The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 1
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The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1
CHAPTER I - STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH, TRAVELS AND EXCURSIONS,
1868-1873
Letter: SPRING GROVE SCHOOL, 12TH NOVEMBER 1863.
MA CHERE MAMAN, - Jai recu votre lettre Aujourdhui et comme le jour
prochaine est mon jour de naisance je vous ecrit ce lettre. Ma
grande gatteaux est arrive il leve 12 livres et demi le prix etait
17 shillings. Sur la soiree de Monseigneur Faux il y etait
quelques belles feux d'artifice. Mais les polissons entrent dans
notre champ et nos feux d'artifice et handkerchiefs disappeared
quickly, but we charged them out of the field. Je suis presque
driven mad par une bruit terrible tous les garcons kik up comme
grand un bruit qu'll est possible. I hope you will find your house
at Mentone nice. I have been obliged to stop from writing by the
want of a pen, but now I have one, so I will continue.
My dear papa, you told me to tell you whenever I was miserable. I
do not feel well, and I wish to get home.
Do take me with you.
R. STEVENSON.
Letter: 2 SULYARDE TERRACE, TORQUAY, THURSDAY (APRIL 1866).
RESPECTED PATERNAL RELATIVE, - I write to make a request of the
most moderate nature. Every year I have cost you an enormous -
nay, elephantine - sum of money for drugs and physician's fees, and
the most expensive time of the twelve months was March.
But this year the biting Oriental blasts, the howling tempests, and
the general ailments of the human race have been successfully
braved by yours truly.
Does not this deserve remuneration?
I appeal to your charity, I appeal to your generosity, I appeal to
your justice, I appeal to your accounts, I appeal, in fine, to your
purse.
My sense of generosity forbids the receipt of more - my sense of
justice forbids the receipt of less - than half-a-crown. - Greeting
from, Sir, your most affectionate and needy son,
R. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
WICK, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1868.
MY DEAR MOTHER, - . . . Wick lies at the end or elbow of an open
triangular bay, hemmed on either side by shores, either cliff or
steep earth-bank, of no great height. The grey houses of Pulteney
extend along the southerly shore almost to the cape; and it is
about half-way down this shore - no, six-sevenths way down - that
the new breakwater extends athwart the bay.
Certainly Wick in itself possesses no beauty: bare, grey shores,
grim grey houses, grim grey sea; not even the gleam of red tiles;
not even the greenness of a tree. The southerly heights, when I
came here, were black with people, fishers waiting on wind and
night. Now all the S.Y.S. (Stornoway boats) have beaten out of the
bay, and the Wick men stay indoors or wrangle on the quays with
dissatisfied fish-curers, knee-high in brine, mud, and herring
refuse. The day when the boats put out to go home to the Hebrides,
the girl here told me there was 'a black wind'; and on going out, I
found the epithet as justifiable as it was picturesque. A cold,
BLACK southerly wind, with occasional rising showers of rain; it
was a fine sight to see the boats beat out a-teeth of it.
In Wick I have never heard any one greet his neighbour with the
usual 'Fine day' or 'Good morning.' Both come shaking their heads,
and both say, 'Breezy, breezy!' And such is the atrocious quality
of the climate, that the remark is almost invariably justified by
the fact.
The streets are full of the Highland fishers, lubberly, stupid,
inconceivably lazy and heavy to move. You bruise against them,
tumble over them, elbow them against the wall - all to no purpose;
they will not budge; and you are forced to leave the pavement every
step.
To the south, however, is as fine a piece of coast scenery as I
ever saw. Great black chasms, huge black cliffs, rugged and over-
hung gullies, natural arches, and deep green pools below them,
almost too deep to let you see the gleam of sand among the darker
weed: there are deep caves too. In one of these lives a tribe of
gipsies. The men are ALWAYS drunk, simply and truthfully always.
From morning to evening the great villainous-looking fellows are
either sleeping off the last debauch, or hulking about the cove 'in
the horrors.' The cave is deep, high, and airy, and might be made
comfortable enough. But they just live among heaped boulders, damp
with continual droppings from above, with no more furniture than
two or three tin pans, a truss of rotten straw, and a few ragged
cloaks. In winter the surf bursts into the mouth and often forces
them to abandon it.
An EMEUTE of disappointed fishers was feared, and two ships of war
are in the bay to render assistance to the municipal authorities.
This is the ides; and, to all intents and purposes, said ides are
passed. Still there is a good deal of disturbance, many drunk men,
and a double supply of police. I saw them sent for by some people
and enter an inn, in a pretty good hurry: what it was for I do not
know.
You would see by papa's letter about the carpenter who fell off the
staging: I don't think I was ever so much excited in my life. The
man was back at his work, and I asked him how he was; but he was a
Highlander, and - need I add it? - dickens a word could I
understand of his answer. What is still worse, I find the people
here-about - that is to say, the Highlanders, not the northmen -
don't understand ME.
I have lost a shilling's worth of postage stamps, which has damped
my ardour for buying big lots of 'em: I'll buy them one at a time
as I want 'em for the future.
The Free Church minister and I got quite thick. He left last night
about two in the morning, when I went to turn in. He gave me the
enclosed. - I remain your affectionate son,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
WICK, September 5, 1868. MONDAY.
MY DEAR MAMMA, - This morning I got a delightful haul: your letter
of the fourth (surely mis-dated); Papa's of same day; Virgil's
BUCOLICS, very thankfully received; and Aikman's ANNALS, a precious
and most acceptable donation, for which I tender my most ebullient
thanksgivings. I almost forgot to drink my tea and eat mine egg.
