SATURDAY. - I have been two days in Edinburgh, and so had not the
occasion to write to you. Morley has accepted the FABLES, and I
have seen it in proof, and think less of it than ever. However, of
course, I shall send you a copy of the MAGAZINE without fail, and
you can be as disappointed as you like, or the reverse if you can.
I would willingly recall it if I could.
Try, by way of change, Byron's MAZEPPA; you will be astonished. It
is grand and no mistake, and one sees through it a fire, and a
passion, and a rapid intuition of genius, that makes one rather
sorry for one's own generation of better writers, and - I don't
know what to say; I was going to say 'smaller men'; but that's not
right; read it, and you will feel what I cannot express. Don't be
put out by the beginning; persevere, and you will find yourself
thrilled before you are at an end with it. - Ever your faithful
friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
TRAIN BETWEEN EDINBURGH AND CHESTER, AUGUST 8, 1874.
MY father and mother reading. I think I shall talk to you for a
moment or two. This morning at Swanston, the birds, poor
creatures, had the most troubled hour or two; evidently there was a
hawk in the neighbourhood; not one sang; and the whole garden
thrilled with little notes of warning and terror. I did not know
before that the voice of birds could be so tragically expressive.
I had always heard them before express their trivial satisfaction
with the blue sky and the return of daylight. Really, they almost
frightened me; I could hear mothers and wives in terror for those
who were dear to them; it was easy to translate, I wish it were as
easy to write; but it is very hard in this flying train, or I would
write you more.
CHESTER. - I like this place much; but somehow I feel glad when I
get among the quiet eighteenth century buildings, in cosy places
with some elbow room about them, after the older architecture.
This other is bedevilled and furtive; it seems to stoop; I am
afraid of trap-doors, and could not go pleasantly into such houses.
I don't know how much of this is legitimately the effect of the
architecture; little enough possibly; possibly far the most part of
it comes from bad historical novels and the disquieting statuary
that garnishes some facades.
On the way, to-day, I passed through my dear Cumberland country.
Nowhere to as great a degree can one find the combination of
lowland and highland beauties; the outline of the blue hills is
broken by the outline of many tumultuous tree-clumps; and the broad
spaces of moorland are balanced by a network of deep hedgerows that
might rival Suffolk, in the foreground. - How a railway journey
shakes and discomposes one, mind and body! I grow blacker and
blacker in humour as the day goes on; and when at last I am let
out, and have the fresh air about me, it is as though I were born
again, and the sick fancies flee away from my mind like swans in
spring.
I want to come back on what I have said about eighteenth century
and middle-age houses: I do not know if I have yet explained to
you the sort of loyalty, of urbanity, that there is about the one
to my mind; the spirit of a country orderly and prosperous, a
flavour of the presence of magistrates and well-to-do merchants in
bag-wigs, the clink of glasses at night in fire-lit parlours,
something certain and civic and domestic, is all about these quiet,
staid, shapely houses, with no character but their exceeding
shapeliness, and the comely external utterance that they make of
their internal comfort. Now the others are, as I have said, both
furtive and bedevilled; they are sly and grotesque; they combine
their sort of feverish grandeur with their sort of secretive
baseness, after the manner of a Charles the Ninth. They are
peopled for me with persons of the same fashion. Dwarfs and
sinister people in cloaks are about them; and I seem to divine
crypts, and, as I said, trap-doors. O God be praised that we live
in this good daylight and this good peace.
BARMOUTH, AUGUST 9TH. - To-day we saw the cathedral at Chester;
and, far more delightful, saw and heard a certain inimitable verger
who took us round. He was full of a certain recondite, far-away
humour that did not quite make you laugh at the time, but was
somehow laughable to recollect. Moreover, he had so far a just
imagination, and could put one in the right humour for seeing an
old place, very much as, according to my favourite text, Scott's
novels and poems do for one. His account of the monks in the
Scriptorium, with their cowls over their heads, in a certain
sheltered angle of the cloister where the big Cathedral building
kept the sun off the parchments, was all that could be wished; and
so too was what he added of the others pacing solemnly behind them
and dropping, ever and again, on their knees before a little shrine
there is in the wall, 'to keep 'em in the frame of mind.' You will
begin to think me unduly biassed in this verger's favour if I go on
to tell you his opinion of me. We got into a little side chapel,
whence we could hear the choir children at practice, and I stopped
a moment listening to them, with, I dare say, a very bright face,
for the sound was delightful to me. 'Ah,' says he, 'you're VERY
fond of music.' I said I was. 'Yes, I could tell that by your
head,' he answered. 'There's a deal in that head.' And he shook
his own solemnly. I said it might be so, but I found it hard, at
least, to get it out. Then my father cut in brutally, said anyway
I had no ear, and left the verger so distressed and shaken in the
foundations of his creed that, I hear, he got my father aside
afterwards and said he was sure there was something in my face, and
wanted to know what it was, if not music. He was relieved when he
heard that I occupied myself with litterature (which word, note
here, I do not spell correctly). Good-night, and here's the
verger's health!
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
SWANSTON, WEDNESDAY, [AUTUMN] 1874.
