e to tell them. So I jest, when I don't address my mind to it: when I
do, shall I be smit louting to my knee, as before the G. O. M.?
Probleme!--Yours ever,

R. L. S.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

In the two following letters are expressed some of the distress and
bitterness with which, in common with most Englishmen, Stevenson felt
the circumstances of Gordon's abandonment in the Soudan and the
failure of the belated attempt to rescue him. The advice to go on
with "my book" refers, if I remember right, to some scheme for the
republication in book form of stray magazine papers of mine of a more
or less personal or biographical nature.

_Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth, February 1885._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--You are indeed a backward correspondent, and much may
be said against you. But in this weather, and O dear! in this political
scene of degradation, much must be forgiven. I fear England is dead of
Burgessry, and only walks about galvanised. I do not love to think of my
countrymen these days; nor to remember myself. Why was I silent? I feel
I have no right to blame any one; but I won't write to the G. O. M. I do
really not see my way to any form of signature, unless "your fellow
criminal in the eyes of God," which might disquiet the proprieties.

About your book, I have always said: go on. The drawing of character is
a different thing from publishing the details of a private career. No
one objects to the first, or should object, if his name be not put upon
it; at the other, I draw the line. In a preface, if you chose, you might
distinguish; it is, besides, a thing for which you are eminently well
equipped, and which you would do with taste and incision. I long to see
the book. People like themselves (to explain a little more); no one
likes his life, which is a misbegotten issue, and a tale of failure. To
see these failures either touched upon, or _coasted_, to get the idea of
a spying eye and blabbing tongue about the house, is to lose all privacy
in life. To see that thing, which we do love, our character, set forth,
is ever gratifying. See how my _Talk and Talkers_ went; every one liked
his own portrait, and shrieked about other people's; so it will be with
yours. If you are the least true to the essential, the sitter will be
pleased; very likely not his friends, and that from _various motives_.

R. L. S.

When will your holiday be? I sent your letter to my wife, and forget.
Keep