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11 March 1928
Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19
Dear Jones,
True, in the last few years I have criticized much about you and have occasionally lost touch with you. But we did not need this last sad occasion to realize that it was only a case of family discord, as when one strains against a bond which one feels to be unbreakable. It would, of course, be better to desist from that as well, but unfortunately we have the gift to create for ourselves unnecessary difficulties in addition to those that are unavoidable.
My painful sympathy stems from my own experience. I realize that the draught was set before me in two portions, which you had to drain all at once. Sophie was a dear daughter, to be sure, but not a child. It was only three years later, in June 1923, when little Heinele died,1 that I became tired of life permanently. Quite remarkably, there is a correspondence between him and your little one. He too was of superior intelligence and unspeakable spiritual grace, and he spoke repeatedly about dying soon. How do these children know?
You and your dear wife are of course young enough to regain your feeling for life. I should like to do something to distract you, but I do not know whether or not I have already spoken to you about this. My memory does occasionally become unreliable. Therefore, let it seem as if I were touching on the subject for the first time. Through your study of Hamlet you are, of course, the one closest to the Shakespeare problem. I am again impressed by a book that, after a year, I have read for a second time. Shakespeare Identified, a book by someone called Looney, was published in America in 1920, but the author is obviously an Englishman. The book makes it seem probable that Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, is the author of Shakespeare's poetry and plays.2 Until now I was a convinced Stratford supporter and dismissed particularly the Bacon hypothesis as being absurd. But now, I must confess, I am very impressed by Looney's investigations, al