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THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
SWANSTON EDITION
VOLUME XXIV
_Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five
Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies
have been printed, of which only Two Thousand
Copies are for sale._
_This is No._ .......
[Illustration: TEMBINOKA, KING OF APEMAMA, WITH THE HEIR-APPARENT]
THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON
VOLUME TWENTY-FOUR
LONDON: PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND
WINDUS: IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL
AND COMPANY LIMITED: WILLIAM
HEINEMANN: AND LONGMANS GREEN
AND COMPANY MDCCCCXII
_For permission to use the_ LETTERS _in the_
SWANSTON EDITION OF STEVENSON'S WORKS
_the Publishers are indebted to the kindness of_
MESSRS. METHUEN & CO., LTD.
_ALL RIGHTS RESERVED_
THE LETTERS OF
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
EDITED BY
SIDNEY COLVIN
PARTS VII-X
CONTENTS
VII. THE RIVIERA AGAIN--MARSEILLES AND HYERES
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY 3
LETTERS--
To the Editor of the New York Tribune 7
To R. A. M. Stevenson 8
To Thomas Stevenson 9
To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 9
To Trevor Haddon 10
[Mrs. R. L. Stevenson to John Addington
Symonds] 11
To Charles Baxter 14
To Sidney Colvin 15
To Alison Cunningham 16
To W. E. Henley 17
To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 21
To Thomas Stevenson 22
To W. E. Henley 23
To Mrs. Sitwell 24
To Edmund Gosse 26
To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 27
To the Same 28
To Edmund Gosse 29
To the Same 30
To W. E. Henley 31
To the Same 32
To Sidney Colvin 33
To W. E. Henley 34
To the Same 36
To Jules Simoneau 36
To W. E. Henley 37
To Trevor Haddon 39
To Jules Simoneau 41
To Alison Cunningham 44
To Edmund Gosse 45
To Miss Ferrier 46
To W. E. Henley 47
To Edmund Gosse 50
To Miss Ferrier 52
To W. E. Henley 54
To Sidney Colvin 55
To W. E. Henley 57
To W. H. Low 57
To R. A. M. Stevenson 59
To Thomas Stevenson 62
To W. H. Low 63
To W. E. Henley 65
To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 66
To Sidney Colvin 67
To Sidney Colvin 69
To Mrs. Milne 70
To Miss Ferrier 71
To W. E. Henley 72
To W. H. Low 73
To Thomas Stevenson 74
To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 75
To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 76
To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 78
To W. E. Henley 79
To Sidney Colvin 81
To Mr. Dick 83
To Cosmo Monkhouse 85
To Edmund Gosse 87
To Miss Ferrier 88
To W. H. Low 89
To Thomas Stevenson 90
To W. E. Henley 91
To Trevor Haddon 93
To Cosmo Monkhouse 95
To W. E. Henley 96
To Edmund Gosse 97
To Sidney Colvin 98
To the Same 99
To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 100
To Sidney Colvin 101
To W. E. Henley 102
VIII. LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH
INTRODUCTORY 104
LETTERS--
To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 110
To Andrew Chatto 110
To W. E. Henley 111
To the Rev. Professor Lewis Campbell 113
To W. E. Henley 114
To W. H. Low 115
To Sir Walter Simpson 117
To Thomas Stevenson 118
To the Same 119
To W. E. Henley 120
To Charles Baxter 121
To Miss Ferrier 121
To Charles Baxter 122
To W. E. Henley 123
To Edmund Gosse 125
To Austin Dobson 126
To W. E. Henley 127
To Henry James 127
To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 130
To W. E. Henley 131
To Miss Ferrier 132
To W. E. Henley 133
To H. A. Jones 133
To Sidney Colvin 134
To Thomas Stevenson 135
To Sidney Golvin 136
To the Same 137
To J. A. Symonds 138
To Edmund Gosse 140
To W. H. Low 142
To P. G. Hamerton 143
To W. E. Henley 146
To the Same 147
To William Archer 147
To Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pennell 149
To Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin 150
To the Same 151
To C. Howard Carrington 152
To Katharine de Mattos 152
To W. H. Low 153
To W. E. Henley 155
To William Archer 156
To Thomas Stevenson 159
To Henry James 160
To William Archer 161
To the Same 163
To W. H. Low 166
To Mrs. de Mattos 167
To Alison Cunningham 167
To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 168
To W. H. Low 169
To Edmund Gosse 173
To James Payn 176
To W. H. Low 177
To Charles J. Guthrie 178
To Thomas Stevenson 179
To C. W. Stoddard 180
To Edmund Gosse 181
To J. A. Symonds 183
To F. W. H. Myers 184
To W. H. Low 185
To Sidney Colvin 186
To Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin 187
To Sidney Colvin 189
To Thomas Stevenson 190
To Miss Monroe 191
To Sidney Colvin 192
To Miss Monroe 193
To Alison Cunningham 196
To R. A. M. Stevenson 196
To the Same 198
To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 199
To Charles Baxter 200
To Alison Cunningham 200
To Thomas Stevenson 201
To Alison Cunningham 202
To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 202
To T. Watts-Dunton 203
To Alison Cunningham 204
To Frederick Locker-Lampson 205
To the Same 206
To the Same 207
To the Same 208
To Auguste Rodin 209
To Sidney Colvin 210
To Lady Taylor 211
To the Same 213
To Henry James 214
To Frederick Locker-Lampson 215
To Henry James 215
To Auguste Rodin 216
To W. H. Low 217
To Sidney Colvin 219
To Alison Cunningham 220
To Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin 221
To the Same 225
To Miss Rawlinson 227
To Sidney Colvin 228
To Sir Walter Simpson 229
To W. E. Henley 229
To W. H. Low 230
To Miss Adelaide Boodle 231
To Messrs. Chatto and Windus 231
IX. THE UNITED STATES AGAIN
WINTER IN THE ADIRONDACKS
INTRODUCTORY 233
LETTERS--
To Sidney Colvin 235
To the Same 236
To Henry James 237
To Sidney Colvin 238
To W. E. Henley 239
To R. A. M. Stevenson 240
To Sir Walter Simpson 242
To Edmund Gosse 244
To W. H. Low 245
To Charles Fairchild 246
To William Archer 247
To W. E. Henley 248
To Henry James 249
To Charles Baxter 251
To Charles Scribner 252
To E. L. Burlingame 253
To the Same 254
To John Addington Symonds 254
To W. E. Henley 257
To Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin 258
To Miss Adelaide Boodle 259
To Charles Baxter 260
To Miss Munroe 261
To Henry James 262
To Sidney Colvin 264
To the Same 265
To Miss Adelaide Boodle 267
To Charles Baxter 268
To E. L. Burlingame 268
To William Archer 270
To the Same 272
To the Same 273
To E. L. Burlingame 273
To the Same 274
To Sidney Colvin 275
To the Rev. Dr. Charteris 276
To Edmund Gosse 277
To Henry James 278
To the Rev. Dr. Charteris 279
To S. R. Crockett 280
To Miss Ferrier 282
To Sidney Colvin 283
To Miss Adelaide Boodle 284
To Sidney Colvin 285
To Charles Baxter 286
To Lady Taylor 286
To Homer St. Gaudens 287
To Henry James 288
X. PACIFIC VOYAGES
YACHT CASCO--SCHOONER EQUATOR--
S.S. JANET NICOLL
INTRODUCTORY 290
LETTERS--
To Sidney Colvin 293
To Charles Baxter 294
To Sidney Colvin 295
To Charles Baxter 296
To Miss Adelaide Boodle 297
To Sidney Colvin 298
To William and Thomas Archer 300
To Charles Baxter 301
To the Same 303
To John Addington Symonds 304
To Thomas Archer 305
[Mrs. R. L. Stevenson to Sidney Colvin] 308
To Sidney Colvin 316
To E. L. Burlingame 319
To Charles Baxter 322
To R. A. M. Stevenson 323
To Marcel Schwob 327
To Charles Baxter 327
To Sidney Colvin 329
[Mrs. R. L. Stevenson to Mrs. Sitwell] 331
To Henry James 334
To Sidney Colvin 336
To E. L. Burlingame 338
To Miss Adelaide Boodle 339
To Charles Baxter 343
To the Same 344
To W. H. Low 345
[Mrs. R. L. Stevenson to Sidney Colvin] 347
To Mrs. R. L. Stevenson 349
To Sidney Colvin 353
To James Payn 355
To Lady Taylor 357
To Sidney Colvin 357
To the Same 362
To E. L. Burlingame 367
To Charles Baxter 369
To Lady Taylor 372
To Dr. Scott 374
To Charles Baxter 375
To E. L. Burlingame 377
To James Payn 381
To Henry James 382
To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 383
To Charles Baxter 384
To Sidney Colvin 385
To E. L. Burlingame 387
To Charles Baxter 392
To E. L. Burlingame 394
To Henry James 396
To Marcel Schwob 397
To Andrew Lang 399
To Miss Adelaide Boodle 401
To Mrs. Charles Fairchild 403
THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
1882-1890
THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
VII
THE RIVIERA AGAIN--MARSEILLES AND HYERES
OCTOBER 1882--AUGUST 1884
In the two years and odd months since his return from California,
Stevenson had made no solid gain of health. His winters, and especially
his second winter, at Davos had seemed to do him much temporary good;
but during the summers in Scotland he had lost as much as he had gained,
or more. Loving the Mediterranean shores of France from of old, he now
made up his mind to try them once again.
As the ways and restrictions of a settled invalid were repugnant to
Stevenson's character and instincts, so were the life and society of a
regular invalid station depressing and uncongenial to him. He
determined, accordingly, to avoid settling in one of these, and hoped to
find a suitable climate and habitation that should be near, though not
in, some centre of the active and ordinary life of man, with accessible
markets, libraries, and other resources. In September 1882 he started
with his cousin Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson in search of a new home, and
thought first of trying the Languedoc coast, a region new to him. At
Montpellier, he was laid up again with a bad bout of his lung troubles;
and, the doctor not recommending him to stay, returned to Marseilles.
Here he was rejoined by his wife, and after a few days' exploration in
the neighbourhood they lighted on what seemed exactly the domicile they
wanted. This was a roomy and attractive enough house and garden called
the Campagne Defli, near the manufacturing suburb of St. Marcel, in a
sheltered position in full view of the shapely coastward hills. By the
third week in October they were installed, and in eager hopes of
pleasant days to come and a return to working health. These hopes were
not realised. Week after week went on, and the hemorrhages and fits of
fever and exhaustion did not diminish. Work, except occasional verses,
and a part of the story called _The Treasure of Franchard_, would not
flow, and the time had to be whiled away with games of patience and
other resources of the sick man. Nearly two months were thus passed;
during the whole of one of them Stevenson had not been able to go beyond
the garden; and by Christmas he had to face the fact that the air of the
place was tainted. An epidemic of fever, due to some defect of drainage,
broke out, and it became clear that this could be no home for Stevenson.
Accordingly, at his wife's instance, though having scarce the strength
to travel, he left suddenly for Nice, she staying behind to pack their
chattels and wind up their affairs and responsibilities as well as might
be. Various misadventures, miscarriages of telegrams, journeys taken at
cross purposes and the like, making existence uncomfortably dramatic at
the moment, caused the couple to believe for a while that they had
fairly lost each other. Mrs. Stevenson allows me to print a letter from
herself to Mr. J. A. Symonds vividly relating these predicaments (see
p. 11 foll.). At last, in the course of January, they came safely
together at Marseilles, and next made a few weeks' stay at Nice, where
Stevenson's health quickly mended. Thence they returned as far as
Hyeres. Staying here through the greater part of February, at the Hotel
des Iles d'Or, and finding the place to their liking, they cast about
once more for a resting-place, and were this time successful.
The house chosen by the Stevensons at Hyeres was not near the sea, but
inland, on the road above the old town and beneath the ruins of the
castle. The Chalet La Solitude it was called; a cramped but habitable
cottage built in the Swiss manner, with a pleasant strip of garden, and
a view and situation hardly to be bettered. Here he and his family lived
for the next sixteen months (March 1883 to July 1884). To the first part
of this period he often afterwards referred as the happiest time of his
life. His malady remained quiescent enough to afford, at least to his
own buoyant spirit, a strong hope of ultimate recovery. He delighted in
his surroundings, and realised for the first time the joys of a true
home of his own. The last shadow of a cloud between himself and his
parents had long passed away; and towards his father, now in declining
health, and often suffering from moods of constitutional depression, the
son begins on his part to assume, how touchingly and tenderly will be
seen from the following letters, a quasi-paternal attitude of
encouragement and monition. At the same time his work on the completion
of the _Silverado Squatters_, on _Prince Otto_, the _Child's Garden of
Verses_ (for which his own name was _Penny Whistles_), on the _Black
Arrow_ (designated hereinafter, on account of its Old English dialect,
as "tushery"), and other undertakings prospered well. In the autumn the
publication of _Treasure Island_ in book form brought with it the first
breath of popular applause. The reader will see how modest a price
Stevenson was content, nay, delighted, to receive for this classic. It
was two or three years yet before he could earn enough to support
himself and his family by literature: a thing he had always been
earnestly bent on doing, regarding it as the only justification for his
chosen way of life. In the meantime, it must be understood, whatever
help he needed from his father was from the hour of his marriage always
amply and ungrudgingly given.
In September of the same year, 1883, Stevenson had felt deeply the death
of his old friend James Walter Ferrier (see the essay _Old Mortality_
and the references in the following letters). But still his health held
out fairly, until, in January 1884, on a visit to Nice, he was
unexpectedly prostrated anew by an acute congestion of the internal
organs, which for the time being brought him to death's door. Returning
to his home, his recovery had been only partial when, after four months
(May 1884), a recurrence of violent hemorrhages from the lung once more
prostrated him completely; soon after which he quitted Hyeres, and the
epidemic of cholera which broke out there the same summer prevented all
thoughts of his return.
The Hyeres time, both during the happy and hard-working months of
March-December 1883, and the semi-convalescence of February-May 1884,
was a prolific one in the way of correspondence; and there is perhaps no
period of his life when his letters reflect so fully the variety of his
moods and the eagerness of his occupations.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE
At Marseilles, while waiting to occupy the house which he had leased
in the suburbs of that city, Stevenson learned that his old friend
and kind adviser, Mr. James Payn, with whom he had been intimate as
sub-editor of the Cornhill Magazine under Mr. Leslie Stephen in the
'70's, had been inadvertently represented in the columns of the New
York Tribune as a plagiarist of R. L. S. In order to put matters
right, he at once sent the following letter both to the Tribune and
to the London Athenaeum:--
_Terminus Hotel, Marseilles, October 16, 1882._
SIR,--It has come to my ears that you have lent the authority of your
columns to an error.
More than half in pleasantry--and I now think the pleasantry
ill-judged--I complained in a note to my _New Arabian Nights_ that some
one, who shall remain nameless for me, had borrowed the idea of a story
from one of mine. As if I had not borrowed the ideas of the half of my
own! As if any one who had written a story ill had a right to complain
of any other who should have written it better! I am indeed thoroughly
ashamed of the note, and of the principle which it implies.
But it is no mere abstract penitence which leads me to beg a corner of
your paper--it is the desire to defend the honour of a man of letters
equally known in America and England, of a man who could afford to lend
to me and yet be none the poorer; and who, if he would so far
condescend, has my free permission to borrow from me all that he can
find worth borrowing.
Indeed, sir, I am doubly surprised at your correspondent's error. That
James Payn should have borrowed from me is already a strange conception.
The author of _Lost Sir Massingberd_ and _By Proxy_ may be trusted to
invent his own stories. The author of _A Grape from a Thorn_ knows
enough, in his own right, of the humorous and pathetic sides of human
nature.
But what is far more monstrous--what argues total ignorance of the man
in question--is the idea that James Payn could ever have transgressed
the limits of professional propriety. I may tell his thousands of
readers on your side of the Atlantic that there breathes no man of
letters more inspired by kindness and generosity to his brethren of the
profession, and, to put an end to any possibility of error, I may be
allowed to add that I often have recourse, and that I had recourse once
more but a few weeks ago, to the valuable practical help which he makes
it his pleasure to extend to younger men.
I send a duplicate of this letter to a London weekly; for the mistake,
first set forth in your columns, has already reached England, and my
wanderings have made me perhaps last of the persons interested to hear a
word of it.--I am, etc.,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
_Terminus Hotel, Marseille_, _Saturday_ [_October 1882_].
MY DEAR BOB,--We have found a house!--at Saint Marcel, Banlieue de
Marseille. In a lovely valley between hills part wooded, part white
cliffs; a house of a dining-room, of a fine salon--one side lined with a
long divan--three good bedrooms (two of them with dressing-rooms), three
small rooms (chambers of _bonne_ and sich), a large kitchen, a lumber
room, many cupboards, a back court, a large olive yard, cultivated by a
resident _paysan_, a well, a berceau, a good deal of rockery, a little
pine shrubbery, a railway station in front, two lines of omnibus to
Marseille.
L48 per annum.
It is called Campagne Defli! query Campagne Debug? The Campagne
Demosquito goes on here nightly, and is very deadly. Ere we can get
installed, we shall be beggared to the door, I see.
I vote for separations; F.'s arrival here, after our separation, was
better fun to me than being married was by far. A separation completed
is a most valuable property; worth piles.--Ever your affectionate
cousin,
R. L. S.
TO THOMAS STEVENSON
_Terminus Hotel, Marseille, le 17th October 1882._
MY DEAR FATHER,--We grow, every time we see it, more delighted with our
house. It is five miles out of Marseilles, in a lovely spot, among
lovely wooded and cliffy hills--most mountainous in line--far lovelier,
to my eyes, than any Alps. To-day we have been out inventorying; and
though a mistral blew, it was delightful in an open cab, and our house
with the windows open was heavenly, soft, dry, sunny, southern. I fear
there are fleas--it is called Campagne Defli--and I look forward to tons
of insecticide being employed.
I have had to write a letter to the New York Tribune and the Athenaeum.
Payn was accused of stealing my stories! I think I have put things
handsomely for him.
Just got a servant!!!--Ever affectionate son,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Our servant is a Muckle Hash of a Weedy!
TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
The next two months' letters had perforce to consist of little save
bulletins of back-going health, and consequent disappointment and
incapacity for work.
_Campagne Defli, St. Marcel,
Banlieue de Marseille, November 13, 1882._
MY DEAR MOTHER,--Your delightful letters duly arrived this morning. They
were the only good feature of the day, which was not a success. Fanny
was in bed--she begged I would not split upon her, she felt so guilty;
but as I believe she is better this evening, and has a good chance to
be right again in a day or two, I will disregard her orders. I do not go
back, but do not go forward--or not much. It is, in one way,
miserable--for I can do no work; a very little wood-cutting, the
newspapers, and a note about every two days to write, completely
exhausts my surplus energy; even Patience I have to cultivate with
parsimony. I see, if I could only get to work, that we could live here
with comfort, almost with luxury. Even as it is, we should be able to
get through a considerable time of idleness. I like the place immensely,
though I have seen so little of it--I have only been once outside the
gate since I was here! It puts me in mind of a summer at Prestonpans and
a sickly child you once told me of.
Thirty-two years now finished! My twenty-ninth was in San Francisco, I
remember--rather a bleak birthday. The twenty-eighth was not much
better; but the rest have been usually pleasant days in pleasant
circumstances.
Love to you and to my father and to Cummy.
From me and Fanny and Wogg.
R. L. S.
TO TREVOR HADDON
_Campagne Defli, St. Marcel, Dec. 29th, 1882._
DEAR SIR,--I am glad you sent me your note, I had indeed lost your
address, and was half thinking to try the Ringstown one; but far from
being busy, I have been steadily ill. I was but three or four days in
London, waiting till one of my friends was able to accompany me, and had
neither time nor health to see anybody but some publisher people. Since
then I have been worse and better, better and worse, but never able to
do any work and for a large part of the time forbidden to write and even
to play Patience, that last of civilised amusements. In brief, I have
been "the sheer hulk" to a degree almost outside of my experience, and I
desire all my friends to forgive me my sins of omission this while
back. I only wish you were the only one to whom I owe a letter, or many
letters.
But you see, at least, you had done nothing to offend me; and I dare say
you will let me have a note from time to time, until we shall have
another chance to meet.--Yours sincerely, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
An excellent new year to you, and many of them.
If you chance to see a paragraph in the papers describing my illness,
and the "delicacies suitable to my invalid condition" cooked in copper,
and the other ridiculous and revolting yarns, pray regard it as a
spectral illusion, and pass by.
[MRS. R. L. STEVENSON TO JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
I intercalate here Mrs. Stevenson's extremely vivid and
characteristic account of the weird misadventures that befell the
pair during their retreat from St. Marcel in search of a healthier
home.
[_Campagne Defli, St. Marcel, January 1883._]
MY DEAR MR. SYMONDS,--What must you think of us? I hardly dare write to
you. What do you do when people to whom you have been the dearest of
friends requite you by acting like fiends? I do hope you heap coals of
fire on their heads in the good old Christian sense.
Louis has been very ill again. I hasten to say that he is now better.
But I thought at one time he would never be better again. He had
continual hemorrhages and became so weak that he was twice insensible in
one day, and was for a long time like one dead. At the worst fever broke
out in this village, typhus, I think, and all day the death-bells rang,
and we could hear the chanting whilst the wretched villagers carried
about their dead lying bare to the sun on their coffin-lids, so
spreading the contagion through the streets. The evening of the day when
Louis was so long insensible the weather changed, becoming very clear
and fine and greatly refreshing and reviving him. Then I said if it held
good he should start in the morning for Nice and try what a change might
do. Just at that time there was not money enough for the two of us, so
he had to start alone, though I expected soon to be able to follow him.
During the night a peasant-man died in a house in our garden, and in the
morning the corpse, hideously swollen in the stomach, was lying on its
coffin-lid at our gates. Fortunately it was taken away just before Louis
went, and he didn't see it nor hear anything about it until afterwards.
