Just got a servant! ! ! - Ever affectionate son,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Our servant is a Muckle Hash of a Weedy!
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
CAMPAGNE DEFLI, ST. MARCEL, BANLIEUE DE MARSEILLE, NOVEMBER 13,
1882.
MY DEAR MOTHER, - Your delightful letters duly arrived this
morning. They were the only good feature of the day, which was not
a success. Fanny was in bed - she begged I would not split upon
her, she felt so guilty; but as I believe she is better this
evening, and has a good chance to be right again in a day or two, I
will disregard her orders. I do not go back, but do not go forward
- or not much. It is, in one way, miserable - for I can do no
work; a very little wood-cutting, the newspapers, and a note about
every two days to write, completely exhausts my surplus energy;
even Patience I have to cultivate with parsimony. I see, if I
could only get to work, that we could live here with comfort,
almost with luxury. Even as it is, we should be able to get
through a considerable time of idleness. I like the place
immensely, though I have seen so little of it - I have only been
once outside the gate since I was here! It puts me in mind of a
summer at Prestonpans and a sickly child you once told me of.
Thirty-two years now finished! My twenty-ninth was in San
Francisco, I remember - rather a bleak birthday. The twenty-eighth
was not much better; but the rest have been usually pleasant days
in pleasant circumstances.
Love to you and to my father and to Cummy.
From me and Fanny and Wogg.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
GRAND HOTEL, NICE, 12TH JANUARY '83.
DEAR CHARLES, - Thanks for your good letter. It is true, man,
God's truth, what ye say about the body Stevison. The deil himsel,
it's my belief, couldnae get the soul harled oot o' the creature's
wame, or he had seen the hinder end o' they proofs. Ye crack o'
Maecenas, he's naebody by you! He gied the lad Horace a rax forrit
by all accounts; but he never gied him proofs like yon. Horace may
hae been a better hand at the clink than Stevison - mind, I'm no
sayin' 't - but onyway he was never sae weel prentit. Damned, but
it's bonny! Hoo mony pages will there be, think ye? Stevison maun
hae sent ye the feck o' twenty sangs - fifteen I'se warrant. Weel,
that'll can make thretty pages, gin ye were to prent on ae side
only, whilk wad be perhaps what a man o' your GREAT idees would be
ettlin' at, man Johnson. Then there wad be the Pre-face, an' prose
ye ken prents oot langer than po'try at the hinder end, for ye hae
to say things in't. An' then there'll be a title-page and a
dedication and an index wi' the first lines like, and the deil an'
a'. Man, it'll be grand. Nae copies to be given to the Liberys.
I am alane myself, in Nice, they ca't, but damned, I think they
micht as well ca't Nesty. The Pile-on, 's they ca't, 's aboot as
big as the river Tay at Perth; and it's rainin' maist like
Greenock. Dod, I've seen 's had mair o' what they ca' the I-talian
at Muttonhole. I-talian! I haenae seen the sun for eicht and
forty hours. Thomson's better, I believe. But the body's fair
attenyated. He's doon to seeven stane eleeven, an' he sooks awa'
at cod liver ile, till it's a fair disgrace. Ye see he tak's it on
a drap brandy; and it's my belief, it's just an excuse for a dram.
He an' Stevison gang aboot their lane, maistly; they're company to
either, like, an' whiles they'll speak o'Johnson. But HE'S far
awa', losh me! Stevison's last book's in a third edeetion; an'
it's bein' translated (like the psaulms o' David, nae less) into
French; and an eediot they ca' Asher - a kind o' rival of Tauchnitz
- is bringin' him oot in a paper book for the Frenchies and the
German folk in twa volumes. Sae he's in luck, ye see. - Yours,
THOMSON.
Letter: TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
[NICE FEBRUARY 1883.]
MY DEAR CUMMY, - You must think, and quite justly, that I am one of
the meanest rogues in creation. But though I do not write (which
is a thing I hate), it by no means follows that people are out of
my mind. It is natural that I should always think more or less
about you, and still more natural that I should think of you when I
went back to Nice. But the real reason why you have been more in
my mind than usual is because of some little verses that I have
been writing, and that I mean to make a book of; and the real
reason of this letter (although I ought to have written to you
anyway) is that I have just seen that the book in question must be
dedicated to
ALISON CUNNINGHAM,
the only person who will really understand it. I don't know when
it may be ready, for it has to be illustrated, but I hope in the
meantime you may like the idea of what is to be; and when the time
comes, I shall try to make the dedication as pretty as I can make
it. Of course, this is only a flourish, like taking off one's hat;
but still, a person who has taken the trouble to write things does
not dedicate them to any one without meaning it; and you must just
try to take this dedication in place of a great many things that I
might have said, and that I ought to have done, to prove that I am
not altogether unconscious of the great debt of gratitude I owe
you. This little book, which is all about my childhood, should
indeed go to no other person but you, who did so much to make that
childhood happy.
Do you know, we came very near sending for you this winter. If we
had not had news that you were ill too, I almost believe we should
have done so, we were so much in trouble.
I am now very well; but my wife has had a very, very bad spell,
through overwork and anxiety, when I was LOST! I suppose you heard
of that. She sends you her love, and hopes you will write to her,
though she no more than I deserves it. She would add a word
herself, but she is too played out. - I am, ever your old boy,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
[NICE, MARCH 1883.]
MY DEAR LAD, - This is to announce to you the MS. of Nursery
Verses, now numbering XLVIII. pieces or 599 verses, which, of
course, one might augment AD INFINITUM.
