The essays here mentioned on Benjamin Franklin and William Penn were
projects long cherished but in the end abandoned: _The Forest State_
came to maturity three years later as _Prince Otto_.
_608 Bush Street, San Francisco, Cal., February 1880._
MY DEAR HENLEY,--Before my work or anything I sit down to answer your
long and kind letter.
I am well, cheerful, busy, hopeful; I cannot be knocked down; I do not
mind about the _Emigrant_. I never thought it a masterpiece. It was
written to sell, and I believe it will sell; and if it does not, the
next will. You need not be uneasy about my work; I am only beginning to
see my true method.
(1) As to _Studies_. There are two more already gone to Stephen.
_Yoshida Torajiro_, which I think temperate and adequate; and _Thoreau_,
which will want a really Balzacian effort over the proofs. But I want
_Benjamin Franklin and the Art of Virtue_ to follow; and perhaps also
_William Penn_, but this last may be perhaps delayed for another
volume--I think not, though. The _Studies_ will be an intelligent
volume, and in their latter numbers more like what I mean to be my
style, or I mean what my style means to be, for I am passive. (2) The
Essays. Good news indeed. I think _Ordered South_ must be thrown in. It
always swells the volume, and it will never find a more appropriate
place. It was May 1874, Macmillan, I believe. (3) Plays. I did not
understand you meant to try the draft. I shall make you a full scenario
as soon as the _Emigrant_ is done. (4) _Emigrant._ He shall be sent off
next week. (5) Stories. You need not be alarmed that I am going to
imitate Meredith. You know I was a story-teller ingrain; did not that
reassure you? The _Vendetta_, which falls next to be finished, is not
entirely pleasant. But it has points. _The Forest State_ or _The
Greenwood State: A Romance_, is another pair of shoes. It is my old
Semiramis, our half-seen Duke and Duchess, which suddenly sprang into
sunshine clearness as a story the other day. The kind, happy
_denouement_ is unfortunately absolutely undramatic, which will be our
only trouble in quarrying out the play. I mean we shall quarry from it.
_Characters_--Otto Frederick John, hereditary Prince of Gruenwald; Amelia
Seraphina, Princess; Conrad, Baron Gondremarck, Prime Minister;
Cancellarius Greisengesang; Killian Gottesacker, Steward of the River
Farm; Ottilie, his daughter; the Countess von Rosen. Seven in all. A
brave story, I swear; and a brave play too, if we can find the trick to
make the end. The play, I fear, will have to end darkly, and that spoils
the quality as I now see it of a kind of crockery, eighteenth century,
high-life-below-stairs life, breaking up like ice in spring before the
nature and the certain modicum of manhood of my poor, clever,
feather-headed Prince, whom I love already. I see Seraphina too.
Gondremarck is not quite so clear. The Countess von Rosen, I have; I'll
never tell you who she is; it's a secret; but I have known the countess;
well, I will tell you; it's my old Russian friend, Madame Zassetsky.
Certain scenes are, in conception, the best I have ever made, except for
_Hester Noble_. Those at the end, Von Rosen and the Princess, the Prince
and Princess, and the Princess and Gondremarck, as I now see them from
here, should be nuts, Henley, nuts. It irks me not to go to them
straight. But the _Emigrant_ stops the way; then a reassured scenario
for _Hester_; then the _Vendetta_; then two (or three) essays--_Benjamin
Franklin_, _Thoughts on Literature as an Art_, _Dialogue on Character
and Destiny between two Puppets_, _The Human Compromise_; and then, at
length--come to me, my Prince. O Lord, it's going to be courtly! And
there is not an ugly person nor an ugly scene in it. The _Slate_ both
Fanny and I have damned utterly; it is too morbid, ugly, and unkind;
better starvation.