The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson — Volume 2
by Robert Louis Stevenson · English · Gutenberg #637 · 649,401 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson — Volume 2
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Release date: August 1, 1996 [eBook #637]
Most recently updated: August 27, 2019
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/637
Credits: Transcribed from the 1906 Methuen and Co edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON — VOLUME 2 ***
Transcribed from the 1906 Methuen and Co edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Book cover]
[Picture: Robert Louis Stevenson]
THE LETTERS OF
ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON
TO HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS
SELECTED AND EDITED WITH
NOTES AND INTRODUCTION BY
SIDNEY COLVIN
VOLUME II
* * * * *
LONDON
METHUEN AND CO.
36 ESSEX STREET
_Seventh Edition_
_First Published_ _November 1899_
_Second Edition_ _November 1899_
_Third Edition_ _April 1900_
_Fourth Edition_ _November 1900_
_Fifth Edition_ _January 1901_
_Sixth Edition_ _October 1902_
_Seventh Edition_ _December 1906_
CONTENTS
VIII 6
LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH—_Continued_
IX 59
THE UNITED STATES AGAIN
WINTER IN THE ADIRONDACKS
X 114
PACIFIC VOYAGES
XI 209
LIFE IN SAMOA
XII 285
LIFE IN SAMOA—_continued_
VIII
LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH,
_Continued_,
JANUARY 1886-JULY 1887.
TO MRS. DE MATTOS
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], _January_ 1_st_, 1886.
DEAREST KATHARINE,—Here, on a very little book and accompanied with lame
verses, I have put your name. Our kindness is now getting well on in
years; it must be nearly of age; and it gets more valuable to me with
every time I see you. It is not possible to express any sentiment, and
it is not necessary to try, at least between us. You know very well that
I love you dearly, and that I always will. I only wish the verses were
better, but at least you like the story; and it is sent to you by the one
that loves you—Jekyll, and not Hyde.
R. L. S.
_Ave_!
Bells upon the city are ringing in the night;
High above the gardens are the houses full of light;
On the heathy Pentlands is the curlew flying free;
And the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.
We cannae break the bonds that God decreed to bind,
Still we’ll be the children of the heather and the wind;
Far away from home, O, it’s still for you and me
That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie!
R. L. S.
TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], 1_st_, 1886.
MY DEAR KINNICUM,—I am a very bad dog, but not for the first time. Your
book, which is very interesting, came duly; and I immediately got a very
bad cold indeed, and have been fit for nothing whatever. I am a bit
better now, and aye on the mend; so I write to tell you, I thought of you
on New Year’s Day; though, I own, it would have been more decent if I had
thought in time for you to get my letter then. Well, what can’t be cured
must be endured, Mr. Lawrie; and you must be content with what I give.
If I wrote all the letters I ought to write, and at the proper time, I
should be very good and very happy; but I doubt if I should do anything
else.
I suppose you will be in town for the New Year; and I hope your health is
pretty good. What you want is diet; but it is as much use to tell you
that as it is to tell my father. And I quite admit a diet is a beastly
thing. I doubt, however, if it be as bad as not being allowed to speak,
which I have tried fully, and do not like. When, at the same time, I was
not allowed to read, it passed a joke. But these are troubles of the
past, and on this day, at least, it is proper to suppose they won’t
return. But we are not put here to enjoy ourselves: it was not God’s
purpose; and I am prepared to argue, it is not our sincere wish. As for
our deserts, the less said of them the better, for somebody might hear,
and nobody cares to be laughed at. A good man is a very noble thing to
see, but not to himself; what he seems to God is, fortunately, not our
business; that is the domain of faith; and whether on the first of
January or the thirty-first of December, faith is a good word to end on.
My dear Cummy, many happy returns to you and my best love.—The worst
correspondent in the world,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], _January_ 1_st_, 1886.
MY DEAR PEOPLE,—Many happy returns of the day to you all; I am fairly
well and in good spirits; and much and hopefully occupied with dear
Jenkin’s life. The inquiry in every detail, every letter that I read,
makes me think of him more nobly. I cannot imagine how I got his
friendship; I did not deserve it. I believe the notice will be
interesting and useful.
My father’s last letter, owing to the use of a quill pen and the neglect
of blotting-paper, was hopelessly illegible. Every one tried, and every
one failed to decipher an important word on which the interest of one
whole clause (and the letter consisted of two) depended.
I find I can make little more of this; but I’ll spare the blots.—Dear
people, ever your loving son,
R. L. S.
I will try again, being a giant refreshed by the house being empty. The
presence of people is the great obstacle to letter-writing. I deny that
letters should contain news (I mean mine; those of other people should).
But mine should contain appropriate sentiments and humorous nonsense, or
nonsense without the humour. When the house is empty, the mind is seized
with a desire—no, that is too strong—a willingness to pour forth
unmitigated rot, which constitutes (in me) the true spirit of
correspondence. When I have no remarks to offer (and nobody to offer
them to), my pen flies, and you see the remarkable consequence of a page
literally covered with words and genuinely devoid of sense. I can always
do that, if quite alone, and I like doing it; but I have yet to learn
that it is beloved by correspondents. The deuce of it is, that there is
no end possible but the end of the paper; and as there is very little
left of that—if I cannot stop writing—suppose you give up reading. It
would all come to the same thing; and I think we should all be happier . . .
TO W. H. LOW
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], _Jan._ 2_nd_, 1886.
MY DEAR LOW,—_Lamia_ has come, and I do not know how to thank you, not
only for the beautiful art of the designs, but for the handsome and apt
words of the dedication. My favourite is ‘Bathes unseen,’ which is a
masterpiece; and the next, ‘Into the green recessed woods,’ is perhaps
more remarkable, though it does not take my fancy so imperiously. The
night scene at Corinth pleases me also. The second part offers fewer
opportunities. I own I should like to see both _Isabella_ and the _Eve_
thus illustrated; and then there’s _Hyperion_—O, yes, and _Endymion_! I
should like to see the lot: beautiful pictures dance before me by
hundreds: I believe _Endymion_ would suit you best. It also is in
faery-land; and I see a hundred opportunities, cloudy and flowery
glories, things as delicate as the cobweb in the bush; actions, not in
themselves of any mighty purport, but made for the pencil: the feast of
Pan, Peona’s isle, the ‘slabbed margin of a well,’ the chase of the
butterfly, the nymph, Glaucus, Cybele, Sleep on his couch, a farrago of
unconnected beauties. But I divagate; and all this sits in the bosom of
the publisher.
What is more important, I accept the terms of the dedication with a frank
heart, and the terms of your Latin legend fairly. The sight of your
pictures has once more awakened me to my right mind; something may come
of it; yet one more bold push to get free of this prisonyard of the
abominably ugly, where I take my daily exercise with my contemporaries.
I do not know, I have a feeling in my bones, a sentiment which may take
on the forms of imagination, or may not. If it does, I shall owe it to
you; and the thing will thus descend from Keats even if on the wrong side
of the blanket. If it can be done in prose—that is the puzzle—I divagate
again. Thank you again: you can draw and yet you do not love the ugly:
what are you doing in this age? Flee, while it is yet time; they will
have your four limbs pinned upon a stable door to scare witches. The
ugly, my unhappy friend, is _de rigueur_: it is the only wear! What a
chance you threw away with the serpent! Why had Apollonius no pimples?
Heavens, my dear Low, you do not know your business. . . .
I send you herewith a Gothic gnome for your Greek nymph; but the gnome is
interesting, I think, and he came out of a deep mine, where he guards the
fountain of tears. It is not always the time to rejoice.—Yours ever,
R. L. S.
The gnome’s name is _Jekyll & Hyde_; I believe you will find he is
likewise quite willing to answer to the name of Low or Stevenson.
_Same day_.—I have copied out on the other sheet some bad verses, which
somehow your picture suggested; as a kind of image of things that I
pursue and cannot reach, and that you seem—no, not to have reached—but to
have come a thought nearer to than I. This is the life we have chosen:
well, the choice was mad, but I should make it again.
What occurs to me is this: perhaps they might be printed in (say) the
_Century_ for the sake of my name; and if that were possible, they might
advertise your book. It might be headed as sent in acknowledgment of
your _Lamia_. Or perhaps it might be introduced by the phrases I have
marked above. I dare say they would stick it in: I want no payment,
being well paid by _Lamia_. If they are not, keep them to yourself.
TO WILL H. LOW
_Damned bad lines in return for a beautiful book_
Youth now flees on feathered foot.
Faint and fainter sounds the flute;
Rarer songs of Gods.
And still,
Somewhere on the sunny hill,
Or along the winding stream,
Through the willows, flits a dream;
Flits, but shows a smiling face,
Flees, but with so quaint a grace,
None can choose to stay at home,
All must follow—all must roam.
This is unborn beauty: she
Now in air floats high and free,
Takes the sun, and breaks the blue;—
Late, with stooping pinion flew
Raking hedgerow trees, and wet
Her wing in silver streams, and set
Shining foot on temple roof.
Now again she flies aloof,
Coasting mountain clouds, and kissed
By the evening’s amethyst.
In wet wood and miry lane
Still we pound and pant in vain;
Still with earthy foot we chase
Waning pinion, fainting face;
Still, with grey hair, we stumble on
Till—behold!—the vision gone!
Where has fleeting beauty led?
To the doorway of the dead!
qy. omit? [Life is gone, but life was gay:
We have come the primrose way!] {11}
R. L. S.
TO EDMUND GOSSE
_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _Jan._ 2_nd_, 1886.
MY DEAR GOSSE,—Thank you for your letter, so interesting to my vanity.
There is a review in the St. James’s, which, as it seems to hold somewhat
of your opinions, and is besides written with a pen and not a poker, we
think may possibly be yours. The _Prince_ {12} has done fairly well in
spite of the reviews, which have been bad: he was, as you doubtless saw,
well slated in the _Saturday_; one paper received it as a child’s story;
another (picture my agony) described it as a ‘Gilbert comedy.’ It was
amusing to see the race between me and Justin M’Carthy: the Milesian has
won by a length.
That is the hard part of literature. You aim high, and you take longer
over your work, and it will not be so successful as if you had aimed low
and rushed it. What the public likes is work (of any kind) a little
loosely executed; so long as it is a little wordy, a little slack, a
little dim and knotless, the dear public likes it; it should (if
possible) be a little dull into the bargain. I know that good work
sometimes hits; but, with my hand on my heart, I think it is by an
accident. And I know also that good work must succeed at last; but that
is not the doing of the public; they are only shamed into silence or
affectation. I do not write for the public; I do write for money, a
nobler deity; and most of all for myself, not perhaps any more noble, but
both more intelligent and nearer home.
Let us tell each other sad stories of the bestiality of the beast whom we
feed. What he likes is the newspaper; and to me the press is the mouth
of a sewer, where lying is professed as from an university chair, and
everything prurient, and ignoble, and essentially dull, finds its abode
and pulpit. I do not like mankind; but men, and not all of these—and
fewer women. As for respecting the race, and, above all, that fatuous
rabble of burgesses called ‘the public,’ God save me from such
irreligion!—that way lies disgrace and dishonour. There must be
something wrong in me, or I would not be popular.
This is perhaps a trifle stronger than my sedate and permanent opinion.
Not much, I think. As for the art that we practise, I have never been
able to see why its professors should be respected. They chose the
primrose path; when they found it was not all primroses, but some of it
brambly, and much of it uphill, they began to think and to speak of
themselves as holy martyrs. But a man is never martyred in any honest
sense in the pursuit of his pleasure; and _delirium tremens_ has more of
the honour of the cross. We were full of the pride of life, and chose,
like prostitutes, to live by a pleasure. We should be paid if we give
the pleasure we pretend to give; but why should we be honoured?
I hope some day you and Mrs. Gosse will come for a Sunday; but we must
wait till I am able to see people. I am very full of Jenkin’s life; it
is painful, yet very pleasant, to dig into the past of a dead friend, and
find him, at every spadeful, shine brighter. I own, as I read, I wonder
more and more why he should have taken me to be a friend. He had many
and obvious faults upon the face of him; the heart was pure gold. I feel
it little pain to have lost him, for it is a loss in which I cannot
believe; I take it, against reason, for an absence; if not to-day, then
to-morrow, I still fancy I shall see him in the door; and then, now when
I know him better, how glad a meeting! Yes, if I could believe in the
immortality business, the world would indeed be too good to be true; but
we were put here to do what service we can, for honour and not for hire:
the sods cover us, and the worm that never dies, the conscience, sleeps
well at last; these are the wages, besides what we receive so lavishly
day by day; and they are enough for a man who knows his own frailty and
sees all things in the proportion of reality. The soul of piety was
killed long ago by that idea of reward. Nor is happiness, whether
eternal or temporal, the reward that mankind seeks. Happinesses are but
his wayside campings; his soul is in the journey; he was born for the
struggle, and only tastes his life in effort and on the condition that he
is opposed. How, then, is such a creature, so fiery, so pugnacious, so
made up of discontent and aspiration, and such noble and uneasy
passions—how can he be rewarded but by rest? I would not say it aloud;
for man’s cherished belief is that he loves that happiness which he
continually spurns and passes by; and this belief in some ulterior
happiness exactly fits him. He does not require to stop and taste it; he
can be about the rugged and bitter business where his heart lies; and yet
he can tell himself this fairy tale of an eternal tea-party, and enjoy
the notion that he is both himself and something else; and that his
friends will yet meet him, all ironed out and emasculate, and still be
lovable,—as if love did not live in the faults of the beloved only, and
draw its breath in an unbroken round of forgiveness! But the truth is,
we must fight until we die; and when we die there can be no quiet for
mankind but complete resumption into—what?—God, let us say—when all these
desperate tricks will lie spellbound at last.
Here came my dinner and cut this sermon short—_excusez_.
R. L. S.
TO JAMES PAYN
_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _Jan._ 2_nd_, 1886.
DEAR JAMES PAYN,—Your very kind letter came very welcome; and still more
welcome the news that you see —’s tale. I will now tell you (and it was
very good and very wise of me not to tell it before) that he is one of
the most unlucky men I know, having put all his money into a pharmacy at
Hyères, when the cholera (certainly not his fault) swept away his
customers in a body. Thus you can imagine the pleasure I have to
announce to him a spark of hope, for he sits to-day in his pharmacy,
doing nothing and taking nothing, and watching his debts inexorably mount
up.
To pass to other matters: your hand, you are perhaps aware, is not one of
those that can be read running; and the name of your daughter remains for
me undecipherable. I call her, then, your daughter—and a very good name
too—and I beg to explain how it came about that I took her house. The
hospital was a point in my tale; but there is a house on each side. Now
the true house is the one before the hospital: is that No. 11? If not,
what do you complain of? If it is, how can I help what is true?
Everything in the _Dynamiter_ is not true; but the story of the Brown Box
is, in almost every particular; I lay my hand on my heart and swear to
it. It took place in that house in 1884; and if your daughter was in
that house at the time, all I can say is she must have kept very bad
society.
But I see you coming. Perhaps your daughter’s house has not a balcony at
the back? I cannot answer for that; I only know that side of Queen
Square from the pavement and the back windows of Brunswick Row. Thence I
saw plenty of balconies (terraces rather); and if there is none to the
particular house in question, it must have been so arranged to spite me.
I now come to the conclusion of this matter. I address three questions
to your daughter:—
1st. Has her house the proper terrace?
2nd. Is it on the proper side of the hospital?
3rd. Was she there in the summer of 1884?
You see, I begin to fear that Mrs. Desborough may have deceived me on
some trifling points, for she is not a lady of peddling exactitude. If
this should prove to be so, I will give your daughter a proper
certificate, and her house property will return to its original value.
Can man say more?—Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
I saw the other day that the Eternal had plagiarised from _Lost Sir
Massingberd_: good again, sir! I wish he would plagiarise the death of
Zero.
TO W. H. LOW
_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _Jan. Somethingorother-th_, 1886.
MY DEAR LOW,—I send you two photographs: they are both done by Sir Percy
Shelley, the poet’s son, which may interest. The sitting down one is, I
think, the best; but if they choose that, see that the little reflected
light on the nose does not give me a turn-up; that would be tragic.
Don’t forget ‘Baronet’ to Sir Percy’s name.
We all think a heap of your book; and I am well pleased with my
dedication.—Yours ever,
R. L. STEVENSON.
_P.S._—_Apropos_ of the odd controversy about Shelley’s nose: I have
before me four photographs of myself, done by Shelley’s son: my nose is
hooked, not like the eagle, indeed, but like the accipitrine family in
man: well, out of these four, only one marks the bend, one makes it
straight, and one suggests a turn-up. This throws a flood of light on
calumnious man—and the scandal-mongering sun. For personally I cling to
my curve. To continue the Shelley controversy: I have a look of him, all
his sisters had noses like mine; Sir Percy has a marked hook; all the
family had high cheek-bones like mine; what doubt, then, but that this
turn-up (of which Jeaffreson accuses the poet, along with much other
_fatras_) is the result of some accident similar to what has happened in
my photographs by his son?
R. L. S.
TO THOMAS STEVENSON
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _January_ 25, 1886.]
MY DEAR FATHER,—Many thanks for a letter quite like yourself. I quite
agree with you, and had already planned a scene of religion in _Balfour_;
the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge furnishes me with
a catechist whom I shall try to make the man. I have another catechist,
the blind, pistol-carrying highway robber, whom I have transferred from
the Long Island to Mull. I find it a most picturesque period, and wonder
Scott let it escape. The _Covenant_ is lost on one of the Tarrans, and
David is cast on Earraid, where (being from inland) he is nearly starved
before he finds out the island is tidal; then he crosses Mull to
Toronsay, meeting the blind catechist by the way; then crosses Morven
from Kinlochaline to Kingairloch, where he stays the night with the good
catechist; that is where I am; next day he is to be put ashore in Appin,
and be present at Colin Campbell’s death. To-day I rest, being a little
run down. Strange how liable we are to brain fag in this scooty family!
But as far as I have got, all but the last chapter, I think David is on
his feet, and (to my mind) a far better story and far sounder at heart
than _Treasure Island_.
I have no earthly news, living entirely in my story, and only coming out
of it to play patience. The Shelleys are gone; the Taylors kinder than
can be imagined. The other day, Lady Taylor drove over and called on me;
she is a delightful old lady, and great fun. I mentioned a story about
the Duchess of Wellington which I had heard Sir Henry tell; and though he
was very tired, he looked it up and copied it out for me in his own
hand.—Your most affectionate son,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO C. W. STODDARD
_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _Feb._ 13_th_, 1886.
MY DEAR STODDARD,—I am a dreadful character; but, you see, I have at last
taken pen in hand; how long I may hold it, God knows. This is already my
sixth letter to-day, and I have many more waiting; and my wrist gives me
a jog on the subject of scrivener’s cramp, which is not encouraging.
I gather you were a little down in the jaw when you wrote your last. I
am as usual pretty cheerful, but not very strong. I stay in the house
all winter, which is base; but, as you continue to see, the pen goes from
time to time, though neither fast enough nor constantly enough to please
me.
My wife is at Bath with my father and mother, and the interval of
widowery explains my writing. Another person writing for you when you
have done work is a great enemy to correspondence. To-day I feel out of
health, and shan’t work; and hence this so much overdue reply.
I was re-reading some of your South Sea Idyls the other day: some of the
chapters are very good indeed; some pages as good as they can be.
How does your class get along? If you like to touch on _Otto_, any day
in a by-hour, you may tell them—as the author’s last dying
confession—that it is a strange example of the difficulty of being ideal
in an age of realism; that the unpleasant giddy-mindedness, which spoils
the book and often gives it a wanton air of unreality and juggling with
air-bells, comes from unsteadiness of key; from the too great realism of
some chapters and passages—some of which I have now spotted, others I
dare say I shall never spot—which disprepares the imagination for the
cast of the remainder.
