Captain Webster is a small man with a carefully waxed moustache and a very Bond Street get up, living at the Grosvenor Hotel. Talking to him you would say: he is an ass, but an agreeable ass, a humble, transparent honourable ass. He is an innocent and idiotic butterfly. The interesting finishing touch is that he has been to New Guinea for four years or so, and had some of the most hideous and extravagant adventures that could befall a modern man. His yacht was surrounded by shoals of canoes full of myriads of cannibals of a race who file their teeth to look like the teeth of dogs, and hang weights in their ears till the ears hang like dogs' ears, on the shoulder. He held his yacht at the point of the revolver and got away, leaving some of his men dead on the shore. All night long he heard the horrible noise of the banqueting gongs and saw the huge fires that told his friends were being eaten. Now he lives in the Grosvenor Hotel. Captain Webster finds the pen, not only mightier than the sword, but also much more difficult. He has written his adventures and we are to publish them and I am translating the honest captain into English grammar, a thing which appals him much more than Papuan savages. This means going through it carefully of course and rewriting many parts of it, where relatives and dependent sentences have been lost past recovery. I went to see him, and his childlike dependence on me was quite pathetic. His general attitude was, "You see I'm such a damned fool." And so he is. But when I compare him with the Balzacian hauteur and the preposterous posing of many of our Fleet Street decadent geniuses, I feel a movement of the blood which declares that perhaps there are worse things than War. (Between ourselves, I have a sneaking sympathy with fighting: I fought horribly at school. It is well you should know my illogicalities.)
3rd. There is the selection of illustrations for the History of China we are producing. I know no more of China than the Man in the Moon (less, for he has seen it, at any rate), except what I got from reading the book, but of course I shall make the most of what I do know and airily talk of La-o-tsee and Wu-sank-Wei, criticise Chung-tang and Fu-Tche, compare Tchieu Lung with his great successor, whose name I have forgotten, and the Napoleonic vigour of Li with the weak opportunism of Woo. Before I have done I hope people will be looking behind for my pig-tail. The name I shall adopt will be Tches-Ter-Ton.
4th. A MS to read translated from the Norwegian: a History of the Kiss, Ceremonial, Amicable, Amatory, etc.—in the worst French sentimental style. God alone knows how angry I am with the author of that book. I am not sure that I shall not send up the brief report. "A snivelling hound."
5th. The book for Nutt [Greybeards at Play], which has reached its worst stage, that of polishing up for the eye of Nutt, instead of merely rejoicing in the eye of God. Do you know this is the only one of the lot about which I am at all worried. I do not feel as if things like the Fish poem are really worth publishing. I know they are better than many books that are published, but Heaven knows that is not saying much. In support of some of my work I would fight to the last. But with regard to this occasional verse I feel a humbug. To publish a book of my nonsense verses seems to me exactly like summoning the whole of the people of Kensington to see me smoke cigarettes.
Macgregor told me that I should do much better in the business of literature if I found the work more difficult. My facility, he said, led me to undervalue my work. I wonder whether this is true, and those silly rhymes are any good after all.
6th. The collection of more serious poems of which I spoke to you. You shall have a hand in the selection of these when you get back.
7th. The Novel—which though I have put it aside for the present, yet has become too much a part of me not to be constantly having chapters written—or rather growing out of the others.
And all these things, with the exception of the last one, are supposed to be really urgent, and to be done immediately. . . . Now I hope I have sickened you forever of wanting to know the details of my dull affairs. But I hope it may give you some notion of how hard it really is to get time for writing just now. For you see they are none of them even mechanical things: they all require some thinking about.
I am afraid . . . that if you really want to know what I do, you must forgive me for seeming egoistic. That is the tragedy of the literary person: his very existence is an assertion of his own mental vanity: he must pretend to be conceited even if he isn't. . . .
Beginning to publish, beginning to write, and still developing mentally at a frantic rate—this is a summary of the years 1895-8.