The paper on _Roads_ herein mentioned had been planned during walks
at Cockfield; was offered to and rejected by the Saturday Review and
ultimately accepted by Mr. Hamerton for the Portfolio; and was the
first regular or paid contribution of Stevenson to periodical
literature.
_17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh, Saturday, September 6, 1873._
I have been to-day a very long walk with my father through some of the
most beautiful ways hereabouts; the day was cold with an iron, windy
sky, and only glorified now and then with autumn sunlight. For it is
fully autumn with us, with a blight already over the greens, and a keen
wind in the morning that makes one rather timid of one's tub when it
finds its way indoors.
I was out this evening to call on a friend, and, coming back through the
wet, crowded, lamp-lit streets, was singing after my own fashion, "_Du
hast Diamanten und Perlen_," when I heard a poor cripple man in the
gutter wailing over a pitiful Scotch air, his club-foot supported on the
other knee, and his whole woebegone body propped sideways against a
crutch. The nearest lamp threw a strong light on his worn, sordid face
and the three boxes of lucifer matches that he held for sale. My own
false notes stuck in my chest. How well off I am! is the burthen of my
songs all day long--"_Drum ist so wohl mir in der Welt!_" and the ugly
reality of the cripple man was an intrusion on the beautiful world in
which I was walking. He could no more sing than I could; and his voice
was cracked and rusty, and altogether perished. To think that that wreck
may have walked the streets some night years ago, as glad at heart as I
was, and promising himself a future as golden and honourable!
_Sunday_, 11.20 _a.m._--I wonder what you are doing now?--in church
likely, at the _Te Deum_. Everything here is utterly silent. I can hear
men's footfalls streets away; the whole life of Edinburgh has been
sucked into sundry pious edifices; the gardens below my windows are
steeped in a diffused sunlight, and every tree seems standing on
tiptoes, strained and silent, as though to get its head above its
neighbour's and _listen_. You know what I mean, don't you? How trees do
seem silently to assert themselves on an occasion! I have been trying to
write _Roads_ until I feel as if I were standing on my head; but I mean
_Roads_, and shall do something to them.
I wish I could make you feel the hush that is over everything, only made
the more perfect by rare interruptions; and the rich, placid light, and
the still autumnal foliage. Houses, you know, stand all about our
gardens: solid, steady blocks of houses; all look empty and asleep.
_Monday night._--The drums and fifes up in the castle are sounding the
guard-call through the dark, and there is a great rattle of carriages
without. I have had (I must tell you) my bed taken out of this room, so
that I am alone in it with my books and two tables, and two chairs, and
a coal-skuttle (or _scuttle_) (?) and a _debris_ of broken pipes in a
corner, and my old school play-box, so full of papers and books that the
lid will not shut down, standing reproachfully in the midst. There is
something in it that is still a little gaunt and vacant; it needs a
little populous disorder over it to give it the feel of homeliness, and
perhaps a bit more furniture, just to take the edge off the sense of
illimitable space, eternity, and a future state, and the like, that is
brought home to one, even in this small attic, by the wide, empty floor.
You would require to know, what only I can ever know, many grim and many
maudlin passages out of my past life to feel how great a change has been
made for me by this past summer. Let me be ever so poor and thread-paper
a soul, I am going to try for the best.
These good booksellers of mine have at last got a _Werther_ without
illustrations. I want you to like Charlotte. Werther himself has every
feebleness and vice that could tend to make his suicide a most virtuous
and commendable action; and yet I like Werther too--I don't know why,
except that he has written the most delightful letters in the world.
Note, by the way, the passage under date June 21st not far from the
beginning; it finds a voice for a great deal of dumb, uneasy,
pleasurable longing that we have all had, times without number. I looked
that up the other day for _Roads_, so I know the reference; but you will
find it a garden of flowers from beginning to end. All through the
passion keeps steadily rising, from the thunderstorm at the
country-house--there was thunder in that story too--up to the last wild
delirious interview; either Lotte was no good at all, or else Werther
should have remained alive after that; either he knew his woman too
well, or else he was precipitate. But an idiot like that is hopeless;
and yet, he wasn't an idiot--I make reparation, and will offer eighteen
pounds of best wax at his tomb. Poor devil! he was only the weakest--or,
at least, a very weak strong man.