Any story can be made _true_ in its own key; any story can be made
_false_ by the choice of a wrong key of detail or style: Otto is made to
reel like a drunken—I was going to say man, but let us substitute
cipher—by the variations of the key. Have you observed that the famous
problem of realism and idealism is one purely of detail? Have you seen
my ‘Note on Realism’ in Cassell’s _Magazine of Art_; and ‘Elements of
Style’ in the _Contemporary_; and ‘Romance’ and ‘Humble Apology’ in
_Longman’s_? They are all in your line of business; let me know what you
have not seen and I’ll send ’em.
I am glad I brought the old house up to you. It was a pleasant old spot,
and I remember you there, though still more dearly in your own strange
den upon a hill in San Francisco; and one of the most San Francisco-y
parts of San Francisco.
Good-bye, my dear fellow, and believe me your friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO J. A. SYMONDS
_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_ [_Spring_ 1886].
MY DEAR SYMONDS,—If we have lost touch, it is (I think) only in a
material sense; a question of letters, not hearts. You will find a warm
welcome at Skerryvore from both the lightkeepers; and, indeed, we never
tell ourselves one of our financial fairy tales, but a run to Davos is a
prime feature. I am not changeable in friendship; and I think I can
promise you you have a pair of trusty well-wishers and friends in
Bournemouth: whether they write or not is but a small thing; the flag may
not be waved, but it is there.
Jekyll is a dreadful thing, I own; but the only thing I feel dreadful
about is that damned old business of the war in the members. This time
it came out; I hope it will stay in, in future.
Raskolnikoff {20} is easily the greatest book I have read in ten years; I
am glad you took to it. Many find it dull: Henry James could not finish
it: all I can say is, it nearly finished me. It was like having an
illness. James did not care for it because the character of Raskolnikoff
was not objective; and at that I divined a great gulf between us, and, on
further reflection, the existence of a certain impotence in many minds of
to-day, which prevents them from living _in_ a book or a character, and
keeps them standing afar off, spectators of a puppet show. To such I
suppose the book may seem empty in the centre; to the others it is a
room, a house of life, into which they themselves enter, and are tortured
and purified. The Juge d’Instruction I thought a wonderful, weird,
touching, ingenious creation: the drunken father, and Sonia, and the
student friend, and the uncircumscribed, protaplasmic humanity of
Raskolnikoff, all upon a level that filled me with wonder: the execution
also, superb in places. Another has been translated—_Humiliés et
Offensés_. It is even more incoherent than _Le Crime et le Châtiment_,
but breathes much of the same lovely goodness, and has passages of power.
Dostoieffsky is a devil of a swell, to be sure. Have you heard that he
became a stout, imperialist conservative? It is interesting to know. To
something of that side, the balance leans with me also in view of the
incoherency and incapacity of all. The old boyish idea of the march on
Paradise being now out of season, and all plans and ideas that I hear
debated being built on a superb indifference to the first principles of
human character, a helpless desire to acquiesce in anything of which I
know the worst assails me. Fundamental errors in human nature of two
sorts stand on the skyline of all this modern world of aspirations.
First, that it is happiness that men want; and second, that happiness
consists of anything but an internal harmony. Men do not want, and I do
not think they would accept, happiness; what they live for is rivalry,
effort, success—the elements our friends wish to eliminate. And, on the
other hand, happiness is a question of morality—or of immorality, there
is no difference—and conviction. Gordon was happy in Khartoum, in his
worst hours of danger and fatigue; Marat was happy, I suppose, in his
ugliest frenzy; Marcus Aurelius was happy in the detested camp; Pepys was
pretty happy, and I am pretty happy on the whole, because we both
somewhat crowingly accepted a _via media_, both liked to attend to our
affairs, and both had some success in managing the same. It is quite an
open question whether Pepys and I ought to be happy; on the other hand,
there is no doubt that Marat had better be unhappy. He was right (if he
said it) that he was _la misère humaine_, cureless misery—unless perhaps
by the gallows. Death is a great and gentle solvent; it has never had
justice done it, no, not by Whitman. As for those crockery chimney-piece
ornaments, the bourgeois (_quorum pars_), and their cowardly dislike of
dying and killing, it is merely one symptom of a thousand how utterly
they have got out of touch of life. Their dislike of capital punishment
and their treatment of their domestic servants are for me the two
flaunting emblems of their hollowness.
God knows where I am driving to. But here comes my lunch.
Which interruption, happily for you, seems to have stayed the issue. I
have now nothing to say, that had formerly such a pressure of twaddle.
Pray don’t fail to come this summer. It will be a great disappointment,
now it has been spoken of, if you do.—Yours ever,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
TO W. H. LOW
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _March_ 1886.]
MY DEAR LOW,—This is the most enchanting picture. Now understand my
state: I am really an invalid, but of a mysterious order. I might be a
_malade imaginaire_, but for one too tangible symptom, my tendency to
bleed from the lungs. If we could go, (1_st_) We must have money enough
to travel with _leisure and comfort_—especially the first. (_2nd_) You
must be prepared for a comrade who would go to bed some part of every day
and often stay silent (3_rd_) You would have to play the part of a
thoughtful courier, sparing me fatigue, looking out that my bed was
warmed, etc. (4_th_) If you are very nervous, you must recollect a bad
hæmorrhage is always on the cards, with its concomitants of anxiety and
horror for those who are beside me.
Do you blench? If so, let us say no more about it.
If you are still unafraid, and the money were forthcoming, I believe the
trip might do me good, and I feel sure that, working together, we might
produce a fine book. The Rhone is the river of Angels. I adore it: have
adored it since I was twelve, and first saw it from the train.
Lastly, it would depend on how I keep from now on. I have stood the
winter hitherto with some credit, but the dreadful weather still
continues, and I cannot holloa till I am through the wood.
Subject to these numerous and gloomy provisos, I embrace the prospect
with glorious feelings.
I write this from bed, snow pouring without, and no circumstance of
pleasure except your letter. That, however, counts for much. I am glad
you liked the doggerel: I have already had a liberal cheque, over which I
licked my fingers with a sound conscience. I had not meant to make money
by these stumbling feet, but if it comes, it is only too welcome in my
handsome but impecunious house.
Let me know soon what is to be expected—as far as it does not hang by
that inconstant quantity, my want of health. Remember me to Madam with
the best thanks and wishes; and believe me your friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _April_ 1886.]
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,—I try to tell myself it is good nature, but I know
it is vanity that makes me write.
I have drafted the first part of Chapter VI., Fleeming and his friends,
his influence on me, his views on religion and literature, his part at
the Savile; it should boil down to about ten pages, and I really do think
it admirably good. It has so much evoked Fleeming for myself that I
found my conscience stirred just as it used to be after a serious talk
with him: surely that means it is good? I had to write and tell you,
being alone.
I have excellent news of Fanny, who is much better for the change. My
father is still very yellow, and very old, and very weak, but yesterday
he seemed happier, and smiled, and followed what was said; even laughed,
I think. When he came away, he said to me, ‘Take care of yourself, my
dearie,’ which had a strange sound of childish days, and will not leave
my mind.
You must get Litolf’s _Gavottes Célèbres_: I have made another trover
there: a musette of Lully’s. The second part of it I have not yet got
the hang of; but the first—only a few bars! The gavotte is beautiful and
pretty hard, I think, and very much of the period; and at the end of it,
this musette enters with the most really thrilling effect of simple
beauty. O—it’s first-rate. I am quite mad over it. If you find other
books containing Lully, Rameau, Martini, please let me know; also you
might tell me, you who know Bach, where the easiest is to be found. I
write all morning, come down, and never leave the piano till about five;
write letters, dine, get down again about eight, and never leave the
piano till I go to bed. This is a fine life.—Yours most sincerely,
R. L. S.
If you get the musette (Lully’s), please tell me if I am right, and it
was probably written for strings. Anyway, it is as neat as—as neat as
Bach—on the piano; or seems so to my ignorance.
I play much of the Rigadoon but it is strange, it don’t come off _quite_
so well with me!
[Picture: Music store]
There is the first part of the musette copied (from memory, so I hope
there’s nothing wrong). Is it not angelic? But it ought, of course, to
have the gavotte before. The gavotte is in G, and ends on the keynote
thus (if I remember):—
[Picture: Music store]
staccato, I think. Then you sail into the musette.
_N.B._—Where I have put an ‘A,’ is that a dominant eleventh, or what? or
just a seventh on the D? and if the latter, is that allowed? It sounds
very funny. Never mind all my questions; if I begin about music (which
is my leading ignorance and curiosity), I have always to babble
questions: all my friends know me now, and take no notice whatever. The
whole piece is marked allegro; but surely could easily be played too
fast? The dignity must not be lost; the periwig feeling.
TO THOMAS STEVENSON
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _March_ 1886.]
MY DEAR FATHER,—The David problem has to-day been decided. I am to leave
the door open for a sequel if the public take to it, and this will save
me from butchering a lot of good material to no purpose. Your letter
from Carlisle was pretty like yourself, sir, as I was pleased to see; the
hand of Jekyll, not the hand of Hyde. I am for action quite unfit, and
even a letter is beyond me; so pray take these scraps at a vast deal more
than their intrinsic worth. I am in great spirits about David, Colvin
agreeing with Henley, Fanny, and myself in thinking it far the most human
of my labours hitherto. As to whether the long-eared British public may
take to it, all think it more than doubtful; I wish they would, for I
could do a second volume with ease and pleasure, and Colvin thinks it sin
and folly to throw away David and Alan Breck upon so small a field as
this one.—Ever your affectionate son,
R. L. S.
TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], _April_ 15 _or_ 16 (_the hour not being
known_), 1886.
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,—It is I know not what hour of the night; but I
cannot sleep, have lit the gas, and here goes.
First, all your packet arrived: I have dipped into the Schumann already
with great pleasure. Surely, in what concerns us there is a sweet little
chirrup; the _Good Words_ arrived in the morning just when I needed it,
and the famous notes that I had lost were recovered also in the nick of
time.
And now I am going to bother you with my affairs: premising, first, that
this is _private_; second, that whatever I do the _Life_ shall be done
first, and I am getting on with it well; and third, that I do not quite
know why I consult you, but something tells me you will hear with
fairness.
Here is my problem. The Curtin women are still miserable prisoners; no
one dare buy their farm of them, all the manhood of England and the world
stands aghast before a threat of murder. (1) Now, my work can be done
anywhere; hence I can take up without loss a back-going Irish farm, and
live on, though not (as I had originally written) in it: First Reason.
(2) If I should be killed, there are a good many who would feel it:
writers are so much in the public eye, that a writer being murdered would
attract attention, throw a bull’s-eye light upon this cowardly business:
Second Reason. (3) I am not unknown in the States, from which the funds
come that pay for these brutalities: to some faint extent, my death (if I
should be killed) would tell there: Third Reason. (4) _Nobody else is
taking up this obvious and crying duly_: Fourth Reason. (5) I have a
crazy health and may die at any moment, my life is of no purchase in an
insurance office, it is the less account to husband it, and the business
of husbanding a life is dreary and demoralising: Fifth Reason.
I state these in no order, but as they occur to me. And I shall do the
like with the objections.
First Objection: It will do no good; you have seen Gordon die and nobody
minded; nobody will mind if you die. This is plainly of the devil.
Second Objection: You will not even be murdered, the climate will
miserably kill you, you will strangle out in a rotten damp heat, in
congestion, etc. Well, what then? It changes nothing: the purpose is to
brave crime; let me brave it, for such time and to such an extent as God
allows. Third Objection: The Curtin women are probably highly
uninteresting females. I haven’t a doubt of it. But the Government
cannot, men will not, protect them. If I am the only one to see this
public duty, it is to the public and the Right I should perform it—not to
Mesdames Curtin. Fourth Objection: I am married. ‘I have married a
wife!’ I seem to have heard it before. It smells ancient! what was the
context? Fifth Objection: My wife has had a mean life (1), loves me (2),
could not bear to lose me (3). (1) I admit: I am sorry. (2) But what
does she love me for? and (3) she must lose me soon or late. And after
all, because we run this risk, it does not follow we should fail. Sixth
Objection: My wife wouldn’t like it. No, she wouldn’t. Who would? But
the Curtins don’t like it. And all those who are to suffer if this goes
on, won’t like it. And if there is a great wrong, somebody must suffer.
Seventh Objection: I won’t like it. No, I will not; I have thought it
through, and I will not. But what of that? And both she and I may like
it more than we suppose. We shall lose friends, all comforts, all
society: so has everybody who has ever done anything; but we shall have
some excitement, and that’s a fine thing; and we shall be trying to do
the right, and that’s not to be despised. Eighth Objection: I am an
author with my work before me. See Second Reason. Ninth Objection: But
am I not taken with the hope of excitement? I was at first. I am not
much now. I see what a dreary, friendless, miserable, God-forgotten
business it will be. And anyway, is not excitement the proper reward of
doing anything both right and a little dangerous? Tenth Objection: But
am I not taken with a notion of glory? I dare say I am. Yet I see quite
clearly how all points to nothing coming, to a quite inglorious death by
disease and from the lack of attendance; or even if I should be knocked
on the head, as these poor Irish promise, how little any one will care.
It will be a smile at a thousand breakfast-tables. I am nearly forty
now; I have not many illusions. And if I had? I do not love this
health-tending, housekeeping life of mine. I have a taste for danger,
which is human, like the fear of it. Here is a fair cause; a just cause;
no knight ever set lance in rest for a juster. Yet it needs not the
strength I have not, only the passive courage that I hope I could muster,
and the watchfulness that I am sure I could learn.
Here is a long midnight dissertation; with myself; with you. Please let
me hear. But I charge you this: if you see in this idea of mine the
finger of duty, do not dissuade me. I am nearing forty, I begin to love
my ease and my home and my habits, I never knew how much till this arose;
do not falsely counsel me to put my head under the bed-clothes. And I
will say this to you: my wife, who hates the idea, does not refuse. ‘It
is nonsense,’ says she, ‘but if you go, I will go.’ Poor girl, and her
home and her garden that she was so proud of! I feel her garden most of
all, because it is a pleasure (I suppose) that I do not feel myself to
share.
1. Here is a great wrong.
2. ,, growing wrong.
3. ,, wrong founded on crime.
4. ,, crime that the Government cannot prevent.
5. ,, crime that it occurs to no man to defy.
6. But it has occurred to me.
7. Being a known person, some will notice my defiance.
8. Being a writer, I can _make_ people notice it.
9. And, I think, _make_ people imitate me.
10. Which would destroy in time this whole scaffolding of oppression.
11. And if I fail, however ignominiously, that is not my concern. It
is, with an odd mixture of reverence and humorous remembrances of
Dickens, be it said—it is A-nother’s.
And here, at I cannot think what hour of the morning, I shall dry up, and
remain,—Yours, really in want of a little help,
R. L S.
Sleepless at midnight’s dewy hour.
,, ,, witching ,,
,, ,, maudlin ,,
,, ,, etc.
_Next morning_.—Eleventh Objection: I have a father and mother. And who
has not? Macduff’s was a rare case; if we must wait for a Macduff.
Besides, my father will not perhaps be long here. Twelfth Objection: The
cause of England in Ireland is not worth supporting. _À qui le
dites-vous_? And I am not supporting that. Home Rule, if you like.
Cause of decency, the idea that populations should not be taught to gain
public ends by private crime, the idea that for all men to bow before a
threat of crime is to loosen and degrade beyond redemption the whole
fabric of man’s decency.
TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _April_ 1886.]
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,—The Book—It is all drafted: I hope soon to send you
for comments Chapters III., IV., and V. Chapter VII. is roughly but
satisfactorily drafted: a very little work should put that to rights.
But Chapter VI. is no joke; it is a _mare magnum_: I swim and drown and
come up again; and it is all broken ends and mystification: moreover, I
perceive I am in want of more matter. I must have, first of all, a
little letter from Mr. Ewing about the phonograph work: _If_ you think he
would understand it is quite a matter of chance whether I use a word or a
fact out of it. If you think he would not: I will go without. Also,
could I have a look at Ewing’s _précis_? And lastly, I perceive I must
interview you again about a few points; they are very few, and might come
to little; and I propose to go on getting things as well together as I
can in the meanwhile, and rather have a final time when all is ready and
only to be criticised. I do still think it will be good. I wonder if
Trélat would let me cut? But no, I think I wouldn’t after all; ’tis so
quaint and pretty and clever and simple and French, and gives such a good
sight of Fleeming: the plum of the book, I think.
You misunderstood me in one point: I always hoped to found such a
society; that was the outside of my dream, and would mean entire success.
_But_—I cannot play Peter the Hermit. In these days of the Fleet Street
journalist, I cannot send out better men than myself, with wives or
mothers just as good as mine, and sisters (I may at least say) better, to
a danger and a long-drawn dreariness that I do not share. My wife says
it’s cowardice; what brave men are the leader-writers! Call it
cowardice; it is mine. Mind you, I may end by trying to do it by the pen
only: I shall not love myself if I do; and is it ever a good thing to do
a thing for which you despise yourself?—even in the doing? And if the
thing you do is to call upon others to do the thing you neglect? I have
never dared to say what I feel about men’s lives, because my own was in
the wrong: shall I dare to send them to death? The physician must heal
himself; he must honestly _try_ the path he recommends: if he does not
even try, should he not be silent?
I thank you very heartily for your letter, and for the seriousness you
brought to it. You know, I think when a serious thing is your own, you
keep a saner man by laughing at it and yourself as you go. So I do not
write possibly with all the really somewhat sickened gravity I feel. And
indeed, what with the book, and this business to which I referred, and
Ireland, I am scarcely in an enviable state. Well, I ought to be glad,
after ten years of the worst training on earth—valetudinarianism—that I
can still be troubled by a duty. You shall hear more in time; so far, I
am at least decided: I will go and see Balfour when I get to London.
We have all had a great pleasure: a Mrs. Rawlinson came and brought with
her a nineteen-year-old daughter, simple, human, as beautiful as—herself;
I never admired a girl before, you know it was my weakness: we are all
three dead in love with her. How nice to be able to do so much good to
harassed people by—yourself! Ever yours,
R. L. S.
TO MISS RAWLINSON
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _April_ 1886.]
OF the many flowers you brought me,
Only some were meant to stay,
And the flower I thought the sweetest
Was the flower that went away.
Of the many flowers you brought me,
All were fair and fresh and gay,
But the flower I thought the sweetest
Was the blossom of the May.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO MISS MONROE
_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _May_ 25_th_, 1886.
DEAR MISS MONROE,—(I hope I have this rightly) I must lose no time in
thanking you for a letter singularly pleasant to receive. It may
interest you to know that I read to the signature without suspecting my
correspondent was a woman; though in one point (a reference to the
Countess) I might have found a hint of the truth. You are not pleased
with Otto; since I judge you do not like weakness; and no more do I. And
yet I have more than tolerance for Otto, whose faults are the faults of
weakness, but never of ignoble weakness, and who seeks before all to be
both kind and just. Seeks, not succeeds. But what is man? So much of
cynicism to recognise that nobody does right is the best equipment for
those who do not wish to be cynics in good earnest. Think better of
Otto, if my plea can influence you; and this I mean for your own sake—not
his, poor fellow, as he will never learn your opinion; but for yours,
because, as men go in this world (and women too), you will not go far
wrong if you light upon so fine a fellow; and to light upon one and not
perceive his merits is a calamity. In the flesh, of course, I mean; in
the book the fault, of course, is with my stumbling pen. Seraphina made
a mistake about her Otto; it begins to swim before me dimly that you may
have some traits of Seraphina?
With true ingratitude you see me pitch upon your exception; but it is
easier to defend oneself gracefully than to acknowledge praise. I am
truly glad that you should like my books; for I think I see from what you
write that you are a reader worth convincing. Your name, if I have
properly deciphered it, suggests that you may be also something of my
countrywoman; for it is hard to see where Monroe came from, if not from
Scotland. I seem to have here a double claim on your good nature: being
myself pure Scotch and having appreciated your letter, make up two
undeniable merits which, perhaps, if it should be quite without trouble,
you might reward with your photograph.—Yours truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO MISS MONROE
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _June_ 1886.]