I had been back and forth all the morning from the door to the gates,
and from the gates to the door, in an agony lest Louis should have to
pass it on his way out.
I was to have a despatch from Toulon where Louis was to pass the night,
two hours from St. Marcel, and another from Nice, some few hours
further, the next day. I waited one, two, three, four days, and no word
came. Neither telegram nor letter. The evening of the fourth day I went
to Marseilles and telegraphed to the Toulon and Nice stations and to the
bureau of police. I had been pouring out letters to every place I could
think of. The people at Marseilles were very kind and advised me to take
no further steps to find my husband. He was certainly dead, they said.
It was plain that he stopped at some little station on the road,
speechless and dying, and it was now too late to do anything; I had much
better return at once to my friends. "Eet ofen 'appens so," said the
Secretary, and "Oh yes, all right, very well," added a Swiss in a
sympathetic voice. I waited all night at Marseilles and got no answer,
all the next day and got no answer; then I went back to St. Marcel and
there was nothing there. At eight I started on the train with Lloyd who
had come for his holidays, but it only took us to Toulon where again I
telegraphed. At last I got an answer the next day at noon. I waited at
Toulon for the train I had reason to believe Louis travelled by,
intending to stop at every station and inquire for him until I got to
Nice. Imagine what those days were to me. I never received any of the
letters Louis had written to me, and he was reading the first he had
received from me when I knocked at his door. A week afterwards I had an
answer from the police. Louis was much better: the change and the
doctor, who seems very clever, have done wonderful things for him. It
was during this first day of waiting that I received your letter. There
was a vague comfort in it like a hand offered in the darkness, but I did
not read it until long after.
We have had many other wild misadventures, Louis has twice (started)
actually from Nice under a misapprehension. At this moment I believe him
to be at Marseilles, stopping at the Hotel du Petit Louvre; I am
supposed to be packing here at St. Marcel, afterwards we are to go
somewhere, perhaps to the Lake of Geneva. My nerves were so shattered by
the terrible suspense I endured that memorable week that I have not been
fit to do much. When I was returning from Nice a dreadful old man with a
fat wife and a weak granddaughter sat opposite me and plied me with the
most extraordinary questions. He began by asking if Lloyd was any
connection of mine, and ended I believe by asking my mother's maiden
name. Another of the questions he put to me was where Louis wished to be
buried, and whether I could afford to have him embalmed when he died.
When the train stopped the only other passenger, a quiet man in a corner
who looked several times as if he wished to interfere and stop the old
man but was too shy, came to me and said that he knew Sidney Colvin and
he knew you, and that you were both friends of Louis; and that his name
was Basil Hammond,[1] and he wished to stay on a day in Marseilles and
help me work off my affairs. I accepted his offer with heartfelt thanks.
I was extremely ill next day, but we two went about and arranged about
giving up this house and what compensation, and did some things that I
could not have managed alone. My French is useful only in domestic
economy, and even that, I fear, is very curious and much of it patois.
Wasn't that a good fellow, and a kind fellow?--I cannot tell you how
grateful I am, words are such feeble things--at least for that purpose.
For anger, justifiable wrath, they are all too forcible. It was very bad
of me not to write to you, we talked of you so often and thought of you
so much, and I always said--"now I will write"--and then somehow I could
not....
FANNY V. DE G. STEVENSON.]
TO CHARLES BAXTER
After his Christmas flight to Marseilles and thence to Nice,
Stevenson began to mend quickly. In this letter to Mr. Baxter he
acknowledges the receipt of a specimen proof, set up for their
private amusement, of _Brashiana_, the series of burlesque sonnets he
had written at Davos in memory of the Edinburgh publican already
mentioned. It should be explained that in their correspondence
Stevenson and Mr. Baxter were accustomed to keep up an old play of
their student days by merging their identities in those of two
fictitious personages, Thomson and Johnson, imaginary types of
Edinburgh character, and ex-elders of the Scottish Kirk.
_Grand Hotel, Nice, 12th January '83._
DEAR CHARLES,--Thanks for your good letter. It is true, man, God's
trueth, what ye say about the body Stevison. The deil himsel, it's my
belief, couldnae get the soul harled oot o' the creature's wame, or he
had seen the hinder end o' they proofs. Ye crack o' Maecenas, he's
naebody by you! He gied the lad Horace a rax forrit by all accounts; but
he never gied him proofs like yon. Horace may hae been a better hand at
the clink than Stevison--mind, I'm no sayin' 't--but onyway he was never
sae weel prentit. Damned, but it's bonny! Hoo mony pages will there be,
think ye? Stevison maun hae sent ye the feck o' twenty sangs--fifteen
I'se warrant. Weel, that'll can make thretty pages, gin ye were to prent
on ae side only, whilk wad be perhaps what a man o' your _great_ idees
would be ettlin' at, man Johnson. Then there wad be the Pre-face, an'
prose ye ken prents oot langer than po'try at the hinder end, for ye hae
to say things in't. An' then there'll be a title-page and a dedication
and an index wi' the first lines like, and the deil an' a'. Man, it'll
be grand. Nae copies to be given to the Liberys.
I am alane myself, in Nice, they ca't, but damned, I think they micht as
well ca't Nesty. The Pile-on,[2] 's they ca't, 's aboot as big as the
river Tay at Perth; and it's rainin' maist like Greenock. Dod, I've seen
's had mair o' what they ca' the I-talian at Muttonhole. I-talian! I
haenae seen the sun for eicht and forty hours. Thomson's better, I
believe. But the body's fair attenyated. He's doon to seeven stane
eleeven, an' he sooks awa' at cod liver ile, till it's a fair disgrace.
Ye see he tak's it on a drap brandy; and it's my belief, it's just an
excuse for a dram. He an' Stevison gang aboot their lane, maistly;
they're company to either, like, an' whiles they'll speak o' Johnson.
But _he's_ far awa', losh me! Stevison's last book 's in a third
edeetion; an' it's bein' translated (like the psaulms of David, nae
less) into French; and an eediot they ca' Asher--a kind o' rival of
Tauchnitz--is bringin' him oot in a paper book for the Frenchies and the
German folk in twa volumes. Sae he's in luck, ye see.--Yours,
THOMSON.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
Stevenson here narrates in his own fashion by what generalship he at
last got rid of the Campagne Defli without having to pay compensation
as his wife expected.
_Hotel du Petit Louvre, Marseille, 15 Feb. 1883._
DEAR SIR,--This is to intimate to you that Mr. and Mrs. Robert Louis
Stevenson were yesterday safely delivered
of a
Campagne.
The parents are both doing much better than could be expected;
particularly the dear papa.
There, Colvin, I did it this time. Huge success. The proprietaires were
scattered like chaff. If it had not been the agent, may Israel now say,
if it had not been the agent who was on our side! But I made the agent
march! I threatened law; I was Immense--what do I say?--Immeasurable.
The agent, however, behaved well and is a fairly honest little
one-eared, white-eyed tom-cat of an opera-going gold-hunter. The
proprietaire _non est inventa_; we countermarched her, got in valuators;
and in place of a hundred francs in her pocket, she got nothing, and I
paid _one_ silver biscuit! It _might_ go further but I am convinced will
not, and anyway, I fear not the consequences.
The weather is incredible; my heart sings; my health satisfies even my
wife. I did jolly well right to come after all and she now admits it.
For she broke down as I knew she would, and I from here, without passing
a night at the Defli, though with a cruel effusion of coach-hires, took
up the wondrous tale and steered the ship through. I now sit crowned
with laurel and literally exulting in kudos. The affair has been better
managed than our two last winterings,--I am yours,
BRABAZON DRUM.
TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
The verses referred to in the following are those of the _Child's
Garden_.
[_Nice, February 1883._]
MY DEAR CUMMY,--You must think, and quite justly, that I am one of the
meanest rogues in creation. But though I do not write (which is a thing
I hate), it by no means follows that people are out of my mind. It is
natural that I should always think more or less about you, and still
more natural that I should think of you when I went back to Nice. But
the real reason why you have been more in my mind than usual is because
of some little verses that I have been writing, and that I mean to make
a book of; and the real reason of this letter (although I ought to have
written to you anyway) is that I have just seen that the book in
question must be dedicated to
ALISON CUNNINGHAM,
the only person who will really understand it, I don't know when it may
be ready, for it has to be illustrated, but I hope in the meantime you
may like the idea of what is to be; and when the time comes, I shall try
to make the dedication as pretty as I can make it. Of course, this is
only a flourish, like taking off one's hat; but still, a person who has
taken the trouble to write things does not dedicate them to any one
without meaning it; and you must just try to take this dedication in
place of a great many things that I might have said, and that I ought to
have done, to prove that I am not altogether unconscious of the great
debt of gratitude I owe you. This little book, which is all about my
childhood, should indeed go to no other person but you, who did so much
to make that childhood happy.
Do you know, we came very near sending for you this winter. If we had
not had news that you were ill too, I almost believe we should have done
so, we were so much in trouble.
I am now very well; but my wife has had a very, very bad spell, through
overwork and anxiety, when I was _lost_! I suppose you heard of that.
She sends you her love, and hopes you will write to her, though she no
more than I deserves it. She would add a word herself, but she is too
played out.--I am, ever your old boy,
R. L. S.
TO W. E. HENLEY
Stevenson was by this time beginning to send home some of the MS. of
the _Child's Garden_, the title of which had not yet been settled.
The pieces as first numbered are in a different order from that
afterwards adopted, but the reader will easily identify the
references.
[_Nice, March 1883._]
MY DEAR LAD,--This is to announce to you the MS. of Nursery Verses, now
numbering XLVIII. pieces or 599 verses, which, of course, one might
augment _ad infinitum_.
But here is my notion to make all clear.
I do not want a big ugly quarto; my soul sickens at the look of a
quarto. I want a refined octavo, not large--not _larger_ than the Donkey
book, at any price.
I think the full page might hold four verses of four lines, that is to
say, counting their blanks at two, of twenty-two lines in height. The
first page of each number would only hold two verses or ten lines, the
title being low down. At this rate, we should have seventy-eight or
eighty pages of letterpress.
The designs should not be in the text, but facing the poem; so that if
the artist liked, he might give two pages of design to every poem that
turned the leaf, _i.e._ longer than eight lines, _i.e._ to twenty-eight
out of the forty-six. I should say he would not use this privilege (?)
above five times, and some he might scorn to illustrate at all, so we
may say fifty drawings. I shall come to the drawings next.
But now you see my book of the thickness, since the drawings count two
pages, of 180 pages; and since the paper will perhaps be thicker, of
near two hundred by bulk. It is bound in a quiet green with the words in
thin gilt. Its shape is a slender, tall octavo. And it sells for the
publisher's fancy, and it will be a darling to look at; in short, it
would be like one of the original Heine books in type and spacing.
Now for the pictures. I take another sheet and begin to jot notes for
them when my imagination serves: I will run through the book, writing
when I have an idea. There, I have jotted enough to give the artist a
notion. Of course, I don't do more than contribute ideas, but I will be
happy to help in any and every way. I may as well add another idea; when
the artist finds nothing much to illustrate, a good drawing of any
_object_ mentioned in the text, were it only a loaf of bread or a
candlestick, is a most delightful thing to a young child. I remember
this keenly.
Of course, if the artist insists on a larger form, I must, I suppose,
bow my head. But my idea I am convinced is the best, and would make the
book truly, not fashionably pretty.
I forgot to mention that I shall have a dedication; I am going to
dedicate 'em to Cummy; it will please her, and lighten a little my
burthen of ingratitude. A low affair is the Muse business.
I will add no more to this lest you should want to communicate with the
artist; try another sheet. I wonder how many I'll keep wandering to.
O I forgot. As for the title, I think "Nursery Verses" the best. Poetry
is not the strong point of the text, and I shrink from any title that
might seem to claim that quality; otherwise we might have "Nursery
Muses" or "New Songs of Innocence" (but that were a blasphemy), or
"Rimes of Innocence": the last not bad, or--an idea--"The Jews' Harp,"
or--now I have it--"The Penny Whistle."
THE PENNY WHISTLE
NURSERY VERSES
BY
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
ILLUSTRATED BY ---- ---- ----
And here we have an excellent frontispiece, of a party playing on a P.
W. to a little ring of dancing children.
THE PENNY WHISTLE
is the name for me.
Fool! this is all wrong, here is the true name:--
PENNY WHISTLES
FOR SMALL WHISTLERS.
The second title is queried, it is perhaps better, as simply PENNY
WHISTLES.
Nor you, O Penny Whistler, grudge
That I your instrument debase:
By worse performers still we judge,
And give that fife a second place!
Crossed penny whistles on the cover, or else a sheaf of 'em.
SUGGESTIONS
IV. The procession--the child running behind it. The procession tailing
off through the gates of a cloudy city.
IX. _Foreign Lands._--This will, I think, want two plates--the child
climbing, his first glimpse over the garden wall, with what he sees--the
tree shooting higher and higher like the beanstalk, and the view
widening. The river slipping in. The road arriving in Fairyland.
X. _Windy Nights._--The child in bed listening--the horseman galloping.
XII. The child helplessly watching his ship--then he gets smaller, and
the doll joyfully comes alive--the pair landing on the island--the
ship's deck with the doll steering and the child firing the penny
cannon. Query two plates? The doll should never come properly alive.
XV. Building of the ship--storing her--Navigation--Tom's accident, the
other child paying no attention.
XXXI. _The Wind._--I sent you my notion of already.
XXXVII. _Foreign Children._--The foreign types dancing in a jing-a-ring,
with the English child pushing in the middle. The foreign children
looking at and showing each other marvels. The English child at the
leeside of a roast of beef. The English child sitting thinking with his
picture-books all round him, and the jing-a-ring of the foreign
children in miniature dancing over the picture-books.
XXXIX. Dear artist, can you do me that?
XLII. The child being started off--the bed sailing, curtains and all,
upon the sea--the child waking and finding himself at home; the corner
of toilette might be worked in to look like the pier.
XLVII. The lighted part of the room, to be carefully distinguished from
my child's dark hunting grounds. A shaded lamp.
R. L. S.
TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
_Hotel des Iles d'Or, Hyeres, Var, March 2 [1883]._
MY DEAR MOTHER,--It must be at least a fortnight since we have had a
scratch of a pen from you; and if it had not been for Cummy's letter, I
should have feared you were worse again: as it is, I hope we shall hear
from you to-day or to-morrow at latest.
_Health._--Our news is good: Fanny never got so bad as we feared, and we
hope now that this attack may pass off in threatenings. I am greatly
better, have gained flesh, strength, spirits; eat well, walk a good
deal, and do some work without fatigue. I am off the sick list.
_Lodging._--We have found a house up the hill, close to the town, an
excellent place though very, very little. If I can get the landlord to
agree to let us take it by the month just now, and let our month's rent
count for the year in case we take it on, you may expect to hear we are
again installed, and to receive a letter dated thus:--
La Solitude,
Hyeres-les-Palmiers,
Var.
If the man won't agree to that, of course I must just give it up, as the
house would be dear enough anyway at 2000 f. However, I hope we may get
it, as it is healthy, cheerful, and close to shops, and society, and
civilisation. The garden, which is above, is lovely, and will be cool in
summer. There are two rooms below with a kitchen, and four rooms above,
all told.--Ever your affectionate son, R. L. STEVENSON.
TO THOMAS STEVENSON
"Cassandra" was a nickname of the elder Mr. Stevenson for his
daughter-in-law. The scheme of a play to be founded on _Great
Expectations_ was one of a hundred formed in these days and
afterwards given up.
_Hotel des Iles d'Or, but my address will be Chalet la Solitude,
Hyeres-les-Palmiers, Var, France, March 17, 1883._
DEAR SIR,--Your undated favour from Eastbourne came to hand in course of
post, and I now hasten to acknowledge its receipt. We must ask you in
future, for the convenience of our business arrangements, to struggle
with and tread below your feet this most unsatisfactory and uncommercial
habit. Our Mr. Cassandra is better; our Mr. Wogg expresses himself
dissatisfied with our new place of business; when left alone in the
front shop, he bawled like a parrot; it is supposed the offices are
haunted.
To turn to the matter of your letter, your remarks on _Great
Expectations_ are very good. We have both re-read it this winter, and I,
in a manner, twice. The object being a play; the play, in its rough
outline, I now see: and it is extraordinary how much of Dickens had to
be discarded as unhuman, impossible, and ineffective: all that really
remains is the loan of a file (but from a grown-up young man who knows
what he was doing, and to a convict who, although he does not know it is
his father--the father knows it is his son), and the fact of the
convict-father's return and disclosure of himself to the son whom he has
made rich. Everything else has been thrown aside; and the position has
had to be explained by a prologue which is pretty strong. I have great
hopes of this piece, which is very amiable and, in places, very strong
indeed: but it was curious how Dickens had to be rolled away; he had
made his story turn on such improbabilities, such fantastic trifles, not
on a good human basis, such as I recognised. You are right about the
casts, they were a capital idea; a good description of them at first,
and then afterwards, say second, for the lawyer to have illustrated
points out of the history of the originals, dusting the particular
bust--that was all the development the thing would bear. Dickens killed
them. The only really well _executed_ scenes are the riverside ones; the
escape in particular is excellent; and I may add, the capture of the two
convicts at the beginning. Miss Havisham is, probably, the worst thing
in human fiction. But Wemmick I like; and I like Trabb's boy; and Mr.
Wopsle as Hamlet is splendid.
The weather here is greatly improved, and I hope in three days to be in
the chalet. That is, if I get some money to float me there.
I hope you are all right again, and will keep better. The month of March
is past its mid career; it must soon begin to turn toward the lamb; here
it has already begun to do so; and I hope milder weather will pick you
up. Wogg has eaten a forpet of rice and milk, his beard is streaming,
his eyes wild. I am besieged by demands of work from America.
The L50 has just arrived; many thanks; I am now at ease.--Ever your
affectionate son, _pro_ Cassandra, Wogg and Co.,
R. L. S.
TO W. E. HENLEY
[_Chalet la Solitude, Hyeres, April 1883._]
My head is singing with _Otto_; for the first two weeks I wrote and
revised and only finished IV chapters: last week, I have just drafted
straight ahead, and I have just finished Chapter XI. It will want a heap
of oversight and much will not stand, but the pace is good; about 28
Cornhill pp. drafted in seven days, and almost all of it
dialogue--indeed I may say all, for I have dismissed the rest very
summarily in the draft: one can always tickle at that. At the same rate,
the draft should be finished in ten days more; and then I shall have the
pleasure of beginning again at the beginning. Ah damned job! I have no
idea whether or not Otto will be good. It is all pitched pretty high and
stilted; almost like the Arabs, at that; but of course there is
love-making in Otto, and indeed a good deal of it. I sometimes feel very
weary; but the thing travels--and I like it when I am at it.
Remember me kindly to all.--Your ex-contributor,
R. L. S.
TO MRS. SITWELL
His correspondent had at his request been writing and despatching to
him fair copies of the various sets of verses for the _Child's
Garden_ (as the collection was ultimately called), which he had been
from time to time sending home.
_Chalet la Solitude, Hyeres [April 1883]._
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I am one of the lowest of the--but that's understood. I
received the copy, excellently written, with I think only one slip from
first to last. I have struck out two, and added five or six; so they now
number forty-five; when they are fifty, they shall out on the world. I
have not written a letter for a cruel time; I have been, and am, so
busy, drafting a long story (for me, I mean), about a hundred Cornhill
pages, or say about as long as the Donkey book: _Prince Otto_ it is
called, and is, at the present hour, a sore burthen but a hopeful. If I
had him all drafted, I should whistle and sing. But no: then I'll have
to rewrite him; and then there will be the publishers, alas! But some
time or other, I shall whistle and sing, I make no doubt.
I am going to make a fortune, it has not yet begun, for I am not yet
clear of debt; but as soon as I can, I begin upon the fortune. I shall
begin it with a halfpenny, and it shall end with horses and yachts and
all the fun of the fair. This is the first real grey hair in my
character: rapacity has begun to show, the greed of the protuberant
guttler. Well, doubtless, when the hour strikes, we must all guttle and
protube. But it comes hard on one who was always so willow-slender and
as careless as the daisies.
Truly I am in excellent spirits. I have crushed through a financial
crisis; Fanny is much better; I am in excellent health, and work from
four to five hours a day--from one to two above my average, that is; and
we all dwell together and make fortunes in the loveliest house you ever
saw, with a garden like a fairy story, and a view like a classical
landscape.
Little? Well, it is not large. And when you come to see us, you will
probably have to bed at the hotel, which is hard by. But it is Eden,
madam, Eden and Beulah and the Delectable Mountains and Eldorado and the
Hesperidean Isles and Bimini.[3]
We both look forward, my dear friend, with the greatest eagerness to
have you here. It seems it is not to be this season: but I appoint you
with an appointment for next season. You cannot see us else: remember
that. Till my health has grown solid like an oak-tree, till my fortune
begins really to spread its boughs like the same monarch of the woods
(and the acorn, ay de mi! is not yet planted), I expect to be a prisoner
among the palms.
Yes, it is like old times to be writing you from the Riviera, and after
all that has come and gone, who can predict anything? How fortune
tumbles men about! Yet I have not found that they change their friends,
thank God.
Both of our loves to your sister and yourself. As for me, if I am here
and happy, I know to whom I owe it; I know who made my way for me in
life, if that were all, and I remain, with love, your faithful friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO EDMUND GOSSE
"Gilder" in the following is of course the late R. W. Gilder, for
many years the admirable editor of the Century Magazine.
_Chalet la Solitude, Hyeres [April 1883]._
MY DEAR GOSSE,--I am very guilty; I should have written to you long ago;
and now, though it must be done, I am so stupid that I can only boldly
recapitulate. A phrase of three members is the outside of my syntax.
