_To Edmumd Gosse._
_The Spoils of Poynton_ (under the title of _The Old Things_) had
begun to appear in the _Atlantic Monthly_ in April 1896.
The Vicarage,
Rye.
August 28th, 1896.
My dear Edmund,
Don't think me a finished brute or a heartless fiend or a soulless one,
or any other unhappy thing with a happy name. I have pressed your letter
to my bosom again and again, and if I've not sooner expressed to you how
I've prized it, the reason has simply been that for the last month there
has been no congruity between my nature and my manners--between my
affections and my lame right hand. A crisis overtook me some three weeks
ago from which I emerge only to hurl myself on this sheet of paper and
consecrate it to _you_. I will reserve details--suffice it that in an
evil hour I began to pay the penalty of having arranged to let a current
serial begin when I was too little ahead of it, and when it proved a
much slower and more difficult job than I expected. The printers and
illustrators overtook and denounced me, the fear of breaking down
paralysed me, the combination of rheumatism and fatigue rendered my
hand and arm a torture--and the total situation made my existence a
nightmare, in which I answered not a single note, letting correspondence
go to smash in order barely to save my honour. I've finished (day before
yesterday,) but I fear my honour--with _you_--lies buried in the ruin of
all the rest. You will soon be coming home, and this will meet or reach
you God only knows when. Let it take you the assurance that the most
lurid thing in my dreams has been the glitter of your sarcastic
spectacles. It was charming of you to write to me from dear little old
devastated Vevey--as to which indeed you make me feel, in a few vivid
touches, a faint nostalgic pang. I don't want to think of you as still
in your horrid ice-world (for it is cold even here and I scribble by a
morning fire;) and yet it's in my interest to suppose you still feeling
so all abroad that these embarrassed lines will have for you some of the
charm of the bloated English post. That makes me, at the same time,
doubly conscious that I've nothing to tell you that you will most
languish for--news of the world and the devil--no throbs nor thrills
from the great beating heart of the thick of things. I went to town for
a week on the 15th, to be nearer the devouring maw into which I had to
pour belated copy; but I spent the whole time shut up in De Vere Gardens
with an inkpot and a charwoman. The only thing that befell me was that I
dined one night at the Savoy with F. Ortmans and the P. Bourgets--and
that the said Bourgets--but two days in London--dined with me one night
at the Grosvenor club. But these occasions were not as rich in incident
and emotion as poetic justice demanded--and your veal-fed table d'hote
will have nourished your intelligence quite as much. The only other
thing I did was to read in the Revue de Paris of the 15th Aug. the
wonderful article of A. Daudet on Goncourt's death--a little miracle of
art, adroitness, demoniac tact and skill, and taste so abysmal, judged
by _our_ fishlike sense, that there is no getting alongside of it at
all. But I grieve to say I can't send you the magazine--I saw it only at
a club. Doubtless you will have come across it. I have this ugly house
till the end of September and don't expect to move from Rye even for a
day till then. The date of your return is vague to me--but if it should
be early in the month I wonder if you couldn't come down for another
Sunday. I fear you will be too blase, much. For comfort my Vicarage is
distinctly superior to my eagle's nest--but, alas, beauty isn't in it.
The peace and prettiness of the whole land, here, however, has been good
to me, and I stay on with unabated relish. But I stay in solitude. I
don't see a creature. That, too, dreadful to relate, I like. You will
have been living in a crowd, and I expect you to return all garlanded
and odorous with anecdote and reminiscence. Mrs Nelly's will all bear, I
trust, on miraculous healings and feelings. I feel far from all access
to the French volume you recommend. Are you crawling over the Dorn, or
only standing at the bottom to catch Philip and Lady Edmund as they
drop? Pardon my poverty and my paucity. It is your absence that makes
them. Yours, my dear Edmund, not inconstantly,