But here is my notion to make all clear.
I do not want a big ugly quarto; my soul sickens at the look of a
quarto. I want a refined octavo, not large - not LARGER than the
DONKEY BOOK, at any price.
I think the full page might hold four verses of four lines, that is
to say, counting their blanks at two, of twenty-two lines in
height. The first page of each number would only hold two verses
or ten lines, the title being low down. At this rate, we should
have seventy-eight or eighty pages of letterpress.
The designs should not be in the text, but facing the poem; so that
if the artist liked, he might give two pages of design to every
poem that turned the leaf, I.E. longer than eight lines, I.E. to
twenty-eight out of the forty-six. I should say he would not use
this privilege (?) above five times, and some he might scorn to
illustrate at all, so we may say fifty drawings. I shall come to
the drawings next.
But now you see my book of the thickness, since the drawings count
two pages, of 180 pages; and since the paper will perhaps be
thicker, of near two hundred by bulk. It is bound in a quiet green
with the words in thin gilt. Its shape is a slender, tall octavo.
And it sells for the publisher's fancy, and it will be a darling to
look at; in short, it would be like one of the original Heine books
in type and spacing.
Now for the pictures. I take another sheet and begin to jot notes
for them when my imagination serves: I will run through the book,
writing when I have an idea. There, I have jotted enough to give
the artist a notion. Of course, I don't do more than contribute
ideas, but I will be happy to help in any and every way. I may as
well add another idea; when the artist finds nothing much to
illustrate, a good drawing of any OBJECT mentioned in the text,
were it only a loaf of bread or a candlestick, is a most delightful
thing to a young child. I remember this keenly.
Of course, if the artist insists on a larger form, I must I
suppose, bow my head. But my idea I am convinced is the best, and
would make the book truly, not fashionably pretty.
I forgot to mention that I shall have a dedication; I am going to
dedicate 'em to Cummy; it will please her, and lighten a little my
burthen of ingratitude. A low affair is the Muse business.
I will add no more to this lest you should want to communicate with
the artist; try another sheet. I wonder how many I'll keep
wandering to.
O I forgot. As for the title, I think 'Nursery Verses' the best.
Poetry is not the strong point of the text, and I shrink from any
title that might seem to claim that quality; otherwise we might
have 'Nursery Muses' or 'New Songs of Innocence' (but that were a
blasphemy), or 'Rimes of Innocence': the last not bad, or - an
idea - 'The Jews' Harp,' or - now I have it - 'The Penny Whistle.'
THE PENNY WHISTLE:
NURSERY VERSES
BY
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
ILLUSTRATED BY - - -
And here we have an excellent frontispiece, of a party playing on a
P. W. to a little ring of dancing children.
THE PENNY WHISTLE
is the name for me.
Fool! this is all wrong, here is the true name:-
PENNY WHISTLES
FOR SMALL WHISTLERS.
The second title is queried, it is perhaps better, as simply PENNY
WHISTLES.
Nor you, O Penny Whistler, grudge
That I your instrument debase:
By worse performers still we judge,
And give that fife a second place!
Crossed penny whistles on the cover, or else a sheaf of 'em.
SUGGESTIONS.
IV. The procession - the child running behind it. The procession
tailing off through the gates of a cloudy city.
IX. FOREIGN LANDS. - This will, I think, want two plates - the
child climbing, his first glimpse over the garden wall, with what
he sees - the tree shooting higher and higher like the beanstalk,
and the view widening. The river slipping in. The road arriving
in Fairyland.
X. WINDY NIGHTS. - The child in bed listening - the horseman
galloping.
XII. The child helplessly watching his ship - then he gets smaller,
and the doll joyfully comes alive - the pair landing on the island
- the ship's deck with the doll steering and the child firing the
penny canon. Query two plates? The doll should never come
properly alive.
XV. Building of the ship - storing her - Navigation - Tom's
accident, the other child paying no attention.
XXXI. THE WIND. - I sent you my notion of already.
XXXVII. FOREIGN CHILDREN. - The foreign types dancing in a jing-a-
ring, with the English child pushing in the middle. The foreign
children looking at and showing each other marvels. The English
child at the leeside of a roast of beef. The English child sitting
thinking with his picture-books all round him, and the jing-a-ring
of the foreign children in miniature dancing over the picture-
books.
XXXIX. Dear artist, can you do me that?
XLII. The child being started off - the bed sailing, curtains and
all, upon the sea - the child waking and finding himself at home;
the corner of toilette might be worked in to look like the pier.
XLVII. The lighted part of the room, to be carefully distinguished
from my child's dark hunting grounds. A shaded lamp.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
HOTEL DES ILES D'OR, HYERES, VAR, MARCH 2, [1883].
MY DEAR MOTHER, - It must be at least a fortnight since we have had
a scratch of a pen from you; and if it had not been for Cummy's
letter, I should have feared you were worse again: as it is, I
hope we shall hear from you to-day or to-morrow at latest.
HEALTH.
Our news is good: Fanny never got so bad as we feared, and we hope
now that this attack may pass off in threatenings. I am greatly
better, have gained flesh, strength, spirits; eat well, walk a good
deal, and do some work without fatigue. I am off the sick list.
LODGING.
We have found a house up the hill, close to the town, an excellent
place though very, very little. If I can get the landlord to agree
to let us take it by the month just now, and let our month's rent
count for the year in case we take it on, you may expect to hear we
are again installed, and to receive a letter dated thus:-
La Solitude,
Hyeres-les-Palmiers,
Var.
