The opening · free to read
My dear David,
Since I first met you, considerably more than a decade ago, in a little studio high up in a great London building, we have both seen much water flow under the bridges of our lives.
We have all sorts of memories, have we not?
Late midnights and famishing morrows, in the gay hard days when we were endeavouring to climb the ladder of our Art; a succession of faces, a welter of experiences. Some of us fell in the struggle; others failed and still haunt the reprobate purlieus of Fleet Street and the Strand! There was one who achieved a high and delicate glory before he died--"Tant va la cruche a l'eau qu'a la fin elle se casse."
There is another who is slowly and surely finding his way to a certainty of fame.
And the rest of us have done something, if not--as yet--all we hoped to do. At any rate, the slopes of the first hills lie beneath us. We are in good courage and resolute for the mountains.
The mist eddies and is spiralled below in the valleys from which we have come, but already we are among the deep sweet billows of the mountain winds, and I think it is because we have both found our "Princess Galvas" that we have got this far upon the way.
We may never stand upon the summit and find that tempest of fire we call the Sun full upon us. But the pleasure of going on is ours still--there will always be that.
Ever your friend, C. RANGER-GULL.
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