In short, your suggestions have broken the heart of the scald. He doesn’t agree with them all; and those he does agree with, the spirit indeed is willing, but the d——d flesh cannot, cannot, cannot, see its way to profit by. I think I’ll lay it by for nine years, like Horace. I think the well of Castaly’s run out. No more the Muses round my pillow haunt. I am fallen once more to the mere proser. God bless you.
R. L. S.
To Miss Jane Balfour
This correspondent, the long-lived spinster among the Balfour sisters (died 1907, aged 91) and the well-beloved “auntie” of a numerous clan of nephews and nieces, is the subject of the set of verses, Auntie’s Skirts, in the Child’s Garden. She had been reading Travels with a Donkey on its publication.
[Swanston, June 1879.]
MY DEAR AUNTIE,—If you could only think a little less of me and others, and a great deal more of your delightful self, you would be as nearly perfect as there is any need to be. I think I have travelled with donkeys all my life; and the experience of this book could be nothing new to me. But if ever I knew a real donkey, I believe it is yourself. You are so eager to think well of everybody else (except when you are angry on account of some third person) that I do not believe you have ever left yourself time to think properly of yourself. You never understand when other people are unworthy, nor when you yourself are worthy in the highest degree. Oblige us all by having a guid conceit o’ yoursel and despising in the future the whole crowd, including your affectionate nephew,
R. L. S.
To Edmund Gosse
This letter is contemporary with the much-debated Cornhill essay On some Aspects of Burns, afterwards published in Familiar Studies of Men and Books. “Meredith’s story” is probably the Tragic Comedians.
Swanston, July 24, 1879.