Journey by Moonlight

We were all very concerned to read that you’ve been ill. With your usual vagueness you forgot to mention what precisely is wrong with you, and you can imagine how anxious we are to know. Please remedy this in due course. Are you now fully recovered? Your mother is extremely worried. Don’t take it amiss that I’ve not sent you any money before this, but you well know the difficulties with foreign exchange. I hope the delay hasn’t caused you any problems. Now, you wrote, send a lot of money. This was a bit vague—‘a lot of money’ is always relative. You may find what I have sent rather little, since it’s not much more than the amount you say you owe. But for us it is a lot of money, considering the state the business is in just now, about which the less said the better, and the major investments we made recently, which will take years to amortise. But at least it will be enough for you to pay off your hotel bills and come home. Luckily you had a return ticket. Because it hardly needs saying, you really have no alternative. You can understand that in the current circumstances the firm really won’t stand the strain of continuing to finance one of its partners residing expensively abroad, quite without rhyme or reason.

Even less so, since, as you would expect, as a result of the situation she finds herself in, your wife has herself approached us with certain demands, quite properly in our view, and these demands we naturally must satisfy as a highest priority. Your wife is at present in Paris, and for the time being has stipulated that we should meet her living expenses there. The final settlement can only be drawn up when she comes home. I really can’t overstate what an exceptionally difficult position that final settlement could put us in. As you well know, all the ready money she brought into the firm was invested in machinery, the prestige building, and other current developments, so that liquidating all these sums will not only cause us difficulties, but will practically shake the firm to its foundations. I really do think anybody else would have taken all this into account before abandoning his wife on their honeymoon. I need hardly add that, quite apart from all the financial considerations, your conduct was in itself absolutely and utterly ungentlemanly, particularly towards such a correct and blameless lady as your wife.