Bachelors' Club,
Piccadilly, W.
March 15th, 1899.
[DEAR CHAS.]
I hope you are not annoyed about Jaggers. When he
started no one knew of it but three people and I had no idea
anyone else would, but the company sent it to The Mail
without my name but describing me as
"an American gentleman" — Instantly the foreign correspondents
went to them to find out who I was and to whom I was sending
the letter — I told the company it was none of their damned
business — that I employed the boy by the week and that I could
send him where-ever I chose. Then the boy's father got proud
and wrote to
The Mail about his age and so they got the
boy's name. Mine, however, is still out of it, but in America
they are sure to know as the people on the steamer are crazy
about him and Kinsey the Purser knows he is sent by me. After
he gets back from Chicago and Philadelphia, you can do with
him as you like until the steamer sails. If the thing is
taken up as it is here and the fat is in the fire, then you
can do as you please — I mean you can tell the papers about it
or not — Somerset holds one end of the bets and I the other.
There are two bets: one that he will beat the mail to Chicago,
Somerset agreeing to consider the letter you give him to
Bruce, as equivalent to one coming from here. The other bet
is that he will deliver and get receipts from you, Nora and
Bruce, and return here by the 5th of April — You and Bobby
ought to be able to do well by him if it becomes, as I say, so
far public that there is no possibility of further
concealment — You have my permission to do what you please —
He is coming into my employ as soon as he gets back and as
soon as the company give him a medal.
Over here there is the greatest possible interest in the
matter — At the Clubs I go to, the waiters all wait on me in
order to have the latest developments and when it was cabled
over here that the Customs' people intended stopping him,
indignation raged at the Foreign office.
Lots of love, DICK,
