I will delete some of those condemned, but not all. I don’t care for the name Penny Whistles; I sent a sheaf to Henley when I sent ’em. But I’ve forgot the others. I would just as soon call ’em ‘Rimes for Children’ as anything else. I am not proud nor particular.
Your remarks on the Black Arrow are to the point. I am pleased you liked Crookback; he is a fellow whose hellish energy has always fired my attention. I wish Shakespeare had written the play after he had learned some of the rudiments of literature and art rather than before. Some day, I will re-tickle the Sable Missile, and shoot it, moyennant finances, once more into the air; I can lighten it of much, and devote some more attention to Dick o’ Gloucester. It’s great sport to write tushery.
By this I reckon you will have heard of my proposed excursiolorum to the Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece, and kindred sites. If the excursiolorum goes on, that is, if moyennant finances comes off, I shall write to beg you to collect introductiolorums for me.
Distinguo: 1. Silverado was not written in America, but in Switzerland’s icy mountains. 2. What you read is the bleeding and disembowelled remains of what I wrote. 3. The good stuff is all to come—so I think. ‘The Sea Fogs,’ ‘The Hunter’s Family,’ ‘Toils and Pleasures’—belles pages.—Yours ever,
Ramnugger.
O!—Seeley is too clever to live, and the book a gem. But why has he read too much Arnold? Why will he avoid—obviously avoid—fine writing up to which he has led? This is a winking, curled-and-oiled, ultra-cultured, Oxford-don sort of an affectation that infuriates my honest soul. ‘You see’—they say—‘how unbombastic we are; we come right up to eloquence, and, when it’s hanging on the pen, dammy, we scorn it!’ It is literary Deronda-ism. If you don’t want the woman, the image, or the phrase, mortify your vanity and avoid the appearance of wanting them.
to W. H. Low
La Solitude, Hyères, October [1883].
MY DEAR LOW,—. . . Some day or other, in Cassell’s Magazine of Art, you will see a paper which will interest you, and where your name appears. It is called ‘Fontainebleau: Village Communities of Artists,’ and the signature of R. L. Stevenson will be found annexed.
Please tell the editor of Manhattan the following secrets for me: 1st, That I am a beast; 2nd, that I owe him a letter; 3rd, that I have lost his, and cannot recall either his name or address; 4th, that I am very deep in engagements, which my absurd health makes it hard for me to overtake; but 5th, that I will bear him in mind; 6th and last, that I am a brute.