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HOTEL DE BELLE-VUE
BUXELLES

August 9th, '05.

My dear Colonel:-

I am here for a couple of days with Miss Birnie-Philip and sister after which I return to London via Ostende, and they will go on to Homburg where Miss Birnie-Philip hopes to receive benefit from the cure. She seems worn after all of the hard work of the last two years and the cure at Homburg will doubtless do her good.

I have just had a week in Holland and renewed my acquaintance with Amsterdam, Haarlem, The Hague, Dordrecht and one or two smaller places like Katwyk. It was delightful everywhere excepting The Hague where I could not shake off a certain melancholy that still clings to the spot where we were so long watchers beside the bedside of the sick one.

At Scheveninger I called upon Van Gravesande the etcher and found him delightful. He was most cordial and kind and finally insisted upon accompanying me to Dordrecht, and if I had consented, he would have come with me to Antwerp and Brussels. He comes from a distinguished Dutch family and is a marvel of courtesy and gentility. I thought I had met a few Whistler enthusiasts but Van Gravesand surpasses all. They were friends and had worked and travelled together. Van G. places Whistler equal with Rembrandt and Frans Hals. He saw the Paris Exhibition and ranks it as one of the greatest one-man shows ever held. By degrees, I am meeting other competent judges who feel so strongly in the same direction that the trouble taken seems worth while.

Your two good letters of July 18th reached me just before I left London and would have been answered earlier but for the fact of the rapid travelling I have been doing lately, and the rush just before my sailing. I don't feel that I have wasted a single hour this summer and yet many things planned are still undone.

With all good wishes to you and yours -
Charles L. Freer.

Long hand.