First, I like the _Rover_ better than any of your other verse. I believe
you are right, and can make stories in verse. The last two stanzas and
one or two in the beginning--but the two last above all--I thought
excellent. I suggest a pursuit of the vein. If you want a good story to
treat, get the _Memoirs of the Chevalier Johnstone_, and do his passage
of the Tay; it would be excellent: the dinner in the field, the woman he
has to follow, the dragoons, the timid boatmen, the brave lasses. It
would go like a charm; look at it, and you will say you owe me one.
Second, Gilder asking me for fiction, I suddenly took a great resolve,
and have packed off to him my new work, _The Silverado Squatters_. I do
not for a moment suppose he will take it; but pray say all the good
words you can for it. I should be awfully glad to get it taken. But if
it does not mean dibbs at once, I shall be ruined for life. Pray write
soon and beg Gilder your prettiest for a poor gentleman in pecuniary
sloughs.
Fourth, next time I am supposed to be at death's door write to me like
a Christian, and let not your correspondence attend on business.--Yours
ever,
R. L. S.
_P.S._--I see I have led you to conceive the _Squatters_ are fiction.
They are not, alas!
TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
_Chalet la Solitude, May 5 [1883]._
MY DEAREST PEOPLE,--I have had a great piece of news. There has been
offered for _Treasure Island_--how much do you suppose? I believe it
would be an excellent jest to keep the answer till my next letter. For
two cents I would do so. Shall I? Anyway, I'll turn the page first.
No--well--A hundred pounds, all alive, O! A hundred jingling, tingling,
golden, minted quid. Is not this wonderful? Add that I have now
finished, in draft, the fifteenth chapter of my novel, and have only
five before me, and you will see what cause of gratitude I have.
The weather, to look at the per contra sheet, continues vomitable; and
Fanny is quite out of sorts. But, really, with such cause of gladness, I
have not the heart to be dispirited by anything. My child's verse book
is finished, dedication and all, and out of my hands--you may tell
Cummy; _Silverado_ is done, too, and cast upon the waters; and this
novel so near completion, it does look as if I should support myself
without trouble in the future. If I have only health, I can, I thank
God. It is dreadful to be a great, big man, and not be able to buy
bread.
O that this may last!
I have to-day paid my rent for the half year, till the middle of
September, and got my lease: why they have been so long, I know not.
I wish you all sorts of good things.
When is our marriage day?--Your loving and ecstatic son,
TREESURE EILAAN.
It has been for me a Treasure Island verily.
TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
_La Solitude, Hyeres, May 8, 1883._
MY DEAR PEOPLE,--I was disgusted to hear my father was not so well. I
have a most troubled existence of work and business. But the work goes
well, which is the great affair. I meant to have written a most
delightful letter; too tired, however, and must stop. Perhaps I'll find
time to add to it ere post.
I have returned refreshed from eating, but have little time, as Lloyd
will go soon with the letters on his way to his tutor, Louis Robert
(!!!!), with whom he learns Latin in French, and French, I suppose, in
Latin, which seems to me a capital education. He, Lloyd, is a great
bicycler already, and has been long distances; he is most new-fangled
over his instrument, and does not willingly converse on other subjects.
Our lovely garden is a prey to snails; I have gathered about a bushel,
which, not having the heart to slay, I steal forth withal and deposit
near my neighbour's garden wall. As a case of casuistry, this presents
many points of interest. I loathe the snails, but from loathing to
actual butchery, trucidation of multitudes, there is still a step that I
hesitate to take. What, then, to do with them? My neighbour's vineyard,
pardy! It is a rich, villa, pleasure-garden of course; if it were a
peasant's patch, the snails, I suppose, would have to perish.
The weather these last three days has been much better, though it is
still windy and unkind. I keep splendidly well, and am cruelly busy,
with mighty little time even for a walk. And to write at all, under such
pressure, must be held to lean to virtue's side.
My financial prospects are shining. O if the health will hold, I should
easily support myself.--Your ever affectionate son,
R. L. S.
TO EDMUND GOSSE
_La Solitude, Hyeres-les-Palmiers, Var [May 20, 1883]._
MY DEAR GOSSE,--I enclose the receipt and the corrections. As for your
letter and Gilder's, I must take an hour or so to think; the matter much
importing--to me. The L40 was a heavenly thing.
I send the MS. by Henley, because he acts for me in all matters, and had
the thing, like all my other books, in his detention. He is my unpaid
agent--an admirable arrangement for me, and one that has rather more
than doubled my income on the spot.
If I have been long silent, think how long you were so and blush, sir,
blush.
I was rendered unwell by the arrival of your cheque, and, like Pepys,
"my hand still shakes to write of it." To this grateful emotion, and not
to D.T., please attribute the raggedness of my hand.
This year I should be able to live and keep my family on my own
earnings, and that in spite of eight months and more of perfect idleness
at the end of last and beginning of this. It is a sweet thought.
This spot, our garden and our view, are sub-celestial. I sing daily with
my Bunyan, that great bard,
"I dwell already the next door to Heaven!"
If you could see my roses, and my aloes, and my fig-marigolds, and my
olives, and my view over a plain, and my view of certain mountains as
graceful as Apollo, as severe as Zeus, you would not think the phrase
exaggerated.
It is blowing to-day a _hot_ mistral, which is the devil or a near
connection of his.
This to catch the post.--Yours affectionately,
R. L. STEVENSON.
TO EDMUND GOSSE
_La Solitude, Hyeres-les-Palmiers, Var, France, May 21, 1883._
MY DEAR GOSSE,--The night giveth advice, generally bad advice; but I
have taken it. And I have written direct to Gilder to tell him to keep
the book[4] back and go on with it in November at his leisure. I do not
know if this will come in time; if it doesn't, of course things will go
on in the way proposed. The L40, or, as I prefer to put it, the 1000
francs, has been such a piercing sun-ray as my whole grey life is gilt
withal. On the back of it I can endure. If these good days of Longman
and the Century only last, it will be a very green world, this that we
dwell in and that philosophers miscall. I have no taste for that
philosophy; give me large sums paid on the receipt of the MS. and
copyright reserved, and what do I care about the non-beent? Only I know
it can't last. The devil always has an imp or two in every house, and my
imps are getting lively. The good lady, the dear, kind lady, the sweet,
excellent lady, Nemesis, whom alone I adore, has fixed her wooden eye
upon me. I fall prone; spare me, Mother Nemesis! But catch her!
I must now go to bed; for I have had a whoreson influenza cold, and have
to lie down all day, and get up only to meals and the delights, June
delights, of business correspondence.
You said nothing about my subject for a poem. Don't you like it? My own
fishy eye has been fixed on it for prose, but I believe it could be
thrown out finely in verse, and hence I resign and pass the hand. Twig
the compliment?--Yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
TO W. E. HENLEY
"Tushery" had been a name in use between Stevenson and Mr. Henley for
romances of the _Ivanhoe_ type. He now applies it to his own tale of
the Wars of the Roses, _The Black Arrow_, written for Mr. Henderson's
Young Folks, of which the office was in Red Lion Court.
[Hyeres, May 1883.]
... The influenza has busted me a good deal; I have no spring, and am
headachy. So, as my good Red Lion Courier begged me for another
Butcher's Boy--I turned me to--what thinkest 'ou?--to Tushery, by the
mass! Ay, friend, a whole tale of tushery. And every tusher tushes me so
free, that may I be tushed if the whole thing is worth a tush. _The
Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest_ is his name: tush! a poor thing!
Will _Treasure Island_ proofs be coming soon, think you?
I will now make a confession. It was the sight of your maimed strength
and masterfulness that begot John Silver in _Treasure Island_. Of
course, he is not in any other quality or feature the least like you;
but the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded by the sound, was
entirely taken from you.
Otto is, as you say, not a thing to extend my public on. It is queer and
a little, little bit free; and some of the parties are immoral; and the
whole thing is not a romance, nor yet a comedy; nor yet a romantic
comedy; but a kind of preparation of some of the elements of all three
in a glass jar. I think it is not without merit, but I am not always on
the level of my argument, and some parts are false, and much of the rest
is thin; it is more a triumph for myself than anything else; for I see,
beyond it, better stuff. I have nine chapters ready, or almost ready,
for press. My feeling would be to get it placed anywhere for as much as
could be got for it, and rather in the shadow, till one saw the look of
it in print.--Ever yours,
PRETTY SICK.
TO W. E. HENLEY
_La Solitude, Hyeres-les-Palmiers, May 1883._
MY DEAR LAD,--The books came some time since, but I have not had the
pluck to answer: a shower of small troubles having fallen in, or
troubles that may be very large.
I have had to incur a huge vague debt for cleaning sewers; our house was
(of course) riddled with hidden cesspools, but that was infallible. I
have the fever, and feel the duty to work very heavy on me at times; yet
go it must. I have had to leave _Fontainebleau_, when three hours would
finish it, and go full-tilt at tushery for a while. But it will come
soon.
I think I can give you a good article on Hokusai; but that is for
afterwards; _Fontainebleau_ is first in hand.
By the way, my view is to give the _Penny Whistles_ to Crane or
Greenaway. But Crane, I think, is likeliest; he is a fellow who, at
least, always does his best.
Shall I ever have money enough to write a play?
O dire necessity!
A word in your ear: I don't like trying to support myself. I hate the
strain and the anxiety; and when unexpected expenses are foisted on me,
I feel the world is playing with false dice.--Now I must Tush, adieu.
AN ACHING, FEVERED, PENNY-JOURNALIST.
A lytle Jape of TUSHERIE.
By A. Tusher.
The pleasant river gushes
Among the meadows green;
At home the author tushes;
For him it flows unseen.
The Birds among the Bushes
May wanton on the spray;
But vain for him who tushes
The brightness of the day!
The frog among the rushes
Sits singing in the blue.
By'r la'kin! but these tushes
Are wearisome to do!
The task entirely crushes
The spirit of the bard:
God pity him who tushes--
His task is very hard.
The filthy gutter slushes,
The clouds are full of rain,
But doomed is he who tushes
To tush and tush again.
At morn with his hair-br_u_shes,
Still "tush" he says, and weeps;
At night again he tushes,
And tushes till he sleeps.
And when at length he pushes
Beyond the river dark--
'Las, to the man who tushes,
"Tush," shall be God's remark!
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
[_Chalet la Solitude, Hyeres, May 1883._]
COLVIN,--The attempt to correspond with you is vain. Well, well, then so
be it. I will from time to time write you an insulting letter, brief but
monstrous harsh. I regard you in the light of a genteel impostor. Your
name figures in the papers but never to a piece of letter-paper: well,
well.
News. I am well: Fanny been ill but better: _Otto_ about three-quarters
done; _Silverado_ proofs a terrible job--it is a most unequal work--new
wine in old bottles--large rats, small bottles:[5] as usual,
penniless--O but penniless: still, with four articles in hand (say L35)
and the L100 for _Silverado_ imminent, not hopeless.
Why am I so penniless, ever, ever penniless, ever, ever
penny-penny-penniless and dry?
The birds upon the thorn,
The poppies in the corn,
They surely are more fortunate or prudenter than I!
In Arabia, everybody is called the Father of something or other for
convenience or insult's sake. Thus you are "the Father of Prints," or of
"Bummkopferies," or "Father of Unanswered Correspondence." They would
instantly dub Henley "the Father of Wooden Legs"; me they would
denominate the "Father of Bones," and Matthew Arnold "the Father of
Eyeglasses."
I have accepted most of the excisions. Proposed titles:--
The Innocent Muse.
A Child's Garden of Rhymes.
Songs of the Playroom.
Nursery Songs.
I like the first?
R. L. S.
TO W. E. HENLEY
_La Solitude, Hyeres, May or June 1883._
DEAR LAD,--Snatches in return for yours; for this little once, I'm well
to windward of you.
Seventeen chapters of _Otto_ are now drafted, and finding I was working
through my voice and getting screechy, I have turned back again to
rewrite the earlier part. It has, I do believe, some merit: of what
order, of course, I am the last to know; and, triumph of triumphs, my
wife--my wife who hates and loathes and slates my women--admits a great
part of my Countess to be on the spot.
Yes, I could borrow, but it is the joy of being before the public, for
once. Really, L100 is a sight more than _Treasure Island_ is worth.
The reason of my _deche_? Well, if you begin one house, have to desert
it, begin another, and are eight months without doing any work, you will
be in a _deche_ too. I am not in a _deche_, however; _distingue_--I
would fain distinguish; I am rather a swell, but _not solvent_. At a
touch the edifice, _aedificium_, might collapse. If my creditors began to
babble around me, I would sink with a slow strain of music into the
crimson west. The difficulty in my elegant villa is to find oil,
_oleum_, for the dam axles. But I've paid my rent until September; and
beyond the chemist, the grocer, the baker, the doctor, the gardener,
Lloyd's teacher, and the great chief creditor Death, I can snap my
fingers at all men. Why will people spring bills on you? I try to make
'em charge me at the moment; they won't, the money goes, the debt
remains.--The Required Play is in the _Merry Men_.
Q. E. F.
I thus render honour to your _flair_; it came on me of a clap; I do not
see it yet beyond a kind of sunset glory. But it's there: passion,
romance, the picturesque, involved: startling, simple, horrid: a
sea-pink in sea-froth! _S'agit de la desenterrer._ "Help!" cries a
buried masterpiece.
Once I see my way to the year's end, clear, I turn to plays; till then I
grind at letters; finish _Otto_; write, say, a couple of my _Traveller's
Tales_; and then, if all my ships come home, I will attack the drama in
earnest. I cannot mix the skeins. Thus, though I'm morally sure there
is a play in _Otto_, I dare not look for it: I shoot straight at the
story.
As a story, a comedy, I think _Otto_ very well constructed; the echoes
are very good, all the sentiments change round, and the points of view
are continually, and, I think (if you please), happily contrasted. None
of it is exactly funny, but some of it is smiling.
R. L. S.
TO W. E. HENLEY
The verses alluded to are some of those afterwards collected in
_Underwoods_.
[_Chalet la Solitude, Hyeres, May or June 1883._]
DEAR HENLEY,--You may be surprised to hear that I am now a great writer
of verses; that is, however, so. I have the mania now like my betters,
and faith, if I live till I am forty, I shall have a book of rhymes like
Pollock, Gosse, or whom you please. Really, I have begun to learn some
of the rudiments of that trade, and have written three or four pretty
enough pieces of octosyllabic nonsense, semi-serious, semi-smiling. A
kind of prose Herrick, divested of the gift of verse, and you behold the
Bard. But I like it.
R. L. S.
TO JULES SIMONEAU
This friend was the keeper of the inn and restaurant where Stevenson
had boarded at Monterey in the autumn of 1879. In writing French, as
will be seen, Stevenson had always more grip of idiom than of
grammar.
[_La Solitude, Hyeres, May or June 1883_.]
MON CHER ET BON SIMONEAU,--J'ai commence plusieurs fois de vous ecrire;
et voila-t-il pas qu'un empechement quelconque est arrive toujours. La
lettre ne part pas; et je vous laisse toujours dans le droit de
soupconner mon coeur. Mon bon ami, ne pensez pas que je vous ai
oublie ou que je vous oublierai jamais. Il n'en est de rien. Votre bon
souvenir me tient de bien pres, et je le garderai jusqu'a la mort.
J'ai failli mourir de bien pres; mais me voici bien retabli, bien que
toujours un peu chetif et malingre. J'habite, comme vous voyez, la
France. Je travaille beaucoup, et je commence a ne pas etre le dernier;
deja on me dispute ce que j'ecris, et je n'ai pas a me plaindre de ce
que l'on appelle les honoraires. Me voici alors tres affaire, tres
heureux dans mon menage, gate par ma femme, habitant la plus petite
maisonette dans le plus beau jardin du monde, et voyant de mes fen etres
la mer, les isles d'Hyeres, et les belles collines, montagnes et forts
de Toulon.
Et vous, mon tres cher ami? Comment cela va-t-il? Comment vous
portez-vous? Comment va le commerce? Comment aimez vous le pays? et
l'enfant? et la femme? Et enfin toutes les questions possibles.
Ecrivez-moi donc bien vite, cher Simoneau. Et quant a moi, je vous
promets que vous entendrez bien vite parler de moi; je vous _recrirai_
sous peu, et je vous enverrai un de mes livres. Ceci n'est qu'un
serrement de main, _from the bottom of my heart, dear and kind old
man_.--Your friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO W. E. HENLEY
The "new dictionary" means, of course, the first instalments of the
great Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, edited by Dr. J. A.
H. Murray.
_La Solitude, Hyeres [June 1883]._
DEAR LAD,--I was delighted to hear the good news about ----. Bravo, he
goes uphill fast. Let him beware of vanity, and he will go higher; let
him be still discontented, and let him (if it might be) see the merits
and not the faults of his rivals, and he may swarm at last to the
top-gallant. There is no other way. Admiration is the only road to
excellence; and the critical spirit kills, but envy and injustice are
putrefaction on its feet.
Thus far the moralist. The eager author now begs to know whether you may
have got the other Whistles, and whether a fresh proof is to be taken;
also whether in that case the dedication should not be printed
therewith; _B_ulk _D_elights _P_ublishers (original aphorism; to be said
sixteen times in succession as a test of sobriety).
Your wild and ravening commands were received; but cannot be obeyed. And
anyway, I do assure you I am getting better every day; and if the
weather would but turn, I should soon be observed to walk in hornpipes.
Truly I am on the mend. I am still very careful. I have the new
dictionary; a joy, a thing of beauty, and--bulk. I shall be raked i' the
mools before it's finished; that is the only pity; but meanwhile I sing.
I beg to inform you that I, Robert Louis Stevenson, author of
_Brashiana_ and other works, am merely beginning to commence to prepare
to make a first start at trying to understand my profession. O the
height and depth of novelty and worth in any art! and O that I am
privileged to swim and shoulder through such oceans! Could one get out
of sight of land--all in the blue? Alas not, being anchored here in
flesh, and the bonds of logic being still about us.
But what a great space and a great air there is in these small shallows
where alone we venture! and how new each sight, squall, calm, or
sunrise! An art is a fine fortune, a palace in a park, a band of music,
health, and physical beauty; all but love--to any worthy practiser. I
sleep upon my art for a pillow; I waken in my art; I am unready for
death, because I hate to leave it. I love my wife, I do not know how
much, nor can, nor shall, unless I lost her; but while I can conceive my
being widowed, I refuse the offering of life without my art. I _am_ not
but in my art; it is me; I am the body of it merely.
And yet I produce nothing, am the author of _Brashiana_ and other works:
tiddy-iddity--as if the works one wrote were anything but 'prentice's
experiments. Dear reader, I deceive you with husks, the real works and
all the pleasure are still mine and incommunicable. After this break in
my work, beginning to return to it, as from light sleep, I wax
exclamatory, as you see.
Sursum Corda:
Heave ahead:
Here's luck.
Art and Blue Heaven,
April and God's Larks.
Green reeds and the sky-scattering river.
A stately music.
Enter God!
R. L. S.
Ay, but you know, until a man can write that "Enter God," he has made no
art! None! Come, let us take counsel together and make some!
TO TREVOR HADDON
During the height of the Provencal summer, for July and part of
August, Stevenson went with his wife to the Baths of Royat in
Auvergne (travelling necessarily by way of Clermont-Ferrand). His
parents joined them at Royat for part of their visit. This and
possibly the next following letters were written during the trip. The
news here referred to was that his correspondent had won a
scholarship at the Slade School.
_La Solitude, Hyeres. But just now writing from
Clermont-Ferrand, July 5, 1883._
DEAR MR. HADDON,--Your note with its piece of excellent news duly
reached me. I am delighted to hear of your success: selfishly so; for it
is pleasant to see that one whom I suppose I may call an admirer is no
fool. I wish you more and more prosperity, and to be devoted to your
art. An art is the very gist of life; it grows with you; you will never
weary of an art at which you fervently and superstitiously labour.
Superstitiously: I mean, think more of it than it deserves; be blind to
its faults, as with a wife or father; forget the world in a technical
trifle. The world is very serious; art is the cure of that, and must be
taken very lightly; but to take art lightly, you must first be stupidly
owlishly in earnest over it. When I made Casimir say "Tiens" at the end,
I made a blunder. I thought it was what Casimir would have said and I
put it down. As your question shows, it should have been left out. It
was a "patch" of realism, and an anti-climax. Beware of realism; it is
the devil; 'tis one of the means of art, and now they make it the end!
And such is the farce of the age in which a man lives, that we all, even
those of us who most detest it, sin by realism.
Notes for the student of any art.
1. Keep an intelligent eye upon _all_ the others. It is only by doing so
that you come to see what Art is: Art is the end common to them all, it
is none of the points by which they differ.
2. In this age beware of realism.
3. In your own art, bow your head over technique. Think of technique
when you rise and when you go to bed. Forget purposes in the meanwhile;
get to love technical processes; to glory in technical successes; get to
see the world entirely through technical spectacles, to see it entirely
in terms of what you can do. Then when you have anything to say, the
language will be apt and copious.
My health is better.
I have no photograph just now; but when I get one you shall have a copy.
It will not be like me; sometimes I turn out a capital, fresh bank
clerk; once I came out the image of Runjeet Singh; again the treacherous
sun has fixed me in the character of a travelling evangelist. It's quite
a lottery; but whatever the next venture proves to be, soldier, sailor,
tinker, tailor, you shall have a proof. Reciprocate. The truth is I have
no appearance; a certain air of disreputability is the one constant
character that my face presents: the rest change like water. But still I
am lean, and still disreputable.
Cling to your youth. It is an artistic stock in trade. Don't give in
that you are ageing, and you won't age. I have exactly the same faults
and qualities still; only a little duller, greedier and better tempered;
a little less tolerant of pain and more tolerant of tedium. The last is
a great thing for life but--query?--a bad endowment for art?
Another note for the art student.