I HAVE been hard at work all yesterday, and besides had to write a
long letter to Bob, so I found no time until quite late, and then
was sleepy. Last night it blew a fearful gale; I was kept awake
about a couple of hours, and could not get to sleep for the horror
of the wind's noise; the whole house shook; and, mind you, our
house IS a house, a great castle of jointed stone that would weigh
up a street of English houses; so that when it quakes, as it did
last night, it means something. But the quaking was not what put
me about; it was the horrible howl of the wind round the corner;
the audible haunting of an incarnate anger about the house; the
evil spirit that was abroad; and, above all, the shuddering silent
pauses when the storm's heart stands dreadfully still for a moment.
O how I hate a storm at night! They have been a great influence in
my life, I am sure; for I can remember them so far back - long
before I was six at least, for we left the house in which I
remember listening to them times without number when I was six.
And in those days the storm had for me a perfect impersonation, as
durable and unvarying as any heathen deity. I always heard it, as
a horseman riding past with his cloak about his head, and somehow
always carried away, and riding past again, and being baffled yet
once more, AD INFINITUM, all night long. I think I wanted him to
get past, but I am not sure; I know only that I had some interest
either for or against in the matter; and I used to lie and hold my
breath, not quite frightened, but in a state of miserable
exaltation.
My first John Knox is in proof, and my second is on the anvil. It
is very good of me so to do; for I want so much to get to my real
tour and my sham tour, the real tour first: it is always working
in my head, and if I can only turn on the right sort of style at
the right moment, I am not much afraid of it. One thing bothers
me; what with hammering at this J. K., and writing necessary
letters, and taking necessary exercise (that even not enough, the
weather is so repulsive to me, cold and windy), I find I have no
time for reading except times of fatigue, when I wish merely to
relax myself. O - and I read over again for this purpose
Flaubert's TENTATION DE ST. ANTOINE; it struck me a good deal at
first, but this second time it has fetched me immensely. I am but
just done with it, so you will know the large proportion of salt to
take with my present statement, that it's the finest thing I ever
read! Of course, it isn't that, it's full of LONGUEURS, and is not
quite 'redd up,' as we say in Scotland, not quite articulated; but
there are splendid things in it.
I say, DO take your maccaroni with oil: DO, PLEASE. It's BEASTLY
with butter. - Ever your faithful friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
[EDINBURGH], DECEMBER 23, 1874.
MONDAY. - I have come from a concert, and the concert was rather a
disappointment. Not so my afternoon skating - Duddingston, our big
loch, is bearing; and I wish you could have seen it this afternoon,
covered with people, in thin driving snow flurries, the big hill
grim and white and alpine overhead in the thick air, and the road
up the gorge, as it were into the heart of it, dotted black with
traffic. Moreover, I CAN skate a little bit; and what one can do
is always pleasant to do.
TUESDAY. - I got your letter to-day, and was so glad thereof. It
was of good omen to me also. I worked from ten to one (my classes
are suspended now for Xmas holidays), and wrote four or five
Portfolio pages of my Buckinghamshire affair. Then I went to
Duddingston and skated all afternoon. If you had seen the moon
rising, a perfect sphere of smoky gold, in the dark air above the
trees, and the white loch thick with skaters, and the great hill,
snow-sprinkled, overhead! It was a sight for a king.
WEDNESDAY. - I stayed on Duddingston to-day till after nightfall.
The little booths that hucksters set up round the edge were marked
each one by its little lamp. There were some fires too; and the
light, and the shadows of the people who stood round them to warm
themselves, made a strange pattern all round on the snow-covered
ice. A few people with torches began to travel up and down the
ice, a lit circle travelling along with them over the snow. A
gigantic moon rose, meanwhile, over the trees and the kirk on the
promontory, among perturbed and vacillating clouds.
The walk home was very solemn and strange. Once, through a broken
gorge, we had a glimpse of a little space of mackerel sky, moon-
litten, on the other side of the hill; the broken ridges standing
grey and spectral between; and the hilltop over all, snow-white,
and strangely magnified in size.
This must go to you to-morrow, so that you may read it on Christmas
Day for company. I hope it may be good company to you.
THURSDAY. - Outside, it snows thick and steadily. The gardens
before our house are now a wonderful fairy forest. And O, this
whiteness of things, how I love it, how it sends the blood about my
body! Maurice de Guerin hated snow; what a fool he must have been!
Somebody tried to put me out of conceit with it by saying that
people were lost in it. As if people don't get lost in love, too,
and die of devotion to art; as if everything worth were not an
occasion to some people's end.
What a wintry letter this is! Only I think it is winter seen from
the inside of a warm greatcoat. And there is, at least, a warm
heart about it somewhere. Do you know, what they say in Xmas
stories is true? I think one loves their friends more dearly at
this season. - Ever your faithful friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
17 HERIOT ROAD, EDINBURGH [JANUARY 1875].
MY DEAR COLVIN, - I have worked too hard; I have given myself one
day of rest, and that was not enough; I am giving myself another.
I shall go to bed again likewise so soon as this is done, and
slumber most potently.
9 P.M., slept all afternoon like a lamb.
About my coming south, I think the still small unanswerable voice
of coins will make it impossible until the session is over (end of
March); but for all that, I think I shall hold out jolly. I do not
want you to come and bother yourself; indeed, it is still not quite
certain whether my father will be quite fit for you, although I
have now no fear of that really. Now don't take up this wrongly; I
wish you could come; and I do not know anything that would make me
happier, but I see that it is wrong to expect it, and so I resign
myself: some time after. I offered Appleton a series of papers on
the modern French school - the Parnassiens, I think they call them
- de Banville, Coppee, Soulary, and Sully Prudhomme. But he has
not deigned to answer my letter.
