Your letter reached me just at a time when everything that had seemed solid was breaking up, and substance had become Shadow. It made me very foolish,—made me cry. Your rebuke for the trivial phrase in my letter was very beautiful as well as very richly deserved. But I don’t think it is a question of volition. It is necessary to obey the impulses of the Unknown for Art’s sake—or rather, you must obey them. The Spahi’s fascination by the invisible Forces was purely physical. I think I am right in going: perhaps I am wrong in thinking of making the tropics a home. Probably it will be the same thing over again: impulse and chance compelling another change.
The carriage—no, the New York hack and hackman (no romance or sentimentality about these!)—is waiting to take me to Pier 49, East River. So I must end. But I have written such a ridiculous letter that I shan’t put anybody’s name to it.
TO GEORGE M. GOULD
Saint-Pierre, Martinique, May, 1888.
Dear Gould,—One of your letters, I think a P. Cd., many months ago, caught me in British Guiana, another to-day finds me here. I left N. O. in June, 1887, and have been travelling since, or at least sojourning in these tropics. I have been sick, too,—have had some trouble fighting the influences of climate, trouble in trying to carry out large plans with absurdly small resources; and have been unable to do my friends justice. How could you think I could have been offended? It was only the other day, in a letter to the editor of Harper’s, that I referred to one of your delightful colour-theories.
Praise from you I value very highly. As to impress such a mind as yours means to me a great pride and pleasure. I am delighted “Chita” pleased you.
I have written a number of sketches on the West Indies,—some of which may appear in a few months, others later on. It has been a hope of mine to make a unique book on these strange Hesperides, with their singularly mixed races; but I don’t know whether I shall be able to carry the project out.
The climate is antagonistic to work. It is a benumbing power, rendering concentrated thought almost out of the question. I can now understand why the tropics have produced so little literature.
We are quarantined and isolated for the present by a long epidemic of small-pox, which among these populations means something as fatal as an Oriental plague. The whites are exempt. But the disease, although on the decline, still prevails to an extent rendering it doubtful when I can get away from here.