And this is where I had got to, before the mail arrives with, I must say, a real gentlemanly letter from yourself. Sir, that is the sort of letter I want! Now, I"ll make my little proposal. I will accept _Child"s Play_ and _Pan"s Pipes_. Then I want _Pastoral_, _The Manse_, _The Islet_, leaving out if you like all the prefacial matter and beginning at I. Then the portrait of Robert Hunter, beginning "Whether he was originally big or little," and ending "fearless and gentle." So much for _Mem. and Portraits_. _Beggars_, sections I. and II., _Random Memories_ II., and _Lantern Bearers_; I"m agreeable. These are my selections. I don"t know about _Pulvis et Umbra_ either, but must leave that to you. But just what you please.
About _Davie_ I elaborately wrote last time, but still _Davie_ is not done; I am grinding singly at _The Ebb Tide_, as we now call the _Farallone_; the most of it will go this mail. About the following, let there be no mistake: I will not write the abstract of _Kidnapped_; write it who will, I will not. Boccaccio must have been a clever fellow to write both argument and story; I am not, _et je me recuse_.
We call it _The Ebb Tide_: _a Trio and Quartette_; but that secondary name you may strike out if it seems dull to you. The book, however, falls in two halves, when the fourth character appears. I am on p. 82 if you want to know, and expect to finish on I suppose 110 or so; but it goes slowly, as you may judge from the fact that this three weeks past, I have only struggled from p. 58 to p. 82: twenty-four pages, _et encore_ sure to be rewritten, in twenty-one days. This is no prize-taker; not much Waverley Novels about this!
_May_ 16_th_.
I believe it will be ten chapters of _The Ebb Tide_ that go to you; the whole thing should be completed in I fancy twelve; and the end will follow punctually next mail. It is my great wish that this might get into _The Ill.u.s.trated London News_ for Gordon Browne to ill.u.s.trate. For whom, in case he should get the job, I give you a few notes. A purao is a tree giving something like a fig with flowers. He will find some photographs of an old marine curiosity shop in my collection, which may help him. Att.w.a.ter"s settlement is to be entirely overshadowed everywhere by tall palms; see photographs of Fakarava: the verandahs of the house are 12 ft. wide. Don"t let him forget the Figure Head, for which I have a great use in the last chapter. It stands just clear of the palms on the crest of the beach at the head of the pier; the flag-staff not far off; the pier he will understand is perhaps three feet above high water, not more at any price. The sailors of the _Farallone_ are to be dressed like white sailors of course. For other things, I remit this excellent artist to my photographs.
I can"t think what to say about the tale, but it seems to me to go off with a considerable bang; in fact, to be an extraordinary work: but whether popular! Att.w.a.ter is a no end of a courageous attempt, I think you will admit; how far successful is another affair. If my island ain"t a thing of beauty, I"ll be d.a.m.ned. Please observe Wiseman and Wishart; for incidental grimness, they strike me as in it. Also, kindly observe the Captain and _Adar_; I think that knocks spots. In short, as you see, I"m a trifle vainglorious. But O, it has been such a grind! The devil himself would allow a man to brag a little after such a crucifixion! And indeed I"m only bragging for a change before I return to the darned thing lying waiting for me on p. 88, where I last broke down. I break down at every paragraph, I may observe; and lie here and sweat, till I can get one sentence wrung out after another. Strange doom; after having worked so easily for so long! Did ever anybody see such a story of four characters?
_Later_, 2.30.
It may interest you to know that I am entirely _tapu_, and live apart in my chambers like a caged beast. Lloyd has a bad cold, and Graham and Belle are getting it. Accordingly, I dwell here without the light of any human countenance or voice, and strap away at _The Ebb Tide_ until (as now) I can no more. f.a.n.n.y can still come, but is gone to glory now, or to her garden. Page 88 is done, and must be done over again to-morrow, and I confess myself exhausted. Pity a man who can"t work on along when he has nothing else on earth to do! But I have ordered Jack, and am going for a ride in the bush presently to refresh the machine; then back to a lonely dinner and durance vile. I acquiesce in this hand of fate; for I think another cold just now would just about do for me. I have scarce yet recovered the two last.
_May_ 18_th_.
My progress is crabwise, and I fear only IX. chapters will be ready for the mail. I am on p. 88 again, and with half an idea of going back again to 85. We shall see when we come to read: I used to regard reading as a pleasure in my old light days. All the house are down with the influenza in a body, except f.a.n.n.y and me. The influenza appears to become endemic here, but it has always been a scourge in the islands. Witness the beginning of _The Ebb Tide_, which was observed long before the Iffle had distinguished himself at home by such Napoleonic conquests. I am now of course "quite a recluse," and it is very stale, and there is no amanuensis to carry me over my mail, to which I shall have to devote many hours that would have been more usefully devoted to _The Ebb Tide_. For you know you can dictate at all hours of the day and at any odd moment; but to sit down and write with your red right hand is a very different matter.
_May_ 20_th_.
