I've reached your letter on my file. I wonder that I did, for truly
I'm doing a lot of work--mostly of the pot-boiler, newspaper sort,
some compiling of future--probably _very_ future--books and a little
for posterity.
Valentine has not returned the "Wine of Wizardry," but I shall tell
him to in a few days and will then try it on the magazines you
mention. If that fails I can see no objection to offering it to the
English periodicals.
I don't know about Mackay. He has a trifle of mine which he was going
to run months ago. He didn't and I asked it back. He returned it and
begged that it go back to him for immediate publication. It went back,
but publication did not ensue. In many other ways he has been
exceedingly kind. Guess he can't always have his way.
* * * * *
I read that other book to the bitter end--the "Arthur Sterling" thing.
He is the most disagreeable character in fiction, though Marie
Bashkirtseff and Mary McLean in real life could give him cards and
spades. Fancy a poet, or any kind of writer, whom it hurts to think!
What the devil are his agonies all about--his writhings and twistings
and foaming at all his mouths? What would a poem by an intellectual
epileptic like that be? Happily the author spares us quotation. I
suppose there are Arthur Sterlings among the little fellows, but if
genius is not serenity, fortitude and reasonableness I don't know what
it is. One cannot even imagine Shakespeare or Goethe bleeding over his
work and howling when "in the fell clutch of circumstance." The great
ones are figured in my mind as ever smiling--a little sadly at times,
perhaps, but always with conscious inaccessibility to the pinpricking
little Titans that would storm their Olympus armed with ineffectual
disasters and pop-gun misfortunes. Fancy a fellow wanting, like Arthur
Sterling, to be supported by his fellows in order that he may write
what they don't want to read! Even Jack London would gag at such
Socialism as _that_.
* * * * *
I'm going to pass a summer month or two with the Pollards, at
Saybrook, Conn. How I wish you could be of the party. But I suppose
you'll be chicken-ranching then, and happy enough where you are. I
wish you joy of the venture and, although I fear it means a meagre
living, it will probably be more satisfactory than doubling over a
desk in your uncle's office. The very name Carmel Bay is enchanting.
I've a notion I shall see that ranch some day. I don't quite recognize
the "filtered-through-the-emasculated-minds-of-about-six-fools"
article from which you say I quote--don't remember it, nor remember
quoting from it.
I don't wonder at your surprise at my high estimate of Longfellow in a
certain article. It is higher than my permanent one. I was thinking
(while writing for a newspaper, recollect) rather of his fame than of
his genius--I had to have a literary equivalent to Washington or
Lincoln. Still, we must not forget that Longfellow wrote "Chrysaor"
and, in narrative poetry (which you don't care for) "Robert of
Sicily." Must one be judged by his average, or may he be judged, on
occasion, by his highest? He is strongest who can lift the greatest
weight, not he who habitually lifts lesser ones.
As to your queries. So far as I know, Realf _did_ write his great
sonnets on the night of his death. Anyhow, they were found with the
body. Your recollection that I said they were written before he came
to the Coast is faulty. Some of his other things were in print when he
submitted them to me (and took pay for them) as new; but not the "De
Mortuis."