It contains more detailed accounts than anything I ever saw, except
Wodrow, without being so portentously tiresome and so desperately
overborne with footnotes, proclamations, acts of Parliament, and
citations as that last history.
I have been reading a good deal of Herbert. He's a clever and a
devout cove; but in places awfully twaddley (if I may use the
word). Oughtn't this to rejoice Papa's heart -
'Carve or discourse; do not a famine fear.
Who carves is kind to two, who talks to all.'
You understand? The 'fearing a famine' is applied to people
gulping down solid vivers without a word, as if the ten lean kine
began to-morrow.
Do you remember condemning something of mine for being too
obtrusively didactic. Listen to Herbert -
'Is it not verse except enchanted groves
And sudden arbours shadow coarse-spun lines?
Must purling streams refresh a lover's loves?
MUST ALL BE VEILED, WHILE HE THAT READS DIVINES
CATCHING THE SENSE AT TWO REMOVES?'
You see, 'except' was used for 'unless' before 1630.
TUESDAY. - The riots were a hum. No more has been heard; and one
of the war-steamers has deserted in disgust.
The MOONSTONE is frightfully interesting: isn't the detective
prime? Don't say anything about the plot; for I have only read on
to the end of Betteredge's narrative, so don't know anything about
it yet.
I thought to have gone on to Thurso to-night, but the coach was
full; so I go to-morrow instead.
To-day I had a grouse: great glorification.
There is a drunken brute in the house who disturbed my rest last
night. He's a very respectable man in general, but when on the
'spree' a most consummate fool. When he came in he stood on the
top of the stairs and preached in the dark with great solemnity and
no audience from 12 P.M. to half-past one. At last I opened my
door. 'Are we to have no sleep at all for that DRUNKEN BRUTE?' I
said. As I hoped, it had the desired effect. 'Drunken brute!' he
howled, in much indignation; then after a pause, in a voice of some
contrition, 'Well, if I am a drunken brute, it's only once in the
twelvemonth!' And that was the end of him; the insult rankled in
his mind; and he retired to rest. He is a fish-curer, a man over
fifty, and pretty rich too. He's as bad again to-day; but I'll be
shot if he keeps me awake, I'll douse him with water if he makes a
row. - Ever your affectionate son,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
WICK, SEPTEMBER 1868. SATURDAY, 10 A.M.
MY DEAR MOTHER, - The last two days have been dreadfully hard, and
I was so tired in the evenings that I could not write. In fact,
last night I went to sleep immediately after dinner, or very nearly
so. My hours have been 10-2 and 3-7 out in the lighter or the
small boat, in a long, heavy roll from the nor'-east. When the dog
was taken out, he got awfully ill; one of the men, Geordie Grant by
name and surname, followed SHOOT with considerable ECLAT; but,
wonderful to relate! I kept well. My hands are all skinned,
blistered, discoloured, and engrained with tar, some of which
latter has established itself under my nails in a position of such
natural strength that it defies all my efforts to dislodge it. The
worst work I had was when David (MacDonald's eldest) and I took the
charge ourselves. He remained in the lighter to tighten or slacken
the guys as we raised the pole towards the perpendicular, with two
men. I was with four men in the boat. We dropped an anchor out a
good bit, then tied a cord to the pole, took a turn round the
sternmost thwart with it, and pulled on the anchor line. As the
great, big, wet hawser came in it soaked you to the skin: I was
the sternest (used, by way of variety, for sternmost) of the lot,
and had to coil it - a work which involved, from ITS being so stiff
and YOUR being busy pulling with all your might, no little trouble
and an extra ducking. We got it up; and, just as we were going to
sing 'Victory!' one of the guys slipped in, the pole tottered -
went over on its side again like a shot, and behold the end of our
labour.
You see, I have been roughing it; and though some parts of the
letter may be neither very comprehensible nor very interesting to
YOU, I think that perhaps it might amuse Willie Traquair, who
delights in all such dirty jobs.
The first day, I forgot to mention, was like mid-winter for cold,
and rained incessantly so hard that the livid white of our cold-
pinched faces wore a sort of inflamed rash on the windward side.
I am not a bit the worse of it, except fore-mentioned state of
hands, a slight crick in my neck from the rain running down, and
general stiffness from pulling, hauling, and tugging for dear life.
We have got double weights at the guys, and hope to get it up like
a shot.
What fun you three must be having! I hope the cold don't disagree
with you. - I remain, my dear mother, your affectionate son,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
PULTENEY, WICK, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1868.
MY DEAR MOTHER, - Another storm: wind higher, rain thicker: the
wind still rising as the night closes in and the sea slowly rising
along with it; it looks like a three days' gale.
Last week has been a blank one: always too much sea.
I enjoyed myself very much last night at the R.'s. There was a
little dancing, much singing and supper.
Are you not well that you do not write? I haven't heard from you
for more than a fortnight.
The wind fell yesterday and rose again to-day; it is a dreadful
evening; but the wind is keeping the sea down as yet. Of course,
nothing more has been done to the poles; and I can't tell when I
shall be able to leave, not for a fortnight yet, I fear, at the
earliest, for the winds are persistent. Where's Murra? Is Cummie
struck dumb about the boots? I wish you would get somebody to
write an interesting letter and say how you are, for you're on the
broad of your back I see. There hath arrived an inroad of farmers
to-night; and I go to avoid them to M- if he's disengaged, to the
R.'s if not.