MY DEAR MISS MONROE,—I am ill in bed and stupid, incoherently stupid; yet
I have to answer your letter, and if the answer is incomprehensible you
must forgive me. You say my letter caused you pleasure; I am sure, as it
fell out, not near so much as yours has brought to me. The interest
taken in an author is fragile: his next book, or your next year of
culture, might see the interest frosted or outgrown; and himself, in
spite of all, you might probably find the most distasteful person upon
earth. My case is different. I have bad health, am often condemned to
silence for days together—was so once for six weeks, so that my voice was
awful to hear when I first used it, like the whisper of a shadow—have
outlived all my chief pleasures, which were active and adventurous, and
ran in the open air: and being a person who prefers life to art, and who
knows it is a far finer thing to be in love, or to risk a danger, than to
paint the finest picture or write the noblest book, I begin to regard
what remains to me of my life as very shadowy. From a variety of
reasons, I am ashamed to confess I was much in this humour when your
letter came. I had a good many troubles; was regretting a high average
of sins; had been recently reminded that I had outlived some friends, and
wondering if I had not outlived some friendships; and had just, while
boasting of better health, been struck down again by my haunting enemy,
an enemy who was exciting at first, but has now, by the iteration of his
strokes, become merely annoying and inexpressibly irksome. Can you fancy
that to a person drawing towards the elderly this sort of conjunction of
circumstances brings a rather aching sense of the past and the future?
Well, it was just then that your letter and your photograph were brought
to me in bed; and there came to me at once the most agreeable sense of
triumph. My books were still young; my words had their good health and
could go about the world and make themselves welcome; and even (in a
shadowy and distant sense) make something in the nature of friends for
the sheer hulk that stays at home and bites his pen over the manuscripts.
It amused me very much to remember that I had been in Chicago, not so
many years ago, in my proper person; where I had failed to awaken much
remark, except from the ticket collector; and to think how much more
gallant and persuasive were the fellows that I now send instead of me,
and how these are welcome in that quarter to the sitter of Herr Platz,
while their author was not very welcome even in the villainous restaurant
where he tried to eat a meal and rather failed.
And this leads me directly to a confession. The photograph which shall
accompany this is not chosen as the most like, but the best-looking. Put
yourself in my place, and you will call this pardonable. Even as it is,
even putting forth a flattered presentment, I am a little pained; and
very glad it is a photograph and not myself that has to go; for in this
case, if it please you, you can tell yourself it is my image—and if it
displeased you, you can lay the blame on the photographer; but in that,
there were no help, and the poor author might belie his labours.
_Kidnapped_ should soon appear; I am afraid you may not like it, as it is
very unlike _Prince Otto_ in every way; but I am myself a great admirer
of the two chief characters, Alan and David. _Virginibus Puerisque_ has
never been issued in the States. I do not think it is a book that has
much charm for publishers in any land; but I am to bring out a new
edition in England shortly, a copy of which I must try to remember to
send you. I say try to remember, because I have some superficial
acquaintance with myself: and I have determined, after a galling
discipline, to promise nothing more until the day of my death: at least,
in this way, I shall no more break my word, and I must now try being
churlish instead of being false.
I do not believe you to be the least like Seraphina. Your photograph has
no trace of her, which somewhat relieves me, as I am a good deal afraid
of Seraphinas—they do not always go into the woods and see the sunrise,
and some are so well-mailed that even that experience would leave them
unaffected and unsoftened. The ‘hair and eyes of several complexions’
was a trait taken from myself; and I do not bind myself to the opinions
of Sir John. In this case, perhaps—but no, if the peculiarity is shared
by two such pleasant persons as you and I (as you and me—the grammatical
nut is hard), it must be a very good thing indeed, and Sir John must be
an ass.
The _Book Reader_ notice was a strange jumble of fact and fancy. I wish
you could have seen my father’s old assistant and present partner when he
heard my father described as an ‘inspector of lighthouses,’ for we are
all very proud of the family achievements, and the name of my house here
in Bournemouth is stolen from one of the sea-towers of the Hebrides which
are our pyramids and monuments. I was never at Cambridge, again; but
neglected a considerable succession of classes at Edinburgh. But to
correct that friendly blunderer were to write an autobiography.—And so
now, with many thanks, believe me yours sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _July_ 1886.
SIR,—Your foolish letter was unduly received. There may be hidden
fifths, and if there are, it shows how dam spontaneous the thing was. I
could tinker and tic-tac-toe on a piece of paper, but scorned the act
with a Threnody, which was poured forth like blood and water on the
groaning organ. If your heart (which was what I addressed) remained
unmoved, let us refer to the affair no more: crystallised emotion, the
statement and the reconciliation of the sorrows of the race and the
individual, is obviously no more to you than supping sawdust. Well,
well. If ever I write another Threnody! My next op. will probably be a
Passepied and fugue in G (or D).
The mind is in my case shrunk to the size and sp. gr. of an aged Spanish
filbert. O, I am so jolly silly. I now pickle with some freedom (1) the
refrain of _Martini’s Moutons_; (2) _Sul margine d’un rio_, arranged for
the infant school by the Aged Statesman; (3) the first phrase of Bach’s
musette (Sweet Englishwoman, No. 3), {37} the rest of the musette being
one prolonged cropper, which I take daily for the benefit of my health.
All my other works (of which there are many) are either arranged (by R.
L. Stevenson) for the manly and melodious forefinger, or else prolonged
and melancholy croppers. . . . I find one can get a notion of music very
nicely. I have been pickling deeply in the Magic Flute; and have
arranged _La dove prende_, almost to the end, for two melodious
forefingers. I am next going to score the really nobler _Colomba o
tortorella_ for the same instruments.
This day is published
The works of Ludwig van Beethoven
arranged
and wiederdurchgearbeiteted
for two melodious forefingers
by,
Sir,—Your obedient servant,
PIMPERLY STIPPLE.
That’s a good idea? There’s a person called Lenz who actually does
it—beware his den; I lost eighteenpennies on him, and found the bleeding
corpses of pieces of music divorced from their keys, despoiled of their
graces, and even changed in time; I do not wish to regard music (nor to
be regarded) through that bony Lenz. You say you are ‘a spumfed idiot’;
but how about Lenz? And how about me, sir, me?
I yesterday sent Lloyd by parcel post, at great expense, an empty
matchbox and empty cigarette-paper book, a bell from a cat’s collar, an
iron kitchen spoon, and a piece of coal more than half the superficies of
this sheet of paper. They are now (appropriately enough) speeding
towards the Silly Isles; I hope he will find them useful. By that, and
my telegram with prepaid answer to yourself, you may judge of my
spiritual state. The finances have much brightened; and if _Kidnapped_
keeps on as it has begun, I may be solvent.—Yours,
THRENODIÆ AVCTOR
(The authour of ane Threnodie).
Op. 2: Scherzo (in G Major) expressive of the Sense of favours to come.
TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
_Skerryvore_ [_Bournemouth_, _July_ 1886].
DEAR BOB,—Herewith another shy; more melancholy than before, but I think
not so abjectly idiotic. The musical terms seem to be as good as in
Beethoven, and that, after all, is the great affair. Bar the dam
bareness of the base, it looks like a piece of real music from a
distance. I am proud to say it was not made one hand at a time; the base
was of synchronous birth with the treble; they are of the same age, sir,
and may God have mercy on their souls!—Yours,
THE MAESTRO.
TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _July_ 7_th_, 1886.
MY DEAR PEOPLE,—It is probably my fault, and not yours, that I did not
understand. I think it would be well worth trying the winter in
Bournemouth; but I would only take the house by the month—this after
mature discussion. My leakage still pursues its course; if I were only
well, I have a notion to go north and get in (if I could) at the inn at
Kirkmichael, which has always smiled upon me much. If I did well there,
we might then meet and do what should most smile at the time.
Meanwhile, of course, I must not move, and am in a rancid box here,
feeling the heat a great deal, and pretty tired of things. Alexander did
a good thing of me at last; it looks like a mixture of an aztec idol, a
lion, an Indian Rajah, and a woman; and certainly represents a mighty
comic figure. F. and Lloyd both think it is the best thing that has been
done of me up to now.
You should hear Lloyd on the penny whistle, and me on the piano! Dear
powers, what a concerto! I now live entirely for the piano, he for the
whistle; the neighbours, in a radius of a furlong and a half, are packing
up in quest of brighter climes.—Ever yours,
R. L. S.
_P.S._—Please say if you can afford to let us have money for this trip,
and if so, how much. I can see the year through without help, I believe,
and supposing my health to keep up; but can scarce make this change on my
own metal.
R. L. S.
TO CHARLES BAXTER
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _July_ 1886].
DEAR CHARLES,—Doubtless, if all goes well, towards the 1st of August we
shall be begging at your door. Thanks for a sight of the papers, which I
return (you see) at once, fearing further responsibility.
Glad you like Dauvit; but eh, man, yon’s terrible strange conduc’ o’ thon
man Rankeillor. Ca’ him a legal adviser! It would make a bonny
law-shuit, the Shaws case; and yon paper they signed, I’m thinking,
wouldnae be muckle thought o’ by Puggy Deas.—Yours ever,
R. L. S.
TO THOMAS STEVENSON
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], _July_ 28, 1886.
MY DEAR FATHER,—We have decided not to come to Scotland, but just to do
as Dobell wished, and take an outing. I believe this is wiser in all
ways; but I own it is a disappointment. I am weary of England; like
Alan, ‘I weary for the heather,’ if not for the deer. Lloyd has gone to
Scilly with Katharine and C., where and with whom he should have a good
time. David seems really to be going to succeed, which is a pleasant
prospect on all sides. I am, I believe, floated financially; a book that
sells will be a pleasant novelty. I enclose another review; mighty
complimentary, and calculated to sell the book too.
Coolin’s tombstone has been got out, honest man! and it is to be
polished, for it has got scratched, and have a touch of gilding in the
letters, and be sunk in the front of the house. Worthy man, he, too,
will maybe weary for the heather, and the bents of Gullane, where (as I
dare say you remember) he gaed clean gyte, and jumped on to his crown
from a gig, in hot and hopeless chase of many thousand rabbits. I can
still hear the little cries of the honest fellow as he disappeared; and
my mother will correct me, but I believe it was two days before he turned
up again at North Berwick: to judge by his belly, he had caught not one
out of these thousands, but he had had some exercise.
I keep well.—Ever your affectionate son,
R. L. S.
TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
_British Museum_ [_August_ 10_th_, 1886].
MY DEAR MOTHER,—We are having a capital holiday, and I am much better,
and enjoying myself to the nines. Richmond is painting my portrait.
To-day I lunch with him, and meet Burne-Jones; to-night Browning dines
with us. That sounds rather lofty work, does it not? His path was paved
with celebrities. To-morrow we leave for Paris, and next week, I
suppose, or the week after, come home. Address here, as we may not reach
Paris. I am really very well.—Ever your affectionate son,
R. L. S.
TO T. WATTS-DUNTON
_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_ [_September_ 1886].
DEAR MR. WATTS, The sight of the last _Athenæum_ reminds me of you, and
of my debt, now too long due. I wish to thank you for your notice of
_Kidnapped_; and that not because it was kind, though for that also I
valued it, but in the same sense as I have thanked you before now for a
hundred articles on a hundred different writers. A critic like you is
one who fights the good fight, contending with stupidity, and I would
fain hope not all in vain; in my own case, for instance, surely not in
vain.
What you say of the two parts in _Kidnapped_ was felt by no one more
painfully than by myself. I began it partly as a lark, partly as a
pot-boiler; and suddenly it moved, David and Alan stepped out from the
canvas, and I found I was in another world. But there was the cursed
beginning, and a cursed end must be appended; and our old friend Byles
the butcher was plainly audible tapping at the back door. So it had to
go into the world, one part (as it does seem to me) alive, one part
merely galvanised: no work, only an essay. For a man of tentative
method, and weak health, and a scarcity of private means, and not too
much of that frugality which is the artist’s proper virtue, the days of
sinecures and patrons look very golden: the days of professional
literature very hard. Yet I do not so far deceive myself as to think I
should change my character by changing my epoch; the sum of virtue in our
books is in a relation of equality to the sum of virtues in ourselves;
and my _Kidnapped_ was doomed, while still in the womb and while I was
yet in the cradle, to be the thing it is.
And now to the more genial business of defence. You attack my fight on
board the _Covenant_: I think it literal. David and Alan had every
advantage on their side—position, arms, training, a good conscience; a
handful of merchant sailors, not well led in the first attack, not led at
all in the second, could only by an accident have taken the round-house
by attack; and since the defenders had firearms and food, it is even
doubtful if they could have been starved out. The only doubtful point
with me is whether the seamen would have ever ventured on the second
onslaught; I half believe they would not; still the illusion of numbers
and the authority of Hoseason would perhaps stretch far enough to justify
the extremity.—I am, dear Mr. Watts, your very sincere admirer,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
_Skerryvore_, _September_ 4, 1886.
NOT roses to the rose, I trow,
The thistle sends, nor to the bee
Do wasps bring honey. Wherefore now
Should Locker ask a verse from me?
Martial, perchance,—but he is dead,
And Herrick now must rhyme no more;
Still burning with the muse, they tread
(And arm in arm) the shadowy shore.
They, if they lived, with dainty hand,
To music as of mountain brooks,
Might bring you worthy words to stand
Unshamed, dear Locker, in your books.
But tho’ these fathers of your race
Be gone before, yourself a sire,
To-day you see before your face
Your stalwart youngsters touch the lyre—
On these—on Lang, or Dobson—call,
Long leaders of the songful feast.
They lend a verse your laughing fall—
A verse they owe you at the least.
TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
[_Skerryvore_], _Bournemouth_, _September_ 1886.
DEAR LOCKER,—You take my verses too kindly, but you will admit, for such
a bluebottle of a versifier to enter the house of Gertrude, where her
necklace hangs, was not a little brave. Your kind invitation, I fear,
must remain unaccented; and yet—if I am very well—perhaps next
spring—(for I mean to be very well)—my wife might. . . . But all that is
in the clouds with my better health. And now look here: you are a rich
man and know many people, therefore perhaps some of the Governors of
Christ’s Hospital. If you do, I know a most deserving case, in which I
would (if I could) do anything. To approach you, in this way, is not
decent; and you may therefore judge by my doing it, how near this matter
lies to my heart. I enclose you a list of the Governors, which I beg you
to return, whether or not you shall be able to do anything to help me.
The boy’s name is —; he and his mother are very poor. It may interest
you in her cause if I tell you this: that when I was dangerously ill at
Hyères, this brave lady, who had then a sick husband of her own (since
dead) and a house to keep and a family of four to cook for, all with her
own hands, for they could afford no servant, yet took watch-about with my
wife, and contributed not only to my comfort, but to my recovery in a
degree that I am not able to limit. You can conceive how much I suffer
from my impotence to help her, and indeed I have already shown myself a
thankless friend. Let not my cry go up before you in vain!—Yours in
hope,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _September_ 1886.
MY DEAR LOCKER,—That I should call myself a man of letters, and land
myself in such unfathomable ambiguities! No, my dear Locker, I did not
want a cheque; and in my ignorance of business, which is greater even
than my ignorance of literature, I have taken the liberty of drawing a
pen through the document and returning it; should this be against the
laws of God or man, forgive me. All that I meant by my excessively
disgusting reference to your material well-being was the vague notion
that a man who is well off was sure to know a Governor of Christ’s
Hospital; though how I quite arrived at this conclusion I do not see. A
man with a cold in the head does not necessarily know a ratcatcher; and
the connection is equally close—as it now appears to my awakened and
somewhat humbled spirit. For all that, let me thank you in the warmest
manner for your friendly readiness to contribute. You say you have hopes
of becoming a miser: I wish I had; but indeed I believe you deceive
yourself, and are as far from it as ever. I wish I had any excuse to
keep your cheque, for it is much more elegant to receive than to return;
but I have my way of making it up to you, and I do sincerely beg you to
write to the two Governors. This extraordinary outpouring of
correspondence would (if you knew my habits) convince you of my great
eagerness in this matter. I would promise gratitude; but I have made a
promise to myself to make no more promises to anybody else, having broken
such a host already, and come near breaking my heart in consequence; and
as for gratitude, I am by nature a thankless dog, and was spoiled from a
child up. But if you can help this lady in the matter of the Hospital,
you will have helped the worthy. Let me continue to hope that I shall
make out my visit in the spring, and believe me, yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
It may amuse you to know that a very long while ago, I broke my heart to
try to imitate your verses, and failed hopelessly. I saw some of the
evidences the other day among my papers, and blushed to the heels.
R. L. S.
I give up finding out your name in the meantime, and keep to that by
which you will be known—Frederick Locker.
TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], 24_th_ _September_ 1886.
MY DEAR LOCKER,—You are simply an angel of light, and your two letters
have gone to the post; I trust they will reach the hearts of the
recipients—at least, that could not be more handsomely expressed. About
the cheque: well now, I am going to keep it; but I assure you Mrs. — has
never asked me for money, and I would not dare to offer any till she did.
For all that I shall stick to the cheque now, and act to that amount as
your almoner. In this way I reward myself for the ambiguity of my
epistolary style.
I suppose, if you please, you may say your verses are thin (would you so
describe an arrow, by the way, and one that struck the gold? It scarce
strikes me as exhaustively descriptive), and, thin or not, they are (and
I have found them) inimitably elegant. I thank you again very sincerely
for the generous trouble you have taken in this matter which was so near
my heart, and you may be very certain it will be the fault of my health
and not my inclination, if I do not see you before very long; for all
that has past has made me in more than the official sense sincerely
yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
_Skerryvore_, _Dec._ 14, 1886.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—This is first-rate of you, the Lord love you for it! I
am truly much obliged. He—my father—is very changeable; at times, he
seems only a slow quiet edition of himself; again, he will be very heavy
and blank; but never so violent as last spring; and therefore, to my
mind, better on the whole.
Fanny is pretty peepy; I am splendid. I have been writing much
verse—quite the bard, in fact; and also a dam tale to order, which will
be what it will be: I don’t love it, but some of it is passable in its
mouldy way, _The Misadventures of John Nicholson_. All my bardly
exercises are in Scotch; I have struck my somewhat ponderous guitar in
that tongue to no small extent: with what success, I know not, but I
think it’s better than my English verse; more marrow and fatness, and
more ruggedness.
How goes _Keats_? Pray remark, if he (Keats) hung back from Shelley, it
was not to be wondered at, _when so many of his friends were Shelley’s
pensioners_. I forget if you have made this point; it has been borne in
upon me reading Dowden and the _Shelley Papers_; and it will do no harm
if you have made it. I finished a poem to-day, and writ 3000 words of a
story, _tant bien que mal_; and have a right to be sleepy, and (what is
far nobler and rarer) am so.—My dear Colvin, ever yours,
THE REAL MACKAY.
TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _February_ 5_th_, 1887.
MY DEAR LOCKER,—Here I am in my bed as usual, and it is indeed a long
while since I went out to dinner. You do not know what a crazy fellow
this is. My winter has not so far been luckily passed, and all hope of
paying visits at Easter has vanished for twelve calendar months. But
because I am a beastly and indurated invalid, I am not dead to human
feelings; and I neither have forgotten you nor will forget you. Some day
the wind may round to the right quarter and we may meet; till then I am
still truly yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO HENRY JAMES
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_, _February_ 1887.]
MY DEAR JAMES,—My health has played me it in once more in the absurdest
fashion, and the creature who now addresses you is but a stringy and
white-faced _bouilli_ out of the pot of fever, with the devil to pay in
every corner of his economy. I suppose (to judge by your letter) I need
not send you these sheets, which came during my collapse by the rush. I
am on the start with three volumes, that one of tales, {48a} a second one
of essays, {48b} and one of—ahem—verse. {48c} This is a great order, is
it not? After that I shall have empty lockers. All new work stands
still; I was getting on well with Jenkin when this blessed malady
unhorsed me, and sent me back to the dung-collecting trade of the
republisher. I shall re-issue _Virg. Puer._ as Vol. I. of _Essays_, and
the new vol. as Vol. II. of ditto; to be sold, however, separately. This
is but a dry maundering; however, I am quite unfit—‘I am for action quite
unfit Either of exercise or wit.’ My father is in a variable state; many
sorrows and perplexities environ the house of Stevenson; my mother shoots
north at this hour on business of a distinctly rancid character; my
father (under my wife’s tutorage) proceeds to-morrow to Salisbury; I
remain here in my bed and whistle; in no quarter of heaven is anything
encouraging apparent, except that the good Colvin comes to the hotel here
on a visit. This dreary view of life is somewhat blackened by the fact
that my head aches, which I always regard as a liberty on the part of the
powers that be. This is also my first letter since my recovery. God
speed your laudatory pen!
