_[Menton, January 1874], Wednesday._
MY DEAR FRIEND,--It is still so cold, I cannot tell you how miserable
the weather is. I have begun my "Walt Whitman" again seriously. Many
winds have blown since I last laid it down, when sickness took me in
Edinburgh. It seems almost like an ill-considered jest to take up these
old sentences, written by so different a person under circumstances so
different, and try to string them together and organise them into
something anyway whole and comely; it is like continuing another man's
book. Almost every word is a little out of tune to me now but I shall
pull it through for all that and make something that will interest you
yet on this subject that I had proposed to myself and partly planned
already, before I left for Cockfield last July.
I am very anxious to hear how you are. My own health is quite very good;
I am a healthy octogenarian; very old, I thank you and of course not so
active as a young man, but hale withal: a lusty December. This is so;
such is R. L. S.
I am a little bothered about Bob, a little afraid that he is living too
poorly. The fellow he chums with spends only two francs a day on food,
with a little excess every day or two to keep body and soul together,
and though Bob is not so austere I am afraid he draws it rather too fine
himself.
_Friday._--We have all got our photographs; it is pretty fair, they say,
of me and as they are particular in the matter of photographs, and
besides partial judges I suppose I may take that for proven. Of Nellie
there is one quite adorable. The weather is still cold. My "Walt
Whitman" at last looks really well: I think it is going to get into
shape in spite of the long gestation.
_Sunday._--Still cold and grey, and a high imperious wind off the sea. I
see nothing particularly _couleur de rose_ this morning: but I am trying
to be faithful to my creed and hope. O yes, one can do something to make
things happier and better; and to give a good example before men and
show them how goodness and fortitude and faith remain undiminished after
they have been stripped bare of all that is formal and outside. We must
do that; you have done it already; and I shall follow and shall make a
worthy life, and you must live to approve of me.