Dearest Mary,   I went in today to dine with Lady Henry Sumerset [sic] at my uncleGÇÖs Mr. NicholsonGÇÖs and came out at 4 P.M. to find Annie and Jim had carried Bessie off bodily, protesting and insisting she was not well enough, and had taken her to Baltimore. Annie told Mamie she feared Bessie would never go if it grew cold and had determined to take her whether she wished it or not. She and Jim came on last night according to Mr. Kings [sic] telegram who was in despair when Bessie refused to return with him. Such a time as we have had - after I wrote you from my club I came out to find Bessie had worked herself up into a fever over Dr. GerhardtGÇÖs remarks and sure enough a fever she had that night and was really ill the next day. I reproached Dr. Gerhardt and he got angry with me, and we had a very uncomfortable time esp as he saw for himself something had made Bessie ill. Then on Sat. came the Trustees and Mr. King and Annie and Jim, I had resigned myself to a long period of illness and lo and behold without any warning they carried Bessie off. What made it esp hard was I had made all this weeks [sic] engagements in advance and I had to go out to dinner and into town and have people here with Bessie upstairs in bed, moreover it was crowded with college business. You will want to know how we got on. Well Bessie was very sweet and very much like her old self but to me she will not mention your name -  she will never forgive that last talk of ours when I refused ever again to discuss you. She is very very much to be pitied for her health will always prevent her from doing anything and I am frightened at my own hard-heartedness for I realise always what a difference last winter has made. I only hope I can act as usual during the few hours we shall be together in our lives. Bessie has, I think, forgiven me far more than I - or rather it is different - I do not feel as if there had been much to forgive - it is that I cannot see things in their old light and that makes me think our friendship must after all never had been if it is possible to be so changed - and it is I that have changed. She is I fancy as she has always been only I never saw it. SInce I wrote, really wrote, last Bessie Mamie and I went on to N.Y. to hear Theodora. Bessie saw Sara for the first time; and she was glorious of course. That completes for me all the roles she now plays I think it gives her almost more opportunities than the others. Then I have seen a very attractive woman, a woman whom I should really like to make a friend of if she were not a scion of 100 earls, in Aunt HannahGÇÖs travelling companion Lady Henry Sumerset [sic]. I heard her speak on temperance last night to a packed house and she spoke better than any woman I have ever heard, her pronunciation of English was like BernhardtGÇÖs French, and she was really eloquent and adorably pretty, perfect hair and brow and sombre pathetic eyelids. I sat next to her today at dinner and I thought I could really make a friend of her if she were someone else. She is witty and talks exceedingly well and is of course in absolutely good form. To see a womans suffragist, a prohibitionist, and a public orator, all these things does ones [sic] heart good. She is just 40. A terrible cold prevented her leaving the house today or she would have come out here. She is immensely evangelical which I should either have to get her out of or it would be as great a barrier as her living in her castle and I in my deanery with the ocean between. No you are wrong about Miss Irwin at Northeast - she by no means resumed her sway. She is too completely given over to idle company for that. I cannot, and do not, admire her at all, she is only a pleasant companion with whom I can spend a pleasant hour. In fact, I am a very good sort of person to have for a friend. I like people so little and books so much better, but for a short time between books and these few people the rivalry is languid when all the charm of a personal presence is opposed to the far off glow of reading. Your roses, a basket of charming white and red roses, came on Saturday Nov. the 21st instead of a letter which will I hope come Monday, and made me wish that we could finish the talk we began a year ago, the only real talk we had in all the days you were here. You see our stars are not very propitious - fancy your being here nearly 4 weeks and no opportunity to talk because you were not well enough. I cannot help thinking from time to time that the completeness of this last breakdown might have been avoided if you had gone abroad just then, taken ship from the deanery.   Monday Nov 23 1891   I waited to see if a letter would not come and was rewarded by your scrap of the 8 and your long letter of the 9th, so now I can finish much better than if I were answering your last, which was so entirely business it might have had BMS and MS blazoned all over it. I too have been thinking about Venice versus the Engadine [?] and I have thought this - it seems cruel unless it is necessary to give up a year among such things as Venice and Italy, or even Cairo and Luxor, can give and now that I see you care so much for all her adorable beauty - I did not know how far your feeling wretched might interfere I believe if I were you I should not hesitate to make up my mind to spend the winter somewhere where you can absorb other things as well as rest and health. Even if Venice gets cold, why not leave her for a few weeks and go to Naples or the Riviera. Ah yes if you are going to care about things I could not bear to have you lose this year. For myself I should know that I could get better faster in the midst of such things - and I really think of all places I