4. See the good in other people's work; it will never be yours. See the
bad in your own, and don't cry about it; it will be there always. Try to
use your faults; at any rate use your knowledge of them, and don't run
your head against stone walls. Art is not like theology; nothing is
forced. You have not to represent the world. You have to represent only
what you can represent with pleasure and effect, and the only way to
find out what that is is by technical exercise.--Yours sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO JULES SIMONEAU
[_Hyeres or Royat, Summer 1883._]
MY DEAR FRIEND SIMONEAU,--It would be difficult to tell how glad I was
to get your letter with your good news and kind remembrances, it did my
heart good to the bottom. I shall never forget the good time we had
together, the many long talks, the games of chess, the flute on an
occasion, and the excellent food. Now I am in clover, only my health a
mere ruined temple; the ivy grows along its shattered front, otherwise,
I have no wish that is not fulfilled: a beautiful large garden, a fine
view of plain, sea and mountain; a wife that suits me down to the
ground, and a barrel of good Beaujolais. To this I must add that my
books grow steadily more popular, and if I could only avoid illness I
should be well to do for money, as it is, I keep pretty near the wind.
Have I other means? I doubt it. I saw Francois here; and it was in some
respects sad to see him, pining in the ungenial life and not, I think,
very well pleased with his relatives. The young men, it is true, adored
him, but his niece tried to pump me about what money I had, with an
effrontery I was glad to disappoint. How he spoke of you I need not tell
you. He is your true friend, dear Simoneau, and your ears should have
tingled when we met, for we talked of little but yourself.
The papers you speak about are past dates but I will send you a paper
from time to time, as soon as I am able to go out again. We were both
well pleased to hear of your marriage, and both Mrs. Stevenson and
myself beg to be remembered with the kindest wishes to Mrs. Simoneau. I
am glad you have done this. All races are better away from their own
country; but I think you French improve the most of all. At home, I like
you well enough, but give me the Frenchman abroad! Had you stayed at
home, you would probably have acted otherwise. Consult your
consciousness, and you will think as I do. How about a law condemning
the people of every country to be educated in another, to change sons in
short? Should we not gain all around? Would not the Englishman unlearn
hypocrisy? Would not the Frenchman learn to put some heart into his
friendships? I name what strikes me as the two most obvious defects of
the two nations. The French might also learn to be a little less
rapacious to women and the English to be a little more honest.
Indeed their merits and defects make a balance.
The English. The French.
hypocrites free from hypocrisy
good, stout reliable friends incapable of friendship
dishonest to the root fairly honest
fairly decent to women. rather indecent to women.
There is my table, not at all the usual one, but yes, I think you will
agree with it. And by travel, each race can cure much of its defects and
acquire much of the others' virtues. Let us say that you and I are
complete! You are anyway: I would not change a hair of you. The
Americans hold the English faults: dishonest and hypocrites, perhaps not
so strongly but still to the exclusion of others. It is strange that
such mean defects should be so hard to eradicate, after a century of
separation, and so great an admixture of other blood.
Your stay in Mexico must have been interesting indeed: and it is natural
you should be so keen against the Church on this side, we have a painful
exhibition of the other side: the _libre-penseur_ a mere priest without
the sacraments, the narrowest tyranny of intolerance popular, and in
fact a repetition in the XIXth century of theological ill-feeling minus
the sermons. We have speeches instead. I met the other day one of the
new lay schoolmasters of France; a pleasant cultivated man, and for some
time listened to his ravings. "In short," I said, "you are like Louis
Quatorze, you wish to drive out of France all who do not agree with
you." I thought he would protest; not he!--"Oui, Monsieur," was his
answer. And that is the cause of liberty and free thought! But the race
of man was born tyrannical; doubtless Adam beat Eve, and when all the
rest are dead the last man will be found beating the last dog. In the
land of Padre d. R. you see the old tyranny still active on its
crutches; in this land, I begin to see the new, a fat fellow, out of
leading-strings and already killing flies.
This letter drones along unprofitably enough. Let me put a period to my
divagations. Write again soon, and let me hear good news of you, and I
will try to be more quick of answer.
And with the best wishes to yourself and all your family, believe me,
your sincere friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
The persons mentioned below in the third paragraph are cousins of the
writer and playmates of his childhood; two of them, christened Lewis
like himself after their Balfour grandfather, had been nicknamed
after their birthplaces "Delhi" and "Cramond" to avoid confusion.
Mount Chessie is a beautiful place near Lasswade: "Cummy" has
described his delight when she cut whistles for him there out of a
plane-tree.
[_Hyeres or Royat, Summer_ 1883.]
MY DEAR CUMMY,--Yes, I own I am a real bad correspondent, and am as bad
as can be in most directions.
I have been adding some more poems to your book. I wish they would look
sharp about it; but, you see, they are trying to find a good artist to
make the illustrations, without which no child would give a kick for it.
It will be quite a fine work, I hope. The dedication is a poem too, and
has been quite a long while written, but I do not mean you to see it
till you get the book; keep the jelly for the last, you know, as you
would often recommend in former days, so now you can take your own
medicine.
I am very sorry to hear you have been so poorly; I have been very well;
it used to be quite the other way, used it not? Do you remember making
the whistle at Mount Chessie? I do not think it _was_ my knife; I
believe it was yours; but rhyme is a very great monarch, and goes before
honesty, in these affairs at least. Do you remember, at Warriston, one
autumn Sunday, when the beech nuts were on the ground, seeing heaven
open? I would like to make a rhyme of that, but cannot.
Is it not strange to think of all the changes: Bob, Cramond, Delhi,
Minnie, and Henrietta, all married, and fathers and mothers, and your
humble servant just the one point better off? And such a little while
ago all children together! The time goes swift and wonderfully even; and
if we are no worse than we are, we should be grateful to the power that
guides us. For more than a generation I have now been to the fore in
this rough world, and been most tenderly helped, and done cruelly wrong,
and yet escaped; and here I am still, the worse for wear, but with some
fight in me still, and not unthankful--no, surely not unthankful, or I
were then the worst of human things!
My little dog is a very much better child in every way, both more loving
and more amiable; but he is not fond of strangers, and is, like most of
his kind, a great, specious humbug.
Fanny has been ill, but is much better again; she now goes donkey rides
with an old woman, who compliments her on her French. That old
woman--seventy odd--is in a parlous spiritual state.
Pretty soon, in the new sixpenny illustrated magazine, Wogg's picture is
to appear: this is a great honour! And the poor soul, whose vanity would
just explode if he could understand it, will never be a bit the
wiser!--With much love, in which Fanny joins, believe me, your
affectionate boy,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO EDMUND GOSSE
The reference is to Mr. Gosse's volume called _Seventeenth Century
Studies_.
[_Hyeres or Royat, Summer 1883._]
MY DEAR GOSSE,--I have now leisurely read your volume; pretty soon, by
the way, you will receive one of mine.
It is a pleasant, instructive, and scholarly volume. The three best
being, quite out of sight--Crashaw, Otway, and Etherege. They are
excellent; I hesitate between them; but perhaps Crashaw is the most
brilliant.
Your Webster is not my Webster; nor your Herrick my Herrick. On these
matters we must fire a gun to leeward, show our colours, and go by.
Argument is impossible. They are two of my favourite authors: Herrick
above all: I suppose they are two of yours. Well, Janus-like, they do
behold us two with diverse countenances, few features are common to
these different avatars; and we can but agree to differ, but still with
gratitude to our entertainers, like two guests at the same dinner, one
of whom takes clear and one white soup. By my way of thinking, neither
of us need be wrong.
The other papers are all interesting, adequate, clear, and with a
pleasant spice of the romantic. It is a book you may be well pleased to
have so finished, and will do you much good. The Crashaw is capital:
capital; I like the taste of it. Preface clean and dignified. The
handling throughout workmanlike, with some four or five touches of
preciosity, which I regret.
With my thanks for information, entertainment, and a pleasurable envy
here and there.--Yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
TO MISS FERRIER
Soon after he was settled again at Hyeres, Stevenson had a great
shock in the death of one of the oldest and most intimate of his
friends of Edinburgh days, Mr. James Walter Ferrier (see the essay
_Old Mortality_ in _Memories and Portraits_). It is in accordance
with the expressed wish of this gentleman's surviving sister that
publicity is given to the following letters:--
_La Solitude, Hyeres_ [_Sept. 1883_].
MY DEAR MISS FERRIER,--They say Walter is gone. You, who know how I have
neglected him, will conceive my remorse. I had another letter written;
when I heard he was worse, I promised myself to wake up for the last
time. Alas, too late!
My dear Walter, set apart that terrible disease, was, in his right mind,
the best and gentlest gentleman. God knows he would never intentionally
hurt a soul.
Well, he is done with his troubles and out of his long sickness, and I
dare say is glad to be at peace and out of the body, which in him seemed
the enemy of the fine and kind spirit. He is the first friend I have
ever lost, and I find it difficult to say anything and fear to intrude
upon your grief. But I had to try to tell you how much I shared it.
Could you get any one to tell me particulars? Do not write yourself of
course--I do not mean that; but some one else.
R. L. S.
TO W. E. HENLEY
_La Solitude, Hyeres, September 19, 1883._
DEAR BOY,--Our letters vigorously cross: you will ere this have received
a note to Coggie: God knows what was in it.
It is strange, a little before the first word you sent me--so
late--kindly late, I know and feel--I was thinking in my bed, when I
knew you I had six friends--Bob I had by nature; then came the good
James Walter--with all his failings--the _gentleman_ of the lot, alas to
sink so low, alas to do so little, but now, thank God, in his quiet
rest; next I found Baxter--well do I remember telling Walter I had
unearthed "a W.S. that I thought would do"--it was in the Academy Lane,
and he questioned me as to the Signet's qualifications; fourth came
Simpson; somewhere about the same time, I began to get intimate with
Jenkin; last came Colvin. Then, one black winter afternoon, long Leslie
Stephen, in his velvet jacket, met me in the Spec. by appointment, took
me over to the infirmary, and in the crackling, blighting gas-light
showed me that old head whose excellent representation I see before me
in the photograph. Now when a man has six friends, to introduce a
seventh is usually hopeless. Yet when you were presented, you took to
them and they to you upon the nail. You must have been a fine fellow;
but what a singular fortune I must have had in my six friends that you
should take to all. I don't know if it is good Latin, most probably
not: but this is enscrolled before my eyes for Walter: _Tandem e nubibus
in apricum properat_. Rest, I suppose, I know, was all that remained;
but O to look back, to remember all the mirth, all the kindness, all the
humorous limitations and loved defects of that character; to think that
he was young with me, sharing that weather-beaten, Fergussonian youth,
looking forward through the clouds to the sunburst; and now clean gone
from my path, silent--well, well. This has been a strange awakening.
Last night, when I was alone in the house, with the window open on the
lovely still night, I could have sworn he was in the room with me; I
could show you the spot; and, what was very curious, I heard his rich
laughter, a thing I had not called to mind for I know not how long.
I see his coral waistcoat studs that he wore the first time he dined in
my house; I see his attitude, leaning back a little, already with
something of a portly air, and laughing internally. How I admired him!
And now in the West Kirk.
I am trying to write out this haunting bodily sense of absence; besides,
what else should I write of?
Yes, looking back, I think of him as one who was good, though sometimes
clouded. He was the only gentle one of all my friends, save perhaps the
other Walter. And he was certainly the only modest man among the lot. He
never gave himself away; he kept back his secret; there was always a
gentle problem behind all. Dear, dear, what a wreck; and yet how
pleasant is the retrospect! God doeth all things well, though by what
strange, solemn, and murderous contrivances!
It is strange: he was the only man I ever loved who did not habitually
interrupt. The fact draws my own portrait. And it is one of the many
reasons why I count myself honoured by his friendship. A man like you
_had_ to like me; you could not help yourself; but Ferrier was above me,
we were not equals; his true self humoured and smiled paternally upon
my failings, even as I humoured and sorrowed over his.
Well, first his mother, then himself, they are gone: "in their resting
graves."
When I come to think of it, I do not know what I said to his sister, and
I fear to try again. Could you send her this? There is too much both
about yourself and me in it; but that, if you do not mind, is but a mark
of sincerity. It would let her know how entirely, in the mind of (I
suppose) his oldest friend, the good, true Ferrier obliterates the
memory of the other, who was only his "lunatic brother."
Judge of this for me, and do as you please; anyway, I will try to write
to her again; my last was some kind of scrawl that I could not see for
crying. This came upon me, remember, with terrible suddenness; I was
surprised by this death; and it is fifteen or sixteen years since first
I saw the handsome face in the Spec. I made sure, besides, to have died
first. Love to you, your wife, and her sisters.--Ever yours, dear boy,
R. L. S.
I never knew any man so superior to himself as poor James Walter. The
best of him only came as a vision, like Corsica from the Corniche. He
never gave his measure either morally or intellectually. The curse was
on him. Even his friends did not know him but by fits. I have passed
hours with him when he was so wise, good, and sweet, that I never knew
the like of it in any other. And for a beautiful good humour he had no
match. I remember breaking in upon him once with a whole red-hot story
(in my worst manner), pouring words upon him by the hour about some
truck not worth an egg that had befallen me; and suddenly, some half
hour after, finding that the sweet fellow had some concern of his own of
infinitely greater import, that he was patiently and smilingly waiting
to consult me on. It sounds nothing; but the courtesy and the
unselfishness were perfect. It makes me rage to think how few knew him,
and how many had the chance to sneer at their better.
Well, he was not wasted, that we know; though if anything looked liker
irony than this fitting of a man out with these rich qualities and
faculties to be wrecked and aborted from the very stocks, I do not know
the name of it. Yet we see that he has left an influence; the memory of
his patient courtesy has often checked me in rudeness; has it not you?
You can form no idea of how handsome Walter was. At twenty he was
splendid to see; then, too, he had the sense of power in him, and great
hopes; he looked forward, ever jesting of course, but he looked to see
himself where he had the right to expect. He believed in himself
profoundly; but _he never disbelieved in others_. To the roughest
Highland student he always had his fine, kind, open dignity of manner;
and a good word behind his back.
The last time that I saw him before leaving for America--it was a sad
blow to both of us. When he heard I was leaving, and that might be the
last time we might meet--it almost was so--he was terribly upset, and
came round at once. We sat late, in Baxter's empty house, where I was
sleeping. My dear friend Walter Ferrier: O if I had only written to him
more! if only one of us in these last days had been well! But I ever
cherished the honour of his friendship, and now when he is gone, I know
what I have lost still better. We live on, meaning to meet; but when the
hope is gone, the pang comes.
R. L. S.
TO EDMUND GOSSE
_La Solitude, Hyeres, 26th September 1883._
MY DEAR GOSSE,--It appears a bolt from Transatlantica is necessary to
produce four lines from you. It is not flattering; but as I was always a
bad correspondent, 'tis a vice to which I am lenient. I give you to
know, however, that I have already twice (this makes three times) sent
you what I please to call a letter, and received from you in return a
subterfuge--or nothing....
My present purpose, however, which must not be postponed, is to ask you
to telegraph to the Americans.
After a summer of good health of a very radiant order, toothache and the
death of a very old friend, which came upon me like a thunderclap, have
rather shelved my powers. I stare upon the paper, not write. I wish I
could write like your Sculptors; yet I am well aware that I should not
try in that direction. A certain warmth (tepid enough) and a certain
dash of the picturesque are my poor essential qualities; and if I went
fooling after the too classical, I might lose even these. But I envied
you that page.
I am, of course, deep in schemes; I was so ever. Execution alone
somewhat halts. How much do you make per annum, I wonder? This year, for
the first time, I shall pass L300; I may even get halfway to the next
milestone. This seems but a faint remuneration; and the devil of it is,
that I manage, with sickness, and moves, and education, and the like, to
keep steadily in front of my income. However, I console myself with
this, that if I were anything else under God's Heaven, and had the same
crank health, I should make an even zero. If I had, with my present
knowledge, twelve months of my old health, I would, could, and should do
something neat. As it is, I have to tinker at my things in little
sittings; and the rent, or the butcher, or something, is always calling
me off to rattle up a pot-boiler. And then comes a back-set of my
health, and I have to twiddle my fingers and play patience.
Well, I do not complain, but I do envy strong health where it is
squandered. Treasure your strength, and may you never learn by
experience the profound _ennui_ and irritation of the shelved artist.
For then, what is life? All that one has done to make one's life
effective then doubles the itch of inefficiency.
I trust also you may be long without finding out the devil that there is
in a bereavement. After love it is the one great surprise that life
preserves for us. Now I don't think I can be astonished any more.--Yours
affectionately,
R. L. S.
TO MISS FERRIER
_La Solitude, Hyeres, 30th Sept. 1883._
MY DEAR MISS FERRIER,--I am very much obliged to you for your letter and
was interested by all you told me. Yes, I know it is better for him to
be gone, and what you say helps me to realise that it is so--I did not
know how much he had suffered; it is so that we are cured of life. I am
a little afraid to write or think much of Walter just yet; as I have not
quite recovered the news and I have my work and my wife to think of.
Some day soon when the sharpness passes off (if it does) I must try to
write some more of what he was: he was so little understood. I don't
suppose any one knew him better than I did. But just now it is difficult
to think of him. For you I do mourn indeed, and admire your courage: the
loss is terrible. I have no portrait of him. Is there one? If so please
let me have it: if it has to be copied please let it be.
Henley seems to have been as good to dear Walter as he is to all. That
introduction was a good turn I did to both. It seems so strange for a
friendship to begin all these years ago with so much mirth and now to
end with this sorrow. Our little lives are moments in the wake of the
eternal silence: but how crowded while they last. His has gone down in
peace.
I was not certainly the best companion for Walter, but I do believe I
was the best he had. In these early days he was not fortunate in
friends--looking back I see most clearly how much we both wanted a man
of riper wisdom. We had no religion between the pair of us--that was the
flaw. How very different was our last intimacy in Gladstone Terrace. But
youth must learn--looking back over these wasted opportunities, I must
try rather to remember what I did right, than to bewail the much that I
left undone and knew not how to do. I see that even you have allowed
yourself to have regrets. Dear Miss Ferrier, sure you were his angel. We
all had something to be glad of, in so far as we had understood and
loved and perhaps a little helped the gentle spirit; but you may
certainly be proud. He always loved you; and I remember in his worst
days spoke of you with great affection; a thing unusual with him; for he
was walking very wild and blind and had no true idea whether of himself
or life. The lifting afterwards was beautiful and touching. Dear Miss
Ferrier I have given your kind messages to my wife who feels for you and
reciprocates the hope to meet. When it may come off I know not. I feel
almost ashamed to say that I keep better, I feel as if like Mrs. Leslie
"you must hate me for it"--still I can very easily throw back whether by
fatigue or want of care, and I do not like to build plans for my return
to my own land. Is there no chance of your coming hereabouts? Though we
cannot in our small and disorderly house offer a lady a room, one can be
got close by and we can offer possible board and a most lovely little
garden for a lounge. Please remember me kindly to your brother John and
Sir A. and Lady Grant and believe me with hearty sympathy--Yours most
sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
I was rejoiced to hear he never doubted of my love, but I must cure my
hate of correspondence. This has been a sharp lesson.
TO W. E. HENLEY
It will be remembered that "Whistles" or "Penny Whistles" was his own
name for the verses of the _Child's Garden_. The proposal referred to
at the end of this letter was one which had reached him from Messrs.
Lippincott, the American publishers, for a sailing trip to be taken
among the Greek islands and made the subject of a book.
_La Solitude, Hyeres [October 1883]._
My dear excellent, admired, volcanic angel of a lad, trusty as a dog,
eruptive as Vesuvius, in all things great, in all the soul of loyalty:
greeting.
That you are better spirits me up good. I have had no colour of a Mag.
of Art. From here, here in Highairs the Palm-trees, I have heard your
conversation. It came here in the form of a Mistral, and I said to
myself, Damme, there is some Henley at the foot of this!
I shall try to do the Whistle as suggested; but I can usually do
whistles only by giving my whole mind to it: to produce even such
limping verse demanding the whole forces of my untuneful soul. I have
other two anyway: better or worse. I am now deep, deep, ocean deep in
_Otto_: a letter is a curst distraction. About 100 pp. are near fit for
publication; I am either making a spoon or spoiling the horn of a
Caledonian bull, with that airy potentate. God help me, I bury a lot of
labour in that principality; and if I am not greatly a gainer, I am a
great loser and a great fool. However, _sursum corda_; faint heart never
writ romance.
Your Dumas I think exquisite; it might even have been stronglier said:
the brave old godly pagan, I adore his big footprints on the earth.
Have you read Meredith's _Love in the Valley_? It got me, I wept; I
remembered that poetry existed.
"When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror."
I propose if they (Lippincotts) will let me wait till next Autumn, and
go when it is safest, to accept L450 with L100 down; but it is now too
late to go this year. November and December are the months when it is
safest; and the back of the season is broken. I shall gain much
knowledge by the trip; this I look upon as one of the main inducements.
R. L. S.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
The following is in answer to a letter containing remarks on the
proofs of the _Child's Garden_, then going round among some of his
friends, and on the instalments of _Silverado Squatters_ and the
_Black Arrow_, which were appearing in the Century Magazine and Young
Folks respectively. The remarks on Professor Seeley's literary manner
are _apropos_ of the _Expansion of England_, which I had lately sent
him.
_La Solitude, Hyeres [October 1883]._
COLVIN, COLVIN, COLVIN,--Yours received; also interesting copy of _P.
Whistles_. "In the multitude of councillors the Bible declares there is
wisdom," said my great-uncle, "but I have always found in them
distraction." It is extraordinary how tastes vary: these proofs have
been handed about, it appears, and I have had several letters;
and--distraction. AEsop: the Miller and the Ass.
Notes on details:--
1. I love the occasional trochaic line; and so did many excellent
writers before me.