SUNDAY (LATER). - Storm without: wind and rain: a confused mass
of wind-driven rain-squalls, wind-ragged mist, foam, spray, and
great, grey waves. Of this hereafter; in the meantime let us
follow the due course of historic narrative.
Seven P.M. found me at Breadalbane Terrace, clad in spotless
blacks, white tie, shirt, et caetera, and finished off below with a
pair of navvies' boots. How true that the devil is betrayed by his
feet! A message to Cummy at last. Why, O treacherous woman! were
my dress boots withheld?
Dramatis personae: pere R., amusing, long-winded, in many points
like papa; mere R., nice, delicate, likes hymns, knew Aunt Margaret
('t'ould man knew Uncle Alan); fille R., nommee Sara (no h), rather
nice, lights up well, good voice, INTERESTED face; Miss L., nice
also, washed out a little, and, I think, a trifle sentimental; fils
R., in a Leith office, smart, full of happy epithet, amusing. They
are very nice and very kind, asked me to come back - 'any night you
feel dull; and any night doesn't mean no night: we'll be so glad
to see you.' CEST LA MERE QUI PARLE.
I was back there again to-night. There was hymn-singing, and
general religious controversy till eight, after which talk was
secular. Mrs. S. was deeply distressed about the boot business.
She consoled me by saying that many would be glad to have such feet
whatever shoes they had on. Unfortunately, fishers and seafaring
men are too facile to be compared with! This looks like enjoyment:
better speck than Anster.
I have done with frivolity. This morning I was awakened by Mrs. S.
at the door. 'There's a ship ashore at Shaltigoe!' As my senses
slowly flooded, I heard the whistling and the roaring of wind, and
the lashing of gust-blown and uncertain flaws of rain. I got up,
dressed, and went out. The mizzled sky and rain blinded you.
C D
+-------------------
|
|
+-------------------
\
A\
\
B\
C D is the new pier.
A the schooner ashore. B the salmon house.
She was a Norwegian: coming in she saw our first gauge-pole,
standing at point E. Norse skipper thought it was a sunk smack, and
dropped his anchor in full drift of sea: chain broke: schooner
came ashore. Insured laden with wood: skipper owner of vessel and
cargo bottom out.
I was in a great fright at first lest we should be liable; but it
seems that's all right.
Some of the waves were twenty feet high. The spray rose eighty
feet at the new pier. Some wood has come ashore, and the roadway
seems carried away. There is something fishy at the far end where
the cross wall is building; but till we are able to get along, all
speculation is vain.
I am so sleepy I am writing nonsense.
I stood a long while on the cope watching the sea below me; I hear
its dull, monotonous roar at this moment below the shrieking of the
wind; and there came ever recurring to my mind the verse I am so
fond of:-
'But yet the Lord that is on high
Is more of might by far
Than noise of many waters is
Or great sea-billows are.'
The thunder at the wall when it first struck - the rush along ever
growing higher - the great jet of snow-white spray some forty feet
above you - and the 'noise of many waters,' the roar, the hiss, the
'shrieking' among the shingle as it fell head over heels at your
feet. I watched if it threw the big stones at the wall; but it
never moved them.
MONDAY. - The end of the work displays gaps, cairns of ten ton
blocks, stones torn from their places and turned right round. The
damage above water is comparatively little: what there may be
below, ON NE SAIT PAS ENCORE. The roadway is torn away, cross
heads, broken planks tossed here and there, planks gnawn and
mumbled as if a starved bear had been trying to eat them, planks
with spales lifted from them as if they had been dressed with a
rugged plane, one pile swaying to and fro clear of the bottom, the
rails in one place sunk a foot at least. This was not a great
storm, the waves were light and short. Yet when we are standing at
the office, I felt the ground beneath me QUAIL as a huge roller
thundered on the work at the last year's cross wall.
How could NOSTER AMICUS Q. MAXIMUS appreciate a storm at Wick? It
requires a little of the artistic temperament, of which Mr. T. S.,
C.E., possesses some, whatever he may say. I can't look at it
practically however: that will come, I suppose, like grey hair or
coffin nails.
Our pole is snapped: a fortnight's work and the loss of the Norse
schooner all for nothing! - except experience and dirty clothes. -
Your affectionate son,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. CHURCHILL BABINGTON
[SWANSTON COTTAGE, LOTHIANBURN, SUMMER 1871.]
MY DEAR MAUD, - If you have forgotten the hand-writing - as is like
enough - you will find the name of a former correspondent (don't
know how to spell that word) at the end. I have begun to write to
you before now, but always stuck somehow, and left it to drown in a
drawerful of like fiascos. This time I am determined to carry
through, though I have nothing specially to say.
We look fairly like summer this morning; the trees are blackening
out of their spring greens; the warmer suns have melted the
hoarfrost of daisies of the paddock; and the blackbird, I fear,
already beginning to 'stint his pipe of mellower days' - which is
very apposite (I can't spell anything to-day - ONE p or TWO?) and
pretty. All the same, we have been having shocking weather - cold
winds and grey skies.
I have been reading heaps of nice books; but I can't go back so
far. I am reading Clarendon's HIST. REBELL. at present, with which
I am more pleased than I expected, which is saying a good deal. It
is a pet idea of mine that one gets more real truth out of one
avowed partisan than out of a dozen of your sham impartialists -
wolves in sheep's clothing - simpering honesty as they suppress
documents. After all, what one wants to know is not what people
did, but why they did it - or rather, why they THOUGHT they did it;
and to learn that, you should go to the men themselves. Their very
falsehood is often more than another man's truth.
