In the heat of conversation Stevenson was accustomed to invent any
number of fictitious personages, generally Scottish, and to give them
names and to set them playing their imaginary parts in life,
reputable or otherwise. Many of these inventions, including Mr.
Pirbright Smith and Mr. Pegfurth Bannatyne, were a kind of
incarnations of himself, or of special aspects of himself; they
assumed for him and his friends a kind of substantial existence; and
constantly in talk, and occasionally in writing, he would keep up the
play of reporting their sayings and doings quite gravely, as in the
following:--
[_Stobo Manse, July 1882._]
DEAR HENLEY,... I am not worth an old damn. I am also crushed by bad
news of Symonds; his good lung going; I cannot help reading it as a
personal hint; God help us all! Really, I am not very fit for work; but
I try, try, and nothing comes of it.
I believe we shall have to leave this place; it is low, damp, and
_mauchy_; the rain it raineth every day; and the glass goes
tol-de-rol-de-riddle.
Yet it's a bonny bit; I wish I could live in it, but doubt. I wish I was
well away somewhere else. I feel like flight some days; honour bright.
Pirbright Smith is well. Old Mr. Pegfurth Bannatyne is here staying at a
country inn. His whole baggage is a pair of socks and a book in a
fishing-basket; and he borrows even a rod from the landlord. He walked
here over the hills from Sanquhar, "singin'," he says, "like a mavis." I
naturally asked him about Hazlitt. "He wouldnae take his drink," he
said, "a queer, queer fellow." But did not seem further communicative.
He says he has become "releegious," but still swears like a trooper. I
asked him if he had no headquarters. "No likely," said he. He says he is
writing his memoirs, which will be interesting. He once met Borrow; they
boxed; "and Geordie," says the old man chuckling, "gave me the damnedest
hiding." Of Wordsworth he remarked, "He wasnae sound in the faith, sir,
and a milk-blooded, blue-spectacled bitch forbye. But his po'mes are
grand--there's no denying that." I asked him what his book was. "I
havenae mind," said he--that was his only book! On turning it out, I
found it was one of my own, and on showing it to him, he remembered it
at once. "O aye," he said, "I mind now. It's pretty bad; ye'll have to
do better than that, chieldy," and chuckled, chuckled. He is a strange
old figure, to be sure. He cannot endure Pirbright Smith--"a mere
aesthatic," he said. "Pooh!" "Fishin' and releegion--these are my
aysthatics," he wound up.
I thought this would interest you, so scribbled it down. I still hope to
get more out of him about Hazlitt, though he utterly pooh-poohed the
idea of writing H.'s life. "Ma life now," he said, "there's been queer
things in _it_." He is seventy-nine! but may well last to a
hundred!--Yours ever,