2. If you don't like _A Good Boy_, I do.
3. In _Escape at Bedtime_, I found two suggestions. "Shove" for "above"
is a correction of the press; it was so written. "Twinkled" is just the
error; to the child the stars appear to be there; any word that suggests
illusion is a horror.
4. I don't care; I take a different view of the vocative.
5. Bewildering and childering are good enough for me. These are rhymes,
jingles; I don't go for eternity and the three unities.
I will delete some of those condemned, but not all. I don't care for the
name Penny Whistles; I sent a sheaf to Henley when I sent 'em. But I've
forgot the others. I would just as soon call 'em "Rimes for Children" as
anything else. I am not proud nor particular.
Your remarks on the _Black Arrow_ are to the point. I am pleased you
liked Crookback; he is a fellow whose hellish energy has always fixed my
attention. I wish Shakespeare had written the play after he had learned
some of the rudiments of literature and art rather than before. Some
day, I will re-tickle the Sable Missile, and shoot it, _moyennant
finances_, once more into the air; I can lighten it of much, and devote
some more attention to Dick o' Gloucester. It's great sport to write
tushery.
By this I reckon you will have heard of my proposed excursiolorum to the
Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece, and kindred sites. If the
excursiolorum goes on, that is if _moyennant finances_ comes off, I
shall write to beg you to collect introductiolorums for me.
Distinguo: 1. _Silverado_ was not written in America, but in
Switzerland's icy mountains. 2. What you read is the bleeding and
disembowelled remains of what I wrote. 3. The good stuff is all to
come--so I think. "The Sea Fogs," "The Hunter's Family," "Toils and
Pleasures"--_belles pages_.--Yours ever,
RAMNUGGER.
O!--Seeley is too clever to live, and the book a gem. But why has he
read too much Arnold? Why will he avoid--obviously avoid--fine writing
up to which he has led? This is a winking, curled-and-oiled,
ultra-cultured, Oxford-don sort of an affectation that infuriates my
honest soul. "You see"--they say--"how unbombastic _we_ are; we come
right up to eloquence, and, when it's hanging on the pen, dammy, we
scorn it!" It is literary Deronda-ism. If you don't want the woman, the
image, or the phrase, mortify your vanity and avoid the appearance of
wanting them.
TO W.E. HENLEY
The first paragraph of the following refers to contributions of R. L.
S. to the Magazine of Art under Mr. Henley's editorship:--
_La Solitude, Hyeres [Autumn 1883]._
DEAR LAD,--Glad you like _Fontainebleau_. I am going to be the means,
under heaven, of aerating or literating your pages. The idea that
because a thing is a picture-book all the writing should be on the wrong
tack is _triste_ but widespread. Thus _Hokusai_ will be really a gossip
on convention, or in great part. And the Skelt will be as like a Charles
Lamb as I can get it. The writer should write, and not illustrate
pictures: else it's bosh....
Your remarks about the ugly are my eye. Ugliness is only the prose of
horror. It is when you are not able to write _Macbeth_ that you write
_Therese Raquin_. Fashions are external: the essence of art only varies
in so far as fashion widens the field of its application; art is a mill
whose thirlage, in different ages, widens and contracts; but, in any
case and under any fashion, the great man produces beauty, terror, and
mirth, and the little man produces cleverness (personalities,
psychology) instead of beauty, ugliness instead of terror, and jokes
instead of mirth. As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be ever,
world without end. Amen!
And even as you read, you say, "Of course, _quelle rengaine_!"
R. L. S.
TO W. H. LOW
Manhattan mentioned below is the name of a short-lived New York
magazine, the editor of which had asked through Mr. Low for a
contribution from R. L. S.
_La Solitude, Hyeres, October [1883]._
MY DEAR LOW,-- ... Some day or other, in Cassell's Magazine of Art, you
will see a paper which will interest you, and where your name appears.
It is called _Fontainebleau: Village Communities of Artists_, and the
signature of R. L. Stevenson will be found annexed.
Please tell the editor of Manhattan the following secrets for me: 1_st_,
That I am a beast; 2_nd_, that I owe him a letter; 3_rd_, that I have
lost his, and cannot recall either his name or address; 4_th_, that I am
very deep in engagements, which my absurd health makes it hard for me to
overtake; but 5_th_, that I will bear him in mind; 6_th_ and last, that
I am a brute.
My address is still the same, and I live in a most sweet corner of the
universe, sea and fine hills before me, and a rich variegated plain; and
at my back a craggy hill, loaded with vast feudal ruins. I am very
quiet; a person passing by my door half startles me; but I enjoy the
most aromatic airs, and at night the most wonderful view into a moonlit
garden. By day this garden fades into nothing, overpowered by its
surroundings and the luminous distance; but at night and when the moon
is out, that garden, the arbour, the flight of stairs that mount the
artificial hillock, the plumed blue gum-trees that hang trembling,
become the very skirts of Paradise. Angels I know frequent it; and it
thrills all night with the flutes of silence. Damn that garden;--and by
day it is gone.
Continue to testify boldly against realism. Down with Dagon, the fish
god! All art swings down towards imitation, in these days, fatally. But
the man who loves art with wisdom sees the joke; it is the lustful that
tremble and respect her ladyship; but the honest and romantic lovers of
the Muse can see a joke and sit down to laugh with Apollo.
The prospect of your return to Europe is very agreeable; and I was
pleased by what you said about your parents. One of my oldest friends
died recently, and this has given me new thoughts of death. Up to now I
had rather thought of him as a mere personal enemy of my own; but now
that I see him hunting after my friends, he looks altogether darker. My
own father is not well; and Henley, of whom you must have heard me
speak, is in a questionable state of health. These things are very
solemn, and take some of the colour out of life. It is a great thing,
after all, to be a man of reasonable honour and kindness. Do you
remember once consulting me in Paris whether you had not better
sacrifice honesty to art; and how, after much confabulation, we agreed
that your art would suffer if you did? We decided better than we knew.
In this strange welter where we live, all hangs together by a million
filaments; and to do reasonably well by others, is the first
pre-requisite of art. Art is a virtue; and if I were the man I should
be, my art would rise in the proportion of my life.
If you were privileged to give some happiness to your parents, I know
your art will gain by it. _By God it will!_--_Sic subscribitur_,
R. L. S.
TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
_La Solitude, Hyeres [October 1883]._
MY DEAR BOB,--Yes, I got both your letters at Lyons, but have been since
then decading in several steps. Toothache; fever; Ferrier's death; lung.
Now it is decided I am to leave to-morrow, penniless, for Nice to see
Dr. Williams.
I was much struck by your last. I have written a breathless note on
Realism for Henley; a fifth part of the subject hurriedly touched, which
will show you how my thoughts are driving. You are now at last beginning
to think upon the problems of executive, plastic art, for you are now
for the first time attacking them. Hitherto you have spoken and thought
of two things--technique and the _ars artium_, or common background of
all arts. Studio work is the real touch. That is the genial error of the
present French teaching. Realism I regard as a mere question of method.
The "brown foreground," "old mastery," and the like, ranking with
villanelles, as technical sports and pastimes. Real art, whether ideal
or realistic, addresses precisely the same feeling, and seeks the same
qualities--significance or charm. And the same--very same--inspiration
is only methodically differentiated according as the artist is an arrant
realist or an arrant idealist. Each, by his own method, seeks to save
and perpetuate the same significance or charm; the one by suppressing,
the other by forcing, detail. All other idealism is the brown foreground
over again, and hence only art in the sense of a game, like cup and
ball. All other realism is not art at all--but not at all. It is, then,
an insincere and showy handicraft.
Were you to re-read some Balzac, as I have been doing, it would greatly
help to clear your eyes. He was a man who never found his method. An
inarticulate Shakespeare, smothered under forcible-feeble detail. It is
astounding to the riper mind how bad he is, how feeble, how untrue, how
tedious; and, of course, when he surrendered to his temperament, how
good and powerful. And yet never plain nor clear. He could not consent
to be dull, and thus became so. He would leave nothing undeveloped, and
thus drowned out of sight of land amid the multitude of crying and
incongruous details. There is but one art--to omit! O if I knew how to
omit, I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knew how to omit would
make an _Iliad_ of a daily paper.
Your definition of seeing is quite right. It is the first part of
omission to be partly blind. Artistic sight is judicious blindness. Sam
Bough must have been a jolly blind old boy. He would turn a corner, look
for one-half or quarter minute, and then say, "This'll do, lad." Down he
sat, there and then, with whole artistic plan, scheme of colour, and the
like, and begin by laying a foundation of powerful and seemingly
incongruous colour on the block. He saw, not the scene, but the
water-colour sketch. Every artist by sixty should so behold nature.
Where does he learn that? In the studio, I swear. He goes to nature for
facts, relations, values--material; as a man, before writing a
historical novel, reads up memoirs. But it is not by reading memoirs
that he has learned the selective criterion. He has learned that in the
practice of his art; and he will never learn it well, but when
disengaged from the ardent struggle of immediate representation, of
realistic and _ex facto_ art. He learns it in the crystallisation of
day-dreams; in changing, not in copying, fact; in the pursuit of the
ideal, not in the study of nature. These temples of art are, as you say,
inaccessible to the realistic climber. It is not by looking at the sea
that you get
"The multitudinous seas incarnadine,"
nor by looking at Mont Blanc that you find
"And visited all night by troops of stars."
A kind of ardour of the blood is the mother of all this; and according
as this ardour is swayed by knowledge and seconded by craft, the art
expression flows clear, and significance and charm, like a moon rising,
are born above the barren juggle of mere symbols.
The painter must study more from nature than the man of words. By why?
Because literature deals with men's business and passions which, in the
game of life, we are irresistibly obliged to study; but painting with
relations of light, and colour, and significances, and form, which, from
the immemorial habit of the race, we pass over with an unregardful eye.
Hence this crouching upon camp-stools, and these crusts.[6] But neither
one nor other is a part of art, only preliminary studies.
I want you to help me to get people to understand that realism is a
method, and only methodic in its consequences; when the realist is an
artist, that is, and supposing the idealist with whom you compare him to
be anything but a _farceur_ and a _dilettante_. The two schools of
working do, and should, lead to the choice of different subjects. But
that is a consequence, not a cause. See my chaotic note, which will
appear, I fancy, in November in Henley's sheet.
Poor Ferrier, it bust me horrid. He was, after you, the oldest of my
friends.
I am now very tired, and will go to bed having prelected freely. Fanny
will finish.
R. L. S.
TO THOMAS STEVENSON
Some pages of MS. exist in which the writer at this time attempted to
re-cast and expand a portion of the _Lay Morals_ of 1879. A letter
written some days earlier to his father, and partly quoted in Mr.
Graham Balfour's _Life_ (ed. 1906, p. 209), explains his purpose.
_La Solitude, Hyeres, 12th October 1883._
MY DEAR FATHER,--I have just lunched; the day is exquisite, the air
comes through the open window rich with odour, and I am by no means
spiritually minded. Your letter, however, was very much valued, and has
been read oftener than once. What you say about yourself I was glad to
hear; a little decent resignation is not only becoming a Christian, but
is likely to be excellent for the health of a Stevenson. To fret and
fume is undignified, suicidally foolish, and theologically unpardonable;
we are here not to make, but to tread predestined, pathways; we are the
foam of a wave, and to preserve a proper equanimity is not merely the
first part of submission to God, but the chief of possible kindnesses to
those about us. I am lecturing myself, but you also. To do our best is
one part, but to wash our hands smilingly of the consequence is the next
part, of any sensible virtue.
I have come, for the moment, to a pause in my moral works; for I have
many irons in the fire, and I wish to finish something to bring coin
before I can afford to go on with what I think doubtfully to be a duty.
It is a most difficult work; a touch of the parson will drive off those
I hope to influence; a touch of overstrained laxity, besides disgusting,
like a grimace, may do harm. Nothing that I have ever seen yet speaks
directly and efficaciously to young men; and I do hope I may find the
art and wisdom to fill up a gap. The great point, as I see it, is to ask
as little as possible, and meet, if it may be, every view or absence of
view; and it should be, must be, easy. Honesty is the one desideratum;
but think how hard a one to meet. I think all the time of Ferrier and
myself; these are the pair that I address. Poor Ferrier, so much a
better man than I, and such a temporal wreck. But the thing of which we
must divest our minds is to look partially upon others; all is to be
viewed; and the creature judged, as he must be by his Creator, not
dissected through a prism of morals, but in the unrefracted ray. So
seen, and in relation to the almost omnipotent surroundings, who is to
distinguish between F. and such a man as Dr. Candlish, or between such a
man as David Hume and such an one as Robert Burns? To compare my poor
and good Walter with myself is to make me startle; he, upon all grounds
above the merely expedient, was the nobler being. Yet wrecked utterly
ere the full age of manhood; and the last skirmishes so well fought, so
humanly useless, so pathetically brave, only the leaps of an expiring
lamp. All this is a very pointed instance. It shuts the mouth. I have
learned more, in some ways, from him than from any other soul I ever
met; and he, strange to think, was the best gentleman, in all kinder
senses, that I ever knew.--Ever your affectionate son,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO W. H. LOW
The paper referred to at the beginning of the second paragraph is one
on R. L. S. in the Century Magazine, the first seriously critical
notice, says Mr. Low, which appeared of him in the States.
[_La Solitude, Hyeres, Oct. 23, 1883._]
MY DEAR LOW,--_C'est d'un bon camarade_; and I am much obliged to you
for your two letters and the inclosure. Times are a lityle changed with
all of us since the ever memorable days of Lavenue: hallowed be his
name! hallowed his old Fleury!--of which you did not see--I think--as I
did--the glorious apotheosis: advanced on a Tuesday to three francs, on
the Thursday to six, and on Friday swept off, holus bolus, for the
proprietor's private consumption. Well, we had the start of that
proprietor. Many a good bottle came our way, and was, I think, worthily
made welcome.
I am pleased that Mr. Gilder should like my literature; and I ask you
particularly to thank Mr. Bunner (have I the name right?) for his
notice, which was of that friendly, headlong sort that really pleases an
author like what the French call a "shake-hands." It pleased me the more
coming from the States, where I have met not much recognition, save from
the buccaneers, and above all from pirates who misspell my name. I saw
my book advertised in a number of the Critic as the work of one R. L.
Stephenson; and, I own, I boiled. It is so easy to know the name of the
man whose book you have stolen; for there it is, at full length, on the
title-page of your booty. But no, damn him, not he! He calls me
Stephenson. These woes I only refer to by the way, as they set a higher
value on the Century notice.
I am now a person with an established ill-health--a wife--a dog
possessed with an evil, a Gadarene spirit--a chalet on a hill, looking
out over the Mediterranean--a certain reputation--and very obscure
finances. Otherwise, very much the same, I guess; and were a bottle of
Fleury a thing to be obtained, capable of developing theories along with
a fit spirit even as of yore. Yet I now draw near to the Middle Ages;
nearly three years ago, that fatal Thirty struck; and yet the great work
is not yet done--not yet even conceived. But so, as one goes on, the
wood seems to thicken, the footpath to narrow, and the House Beautiful
on the hill's summit to draw further and further away. We learn, indeed,
to use our means; but only to learn, along with it, the paralysing
knowledge that these means are only applicable to two or three poor
commonplace motives. Eight years ago, if I could have slung ink as I can
now, I should have thought myself well on the road after Shakespeare;
and now--I find I have only got a pair of walking-shoes and not yet
begun to travel. And art is still away there on the mountain summit. But
I need not continue; for, of course, this is your story just as much as
it is mine; and, strange to think, it was Shakespeare's too, and
Beethoven's, and Phidias's. It is a blessed thing that, in this forest
of art, we can pursue our woodlice and sparrows, _and not catch them_,
with almost the same fervour of exhilaration as that with which
Sophocles hunted and brought down the Mastodon.
Tell me something of your work, and your wife.--My dear fellow, I am
yours ever,
R. L. STEVENSON.
My wife begs to be remembered to both of you; I cannot say as much for
my dog, who has never seen you, but he would like, on general
principles, to bite you.
TO W. E. HENLEY
By this time _Treasure Island_ was out in book form, and the
following is in reply to some reflections on its seamanship which had
been conveyed to him through Mr. Henley:--
[_La Solitude, Hyeres, November 1883._]
MY DEAR LAD,-- ... Of course, my seamanship is jimmy: did I not beseech
you I know not how often to find me an ancient mariner--and you, whose
own wife's own brother is one of the ancientest, did nothing for me? As
for my seamen, did Runciman ever know eighteenth century Buccaneers? No?
Well, no more did I. But I have known and sailed with seamen too, and
lived and eaten with them; and I made my put-up shot in no great
ignorance, but as a put-up thing has to be made, _i.e._ to be coherent
and picturesque, and damn the expense. Are they fairly lively on the
wires? Then, favour me with your tongues. Are they wooden, and dim, and
no sport? Then it is I that am silent, otherwise not. The work, strange
as it may sound in the ear, is not a work of realism. The next thing I
shall hear is that the etiquette is wrong in Otto's Court! With a
warrant, and I mean it to be so, and the whole matter never cost me half
a thought. I make these paper people to please myself, and Skelt, and
God Almighty, and with no ulterior purpose. Yet am I mortal myself; for,
as I remind you, I begged for a supervising mariner. However, my heart
is in the right place. I have been to sea, but I never crossed the
threshold of a court; and the courts shall be the way I want 'em.
I'm glad to think I owe you the review that pleased me best of all the
reviews I ever had; the one I liked best before that was ----'s on the
_Arabians_. These two are the flowers of the collection, according to
me. To live reading such reviews and die eating ortolans--sich is my
aspiration.
Whenever you come you will be equally welcome. I am trying to finish
_Otto_ ere you shall arrive, so as to take and be able to enjoy a
well-earned--O yes, a well-earned--holiday. Longman fetched by _Otto_:
is it a spoon or a spoilt horn? Momentous, if the latter; if the former,
a spoon to dip much praise and pudding, and to give, I do think, much
pleasure. The last part, now in hand, much smiles upon me.--Ever yours,
R. L. S.
TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
_La Solitude, Hyeres [November 1883]._
MY DEAR MOTHER,--You must not blame me too much for my silence; I am
over head and ears in work, and do not know what to do first. I have
been hard at _Otto_, hard at _Silverado_ proofs, which I have worked
over again to a tremendous extent; cutting, adding, rewriting, until
some of the worst chapters of the original are now, to my mind, as good
as any. I was the more bound to make it good, as I had such liberal
terms; it's not for want of trying if I have failed.
I got your letter on my birthday; indeed, that was how I found it out
about three in the afternoon, when postie comes. Thank you for all you
said. As for my wife, that was the best investment ever made by man; but
"in our branch of the family" we seem to marry well. I, considering my
piles of work, am wonderfully well; I have not been so busy for I know
not how long. I hope you will send me the money I asked however, as I am
not only penniless, but shall remain so in all human probability for
some considerable time. I have got in the mass of my expectations; and
the L100 which is to float us on the new year cannot come due till
_Silverado_ is all ready; I am delaying it myself for the moment; then
will follow the binders and the travellers and an infinity of other
nuisances; and only at the last, the jingling-tingling.
Do you know that _Treasure Island_ has appeared? In the November number
of Henley's Magazine, a capital number anyway, there is a funny
publisher's puff of it for your book; also a bad article by me. Lang
dotes on _Treasure Island_: "Except _Tom Sawyer_ and the _Odyssey_," he
writes, "I never liked any romance so much." I will inclose the letter
though. The Bogue is angelic, although very dirty. It has rained--at
last! It was jolly cold when the rain came.
I was overjoyed to hear such good news of my father. Let him go on at
that!--Ever your affectionate,
R. L. S.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
Of the "small ships" here mentioned, _Fontainebleau_ and _The
Character of Dogs_ are well known: _A Misadventure in France_ is
probably a draft of the _Epilogue to an Inland Voyage_, not
published till five years later. The _Travelling Companion_ (of which
I remember little except that its scene was partly laid in North
Italy and that a publisher to whom it was shown declared it a work of
genius but indecent) was abandoned some two years later, as set forth
on p. 193 of this volume.
_La Solitude, Hyeres [November 1883]._
L10,000 Pounds Reward!
WHEREAS Sidney Colvin, more generally known as the Guardian Angel, has
vanished from the gaze of Mr. R. L. Stevenson, the above reward is
offered as a means to discover the whereabouts of the misguided
gentleman. He was known as a man of irregular habits, and his rowdy
exterior would readily attract attention in a crowd. He was never known
to resist a drink; whisky was his favourite dish. If any one will bring
him to Mr. Stevenson's back area door, dead or alive, the greatest
rejoicing will be felt by a bereaved and uneasy family.
Also, wherefore not a word, dear Colvin? My news is: splendid health;
great success of the _Black Arrow_; another tale demanded, readers this
time (the Lord lighten them!) pleased; a great variety of small ships
launched or still upon the stocks--(also, why not send the annotated
proof of _Fontainebleau_? ce n'est pas d'un bon camarade); a paper on
dogs for Carr;[7] a paper called _Old Mortality_, a paper called _A
Misadventure in France_, a tale entituled _The Travelling Companion_;
_Otto_ arrested one foot in air; and last and not least, a great demand
for news of Sidney Colvin and others. Herewith I pause, for why should I
cast pearls before swine?
A word, Guardian Angel. You are much loved in this house, not by me
only, but by the wife. The Wogg himself is anxious.--Ever yours
affectionately,
R. L. S.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
_La Solitude, Hyeres [November 1883]._
MY DEAR COLVIN,--I have been bad, but as you were worse, I feel no
shame. I raise a blooming countenance, not the evidence of a
self-righteous spirit.
I continue my uphill fight with the twin spirits of bankruptcy and
indigestion. Duns rage about my portal, at least to fancy's ear.
I suppose you heard of Ferrier's death: my oldest friend, except Bob. It
has much upset me. I did not fancy how much. I am strangely concerned
about it.