I shall have another Portfolio paper so soon as I am done with this
story, that has played me out; the story is to be called WHEN THE
DEVIL WAS WELL: scene, Italy, Renaissance; colour, purely
imaginary of course, my own unregenerate idea of what Italy then
was. O, when shall I find the story of my dreams, that shall never
halt nor wander nor step aside, but go ever before its face, and
ever swifter and louder, until the pit receives it, roaring? The
Portfolio paper will be about Scotland and England. - Ever yours,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
EDINBURGH, TUESDAY [FEBRUARY 1875].
I GOT your nice long gossiping letter to-day - I mean by that that
there was more news in it than usual - and so, of course, I am
pretty jolly. I am in the house, however, with such a beastly cold
in the head. Our east winds begin already to be very cold.
O, I have such a longing for children of my own; and yet I do not
think I could bear it if I had one. I fancy I must feel more like
a woman than like a man about that. I sometimes hate the children
I see on the street - you know what I mean by hate - wish they were
somewhere else, and not there to mock me; and sometimes, again, I
don't know how to go by them for the love of them, especially the
very wee ones.
THURSDAY. - I have been still in the house since I wrote, and I
HAVE worked. I finished the Italian story; not well, but as well
as I can just now; I must go all over it again, some time soon,
when I feel in the humour to better and perfect it. And now I have
taken up an old story, begun years ago; and I have now re-written
all I had written of it then, and mean to finish it. What I have
lost and gained is odd. As far as regards simple writing, of
course, I am in another world now; but in some things, though more
clumsy, I seem to have been freer and more plucky: this is a
lesson I have taken to heart. I have got a jolly new name for my
old story. I am going to call it A COUNTRY DANCE; the two heroes
keep changing places, you know; and the chapter where the most of
this changing goes on is to be called 'Up the middle, down the
middle.' It will be in six, or (perhaps) seven chapters. I have
never worked harder in my life than these last four days. If I can
only keep it up.
SATURDAY. - Yesterday, Leslie Stephen, who was down here to
lecture, called on me and took me up to see a poor fellow, a poet
who writes for him, and who has been eighteen months in our
infirmary, and may be, for all I know, eighteen months more. It
was very sad to see him there, in a little room with two beds, and
a couple of sick children in the other bed; a girl came in to visit
the children, and played dominoes on the counterpane with them; the
gas flared and crackled, the fire burned in a dull economical way;
Stephen and I sat on a couple of chairs, and the poor fellow sat up
in his bed with his hair and beard all tangled, and talked as
cheerfully as if he had been in a King's palace, or the great
King's palace of the blue air. He has taught himself two languages
since he has been lying there. I shall try to be of use to him.
We have had two beautiful spring days, mild as milk, windy withal,
and the sun hot. I dreamed last night I was walking by moonlight
round the place where the scene of my story is laid; it was all so
quiet and sweet, and the blackbirds were singing as if it was day;
it made my heart very cool and happy. - Ever yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
FEBRUARY 8, 1875.
MY DEAR COLVIN, - Forgive my bothering you. Here is the proof of
my second KNOX. Glance it over, like a good fellow, and if there's
anything very flagrant send it to me marked. I have no confidence
in myself; I feel such an ass. What have I been doing? As near as
I can calculate, nothing. And yet I have worked all this month
from three to five hours a day, that is to say, from one to three
hours more than my doctor allows me; positively no result.
No, I can write no article just now; I am PIOCHING, like a madman,
at my stories, and can make nothing of them; my simplicity is tame
and dull - my passion tinsel, boyish, hysterical. Never mind - ten
years hence, if I live, I shall have learned, so help me God. I
know one must work, in the meantime (so says Balzac) COMME LE
MINEUR ENFOUI SOUS UN EBOULEMENT.
J'Y PARVIENDRAI, NOM DE NOM DE NOM! But it's a long look forward.
- Ever yours,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
[BARBIZON, APRIL 1875.]
MY DEAR FRIEND, - This is just a line to say I am well and happy.
I am here in my dear forest all day in the open air. It is very be
- no, not beautiful exactly, just now, but very bright and living.
There are one or two song birds and a cuckoo; all the fruit-trees
are in flower, and the beeches make sunshine in a shady place, I
begin to go all right; you need not be vexed about my health; I
really was ill at first, as bad as I have been for nearly a year;
but the forest begins to work, and the air, and the sun, and the
smell of the pines. If I could stay a month here, I should be as
right as possible. Thanks for your letter. - Your faithful
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
17 HERIOT ROW, EDINBURGH, SUNDAY [APRIL 1875].
HERE is my long story: yesterday night, after having supped, I
grew so restless that I was obliged to go out in search of some
excitement. There was a half-moon lying over on its back, and
incredibly bright in the midst of a faint grey sky set with faint
stars: a very inartistic moon, that would have damned a picture.
