SUNDAY, 11.20 A.M. - I wonder what you are doing now? - in church
likely, at the TE DEUM. Everything here is utterly silent. I can
hear men's footfalls streets away; the whole life of Edinburgh has
been sucked into sundry pious edifices; the gardens below my
windows are steeped in a diffused sunlight, and every tree seems
standing on tiptoes, strained and silent, as though to get its head
above its neighbour's and LISTEN. You know what I mean, don't you?
How trees do seem silently to assert themselves on an occasion! I
have been trying to write ROADS until I feel as if I were standing
on my head; but I mean ROADS, and shall do something to them.
I wish I could make you feel the hush that is over everything, only
made the more perfect by rare interruptions; and the rich, placid
light, and the still, autumnal foliage. Houses, you know, stand
all about our gardens: solid, steady blocks of houses; all look
empty and asleep.
MONDAY NIGHT. - The drums and fifes up in the Castle are sounding
the guard-call through the dark, and there is a great rattle of
carriages without. I have had (I must tell you) my bed taken out
of this room, so that I am alone in it with my books and two
tables, and two chairs, and a coal-skuttle (or SCUTTLE) (?) and a
DEBRIS of broken pipes in a corner, and my old school play-box, so
full of papers and books that the lid will not shut down, standing
reproachfully in the midst. There is something in it that is still
a little gaunt and vacant; it needs a little populous disorder over
it to give it the feel of homeliness, and perhaps a bit more
furniture, just to take the edge off the sense of illimitable
space, eternity, and a future state, and the like, that is brought
home to one, even in this small attic, by the wide, empty floor.
You would require to know, what only I can ever know, many grim and
many maudlin passages out of my past life to feel how great a
change has been made for me by this past summer. Let me be ever so
poor and thread-paper a soul, I am going to try for the best.
These good booksellers of mine have at last got a WERTHER without
illustrations. I want you to like Charlotte. Werther himself has
every feebleness and vice that could tend to make his suicide a
most virtuous and commendable action; and yet I like Werther too -
I don't know why, except that he has written the most delightful
letters in the world. Note, by the way, the passage under date
June 21st not far from the beginning; it finds a voice for a great
deal of dumb, uneasy, pleasurable longing that we have all had,
times without number. I looked that up the other day for ROADS, so
I know the reference; but you will find it a garden of flowers from
beginning to end. All through the passion keeps steadily rising,
from the thunderstorm at the country-house - there was thunder in
that story too - up to the last wild delirious interview; either
Lotte was no good at all, or else Werther should have remained
alive after that; either he knew his woman too well, or else he was
precipitate. But an idiot like that is hopeless; and yet, he
wasn't an idiot - I make reparation, and will offer eighteen pounds
of best wax at his tomb. Poor devil! he was only the weakest - or,
at least, a very weak strong man.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
17 HERIOT ROW, EDINBURGH, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1873.
. . . I WAS over last night, contrary to my own wish, in Leven,
Fife; and this morning I had a conversation of which, I think, some
account might interest you. I was up with a cousin who was fishing
in a mill-lade, and a shower of rain drove me for shelter into a
tumbledown steading attached to the mill. There I found a labourer
cleaning a byre, with whom I fell into talk. The man was to all
appearance as heavy, as HEBETE, as any English clodhopper; but I
knew I was in Scotland, and launched out forthright into Education
and Politics and the aims of one's life. I told him how I had
found the peasantry in Suffolk, and added that their state had made
me feel quite pained and down-hearted. 'It but to do that,' he
said, 'to onybody that thinks at a'!' Then, again, he said that he
could not conceive how anything could daunt or cast down a man who
had an aim in life. 'They that have had a guid schoolin' and do
nae mair, whatever they do, they have done; but him that has aye
something ayont need never be weary.' I have had to mutilate the
dialect much, so that it might be comprehensible to you; but I
think the sentiment will keep, even through a change of words,
something of the heartsome ring of encouragement that it had for
me: and that from a man cleaning a byre! You see what John Knox
and his schools have done.
SATURDAY. - This has been a charming day for me from morning to now
(5 P.M.). First, I found your letter, and went down and read it on
a seat in those Public Gardens of which you have heard already.
After lunch, my father and I went down to the coast and walked a
little way along the shore between Granton and Cramond. This has
always been with me a very favourite walk. The Firth closes
gradually together before you, the coast runs in a series of the
most beautifully moulded bays, hill after hill, wooded and softly
outlined, trends away in front till the two shores join together.
When the tide is out there are great, gleaming flats of wet sand,
over which the gulls go flying and crying; and every cape runs down
into them with its little spit of wall and trees. We lay together
a long time on the beach; the sea just babbled among the stones;
and at one time we heard the hollow, sturdy beat of the paddles of
an unseen steamer somewhere round the cape. I am glad to say that
the peace of the day and scenery was not marred by any
unpleasantness between us two.
I am, unhappily, off my style, and can do nothing well; indeed, I
fear I have marred ROADS finally by patching at it when I was out
of the humour. Only, I am beginning to see something great about
John Knox and Queen Mary: I like them both so much, that I feel as
if I could write the history fairly.
I have finished ROADS to-day, and send it off to you to see. The
Lord knows whether it is worth anything! - some of it pleases me a
good deal, but I fear it is quite unfit for any possible magazine.
