Well, I do not complain, but I do envy strong health where it is
squandered. Treasure your strength, and may you never learn by
experience the profound ENNUI and irritation of the shelved artist.
For then, what is life? All that one has done to make one's life
effective then doubles the itch of inefficiency.
I trust also you may be long without finding out the devil that
there is in a bereavement. After love it is the one great surprise
that life preserves for us. Now I don't think I can be astonished
any more. - Yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR [OCTOBER 1883].
COLVIN, COLVIN, COLVIN, - Yours received; also interesting copy of
P. WHISTLES. 'In the multitude of councillors the Bible declares
there is wisdom,' said my great-uncle, 'but I have always found in
them distraction.' It is extraordinary how tastes vary: these
proofs have been handed about, it appears, and I have had several
letters; and - distraction. 'AEsop: the Miller and the Ass.'
Notes on details:-
1. I love the occasional trochaic line; and so did many excellent
writers before me.
2. If you don't like 'A Good Boy,' I do.
3. In 'Escape at Bedtime,' I found two suggestions. 'Shove' for
'above' is a correction of the press; it was so written.
'Twinkled' is just the error; to the child the stars appear to be
there; any word that suggests illusion is a horror.
4. I don't care; I take a different view of the vocative.
5. Bewildering and childering are good enough for me. These are
rhymes, jingles; I don't go for eternity and the three unities.
I will delete some of those condemned, but not all. I don't care
for the name Penny Whistles; I sent a sheaf to Henley when I sent
'em. But I've forgot the others. I would just as soon call 'em
'Rimes for Children' as anything else. I am not proud nor
particular.
Your remarks on the BLACK ARROW are to the point. I am pleased you
liked Crookback; he is a fellow whose hellish energy has always
fired my attention. I wish Shakespeare had written the play after
he had learned some of the rudiments of literature and art rather
than before. Some day, I will re-tickle the Sable Missile, and
shoot it, MOYENNANT FINANCES, once more into the air; I can lighten
it of much, and devote some more attention to Dick o' Gloucester.
It's great sport to write tushery.
By this I reckon you will have heard of my proposed excursiolorum
to the Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece, and kindred sites. If
the excursiolorum goes on, that is, if MOYENNANT FINANCES comes
off, I shall write to beg you to collect introductiolorums for me.
Distinguo: 1. SILVERADO was not written in America, but in
Switzerland's icy mountains. 2. What you read is the bleeding and
disembowelled remains of what I wrote. 3. The good stuff is all to
come - so I think. 'The Sea Fogs,' 'The Hunter's Family,' 'Toils
and Pleasures' - BELLES PAGES. - Yours ever,
RAMNUGGER.
O! - Seeley is too clever to live, and the book a gem. But why has
he read too much Arnold? Why will he avoid - obviously avoid -
fine writing up to which he has led? This is a winking, curled-
and-oiled, ultra-cultured, Oxford-don sort of an affectation that
infuriates my honest soul. 'You see' - they say - 'how unbombastic
WE are; we come right up to eloquence, and, when it's hanging on
the pen, dammy, we scorn it!' It is literary Deronda-ism. If you
don't want the woman, the image, or the phrase, mortify your vanity
and avoid the appearance of wanting them.
Letter: TO W. H. LOW
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, OCTOBER [1883].
MY DEAR LOW, - . . . Some day or other, in Cassell's MAGAZINE OF
ART, you will see a paper which will interest you, and where your
name appears. It is called 'Fontainebleau: Village Communities of
Artists,' and the signature of R. L. Stevenson will be found
annexed
Please tell the editor of MANHATTAN the following secrets for me:
1ST, That I am a beast; 2ND, that I owe him a letter; 3RD, that I
have lost his, and cannot recall either his name or address; 4TH,
that I am very deep in engagements, which my absurd health makes it
hard for me to overtake; but 5TH, that I will bear him in mind; 6TH
and last, that I am a brute.
My address is still the same, and I live in a most sweet corner of
the universe, sea and fine hills before me, and a rich variegated
plain; and at my back a craggy hill, loaded with vast feudal ruins.
I am very quiet; a person passing by my door half startles me; but
I enjoy the most aromatic airs, and at night the most wonderful
view into a moonlit garden. By day this garden fades into nothing,
overpowered by its surroundings and the luminous distance; but at
night and when the moon is out, that garden, the arbour, the flight
of stairs that mount the artificial hillock, the plumed blue gum-
trees that hang trembling, become the very skirts of Paradise.
Angels I know frequent it; and it thrills all night with the flutes
of silence. Damn that garden;- and by day it is gone.
Continue to testify boldly against realism. Down with Dagon, the
fish god! All art swings down towards imitation, in these days,
fatally. But the man who loves art with wisdom sees the joke; it
is the lustful that tremble and respect her ladyship; but the
honest and romantic lovers of the Muse can see a joke and sit down
to laugh with Apollo.
The prospect of your return to Europe is very agreeable; and I was
pleased by what you said about your parents. One of my oldest
friends died recently, and this has given me new thoughts of death.
Up to now I had rather thought of him as a mere personal enemy of
my own; but now that I see him hunting after my friends, he looks
altogether darker. My own father is not well; and Henley, of whom
you must have heard me speak, is in a questionable state of health.
