Feb. 23rd. Again I had to go to bed, but it's all right and my letter wouldn't in any case have gone to you till to-morrow's New York post. Meanwhile not much has happened, thank heaven, save that I went to tea with little Fanny P. and her five convalescents, and that it was a very successful affair.... We plied them with edibles and torrents of the drinkable and they expanded, as always, and became interesting and moving, in the warmth of civilization and sympathy. Those I had on either side of me at table were men of the old Army--I mean who had been through the Boer War, and were therefore nigh upon forty, and proportionately more _soldatesques_; but there is nothing, ever, that one wouldn't do for any one of them; they become at once such children of history, such creatures of distinction....
/# Mrs. Wharton, writing to describe a journey she had made along part of the French front, had mentioned that a staff-officer at Ste. Menehould had read some of her books, and had shown his appreciation by facilitating her visit to Verdun. #/
/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W. March 5th, 1915. */
How can I welcome and applaud enough your splendid thrilling letter--in which, though it gives me your whole spectacle and impression as unspeakably portentous, I find you somehow of the very same heroic _taille_ of whatever it was that gave the rest at the monstrous maximum. I unutterably envy you these sights and suffered assaults of the _maxima_--condemned as I am by doddering age and "mean" infirmity to the poor mesquins _minima_, when really to find myself in closer touch would so fearfully interest and inspire and overwhelm me (as one wants to be overwhelmed.) However, since my ignoble portion is what it is, the next best thing is to heap you on the altar of sacrifice and gloat over _your_ overwhelmedness and demand of you to serve me still more and more of it. On this I even insist now that I have tasted of your state and your substance--for your impression is rendered in a degree so vivid and touching that it all (especially those vespers in the church with the tragic beds in the aisles) wrings tears from my aged eyes. What a hungry _luxury_ to be able to come back with things and give them then and there straight into the aching voids: do it, _do_ it, my blest Edith, for all you're worth: rather, rather--"sauvez, sauvez la France!" Ah, je la sauverais bien, moi, if I hadn't been ruined myself too soon!... Ce que c'est for you, evidently, to find yourself in these adventures, like Ouida, "the favourite reading of the military." Well, as I say, do keep in touch with your public! I stupidly forgot to tell Frederick to tell you not to dream of returning me those £6. 0. 0 (all he would take,) but to regard them as the contribution I was really then in the very nick of sending to your Belges! So I _wired_ you a day or two ago to that effect, after too much wool-gathering, and to anticipate absolutely any restitution. It made it so _easy_ a sending. Well then à bientôt--Oliver shamelessly (not asks, but) _howls_ for more. Yours all devotedlier than ever,