System Number: 00552
Date: [31 March 1889?][1]
Author: JW
Place: [Paris]
Recipient: John Cavafy[2]
Place: [London]
Repository: Glasgow University Library
Call Number: MS Whistler C53
Document Type: ALdS
My dear John -
I have received your short curt and [blunt?] scarcely gracious note - Certainly I shall return your picture[3] - with thanks for it's loan, as I have been thus enabled to show to the Art world in Paris what otherwise was lost in your rooms - I remember you as something of a Philosopher as well as friend - To that philosopher I think I may note say a point out one or two matters for his reflection, without the [relating?] of which I would seem to be from the Bourgeois point of view more or less ungrateful or churlish - Now I have had enough of this sort of parochial summing up - I will therefore state clearly my sense of the situation -[4] [...]
[p. 2] [butterfly signature[5]]
For after all[6] this is history that we are writing, and in this case history concerns me, and you are out of it, as I should be were the question a medical one, and you the scientist to be judged from my outside prejudice
This document is protected by copyright.
Notes:
1. [31 March 1889?]
This may be the draft of a reply to Cavafy's letter of 22 March 1889 (#00553).
2. John Cavafy
Dr John Cavafy (ca 1839-1901), physician and collector, son of G. J. Cavafy [more].
3. picture
Variations in Flesh Colour and Green: The Balcony (YMSM 56).
4. situation
The rest of the page is torn away at this point.
5. butterfly signature
This looks as if it might be a design for an etching frame, in white with black lines.
6. For after all
Paragraph written diagonally across page.