Henry James to H. G. Wells, 18 October 1912, whilst suffering from shingles: 'you may not have forgotten that you kindly sent me "Marriage" [...] which I've been able to give myself to at my less ravaged and afflicted hours. I have read you, as I always read you [...] with a complete abdication of all those "principles of criticism" [...] which I roam, which I totter, through the pages of others attended in some dim degree by the fond yet feeble theory of, but which I shake off, as I advance under your spell, with the most cynical inconsistency.'