I did go out to Davos after all in January, and found Stevenson
apparently little improved in health, and depressed by a sad turn of
destiny which had brought out his old friend Mrs. Sitwell to the same
place, at the same time, to watch beside the deathbed of her son--the
youth commemorated in the verses headed _F. A. S., In Memoriam_,
afterwards published in _Underwoods_. The following letter refers to
a copy of Carlyle's _Reminiscences_ which I had sent him some time
after I came back to England.
_Hotel Belvedere, Davos, [Spring 1881]._
MY DEAR COLVIN,--My health is not just what it should be; I have lost
weight, pulse, respiration, etc., and gained nothing in the way of my
old bellows. But these last few days, with tonic, cod-liver oil, better
wine (there is some better now), and perpetual beef-tea, I think I have
progressed. To say truth, I have been here a little over long. I was
reckoning up, and since I have known you, already quite a while, I have
not, I believe, remained so long in any one place as here in Davos. That
tells on my old gipsy nature; like a violin hung up, I begin to lose
what music there was in me; and with the music, I do not know what
besides, or do not know what to call it, but something radically part of
life, a rhythm, perhaps, in one's old and so brutally over-ridden
nerves, or perhaps a kind of variety of blood that the heart has come to
look for.
I purposely knocked myself off first. As to F. A. S., I believe I am no
sound authority; I alternate between a stiff disregard and a kind of
horror. In neither mood can a man judge at all. I know the thing to be
terribly perilous, I fear it to be now altogether hopeless. Luck has
failed; the weather has not been favourable; and in her true heart, the
mother hopes no more. But--well, I feel a great deal, that I either
cannot or will not say, as you well know. It has helped to make me more
conscious of the wolverine on my own shoulders, and that also makes me a
poor judge and poor adviser. Perhaps, if we were all marched out in a
row, and a piece of platoon firing to the drums performed, it would be
well for us; although, I suppose--and yet I wonder!--so ill for the poor
mother and for the dear wife. But you can see this makes me morbid.
_Sufficit; explicit_.
You are right about the Carlyle book; F. and I are in a world not ours;
but pardon me, as far as sending on goes, we take another view: the
first volume, _a la bonne_ _heure!_ but not--never--the second. Two
hours of hysterics can be no good matter for a sick nurse, and the
strange, hard, old being in so lamentable and yet human a
desolation--crying out like a burnt child, and yet always wisely and
beautifully--how can that end, as a piece of reading, even to the
strong--but on the brink of the most cruel kind of weeping? I observe
the old man's style is stronger on me than ever it was, and by rights,
too, since I have just laid down his most attaching book. God rest the
baith o' them I But even if they do not meet again, how we should all be
strengthened to be kind, and not only in act, in speech also, that so
much more important part. See what this apostle of silence most regrets,
not speaking out his heart.
I was struck as you were by the admirable, sudden, clear sunshine upon
Southey--even on his works. Symonds, to whom I repeated it, remarked at
once, a man who was thus respected by both Carlyle and Landor must have
had more in him than we can trace. So I feel with true humility.
It was to save my brain that Symonds proposed reviewing. He and, it
appears, Leslie Stephen fear a little some eclipse: I am not quite
without sharing the fear. I know my own languor as no one else does; it
is a dead down-draught, a heavy fardel. Yet if I could shake off the
wolverine aforesaid, and his fangs are lighter, though perhaps I feel
them more, I believe I could be myself again a while. I have not written
any letter for a great time; none saying what I feel, since you were
here, I fancy. Be duly obliged for it, and take my most earnest thanks
not only for the books but for your letter.--Your affectionate,