1889-05-03 to Mary Singleton

Autograph letter signed, Huntington Library, 216 words

[Edited for paragraph breaks, capitalization, spelling and punctuation.]

8 Kings Bench Walk, Temple

[Friday] May 3rd 1889

Dear Mrs Singleton

A strange story reaches me through Mr. Geary. It appears that you ordered your bookseller to procure you a copy of my unfortunate volume Pagan Poems. That you should have done this is sufficiently surprising, that your bookseller should have supplied you with a copy inscribed to Violet Fane is simply extraordinary. I did not know you, except through your writings, at the time the book was printed... I suppose I must have intended to send you a copy (on such a matter of course memory is blank: intentions of ten years ago!!). That anyone should have forged my signature selecting you as a likely person to whom a copy might have been sent seems to me as extraordinary, but hardly more extraordinary, than the purchase of the book complicated by the purchase of the copy in your possession. I have not seen the poems for many years but if I remember right there is one — a poem to a consumptive girl — which is not wholly bad; I am thinking of including it in a book I am now writing.

Very sincerely yours

George Moore.