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85 Charlotte St, W. [on printed notepaper for 7 Bayley St, Bedford Square, W.C.]. - She is correct that it is [Purcell's] "Golden Sonata", but she should not look at the Jensen edition, which is 'shocking'; will lend her a copy from the original, and it will give her no trouble. Asks her to let him know when she will come to London before 11 June, and he will arrange to accompany her here; a 'good practice' on the 11th then will be 'quite sufficient to play the piece successfully' [for a concert?]. It is very beautiful, and she must not judge it by Jensen's version; she will 'enjoy it very much' when they play it together.

The Shiffolds. - Had a 'very interesting visit to Cambridge' after his enjoyable one to Welcombe: went to see The Fairy Queen acted and sung 'chiefly by undergraduates' - this is Midsummmer Night's Dream, with 'operatic additions and ballets by Purcell'. It was 'an almost perfect entertainment; the spoken parts being acted and delivered as well as I have ever heard them on the English stage'. with the 'somewhat incongruous additions' also being 'excellently sung and staged'. Purcell's music was 'quite worthy of his fame as about the only great musician we have ever had during the last three centuries'.

Found everyone well at home: Julian is currently 'busy helping to light the twenty bonfires of brambles and brush' they have made in the 'clearing part of our copse'. A 'good bonfire is a delight to anyone, whether child or no'. Sends thanks to his mother for her letter, and asks his father to say that he has 'got [Robert] Bridges pamphlet on homophones', which was sent him as a 'member of the S.P.E. or Society for the Preservation of English [actually, the Society for Pure English]'. However, he imagines 'English will go its own way for good or evil, without troubling itself much about the S.P.E. or anything else'.

Welcombe, Stratford on Avon. - Envies Robert having heard the Fairy Queen [see 46/254]; Purcell is the 'only name which really fascinates' him in music, apart from that of Mrs R. C. Trevelyan, the effect of allusion to him in Browning's Waring', and of reading about him in the 'list of composers at the beginning of the Anthem-book in Trinity Chapel' as he sat in his surplice like the four or five hundred other young men around him in 'the most impressive Church ceremony (Uncle Tom used to say) except perhaps the Beguinage at Ghent'. Thanks Robert for sending [Lucian's] Peregrinus which goes well with the Alexander Pseudomantis and the On Salaried Posts in Great Houses [whose title he gives in Greek]; considers to be 'the most human pictures of ancient society', and recommends Robert to read the other two if he has not done so. Is going to read gradually through Bergck, except for the Pindar and the fragments taken from ancient grammarians; will use Robert's letter from 1900 with the 'first sketch of a charming little poem on the "roses"'. Good to hear of Robert and Julian's bonfires; cannot remember if he saw their bonfire for the 'second jubilee of 1897' [Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee], which was the best he himself ever saw: the estate was fully staffed, and the estate workers built it forty foot high of brushwood soaked with paraffin.