The verses herein alluded to were addressed to Rossetti’s friend, Dr. Gordon Hake, physician and poet (1809-1895), in return for some received from him. They are those beginning “In the beloved hour that ushers day” and printed as No. xix. in Songs of Travel.
New York [September 1887].
MY DEAR LAD,—Herewith verses for Dr. Hake, which please communicate. I did my best with the interviewers; I don’t know if Lloyd sent you the result; my heart was too sick: you can do nothing with them; and yet —— literally sweated with anxiety to please, and took me down in long hand!
I have been quite ill, but go better. I am being not busted, but medallioned, by St. Gaudens, who is a first-rate, plain, high-minded artist and honest fellow; you would like him down to the ground. I believe sculptors are fine fellows when they are not demons. O, I am now a salaried person, £600, a year,[21] to write twelve articles in Scribner’s Magazine; it remains to be seen if it really pays, huge as the sum is, but the slavery may overweigh me. I hope you will like my answer to Hake, and specially that he will.
Love to all.—Yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
(le salarié).
To R. A. M. Stevenson
Saranac Lake, Adirondacks, New York, U.S.A. [October 1887].
MY DEAR BOB,—The cold [of Colorado] was too rigorous for me; I could not risk the long railway voyage, and the season was too late to risk the Eastern, Cape Hatteras side of the steamer one; so here we stuck and stick. We have a wooden house on a hill-top, overlooking a river, and a village about a quarter of a mile away, and very wooded hills; the whole scene is very Highland, bar want of heather and the wooden houses.