to Edmund Gosse

Chalet la Solitude, Hyères, [April 1883].

MY DEAR GOSSE,—I am very guilty; I should have written to you long ago; and now, though it must be done, I am so stupid that I can only boldly recapitulate.  A phrase of three members is the outside of my syntax.

First, I liked the Rover better than any of your other verse.  I believe you are right, and can make stories in verse.  The last two stanzas and one or two in the beginning—but the two last above all—I thought excellent.  I suggest a pursuit of the vein.  If you want a good story to treat, get the Memoirs of the Chevalier Johnstone, and do his passage of the Tay; it would be excellent: the dinner in the field, the woman he has to follow, the dragoons, the timid boatmen, the brave lasses.  It would go like a charm; look at it, and you will say you owe me one.

Second, Gilder asking me for fiction, I suddenly took a great resolve, and have packed off to him my new work, The Silverado Squatters.  I do not for a moment suppose he will take it; but pray say all the good words you can for it.  I should be awfully glad to get it taken.  But if it does not mean dibbs at once, I shall be ruined for life.  Pray write soon and beg Gilder your prettiest for a poor gentleman in pecuniary sloughs.

Fourth, next time I am supposed to be at death’s door, write to me like a Christian, and let not your correspondence attend on business.—Yours ever,

R. L. S.

P.S.—I see I have led you to conceive the Squatters are fiction.  They are not, alas!