R. L. Stevenson.
If it was Captain Singleton, send it to me, won’t you?
Later.—My life dwindles into a kind of valley of the shadow picnic. I cannot read; so much of the time (as to-day) I must not speak above my breath, that to play patience, or to see my wife play it, is become the be-all and the end-all of my dim career. To add to my gaiety, I may write letters, but there are few to answer. Patience and Poesy are thus my rod and staff; with these I not unpleasantly support my days.
I am very dim, dumb, dowie, and damnable. I hate to be silenced; and if to talk by signs is my forte (as I contend), to understand them cannot be my wife’s. Do not think me unhappy; I have not been so for years; but I am blurred, inhabit the debatable frontier of sleep, and have but dim designs upon activity. All is at a standstill; books closed, paper put aside, the voice, the eternal voice of R. L. S., well silenced. Hence this plaint reaches you with no very great meaning, no very great purpose, and written part in slumber by a heavy, dull, somnolent, superannuated son of a bedpost.
To W. E. Henley
I suppose, but cannot remember, that I had in the meantime sent him Captain Singleton.
[Hotel Chabassière, Royat, July 1884.]
DEAR BOY,—I am glad that —— —— has disappointed you. Depend upon it, nobody is so bad as to be worth scalping, except your dearest friends and parents; and scalping them may sometimes be avoided by scalping yourself. I grow daily more lymphatic and benign; bring me a dynamiter, that I may embrace and bless him!—So, if I continue to evade the friendly hemorrhage, I shall be spared in anger to pour forth senile and insignificant volumes, and the clever lads in the journals, not doubting of the eye of Nemesis, shall mock and gird at me.
All this seems excellent news of the Deacon. But O! that the last tableau, on from Leslie’s entrance, were re-written! We had a great opening there and missed it. I read for the first time Captain Singleton; it has points; and then I re-read Colonel Jack with ecstasy; the first part is as much superior to Robinson Crusoe as Robinson is to—The Inland Voyage. It is pretty, good, philosophical, dramatic, and as picturesque as a promontory goat in a gale of wind. Get it and fill your belly with honey.
Fanny hopes to be in time for the Deacon. I was out yesterday, and none the worse. We leave Monday.