No. 1. Is for a couple of copies of my medallion, as gilt-edged and
high-toned as it is possible to make them. One is for our house
here, and should be addressed as above. The other is for my friend
Sidney Colvin, and should be addressed - Sidney Colvin, Esq.,
Keeper of the Print Room, British Museum, London.
No. 2. This is a rather large order, and demands some explanation.
Our house is lined with varnished wood of a dark ruddy colour, very
beautiful to see; at the same time, it calls very much for gold;
there is a limit to picture frames, and really you know there has
to be a limit to the pictures you put inside of them. Accordingly,
we have had an idea of a certain kind of decoration, which, I
think, you might help us to make practical. What we want is an
alphabet of gilt letters (very much such as people play with), and
all mounted on spikes like drawing-pins; say two spikes to each
letter, one at top, and one at bottom. Say that they were this
height,
I
I
I
and that you chose a model of some really exquisitely fine, clear
type from some Roman monument, and that they were made either of
metal or some composition gilt - the point is, could not you, in
your land of wooden houses, get a manufacturer to take the idea and
manufacture them at a venture, so that I could get two or three
hundred pieces or so at a moderate figure? You see, suppose you
entertain an honoured guest, when he goes he leaves his name in
gilt letters on your walls; an infinity of fun and decoration can
be got out of hospitable and festive mottoes; and the doors of
every room can be beautified by the legend of their names. I
really think there is something in the idea, and you might be able
to push it with the brutal and licentious manufacturer, using my
name if necessary, though I should think the name of the god-like
sculptor would be more germane. In case you should get it started,
I should tell you that we should require commas in order to write
the Samoan language, which is full of words written thus: la'u,
ti'e ti'e. As the Samoan language uses but a very small proportion
of the consonants, we should require a double or treble stock of
all vowels and of F, G, L, U, N, P, S, T, and V.
The other day in Sydney, I think you might be interested to hear, I
was sculpt a second time by a man called -, as well as I can
remember and read. I mustn't criticise a present, and he had very
little time to do it in. It is thought by my family to be an
excellent likeness of Mark Twain. This poor fellow, by the by, met
with the devil of an accident. A model of a statue which he had
just finished with a desperate effort was smashed to smithereens on
its way to exhibition.
Please be sure and let me know if anything is likely to come of
this letter business, and the exact cost of each letter, so that I
may count the cost before ordering. - Yours sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
JUNE 10TH, 1893.
MY DEAR GOSSE, - My mother tells me you never received the very
long and careful letter that I sent you more than a year ago; or is
it two years?
I was indeed so much surprised at your silence that I wrote to
Henry James and begged him to inquire if you had received it; his
reply was an (if possible) higher power of the same silence;
whereupon I bowed my head and acquiesced. But there is no doubt
the letter was written and sent; and I am sorry it was lost, for it
contained, among other things, an irrecoverable criticism of your
father's LIFE, with a number of suggestions for another edition,
which struck me at the time as excellent.
Well, suppose we call that cried off, and begin as before? It is
fortunate indeed that we can do so, being both for a while longer
in the day. But, alas! when I see 'works of the late J. A. S.,' I
can see no help and no reconciliation possible. I wrote him a
letter, I think, three years ago, heard in some roundabout way that
he had received it, waited in vain for an answer (which had
probably miscarried), and in a humour between frowns and smiles
wrote to him no more. And now the strange, poignant, pathetic,
brilliant creature is gone into the night, and the voice is silent
that uttered so much excellent discourse; and I am sorry that I did
not write to him again. Yet I am glad for him; light lie the turf!
The SATURDAY is the only obituary I have seen, and I thought it
very good upon the whole. I should be half tempted to write an IN
MEMORIAM, but I am submerged with other work. Are you going to do
it? I very much admire your efforts that way; you are our only
academician.
So you have tried fiction? I will tell you the truth: when I saw
it announced, I was so sure you would send it to me, that I did not
order it! But the order goes this mail, and I will give you news
of it. Yes, honestly, fiction is very difficult; it is a terrible
strain to CARRY your characters all that time. And the difficulty
of according the narrative and the dialogue (in a work in the third
person) is extreme. That is one reason out of half a dozen why I
so often prefer the first. It is much in my mind just now, because
of my last work, just off the stocks three days ago, THE EBB TIDE:
a dreadful, grimy business in the third person, where the strain
between a vilely realistic dialogue and a narrative style pitched
about (in phrase) 'four notes higher' than it should have been, has
sown my head with grey hairs; or I believe so - if my head escaped,
my heart has them.
The truth is, I have a little lost my way, and stand bemused at the
cross-roads. A subject? Ay, I have dozens; I have at least four
novels begun, they are none good enough; and the mill waits, and
I'll have to take second best. THE EBB TIDE I make the world a
present of; I expect, and, I suppose, deserve to be torn to pieces;
but there was all that good work lying useless, and I had to finish
it!
