During his days in London Stevenson had gone with Mrs. Sitwell to
revisit the Elgin marbles, and had carried off photographs of them to
put up in his room at Edinburgh. _King Matthias's Hunting Horn_ has
perished like so many other stories of this time.
_[Edinburgh, November 1874], Tuesday._
Well, I've got some women now, and they're better than nothing. Three,
without heads, who have been away getting framed. And you know they are
more to me, after a fashion, than they can be to you, because, after a
fashion also, they are women. I have come now to think the sitting
figure in spite of its beautiful drapery rather a blemish, rather an
interruption to the sentiment. The two others are better than one has
ever dreamed; I think these two women are the only things in the world
that have been better than, in Bible phrase, it had entered into my
heart to conceive. Who made them? Was it Pheidias? or do they not know?
It is wonderful what company they are--noble company. And then I have
now three Japanese pictures that are after my own heart, and I get up
from time to time and turn a bit of favourite colour over and over, roll
it under my tongue, savour it till it gets all through me; and then back
to my chair and to work.
This afternoon about six there was a small orange moon, lost in a great
world of blue evening. A few leafless boughs, and a bit of garden
railing, criss-cross its face; and below it there was blueness and the
spread lights of Leith, lost in blue haze. To the east, the town, also
subdued to the same blue, piled itself up, with here and there a lit
window, until it could print off its outline against a faint patch of
green and russet that remained behind the sunset.
I must tell you about my way of life, which is regular to a degree.
Breakfast 8.30; during breakfast and my smoke afterwards till ten, when
I begin work, I read Reformation; from ten, I work until about a quarter
to one; from one until two, I lunch and read a book on Schopenhauer or
one on Positivism; two to three work, three to six anything; if I am in
before six, I read about Japan: six, dinner and a pipe with my father
and coffee until 7.30; 7.30 to 9.30, work; after that either supper and
a pipe at home, or out to Simpson's or Baxter's: bed between eleven and
twelve.
_Wednesday._--Two good things have arrived to me to-day: your letter for
one, and the end of _John Knox_ for another. I cannot write English
because I have been speaking French all evening with some French people
of my knowledge. It's a sad thing the state I get into, when I cannot
remember English and yet do not know French! And it is worse when it is
complicated, as at present, with a pen that will not write! If you knew
how I have to paint and how I have to manoeuvre to get the stuff legible
at all.
_Thursday._--I have said the Fates are only women after a fashion; and
that is one of the strangest things about them. They are wonderfully
womanly--they are more womanly than any woman--and those girt draperies
are drawn over a wonderful greatness of body instinct with sex; I do not
see a line in them that could be a line in a man. And yet, when all is
said, they are not women for us; they are of another race, immortal,
separate; one has no wish to look at them with love, only with a sort of
lowly adoration, physical, but wanting what is the soul of all love,
whether admitted to oneself or not, hope; in a word "the desire of the
moth for the star." O great white stars of eternal marble, O shapely,
colossal women, and yet not women. It is not love that we seek from
them, we do not desire to see their great eyes troubled with our
passions, or the great impassive members contorted by any hope or pain
or pleasure; only now and again, to be conscious that they exist, to
have knowledge of them far off in cloudland or feel their steady eyes
shining, like quiet watchful stars, above the turmoil of the earth.
I write so ill; so cheap and miserable and penny-a-linerish is this
_John Knox_ that I have just sent, that I am low. Only I keep my heart
up by thinking of you. And if all goes to the worst, shall I not be able
to lay my head on the great knees of the middle Fate--O these great
knees--I know all Baudelaire meant now with his _geante_--to lay my head
on her great knees and go to sleep.
_Friday._--I have finished _The Story of King Matthias' Hunting Horn_,
whereof I spoke to you, and I think it should be good. It excites me
like wine, or fire, or death, or love, or something; nothing of my own
writing ever excited me so much; it does seem to me so weird and
fantastic.
_Saturday._--I know now that there is a more subtle and dangerous sort
of selfishness in habit than there ever can be in disorder. I never
ceased to be generous when I was most _deregle_; now when I am beginning
to settle into habits, I see the danger in front of me--one might cease
to be generous and grow hard and sordid in time and trouble. However,
thank God it is life I want, and nothing posthumous, and for two good
emotions I would sacrifice a thousand years of fame. Moreover I know so
well that I shall never be much as a writer that I am not very sorely
tempted.
My only chance is in my stories; and so you will forgive me if I
postpone everything else to copy out _King Matthias_; I have learned by
experience that a story should be copied out and finished fairly off at
the first heat if ever. I am even thinking of finishing up half-a-dozen
perhaps and trying the publishers? what do you say? Give me your
advice?
_Sunday._--Good-bye. A long story to tell but no time to tell it: well
and happy. Adieu.--Ever your faithful friend,