These things are very solemn, and take some of the colour out of
life. It is a great thing, after all, to be a man of reasonable
honour and kindness. Do you remember once consulting me in Paris
whether you had not better sacrifice honesty to art; and how, after
much confabulation, we agreed that your art would suffer if you
did? We decided better than we knew. In this strange welter where
we live, all hangs together by a million filaments; and to do
reasonably well by others, is the first prerequisite of art. Art
is a virtue; and if I were the man I should be, my art would rise
in the proportion of my life.
If you were privileged to give some happiness to your parents, I
know your art will gain by it. BY GOD, IT WILL! SIC SUBSCRIBITUR,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS [OCTOBER 1883].
MY DEAR BOB, - Yes, I got both your letters at Lyons, but have been
since then decading in several steps Toothache; fever; Ferrier's
death; lung. Now it is decided I am to leave to-morrow, penniless,
for Nice to see Dr. Williams.
I was much struck by your last. I have written a breathless note
on Realism for Henley; a fifth part of the subject, hurriedly
touched, which will show you how my thoughts are driving. You are
now at last beginning to think upon the problems of executive,
plastic art, for you are now for the first time attacking them.
Hitherto you have spoken and thought of two things - technique and
the ARS ARTIUM, or common background of all arts. Studio work is
the real touch. That is the genial error of the present French
teaching. Realism I regard as a mere question of method. The
'brown foreground,' 'old mastery,' and the like, ranking with
villanelles, as technical sports and pastimes. Real art, whether
ideal or realistic, addresses precisely the same feeling, and seeks
the same qualities - significance or charm. And the same - very
same - inspiration is only methodically differentiated according as
the artist is an arrant realist or an arrant idealist. Each, by
his own method, seeks to save and perpetuate the same significance
or charm; the one by suppressing, the other by forcing, detail.
All other idealism is the brown foreground over again, and hence
only art in the sense of a game, like cup and ball. All other
realism is not art at all - but not at all. It is, then, an
insincere and showy handicraft.
Were you to re-read some Balzac, as I have been doing, it would
greatly help to clear your eyes. He was a man who never found his
method. An inarticulate Shakespeare, smothered under forcible-
feeble detail. It is astounding to the riper mind how bad he is,
how feeble, how untrue, how tedious; and, of course, when he
surrendered to his temperament, how good and powerful. And yet
never plain nor clear. He could not consent to be dull, and thus
became so. He would leave nothing undeveloped, and thus drowned
out of sight of land amid the multitude of crying and incongruous
details. There is but one art - to omit! O if I knew how to omit,
I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knew how to omit would
make an ILIAD of a daily paper.
Your definition of seeing is quite right. It is the first part of
omission to be partly blind. Artistic sight is judicious
blindness. Sam Bough must have been a jolly blind old boy. He
would turn a corner, look for one-half or quarter minute, and then
say, 'This'll do, lad.' Down he sat, there and then, with whole
artistic plan, scheme of colour, and the like, and begin by laying
a foundation of powerful and seemingly incongruous colour on the
block. He saw, not the scene, but the water-colour sketch. Every
artist by sixty should so behold nature. Where does he learn that?
In the studio, I swear. He goes to nature for facts, relations,
values - material; as a man, before writing a historical novel,
reads up memoirs. But it is not by reading memoirs that he has
learned the selective criterion. He has learned that in the
practice of his art; and he will never learn it well, but when
disengaged from the ardent struggle of immediate representation, of
realistic and EX FACTO art. He learns it in the crystallisation of
day-dreams; in changing, not in copying, fact; in the pursuit of
the ideal, not in the study of nature. These temples of art are,
as you say, inaccessible to the realistic climber. It is not by
looking at the sea that you get
'The multitudinous seas incarnadine,'
nor by looking at Mont Blanc that you find
'And visited all night by troops of stars.'
A kind of ardour of the blood is the mother of all this; and
according as this ardour is swayed by knowledge and seconded by
craft, the art expression flows clear, and significance and charm,
like a moon rising, are born above the barren juggle of mere
symbols.
The painter must study more from nature than the man of words. But
why? Because literature deals with men's business and passions
which, in the game of life, we are irresistibly obliged to study;
but painting with relations of light, and colour, and
significances, and form, which, from the immemorial habit of the
race, we pass over with an unregardful eye. Hence this crouching
upon camp-stools, and these crusts. But neither one nor other is a
part of art, only preliminary studies.
I want you to help me to get people to understand that realism is a
method, and only methodic in its consequences; when the realist is
an artist, that is, and supposing the idealist with whom you
compare him to be anything but a FARCEUR and a DILETTANTE. The two
schools of working do, and should, lead to the choice of different
subjects. But that is a consequence, not a cause. See my chaotic
note, which will appear, I fancy, in November in Henley's sheet.
Poor Ferrier, it bust me horrid. He was, after you, the oldest of
my friends.
I am now very tired, and will go to bed having prelected freely.
Fanny will finish.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, 12TH OCTOBER 1883.
MY DEAR FATHER, - I have just lunched; the day is exquisite, the
air comes though the open window rich with odour, and I am by no
means spiritually minded. Your letter, however, was very much
valued, and has been read oftener than once. What you say about
yourself I was glad to hear; a little decent resignation is not
only becoming a Christian, but is likely to be excellent for the
health of a Stevenson. To fret and fume is undignified, suicidally
foolish, and theologically unpardonable; we are here not to make,
but to tread predestined, pathways; we are the foam of a wave, and
to preserve a proper equanimity is not merely the first part of
submission to God, but the chief of possible kindnesses to those
about us. I am lecturing myself, but you also. To do our best is
one part, but to wash our hands smilingly of the consequence is the
next part, of any sensible virtue.