All your news of your family is pleasant to hear. My wife has been
very ill, but is now better; I may say I am ditto, THE EBB TIDE
having left me high and dry, which is a good example of the mixed
metaphor. Our home, and estate, and our boys, and the politics of
the island, keep us perpetually amused and busy; and I grind away
with an odd, dogged, down sensation - and an idea IN PETTO that the
game is about played out. I have got too realistic, and I must
break the trammels - I mean I would if I could; but the yoke is
heavy. I saw with amusement that Zola says the same thing; and
truly the DEBACLE was a mighty big book, I have no need for a
bigger, though the last part is a mere mistake in my opinion. But
the Emperor, and Sedan, and the doctor at the ambulance, and the
horses in the field of battle, Lord, how gripped it is! What an
epical performance! According to my usual opinion, I believe I
could go over that book and leave a masterpiece by blotting and no
ulterior art. But that is an old story, ever new with me. Taine
gone, and Renan, and Symonds, and Tennyson, and Browning; the suns
go swiftly out, and I see no suns to follow, nothing but a
universal twilight of the demi-divinities, with parties like you
and me and Lang beating on toy drums and playing on penny whistles
about glow-worms. But Zola is big anyway; he has plenty in his
belly; too much, that is all; he wrote the DEBACLE and he wrote LA
BETE HUMAINE, perhaps the most excruciatingly silly book that I
ever read to an end. And why did I read it to an end, W. E. G.?
Because the animal in me was interested in the lewdness. Not
sincerely, of course, my mind refusing to partake in it; but the
flesh was slightly pleased. And when it was done, I cast it from
me with a peal of laughter, and forgot it, as I would forget a
Montepin. Taine is to me perhaps the chief of these losses; I did
luxuriate in his ORIGINES; it was something beyond literature, not
quite so good, if you please, but so much more systematic, and the
pages that had to be 'written' always so adequate. Robespierre,
Napoleon, were both excellent good.
JUNE 18TH, '93
Well, I have left fiction wholly, and gone to my GRANDFATHER, and
on the whole found peace. By next month my GRANDFATHER will begin
to be quite grown up. I have already three chapters about as good
as done; by which, of course, as you know, I mean till further
notice or the next discovery. I like biography far better than
fiction myself: fiction is too free. In biography you have your
little handful of facts, little bits of a puzzle, and you sit and
think, and fit 'em together this way and that, and get up and throw
'em down, and say damn, and go out for a walk. And it's real
soothing; and when done, gives an idea of finish to the writer that
is very peaceful. Of course, it's not really so finished as quite
a rotten novel; it always has and always must have the incurable
illogicalities of life about it, the fathoms of slack and the miles
of tedium. Still, that's where the fun comes in; and when you have
at last managed to shut up the castle spectre (dulness), the very
outside of his door looks beautiful by contrast. There are pages
in these books that may seem nothing to the reader; but you
REMEMBER WHAT THEY WERE, YOU KNOW WHAT THEY MIGHT HAVE BEEN, and
they seem to you witty beyond comparison. In my GRANDFATHER I've
had (for instance) to give up the temporal order almost entirely;
doubtless the temporal order is the great foe of the biographer; it
is so tempting, so easy, and lo! there you are in the bog! - Ever
yours,
R. L. STEVENSON.
With all kind messages from self and wife to you and yours. My
wife is very much better, having been the early part of this year
alarmingly ill. She is now all right, only complaining of trifles,
annoying to her, but happily not interesting to her friends. I am
in a hideous state, having stopped drink and smoking; yes, both.
No wine, no tobacco; and the dreadful part of it is that - looking
forward - I have - what shall I say? - nauseating intimations that
it ought to be for ever.
Letter: TO HENRY JAMES
VAILIMA PLANTATION, SAMOAN ISLANDS, JUNE 17TH, 1893.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - I believe I have neglected a mail in
answering yours. You will be very sorry to hear that my wife was
exceedingly ill, and very glad to hear that she is better. I
cannot say that I feel any more anxiety about her. We shall send
you a photograph of her taken in Sydney in her customary island
habit as she walks and gardens and shrilly drills her brown
assistants. She was very ill when she sat for it, which may a
little explain the appearance of the photograph. It reminds me of
a friend of my grandmother's who used to say when talking to
younger women, 'Aweel, when I was young, I wasnae just exactly what
ye wad call BONNY, but I was pale, penetratin', and interestin'.'
I would not venture to hint that Fanny is 'no bonny,' but there is
no doubt but that in this presentment she is 'pale, penetratin',
and interesting.'
As you are aware, I have been wading deep waters and contending
with the great ones of the earth, not wholly without success. It
is, you may be interested to hear, a dreary and infuriating
business. If you can get the fools to admit one thing, they will
always save their face by denying another. If you can induce them
to take a step to the right hand, they generally indemnify
themselves by cutting a caper to the left. I always held (upon no
evidence whatever, from a mere sentiment or intuition) that
politics was the dirtiest, the most foolish, and the most random of
human employments. I always held, but now I know it! Fortunately,
you have nothing to do with anything of the kind, and I may spare
you the horror of further details.
I received from you a book by a man by the name of Anatole France.
Why should I disguise it? I have no use for Anatole. He writes
very prettily, and then afterwards? Baron Marbot was a different
pair of shoes. So likewise is the Baron de Vitrolles, whom I am
now perusing with delight. His escape in 1814 is one of the best
pages I remember anywhere to have read. But Marbot and Vitrolles
are dead, and what has become of the living? It seems as if
literature were coming to a stand. I am sure it is with me; and I
am sure everybody will say so when they have the privilege of
reading THE EBB TIDE. My dear man, the grimness of that story is
not to be depicted in words. There are only four characters, to be
sure, but they are such a troop of swine! And their behaviour is
really so deeply beneath any possible standard, that on a
retrospect I wonder I have been able to endure them myself until
the yarn was finished. Well, there is always one thing; it will
serve as a touchstone. If the admirers of Zola admire him for his
pertinent ugliness and pessimism, I think they should admire this;
but if, as I have long suspected, they neither admire nor
understand the man's art, and only wallow in his rancidness like a
hound in offal, then they will certainly be disappointed in THE EBB
TIDE. ALAS! poor little tale, it is not EVEN rancid.
