Yes, Carlyle was ashamed of himself as few men have been; and let
all carpers look at what he did. He prepared all these papers for
publication with his own hand; all his wife's complaints, all the
evidence of his own misconduct: who else would have done so much?
Is repentance, which God accepts, to have no avail with men? nor
even with the dead? I have heard too much against the thrawn,
discomfortable dog: dead he is, and we may be glad of it; but he
was a better man than most of us, no less patently than he was a
worse. To fill the world with whining is against all my views: I
do not like impiety. But - but - there are two sides to all
things, and the old scalded baby had his noble side. - Ever
affectionate son,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
BONALLIE TOWERS, BOURNEMOUTH, JANUARY 1885.
DEAR S. C., - I have addressed a letter to the G. O. M., A PROPOS
of Wellington; and I became aware, you will be interested to hear,
of an overwhelming respect for the old gentleman. I can BLAGUER
his failures; but when you actually address him, and bring the two
statures and records to confrontation, dismay is the result. By
mere continuance of years, he must impose; the man who helped to
rule England before I was conceived, strikes me with a new sense of
greatness and antiquity, when I must actually beard him with the
cold forms of correspondence. I shied at the necessity of calling
him plain 'Sir'! Had he been 'My lord,' I had been happier; no, I
am no equalitarian. Honour to whom honour is due; and if to none,
why, then, honour to the old!
These, O Slade Professor, are my unvarnished sentiments: I was a
little surprised to find them so extreme, and therefore I
communicate the fact.
Belabour thy brains, as to whom it would be well to question. I
have a small space; I wish to make a popular book, nowhere obscure,
nowhere, if it can be helped, unhuman. It seems to me the most
hopeful plan to tell the tale, so far as may be, by anecdote. He
did not die till so recently, there must be hundreds who remember
him, and thousands who have still ungarnered stories. Dear man, to
the breach! Up, soldier of the iron dook, up, Slades, and at 'em!
(which, conclusively, he did not say: the at 'em-ic theory is to
be dismissed). You know piles of fellows who must reek with
matter; help! help! - Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
BONALLIE TOWERS, BOURNEMOUTH, FEBRUARY 1885.
MY DEAR COLVIN, - You are indeed a backward correspondent, and much
may be said against you. But in this weather, and O dear! in this
political scene of degradation, much must be forgiven. I fear
England is dead of Burgessry, and only walks about galvanised. I
do not love to think of my countrymen these days; nor to remember
myself. Why was I silent? I feel I have no right to blame any
one; but I won't write to the G. O. M. I do really not see my way
to any form of signature, unless 'your fellow criminal in the eyes
of God,' which might disquiet the proprieties.
About your book, I have always said: go on. The drawing of
character is a different thing from publishing the details of a
private career. No one objects to the first, or should object, if
his name be not put upon it; at the other, I draw the line. In a
preface, if you chose, you might distinguish; it is, besides, a
thing for which you are eminently well equipped, and which you
would do with taste and incision. I long to see the book. People
like themselves (to explain a little more); no one likes his life,
which is a misbegotten issue, and a tale of failure. To see these
failures either touched upon, or COASTED, to get the idea of a
spying eye and blabbing tongue about the house, is to lose all
privacy in life. To see that thing, which we do love, our
character, set forth, is ever gratifying. See how my TALK AND
TALKERS went; every one liked his own portrait, and shrieked about
other people's; so it will be with yours. If you are the least
true to the essential, the sitter will be pleased; very likely not
his friends, and that from VARIOUS MOTIVES.
R. L. S.
When will your holiday be? I sent your letter to my wife, and
forget. Keep us in mind, and I hope we shall he able to receive
you.
Letter: TO J. A. SYMONDS
BOURNEMOUTH, FEBRUARY 1885.
MY DEAR SYMONDS, - Yes, we have both been very neglectful. I had
horrid luck, catching two thundering influenzas in August and
November. I recovered from the last with difficulty, but have come
through this blustering winter with some general success; in the
house, up and down. My wife, however, has been painfully upset by
my health. Last year, of course, was cruelly trying to her nerves;
Nice and Hyeres are bad experiences; and though she is not ill, the
doctor tells me that prolonged anxiety may do her a real mischief.
I feel a little old and fagged, and chary of speech, and not very
sure of spirit in my work; but considering what a year I have
passed, and how I have twice sat on Charon's pierhead, I am
surprising.
My father has presented us with a very pretty home in this place,
into which we hope to move by May. My CHILD'S VERSES come out next
week. OTTO begins to appear in April; MORE NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS as
soon as possible. Moreover, I am neck deep in Wellington; also a
story on the stocks, GREAT NORTH ROAD. O, I am busy! Lloyd is at
college in Edinburgh. That is, I think, all that can be said by
way of news.
Have you read HUCKLEBERRY FINN? It contains many excellent things;
above all, the whole story of a healthy boy's dealings with his
conscience, incredibly well done.