I have come, for the moment, to a pause in my moral works; for I
have many irons in the fire, and I wish to finish something to
bring coin before I can afford to go on with what I think
doubtfully to be a duty. It is a most difficult work; a touch of
the parson will drive off those I hope to influence; a touch of
overstrained laxity, besides disgusting, like a grimace, may do
harm. Nothing that I have ever seen yet speaks directly and
efficaciously to young men; and I do hope I may find the art and
wisdom to fill up a gap. The great point, as I see it, is to ask
as little as possible, and meet, if it may be, every view or
absence of view; and it should be, must be, easy. Honesty is the
one desideratum; but think how hard a one to meet. I think all the
time of Ferrier and myself; these are the pair that I address.
Poor Ferrier, so much a better man than I, and such a temporal
wreck. But the thing of which we must divest our minds is to look
partially upon others; all is to be viewed; and the creature
judged, as he must be by his Creator, not dissected through a prism
of morals, but in the unrefracted ray. So seen, and in relation to
the almost omnipotent surroundings, who is to distinguish between
F. and such a man as Dr. Candlish, or between such a man as David
Hume and such an one as Robert Burns? To compare my poor and good
Walter with myself is to make me startle; he, upon all grounds
above the merely expedient, was the nobler being. Yet wrecked
utterly ere the full age of manhood; and the last skirmishes so
well fought, so humanly useless, so pathetically brave, only the
leaps of an expiring lamp. All this is a very pointed instance.
It shuts the mouth. I have learned more, in some ways, from him
than from any other soul I ever met; and he, strange to think, was
the best gentleman, in all kinder senses, that I ever knew. - Ever
your affectionate son,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO W H LOW
[CHALET LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, OCT. 23, 1883.]
MY DEAR LOW, - C'EST D'UN BON CAMARADE; and I am much obliged to
you for your two letters and the inclosure. Times are a lityle
changed with all of us since the ever memorable days of Lavenue:
hallowed be his name! hallowed his old Fleury! - of which you did
not see - I think - as I did - the glorious apotheosis: advanced
on a Tuesday to three francs, on the Thursday to six, and on Friday
swept off, holus bolus, for the proprietor's private consumption.
Well, we had the start of that proprietor. Many a good bottle came
our way, and was, I think, worthily made welcome.
I am pleased that Mr. Gilder should like my literature; and I ask
you particularly to thank Mr. Bunner (have I the name right?) for
his notice, which was of that friendly, headlong sort that really
pleases an author like what the French call a 'shake-hands.' It
pleased me the more coming from the States, where I have met not
much recognition, save from the buccaneers, and above all from
pirates who misspell my name. I saw my book advertised in a number
of the CRITIC as the work of one R. L. Stephenson; and, I own, I
boiled. It is so easy to know the name of the man whose book you
have stolen; for there it is, at full length, on the title-page of
your booty. But no, damn him, not he! He calls me Stephenson.
These woes I only refer to by the way, as they set a higher value
on the CENTURY notice.
I am now a person with an established ill-health - a wife - a dog
possessed with an evil, a Gadarene spirit - a chalet on a hill,
looking out over the Mediterranean - a certain reputation - and
very obscure finances. Otherwise, very much the same, I guess; and
were a bottle of Fleury a thing to be obtained, capable of
developing theories along with a fit spirit even as of yore. Yet I
now draw near to the Middle Ages; nearly three years ago, that
fatal Thirty struck; and yet the great work is not yet done - not
yet even conceived. But so, as one goes on, the wood seems to
thicken, the footpath to narrow, and the House Beautiful on the
hill's summit to draw further and further away. We learn, indeed,
to use our means; but only to learn, along with it, the paralysing
knowledge that these means are only applicable to two or three poor
commonplace motives. Eight years ago, if I could have slung ink as
I can now, I should have thought myself well on the road after
Shakespeare; and now - I find I have only got a pair of walking-
shoes and not yet begun to travel. And art is still away there on
the mountain summit. But I need not continue; for, of course, this
is your story just as much as it is mine; and, strange to think, it
was Shakespeare's too, and Beethoven's, and Phidias's. It is a
blessed thing that, in this forest of art, we can pursue our wood-
lice and sparrows, AND NOT CATCH THEM, with almost the same fervour
of exhilaration as that with which Sophocles hunted and brought
down the Mastodon.
Tell me something of your work, and your wife. - My dear fellow, I
am yours ever,
R. L. STEVENSON.
My wife begs to be remembered to both of you; I cannot say as much
for my dog, who has never seen you, but he would like, on general
principles, to bite you.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
[HYERES, NOVEMBER 1883.]
MY DEAR LAD, - . . . Of course, my seamanship is jimmy: did I not
beseech you I know not how often to find me an ancient mariner -
and you, whose own wife's own brother is one of the ancientest, did
nothing for me? As for my seamen, did Runciman ever know
eighteenth century buccaneers? No? Well, no more did I. But I
have known and sailed with seamen too, and lived and eaten with
them; and I made my put-up shot in no great ignorance, but as a
put-up thing has to be made, I.E. to be coherent and picturesque,
and damn the expense. Are they fairly lively on the wires? Then,
favour me with your tongues. Are they wooden, and dim, and no
sport? Then it is I that am silent, otherwise not. The work,
strange as it may sound in the ear, is not a work of realism. The
next thing I shall hear is that the etiquette is wrong in Otto's
Court! With a warrant, and I mean it to be so, and the whole
matter never cost me half a thought. I make these paper people to
please myself, and Skelt, and God Almighty, and with no ulterior
purpose. Yet am I mortal myself; for, as I remind you, I begged
for a supervising mariner. However, my heart is in the right
place. I have been to sea, but I never crossed the threshold of a
court; and the courts shall be the way I want 'em.