By way of an antidote or febrifuge, I am going on at a great rate
with my HISTORY OF THE STEVENSONS, which I hope may prove rather
amusing, in some parts at least. The excess of materials weighs
upon me. My grandfather is a delightful comedy part; and I have to
treat him besides as a serious and (in his way) a heroic figure,
and at times I lose my way, and I fear in the end will blur the
effect. However, A LA GRACE DE DIEU! I'll make a spoon or spoil a
horn. You see, I have to do the Building of the Bell Rock by
cutting down and packing my grandsire's book, which I rather hope I
have done, but do not know. And it makes a huge chunk of a very
different style and quality between Chapters II. and IV. And it
can't be helped! It is just a delightful and exasperating
necessity. You know, the stuff is really excellent narrative:
only, perhaps there's too much of it! There is the rub. Well,
well, it will be plain to you that my mind is affected; it might be
with less. THE EBB TIDE and NORTHERN LIGHTS are a full meal for
any plain man.
I have written and ordered your last book, THE REAL THING, so be
sure and don't send it. What else are you doing or thinking of
doing? News I have none, and don't want any. I have had to stop
all strong drink and all tobacco, and am now in a transition state
between the two, which seems to be near madness. You never smoked,
I think, so you can never taste the joys of stopping it. But at
least you have drunk, and you can enter perhaps into my annoyance
when I suddenly find a glass of claret or a brandy-and-water give
me a splitting headache the next morning. No mistake about it;
drink anything, and there's your headache. Tobacco just as bad for
me. If I live through this breach of habit, I shall be a white-
livered puppy indeed. Actually I am so made, or so twisted, that I
do not like to think of a life without the red wine on the table
and the tobacco with its lovely little coal of fire. It doesn't
amuse me from a distance. I may find it the Garden of Eden when I
go in, but I don't like the colour of the gate-posts. Suppose
somebody said to you, you are to leave your home, and your books,
and your clubs, and go out and camp in mid-Africa, and command an
expedition, you would howl, and kick, and flee. I think the same
of a life without wine and tobacco; and if this goes on, I've got
to go and do it, sir, in the living flesh!
I thought Bourget was a friend of yours? And I thought the French
were a polite race? He has taken my dedication with a stately
silence that has surprised me into apoplexy. Did I go and dedicate
my book to the nasty alien, and the 'norrid Frenchman, and the
Bloody Furrineer? Well, I wouldn't do it again; and unless his
case is susceptible of explanation, you might perhaps tell him so
over the walnuts and the wine, by way of speeding the gay hours.
Sincerely, I thought my dedication worth a letter.
If anything be worth anything here below! Do you know the story of
the man who found a button in his hash, and called the waiter?
'What do you call that?' says he. 'Well,' said the waiter, 'what
d'you expect? Expect to find a gold watch and chain?' Heavenly
apologue, is it not? I expected (rather) to find a gold watch and
chain; I expected to be able to smoke to excess and drink to
comfort all the days of my life; and I am still indignantly staring
on this button! It's not even a button; it's a teetotal badge! -
Ever yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO HENRY JAMES
APIA, JULY 1893.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - Yes. LES TROPHEES, on the whole, a book.
It is excellent; but is it a life's work? I always suspect YOU of
a volume of sonnets up your sleeve; when is it coming down? I am
in one of my moods of wholesale impatience with all fiction and all
verging on it, reading instead, with rapture, FOUNTAINHALL'S
DECISIONS. You never read it: well, it hasn't much form, and is
inexpressibly dreary, I should suppose, to others - and even to me
for pages. It's like walking in a mine underground, and with a
damned bad lantern, and picking out pieces of ore. This, and war,
will be my excuse for not having read your (doubtless) charming
work of fiction. The revolving year will bring me round to it; and
I know, when fiction shall begin to feel a little SOLID to me
again, that I shall love it, because it's James. Do you know, when
I am in this mood, I would rather try to read a bad book? It's not
so disappointing, anyway. And FOUNTAINHALL is prime, two big folio
volumes, and all dreary, and all true, and all as terse as an
obituary; and about one interesting fact on an average in twenty
pages, and ten of them unintelligible for technicalities. There's
literature, if you like! It feeds; it falls about you genuine like
rain. Rain: nobody has done justice to rain in literature yet:
surely a subject for a Scot. But then you can't do rain in that
ledger-book style that I am trying for - or between a ledger-book
and an old ballad. How to get over, how to escape from, the
besotting PARTICULARITY of fiction. 'Roland approached the house;
it had green doors and window blinds; and there was a scraper on
the upper step.' To hell with Roland and the scraper! - Yours
ever,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO A. CONAN DOYLE
VAILIMA, JULY 12, 1893.
MY DEAR DR. CONAN DOYLE, - The WHITE COMPANY has not yet turned up;
but when it does - which I suppose will be next mail - you shall
hear news of me. I have a great talent for compliment, accompanied
by a hateful, even a diabolic frankness.
Delighted to hear I have a chance of seeing you and Mrs. Doyle;
Mrs. Stevenson bids me say (what is too true) that our rations are
often spare. Are you Great Eaters? Please reply.
