29_th_ _May_.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Still grinding at Chap. XI. I began many days ago on p.
93, and am still on p. 93, which is exhilarating, but the thing takes
shape all the same and should make a pretty lively chapter for an end of
it. For XII. is only a footnote _ad explicandum_.
* * * * *
_June the_ 1_st_.
Back on p. 93. I was on 100 yesterday, but read it over and condemned
it.
* * * * *
10 _a.m._
I have worked up again to 97, but how? The deuce fly away with
literature, for the basest sport in creation. But it’s got to come
straight! and if possible, so that I may finish _D. Balfour_ in time for
the same mail. What a getting upstairs! This is Flaubert outdone.
Belle, Graham, and Lloyd leave to-day on a malaga down the coast; to be
absent a week or so: this leaves Fanny, me, and —, who seems a nice,
kindly fellow.
* * * * *
_June_ 2_nd_.
I am nearly dead with dyspepsia, over-smoking, and unremunerative
overwork. Last night, I went to bed by seven; woke up again about ten
for a minute to find myself light-headed and altogether off my legs; went
to sleep again, and woke this morning fairly fit. I have crippled on to
p. 101, but I haven’t read it yet, so do not boast. What kills me is the
frame of mind of one of the characters; I cannot get it through. Of
course that does not interfere with my total inability to write; so that
yesterday I was a living half-hour upon a single clause and have a
gallery of variants that would surprise you. And this sort of trouble
(which I cannot avoid) unfortunately produces nothing when done but
alembication and the far-fetched. Well, read it with mercy!
* * * * *
8 _a.m._
Going to bed. Have read it, and believe the chapter practically done at
last. But lord! it has been a business.
* * * * *
_July_ 3_rd_, 8.15.
The draft is finished, the end of Chapter II. and the tale, and I have
only eight pages _wiederzuarbeiten_. This is just a cry of joy in
passing.
* * * * *
10.30.
Knocked out of time. Did 101 and 102. Alas, no more to-day, as I have
to go down town to a meeting. Just as well though, as my thumb is about
done up.
* * * * *
_Sunday_, _June_ 4_th_.
Now for a little snippet of my life. Yesterday, 12.30, in a heavenly day
of sun and trade, I mounted my horse and set off. A boy opens my gate
for me. ‘Sleep and long life! A blessing on your journey,’ says he.
And I reply ‘Sleep, long life! A blessing on the house!’ Then on, down
the lime lane, a rugged, narrow, winding way, that seems almost as if it
was leading you into Lyonesse, and you might see the head and shoulders
of a giant looking in. At the corner of the road I meet the inspector of
taxes, and hold a diplomatic interview with him; he wants me to pay taxes
on the new house; I am informed I should not till next year; and we part,
_re infecta_, he promising to bring me decisions, I assuring him that, if
I find any favouritism, he will find me the most recalcitrant tax-payer
on the island. Then I have a talk with an old servant by the wayside. A
little further I pass two children coming up. ‘Love!’ say I; ‘are you
two chiefly-proceeding inland?’ and they say, ‘Love! yes!’ and the
interesting ceremony is finished. Down to the post office, where I find
Vitrolles and (Heaven reward you!) the White Book, just arrived per
_Upolu_, having gone the wrong way round, by Australia; also six copies
of _Island Nights’ Entertainments_. Some of Weatherall’s illustrations
are very clever; but O Lord! the lagoon! I did say it was ‘shallow,’
but, O dear, not so shallow as that a man could stand up in it! I had
still an hour to wait for my meeting, so Postmaster Davis let me sit down
in his room and I had a bottle of beer in, and read _A Gentleman of
France_. Have you seen it coming out in _Longman’s_? My dear Colvin!
’tis the most exquisite pleasure; a real chivalrous yarn, like the Dumas’
and yet unlike. Thereafter to the meeting of the five newspaper
proprietors. Business transacted, I have to gallop home and find the
boys waiting to be paid at the doorstep.
* * * * *
_Monday_, 5_th_.
Yesterday, Sunday, the Rev. Dr. Browne, secretary to the Wesleyan
Mission, and the man who made the war in the Western Islands and was
tried for his life in Fiji, came up, and we had a long, important talk
about Samoa. O, if I could only talk to the home men! But what would it
matter? none of them know, none of them care. If we could only have
Macgregor here with his schooner, you would hear of no more troubles in
Samoa. That is what we want; a man that knows and likes the natives,
_qui paye de sa personne_, and is not afraid of hanging when necessary.
We don’t want bland Swedish humbugs, and fussy, fostering German barons.
That way the maelstrom lies, and we shall soon be in it.
I have to-day written 103 and 104, all perfectly wrong, and shall have to
rewrite them. This tale is devilish, and Chapter XI. the worst of the
lot. The truth is of course that I am wholly worked out; but it’s nearly
done, and shall go somehow according to promise. I go against all my
gods, and say it is _not worth while_ to massacre yourself over the last
few pages of a rancid yarn, that the reviewers will quite justly tear to
bits. As for D.B., no hope, I fear, this mail, but we’ll see what the
afternoon does for me.
* * * * *
4.15.
Well, it’s done. Those tragic 16 pp. are at last finished, and I have
put away thirty-two pages of chips, and have spent thirteen days about as
nearly in Hell as a man could expect to live through. It’s done, and of
course it ain’t worth while, and who cares? There it is, and about as
grim a tale as was ever written, and as grimy, and as hateful.
SACRED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
J. L. HUISH,
BORN 1856, AT HACKNEY,
LONDON,
Accidentally killed upon this
Island,
10th September, 1889.