However, I wish you to see it, as you know the humour in which it
was conceived, walking alone and very happily about the Suffolk
highways and byeways on several splendid sunny afternoons. -
Believe me, ever your faithful friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
MONDAY. - I have looked over ROADS again, and I am aghast at its
feebleness. It is the trial of a very ''prentice hand' indeed.
Shall I ever learn to do anything well? However, it shall go to
you, for the reasons given above.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
EDINBURGH, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1873.
. . . I MUST be very strong to have all this vexation and still to
be well. I was weighed the other day, and the gross weight of my
large person was eight stone six! Does it not seem surprising that
I can keep the lamp alight, through all this gusty weather, in so
frail a lantern? And yet it burns cheerily.
My mother is leaving for the country this morning, and my father
and I will be alone for the best part of the week in this house.
Then on Friday I go south to Dumfries till Monday. I must write
small, or I shall have a tremendous budget by then.
7.20 P.M. - I must tell you a thing I saw to-day. I was going down
to Portobello in the train, when there came into the next
compartment (third class) an artisan, strongly marked with
smallpox, and with sunken, heavy eyes - a face hard and unkind, and
without anything lovely. There was a woman on the platform seeing
him off. At first sight, with her one eye blind and the whole cast
of her features strongly plebeian, and even vicious, she seemed as
unpleasant as the man; but there was something beautifully soft, a
sort of light of tenderness, as on some Dutch Madonna, that came
over her face when she looked at the man. They talked for a while
together through the window; the man seemed to have been asking
money. 'Ye ken the last time,' she said, 'I gave ye two shillin's
for your ludgin', and ye said - ' it died off into whisper.
Plainly Falstaff and Dame Quickly over again. The man laughed
unpleasantly, even cruelly, and said something; and the woman
turned her back on the carriage and stood a long while so, and, do
what I might, I could catch no glimpse of her expression, although
I thought I saw the heave of a sob in her shoulders. At last,
after the train was already in motion, she turned round and put two
shillings into his hand. I saw her stand and look after us with a
perfect heaven of love on her face - this poor one-eyed Madonna -
until the train was out of sight; but the man, sordidly happy with
his gains, did not put himself to the inconvenience of one glance
to thank her for her ill-deserved kindness.
I have been up at the Spec. and looked out a reference I wanted.
The whole town is drowned in white, wet vapour off the sea.
Everything drips and soaks. The very statues seem wet to the skin.
I cannot pretend to be very cheerful; I did not see one contented
face in the streets; and the poor did look so helplessly chill and
dripping, without a stitch to change, or so much as a fire to dry
themselves at, or perhaps money to buy a meal, or perhaps even a
bed. My heart shivers for them.
DUMFRIES, FRIDAY. - All my thirst for a little warmth, a little
sun, a little corner of blue sky avails nothing. Without, the rain
falls with a long drawn SWISH, and the night is as dark as a vault.
There is no wind indeed, and that is a blessed change after the
unruly, bedlamite gusts that have been charging against one round
street corners and utterly abolishing and destroying all that is
peaceful in life. Nothing sours my temper like these coarse
termagant winds. I hate practical joking; and your vulgarest
practical joker is your flaw of wind.
I have tried to write some verses; but I find I have nothing to say
that has not been already perfectly said and perfectly sung in
ADELAIDE. I have so perfect an idea out of that song! The great
Alps, a wonder in the starlight - the river, strong from the hills,
and turbulent, and loudly audible at night - the country, a scented
FRUHLINGSGARTEN of orchards and deep wood where the nightingales
harbour - a sort of German flavour over all - and this love-drunken
man, wandering on by sleeping village and silent town, pours out of
his full heart, EINST, O WUNDER, EINST, etc. I wonder if I am
wrong about this being the most beautiful and perfect thing in the
world - the only marriage of really accordant words and music -
both drunk with the same poignant, unutterable sentiment.
To-day in Glasgow my father went off on some business, and my
mother and I wandered about for two hours. We had lunch together,
and were very merry over what the people at the restaurant would
think of us - mother and son they could not suppose us to be.
SATURDAY. - And to-day it came - warmth, sunlight, and a strong,
hearty living wind among the trees. I found myself a new being.
My father and I went off a long walk, through a country most
beautifully wooded and various, under a range of hills. You should
have seen one place where the wood suddenly fell away in front of
us down a long, steep hill between a double row of trees, with one
small fair-haired child framed in shadow in the foreground; and
when we got to the foot there was the little kirk and kirkyard of
Irongray, among broken fields and woods by the side of the bright,
rapid river. In the kirkyard there was a wonderful congregation of
tombstones, upright and recumbent on four legs (after our Scotch
fashion), and of flat-armed fir-trees. One gravestone was erected
by Scott (at a cost, I learn, of 70 pounds) to the poor woman who
served him as heroine in the HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN, and the
inscription in its stiff, Jedediah Cleishbotham fashion is not
without something touching. We went up the stream a little further
to where two Covenanters lie buried in an oakwood; the tombstone
(as the custom is) containing the details of their grim little
tragedy in funnily bad rhyme, one verse of which sticks in my
memory:-
'We died, their furious rage to stay,
Near to the kirk of Iron-gray.'
We then fetched a long compass round about through Holywood Kirk
and Lincluden ruins to Dumfries. But the walk came sadly to grief
as a pleasure excursion before our return . . .
