One day at the Savile Club, Stevenson, hearing a certain laugh, cried
out that he must know the laugher, who turned out to be a
fellow-countryman, the late John Meiklejohn, the well-known
educational authority and professor at St. Andrews University.
Stevenson introduced himself, and the two became firm friends.
Allusion was made a few pages back to a letter from Professor
Meiklejohn about the _Burns_ essay.
_608 Bush Street, San Francisco, California, Feb. 1st, 1880._
MY DEAR MEIKLEJOHN,--You must think me a thankless fellow by this time;
but if you knew how harassed and how sick I had been, and how I have
twice begun to write to you already, you might condescend to forgive the
puir gangrel body. To tell you what I have been doing, thinking, and
coming through these six or seven months would exhilarate nobody: least
of all me. _Infandum jubes_, so I hope you won't. I have done a great
deal of work, but perhaps my health of mind and body should not let me
expect much from what I have done. At least I have turned the corner; my
feet are on the rock again, I believe, and I shall continue to pour
forth pure and wholesome literature for the masses as per invoice.
I am glad you liked _Burns_; I think it is the best thing I ever did.
Did not the national vanity exclaim? Do you know what Shairp thought? I
think I let him down gently, did I not?
I have done a _Thoreau_, which I hope you may like, though I have a
feeling that perhaps it might be better. Please look out for a little
paper called _Yoshida Torajiro_, which, I hope, will appear in Cornhill
ere very long; the subject, at least, will interest you. I am to appear
in the same magazine with a real "blood and bones in the name of God"
story. Why Stephen took it, is to me a mystery; anyhow, it was fun to
write, and if you can interest a person for an hour and a half, you have
not been idle. When I suffer in mind, stories are my refuge; I take them
like opium; and I consider one who writes them as a sort of doctor of
the mind. And frankly, Meiklejohn, it is not Shakespeare we take to,
when we are in a hot corner; nor, certainly, George Eliot--no, nor even
Balzac. It is Charles Reade, or old Dumas, or the Arabian Nights, or the
best of Walter Scott; it is stories we want, not the high poetic
function which represents the world; we are then like the Asiatic with
his improvisatore or the middle-agee with his trouvere. We want
incident, interest, action: to the devil with your philosophy. When we
are well again, and have an easy mind, we shall peruse your important
work; but what we want now is a drug. So I, when I am ready to go beside
myself, stick my head into a story-book, as the ostrich with her bush;
let fate and fortune meantime belabour my posteriors at their will.
I have not seen the Spectator article; nobody sent it to me. If you had
an old copy lying by you, you would be very good to despatch it to me. A
little abuse from my grandmamma would do me good in health, if not in
morals.
This is merely to shake hands with you and give you the top of the
morning in 1880. But I look to be answered; and then I shall promise to
answer in return. For I am now, so far as that can be in this world, my
own man again, and when I have heard from you, I shall be able to write
more naturally and at length.
At least, my dear Meiklejohn, I hope you will believe in the sincerely
warm and friendly regard in which I hold you, and the pleasure with
which I look forward, not only to hearing from you shortly, but to
seeing you again in the flesh with another good luncheon and good talk.
Tell me when you don't like my work.--Your friend,