This is the new work on which I am engaged with Fanny; they are all supernatural. Thrawn Janet is off to Stephen, but as it is all in Scotch he cannot take it, I know. It was so good, I could not help sending it. My health improves. We have a lovely spot here: a little green glen with a burn, a wonderful burn, gold and green and snow-white, singing loud and low in different steps of its career, now pouring over miniature crags, now fretting itself to death in a maze of rocky stairs and pots; never was so sweet a little river. Behind, great purple moorlands reaching to Ben Vrackie. Hunger lives here, alone with larks and sheep. Sweet spot, sweet spot.
Write me a word about Bob’s professoriate and Landor, and what you think of The Black Man. The tales are all ghastly. Thrawn Janet frightened me to death. There will maybe be another—The Dead Man’s Letter. I believe I shall recover; and I am, in this blessed hope, yours exuberantly,
R. L. S.
To Professor Æneas Mackay
This and the next four or five letters refer to the candidature of R. L. S. for the Edinburgh Chair.
Kinnaird Cottage, Pitlochry, Wednesday, June 21, 1881.
MY DEAR MACKAY,—What is this I hear?—that you are retiring from your chair. It is not, I hope, from ill-health?
But if you are retiring, may I ask if you have promised your support to any successor? I have a great mind to try. The summer session would suit me; the chair would suit me—if only I would suit it; I certainly should work it hard: that I can promise. I only wish it were a few years from now, when I hope to have something more substantial to show for myself. Up to the present time, all that I have published, even bordering on history, has been in an occasional form, and I fear this is much against me.
Please let me hear a word in answer, and believe me, yours very sincerely,