TO HIS FATHER.
Dear Father,—It is a year to-day since we kept your birthday at the Hensels; let me keep a sort of celebration of it now and relate you something from Rome, as then from London. To-morrow I hope to finish writing down my old overture to the “Lonely Island”[1] for a present, and when I date it “December 11th” it will seem as if I was going to lay it actually in your hands. You may say that you cannot read it, but I give you the best I can create, and though indeed one has to do one’s best every day, still a birthday stands by itself; I wish only I could be with you. About my wishes for you let me be silent. You know it all and know how we all feel ourselves bound up with your happiness and contentment, and that I can wish you nothing which would not so return to us twofold. It is a festival to-day; I rejoice in thinking how gladsome everything must look with you; and, in telling you how pleasant my life is here. I have a sense that this also is to send you a felicitation. A time like this in which seriousness and pleasure unite does indeed strengthen and refresh one.
- ↑ “Overture to the Hebrides.”
