LORD KNOLLYS writes: ‘His Majesty commands me to say that he is so pleased with your INSIDECOMPLETUAR that he has decided to establish a new Order of Merit, to be conferred upon the few persons who have not contributed to its pages.’
The DUKE OF FIFE writes: ‘An excellent publication, but dear. Might I suggest a cheaper edition for the members of the starving aristocracy?’
LORD ROSEBERY writes: ‘In spite of certain trifling inaccuracies in the article on Napoleon, I like your work, into which I have dug deeply. I have a set at each of my houses, and should have kept one on my yacht, but it is only a 1000-ton boat. By the way, in your article on dialect you should have given some specimens of the Tabernacular.’
LORD SALISBURY’S PRIVATE SECRETARY writes: ‘I am requested by Lord Salisbury to say that the rumour that the purchase of a set of your INSIDECOMPLETUAR BRITANNIAWARE accelerated his resignation is perfectly true. Finding how much he had still to learn his Lordship decided that it was better not to permit the cares of office to interfere with his receptivity. He therefore resigned, and now reads nothing else.’
The DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE writes: ‘May I ask you to be so good as to send for the volumes at once? We find it impossible to keep the Duke awake.’
THE RT. HON. A. J. BALFOUR, M.P., writes: ‘Your volumes give the greatest satisfaction both at Whittinghame and Downing Street. One volume makes an excellent tee. Ten volumes block the door effectually against Dr. Clifford. Forty volumes make a superb bunker. The whole set when packed into my motor-car prevents my going at a greater speed than 12 miles an hour, thus providing me with the Foundations of Relief whenever I see a policeman on the horizon.’
LORD ROWTON writes: ‘All our Rowton Houses are now supplied with your INSIDECOMPLETUAR. Next to Lothair it is my favourite reading.’
MR. MAURICE HEWLETT writes: ‘I am free to confess, per Bacco, that if my Richard had only had access to your priceless pemmican of fact and fancy his conduct would not have shown that deplorable vacillation which I felt it my painful, though perhaps disloyal, duty to portray.’
MR. STEPHEN PHILLIPS writes:
‘They come as a boon to men, matrons, and misses,
Like Herod, Marpessa, ping-pong, and Ulysses.’
SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN writes: ‘I have two sets, one in Campbell’s tabernacle and one in Bannerman’s.’
MR. ANDREW CARNEGIE writes: ‘I am trying to persuade the ratepayers of 2000 English towns to accept a gift of your INSIDECOMPLETUAR. Meanwhile please send me four sets for the Free Libraries which I am establishing at Balmoral, Windsor, Sandringham, and Buckingham Palace.’
MR. AUSTIN DOBSON writes: ‘I cannot too highly praise Mr. Gosse’s contributions.’
MR. EDMUND GOSSE writes: ‘... Admirable publication.... Mr. Dobson’s meritorious articles have fascinated me....’
MR. MONTAGU HOLBEIN writes: ‘I have no hesitation in saying that the glory of my attempt to swim across the Channel would have been infinitely greater had I carried on my back a set of your admirable INSIDECOMPLETUAR.’
LORD ROBERTS writes: ‘I am recommending the perusal of your 100 volumes as an excellent deterrent from ragging in the army.’
MR. H. G. WELLS writes: ‘I have already given you an advertisement in The Sea Lady, and can only repeat that for submarine reading your work has no equal. The Atlantic is paved with it.’
MR. ALFRED AUSTIN, Poet Laureate, writes:
‘Next to the bliss of writing “Jameson’s Ride”
Is that of reading your “Complete Inside.”’
MR. JOHN MORLEY writes: ‘I heartily congratulate Messrs. Salmon & Gluckstein on the completion of their editorial labours. When I have finished the life of Gladstone I hope to write a short monograph on his illustrious namesake, Mr. Gluckstein.’
MR. JOHN SARGENT, R.A., writes: ‘I have found your volumes invaluable in calming the agitation of nervous sitters. Mr. Wertheimer’s poodle simply revelled in them.’
M. PADEREWSKI writes: ‘Ten volumes of your monumental work make the most perfect pianoforte stool imaginable.’
MESSRS. FITTER, of Leadenhall Market, write: ‘The cuts are prime and no mistake. Nothing in recent literature has affected us more than your noble essay on Cold Storage.’
THE DOWAGER EMPRESS OF CHINA.—Un Hung, Private Secretary to the Dowager Empress of China, writes to thank us in Her Majesty’s name for the set of volumes presented to her, and to say that she is using them in rebuilding the Great Wall.