My own conscience is badly seared; a want of piety; yet I pray for
it, tacitly, every day; believing it, after courage, the only gift
worth having; and its want, in a man of any claims to honour, quite
unpardonable. The tone of your letter seemed to me very sound. In
these dark days of public dishonour, I do not know that one can do
better than carry our private trials piously. What a picture is
this of a nation! No man that I can see, on any side or party,
seems to have the least sense of our ineffable shame: the
desertion of the garrisons. I tell my little parable that Germany
took England, and then there was an Indian Mutiny, and Bismarck
said: 'Quite right: let Delhi and Calcutta and Bombay fall; and
let the women and children be treated Sepoy fashion,' and people
say, 'O, but that is very different!' And then I wish I were dead.
Millais (I hear) was painting Gladstone when the news came of
Gordon's death; Millais was much affected, and Gladstone said,
'Why? IT IS THE MAN'S OWN TEMERITY!' Voila le Bourgeois! le voila
nu! But why should I blame Gladstone, when I too am a Bourgeois?
when I have held my peace? Why did I hold my peace? Because I am
a sceptic: I.E. a Bourgeois. We believe in nothing, Symonds; you
don't, and I don't; and these are two reasons, out of a handful of
millions, why England stands before the world dripping with blood
and daubed with dishonour. I will first try to take the beam out
of my own eye, trusting that even private effort somehow betters
and braces the general atmosphere. See, for example, if England
has shown (I put it hypothetically) one spark of manly sensibility,
they have been shamed into it by the spectacle of Gordon. Police-
Officer Cole is the only man that I see to admire. I dedicate my
NEW ARABS to him and Cox, in default of other great public
characters. - Yours ever most affectionately,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
BONALLIE TOWERS, BOURNEMOUTH, MARCH 12, 1885.
MY DEAR GOSSE, - I was indeed much exercised how I could be worked
into Gray; and lo! when I saw it, the passage seemed to have been
written with a single eye to elucidate the - worst? - well, not a
very good poem of Gray's. Your little life is excellent, clean,
neat, efficient. I have read many of your notes, too, with
pleasure. Your connection with Gray was a happy circumstance; it
was a suitable conjunction.
I did not answer your letter from the States, for what was I to
say? I liked getting it and reading it; I was rather flattered
that you wrote it to me; and then I'll tell you what I did - I put
it in the fire. Why? Well, just because it was very natural and
expansive; and thinks I to myself, if I die one of these fine
nights, this is just the letter that Gosse would not wish to go
into the hands of third parties. Was I well inspired? And I did
not answer it because you were in your high places, sailing with
supreme dominion, and seeing life in a particular glory; and I was
peddling in a corner, confined to the house, overwhelmed with
necessary work, which I was not always doing well, and, in the very
mild form in which the disease approaches me, touched with a sort
of bustling cynicism. Why throw cold water? How ape your
agreeable frame of mind? In short, I held my tongue.
I have now published on 101 small pages THE COMPLETE PROOF OF MR.
R. L. STEVENSON'S INCAPACITY TO WRITE VERSE, in a series of
graduated examples with table of contents. I think I shall issue a
companion volume of exercises: 'Analyse this poem. Collect and
comminate the ugly words. Distinguish and condemn the CHEVILLES.
State Mr. Stevenson's faults of taste in regard to the measure.
What reasons can you gather from this example for your belief that
Mr. S. is unable to write any other measure?'
They look ghastly in the cold light of print; but there is
something nice in the little ragged regiment for all; the
blackguards seem to me to smile, to have a kind of childish treble
note that sounds in my ears freshly; not song, if you will, but a
child's voice.
I was glad you enjoyed your visit to the States. Most Englishmen
go there with a confirmed design of patronage, as they go to France
for that matter; and patronage will not pay. Besides, in this year
of - grace, said I? - of disgrace, who should creep so low as an
Englishman? 'It is not to be thought of that the flood' - ah,
Wordsworth, you would change your note were you alive to-day!
I am now a beastly householder, but have not yet entered on my
domain. When I do, the social revolution will probably cast me
back upon my dung heap. There is a person called Hyndman whose eye
is on me; his step is beHynd me as I go. I shall call my house
Skerryvore when I get it: SKERRYVORE: C'EST BON POUR LA POESHIE.
I will conclude with my favourite sentiment: 'The world is too
much with me.'
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,
THE HERMIT OF SKERRYVORE.
Author of 'John Vane Tempest: a Romance,' 'Herbert and Henrietta:
or the Nemesis of Sentiment,' 'The Life and Adventures of Colonel
Bludyer Fortescue,' 'Happy Homes and Hairy Faces,' 'A Pound of
Feathers and a Pound of Lead,' part author of 'Minn's Complete
Capricious Correspondent: a Manual of Natty, Natural, and Knowing
Letters,' and editor of the 'Poetical Remains of Samuel Burt
Crabbe, known as the melodious Bottle-Holder.'
Uniform with the above:
'The Life and Remains of the Reverend Jacob Degray Squah,' author
of 'Heave-yo for the New Jerusalem.' 'A Box of Candles; or the
Patent Spiritual Safety Match,' and 'A Day with the Heavenly
Harriers.'
