No one can prophesy here, of course, and the balance still hangs trembling, but I THINK it will go for peace.
The mail was very late this time; hence the paltryness of this note. When it came and I had read it, I retired with THE EBB TIDE and read it all before I slept. I did not dream it was near as good; I am afraid I think it excellent. A little indecision about Attwater, not much. It gives me great hope, as I see I CAN work in that constipated, mosaic manner, which is what I have to do just now with WEIR OF HERMISTON.
We have given a ball; I send you a paper describing the event. We have two guests in the house, Captain-Count Wurmbrand and Monsieur Albert de Lautreppe. Lautreppe is awfully nice - a quiet, gentlemanly fellow, GONFLE DE REVES, as he describes himself - once a sculptor in the atelier of Henry Crosse, he knows something of art, and is really a resource to me.
Letter from Meredith very kind. Have you seen no more of Graham?
What about my grandfather? The family history will grow to be quite a chapter.
I suppose I am growing sensitive; perhaps, by living among barbarians, I expect more civility. Look at this from the author of a very interesting and laudatory critique. He gives quite a false description of something of mine, and talks about my 'insolence.' Frankly, I supposed 'insolence' to be a tapua word. I do not use it to a gentleman, I would not write it of a gentleman: I may be wrong, but I believe we did not write it of a gentleman in old days, and in my view he (clever fellow as he is) wants to be kicked for applying it to me. By writing a novel - even a bad one - I do not make myself a criminal for anybody to insult. This may amuse you. But either there is a change in journalism, too gradual for you to remark it on the spot, or there is a change in me. I cannot bear these phrases; I long to resent them. My forbears, the tenant farmers of the Mains, would not have suffered such expressions unless it had been from Cauldwell, or Rowallan, or maybe Auchendrane. My Family Pride bristles. I am like the negro, 'I just heard last night' who my great, great, great, great grandfather was. - Ever yours,
R. L. S.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
MARCH 1894.
MY DEAR COLVIN, - This is the very day the mail goes, and I have as yet written you nothing. But it was just as well - as it was all about my 'blacks and chocolates,' and what of it had relation to whites you will read some of in the TIMES. It means, as you will see, that I have at one blow quarrelled with all the officials of Samoa, the Foreign Office, and I suppose her Majesty the Queen with milk and honey blest. But you'll see in the TIMES. I am very well indeed, but just about dead and mighty glad the mail is near here, and I can just give up all hope of contending with my letters, and lie down for the rest of the day. These TIMES letters are not easy to write. And I dare say the Consuls say, 'Why, then, does he write them?'
I had miserable luck with ST. IVES; being already half-way through it, a book I had ordered six months ago arrives at last, and I have to change the first half of it from top to bottom! How could I have dreamed the French prisoners were watched over like a female charity school, kept in a grotesque livery, and shaved twice a week? And I had made all my points on the idea that they were unshaved and clothed anyhow. However, this last is better business; if only the book had come when I ordered it! A PROPOS, many of the books you announce don't come as a matter of fact. When they are of any value, it is best to register them. Your letter, alas! is not here; I sent it down to the cottage, with all my mail, for Fanny; on Sunday night a boy comes up with a lantern and a note from Fanny, to say the woods are full of Atuas and I must bring a horse down that instant, as the posts are established beyond her on the road, and she does not want to have the fight going on between us. Impossible to get a horse; so I started in the dark on foot, with a revolver, and my spurs on my bare feet, leaving directions that the boy should mount after me with the horse.