MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,—I try to tell myself it is good nature, but I know it is vanity that makes me write. I have drafted the first part of Chapter VI., Fleeming and his friends, his influence on me, his views on religion and literature, his part at the Savile; it should boil down to about ten pages, and I really do think it admirably good. It has so much evoked Fleeming for myself that I found my conscience stirred just as it used to be after a serious talk with him: surely that means it is good? I had to write and tell you, being alone. I have excellent news of Fanny, who is much better for the change. My father is still very yellow, and very old, and very weak, but yesterday he seemed happier, and smiled, and followed what was said; even laughed, I think. When he came away, he said to me, ‘Take care of yourself, my dearie,’ which had a strange sound of childish days, and will not leave my mind. You must get Litolf’s _Gavottes Célèbres_: I have made another trover there: a musette of Lully’s. The second part of it I have not yet got the hang of; but the first—only a few bars! The gavotte is beautiful and pretty hard, I think, and very much of the period; and at the end of it, this musette enters with the most really thrilling effect of simple beauty. O—it’s first-rate. I am quite mad over it. If you find other books containing Lully, Rameau, Martini, please let me know; also you might tell me, you who know Bach, where the easiest is to be found. I write all morning, come down, and never leave the piano till about five; write letters, dine, get down again about eight, and never leave the piano till I go to bed. This is a fine life.—Yours most sincerely, R. L. S. If you get the musette (Lully’s), please tell me if I am right, and it was probably written for strings. Anyway, it is as neat as—as neat as Bach—on the piano; or seems so to my ignorance. I play much of the Rigadoon but it is strange, it don’t come off _quite_ so well with me! [Picture: Music store] There is the first part of the musette copied (from memory, so I hope there’s nothing wrong). Is it not angelic? But it ought, of course, to have the gavotte before. The gavotte is in G, and ends on the keynote thus (if I remember):— [Picture: Music store] staccato, I think. Then you sail into the musette. _N.B._—Where I have put an ‘A,’ is that a dominant eleventh, or what? or just a seventh on the D? and if the latter, is that allowed? It sounds very funny. Never mind all my questions; if I begin about music (which is my leading ignorance and curiosity), I have always to babble questions: all my friends know me now, and take no notice whatever. The whole piece is marked allegro; but surely could easily be played too fast? The dignity must not be lost; the periwig feeling. TO THOMAS STEVENSON