[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _June_ 1886.]
MY DEAR MISS MONROE,—I am ill in bed and stupid, incoherently stupid; yet
I have to answer your letter, and if the answer is incomprehensible you
must forgive me. You say my letter caused you pleasure; I am sure, as it
fell out, not near so much as yours has brought to me. The interest
taken in an author is fragile: his next book, or your next year of
culture, might see the interest frosted or outgrown; and himself, in
spite of all, you might probably find the most distasteful person upon
earth. My case is different. I have bad health, am often condemned to
silence for days together—was so once for six weeks, so that my voice was
awful to hear when I first used it, like the whisper of a shadow—have
outlived all my chief pleasures, which were active and adventurous, and
ran in the open air: and being a person who prefers life to art, and who
knows it is a far finer thing to be in love, or to risk a danger, than to
paint the finest picture or write the noblest book, I begin to regard
what remains to me of my life as very shadowy. From a variety of
reasons, I am ashamed to confess I was much in this humour when your
letter came. I had a good many troubles; was regretting a high average
of sins; had been recently reminded that I had outlived some friends, and
wondering if I had not outlived some friendships; and had just, while
boasting of better health, been struck down again by my haunting enemy,
an enemy who was exciting at first, but has now, by the iteration of his
strokes, become merely annoying and inexpressibly irksome. Can you fancy
that to a person drawing towards the elderly this sort of conjunction of
circumstances brings a rather aching sense of the past and the future?
Well, it was just then that your letter and your photograph were brought
to me in bed; and there came to me at once the most agreeable sense of
triumph. My books were still young; my words had their good health and
could go about the world and make themselves welcome; and even (in a
shadowy and distant sense) make something in the nature of friends for
the sheer hulk that stays at home and bites his pen over the manuscripts.
It amused me very much to remember that I had been in Chicago, not so
many years ago, in my proper person; where I had failed to awaken much
remark, except from the ticket collector; and to think how much more
gallant and persuasive were the fellows that I now send instead of me,
and how these are welcome in that quarter to the sitter of Herr Platz,
while their author was not very welcome even in the villainous restaurant
where he tried to eat a meal and rather failed.
And this leads me directly to a confession. The photograph which shall
accompany this is not chosen as the most like, but the best-looking. Put
yourself in my place, and you will call this pardonable. Even as it is,
even putting forth a flattered presentment, I am a little pained; and
very glad it is a photograph and not myself that has to go; for in this
case, if it please you, you can tell yourself it is my image—and if it
displeased you, you can lay the blame on the photographer; but in that,
there were no help, and the poor author might belie his labours.
_Kidnapped_ should soon appear; I am afraid you may not like it, as it is
very unlike _Prince Otto_ in every way; but I am myself a great admirer
of the two chief characters, Alan and David. _Virginibus Puerisque_ has
never been issued in the States. I do not think it is a book that has
much charm for publishers in any land; but I am to bring out a new
edition in England shortly, a copy of which I must try to remember to
send you. I say try to remember, because I have some superficial
acquaintance with myself: and I have determined, after a galling
discipline, to promise nothing more until the day of my death: at least,
in this way, I shall no more break my word, and I must now try being
churlish instead of being false.
I do not believe you to be the least like Seraphina. Your photograph has
no trace of her, which somewhat relieves me, as I am a good deal afraid
of Seraphinas—they do not always go into the woods and see the sunrise,
and some are so well-mailed that even that experience would leave them
unaffected and unsoftened. The ‘hair and eyes of several complexions’
was a trait taken from myself; and I do not bind myself to the opinions
of Sir John. In this case, perhaps—but no, if the peculiarity is shared
by two such pleasant persons as you and I (as you and me—the grammatical
nut is hard), it must be a very good thing indeed, and Sir John must be
an ass.
The _Book Reader_ notice was a strange jumble of fact and fancy. I wish
you could have seen my father’s old assistant and present partner when he
heard my father described as an ‘inspector of lighthouses,’ for we are
all very proud of the family achievements, and the name of my house here
in Bournemouth is stolen from one of the sea-towers of the Hebrides which
are our pyramids and monuments. I was never at Cambridge, again; but
neglected a considerable succession of classes at Edinburgh. But to
correct that friendly blunderer were to write an autobiography.—And so
now, with many thanks, believe me yours sincerely,