to Sidney Colvin

[San Francisco, April 1880.]

MY DEAR COLVIN,—My dear people telegraphed me in these words: ‘Count on 250 pounds annually.’  You may imagine what a blessed business this was.  And so now recover the sheets of the Emigrant, and post them registered to me.  And now please give me all your venom against it; say your worst, and most incisively, for now it will be a help, and I’ll make it right or perish in the attempt.  Now, do you understand why I protested against your depressing eloquence on the subject?  When I had to go on any way, for dear life, I thought it a kind of pity and not much good to discourage me.  Now all’s changed.  God only knows how much courage and suffering is buried in that MS.  The second part was written in a circle of hell unknown to Dante—that of the penniless and dying author.  For dying I was, although now saved.  Another week, the doctor said, and I should have been past salvation.  I think I shall always think of it as my best work.  There is one page in Part II., about having got to shore, and sich, which must have cost me altogether six hours of work as miserable as ever I went through.  I feel sick even to think of it.—Ever your friend,

R. L. S.