If the man won't agree to that, of course I must just give it up,
as the house would be dear enough anyway at 2000 f. However, I
hope we may get it, as it is healthy, cheerful, and close to shops,
and society, and civilisation. The garden, which is above, is
lovely, and will be cool in summer. There are two rooms below with
a kitchen, and four rooms above, all told. - Ever your affectionate
son,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON
HOTEL DES ILES D'OR, BUT MY ADDRESS WILL BE CHALET LA SOLITUDE,
HYERES-LE-PALMIERS, VAR, FRANCE, MARCH 17, 1883.
DEAR SIR, - Your undated favour from Eastbourne came to hand in
course of post, and I now hasten to acknowledge its receipt. We
must ask you in future, for the convenience of our business
arrangements, to struggle with and tread below your feet this most
unsatisfactory and uncommercial habit. Our Mr. Cassandra is
better; our Mr. Wogg expresses himself dissatisfied with our new
place of business; when left alone in the front shop, he bawled
like a parrot; it is supposed the offices are haunted.
To turn to the matter of your letter, your remarks on GREAT
EXPECTATIONS are very good. We have both re-read it this winter,
and I, in a manner, twice. The object being a play; the play, in
its rough outline, I now see: and it is extraordinary how much of
Dickens had to be discarded as unhuman, impossible, and
ineffective: all that really remains is the loan of a file (but
from a grown-up young man who knows what he was doing, and to a
convict who, although he does not know it is his father - the
father knows it is his son), and the fact of the convict-father's
return and disclosure of himself to the son whom he has made rich.
Everything else has been thrown aside; and the position has had to
be explained by a prologue which is pretty strong. I have great
hopes of this piece, which is very amiable and, in places, very
strong indeed: but it was curious how Dickens had to be rolled
away; he had made his story turn on such improbabilities, such
fantastic trifles, not on a good human basis, such as I recognised.
You are right about the casts, they were a capital idea; a good
description of them at first, and then afterwards, say second, for
the lawyer to have illustrated points out of the history of the
originals, dusting the particular bust - that was all the
development the thing would bear. Dickens killed them. The only
really well EXECUTED scenes are the riverside ones; the escape in
particular is excellent; and I may add, the capture of the two
convicts at the beginning. Miss Havisham is, probably, the worst
thing in human fiction. But Wemmick I like; and I like Trabb's
boy; and Mr. Wopsle as Hamlet is splendid.
The weather here is greatly improved, and I hope in three days to
be in the chalet. That is, if I get some money to float me there.
I hope you are all right again, and will keep better. The month of
March is past its mid career; it must soon begin to turn toward the
lamb; here it has already begun to do so; and I hope milder weather
will pick you up. Wogg has eaten a forpet of rice and milk, his
beard is streaming, his eyes wild. I am besieged by demands of
work from America.
The 50 pounds has just arrived; many thanks; I am now at ease. -
Ever your affectionate son, PRO Cassandra, Wogg and Co.,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
CHALET LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, [APRIL 1883].
MY DEAR FRIEND, - I am one of the lowest of the - but that's
understood. I received the copy, excellently written, with I think
only one slip from first to last. I have struck out two, and added
five or six; so they now number forty-five; when they are fifty,
they shall out on the world. I have not written a letter for a
cruel time; I have been, and am, so busy, drafting a long story
(for me, I mean), about a hundred CORNHILL pages, or say about as
long as the Donkey book: PRINCE OTTO it is called, and is, at the
present hour, a sore burthen but a hopeful. If I had him all
drafted, I should whistle and sing. But no: then I'll have to
rewrite him; and then there will be the publishers, alas! But some
time or other, I shall whistle and sing, I make no doubt.
I am going to make a fortune, it has not yet begun, for I am not
yet clear of debt; but as soon as I can, I begin upon the fortune.
I shall begin it with a halfpenny, and it shall end with horses and
yachts and all the fun of the fair. This is the first real grey
hair in my character: rapacity has begun to show, the greed of the
protuberant guttler. Well, doubtless, when the hour strikes, we
must all guttle and protube. But it comes hard on one who was
always so willow-slender and as careless as the daisies.
Truly I am in excellent spirits. I have crushed through a
financial crisis; Fanny is much better; I am in excellent health,
and work from four to five hours a day - from one to two above my
average, that is; and we all dwell together and make fortunes in
the loveliest house you ever saw, with a garden like a fairy story,
and a view like a classical landscape.
Little? Well, it is not large. And when you come to see us, you
will probably have to bed at the hotel, which is hard by. But it
is Eden, madam, Eden and Beulah and the Delectable Mountains and
Eldorado and the Hesperidean Isles and Bimini.
We both look forward, my dear friend, with the greatest eagerness
to have you here. It seems it is not to be this season; but I
appoint you with an appointment for next season. You cannot see us
else: remember that. Till my health has grown solid like an oak-
tree, till my fortune begins really to spread its boughs like the
same monarch of the woods (and the acorn, ay de mi! is not yet
planted), I expect to be a prisoner among the palms.
Yes, it is like old times to be writing you from the Riviera, and
after all that has come and gone who can predict anything? How
fortune tumbles men about! Yet I have not found that they change
their friends, thank God.
Both of our loves to your sister and yourself. As for me, if I am
here and happy, I know to whom I owe it; I know who made my way for
me in life, if that were all, and I remain, with love, your
faithful friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
CHALET LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, [APRIL 1883].
