_To Gaillard T. Lapsley._
Lamb House, Rye.
June 22nd, 1902.
My dear, dear Boy!
The penalty of shameful turpitude is that even reparation and contrition
are made almost impossible by the dimensions of the abyss that separates
the criminal from virtue. Or, more simply, the amount of explanation (of
my baseness) that I have felt myself saddled with toward you, has long
operated as a further and a fatal deterrent in respect to writing to you
at all. The burden of my shame has in short piled up my silence, and to
break that hideous spell I must now cast explanations to the winds--ere
they crush me altogether. I've had a rather blighted and broken
winter--a good deal of somewhat ominous unwellness, now happily (D.V.)
over-past. Under the effect of it _all_ my correspondence has gone to
pieces, and though I've managed to write two books I've done so mainly
by an economy of _moyens_ that has forbidden my answering even a note or
two. I've thought of you, dreamed of you, followed you, admired you, in
fine tenderly loved you: done everything accordingly but treat you
decently. But I'm all right in the long, the very long run, and your
admirably interesting and charming letter of ever so many months ago has
never ceased to be a joy and pride to me. Those emotions have just been
immeasureably quickened by something told me by my brave little cousin
Bay Emmet (the paintress)--viz. her having lately met you in New York
and heard on your lips words (a mon adresse) not of resentment or scorn,
but of divine magnanimity and gentleness. You appear to have spoken to
her "as if you still liked me," and I like you so much for that that the
vibration has started these stammering accents. I really write you these
words not from my peaceful hermitage by the southern sea, but from the
depths of the meretricious metropolis, which I've never known so
detestable as at this most tawdry of crises, and from which I hope to
escape in a day or two, utterly dodging the insane crush of the
Coronation. The place is vilely disfigured by league-long hoardings (for
spectators at L10 0. 0. a head,) and cheap and awful decorations, and
the dear old Abbey in particular smothered into the likeness of the
Earl's Court Exhibition--not to be distinguished from the Westminster
Aquarium, in fact, opposite. And then the crowds, the gregarious, gaping
millions, are appalling, and I fly, in fine, back to the Southern
Sea--on the shore of which I've spent almost all my time for almost a
year past. I've lately been dabbling a little, for compensation, in
town; but I find small doses of London now go further, for my
organisation, than they used.
B. Emmet tells me that you still sit aloft in California and I permit
myself to rejoice in it, in spite of some of the lurid lights projected
by your so vivid letter over the composition of that _milieu_. You tell
me things of awful suggestion--and in respect to which I would give
anything for more talk with you and more chance for question and answer.
_June 26th._ The foregoing, my dear Boy, though dated here, was written
in London--which means that in the confusion and distraction, the
present chaotic crash of things there, it was also interrupted. I had
been there for a snatch of but three or four days, and I rushed back
here, in horror and dismay (24 hours since), just _before_ the poor
King's collapse set the seal on the general gregarious madness. I had
"chucked" the Coronation, thank heaven, before the Coronation chucked
_me_, and this little russet and green corner, as so often before, has
been breathing balm and peace to me after the huge bear-garden. The
latter beggars description at the present moment--and must now do so
doubly while reeling under the smash of everything. I feel like a man
who has jumped, safe, from an express-train before a collision--and to
make really sure of my _not_ having broken my neck I take up again this
distempered scrawl to you. But I won't talk of all this dreary
pandemonium here--dreary _whatever_ the issue of the poor King's
illness; inasmuch as, either way, it can only mean more gregarious
madness, more league-long hoarding, more blocks of traffic and deluges
of dust and tons of newspaper verbiage. Amen!
What I didn't begin to say to you the other day was how interesting and
awful I found your picture of your seat of learning. I rejoice with all
my heart that it has attached you, for just "the likes of you" are what
must make a difference (by influence, by example, by civilization, by
revelation) in the strange mixture--or absence of mixture--of its
elements. I gather from you that its air is _all_ female, so to speak,
and that in this buoyant medium you triumphantly float. It must be very
wonderful and fearful and indescribable, all of it, lifelike indeed
though your sketch appears to me. I wish immensely I could see you, so
that we could get nearer, together, to everything. You come out most
summers--is there no chance of your doing so this year? I seem to infer
the sad contrary, from my little cousin's not having told me that you
mentioned anything of the sort to her. I have the sense of having seen
you odiously little last year--a blighted and distracted season. As I
read over at present your generous letter I feel a special horror and
dismay at having failed so long and so abominably to give you the
promised word of introduction to Fanny Stevenson. I enclose one
herewith--but I must tell you that I feel myself to be launching it
rather into the dark. That is, I have a fear that she is rather
changed--or rather exaggerated--with time, illness etc.--and that you
may find her somewhat aged, queer, eccentric etc. And I'm not sure I'm
possessed of her address. Only remember this--that _she_ (with all
deference to her) was never the person to have seen, it was R. L. S.
himself. But good-night. I haven't half responded to you, nor met
you--in your charming details; yet I _am_, none the less, my dear
Lapsley, very affectionately yours,