to Sidney Colvin

608 Bush Street, San Francisco [December 26, 1879].

MY DEAR COLVIN,—I am now writing to you in a café waiting for some music to begin.  For four days I have spoken to no one but to my landlady or landlord or to restaurant waiters.  This is not a gay way to pass Christmas, is it? and I must own the guts are a little knocked out of me.  If I could work, I could worry through better.  But I have no style at command for the moment, with the second part of the Emigrant, the last of the novel, the essay on Thoreau, and God knows all, waiting for me.  But I trust something can be done with the first part, or, by God, I’ll starve here . . . . [161]

O Colvin, you don’t know how much good I have done myself.  I feared to think this out by myself.  I have made a base use of you, and it comes out so much better than I had dreamed.  But I have to stick to work now; and here’s December gone pretty near useless.  But, Lord love you, October and November saw a great harvest.  It might have affected the price of paper on the Pacific coast.  As for ink, they haven’t any, not what I call ink; only stuff to write cookery-books with, or the works of Hayley, or the pallid perambulations of the—I can find nobody to beat Hayley.  I like good, knock-me-down black-strap to write with; that makes a mark and done with it.—By the way, I have tried to read the Spectator, which they all say I imitate, and—it’s very wrong of me, I know—but I can’t.  It’s all very fine, you know, and all that, but it’s vapid.  They have just played the overture to Norma, and I know it’s a good one, for I bitterly wanted the opera to go on; I had just got thoroughly interested—and then no curtain to rise.

I have written myself into a kind of spirits, bless your dear heart, by your leave.  But this is wild work for me, nearly nine and me not back!  What will Mrs. Carson think of me!  Quite a night-hawk, I do declare.  You are the worst correspondent in the world—no, not that, Henley is that—well, I don’t know, I leave the pair of you to Him that made you—surely with small attention.  But here’s my service, and I’ll away home to my den O! much the better for this crack, Professor Colvin.

R. L. S.