_105 Pall Mall._ November 6th. I've been in town a couple of days without having a moment to return to this--for the London tangle immediately begins. What it will perhaps most interest you to know is that I "attended" yesterday the Private View of the Society of Portrait Painters' Exhibition and saw Blanche's "big" portrait of poor H. J. (His two exhibits are that one and one of himself--the latter very flattered, the former not.) The "funny thing about it" is that whereas I sat in almost full face, and left it on the canvas in that bloated aspect when I quitted Paris in June, it is now a splendid Profile, and with the body (and _more_ of the body) in a quite different attitude; a wonderful _tour de force_ (the sort of thing _you_ ought to do if you understand your real interest!)--consisting of course of his having begun the whole thing afresh on a new canvas after I had gone, and worked out the profile, in my absence, by the aid of fond memory ("secret notes" on my silhouette, he also says, surreptitiously taken by him) and several photographs (also secretly taken at that angle while I sat there with my whole beauty, as I supposed, turned on. The result is wonderfully "fine" (for _me_)--_considering_! I think one sees a little that it's a _chic'd_ thing, but ever so much less than you'd have supposed. He dines with me to-night and I will get him to give me two or three photographs (of the picture, not of _me_) and send them to you, for curiosity's sake. But I really think that (for a certain _style_--of presentation of H.J.--that it has, a certain dignity of intention and of indication--of who and what, poor creature, he _is_!) it ought to be seen in the U.S. He (Blanche) wants to go there himself--so put in all your own triumphs first. However, it would _kill_ him--so his triumphs would be brief; and yours would then begin again. Meanwhile he was almost as agreeable and charming and beguiling to sit to, as _you_, dear Bay, in your own attaching person--which somebody once remarked to me explained _half_ the "run" on you!... Dear Gaillard Lapsley (I hope immensely you'll see _him_ on his way to Colorado or wherever) has given me occasional news of Eleanor and Elizabeth--in which I have rejoiced--seeming to hear their nurseries ring with the echo of their prosperity. As they must now have children enough for them to take care of _each other_ (haven't they?) I hope they are thinking of profiting by it to come out here again--where they are greatly desired.... _But_, beloved Bay, I must get this off now. I send tenderest love to the Mother and the Sister; I beseech you not to let your waiting laurel, here, wither ungathered, and am ever your fondest,