My wife joins in all warm messages.—Yours,
R. L. S.
TO W. H. LOW
(_April_ 1887.)
MY DEAR LOW,—The fares to London may be found in any continental Bradshaw
or sich; from London to Bournemouth impoverished parties who can stoop to
the third class get their ticket for the matter of 10s., or, as my wife
loves to phrase it, ‘a half a pound.’ You will also be involved in a 3s.
fare to get to Skerryvore; but this, I dare say, friends could help you
in on your arrival; so that you may reserve your energies for the two
tickets—costing the matter of a pound—and the usual gratuities to
porters. This does not seem to me much: considering the intellectual
pleasures that await you here, I call it dirt cheap. I _believe_ the
third class from Paris to London (_viâ_ Dover) is _about_ forty francs,
but I cannot swear. Suppose it to be fifty.
50 × 2=100 100
The expense of spirit or spontaneous lapse of coin 10
on the journey, at 5 frcs. a head, 5 × 2=10
Victuals on ditto, at 5 frcs. a head, 5 × 2 = 10 10
Gratuity to stewardess, in case of severe 3
prostration, at 3 francs
One night in London, on a modest footing, say 20 20
Two tickets to Bournemouth at 12.50, 12.50 × 2=25 25
Porters and general devilment, say 5 5
Cabs in London, say 2 shillings, and in 6.25
Bournemouth, 3 shillings=5 shillings, 6 frcs. 25
frcs. 179.25
Or, the same in pounds, £7, 3s. 6½d.
Or, the same in dollars, $35.45
if there be any arithmetical virtue in me. I have left out dinner in
London in case you want to blow out, which would come extry, and with the
aid of _vangs fangs_ might easily double the whole amount—above all if
you have a few friends to meet you.
In making this valuable project, or budget, I discovered for the first
time a reason (frequently overlooked) for the singular costliness of
travelling with your wife. Anybody would count the tickets double; but
how few would have remembered—or indeed has any one ever remembered?—to
count the spontaneous lapse of coin double also? Yet there are two of
you, each must do his daily leakage, and it must be done out of your
travelling fund. You will tell me, perhaps, that you carry the coin
yourself: my dear sir, do you think you can fool your Maker? Your wife
has to lose her quota; and by God she will—if you kept the coin in a
belt. One thing I have omitted: you will lose a certain amount on the
exchange, but this even I cannot foresee, as it is one of the few things
that vary with the way a man has.—I am, dear sir, yours financially,
SAMUEL BUDGETT.
TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
_Skerryvore_, _April_ 16_th_, 1887.
MY DEAREST CUMMY,—As usual, I have been a dreary bad fellow and not
written for ages; but you must just try to forgive me, to believe (what
is the truth) that the number of my letters is no measure of the number
of times I think of you, and to remember how much writing I have to do.
The weather is bright, but still cold; and my father, I’m afraid, feels
it sharply. He has had—still has, rather—a most obstinate jaundice,
which has reduced him cruelly in strength, and really upset him
altogether. I hope, or think, he is perhaps a little better; but he
suffers much, cannot sleep at night, and gives John and my mother a
severe life of it to wait upon him. My wife is, I think, a little
better, but no great shakes. I keep mightily respectable myself.
Coolin’s Tombstone is now built into the front wall of Skerryvore, and
poor Bogie’s (with a Latin inscription also) is set just above it. Poor,
unhappy wee man, he died, as you must have heard, in fight, which was
what he would have chosen; for military glory was more in his line than
the domestic virtues. I believe this is about all my news, except that,
as I write, there is a blackbird singing in our garden trees, as it were
at Swanston. I would like fine to go up the burnside a bit, and sit by
the pool and be young again—or no, be what I am still, only there instead
of here, for just a little. Did you see that I had written about John
Todd? In this month’s _Longman_ it was; if you have not seen it, I will
try and send it you. Some day climb as high as Halkerside for me (I am
never likely to do it for myself), and sprinkle some of the well water on
the turf. I am afraid it is a pagan rite, but quite harmless, and _ye
can sain it wi’ a bit prayer_. Tell the Peewies that I mind their
forbears well. My heart is sometimes heavy, and sometimes glad to mind
it all. But for what we have received, the Lord make us truly thankful.
Don’t forget to sprinkle the water, and do it in my name; I feel a
childish eagerness in this.
Remember me most kindly to James, and with all sorts of love to yourself,
believe me, your laddie,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
_P.S._—I suppose Mrs. Todd ought to see the paper about her man; judge of
that, and if you think she would not dislike it, buy her one from me, and
let me know. The article is called ‘Pastoral,’ in _Longman’s Magazine_
for April. I will send you the money; I would to-day, but it’s the
Sabbie day, and I cannae.
R. L. S.
Remembrances from all here.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
[_Edinburgh_, _June_ 1887.]
MY DEAR S. C.,—At last I can write a word to you. Your little note in
the _P. M. G._ was charming. I have written four pages in the
_Contemporary_, which Bunting found room for: they are not very good, but
I shall do more for his memory in time.
About the death, I have long hesitated, I was long before I could tell my
mind; and now I know it, and can but say that I am glad. If we could
have had my father, that would have been a different thing. But to keep
that changeling—suffering changeling—any longer, could better none and
nothing. Now he rests; it is more significant, it is more like himself.
He will begin to return to us in the course of time, as he was and as we
loved him.
My favourite words in literature, my favourite scene—‘O let him pass,’
Kent and Lear—was played for me here in the first moment of my return. I
believe Shakespeare saw it with his own father. I had no words; but it
was shocking to see. He died on his feet, you know; was on his feet the
last day, knowing nobody—still he would be up. This was his constant
wish; also that he might smoke a pipe on his last day. The funeral would
have pleased him; it was the largest private funeral in man’s memory
here.
We have no plans, and it is possible we may go home without going through
town. I do not know; I have no views yet whatever; nor can have any at
this stage of my cold and my business.—Ever yours,
R. L. S.
IX
THE UNITED STATES AGAIN:
WINTER IN THE ADIRONDACKS
AUGUST 1887-OCTOBER 1888
TO W. E. HENLEY
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], _August_ 1887.
DEAR LAD,—I write to inform you that Mr. Stevenson’s well-known work,
_Virginibus Puerisque_, is about to be reprinted. At the same time a
second volume called _Memories and Portraits_ will issue from the roaring
loom. Its interest will be largely autobiographical, Mr. S. having
sketched there the lineaments of many departed friends, and dwelt fondly,
and with a m’istened eye, upon byegone pleasures. The two will be issued
under the common title of _Familiar Essays_; but the volumes will be
vended separately to those who are mean enough not to hawk at both.
The blood is at last stopped: only yesterday. I began to think I should
not get away. However, I hope—I hope—remark the word—no boasting—I hope
I may luff up a bit now. Dobell, whom I saw, gave as usual a good
account of my lungs, and expressed himself, like his neighbours,
hopefully about the trip. He says, my uncle says, Scott says, Brown
says—they all say—You ought not to be in such a state of health; you
should recover. Well, then, I mean to. My spirits are rising again
after three months of black depression: I almost begin to feel as if I
should care to live: I would, by God! And so I believe I shall.—Yours,
BULLETIN M‘GURDER.
How has the Deacon gone?
TO W. H. LOW
[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], August 6_th_, 1887.
MY DEAR LOW,—We—my mother, my wife, my stepson, my maidservant, and
myself, five souls—leave, if all is well, Aug. 20th, per Wilson line SS.
_Ludgate Hill_. Shall probably evade N. Y. at first, cutting straight to
a watering-place: Newport, I believe, its name. Afterwards we shall
steal incognito into _la bonne villa_, and see no one but you and the
Scribners, if it may be so managed. You must understand I have been very
seedy indeed, quite a dead body; and unless the voyage does miracles, I
shall have to draw it dam fine. Alas, ‘The Canoe Speaks’ is now out of
date; it will figure in my volume of verses now imminent. However, I may
find some inspiration some day.—Till very soon, yours ever,
R. L. S.
TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
_Bournemouth_, _August_ 19_th_, 1887.
MY DEAR MISS BOODLE,—I promise you the paper-knife shall go to sea with
me; and if it were in my disposal, I should promise it should return with
me too. All that you say, I thank you for very much; I thank you for all
the pleasantness that you have brought about our house; and I hope the
day may come when I shall see you again in poor old Skerryvore, now left
to the natives of Canada, or to worse barbarians, if such exist. I am
afraid my attempt to jest is rather _à contre-cœur_. Good-bye—_au
revoir_—and do not forget your friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO MESSRS. CHATTO AND WINDUS
_Bournemouth_ [_August_ 1887].
DEAR SIRS,—I here enclose the two titles. Had you not better send me the
bargains to sign? I shall be here till Saturday; and shall have an
address in London (which I shall send you) till Monday, when I shall
sail. Even if the proofs do not reach you till Monday morning, you could
send a clerk from Fenchurch Street Station at 10.23 A.M. for Galleons
Station, and he would find me embarking on board the _Ludgate Hill_,
Island Berth, Royal Albert Dock. Pray keep this in case it should be
necessary to catch this last chance. I am most anxious to have the
proofs with me on the voyage.—Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
_H.M.S._ ‘_Vulgarium_,’
_Off Havre de Grace_, _this_ 22_nd_ _day of August_ [1887].
SIR,—The weather has been hitherto inimitable. Inimitable is the only
word that I can apply to our fellow-voyagers, whom a categorist, possibly
premature, has been already led to divide into two classes—the better
sort consisting of the baser kind of Bagman, and the worser of
undisguised Beasts of the Field. The berths are excellent, the pasture
swallowable, the champagne of H. James (to recur to my favourite
adjective) inimitable. As for the Commodore, he slept awhile in the
evening, tossed off a cup of Henry James with his plain meal, walked the
deck till eight, among sands and floating lights and buoys and wrecked
brigantines, came down (to his regret) a minute too soon to see Margate
lit up, turned in about nine, slept, with some interruptions, but on the
whole sweetly, until six, and has already walked a mile or so of deck,
among a fleet of other steamers waiting for the tide, within view of
Havre, and pleasantly entertained by passing fishing-boats, hovering
sea-gulls, and Vulgarians pairing on deck with endearments of primitive
simplicity. There, sir, can be viewed the sham quarrel, the sham desire
for information, and every device of these two poor ancient sexes (who
might, you might think, have learned in the course of the ages something
new) down to the exchange of head-gear.—I am, sir, yours,
BOLD BOB BOLTSPRIT.
B. B. B. (_alias_ the Commodore) will now turn to his proofs. Havre de
Grace is a city of some show. It is for-ti-fied; and, so far as I can
see, is a place of some trade. It is situ-ated in France, a country of
Europe. You always complain there are no facts in my letters.
R. L. S.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
_Newport_, _R. I. U.S.A._ [_September_ 1887].
MY DEAR COLVIN,—So long it went excellent well, and I had a time I am
glad to have had; really enjoying my life. There is nothing like being
at sea, after all. And O, why have I allowed myself to rot so long on
land? But on the Banks I caught a cold, and I have not yet got over it.
My reception here was idiotic to the last degree. . . . It is very
silly, and not pleasant, except where humour enters; and I confess the
poor interviewer lads pleased me. They are too good for their trade;
avoided anything I asked them to avoid, and were no more vulgar in their
reports than they could help. I liked the lads.
O, it was lovely on our stable-ship, chock full of stallions. She rolled
heartily, rolled some of the fittings out of our state-room, and I think
a more dangerous cruise (except that it was summer) it would be hard to
imagine. But we enjoyed it to the masthead, all but Fanny; and even she
perhaps a little. When we got in, we had run out of beer, stout, cocoa,
soda-water, water, fresh meat, and (almost) of biscuit. But it was a
thousandfold pleasanter than a great big Birmingham liner like a new
hotel; and we liked the officers, and made friends with the
quartermasters, and I (at least) made a friend of a baboon (for we
carried a cargo of apes), whose embraces have pretty near cost me a coat.
The passengers improved, and were a very good specimen lot, with no
drunkard, no gambling that I saw, and less grumbling and backbiting than
one would have asked of poor human nature. Apes, stallions, cows,
matches, hay, and poor men-folk, all, or almost all, came successfully to
land.—Yours ever,
R. L. S.
TO HENRY JAMES
[_Newport_, _U.S.A._, _September_ 1887.]
MY DEAR JAMES,—Here we are at Newport in the house of the good
Fairchilds; and a sad burthen we have laid upon their shoulders. I have
been in bed practically ever since I came. I caught a cold on the Banks
after having had the finest time conceivable, and enjoyed myself more
than I could have hoped on board our strange floating menagerie:
stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the vast continent
of these incongruities rolled the while like a haystack; and the
stallions stood hypnotised by the motion, looking through the ports at
our dinner-table, and winked when the crockery was broken; and the little
monkeys stared at each other in their cages, and were thrown overboard
like little bluish babies; and the big monkey, Jacko, scoured about the
ship and rested willingly in my arms, to the ruin of my clothing; and the
man of the stallions made a bower of the black tarpaulin, and sat therein
at the feet of a raddled divinity, like a picture on a box of chocolates;
and the other passengers, when they were not sick, looked on and laughed.
Take all this picture, and make it roll till the bell shall sound
unexpected notes and the fittings shall break lose in our state-room, and
you have the voyage of the _Ludgate Hill_. She arrived in the port of
New York, without beer, porter, soda-water, curaçoa, fresh meat, or fresh
water; and yet we lived, and we regret her.
My wife is a good deal run down, and I am no great shakes.
America is, as I remarked, a fine place to eat in, and a great place for
kindness; but, Lord, what a silly thing is popularity! I envy the cool
obscurity of Skerryvore. If it even paid, said Meanness! and was abashed
at himself.—Yours most sincerely,
R. L S.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
[_New York_: _end of September_ 1887.]
MY DEAR S. C.,—Your delightful letter has just come, and finds me in a
New York hotel, waiting the arrival of a sculptor (St. Gaudens) who is
making a medallion of yours truly and who is (to boot) one of the
handsomest and nicest fellows I have seen. I caught a cold on the Banks;
fog is not for me; nearly died of interviewers and visitors, during
twenty-four hours in New York; cut for Newport with Lloyd and Valentine,
a journey like fairy-land for the most engaging beauties, one little
rocky and pine-shaded cove after another, each with a house and a boat at
anchor, so that I left my heart in each and marvelled why American
authors had been so unjust to their country; caught another cold on the
train; arrived at Newport to go to bed and to grow worse, and to stay in
bed until I left again; the Fairchilds proving during this time kindness
itself; Mr. Fairchild simply one of the most engaging men in the world,
and one of the children, Blair, _aet._ ten, a great joy and amusement in
his solemn adoring attitude to the author of _Treasure Island_.
Here I was interrupted by the arrival of my sculptor. I have begged him
to make a medallion of himself and give me a copy. I will not take up
the sentence in which I was wandering so long, but begin fresh. I was
ten or twelve days at Newport; then came back convalescent to New York.
Fanny and Lloyd are off to the Adirondacks to see if that will suit; and
the rest of us leave Monday (this is Saturday) to follow them up. I hope
we may manage to stay there all winter. I have a splendid appetite and
have on the whole recovered well after a mighty sharp attack. I am now
on a salary of £500 a year for twelve articles in _Scribner’s Magazine_
on what I like; it is more than £500, but I cannot calculate more
precisely. You have no idea how much is made of me here; I was offered
£2000 for a weekly article—eh heh! how is that? but I refused that
lucrative job. The success of _Underwoods_ is gratifying. You see, the
verses are sane; that is their strong point, and it seems it is strong
enough to carry them.
A thousand thanks for your grand letter, ever yours,
R. L. S.
TO W. E. HENLEY
_New York_ [_September_ 1887]
MY DEAR LAD,—Herewith verses for Dr. Hake, which please communicate. I
did my best with the interviewers; I don’t know if Lloyd sent you the
result; my heart was too sick: you can do nothing with them; and
yet—literally sweated with anxiety to please, and took me down in long
hand!
I have been quite ill, but go better. I am being not busted, but
medallioned, by St. Gaudens, who is a first-rate, plain, high-minded
artist and honest fellow; you would like him down to the ground. I
believe sculptors are fine fellows when they are not demons. O, I am now
a salaried person, £600 a year, {66} to write twelve articles in
_Scribner’s Magazine_; it remains to be seen if it really pays, huge as
the sum is, but the slavery may overweigh me. I hope you will like my
answer to Hake, and specially that he will.
Love to all.—Yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
(_le salarie_).
TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
_Saranac Lake_, _Adirondacks_,
_New York_, _U.S.A._ [_October_ 1887].
MY DEAR BOB,—The cold [of Colorado] was too rigorous for me; I could not
risk the long railway voyage, and the season was too late to risk the
Eastern, Cape Hatteras side of the steamer one; so here we stuck and
stick. We have a wooden house on a hill-top, overlooking a river, and a
village about a quarter of a mile away, and very wooded hills; the whole
scene is very Highland, bar want of heather and the wooden houses.
I have got one good thing of my sea voyage: it is proved the sea agrees
heartily with me, and my mother likes it; so if I get any better, or no
worse, my mother will likely hire a yacht for a month or so in summer.
Good Lord! What fun! Wealth is only useful for two things: a yacht and
a string quartette. For these two I will sell my soul. Except for these
I hold that £700 a year is as much as anybody can possibly want; and I
have had more, so I know, for the extry coins were for no use, excepting
for illness, which damns everything.
I was so happy on board that ship, I could not have believed it possible.
We had the beastliest weather, and many discomforts; but the mere fact of
its being a tramp-ship gave us many comforts; we could cut about with the
men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, discuss all manner of things,
and really be a little at sea. And truly there is nothing else. I had
literally forgotten what happiness was, and the full mind—full of
external and physical things, not full of cares and labours and rot about
a fellow’s behaviour. My heart literally sang; I truly care for nothing
so much as for that. We took so north a course, that we saw
Newfoundland; no one in the ship had ever seen it before.
It was beyond belief to me how she rolled; in seemingly smooth water, the
bell striking, the fittings bounding out of our state-room. It is worth
having lived these last years, partly because I have written some better
books, which is always pleasant, but chiefly to have had the joy of this
voyage. I have been made a lot of here, and it is sometimes pleasant,
sometimes the reverse; but I could give it all up, and agree that—was the
author of my works, for a good seventy ton schooner and the coins to keep
her on. And to think there are parties with yachts who would make the
exchange! I know a little about fame now; it is no good compared to a
yacht; and anyway there is more fame in a yacht, more genuine fame; to
cross the Atlantic and come to anchor in Newport (say) with the Union
Jack, and go ashore for your letters and hang about the pier, among the
holiday yachtsmen—that’s fame, that’s glory, and nobody can take it away;
they can’t say your book is bad; you _have_ crossed the Atlantic. I
should do it south by the West Indies, to avoid the damned Banks; and
probably come home by steamer, and leave the skipper to bring the yacht
home.
Well, if all goes well, we shall maybe sail out of Southampton water some
of these days and take a run to Havre, and try the Baltic, or somewhere.
Love to you all.—Ever your afft.,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO EDMUND GOSSE
_Saranac Lake_, _Oct._ 8_th_, 1887.