Letter: TO W. H. LOW
BONALLIE TOWERS, BOURNEMOUTH, MARCH 13, 1885.
MY DEAR LOW, - Your success has been immense. I wish your letter
had come two days ago: OTTO, alas! has been disposed of a good
while ago; but it was only day before yesterday that I settled the
new volume of Arabs. However, for the future, you and the sons of
the deified Scribner are the men for me. Really they have behaved
most handsomely. I cannot lay my hand on the papers, or I would
tell you exactly how it compares with my English bargain; but it
compares well. Ah, if we had that copyright, I do believe it would
go far to make me solvent, ill-health and all.
I wrote you a letter to the Rembrandt, in which I stated my views
about the dedication in a very brief form. It will give me sincere
pleasure, and will make the second dedication I have received, the
other being from John Addington Symonds. It is a compliment I
value much; I don't know any that I should prefer.
I am glad to hear you have windows to do; that is a fine business,
I think; but, alas! the glass is so bad nowadays; realism invading
even that, as well as the huge inferiority of our technical
resource corrupting every tint. Still, anything that keeps a man
to decoration is, in this age, good for the artist's spirit.
By the way, have you seen James and me on the novel? James, I
think in the August or September - R. L. S. in the December
LONGMAN. I own I think the ECOLE BETE, of which I am the champion,
has the whip hand of the argument; but as James is to make a
rejoinder, I must not boast. Anyway the controversy is amusing to
see. I was terribly tied down to space, which has made the end
congested and dull. I shall see if I can afford to send you the
April CONTEMPORARY - but I dare say you see it anyway - as it will
contain a paper of mine on style, a sort of continuation of old
arguments on art in which you have wagged a most effective tongue.
It is a sort of start upon my Treatise on the Art of Literature: a
small, arid book that shall some day appear.
With every good wish from me and mine (should I not say 'she and
hers'?) to you and yours, believe me yours ever,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO P. G. HAMERTON
BOURNEMOUTH, MARCH 16, 1885.
MY DEAR HAMERTON, - Various things have been reminding me of my
misconduct: First, Swan's application for your address; second, a
sight of the sheets of your LANDSCAPE book; and last, your note to
Swan, which he was so kind as to forward. I trust you will never
suppose me to be guilty of anything more serious than an idleness,
partially excusable. My ill-health makes my rate of life heavier
than I can well meet, and yet stops me from earning more. My
conscience, sometimes perhaps too easily stifled, but still (for my
time of life and the public manners of the age) fairly well alive,
forces me to perpetual and almost endless transcriptions. On the
back of all this, my correspondence hangs like a thundercloud; and
just when I think I am getting through my troubles, crack, down
goes my health, I have a long, costly sickness, and begin the world
again. It is fortunate for me I have a father, or I should long
ago have died; but the opportunity of the aid makes the necessity
none the more welcome. My father has presented me with a beautiful
house here - or so I believe, for I have not yet seen it, being a
cage bird but for nocturnal sorties in the garden. I hope we shall
soon move into it, and I tell myself that some day perhaps we may
have the pleasure of seeing you as our guest. I trust at least
that you will take me as I am, a thoroughly bad correspondent, and
a man, a hater, indeed, of rudeness in others, but too often rude
in all unconsciousness himself; and that you will never cease to
believe the sincere sympathy and admiration that I feel for you and
for your work.
About the LANDSCAPE, which I had a glimpse of while a friend of
mine was preparing a review, I was greatly interested, and could
write and wrangle for a year on every page; one passage
particularly delighted me, the part about Ulysses - jolly. Then,
you know, that is just what I fear I have come to think landscape
ought to be in literature; so there we should be at odds. Or
perhaps not so much as I suppose, as Montaigne says it is a pot
with two handles, and I own I am wedded to the technical handle,
which (I likewise own and freely) you do well to keep for a
mistress. I should much like to talk with you about some other
points; it is only in talk that one gets to understand. Your
delightful Wordsworth trap I have tried on two hardened
Wordsworthians, not that I am not one myself. By covering up the
context, and asking them to guess what the passage was, both (and
both are very clever people, one a writer, one a painter)
pronounced it a guide-book. 'Do you think it an unusually good
guide-book?' I asked, and both said, 'No, not at all!' Their
grimace was a picture when I showed the original.
I trust your health and that of Mrs. Hamerton keep better; your
last account was a poor one. I was unable to make out the visit I
had hoped, as (I do not know if you heard of it) I had a very
violent and dangerous haemorrhage last spring. I am almost glad to
have seen death so close with all my wits about me, and not in the
customary lassitude and disenchantment of disease. Even thus
clearly beheld I find him not so terrible as we suppose. But,
indeed, with the passing of years, the decay of strength, the loss
of all my old active and pleasant habits, there grows more and more
upon me that belief in the kindness of this scheme of things, and
the goodness of our veiled God, which is an excellent and pacifying
compensation. I trust, if your health continues to trouble you,
you may find some of the same belief. But perhaps my fine
discovery is a piece of art, and belongs to a character cowardly,
intolerant of certain feelings, and apt to self-deception. I don't
think so, however; and when I feel what a weak and fallible vessel
I was thrust into this hurly-burly, and with what marvellous
kindness the wind has been tempered to my frailties, I think I
should be a strange kind of ass to feel anything but gratitude.