As to ways and means, here is what you will have to do. Leave San
Francisco by the down mail, get off at Samoa, and twelve days or a
fortnight later, you can continue your journey to Auckland per
Upolu, which will give you a look at Tonga and possibly Fiji by the
way. Make this a FIRST PART OF YOUR PLANS. A fortnight, even of
Vailima diet, could kill nobody.
We are in the midst of war here; rather a nasty business, with the
head-taking; and there seem signs of other trouble. But I believe
you need make no change in your design to visit us. All should be
well over; and if it were not, why! you need not leave the steamer.
- Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
19TH JULY '93.
. . . We are in the thick of war - see ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS - we
have only two outside boys left to us. Nothing is doing, and PER
CONTRA little paying. . . My life here is dear; but I can live
within my income for a time at least - so long as my prices keep up
- and it seems a clear duty to waste none of it on gadding about. .
. . My life of my family fills up intervals, and should be an
excellent book when it is done, but big, damnably big.
My dear old man, I perceive by a thousand signs that we grow old,
and are soon to pass away! I hope with dignity; if not, with
courage at least. I am myself very ready; or would be - will be -
when I have made a little money for my folks. The blows that have
fallen upon you are truly terrifying; I wish you strength to bear
them. It is strange, I must seem to you to blaze in a Birmingham
prosperity and happiness; and to myself I seem a failure. The
truth is, I have never got over the last influenza yet, and am
miserably out of heart and out of kilter. Lungs pretty right,
stomach nowhere, spirits a good deal overshadowed; but we'll come
through it yet, and cock our bonnets. (I confess with sorrow that
I am not yet quite sure about the INTELLECTS; but I hope it is only
one of my usual periods of non-work. They are more unbearable now,
because I cannot rest. NO REST BUT THE GRAVE FOR SIR WALTER! O
the words ring in a man's head.)
R. L. S.
Letter: TO A. CONAN DOYLE
VAILIMA, AUGUST 23RD, 1893.
MY DEAR DR. CONAN DOYLE, - I am reposing after a somewhat severe
experience upon which I think it my duty to report to you.
Immediately after dinner this evening it occurred to me to re-
narrate to my native overseer Simele your story of THE ENGINEER'S
THUMB. And, sir, I have done it. It was necessary, I need hardly
say, to go somewhat farther afield than you have done. To explain
(for instance) what a railway is, what a steam hammer, what a coach
and horse, what coining, what a criminal, and what the police. I
pass over other and no less necessary explanations. But I did
actually succeed; and if you could have seen the drawn, anxious
features and the bright, feverish eyes of Simele, you would have
(for the moment at least) tasted glory. You might perhaps think
that, were you to come to Samoa, you might be introduced as the
Author of THE ENGINEER'S THUMB. Disabuse yourself. They do not
know what it is to make up a story. THE ENGINEER'S THUMB (God
forgive me) was narrated as a piece of actual and factual history.
Nay, and more, I who write to you have had the indiscretion to
perpetrate a trifling piece of fiction entitled THE BOTTLE IMP.
Parties who come up to visit my unpretentious mansion, after having
admired the ceilings by Vanderputty and the tapestry by Gobbling,
manifest towards the end a certain uneasiness which proves them to
be fellows of an infinite delicacy. They may be seen to shrug a
brown shoulder, to roll up a speaking eye, and at last secret
bursts from them: 'Where is the bottle?' Alas, my friends (I feel
tempted to say), you will find it by the Engineer's Thumb! Talofa-
soifuia.
Oa'u, O lau no moni, O Tusitala.
More commonly known as,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Have read the REFUGEES; Conde and old P. Murat very good; Louis
XIV. and Louvois with the letter bag very rich. You have reached a
trifle wide perhaps; too MANY celebrities? Though I was delighted
to re-encounter my old friend Du Chaylu. Old Murat is perhaps your
high water mark; 'tis excellently human, cheerful and real. Do it
again. Madame de Maintenon struck me as quite good. Have you any
document for the decapitation? It sounds steepish. The devil of
all that first part is that you see old Dumas; yet your Louis XIV.
is DISTINCTLY GOOD. I am much interested with this book, which
fulfils a good deal, and promises more. Question: How far a
Historical Novel should be wholly episodic? I incline to that
view, with trembling. I shake hands with you on old Murat.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO GEORGE MEREDITH
SEPT. 5TH, 1893, VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOA.
MY DEAR MEREDITH, - I have again and again taken up the pen to
write to you, and many beginnings have gone into the waste paper
basket (I have one now - for the second time in my life - and feel
a big man on the strength of it). And no doubt it requires some
decision to break so long a silence. My health is vastly restored,
and I am now living patriarchally in this place six hundred feet
above the sea on the shoulder of a mountain of 1500. Behind me,
the unbroken bush slopes up to the backbone of the island (3 to
4000) without a house, with no inhabitants save a few runaway black
boys, wild pigs and cattle, and wild doves and flying foxes, and
many parti-coloured birds, and many black, and many white: a very
eerie, dim, strange place and hard to travel. I am the head of a
household of five whites, and of twelve Samoans, to all of whom I
am the chief and father: my cook comes to me and asks leave to
marry - and his mother, a fine old chief woman, who has never lived
here, does the same. You may be sure I granted the petition. It
is a life of great interest, complicated by the Tower of Babel,
that old enemy. And I have all the time on my hands for literary
work. My house is a great place; we have a hall fifty feet long
with a great red-wood stair ascending from it, where we dine in
state - myself usually dressed in a singlet and a pair of trousers
- and attended on by servants in a single garment, a kind of kilt -
also flowers and leaves - and their hair often powdered with lime.
