_June_ 10_th_, 1893.
MY DEAR GOSSE,—My mother tells me you never received the very long and
careful letter that I sent you more than a year ago; or is it two years?
I was indeed so much surprised at your silence that I wrote to Henry
James and begged him to inquire if you had received it; his reply was an
(if possible) higher power of the same silence; whereupon I bowed my head
and acquiesced. But there is no doubt the letter was written and sent;
and I am sorry it was lost, for it contained, among other things, an
irrecoverable criticism of your father’s _Life_, with a number of
suggestions for another edition, which struck me at the time as
excellent.
Well, suppose we call that cried off, and begin as before? It is
fortunate indeed that we can do so, being both for a while longer in the
day. But, alas! when I see ‘works of the late J. A. S.,’ {292} I can
see no help and no reconciliation possible. I wrote him a letter, I
think, three years ago, heard in some roundabout way that he had received
it, waited in vain for an answer (which had probably miscarried), and in
a humour between frowns and smiles wrote to him no more. And now the
strange, poignant, pathetic, brilliant creature is gone into the night,
and the voice is silent that uttered so much excellent discourse; and I
am sorry that I did not write to him again. Yet I am glad for him; light
lie the turf! The _Saturday_ is the only obituary I have seen, and I
thought it very good upon the whole. I should be half tempted to write
an _In Memoriam_, but I am submerged with other work. Are you going to
do it? I very much admire your efforts that way; you are our only
academician.
So you have tried fiction? I will tell you the truth: when I saw it
announced, I was so sure you would send it to me, that I did not order
it! But the order goes this mail, and I will give you news of it. Yes,
honestly, fiction is very difficult; it is a terrible strain to _carry_
your characters all that time. And the difficulty of according the
narrative and the dialogue (in a work in the third person) is extreme.
That is one reason out of half a dozen why I so often prefer the first.
It is much in my mind just now, because of my last work, just off the
stocks three days ago, _The Ebb Tide_: a dreadful, grimy business in the
third person, where the strain between a vilely realistic dialogue and a
narrative style pitched about (in phrase) ‘four notes higher’ than it
should have been, has sown my head with grey hairs; or I believe so—if my
head escaped, my heart has them.
The truth is, I have a little lost my way, and stand bemused at the
cross-roads. A subject? Ay, I have dozens; I have at least four novels
begun, they are none good enough; and the mill waits, and I’ll have to
take second best. _The Ebb Tide_ I make the world a present of; I
expect, and, I suppose, deserve to be torn to pieces; but there was all
that good work lying useless, and I had to finish it!
All your news of your family is pleasant to hear. My wife has been very
ill, but is now better; I may say I am ditto, _The Ebb Tide_ having left
me high and dry, which is a good example of the mixed metaphor. Our
home, and estate, and our boys, and the politics of the island, keep us
perpetually amused and busy; and I grind away with an odd, dogged, down
sensation—and an idea _in petto_ that the game is about played out. I
have got too realistic, and I must break the trammels—I mean I would if I
could; but the yoke is heavy. I saw with amusement that Zola says the
same thing; and truly the _Débâcle_ was a mighty big book, I have no need
for a bigger, though the last part is a mere mistake in my opinion. But
the Emperor, and Sedan, and the doctor at the ambulance, and the horses
in the field of battle, Lord, how gripped it is! What an epical
performance! According to my usual opinion, I believe I could go over
that book and leave a masterpiece by blotting and no ulterior art. But
that is an old story, ever new with me. Taine gone, and Renan, and
Symonds, and Tennyson, and Browning; the suns go swiftly out, and I see
no suns to follow, nothing but a universal twilight of the
demi-divinities, with parties like you and me and Lang beating on toy
drums and playing on penny whistles about glow-worms. But Zola is big
anyway; he has plenty in his belly; too much, that is all; he wrote the
_Débâcle_ and he wrote _La Bête humaine_, perhaps the most excruciatingly
silly book that I ever read to an end. And why did I read it to an end,
W. E. G.? Because the animal in me was interested in the lewdness. Not
sincerely, of course, my mind refusing to partake in it; but the flesh
was slightly pleased. And when it was done, I cast it from me with a
peal of laughter, and forgot it, as I would forget a Montépin. Taine is
to me perhaps the chief of these losses; I did luxuriate in his
_Origines_; it was something beyond literature, not quite so good, if you
please, but so much more systematic, and the pages that had to be
‘written’ always so adequate. Robespierre, Napoleon, were both excellent
good.
_June_ 18_th_, ’93
Well, I have left fiction wholly, and gone to my _Grandfather_, and on
the whole found peace. By next month my _Grandfather_ will begin to be
quite grown up. I have already three chapters about as good as done; by
which, of course, as you know, I mean till further notice or the next
discovery. I like biography far better than fiction myself: fiction is
too free. In biography you have your little handful of facts, little
bits of a puzzle, and you sit and think, and fit ’em together this way
and that, and get up and throw ’em down, and say damn, and go out for a
walk. And it’s real soothing; and when done, gives an idea of finish to
the writer that is very peaceful. Of course, it’s not really so finished
as quite a rotten novel; it always has and always must have the incurable
illogicalities of life about it, the fathoms of slack and the miles of
tedium. Still, that’s where the fun comes in; and when you have at last
managed to shut up the castle spectre (dulness), the very outside of his
door looks beautiful by contrast. There are pages in these books that
may seem nothing to the reader; but you _remember what they were_, _you
know what they might have been_, and they seem to you witty beyond
comparison. In my _Grandfather_ I’ve had (for instance) to give up the
temporal order almost entirely; doubtless the temporal order is the great
foe of the biographer; it is so tempting, so easy, and lo! there you are
in the bog!—Ever yours,