I have possessed myself of Mrs. Hutchinson, which, of course, I
admire, etc. But is there not an irritating deliberation and
correctness about her and everybody connected with her? If she
would only write bad grammar, or forget to finish a sentence, or do
something or other that looks fallible, it would be a relief. I
sometimes wish the old Colonel had got drunk and beaten her, in the
bitterness of my spirit. I know I felt a weight taken off my heart
when I heard he was extravagant. It is quite possible to be too
good for this evil world; and unquestionably, Mrs. Hutchinson was.
The way in which she talks of herself makes one's blood run cold.
There - I am glad to have got that out - but don't say it to
anybody - seal of secrecy.
Please tell Mr. Babington that I have never forgotten one of his
drawings - a Rubens, I think - a woman holding up a model ship.
That woman had more life in her than ninety per cent. of the lame
humans that you see crippling about this earth.
By the way, that is a feature in art which seems to have come in
with the Italians. Your old Greek statues have scarce enough
vitality in them to keep their monstrous bodies fresh withal. A
shrewd country attorney, in a turned white neckcloth and rusty
blacks, would just take one of these Agamemnons and Ajaxes quietly
by his beautiful, strong arm, trot the unresisting statue down a
little gallery of legal shams, and turn the poor fellow out at the
other end, 'naked, as from the earth he came.' There is more
latent life, more of the coiled spring in the sleeping dog, about a
recumbent figure of Michael Angelo's than about the most excited of
Greek statues. The very marble seems to wrinkle with a wild energy
that we never feel except in dreams.
I think this letter has turned into a sermon, but I had nothing
interesting to talk about.
I do wish you and Mr. Babington would think better of it and come
north this summer. We should be so glad to see you both. DO
reconsider it. - Believe me, my dear Maud, ever your most
affectionate cousin,
LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
1871?
MY DEAR CUMMY, - I was greatly pleased by your letter in many ways.
Of course, I was glad to hear from you; you know, you and I have so
many old stories between us, that even if there was nothing else,
even if there was not a very sincere respect and affection, we
should always be glad to pass a nod. I say 'even if there was
not.' But you know right well there is. Do not suppose that I
shall ever forget those long, bitter nights, when I coughed and
coughed and was so unhappy, and you were so patient and loving with
a poor, sick child. Indeed, Cummy, I wish I might become a man
worth talking of, if it were only that you should not have thrown
away your pains.
Happily, it is not the result of our acts that makes them brave and
noble, but the acts themselves and the unselfish love that moved us
to do them. 'Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of
these.' My dear old nurse, and you know there is nothing a man can
say nearer his heart except his mother or his wife - my dear old
nurse, God will make good to you all the good that you have done,
and mercifully forgive you all the evil. And next time when the
spring comes round, and everything is beginning once again, if you
should happen to think that you might have had a child of your own,
and that it was hard you should have spent so many years taking
care of some one else's prodigal, just you think this - you have
been for a great deal in my life; you have made much that there is
in me, just as surely as if you had conceived me; and there are
sons who are more ungrateful to their own mothers than I am to you.
For I am not ungrateful, my dear Cummy, and it is with a very
sincere emotion that I write myself your little boy,
Louis.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
DUNBLANE, FRIDAY, 5TH MARCH 1872.
MY DEAR BAXTER, - By the date you may perhaps understand the
purport of my letter without any words wasted about the matter. I
cannot walk with you to-morrow, and you must not expect me. I came
yesterday afternoon to Bridge of Allan, and have been very happy
ever since, as every place is sanctified by the eighth sense,
Memory. I walked up here this morning (three miles, TU-DIEU! a
good stretch for me), and passed one of my favourite places in the
world, and one that I very much affect in spirit when the body is
tied down and brought immovably to anchor on a sickbed. It is a
meadow and bank on a corner on the river, and is connected in my
mind inseparably with Virgil's ECLOGUES. HIC CORULIS MISTOS INTER
CONSEDIMUS ULMOS, or something very like that, the passage begins
(only I know my short-winded Latinity must have come to grief over
even this much of quotation); and here, to a wish, is just such a
cavern as Menalcas might shelter himself withal from the bright
noon, and, with his lips curled backward, pipe himself blue in the
face, while MESSIEURS LES ARCADIENS would roll out those cloying
hexameters that sing themselves in one's mouth to such a curious
lifting chant.
In such weather one has the bird's need to whistle; and I, who am
specially incompetent in this art, must content myself by
chattering away to you on this bit of paper. All the way along I
was thanking God that he had made me and the birds and everything
just as they are and not otherwise; for although there was no sun,
the air was so thrilled with robins and blackbirds that it made the
heart tremble with joy, and the leaves are far enough forward on
the underwood to give a fine promise for the future. Even myself,
as I say, I would not have had changed in one IOTA this forenoon,
in spite of all my idleness and Guthrie's lost paper, which is ever
present with me - a horrible phantom.
No one can be alone at home or in a quite new place. Memory and
you must go hand in hand with (at least) decent weather if you wish
to cook up a proper dish of solitude. It is in these little
flights of mine that I get more pleasure than in anything else.
Now, at present, I am supremely uneasy and restless - almost to the
extent of pain; but O! how I enjoy it, and how I SHALL enjoy it
afterwards (please God), if I get years enough allotted to me for
the thing to ripen in. When I am a very old and very respectable
citizen with white hair and bland manners and a gold watch, I shall
hear three crows cawing in my heart, as I heard them this morning:
I vote for old age and eighty years of retrospect. Yet, after all,
I dare say, a short shrift and a nice green grave are about as
desirable.