DR. J. M. BARRIE writes: ‘I cannot sufficiently praise your generosity in the matter of pages. Few books afford such a plethora of pipelights.’
MRS. DAN LENO writes: ‘The cause of poor Dan’s nervous breakdown has been inaccurately given. The pains in the back of his head were not the result of overwork, but of his mortification at not finding any mention of himself in your otherwise readable article on King Edward VII.’
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD writes: ‘I cannot but admit that the portraiture of my earlier heroines might have been better provided with comic relief had I enjoyed the advantage of perusing your inimitable supplement. It positively teems with sweetness and light.’
SIR ERNEST CASSEL writes: ‘Eighteen more sets and I think the Assouan dam will be completed.’
MR. T. W. RUSSELL, M.P., writes: ‘My debt to your Brobdingnagian enterprise is so great that I have decided to add a new plank to my platform, and will henceforth advocate the extension of compulsory purchase to your new volumes. The magic of ownership is doubly potent when it implies the possession not only of the soil, but the fruits of knowledge.’
The BROWN CAT’S THANKS: ‘Mice and Nestlé’s aren’t in it with your volumes.’
MR. G. R. SIMS writes: ‘I have found your new volumes perfectly invaluable in composing the advertisements for “Tatcho.”’
MISS MARIE CORELLI writes: ‘The sorrows of Satan were largely due to the fact that he did not possess the supplementary volumes.’
MR. VICTOR TRUMPER writes: ‘I attribute my success with the bat during the past cricket season to the scrupulous way in which I refrained from reading your INSIDECOMPLETUAR.’
MR. ANDREW LANG writes: ‘I have your ingenious volumes by heart. They are among the few books I did not write.’
MR. HENRY JAMES writes:
‘The Dovecote, Rye.
‘I have no hesitation in saying, that if it had been, what I might call my splendid destiny, to read, in early life, bang through these hundred magnificent volumes, with their robust, almost brutal, perspicacity and frankness, as of a battering-ram, I think it is beyond question, that the number of those of my readers who now are able to grasp my meaning, such as it is, and follow my drift, would be sensibly augmented.’
THE RT. HON. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, M.P., writes: ‘I feel that it ought to be known generally that when I sustained my recent injury in a hansom I was hurrying home to resume the perusal of the engaging biography of Mr. Kruger in your new volumes. Had I only taken it to the Colonial Office with me, as Austen wished me to, the volume would have saved me a severe contusion by acting as a buffer.’
DR. ROBERTSON NICOLL writes: ‘Capital reading.... Please send me two more sets. Claudius wants one, and the Man of Kent another. I will O. O. for them.’
LORD HUGH CECIL writes: ‘That unfortunate delay in the division lobby has never, I fancy, been properly explained. The fact was, I couldn’t tear myself away from your picture of my friend, Sir Richard Calmady, with his prize Oxford Down ram, illustrating your alluring article on agriculture.’
MR. GEORGE ALEXANDER writes: ‘Four volumes make a perfect press for trousers.’
THE RIGHT HON. JESSE COLLINGS, M.P., writes: ‘I have been so exhilarated by the perusal of your fascinating miscellany that I think of re-entering the political arena with a new battle-cry: “Three acres and a Supplement.”’
LUCAS MALET (Mrs. Harrison) writes: ‘I omitted to mention it in my work, and now feel it my duty to Mr. Stephen Gwynn and my vast circle of readers to state that one of the few things that kept poor Sir Richard Calmady bright in a world of phantoms and futilities was the certainty that he could never drop one of your monumental volumes on his toe.’
LORD ’IVEBURY writes: ‘... Your splendid article on Bee-mæterlism....’
MRS. CARRIE NATION writes: ‘I don’t know how my campaign against the liquor saloons would ever have succeeded but for your timely publication. There is no plate glass that can stand against one of your tomes. You should see vol. xxvii. bringing down a row of rye whisky bottles! It’s great.’
MR. W. W. ASTOR writes: ‘Clieveden would not be Clieveden without your charming books. My retainers find them infallible for throwing at trespassers on Sunday afternoons. We sank two houseboats and a naphtha launch with them last week.’
MR. T. P. O’CONNOR writes: ‘Begorra, I’ll make it the Book of the Week.’
MR. YERKES writes: ‘No time to read your admirable volumes; but am arranging to tube them.’
MR. TULLY, M.P., writes: ‘I should like to ask the Editors some questions.’
MR. C. T. RITCHIE, Chancellor of the Exchequer, writes: ‘I am reducing the Income Tax to bring your boon within the reach of the wealthy.’
MR. C. F. MOBERLY BELL writes: ‘I hear they want more.’