MY DEAR GOSSE, - I am very guilty; I should have written to you
long ago; and now, though it must be done, I am so stupid that I
can only boldly recapitulate. A phrase of three members is the
outside of my syntax.
First, I liked the ROVER better than any of your other verse. I
believe you are right, and can make stories in verse. The last two
stanzas and one or two in the beginning - but the two last above
all - I thought excellent. I suggest a pursuit of the vein. If
you want a good story to treat, get the MEMOIRS OF THE CHEVALIER
JOHNSTONE, and do his passage of the Tay; it would be excellent:
the dinner in the field, the woman he has to follow, the dragoons,
the timid boatmen, the brave lasses. It would go like a charm;
look at it, and you will say you owe me one.
Second, Gilder asking me for fiction, I suddenly took a great
resolve, and have packed off to him my new work, THE SILVERADO
SQUATTERS. I do not for a moment suppose he will take it; but pray
say all the good words you can for it. I should be awfully glad to
get it taken. But if it does not mean dibbs at once, I shall be
ruined for life. Pray write soon and beg Gilder your prettiest for
a poor gentleman in pecuniary sloughs.
Fourth, next time I am supposed to be at death's door, write to me
like a Christian, and let not your correspondence attend on
business. - Yours ever,
R. L. S.
P.S. - I see I have led you to conceive the SQUATTERS are fiction.
They are not, alas!
Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
CHALET SOLITUDE, MAY 5, [1883].
MY DEAREST PEOPLE, - I have had a great piece of news. There has
been offered for TREASURE ISLAND - how much do you suppose? I
believe it would be an excellent jest to keep the answer till my
next letter. For two cents I would do so. Shall I? Anyway, I'll
turn the page first. No - well - A hundred pounds, all alive, O!
A hundred jingling, tingling, golden, minted quid. Is not this
wonderful? Add that I have now finished, in draft, the fifteenth
chapter of my novel, and have only five before me, and you will see
what cause of gratitude I have.
The weather, to look at the per contra sheet, continues vomitable;
and Fanny is quite out of sorts. But, really, with such cause of
gladness, I have not the heart to be dispirited by anything. My
child's verse book is finished, dedication and all, and out of my
hands - you may tell Cummy; SILVERADO is done, too, and cast upon
the waters; and this novel so near completion, it does look as if I
should support myself without trouble in the future. If I have
only health, I can, I thank God. It is dreadful to be a great, big
man, and not be able to buy bread.
O that this may last!
I have to-day paid my rent for the half year, till the middle of
September, and got my lease: why they have been so long, I know
not.
I wish you all sorts of good things.
When is our marriage day? - Your loving and ecstatic son,
TREESURE EILAAN,
It has been for me a Treasure Island verily.
Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, MAY 8, 1883.
MY DEAR PEOPLE, - I was disgusted to hear my father was not so
well. I have a most troubled existence of work and business. But
the work goes well, which is the great affair. I meant to have
written a most delightful letter; too tired, however, and must
stop. Perhaps I'll find time to add to it ere post.
I have returned refreshed from eating, but have little time, as
Lloyd will go soon with the letters on his way to his tutor, Louis
Robert (!!!!), with whom he learns Latin in French, and French, I
suppose, in Latin, which seems to me a capital education. He,
Lloyd, is a great bicycler already, and has been long distances; he
is most new-fangled over his instrument, and does not willingly
converse on other subjects.
Our lovely garden is a prey to snails; I have gathered about a
bushel, which, not having the heart to slay, I steal forth withal
and deposit near my neighbour's garden wall. As a case of
casuistry, this presents many points of interest. I loathe the
snails, but from loathing to actual butchery, trucidation of
multitudes, there is still a step that I hesitate to take. What,
then, to do with them? My neighbour's vineyard, pardy! It is a
rich, villa, pleasure-garden of course; if it were a peasant's
patch, the snails, I suppose, would have to perish.
The weather these last three days has been much better, though it
is still windy and unkind. I keep splendidly well, and am cruelly
busy, with mighty little time even for a walk. And to write at
all, under such pressure, must be held to lean to virtue's side.
My financial prospects are shining. O if the health will hold, I
should easily support myself. - Your ever affectionate son,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, [MAY 20, 1883].
MY DEAR GOSSE, - I enclose the receipt and the corrections. As for
your letter and Gilder's, I must take an hour or so to think; the
matter much importing - to me. The 40 pounds was a heavenly thing.
I send the MS. by Henley, because he acts for me in all matters,
and had the thing, like all my other books, in his detention. He
is my unpaid agent - an admirable arrangement for me, and one that
has rather more than doubled my income on the spot.
If I have been long silent, think how long you were so and blush,
sir, blush.
I was rendered unwell by the arrival of your cheque, and, like
Pepys, 'my hand still shakes to write of it.' To this grateful
emotion, and not to D.T., please attribute the raggedness of my
hand.
This year I should be able to live and keep my family on my own
earnings, and that in spite of eight months and more of perfect
idleness at the end of last and beginning of this. It is a sweet
thought.
This spot, our garden and our view, are sub-celestial. I sing
daily with my Bunyan, that great bard,
'I dwell already the next door to Heaven!'
If you could see my roses, and my aloes, and my fig-marigolds, and
my olives, and my view over a plain, and my view of certain
mountains as graceful as Apollo, as severe as Zeus, you would not
think the phrase exaggerated.
It is blowing to-day a HOT mistral, which is the devil or a near
connection of his.
This to catch the post. - Yours affectionately,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, FRANCE, MAY 21, 1883.