have seen like Venice the best. San Marco has but one rival and it is not a rival in love but in some loftier feeling, St. Sophia. I could sit for days on St. Marcs. To think that, if I live, I shall see Venice next summer makes my pulses beat now as I write. I wonder if I am not making a mistake here in my college so far from St. Marcs and all that that means. I know you do not think so but perhaps for all that we are wrong. I am not at all sure that if you do not come home till May you ought to come home at all. Why should you undo everything by a hot summer and in America - one cannot be cool. At least if you come come in April and go abroad again. Of course your staying away would mean I could not see you, and that we must manage somehow. Of course it is far off but you must think about it in time for me to know. If you were to reach home the middle of May I should probably not be able to see you more than once for the last week of May and the 1st week of June count out for me I am so frightfully busy and we have taken passage on Sat. June 6th by the French line. Then why should you come home so late into the warm weather. So, listen, either come in time to see me - and some other things besides of course - and go abroad again in June, or do not come at all and I hate to say this but I do want you well this time. Nevertheless I do not think we can go without seeing each other all that time, do you? And you will have to plan to be in Paris the week of June 15th to 22nd for after that we go to Northern Italy and return only to hear the operas the last week they are given and through the Tyrol back to our steam Sept. 17th. It will be awfully unsatisfactory for I can only go to see you at your hotel but still better, much better, than nothing - Oh if only you and Mamie were as you were this time last year what a charming time we might have in Paris and at Bayreuth and in the cooler parts of northern Italy. But now of course it is impossible still see you I very much wish to even if you will not act as I long to have you act. You are too far tonight however, and too wretched perhaps (although I hope you are much better than when you wrote) and letters are too dangerous a medium, to scold you; only it is a very great pity. Because it looks to me as if GÇ£golden hoursGÇ¥ in golden places were far off and we should have to put up with pretend golden rooms at Montebello (how impossible not to have accepted in imagination, which was all required, to my suggestion!) and sham cathedral glooms at 101 for some time to come. I do not know why I have been thinking of your plans especially tonight. Perhaps because I do not like to expect to see you and only know a month before so this time I wish to know as soon as you know and I will say nothing of course. I never do.   Thursday is Thanksgiving and I am going to Baltimore. I will look over the photos you speak of and see if I can have a list made of them. Of those here I have already had a list made and I will have it copied and sent you. No you had not acknowledged the photo cat, the bound one, before. I am very glad you liked it.    I am going to do what I can about the Med. Sch. this vacation but it is fighting odds.   Mrs. Heurst (yes I saw her scholarships) cannot honestly be asked to contribute, nor any one else in my opinion, so long as we see clearly that Mr. Gilman is working to get a majority to rescind the whole action and return the $115,000. Money is nothing to them. If your $100,000 lapses, as it will, unless we can think of some plan the next move will be to have the Womens [sic] Fund returned. You do not realise Mr. GilmanGÇÖs grim determination; it is with him a death struggle and money weighs nothing with him. Unless the Med. Sch. opens within a year or two it will open without women.   I send you Mr. GwinnGÇÖs statement drawn up to defeat Hall Phasants [sic] building scheme and Bessies [sic] letters after I left Baltimore last. All our plans came to naught through Mr. Phasants [sic] staying away. We are now trying to put in Mr. Dixon simply because he is dead in favour of women. Lance Riggs will not do. In short in [sic] makes me ill to write about it and I do not care to until there is something positive to say.   Yes of course the woman at Berlin is our Miss Gentry our fellow in Math. last year who is working for a Ph.D. here she won the Coll. Alumn. Fellowship and went abroad. Her math. talent is we think great and the triumph at Berlin greater. It shows the Empress [illegible]GÇÖs power, I fancy.   I shall see about the swimming pool this week too and the sawmill. Geo. Carey is of course a very young lawyer but he has been very successful and old Mr. Glenn his partner is exceedingly clever. I can manage him better, and he will take more trouble than an older lawyer. It is, I fancy, a simple matter - still I will see.   Now I must close. And first I think perhaps I will tell you of a personal thing I should care to have if you died because it is something I could have with me always and because it is associated with many of our talks. I have always thought perhaps I would ask you about it only I did not know how valuable it was (and be sure to have its chime made clear again if you are in Switzerland for it is your watch and if you wish to do anything else with it you may of course only I doubt whether it has run the midnight and past midnight hours in just the same way to other talks - IGÇÖm sure I hope not - and with this extremely selfish remark goodnight. I wish it could ring for our talk tonight and I wonder how many hours we should make it number for us.    [enclosed is a typed page about the upcoming visit of Lady Henry Somerset to Philadelphia]