My house is the loveliest spot in the universe; the moonlight nights we
have are incredible; love, poetry and music, and the Arabian Nights,
inhabit just my corner of the world--nest there like mavises.
Here lies
The carcase
of
Robert Louis Stevenson,
An active, austere, and not inelegant
writer,
who,
at the termination of a long career,
wealthy, wise, benevolent, and honoured by
the attention of two hemispheres,
yet owned it to have been his crowning favour
TO INHABIT
LA SOLITUDE.
(with the consent of the intelligent edility of Hyeres, he has been
interred, below this frugal stone, in the garden which he honoured for
so long with his poetic presence.)
I must write more solemn letters. Adieu. Write.
R. L. S.
TO MRS. MILNE
This is to a cousin who had been one of his favourite playmates in
childhood, and had recognised some allusions in the proof slips of
the _Child's Garden_ (the piece called _A Pirate Story_).
_La Solitude, Hyeres [November 1883]._
MY DEAR HENRIETTA,--Certainly; who else would they be? More by token, on
that particular occasion, you were sailing under the title of Princess
Royal; I, after a furious contest, under that of Prince Alfred; and
Willie, still a little sulky, as the Prince of Wales. We were all in a
buck basket about half-way between the swing and the gate; and I can
still see the Pirate Squadron heave in sight upon the weather bow.
I wrote a piece besides on Giant Bunker; but I was not happily inspired,
and it is condemned. Perhaps I'll try again; he was a horrid fellow,
Giant Bunker! and some of my happiest hours were passed in pursuit of
him. You were a capital fellow to play: how few there were who could!
None better than yourself. I shall never forget some of the days at
Bridge of Allan; they were one golden dream. See "A Good Boy" in the
_Penny Whistles_, much of the sentiment of which is taken direct from
one evening at B. of A. when we had had a great play with the little
Glasgow girl. Hallowed be that fat book of fairy tales! Do you remember
acting the Fair One with Golden Locks? What a romantic drama! Generally
speaking, whenever I think of play, it is pretty certain that you will
come into my head. I wrote a paper called _Child's Play_ once, where, I
believe, you or Willie would recognise things....
Surely Willie is just the man to marry; and if his wife wasn't a happy
woman, I think I could tell her who was to blame. Is there no word of
it? Well, these things are beyond arrangement; and the wind bloweth
where it listeth--which, I observe, is generally towards the west in
Scotland. Here it prefers a south-easterly course, and is called the
Mistral--usually with an adjective in front. But if you will remember my
yesterday's toothache and this morning's crick, you will be in a
position to choose an adjective for yourself. Not that the wind is
unhealthy; only when it comes strong, it is both very high and very
cold, which makes it the d-v-l. But as I am writing to a lady, I had
better avoid this topic; winds requiring a great scope of language.
Please remember me to all at home; give Ramsay a pennyworth of
acidulated drops for his good taste.--And believe me, your affectionate
cousin,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO MISS FERRIER
_La Solitude, Hyeres [November 22, 1883]._
DEAR MISS FERRIER,--Many thanks for the photograph. It is---well, it is
like most photographs. The sun is an artist of too much renown; and, at
any rate, we who knew Walter "in the brave days of old" will be
difficult to please.
I was inexpressibly touched to get a letter from some lawyers as to some
money. I have never had any account with my friends; some have gained
and some lost; and I should feel there was something dishonest in a
partial liquidation even if I could recollect the facts, _which I
cannot_. But the fact of his having put aside this memorandum touched me
greatly.
The mystery of his life is great. Our chemist in this place, who had
been at Malvern, recognised the picture. You may remember Walter had a
romantic affection for all pharmacies? and the bottles in the window
were for him a poem? He said once that he knew no pleasure like driving
through a lamplit city, waiting for the chemists to go by.
All these things return now.
He had a pretty full translation of Schiller's _AEsthetic Letters_, which
we read together, as well as the second part of _Faust_, in Gladstone
Terrace, he helping me with the German. There is no keepsake I should
more value than the MS. of that translation. They were the best days I
ever had with him, little dreaming all would so soon be over. It needs a
blow like this to convict a man of mortality and its burthen. I always
thought I should go by myself; not to survive. But now I feel as if the
earth were undermined, and all my friends have lost one thickness of
reality since that one passed. Those are happy who can take it
otherwise; with that I found things all beginning to dislimn. Here we
have no abiding city, and one felt as though he had--and O too much
acted.
But if you tell me, he did not feel my silence. However, he must have
done so; and my guilt is irreparable now. I thank God at least heartily
that he did not resent it.
Please remember me to Sir Alexander and Lady Grant, to whose care I will
address this. When next I am in Edinburgh I will take flowers, alas! to
the West Kirk. Many a long hour we passed in graveyards, the man who has
gone and I--or rather not that man--but the beautiful, genial, witty
youth who so betrayed him.--Dear Miss Ferrier, I am yours most
sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO W. E. HENLEY
This refers to some dispute which had arisen with an editor (I forget
whom) concerning the refusal of an article on Salvini. The nickname
"Fastidious Brisk," from Ben Jonson's _Every Man out of his Humour_,
was applied by Mr. Henley to Stevenson--very inappropriately as I
always thought.
_La Solitude, Hyeres, Autumn_ 1883.
MY DEAR LAD,--You know your own business best; but I wish your honesty
were not so warfaring. These conflicts pain Lucretian sitters on the
shore; and one wonders--one wonders--wonders and whimpers. I do not say
my attitude is noble; but is yours conciliatory? I revere Salvini, but I
shall never see him--nor anybody--play again. That is all a matter of
history, heroic history, to me. Were I in London, I should be the liker
Tantalus--no more. But as for these quarrels: in not many years shall we
not all be clay-cold and safe below ground, you with your loud-mouthed
integrity, I with my fastidious briskness--and--with all their faults
and merits, swallowed in silence. It seems to me, in ignorance of cause,
that when the dustman has gone by, these quarrellings will prick the
conscience. Am I wrong? I am a great sinner; so, my brave friend, are
you; the others also. Let us a little imitate the divine patience and
the divine sense of humour, and smilingly tolerate those faults and
virtues that have so brief a period and so intertwined a being.
I fear I was born a parson; but I live very near upon the margin
(though, by your leave, I may outlive you all!), and too much rigour in
these daily things sounds to me like clatter on the kitchen dishes. If
it might be--could it not be smoothed? This very day my father writes me
he has gone to see, upon his deathbed, an old friend to whom for years
he has not spoken or written. On his deathbed; no picking up of the lost
stitches; merely to say: my little fury, my spotted uprightness, after
having split our lives, have not a word of quarrel to say more. And the
same post brings me the news of another--War! Things in this troubled
medium are not so clear, dear Henley; there are faults upon all hands;
and the end comes, and Ferrier's grave gapes for us all.
THE PROSY PREACHER
(But written in deep dejection, my dear man).
Suppose they _are_ wrong? Well, am I not tolerated, are you not
tolerated?--we and _our_ faults?
TO W. H. LOW
_La Solitude, Hyeres, Var, 13th December 1883._
MY DEAR LOW,-- ... I was much pleased with what you said about my work.
Ill-health is a great handicapper in the race. I have never at command
that press of spirits that are necessary to strike out a thing red-hot.
_Silverado_ is an example of stuff worried and pawed about, God knows
how often, in poor health, and you can see for yourself the result: good
pages, an imperfect fusion, a certain languor of the whole. Not, in
short, art. I have told Roberts to send you a copy of the book when it
appears, where there are some fair passages that will be new to you. My
brief romance, _Prince Otto_--far my most difficult adventure up to
now--is near an end. I have still one chapter to write _de fond en
comble_, and three or four to strengthen or recast. The rest is done. I
do not know if I have made a spoon, or only spoiled a horn; but I am
tempted to hope the first. If the present bargain hold, it will not see
the light of day for some thirteen months. Then I shall be glad to know
how it strikes you. There is a good deal of stuff in it, both dramatic
and, I think, poetic; and the story is not like these purposeless fables
of to-day, but is, at least, intended to stand firm upon a base of
philosophy--or morals--as you please. It has been long gestated, and is
wrought with care. _Enfin, nous verrons._ My labours have this year for
the first time been rewarded with upwards of L350; that of itself, so
base we are! encourages me; and the better tenor of my health yet
more.--Remember me to Mrs. Low, and believe me, yours most sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO THOMAS STEVENSON
_La Solitude, December 20, 1883._
MY DEAR FATHER,--I do not know which of us is to blame; I suspect it is
you this time. The last accounts of you were pretty good, I was pleased
to see; I am, on the whole, very well--suffering a little still from my
fever and liver complications, but better.
I have just finished re-reading a book, which I counsel you above all
things _not_ to read, as it has made me very ill, and would make you
worse--Lockhart's _Scott_. It is worth reading, as all things are from
time to time that keep us nose to nose with fact; though I think such
reading may be abused, and that a great deal of life is better spent in
reading of a light and yet chivalrous strain. Thus, no Waverley novel
approaches in power, blackness, bitterness, and moral elevation to the
diary and Lockhart's narrative of the end; and yet the Waverley novels
are better reading for every day than the Life. You may take a tonic
daily, but not phlebotomy.
The great double danger of taking life too easily, and taking it too
hard, how difficult it is to balance that! But we are all too little
inclined to faith; we are all, in our serious moments, too much inclined
to forget that all are sinners, and fall justly by their faults, and
therefore that we have no more to do with that than with the
thundercloud; only to trust, and do our best, and wear as smiling a face
as may be for others and ourselves. But there is no royal road among
this complicated business. Hegel the German got the best word of all
philosophy with his antinomies: the contrary of everything is its
postulate. That is, of course, grossly expressed, but gives a hint of
the idea, which contains a great deal of the mysteries of religion, and
a vast amount of the practical wisdom of life. For your part, there is
no doubt as to your duty--to take things easy and be as happy as you
can, for your sake, and my mother's, and that of many besides. Excuse
this sermon.--Ever your loving son,
R. L. S.
TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
_La Solitude, December 25, 1883._
MY DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER,--This it is supposed will reach you about
Christmas, and I believe I should include Lloyd in the greeting. But I
want to lecture my father; he is not grateful enough; he is like Fanny;
his resignation is not the "true blue." A man who has gained a stone;
whose son is better, and, after so many fears to the contrary, I dare to
say, a credit to him; whose business is arranged; whose marriage is a
picture--what I should call resignation in such a case as his would be
to "take down his fiddle and play as lood as ever he could." That and
nought else. And now, you dear old pious ingrate, on this Christmas
morning, think what your mercies have been; and do not walk too far
before your breakfast--as far as to the top of India Street, then to the
top of Dundas Street, and then to your ain stair heid; and do not forget
that even as _laborare_, so _joculari_, _est orare_; and to be happy the
first step to being pious.
I have as good as finished my novel, and a hard job it has been--but now
practically over, _laus deo_! My financial prospects better than ever
before; my excellent wife a touch dolorous, like Mr. Tommy; my Bogue
quite converted, and myself in good spirits. O, send Curry Powder per
Baxter.
R. L. S.
TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
_[La Solitude, Hyeres] last Sunday of '83._
MY DEAR MOTHER,--I give my father up. I give him a parable: that the
Waverley novels are better reading for every day than the tragic Life.
And he takes it backside foremost, and shakes his head, and is gloomier
than ever. Tell him that I give him up. I don't want no such a parent.
This is not the man for my money. I do not call that by the name of
religion which fills a man with bile. I write him a whole letter,
bidding him beware of extremes, and telling him that his gloom is
gallows-worthy; and I get back an answer--Perish the thought of it.
Here am I on the threshold of another year, when, according to all human
foresight, I should long ago have been resolved into my elements; here
am I, who you were persuaded was born to disgrace you--and, I will do
you the justice to add, on no such insufficient grounds--no very burning
discredit when all is done; here am I married, and the marriage
recognised to be a blessing of the first order, A1 at Lloyd's. There is
he, at his not first youth, able to take more exercise than I at
thirty-three, and gaining a stone's weight, a thing of which I am
incapable. There are you; has the man no gratitude? There is
Smeoroch[8]: is he blind? Tell him from me that all this is
NOT THE TRUE BLUE!
I will think more of his prayers when I see in him a spirit of _praise_.
Piety is a more childlike and happy attitude than he admits. Martha,
Martha, do you hear the knocking at the door? But Mary was happy. Even
the Shorter Catechism, not the merriest epitome of religion, and a work
exactly as pious although not quite so true as the multiplication
table--even that dry-as-dust epitome begins with a heroic note. What is
man's chief end? Let him study that; and ask himself if to refuse to
enjoy God's kindest gifts is in the spirit indicated. Up, Dullard! It is
better service to enjoy a novel than to mump.
I have been most unjust to the Shorter Catechism, I perceive. I wish to
say that I keenly admire its merits as a performance; and that all that
was in my mind was its peculiarly unreligious and unmoral texture; from
which defect it can never, of course, exercise the least influence on
the minds of children. But they learn fine style and some austere
thinking unconsciously.--Ever your loving son,
R. L. S.
TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
_La Solitude, Hyeres-les-Palmiers, Var, January 1 (1884)._
MY DEAR PEOPLE,--A Good New Year to you. The year closes, leaving me
with L50 in the bank, owing no man nothing, L100 more due to me in a
week or so, and L150 more in the course of the month; and I can look
back on a total receipt of L465, 0s. 6d. for the last twelve months!
And yet I am not happy!
Yet I beg! Here is my beggary:--
1. Sellar's Trial.
2. George Borrow's Book about Wales.
3. My Grandfather's Trip to Holland.
4. And (but this is, I fear, impossible) the Bell Rock Book.
When I think of how last year began, after four months of sickness and
idleness, all my plans gone to water, myself starting alone, a kind of
spectre, for Nice--should I not be grateful? Come, let us sing unto the
Lord!
Nor should I forget the expected visit, but I will not believe in that
till it befall; I am no cultivator of disappointments, 'tis a herb that
does not grow in my garden; but I get some good crops both of remorse
and gratitude. The last I can recommend to all gardeners; it grows best
in shiny weather, but once well grown, is very hardy; it does not
require much labour; only that the husbandman should smoke his pipe
about the flower-plots and admire God's pleasant wonders. Winter green
(otherwise known as Resignation, or the "false gratitude plant") springs
in much the same soil; is little hardier, if at all; and requires to be
so dug about and dunged, that there is little margin left for profit.
The variety known as the Black Winter green (H. V. Stevensoniana) is
rather for ornament than profit.
"John, do you see that bed of resignation?"--"It's doin' bravely,
sir."--"John, I will not have it in my garden; it flatters not the eye
and comforts not the stomach; root it out."--"Sir, I ha'e seen o' them
that rase as high as nettles; gran' plants!"--"What then? Were they as
tall as alps, if still unsavoury and bleak, what matters it? Out with
it, then; and in its place put Laughter and a Good Conceit (that capital
home evergreen), and a bush of Flowering Piety--but see it be the
flowering sort--the other species is no ornament to any gentleman's Back
Garden."
JNO. BUNYAN.
TO W. E. HENLEY
Early in January, Stevenson, after a week's visit at Hyeres from his
friends Charles Baxter and W. E. Henley, accompanied them as far as
Nice, and there suddenly went down with an attack of acute
congestion, first of the lungs and then of the kidneys. At one moment
there seemed no hope, but he recovered slowly and returned to Hyeres.
His friends had not written during his illness, fearing him to be too
far gone to care for letters. As he got better he began to chafe at
their silence.
_[Hyeres, February or March 1884]._
TANDEM DESINO*
I cannot read, work, sleep, lie still, walk, or even play patience.
These plagues will overtake all damned silencists; among whom, from this
day out, number
Eructavit cor Timonis.**
the fiery indignator
Roland Little Stevenson.
I counted miseries by the heap,
But now have had my fill,
I cannot see, I do not sleep,
_But shortly I shall kill_.
Of many letters, here is a
Full End.
The last will and testament of
a demitting correspondent.
My indefatigable pen
I here lay down forever. Men
Have used, and left me, and forgot;
Men are entirely off the spot;
Men are a _blague_ and an abuse;
And I commit them to the deuce!
RODERICK LAMOND STEVENSON.
I had companions, I had friends,
I had of whisky various blends.
The whisky was all drunk; and lo!
The friends were gone for evermo!
* * * * *
The loquacious man at peace.*
And when I marked the ingratitude,
I to my maker turned, and spewed.
RANDOLPH LOVEL STEVENSON.
A pen broken, a subverted ink-pot.
Here endeth the Familiar Correspondence of R. L. S.**
Explicuerunt Epistolae Stevensonianae Omnes.**
All men are rot; but there are two--
Sidney, the oblivious Slade, and you--
Who from that rabble stand confest
Ten million times the rottenest.
R. L. S.
When I was sick and safe in gaol
I thought my friends would never fail.
One wrote me nothing; t'other bard
Sent me an insolent post-card.
R. L. S.
Terminus: Silentia.**
FINIS Finaliter finium**
IF NOBODY WRITES TO ME I SHALL DIE
I now write no more.
RICHARD LEFANU STEVENSON,
Duke of Indignation
Mark Tacebo, Isaac Blood }
Secretary John Blind }
Vain-hope Go-to-bed } witnesses
Israel Sciatica }
-----
The finger on the mouth.
-----
* Originally reversed print.
** Originally sideways print.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
The allusions in the second paragraph are to the commanders in the
Nile campaigns of those years.
_La Solitude, Hyeres, 9th March 1884._
MY DEAR S. C.,--You will already have received a not very sane note from
me; so your patience was rewarded--may I say, your patient silence?
However, now comes a letter, which on receipt, I thus acknowledge.
I have already expressed myself as to the political aspect. About
Grahame, I feel happier; it does seem to have been really a good, neat,
honest piece of work. We do not seem to be so badly off for commanders:
Wolseley and Roberts, and this pile of Woods, Stewarts, Alisons,
Grahames, and the like. Had we but ONE statesman on any side of the
house!
Two chapters of _Otto_ do remain: one to rewrite, one to create; and I
am not yet able to tackle them. For me it is my chief o' works; hence
probably not so for others, since it only means that I have here
attacked the greatest difficulties. But some chapters towards the end:
three in particular--I do think come off. I find them stirring,
dramatic, and not unpoetical. We shall see, however; as like as not,
the effort will be more obvious than the success. For, of course, I
strung myself hard to carry it out. The next will come easier, and
possibly be more popular. I believe in the covering of much paper, each
time with a definite and not too difficult artistic purpose; and then,
from time to time, drawing oneself up and trying, in a superior effort,
to combine the facilities thus acquired or improved. Thus one
progresses. But, mind, it is very likely that the big effort, instead of
being the masterpiece, may be the blotted copy, the gymnastic exercise.
This no man can tell; only the brutal and licentious public, snouting in
Mudie's wash-trough, can return a dubious answer.
I am to-day, thanks to a pure heaven and a beneficent, loud-talking,
antiseptic mistral, on the high places as to health and spirits. Money
holds out wonderfully. Fanny has gone for a drive to certain meadows
which are now one sheet of jonquils: sea-bound meadows, the thought of
which may freshen you in Bloomsbury. "Ye have been fresh and fair, Ye
have been filled with flowers"--I fear I misquote. Why do people babble?
Surely Herrick, in his true vein, is superior to Martial himself, though
Martial is a very pretty poet.
Did you ever read St. Augustine? The first chapters of the _Confessions_
are marked by a commanding genius: Shakespearian in depth. I was struck
dumb, but, alas! when you begin to wander into controversy, the poet
drops out. His description of infancy is most seizing. And how is this:
"Sed majorum nugae negotia vocantur; puerorum autem talia cum sint
puniuntur a majoribus." Which is quite after the heart of R. L. S. See
also his splendid passage about the "luminosus limes amicitiae" and the
"nebulae de limosa concupiscentia carnis"; going on "_Utrumque_ in
confuso aestuabat et rapiebat imbecillam aetatem per abrupta
cupiditatum." That "Utrumque" is a real contribution to life's science.
Lust _alone_ is but a pigmy; but it never, or rarely, attacks us
single-handed.
Do you ever read (to go miles off, indeed) the incredible Barbey
d'Aurevilly? A psychological Poe--to be for a moment Henley. I own with
pleasure I prefer him with all his folly, rot, sentiment, and mixed
metaphors, to the whole modern school in France. It makes me laugh when
it's nonsense; and when he gets an effect (though it's still nonsense
and mere Poery, not poesy) it wakens me. _Ce qui ne meurt pas_ nearly
killed me with laughing, and left me--well, it left me very nearly
admiring the old ass. At least, it's the kind of thing one feels one
couldn't do. The dreadful moonlight, when they all three sit silent in
the room--by George, sir, it's imagined--and the brief scene between the
husband and wife is all there. _Quant au fond_, the whole thing, of
course, is a fever dream, and worthy of eternal laughter. Had the young
man broken stones, and the two women been hard-working honest
prostitutes, there had been an end of the whole immoral and baseless
business: you could at least have respected them in that case.
I also read _Petronius Arbiter_, which is a rum work, not so immoral as
most modern works, but singularly silly. I tackled some Tacitus too. I
got them with a dreadful French crib on the same page with the text,
which helps me along and drives me mad. The French do not even try to
translate. They try to be much more classical than the classics, with
astounding results of barrenness and tedium. Tacitus, I fear, was too
solid for me. I liked the war part; but the dreary intriguing at Rome
was too much.
R. L. S.
TO MR. DICK
This correspondent was for many years head clerk and confidential
assistant in the family firm at Edinburgh.