MY DEAR GOSSE, - The night giveth advice, generally bad advice; but
I have taken it. And I have written direct to Gilder to tell him
to keep the book back and go on with it in November at his leisure.
I do not know if this will come in time; if it doesn't, of course
things will go on in the way proposed. The 40 pounds, or, as I
prefer to put it, the 1000 francs, has been such a piercing sun-ray
as my whole grey life is gilt withal. On the back of it I can
endure. If these good days of LONGMAN and the CENTURY only last,
it will be a very green world, this that we dwell in and that
philosophers miscall. I have no taste for that philosophy; give me
large sums paid on the receipt of the MS. and copyright reserved,
and what do I care about the non-beent? Only I know it can't last.
The devil always has an imp or two in every house, and my imps are
getting lively. The good lady, the dear, kind lady, the sweet,
excellent lady, Nemesis, whom alone I adore, has fixed her wooden
eye upon me. I fall prone; spare me, Mother Nemesis! But catch
her!
I must now go to bed; for I have had a whoreson influenza cold, and
have to lie down all day, and get up only to meals and the
delights, June delights, of business correspondence.
You said nothing about my subject for a poem. Don't you like it?
My own fishy eye has been fixed on it for prose, but I believe it
could be thrown out finely in verse, and hence I resign and pass
the hand. Twig the compliment? - Yours affectionately
R. L. S.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
[HYERES, MAY 1883.]
. . . THE influenza has busted me a good deal; I have no spring,
and am headachy. So, as my good Red Lion Counter begged me for
another Butcher's Boy - I turned me to - what thinkest 'ou? - to
Tushery, by the mass! Ay, friend, a whole tale of tushery. And
every tusher tushes me so free, that may I be tushed if the whole
thing is worth a tush. THE BLACK ARROW: A TALE OF TUNSTALL FOREST
is his name: tush! a poor thing!
Will TREASURE ISLAND proofs be coming soon, think you?
I will now make a confession. It was the sight of your maimed
strength and masterfulness that begot John Silver in TREASURE
ISLAND. Of course, he is not in any other quality or feature the
least like you; but the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded
by the sound, was entirely taken from you.
Otto is, as you say, not a thing to extend my public on. It is
queer and a little, little bit free; and some of the parties are
immoral; and the whole thing is not a romance, nor yet a comedy;
nor yet a romantic comedy; but a kind of preparation of some of the
elements of all three in a glass jar. I think it is not without
merit, but I am not always on the level of my argument, and some
parts are false, and much of the rest is thin; it is more a triumph
for myself than anything else; for I see, beyond it, better stuff.
I have nine chapters ready, or almost ready, for press. My feeling
would be to get it placed anywhere for as much as could be got for
it, and rather in the shadow, till one saw the look of it in print.
- Ever yours,
PRETTY SICK.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, MAY 1883.
MY DEAR LAD, - The books came some time since, but I have not had
the pluck to answer: a shower of small troubles having fallen in,
or troubles that may be very large.
I have had to incur a huge vague debt for cleaning sewers; our
house was (of course) riddled with hidden cesspools, but that was
infallible. I have the fever, and feel the duty to work very heavy
on me at times; yet go it must. I have had to leave FONTAINEBLEAU,
when three hours would finish it, and go full-tilt at tushery for a
while. But it will come soon.
I think I can give you a good article on Hokusai; but that is for
afterwards; FONTAINEBLEAU is first in hand
By the way, my view is to give the PENNY WHISTLES to Crane or
Greenaway. But Crane, I think, is likeliest; he is a fellow who,
at least, always does his best.
Shall I ever have money enough to write a play? O dire necessity!
A word in your ear: I don't like trying to support myself. I hate
the strain and the anxiety; and when unexpected expenses are
foisted on me, I feel the world is playing with false dice. - Now I
must Tush, adieu,
AN ACHING, FEVERED, PENNY-JOURNALIST.
A lytle Jape of TUSHERIE.
By A. Tusher.
The pleasant river gushes
Among the meadows green;
At home the author tushes;
For him it flows unseen.
The Birds among the Bushes
May wanton on the spray;
But vain for him who tushes
The brightness of the day!
The frog among the rushes
Sits singing in the blue.
By'r la'kin! but these tushes
Are wearisome to do!
The task entirely crushes
The spirit of the bard:
God pity him who tushes -
His task is very hard.
The filthy gutter slushes,
The clouds are full of rain,
But doomed is he who tushes
To tush and tush again.
At morn with his hair-brUshes,
Still, 'tush' he says, and weeps;
At night again he tushes,
And tushes till he sleeps.
And when at length he pushes
Beyond the river dark -
'Las, to the man who tushes,
'Tush' shall be God's remark!
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
[CHALET LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, MAY 1883.]
DEAR HENLEY, - You may be surprised to hear that I am now a great
writer of verses; that is, however, so. I have the mania now like
my betters, and faith, if I live till I am forty, I shall have a
book of rhymes like Pollock, Gosse, or whom you please. Really, I
have begun to learn some of the rudiments of that trade, and have
written three or four pretty enough pieces of octosyllabic
nonsense, semi-serious, semi-smiling. A kind of prose Herrick,
divested of the gift of verse, and you behold the Bard. But I like
it.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
HYERES [JUNE 1883].
DEAR LAD, - I was delighted to hear the good news about -. Bravo,
he goes uphill fast. Let him beware of vanity, and he will go
higher; let him be still discontented, and let him (if it might be)
see the merits and not the faults of his rivals, and he may swarm
at last to the top-gallant. There is no other way. Admiration is
the only road to excellence; and the critical spirit kills, but
envy and injustice are putrefaction on its feet.