At the most populous place of the city I found a little boy, three
years old perhaps, half frantic with terror, and crying to every
one for his 'Mammy.' This was about eleven, mark you. People
stopped and spoke to him, and then went on, leaving him more
frightened than before. But I and a good-humoured mechanic came up
together; and I instantly developed a latent faculty for setting
the hearts of children at rest. Master Tommy Murphy (such was his
name) soon stopped crying, and allowed me to take him up and carry
him; and the mechanic and I trudged away along Princes Street to
find his parents. I was soon so tired that I had to ask the
mechanic to carry the bairn; and you should have seen the puzzled
contempt with which he looked at me, for knocking in so soon. He
was a good fellow, however, although very impracticable and
sentimental; and he soon bethought him that Master Murphy might
catch cold after his excitement, so we wrapped him up in my
greatcoat. 'Tobauga (Tobago) Street' was the address he gave us;
and we deposited him in a little grocer's shop and went through all
the houses in the street without being able to find any one of the
name of Murphy. Then I set off to the head police office, leaving
my greatcoat in pawn about Master Murphy's person. As I went down
one of the lowest streets in the town, I saw a little bit of life
that struck me. It was now half-past twelve, a little shop stood
still half-open, and a boy of four or five years old was walking up
and down before it imitating cockcrow. He was the only living
creature within sight.
At the police offices no word of Master Murphy's parents; so I went
back empty-handed. The good groceress, who had kept her shop open
all this time, could keep the child no longer; her father, bad with
bronchitis, said he must forth. So I got a large scone with
currants in it, wrapped my coat about Tommy, got him up on my arm,
and away to the police office with him: not very easy in my mind,
for the poor child, young as he was - he could scarce speak - was
full of terror for the 'office,' as he called it. He was now very
grave and quiet and communicative with me; told me how his father
thrashed him, and divers household matters. Whenever he saw a
woman on our way he looked after her over my shoulder and then gave
his judgment: 'That's no HER,' adding sometimes, 'She has a wean
wi' her.' Meantime I was telling him how I was going to take him
to a gentleman who would find out his mother for him quicker than
ever I could, and how he must not be afraid of him, but be brave,
as he had been with me. We had just arrived at our destination -
we were just under the lamp - when he looked me in the face and
said appealingly, 'He'll no put - me in the office?' And I had to
assure him that he would not, even as I pushed open the door and
took him in.
The serjeant was very nice, and I got Tommy comfortably seated on a
bench, and spirited him up with good words and the scone with the
currants in it; and then, telling him I was just going out to look
for Mammy, I got my greatcoat and slipped away.
Poor little boy! he was not called for, I learn, until ten this
morning. This is very ill written, and I've missed half that was
picturesque in it; but to say truth, I am very tired and sleepy:
it was two before I got to bed. However, you see, I had my
excitement.
MONDAY. - I have written nothing all morning; I cannot settle to
it. Yes - I WILL though.
10.45. - And I did. I want to say something more to you about the
three women. I wonder so much why they should have been WOMEN, and
halt between two opinions in the matter. Sometimes I think it is
because they were made by a man for men; sometimes, again, I think
there is an abstract reason for it, and there is something more
substantive about a woman than ever there can be about a man. I
can conceive a great mythical woman, living alone among
inaccessible mountain-tops or in some lost island in the pagan
seas, and ask no more. Whereas if I hear of a Hercules, I ask
after Iole or Dejanira. I cannot think him a man without women.
But I can think of these three deep-breasted women, living out all
their days on remote hilltops, seeing the white dawn and the purple
even, and the world outspread before them for ever, and no more to
them for ever than a sight of the eyes, a hearing of the ears, a
far-away interest of the inflexible heart, not pausing, not
pitying, but austere with a holy austerity, rigid with a calm and
passionless rigidity; and I find them none the less women to the
end.
And think, if one could love a woman like that once, see her once
grow pale with passion, and once wring your lips out upon hers,
would it not be a small thing to die? Not that there is not a
passion of a quite other sort, much less epic, far more dramatic
and intimate, that comes out of the very frailty of perishable
women; out of the lines of suffering that we see written about
their eyes, and that we may wipe out if it were but for a moment;
out of the thin hands, wrought and tempered in agony to a fineness
of perception, that the indifferent or the merely happy cannot
know; out of the tragedy that lies about such a love, and the
pathetic incompleteness. This is another thing, and perhaps it is
a higher. I look over my shoulder at the three great headless
Madonnas, and they look back at me and do not move; see me, and
through and over me, the foul life of the city dying to its embers
already as the night draws on; and over miles and miles of silent
country, set here and there with lit towns, thundered through here
and there with night expresses scattering fire and smoke; and away
to the ends of the earth, and the furthest star, and the blank
regions of nothing; and they are not moved. My quiet, great-kneed,
deep-breasted, well-draped ladies of Necessity, I give my heart to
you!
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
[SWANSTON, TUESDAY, APRIL 1875.]
MY DEAR FRIEND, - I have been so busy, away to Bridge Of Allan with
my father first, and then with Simpson and Baxter out here from
Saturday till Monday. I had no time to write, and, as it is, am
strangely incapable. Thanks for your letter. I have been reading
such lots of law, and it seems to take away the power of writing
from me. From morning to night, so often as I have a spare moment,
I am in the embrace of a law book - barren embraces. I am in good
spirits; and my heart smites me as usual, when I am in good
spirits, about my parents. If I get a bit dull, I am away to
London without a scruple; but so long as my heart keeps up, I am
all for my parents.
What do you think of Henley's hospital verses? They were to have
been dedicated to me, but Stephen wouldn't allow it - said it would
be pretentious.
WEDNESDAY. - I meant to have made this quite a decent letter this
morning, but listen. I had pain all last night, and did not sleep
well, and now am cold and sickish, and strung up ever and again
with another flash of pain. Will you remember me to everybody? My
principal characteristics are cold, poverty, and Scots Law - three
very bad things. Oo, how the rain falls! The mist is quite low on
the hill. The birds are twittering to each other about the
indifferent season. O, here's a gem for you. An old godly woman
predicted the end of the world, because the seasons were becoming
indistinguishable; my cousin Dora objected that last winter had
been pretty well marked. 'Yes, my dear,' replied the
soothsayeress; 'but I think you'll find the summer will be rather
coamplicated.' - Ever your faithful
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
[EDINBURGH, SATURDAY, APRIL 1875.]
