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ASBG/DG.

Norman Douglas, Esq.,
Isola Capri,
NAPLES, Italy.

26th November, 1947

Dear Mr. Douglas,

Thank you for your letter of November 21st. A set of
proofs has been sent to Mr. King, and already returned by him
with some corrections which are, of course, being made.

Unless the new index can be finished quite quickly, it will
certainly be best to use that from the second edition, and I
will arrange for this to be transpaginated.

Thank you very much indeed for the news on the Hagiological
problem. I will also take advantage of your kindness and
write very shortly telling you in questionnaire form a little
more closely what I am after. Meanwhile, may I say how
much I enjoyed renewing my acquaintance with SIREN LAND in
reading through the proofs?

Yours sincerely,

BRANCH OFFICE: 4A, LIVERPOOL ROAD, BIRKDALE, LANCS., TELEPHONE: BIRKDALE 66506

1, CHESTER GATE,
REGENTS PARK, N.W. 1.
WELBECK 4975.

22 January 1947

Dear Douglas,

I thought I must write and tell you how much I enjoyed *Late Harvest*, which the Spectator sent me for review. I tried to indicate there that I thought the book first-rate. As a result of it, I am doing a re-read of all your works; with great pleasure, and, I hope, profit.

It so happens that I am doing an introduction to a reprint of E. W. Hornung's short stories about Raffles, and in the course of researches into his life I find that he was at Uppingham at the same time

as yourself. I suppose you don't
remember anything funny about him? His
books are, of course, ludicrous; but he
did add the word 'a Raffles' to the
English language, which is always
something of an achievement for an author.
Also he gets that extraordinary sort of
welling-up of sentimentality and violence
so characteristic of the end of Queen
Victoria's reign — I suppose the
reaction from aestheticism.

I haven't seen Desmond for ages, but
suppose that he survives. Sad about
poor Marcelle.

I CHESTER GATE

REGENT'S PARK. N.W.I.

II February 1947

Thank you so much for your letter about Hornung. It was just a long shot on my part. He married Conan Doyle's sister, so that the creators of Raffles and Sherlock Holmes were brothers-in-law which has its amusing side. Of course (in my opinion) the Sherlock Holmes stories have qualities that Raffles never rises to on the imaginative level; tho' the pure mechanics of Hornung are sometimes equally good if not better.

I think I told you that I was rereading your works; and was amused to find that you were such an adherent of Ouida, which I had forgotten. I have done an introduction to a collection of 'Victorian Society' novels which is coming out in the Spring, of which one is Moths. The other two are Disraeli's Henrietta Temple and George Lawrence's Guy Livingstone. The latter delighted me. I wanted to conclude the volume with Malock's The Old Order Changes but unfortunately there was not room.

Since writing to you, Willie King passed on your kind message to me. There is nothing I should like more than a visit to Naples but there seems little prospect of it at present. Here it is infernally cold and generally

unpleasant in many respects.

By the way, I much appreciated your remarks about the English 'but' and its slashing effect upon za sentence. I had only a few months earlier made a resolution to replace it with 'and ' or 'though' etc whenever possible.