I'm glad to think I owe you the review that pleased me best of all
the reviews I ever had; the one I liked best before that was -'s on
the ARABIANS. These two are the flowers of the collection,
according to me. To live reading such reviews and die eating
ortolans - sich is my aspiration.
Whenever you come you will be equally welcome. I am trying to
finish OTTO ere you shall arrive, so as to take and be able to
enjoy a well-earned - O yes, a well-earned - holiday. Longman
fetched by Otto: is it a spoon or a spoilt horn? Momentous, if
the latter; if the former, a spoon to dip much praise and pudding,
and to give, I do think, much pleasure. The last part, now in
hand, much smiles upon me. - Ever yours,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, [NOVEMBER 1883].
MY DEAR MOTHER, - You must not blame me too much for my silence; I
am over head and ears in work, and do not know what to do first. I
have been hard at OTTO, hard at SILVERADO proofs, which I have
worked over again to a tremendous extent; cutting, adding,
rewriting, until some of the worst chapters of the original are
now, to my mind, as good as any. I was the more bound to make it
good, as I had such liberal terms; it's not for want of trying if I
have failed.
I got your letter on my birthday; indeed, that was how I found it
out about three in the afternoon, when postie comes. Thank you for
all you said. As for my wife, that was the best investment ever
made by man; but 'in our branch of the family' we seem to marry
well. I, considering my piles of work, am wonderfully well; I have
not been so busy for I know not how long. I hope you will send me
the money I asked however, as I am not only penniless, but shall
remain so in all human probability for some considerable time. I
have got in the mass of my expectations; and the 100 pounds which
is to float us on the new year can not come due till SILVERADO is
all ready; I am delaying it myself for the moment; then will follow
the binders and the travellers and an infinity of other nuisances;
and only at the last, the jingling-tingling.
Do you know that TREASURE ISLAND has appeared? In the November
number of Henley's Magazine, a capital number anyway, there is a
funny publisher's puff of it for your book; also a bad article by
me. Lang dotes on TREASURE ISLAND: 'Except TOM SAWYER and the
ODYSSEY,' he writes, 'I never liked any romance so much.' I will
inclose the letter though. The Bogue is angelic, although very
dirty. It has rained - at last! It was jolly cold when the rain
came.
I was overjoyed to hear such good news of my father. Let him go on
at that! Ever your affectionate,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, [NOVEMBER 1883].
MY DEAR COLVIN, - I have been bad, but as you were worse, I feel no
shame. I raise a blooming countenance, not the evidence of a self-
righteous spirit.
I continue my uphill fight with the twin spirits of bankruptcy and
indigestion. Duns rage about my portal, at least to fancy's ear.
I suppose you heard of Ferrier's death: my oldest friend, except
Bob. It has much upset me. I did not fancy how much. I am
strangely concerned about it.
My house is the loveliest spot in the universe; the moonlight
nights we have are incredible; love, poetry and music, and the
Arabian Nights, inhabit just my corner of the world - nest there
like mavises.
Here lies
The carcase
of
Robert Louis Stevenson,
An active, austere, and not inelegant
writer,
who,
at the termination of a long career,
wealthy, wise, benevolent, and honoured by
the attention of two hemispheres,
yet owned it to have been his crowning favour
TO INHABIT
LA SOLITUDE.
(With the consent of the intelligent edility of Hyeres, he has been
interred, below this frugal stone, in the garden which he honoured
for so long with his poetic presence.)
I must write more solemn letters. Adieu. Write.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. MILNE
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, [NOVEMBER 1883].
MY DEAR HENRIETTA, - Certainly; who else would they be? More by
token, on that particular occasion, you were sailing under the
title of Princess Royal; I, after a furious contest, under that of
Prince Alfred; and Willie, still a little sulky, as the Prince of
Wales. We were all in a buck basket about half-way between the
swing and the gate; and I can still see the Pirate Squadron heave
in sight upon the weather bow.
I wrote a piece besides on Giant Bunker; but I was not happily
inspired, and it is condemned. Perhaps I'll try again; he was a
horrid fellow, Giant Bunker! and some of my happiest hours were
passed in pursuit of him. You were a capital fellow to play: how
few there were who could! None better than yourself. I shall
never forget some of the days at Bridge of Allan; they were one
golden dream. See 'A Good Boy' in the PENNY WHISTLES, much of the
sentiment of which is taken direct from one evening at B. of A.
when we had had a great play with the little Glasgow girl.
Hallowed be that fat book of fairy tales! Do you remember acting
the Fair One with Golden Locks? What a romantic drama! Generally
speaking, whenever I think of play, it is pretty certain that you
will come into my head. I wrote a paper called 'Child's Play'
once, where, I believe, you or Willie would recognise things. . . .