I AM getting on with my rehearsals, but I find the part very hard.
I rehearsed yesterday from a quarter to seven, and to-day from four
(with interval for dinner) to eleven. You see the sad strait I am
in for ink. - A DEMAIN.
SUNDAY. - This is the third ink-bottle I have tried, and still it's
nothing to boast of. My journey went off all right, and I have
kept ever in good spirits. Last night, indeed, I did think my
little bit of gaiety was going away down the wind like a whiff of
tobacco smoke, but to-day it has come back to me a little. The
influence of this place is assuredly all that can be worst against
one; MAIL IL FAUT LUTTER. I was haunted last night when I was in
bed by the most cold, desolate recollections of my past life here;
I was glad to try and think of the forest, and warm my hands at the
thought of it. O the quiet, grey thickets, and the yellow
butterflies, and the woodpeckers, and the outlook over the plain as
it were over a sea! O for the good, fleshly stupidity of the
woods, the body conscious of itself all over and the mind
forgotten, the clean air nestling next your skin as though your
clothes were gossamer, the eye filled and content, the whole MAN
HAPPY! Whereas here it takes a pull to hold yourself together; it
needs both hands, and a book of stoical maxims, and a sort of
bitterness at the heart by way of armour. - Ever your faithful
R. L. S.
WEDNESDAY. - I am so played out with a cold in my eye that I cannot
see to write or read without difficulty. It is swollen HORRIBLE;
so how I shall look as Orsino, God knows! I have my fine clothes
tho'. Henley's sonnets have been taken for the CORNHILL. He is
out of hospital now, and dressed, but still not too much to brag of
in health, poor fellow, I am afraid.
SUNDAY. - So. I have still rather bad eyes, and a nasty sore
throat. I play Orsino every day, in all the pomp of Solomon,
splendid Francis the First clothes, heavy with gold and stage
jewellery. I play it ill enough, I believe; but me and the
clothes, and the wedding wherewith the clothes and me are
reconciled, produce every night a thrill of admiration. Our cook
told my mother (there is a servants' night, you know) that she and
the housemaid were 'just prood to be able to say it was oor young
gentleman.' To sup afterwards with these clothes on, and a
wonderful lot of gaiety and Shakespearean jokes about the table, is
something to live for. It is so nice to feel you have been dead
three hundred years, and the sound of your laughter is faint and
far off in the centuries. - Ever your faithful
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
WEDNESDAY. - A moment at last. These last few days have been as
jolly as days could be, and by good fortune I leave to-morrow for
Swanston, so that I shall not feel the whole fall back to habitual
self. The pride of life could scarce go further. To live in
splendid clothes, velvet and gold and fur, upon principally
champagne and lobster salad, with a company of people nearly all of
whom are exceptionally good talkers; when your days began about
eleven and ended about four - I have lost that sentence; I give it
up; it is very admirable sport, any way. Then both my afternoons
have been so pleasantly occupied - taking Henley drives. I had a
business to carry him down the long stair, and more of a business
to get him up again, but while he was in the carriage it was
splendid. It is now just the top of spring with us. The whole
country is mad with green. To see the cherry-blossom bitten out
upon the black firs, and the black firs bitten out of the blue sky,
was a sight to set before a king. You may imagine what it was to a
man who has been eighteen months in an hospital ward. The look of
his face was a wine to me.
I shall send this off to-day to let you know of my new address -
Swanston Cottage, Lothianburn, Edinburgh. Salute the faithful in
my name. Salute Priscilla, salute Barnabas, salute Ebenezer - O
no, he's too much, I withdraw Ebenezer; enough of early Christians.
- Ever your faithful
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
[EDINBURGH, JUNE 1875.]
SIMPLY a scratch. All right, jolly, well, and through with the
difficulty. My father pleased about the Burns. Never travel in
the same carriage with three able-bodied seamen and a fruiterer
from Kent; the A.-B.'s speak all night as though they were hailing
vessels at sea; and the fruiterer as if he were crying fruit in a
noisy market-place - such, at least, is my FUNESTE experience. I
wonder if a fruiterer from some place else - say Worcestershire -
would offer the same phenomena? insoluble doubt.
R. L. S.
Later. - Forgive me, couldn't get it off. Awfully nice man here
to-night. Public servant - New Zealand. Telling us all about the
South Sea Islands till I was sick with desire to go there:
beautiful places, green for ever; perfect climate; perfect shapes
of men and women, with red flowers in their hair; and nothing to do
but to study oratory and etiquette, sit in the sun, and pick up the
fruits as they fall. Navigator's Island is the place; absolute
balm for the weary. - Ever your faithful friend,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
SWANSTON. END OF JUNE, 1875.
THURSDAY. - This day fortnight I shall fall or conquer. Outside
the rain still soaks; but now and again the hilltop looks through
the mist vaguely. I am very comfortable, very sleepy, and very
much satisfied with the arrangements of Providence.