The European who came upon it suddenly would think it was a dream.
We have prayers on Sunday night - I am a perfect pariah in the
island not to have them oftener, but the spirit is unwilling and
the flesh proud, and I cannot go it more. It is strange to see the
long line of the brown folk crouched along the wall with lanterns
at intervals before them in the big shadowy hall, with an oak
cabinet at one end of it and a group of Rodin's (which native taste
regards as PRODIGIEUSEMENT LESTE) presiding over all from the top -
and to hear the long rambling Samoan hymn rolling up (God bless me,
what style! But I am off business to-day, and this is not meant to
be literature.).
I have asked Colvin to send you a copy of CATRIONA, which I am
sometimes tempted to think is about my best work. I hear word
occasionally of the AMAZING MARRIAGE. It will be a brave day for
me when I get hold of it. Gower Woodseer is now an ancient, lean,
grim, exiled Scot, living and labouring as for a wager in the
tropics; still active, still with lots of fire in him, but the
youth - ah, the youth where is it? For years after I came here,
the critics (those genial gentlemen) used to deplore the relaxation
of my fibre and the idleness to which I had succumbed. I hear less
of this now; the next thing is they will tell me I am writing
myself out! and that my unconscientious conduct is bringing their
grey hairs with sorrow to the dust. I do not know - I mean I do
know one thing. For fourteen years I have not had a day's real
health; I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary; and I have done
my work unflinchingly. I have written in bed, and written out of
it, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn by
coughing, written when my head swam for weakness; and for so long,
it seems to me I have won my wager and recovered my glove. I am
better now, have been rightly speaking since first I came to the
Pacific; and still, few are the days when I am not in some physical
distress. And the battle goes on - ill or well, is a trifle; so as
it goes. I was made for a contest, and the Powers have so willed
that my battlefield should be this dingy, inglorious one of the bed
and the physic bottle. At least I have not failed, but I would
have preferred a place of trumpetings and the open air over my
head.
This is a devilish egotistical yarn. Will you try to imitate me in
that if the spirit ever moves you to reply? And meantime be sure
that away in the midst of the Pacific there is a house on a wooded
island where the name of George Meredith is very dear, and his
memory (since it must be no more) is continually honoured. - Ever
your friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Remember me to Mariette, if you please; and my wife sends her most
kind remembrances to yourself.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS
VAILIMA, SEPTEMBER 1893.
MY DEAR ST. GAUDENS, - I had determined not to write to you till I
had seen the medallion, but it looks as if that might mean the
Greek Kalends or the day after to-morrow. Reassure yourself, your
part is done, it is ours that halts - the consideration of
conveyance over our sweet little road on boys' backs, for we cannot
very well apply the horses to this work; there is only one; you
cannot put it in a panier; to put it on the horse's back we have
not the heart. Beneath the beauty of R. L. S., to say nothing of
his verses, which the publishers find heavy enough, and the genius
of the god-like sculptor, the spine would snap and the well-knit
limbs of the (ahem) cart-horse would be loosed by death. So you
are to conceive me, sitting in my house, dubitative, and the
medallion chuckling in the warehouse of the German firm, for some
days longer; and hear me meanwhile on the golden letters.
Alas! they are all my fancy painted, but the price is prohibitive.
I cannot do it. It is another day-dream burst. Another gable of
Abbotsford has gone down, fortunately before it was builded, so
there's nobody injured - except me. I had a strong conviction that
I was a great hand at writing inscriptions, and meant to exhibit
and test my genius on the walls of my house; and now I see I can't.
It is generally thus. The Battle of the Golden Letters will never
be delivered. On making preparation to open the campaign, the King
found himself face to face with invincible difficulties, in which
the rapacity of a mercenary soldiery and the complaints of an
impoverished treasury played an equal part. - Ever yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
I enclose a bill for the medallion; have been trying to find your
letter, quite in vain, and therefore must request you to pay for
the bronze letters yourself and let me know the damage.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO J. HORNE STEVENSON
VAILIMA, SAMOA, NOVEMBER 5TH, 1893.
MY DEAR STEVENSON, - A thousand thanks for your voluminous and
delightful collections. Baxter - so soon as it is ready - will let
you see a proof of my introduction, which is only sent out as a
sprat to catch whales. And you will find I have a good deal of
what you have, only mine in a perfectly desultory manner, as is
necessary to an exile. My uncle's pedigree is wrong; there was
never a Stevenson of Caldwell, of course, but they were tenants of
the Muirs; the farm held by them is in my introduction; and I have
already written to Charles Baxter to have a search made in the
Register House. I hope he will have had the inspiration to put it
under your surveillance. Your information as to your own family is
intensely interesting, and I should not wonder but what you and we
and old John Stevenson, 'land labourer in the parish of Dailly,'
came all of the same stock. Ayrshire - and probably Cunningham -
seems to be the home of the race - our part of it. From the
distribution of the name - which your collections have so much
extended without essentially changing my knowledge of - we seem
rather pointed to a British origin. What you say of the Engineers
is fresh to me, and must be well thrashed out. This introduction
of it will take a long while to walk about! - as perhaps I may be
tempted to let it become long; after all, I am writing THIS for my
own pleasure solely. Greetings to you and other Speculatives of
our date, long bygone, alas! - Yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - I have a different version of my grandfather's arms - or my
father had if I could find it.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO JOHN P-N
VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 3RD, 1893.