SUNDAY. - Another beautiful day. My father and I walked into
Dumfries to church. When the service was done I noted the two
halberts laid against the pillar of the churchyard gate; and as I
had not seen the little weekly pomp of civic dignitaries in our
Scotch country towns for some years, I made my father wait. You
should have seen the provost and three bailies going stately away
down the sunlit street, and the two town servants strutting in
front of them, in red coats and cocked hats, and with the halberts
most conspicuously shouldered. We saw Burns's house - a place that
made me deeply sad - and spent the afternoon down the banks of the
Nith. I had not spent a day by a river since we lunched in the
meadows near Sudbury. The air was as pure and clear and sparkling
as spring water; beautiful, graceful outlines of hill and wood shut
us in on every side; and the swift, brown river fled smoothly away
from before our eyes, rippled over with oily eddies and dimples.
White gulls had come up from the sea to fish, and hovered and flew
hither and thither among the loops of the stream. By good fortune,
too, it was a dead calm between my father and me.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
[EDINBURGH], SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1873.
IT is a little sharp to-day; but bright and sunny with a sparkle in
the air, which is delightful after four days of unintermitting
rain. In the streets I saw two men meet after a long separation,
it was plain. They came forward with a little run and LEAPED at
each other's hands. You never saw such bright eyes as they both
had. It put one in a good humour to see it.
8 P.M. - I made a little more out of my work than I have made for a
long while back; though even now I cannot make things fall into
sentences - they only sprawl over the paper in bald orphan clauses.
Then I was about in the afternoon with Baxter; and we had a good
deal of fun, first rhyming on the names of all the shops we passed,
and afterwards buying needles and quack drugs from open-air
vendors, and taking much pleasure in their inexhaustible eloquence.
Every now and then as we went, Arthur's Seat showed its head at the
end of a street. Now, to-day the blue sky and the sunshine were
both entirely wintry; and there was about the hill, in these
glimpses, a sort of thin, unreal, crystalline distinctness that I
have not often seen excelled. As the sun began to go down over the
valley between the new town and the old, the evening grew
resplendent; all the gardens and low-lying buildings sank back and
became almost invisible in a mist of wonderful sun, and the Castle
stood up against the sky, as thin and sharp in outline as a castle
cut out of paper. Baxter made a good remark about Princes Street,
that it was the most elastic street for length that he knew;
sometimes it looks, as it looked to-night, interminable, a way
leading right into the heart of the red sundown; sometimes, again,
it shrinks together, as if for warmth, on one of the withering,
clear east-windy days, until it seems to lie underneath your feet.
I want to let you see these verses from an ODE TO THE CUCKOO,
written by one of the ministers of Leith in the middle of last
century - the palmy days of Edinburgh - who was a friend of Hume
and Adam Smith and the whole constellation. The authorship of
these beautiful verses has been most truculently fought about; but
whoever wrote them (and it seems as if this Logan had) they are
lovely -
'What time the pea puts on the bloom,
Thou fliest the vocal vale,
An annual guest, in other lands
Another spring to hail.
Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year.
O could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make on joyful wing
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the spring.'
SUNDAY. - I have been at church with my mother, where we heard
'Arise, shine,' sung excellently well, and my mother was so much
upset with it that she nearly had to leave church. This was the
antidote, however, to fifty minutes of solid sermon, varra heavy.
I have been sticking in to Walt Whitman; nor do I think I have ever
laboured so hard to attain so small a success. Still, the thing is
taking shape, I think; I know a little better what I want to say
all through; and in process of time, possibly I shall manage to say
it. I must say I am a very bad workman, MAIS J'AI DU COURAGE; I am
indefatigable at rewriting and bettering, and surely that humble
quality should get me on a little.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 6. - It is a magnificent glimmering moonlight
night, with a wild, great west wind abroad, flapping above one like
an immense banner, and every now and again swooping furiously
against my windows. The wind is too strong perhaps, and the trees
are certainly too leafless for much of that wide rustle that we
both remember; there is only a sharp, angry, sibilant hiss, like
breath drawn with the strength of the elements through shut teeth,
that one hears between the gusts only. I am in excellent humour
with myself, for I have worked hard and not altogether fruitlessly;
and I wished before I turned in just to tell you that things were
so. My dear friend, I feel so happy when I think that you remember
me kindly. I have been up to-night lecturing to a friend on life
and duties and what a man could do; a coal off the altar had been
laid on my lips, and I talked quite above my average, and hope I
spread, what you would wish to see spread, into one person's heart;
and with a new light upon it.
I shall tell you a story. Last Friday I went down to Portobello,
in the heavy rain, with an uneasy wind blowing PAR RAFALES off the
sea (or 'EN RAFALES' should it be? or what?). As I got down near
the beach a poor woman, oldish, and seemingly, lately at least,
respectable, followed me and made signs. She was drenched to the
skin, and looked wretched below wretchedness. You know, I did not
like to look back at her; it seemed as if she might misunderstand
and be terribly hurt and slighted; so I stood at the end of the
street - there was no one else within sight in the wet - and lifted
up my hand very high with some money in it. I heard her steps draw
heavily near behind me, and, when she was near enough to see, I let
the money fall in the mud and went off at my best walk without ever
turning round. There is nothing in the story; and yet you will
understand how much there is, if one chose to set it forth. You
see, she was so ugly; and you know there is something terribly,
miserably pathetic in a certain smile, a certain sodden aspect of
invitation on such faces. It is so terrible, that it is in a way
sacred; it means the outside of degradation and (what is worst of
all in life) false position. I hope you understand me rightly. -
Ever your faithful friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
[EDINBURGH], TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1873.
