From Juliet Pollock

AUDACTER ET STRENUE¹

Are you good or bad, and how is it that you have disappeared from our world without a word or a sign, and what are you about and what is Bromine about and how are you, and may I wish you a happy new year, and many more to come for use and enjoyment? And will you answer me and will you care for what I have to tell? Know then that we have all been laid up with colds and that poor Moss² coughs to day still so much that he is not fit to leave home (although not ill) and that therefore I remain at home while my husband³ and elder sons⁴ go to S^t. Julians⁵ & the good Sarah Spedding⁶ stays with me: if Moss is pretty well on Friday I shall go down with her to S^t. Julians just for two days leaving him in Polly’s⁷ care in order that my Aunt may not be altogether disappointed and that Sarah S. may have still the pleasure of a little outing. Now Sir—does all that signify any thing to you, or are you indifferent; as I am not yet evaporated into a gas—and we are all mere common solid bodies?

Charades in active preparation! Will you play a ruffian who has a part of dumb show & who will be inserted in the bills as A ruffian—by a ticket of leave man? Nights of performance | 13^th. & 14^th. Jan[uar]^y.—

So! M^r. Savory⁸ is going to give us four lectures on life & death.⁹—what can he tell us of that, that we long to know? Can he say why one goes & another stays, why one career happy & useful is suddenly cut short, & another drivelling & wretched is prolonged to the extremest verge?—no—he cannot—he certainly cannot & therefore I suppose will only deal with the thing physically. But why do I talk so much to you who don’t care—just as if the needle would deflect for me?

Some people talk of the value of a solid friendship but not you!—If I were but vapourish instead of [being] | still most truly your Juliet Pollock

RI MS JT/1/P/223