[_Vailima_], _Tuesday_, 19_th_ _May_ ’91.
MY DEAR CHARLES,—I don’t know what you think of me, not having written to
you at all during your illness. I find two sheets begun with your name,
but that is no excuse. . . . I am keeping bravely; getting about better,
every day, and hope soon to be in my usual fettle. My books begin to
come; and I fell once more on the Old Bailey session papers. I have
1778, 1784, and 1786. Should you be able to lay hands on any other
volumes, above all a little later, I should be very glad you should buy
them for me. I particularly want _one_ or _two_ during the course of the
Peninsular War. Come to think, I ought rather to have communicated this
want to Bain. Would it bore you to communicate to that effect with the
great man? The sooner I have them, the better for me. ’Tis for Henry
Shovel. But Henry Shovel has now turned into a work called ‘The Shovels
of Newton French: Including Memoirs of Henry Shovel, a Private in the
Peninsular War,’ which work is to begin in 1664 with the marriage of
Skipper, afterwards Alderman Shovel of Bristol, Henry’s
great-great-grandfather, and end about 1832 with his own second marriage
to the daughter of his runaway aunt. Will the public ever stand such an
opus? Gude kens, but it tickles me. Two or three historical personages
will just appear: Judge Jeffreys, Wellington, Colquhoun, Grant, and I
think Townsend the runner. I know the public won’t like it; let ’em lump
it then; I mean to make it good; it will be more like a saga.—Adieu,
yours ever affectionately,