[SARANAC], April 9th!! 1888.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I have been long without writing to you, but
am not to blame. I had some little annoyances quite for a
private eye, but they ran me so hard that I could not write
without lugging them in, which (for several reasons) I did not
choose to do. Fanny is off to San Francisco, and next week I
myself flit to New York: address Scribners. Where we shall go
I know not, nor (I was going to say) care; so bald and bad
is my frame of mind. Do you know our—ahem!—fellow clubman,
Colonel Majendie? I had such an interesting letter from him.
Did you see my sermon? [_Pulvis et Umbra_] It has evoked the
worst feeling: I fear people don't care for the truth, or
else I don't tell it. Suffer me to wander without purpose.
I have sent off twenty letters to-day, and begun and stuck
over a twenty-first, and taken a copy of one which was on
business, and corrected several galleys of proof, and sorted
about a bushel of old letters; so if any one has a right to be
romantically stupid it is I—and I am. Really deeply stupid,
and at that stage when in old days I used to pour out words
without any meaning whatever and with my mind taking no part
in the performance. I suspect that is now the case. I am
reading with extraordinary pleasure the life of Lord Lawrence:
Lloyd and I have a mutiny novel—
(Next morning, after twelve other letters)—mutiny novel
on hand—_The White Nigger_—a tremendous work—so we are
all at Indian books. The idea of the novel is Lloyd's: I
call it a novel. 'Tis a tragic romance, of the most tragic
sort: I believe the end will be almost too much for human
endurance—when the White Nigger was thrown to the ground with
one of his own (Sepoy) soldier's knees upon his chest, and
the cries begin in the Beebeeghar. Oh, truly, you know it is
a howler! The whole last part is—well the difficulty is that,
short of resuscitating Shakespeare, I don't know who is to
write it.
I still keep wonderful. I am a great performer before the Lord
on a penny whistle. Dear sir, sincerely yours,