DEAR JOHNNIE, - Well, I must say you seem to be a tremendous
fellow! Before I was eight I used to write stories - or dictate
them at least - and I had produced an excellent history of Moses,
for which I got 1 pound from an uncle; but I had never gone the
length of a play, so you have beaten me fairly on my own ground. I
hope you may continue to do so, and thanking you heartily for your
nice letter, I shall beg you to believe me yours truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO RUSSELL P-N
VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 3RD, 1893.
DEAR RUSSELL, - I have to thank you very much for your capital
letter, which came to hand here in Samoa along with your mother's.
When you 'grow up and write stories like me,' you will be able to
understand that there is scarce anything more painful than for an
author to hold a pen; he has to do it so much that his heart
sickens and his fingers ache at the sight or touch of it; so that
you will excuse me if I do not write much, but remain (with
compliments and greetings from one Scot to another - though I was
not born in Ceylon - you're ahead of me there). - Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
VAILIMA, DECEMBER 5, 1893.
MY DEAREST CUMMY, - This goes to you with a Merry Christmas and a
Happy New Year. The Happy New Year anyway, for I think it should
reach you about NOOR'S DAY. I dare say it may be cold and frosty.
Do you remember when you used to take me out of bed in the early
morning, carry me to the back windows, show me the hills of Fife,
and quote to me.
'A' the hills are covered wi' snaw,
An' winter's noo come fairly'?
There is not much chance of that here! I wonder how my mother is
going to stand the winter. If she can, it will be a very good
thing for her. We are in that part of the year which I like the
best - the Rainy or Hurricane Season. 'When it is good, it is
very, very good; and when it is bad, it is horrid,' and our fine
days are certainly fine like heaven; such a blue of the sea, such
green of the trees, and such crimson of the hibiscus flowers, you
never saw; and the air as mild and gentle as a baby's breath, and
yet not hot!
The mail is on the move, and I must let up. - With much love, I am,
your laddie,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
6TH DECEMBER 1893.
'OCTOBER 25, 1685. - At Privy Council, George Murray, Lieutenant of
the King's Guard, and others, did, on the 21st of September last,
obtain a clandestine order of Privy Council to apprehend the person
of Janet Pringle, daughter to the late Clifton, and she having
retired out of the way upon information, he got an order against
Andrew Pringle, her uncle, to produce her. . . . But she having
married Andrew Pringle, her uncle's son (to disappoint all their
designs of selling her), a boy of thirteen years old.' But my boy
is to be fourteen, so I extract no further. - FOUNTAINHALL, i. 320.
'MAY 6, 1685. - Wappus Pringle of Clifton was still alive after
all, and in prison for debt, and transacts with Lieutenant Murray,
giving security for 7000 marks.' - i. 372.
No, it seems to have been HER brother who had succeeded.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - The above is my story, and I wonder if any light
can be thrown on it. I prefer the girl's father dead; and the
question is, How in that case could Lieutenant George Murray get
his order to 'apprehend' and his power to 'sell' her in marriage?
Or - might Lieutenant G. be her tutor, and she fugitive to the
Pringles, and on the discovery of her whereabouts hastily married?
A good legal note on these points is very ardently desired by me;
it will be the corner-stone of my novel.
This is for - I am quite wrong to tell you - for you will tell
others - and nothing will teach you that all my schemes are in the
air, and vanish and reappear again like shapes in the clouds - it
is for HEATHERCAT: whereof the first volume will be called THE
KILLING TIME, and I believe I have authorities ample for that. But
the second volume is to be called (I believe) DARIEN, and for that
I want, I fear, a good deal of truck:-
DARIEN PAPERS,
CARSTAIRS PAPERS,
MARCHMONT PAPERS,
JERVISWOODE CORRESPONDENCE,
I hope may do me. Some sort of general history of the Darien
affair (if there is a decent one, which I misdoubt), it would also
be well to have - the one with most details, if possible. It is
singular how obscure to me this decade of Scots history remains,
1690-1700 - a deuce of a want of light and grouping to it!
However, I believe I shall be mostly out of Scotland in my tale;
first in Carolina, next in Darien. I want also - I am the daughter
of the horse-leech truly - 'Black's new large map of Scotland,'
sheets 3, 4, and 5, a 7s. 6d. touch. I believe, if you can get the
CALDWELL PAPERS,
they had better come also; and if there be any reasonable work -
but no, I must call a halt. . . .
I fear the song looks doubtful, but I'll consider of it, and I can
promise you some reminiscences which it will amuse me to write,
whether or not it will amuse the public to read of them. But it's
an unco business to SUPPLY deid-heid coapy.
Letter: TO J. M. BARRIE
VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 7TH, 1893.
MY DEAR BARRIE, - I have received duly the MAGNUM OPUS, and it
really is a MAGNUM OPUS. It is a beautiful specimen of Clark's
printing, paper sufficient, and the illustrations all my fancy
painted. But the particular flower of the flock to whom I have
hopelessly lost my heart is Tibby Birse. I must have known Tibby
Birse when she was a servant's mantua-maker in Edinburgh and
answered to the name of Miss BRODDIE. She used to come and sew
with my nurse, sitting with her legs crossed in a masculine manner;
and swinging her foot emphatically, she used to pour forth a
perfectly unbroken stream of gossip. I didn't hear it, I was
immersed in far more important business with a box of bricks, but
the recollection of that thin, perpetual, shrill sound of a voice
has echoed in my ears sinsyne. I am bound to say she was younger
than Tibbie, but there is no mistaking that and the indescribable
and eminently Scottish expression.