MY DEAR GOSSE,—I have just read your article twice, with cheers of
approving laughter. I do not believe you ever wrote anything so funny:
Tyndall’s ‘shell,’ the passage on the Davos press and its invaluable
issues, and that on V. Hugo and Swinburne, are exquisite; so, I say it
more ruefully, is the touch about the doctors. For the rest, I am very
glad you like my verses so well; and the qualities you ascribe to them
seem to me well found and well named. I own to that kind of candour you
attribute to me: when I am frankly interested, I suppose I fancy the
public will be so too; and when I am moved, I am sure of it. It has been
my luck hitherto to meet with no staggering disillusion. ‘Before’ and
‘After’ may be two; and yet I believe the habit is now too thoroughly
ingrained to be altered. About the doctors, you were right, that
dedication has been the subject of some pleasantries that made me grind,
and of your happily touched reproof which made me blush. And to miscarry
in a dedication is an abominable form of book-wreck; I am a good captain,
I would rather lose the tent and save my dedication.
I am at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, I suppose for the winter: it
seems a first-rate place; we have a house in the eye of many winds, with
a view of a piece of running water—Highland, all but the dear hue of
peat—and of many hills—Highland also, but for the lack of heather. Soon
the snow will close on us; we are here some twenty miles—twenty-seven,
they say, but this I profoundly disbelieve—in the woods; communication by
letter is slow and (let me be consistent) aleatory; by telegram is as
near as may be impossible.
I had some experience of American appreciation; I liked a little of it,
but there is too much; a little of that would go a long way to spoil a
man; and I like myself better in the woods. I am so damned candid and
ingenuous (for a cynic), and so much of a ‘cweatu’ of impulse—aw’ (if you
remember that admirable Leech), that I begin to shirk any more taffy; I
think I begin to like it too well. But let us trust the Gods; they have
a rod in pickle; reverently I doff my trousers, and with screwed eyes
await the _amari aliquid_ of the great God Busby.
I thank you for the article in all ways, and remain yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
TO W. H. LOW
[_Saranac_, _October_ 1887.]
SIR,—I have to trouble you with the following _paroles bien senties_. We
are here at a first-rate place. ‘Baker’s’ is the name of our house, but
we don’t address there; we prefer the tender care of the Post-Office, as
more aristocratic (it is no use to telegraph even to the care of the
Post-Office who does not give a single damn {70}). Baker’s has a
prophet’s chamber, which the hypercritical might describe as a garret
with a hole in the floor: in that garret, sir, I have to trouble you and
your wife to come and slumber. Not now, however: with manly hospitality,
I choke off any sudden impulse. Because first, my wife and my mother are
gone (a note for the latter, strongly suspected to be in the hand of your
talented wife, now sits silent on the mantel shelf), one to Niagara and
t’other to Indianapolis. Because, second, we are not yet installed. And
because third, I won’t have you till I have a buffalo robe and leggings,
lest you should want to paint me as a plain man, which I am not, but a
rank Saranacker and wild man of the woods.—Yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO WILLIAM ARCHER.
_Saranac Lake_, _October_ 1887.
DEAR ARCHER,—Many thanks for the Wondrous Tale. It is scarcely a work of
genius, as I believe you felt. Thanks also for your pencillings; though
I defend ‘shrew,’ or at least many of the shrews.
We are here (I suppose) for the winter in the Adirondacks, a hill and
forest country on the Canadian border of New York State, very unsettled
and primitive and cold, and healthful, or we are the more bitterly
deceived. I believe it will do well for me; but must not boast.
My wife is away to Indiana to see her family; my mother, Lloyd, and I
remain here in the cold, which has been exceeding sharp, and the hill
air, which is inimitably fine. We all eat bravely, and sleep well, and
make great fires, and get along like one o’clock.
I am now a salaried party; I am a _bourgeois_ now; I am to write a weekly
paper for Scribner’s, at a scale of payment which makes my teeth ache for
shame and diffidence. The editor is, I believe, to apply to you; for we
were talking over likely men, and when I instanced you, he said he had
had his eye upon you from the first. It is worth while, perhaps, to get
in tow with the Scribners; they are such thorough gentlefolk in all ways
that it is always a pleasure to deal with them. I am like to be a
millionaire if this goes on, and be publicly hanged at the social
revolution: well, I would prefer that to dying in my bed; and it would be
a godsend to my biographer, if ever I have one. What are you about? I
hope you are all well and in good case and spirits, as I am now, after a
most nefast experience of despondency before I left; but indeed I was
quite run down. Remember me to Mrs. Archer, and give my respects to
Tom.—Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO HENRY JAMES
[_Saranac Lake_, _October_ 1887.]
I know not the day; but the month it
is the drear October by the
ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—This is to say _First_, the voyage was a huge
success. We all enjoyed it (bar my wife) to the ground: sixteen days at
sea with a cargo of hay, matches, stallions, and monkeys, and in a ship
with no style on, and plenty of sailors to talk to, and the endless
pleasures of the sea—the romance of it, the sport of the scratch dinner
and the smashing crockery, the pleasure—an endless pleasure—of balancing
to the swell: well, it’s over.
_Second_, I had a fine time, rather a troubled one, at Newport and New
York; saw much of and liked hugely the Fairchilds, St. Gaudens the
sculptor, Gilder of the _Century_—just saw the dear Alexander—saw a lot
of my old and admirable friend Will Low, whom I wish you knew and
appreciated—was medallioned by St. Gaudens, and at last escaped to
_Third_, Saranac Lake, where we now are, and which I believe we mean to
like and pass the winter at. Our house—emphatically ‘Baker’s’—is on a
hill, and has a sight of a stream turning a corner in the valley—bless
the face of running water!—and sees some hills too, and the paganly
prosaic roofs of Saranac itself; the Lake it does not see, nor do I
regret that; I like water (fresh water I mean) either running swiftly
among stones, or else largely qualified with whisky. As I write, the sun
(which has been long a stranger) shines in at my shoulder; from the next
room, the bell of Lloyd’s typewriter makes an agreeable music as it
patters off (at a rate which astonishes this experienced novelist) the
early chapters of a humorous romance; from still further off—the walls of
Baker’s are neither ancient nor massive—rumours of Valentine about the
kitchen stove come to my ears; of my mother and Fanny I hear nothing, for
the excellent reason that they have gone sparking off, one to Niagara,
one to Indianapolis. People complain that I never give news in my
letters. I have wiped out that reproach.
But now, _Fourth_, I have seen the article; and it may be from natural
partiality, I think it the best you have written. O—I remember the
Gautier, which was an excellent performance; and the Balzac, which was
good; and the Daudet, over which I licked my chops; but the R. L. S. is
better yet. It is so humorous, and it hits my little frailties with so
neat (and so friendly) a touch; and Alan is the occasion for so much
happy talk, and the quarrel is so generously praised. I read it twice,
though it was only some hours in my possession; and Low, who got it for
me from the _Century_, sat up to finish it ere he returned it; and, sir,
we were all delighted. Here is the paper out, nor will anything, not
even friendship, not even gratitude for the article, induce me to begin a
second sheet; so here with the kindest remembrances and the warmest good
wishes, I remain, yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
TO CHARLES BAXTER
_Saranac_, 18_th_ _November_ 1887.
MY DEAR CHARLES,—No likely I’m going to waste a sheet of paper. . . . I
am offered £1600 ($8000) for the American serial rights on my next story!
As you say, times are changed since the Lothian Road. Well, the Lothian
Road was grand fun too; I could take an afternoon of it with great
delight. But I’m awfu’ grand noo, and long may it last!
Remember me to any of the faithful—if there are any left. I wish I could
have a crack with you.—Yours ever affectionately,
R. L. S.
I find I have forgotten more than I remembered of business. . . . Please
let us know (if you know) for how much Skerryvore is let; you will here
detect the female mind; I let it for what I could get; nor shall the
possession of this knowledge (which I am happy to have forgot) increase
the amount by so much as the shadow of a sixpenny piece; but my females
are agog.—Yours ever,
R. L. S.
TO CHARLES SCRIBNER
[_Saranac_, _November_ 20 _or_ 21, 1887.]
MY DEAR MR. SCRIBNER,—Heaven help me, I am under a curse just now. I
have played fast and loose with what I said to you; and that, I beg you
to believe, in the purest innocence of mind. I told you you should have
the power over all my work in this country; and about a fortnight ago,
when M’Clure was here, I calmly signed a bargain for the serial
publication of a story. You will scarce believe that I did this in mere
oblivion; but I did; and all that I can say is that I will do so no more,
and ask you to forgive me. Please write to me soon as to this.
Will you oblige me by paying in for three articles, as already sent, to
my account with John Paton & Co., 52 William Street? This will be most
convenient for us.
The fourth article is nearly done; and I am the more deceived, or it is
_A Buster_.
Now as to the first thing in this letter, I do wish to hear from you
soon; and I am prepared to hear any reproach, or (what is harder to hear)
any forgiveness; for I have deserved the worst.—Yours sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO E. L. BURLINGAME
_Saranac_, _November_ 1887.
DEAR MR. BURLINGAME,—I enclose corrected proof of _Beggars_, which seems
good. I mean to make a second sermon, which, if it is about the same
length as _Pulvis et Umbra_, might go in along with it as two sermons, in
which case I should call the first ‘The Whole Creation,’ and the second
‘Any Good.’ We shall see; but you might say how you like the notion.
One word: if you have heard from Mr. Scribner of my unhappy oversight in
the matter of a story, you will make me ashamed to write to you, and yet
I wish to beg you to help me into quieter waters. The oversight
committed—and I do think it was not so bad as Mr. Scribner seems to think
it-and discovered, I was in a miserable position. I need not tell you
that my first impulse was to offer to share or to surrender the price
agreed upon when it should fall due; and it is almost to my credit that I
arranged to refrain. It is one of these positions from which there is no
escape; I cannot undo what I have done. And I wish to beg you—should Mr.
Scribner speak to you in the matter—to try to get him to see this neglect
of mine for no worse than it is: unpardonable enough, because a breach of
an agreement; but still pardonable, because a piece of sheer carelessness
and want of memory, done, God knows, without design and since most
sincerely regretted. I have no memory. You have seen how I omitted to
reserve the American rights in _Jekyll_: last winter I wrote and
demanded, as an increase, a less sum than had already been agreed upon
for a story that I gave to Cassell’s. For once that my forgetfulness
has, by a cursed fortune, seemed to gain, instead of lose, me money, it
is painful indeed that I should produce so poor an impression on the mind
of Mr. Scribner. But I beg you to believe, and if possible to make him
believe, that I am in no degree or sense a _faiseur_, and that in matters
of business my design, at least, is honest. Nor (bating bad memory and
self-deception) am I untruthful in such affairs.
If Mr. Scribner shall have said nothing to you in the matter, please
regard the above as unwritten, and believe me, yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO E. L. BURLINGAME
_Saranac_, _November_ 1887.
DEAR MR. BURLINGAME,—The revise seemed all right, so I did not trouble
you with it; indeed, my demand for one was theatrical, to impress that
obdurate dog, your reader. Herewith a third paper: it has been a cruel
long time upon the road, but here it is, and not bad at last, I fondly
hope. I was glad you liked the _Lantern Bearers_; I did, too. I thought
it was a good paper, really contained some excellent sense, and was
ingeniously put together. I have not often had more trouble than I have
with these papers; thirty or forty pages of foul copy, twenty is the very
least I have had. Well, you pay high; it is fit that I should have to
work hard, it somewhat quiets my conscience.—Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO J. A. SYMONDS
_Saranac Lake_, _Adirondack Mountains_,
_New York_, _U.S.A._, _November_ 21, 1887.
MY DEAR SYMONDS,—I think we have both meant and wanted to write to you
any time these months; but we have been much tossed about, among new
faces and old, and new scenes and old, and scenes (like this of Saranac)
which are neither one nor other. To give you some clue to our affairs, I
had best begin pretty well back. We sailed from the Thames in a vast
bucket of iron that took seventeen days from shore to shore. I cannot
describe how I enjoyed the voyage, nor what good it did me; but on the
Banks I caught friend catarrh. In New York and then in Newport I was
pretty ill; but on my return to New York, lying in bed most of the time,
with St. Gaudens the sculptor sculping me, and my old friend Low around,
I began to pick up once more. Now here we are in a kind of wilderness of
hills and firwoods and boulders and snow and wooden houses. So far as we
have gone the climate is grey and harsh, but hungry and somnolent; and
although not charming like that of Davos, essentially bracing and
briskening. The country is a kind of insane mixture of Scotland and a
touch of Switzerland and a dash of America, and a thought of the British
Channel in the skies. We have a decent house—
_December_ 6_th_.
—A decent house, as I was saying, sir, on a hill-top, with a look down a
Scottish river in front, and on one hand a Perthshire hill; on the other,
the beginnings and skirts of the village play hide and seek among other
hills. We have been below zero, I know not how far (10 at 8 A.M. once),
and when it is cold it is delightful; but hitherto the cold has not held,
and we have chopped in and out from frost to thaw, from snow to rain,
from quiet air to the most disastrous north-westerly curdlers of the
blood. After a week of practical thaw, the ice still bears in favoured
places. So there is hope.
I wonder if you saw my book of verses? It went into a second edition,
because of my name, I suppose, and its _prose_ merits. I do not set up
to be a poet. Only an all-round literary man: a man who talks, not one
who sings. But I believe the very fact that it was only speech served
the book with the public. Horace is much a speaker, and see how popular!
most of Martial is only speech, and I cannot conceive a person who does
not love his Martial; most of Burns, also, such as ‘The Louse,’ ‘The
Toothache,’ ‘The Haggis,’ and lots more of his best. Excuse this little
apology for my house; but I don’t like to come before people who have a
note of song, and let it be supposed I do not know the difference.
To return to the more important—news. My wife again suffers in high and
cold places; I again profit. She is off to-day to New York for a change,
as heretofore to Berne, but I am glad to say in better case than then.
Still it is undeniable she suffers, and you must excuse her (at least) if
we both prove bad correspondents. I am decidedly better, but I have been
terribly cut up with business complications: one disagreeable, as
threatening loss; one, of the most intolerable complexion, as involving
me in dishonour. The burthen of consistent carelessness: I have lost
much by it in the past; and for once (to my damnation) I have gained. I
am sure you will sympathise. It is hard work to sleep; it is hard to be
told you are a liar, and have to hold your peace, and think, ‘Yes, by
God, and a thief too!’ You remember my lectures on Ajax, or the
Unintentional Sin? Well, I know all about that now. Nothing seems so
unjust to the sufferer: or is more just in essence. _Laissez passer la
justice de Dieu_.
Lloyd has learned to use the typewriter, and has most gallantly completed
upon that the draft of a tale, which seems to me not without merit and
promise, it is so silly, so gay, so absurd, in spots (to my partial eyes)
so genuinely humorous. It is true, he would not have written it but for
the New Arabian Nights; but it is strange to find a young writer funny.
Heavens, but I was depressing when I took the pen in hand! And now I
doubt if I am sadder than my neighbours. Will this beginner move in the
inverse direction?
Let me have your news, and believe me, my dear Symonds, with genuine
affection, yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO W. E. HENLEY
_Saranac_ [_December_ 1887].
MY DEAR LAD,—I was indeed overjoyed to hear of the Dumas. In the matter
of the dedication, are not cross dedications a little awkward? Lang and
Rider Haggard did it, to be sure. Perpend. And if you should conclude
against a dedication, there is a passage in _Memories and Portraits_
written _at_ you, when I was most desperate (to stir you up a bit), which
might be quoted: something about Dumas still waiting his biographer. I
have a decent time when the weather is fine; when it is grey, or windy,
or wet (as it too often is), I am merely degraded to the dirt. I get
some work done every day with a devil of a heave; not extra good ever;
and I regret my engagement. Whiles I have had the most deplorable
business annoyances too; have been threatened with having to refund
money; got over that; and found myself in the worse scrape of being a
kind of unintentional swindler. These have worried me a great deal; also
old age with his stealing steps seems to have clawed me in his clutch to
some tune.
Do you play All Fours? We are trying it; it is still all haze to me.
Can the elder hand _beg_ more than once? The Port Admiral is at Boston
mingling with millionaires. I am but a weed on Lethe wharf. The wife is
only so-so. The Lord lead us all: if I can only get off the stage with
clean hands, I shall sing Hosanna. ‘Put’ is described quite differently
from your version in a book I have; what are your rules? The Port
Admiral is using a game of put in a tale of his, the first copy of which
was gloriously finished about a fortnight ago, and the revise gallantly
begun: _The Finsbury Tontine_ it is named, and might fill two volumes,
and is quite incredibly silly, and in parts (it seems to me) pretty
humorous.—Love to all from
AN OLD, OLD MAN.
I say, Taine’s _Origines de la France Contemporaine_ is no end; it would
turn the dead body of Charles Fox into a living Tory.
TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
[_Saranac Lake_, _December_ 1887.]
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,—The Opal is very well; it is fed with glycerine when
it seems hungry. I am very well, and get about much more than I could
have hoped. My wife is not very well; there is no doubt the high level
does not agree with her, and she is on the move for a holiday to New
York. Lloyd is at Boston on a visit, and I hope has a good time. My
mother is really first-rate; she and I, despairing of other games for
two, now play All Fours out of a gamebook, and have not yet discovered
its niceties, if any.
You will have heard, I dare say, that they made a great row over me here.
They also offered me much money, a great deal more than my works are
worth: I took some of it, and was greedy and hasty, and am now very
sorry. I have done with big prices from now out. Wealth and
self-respect seem, in my case, to be strangers.
We were talking the other day of how well Fleeming managed to grow rich.
Ah, that is a rare art; something more intellectual than a virtue. The
book has not yet made its appearance here; the life alone, with a little
preface, is to appear in the States; and the Scribners are to send you
half the royalties. I should like it to do well, for Fleeming’s sake.
Will you please send me the Greek water-carrier’s song? I have a
particular use for it.
Have I any more news, I wonder?—and echo wonders along with me. I am
strangely disquieted on all political matters; and I do not know if it is
‘the signs of the times’ or the sign of my own time of life. But to me
the sky seems black both in France and England, and only partly clear in
America. I have not seen it so dark in my time; of that I am sure.
Please let us have some news; and, excuse me, for the sake of my
well-known idleness; and pardon Fanny, who is really not very well, for
this long silence.—Very sincerely your friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
[_Saranac Lake_, _December_ 1887.]
MY DEAR MISS BOODLE,—I am so much afraid, our gamekeeper may weary of
unacknowledged reports! Hence, in the midst of a perfect horror of
detestable weathers of a quite incongruous strain, and with less desire
for correspondence than—well, than—well, with no desire for
correspondence, behold me dash into the breach. Do keep up your letters.
They are most delightful to this exiled backwoods family; and in your
next, we shall hope somehow or other to hear better news of you and
yours—that in the first place—and to hear more news of our beasts and
birds and kindly fruits of earth and those human tenants who are (truly)
too much with us.
I am very well; better than for years: that is for good. But then my
wife is no great shakes; the place does not suit her—it is my private
opinion that no place does—and she is now away down to New York for a
change, which (as Lloyd is in Boston) leaves my mother and me and
Valentine alone in our wind-beleaguered hilltop hatbox of a house. You
should hear the cows butt against the walls in the early morning while
they feed; you should also see our back log when the thermometer goes (as
it does go) away—away below zero, till it can be seen no more by the eye
of man—not the thermometer, which is still perfectly visible, but the
mercury, which curls up into the bulb like a hibernating bear; you should
also see the lad who ‘does chores’ for us, with his red stockings and his
thirteen year old face, and his highly manly tramp into the room; and his
two alternative answers to all questions about the weather: either
‘Cold,’ or with a really lyrical movement of the voice,
‘_Lovely_—raining!’
Will you take this miserable scarp for what it is worth? Will you also
understand that I am the man to blame, and my wife is really almost too
much out of health to write, or at least doesn’t write?—And believe me,
with kind remembrance to Mrs. Boodle and your sisters, very sincerely
yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
TO CHARLES BAXTER
_Saranac_, 12_th_ _December_ ’87.
Give us news of all your folk. A Merry Christmas from all of us.
MY DEAR CHARLES,—Will you please send £20 to — for a Christmas gift from
—? Moreover, I cannot remember what I told you to send to —; but as God
has dealt so providentially with me this year, I now propose to make it
£20.
I beg of you also to consider my strange position. I jined a club which
it was said was to defend the Union; and had a letter from the secretary,
which his name I believe was Lord Warmingpan (or words to that effect),
to say I am elected, and had better pay up a certain sum of money, I
forget what. Now I cannae verra weel draw a blank cheque and send to—
LORD WARMINGPAN (or words to that effect),
London, England.
