It has been very much on my conscience that I did not say a word in my hasty letter about your beautiful and valuable present.[[115]] How very pretty it must be, and a very great pleasure to yourself as a kindly acknowledgment.
About the “Reminiscences”—what you suggest about typewriting is just what I should like, but I did not care to trust MS. here. Before parleying with the typewriters, I should like very much indeed to read to you all the papers that I can get ready before the ninth. I feel a little anxious about the new style of writing.
February 21, 1901.
I have made up a good bit on “birth, childhood, and parentage” (chap. I.) not forgetting with “an action of humility”! Edward I., and Eleanor of Castille. At present I have “Series of Annual Reports” (chap. IX.) on hand,—very pleasant work.
But now I want you, please (and very much indeed), to be kindly thinking of some advice about my entomological work that I am sure you could help me greatly with when we meet. The burthen has become so very great that it seriously affects my health. I am in bed now with another of these attacks; the constant pressure of work to suit other people’s time and convenience, and maybe a tremendous worry, brings on painful and exhausting illness. I hope to be up again to-day, but the doctor is very anxious I should—may I call it?—“Take in sail.” My wish is that the present Annual Report should be the last of the series with an addendum slip of explanation inserted. There is not the important information needed or forwarded that there was twenty years ago, and working hard for months over so much repetition is dreadful drudgery. I heard lately from Dr. Fream, and he very strongly advises me to drop it. If your opinion—which I thoroughly trust—is the same, I should have no doubt. The difficult thing is to moderate the applications, but I think I see my way to that very nicely by having plenty of the addendum slip printed and sending a copy to an unreasonable applicant. I do not want to give up Entomology entirely.
How nice it must have been to have a good turn at curling!
February 24, 1901.
In answer to your very kind letter I must tell you I am much better. It was quite my fault that I got so out of sorts; I ought to have asked my doctor weeks ago what was amiss, and then the difficulty of how I, “all of my own head,” was to get that “old man of the sea”—the Annual Reports—off my shoulders, came on me like a brain shock. However, now I hope things are getting quite nicely into order again. Meanwhile I am trying to arrange what can hardly fail to be a rather explosive announcement. When I came to set to work it did not seem to me that an addendum slip would do. It would have been on such different lines to the statements in the Preface that folks would have wondered what could have happened! So I mean to have a Cancel, and hope all will be nice.
One word which I forgot—I quite hope to pass on quietly as much Economic Entomology as I possibly can to Dr. MacDougall.
March 1, 1901.