Poor devil! how I am wearying you! Cheer up. Two pages more, and
my letter reaches its term, for I have no more paper. What
delightful things inns and waiters and bagmen are! If we didn't
travel now and then, we should forget what the feeling of life is.
The very cushion of a railway carriage - 'the things restorative to
the touch.' I can't write, confound it! That's because I am so
tired with my walk. Believe me, ever your affectionate friend,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
DUNBLANE, TUESDAY, 9TH APRIL 1872.
MY DEAR BAXTER, - I don't know what you mean. I know nothing about
the Standing Committee of the Spec., did not know that such a body
existed, and even if it doth exist, must sadly repudiate all
association with such 'goodly fellowship.' I am a 'Rural
Voluptuary' at present. THAT is what is the matter with me. The
Spec. may go whistle. As for 'C. Baxter, Esq.,' who is he? 'One
Baxter, or Bagster, a secretary,' I say to mine acquaintance, 'is
at present disquieting my leisure with certain illegal,
uncharitable, unchristian, and unconstitutional documents called
BUSINESS LETTERS: THE AFFAIR IS IN THE HANDS OF THE POLICE.' Do
you hear THAT, you evildoer? Sending business letters is surely a
far more hateful and slimy degree of wickedness than sending
threatening letters; the man who throws grenades and torpedoes is
less malicious; the Devil in red-hot hell rubs his hands with glee
as he reckons up the number that go forth spreading pain and
anxiety with each delivery of the post.
I have been walking to-day by a colonnade of beeches along the
brawling Allan. My character for sanity is quite gone, seeing that
I cheered my lonely way with the following, in a triumphant chaunt:
'Thank God for the grass, and the fir-trees, and the crows, and the
sheep, and the sunshine, and the shadows of the fir-trees.' I hold
that he is a poor mean devil who can walk alone, in such a place
and in such weather, and doesn't set up his lungs and cry back to
the birds and the river. Follow, follow, follow me. Come hither,
come hither, come hither - here shall you see - no enemy - except a
very slight remnant of winter and its rough weather. My bedroom,
when I awoke this morning, was full of bird-songs, which is the
greatest pleasure in life. Come hither, come hither, come hither,
and when you come bring the third part of the EARTHLY PARADISE; you
can get it for me in Elliot's for two and tenpence (2s. 10d.)
(BUSINESS HABITS). Also bring an ounce of honeydew from Wilson's.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
BRUSSELS, THURSDAY, 25TH JULY 1872.
MY DEAR MOTHER, - I am here at last, sitting in my room, without
coat or waistcoat, and with both window and door open, and yet
perspiring like a terra-cotta jug or a Gruyere cheese.
We had a very good passage, which we certainly deserved, in
compensation for having to sleep on cabin floor, and finding
absolutely nothing fit for human food in the whole filthy
embarkation. We made up for lost time by sleeping on deck a good
part of the forenoon. When I woke, Simpson was still sleeping the
sleep of the just, on a coil of ropes and (as appeared afterwards)
his own hat; so I got a bottle of Bass and a pipe and laid hold of
an old Frenchman of somewhat filthy aspect (FIAT EXPERIMENTUM IN
CORPORE VILI) to try my French upon. I made very heavy weather of
it. The Frenchman had a very pretty young wife; but my French
always deserted me entirely when I had to answer her, and so she
soon drew away and left me to her lord, who talked of French
politics, Africa, and domestic economy with great vivacity. From
Ostend a smoking-hot journey to Brussels. At Brussels we went off
after dinner to the Parc. If any person wants to be happy, I
should advise the Parc. You sit drinking iced drinks and smoking
penny cigars under great old trees. The band place, covered walks,
etc., are all lit up. And you can't fancy how beautiful was the
contrast of the great masses of lamplit foliage and the dark
sapphire night sky with just one blue star set overhead in the
middle of the largest patch. In the dark walks, too, there are
crowds of people whose faces you cannot see, and here and there a
colossal white statue at the corner of an alley that gives the
place a nice, ARTIFICIAL, eighteenth century sentiment. There was
a good deal of summer lightning blinking overhead, and the black
avenues and white statues leapt out every minute into short-lived
distinctness.
I get up to add one thing more. There is in the hotel a boy in
whom I take the deepest interest. I cannot tell you his age, but
the very first time I saw him (when I was at dinner yesterday) I
was very much struck with his appearance. There is something very
leonine in his face, with a dash of the negro especially, if I
remember aright, in the mouth. He has a great quantity of dark
hair, curling in great rolls, not in little corkscrews, and a pair
of large, dark, and very steady, bold, bright eyes. His manners
are those of a prince. I felt like an overgrown ploughboy beside
him. He speaks English perfectly, but with, I think, sufficient
foreign accent to stamp him as a Russian, especially when his
manners are taken into account. I don't think I ever saw any one
who looked like a hero before. After breakfast this morning I was
talking to him in the court, when he mentioned casually that he had
caught a snake in the Riesengebirge. 'I have it here,' he said;
'would you like to see it?' I said yes; and putting his hand into
his breast-pocket, he drew forth not a dried serpent skin, but the
head and neck of the reptile writhing and shooting out its horrible
tongue in my face. You may conceive what a fright I got. I send
off this single sheet just now in order to let you know I am safe
across; but you must not expect letters often.
R. L. STEVENSON.
P.S. - The snake was about a yard long, but harmless, and now, he
says, quite tame.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
HOTEL LANDSBERG, FRANKFURT, MONDAY, 29TH JULY 1872.