And, man, if it was possible, I would be dooms glad to be out o’ this bit
scrapie. Mebbe the club was ca’d ‘The Union,’ but I wouldnae like to
sweir; and mebbe it wasnae, or mebbe only words to that effec’—but I
wouldnae care just exac’ly about sweirin’. Do ye no think Henley, or
Pollick, or some o’ they London fellies, micht mebbe perhaps find out for
me? and just what the soom was? And that you would aiblins pay for me?
For I thocht I was sae dam patriotic jinin’, and it would be a kind o’ a
come-doun to be turned out again. Mebbe Lang would ken; or mebbe Rider
Haggyard: they’re kind o’ Union folks. But it’s my belief his name was
Warmingpan whatever. Yours,
THOMSON,
_alias_ ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Could it be Warminster? {83}
TO MISS MONROE
_Saranac Lake_, _New York_ [_December_ 19, 1887].
DEAR MISS MONROE,—Many thanks for your letter and your good wishes. It
was much my desire to get to Chicago: had I done—or if I yet do—so, I
shall hope to see the original of my photograph, which is one of my show
possessions; but the fates are rather contrary. My wife is far from
well; I myself dread worse than almost any other imaginable peril, that
miraculous and really insane invention the American Railroad Car. Heaven
help the man—may I add the woman—that sets foot in one! Ah, if it were
only an ocean to cross, it would be a matter of small thought to me—and
great pleasure. But the railroad car—every man has his weak point; and I
fear the railroad car as abjectly as I do an earwig, and, on the whole,
on better grounds. You do not know how bitter it is to have to make such
a confession; for you have not the pretension nor the weakness of a man.
If I do get to Chicago, you will hear of me: so much can be said. And do
you never come east?
I was pleased to recognise a word of my poor old Deacon in your letter.
It would interest me very much to hear how it went and what you thought
of piece and actors; and my collaborator, who knows and respects the
photograph, would be pleased too.—Still in the hope of seeing you, I am,
yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO HENRY JAMES
_Saranac Lake_, _Winter_ 1887–8.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—It may please you to know how our family has been
employed. In the silence of the snow the afternoon lamp has lighted an
eager fireside group: my mother reading, Fanny, Lloyd, and I devoted
listeners; and the work was really one of the best works I ever heard;
and its author is to be praised and honoured; and what do you suppose is
the name of it? and have you ever read it yourself? and (I am bound I
will get to the bottom of the page before I blow the gaff, if I have to
fight it out on this line all summer; for if you have not to turn a leaf,
there can be no suspense, the conspectory eye being swift to pick out
proper names; and without suspense, there can be little pleasure in this
world, to my mind at least)—and, in short, the name of it is _Roderick
Hudson_, if you please. My dear James, it is very spirited, and very
sound, and very noble too. Hudson, Mrs. Hudson, Rowland, O, all
first-rate: Rowland a very fine fellow; Hudson as good as he can stick
(did you know Hudson? I suspect you did), Mrs. H. his real born mother,
a thing rarely managed in fiction.
We are all keeping pretty fit and pretty hearty; but this letter is not
from me to you, it is from a reader of _R. H._ to the author of the same,
and it says nothing, and has nothing to say, but thank you.
We are going to re-read _Casamassima_ as a proper pendant. Sir, I think
these two are your best, and care not who knows it.
May I beg you, the next time _Roderick_ is printed off, to go over the
sheets of the last few chapters, and strike out ‘immense’ and
‘tremendous’? You have simply dropped them there like your
pocket-handkerchief; all you have to do is to pick them up and pouch
them, and your room—what do I say?—your cathedral!—will be swept and
garnished.—I am, dear sir, your delighted reader,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
_P.S._—Perhaps it is a pang of causeless honesty, perhaps. I hope it
will set a value on my praise of _Roderick_, perhaps it’s a burst of the
diabolic, but I must break out with the news that I can’t bear the
_Portrait of a Lady_. I read it all, and I wept too; but I can’t stand
your having written it; and I beg you will write no more of the like.
_Infra_, sir; Below you: I can’t help it—it may be your favourite work,
but in my eyes it’s BELOW YOU to write and me to read. I thought
_Roderick_ was going to be another such at the beginning; and I cannot
describe my pleasure as I found it taking bones and blood, and looking
out at me with a moved and human countenance, whose lineaments are
written in my memory until my last of days.
R. L. S.
My wife begs your forgiveness; I believe for her silence.
[Picture: Manuscript of letter]
[Picture: Manuscript of letter]
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
_Saranac Lake_ [_December_ 1887].
MY DEAR COLVIN,—This goes to say that we are all fit, and the place is
very bleak and wintry, and up to now has shown no such charms of climate
as Davos, but is a place where men eat and where the cattarh, catarrh
(cattarrh, or cattarrhh) appears to be unknown. I walk in my verandy in
the snaw, sir, looking down over one of those dabbled wintry landscapes
that are (to be frank) so chilly to the human bosom, and up at a grey,
English—nay, _mehercle_, Scottish—heaven; and I think it pretty bleak;
and the wind swoops at me round the corner, like a lion, and fluffs the
snow in my face; and I could aspire to be elsewhere; but yet I do not
catch cold, and yet, when I come in, I eat. So that hitherto Saranac, if
not deliriously delectable, has not been a failure; nay, from the mere
point of view of the wicked body, it has proved a success. But I wish I
could still get to the woods; alas, _nous n’irons plus au bois_ is my
poor song; the paths are buried, the dingles drifted full, a little walk
is grown a long one; till spring comes, I fear the burthen will hold
good.
I get along with my papers for _Scribner_ not fast, nor so far specially
well; only this last, the fourth one (which makes a third part of my
whole task), I do believe is pulled off after a fashion. It is a mere
sermon: ‘Smith opens out’; {86} but it is true, and I find it touching
and beneficial, to me at least; and I think there is some fine writing in
it, some very apt and pregnant phrases. _Pulvis et Umbra_, I call it; I
might have called it a Darwinian Sermon, if I had wanted. Its
sentiments, although parsonic, will not offend even you, I believe. The
other three papers, I fear, bear many traces of effort, and the ungenuine
inspiration of an income at so much per essay, and the honest desire of
the incomer to give good measure for his money. Well, I did my damndest
anyway.
We have been reading H. James’s _Roderick Hudson_, which I eagerly press
you to get at once: it is a book of a high order—the last volume in
particular. I wish Meredith would read it. It took my breath away.
I am at the seventh book of the _Æneid_, and quite amazed at its merits
(also very often floored by its difficulties). The Circe passage at the
beginning, and the sublime business of Amata with the simile of the boy’s
top—O Lord, what a happy thought!—have specially delighted me.—I am, dear
sir, your respected friend,
JOHN GREGG GILLSON, J.P., M.R.I.A., etc.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
[_Saranac_, _December_ 24, 1887.]
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Thank you for your explanations. I have done no more
Virgil since I finished the seventh book, for I have, first been eaten up
with Taine, and next have fallen head over heels into a new tale, _The
Master of Ballantrae_. No thought have I now apart from it, and I have
got along up to page ninety-two of the draft with great interest. It is
to me a most seizing tale: there are some fantastic elements; the most is
a dead genuine human problem—human tragedy, I should say rather. It will
be about as long, I imagine, as _Kidnapped_.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
(1) My old Lord Durrisdeer.
(2) The Master of Ballantrae, _and_
(3) Henry Durie, _his sons_.
(4) Clementina, _engaged to the first_, _married to the second_.
(5) Ephraim Mackellar, _land steward at Durrisdeer and narrator of the
most of the book_.
(6) Francis Burke, Chevalier de St. Louis, _one of Prince Charlie’s
Irishmen and narrator of the rest_.
Besides these, many instant figures, most of them dumb or nearly so:
Jessie Brown the whore, Captain Crail, Captain MacCombie, our old friend
Alan Breck, our old friend Riach (both only for an instant), Teach the
pirate (vulgarly Blackbeard), John Paul and Macconochie, servants at
Durrisdeer. The date is from 1745 to ’65 (about). The scene, near
Kirkcudbright, in the States, and for a little moment in the French East
Indies. I have done most of the big work, the quarrel, duel between the
brothers, and announcement of the death to Clementina and my
Lord—Clementina, Henry, and Mackellar (nicknamed Squaretoes) are really
very fine fellows; the Master is all I know of the devil. I have known
hints of him, in the world, but always cowards; he is as bold as a lion,
but with the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much
surprise in my two cowards. ’Tis true, I saw a hint of the same nature
in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things to attend
to; the Master has nothing else but his devilry. Here come my
visitors—and have now gone, or the first relay of them; and I hope no
more may come. For mark you, sir, this is our ‘day’—Saturday, as ever
was, and here we sit, my mother and I, before a large wood fire and await
the enemy with the most steadfast courage; and without snow and greyness:
and the woman Fanny in New York for her health, which is far from good;
and the lad Lloyd at the inn in the village because he has a cold; and
the handmaid Valentine abroad in a sleigh upon her messages; and
to-morrow Christmas and no mistake. Such is human life: _la carrière
humaine_. I will enclose, if I remember, the required autograph.
I will do better, put it on the back of this page. Love to all, and
mostly, my very dear Colvin, to yourself. For whatever I say or do, or
don’t say or do, you may be very sure I am,—Yours always affectionately,
R. L. S.
TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
_Saranac Lake_, _Adirondacks_, _N.Y._, _U.S.A._, _Christmas_ 1887.
MY DEAR MISS BOODLE,—And a very good Christmas to you all; and better
fortune; and if worse, the more courage to support it—which I think is
the kinder wish in all human affairs. Somewhile—I fear a good
while—after this, you should receive our Christmas gift; we have no tact
and no taste, only a welcome and (often) tonic brutality; and I dare say
the present, even after my friend Baxter has acted on and reviewed my
hints, may prove a White Elephant. That is why I dread presents. And
therefore pray understand if any element of that hamper prove unwelcome,
_it is to be exchanged_. I will not sit down under the name of a giver
of White Elephants. I never had any elephant but one, and his initials
were R. L. S.; and he trod on my foot at a very early age. But this is a
fable, and not in the least to the point: which is that if, for once in
my life, I have wished to make things nicer for anybody but the Elephant
(see fable), do not suffer me to have made them ineffably more
embarrassing, and exchange—ruthlessly exchange!
For my part, I am the most cockered up of any mortal being; and one of
the healthiest, or thereabout, at some modest distance from the bull’s
eye. I am condemned to write twelve articles in _Scribner’s Magazine_
for the love of gain; I think I had better send you them; what is far
more to the purpose, I am on the jump with a new story which has
bewitched me—I doubt it may bewitch no one else. It is called _The
Master of Ballantrae_—pronounce Bällän-tray. If it is not good, well,
mine will be the fault; for I believe it is a good tale.
The greetings of the season to you, and your mother, and your sisters.
My wife heartily joins.—And I am, yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
_P.S._—You will think me an illiterate dog: I am, for the first time,
reading _Robertson’s Sermons_. I do not know how to express how much I
think of them. If by any chance you should be as illiterate as I, and
not know them, it is worth while curing the defect.
R. L. S.
TO CHARLES BAXTER
_Saranac Lake_, _January_ ’88.
DEAR CHARLES,—You are the flower of Doers. . . . Will my doer collaborate
thus much in my new novel? In the year 1794 or 5, Mr. Ephraim Mackellar,
A.M., late steward on the Durrisdeer estates, completed a set of
memoranda (as long as a novel) with regard to the death of the (then)
late Lord Durrisdeer, and as to that of his attainted elder brother,
called by the family courtesy title the Master of Ballantrae. These he
placed in the hands of John Macbrair. W.S., the family agent, on the
understanding they were to be sealed until 1862, when a century would
have elapsed since the affair in the wilderness (my lord’s death). You
succeeded Mr. Macbrair’s firm; the Durrisdeers are extinct; and last
year, in an old green box, you found these papers with Macbrair’s
indorsation. It is that indorsation of which I want a copy; you may
remember, when you gave me the papers, I neglected to take that, and I am
sure you are a man too careful of antiquities to have let it fall aside.
I shall have a little introduction descriptive of my visit to Edinburgh,
arrival there, denner with yoursel’, and first reading of the papers in
your smoking-room: all of which, of course, you well remember.—Ever yours
affectionately,
R. L S.
Your name is my friend Mr. Johnstone Thomson, W.S.!!!
TO E. L. BURLINGAME
_Saranac_, _Winter_ 1887–8.
DEAR MR. BURLINGAME,—I am keeping the sermon to see if I can’t add
another. Meanwhile, I will send you very soon a different paper which
may take its place. Possibly some of these days soon I may get together
a talk on things current, which should go in (if possible) earlier than
either. I am now less nervous about these papers; I believe I can do the
trick without great strain, though the terror that breathed on my back in
the beginning is not yet forgotten.
_The Master of Ballantrae_ I have had to leave aside, as I was quite
worked out. But in about a week I hope to try back and send you the
first four numbers: these are all drafted, it is only the revision that
has broken me down, as it is often the hardest work. These four I
propose you should set up for me at once, and we’ll copyright ’em in a
pamphlet. I will tell you the names of the _bona fide_ purchasers in
England.
The numbers will run from twenty to thirty pages of my manuscript. You
can give me that much, can you not? It is a howling good tale—at least
these first four numbers are; the end is a trifle more fantastic, but
’tis all picturesque.
Don’t trouble about any more French books; I am on another scent, you
see, just now. Only the _French in Hindustan_ I await with impatience,
as that is for _Ballantrae_. The scene of that romance is Scotland—the
States—Scotland—India—Scotland—and the States again; so it jumps like a
flea. I have enough about the States now, and very much obliged I am;
yet if Drake’s _Tragedies of the Wilderness_ is (as I gather) a
collection of originals, I should like to purchase it. If it is a
picturesque vulgarisation, I do not wish to look it in the face.
Purchase, I say; for I think it would be well to have some such
collection by me with a view to fresh works.—Yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
_P.S._—If you think of having the _Master_ illustrated, I suggest that
Hole would be very well up to the Scottish, which is the larger part. If
you have it done here, tell your artist to look at the hall of Craigievar
in Billing’s _Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities_, and he will get a
broad hint for the hall at Durrisdeer: it is, I think, the chimney of
Craigievar and the roof of Pinkie, and perhaps a little more of Pinkie
altogether; but I should have to see the book myself to be sure. Hole
would be invaluable for this. I dare say if you had it illustrated, you
could let me have one or two for the English edition.
R. L. S.
TO WILLIAM ARCHER
[_Saranac_, _Winter_ 1887–8.]
MY DEAR ARCHER,—What am I to say? I have read your friend’s book with
singular relish. If he has written any other, I beg you will let me see
it; and if he has not, I beg him to lose no time in supplying the
deficiency. It is full of promise; but I should like to know his age.
There are things in it that are very clever, to which I attach small
importance; it is the shape of the age. And there are passages,
particularly the rally in presence of the Zulu king, that show genuine
and remarkable narrative talent—a talent that few will have the wit to
understand, a talent of strength, spirit, capacity, sufficient vision,
and sufficient self-sacrifice, which last is the chief point in a
narrator.
As a whole, it is (of course) a fever dream of the most feverish. Over
Bashville the footman I howled with derision and delight; I dote on
Bashville—I could read of him for ever; _de Bashville je suis le
fervent_—there is only one Bashville, and I am his devoted slave;
_Bashville est magnifique_, _mais il n’est guère possible_. He is the
note of the book. It is all mad, mad and deliriously delightful; the
author has a taste in chivalry like Walter Scott’s or Dumas’, and then he
daubs in little bits of socialism; he soars away on the wings of the
romantic griffon—even the griffon, as he cleaves air, shouting with
laughter at the nature of the quest—and I believe in his heart he thinks
he is labouring in a quarry of solid granite realism.
It is this that makes me—the most hardened adviser now extant—stand back
and hold my peace. If Mr. Shaw is below five-and-twenty, let him go his
path; if he is thirty, he had best be told that he is a romantic, and
pursue romance with his eyes open;—or perhaps he knows it;—God knows!—my
brain is softened.
It is HORRID FUN. All I ask is more of it. Thank you for the pleasure
you gave us, and tell me more of the inimitable author.
(I say, Archer, my God, what women!)—Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO WILLIAM ARCHER
_Saranac_, _February_ 1888.
MY DEAR ARCHER,—Pretty sick in bed; but necessary to protest and continue
your education.
Why was Jenkin an amateur in my eyes? You think because not amusing (I
think he often was amusing). The reason is this: I never, or almost
never, saw two pages of his work that I could not have put in one without
the smallest loss of material. That is the only test I know of writing.
If there is anywhere a thing said in two sentences that could have been
as clearly and as engagingly and as forcibly said in one, then it’s
amateur work. Then you will bring me up with old Dumas. Nay, the object
of a story is to be long, to fill up hours; the story-teller’s art of
writing is to water out by continual invention, historical and technical,
and yet not seem to water; seem on the other hand to practise that same
wit of conspicuous and declaratory condensation which is the proper art
of writing. That is one thing in which my stories fail: I am always
cutting the flesh off their bones.
I would rise from the dead to preach!
Hope all well. I think my wife better, but she’s not allowed to write;
and this (only wrung from me by desire to Boss and Parsonise and
Dominate, strong in sickness) is my first letter for days, and will
likely be my last for many more. Not blame my wife for her silence:
doctor’s orders. All much interested by your last, and fragment from
brother, and anecdotes of Tomarcher.—The sick but still Moral
R. L. S.
Tell Shaw to hurry up: I want another.
TO WILLIAM ARCHER
[_Saranac_, _Spring_ 1888?]
MY DEAR ARCHER,—It happened thus. I came forth from that performance in
a breathing heat of indignation. (Mind, at this distance of time and
with my increased knowledge, I admit there is a problem in the piece; but
I saw none then, except a problem in brutality; and I still consider the
problem in that case not established.) On my way down the _Français_
stairs, I trod on an old gentleman’s toes, whereupon with that suavity
that so well becomes me, I turned about to apologise, and on the instant,
repenting me of that intention, stopped the apology midway, and added
something in French to this effect: No, you are one of the _lâches_ who
have been applauding that piece. I retract my apology. Said the old
Frenchman, laying his hand on my arm, and with a smile that was truly
heavenly in temperance, irony, good-nature, and knowledge of the world,
‘Ah, monsieur, vous êtes bien jeune!’—Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO E. L. BURLINGAME
_Saranac_ [_February_ 1888].
DEAR MR. BURLINGAME,—Will you send me (from the library) some of the
works of my dear old G. P. R. James. With the following especially I
desire to make or to renew acquaintance: _The Songster_, _The Gipsy_,
_The Convict_, _The Stepmother_, _The Gentleman of the Old School_, _The
Robber_.
_Excusez du peu_.
This sudden return to an ancient favourite hangs upon an accident. The
‘Franklin County Library’ contains two works of his, _The Cavalier_ and
_Morley Ernstein_. I read the first with indescribable amusement—it was
worse than I had feared, and yet somehow engaging; the second (to my
surprise) was better than I had dared to hope: a good honest, dull,
interesting tale, with a genuine old-fashioned talent in the invention
when not strained; and a genuine old-fashioned feeling for the English
language. This experience awoke appetite, and you see I have taken steps
to stay it.
R. L. S.
TO E. L. BURLINGAME
[_Saranac_, _February_ 1888.]
DEAR MR. BURLINGAME,—1. Of course then don’t use it. Dear Man, I write
these to please you, not myself, and you know a main sight better than I
do what is good. In that case, however, I enclose another paper, and
return the corrected proof of _Pulvis et Umbra_, so that we may be
afloat.
2. I want to say a word as to the _Master_. (_The Master of Ballantrae_
shall be the name by all means.) If you like and want it, I leave it to
you to make an offer. You may remember I thought the offer you made when
I was still in England too small; by which I did not at all mean, I
thought it less than it was worth, but too little to tempt me to undergo
the disagreeables of serial publication. This tale (if you want it) you
are to have; for it is the least I can do for you; and you are to observe
that the sum you pay me for my articles going far to meet my wants, I am
quite open to be satisfied with less than formerly. I tell you I do
dislike this battle of the dollars. I feel sure you all pay too much
here in America; and I beg you not to spoil me any more. For I am
getting spoiled: I do not want wealth, and I feel these big sums
demoralise me.
