To Miss Frances R. Morse

Roxburghe Hotel,
Edinburgh, May 15, 1901.

Dearest Fanny,—You see where we are! I give you the first news of life's journey being so far advanced! It is a deadly enterprise, I'm afraid, with the social entanglements that lie ahead, and I feel a cake of ice in my epigastrium at the prospect, but le vin est versé, il faut le boire, and from the other point of view, that it is real life beginning once more, it is perfectly glorious, and I feel as if yesterday in leaving London I had said good-bye to a rather dreadful and death-bound segment of life. As regards the sociability, it is fortunately a time of year in which only the medical part of the University is present. The professors of the other faculties are already in large part scattered, I think,—at least the two Seths (who are the only ones I directly know) are away, and I have written to the Secretary of the Academic Senate, Sir Ludovic Grant of the Law Faculty, that I am unable to "dine out" or attend afternoon receptions, so we may be pretty well left alone. I always hated lecturing except as regular instruction to students, of whom there will probably be none now in the audience. But to compensate, there begins next week a big convocation here of all ministers in Scotland, and there will doubtless be a number of them present, which, considering the matter to be offered, is probably better.

We had a splendid journey yesterday in an American (almost!) train, first-class, and had the pleasure of some talk with our Cambridge neighbor, Mrs. Ole Bull, on her way to Norway to the unveiling of a monument to her husband. She was accompanied by an extraordinarily fine character and mind—odd way of expressing myself!—a young Englishwoman named Noble, who has Hinduized herself (converted by Vivekananda to his philosophy) and lives now for the Hindu people. These free individuals who live their own life, no matter what domestic prejudices have to be snapped, are on the whole a refreshing sight to me, who can do nothing of the kind myself. And Miss Noble is a most deliberate and balanced person—no frothy enthusiast in point of character, though I believe her philosophy to be more or less false. Perhaps no more so than anyone else's!

We are in one of those deadly respectable hotels where you have to ring the front-door-bell. Give me a cheerful, blackguardly place like the Charing Cross, where we were in London. The London tailor and shirtmaker, it being in the height of the Season, didn't fulfill their promises; and as I sloughed my ancient cocoon at Rye, trusting to pick up my iridescent wings the day before yesterday in passing through the metropolis, I am here with but two chemises at present (one of them now in the wash) and fear that tomorrow, in spite of tailors' promises to send, I may have to lecture in my pyjamas—that would give a cachet of American originality. The weather is fine—we have just finished breakfast.

Our son Harry ... and his mother will soon sally out to explore the town, whilst I lie low till about noon, when I shall report my presence and receive instructions from my boss, Grant, and prepare to meet the storm. It is astonishing how pusillanimous two years of invalidism can make one. Alice and Harry both send love, and so do I in heaps and steamer-loads, dear Fanny, begging your mother to take of it as much as she requires for her share. I will write again—doubtless—tomorrow.

May 17.

It proved quite impossible to write to you yesterday, so I do it the first thing this morning. I have made my plunge and the foregoing chill has given place to the warm "reaction." The audience was more numerous than had been expected, some 250, and exceedingly sympathetic, laughing at everything, even whenever I used a polysyllabic word. I send you the "Scotsman," with a skeleton report which might have been much worse made. I am all right this morning again, so have no doubts of putting the job through, if only I don't have too much sociability. I have got a week free of invitations so far, and all things considered, fancy that we shan't be persecuted.

Edinburgh is surely the noblest city ever built by man. The weather has been splendid so far, and cold and bracing as the top of Mount Washington in early April. Everyone here speaks of it however as "hot." One needs fires at night and an overcoat out of the sun. The full-bodied air, half misty and half smoky, holds the sunshine in that way which one sees only in these islands, making the shadowy side of everything quite black, so that all perspectives and vistas appear with objects cut blackly against each other according to their nearness, and plane rising behind plane of flat dark relieved against flat light in ever-receding gradation. It is magnificent.

But I mustn't become a Ruskin!—the purpose of this letter being merely to acquaint you with our well-being and success so far. We have found bully lodgings, spacious to one's heart's content, upon a cheerful square, and actually with a book-shelf fully two feet wide and two stories high, upon the wall, the first we have seen for two years! (There were of course book-cases enough at Lamb House, but all tight packed already.) We now go out to take the air. I feel as if a decidedly bad interlude in the journey of my life were closed, and the real honest thing gradually beginning again. Love to you all! Your ever affectionate

W. J.