_La Solitude, Hyeres, 12th March 1884._
MY DEAR MR. DICK,--I have been a great while owing you a letter; but I
am not without excuses, as you have heard. I overworked to get a piece
of work finished before I had my holiday, thinking to enjoy it more; and
instead of that, the machinery near hand came sundry in my hands! like
Murdie's uniform. However, I am now, I think, in a fair way of recovery;
I think I was made, what there is of me, of whipcord and thorn-switches;
surely I am tough! But I fancy I shall not overdrive again, or not so
long. It is my theory that work is highly beneficial, but that it
should, if possible, and certainly for such partially broken-down
instruments as the thing I call my body, be taken in batches, with a
clear break and breathing space between. I always do vary my work,
laying one thing aside to take up another, not merely because I believe
it rests the brain, but because I have found it most beneficial to the
result. Reading, Bacon says, makes a full man, but what makes me full on
any subject is to banish it for a time from all my thoughts. However,
what I now propose is, out of every quarter to work two months, and rest
the third. I believe I shall get more done, as I generally manage, on my
present scheme, to have four months' impotent illness and two of
imperfect health--one before, one after, I break down. This, at least,
is not an economical division of the year.
I re-read the other day that heartbreaking book, the _Life of Scott_.
One should read such works now and then, but O, not often. As I live, I
feel more and more that literature should be cheerful and
brave-spirited, even if it cannot be made beautiful and pious and
heroic. We wish it to be a green place; the Waverley Novels are better
to re-read than the over-true _Life_, fine as dear Sir Walter was. The
Bible, in most parts, is a cheerful book; it is our little piping
theologies, tracts, and sermons that are dull and dowie; and even the
Shorter Catechism, which is scarcely a work of consolation, opens with
the best and shortest and completest sermon ever written--upon Man's
chief end.--Believe me, my dear Mr. Dick, very sincerely yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
_P.S._--You see I have changed my hand. I was threatened apparently with
scrivener's cramp, and at any rate had got to write so small, that the
revisal of my MS. tried my eyes, hence my signature alone remains upon
the old model; for it appears that if I changed that, I should be cut
off from my "vivers."
R. L. S.
TO COSMO MONKHOUSE
This amiable and excellent public servant, art-critic, and versifier
was a friend of old Savile Club days; the drift of his letter can
easily be guessed from this reply. The reference to Lamb is to the
essay on the Restoration dramatists.
_La Solitude, Hyeres, March 16, 1884._
MY DEAR MONKHOUSE,--You see with what promptitude I plunge into
correspondence; but the truth is, I am condemned to a complete inaction,
stagnate dismally, and love a letter. Yours, which would have been
welcome at any time, was thus doubly precious.
Dover sounds somewhat shiveringly in my ears. You should see the weather
_I_ have--cloudless, clear as crystal, with just a punkah-draft of the
most aromatic air, all pine and gum tree. You would be ashamed of Dover;
you would scruple to refer, sir, to a spot so paltry. To be idle at
Dover is a strange pretension; pray, how do you warm yourself? If I were
there I should grind knives or write blank verse, or---- But at least
you do not bathe? It is idle to deny it: I have--I may say I nourish--a
growing jealousy of the robust, large-legged, healthy Britain-dwellers,
patient of grog, scorners of the timid umbrella, innocuously breathing
fog: all which I once was, and I am ashamed to say liked it. How
ignorant is youth! grossly rolling among unselected pleasures; and how
nobler, purer, sweeter, and lighter, to sip the choice tonic, to recline
in the luxurious invalid chair, and to tread, well-shawled, the little
round of the constitutional. Seriously, do you like to repose? Ye gods,
I hate it. I never rest with any acceptation; I do not know what people
mean who say they like sleep and that damned bedtime which, since long
ere I was breeched, has rung a knell to all my day's doings and beings.
And when a man, seemingly sane, tells me he has "fallen in love with
stagnation," I can only say to him, "You will never be a Pirate!" This
may not cause any regret to Mrs. Monkhouse; but in your own soul it will
clang hollow--think of it! Never! After all boyhood's aspirations and
youth's immoral day-dreams, you are condemned to sit down, grossly draw
in your chair to the fat board, and be a beastly Burgess till you die.
Can it be? Is there not some escape, some furlough from the Moral Law,
some holiday jaunt contrivable into a Better Land? Shall we never shed
blood? This prospect is too grey.
Here lies a man who never did
Anything but what he was bid;
Who lived his life in paltry ease,
And died of commonplace disease.
To confess plainly, I had intended to spend my life (or any leisure I
might have from Piracy upon the high seas) as the leader of a great
horde of irregular cavalry, devastating whole valleys. I can still,
looking back, see myself in many favourite attitudes; signalling for a
boat from my pirate ship with a pocket-handkerchief, I at the jetty end,
and one or two of my bold blades keeping the crowd at bay; or else
turning in the saddle to look back at my whole command (some five
thousand strong) following me at the hand-gallop up the road out of the
burning valley: this last by moonlight.
_Et point du tout._ I am a poor scribe, and have scarce broken a
commandment to mention, and have recently dined upon cold veal! As for
you (who probably had some ambitions), I hear of you living at Dover, in
lodgings, like the beasts of the field. But in heaven, when we get
there, we shall have a good time, and see some real carnage. For heaven
is--must be--that great Kingdom of Antinomia, which Lamb saw dimly
adumbrated in the _Country Wife_, where the worm which never dies (the
conscience) peacefully expires, and the sinner lies down beside the Ten
Commandments. Till then, here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling, with
neither health nor vice for anything more spirited than procrastination,
which I may well call the Consolation Stakes of Wickedness; and by whose
diligent practice, without the least amusement to ourselves, we can rob
the orphan and bring down grey hairs with sorrow to the dust.
This astonishing gush of nonsense I now hasten to close, envelope, and
expedite to Shakespeare's Cliff. Remember me to Shakespeare, and believe
me, yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO EDMUND GOSSE
Mr. Gosse had written describing the office which he then occupied, a
picturesque old-fashioned chamber in the upper stories of the Board
of Trade.
_La Solitude, Hyeres, March 17, 1884._
MY DEAR GOSSE,--Your office--office is profanely said--your bower upon
the leads is divine. Have you, like Pepys, "the right to fiddle" there?
I see you mount the companion, barbiton in hand, and, fluttered about by
city sparrows, pour forth your spirit in a voluntary. Now when the
spring begins, you must lay in your flowers: how do you say about a
potted hawthorn? Would it bloom? Wallflower is a choice pot-herb;
lily-of-the-valley, too, and carnation, and Indian cress trailed about
the window, is not only beautiful by colour, but the leaves are good to
eat. I recommend thyme and rosemary for the aroma, which should not be
left upon one side; they are good quiet growths.
On one of your tables keep a great map spread out; a chart is still
better--it takes one further--the havens with their little anchors, the
rocks, banks, and soundings, are adorably marine; and such furniture
will suit your ship-shape habitation. I wish I could see those cabins;
they smile upon me with the most intimate charm. From your leads, do you
behold St. Paul's? I always like to see the Foolscap; it is London _per
se_ and no spot from which it is visible is without romance. Then it is
good company for the man of letters, whose veritable nursing
Pater-Noster is so near at hand.
I am all at a standstill; as idle as a painted ship, but not so pretty.
My romance, which has so nearly butchered me in the writing, not even
finished; though so near, thank God, that a few days of tolerable
strength will see the roof upon that structure. I have worked very hard
at it, and so do not expect any great public favour. _In moments of
effort, one learns to do the easy things that people like._ There is the
golden maxim; thus one should strain and then play, strain again and
play again. The strain is for us, it educates; the play is for the
reader, and pleases. Do you not feel so? We are ever threatened by two
contrary faults: both deadly. To sink into what my forefathers would
have called "rank conformity," and to pour forth cheap replicas, upon
the one hand; upon the other, and still more insidiously present, to
forget that art is a diversion and a decoration, that no triumph or
effort is of value, nor anything worth reaching except charm.--Yours
affectionately,
R. L. S.
TO MISS FERRIER
Soon after the date of the following letter Miss Ferrier went out to
her friends and stayed with them through the trying weeks which
followed.
_La Solitude, Hyeres_ [_March_ 22, 1884].
MY DEAR MISS FERRIER,--Are you really going to fail us? This seems a
dreadful thing. My poor wife, who is not well off for friends on this
bare coast, has been promising herself, and I have been promising her, a
rare acquisition. And now Miss Burn has failed, and you utter a very
doubtful note. You do not know how delightful this place is, nor how
anxious we are for a visit. Look at the names: "The Solitude"--is that
romantic? The palm-trees?--how is that for the gorgeous East? "Var"? the
name of a river--"the quiet waters by"! 'Tis true, they are in another
department, and consist of stones and a biennial spate; but what a
music, what a plash of brooks, for the imagination! We have hills; we
have skies; the roses are putting forth, as yet sparsely; the meadows by
the sea are one sheet of jonquils; the birds sing as in an English
May--for, considering we are in France and serve up our song-birds, I am
ashamed to say, on a little field of toast and with a sprig of thyme (my
own receipt) in their most innocent and now unvocal bellies--considering
all this, we have a wonderfully fair wood-music round this Solitude of
ours. What can I say more?--All this awaits you. _Kennst du das Land_,
in short.--Your sincere friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO W. H. LOW
The verses enclosed were the set entitled "The Canoe Speaks,"
afterwards printed in _Underwoods_. Stevenson was suffering at this
time from a temporary weakness of the eyesight.
_La Solitude, Hyeres [April 1884]._
MY DEAR LOW,--The blind man in these sprawled lines sends greeting. I
have been ill, as perhaps the papers told you. The news--"great
news--glorious news--sec-ond ed-ition!"--went the round in England.
Anyway, I now thank you for your pictures, which, particularly the
Arcadian one, we all (Bob included, he was here sick-nursing me) much
liked.
Herewith are a set of verses which I thought pretty enough to send to
press. Then I thought of the Manhattan, towards whom I have guilty and
compunctious feelings. Last, I had the best thought of all--to send them
to you in case you might think them suitable for illustration. It seemed
to me quite in your vein. If so, good; if not, hand them on to
Manhattan, Century, or Lippincott, at your pleasure, as all three desire
my work or pretend to. But I trust the lines will not go unattended.
Some riverside will haunt you; and O! be tender to my bathing girls. The
lines are copied in my wife's hand, as I cannot see to write otherwise
than with the pen of Cormoran, Gargantua, or Nimrod. Love to your
wife.--Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Copied it myself.
TO THOMAS STEVENSON
_La Solitude, Hyeres, April 19, 1884._
MY DEAR FATHER,--Yesterday I very powerfully stated the _Haeresis
Stevensoniana_, or the complete body of divinity of the family
theologian, to Miss Ferrier. She was much impressed; so was I. You are a
great heresiarch; and I know no better. Whaur the devil did ye get thon
about the soap? Is it altogether your own? I never heard it elsewhere;
and yet I suspect it must have been held at some time or other, and if
you were to look up you would probably find yourself condemned by some
Council.
I am glad to hear you are so well. The hear is excellent. The Cornhills
came; I made Miss Ferrier read us _Thrawn Janet_, and was quite bowled
over by my own works. _The Merry Men_ I mean to make much longer, with a
whole new denouement, not yet quite clear to me. _The Story of a Lie_ I
must rewrite entirely also, as it is too weak and ragged, yet is worth
saving for the Admiral. Did I ever tell you that the Admiral was
recognised in America?
When they are all on their legs this will make an excellent collection.
Has Davie never read _Guy Mannering_, _Rob Roy_, or _The Antiquary_? All
of which are worth three _Waverleys_. I think _Kenilworth_ better than
_Waverley_; _Nigel_, too; and _Quentin Durward_ about as good. But it
shows a true piece of insight to prefer _Waverley_, for it _is_
different; and though not quite coherent, better worked in parts than
almost any other: surely more carefully. It is undeniable that the love
of the slap-dash and the shoddy grew upon Scott with success. Perhaps it
does on many of us, which may be the granite on which D.'s opinion
stands. However, I hold it, in Patrick Walker's phrase, for an "old,
condemned, damnable error." Dr. Simson was condemned by P. W. as being
"a bagful of" such. One of Patrick's amenities!
Another ground there may be to D.'s opinion; those who avoid (or seek to
avoid) Scott's facility are apt to be continually straining and
torturing their style to get in more of life. And to many the extra
significance does not redeem the strain.
DOCTOR STEVENSON.
TO W. E. HENLEY
_La Solitude, Hyeres, April 20th, 1884._
I have been really ill for two days, hemorrhage, weakness, extreme
nervousness that will not let me lie a moment, and damned sciatica o'
nights; but to-day I am on the recovery. Time; for I was miserable. It
is not often that I suffer, with all my turns and tumbles, from the
sense of serious illness; and I hate it, as I believe everybody does.
And then the combination of not being able to read, not being allowed to
speak, being too weak to write, and not wishing to eat, leaves a man
with some empty seconds. But I bless God, it's over now; to-day I am
much mended.
Insatiable gulf, greedier than hell, and more silent than the woods of
Styx, have you or have you not lost the dedication to the _Child's
Garden_? Answer that plain question as otherwise I must try to tackle to
it once again.
Sciatica is a word employed much by Shakespeare in a certain connection.
'Tis true, he was no physician, but as I read, he had smarted in his
day. I, too, do smart. And yet this keen soprano agony, these veins of
fire and bombshell explosions in the knee, are as nothing to a certain
dull, drowsy pain I had when my kidneys were congested at Nice; there
was death in that; the creak of Charon's rowlocks, and the miasmas of
the Styx. I may say plainly, much as I have lost the power of bearing
pain, I had still rather suffer much than die. Not only the love of life
grows on me, but the fear of certain odd end-seconds grows as well. 'Tis
a suffocating business, take it how you will; and Tyrrel and Forest only
bunglers.
Well, this is an essay on death, or worse, on dying: to return to
daylight and the winds, I perceive I have grown to live too much in my
work and too little in life. 'Tis the dollars do it: the world is too
much. Whenever I think I would like to live a little, I hear the
butcher's cart resounding through the neighbourhood; and so to plunge
again. The fault is a good fault for me; to be able to do so, is to
succeed in life; and my life has been a huge success. I can live with
joy and without disgust in the art by which I try to support myself; I
have the best wife in the world; I have rather more praise and nearly as
much coin as I deserve; my friends are many and true-hearted. Sir, it is
a big thing in successes. And if mine anchorage lies something open to
the wind, Sciatica, if the crew are blind, and the captain spits blood,
one cannot have all, and I may be patched up again, who knows? "His
timbers yet are (indifferently) sound, and he may float again."
Thanks for the word on _Silverado_.--Yours ever,
THE SCIATICATED BARD.
TO TREVOR HADDON
The allusions to Skelt, the last of the designers and etchers of
cheap sheets illustrating the popular dramas and melodramas of the
day, will need no explanation to readers familiar with the essay _A
Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured_.
_La Solitude, Hyeres, April 23rd, 1884._
DEAR MR. HADDON,--I am pleased to see your hand again, and, waiting my
wife's return, to guess at some of the contents. For various things have
befallen me of late. First, as you see, I had to change my hand; lastly
I have fallen into a kind of blindness, and cannot read. This more
inclines me for something to do, to answer your letter before I have
read it, a safe plan familiar to diplomatists.
I gather from half shut eyes that you were a Skeltist; now seriously
that is a good beginning; there is a deal of romance (cheap) in Skelt.
Look at it well, and you will see much of Dickens. And even Skelt is
better than conscientious, grey back-gardens, and conscientious, dull
still lives. The great lack of art just now is a spice of life and
interest; and I prefer galvanism to acquiescence in the grave. All do
not; 'tis an affair of tastes; and mine are young. Those who like death
have their innings to-day with art that is like mahogany and horse-hair
furniture, solid, true, serious and as dead as Caesar. I wish I could
read _Treasure Island_; I believe I should like it. But work done, for
the artist, is the Golden Goose killed; you sell its feathers and lament
the eggs. To-morrow the fresh woods!
I have been seriously ill, and do not pick up with that finality that I
should like to see. I linger over and digest my convalescence like a
favourite wine; and what with blindness, green spectacles, and
seclusion, cut but a poor figure in the world.
I made out at the end that you were asking some advice--but what, my
failing eyes refuse to inform me. I must keep a sheet for the answer;
and Mrs. Stevenson still delays, and still I have no resource against
tedium but the waggling of this pen.
You seem to me to be a pretty lucky young man; keep your eyes open to
your mercies. That part of piety is eternal; and the man who forgets to
be grateful has fallen asleep in life. Please to recognise that you are
unworthy of all that befalls you--unworthy, too, I hear you wail, of
this terrible sermon; but indeed we are not worthy of our fortunes; love
takes us in a counterfeit, success comes to us at play, health stays
with us while we abuse her; and even when we gird at our fellow-men, we
should remember that it is of their good will alone, that we still live
and still have claims to honour. The sins of the most innocent, if they
were exactly visited, would ruin them to the doer. And if you know any
man who believes himself to be worthy of a wife's love, a friend's
affection, a mistress's caress, even if venal, you may rest assured he
is worthy of nothing but a kicking. I fear men who have no open faults;
what do they conceal? We are not meant to be good in this world, but to
try to be, and fail, and keep on trying; and when we get a cake to say,
"Thank God!" and when we get a buffet, to say, "Just so: well hit!"
I have been getting some of the buffets of late; but have amply earned
them--you need not pity me. Pity sick children and the individual poor
man; not the mass. Don't pity anybody else, and never pity fools. The
optimistic Stevenson; but there is a sense in these wanderings.
Now I have heard your letter, and my sermon was not mal-a-propos. For
you seem to be complaining. Everybody's home is depressing, I believe;
it is their difficult business to make it less so. There is an
unpleasant saying, which would have pricked me sharply at your
age.--Yours truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO COSMO MONKHOUSE
_La Solitude, Hyeres [April 24, 1884]._
DEAR MONKHOUSE,--If you are in love with repose, here is your occasion:
change with me. I am too blind to read, hence no reading; I am too weak
to walk, hence no walking; I am not allowed to speak, hence no talking;
but the great simplification has yet to be named; for, if this goes on,
I shall soon have nothing to eat--and hence, O Hallelujah! hence no
eating. The offer is a fair one: I have not sold myself to the devil,
for I could never find him. I am married, but so are you. I sometimes
write verses, but so do you. Come! _Hic quies!_ As for the commandments,
I have broken them so small that they are the dust of my chambers; you
walk upon them, triturate and toothless; and with the Golosh of
Philosophy, they shall not bite your heel. True, the tenement is
falling. Ay, friend, but yours also. Take a larger view; what is a year
or two? dust in the balance! 'Tis done, behold you Cosmo Stevenson, and
me R. L. Monkhouse; you at Hyeres, I in London; you rejoicing in the
clammiest repose, me proceeding to tear your tabernacle into rags, as I
have already so admirably torn my own.
My place to which I now introduce you--it is yours--is like a London
house, high and very narrow; upon the lungs I will not linger; the heart
is large enough for a ballroom; the belly greedy and inefficient; the
brain stocked with the most damnable explosives, like a dynamiter's den.
The whole place is well furnished, though not in a very pure taste;
Corinthian much of it; showy and not strong.
About your place I shall try to find my way above, an interesting
exploration. Imagine me, as I go to bed, falling over a blood-stained
remorse; opening that cupboard in the cerebellum and being welcomed by
the spirit of your murdered uncle. I should probably not like your
remorses; I wonder if you will like mine; I have a spirited assortment;
they whistle in my ear o' nights like a north-easter. I trust yours
don't dine with the family; mine are better mannered; you will hear
nought of them till 2 A.M., except one, to be sure, that I have made a
pet of, but he is small; I keep him in buttons, so as to avoid
commentaries; you will like him much--if you like what is genuine.
Must we likewise change religions? Mine is a good article, with a trick
of stopping; cathedral bell note; ornamental dial; supported by Venus
and the Graces; quite a summer-parlour piety. Of yours, since your last,
I fear there is little to be said.
There is one article I wish to take away with me: my spirits. They suit
me. I don't want yours; I like my own; I have had them a long while in
bottle. It is my only reservation.--Yours (as you decide),
R. L. MONKHOUSE.
TO W. E. HENLEY
_La Solitude, Hyeres [May 1884]._
DEAR BOY,--_Old Mortality_[9] is out, and I am glad to say Coggie likes
it. We like her immensely.
I keep better, but no great shakes yet; cannot work--cannot: that is
flat, not even verses: as for prose, that more active place is shut on
me long since.
My view of life is essentially the comic; and the romantically comic.
_As You Like It_ is to me the most bird-haunted spot in letters;
_Tempest_ and _Twelfth Night_ follow. These are what I mean by poetry
and nature. I make an effort of my mind to be quite one with Moliere,
except upon the stage, where his inimitable _jeux de scene_ beggar
belief; but you will observe they are stage-plays--things _ad hoc_; not
great Olympian debauches of the heart and fancy; hence more perfect, and
not so great. Then I come, after great wanderings, to Carmosine and to
Fantasio; to one part of La Derniere Aldini (which, by the by, we might
dramatise in a week), to the notes that Meredith has found, Evan and the
postillion, Evan and Rose, Harry in Germany. And to me these things are
the good; beauty, touched with sex and laughter; beauty with God's earth
for the background. Tragedy does not seem to me to come off; and when it
does, it does so by the heroic illusion; the anti-masque has been
omitted; laughter, which attends on all our steps in life, and sits by
the deathbed, and certainly redacts the epitaph, laughter has been lost
from these great-hearted lies. But the comedy which keeps the beauty and
touches the terrors of our life (laughter and tragedy-in-a-good-humour
having kissed), that is the last word of moved representation; embracing
the greatest number of elements of fate and character; and telling its
story, not with the one eye of pity, but with the two of pity and mirth.
R. L. S.
TO EDMUND GOSSE
Early in May Stevenson again fell very dangerously ill with
hemorrhage of the lungs, and lay for several weeks between life and
death, until towards the end of June he was brought sufficiently
round to venture by slow stages on the journey to England, staying
for two or three weeks at Royat on the way. His correspondent had
lately been appointed Clark Reader in English Literature at Trinity
College, Cambridge.
