I had written proposing that a collected volume of his short stories
should be published with illustrations by Caldecott. At the end of
this letter occurs his first allusion to his now famous _Requiem_.
[_608 Bush Street, San Francisco, February 1880._]
MY DEAR COLVIN,--I received a very nice letter from you with two
enclosures. I am still unable to finish the _Emigrant_, although there
are only some fifteen pages to do. The _Vendetta_ is, I am afraid,
scarce Fortnightly form, though after the _Pavilion_ being taken by
Stephen, I am truly at sea about all such matters. I dare say my _Prince
of Gruenewald_--the name still uncertain--would be good enough for
anything if I could but get it done: I believe that to be a really good
story. The _Vendetta_ is somewhat cheap in motive; very rum and unlike
the present kind of novels both for good and evil in writing; and on the
whole, only remarkable for the heroine's character, and that I believe
to be in it.
I am not well at all. But hope to be better. You know I have been hawked
to death these last months. And then I lived too low, I fear; and any
way I have got pretty low and out at elbows in health. I wish I could
say better,--but I cannot. With a constitution like mine, you never
know--to-morrow I may be carrying topgallant sails again: but just at
present I am scraping along with a jurymast and a kind of amateur
rudder. Truly I have some misery, as things go; but these things are
mere detail. However, I do not want to _crever_, _claquer_, and cave in
just when I have a chance of some happiness; nor do I mean to. All the
same, I am more and more in a difficulty how to move every day. What a
day or an hour might bring forth, God forbid that I should prophesy.
Certainly, do what you like about the stories; _Will o' the Mill_, or
not. It will be Caldecott's book or nobody's. I am glad you liked the
_Guitar_: I always did: and I think C. could make lovely pikters to it:
it almost seems as if I must have written it for him express.
I have already been a visitor at the Club for a fortnight; but that's
over, and I don't much care to renew the period. I want to be married,
not to belong to all the Clubs in Christendie.... I half think of
writing up the Sand-lot agitation for Morley; it is a curious business;
were I stronger, I should try to sugar in with some of the leaders: a
chield amang 'em takin' notes; one, who kept a brothel, I reckon, before
she started socialist, particularly interests me. If I am right as to
her early industry, you know she would be sure to adore me. I have been
all my days a dead hand at a harridan, I never saw the one yet that
could resist me. When I die of consumption, you can put that upon my
tomb.
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