Surely Willie is just the man to marry; and if his wife wasn't a
happy woman, I think I could tell her who was to blame. Is there
no word of it? Well, these things are beyond arrangement; and the
wind bloweth where it listeth - which, I observe, is generally
towards the west in Scotland. Here it prefers a south-easterly
course, and is called the Mistral - usually with an adjective in
front. But if you will remember my yesterday's toothache and this
morning's crick, you will be in a position to choose an adjective
for yourself. Not that the wind is unhealthy; only when it comes
strong, it is both very high and very cold, which makes it the d-v-
l. But as I am writing to a lady, I had better avoid this topic;
winds requiring a great scope of language.
Please remember me to all at home; give Ramsay a pennyworth of
acidulated drops for his good taste. - And believe me, your
affectionate cousin,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MISS FERRIER
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, VAR, NOVEMBER 22, 1883.
DEAR MISS FERRIER, - Many thanks for the photograph. It is - well,
it is like most photographs. The sun is an artist of too much
renown; and, at any rate, we who knew Walter 'in the brave days of
old' will be difficult to please.
I was inexpressibly touched to get a letter from some lawyers as to
some money. I have never had any account with my friends; some
have gained and some lost; and I should feel there was something
dishonest in a partial liquidation even if I could recollect the
facts, WHICH I CANNOT. But the fact of his having put aside this
memorandum touched me greatly.
The mystery of his life is great. Our chemist in this place, who
had been at Malvern, recognised the picture. You may remember
Walter had a romantic affection for all pharmacies? and the bottles
in the window were for him a poem? He said once that he knew no
pleasure like driving through a lamplit city, waiting for the
chemists to go by.
All these things return now.
He had a pretty full translation of Schiller's AESTHETIC LETTERS,
which we read together, as well as the second part of FAUST, in
Gladstone Terrace, he helping me with the German. There is no
keepsake I should more value than the MS. of that translation.
They were the best days I ever had with him, little dreaming all
would so soon be over. It needs a blow like this to convict a man
of mortality and its burthen. I always thought I should go by
myself; not to survive. But now I feel as if the earth were
undermined, and all my friends have lost one thickness of reality
since that one passed. Those are happy who can take it otherwise;
with that I found things all beginning to dislimn. Here we have no
abiding city, and one felt as though he had - and O too much acted.
But if you tell me, he did not feel my silence. However, he must
have done so; and my guilt is irreparable now. I thank God at
least heartily that he did not resent it.
Please remember me to Sir Alexander and Lady Grant, to whose care I
will address this. When next I am in Edinburgh I will take
flowers, alas! to the West Kirk. Many a long hour we passed in
graveyards, the man who has gone and I - or rather not that man -
but the beautiful, genial, witty youth who so betrayed him. - Dear
Miss Ferrier, I am yours most sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO W. H. LOW
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, VAR, 13TH DECEMBER 1883.
MY DEAR LOW, - . . . I was much pleased with what you send about my
work. Ill-health is a great handicapper in the race. I have never
at command that press of spirits that are necessary to strike out a
thing red-hot. SILVERADO is an example of stuff worried and pawed
about, God knows how often, in poor health, and you can see for
yourself the result: good pages, an imperfect fusion, a certain
languor of the whole. Not, in short, art. I have told Roberts to
send you a copy of the book when it appears, where there are some
fair passages that will be new to you. My brief romance, PRINCE
OTTO - far my most difficult adventure up to now - is near an end.
I have still one chapter to write DE FOND EN COMBLE, and three or
four to strengthen or recast. The rest is done. I do not know if
I have made a spoon, or only spoiled a horn; but I am tempted to
hope the first. If the present bargain hold, it will not see the
light of day for some thirteen months. Then I shall be glad to
know how it strikes you. There is a good deal of stuff in it, both
dramatic and, I think, poetic; and the story is not like these
purposeless fables of to-day, but is, at least, intended to stand
FIRM upon a base of philosophy - or morals - as you please. It has
been long gestated, and is wrought with care. ENFIN, NOUS VERRONS.
My labours have this year for the first time been rewarded with
upwards of 350 pounds; that of itself, so base we are! encourages
me; and the better tenor of my health yet more. - Remember me to
Mrs. Low, and believe me, yours most sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON
LA SOLITUDE, DECEMBER 20, 1883.
MY DEAR FATHER, - I do not know which of us is to blame; I suspect
it is you this time. The last accounts of you were pretty good, I
was pleased to see; I am, on the whole, very well - suffering a
little still from my fever and liver complications, but better.
I have just finished re-reading a book, which I counsel you above
all things NOT to read, as it has made me very ill, and would make
you worse - Lockhart's SCOTT. It is worth reading, as all things
are from time to time that keep us nose to nose with fact; though I
think such reading may be abused, and that a great deal of life is
better spent in reading of a light and yet chivalrous strain.
Thus, no Waverley novel approaches in power, blackness, bitterness,
and moral elevation to the diary and Lockhart's narrative of the
end; and yet the Waverley novels are better reading for every day
than the Life. You may take a tonic daily, but not phlebotomy.
The great double danger of taking life too easily, and taking it
too hard, how difficult it is to balance that! But we are all too
little inclined to faith; we are all, in our serious moments, too
much inclined to forget that all are sinners, and fall justly by
their faults, and therefore that we have no more to do with that
than with the thunder-cloud; only to trust, and do our best, and
wear as smiling a face as may be for others and ourselves. But
there is no royal road among this complicated business. Hegel the
German got the best word of all philosophy with his antinomies:
the contrary of everything is its postulate. That is, of course,
grossly expressed, but gives a hint of the idea, which contains a
great deal of the mysteries of religion, and a vast amount of the
practical wisdom of life. For your part, there is no doubt as to
your duty - to take things easy and be as happy as you can, for
your sake, and my mother's, and that of many besides. Excuse this
sermon. - Ever your loving son,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
LA SOLITUDE, DECEMBER 25, 1883.
