NOTE.—Between 1730–1766 flourished in Glasgow Alan the Coppersmith, who
acts as a kind of a pin to the whole Stevenson system there. He was
caution to Robert the Second’s will, and to William’s will, and to the
will of a John, another maltman.
Enough genealogy. I do not know if you will be able to read my hand.
Unhappily, Belle, who is my amanuensis, is out of the way on other
affairs, and I have to make the unwelcome effort. (O this is beautiful,
I am quite pleased with myself.) Graham has just arrived last night (my
mother is coming by the other steamer in three days), and has told me of
your meeting, and he said you looked a little older than I did; so that I
suppose we keep step fairly on the downward side of the hill. He thought
you looked harassed, and I could imagine that too. I sometimes feel
harassed. I have a great family here about me, a great anxiety. The
loss (to use my grandfather’s expression), the ‘loss’ of our family is
that we are disbelievers in the morrow—perhaps I should say, rather, in
next year. The future is _always_ black to us; it was to Robert
Stevenson; to Thomas; I suspect to Alan; to R. A. M. S. it was so almost
to his ruin in youth; to R. L. S., who had a hard hopeful strain in him
from his mother, it was not so much so once, but becomes daily more so.
Daily so much more so, that I have a painful difficulty in believing I
can ever finish another book, or that the public will ever read it.
I have so huge a desire to know exactly what you are doing, that I
suppose I should tell you what I am doing by way of an example. I have a
room now, a part of the twelve-foot verandah sparred in, at the most
inaccessible end of the house. Daily I see the sunrise out of my bed,
which I still value as a tonic, a perpetual tuning fork, a look of God’s
face once in the day. At six my breakfast comes up to me here, and I
work till eleven. If I am quite well, I sometimes go out and bathe in
the river before lunch, twelve. In the afternoon I generally work again,
now alone drafting, now with Belle dictating. Dinner is at six, and I am
often in bed by eight. This is supposing me to stay at home. But I must
often be away, sometimes all day long, sometimes till twelve, one, or two
at night, when you might see me coming home to the sleeping house,
sometimes in a trackless darkness, sometimes with a glorious tropic moon,
everything drenched with dew—unsaddling and creeping to bed; and you
would no longer be surprised that I live out in this country, and not in
Bournemouth—in bed.
My great recent interruptions have (as you know) come from politics; not
much in my line, you will say. But it is impossible to live here and not
feel very sorely the consequences of the horrid white mismanagement. I
tried standing by and looking on, and it became too much for me. They
are such illogical fools; a logical fool in an office, with a lot of red
tape, is conceivable. Furthermore, he is as much as we have any reason
to expect of officials—a thoroughly common-place, unintellectual lot.
But these people are wholly on wires; laying their ears down, skimming
away, pausing as though shot, and presto! full spread on the other tack.
I observe in the official class mostly an insane jealousy of the smallest
kind, as compared to which the artist’s is of a grave, modest
character—the actor’s, even; a desire to extend his little authority, and
to relish it like a glass of wine, that is _impayable_. Sometimes, when
I see one of these little kings strutting over one of his
victories—wholly illegal, perhaps, and certain to be reversed to his
shame if his superiors ever heard of it—I could weep. The strange thing
is that they _have nothing else_. I auscultate them in vain; no real
sense of duty, no real comprehension, no real attempt to comprehend, no
wish for information—you cannot offend one of them more bitterly than by
offering information, though it is certain that you have _more_, and
obvious that you have _other_, information than they have; and talking of
policy, they could not play a better stroke than by listening to you, and
it need by no means influence their action. _Tenez_, you know what a
French post office or railway official is? That is the diplomatic card
to the life. Dickens is not in it; caricature fails.
All this keeps me from my work, and gives me the unpleasant side of the
world. When your letters are disbelieved it makes you angry, and that is
rot; and I wish I could keep out of it with all my soul. But I have just
got into it again, and farewell peace!
My work goes along but slowly. I have got to a crossing place, I
suppose; the present book, _Saint Ives_, is nothing; it is in no style in
particular, a tissue of adventures, the central character not very well
done, no philosophic pith under the yarn; and, in short, if people will
read it, that’s all I ask; and if they won’t, damn them! I like doing it
though; and if you ask me why!—after that I am on _Weir of Hermiston_ and
_Heathercat_, two Scotch stories, which will either be something
different, or I shall have failed. The first is generally designed, and
is a private story of two or three characters in a very grim vein. The
second—alas! the thought—is an attempt at a real historical novel, to
present a whole field of time; the race—our own race—the west land and
Clydesdale blue bonnets, under the influence of their last trial, when
they got to a pitch of organisation in madness that no other peasantry
has ever made an offer at. I was going to call it _The Killing Time_,
but this man Crockett has forestalled me in that. Well, it’ll be a big
smash if I fail in it; but a gallant attempt. All my weary reading as a
boy, which you remember well enough, will come to bear on it; and if my
mind will keep up to the point it was in a while back, perhaps I can pull
it through.
For two months past, Fanny, Belle, Austin (her child), and I have been
alone; but yesterday, as I mentioned, Graham Balfour arrived, and on
Wednesday my mother and Lloyd will make up the party to its full
strength. I wish you could drop in for a month or a week, or two hours.
That is my chief want. On the whole, it is an unexpectedly pleasant
corner I have dropped into for an end of it, which I could scarcely have
foreseen from Wilson’s shop, or the Princes Street Gardens, or the
Portobello Road. Still, I would like to hear what my _alter ego_ thought
of it; and I would sometimes like to have my old _maître ès arts_ express
an opinion on what I do. I put this very tamely, being on the whole a
quiet elderly man; but it is a strong passion with me, though
intermittent. Now, try to follow my example and tell me something about
yourself, Louisa, the Bab, and your work; and kindly send me some
specimens of what you’re about. I have only seen one thing by you, about
Notre Dame in the _Westminster_ or _St. James’s_, since I left England,
now I suppose six years ago.
I have looked this trash over, and it is not at all the letter I wanted
to write—not truck about officials, ancestors, and the like
rancidness—but you have to let your pen go in its own broken-down gait,
like an old butcher’s pony, stop when it pleases, and go on again as it
will.—Ever, my dear Bob, your affectionate cousin,