_608 Bush Street, San Francisco [January 10, 1880]._
MY DEAR COLVIN,--This is a circular letter to tell my estate fully. You
have no right to it, being the worst of correspondents; but I wish to
efface the impression of my last, so to you it goes.
Any time between eight and half-past nine in the morning, a slender
gentleman in an ulster, with a volume buttoned into the breast of it,
may be observed leaving No. 608 Bush and descending Powell with an
active step. The gentleman is R. L. S.; the volume relates to Benjamin
Franklin, on whom he meditates one of his charming essays. He descends
Powell, crosses Market, and descends in Sixth on a branch of the
original Pine Street Coffee House, no less; I believe he would be
capable of going to the original itself, if he could only find it. In
the branch he seats himself at a table covered with wax-cloth, and a
pampered menial, of High-Dutch extraction and, indeed, as yet only
partially extracted, lays before him a cup of coffee, a roll and a pat
of butter, all, to quote the deity, very good. A while ago and R. L. S.
used to find the supply of butter insufficient; but he has now learned
the art to exactitude, and butter and roll expire at the same moment.
For this refection he pays ten cents, or five pence sterling (L0, 0s.
5d.).
Half an hour later, the inhabitants of Bush Street observe the same
slender gentleman armed, like George Washington, with his little
hatchet, splitting, kindling, and breaking coal for his fire. He does
this quasi-publicly upon the window-sill; but this is not to be
attributed to any love of notoriety, though he is indeed vain of his
prowess with the hatchet (which he persists in calling an axe), and
daily surprised at the perpetuation of his fingers. The reason is this:
that the sill is a strong, supporting beam, and that blows of the same
emphasis in other parts of his room might knock the entire shanty into
hell. Thenceforth, for from three to four hours, he is engaged darkly
with an ink bottle. Yet he is not blacking his boots, for the only pair
that he possesses are innocent of lustre and wear the natural hue of the
material turned up with caked and venerable slush. The youngest child of
his landlady remarks several times a day, as this strange occupant
enters or quits the house, "Dere's de author." Can it be that this
bright-haired innocent has found the true clue to the mystery? The being
in question is, at least, poor enough to belong to that honourable
craft.
His next appearance is at the restaurant of one Donadieu, in Bush
Street, between Dupont and Kearney, where a copious meal, half a bottle
of wine, coffee and brandy may be procured for the sum of four bits,
_alias_ fifty cents, L0, 2s. 2d. sterling. The wine is put down in a
whole bottleful, and it is strange and painful to observe the greed with
which the gentleman in question seeks to secure the last drop of his
allotted half, and the scrupulousness with which he seeks to avoid
taking the first drop of the other. This is partly explained by the fact
that if he were to go over the mark--bang would go a tenpence. He is
again armed with a book, but his best friends will learn with pain that
he seems at this hour to have deserted the more serious studies of the
morning. When last observed, he was studying with apparent zest the
exploits of one Rocambole by the late Viscomte Ponson du Terrail. This
work, originally of prodigious dimensions, he had cut into liths or
thicknesses apparently for convenience of carriage.
Then the being walks, where is not certain. But by about half-past four,
a light beams from the windows of 608 Bush, and he may be observed
sometimes engaged in correspondence, sometimes once again plunged in the
mysterious rites of the forenoon. About six he returns to the Branch
Original, where he once more imbrues himself to the worth of fivepence
in coffee and roll. The evening is devoted to writing and reading, and
by eleven or half-past darkness closes over this weird and truculent
existence.
As for coin, you see I don't spend much, only you and Henley both seem
to think my work rather bosh nowadays, and I do want to make as much as
I was making, that is L200; if I can do that, I can swim: last year with
my ill health I touched only L109; that would not do, I could not fight
it through on that; but on L200, as I say, I am good for the world, and
can even in this quiet way save a little, and that I must do. The worst
is my health; it is suspected I had an ague chill yesterday; I shall
know by to-morrow, and you know if I am to be laid down with ague the
game is pretty well lost. But I don't know; I managed to write a good
deal down in Monterey, when I was pretty sickly most of the time, and,
by God, I'll try, ague and all. I have to ask you frankly, when you
write, to give me any good news you can, and chat a little, but _just in
the meantime_, give me no bad. If I could get _Thoreau_, _Emigrant_ and
_Vendetta_ all finished and out of my hand, I should feel like a man who
had made half a year's income in a half year; but until the two last are
_finished_, you see, they don't fairly count.
I am afraid I bore you sadly with this perpetual talk about my affairs;
I will try and stow it; but you see, it touches me nearly. I'm the miser
in earnest now: last night, when I felt so ill, the supposed ague chill,
it seemed strange not to be able to afford a drink. I would have walked
half a mile, tired as I felt, for a brandy and soda.--Ever yours,