MY DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER, - This it is supposed will reach you
about Christmas, and I believe I should include Lloyd in the
greeting. But I want to lecture my father; he is not grateful
enough; he is like Fanny; his resignation is not the 'true blue.'
A man who has gained a stone; whose son is better, and, after so
many fears to the contrary, I dare to say, a credit to him; whose
business is arranged; whose marriage is a picture - what I should
call resignation in such a case as his would be to 'take down his
fiddle and play as lood as ever he could.' That and nought else.
And now, you dear old pious ingrate, on this Christmas morning,
think what your mercies have been; and do not walk too far before
your breakfast - as far as to the top of India Street, then to the
top of Dundas Street, and then to your ain stair heid; and do not
forget that even as LABORARE, so JOCULARI, EST ORARE; and to be
happy the first step to being pious.
I have as good as finished my novel, and a hard job it has been -
but now practically over, LAUS DEO! My financial prospects better
than ever before; my excellent wife a touch dolorous, like Mr.
Tommy; my Bogue quite converted, and myself in good spirits. O,
send Curry Powder per Baxter.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
[LA SOLITUDE, HYERES], LAST SUNDAY OF '83.
MY DEAR MOTHER, - I give my father up. I give him a parable: that
the Waverley novels are better reading for every day than the
tragic Life. And he takes it backside foremost, and shakes his
head, and is gloomier than ever. Tell him that I give him up. I
don't want no such a parent. This is not the man for my money. I
do not call that by the name of religion which fills a man with
bile. I write him a whole letter, bidding him beware of extremes,
and telling him that his gloom is gallows-worthy; and I get back an
answer - Perish the thought of it.
Here am I on the threshold of another year, when, according to all
human foresight, I should long ago have been resolved into my
elements; here am I, who you were persuaded was born to disgrace
you - and, I will do you the justice to add, on no such
insufficient grounds - no very burning discredit when all is done;
here am I married, and the marriage recognised to be a blessing of
the first order, A1 at Lloyd's. There is he, at his not first
youth, able to take more exercise than I at thirty-three, and
gaining a stone's weight, a thing of which I am incapable. There
are you; has the man no gratitude? There is Smeoroch: is he
blind? Tell him from me that all this is
NOT THE TRUE BLUE!
I will think more of his prayers when I see in him a spirit of
PRAISE. Piety is a more childlike and happy attitude than he
admits. Martha, Martha, do you hear the knocking at the door? But
Mary was happy. Even the Shorter Catechism, not the merriest
epitome of religion, and a work exactly as pious although not quite
so true as the multiplication table - even that dry-as-dust epitome
begins with a heroic note. What is man's chief end? Let him study
that; and ask himself if to refuse to enjoy God's kindest gifts is
in the spirit indicated. Up, Dullard! It is better service to
enjoy a novel than to mump.
I have been most unjust to the Shorter Catechism, I perceive. I
wish to say that I keenly admire its merits as a performance; and
that all that was in my mind was its peculiarly unreligious and
unmoral texture; from which defect it can never, of course,
exercise the least influence on the minds of children. But they
learn fine style and some austere thinking unconsciously. - Ever
your loving son,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, JANUARY 1 (1884).
MY DEAR PEOPLE, - A Good New Year to you. The year closes, leaving
me with 50 pounds in the bank, owing no man nothing, 100 pounds
more due to me in a week or so, and 150 pounds more in the course
of the month; and I can look back on a total receipt of 465 pounds,
0s. 6d. for the last twelve months!
And yet I am not happy!
Yet I beg! Here is my beggary:-
1. Sellar's Trial.
2. George Borrow's Book about Wales.
3. My Grandfather's Trip to Holland.
4. And (but this is, I fear, impossible) the Bell Rock Book.
When I think of how last year began, after four months of sickness
and idleness, all my plans gone to water, myself starting alone, a
kind of spectre, for Nice - should I not be grateful? Come, let us
sing unto the Lord!
Nor should I forget the expected visit, but I will not believe in
that till it befall; I am no cultivator of disappointments, 'tis a
herb that does not grow in my garden; but I get some good crops
both of remorse and gratitude. The last I can recommend to all
gardeners; it grows best in shiny weather, but once well grown, is
very hardy; it does not require much labour; only that the
husbandman should smoke his pipe about the flower-plots and admire
God's pleasant wonders. Winter green (otherwise known as
Resignation, or the 'false gratitude plant') springs in much the
same soil; is little hardier, if at all; and requires to be so dug
about and dunged, that there is little margin left for profit. The
variety known as the Black Winter green (H. V. Stevensoniana) is
rather for ornament than profit.
'John, do you see that bed of resignation?' - 'It's doin' bravely,
sir.' - 'John, I will not have it in my garden; it flatters not the
eye and comforts not the stomach; root it out.' - 'Sir, I ha'e seen
o' them that rase as high as nettles; gran' plants!' - 'What then?
