If you desert Carmel I shall destroy my Jorgensen picture, build a
bungalow in the Catskills and cut out California forever. (Those are
the footprints of my damned canary, who will neither write himself nor
let me write. Just now he is perched on my shoulder, awaiting the
command to sing--then he will deafen me with a song without sense. O
he's a poet all right.)
I entirely approve your allegiance to Mammon. If I'd had brains enough
to make a decision like that I could now, at 65, have the leisure to
make a good book or two before I go to the waste-dump. * * * Get
yourself a fat bank account--there's no such friend as a bank account,
and the greatest book is a check-book; "You may lay to that!" as one
of Stevenson's pirates puts it.
* * * * *
No, sir, your boss will not bring you East next June; or if he does
you will not come to Washington. How do I know? I don't know how I
know, but concerning all (and they are many) who were to come from
California to see me I have never once failed in my forecast of their
coming or not coming. Even in the case of * * *, although I wrote to
you, and to her, as if I expected her, I _said_ to one of my friends:
"She will not come." I don't think it's a gift of divination--it just
happens, somehow. Yours is not a very good example, for you have not
said you were coming, "sure."
So your colony of high-brows is re-establishing itself at the old
stand--Piedmont. * * * But Piedmont--it must be in the heart of
Oakland. I could no longer shoot rabbits in the gulch back of it and
sleep under a tree to shoot more in the morning. Nor could I traverse
that long ridge with various girls. I dare say there's a boulevard
running the length of it,
"A palace and a prison on each hand."
If I could stop you from reading that volume of old "Argonauts" I'd do
so, but I suppose an injunction would not "lie." Yes, I was a slovenly
writer in those days, though enough better than my neighbors to have
attracted my own attention. My knowledge of English was imperfect "a
whole lot." Indeed, my intellectual status (whatever it may be, and
God knows it's enough to make me blush) was of slow growth--as was my
moral. I mean, I had not literary sincerity.
Yes, I wrote of Swinburne the distasteful words that you quote. But
they were not altogether untrue. He used to set my teeth on
edge--could _not_ stand still a minute, and kept you looking for the
string that worked his legs and arms. And he had a weak face that gave
you the memory of chinlessness. But I have long renounced the views
that I once held about his poetry--held, or thought I held. I don't
remember, though, if it was as lately as '78 that I held them.
You write of Miss Dawson. Did she survive the 'quake? And do you know
about her? Not a word of her has reached me. Notwithstanding your
imported nightingale (upon which I think you should be made to pay a
stiff duty) your Ina Coolbrith poem is so good that I want to keep it
if you have another copy. I find no amendable faults in it. * * *
The fellow that told you that I was an editor of "The Cosmopolitan"
has an impediment in his veracity. I simply write for it, * * *, and
the less of my stuff the editor uses the better I'm pleased.
* * * * *
O, you ask about the "Ursus-Aborn-Gorgias-Agrestis-Polyglot" stuff. It
was written by James F. ("Jimmie") Bowman--long dead. (See a pretty
bad sonnet on page 94, "Shapes of Clay.") My only part in the matter
was to suggest the papers and discuss them with him over many mugs of
beer.
* * * * *
By the way, Neale says he gets almost enough inquiries for my books
(from San Francisco) to justify him in republishing them.
* * * * *
That's all--and, as George Augustus Sala wrote of a chew of tobacco as
the price of a certain lady's favors, "God knows it's enough!"