... LAST night I met with rather an amusing adventurette. Seeing a
church door open, I went in, and was led by most importunate
finger-bills up a long stair to the top of the tower. The father
smoking at the door, the mother and the three daughters received me
as if I was a friend of the family and had come in for an evening
visit. The youngest daughter (about thirteen, I suppose, and a
pretty little girl) had been learning English at the school, and
was anxious to play it off upon a real, veritable Englander; so we
had a long talk, and I was shown photographs, etc., Marie and I
talking, and the others looking on with evident delight at having
such a linguist in the family. As all my remarks were duly
translated and communicated to the rest, it was quite a good German
lesson. There was only one contretemps during the whole interview
- the arrival of another visitor, in the shape (surely) the last of
God's creatures, a wood-worm of the most unnatural and hideous
appearance, with one great striped horn sticking out of his nose
like a boltsprit. If there are many wood-worms in Germany, I shall
come home. The most courageous men in the world must be
entomologists. I had rather be a lion-tamer.
To-day I got rather a curiosity - LIEDER UND BALLADEN VON ROBERT
BURNS, translated by one Silbergleit, and not so ill done either.
Armed with which, I had a swim in the Main, and then bread and
cheese and Bavarian beer in a sort of cafe, or at least the German
substitute for a cafe; but what a falling off after the heavenly
forenoons in Brussels!
I have bought a meerschaum out of local sentiment, and am now very
low and nervous about the bargain, having paid dearer than I should
in England, and got a worse article, if I can form a judgment.
Do write some more, somebody. To-morrow I expect I shall go into
lodgings, as this hotel work makes the money disappear like butter
in a furnace. - Meanwhile believe me, ever your affectionate son,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
HOTEL LANDSBERG, THURSDAY, 1ST AUGUST 1872.
... YESTERDAY I walked to Eckenheim, a village a little way out of
Frankfurt, and turned into the alehouse. In the room, which was
just such as it would have been in Scotland, were the landlady, two
neighbours, and an old peasant eating raw sausage at the far end.
I soon got into conversation; and was astonished when the landlady,
having asked whether I were an Englishman, and received an answer
in the affirmative, proceeded to inquire further whether I were not
also a Scotchman. It turned out that a Scotch doctor - a professor
- a poet - who wrote books - GROSS WIE DAS - had come nearly every
day out of Frankfurt to the ECKENHEIMER WIRTHSCHAFT, and had left
behind him a most savoury memory in the hearts of all its
customers. One man ran out to find his name for me, and returned
with the news that it was COBIE (Scobie, I suspect); and during his
absence the rest were pouring into my ears the fame and
acquirements of my countryman. He was, in some undecipherable
manner, connected with the Queen of England and one of the
Princesses. He had been in Turkey, and had there married a wife of
immense wealth. They could find apparently no measure adequate to
express the size of his books. In one way or another, he had
amassed a princely fortune, and had apparently only one sorrow, his
daughter to wit, who had absconded into a KLOSTER, with a
considerable slice of the mother's GELD. I told them we had no
klosters in Scotland, with a certain feeling of superiority. No
more had they, I was told - 'HIER IST UNSER KLOSTER!' and the
speaker motioned with both arms round the taproom. Although the
first torrent was exhausted, yet the Doctor came up again in all
sorts of ways, and with or without occasion, throughout the whole
interview; as, for example, when one man, taking his pipe out of
his mouth and shaking his head, remarked APROPOS of nothing and
with almost defiant conviction, 'ER WAR EIN FEINER MANN, DER HERR
DOCTOR,' and was answered by another with 'YAW, YAW, UND TRANK
IMMER ROTHEN WEIN.'
Setting aside the Doctor, who had evidently turned the brains of
the entire village, they were intelligent people. One thing in
particular struck me, their honesty in admitting that here they
spoke bad German, and advising me to go to Coburg or Leipsic for
German. - 'SIE SPRECHEN DA REIN' (clean), said one; and they all
nodded their heads together like as many mandarins, and repeated
REIN, SO REIN in chorus.
Of course we got upon Scotland. The hostess said, 'DIE
SCHOTTLANDER TRINKEN GERN SCHNAPPS,' which may be freely
translated, 'Scotchmen are horrid fond of whisky.' It was
impossible, of course, to combat such a truism; and so I proceeded
to explain the construction of toddy, interrupted by a cry of
horror when I mentioned the HOT water; and thence, as I find is
always the case, to the most ghastly romancing about Scottish
scenery and manners, the Highland dress, and everything national or
local that I could lay my hands upon. Now that I have got my
German Burns, I lean a good deal upon him for opening a
conversation, and read a few translations to every yawning audience
that I can gather. I am grown most insufferably national, you see.
I fancy it is a punishment for my want of it at ordinary times.
Now, what do you think, there was a waiter in this very hotel, but,
alas! he is now gone, who sang (from morning to night, as my
informant said with a shrug at the recollection) what but 'S IST
LANGE HER, the German version of Auld Lang Syne; so you see,
madame, the finest lyric ever written will make its way out of
whatsoever corner of patois it found its birth in.
'MEITZ HERZ IST IM HOCHLAND, MEAN HERZ IST NICHT HIER,
MEIN HERZ IST IM HOCHLAND IM GRUNEN REVIER.
IM GRUNEN REVIERE ZU JAGEN DAS REH;
MEIN HERZ IST IM HOCHLAND, WO IMMER ICH GEH.'
I don't think I need translate that for you.
There is one thing that burthens me a good deal in my patriotic
garrulage, and that is the black ignorance in which I grope about
everything, as, for example, when I gave yesterday a full and, I
fancy, a startlingly incorrect account of Scotch education to a
very stolid German on a garden bench: he sat and perspired under
it, however with much composure. I am generally glad enough to
fall back again, after these political interludes, upon Burns,
toddy, and the Highlands.
I go every night to the theatre, except when there is no opera. I
cannot stand a play yet; but I am already very much improved, and
can understand a good deal of what goes on.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 1872. - In the evening, at the theatre, I had a
great laugh. Lord Allcash in FRA DIAVOLO, with his white hat, red
guide-books, and bad German, was the PIECE-DE-RESISTANCE from a
humorous point of view; and I had the satisfaction of knowing that
in my own small way I could minister the same amusement whenever I
chose to open my mouth.
I am just going off to do some German with Simpson. - Your
affectionate son,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON
FRANKFURT, ROSENGASSE 13, AUGUST 4, 1872.
MY DEAR FATHER, - You will perceive by the head of this page that
we have at last got into lodgings, and powerfully mean ones too.
If I were to call the street anything but SHADY, I should be
boasting. The people sit at their doors in shirt-sleeves, smoking
as they do in Seven Dials of a Sunday.
Last night we went to bed about ten, for the first time
HOUSEHOLDERS in Germany - real Teutons, with no deception, spring,
or false bottom. About half-past one there began such a
trumpeting, shouting, pealing of bells, and scurrying hither and
thither of feet as woke every person in Frankfurt out of their
first sleep with a vague sort of apprehension that the last day was
at hand. The whole street was alive, and we could hear people
talking in their rooms, or crying to passers-by from their windows,
all around us. At last I made out what a man was saying in the
next room. It was a fire in Sachsenhausen, he said (Sachsenhausen
is the suburb on the other side of the Main), and he wound up with
one of the most tremendous falsehoods on record, 'HIER ALLES RUHT -
here all is still.' If it can be said to be still in an engine
factory, or in the stomach of a volcano when it is meditating an
eruption, he might have been justified in what he said, but not
otherwise. The tumult continued unabated for near an hour; but as
one grew used to it, it gradually resolved itself into three bells,
answering each other at short intervals across the town, a man
shouting, at ever shorter intervals and with superhuman energy,
'FEUER, - IM SACHSENHAUSEN, and the almost continuous winding of
all manner of bugles and trumpets, sometimes in stirring
flourishes, and sometimes in mere tuneless wails. Occasionally
there was another rush of feet past the window, and once there was
a mighty drumming, down between us and the river, as though the
soldiery were turning out to keep the peace. This was all we had
of the fire, except a great cloud, all flushed red with the glare,
above the roofs on the other side of the Gasse; but it was quite
enough to put me entirely off my sleep and make me keenly alive to
three or four gentlemen who were strolling leisurely about my
person, and every here and there leaving me somewhat as a keepsake.
. . . However, everything has its compensation, and when day came
at last, and the sparrows awoke with trills and CAROL-ETS, the dawn
seemed to fall on me like a sleeping draught. I went to the window
and saw the sparrows about the eaves, and a great troop of doves go
strolling up the paven Gasse, seeking what they may devour. And so
to sleep, despite fleas and fire-alarms and clocks chiming the
hours out of neighbouring houses at all sorts of odd times and with
the most charming want of unanimity.
We have got settled down in Frankfurt, and like the place very
much. Simpson and I seem to get on very well together. We suit
each other capitally; and it is an awful joke to be living (two
would-be advocates, and one a baronet) in this supremely mean
abode.
The abode is, however, a great improvement on the hotel, and I
think we shall grow quite fond of it. - Ever your affectionate son,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
13 ROSENGASSE, FRANKFURT, TUESDAY MORNING, AUGUST 1872.
. . . Last night I was at the theatre and heard DIE JUDIN (LA
JUIVE), and was thereby terribly excited. At last, in the middle
of the fifth act, which was perfectly beastly, I had to slope. I
could stand even seeing the cauldron with the sham fire beneath,
and the two hateful executioners in red; but when at last the
girl's courage breaks down, and, grasping her father's arm, she
cries out - O so shudderfully! - I thought it high time to be out
of that GALERE, and so I do not know yet whether it ends well or
ill; but if I ever afterwards find that they do carry things to the
extremity, I shall think more meanly of my species. It was raining
and cold outside, so I went into a BIERHALLE, and sat and brooded
over a SCHNITT (half-glass) for nearly an hour. An opera is far
more REAL than real life to me. It seems as if stage illusion, and
particularly this hardest to swallow and most conventional illusion
of them all - an opera - would never stale upon me. I wish that
life was an opera. I should like to LIVE in one; but I don't know
in what quarter of the globe I shall find a society so constituted.
Besides, it would soon pall: imagine asking for three-kreuzer
cigars in recitative, or giving the washerwoman the inventory of
your dirty clothes in a sustained and FLOURISHOUS aria.
I am in a right good mood this morning to sit here and write to
you; but not to give you news. There is a great stir of life, in a
quiet, almost country fashion, all about us here. Some one is
hammering a beef-steak in the REZ-DE-CHAUSSEE: there is a great
clink of pitchers and noise of the pump-handle at the public well
in the little square-kin round the corner. The children, all
seemingly within a month, and certainly none above five, that
always go halting and stumbling up and down the roadway, are
ordinarily very quiet, and sit sedately puddling in the gutter,
trying, I suppose, poor little devils! to understand their
MUTTERSPRACHE; but they, too, make themselves heard from time to
time in little incomprehensible antiphonies, about the drift that
comes down to them by their rivers from the strange lands higher up
the Gasse. Above all, there is here such a twittering of canaries
(I can see twelve out of our window), and such continual visitation
of grey doves and big-nosed sparrows, as make our little bye-street
into a perfect aviary.
I look across the Gasse at our opposite neighbour, as he dandles
his baby about, and occasionally takes a spoonful or two of some
pale slimy nastiness that looks like DEAD PORRIDGE, if you can take
the conception. These two are his only occupations. All day long
you can hear him singing over the brat when he is not eating; or
see him eating when he is not keeping baby. Besides which, there
comes into his house a continual round of visitors that puts me in
mind of the luncheon hour at home. As he has thus no ostensible
avocation, we have named him 'the W.S.' to give a flavour of
respectability to the street.
Enough of the Gasse. The weather is here much colder. It rained a
good deal yesterday; and though it is fair and sunshiny again to-
day, and we can still sit, of course, with our windows open, yet
there is no more excuse for the siesta; and the bathe in the river,
except for cleanliness, is no longer a necessity of life. The Main
is very swift. In one part of the baths it is next door to
impossible to swim against it, and I suspect that, out in the open,
it would be quite impossible. - Adieu, my dear mother, and believe
me, ever your affectionate son,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
(RENTIER).
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
17 HERIOT ROW, EDINBURGH, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1873.
MY DEAR BAXTER, - The thunderbolt has fallen with a vengeance now.
On Friday night after leaving you, in the course of conversation,
my father put me one or two questions as to beliefs, which I
candidly answered. I really hate all lying so much now - a new
found honesty that has somehow come out of my late illness - that I
could not so much as hesitate at the time; but if I had foreseen
the real hell of everything since, I think I should have lied, as I
have done so often before. I so far thought of my father, but I
had forgotten my mother. And now! they are both ill, both silent,
both as down in the mouth as if - I can find no simile. You may
fancy how happy it is for me. If it were not too late, I think I
could almost find it in my heart to retract, but it is too late;
and again, am I to live my whole life as one falsehood? Of course,
it is rougher than hell upon my father, but can I help it? They
don't see either that my game is not the light-hearted scoffer;
that I am not (as they call me) a careless infidel. I believe as
much as they do, only generally in the inverse ratio: I am, I
think, as honest as they can be in what I hold. I have not come
hastily to my views. I reserve (as I told them) many points until
I acquire fuller information, and do not think I am thus justly to
be called 'horrible atheist.'
Now, what is to take place? What a curse I am to my parents! O
Lord, what a pleasant thing it is to have just DAMNED the happiness
of (probably) the only two people who care a damn about you in the
world.
What is my life to be at this rate? What, you rascal? Answer - I
have a pistol at your throat. If all that I hold true and most
desire to spread is to be such death, and a worse than death, in
the eyes of my father and mother, what the DEVIL am I to do?
Here is a good heavy cross with a vengeance, and all rough with
rusty nails that tear your fingers, only it is not I that have to
carry it alone; I hold the light end, but the heavy burden falls on
these two.
Don't - I don't know what I was going to say. I am an abject
idiot, which, all things considered, is not remarkable. - Ever your
affectionate and horrible atheist,
R. L. STEVENSON.
CHAPTER II - STUDENT DAYS - ORDERED SOUTH, SEPTEMBER 1873-JULY 1875
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
COCKFIELD RECTORY, SUDBURY, SUFFOLK, TUESDAY, JULY 28, 1873.
MY DEAR MOTHER, - I am too happy to be much of a correspondent.
Yesterday we were away to Melford and Lavenham, both exceptionally
placid, beautiful old English towns. Melford scattered all round a
big green, with an Elizabethan Hall and Park, great screens of
trees that seem twice as high as trees should seem, and everything
else like what ought to be in a novel, and what one never expects
to see in reality, made me cry out how good we were to live in
Scotland, for the many hundredth time. I cannot get over my
astonishment - indeed, it increases every day - at the hopeless
gulf that there is between England and Scotland, and English and
Scotch. Nothing is the same; and I feel as strange and outlandish
here as I do in France or Germany. Everything by the wayside, in
the houses, or about the people, strikes me with an unexpected
unfamiliarity: I walk among surprises, for just where you think
you have them, something wrong turns up.
I got a little Law read yesterday, and some German this morning,
but on the whole there are too many amusements going for much work;
as for correspondence, I have neither heart nor time for it to-day.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
17 HERIOT ROW, EDINBURGH, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1873.
I HAVE been to-day a very long walk with my father through some of
the most beautiful ways hereabouts; the day was cold with an iron,
windy sky, and only glorified now and then with autumn sunlight.
For it is fully autumn with us, with a blight already over the
greens, and a keen wind in the morning that makes one rather timid
of one's tub when it finds its way indoors.
I was out this evening to call on a friend, and, coming back
through the wet, crowded, lamp-lit streets, was singing after my
own fashion, DU HAST DIAMANTEN UND PERLEN, when I heard a poor
cripple man in the gutter wailing over a pitiful Scotch air, his
club-foot supported on the other knee, and his whole woebegone body
propped sideways against a crutch. The nearest lamp threw a strong
light on his worn, sordid face and the three boxes of lucifer
matches that he held for sale. My own false notes stuck in my
chest. How well off I am! is the burthen of my songs all day long
- DRUM IST SO WOHL MIR IN DER WELT! and the ugly reality of the
cripple man was an intrusion on the beautiful world in which I was
walking. He could no more sing than I could; and his voice was
cracked and rusty, and altogether perished. To think that that
wreck may have walked the streets some night years ago, as glad at
heart as I was, and promising himself a future as golden and
honourable!
