"With best love to my father, and to Polly when you next may see her (Maggie, I suppose, will by this time be beyond the reach of messages), I remain, yours affectionately,
"_P.S._--My address is still that given at the beginning of this letter, which is so enormous that I shall have to send it in two envelopes. I am afraid that you will have to read it by easy stages, unless you subdivide labour by calling in your curate. By the way, I spoke of my lines on Shelley as being risky for a Catholic audience. Let me explain the reason, lest you should suppose something worse. They are founded on a letter given in Trelawny's _Recollections_--a letter from Jane Williams to Shelley two days before his death. The poem is put into the mouth of the dead Shelley, and is supposed to be addressed by the poet's spirit to Jane while his body is tossing on the waters of Spezzia. Now Jane Williams was a married woman. I have carefully avoided anything which might not be addressed by one warm friend to another; but Catholic readers (witness Canon T----) are apt to shy sometimes at shadows. . . . When a poet writes love-verses to a lady, and gives them to her husband for her, it is surely evident that neither pistols nor the divorce court are necessary. Now that is what Shelley did."
To Pantasaph in Wales, where he lodged at the gates of the Capuchin Monastery, he went early in 1892. His first business was the passing of _Poems_ for the press. Busy over the proof sheets, he writes in answer to some suggestions of my father's as to the dedication:--
"I cannot consent to the withdrawal of _your_ name. You have of course the right to refuse to accept the dedication to yourself. But in that case I have the right to withdraw the dedication altogether, as I should certainly do. I should belie the truth and my own feelings if I represented Mrs. Meynell as the sole person to whom I owe what it has been given to me to accomplish in poetry. Suffer this--the sole thing, as unfortunate necessities of exclusion would have it, which links this first, possibly this only volume, with your name--suffer this to stand. I will feel deeply hurt if you refuse me this gratification."
A slight difficulty in sight, he writes on the impulse:--
