to Sidney Colvin

[San Francisco, May 1880.]

MY DEAR COLVIN,—It is a long while since I have heard from you; nearly a month, I believe; and I begin to grow very uneasy.  At first I was tempted to suppose that I had been myself to blame in some way; but now I have grown to fear lest some sickness or trouble among those whom you love may not be the impediment.  I believe I shall soon hear; so I wait as best I can.  I am, beyond a doubt, greatly stronger, and yet still useless for any work, and, I may say, for any pleasure.  My affairs and the bad weather still keep me here unmarried; but not, I earnestly hope, for long.  Whenever I get into the mountain, I trust I shall rapidly pick up.  Until I get away from these sea fogs and my imprisonment in the house, I do not hope to do much more than keep from active harm.  My doctor took a desponding fit about me, and scared Fanny into blue fits; but I have talked her over again.  It is the change I want, and the blessed sun, and a gentle air in which I can sit out and see the trees and running water: these mere defensive hygienics cannot advance one, though they may prevent evil.  I do nothing now, but try to possess my soul in peace, and continue to possess my body on any terms.

Calistoga, Napa County, California.

All which is a fortnight old and not much to the point nowadays.  Here we are, Fanny and I, and a certain hound, in a lovely valley under Mount Saint Helena, looking around, or rather wondering when we shall begin to look around, for a house of our own.  I have received the first sheets of the Amateur Emigrant; not yet the second bunch, as announced.  It is a pretty heavy, emphatic piece of pedantry; but I don’t care; the public, I verily believe, will like it.  I have excised all you proposed and more on my own movement.  But I have not yet been able to rewrite the two special pieces which, as you said, so badly wanted it; it is hard work to rewrite passages in proof; and the easiest work is still hard to me.  But I am certainly recovering fast; a married and convalescent being.

Received James’s Hawthorne, on which I meditate a blast, Miss Bird, Dixon’s Penn, a wrong Cornhill (like my luck) and Coquelin: for all which, and especially the last, I tender my best thanks.  I have opened only James; it is very clever, very well written, and out of sight the most inside-out thing in the world; I have dug up the hatchet; a scalp shall flutter at my belt ere long.  I think my new book should be good; it will contain our adventures for the summer, so far as these are worth narrating; and I have already a few pages of diary which should make up bright.  I am going to repeat my old experiment, after buckling-to a while to write more correctly, lie down and have a wallow.  Whether I shall get any of my novels done this summer I do not know; I wish to finish the Vendetta first, for it really could not come after Prince Otto.  Lewis Campbell has made some noble work in that Agamemnon; it surprised me.  We hope to get a house at Silverado, a deserted mining-camp eight miles up the mountain, now solely inhabited by a mighty hunter answering to the name of Rufe Hansome, who slew last year a hundred and fifty deer.  This is the motto I propose for the new volume: ‘Vixerunt nonnulli in agris, delectati re sua familiari.  His idem propositum fuit quod regibus, ut ne qua re egerent, ne cui parerent, libertate uterentur; cujus proprium est sic vivere ut velis.’  I always have a terror lest the wish should have been father to the translation, when I come to quote; but that seems too plain sailing.  I should put regibus in capitals for the pleasantry’s sake.  We are in the Coast Range, that being so much cheaper to reach; the family, I hope, will soon follow.—Love to all, ever yours,

R. L. S.