SATURDAY - NO, SUNDAY, 12.45. - Just been - not grinding, alas! - I
couldn't - but doing a bit of Fontainebleau. I don't think I'll be
plucked. I am not sure though - I am so busy, what with this d-d
law, and this Fontainebleau always at my elbow, and three plays
(three, think of that!) and a story, all crying out to me, 'Finish,
finish, make an entire end, make us strong, shapely, viable
creatures!' It's enough to put a man crazy. Moreover, I have my
thesis given out now, which is a fifth (is it fifth? I can't count)
incumbrance.
SUNDAY. - I've been to church, and am not depressed - a great step.
I was at that beautiful church my PETIT POEME EN PROSE was about.
It is a little cruciform place, with heavy cornices and string
course to match, and a steep slate roof. The small kirkyard is
full of old grave-stones. One of a Frenchman from Dunkerque - I
suppose he died prisoner in the military prison hard by - and one,
the most pathetic memorial I ever saw, a poor school-slate, in a
wooden frame, with the inscription cut into it evidently by the
father's own hand. In church, old Mr. Torrence preached - over
eighty, and a relic of times forgotten, with his black thread
gloves and mild old foolish face. One of the nicest parts of it
was to see John Inglis, the greatest man in Scotland, our Justice-
General, and the only born lawyer I ever heard, listening to the
piping old body, as though it had all been a revelation, grave and
respectful. - Ever your faithful
R. L. S.
CHAPTER III - ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR, EDINBURGH - PARIS -
FONTAINEBLEAU, JULY 1875-JULY 1879
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
[CHEZ SIRON, BARBIZON, SEINE ET MARNE, AUGUST 1875.]
MY DEAR MOTHER, - I have been three days at a place called Grez, a
pretty and very melancholy village on the plain. A low bridge of
many arches choked with sedge; great fields of white and yellow
water-lilies; poplars and willows innumerable; and about it all
such an atmosphere of sadness and slackness, one could do nothing
but get into the boat and out of it again, and yawn for bedtime.
Yesterday Bob and I walked home; it came on a very creditable
thunderstorm; we were soon wet through; sometimes the rain was so
heavy that one could only see by holding the hand over the eyes;
and to crown all, we lost our way and wandered all over the place,
and into the artillery range, among broken trees, with big shot
lying about among the rocks. It was near dinner-time when we got
to Barbizon; and it is supposed that we walked from twenty-three to
twenty-five miles, which is not bad for the Advocate, who is not
tired this morning. I was very glad to be back again in this dear
place, and smell the wet forest in the morning.
Simpson and the rest drove back in a carriage, and got about as wet
as we did.
Why don't you write? I have no more to say. - Ever your
affectionate son,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
CHATEAU RENARD, LOIRET, AUGUST 1875.
. . . I HAVE been walking these last days from place to place; and
it does make it hot for walking with a sack in this weather. I am
burned in horrid patches of red; my nose, I fear, is going to take
the lead in colour; Simpson is all flushed, as if he were seen by a
sunset. I send you here two rondeaux; I don't suppose they will
amuse anybody but me; but this measure, short and yet intricate, is
just what I desire; and I have had some good times walking along
the glaring roads, or down the poplar alley of the great canal,
pitting my own humour to this old verse.
Far have you come, my lady, from the town,
And far from all your sorrows, if you please,
To smell the good sea-winds and hear the seas,
And in green meadows lay your body down.
To find your pale face grow from pale to brown,
Your sad eyes growing brighter by degrees;
Far have you come, my lady, from the town,
And far from all your sorrows, if you please.
Here in this seaboard land of old renown,
In meadow grass go wading to the knees;
Bathe your whole soul a while in simple ease;
There is no sorrow but the sea can drown;
Far have you come, my lady, from the town.
NOUS N'IRONS PLUS AU BOIS.
We'll walk the woods no more,
But stay beside the fire,
To weep for old desire
And things that are no more.
The woods are spoiled and hoar,
The ways are full of mire;
We'll walk the woods no more,
But stay beside the fire.
We loved, in days of yore,
Love, laughter, and the lyre.
Ah God, but death is dire,
And death is at the door -
We'll walk the woods no more.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
EDINBURGH, [AUTUMN] 1875.
MY DEAR COLVIN, - Thanks for your letter and news. No - my BURNS
is not done yet, it has led me so far afield that I cannot finish
it; every time I think I see my way to an end, some new game (or
perhaps wild goose) starts up, and away I go. And then, again, to
be plain, I shirk the work of the critical part, shirk it as a man
shirks a long jump. It is awful to have to express and
differentiate BURNS in a column or two. O golly, I say, you know,
it CAN'T be done at the money. All the more as I'm going write a
book about it. RAMSAY, FERGUSSON, AND BURNS: AN ESSAY (or A
CRITICAL ESSAY? but then I'm going to give lives of the three
gentlemen, only the gist of the book is the criticism) BY ROBERT
LOUIS STEVENSON, ADVOCATE. How's that for cut and dry? And I
COULD write this book. Unless I deceive myself, I could even write
it pretty adequately. I feel as if I was really in it, and knew
the game thoroughly. You see what comes of trying to write an
essay on BURNS in ten columns.
Meantime, when I have done Burns, I shall finish Charles of Orleans
(who is in a good way, about the fifth month, I should think, and
promises to be a fine healthy child, better than any of his elder
brothers for a while); and then perhaps a Villon, for Villon is a
very essential part of my RAMSAY-FERGUSSON-BURNS; I mean, is a note
in it, and will recur again and again for comparison and
illustration; then, perhaps, I may try Fontainebleau, by the way.
