Letter from James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, Harpenden Hall, to W. E. Henley, 1903 January 21 : autograph manuscript signed with initials.

Congratulating Henley on his 25th wedding anniversary; saying "I should dearly like to be with you tomorrow, but the wish voice tells me to avoid a crush. But though the flesh will be absent, the spirit will be there. Twenty-five years! A long, long time - some downs, but more ups : on the whole, a large balance of happiness, and at least a life that has been lived. No man was ever less intended to live alone, and, if you are not the most ungrateful scamp in the world, you'll drop down on your knees and thank God for sending you someone to multiply the joys and divided the sorrows by two. I look round my shelves here to see if there's anything that you would care to have, but there's nothing - nothing except, perhaps, a little book that deals with a poet whom nobody knows and understands better than you. And, in default of anything else, I send it with the best wishes in the world. How long shall you be at Battersea, and once one is in London, what is the best - i.e., the shortest - way of reaching Park Mansions (from the B. Museum)? I long to see you both, again : and am anxious to hear of your great doings...Thank you so much for the kind things you say about the "Lope" Don't forget that one had only forty-five minutes (I took fifty-five), and that I found myself face to face suddenly with a crowd of Dons' wives. You knew your Lope : you know a Don's wife (when you see her) : you know that she is a person of rigid, frosty virtue, and you'll pity a poor wretch who had to cut and improvize on the spur of the moment. One is pretty sure to cut the wrong things. Evidently I did. I think you said you knew a pearl of publishers (an American) who had a fortune to spend. If he exists (I can scarcely believe it) do you think he (a Blackwood, or any of the tribe) would tackle a Spanish Chrestomathy : four vols., 500 pp. each? You don't? No more do I. But there's an opening for such a thing. There is nothing save Leincke in existence, and his date is 1855. Appleton nibbled, but (of course, ran away at the first moment. And yet there is a boom - a natural boom - in Spanish in the U.S.A....We must talk of many things. A bientot! My love and best wishes and congratulations to you both on Jan. 22 : one of the happiest days in the calendar."