[_Vailima_, _October_ 1891.]
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—From this perturbed and hunted being expect but a
line, and that line shall be but a whoop for Adela. O she’s delicious,
delicious; I could live and die with Adela—die, rather the better of the
two; you never did a straighter thing, and never will.
_David Balfour_, second part of _Kidnapped_, is on the stocks at last;
and is not bad, I think. As for _The Wrecker_, it’s a machine, you
know—don’t expect aught else—a machine, and a police machine; but I
believe the end is one of the most genuine butcheries in literature; and
we point to our machine with a modest pride, as the only police machine
without a villain. Our criminals are a most pleasing crew, and leave the
dock with scarce a stain upon their character.
What a different line of country to be trying to draw Adela, and trying
to write the last four chapters of _The Wrecker_! Heavens, it’s like two
centuries; and ours is such rude, transpontine business, aiming only at a
certain fervour of conviction and sense of energy and violence in the
men; and yours is so neat and bright and of so exquisite a surface!
Seems dreadful to send such a book to such an author; but your name is on
the list. And we do modestly ask you to consider the chapters on the
_Norah Creina_ with the study of Captain Nares, and the forementioned
last four, with their brutality of substance and the curious (and perhaps
unsound) technical manœuvre of running the story together to a point as
we go along, the narrative becoming more succinct and the details fining
off with every page.—Sworn affidavit of