MY father has returned in better health, and I am more delighted
than I can well tell you. The one trouble that I can see no way
through is that his health, or my mother's, should give way. To-
night, as I was walking along Princes Street, I heard the bugles
sound the recall. I do not think I had ever remarked it before;
there is something of unspeakable appeal in the cadence. I felt as
if something yearningly cried to me out of the darkness overhead to
come thither and find rest; one felt as if there must be warm
hearts and bright fires waiting for one up there, where the buglers
stood on the damp pavement and sounded their friendly invitation
forth into the night.
WEDNESDAY. - I may as well tell you exactly about my health. I am
not at all ill; have quite recovered; only I am what MM. LES
MEDECINS call below par; which, in plain English, is that I am
weak. With tonics, decent weather, and a little cheerfulness, that
will go away in its turn, and I shall be all right again.
I am glad to hear what you say about the Exam.; until quite lately
I have treated that pretty cavalierly, for I say honestly that I do
not mind being plucked; I shall just have to go up again. We
travelled with the Lord Advocate the other day, and he strongly
advised me in my father's hearing to go to the English Bar; and the
Lord Advocate's advice goes a long way in Scotland. It is a sort
of special legal revelation. Don't misunderstand me. I don't, of
course, want to be plucked; but so far as my style of knowledge
suits them, I cannot make much betterment on it in a month. If
they wish scholarship more exact, I must take a new lease
altogether.
THURSDAY. - My head and eyes both gave in this morning, and I had
to take a day of complete idleness. I was in the open air all day,
and did no thought that I could avoid, and I think I have got my
head between my shoulders again; however, I am not going to do
much. I don't want you to run away with any fancy about my being
ill. Given a person weak and in some trouble, and working longer
hours than he is used to, and you have the matter in a nutshell.
You should have seen the sunshine on the hill to-day; it has lost
now that crystalline clearness, as if the medium were spring-water
(you see, I am stupid!); but it retains that wonderful thinness of
outline that makes the delicate shape and hue savour better in
one's mouth, like fine wine out of a finely-blown glass. The birds
are all silent now but the crows. I sat a long time on the stairs
that lead down to Duddingston Loch - a place as busy as a great
town during frost, but now solitary and silent; and when I shut my
eyes I heard nothing but the wind in the trees; and you know all
that went through me, I dare say, without my saying it.
II. - I am now all right. I do not expect any tic to-night, and
shall be at work again to-morrow. I have had a day of open air,
only a little modified by LE CAPITAINE FRACASSE before the dining-
room fire. I must write no more, for I am sleepy after two nights,
and to quote my book, 'SINON BLANCHES, DU MOINS GRISES'; and so I
must go to bed and faithfully, hoggishly slumber. - Your faithful
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
MENTONE, NOVEMBER 13, 1873.
MY DEAR MOTHER, - The PLACE is not where I thought; it is about
where the old Post Office was. The Hotel de Londres is no more an
hotel. I have found a charming room in the Hotel du Pavillon, just
across the road from the Prince's Villa; it has one window to the
south and one to the east, with a superb view of Mentone and the
hills, to which I move this afternoon. In the old great PLACE
there is a kiosque for the sale of newspapers; a string of
omnibuses (perhaps thirty) go up and down under the plane-trees of
the Turin Road on the occasion of each train; the Promenade has
crossed both streams, and bids fair to reach the Cap St. Martin.
The old chapel near Freeman's house at the entrance to the Gorbio
valley is now entirely submerged under a shining new villa, with
Pavilion annexed; over which, in all the pride of oak and chestnut
and divers coloured marbles, I was shown this morning by the
obliging proprietor. The Prince's Palace itself is rehabilitated,
and shines afar with white window-curtains from the midst of a
garden, all trim borders and greenhouses and carefully kept walks.
On the other side, the villas are more thronged together, and they
have arranged themselves, shelf after shelf, behind each other. I
see the glimmer of new buildings, too, as far eastward as Grimaldi;
and a viaduct carries (I suppose) the railway past the mouth of the
bone caves. F. Bacon (Lord Chancellor) made the remark that 'Time
was the greatest innovator'; it is perhaps as meaningless a remark
as was ever made; but as Bacon made it, I suppose it is better than
any that I could make. Does it not seem as if things were fluid?
They are displaced and altered in ten years so that one has
difficulty, even with a memory so very vivid and retentive for that
sort of thing as mine, in identifying places where one lived a long
while in the past, and which one has kept piously in mind during
all the interval. Nevertheless, the hills, I am glad to say, are
unaltered; though I dare say the torrents have given them many a
shrewd scar, and the rains and thaws dislodged many a boulder from
their heights, if one were only keen enough to perceive it. The
sea makes the same noise in the shingle; and the lemon and orange
gardens still discharge in the still air their fresh perfume; and
the people have still brown comely faces; and the Pharmacie Gros
still dispenses English medicines; and the invalids (eheu!) still
sit on the promenade and trifle with their fingers in the fringes
of shawls and wrappers; and the shop of Pascal Amarante still, in
its present bright consummate flower of aggrandisement and new
paint, offers everything that it has entered into people's hearts
to wish for in the idleness of a sanatorium; and the 'Chateau des
Morts' is still at the top of the town; and the fort and the jetty
are still at the foot, only there are now two jetties; and - I am
out of breath. (To be continued in our next.)