I do not know why I should inflict this talk upon you; but when I
summon the rebellous pen, he must go his own way; I am no Michael
Scott, to rule the fiend of correspondence. Most days he will none
of me; and when he comes, it is to rape me where he will. - Yours
very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO WILLIAM ARCHER
BOURNEMOUTH, MARCH 29, 1885.
DEAR MR. ARCHER, - Yes, I have heard of you and read some of your
work; but I am bound in particular to thank you for the notice of
my verses. 'There,' I said, throwing it over to the friend who was
staying with me, 'it's worth writing a book to draw an article like
that.' Had you been as hard upon me as you were amiable, I try to
tell myself I should have been no blinder to the merits of your
notice. For I saw there, to admire and to be very grateful for, a
most sober, agile pen; an enviable touch; the marks of a reader,
such as one imagines for one's self in dreams, thoughtful,
critical, and kind; and to put the top on this memorial column, a
greater readiness to describe the author criticised than to display
the talents of his censor.
I am a man BLASE to injudicious praise (though I hope some of it
may be judicious too), but I have to thank you for THE BEST
CRITICISM I EVER HAD; and am therefore, dear Mr. Archer, the most
grateful critickee now extant.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - I congratulate you on living in the corner of all London
that I like best. A PROPOS, you are very right about my voluntary
aversion from the painful sides of life. My childhood was in
reality a very mixed experience, full of fever, nightmare,
insomnia, painful days and interminable nights; and I can speak
with less authority of gardens than of that other 'land of
counterpane.' But to what end should we renew these sorrows? The
sufferings of life may be handled by the very greatest in their
hours of insight; it is of its pleasures that our common poems
should be formed; these are the experiences that we should seek to
recall or to provoke; and I say with Thoreau, 'What right have I to
complain, who have not ceased to wonder?' and, to add a rider of my
own, who have no remedy to offer.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JUNE 1885.]
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, - You know how much and for how long I have
loved, respected, and admired him; I am only able to feel a little
with you. But I know how he would have wished us to feel. I never
knew a better man, nor one to me more lovable; we shall all feel
the loss more greatly as time goes on. It scarce seems life to me;
what must it be to you? Yet one of the last things that he said to
me was, that from all these sad bereavements of yours he had
learned only more than ever to feel the goodness and what we, in
our feebleness, call the support of God; he had been ripening so
much - to other eyes than ours, we must suppose he was ripe, and
try to feel it. I feel it is better not to say much more. It will
be to me a great pride to write a notice of him: the last I can
now do. What more in any way I can do for you, please to think and
let me know. For his sake and for your own, I would not be a
useless friend: I know, you know me a most warm one; please
command me or my wife, in any way. Do not trouble to write to me;
Austin, I have no doubt, will do so, if you are, as I fear you will
be, unfit.
My heart is sore for you. At least you know what you have been to
him; how he cherished and admired you; how he was never so pleased
as when he spoke of you; with what a boy's love, up to the last, he
loved you. This surely is a consolation. Yours is the cruel part
- to survive; you must try and not grudge to him his better
fortune, to go first. It is the sad part of such relations that
one must remain and suffer; I cannot see my poor Jenkin without
you. Nor you indeed without him; but you may try to rejoice that
he is spared that extremity. Perhaps I (as I was so much his
confidant) know even better than you can do what your loss would
have been to him; he never spoke of you but his face changed; it
was - you were - his religion.
I write by this post to Austin and to the ACADEMY. - Yours most
sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,
Letter: TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JUNE 1885.]
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, - I should have written sooner, but we are in
a bustle, and I have been very tired, though still well. Your very
kind note was most welcome to me. I shall be very much pleased to
have you call me Louis, as he has now done for so many years.
Sixteen, you say? is it so long? It seems too short now; but of
that we cannot judge, and must not complain.
I wish that either I or my wife could do anything for you; when we
can, you will, I am sure, command us.
I trust that my notice gave you as little pain as was possible. I
found I had so much to say, that I preferred to keep it for another
place and make but a note in the ACADEMY. To try to draw my friend
at greater length, and say what he was to me and his intimates,
what a good influence in life and what an example, is a desire that
grows upon me. It was strange, as I wrote the note, how his old
tests and criticisms haunted me; and it reminded me afresh with
every few words how much I owe to him.
I had a note from Henley, very brief and very sad. We none of us
yet feel the loss; but we know what he would have said and wished.
Do you know that Dew Smith has two photographs of him, neither very
bad? and one giving a lively, though not flattering air of him in
conversation? If you have not got them, would you like me to write
to Dew and ask him to give you proofs?
I was so pleased that he and my wife made friends; that is a great
pleasure. We found and have preserved one fragment (the head) of
the drawing he made and tore up when he was last here. He had
promised to come and stay with us this summer. May we not hope, at
least, some time soon to have one from you? - Believe me, my dear
Mrs. Jenkin, with the most real sympathy, your sincere friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Dear me, what happiness I owe to both of you!