My wife came here pretty ill; she had a dreadful bad night; to-day she is
better. But now Valentine is ill; and Lloyd and I have got breakfast,
and my hand somewhat shakes after washing dishes.—Yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
_P.S._—Please order me the _Evening Post_ for two months. My
subscription is run out. The _Mutiny_ and _Edwardes_ to hand.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
[_Saranac_, _March_ 1888.]
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Fanny has been very unwell. She is not long home, has
been ill again since her return, but is now better again to a degree.
You must not blame her for not writing, as she is not allowed to write at
all, not even a letter. To add to our misfortunes, Valentine is quite
ill and in bed. Lloyd and I get breakfast; I have now, 10.15, just got
the dishes washed and the kitchen all clear, and sit down to give you as
much news as I have spirit for, after such an engagement. Glass is a
thing that really breaks my spirit: I do not like to fail, and with glass
I cannot reach the work of my high calling—the artist’s.
I am, as you may gather from this, wonderfully better: this harsh, grey,
glum, doleful climate has done me good. You cannot fancy how sad a
climate it is. When the thermometer stays all day below 10°, it is
really cold; and when the wind blows, O commend me to the result.
Pleasure in life is all delete; there is no red spot left, fires do not
radiate, you burn your hands all the time on what seem to be cold stones.
It is odd, zero is like summer heat to us now; and we like, when the
thermometer outside is really low, a room at about 48°: 60° we find
oppressive. Yet the natives keep their holes at 90° or even 100°.
This was interrupted days ago by household labours. Since then I have
had and (I tremble to write it, but it does seem as if I had) beaten off
an influenza. The cold is exquisite. Valentine still in bed. The
proofs of the first part of the _Master of Ballantrae_ begin to come in;
soon you shall have it in the pamphlet form; and I hope you will like it.
The second part will not be near so good; but there—we can but do as
it’ll do with us. I have every reason to believe this winter has done me
real good, so far as it has gone; and if I carry out my scheme for next
winter, and succeeding years, I should end by being a tower of strength.
I want you to save a good holiday for next winter; I hope we shall be
able to help you to some larks. Is there any Greek Isle you would like
to explore? or any creek in Asia Minor?—Yours ever affectionately,
R. L. S.
TO THE REV. DR. CHARTERIS
[_Saranac Lake_, _Winter_ 1887–1888.]
MY DEAR DR. CHARTERIS,—I have asked Douglas and Foulis to send you my
last volume, so that you may possess my little paper on my father in a
permanent shape; not for what that is worth, but as a tribute of respect
to one whom my father regarded with such love, esteem, and affection.
Besides, as you will see, I have brought you under contribution, and I
have still to thank you for your letter to my mother; so more than kind;
in much, so just. It is my hope, when time and health permit, to do
something more definite for my father’s memory. You are one of the very
few who can (if you will) help me. Pray believe that I lay on you no
obligation; I know too well, you may believe me, how difficult it is to
put even two sincere lines upon paper, where all, too, is to order. But
if the spirit should ever move you, and you should recall something
memorable of your friend, his son will heartily thank you for a note of
it.—With much respect, believe me, yours sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO HENRY JAMES
[_Saranac Lake_, _March_ 1888.]
MY DEAR DELIGHTFUL JAMES,—To quote your heading to my wife, I think no
man writes so elegant a letter, I am sure none so kind, unless it be
Colvin, and there is more of the stern parent about him. I was vexed at
your account of my admired Meredith: I wish I could go and see him; as it
is I will try to write. I read with indescribable admiration your
_Emerson_. I begin to long for the day when these portraits of yours
shall be collected: do put me in. But Emerson is a higher flight. Have
you a _Tourgueneff_? You have told me many interesting things of him,
and I seem to see them written, and forming a graceful and _bildend_
sketch. My novel is a tragedy; four parts out of six or seven are
written, and gone to Burlingame. Five parts of it are sound, human
tragedy; the last one or two, I regret to say, not so soundly designed; I
almost hesitate to write them; they are very picturesque, but they are
fantastic; they shame, perhaps degrade, the beginning. I wish I knew;
that was how the tale came to me however. I got the situation; it was an
old taste of mine: The older brother goes out in the ’45, the younger
stays; the younger, of course, gets title and estate and marries the
bride designate of the elder—a family match, but he (the younger) had
always loved her, and she had really loved the elder. Do you see the
situation? Then the devil and Saranac suggested this _dénouement_, and I
joined the two ends in a day or two of constant feverish thought, and
began to write. And now—I wonder if I have not gone too far with the
fantastic? The elder brother is an INCUBUS: supposed to be killed at
Culloden, he turns up again and bleeds the family of money; on that
stopping he comes and lives with them, whence flows the real tragedy, the
nocturnal duel of the brothers (very naturally, and indeed, I think,
inevitably arising), and second supposed death of the elder. Husband and
wife now really make up, and then the cloven hoof appears. For the third
supposed death and the manner of the third reappearance is steep; steep,
sir. It is even very steep, and I fear it shames the honest stuff so
far; but then it is highly pictorial, and it leads up to the death of the
elder brother at the hands of the younger in a perfectly cold-blooded
murder, of which I wish (and mean) the reader to approve. You see how
daring is the design. There are really but six characters, and one of
these episodic, and yet it covers eighteen years, and will be, I imagine,
the longest of my works.—Yours ever,
R. L. S.
_Read Gosse’s Raleigh_. First-rate.—Yours ever,
R. L. S.
TO THE REV. DR. CHARTERIS
_Saranac Lake_, _Adirondacks_,
_New York_, _U.S.A._, _Spring_ 1888.
MY DEAR DR. CHARTERIS,—The funeral letter, your notes, and many other
things, are reserved for a book, _Memorials of a Scottish Family_, if
ever I can find time and opportunity. I wish I could throw off all else
and sit down to it to-day. Yes, my father was a ‘distinctly religious
man,’ but not a pious. The distinction painfully and pleasurably recalls
old conflicts; it used to be my great gun—and you, who suffered for the
whole Church, know how needful it was to have some reserve artillery!
His sentiments were tragic; he was a tragic thinker. Now, granted that
life is tragic to the marrow, it seems the proper function of religion to
make us accept and serve in that tragedy, as officers in that other and
comparable one of war. Service is the word, active service, in the
military sense; and the religious man—I beg pardon, the pious man—is he
who has a military joy in duty—not he who weeps over the wounded. We can
do no more than try to do our best. Really, I am the grandson of the
manse—I preach you a kind of sermon. Box the brat’s ears!
My mother—to pass to matters more within my competence—finely enjoys
herself. The new country, some new friends we have made, the interesting
experiment of this climate-which (at least) is tragic—all have done her
good. I have myself passed a better winter than for years, and now that
it is nearly over have some diffident hopes of doing well in the summer
and ‘eating a little more air’ than usual.
I thank you for the trouble you are taking, and my mother joins with me
in kindest regards to yourself and Mrs. Charteris.—Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO S. R. CROCKETT
[_Saranac Lake_, _Spring_ 1888.]
DEAR MINISTER OF THE FREE KIRK AT PENICUIK,—For O, man, I cannae read
your name!—That I have been so long in answering your delightful letter
sits on my conscience badly. The fact is I let my correspondence
accumulate until I am going to leave a place; and then I pitch in,
overhaul the pile, and my cries of penitence might be heard a mile about.
Yesterday I despatched thirty-five belated letters: conceive the state of
my conscience, above all as the Sins of Omission (see boyhood’s guide,
the Shorter Catechism) are in my view the only serious ones; I call it my
view, but it cannot have escaped you that it was also Christ’s. However,
all that is not to the purpose, which is to thank you for the sincere
pleasure afforded by your charming letter. I get a good few such; how
few that please me at all, you would be surprised to learn—or have a
singularly just idea of the dulness of our race; how few that please me
as yours did, I can tell you in one word—_None_. I am no great kirkgoer,
for many reasons—and the sermon’s one of them, and the first prayer
another, but the chief and effectual reason is the stuffiness. I am no
great kirkgoer, says I, but when I read yon letter of yours, I thought I
would like to sit under ye. And then I saw ye were to send me a bit
buik, and says I, I’ll wait for the bit buik, and then I’ll mebbe can
read the man’s name, and anyway I’ll can kill twa birds wi’ ae stane.
And, man! the buik was ne’er heard tell o’!
That fact is an adminicle of excuse for my delay.
And now, dear minister of the illegible name, thanks to you, and greeting
to your wife, and may you have good guidance in your difficult labours,
and a blessing on your life.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
(No just so young sae young’s he was, though—
I’m awfae near forty, man.)
Address c/o CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS,
743 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.
Don’t put ‘N.B.’ in your paper: put _Scotland_, and be done with it.
Alas, that I should be thus stabbed in the home of my friends! The name
of my native land is not _North Britain_, whatever may be the name of
yours.
R. L. S.
TO MISS FERRIER
[_Saranac Lake_, _April_ 1888.]
MY DEAREST COGGIE,—I wish I could find the letter I began to you some
time ago when I was ill; but I can’t and I don’t believe there was much
in it anyway. We have all behaved like pigs and beasts and barn-door
poultry to you; but I have been sunk in work, and the lad is lazy and
blind and has been working too; and as for Fanny, she has been (and still
is) really unwell. I had a mean hope you might perhaps write again
before I got up steam: I could not have been more ashamed of myself than
I am, and I should have had another laugh.
They always say I cannot give news in my letters: I shall shake off that
reproach. On Monday, if she is well enough, Fanny leaves for California
to see her friends; it is rather an anxiety to let her go alone; but the
doctor simply forbids it in my case, and she is better anywhere than
here—a bleak, blackguard, beggarly climate, of which I can say no good
except that it suits me and some others of the same or similar
persuasions whom (by all rights) it ought to kill. It is a form of
Arctic St. Andrews, I should imagine; and the miseries of forty degrees
below zero, with a high wind, have to be felt to be appreciated. The
greyness of the heavens here is a circumstance eminently revolting to the
soul; I have near forgot the aspect of the sun—I doubt if this be news;
it is certainly no news to us. My mother suffers a little from the
inclemency of the place, but less on the whole than would be imagined.
Among other wild schemes, we have been projecting yacht voyages; and I
beg to inform you that Cogia Hassan was cast for the part of passenger.
They may come off!—Again this is not news. The lad? Well, the lad wrote
a tale this winter, which appeared to me so funny that I have taken it in
hand, and some of these days you will receive a copy of a work entitled
‘_A Game of Bluff_, by Lloyd Osbourne and Robert Louis Stevenson.’
Otherwise he (the lad) is much as usual. There remains, I believe, to be
considered only R. L. S., the house-bond, prop, pillar, bread-winner, and
bully of the establishment. Well, I do think him much better; he is
making piles of money; the hope of being able to hire a yacht ere long
dances before his eyes; otherwise he is not in very high spirits at this
particular moment, though compared with last year at Bournemouth an angel
of joy.
And now is this news, Cogia, or is it not? It all depends upon the point
of view, and I call it news. The devil of it is that I can think of
nothing else, except to send you all our loves, and to wish exceedingly
you were here to cheer us all up. But we’ll see about that on board the
yacht.—Your affectionate friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
[_Saranac Lake_], _April_ 9_th_!! 1888
MY DEAR COLVIN,—I have been long without writing to you, but am not to
blame, I had some little annoyances quite for a private eye, but they ran
me so hard that I could not write without lugging them in, which (for
several reasons) I did not choose to do. Fanny is off to San Francisco,
and next week I myself flit to New York: address Scribner’s. Where we
shall go I know not, nor (I was going to say) care; so bald and bad is my
frame of mind. Do you know our—ahem!—fellow clubman, Colonel Majendie?
I had such an interesting letter from him. Did you see my sermon? It
has evoked the worst feeling: I fear people don’t care for the truth, or
else I don’t tell it. Suffer me to wander without purpose. I have sent
off twenty letters to-day, and begun and stuck at a twenty-first, and
taken a copy of one which was on business, and corrected several galleys
of proof, and sorted about a bushel of old letters; so if any one has a
right to be romantically stupid it is I—and I am. Really deeply stupid,
and at that stage when in old days I used to pour out words without any
meaning whatever and with my mind taking no part in the performance. I
suspect that is now the case. I am reading with extraordinary pleasure
the life of Lord Lawrence: Lloyd and I have a mutiny novel—
(_Next morning_, _after twelve other letters_)—mutiny novel on hand—a
tremendous work—so we are all at Indian books. The idea of the novel is
Lloyd’s: I call it a novel. ’Tis a tragic romance, of the most tragic
sort: I believe the end will be almost too much for human endurance—when
the hero is thrown to the ground with one of his own (Sepoy) soldier’s
knees upon his chest, and the cries begin in the Beebeeghar. O truly,
you know it is a howler! The whole last part is—well the difficulty is
that, short of resuscitating Shakespeare, I don’t know who is to write
it.
I still keep wonderful. I am a great performer before the Lord on the
penny whistle. Dear sir, sincerely yours,
ANDREW JACKSON.
TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
[_Saranac Lake_, _April_ 1888.]
_Address c/o Messrs. Scribner’s Sons_,
743 _Broadway_, _N.Y._
MY DEAR GAMEKEEPER,—Your p. c. (proving you a good student of Micawber)
has just arrived, and it paves the way to something I am anxious to say.
I wrote a paper the other day—_Pulvis et Umbra_;—I wrote it with great
feeling and conviction: to me it seemed bracing and healthful, it is in
such a world (so seen by me), that I am very glad to fight out my battle,
and see some fine sunsets, and hear some excellent jests between whiles
round the camp fire. But I find that to some people this vision of mine
is a nightmare, and extinguishes all ground of faith in God or pleasure
in man. Truth I think not so much of; for I do not know it. And I could
wish in my heart that I had not published this paper, if it troubles folk
too much: all have not the same digestion, nor the same sight of things.
And it came over me with special pain that perhaps this article (which I
was at the pains to send to her) might give dismalness to my _Gamekeeper
at Home_. Well, I cannot take back what I have said; but yet I may add
this. If my view be everything but the nonsense that it may be—to me it
seems self-evident and blinding truth—surely of all things it makes this
world holier. There is nothing in it but the moral side—but the great
battle and the breathing times with their refreshments. I see no more
and no less. And if you look again, it is not ugly, and it is filled
with promise.
Pray excuse a desponding author for this apology. My wife is away off to
the uttermost parts of the States, all by herself. I shall be off, I
hope, in a week; but where? Ah! that I know not. I keep wonderful, and
my wife a little better, and the lad flourishing. We now perform duets
on two D tin whistles; it is no joke to make the bass; I think I must
really send you one, which I wish you would correct . . . I may be said
to live for these instrumental labours now, but I have always some
childishness on hand.—I am, dear Gamekeeper, your indulgent but
intemperate Squire,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO CHARLES BAXTER
_Union House_, _Manasquan_, _N.J._, _but address to Scribner’s_,
11_th_ _May_ 1888.
MY DEAR CHARLES,—I have found a yacht, and we are going the full pitch
for seven months. If I cannot get my health back (more or less), ’tis
madness; but, of course, there is the hope, and I will play big. . . . If
this business fails to set me up, well, £2000 is gone, and I know I can’t
get better. We sail from San Francisco, June 15th, for the South Seas in
the yacht _Casco_.—With a million thanks for all your dear friendliness,
ever yours affectionately,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO HOMER ST. GAUDENS
_Manasquan_, _New Jersey_, 27_th_ _May_ 1888.
DEAR HOMER ST. GAUDENS,—Your father has brought you this day to see me,
and he tells me it is his hope you may remember the occasion. I am going
to do what I can to carry out his wish; and it may amuse you, years
after, to see this little scrap of paper and to read what I write. I
must begin by testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in
the introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded
ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and
admirable point in your character. You were also (I use the past tense,
with a view to the time when you shall read, rather than to that when I
am writing) a very pretty boy, and (to my European views) startlingly
self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you must
pardon me if I can say no more: what else I marked, what restlessness of
foot and hand, what graceful clumsiness, what experimental designs upon
the furniture, was but the common inheritance of human youth. But you
may perhaps like to know that the lean flushed man in bed, who interested
you so little, was in a state of mind extremely mingled and unpleasant:
harassed with work which he thought he was not doing well, troubled with
difficulties to which you will in time succeed, and yet looking forward
to no less a matter than a voyage to the South Seas and the visitation of
savage and desert islands.—Your father’s friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO HENRY JAMES
_Manasquan_ (_ahem_!), _New Jersey_, _May_ 28_th_, 1888.
MY DEAR JAMES,—With what a torrent it has come at last! Up to now, what
I like best is the first number of a _London Life_. You have never done
anything better, and I don’t know if perhaps you have ever done anything
so good as the girl’s outburst: tip-top. I have been preaching your
later works in your native land. I had to present the Beltraffio volume
to Low, and it has brought him to his knees; he was _amazed_ at the first
part of Georgina’s Reasons, although (like me) not so well satisfied with
Part II. It is annoying to find the American public as stupid as the
English, but they will waken up in time: I wonder what they will think of
_Two Nations_? . . .
This, dear James, is a valedictory. On June 15th the schooner yacht
_Casco_ will (weather and a jealous providence permitting) steam through
the Golden Gates for Honolulu, Tahiti, the Galapagos, Guayaquil, and—I
hope _not_ the bottom of the Pacific. It will contain your obedient
’umble servant and party. It seems too good to be true, and is a very
good way of getting through the green-sickness of maturity which, with
all its accompanying ills, is now declaring itself in my mind and life.
They tell me it is not so severe as that of youth; if I (and the _Casco_)
are spared, I shall tell you more exactly, as I am one of the few people
in the world who do not forget their own lives.
Good-bye, then, my dear fellow, and please write us a word; we expect to
have three mails in the next two months: Honolulu, Tahiti, and Guayaquil.
But letters will be forwarded from Scribner’s, if you hear nothing more
definite directly. In 3 (three) days I leave for San Francisco.—Ever
yours most cordially,
R. L. S.
X
PACIFIC VOYAGES
JUNE 1888-NOVEMBER 1890
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
_Yacht_ ‘_Casco_,’ _Anaho Bay_, _Nukahiva_,
_Marquesas Islands_ [_July_ 1888].
MY DEAR COLVIN,—From this somewhat (ahem) out of the way place, I write
to say how d’ye do. It is all a swindle: I chose these isles as having
the most beastly population, and they are far better, and far more
civilised than we. I know one old chief Ko-o-amua, a great cannibal in
his day, who ate his enemies even as he walked home from killing ’em, and
he is a perfect gentleman and exceedingly amiable and simple-minded: no
fool, though.
The climate is delightful; and the harbour where we lie one of the
loveliest spots imaginable. Yesterday evening we had near a score
natives on board; lovely parties. We have a native god; very rare now.
Very rare and equally absurd to view.
This sort of work is not favourable to correspondence: it takes me all
the little strength I have to go about and see, and then come home and
note, the strangeness around us. I shouldn’t wonder if there came
trouble here some day, all the same. I could name a nation that is not
beloved in certain islands—and it does not know it! {114} Strange: like
ourselves, perhaps, in India! Love to all and much to yourself.