For myself, I have come famously through the journey; and as I have
written this letter (for the first time for ever so long) with ease
and even pleasure, I think my head must be better. I am still no
good at coming down hills or stairs; and my feet are more
consistently cold than is quite comfortable. But, these apart, I
feel well; and in good spirits all round.
I have written to Nice for letters, and hope to get them to-night.
Continue to address Poste Restante. Take care of yourselves.
This is my birthday, by the way - O, I said that before. Adieu. -
Ever your affectionate son,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
MENTONE, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1873.
MY DEAR FRIEND, - I sat a long while up among the olive yards to-
day at a favourite corner, where one has a fair view down the
valley and on to the blue floor of the sea. I had a Horace with
me, and read a little; but Horace, when you try to read him fairly
under the open heaven, sounds urban, and you find something of the
escaped townsman in his descriptions of the country, just as
somebody said that Morris's sea-pieces were all taken from the
coast. I tried for long to hit upon some language that might catch
ever so faintly the indefinable shifting colour of olive leaves;
and, above all, the changes and little silverings that pass over
them, like blushes over a face, when the wind tosses great branches
to and fro; but the Muse was not favourable. A few birds scattered
here and there at wide intervals on either side of the valley sang
the little broken songs of late autumn and there was a great stir
of insect life in the grass at my feet. The path up to this coign
of vantage, where I think I shall make it a habit to ensconce
myself a while of a morning, is for a little while common to the
peasant and a little clear brooklet. It is pleasant, in the
tempered grey daylight of the olive shadows, to see the people
picking their way among the stones and the water and the brambles;
the women especially, with the weights poised on their heads and
walking all from the hips with a certain graceful deliberation.
TUESDAY. - I have been to Nice to-day to see Dr. Bennet; he agrees
with Clark that there is no disease; but I finished up my day with
a lamentable exhibition of weakness. I could not remember French,
or at least I was afraid to go into any place lest I should not be
able to remember it, and so could not tell when the train went. At
last I crawled up to the station and sat down on the steps, and
just steeped myself there in the sunshine until the evening began
to fall and the air to grow chilly. This long rest put me all
right; and I came home here triumphantly and ate dinner well.
There is the full, true, and particular account of the worst day I
have had since I left London. I shall not go to Nice again for
some time to come.
THURSDAY. - I am to-day quite recovered, and got into Mentone to-
day for a book, which is quite a creditable walk. As an
intellectual being I have not yet begun to re-exist; my immortal
soul is still very nearly extinct; but we must hope the best. Now,
do take warning by me. I am set up by a beneficent providence at
the corner of the road, to warn you to flee from the hebetude that
is to follow. Being sent to the South is not much good unless you
take your soul with you, you see; and my soul is rarely with me
here. I don't see much beauty. I have lost the key; I can only be
placid and inert, and see the bright days go past uselessly one
after another; therefore don't talk foolishly with your mouth any
more about getting liberty by being ill and going south VIA the
sickbed. It is not the old free-born bird that gets thus to
freedom; but I know not what manacled and hide-bound spirit,
incapable of pleasure, the clay of a man. Go south! Why, I saw
more beauty with my eyes healthfully alert to see in two wet windy
February afternoons in Scotland than I can see in my beautiful
olive gardens and grey hills in a whole week in my low and lost
estate, as the Shorter Catechism puts it somewhere. It is a
pitiable blindness, this blindness of the soul; I hope it may not
be long with me. So remember to keep well; and remember rather
anything than not to keep well; and again I say, ANYTHING rather
than not to keep well.
Not that I am unhappy, mind you. I have found the words already -
placid and inert, that is what I am. I sit in the sun and enjoy
the tingle all over me, and I am cheerfully ready to concur with
any one who says that this is a beautiful place, and I have a
sneaking partiality for the newspapers, which would be all very
well, if one had not fallen from heaven and were not troubled with
some reminiscence of the INEFFABLE AURORE.
To sit by the sea and to be conscious of nothing but the sound of
the waves, and the sunshine over all your body, is not unpleasant;
but I was an Archangel once.
FRIDAY. - If you knew how old I felt! I am sure this is what age
brings with it - this carelessness, this disenchantment, this
continual bodily weariness. I am a man of seventy: O Medea, kill
me, or make me young again!
To-day has been cloudy and mild; and I have lain a great while on a
bench outside the garden wall (my usual place now) and looked at
the dove-coloured sea and the broken roof of cloud, but there was
no seeing in my eye. Let us hope to-morrow will be more
profitable.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
HOTEL MIRABEAU, MENTONE, SUNDAY, JANUARY 4, 1874.
MY DEAR MOTHER, - We have here fallen on the very pink of hotels.
I do not say that it is more pleasantly conducted than the
Pavillon, for that were impossible; but the rooms are so cheery and
bright and new, and then the food! I never, I think, so fully
appreciated the phrase 'the fat of the land' as I have done since I
have been here installed. There was a dish of eggs at DEJEUNER the
other day, over the memory of which I lick my lips in the silent
watches.