I have been very much prevented of late, having carried out
thoroughly to my own satisfaction two considerable illnesses, had a
birthday, and visited Honolulu, where politics are (if possible) a
shade more exasperating than they are with us. I am told that it
was just when I was on the point of leaving that I received your
superlative epistle about the cricket eleven. In that case it is
impossible I should have answered it, which is inconsistent with my
own recollection of the fact. What I remember is, that I sat down
under your immediate inspiration and wrote an answer in every way
worthy. If I didn't, as it seems proved that I couldn't, it will
never be done now. However, I did the next best thing, I equipped
my cousin Graham Balfour with a letter of introduction, and from
him, if you know how - for he is rather of the Scottish character -
you may elicit all the information you can possibly wish to have as
to us and ours. Do not be bluffed off by the somewhat stern and
monumental first impression that he may make upon you. He is one
of the best fellows in the world, and the same sort of fool that we
are, only better-looking, with all the faults of Vailimans and some
of his own - I say nothing about virtues.
I have lately been returning to my wallowing in the mire. When I
was a child, and indeed until I was nearly a man, I consistently
read Covenanting books. Now that I am a grey-beard - or would be,
if I could raise the beard - I have returned, and for weeks back
have read little else but Wodrow, Walker, Shields, etc. Of course
this is with an idea of a novel, but in the course of it I made a
very curious discovery. I have been accustomed to hear refined and
intelligent critics - those who know so much better what we are
than we do ourselves, - trace down my literary descent from all
sorts of people, including Addison, of whom I could never read a
word. Well, laigh i' your lug, sir - the clue was found. My style
is from the Covenanting writers. Take a particular case - the
fondness for rhymes. I don't know of any English prose-writer who
rhymes except by accident, and then a stone had better be tied
around his neck and himself cast into the sea. But my Covenanting
buckies rhyme all the time - a beautiful example of the unconscious
rhyme above referred to.
Do you know, and have you really tasted, these delightful works?
If not, it should be remedied; there is enough of the Auld Licht in
you to be ravished.
I suppose you know that success has so far attended my banners - my
political banners I mean, and not my literary. In conjunction with
the Three Great Powers I have succeeded in getting rid of My
President and My Chief-Justice. They've gone home, the one to
Germany, the other to Souwegia. I hear little echoes of footfalls
of their departing footsteps through the medium of the newspapers.
. . .
Whereupon I make you my salute with the firm remark that it is time
to be done with trifling and give us a great book, and my ladies
fall into line with me to pay you a most respectful courtesy, and
we all join in the cry, 'Come to Vailima!'
My dear sir, your soul's health is in it - you will never do the
great book, you will never cease to work in L., etc., till you come
to Vailima.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO R. LE GALLIENNE
VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 28TH, 1893.
DEAR MR. LE GALLIENNE, - I have received some time ago, through our
friend Miss Taylor, a book of yours. But that was by no means my
first introduction to your name. The same book had stood already
on my shelves; I had read articles of yours in the ACADEMY; and by
a piece of constructive criticism (which I trust was sound) had
arrived at the conclusion that you were 'Log-roller.' Since then I
have seen your beautiful verses to your wife. You are to conceive
me, then, as only too ready to make the acquaintance of a man who
loved good literature and could make it. I had to thank you,
besides, for a triumphant exposure of a paradox of my own: the
literary-prostitute disappeared from view at a phrase of yours -
'The essence is not in the pleasure but the sale.' True: you are
right, I was wrong; the author is not the whore, but the libertine;
and yet I shall let the passage stand. It is an error, but it
illustrated the truth for which I was contending, that literature -
painting - all art, are no other than pleasures, which we turn into
trades.
And more than all this, I had, and I have to thank you for the
intimate loyalty you have shown to myself; for the eager welcome
you give to what is good - for the courtly tenderness with which
you touch on my defects. I begin to grow old; I have given my top
note, I fancy; - and I have written too many books. The world
begins to be weary of the old booth; and if not weary, familiar
with the familiarity that breeds contempt. I do not know that I am
sensitive to criticism, if it be hostile; I am sensitive indeed,
when it is friendly; and when I read such criticism as yours, I am
emboldened to go on and praise God.
You are still young, and you may live to do much. The little,
artificial popularity of style in England tends, I think, to die
out; the British pig returns to his true love, the love of the
styleless, of the shapeless, of the slapdash and the disorderly.
There is trouble coming, I think; and you may have to hold the fort
for us in evil days.
Lastly, let me apologise for the crucifixion that I am inflicting
on you (BIEN A CONTRE-COEUR) by my bad writing. I was once the
best of writers; landladies, puzzled as to my 'trade,' used to have
their honest bosoms set at rest by a sight of a page of manuscript.
- 'Ah,' they would say, 'no wonder they pay you for that'; - and
when I sent it in to the printers, it was given to the boys! I was
about thirty-nine, I think, when I had a turn of scrivener's palsy;
my hand got worse; and for the first time, I received clean proofs.
But it has gone beyond that now, I know I am like my old friend
James Payn, a terror to correspondents; and you would not believe
the care with which this has been written. - Believe me to be, very
sincerely yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. A. BAKER
DECEMBER 1893.