But so soon as Charles of Orleans is polished off, and immortalised
for ever, he and his pipings, in a solid imperishable shrine of R.
L. S., my true aim and end will be this little book. Suppose I
could jerk you out 100 Cornhill pages; that would easy make 200
pages of decent form; and then thickish paper - eh? would that do?
I dare say it could be made bigger; but I know what 100 pages of
copy, bright consummate copy, imply behind the scenes of weary
manuscribing; I think if I put another nothing to it, I should not
be outside the mark; and 100 Cornhill pages of 500 words means, I
fancy (but I never was good at figures), means 500,00 words.
There's a prospect for an idle young gentleman who lives at home at
ease! The future is thick with inky fingers. And then perhaps
nobody would publish. AH NOM DE DIEU! What do you think of all
this? will it paddle, think you?
I hope this pen will write; it is the third I have tried.
About coming up, no, that's impossible; for I am worse than a
bankrupt. I have at the present six shillings and a penny; I have
a sounding lot of bills for Christmas; new dress suit, for
instance, the old one having gone for Parliament House; and new
white shirts to live up to my new profession; I'm as gay and swell
and gummy as can be; only all my boots leak; one pair water, and
the other two simple black mud; so that my rig is more for the eye,
than a very solid comfort to myself. That is my budget. Dismal
enough, and no prospect of any coin coming in; at least for months.
So that here I am, I almost fear, for the winter; certainly till
after Christmas, and then it depends on how my bills 'turn out'
whether it shall not be till spring. So, meantime, I must whistle
in my cage. My cage is better by one thing; I am an Advocate now.
If you ask me why that makes it better, I would remind you that in
the most distressing circumstances a little consequence goes a long
way, and even bereaved relatives stand on precedence round the
coffin. I idle finely. I read Boswell's LIFE OF JOHNSON, Martin's
HISTORY OF FRANCE, ALLAN RAMSAY, OLIVIER BOSSELIN, all sorts of
rubbish, APROPOS of BURNS, COMMINES, JUVENAL DES URSINS, etc. I
walk about the Parliament House five forenoons a week, in wig and
gown; I have either a five or six mile walk, or an hour or two hard
skating on the rink, every afternoon, without fail.
I have not written much; but, like the seaman's parrot in the tale,
I have thought a deal. You have never, by the way, returned me
either SPRING or BERANGER, which is certainly a d-d shame. I
always comforted myself with that when my conscience pricked me
about a letter to you. 'Thus conscience' - O no, that's not
appropriate in this connection. - Ever yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
I say, is there any chance of your coming north this year? Mind
you that promise is now more respectable for age than is becoming.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
[EDINBURGH, OCTOBER 1875.]
NOO lyart leaves blaw ower the green,
Red are the bonny woods o' Dean,
An' here we're back in Embro, freen',
To pass the winter.
Whilk noo, wi' frosts afore, draws in,
An' snaws ahint her.
I've seen's hae days to fricht us a',
The Pentlands poothered weel wi' snaw,
The ways half-smoored wi' liquid thaw,
An' half-congealin',
The snell an' scowtherin' norther blaw
Frae blae Brunteelan'.
I've seen's been unco sweir to sally,
And at the door-cheeks daff an' dally,
Seen's daidle thus an' shilly-shally
For near a minute -
Sae cauld the wind blew up the valley,
The deil was in it! -
Syne spread the silk an' tak the gate,
In blast an' blaudin' rain, deil hae't!
The hale toon glintin', stane an' slate,
Wi' cauld an' weet,
An' to the Court, gin we'se be late,
Bicker oor feet.
And at the Court, tae, aft I saw
Whaur Advocates by twa an' twa
Gang gesterin' end to end the ha'
In weeg an' goon,
To crack o' what ye wull but Law
The hale forenoon.
That muckle ha,' maist like a kirk,
I've kent at braid mid-day sae mirk
Ye'd seen white weegs an' faces lurk
Like ghaists frae Hell,
But whether Christian ghaist or Turk
Deil ane could tell.
The three fires lunted in the gloom,
The wind blew like the blast o' doom,
The rain upo' the roof abune
Played Peter Dick -
Ye wad nae'd licht enough i' the room
Your teeth to pick!
But, freend, ye ken how me an' you,
The ling-lang lanely winter through,
Keep'd a guid speerit up, an' true
To lore Horatian,
We aye the ither bottle drew
To inclination.
Sae let us in the comin' days
Stand sicker on our auncient ways -
The strauchtest road in a' the maze
Since Eve ate apples;
An' let the winter weet our cla'es -
We'll weet oor thrapples.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
[EDINBURGH, AUTUMN 1875.]
MY DEAR COLVIN, - FOUS NE ME GOMBRENNEZ PAS. Angry with you? No.
Is the thing lost? Well, so be it. There is one masterpiece fewer
in the world. The world can ill spare it, but I, sir, I (and here
I strike my hollow boson, so that it resounds) I am full of this
sort of bauble; I am made of it; it comes to me, sir, as the desire
to sneeze comes upon poor ordinary devils on cold days, when they
should be getting out of bed and into their horrid cold tubs by the
light of a seven o'clock candle, with the dismal seven o'clock
frost-flowers all over the window.
Show Stephen what you please; if you could show him how to give me
money, you would oblige, sincerely yours,
R. L. S.
I have a scroll of SPRINGTIME somewhere, but I know that it is not
in very good order, and do not feel myself up to very much grind
over it. I am damped about SPRINGTIME, that's the truth of it. It
might have been four or five quid!