Thus far the moralist. The eager author now begs to know whether
you may have got the other Whistles, and whether a fresh proof is
to be taken; also whether in that case the dedication should not be
printed therewith; Bulk Delights Publishers (original aphorism; to
be said sixteen times in succession as a test of sobriety).
Your wild and ravening commands were received; but cannot be
obeyed. And anyway, I do assure you I am getting better every day;
and if the weather would but turn, I should soon be observed to
walk in hornpipes. Truly I am on the mend. I am still very
careful. I have the new dictionary; a joy, a thing of beauty, and
- bulk. I shall be raked i' the mools before it's finished; that
is the only pity; but meanwhile I sing.
I beg to inform you that I, Robert Louis Stevenson, author of
BRASHIANA and other works, am merely beginning to commence to
prepare to make a first start at trying to understand my
profession. O the height and depth of novelty and worth in any
art! and O that I am privileged to swim and shoulder through such
oceans! Could one get out of sight of land - all in the blue?
Alas not, being anchored here in flesh, and the bonds of logic
being still about us.
But what a great space and a great air there is in these small
shallows where alone we venture! and how new each sight, squall,
calm, or sunrise! An art is a fine fortune, a palace in a park, a
band of music, health, and physical beauty; all but love - to any
worthy practiser. I sleep upon my art for a pillow; I waken in my
art; I am unready for death, because I hate to leave it. I love my
wife, I do not know how much, nor can, nor shall, unless I lost
her; but while I can conceive my being widowed, I refuse the
offering of life without my art. I AM not but in my art; it is me;
I am the body of it merely.
And yet I produce nothing, am the author of BRASHIANA and other
works: tiddy-iddity - as if the works one wrote were anything but
'prentice's experiments. Dear reader, I deceive you with husks,
the real works and all the pleasure are still mine and
incommunicable. After this break in my work, beginning to return
to it, as from light sleep, I wax exclamatory, as you see.
Sursum Corda:
Heave ahead:
Here's luck.
Art and Blue Heaven,
April and God's Larks.
Green reeds and the sky-scattering river.
A stately music.
Enter God!
R. L. S.
Ay, but you know, until a man can write that 'Enter God,' he has
made no art! None! Come, let us take counsel together and make
some!
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES [SUMMER 1883].
DEAR LAD, - Glad you like FONTAINEBLEAU. I am going to be the
means, under heaven, of aerating or liberating your pages. The
idea that because a thing is a picture-book all the writing should
be on the wrong tack is TRISTE but widespread. Thus Hokusai will
be really a gossip on convention, or in great part. And the Skelt
will be as like a Charles Lamb as I can get it. The writer should
write, and not illustrate pictures: else it's bosh. . . .
Your remarks about the ugly are my eye. Ugliness is only the prose
of horror. It is when you are not able to write MACBETH that you
write THERESE RAQUIN. Fashions are external: the essence of art
only varies in so far as fashion widens the field of its
application; art is a mill whose thirlage, in different ages,
widens and contracts; but, in any case and under any fashion, the
great man produces beauty, terror, and mirth, and the little man
produces cleverness (personalities, psychology) instead of beauty,
ugliness instead of terror, and jokes instead of mirth. As it was
in the beginning, is now, and shall be ever, world without end.
Amen!
And even as you read, you say, 'Of course, QUELLE RENGAINE!'
R. L. S.
Letter: TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES [SUMMER 1883].
MY DEAR CUMMY, - Yes, I own I am a real bad correspondent, and am
as bad as can be in most directions.
I have been adding some more poems to your book. I wish they would
look sharp about it; but, you see, they are trying to find a good
artist to make the illustrations, without which no child would give
a kick for it. It will be quite a fine work, I hope. The
dedication is a poem too, and has been quite a long while written,
but I do not mean you to see it till you get the book; keep the
jelly for the last, you know, as you would often recommend in
former days, so now you can take your own medicine.
I am very sorry to hear you have been so poorly; I have been very
well; it used to be quite the other way, used it not? Do you
remember making the whistle at Mount Chessie? I do not think it
WAS my knife; I believe it was yours; but rhyme is a very great
monarch, and goes before honesty, in these affairs at least. Do
you remember, at Warriston, one autumn Sunday, when the beech nuts
were on the ground, seeing heaven open? I would like to make a
rhyme of that, but cannot.
Is it not strange to think of all the changes: Bob, Cramond,
Delhi, Minnie, and Henrietta, all married, and fathers and mothers,
and your humble servant just the one point better off? And such a
little while ago all children together! The time goes swift and
wonderfully even; and if we are no worse than we are, we should be
grateful to the power that guides us. For more than a generation I
have now been to the fore in this rough world, and been most
tenderly helped, and done cruelly wrong, and yet escaped; and here
I am still, the worse for wear, but with some fight in me still,
and not unthankful - no, surely not unthankful, or I were then the
worst of human beings!
My little dog is a very much better child in every way, both more
loving and more amiable; but he is not fond of strangers, and is,
like most of his kind, a great, specious humbug.
Fanny has been ill, but is much better again; she now goes donkey
rides with an old woman, who compliments her on her French. That
old woman - seventy odd - is in a parlous spiritual state.
Pretty soon, in the new sixpenny illustrated magazine, Wogg's
picture is to appear: this is a great honour! And the poor soul
whose vanity would just explode if he could understand it, will
never be a bit the wiser! - With much love, in which Fanny joins,
believe me, your affectionate boy,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, SUMMER 1883.
