This dates from just before the canoeing trip recounted in the
_Inland Voyage_.
[_Swanston, July 1876._]
Well, here I am at last; it is a Sunday, blowing hard, with a grey sky
with the leaves flying; and I have nothing to say. I ought to have no
doubt; since it's so long since last I wrote; but there are times when
people's lives stand still. If you were to ask a squirrel in a
mechanical cage for his autobiography, it would not be very gay. Every
spin may be amusing in itself, but is mighty like the last; you see I
compare myself to a lighthearted animal; and indeed I have been in a
very good humour. For the weather has been passable; I have taken a deal
of exercise, and done some work. But I have the strangest repugnance for
writing; indeed, I have nearly got myself persuaded into the notion that
letters don't arrive, in order to salve my conscience for never sending
them off. I'm reading a great deal of fifteenth century: _Trial of Joan
of Arc_, _Paston Letters_, _Basin_,[21] etc., also Boswell daily by way
of a Bible; I mean to read Boswell now until the day I die. And now and
again a bit of _Pilgrim's Progress_. Is that all? Yes, I think that's
all. I have a thing in proof for the Cornhill called _Virginibus
Puerisque_. _Charles of Orleans_ is again laid aside, but in a good
state of furtherance this time. A paper called _A Defence of Idlers_
(which is really a defence of R. L. S.) is in a good way. So, you see, I
am busy in a tumultuous, knotless sort of fashion; and as I say, I take
lots of exercise, and I'm as brown as a berry.
This is the first letter I've written for--O I don't know how long.
_July 30th._--This is, I suppose, three weeks after I began. Do, please,
forgive me.
To the Highlands, first, to the Jenkins'; then to Antwerp; thence, by
canoe with Simpson, to Paris and Grez (on the Loing, and an old
acquaintance of mine on the skirts of Fontainebleau) to complete our
cruise next spring (if we're all alive and jolly) by Loing and Loire,
Saone and Rhone to the Mediterranean. It should make a jolly book of
gossip, I imagine.
God bless you.