Sir, I shall shave my head, if this goes on. All men take a
pleasure to gird at me. The laws of nature are in open war with
me. The wheel of a dog-cart took the toes off my new boots. Gout
has set in with extreme rigour, and cut me out of the cheap
refreshment of beer. I leant my back against an oak, I thought it
was a trusty tree, but first it bent, and syne - it lost the Spirit
of Springtime, and so did Professor Sidney Colvin, Trinity College,
to me. - Ever yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Along with this, I send you some P.P.P's; if you lose them, you
need not seek to look upon my face again. Do, for God's sake,
answer me about them also; it is a horrid thing for a fond
architect to find his monuments received in silence. - Yours,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
[EDINBURGH, NOVEMBER 12, 1875.]
MY DEAR FRIEND, - Since I got your letter I have been able to do a
little more work, and I have been much better contented with
myself; but I can't get away, that is absolutely prevented by the
state of my purse and my debts, which, I may say, are red like
crimson. I don't know how I am to clear my hands of them, nor
when, not before Christmas anyway. Yesterday I was twenty-five; so
please wish me many happy returns - directly. This one was not
UNhappy anyway. I have got back a good deal into my old random,
little-thought way of life, and do not care whether I read, write,
speak, or walk, so long as I do something. I have a great delight
in this wheel-skating; I have made great advance in it of late, can
do a good many amusing things (I mean amusing in MY sense - amusing
to do). You know, I lose all my forenoons at Court! So it is, but
the time passes; it is a great pleasure to sit and hear cases
argued or advised. This is quite autobiographical, but I feel as
if it was some time since we met, and I can tell you, I am glad to
meet you again. In every way, you see, but that of work the world
goes well with me. My health is better than ever it was before; I
get on without any jar, nay, as if there never had been a jar, with
my parents. If it weren't about that work, I'd be happy. But the
fact is, I don't think - the fact is, I'm going to trust in
Providence about work. If I could get one or two pieces I hate out
of my way all would be well, I think; but these obstacles disgust
me, and as I know I ought to do them first, I don't do anything. I
must finish this off, or I'll just lose another day. I'll try to
write again soon. - Ever your faithful friend,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. DE MATTOS
EDINBURGH, JANUARY 1876.
MY DEAR KATHARINE, - The prisoner reserved his defence. He has
been seedy, however; principally sick of the family evil,
despondency; the sun is gone out utterly; and the breath of the
people of this city lies about as a sort of damp, unwholesome fog,
in which we go walking with bowed hearts. If I understand what is
a contrite spirit, I have one; it is to feel that you are a small
jar, or rather, as I feel myself, a very large jar, of pottery work
rather MAL REUSSI, and to make every allowance for the potter (I
beg pardon; Potter with a capital P.) on his ill-success, and
rather wish he would reduce you as soon as possible to potsherds.
However, there are many things to do yet before we go
GROSSIR LA PATE UNIVERSELLE
FAITE DES FORMES QUE DIEU FOND.
For instance, I have never been in a revolution yet. I pray God I
may be in one at the end, if I am to make a mucker. The best way
to make a mucker is to have your back set against a wall and a few
lead pellets whiffed into you in a moment, while yet you are all in
a heat and a fury of combat, with drums sounding on all sides, and
people crying, and a general smash like the infernal orchestration
at the end of the HUGUENOTS. . . .
Please pardon me for having been so long of writing, and show your
pardon by writing soon to me; it will be a kindness, for I am
sometimes very dull. Edinburgh is much changed for the worse by
the absence of Bob; and this damned weather weighs on me like a
curse. Yesterday, or the day before, there came so black a rain
squall that I was frightened - what a child would call frightened,
you know, for want of a better word - although in reality it has
nothing to do with fright. I lit the gas and sat cowering in my
chair until it went away again. - Ever yours,
R. L. S.
O I am trying my hand at a novel just now; it may interest you to
know, I am bound to say I do not think it will be a success.
However, it's an amusement for the moment, and work, work is your
only ally against the 'bearded people' that squat upon their hams
in the dark places of life and embrace people horribly as they go
by. God save us from the bearded people! to think that the sun is
still shining in some happy places!
R. L S.
Letter: TO MRS SITWELL
[EDINBURGH, JANUARY 1876.]
. . . OUR weather continues as it was, bitterly cold, and raining
often. There is not much pleasure in life certainly as it stands
at present. NOUS N'IRONS PLUS AU BOSS, HELAS!
I meant to write some more last night, but my father was ill and it
put it out of my way. He is better this morning.
If I had written last night, I should have written a lot. But this
morning I am so dreadfully tired and stupid that I can say nothing.
I was down at Leith in the afternoon. God bless me, what horrid
women I saw; I never knew what a plain-looking race it was before.
I was sick at heart with the looks of them. And the children,
filthy and ragged! And the smells! And the fat black mud!
My soul was full of disgust ere I got back. And yet the ships were
beautiful to see, as they are always; and on the pier there was a
clean cold wind that smelt a little of the sea, though it came down
the Firth, and the sunset had a certain ECLAT and warmth. Perhaps
if I could get more work done, I should be in a better trim to
enjoy filthy streets and people and cold grim weather; but I don't
much feel as if it was what I would have chosen. I am tempted
every day of my life to go off on another walking tour. I like
that better than anything else that I know. - Ever your faithful
friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