Well, I believe I"ve about finished the thing, I mean as far as the mail is to take it. Chapter X. is now in Lloyd"s hands for remarks, and extends in its present form to p. 93 incl. On the 12th of May, I see by looking back, I was on p. 82, not for the first time; so that I have made 11 pages in nine livelong days. Well! up a high hill he heaved a huge round stone. But this Flaubert business must be resisted in the premises. Or is it the result of influenza? G.o.d forbid. f.a.n.n.y is down now, and the last link that bound me to my fellow men is severed. I sit up here, and write, and read Renan"s _Origines_, which is certainly devilish interesting; I read his Nero yesterday, it is very good, O, very good! But he is quite a Michelet; the general views, and such a piece of character painting, excellent; but his method sheer lunacy. You can see him take up the block which he had just rejected, and make of it the corner-stone: a maddening way to deal with authorities; and the result so little like history that one almost blames oneself for wasting time. But the time is not wasted; the conspectus is always good, and the blur that remains on the mind is probably just enough. I have been enchanted with the unveiling of Revelations. And how picturesque that return of the false Nero! The Apostle John is rather discredited. And to think how one had read the thing so often, and never understood the attacks upon St. Paul! I remember when I was a child, and we came to the Four Beasts that were all over eyes, the sickening terror with which I was filled.
If that was Heaven, what, in the name of Davy Jones and the aboriginal night-mare, could h.e.l.l be? Take it for all in all, _L"Antechrist_ is worth reading. The _Histoire d"Israel_ did not surprise me much; I had read those Hebrew sources with more intelligence than the New Testament, and was quite prepared to admire Ahab and Jezebel, etc. Indeed, Ahab has always been rather a hero of mine; I mean since the years of discretion.
_May_ 21_st_.
And here I am back again on p. 85! the last chapter demanding an entire revision, which accordingly it is to get. And where my mail is to come in, G.o.d knows! This forced, violent, alembicated style is most abhorrent to me; it can"t be helped; the note was struck years ago on the _Janet Nicoll_, and has to be maintained somehow; and I can only hope the intrinsic horror and pathos, and a kind of fierce glow of colour there is to it, and the surely remarkable wealth of striking incident, may guide our little shallop into port. If Gordon Browne is to get it, he should see the Bra.s.sey photographs of Papeete. But mind, the three waifs were never in the town; only on the beach and in the calaboose. By George, but it"s a good thing to ill.u.s.trate for a man like that! f.a.n.n.y is all right again. False alarm! I was down yesterday afternoon at Paupata, and heard much growling of war, and the delightful news that the C. J.
and the President are going to run away from Mulinuu and take refuge in the Tivoli hotel.
23_rd_. _Mail day_.
And lots of pleasures before me, no doubt! Among others the attempt to extract an answer from-before mail time, which may succeed or may not.
_The Ebb Tide_, all but (I take it) fifteen pages, is now in your hands-possibly only about eleven pp. It is hard to say. But there it is, and you can do your best with it. Personally, I believe I would in this case make even a sacrifice to get Gordon Browne and copious ill.u.s.tration. I guess in ten days I shall have finished with it; then I go next to _D. Balfour_, and get the proofs ready: a nasty job for me, as you know. And then? Well, perhaps I"ll take a go at the family history.
I think that will be wise, as I am so much off work. And then, I suppose, _Weir of Hermiston_, but it may be anything. I am discontented with _The Ebb Tide_, naturally; there seems such a veil of words over it; and I like more and more naked writing; and yet sometimes one has a longing for full colour and there comes the veil again. _The Young Chevalier_ is in very full colour, and I fear it for that reason.-Ever,
R. L S.
CHAPTER x.x.x
29_th_ _May_.
MY DEAR COLVIN,-Still grinding at Chap. XI. I began many days ago on p.
93, and am still on p. 93, which is exhilarating, but the thing takes shape all the same and should make a pretty lively chapter for an end of it. For XII. is only a footnote _ad explicandum_.
_June the_ 1_st_.
Back on p. 93. I was on 100 yesterday, but read it over and condemned it.
10 _a.m._
I have worked up again to 97, but how? The deuce fly away with literature, for the basest sport in creation. But it"s got to come straight! and if possible, so that I may finish _D. Balfour_ in time for the same mail. What a getting upstairs! This is Flaubert outdone.
Belle, Graham, and Lloyd leave to-day on a malaga down the coast; to be absent a week or so: this leaves f.a.n.n.y, me, and -, who seems a nice, kindly fellow.
_June_ 2_nd_.
I am nearly dead with dyspepsia, over-smoking, and unremunerative overwork. Last night, I went to bed by seven; woke up again about ten for a minute to find myself light-headed and altogether off my legs; went to sleep again, and woke this morning fairly fit. I have crippled on to p. 101, but I haven"t read it yet, so do not boast. What kills me is the frame of mind of one of the characters; I cannot get it through. Of course that does not interfere with my total inability to write; so that yesterday I was a living half-hour upon a single clause and have a gallery of variants that would surprise you. And this sort of trouble (which I cannot avoid) unfortunately produces nothing when done but alembication and the far-fetched. Well, read it with mercy!
8 _a.m._
Going to bed. Have read it, and believe the chapter practically done at last. But lord! it has been a business.
_July_ 3_rd_, 8.15.
The draft is finished, the end of Chapter II. and the tale, and I have only eight pages _wiederzuarbeiten_. This is just a cry of joy in pa.s.sing.
10.30.
Knocked out of time. Did 101 and 102. Alas, no more to-day, as I have to go down town to a meeting. Just as well though, as my thumb is about done up.