With sincere kind regards,
Very truly yours,
Walter Pater.
Cimiez, près Nice.
22d Dec., 1887.
My dear Friend,
I wonder how it is with you now, whether you are better, which I sincerely hope, and already in the Isle of Wight? but I suppose you will only go after Christmas. To-day it is so cold here that I wonder what it must be like with you; there is snow on the mountains behind the house and the sea looks iron-gray and ungenial.
I never told you I think how much I liked your “Shelley,” which I think gives a very succinct and fair statement of the poet’s life and works. It is just what is wanted by the public at large, and I thought your remarks on Shelley’s relations with Harriet exceedingly sympathetic and to the point; as well as what you say touching his married life with Mary; the passage on page 98 concerning this disenchantment with all mortal passion struck me as most happily felt and expressed. I have only one fault to find with you, and that you will think a very selfish one (so you must excuse it), to wit that when speaking of The Revolt of Islam you did not mention in a line or so that I was the first writer who pointed out, first in the “Westminster Review” and afterward in my Memoir of the poet, that in Cythna Shelley had introduced a new type of Woman into poetry. I am rather proud of it, and as it was mentioned by several of Shelley’s subsequent biographers I would have been pleased to have seen it in a volume likely to be so popular as yours.
But enough of this small matter.
I wish you and your dear wife health and happiness.