Now that the cold has gone again, I continue to keep well in body,
and already I begin to walk a little more. My head is still a very
feeble implement, and easily set a-spinning; and I can do nothing
in the way of work beyond reading books that may, I hope, be of
some use to me afterwards.
I was very glad to see that M'Laren was sat upon, and principally
for the reason why. Deploring as I do much of the action of the
Trades Unions, these conspiracy clauses and the whole partiality of
the Master and Servant Act are a disgrace to our equal laws. Equal
laws become a byeword when what is legal for one class becomes a
criminal offence for another. It did my heart good to hear that
man tell M'Laren how, as he had talked much of getting the
franchise for working men, he must now be content to see them use
it now they had got it. This is a smooth stone well planted in the
foreheads of certain dilettanti radicals, after M'Laren's fashion,
who are willing to give the working men words and wind, and votes
and the like, and yet think to keep all the advantages, just or
unjust, of the wealthier classes without abatement. I do hope wise
men will not attempt to fight the working men on the head of this
notorious injustice. Any such step will only precipitate the
action of the newly enfranchised classes, and irritate them into
acting hastily; when what we ought to desire should be that they
should act warily and little for many years to come, until
education and habit may make them the more fit.
All this (intended for my father) is much after the fashion of his
own correspondence. I confess it has left my own head exhausted; I
hope it may not produce the same effect on yours. But I want him
to look really into this question (both sides of it, and not the
representations of rabid middle-class newspapers, sworn to support
all the little tyrannies of wealth), and I know he will be
convinced that this is a case of unjust law; and that, however
desirable the end may seem to him, he will not be Jesuit enough to
think that any end will justify an unjust law.
Here ends the political sermon of your affectionate (and somewhat
dogmatical) son,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
MENTONE, JANUARY 7, 1874.
MY DEAR MOTHER, - I received yesterday two most charming letters -
the nicest I have had since I left - December 26th and January 1st:
this morning I got January 3rd.
Into the bargain with Marie, the American girl, who is grace
itself, and comes leaping and dancing simply like a wave - like
nothing else, and who yesterday was Queen out of the Epiphany cake
and chose Robinet (the French Painter) as her FAVORI with the most
pretty confusion possible - into the bargain with Marie, we have
two little Russian girls, with the youngest of whom, a little
polyglot button of a three-year old, I had the most laughable
little scene at lunch to-day. I was watching her being fed with
great amusement, her face being as broad as it is long, and her
mouth capable of unlimited extension; when suddenly, her eye
catching mine, the fashion of her countenance was changed, and
regarding me with a really admirable appearance of offended
dignity, she said something in Italian which made everybody laugh
much. It was explained to me that she had said I was very POLISSON
to stare at her. After this she was somewhat taken up with me, and
after some examination she announced emphatically to the whole
table, in German, that I was a MADCHEN; which word she repeated
with shrill emphasis, as though fearing that her proposition would
be called in question - MADCHEN, MADCHEN, MADCHEN, MADCHEN. This
hasty conclusion as to my sex she was led afterwards to revise, I
am informed; but her new opinion (which seems to have been
something nearer the truth) was announced in a third language quite
unknown to me, and probably Russian. To complete the scroll of her
accomplishments, she was brought round the table after the meal was
over, and said good-bye to me in very commendable English.
The weather I shall say nothing about, as I am incapable of
explaining my sentiments upon that subject before a lady. But my
health is really greatly improved: I begin to recognise myself
occasionally now and again, not without satisfaction.
Please remember me very kindly to Professor Swan; I wish I had a
story to send him; but story, Lord bless you, I have none to tell,
sir, unless it is the foregoing adventure with the little polyglot.
The best of that depends on the significance of POLISSON, which is
beautifully out of place.
SATURDAY, 10TH JANUARY. - The little Russian kid is only two and a
half: she speaks six languages. She and her sister (aet. 8) and
May Johnstone (aet. 8) are the delight of my life. Last night I
saw them all dancing - O it was jolly; kids are what is the matter
with me. After the dancing, we all - that is the two Russian
ladies, Robinet the French painter, Mr. and Mrs. Johnstone, two
governesses, and fitful kids joining us at intervals - played a
game of the stool of repentance in the Gallic idiom.
O - I have not told you that Colvin is gone; however, he is coming
back again; he has left clothes in pawn to me. - Ever your
affectionate son,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
MENTONE, TUESDAY, 13TH JANUARY 1874.
. . . I LOST a Philipine to little Mary Johnstone last night; so
to-day I sent her a rubbishing doll's toilet, and a little note
with it, with some verses telling how happy children made every one
near them happy also, and advising her to keep the lines, and some
day, when she was 'grown a stately demoiselle,' it would make her
'glad to know she gave pleasure long ago,' all in a very lame
fashion, with just a note of prose at the end, telling her to mind
her doll and the dog, and not trouble her little head just now to
understand the bad verses; for some time when she was ill, as I am
now, they would be plain to her and make her happy. She has just
been here to thank me, and has left me very happy. Children are
certainly too good to be true.