Letter: TO W. H. LOW
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, OCTOBER 22, 1885.
MY DEAR LOW, - I trust you are not annoyed with me beyond
forgiveness; for indeed my silence has been devilish prolonged. I
can only tell you that I have been nearly six months (more than
six) in a strange condition of collapse, when it was impossible to
do any work, and difficult (more difficult than you would suppose)
to write the merest note. I am now better, but not yet my own man
in the way of brains, and in health only so-so. I suppose I shall
learn (I begin to think I am learning) to fight this vast, vague
feather-bed of an obsession that now overlies and smothers me; but
in the beginnings of these conflicts, the inexperienced wrestler is
always worsted, and I own I have been quite extinct. I wish you to
know, though it can be no excuse, that you are not the only one of
my friends by many whom I have thus neglected; and even now, having
come so very late into the possession of myself, with a substantial
capital of debts, and my work still moving with a desperate
slowness - as a child might fill a sandbag with its little handfuls
- and my future deeply pledged, there is almost a touch of virtue
in my borrowing these hours to write to you. Why I said 'hours' I
know not; it would look blue for both of us if I made good the
word.
I was writing your address the other day, ordering a copy of my
next, PRINCE OTTO, to go your way. I hope you have not seen it in
parts; it was not meant to be so read; and only my poverty
(dishonourably) consented to the serial evolution.
I will send you with this a copy of the English edition of the
CHILD'S GARDEN. I have heard there is some vile rule of the post-
office in the States against inscriptions; so I send herewith a
piece of doggerel which Mr. Bunner may, if he thinks fit, copy off
the fly leaf.
Sargent was down again and painted a portrait of me walking about
in my own dining-room, in my own velveteen jacket, and twisting as
I go my own moustache; at one corner a glimpse of my wife, in an
Indian dress, and seated in a chair that was once my grandfather's;
but since some months goes by the name of Henry James's, for it was
there the novelist loved to sit - adds a touch of poesy and
comicality. It is, I think, excellent, but is too eccentric to be
exhibited. I am at one extreme corner; my wife, in this wild
dress, and looking like a ghost, is at the extreme other end;
between us an open door exhibits my palatial entrance hall and a
part of my respected staircase. All this is touched in lovely,
with that witty touch of Sargent's; but, of course, it looks dam
queer as a whole.
Pray let me hear from you, and give me good news of yourself and
your wife, to whom please remember me. -
Yours most sincerely, my dear Low,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, AUTUMN 1885.]
DEAR LAD, - If there was any more praise in what you wrote, I think
[the editor] has done us both a service; some of it stops my
throat. What, it would not have been the same if Dumas or Musset
had done it, would it not? Well, no, I do not think it would, do
you know, now; I am really of opinion it would not; and a dam good
job too. Why, think what Musset would have made of Otto! Think
how gallantly Dumas would have carried his crowd through! And
whatever you do, don't quarrel with -. It gives me much pleasure
to see your work there; I think you do yourself great justice in
that field; and I would let no annoyance, petty or justifiable,
debar me from such a market. I think you do good there. Whether
(considering our intimate relations) you would not do better to
refrain from reviewing me, I will leave to yourself: were it all
on my side, you could foresee my answer; but there is your side
also, where you must be the judge.
As for the SATURDAY. Otto is no 'fool,' the reader is left in no
doubt as to whether or not Seraphina was a Messalina (though much
it would matter, if you come to that); and therefore on both these
points the reviewer has been unjust. Secondly, the romance lies
precisely in the freeing of two spirits from these court intrigues;
and here I think the reviewer showed himself dull. Lastly, if
Otto's speech is offensive to him, he is one of the large class of
unmanly and ungenerous dogs who arrogate and defile the name of
manly. As for the passages quoted, I do confess that some of them
reek Gongorically; they are excessive, but they are not inelegant
after all. However, had he attacked me only there, he would have
scored.
Your criticism on Gondremark is, I fancy, right. I thought all
your criticisms were indeed; only your praise - chokes me. - Yours
ever,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO WILLIAM ARCHER
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, OCTOBER 28, 1885.
DEAR MR. ARCHER, - I have read your paper with my customary
admiration; it is very witty, very adroit; it contains a great deal
that is excellently true (particularly the parts about my stories
and the description of me as an artist in life); but you will not
be surprised if I do not think it altogether just. It seems to me,
in particular, that you have wilfully read all my works in terms of
my earliest; my aim, even in style, has quite changed in the last
six or seven years; and this I should have thought you would have
noticed. Again, your first remark upon the affectation of the
italic names; a practice only followed in my two affected little
books of travel, where a typographical MINAUDERIE of the sort
appeared to me in character; and what you say of it, then, is quite
just. But why should you forget yourself and use these same
italics as an index to my theology some pages further on? This is
lightness of touch indeed; may I say, it is almost sharpness of
practice?
