was no further exchange of letters save when one or other was absent from our department.
I have read the new Maeterlinck play[1]—a good theme infamously treated, I find myself writing, 27. 12. 18. I beg you to scrap the third act and with it your regard for M's feelings; then rewrite it with a little passion, a great deal of fear and unlimited un-understanding horror. The invasion of Belgium wasn't a Greek tragedy where the afflicted prosed and philosophised—with a chorus dilating on cattle-*yas; it was noisy, bloody and, above all, unbelievable. Maeterlinck has brought no nightmare into it. . . .
Letter just received, he replied next day. You are a highly illuminated and illuminating critick. Your remarks upon that play are exactly right (as I now know, having just read my first three Greek plays). . . .
I enclose, he writes 10. 8. 18, 1-3/4 chapters of the Couperus classical comedy-novel [The Tour], which I amused myself by doing because you insisted so emphatically that the book should
- ↑ The Burgomaster of Stillemonde.