Yesterday I walked too far, and spent all the afternoon on the
outside of my bed; went finally to rest at nine, and slept nearly
twelve hours on the stretch. Bennet (the doctor), when told of it
this morning, augured well for my recovery; he said youth must be
putting in strong; of course I ought not to have slept at all. As
it was, I dreamed HORRIDLY; but not my usual dreams of social
miseries and misunderstandings and all sorts of crucifixions of the
spirit; but of good, cheery, physical things - of long successions
of vaulted, dimly lit cellars full of black water, in which I went
swimming among toads and unutterable, cold, blind fishes. Now and
then these cellars opened up into sort of domed music-hall places,
where one could land for a little on the slope of the orchestra,
but a sort of horror prevented one from staying long, and made one
plunge back again into the dead waters. Then my dream changed, and
I was a sort of Siamese pirate, on a very high deck with several
others. The ship was almost captured, and we were fighting
desperately. The hideous engines we used and the perfectly
incredible carnage that we effected by means of them kept me
cheery, as you may imagine; especially as I felt all the time my
sympathy with the boarders, and knew that I was only a prisoner
with these horrid Malays. Then I saw a signal being given, and
knew they were going to blow up the ship. I leaped right off, and
heard my captors splash in the water after me as thick as pebbles
when a bit of river bank has given way beneath the foot. I never
heard the ship blow up; but I spent the rest of the night swimming
about some piles with the whole sea full of Malays, searching for
me with knives in their mouths. They could swim any distance under
water, and every now and again, just as I was beginning to reckon
myself safe, a cold hand would be laid on my ankle - ugh!
However, my long sleep, troubled as it was, put me all right again,
and I was able to work acceptably this morning and be very jolly
all day. This evening I have had a great deal of talk with both
the Russian ladies; they talked very nicely, and are bright,
likable women both. They come from Georgia.
WEDNESDAY, 10.30. - We have all been to tea to-night at the
Russians' villa. Tea was made out of a samovar, which is something
like a small steam engine, and whose principal advantage is that it
burns the fingers of all who lay their profane touch upon it.
After tea Madame Z. played Russian airs, very plaintive and pretty;
so the evening was Muscovite from beginning to end. Madame G.'s
daughter danced a tarantella, which was very pretty.
Whenever Nelitchka cries - and she never cries except from pain -
all that one has to do is to start 'Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre.'
She cannot resist the attraction; she is drawn through her sobs
into the air; and in a moment there is Nelly singing, with the glad
look that comes into her face always when she sings, and all the
tears and pain forgotten.
It is wonderful, before I shut this up, how that child remains ever
interesting to me. Nothing can stale her infinite variety; and yet
it is not very various. You see her thinking what she is to do or
to say next, with a funny grave air of reserve, and then the face
breaks up into a smile, and it is probably 'Berecchino!' said with
that sudden little jump of the voice that one knows in children, as
the escape of a jack-in-the-box, and, somehow, I am quite happy
after that!
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
[MENTONE, JANUARY 1874.]
. . . LAST night I had a quarrel with the American on politics. It
is odd how it irritates you to hear certain political statements
made. He was excited, and he began suddenly to abuse our conduct
to America. I, of course, admitted right and left that we had
behaved disgracefully (as we had); until somehow I got tired of
turning alternate cheeks and getting duly buffeted; and when he
said that the Alabama money had not wiped out the injury, I
suggested, in language (I remember) of admirable directness and
force, that it was a pity they had taken the money in that case.
He lost his temper at once, and cried out that his dearest wish was
a war with England; whereupon I also lost my temper, and,
thundering at the pitch of my voice, I left him and went away by
myself to another part of the garden. A very tender reconciliation
took place, and I think there will come no more harm out of it. We
are both of us nervous people, and he had had a very long walk and
a good deal of beer at dinner: that explains the scene a little.
But I regret having employed so much of the voice with which I have
been endowed, as I fear every person in the hotel was taken into
confidence as to my sentiments, just at the very juncture when
neither the sentiments nor (perhaps) the language had been
sufficiently considered.
FRIDAY. - You have not yet heard of my book? - FOUR GREAT SCOTSMEN
- John Knox, David Hume, Robert Burns, Walter Scott. These, their
lives, their work, the social media in which they lived and worked,
with, if I can so make it, the strong current of the race making
itself felt underneath and throughout - this is my idea. You must
tell me what you think of it. The Knox will really be new matter,
as his life hitherto has been disgracefully written, and the events
are romantic and rapid; the character very strong, salient, and
worthy; much interest as to the future of Scotland, and as to that
part of him which was truly modern under his Hebrew disguise.
Hume, of course, the urbane, cheerful, gentlemanly, letter-writing
eighteenth century, full of attraction, and much that I don't yet
know as to his work. Burns, the sentimental side that there is in
most Scotsmen, his poor troubled existence, how far his poems were
his personally, and how far national, the question of the framework
of society in Scotland, and its fatal effect upon the finest
natures. Scott again, the ever delightful man, sane, courageous,
admirable; the birth of Romance, in a dawn that was a sunset;
snobbery, conservatism, the wrong thread in History, and notably in
that of his own land. VOILA, MADAME, LE MENU. COMMENT LE TROUVEZ-
VOUS? IL Y A DE LA BONNE VIANDO, SI ON PARVIENT A LA CUIRE
CONVENABLEMENT.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
[MENTONE, MARCH 28, 1874.]
MY DEAR MOTHER, - Beautiful weather, perfect weather; sun, pleasant
cooling winds; health very good; only incapacity to write.