DEAR LAD, - Snatches in return for yours; for this little once, I'm
well to windward of you.
Seventeen chapters of OTTO are now drafted, and finding I was
working through my voice and getting screechy, I have turned back
again to rewrite the earlier part. It has, I do believe, some
merit: of what order, of course, I am the last to know; and,
triumph of triumphs, my wife - my wife who hates and loathes and
slates my women - admits a great part of my Countess to be on the
spot.
Yes, I could borrow, but it is the joy of being before the public,
for once. Really, 100 pounds is a sight more than TREASURE ISLAND
is worth.
The reason of my DECHE? Well, if you begin one house, have to
desert it, begin another, and are eight months without doing any
work, you will be in a DECHE too. I am not in a DECHE, however;
DISTINGUO - I would fain distinguish; I am rather a swell, but NOT
SOLVENT. At a touch the edifice, AEDIFICIUM, might collapse. If
my creditors began to babble around me, I would sink with a slow
strain of music into the crimson west. The difficulty in my
elegant villa is to find oil, OLEUM, for the dam axles. But I've
paid my rent until September; and beyond the chemist, the grocer,
the baker, the doctor, the gardener, Lloyd's teacher, and the great
thief creditor Death, I can snap my fingers at all men. Why will
people spring bills on you? I try to make 'em charge me at the
moment; they won't, the money goes, the debt remains. - The
Required Play is in the MERRY MEN.
Q. E. F.
I thus render honour to your FLAIR; it came on me of a clap; I do
not see it yet beyond a kind of sunset glory. But it's there:
passion, romance, the picturesque, involved: startling, simple,
horrid: a sea-pink in sea-froth! S'AGIT DE LA DESENTERRER.
'Help!' cries a buried masterpiece.
Once I see my way to the year's end, clear, I turn to plays; till
then I grind at letters; finish OTTO; write, say, a couple of my
TRAVELLER'S TALES; and then, if all my ships come home, I will
attack the drama in earnest. I cannot mix the skeins. Thus,
though I'm morally sure there is a play in OTTO, I dare not look
for it: I shoot straight at the story.
As a story, a comedy, I think OTTO very well constructed; the
echoes are very good, all the sentiments change round, and the
points of view are continually, and, I think (if you please),
happily contrasted. None of it is exactly funny, but some of it is
smiling.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES [SUMMER 1883].
MY DEAR GOSSE, - I have now leisurely read your volume; pretty
soon, by the way, you will receive one of mine.
It is a pleasant, instructive, and scholarly volume. The three
best being, quite out of sight - Crashaw, Otway, and Etherege.
They are excellent; I hesitate between them; but perhaps Crashaw is
the most brilliant
Your Webster is not my Webster; nor your Herrick my Herrick. On
these matters we must fire a gun to leeward, show our colours, and
go by. Argument is impossible. They are two of my favourite
authors: Herrick above all: I suppose they are two of yours.
Well, Janus-like, they do behold us two with diverse countenances,
few features are common to these different avatars; and we can but
agree to differ, but still with gratitude to our entertainers, like
two guests at the same dinner, one of whom takes clear and one
white soup. By my way of thinking, neither of us need be wrong.
The other papers are all interesting, adequate, clear, and with a
pleasant spice of the romantic. It is a book you may be well
pleased to have so finished, and will do you much good. The
Crashaw is capital: capital; I like the taste of it. Preface
clean and dignified. The handling throughout workmanlike, with
some four or five touches of preciosity, which I regret.
With my thanks for information, entertainment, and a pleasurable
envy here and there. - Yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, SEPTEMBER 19, 1883.
DEAR BOY, - Our letters vigorously cross: you will ere this have
received a note to Coggie: God knows what was in it.
It is strange, a little before the first word you sent me - so late
- kindly late, I know and feel - I was thinking in my bed, when I
knew you I had six friends - Bob I had by nature; then came the
good James Walter - with all his failings - the GENTLEMAN of the
lot, alas to sink so low, alas to do so little, but now, thank God,
in his quiet rest; next I found Baxter - well do I remember telling
Walter I had unearthed 'a W.S. that I thought would do' - it was in
the Academy Lane, and he questioned me as to the Signet's
qualifications; fourth came Simpson; somewhere about the same time,
I began to get intimate with Jenkin; last came Colvin. Then, one
black winter afternoon, long Leslie Stephen, in his velvet jacket,
met me in the SPEC. by appointment, took me over to the infirmary,
and in the crackling, blighting gaslight showed me that old head
whose excellent representation I see before me in the photograph.
Now when a man has six friends, to introduce a seventh is usually
hopeless. Yet when you were presented, you took to them and they
to you upon the nail. You must have been a fine fellow; but what a
singular fortune I must have had in my six friends that you should
take to all. I don't know if it is good Latin, most probably not:
but this is enscrolled before my eye for Walter: TANDEM E NUBIBUS
IN APRICUM PROPERAT. Rest, I suppose, I know, was all that
remained; but O to look back, to remember all the mirth, all the
kindness, all the humorous limitations and loved defects of that
character; to think that he was young with me, sharing that
weather-beaten, Fergussonian youth, looking forward through the
clouds to the sunburst; and now clean gone from my path, silent -
well, well. This has been a strange awakening. Last night, when I
was alone in the house, with the window open on the lovely still
night, I could have sworn he was in the room with me; I could show
you the spot; and, what was very curious, I heard his rich
laughter, a thing I had not called to mind for I know not how long.
