King Leopold wires: “Too busy to write. Hope you are and always will be.”

Mrs Eddy wires: “Stay in England. In your case I prefer Absent Treatment.”

Frank Richardson wires: “Am sending you post-paid packet new Razorless Shaving Powder.”

Algernon Ashton wires: “Deeply interested in your remarks on your funeral. When it comes off may I have sole letter-rights in tomb?”

Mr Hunnable wires: “Are you coming to Jarrow as a candidate, too? Plenty of room for all.”

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman wires: “I never say ‘Enough of your foolery’.”

Mr A J Balfour wires: “I have no Philosophic Doubt as to the merits of ‘Huckleberry Finn’.”

Mr Eustace Miles wires: “Much interested in your remarks about your funeral. Why not live on Plasmon and lentils, and postpone it indefinitely?”

Mr Bernard Shaw wires: “Heartiest congratulations on seeing me so soon after landing.”

“Z” (of Blackwood’s Magazine) wires: “Deeply sympathise with your bad luck in meeting Shaw at station. Awful thing to happen after tiring railway journey.”

M Marcellin Albert wires: “If every one had your sense of humour, there would have been no Wine-growers’ Revolt.”

Winston Churchill wires: “I and the country welcome you.”

Sir A Swettenham wires: “Glad you have come. I like some Americans.”

The Prince of Asturias wires (per pro his nurse): “Have read ‘The Jumping Frog’ for the first time, and laughed so much that I turned bright purple. Everybody thought it was a fit. Such larks!”