The only new cloud on my horizon (I mean this in no menacing sense)
is the Prince. I have philosophical and artistic discussions with
the Prince. He is capable of talking for two hours upon end,
developing his theory of everything under Heaven from his first
position, which is that there is no straight line. Doesn't that
sound like a game of my father's - I beg your pardon, you haven't
read it - I don't mean MY father, I mean Tristram Shandy's. He is
very clever, and it is an immense joke to hear him unrolling all
the problems of life - philosophy, science, what you will - in this
charmingly cut-and-dry, here-we-are-again kind of manner. He is
better to listen to than to argue withal. When you differ from
him, he lifts up his voice and thunders; and you know that the
thunder of an excited foreigner often miscarries. One stands
aghast, marvelling how such a colossus of a man, in such a great
commotion of spirit, can open his mouth so much and emit such a
still small voice at the hinder end of it all. All this while he
walks about the room, smokes cigarettes, occupies divers chairs for
divers brief spaces, and casts his huge arms to the four winds like
the sails of a mill. He is a most sportive Prince.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
[SWANSTON], MAY 1874, MONDAY.
WE are now at Swanston Cottage, Lothianburn, Edinburgh. The garden
is but little clothed yet, for, you know, here we are six hundred
feet above the sea. It is very cold, and has sleeted this morning.
Everything wintry. I am very jolly, however, having finished
Victor Hugo, and just looking round to see what I should next take
up. I have been reading Roman Law and Calvin this morning.
EVENING. - I went up the hill a little this afternoon. The air was
invigorating, but it was so cold that my scalp was sore. With this
high wintry wind, and the grey sky, and faint northern daylight, it
was quite wonderful to hear such a clamour of blackbirds coming up
to me out of the woods, and the bleating of sheep being shorn in a
field near the garden, and to see golden patches of blossom already
on the furze, and delicate green shoots upright and beginning to
frond out, among last year's russet bracken. Flights of crows were
passing continually between the wintry leaden sky and the wintry
cold-looking hills. It was the oddest conflict of seasons. A wee
rabbit - this year's making, beyond question - ran out from under
my feet, and was in a pretty perturbation, until he hit upon a
lucky juniper and blotted himself there promptly. Evidently this
gentleman had not had much experience of life.
I have made an arrangement with my people: I am to have 84 pounds
a year - I only asked for 80 pounds on mature reflection - and as I
should soon make a good bit by my pen, I shall be very comfortable.
We are all as jolly as can be together, so that is a great thing
gained.
WEDNESDAY. - Yesterday I received a letter that gave me much
pleasure from a poor fellow-student of mine, who has been all
winter very ill, and seems to be but little better even now. He
seems very much pleased with ORDERED SOUTH. 'A month ago,' he
says, 'I could scarcely have ventured to read it; to-day I felt on
reading it as I did on the first day that I was able to sun myself
a little in the open air.' And much more to the like effect. It
is very gratifying. - Ever your faithful friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
SWANSTON, WEDNESDAY, MAY 1874.
STRUGGLING away at FABLES IN SONG. I am much afraid I am going to
make a real failure; the time is so short, and I am so out of the
humour. Otherwise very calm and jolly: cold still IMPOSSIBLE.
THURSDAY. - I feel happier about the FABLES, and it is warmer a
bit; but my body is most decrepit, and I can just manage to be
cheery and tread down hypochondria under foot by work. I lead such
a funny life, utterly without interest or pleasure outside of my
work: nothing, indeed, but work all day long, except a short walk
alone on the cold hills, and meals, and a couple of pipes with my
father in the evening. It is surprising how it suits me, and how
happy I keep.
SATURDAY. - I have received such a nice long letter (four sides)
from Leslie Stephen to-day about my Victor Hugo. It is accepted.
This ought to have made me gay, but it hasn't. I am not likely to
be much of a tonic to-night. I have been very cynical over myself
to-day, partly, perhaps, because I have just finished some of the
deedest rubbish about Lord Lytton's fables that an intelligent
editor ever shot into his wastepaper basket. If Morley prints it I
shall be glad, but my respect for him will be shaken.
TUESDAY. - Another cold day; yet I have been along the hillside,
wondering much at idiotic sheep, and raising partridges at every
second step. One little plover is the object of my firm adherence.
I pass his nest every day, and if you saw how he files by me, and
almost into my face, crying and flapping his wings, to direct my
attention from his little treasure, you would have as kind a heart
to him as I. To-day I saw him not, although I took my usual way;
and I am afraid that some person has abused his simple wiliness and
harried (as we say in Scotland) the nest. I feel much righteous
indignation against such imaginary aggressor. However, one must
not be too chary of the lower forms. To-day I sat down on a tree-
stump at the skirt of a little strip of planting, and thoughtlessly
began to dig out the touchwood with an end of twig. I found I had
carried ruin, death, and universal consternation into a little
community of ants; and this set me a-thinking of how close we are
environed with frail lives, so that we can do nothing without
spreading havoc over all manner of perishable homes and interests
and affections; and so on to my favourite mood of an holy terror
for all action and all inaction equally - a sort of shuddering
revulsion from the necessary responsibilities of life. We must not
be too scrupulous of others, or we shall die. Conscientiousness is
a sort of moral opium; an excitant in small doses, perhaps, but at
bottom a strong narcotic.
