to Sidney Colvin

Saranac Lake [December 1887].

MY DEAR COLVIN,—This goes to say that we are all fit, and the place is very bleak and wintry, and up to now has shown no such charms of climate as Davos, but is a place where men eat and where the cattarh, catarrh (cattarrh, or cattarrhh) appears to be unknown.  I walk in my verandy in the snaw, sir, looking down over one of those dabbled wintry landscapes that are (to be frank) so chilly to the human bosom, and up at a grey, English—nay, mehercle, Scottish—heaven; and I think it pretty bleak; and the wind swoops at me round the corner, like a lion, and fluffs the snow in my face; and I could aspire to be elsewhere; but yet I do not catch cold, and yet, when I come in, I eat.  So that hitherto Saranac, if not deliriously delectable, has not been a failure; nay, from the mere point of view of the wicked body, it has proved a success.  But I wish I could still get to the woods; alas, nous n’irons plus au bois is my poor song; the paths are buried, the dingles drifted full, a little walk is grown a long one; till spring comes, I fear the burthen will hold good.

I get along with my papers for Scribner not fast, nor so far specially well; only this last, the fourth one (which makes a third part of my whole task), I do believe is pulled off after a fashion.  It is a mere sermon: ‘Smith opens out’; [86] but it is true, and I find it touching and beneficial, to me at least; and I think there is some fine writing in it, some very apt and pregnant phrases.  Pulvis et Umbra, I call it; I might have called it a Darwinian Sermon, if I had wanted.  Its sentiments, although parsonic, will not offend even you, I believe.  The other three papers, I fear, bear many traces of effort, and the ungenuine inspiration of an income at so much per essay, and the honest desire of the incomer to give good measure for his money.  Well, I did my damndest anyway.

We have been reading H. James’s Roderick Hudson, which I eagerly press you to get at once: it is a book of a high order—the last volume in particular.  I wish Meredith would read it.  It took my breath away.

I am at the seventh book of the Æneid, and quite amazed at its merits (also very often floored by its difficulties).  The Circe passage at the beginning, and the sublime business of Amata with the simile of the boy’s top—O Lord, what a happy thought!—have specially delighted me.—I am, dear sir, your respected friend,

John Gregg Gillson, J.P., M.R.I.A., etc.