Were they as tall as alps, if still unsavoury and bleak, what
matters it? Out with it, then; and in its place put Laughter and a
Good Conceit (that capital home evergreen), and a bush of Flowering
Piety - but see it be the flowering sort - the other species is no
ornament to any gentleman's Back Garden.'
JNO. BUNYAN.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, 9TH MARCH 1884.
MY DEAR S. C., - You will already have received a not very sane
note from me; so your patience was rewarded - may I say, your
patient silence? However, now comes a letter, which on receipt, I
thus acknowledge.
I have already expressed myself as to the political aspect. About
Grahame, I feel happier; it does seem to have been really a good,
neat, honest piece of work. We do not seem to be so badly off for
commanders: Wolseley and Roberts, and this pile of Woods,
Stewarts, Alisons, Grahames, and the like. Had we but ONE
statesman on any side of the house!
Two chapters of OTTO do remain: one to rewrite, one to create; and
I am not yet able to tackle them. For me it is my chief o' works;
hence probably not so for others, since it only means that I have
here attacked the greatest difficulties. But some chapters towards
the end: three in particular - I do think come off. I find them
stirring, dramatic, and not unpoetical. We shall see, however; as
like as not, the effort will be more obvious than the success.
For, of course, I strung myself hard to carry it out. The next
will come easier, and possibly be more popular. I believe in the
covering of much paper, each time with a definite and not too
difficult artistic purpose; and then, from time to time, drawing
oneself up and trying, in a superior effort, to combine the
facilities thus acquired or improved. Thus one progresses. But,
mind, it is very likely that the big effort, instead of being the
masterpiece, may be the blotted copy, the gymnastic exercise. This
no man can tell; only the brutal and licentious public, snouting in
Mudie's wash-trough, can return a dubious answer.
I am to-day, thanks to a pure heaven and a beneficent, loud-
talking, antiseptic mistral, on the high places as to health and
spirits. Money holds out wonderfully. Fanny has gone for a drive
to certain meadows which are now one sheet of jonquils: sea-bound
meadows, the thought of which may freshen you in Bloomsbury. 'Ye
have been fresh and fair, Ye have been filled with flowers' - I
fear I misquote. Why do people babble? Surely Herrick, in his
true vein, is superior to Martial himself, though Martial is a very
pretty poet.
Did you ever read St. Augustine? The first chapters of the
CONFESSIONS are marked by a commanding genius. Shakespearian in
depth. I was struck dumb, but, alas! when you begin to wander into
controversy, the poet drops out. His description of infancy is
most seizing. And how is this: 'Sed majorum nugae negotia
vocantur; puerorum autem talia cum sint puniuntur a majoribus.'
Which is quite after the heart of R. L. S. See also his splendid
passage about the 'luminosus limes amicitiae' and the 'nebulae de
limosa concupiscentia carnis'; going on 'UTRUMQUE in confuso
aestuabat et rapiebat imbecillam aetatem per abrupta cupiditatum.'
That 'Utrumque' is a real contribution to life's science. Lust
ALONE is but a pigmy; but it never, or rarely, attacks us single-
handed.
Do you ever read (to go miles off, indeed) the incredible Barbey
d'Aurevilly? A psychological Poe - to be for a moment Henley. I
own with pleasure I prefer him with all his folly, rot, sentiment,
and mixed metaphors, to the whole modern school in France. It
makes me laugh when it's nonsense; and when he gets an effect
(though it's still nonsense and mere Poery, not poesy) it wakens
me. CE QUI NE MEURT PAS nearly killed me with laughing, and left
me - well, it left me very nearly admiring the old ass. At least,
it's the kind of thing one feels one couldn't do. The dreadful
moonlight, when they all three sit silent in the room - by George,
sir, it's imagined - and the brief scene between the husband and
wife is all there. QUANT AU FOND, the whole thing, of course, is a
fever dream, and worthy of eternal laughter. Had the young man
broken stones, and the two women been hard-working honest
prostitutes, there had been an end of the whole immoral and
baseless business: you could at least have respected them in that
case.
I also read PETRONIUS ARBITER, which is a rum work, not so immoral
as most modern works, but singularly silly. I tackled some Tacitus
too. I got them with a dreadful French crib on the same page with
the text, which helps me along and drives me mad. The French do
not even try to translate. They try to be much more classical than
the classics, with astounding results of barrenness and tedium.
Tacitus, I fear, was too solid for me. I liked the war part; but
the dreary intriguing at Rome was too much.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MR. DICK
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, VAR, 12TH MARCH 1884.
MY DEAR MR. DICK, - I have been a great while owing you a letter;
but I am not without excuses, as you have heard. I overworked to
get a piece of work finished before I had my holiday, thinking to
enjoy it more; and instead of that, the machinery near hand came
sundry in my hands! like Murdie's uniform. However, I am now, I
think, in a fair way of recovery; I think I was made, what there is
of me, of whipcord and thorn-switches; surely I am tough! But I
fancy I shall not overdrive again, or not so long. It is my theory
that work is highly beneficial, but that it should, if possible,
and certainly for such partially broken-down instruments as the
thing I call my body, be taken in batches, with a clear break and
breathing space between. I always do vary my work, laying one
thing aside to take up another, not merely because I believe it
rests the brain, but because I have found it most beneficial to the
result. Reading, Bacon says, makes a full man, but what makes me
full on any subject is to banish it for a time from all my
thoughts. However, what I now propose is, out of every quarter, to
work two months' and rest the third. I believe I shall get more
done, as I generally manage, on my present scheme, to have four
months' impotent illness and two of imperfect health - one before,
one after, I break down. This, at least, is not an economical
division of the year.
I re-read the other day that heartbreaking book, the LIFE OF SCOTT.
One should read such works now and then, but O, not often. As I
live, I feel more and more that literature should be cheerful and
brave-spirited, even if it cannot be made beautiful and pious and
heroic. We wish it to be a green place; the WAVERLEY NOVELS are
better to re-read than the over-true life, fine as dear Sir Walter
was. The Bible, in most parts, is a cheerful book; it is our
little piping theologies, tracts, and sermons that are dull and
dowie; and even the Shorter Catechism, which is scarcely a work of
consolation, opens with the best and shortest and completest sermon
ever written - upon Man's chief end. - Believe me, my dear Mr.
Dick, very sincerely yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - You see I have changed my hand. I was threatened apparently
with scrivener's cramp, and at any rate had got to write so small,
that the revisal of my MS. tried my eyes, hence my signature alone
remains upon the old model; for it appears that if I changed that,
I should be cut off from my 'vivers.'
R. L. S.
Letter: TO COSMO MONKHOUSE
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, MARCH 16, 1884.
MY DEAR MONKHOUSE, - You see with what promptitude I plunge into
correspondence; but the truth is, I am condemned to a complete
inaction, stagnate dismally, and love a letter. Yours, which would
have been welcome at any time, was thus doubly precious.
Dover sounds somewhat shiveringly in my ears. You should see the
weather I have - cloudless, clear as crystal, with just a punkah-
draft of the most aromatic air, all pine and gum tree. You would
be ashamed of Dover; you would scruple to refer, sir, to a spot so
paltry. To be idle at Dover is a strange pretension; pray, how do
you warm yourself? If I were there I should grind knives or write
blank verse, or - But at least you do not bathe? It is idle to
deny it: I have - I may say I nourish - a growing jealousy of the
robust, large-legged, healthy Britain-dwellers, patient of grog,
scorners of the timid umbrella, innocuously breathing fog: all
which I once was, and I am ashamed to say liked it. How ignorant
is youth! grossly rolling among unselected pleasures; and how
nobler, purer, sweeter, and lighter, to sip the choice tonic, to
recline in the luxurious invalid chair, and to tread, well-shawled,
the little round of the constitutional. Seriously, do you like to
repose? Ye gods, I hate it. I never rest with any acceptation; I
do not know what people mean who say they like sleep and that
damned bedtime which, since long ere I was breeched, has rung a
knell to all my day's doings and beings. And when a man, seemingly
sane, tells me he has 'fallen in love with stagnation,' I can only
say to him, 'You will never be a Pirate!' This may not cause any
regret to Mrs. Monkhouse; but in your own soul it will clang hollow
- think of it! Never! After all boyhood's aspirations and youth's
immoral day-dreams, you are condemned to sit down, grossly draw in
your chair to the fat board, and be a beastly Burgess till you die.
Can it be? Is there not some escape, some furlough from the Moral
Law, some holiday jaunt contrivable into a Better Land? Shall we
never shed blood? This prospect is too grey.
'Here lies a man who never did
Anything but what he was bid;
Who lived his life in paltry ease,
And died of commonplace disease.'
To confess plainly, I had intended to spend my life (or any leisure
I might have from Piracy upon the high seas) as the leader of a
great horde of irregular cavalry, devastating whole valleys. I can
still, looking back, see myself in many favourite attitudes;
signalling for a boat from my pirate ship with a pocket-
handkerchief, I at the jetty end, and one or two of my bold blades
keeping the crowd at bay; or else turning in the saddle to look
back at my whole command (some five thousand strong) following me
at the hand-gallop up the road out of the burning valley: this
last by moonlight.
ET POINT DU TOUT. I am a poor scribe, and have scarce broken a
commandment to mention, and have recently dined upon cold veal! As
for you (who probably had some ambitions), I hear of you living at
Dover, in lodgings, like the beasts of the field. But in heaven,
when we get there, we shall have a good time, and see some real
carnage. For heaven is - must be - that great Kingdom of
Antinomia, which Lamb saw dimly adumbrated in the COUNTRY WIFE,
where the worm which never dies (the conscience) peacefully
expires, and the sinner lies down beside the Ten Commandments.
Till then, here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling, with neither
health nor vice for anything more spirited than procrastination,
which I may well call the Consolation Stakes of Wickedness; and by
whose diligent practice, without the least amusement to ourselves,
we can rob the orphan and bring down grey hairs with sorrow to the
dust.
This astonishing gush of nonsense I now hasten to close, envelope,
and expedite to Shakespeare's Cliff. Remember me to Shakespeare,
and believe me, yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, MARCH 17, 1884.
MY DEAR GOSSE, - Your office - office is profanely said - your
bower upon the leads is divine. Have you, like Pepys, 'the right
to fiddle' there? I see you mount the companion, barbiton in hand,
and, fluttered about by city sparrows, pour forth your spirit in a
voluntary. Now when the spring begins, you must lay in your
flowers: how do you say about a potted hawthorn? Would it bloom?
Wallflower is a choice pot-herb; lily-of-the-valley, too, and
carnation, and Indian cress trailed about the window, is not only
beautiful by colour, but the leaves are good to eat. I recommend
thyme and rosemary for the aroma, which should not be left upon one
side; they are good quiet growths.