* * * * *
_Tuesday_, 6.
I am exulting to do nothing. It pours with rain from the westward, very
unusual kind of weather; I was standing out on the little verandah in
front of my room this morning, and there went through me or over me a
wave of extraordinary and apparently baseless emotion. I literally
staggered. And then the explanation came, and I knew I had found a frame
of mind and body that belonged to Scotland, and particularly to the
neighbourhood of Callander. Very odd these identities of sensation, and
the world of connotations implied; highland huts, and peat smoke, and the
brown, swirling rivers, and wet clothes, and whiskey, and the romance of
the past, and that indescribable bite of the whole thing at a man’s
heart, which is—or rather lies at the bottom of—a story.
I don’t know if you are a Barbey d’Aurévilly-an. I am. I have a great
delight in his Norman stories. Do you know the _Chevalier des Touches_
and _L’Ensorcelée_? They are admirable, they reek of the soil and the
past. But I was rather thinking just now of _Le Rideau Cramoisi_, and
its adorable setting of the stopped coach, the dark street, the
home-going in the inn yard, and the red blind illuminated. Without
doubt, _there_ was an identity of sensation; one of those conjunctions in
life that had filled Barbey full to the brim, and permanently bent his
memory.
I wonder exceedingly if I have done anything at all good; and who can
tell me? and why should I wish to know? In so little a while, I, and the
English language, and the bones of my descendants, will have ceased to be
a memory! And yet—and yet—one would like to leave an image for a few
years upon men’s minds—for fun. This is a very dark frame of mind,
consequent on overwork and the conclusion of the excruciating _Ebb Tide_.
Adieu.
What do you suppose should be done with _The Ebb Tide_? It would make a
volume of 200 pp.; on the other hand, I might likely have some more
stories soon: _The Owl_, _Death in the Pot_, _The Sleeper Awakened_; all
these are possible. _The Owl_ might be half as long; _The Sleeper
Awakened_, ditto; _Death in the Pot_ a deal shorter, I believe. Then
there’s the _Go-Between_, which is not impossible altogether. _The Owl_,
_The Sleeper Awakened_, and the _Go-Between_ end reasonably well; _Death
in the Pot_ is an ungodly massacre. O, well, _The Owl_ only ends well in
so far as some lovers come together, and nobody is killed at the moment,
but you know they are all doomed, they are Chouan fellows.
* * * * *
_Friday_, 9_th_.
Well, the mail is in; no Blue-book, depressing letter from C.; a long,
amusing ramble from my mother; vast masses of Romeike; they _are_ going
to war now; and what will that lead to? and what has driven, them to it
but the persistent misconduct of these two officials? I know I ought to
rewrite the end of this bluidy _Ebb Tide_: well, I can’t. _Cest plus
fort que moi_; it has to go the way it is, and be jowned to it! From
what I make out of the reviews, I think it would be better not to
republish _The Ebb Tide_: but keep it for other tales, if they should
turn up. Very amusing how the reviews pick out one story and damn the
rest I and it is always a different one. Be sure you send me the article
from _Le Temps_.
* * * * *
_Saturday_, 17_th_.
Since I wrote this last, I have written a whole chapter of my
grandfather, and read it to-night; it was on the whole much appreciated,
and I kind of hope it ain’t bad myself. ’Tis a third writing, but it
wants a fourth. By next mail, I believe I might send you 3 chapters.
That is to say _Family Annals_, _The Service of the Northern Lights_, and
_The Building of the Bell Rock_. Possibly even 4—_A Houseful of Boys_.
I could finish my grandfather very easy now; my father and Uncle Alan
stop the way. I propose to call the book: _Northern Lights_: _Memoirs of
a Family of Engineers_. I tell you, it is going to be a good book. My
idea in sending Ms. would be to get it set up; two proofs to me, one to
Professor Swan, Ardchapel, Helensburgh—mark it private and
confidential—one to yourself; and come on with criticisms! But I’ll have
to see. The total plan of the book is this—
I. Domestic Annals.
II. The Service of the Northern Lights.
III. The Building of the Bell Rock.
IV. A Houseful of Boys (or, the Family in Baxter’s Place).
V. Education of an Engineer.
VI. The Grandfather.
VII. Alan Stevenson.
VIII. Thomas Stevenson.
There will be an Introduction ‘The Surname of Stevenson’ which has proved
a mighty queer subject of inquiry. But, Lord! if I were among libraries.
* * * * *
_Sunday_, 18_th_.
I shall put in this envelope the end of the ever-to-be-execrated _Ebb
Tide_, or Stevenson’s Blooming Error. Also, a paper apart for _David
Balfour_. The slips must go in another enclosure, I suspect, owing to
their beastly bulk. Anyway, there are two pieces of work off my mind,
and though I could wish I had rewritten a little more of _David_, yet it
was plainly to be seen it was impossible. All the points indicated by
you have been brought out; but to rewrite the end, in my present state of
over-exhaustion and fiction—phobia, would have been madness; and I let it
go as it stood. My grandfather is good enough for me, these days. I do
not work any less; on the whole, if anything, a little more. But it is
different.
The slips go to you in four packets; I hope they are what they should be,
but do not think so. I am at a pitch of discontent with fiction in all
its form—or my forms—that prevents me being able to be even interested.
I have had to stop all drink; smoking I am trying to stop also. It
annoys me dreadfully: and yet if I take a glass of claret,—I have a
headache the next day! O, and a good headache too; none of your trifles.
Well, sir, here’s to you, and farewell.—Yours ever.
R. L. S.