Jan. 28, 1904.
Dear Miss Fiona Macleod,
Most delightful of all New Year’s gifts is a really beautiful book; and we thank you,—both of us,—for sending us your most characteristic heroic-lyric tragedy, The House of Usna. We were fortunate in being allowed to see it performed—how long ago can it have been!—at the Stage Society’s instance.... The “Psychic Drama,” as you conceive it, opens the door to a lost world of Nature and the emotions of Nature in the imagination. No doubt it is a frightfully difficult thing to attire these emotions in fair and credible human dress, one that seemed impossible even, but the “House of Usna” may serve as a test of how far those who have the key to these emotions can hope to fit it to old or new-old dramatic forms. Your ‘Foreword’ is suggestive enough to be treated separately; but we write from a sick house, and in such states, it is harder to think of critical things than of pure imaginative ones. For these last, as they rise out of your magic ‘House,’ and haunt the ear, we owe you very whole and ample thanks.
With many wishes for health and spirit in this year of 1904,
We are, yours most truly,
G. and E. Rhys.
With Spring sunshine and warmth my husband regained a degree of strength, and it was his chief pleasure to take long rambles on the neighbouring hills alone, or with the young American archeologist, Mrs. Roselle L. Shields, a tireless walker. We made some interesting expeditions to Tyrens, Mycenæ, Corinth, Delphi, etc. and from ‘Olympia in Elis’ he wrote to a friend:
“How you would love this radiant heat, this vast solitude of ruins, the millions of flowers and dense daisied grass. This fragment of vast Olympia is the most ancient Greek temple extant. It lies at the base of the Hill of Kronos, of which the lowest pines are seen to the right and overlooks the whole valley of the Alpheios....
And the millions of flowers. They are almost incredible in number and density. The ground is often white with thick snow of daisies. Wild plums, pears, cherries, etc. The radiant and glowing heat is a joy. I am sad to think that this day week beautiful Greece will be out of sight.”
Later he wrote to Mr. Rhys: