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SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH,
October 28th, 1885.
DEAR MR. ARCHER,—I have read your paper with my customary admiration; it
is very witty, very adroit, it contains a great deal that is excellently
true (particularly the parts about my stories and the description of
me as an artist in life): but you will not be surprised if I do not
think it altogether just. It seems to me, in particular, that you have
wilfully read all my works in terms of my earliest; my aim, even in
style, has quite changed in the last six or seven years; and this I
should have thought you would have noticed. Again, you first remark upon
the affectation of the italic names: a practice only followed in my two
affected little books of travel, where a typographical _minauderie_ of
the sort appeared to me in character; and what you say of it, then, is
quite just. But why should you forget yourself and use these same italics
as an index to my theology some pages further on? This is lightness of
touch indeed; may I say, it is almost sharpness of practice?
Excuse these remarks. I have been on the whole much interested, and
sometimes amused. Are you aware that the praiser of this "brave gymnasium"
has not seen a canoe nor taken a long walk since '79? that he is rarely
out of the house nowadays, and carries his arm in a sling? Can you imagine
that he is a back-slidden communist, and is sure he will go to Hell (if
there be such an excellent institution) for the luxury in which he lives?
And can you believe that, though it is gaily expressed, the thought
is hag and skeleton in every moment of vacuity or depression? Can you
conceive how profoundly I am irritated by the opposite affectation to my
own, when I see strong men and rich men bleating about their sorrows and
the burthen of life, in a world full of "cancerous paupers," and poor
sick children, and the fatally bereaved, ay, and down even to such happy
creatures as myself, who has yet been obliged to strip himself, one after
another, of all the pleasures that he had chosen except smoking (and
the days of that I know in my heart ought to be over), I forgot eating,
which I still enjoy, and who sees the circle of impotence closing very
slowly but quite steadily around him? In my view, one dank, dispirited
word is harmful, a crime of _lèse-humanité_, a piece of acquired evil;
every gay, every bright word or picture, like every pleasant air of
music, is a piece of pleasure set afloat; the reader catches it and, if
he be healthy, goes on his way rejoicing; and it is the business of art
so to send him, as often as possible.
For what you say, so kindly, so prettily, so precisely, of my style, I
must in particular thank you: though even here, I am vexed you should not
have remarked on my attempted change of manner: seemingly this attempt
is still quite unsuccessful! Well, we shall fight it out on this line
if it takes all summer.
And now for my last word: Mrs. Stevenson is very anxious that you should
see me, and that she should see you, in the flesh. If you at all share
in these views, I am a fixture. Write or telegraph (giving us time,
however, to telegraph in reply, lest the day be impossible), and come down
here to a bed and a dinner. What do you say, my dear critic? I shall be
truly pleased to see you; and to explain at greater length what I meant
by saying narrative was the most characteristic mood of literature, on
which point I have great hopes I shall persuade you.—Yours truly,