Dearest James,
I do not know where to begin- my pen trembles before caressing the page, it quivers in knowing that you will be returning to us soon. Ah, to see your face beneath our melancholy skies! The very thought brings me a pleasure unhealthily like that of hysteria. At odd moments, I am quite overcome, and frequently apply the electric belt to alleviate my symptoms.
Does it matter, dear, if there are lions in Indonesia or not? You are my lion, my Caucasoid Adam. Come back to me darling, groomed into ease during your long voyage, and embrace me. Your child too, whom you have never met, longs to see his father. Sweet Albert is in great pain following the surgery, and though his health is not yet much improved, his temper has grown placid. He is less rebellious, and eager when it is time for medicine. He will be speaking before you arrive, and will soon be studying both Esperanto and Volapuk for his edification, although your silly wife speaks only her mother tongue with him. As you can see, the delight I feel allows me some humor after long nights of worry.
The house to which you return will be much changed in other ways. I have just read "Trilby" again, for what seems like the hundredth time, and I've decked out the house in a bohemian style which would well please Little Billee and the Laird equally.
My dress, too, is most bohemian seeming, such that the ladies of the Society were nearly overcome when I presented myself. They remarked quite favorably on the poverty of my appearance, and especially my consumptive complexion, which I attributed to proper bowel care. Little did they suspect that your impending return shone within me like an inner consumption, one that not even a thousand arsenic wafers could attain. I am as white as wax, and as luminous as a tubercular candle.
To compound the transformation, the garden has been over-turned completely. I'm afraid this will offer a depressing spectacle, as Madame Blataslavsky has predicted that you are to arrive in January, but with the coming of spring, roses and other sanguine plants will burst from the beds. Mad. Blataslavsky says that roses are the most intelligent of flowers, and that their character is in keeping with your own high-mindedness. I myself never imagined the rose as adventurous, but Mad. Blataslavsky insists that the Oliver Cromwell himself has told her this, and whatever abuse may be heaped on his usurping head, it seems reasonable that it would be a matter he would know of.
I have also taken the liberty of consulting through her the spirits which may be of assistance to you in your current investigation. They revealed that the man you are searching for is not of German extraction at all, although he has dark hair, and a most sanguine manner. The spirit of the great Macedonian general, Beaucephalus, companion to Alexander himself, has informed Mad. Blataslavsky that this man is a Jew, a man of evil motive and unrestrained passions.
I imagine him thus, a typical son of Isaac: Wild hair, topped with a tattered skullcap. A heavy, apelike brow, indicative of much time spent bent over ledger-cards, and darkly insinistrated eyes, which hold hypnotic fascination. Perhaps he was in the jungles trading mesmerized girls for black lotus, or another potent jungle drug? Hypnotism has great power to harm as well as help. I am certain that he is entirely left-handed, and that from his pen flows heavy, indecent lettering, as corrupt as his own brutal, clublike soul.
But why dwell on the evils of an unknown Semitic? Come back to England! While you spread peace and civilization across our globe, when you return to Meadow's Rest, you will find enlightened learning and medicine flourishing here, in the jewel of the empire, your home.
With love, and in expectation of a speedy return,
Elizabeth