I got the proofs yesterday, and am returning them by this mail. The
"report of progress" is every way satisfactory, and I don't doubt that
a neat job is being done.
The correction that you made is approved. I should have wanted and
expected you to make many corrections and suggestions, but that I have
had a purpose in making this book--namely, that it should represent my
work at its average. In pursuance of this notion I was not hospitable
even to suggestions, and have retained much work that I did not myself
particularly approve; some of it trivial. You know I have always been
addicted to trifling, and no book from which trivialities were
excluded would fairly represent me.
I could not commend this notion in another. In your work and
Sterling's I have striven hard to help you to come as near to
perfection as we could, because perfection is what you and he want,
and as young writers ought to want, the character of your work being
higher than mine. I reached my literary level long ago, and seeing
that it is not a high one there would seem to be a certain
affectation, even a certain dishonesty, in making it seem higher than
it is by republication of my best only. Of course I have not carried
out this plan so consistently as to make the book dull: I had to "draw
the line" at that.
I say all this because I don't want you and Sterling to think that I
disdain assistance: I simply decided beforehand not to avail myself of
its obvious advantages. You would have done as much for the book in
one way as you have done in another.
I'll have to ask you to suggest that Mr. Wood have a man go over all
the matter in the book, and see that none of the pieces are
duplicated, as I fear they are. Reading the titles will not be enough:
I might have given the same piece two titles. It will be necessary to
compare first lines, I think. That will be drudgery which I'll not ask
you to undertake: some of Wood's men, or some of the printer's men,
will do it as well; it is in the line of their work.
The "Dies Irae" is the most earnest and sincere of religious poems; my
travesty of it is mere solemn fooling, which fact is "given away" in
the prose introduction, where I speak of my version being of possible
service in the church! The travesty is not altogether unfair--it was
inevitably suggested by the author's obvious inaccessibility to humor
and logic--a peculiarity that is, however, observable in all religious
literature, for it is a fundamental necessity to the religious mind.
Without logic and a sense of the ludicrous a man is religious as
certainly as without webbed feet a bird has the land habit.
It is funny, but I am a "whole lot" more interested in seeing your
cover of the book than my contents of it. I don't at all doubt--since
you dared undertake it--that your great conception will find a fit
interpreter in your hand; so my feeling is not anxiety. It is just
interest--pure interest in what is above my powers, but in which _you_
can work. By the way, Keller, of the old "Wasp" was _not_ the best of
its cartoonists. The best--the best of _all_ cartoonists if he had not
died at eighteen--was another German, named Barkhaus. I have all his
work and have long cherished a wish to republish it with the needed
explanatory text--much of it being "local" and "transient." Some day,
perhaps--most likely not. But Barkhaus was a giant.
How I envy you! There are few things that would please me so well as
to "drop in" on you folks in Sterling's camp. Honestly, I think all
that prevents is the (to me) killing journey by rail. And two months
would be required, going and returning by sea. But the rail trip
across the continent always gives me a horrible case of asthma, which
lasts for weeks. I shall never take _that_ journey again if I can
avoid it. What times you and they will have about the campfire and the
table! I feel like an exile, though I fear I don't look and act the
part.
I did not make the little excursion I was about to take when I wrote
you recently. Almost as I posted the letter I was taken ill and have
not been well since.
Poor Doyle! how thoughtful of him to provide for the destruction of my
letters! But I fear Mrs. Doyle found some of them queer reading--if
she read them.
* * * * *
Great Scott! if ever they begin to publish mine there will be a
circus! For of course the women will be the chief sinners,
and--well, they have material a-plenty; they can make many volumes,
and your poor dead friend will have so bad a reputation that you'll
swear you never knew him. I dare say, though, you have sometimes been
indiscreet, too. _My_ besetting sin has been in writing to my girl
friends as if they were sweethearts--the which they'll doubtless not
be slow to affirm. The fact that they write to me in the same way will
be no defense; for when I'm worm's meat I can't present the proof--and
wouldn't if I could. Maybe it won't matter--if I don't turn in my
grave and so bother the worms.
As Doyle's "literary executor" I fear your duties will be light: he
probably did not leave much manuscript. I judge from his letters that
he was despondent about his work and the narrow acceptance that it
had. So I assume that he did not leave much more than the book of
poems, which no publisher would (or will) take.
You are about to encounter the same stupid indifference of the
public--so is Sterling. I'm sure of Sterling, but don't quite know how
it will affect _you_. You're a pretty sturdy fellow, physically and
mentally, but this _may_ hurt horribly. I pray that it do not, and
could give you--perhaps have given you--a thousand reasons why it
_should_ not. You are still young and your fame may come while you
live; but you must not expect it now, and doubtless do not. To me, and
I hope to you, the approval of one person who knows is sweeter than
the acclaim of ten thousand who do not--whose acclaim, indeed, I would
rather not have. If you do not _feel_ this in every fibre of your
brain and heart, try to learn to feel it--practice feeling it, as one
practices some athletic feat necessary to health and strength.
Thank you very much for the photograph. You are growing too
infernally handsome to be permitted to go about unchained. If I had
your "advantages" of youth and comeliness I'd go to the sheriff and
ask him to lock me up. That would be the honorable thing for you to
do, if you don't mind. God be with you--but inattentive.