R. L. S.
TO CHARLES BAXTER
_Yacht_ ‘_Casco_,’ _at sea_, _near the Paumotus_,
7 A.M., _September_ 6_th_, 1888, _with a dreadful pen_.
MY DEAR CHARLES,—Last night as I lay under my blanket in the cockpit,
courting sleep, I had a comic seizure. There was nothing visible but the
southern stars, and the steersman there out by the binnacle lamp; we were
all looking forward to a most deplorable landfall on the morrow, praying
God we should fetch a tuft of palms which are to indicate the Dangerous
Archipelago; the night was as warm as milk, and all of a sudden I had a
vision of—Drummond Street. It came on me like a flash of lightning: I
simply returned thither, and into the past. And when I remember all I
hoped and feared as I pickled about Rutherford’s in the rain and the east
wind; how I feared I should make a mere shipwreck, and yet timidly hoped
not; how I feared I should never have a friend, far less a wife, and yet
passionately hoped I might; how I hoped (if I did not take to drink) I
should possibly write one little book, etc. etc. And then now—what a
change! I feel somehow as if I should like the incident set upon a brass
plate at the corner of that dreary thoroughfare for all students to read,
poor devils, when their hearts are down. And I felt I must write one
word to you. Excuse me if I write little: when I am at sea, it gives me
a headache; when I am in port, I have my diary crying ‘Give, give.’ I
shall have a fine book of travels, I feel sure; and will tell you more of
the South Seas after very few months than any other writer has
done—except Herman Melville perhaps, who is a howling cheese. Good luck
to you, God bless you.—Your affectionate friend,
R. L. S.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
_Fakarava_, _Low Archipelago_, _September_ 21_st_, 1888.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—Only a word. Get out your big atlas, and imagine a
straight line from San Francisco to Anaho, the N.E. corner of Nukahiva,
one of the Marquesas Islands; imagine three weeks there: imagine a day’s
sail on August 12th round the eastern end of the island to Tai-o-hae, the
capital; imagine us there till August 22nd: imagine us skirt the east
side of Ua-pu—perhaps Rona-Poa on your atlas—and through the Bondelais
straits to Taaka-uku in Hiva-Oa, where we arrive on the 23rd; imagine us
there until September 4th, when we sailed for Fakarava, which we reached
on the 9th, after a very difficult and dangerous passage among these
isles. Tuesday, we shall leave for Taiti, where I shall knock off and do
some necessary work ashore. It looks pretty bald in the atlas; not in
fact; nor I trust in the 130 odd pages of diary which I have just been
looking up for these dates: the interest, indeed, has been _incredible_:
I did not dream there were such places or such races. My health has
stood me splendidly; I am in for hours wading over the knees for shells;
I have been five hours on horseback: I have been up pretty near all night
waiting to see where the _Casco_ would go ashore, and with my diary all
ready—simply the most entertaining night of my life. Withal I still have
colds; I have one now, and feel pretty sick too; but not as at home:
instead of being in bed, for instance, I am at this moment sitting
snuffling and writing in an undershirt and trousers; and as for colour,
hands, arms, feet, legs, and face, I am browner than the berry: only my
trunk and the aristocratic spot on which I sit retain the vile whiteness
of the north.
Please give my news and kind love to Henley, Henry James, and any whom
you see of well-wishers. Accept from me the very best of my affection:
and believe me ever yours,
THE OLD MAN VIRULENT.
* * * * *
_Taiti_, _October_ 7_th_, 1888.
Never having found a chance to send this off, I may add more of my news.
My cold took a very bad turn, and I am pretty much out of sorts at this
particular, living in a little bare one-twentieth-furnished house,
surrounded by mangoes, etc. All the rest are well, and I mean to be
soon. But these Taiti colds are very severe and, to children, often
fatal; so they were not the thing for me. Yesterday the brigantine came
in from San Francisco, so we can get our letters off soon. There are in
Papeete at this moment, in a little wooden house with grated verandahs,
two people who love you very much, and one of them is
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO CHARLES BAXTER
_Taiti_, _as ever was_, 6_th_ _October_ 1888.
MY DEAR CHARLES,—. . . You will receive a lot of mostly very bad proofs
of photographs: the paper was so bad. Please keep them very private, as
they are for the book. We send them, having learned so dread a fear of
the sea, that we wish to put our eggs in different baskets. We have been
thrice within an ace of being ashore: we were lost (!) for about twelve
hours in the Low Archipelago, but by God’s blessing had quiet weather all
the time; and once, in a squall, we cam’ so near gaun heels ower hurdies,
that I really dinnae ken why we didnae athegither. Hence, as I say, a
great desire to put our eggs in different baskets, particularly on the
Pacific (aw-haw-haw) Pacific Ocean.
You can have no idea what a mean time we have had, owing to incidental
beastlinesses, nor what a glorious, owing to the intrinsic interest of
these isles. I hope the book will be a good one; nor do I really very
much doubt that—the stuff is so curious; what I wonder is, if the public
will rise to it. A copy of my journal, or as much of it as is made,
shall go to you also; it is, of course, quite imperfect, much being to be
added and corrected; but O, for the eggs in the different baskets.
All the rest are well enough, and all have enjoyed the cruise so far, in
spite of its drawbacks. We have had an awfae time in some ways, Mr.
Baxter; and if I wasnae sic a verra patient man (when I ken that I _have_
to be) there wad hae been a braw row; and ance if I hadnae happened to be
on deck about three in the marnin’, I _think_ there would have been
_murder_ done. The American Mairchant Marine is a kent service; ye’ll
have heard its praise, I’m thinkin’; an’ if ye never did, ye can get _Twa
Years Before the Mast_, by Dana, whaur forbye a great deal o’ pleisure,
ye’ll get a’ the needcessary information. Love to your father and all
the family.—Ever your affectionate friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
_Taiti_, _October_ 10_th_, 1888.
DEAR GIVER,—I am at a loss to conceive your object in giving me to a
person so locomotory as my proprietor. The number of thousand miles that
I have travelled, the strange bed-fellows with which I have been made
acquainted, I lack the requisite literary talent to make clear to your
imagination. I speak of bed-fellows; pocket-fellows would be a more
exact expression, for the place of my abode is in my master’s righthand
trouser-pocket; and there, as he waded on the resounding beaches of
Nukahiva, or in the shallow tepid water on the reef of Fakarava, I have
been overwhelmed by and buried among all manner of abominable South Sea
shells, beautiful enough in their way, I make no doubt, but singular
company for any self-respecting paper-cutter. He, my master—or as I more
justly call him, my bearer; for although I occasionally serve him, does
not he serve me daily and all day long, carrying me like an African
potentate on my subject’s legs?—_he_ is delighted with these isles, and
this climate, and these savages, and a variety of other things. He now
blows a flageolet with singular effects: sometimes the poor thing appears
stifled with shame, sometimes it screams with agony; he pursues his
career with truculent insensibility. Health appears to reign in the
party. I was very nearly sunk in a squall. I am sorry I ever left
England, for here there are no books to be had, and without books there
is no stable situation for, dear Giver, your affectionate
WOODEN PAPER-CUTTER.
A neighbouring pair of scissors snips a kiss in your direction.
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
_Taiti_, _October_ 16_th_, 1888.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—The cruiser for San Francisco departs to-morrow morning
bearing you some kind of a scratch. This much more important packet will
travel by way of Auckland. It contains a ballant; and I think a better
ballant than I expected ever to do. I can imagine how you will wag your
pow over it; and how ragged you will find it, etc., but has it not spirit
all the same? and though the verse is not all your fancy painted it, has
it not some life? And surely, as narrative, the thing has considerable
merit! Read it, get a typewritten copy taken, and send me that and your
opinion to the Sandwiches. I know I am only courting the most
excruciating mortification; but the real cause of my sending the thing is
that I could bear to go down myself, but not to have much MS. go down
with me. To say truth, we are through the most dangerous; but it has
left in all minds a strong sense of insecurity, and we are all for
putting eggs in various baskets.
We leave here soon, bound for Uahiva, Reiatea, Bora-Bora, and the
Sandwiches.
O, how my spirit languishes
To step ashore on the Sanguishes;
For there my letters wait,
There shall I know my fate.
O, how my spirit languidges
To step ashore on the Sanguidges.
18_th_.—I think we shall leave here if all is well on Monday. I am quite
recovered, astonishingly recovered. It must be owned these climates and
this voyage have given me more strength than I could have thought
possible. And yet the sea is a terrible place, stupefying to the mind
and poisonous to the temper, the sea, the motion, the lack of space, the
cruel publicity, the villainous tinned foods, the sailors, the captain,
the passengers—but you are amply repaid when you sight an island, and
drop anchor in a new world. Much trouble has attended this trip, but I
must confess more pleasure. Nor should I ever complain, as in the last
few weeks, with the curing of my illness indeed, as if that were the
bursting of an abscess, the cloud has risen from my spirits and to some
degree from my temper. Do you know what they called the _Casco_ at
Fakarava? The _Silver Ship_. Is that not pretty? Pray tell Mrs.
Jenkin, _die silberne Frau_, as I only learned it since I wrote her. I
think of calling the book by that name: _The Cruise of the Silver
Ship_—so there will be one poetic page at least—the title. At the
Sandwiches we shall say farewell to the _S. S._ with mingled feelings.
She is a lovely creature: the most beautiful thing at this moment in
Taiti.
Well, I will take another sheet, though I know I have nothing to say.
You would think I was bursting: but the voyage is all stored up for the
book, which is to pay for it, we fondly hope; and the troubles of the
time are not worth telling; and our news is little.
Here I conclude (Oct. 24th, I think), for we are now stored, and the Blue
Peter metaphorically flies.
R. L. S.
TO WILLIAM AND THOMAS ARCHER
_Taiti_, _October_ 17_th_, 1888.
DEAR ARCHER,—Though quite unable to write letters, I nobly send you a
line signifying nothing. The voyage has agreed well with all; it has had
its pains, and its extraordinary pleasures; nothing in the world can
equal the excitement of the first time you cast anchor in some bay of a
tropical island, and the boats begin to surround you, and the tattooed
people swarm aboard. Tell Tomarcher, with my respex, that hide-and-seek
is not equal to it; no, nor hidee-in-the-dark; which, for the matter of
that, is a game for the unskilful: the artist prefers daylight, a
good-sized garden, some shrubbery, an open paddock, and—come on, Macduff.
TOMARCHER, I am now a distinguished litterytour, but that was not the
real bent of my genius. I was the best player of hide-and-seek going;
not a good runner, I was up to every shift and dodge, I could jink very
well, I could crawl without any noise through leaves, I could hide under
a carrot plant, it used to be my favourite boast that I always _walked_
into the den. You may care to hear, Tomarcher, about the children in
these parts; their parents obey them, they do not obey their parents; and
I am sorry to tell you (for I dare say you are already thinking the idea
a good one) that it does not pay one halfpenny. There are three sorts of
civilisation, Tomarcher: the real old-fashioned one, in which children
either had to find out how to please their dear papas, or their dear
papas cut their heads off. This style did very well, but is now out of
fashion. Then the modern European style: in which children have to
behave reasonably well, and go to school and say their prayers, or their
dear papas _will know the reason why_. This does fairly well. Then
there is the South Sea Island plan, which does not do one bit. The
children beat their parents here; it does not make their parents any
better; so do not try it.
Dear Tomarcher, I have forgotten the address of your new house, but will
send this to one of your papa’s publishers. Remember us all to all of
you, and believe me, yours respectably,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
TO CHARLES BAXTER
_Tautira_ (_The Garden of the World_), _otherwise called_
_Hans-Christian-Andersen-ville_ [_November_ 1888].
MY DEAR CHARLES,—Whether I have a penny left in the wide world, I know
not, nor shall know, till I get to Honolulu, where I anticipate a devil
of an awakening. It will be from a mighty pleasant dream at least:
Tautira being mere Heaven. But suppose, for the sake of argument, any
money to be left in the hands of my painful doer, what is to be done with
it? Save us from exile would be the wise man’s choice, I suppose; for
the exile threatens to be eternal. But yet I am of opinion—in case there
should be _some_ dibs in the hand of the P.D., _i.e._ painful doer;
because if there be none, I shall take to my flageolet on the high-road,
and work home the best way I can, having previously made away with my
family—I am of opinion that if — and his are in the customary state, and
you are thinking of an offering, and there should be still some funds
over, you would be a real good P.D. to put some in with yours and tak’
the credit o’t, like a wee man! I know it’s a beastly thing to ask; but
it, after all, does no earthly harm, only that much good. And besides,
like enough there’s nothing in the till, and there is an end. Yet I live
here in the full lustre of millions; it is thought I am the richest son
of man that has yet been to Tautira: I!—and I am secretly eaten with the
fear of lying in pawn, perhaps for the remainder of my days, in San
Francisco. As usual, my colds have much hashed my finances.
Do tell Henley I write this just after having dismissed Ori the
sub-chief, in whose house I live, Mrs. Ori, and Pairai, their adopted
child, from the evening hour of music: during which I Publickly (with a
k) Blow on the Flageolet. These are words of truth. Yesterday I told
Ori about W. E. H., counterfeited his playing on the piano and the pipe,
and succeeded in sending the six feet four there is of that sub-chief
somewhat sadly to his bed; feeling that his was not the genuine article
after all. Ori is exactly like a colonel in the Guards.—I am, dear
Charles, ever yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
_Tautira_, 10_th_ _November_ ’88.
MY DEAR CHARLES,—Our mainmast is dry-rotten, and we are all to the devil;
I shall lie in a debtor’s jail. Never mind, Tautira is first chop. I am
so besotted that I shall put on the back of this my attempt at words to
Wandering Willie; if you can conceive at all the difficulty, you will
also conceive the vanity with which I regard any kind of result; and
whatever mine is like, it has some sense, and Burns’s has none.
Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?
Hunger my driver, I go where I must.
Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather;
Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust.
Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree.
The true word of welcome was spoken in the door—
Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight,
Kind folks of old, you come again no more.
Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces,
Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.
Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland;
Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.
Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland,
Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.
Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed,
The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.
R. L. S.
TO J. A. SYMONDS
_November_ 11_th_ 1888.
_One November night_, _in the village of Tautira_, _we sat at the high
table in the hall of assembly_, _hearing the natives sing_. _It was dark
in the hall_, _and very warm_; _though at times the land wind blew a
little shrewdly through the chinks_, _and at times_, _through the larger
openings_, _we could see the moonlight on the lawn_. _As the songs arose
in the rattling Tahitian chorus_, _the chief translated here and there a
verse_. _Farther on in the volume you shall read the songs themselves_;
_and I am in hopes that not you only_, _but all who can find a savour in
the ancient poetry of places_, _will read them with some pleasure_. _You
are to conceive us_, _therefore_, _in strange circumstances and very
pleasing_; _in a strange land and climate_, _the most beautiful on
earth_; _surrounded by a foreign race that all travellers have agreed to
be the most engaging_; _and taking a double interest in two foreign
arts_.
_We came forth again at last_, _in a cloudy moonlight_, _on the forest
lawn which is the street of Tautira_. _The Pacific roared outside upon
the reef_. _Here and there one of the scattered palm-built lodges shone
out under the shadow of the wood_, _the lamplight bursting through the
crannies of the wall_. _We went homeward slowly_, _Ori a Ori carrying
behind us the lantern and the chairs_, _properties with which we had just
been enacting our part of the distinguished visitor_. _It was one of
those moments in which minds not altogether churlish recall the names and
deplore the absence of congenial friends_; _and it was your name that
first rose upon our lips_. ‘_How Symonds would have enjoyed this
evening_!’ _said one_, _and then another_. _The word caught in my mind_;
_I went to bed_, _and it was still there_. _The glittering_, _frosty
solitudes in which your days are cast arose before me_: _I seemed to see
you walking there in the late night_, _under the pine-trees and the
stars_; _and I received the image with something like remorse_.
_There is a modern attitude towards fortune_; _in this place I will not
use a graver name_. _Staunchly to withstand her buffets and to enjoy
with equanimity her favours was the code of the virtuous of old_. _Our
fathers_, _it should seem_, _wondered and doubted how they had merited
their misfortunes_: _we_, _rather how we have deserved our happiness_.
_And we stand often abashed and sometimes revolted_, _at those
partialities of fate by which we profit most_. _It was so with me on
that November night_: _I felt that our positions should be changed_. _It
was you_, _dear Symonds_, _who should have gone upon that voyage and
written this account_. _With your rich stores of knowledge_, _you could
have remarked and understood a thousand things of interest and beauty
that escaped my ignorance_; _and the brilliant colours of your style
would have carried into a thousand sickrooms the sea air and the strong
sun of tropic islands_. _It was otherwise decreed_. _But suffer me at
least to connect you_, _if only in name and only in the fondness of
imagination_, _with the voyage of the_ ‘Silver Ship.’
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
DEAR SYMONDS,—I send you this (November 11th), the morning of its
completion. If I ever write an account of this voyage, may I place this
letter at the beginning? It represents—I need not tell you, for you too
are an artist—a most genuine feeling, which kept me long awake last
night; and though perhaps a little elaborate, I think it a good piece of
writing. We are _in heaven here_. Do not forget
R. L. S.
Please keep this: I have no perfect copy.
_Tautira_, _on the peninsula of Tahiti_.
TO THOMAS ARCHER
_Tautira_, _Island of Tahiti_ [_November_ 1888].
DEAR TOMARCHER,—This is a pretty state of things! seven o’clock and no
word of breakfast! And I was awake a good deal last night, for it was
full moon, and they had made a great fire of cocoa-nut husks down by the
sea, and as we have no blinds or shutters, this kept my room very bright.
And then the rats had a wedding or a school-feast under my bed. And then
I woke early, and I have nothing to read except Virgil’s _Æneid_, which
is not good fun on an empty stomach, and a Latin dictionary, which is
good for naught, and by some humorous accident, your dear papa’s article
on Skerryvore. And I read the whole of that, and very impudent it is,
but you must not tell your dear papa I said so, or it might come to a
battle in which you might lose either a dear papa or a valued
correspondent, or both, which would be prodigal. And still no breakfast;
so I said ‘Let’s write to Tomarcher.’
This is a much better place for children than any I have hitherto seen in
these seas. The girls (and sometimes the boys) play a very elaborate
kind of hopscotch. The boys play horses exactly as we do in Europe; and
have very good fun on stilts, trying to knock each other down, in which
they do not often succeed. The children of all ages go to church and are
allowed to do what they please, running about the aisles, rolling balls,
stealing mamma’s bonnet and publicly sitting on it, and at last going to
sleep in the middle of the floor. I forgot to say that the whips to play
horses, and the balls to roll about the church—at least I never saw them
used elsewhere—grow ready made on trees; which is rough on toy-shops.
The whips are so good that I wanted to play horses myself; but no such
luck! my hair is grey, and I am a great, big, ugly man. The balls are
rather hard, but very light and quite round. When you grow up and become
offensively rich, you can charter a ship in the port of London, and have
it come back to you entirely loaded with these balls; when you could
satisfy your mind as to their character, and give them away when done
with to your uncles and aunts. But what I really wanted to tell you was
this: besides the tree-top toys (Hush-a-by, toy-shop, on the tree-top!),
I have seen some real _made_ toys, the first hitherto observed in the
South Seas.
This was how. You are to imagine a four-wheeled gig; one horse; in the
front seat two Tahiti natives, in their Sunday clothes, blue coat, white
shirt, kilt (a little longer than the Scotch) of a blue stuff with big
white or yellow flowers, legs and feet bare; in the back seat me and my
wife, who is a friend of yours; under our feet, plenty of lunch and
things: among us a great deal of fun in broken Tahitian, one of the
natives, the sub-chief of the village, being a great ally of mine.
Indeed we have exchanged names; so that he is now called Rui, the nearest
they can come to Louis, for they have no _l_ and no _s_ in their
language. Rui is six feet three in his stockings, and a magnificent man.
We all have straw hats, for the sun is strong. We drive between the sea,
which makes a great noise, and the mountains; the road is cut through a
forest mostly of fruit trees, the very creepers, which take the place of
our ivy, heavy with a great and delicious fruit, bigger than your head
and far nicer, called Barbedine. Presently we came to a house in a
pretty garden, quite by itself, very nicely kept, the doors and windows
open, no one about, and no noise but that of the sea. It looked like a
house in a fairy-tale, and just beyond we must ford a river, and there we
saw the inhabitants. Just in the mouth of the river, where it met the
sea waves, they were ducking and bathing and screaming together like a
covey of birds: seven or eight little naked brown boys and girls as happy
as the day was long; and on the banks of the stream beside them, real
toys—toy ships, full rigged, and with their sails set, though they were
lying in the dust on their beam ends. And then I knew for sure they were
all children in a fairy-story, living alone together in that lonely house
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