Symonds' conversation is described in Stevenson's essay on Talks and Talkers, but no one could ever really give the fancy, the epigram, the swiftness and earnestness with which he not only expressed himself but engaged you in conversation. This and his affection combined to make him an enchanting companion.
The Swiss postmen and woodmen constantly joined us at midnight and drank Italian wines out of beautiful glass which our host had brought from Venice; and they were our only interruptions when Mrs. Symonds and the handsome girls went to bed. I have many memories of seeing our peasant friends off from Symonds' front door, and standing by his side in the dark, listening to the crack of their whips and their yodels yelled far down the snow roads into the starry skies.
When I first left him and returned to England, Mrs. Symonds told me he sat up all night, filling a blank book with his own poems and translations, which he posted to me in the early morning. We corresponded till he died; and I have kept every letter that he ever wrote to me.
He was the first person who besought me to write. If only he were alive now, I would show him this manuscript and, if any one could make any thing of it by counsel, sympathy and encouragement; my autobiography might become famous.
"You have l'oreille juste" he would say, "and I value your literary judgment."
I will here insert some of his letters, beginning with the one he sent down to our villa at Davos a propos of the essays over which Lady Londonderry and I had our little breeze:
I am at work upon a volume of essays in art and criticism, puzzling to my brain and not easy to write. I think I shall ask you to read them.
I want an intelligent audience before I publish them. I want to "try them on" somebody's mind—like a dress—to see how they fit. Only you must promise to write observations and, most killing remark of all, to say when the tedium of reading them begins to overweigh the profit of my philosophy.
I think you could help me.
After the publication he wrote: