_608 Bush Street, San Francisco, California, Jan. 23, 1880._
MY DEAR AND KIND WEG,--It was a lesson in philosophy that would have
moved a bear, to receive your letter in my present temper. For I am now
well and well at my ease, both by comparison. First, my health has
turned a corner; it was not consumption this time, though consumption it
has to be some time, as all my kind friends sing to me, day in, day out.
Consumption! how I hate that word; yet it can sound innocent, as,
_e.g._, consumption of military stores. What was wrong with me, apart
from colds and little pleuritic flea-bites, was a lingering malaria; and
that is now greatly overcome, I eat once more, which is a great
amusement and, they say, good for the health. Second, many of the
thunderclouds that were overhanging me when last I wrote, have silently
stolen away like Longfellow's Arabs: and I am now engaged to be married
to the woman whom I have loved for three years and a half. I do not yet
know when the marriage can come off; for there are many reasons for
delay. But as few people before marriage have known each other so long
or made more trials of each other's tenderness and constancy, I permit
myself to hope some quiet at the end of all. At least I will boast
myself so far; I do not think many wives are better loved than mine will
be. Third and last, in the order of what has changed my feelings, my
people have cast me off, and so that thundercloud, as you may almost
say, has overblown. You know more than most people whether or not I
loved my father.[27] These things are sad; nor can any man forgive
himself for bringing them about; yet they are easier to meet in fact
than by anticipation. I almost trembled whether I was doing right, until
I was fairly summoned; then, when I found that I was not shaken one jot,
that I could grieve, that I could sharply blame myself, for the past,
and yet never hesitate one second as to my conduct in the future, I
believed my cause was just and I leave it with the Lord. I certainly
look for no reward, nor any abiding city either here or hereafter, but I
please myself with hoping that my father will not always think so badly
of my conduct nor so very slightingly of my affection as he does at
present.
You may now understand that the quiet economical citizen of San
Francisco who now addresses you, a bonhomme given to cheap living, early
to bed though scarce early to rise in proportion (que diable! let us
have style, anyway), busied with his little bits of books and essays and
with a fair hope for the future, is no longer the same desponding,
invalid son of a doubt and an apprehension who last wrote to you from
Monterey. I am none the less warmly obliged to you and Mrs. Gosse for
your good words. I suppose that I am the devil (hearing it so often),
but I am not ungrateful. Only please, Weg, do not talk of genius about
me; I do not think I want for a certain talent, but I am heartily
persuaded I have none of the other commodity; so let that stick to the
wall: you only shame me by such friendly exaggerations.
When shall I be married? When shall I be able to return to England? When
shall I join the good and blessed in a forced march upon the New
Jerusalem? That is what I know not in any degree; some of them, let us
hope, will come early, some after a judicious interval. I have three
little strangers knocking at the door of Leslie Stephen: _The Pavilion
on the Links_, a blood and thunder story, _accepted_; _Yoshida
Torajiro_, a paper on a Japanese hero who will warm your blood,
_postulant_; and _Henry David Thoreau_: _his character and
opinions_--postulant also. I give you these hints knowing you to love
the best literature, that you may keep an eye at the mast-head for these
little tit-bits. Write again, and soon, and at greater length to your
friend.--Your friend,
(signed) R. L. S.