Excuse these remarks. I have been on the whole much interested,
and sometimes amused. Are you aware that the praiser of this
'brave gymnasium' has not seen a canoe nor taken a long walk since
'79? that he is rarely out of the house nowadays, and carries his
arm in a sling? Can you imagine that he is a backslidden
communist, and is sure he will go to hell (if there be such an
excellent institution) for the luxury in which he lives? And can
you believe that, though it is gaily expressed, the thought is hag
and skeleton in every moment of vacuity or depression? Can you
conceive how profoundly I am irritated by the opposite affectation
to my own, when I see strong men and rich men bleating about their
sorrows and the burthen of life, in a world full of 'cancerous
paupers,' and poor sick children, and the fatally bereaved, ay, and
down even to such happy creatures as myself, who has yet been
obliged to strip himself, one after another, of all the pleasures
that he had chosen except smoking (and the days of that I know in
my heart ought to be over), I forgot eating, which I still enjoy,
and who sees the circle of impotence closing very slowly but quite
steadily around him? In my view, one dank, dispirited word is
harmful, a crime of LESE- HUMANITE, a piece of acquired evil; every
gay, every bright word or picture, like every pleasant air of
music, is a piece of pleasure set afloat; the reader catches it,
and, if he be healthy, goes on his way rejoicing; and it is the
business of art so to send him, as often as possible.
For what you say, so kindly, so prettily, so precisely, of my
style, I must in particular thank you; though even here, I am vexed
you should not have remarked on my attempted change of manner:
seemingly this attempt is still quite unsuccessful! Well, we shall
fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.
And now for my last word: Mrs. Stevenson is very anxious that you
should see me, and that she should see you, in the flesh. If you
at all share in these views, I am a fixture. Write or telegraph
(giving us time, however, to telegraph in reply, lest the day be
impossible), and come down here to a bed and a dinner. What do you
say, my dear critic? I shall be truly pleased to see you; and to
explain at greater length what I meant by saying narrative was the
most characteristic mood of literature, on which point I have great
hopes I shall persuade you. - Yours truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - My opinion about Thoreau, and the passage in THE WEEK, is
perhaps a fad, but it is sincere and stable. I am still of the
same mind five years later; did you observe that I had said
'modern' authors? and will you observe again that this passage
touches the very joint of our division? It is one that appeals to
me, deals with that part of life that I think the most important,
and you, if I gather rightly, so much less so? You believe in the
extreme moment of the facts that humanity has acquired and is
acquiring; I think them of moment, but still or much less than
those inherent or inherited brute principles and laws that sit upon
us (in the character of conscience) as heavy as a shirt of mail,
and that (in the character of the affections and the airy spirit of
pleasure) make all the light of our lives. The house is, indeed, a
great thing, and should be rearranged on sanitary principles; but
my heart and all my interest are with the dweller, that ancient of
days and day-old infant man.
R. L. S.
An excellent touch is p. 584. 'By instinct or design he eschews
what demands constructive patience.' I believe it is both; my
theory is that literature must always be most at home in treating
movement and change; hence I look for them.
Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH,] OCTOBER 28, 1885.
MY DEAREST FATHER, - Get the November number of TIME, and you will
see a review of me by a very clever fellow, who is quite furious at
bottom because I am too orthodox, just as Purcell was savage
because I am not orthodox enough. I fall between two stools. It
is odd, too, to see how this man thinks me a full-blooded fox-
hunter, and tells me my philosophy would fail if I lost my health
or had to give up exercise!
An illustrated TREASURE ISLAND will be out next month. I have had
an early copy, and the French pictures are admirable. The artist
has got his types up in Hogarth; he is full of fire and spirit, can
draw and can compose, and has understood the book as I meant it,
all but one or two little accidents, such as making the HISPANIOLA
a brig. I would send you my copy, BUT I CANNOT; it is my new toy,
and I cannot divorce myself from this enjoyment.
I am keeping really better, and have been out about every second
day, though the weather is cold and very wild.
I was delighted to hear you were keeping better; you and Archer
would agree, more shame to you! (Archer is my pessimist critic.)
Good-bye to all of you, with my best love. We had a dreadful
overhauling of my conduct as a son the other night; and my wife
stripped me of my illusions and made me admit I had been a
detestable bad one. Of one thing in particular she convicted me in
my own eyes: I mean, a most unkind reticence, which hung on me
then, and I confess still hangs on me now, when I try to assure you
that I do love you. - Ever your bad son,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO HENRY JAMES
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, OCTOBER 28, 1885.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - At last, my wife being at a concert, and a
story being done, I am at some liberty to write and give you of my
views. And first, many thanks for the works that came to my
sickbed. And second, and more important, as to the PRINCESS.
Well, I think you are going to do it this time; I cannot, of
course, foresee, but these two first numbers seem to me picturesque
and sound and full of lineament, and very much a new departure. As
for your young lady, she is all there; yes, sir, you can do low
life, I believe. The prison was excellent; it was of that nature
of touch that I sometimes achingly miss from your former work; with
some of the grime, that is, and some of the emphasis of skeleton
there is in nature. I pray you to take grime in a good sense; it
need not be ignoble: dirt may have dignity; in nature it usually
has; and your prison was imposing.