_[La Solitude, Hyeres] From my bed, May 29, 1884._
DEAR GOSSE,--The news of the Professorate found me in the article
of--well, of heads or tails; I am still in bed, and a very poor person.
You must thus excuse my damned delay; but, I assure you, I was
delighted. You will believe me the more, if I confess to you that my
first sentiment was envy; yes, sir, on my blood-boltered couch I envied
the professor. However, it was not of long duration; the double thought
that you deserved and that you would thoroughly enjoy your success fell
like balsam on my wounds. How came it that you never communicated my
rejection of Gilder's offer for the Rhone? But it matters not. Such
earthly vanities are over for the present. This has been a fine
well-conducted illness. A month in bed; a month of silence; a fortnight
of not stirring my right hand; a month of not moving without being
lifted. Come! _Ca y est_: devilish like being dead.--Yours, dear
Professor, academically,
R. L. S.
I am soon to be moved to Royat; an invalid valet goes with me! I got him
cheap--second-hand.
In turning over my late friend Ferrier's commonplace book, I find three
poems from _Viol and Flute_ copied out in his hand: "When Flower-time,"
"Love in Winter," and "Mistrust." They are capital too. But I thought
the fact would interest you. He was no poetist either; so it means the
more. "Love in W.!" I like the best.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
Enclosing some supplementary verses for the _Child's Garden_.
_Marseilles, June 1884._
DEAR S. C.,--Are these four in time? No odds about order. I am at
Marseille and stood the journey wonderfully. Better address Hotel
Chabassiere, Royat, Puy de Dome. You see how this d--d poeshie flows
from me in sickness: Are they good or bad? Wha kens? But I like the
_Little Land_, I think, as well as any. As time goes on I get more fancy
in. We have no money, but a valet and a maid. The valet is no end; how
long can you live on a valet? Vive le valet! I am tempted to call myself
a valetudinarian. I love my love with a V because he is a
Valetudinarian; I took him to Valetta or Valais, gave him his Vails and
tenderly addressed him with one word,
Vale.
_P.S._--It does not matter of course about order. As soon as I have all
the slips I shall organise the book for the publisher. A set of 8 will
be put together under the title _An Only Child_; another cycle of 10
will be called _In the Garden_, and other six called _Bedtime_ to end
all up. It will now make quite a little volume of a good way upwards of
100 pp. Will you instruct Bain to send me a Bible; of a type that I can
read without blindness; the better if with notes; there is a Clarendon
Press Bible, pray see it yourself. I also want Ewald's History in a
translation.
R. L. S.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
The play of _Deacon Brodie_, the joint work of R. L. S. and W. E. H.,
was to be performed in London early in July.
[_Hotel Chabassiere, Royat, July 1884._]
DEAR S. C.,--Books received with great thanks. Very nice books, though I
see you underrate my cecity: I could no more read their beautiful Bible
than I could sail in heaven. However I have sent for another and can
read the rest for patience.
I quite understand your feelings about the _Deacon_, which is a far way
behind; but I get miserable when I think of Henley cutting this splash
and standing, I fear, to lose a great deal of money. It is about Henley,
not Brodie, that I care. I fear my affections are not strong to my past
works; they are blotted out by others; and anyhow the _Deacon_ is damn
bad.
I am half asleep and can no more discourse. Say to your friends, "Look
here, some friends of mine are bringing out a play; it has some stuff;
suppose you go and see it." But I know I am a cold, unbelieving fellow,
incapable of those hot claps that honour you and Henley and therefore--I
am asleep. _Child's Garden_ (first instalment) come. Fanny ill; self
asleep.
R. L. S.
TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
_Hotel Chabassiere, Royat [July 1884]._
MY DEAR PEOPLE,--The weather has been demoniac; I have had a skiff of
cold, and was finally obliged to take to bed entirely; to-day, however,
it has cleared, the sun shines, and I begin to
* * * * *
_Several days after._--I have been out once, but now am back in bed. I
am better, and keep better, but the weather is a mere injustice. The
imitation of Edinburgh is, at times, deceptive; there is a note among
the chimney pots that suggests Howe Street; though I think the shrillest
spot in Christendom was not upon the Howe Street side, but in front,
just under the Miss Graemes' big chimney stack. It had a fine alto
character--a sort of bleat that used to divide the marrow in my
joints--say in the wee, slack hours. That music is now lost to us by
rebuilding; another air that I remember, not regret, was the solo of the
gas-burner in the little front room; a knickering, flighty, fleering,
and yet spectral cackle. I mind it above all on winter afternoons, late,
when the window was blue and spotted with rare rain-drops, and, looking
out, the cold evening was seen blue all over, with the lamps of Queen's
and Frederick's Street dotting it with yellow, and flaring eastward in
the squalls. Heavens, how unhappy I have been in such circumstances--I,
who have now positively forgotten the colour of unhappiness; who am full
like a fed ox, and dull like a fresh turf, and have no more spiritual
life, for good or evil, than a French bagman.
We are at Chabassiere's, for of course it was nonsense to go up the hill
when we could not walk.
The child's poems in a far extended form are likely soon to be heard
of--which Cummy I dare say will be glad to know. They will make a book
of about one hundred pages.--Ever your affectionate,
R. L. S.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
I had reported to Stevenson a remark made by one of his greatest
admirers, Sir E. Burne-Jones, on some particular analogy, I forget
what, between a passage of Defoe and one in _Treasure Island_.
[_Hotel Chabassiere, Royat, July 1884._]
... Here is a quaint thing, I have read _Robinson_, _Colonel Jack_,
_Moll Flanders_, _Memoirs of a Cavalier_, _History of the Plague_,
_History of the Great Storm_, _Scotch Church and Union_. And there my
knowledge of Defoe ends--except a book, the name of which I forget,
about Peterborough in Spain, which Defoe obviously did not write, and
could not have written if he wanted. To which of these does B. J. refer?
I guess it must be the history of the Scottish Church. I jest; for, of
course, I _know_ it must be a book I have never read, and which this
makes me keen to read--I mean _Captain Singleton_. Can it be got and
sent to me? If _Treasure Island_ is at all like it, it will be
delightful. I was just the other day wondering at my folly in not
remembering it, when I was writing _T. I._, as a mine for pirate tips.
_T. I._ came out of Kingsley's _At Last_, where I got the Dead Man's
Chest--and that was the seed--and out of the great Captain Johnson's
_History of Notorious Pirates_. The scenery is Californian in part, and
in part _chic_.
I was downstairs to-day! So now I am a made man--till the next time.
R. L. STEVENSON.
If it was _Captain Singleton_, send it to me, won't you?
_Later._--My life dwindles into a kind of valley of the shadow picnic. I
cannot read; so much of the time (as to-day) I must not speak above my
breath, that to play patience, or to see my wife play it, is become the
be-all and the end-all of my dim career. To add to my gaiety, I may
write letters, but there are few to answer. Patience and Poesy are thus
my rod and staff; with these I not unpleasantly support my days.
I am very dim, dumb, dowie, and damnable. I hate to be silenced; and if
to talk by signs is my forte (as I contend), to understand them cannot
be my wife's. Do not think me unhappy; I have not been so for years; but
I am blurred, inhabit the debatable frontier of sleep, and have but dim
designs upon activity. All is at a standstill; books closed, paper put
aside, the voice, the eternal voice of R. L. S., well silenced. Hence
this plaint reaches you with no very great meaning, no very great
purpose, and written part in slumber by a heavy, dull, somnolent,
superannuated son of a bedpost.
TO W. E. HENLEY
I suppose, but cannot remember, that I had in the meantime sent him
_Captain Singleton_.
[_Hotel Chabassiere, Royat, July 1884._]
DEAR BOY,--I am glad that ---- ---- has disappointed you. Depend upon
it, nobody is so bad as to be worth scalping, except your dearest
friends and parents; and scalping them may sometimes be avoided by
scalping yourself. I grow daily more lymphatic and benign; bring me a
dynamiter, that I may embrace and bless him!--So, if I continue to evade
the friendly hemorrhage, I shall be spared in anger to pour forth senile
and insignificant volumes, and the clever lads in the journals, not
doubting of the eye of Nemesis, shall mock and gird at me.
All this seems excellent news of the _Deacon_. But O! that the last
tableau, on from Leslie's entrance, were re-written! We had a great
opening there and missed it. I read for the first time _Captain
Singleton_; it has points; and then I re-read _Colonel Jack_ with
ecstasy; the first part is as much superior to _Robinson Crusoe_ as
_Robinson_ is to--_The Inland Voyage_. It is pretty, good,
philosophical, dramatic, and as picturesque as a promontory goat in a
gale of wind. Get it and fill your belly with honey.
Fanny hopes to be in time for the _Deacon_. I was out yesterday, and
none the worse. We leave Monday.
R. L. S.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] For many years fellow of and historical lecturer at Trinity
College, Cambridge.
[2] _Paillon._
[3] The name of the Delectable Land in one of Heine's _Lieder_.
[4] _Silverado Squatters_.
[5] The allusion is to a specimen I had been used to hear quoted of
the Duke of Wellington's table-talk in his latter years. He had said
that musk-rats were sometimes kept alive in bottles in India. Curate,
or other meek dependent: "I presume, your Grace, they are small rats
and large bottles." His Grace: "No, large rats, small bottles; large
rats, small bottles; large rats, small bottles."
[6] _Croutes_: crude studies from nature.
[7] Mr. J. Comyns Carr, at this time editing the English Illustrated
Magazine.
[8] A favourite Skye terrier. Mr. Stevenson was a great lover of dogs.
[9] The essay so called, suggested by the death of J. W. Ferrier. See
_Memories and Portraits_.
VIII
LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH
SEPTEMBER 1884--AUGUST 1887
Arriving in England at the end of July 1884, Stevenson took up his
quarters first for a few weeks at Richmond. He was compelled to abandon
the hope of making his permanent home at Hyeres, partly by the renewed
failure there of his own health, partly by a bad outbreak of cholera
which occurred in the old Provencal town about the time he left it.
After consultation with several doctors, all of whom held out hopes of
ultimate recovery despite the gravity of his present symptoms, he moved
to Bournemouth. Here he found in the heaths and pinewoods some distant
semblance of the landscape of his native Scotland, and in the sandy
curves of the Channel coast a passable substitute for the bays and
promontories of his beloved Mediterranean. At all events, he liked the
place well enough to be willing to try it for a home; and such it became
for all but three years, from September 1884 to August 1887. These,
although in the matter of health the worst and most trying years of his
life, were in the matter of work some of the most active and successful.
For the first two or three months the Stevensons occupied a lodging on
the West Cliff called Wensleydale; for the next five, from mid-November
1884 to mid-April 1885, they were tenants of a house named Bonallie
Towers, pleasantly situated amid the pinewoods of Branksome Park, and
by its name recalling familiar Midlothian associations. Lastly, about
Easter 1885, they entered into occupation of a house of their own, given
by the elder Mr. Stevenson as a special gift to his daughter-in-law, and
renamed by its new occupants Skerryvore, in reminiscence of one of the
great lighthouse works carried out by the family firm off the Scottish
coast.
During all the time of Stevenson's residence at Bournemouth he was
compelled to lead the life, irksome to him above all men, but borne with
invincible spirit and patience, of a chronic invalid and almost constant
prisoner to the house. A great part of his time had perforce to be spent
in bed, and there almost all his literary work was produced. Often for
days, and sometimes for whole weeks together, he was forbidden to speak
aloud, and compelled to carry on conversation with his family and
friends in whispers or with the help of pencil and paper. The few
excursions to a distance which he attempted--most commonly to my house
at the British Museum, once to Cambridge, once to Matlock, once to
Exeter, and once in 1886 as far as Paris--these excursions generally
ended in a breakdown and a hurried retreat to home and bed.
Nevertheless, he was able in intervals of comparative ease to receive
and enjoy the visits of friends from a distance both old and new--among
the most welcome of the latter being Mr. Henry James, Mr. William
Archer, and Mr. John S. Sargent; while among Bournemouth residents who
attached themselves to him on terms of special intimacy and affection
were Sir Percy and Lady Shelley and Sir Henry and Lady Taylor and their
daughters.
At the same time, seizing and making the most of every week, nay, every
day and hour of respite, he contrived to produce work surprising, under
the circumstances, alike by quantity and quality. During the first two
months of his life at Bournemouth the two plays _Admiral Guinea_ and
_Beau Austin_ were written in collaboration with Mr. Henley, and many
other dramatic schemes were broached which health and leisure failed him
to carry out. In the course of the next few months he finished _Prince
Otto_, _The Child's Garden of Verses_, and _More New Arabian Nights_,
all three of which had been begun, and the two first almost completed,
before he left Hyeres. He at the same time attacked two new tasks--a
highway novel called _The Great North Road_, and a _Life of Wellington_
for a series edited by Mr. Andrew Lang, both of which he had in the
sequel to abandon; and a third, the boys' story of _Kidnapped_, which in
its turn had to be suspended, but on its publication next year turned
out one of the most brilliant of his successes.
About midsummer of this year, 1885, he was distressed by the sudden
death of his old and kind friend Professor Fleeming Jenkin, and after a
while undertook the task of writing a memoir of him to be prefixed to
his collected papers. Towards the close of the same year he was busy
with what proved to be the most popular of all his writings, _The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, and with the Christmas story
of _Olalla_. _Jekyll and Hyde_ was published in January 1886, and after
threatening for the first week or two to fall flat, in no long time
caught the attention of all classes of readers, was quoted from a
hundred pulpits, and made the writer's name familiar to multitudes both
in England and America whom it had never reached before. A success
scarcely inferior, though of another kind, was made a few months
afterwards by _Kidnapped_, which Stevenson had taken up again in the
early spring, and which was published about midsummer. After completing
this task in March, he was able to do little work during the remainder
of the year, except in preparing materials for the _Life of Fleeming
Jenkin_, and in writing occasional verses which helped to make up the
collection published in the following year under the title _Underwoods_.
In the early autumn of the same year, 1886, he took a longer and more
successful excursion from home than usual, staying without breakdown for
two or three weeks at the Monument, as he always called my house at the
British Museum, and seeing something of kindred spirits among his
elders, such as Robert Browning, James Russell Lowell, the painters
Burne-Jones and W. B. Richmond, and others who had hitherto delighted in
his work and now learned to delight no less in his society.
Thence he went with Mr. Henley for a short trip to Paris, chiefly in
order to see the sculptor Rodin and his old friends Mr. and Mrs. W. H.
Low. From this trip he returned none the worse, but during all the later
autumn and winter at Bournemouth was again hampered in his work by
renewed and prolonged attacks of illness. A further cause of trouble was
the distressing failure of his father's health and spirits, attended by
symptoms which plainly indicated the beginning of the end.
For some weeks of April, 1887, he was much taken up with a scheme which
had nothing to do with literature, and which the few friends to whom he
confided it regarded as wildly Quixotic and unwise. In these years he
had, as we have seen, taken deeply to heart both what he thought the
guilty remissness of Government action in the matter of the Soudan
garrisons and of Gordon, and the tameness of acquiescence with which the
national conscience appeared to take the result. He had been not less
disturbed at the failure, hitherto, of successive administrations to
assert the reign of law in Ireland. He was no blind partisan of the
English cause in that country, and had even written of the hereditary
hatred of Irish for English as a sentiment justified by the facts of
history. But he held strongly that private warfare, the use of dynamite
and the knife, with the whole system of agrarian vengeances and the
persecution of the weak, were means which no end could justify; and that
redress of grievances, whatever form it might ultimately take, must be
preceded by the re-establishment of law. In _More New Arabian Nights_,
published the year before, he had endeavoured "to make dynamite
ridiculous if he could not make it horrible," and to the old elements of
fantastic invention, and humorously solemn realism in the unreal, had
added the new element of a witty and scornful criminal psychology. A
case that now appealed to him with especial force was that of the cruel
persecution kept up against the widow and daughters of the murdered man
Curtin. He determined that if no one else would take up the duty of
resisting such persecution without regard to consequences, he would take
it up himself, in the hope of more effectually rousing the public
conscience to the evils of the time. His plan was to go with his family,
occupy and live upon the derelict farm, and let happen what would. This,
as the letters referring to the matter plainly show, was no
irresponsible dream or whim, but a purpose conceived in absolute and
sober earnest. His wife and household were prepared to follow, though
under protest, had he persisted; as it seemed for some weeks that he
certainly would, until at last the arguments of his friends, and still
more the unmistakable evidence that his father's end was near,
persuaded him to give up his purpose. But to the last, I think he was
never well satisfied that in giving way he had not been a coward,
preferring fireside ease and comfort to the call of a public duty.
After spending a part of the winter at Bournemouth and a part at
Torquay, both Stevenson's parents returned to Edinburgh in April 1887;
and within a few weeks after their arrival he was summoned north to his
father's death-bed. He stayed at Edinburgh the short time necessary for
the dispatch of business, and returned to his own sick-room life at
Skerryvore.
During the two years and nine months of Stevenson's residence at
Bournemouth, preceding the date of his father's death, he had made no
apparent progress towards recovery. Every period of respite had been
quickly followed by a relapse, and all his work, brilliant and varied as
it was, had been done under conditions which would have reduced almost
any other man to inactivity. The close and frequently recurring
struggles against the danger of death from hemorrhage and exhaustion,
which he had been used, when they first occurred, to find exciting, grew
in the long run merely irksome; and even his persistent high courage and
gaiety, sustained as they were by the devoted affection of his wife and
many friends, began occasionally, for the first time, to fail him.
Accordingly, when in May 1887 the death of his father severed the
strongest of the ties which bound him to the old country, he was very
ready to listen to the advice of his physicians, who were unanimous in
thinking his case not hopeless, but urged him to try some complete
change of climate, surroundings, and mode of life. His wife's
connections pointing to the West, he thought of the mountain
health-resorts of Colorado, and of their growing reputation for the
cure of lung patients. Having let his house at Bournemouth, he
accordingly took passage on board the S.S. _Ludgate Hill_, sailing for
New York from London on August 21st, 1887, with his whole party,
consisting of his wife, his widowed mother, whom they had persuaded to
join them, his young stepson, and a trusted servant, Valentine Roch. The
concluding letters of the present section tell of the preparations for
this departure.
TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
_Wensleydale, Bournemouth, Sunday, 28th September 1884._
MY DEAR PEOPLE,--I keep better, and am to-day downstairs for the first
time. I find the lockers entirely empty; not a cent to the front. Will
you pray send us some? It blows an equinoctial gale, and has blown for
nearly a week. Nimbus Britannicus; piping wind, lashing rain; the sea is
a fine colour, and wind-bound ships lie at anchor under the Old Harry
rocks, to make one glad to be ashore.
The Henleys are gone, and two plays practically done. I hope they may
produce some of the ready.--I am, ever affectionate son,
R. L. S.
TO ANDREW CHATTO
During the earlier Bournemouth days were firmly established
Stevenson's cordial relations with the several English publishers
Cassell & Co., Chatto & Windus, and Longmans, and a little later with
C. Scribner's Sons in America.
_Wensleydale, Bournemouth, October 3, 1884._
DEAR MR. CHATTO,--I have an offer of L25 for _Otto_ from America. I do
not know if you mean to have the American rights; from the nature of the
contract, I think not; but if you understood that you were to sell the
sheets, I will either hand over the bargain to you, or finish it myself
and hand you over the money if you are pleased with the amount. You see,
I leave this quite in your hands. To parody an old Scotch story of
servant and master: if you don't know that you have a good author, I
know that I have a good publisher. Your fair, open, and handsome
dealings are a good point in my life, and do more for my crazy health
than has yet been done by any doctor.--Very truly yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO W. E. HENLEY
There is no certain clue to the date of the following; neither has it
been possible to make sure what was the enclosure mentioned. The
special illness referred to seems to be that of the preceding May at
Hyeres.
[_Wensleydale, Bournemouth, October 1884?_]
DEAR BOY,--I trust this finds you well; it leaves me so-so. The weather
is so cold that I must stick to bed, which is rotten and tedious, but
can't be helped.
I find in the blotting book the enclosed, which I wrote to you the eve
of my blood. Is it not strange? That night, when I naturally thought I
was coopered, the thought of it was much in my mind; I thought it had
gone; and I thought what a strange prophecy I had made in jest, and how
it was indeed like to be the end of many letters. But I have written a
good few since, and the spell is broken. I am just as pleased, for I
earnestly desire to live. This pleasant middle age into whose port we
are steering is quite to my fancy. I would cast anchor here, and go
ashore for twenty years and see the manners of the place. Youth was a
great time, but somewhat fussy. Now in middle age (bar lucre) all seems
mighty placid. It likes me; I spy a little bright cafe in one corner of
the port, in front of which I now propose we should sit down. There is
just enough of the bustle of the harbour and no more; and the ships are
close in, regarding us with stern-windows--the ships that bring deals
from Norway and parrots from the Indies. Let us sit down here for twenty
years, with a packet of tobacco and a drink, and talk of art and women.
By-and-by, the whole city will sink, and the ships too, and the table,
and we also; but we shall have sat for twenty years and had a fine talk;
and by that time, who knows? exhausted the subject.
I send you a book which (or I am mistook) will please you; it pleased
me. But I do desire a book of adventure--a romance--and no man will get
or write me one. Dumas I have read and re-read too often; Scott, too and
I am short. I want to hear swords clash. I want a book to begin in a
good way; a book, I guess, like _Treasure Island_, alas! which I have
never read, and cannot though I live to ninety. I would God that some
one else had written it! By all that I can learn, it is the very book
for my complaint. I like the way I hear it opens; and they tell me John
Silver is good fun. And to me it is, and must ever be, a dream
unrealised, a book unwritten. O my sighings after romance, or even
Skeltery, and O! the weary age which will produce me neither!
CHAPTER I
The night was damp and cloudy, the ways foul. The single horseman,
cloaked and booted, who pursued his way across Willesden Common, had not
met a traveller, when the sound of wheels----