The spell of good health did not last long, and with a break of the
weather came a return of catarrhal troubles and hemorrhage. This
letter answers some criticisms made by his correspondent on _The
Merry Men_ as drafted in MS.
_Pitlochry, if you please [August], 1881._
DEAR HENLEY,--To answer a point or two. First, the Spanish ship was
sloop-rigged and clumsy, because she was fitted out by some private
adventurers, not over wealthy, and glad to take what they could get. Is
that not right? Tell me if you think not. That, at least, was how I
meant it. As for the boat-cloaks, I am afraid they are, as you say,
false imagination; but I love the name, nature, and being of them so
dearly, that I feel as if I would almost rather ruin a story than omit
the reference. The proudest moments of my life have been passed in the
stern-sheets of a boat with that romantic garment over my shoulders.
This, without prejudice to one glorious day when standing upon some
water stairs at Lerwick I signalled with my pocket-handkerchief for a
boat to come ashore for me. I was then aged fifteen or sixteen; conceive
my glory.
Several of the phrases you object to are proper nautical, or long-shore
phrases, and therefore, I think, not out of place in this long-shore
story. As for the two members which you thought at first so ill-united;
I confess they seem perfectly so to me. I have chosen to sacrifice a
long-projected story of adventure because the sentiment of that is
identical with the sentiment of "My uncle." My uncle himself is not the
story as I see it, only the leading episode of that story. It's really a
story of wrecks, as they appear to the dweller on the coast. It's a view
of the sea. Goodness knows when I shall be able to re-write; I must
first get over this copper-headed cold.