Oakdene, Guildford Friday My dear I have not much to tell you the days pass so like one another intervals of rather weary pain being the chief interruptions of the otherwise rather monotonous circle but it is such a bright little home with many kind hands and feet coming and going that it would be a shame to be less than contented. I have been thinking of what we talked of the other day and I see no reason to doubt we can carry it out if the completion of the Briar Rose1 and the Perseus2 be not spread over too long a time. With the Balance of the Cophetua3^ 1000 The Small Fortune??4 is it complete? The two angel figures5 which you can finish very soon I fancy say £600 or £700 The Merlin6 which you must please take up now while the May flower lasts and get convertible into money we should have at all events between £4000 and 5 000 available within the next 12 months or so, much of it sooner if necessary and if relying on that for current wants we deliberately set apart Agnew's and Balfour's money to be invested I should feel that you were doing the right thing to the utmost of your possibility - but I daresay it may be difficult for you to combine these 'spending money* labours with the more important work - and I must just keep poking you! isn't it so I am sure no man living works harder and more conscientiously but you kill yourself with overanxiety and overfastidiousness. If you can polish off* my Angel [bi?] and send her down here by Dickenson it will be a little pleasure to look at her. Then I think I could place the other two angels if they were finished and get money for them soon. The Wheel of Fortune - I want your idea of its value tell me truly - no nonsense what I ought to ask for it is £ 600 or £650 enough? And is it finished and ready to deliver. Then what may I calculate upon as to the Merlin. When can I promise to complete it - and what price do you think yourself (never mind me) it ought to bring - remember you can help me and ought to do so a little in estimating prices and I shall form my own judgment quite independently but yours helps me - I cannot ask the same for it as a replica that I [would] for an original work even altho as I believe in this case it will be better than the original. The Merlin is a serious work and our success in our plans depends not a little on it so do answer me. What we want is a real effort just now to keep the thing going entirely apart from the Briar rose and Perseus - and we can and will do it if you will and your health holds but I am very anxious and have set my mind upon it - and it will worry me and do me harm if we don't be good and go at it now steadily. My impression is that if I am only well enough I can provide the 'shop* you spoke can convert potboilers, in the form of Agnew and that Mr A. is now pretty well posterity as your 'Mecaenus' [sic] - How I wish I had Dante's genius that I might the Purgatorio of bad painters - where you might wander among the shades of the Virgil and see and hear things new and old! and make your fortune by an Illustrated If you send me my Angel' here - her of the bright garments - I would like Veneris watercolour [b2i] if you can find it - it is funny how a pic acts as a real pick Mary Virgin [ai8] has done me no end of good! I would like the loan of the old W.C. drawing of the girls sending their lamps down week or two here if you could spare it from N. End - it would rest me a bit to have my dear - Now do answer my questions and this confused note. Ever Yours affly W.G. 1 Buscot Park. 2 Staatsgalene, Stuttgart. 3 Tate Gallery, 1771. 4 The Wheel of Fortune (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne). 5 ?Cf. Bell, 1895, p. 59: large-scale watercolour replicas, d. 1881. 6 A replica of The Beguiling of Merlin, not completed. 7 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. 8 William Agnew (1825-1910), dealer and head of the family firm. 9 Perhaps The Boat (private collection).