And now to the main point: why do we not see you? Do not fail us.
Make an alarming sacrifice, and let us see 'Henry James's chair'
properly occupied. I never sit in it myself (though it was my
grandfather's); it has been consecrated to guests by your approval,
and now stands at my elbow gaping. We have a new room, too, to
introduce to you - our last baby, the drawing-room; it never cries,
and has cut its teeth. Likewise, there is a cat now. It promises
to be a monster of laziness and self-sufficiency.
Pray see, in the November TIME (a dread name for a magazine of
light reading), a very clever fellow, W. Archer, stating his views
of me; the rosy-gilled 'athletico-aesthete'; and warning me, in a
fatherly manner, that a rheumatic fever would try my philosophy (as
indeed it would), and that my gospel would not do for 'those who
are shut out from the exercise of any manly virtue save
renunciation.' To those who know that rickety and cloistered
spectre, the real R. L. S., the paper, besides being clever in
itself, presents rare elements of sport. The critical parts are in
particular very bright and neat, and often excellently true. Get
it by all manner of means.
I hear on all sides I am to be attacked as an immoral writer; this
is painful. Have I at last got, like you, to the pitch of being
attacked? 'Tis the consecration I lack - and could do without.
Not that Archer's paper is an attack, or what either he or I, I
believe, would call one; 'tis the attacks on my morality (which I
had thought a gem of the first water) I referred to.
Now, my dear James, come - come - come. The spirit (that is me)
says, Come; and the bride (and that is my wife) says, Come; and the
best thing you can do for us and yourself and your work is to get
up and do so right away, - Yours affectionately,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO WILLIAM ARCHER
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH,] OCTOBER 30, 1885.
DEAR MR. ARCHER. - It is possible my father may be soon down with
me; he is an old man and in bad health and spirits; and I could
neither leave him alone, nor could we talk freely before him. If
he should be here when you offer your visit, you will understand if
I have to say no, and put you off.
I quite understand your not caring to refer to things of private
knowledge. What still puzzles me is how you ('in the witness box'
- ha! I like the phrase) should have made your argument actually
hinge on a contention which the facts answered.
I am pleased to hear of the correctness of my guess. It is then as
I supposed; you are of the school of the generous and not the
sullen pessimists; and I can feel with you. I used myself to rage
when I saw sick folk going by in their Bath-chairs; since I have
been sick myself (and always when I was sick myself), I found life,
even in its rough places, to have a property of easiness. That
which we suffer ourselves has no longer the same air of monstrous
injustice and wanton cruelty that suffering wears when we see it in
the case of others. So we begin gradually to see that things are
not black, but have their strange compensations; and when they draw
towards their worst, the idea of death is like a bed to lie on. I
should bear false witness if I did not declare life happy. And
your wonderful statement that happiness tends to die out and misery
to continue, which was what put me on the track of your frame of
mind, is diagnostic of the happy man raging over the misery of
others; it could never be written by the man who had tried what
unhappiness was like. And at any rate, it was a slip of the pen:
the ugliest word that science has to declare is a reserved
indifference to happiness and misery in the individual; it declares
no leaning toward the black, no iniquity on the large scale in
fate's doings, rather a marble equality, dread not cruel, giving
and taking away and reconciling.
Why have I not written my TIMON? Well, here is my worst quarrel
with you. You take my young books as my last word. The tendency
to try to say more has passed unperceived (my fault, that). And
you make no allowance for the slowness with which a man finds and
tries to learn his tools. I began with a neat brisk little style,
and a sharp little knack of partial observation; I have tried to
expand my means, but still I can only utter a part of what I wish
to say, and am bound to feel; and much of it will die unspoken.
But if I had the pen of Shakespeare, I have no TIMON to give forth.
I feel kindly to the powers that be; I marvel they should use me so
well; and when I think of the case of others, I wonder too, but in
another vein, whether they may not, whether they must not, be like
me, still with some compensation, some delight. To have suffered,
nay, to suffer, sets a keen edge on what remains of the agreeable.
This is a great truth, and has to be learned in the fire. - Yours
very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
We expect you, remember that.
Letter: TO WILLIAM ARCHER
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, NOVEMBER 1, 1885.
DEAR MR. ARCHER, - You will see that I had already had a sight of
your article and what were my thoughts.
One thing in your letter puzzles me. Are you, too, not in the
witness-box? And if you are, why take a wilfully false hypothesis?
If you knew I was a chronic invalid, why say that my philosophy was
unsuitable to such a case? My call for facts is not so general as
yours, but an essential fact should not be put the other way about.
The fact is, consciously or not, you doubt my honesty; you think I
am making faces, and at heart disbelieve my utterances. And this I
am disposed to think must spring from your not having had enough of
pain, sorrow, and trouble in your existence. It is easy to have
too much; easy also or possible to have too little; enough is
required that a man may appreciate what elements of consolation and
joy there are in everything but absolutely over-powering physical
pain or disgrace, and how in almost all circumstances the human
soul can play a fair part. You fear life, I fancy, on the
principle of the hand of little employment. But perhaps my
hypothesis is as unlike the truth as the one you chose. Well, if
it be so, if you have had trials, sickness, the approach of death,
the alienation of friends, poverty at the heels, and have not felt
your soul turn round upon these things and spurn them under - you
must be very differently made from me, and I earnestly believe from
the majority of men. But at least you are in the right to wonder
and complain.