I see his coral waistcoat studs that he wore the first time he
dined in my house; I see his attitude, leaning back a little,
already with something of a portly air, and laughing internally.
How I admired him! And now in the West Kirk.
I am trying to write out this haunting bodily sense of absence;
besides, what else should I write of?
Yes, looking back, I think of him as one who was good, though
sometimes clouded. He was the only gentle one of all my friends,
save perhaps the other Walter. And he was certainly the only
modest man among the lot. He never gave himself away; he kept back
his secret; there was always a gentle problem behind all. Dear,
dear, what a wreck; and yet how pleasant is the retrospect! God
doeth all things well, though by what strange, solemn, and
murderous contrivances!
It is strange: he was the only man I ever loved who did not
habitually interrupt. The fact draws my own portrait. And it is
one of the many reasons why I count myself honoured by his
friendship. A man like you HAD to like me; you could not help
yourself; but Ferrier was above me, we were not equals; his true
self humoured and smiled paternally upon my failings, even as I
humoured and sorrowed over his.
Well, first his mother, then himself, they are gone: 'in their
resting graves.'
When I come to think of it, I do not know what I said to his
sister, and I fear to try again. Could you send her this? There
is too much both about yourself and me in it; but that, if you do
not mind, is but a mark of sincerity. It would let her know how
entirely, in the mind of (I suppose) his oldest friend, the good,
true Ferrier obliterates the memory of the other, who was only his
'lunatic brother.'
Judge of this for me, and do as you please; anyway, I will try to
write to her again; my last was some kind of scrawl that I could
not see for crying. This came upon me, remember, with terrible
suddenness; I was surprised by this death; and it is fifteen or
sixteen years since first I saw the handsome face in the SPEC. I
made sure, besides, to have died first. Love to you, your wife,
and her sisters.
- Ever yours, dear boy,
R. L. S.
I never knew any man so superior to himself as poor James Walter.
The best of him only came as a vision, like Corsica from the
Corniche. He never gave his measure either morally or
intellectually. The curse was on him. Even his friends did not
know him but by fits. I have passed hours with him when he was so
wise, good, and sweet, that I never knew the like of it in any
other. And for a beautiful good humour he had no match. I
remember breaking in upon him once with a whole red-hot story (in
my worst manner), pouring words upon him by the hour about some
truck not worth an egg that had befallen me; and suddenly, some
half hour after, finding that the sweet fellow had some concern of
his own of infinitely greater import, that he was patiently and
smilingly waiting to consult me on. It sounds nothing; but the
courtesy and the unselfishness were perfect. It makes me rage to
think how few knew him, and how many had the chance to sneer at
their better.
Well, he was not wasted, that we know; though if anything looked
liker irony than this fitting of a man out with these rich
qualities and faculties to be wrecked and aborted from the very
stocks, I do not know the name of it. Yet we see that he has left
an influence; the memory of his patient courtesy has often checked
me in rudeness; has it not you?
You can form no idea of how handsome Walter was. At twenty he was
splendid to see; then, too, he had the sense of power in him, and
great hopes; he looked forward, ever jesting of course, but he
looked to see himself where he had the right to expect. He
believed in himself profoundly; but HE NEVER DISBELIEVED IN OTHERS.
To the roughest Highland student he always had his fine, kind, open
dignity of manner; and a good word behind his back.
The last time that I saw him before leaving for America - it was a
sad blow to both of us. When he heard I was leaving, and that
might be the last time we might meet - it almost was so - he was
terribly upset, and came round at once. We sat late, in Baxter's
empty house, where I was sleeping. My dear friend Walter Ferrier:
O if I had only written to him more! if only one of us in these
last days had been well! But I ever cherished the honour of his
friendship, and now when he is gone, I know what I have lost still
better. We live on, meaning to meet; but when the hope is gone,
the, pang comes.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, 26TH SEPTEMBER 1883.
MY DEAR GOSSE, - It appears a bolt from Transatlantica is necessary
to produce four lines from you. It is not flattering; but as I was
always a bad correspondent, 'tis a vice to which I am lenient. I
give you to know, however, that I have already twice (this makes
three times) sent you what I please to call a letter, and received
from you in return a subterfuge - or nothing. . . .
My present purpose, however, which must not be postponed, is to ask
you to telegraph to the Americans.
After a summer of good health of a very radiant order, toothache
and the death of a very old friend, which came upon me like a
thunderclap, have rather shelved my powers. I stare upon the
paper, not write. I wish I could write like your Sculptors; yet I
am well aware that I should not try in that direction. A certain
warmth (tepid enough) and a certain dash of the picturesque are my
poor essential qualities; and if I went fooling after the too
classical, I might lose even these. But I envied you that page.
I am, of course, deep in schemes; I was so ever. Execution alone
somewhat halts. How much do you make per annum, I wonder? This
year, for the first time, I shall pass 300 pounds; I may even get
halfway to the next milestone. This seems but a faint
remuneration; and the devil of it is, that I manage, with sickness,
and moves, and education, and the like, to keep steadily in front
of my income. However, I console myself with this, that if I were
anything else under God's Heaven, and had the same crank health, I
should make an even zero. If I had, with my present knowledge,
twelve months of my old health, I would, could, and should do
something neat. As it is, I have to tinker at my things in little
sittings; and the rent, or the butcher, or something, is always
calling me off to rattle up a pot-boiler. And then comes a back-
set of my health, and I have to twiddle my fingers and play
patience.
