to W. E. Henley

Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth, [December 1884].

DEAR LAD,—I have made up my mind about the P. M. G., and send you a copy, which please keep or return.  As for not giving a reduction, what are we?  Are we artists or city men?  Why do we sneer at stock-brokers?  O nary; I will not take the £40.  I took that as a fair price for my best work; I was not able to produce my best; and I will be damned if I steal with my eyes open.  Sufficit.  This is my lookout.  As for the paper being rich, certainly it is; but I am honourable.  It is no more above me in money than the poor slaveys and cads from whom I look for honesty are below me.  Am I Pepys, that because I can find the countenance of ‘some of our ablest merchants,’ that because—and—pour forth languid twaddle and get paid for it, I, too, should ‘cheerfully continue to steal’?  I am not Pepys.  I do not live much to God and honour; but I will not wilfully turn my back on both.  I am, like all the rest of us, falling ever lower from the bright ideas I began with, falling into greed, into idleness, into middle-aged and slippered fireside cowardice; but is it you, my bold blade, that I hear crying this sordid and rank twaddle in my ear?  Preaching the dankest Grundyism and upholding the rank customs of our trade—you, who are so cruel hard upon the customs of the publishers?  O man, look at the Beam in our own Eyes; and whatever else you do, do not plead Satan’s cause, or plead it for all; either embrace the bad, or respect the good when you see a poor devil trying for it.  If this is the honesty of authors—to take what you can get and console yourself because publishers are rich—take my name from the rolls of that association.  ’Tis a caucus of weaker thieves, jealous of the stronger.—Ever yours,

The Roaring R. L. S.

You will see from the enclosed that I have stuck to what I think my dues pretty tightly in spite of this flourish: these are my words for a poor ten-pound note!