A LETTER TO EDMUND GOSSE
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, Jan. 2nd, 1886.
MY DEAR GOSSE, -- Thank you for your letter,
so interesting to my vanity. There is a
review in the St. James's, which, as it
seems to hold somewhat of your opinions,
and is besides written with a pen and not
a poker, we think may possibly be yours.
The "Prince"* has done fairly well in spite
of the reviews, which have been bad: he
was, as you doubtless saw, well slated in
the Saturday; one paper received it as a
child's story; another (picture my agony)
described it as a "Gilbert comedy." It
was amusing to see the race between me and
Justin M'Carthy: the Milesian has won by
a length.
That is the hard part of literature. You
aim high, and you take longer over your
work, and it will not be so successful as
if you had aimed low and rushed it. What
the public likes is work (of any kind) a
little loosely executed; so long as it is
a little wordy, a little slack, a little
dim and knotless, the dear public likes it;
it should (if possible) be a little dull
into the bargain. I know that good work
sometimes hits; but, with my hand on my
heart, I think it is by an accident. And
I know also that good work must succeed
at last; but that is not the doing of the
public; they are only shamed into silence
or affectation. I do not write for the
public; I do write for money, a nobler
deity; and most of all for myself, not
perhaps any more noble, but both more
intelligent and nearer home.
Let us tell each other sad stories of
the bestiality of the beasts whom we feed.
What he likes is the newspaper; and to
me the press is the mouth of a sewer,
where lying is professed as from an
university chair, and everything prurient,
and ignoble, and essentially dull, finds
its abode and pulpit. I do not like
mankind; but men, and not all of these --
and fewer women. As for respecting the
race, and, above all, that fatuous rabble
of burgesses called "the public," God
save me from such irreligion! -- that
way lies disgrace and dishonour. There
must be something wrong in me, or I
would not be popular.
This is perhaps a trifle stronger than
my sedate and permanent opinion. Not
much, I think. As for the art that we
practise, I have never been able to see
why its professors should be respected.
They chose the primrose path; when they
found it was not all primroses, but some
of it brambly, and much of it uphill,
they began to think and to speak of
themselves as holy martyrs. But a man
is never martyred in any honest sense
in the pursuit of his pleasure; and
delirium tremens has more of the honour
of the cross. We were full of the pride
of life, and chose, like prostitutes, to
live by a pleasure. We should be paid
if we give the pleasure we pretend to
give; but why should we be honoured?
I hope some day you and Mrs. Gosse will
come for a Sunday; but we must wait till
I am able to see people. I am very full
of Jenkin's life; it is painful, yet very
pleasant, to dig into the past of a dead
friend, and find him, at every spadeful,
shine brighter. I own, as I read, I
wonder more and more why he should have
taken me to be a friend. He had many
and obvious faults upon the face of him;
the heart was pure gold. I feel it little
pain to have lost him, for it is a loss
in which I cannot believe; I take it,
against reason, for an absence; if not
to-day, then to-morrow, I still fancy I
shall see him in the door; and then, now
when I know him better, how glad a meeting!
Yes, if I could believe in the immortality
business, the world would indeed be too
good to be true; but we were put here to
do what service we can, for honour and
not for hire: the sods cover us, and
the worm that never dies, the conscience,
sleeps well at last; these are the wages,
besides what we receive so lavishly day
by day; and they are enough for a man who
knows his own frailty and sees all things
in the proportion of reality. The soul
of piety was killed long ago by that idea
of reward. Nor is happiness, whether
eternal or temporal, the reward that
mankind seeks. Happinesses are but his
wayside campings; his soul is in the
journey; he was born for the struggle,
and only tastes his life in effort and
on the condition that he is opposed.
How, then, is such a creature, so fiery,
so pugnacious, so made up of discontent
and aspiration, and such noble and uneasy
passions -- how can he be rewarded but
by rest? I would not say it aloud; for
man's cherished belief is that he loves
that happiness which he continually
spurns and passes by; and this belief
in some ulterior happiness exactly fits
him. He does not require to stop and
taste it; he can be about the rugged
and bitter business where his heart lies;
and yet he can tell himself this fairy
tale of an eternal tea-party, and enjoy
the notion that he is both himself and
something else; and that his friends
will yet meet him, all ironed out and
emasculate, and still be lovable, -- as
if love did not live in the faults of
the beloved only, and draw its breath
in an unbroken round of forgiveness!
But the truth is, we must fight until
we die; and when we die there can be no
quiet for mankind but complete resumption
into -- what? -- God, let us say -- when
all these desperate tricks will lie
spellbound at last.
Here came my dinner and cut this sermon
short -- excusez.
R. L. S.
* "Prince Otto."
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