DEAR MADAM, - There is no trouble, and I wish I could help instead.
As it is, I fear I am only going to put you to trouble and
vexation. This Braille writing is a kind of consecration, and I
would like if I could to have your copy perfect. The two volumes
are to be published as Vols. I. and II. of THE ADVENTURES OF DAVID
BALFOUR. 1st, KIDNAPPED; 2nd, CATRIONA. I am just sending home a
corrected KIDNAPPED for this purpose to Messrs. Cassell, and in
order that I may if possible be in time, I send it to you first of
all. Please, as soon as you have noted the changes, forward the
same to Cassell and Co., La Belle Sauvage Yard, Ludgate Hill.
I am writing to them by this mail to send you CATRIONA.
You say, dear madam, you are good enough to say, it is 'a keen
pleasure' to you to bring my book within the reach of the blind.
Conceive then what it is to me! and believe me, sincerely yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
I was a barren tree before,
I blew a quenched coal,
I could not, on their midnight shore,
The lonely blind console.
A moment, lend your hand, I bring
My sheaf for you to bind,
And you can teach my words to sing
In the darkness of the blind.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO HENRY JAMES
APIA, DECEMBER 1893.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - The mail has come upon me like an armed man
three days earlier than was expected; and the Lord help me! It is
impossible I should answer anybody the way they should be. Your
jubilation over CATRIONA did me good, and still more the subtlety
and truth of your remark on the starving of the visual sense in
that book. 'Tis true, and unless I make the greater effort - and
am, as a step to that, convinced of its necessity - it will be more
true I fear in the future. I HEAR people talking, and I FEEL them
acting, and that seems to me to be fiction. My two aims may be
described as -
1ST. War to the adjective.
2ND. Death to the optic nerve.
Admitted we live in an age of the optic nerve in literature. For
how many centuries did literature get along without a sign of it?
However, I'll consider your letter.
How exquisite is your character of the critic in ESSAYS IN LONDON!
I doubt if you have done any single thing so satisfying as a piece
of style and of insight. - Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
1ST JANUARY '94.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - I am delighted with your idea, and first, I will
here give an amended plan and afterwards give you a note of some of
the difficulties.
[Plan of the Edinburgh edition - 14 vols.]
. . . It may be a question whether my TIMES letters might not be
appended to the 'Footnote' with a note of the dates of discharge of
Cedercrantz and Pilsach.
I am particularly pleased with this idea of yours, because I am
come to a dead stop. I never can remember how bad I have been
before, but at any rate I am bad enough just now, I mean as to
literature; in health I am well and strong. I take it I shall be
six months before I'm heard of again, and this time I could put in
to some advantage in revising the text and (if it were thought
desirable) writing prefaces. I do not know how many of them might
be thought desirable. I have written a paper on TREASURE ISLAND,
which is to appear shortly. MASTER OF BALLANTRAE - I have one
drafted. THE WRECKER is quite sufficiently done already with the
last chapter, but I suppose an historic introduction to DAVID
BALFOUR is quite unavoidable. PRINCE OTTO I don't think I could
say anything about, and BLACK ARROW don't want to. But it is
probable I could say something to the volume of TRAVELS. In the
verse business I can do just what I like better than anything else,
and extend UNDERWOODS with a lot of unpublished stuff. APROPOS, if
I were to get printed off a very few poems which are somewhat too
intimate for the public, could you get them run up in some luxuous
manner, so that fools might be induced to buy them in just a
sufficient quantity to pay expenses and the thing remain still in a
manner private? We could supply photographs of the illustrations -
and the poems are of Vailima and the family - I should much like to
get this done as a surprise for Fanny.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO H. B. BAILDON
VAILIMA, JANUARY 15TH, 1894.
MY DEAR BAILDON, - Last mail brought your book and its Dedication.
'Frederick Street and the gardens, and the short-lived Jack o'
Lantern,' are again with me - and the note of the east wind, and
Froebel's voice, and the smell of soup in Thomson's stair. Truly,
you had no need to put yourself under the protection of any other
saint, were that saint our Tamate himself! Yourself were enough,
and yourself coming with so rich a sheaf.
For what is this that you say about the Muses? They have certainly
never better inspired you than in 'Jael and Sisera,' and 'Herodias
and John the Baptist,' good stout poems, fiery and sound. ''Tis
but a mask and behind it chuckles the God of the Garden,' I shall
never forget. By the by, an error of the press, page 49, line 4,
'No infant's lesson are the ways of God.' THE is dropped.
And this reminds me you have a bad habit which is to be comminated
in my theory of letters. Same page, two lines lower: 'But the
vulture's track' is surely as fine to the ear as 'But vulture's
track,' and this latter version has a dreadful baldness. The
reader goes on with a sense of impoverishment, of unnecessary
sacrifice; he has been robbed by footpads, and goes scouting for
his lost article! Again, in the second Epode, these fine verses
would surely sound much finer if they began, 'As a hardy climber
who has set his heart,' than with the jejune 'As hardy climber.' I
do not know why you permit yourself this license with grammar; you
show, in so many pages, that you are superior to the paltry sense
of rhythm which usually dictates it - as though some poetaster had
been suffered to correct the poet's text. By the way, I confess to
a heartfelt weakness for AURICULAS. - Believe me the very grateful
and characteristic pick-thank, but still sincere and affectionate,
