deaf. But these things I count
as mere specks showing up the general blaze of salubrity. I am
getting steadily better and I don't mind how slowly. As for my
spirits a cold never affects them: for I have plenty to do and think
about indoors. One