To 'say all'? Stay here. All at once? That would require a word
from the pen of Gargantua. We say each particular thing as it
comes up, and 'with that sort of emphasis that for the time there
seems to be no other.' Words will not otherwise serve us; no, nor
even Shakespeare, who could not have put AS YOU LIKE IT and TIMON
into one without ruinous loss both of emphasis and substance. Is
it quite fair then to keep your face so steadily on my most light-
hearted works, and then say I recognise no evil? Yet in the paper
on Burns, for instance, I show myself alive to some sorts of evil.
But then, perhaps, they are not your sorts.
And again: 'to say all'? All: yes. Everything: no. The task
were endless, the effect nil. But my all, in such a vast field as
this of life, is what interests me, what stands out, what takes on
itself a presence for my imagination or makes a figure in that
little tricky abbreviation which is the best that my reason can
conceive. That I must treat, or I shall be fooling with my
readers. That, and not the all of some one else.
And here we come to the division: not only do I believe that
literature should give joy, but I see a universe, I suppose,
eternally different from yours; a solemn, a terrible, but a very
joyous and noble universe, where suffering is not at least wantonly
inflicted, though it falls with dispassionate partiality, but where
it may be and generally is nobly borne; where, above all (this I
believe; probably you don't: I think he may, with cancer), ANY
BRAVE MAN MAY MAKE out a life which shall be happy for himself,
and, by so being, beneficent to those about him. And if he fails,
why should I hear him weeping? I mean if I fail, why should I
weep? Why should YOU hear ME? Then to me morals, the conscience,
the affections, and the passions are, I will own frankly and
sweepingly, so infinitely more important than the other parts of
life, that I conceive men rather triflers who become immersed in
the latter; and I will always think the man who keeps his lip
stiff, and makes 'a happy fireside clime,' and carries a pleasant
face about to friends and neighbours, infinitely greater (in the
abstract) than an atrabilious Shakespeare or a backbiting Kant or
Darwin. No offence to any of these gentlemen, two of whom probably
(one for certain) came up to my standard.
And now enough said; it were hard if a poor man could not criticise
another without having so much ink shed against him. But I shall
still regret you should have written on an hypothesis you knew to
be untenable, and that you should thus have made your paper, for
those who do not know me, essentially unfair. The rich, fox-
hunting squire speaks with one voice; the sick man of letters with
another. - Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
(PROMETHEUS-HEINE IN MINIMIS).
P.S. - Here I go again. To me, the medicine bottles on my chimney
and the blood on my handkerchief are accidents; they do not colour
my view of life, as you would know, I think, if you had experience
of sickness; they do not exist in my prospect; I would as soon drag
them under the eyes of my readers as I would mention a pimple I
might chance to have (saving your presence) on my posteriors. What
does it prove? what does it change? it has not hurt, it has not
changed me in any essential part; and I should think myself a
trifler and in bad taste if I introduced the world to these
unimportant privacies.
But, again, there is this mountain-range between us - THAT YOU DO
NOT BELIEVE ME. It is not flattering, but the fault is probably in
my literary art.
Letter: TO W. H. LOW
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, DECEMBER 26, 1885.
MY DEAR LOW, - LAMIA has not yet turned up, but your letter came to
me this evening with a scent of the Boulevard Montparnasse that was
irresistible. The sand of Lavenue's crumbled under my heel; and
the bouquet of the old Fleury came back to me, and I remembered the
day when I found a twenty franc piece under my fetish. Have you
that fetish still? and has it brought you luck? I remembered, too,
my first sight of you in a frock coat and a smoking-cap, when we
passed the evening at the Cafe de Medicis; and my last when we sat
and talked in the Parc Monceau; and all these things made me feel a
little young again, which, to one who has been mostly in bed for a
month, was a vivifying change.
Yes, you are lucky to have a bag that holds you comfortably. Mine
is a strange contrivance; I don't die, damme, and I can't get along
on both feet to save my soul; I am a chronic sickist; and my work
cripples along between bed and the parlour, between the medicine
bottle and the cupping glass. Well, I like my life all the same;
and should like it none the worse if I could have another talk with
you, though even my talks now are measured out to me by the minute
hand like poisons in a minim glass.
A photograph will be taken of my ugly mug and sent to you for
ulterior purposes: I have another thing coming out, which I did
not put in the way of the Scribners, I can scarce tell how; but I
was sick and penniless and rather back on the world, and mismanaged
it. I trust they will forgive me.
I am sorry to hear of Mrs. Low's illness, and glad to hear of her
recovery. I will announce the coming LAMIA to Bob: he steams away
at literature like smoke. I have a beautiful Bob on my walls, and
a good Sargent, and a delightful Lemon; and your etching now hangs
framed in the dining-room. So the arts surround me. - Yours,
R. L. S.
