608 Bush Street, San Francisco, Cal., February 1880.
MY DEAR HENLEY,—Before my work or anything I sit down to answer your long and kind letter.
I am well, cheerful, busy, hopeful; I cannot be knocked down; I do not mind about the Emigrant. I never thought it a masterpiece. It was written to sell, and I believe it will sell; and if it does not, the next will. You need not be uneasy about my work; I am only beginning to see my true method.
(1) As to Studies. There are two more already gone to Stephen. Yoshida Torajiro, which I think temperate and adequate; and Thoreau, which will want a really Balzacian effort over the proofs. But I want Benjamin Franklin and the Art of Virtue to follow; and perhaps also William Penn, but this last may be perhaps delayed for another volume—I think not, though. The Studies will be an intelligent volume, and in their latter numbers more like what I mean to be my style, or I mean what my style means to be, for I am passive. (2) The Essays. Good news indeed. I think Ordered South must be thrown in. It always swells the volume, and it will never find a more appropriate place. It was May 1874, Macmillan, I believe. (3) Plays. I did not understand you meant to try the draft. I shall make you a full scenario as soon as the Emigrant is done. (4) Emigrant. He shall be sent off next week. (5) Stories. You need not be alarmed that I am going to imitate Meredith. You know I was a story-teller ingrain; did not that reassure you? The Vendetta, which falls next to be finished, is not entirely pleasant. But it has points. The Forest State or The Greenwood State: A Romance, is another pair of shoes. It is my old Semiramis, our half-seen Duke and Duchess, which suddenly sprang into sunshine clearness as a story the other day. The kind, happy dénouement is unfortunately absolutely undramatic, which will be our only trouble in quarrying out the play. I mean we shall quarry from it. Characters—Otto Frederick John, hereditary Prince of Grünwald; Amelia Seraphina, Princess; Conrad, Baron Gondremarck, Prime Minister; Cancellarius Greisengesang; Killian Gottesacker, Steward of the River Farm; Ottilie, his daughter; the Countess von Rosen. Seven in all. A brave story, I swear; and a brave play too, if we can find the trick to make the end. The play, I fear, will have to end darkly, and that spoils the quality as I now see it of a kind of crockery, eighteenth century, high-life-below-stairs life, breaking up like ice in spring before the nature and the certain modicum of manhood of my poor, clever, feather-headed Prince, whom I love already. I see Seraphina too. Gondremarck is not quite so clear. The Countess von Rosen, I have; I’ll never tell you who she is; it’s a secret; but I have known the countess; well, I will tell you; it’s my old Russian friend, Madame Zassetsky. Certain scenes are, in conception, the best I have ever made, except for Hester Noble. Those at the end, Von Rosen and the Princess, the Prince and Princess, and the Princess and Gondremarck, as I now see them from here, should be nuts, Henley, nuts. It irks me not to go to them straight. But the Emigrant stops the way; then a reassured scenario for Hester; then the Vendetta; then two (or three) essays—Benjamin Franklin, Thoughts on Literature as an Art, Dialogue on Character and Destiny between two Puppets, The Human Compromise; and then, at length—come to me, my Prince. O Lord, it’s going to be courtly! And there is not an ugly person nor an ugly scene in it. The Slate both Fanny and I have damned utterly; it is too morbid, ugly, and unkind; better starvation.
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
I had written proposing that a collected volume of his short stories should be published with illustrations by Caldecott. At the end of this letter occurs his first allusion to his now famous Requiem.
[608 Bush Street, San Francisco, February 1880.]
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I received a very nice letter from you with two enclosures. I am still unable to finish the Emigrant, although there are only some fifteen pages to do. The Vendetta is, I am afraid, scarce Fortnightly form, though after the Pavilion being taken by Stephen, I am truly at sea about all such matters. I dare say my Prince of Grünewald—the name still uncertain—would be good enough for anything if I could but get it done: I believe that to be a really good story. The Vendetta is somewhat cheap in motive; very rum and unlike the present kind of novels both for good and evil in writing; and on the whole, only remarkable for the heroine’s character, and that I believe to be in it.
I am not well at all. But hope to be better. You know I have been hawked to death these last months. And then I lived too low, I fear; and any way I have got pretty low and out at elbows in health. I wish I could say better,—but I cannot. With a constitution like mine, you never know—to-morrow I may be carrying topgallant sails again: but just at present I am scraping along with a jurymast and a kind of amateur rudder. Truly I have some misery, as things go; but these things are mere detail. However, I do not want to crever, claquer, and cave in just when I have a chance of some happiness; nor do I mean to. All the same, I am more and more in a difficulty how to move every day. What a day or an hour might bring forth, God forbid that I should prophesy. Certainly, do what you like about the stories; Will o’ the Mill, or not. It will be Caldecott’s book or nobody’s. I am glad you liked the Guitar: I always did: and I think C. could make lovely pikters to it: it almost seems as if I must have written it for him express.