_Saranac Lake_, _Oct._ 8_th_, 1887.
MY DEAR GOSSE,—I have just read your article twice, with cheers of
approving laughter. I do not believe you ever wrote anything so funny:
Tyndall’s ‘shell,’ the passage on the Davos press and its invaluable
issues, and that on V. Hugo and Swinburne, are exquisite; so, I say it
more ruefully, is the touch about the doctors. For the rest, I am very
glad you like my verses so well; and the qualities you ascribe to them
seem to me well found and well named. I own to that kind of candour you
attribute to me: when I am frankly interested, I suppose I fancy the
public will be so too; and when I am moved, I am sure of it. It has been
my luck hitherto to meet with no staggering disillusion. ‘Before’ and
‘After’ may be two; and yet I believe the habit is now too thoroughly
ingrained to be altered. About the doctors, you were right, that
dedication has been the subject of some pleasantries that made me grind,
and of your happily touched reproof which made me blush. And to miscarry
in a dedication is an abominable form of book-wreck; I am a good captain,
I would rather lose the tent and save my dedication.
I am at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, I suppose for the winter: it
seems a first-rate place; we have a house in the eye of many winds, with
a view of a piece of running water—Highland, all but the dear hue of
peat—and of many hills—Highland also, but for the lack of heather. Soon
the snow will close on us; we are here some twenty miles—twenty-seven,
they say, but this I profoundly disbelieve—in the woods; communication by
letter is slow and (let me be consistent) aleatory; by telegram is as
near as may be impossible.
I had some experience of American appreciation; I liked a little of it,
but there is too much; a little of that would go a long way to spoil a
man; and I like myself better in the woods. I am so damned candid and
ingenuous (for a cynic), and so much of a ‘cweatu’ of impulse—aw’ (if you
remember that admirable Leech), that I begin to shirk any more taffy; I
think I begin to like it too well. But let us trust the Gods; they have
a rod in pickle; reverently I doff my trousers, and with screwed eyes
await the _amari aliquid_ of the great God Busby.