_Vailima_, _Samoa_, _December_ 28_th_, 1893.
DEAR MR. LE GALLIENNE,—I have received some time ago, through our friend
Miss Taylor, a book of yours. But that was by no means my first
introduction to your name. The same book had stood already on my
shelves; I had read articles of yours in the _Academy_; and by a piece of
constructive criticism (which I trust was sound) had arrived at the
conclusion that you were ‘Log-roller.’ Since then I have seen your
beautiful verses to your wife. You are to conceive me, then, as only too
ready to make the acquaintance of a man who loved good literature and
could make it. I had to thank you, besides, for a triumphant exposure of
a paradox of my own: the literary-prostitute disappeared from view at a
phrase of yours—‘The essence is not in the pleasure but the sale.’ True:
you are right, I was wrong; the author is not the whore, but the
libertine; and yet I shall let the passage stand. It is an error, but it
illustrated the truth for which I was contending, that
literature—painting—all art, are no other than pleasures, which we turn
into trades.
And more than all this, I had, and I have to thank you for the intimate
loyalty you have shown to myself; for the eager welcome you give to what
is good—for the courtly tenderness with which you touch on my defects. I
begin to grow old; I have given my top note, I fancy;—and I have written
too many books. The world begins to be weary of the old booth; and if
not weary, familiar with the familiarity that breeds contempt. I do not
know that I am sensitive to criticism, if it be hostile; I am sensitive
indeed, when it is friendly; and when I read such criticism as yours, I
am emboldened to go on and praise God.
You are still young, and you may live to do much. The little, artificial
popularity of style in England tends, I think, to die out; the British
pig returns to his true love, the love of the styleless, of the
shapeless, of the slapdash and the disorderly. There is trouble coming,
I think; and you may have to hold the fort for us in evil days.
Lastly, let me apologise for the crucifixion that I am inflicting on you
(_bien à contre-cœur_) by my bad writing. I was once the best of
writers; landladies, puzzled as to my ‘trade,’ used to have their honest
bosoms set at rest by a sight of a page of manuscript.—‘Ah,’ they would
say, ‘no wonder they pay you for that’;—and when I sent it in to the
printers, it was given to the boys! I was about thirty-nine, I think,
when I had a turn of scrivener’s palsy; my hand got worse; and for the
first time, I received clean proofs. But it has gone beyond that now, I
know I am like my old friend James Payn, a terror to correspondents; and
you would not believe the care with which this has been written.—Believe
me to be, very sincerely yours,