ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO W. H. LOW.
VAILIMA, JANUARY 15th, 1894.
MY DEAR LOW, - . . . Pray you, stoop your proud head, and sell
yourself to some Jew magazine, and make the visit out. I assure
you, this is the spot for a sculptor or painter. This, and no
other - I don't say to stay there, but to come once and get the
living colour into them. I am used to it; I do not notice it;
rather prefer my grey, freezing recollections of Scotland; but
there it is, and every morning is a thing to give thanks for, and
every night another - bar when it rains, of course.
About THE WRECKER - rather late days, and I still suspect I had
somehow offended you; however, all's well that ends well, and I am
glad I am forgiven - did you not fail to appreciate the attitude of
Dodd? He was a fizzle and a stick, he knew it, he knew nothing
else, and there is an undercurrent of bitterness in him. And then
the problem that Pinkerton laid down: why the artist can DO
NOTHING ELSE? is one that continually exercises myself. He cannot:
granted. But Scott could. And Montaigne. And Julius Caesar. And
many more. And why can't R. L. S.? Does it not amaze you? It
does me. I think of the Renaissance fellows, and their all-round
human sufficiency, and compare it with the ineffable smallness of
the field in which we labour and in which we do so little. I think
DAVID BALFOUR a nice little book, and very artistic, and just the
thing to occupy the leisure of a busy man; but for the top flower
of a man's life it seems to me inadequate. Small is the word; it
is a small age, and I am of it. I could have wished to be
otherwise busy in this world. I ought to have been able to build
lighthouses and write DAVID BALFOURS too. HINC ILLAE LACRYMAE. I
take my own case as most handy, but it is as illustrative of my
quarrel with the age. We take all these pains, and we don't do as
well as Michael Angelo or Leonardo, or even Fielding, who was an
active magistrate, or Richardson, who was a busy bookseller. J'AI
HONTE POUR NOUS; my ears burn.
I am amazed at the effect which this Chicago exhibition has
produced upon you and others. It set Mrs. Fairchild literally mad
- to judge by her letters. And I wish I had seen anything so
influential. I suppose there was an aura, a halo, some sort of
effulgency about the place; for here I find you louder than the
rest. Well, it may be there is a time coming; and I wonder, when
it comes, whether it will be a time of little, exclusive, one-eyed
rascals like you and me, or parties of the old stamp who can paint
and fight, and write and keep books of double entry, and sculp, and
scalp. It might be. You have a lot of stuff in the kettle, and a
great deal of it Celtic. I have changed my mind progressively
about England, practically the whole of Scotland is Celtic, and the
western half of England, and all Ireland, and the Celtic blood
makes a rare blend for art. If it is stiffened up with Latin
blood, you get the French. We were less lucky: we had only
Scandinavians, themselves decidedly artistic, and the Low-German
lot. However, that is a good starting-point, and with all the
other elements in your crucible, it may come to something great
very easily. I wish you would hurry up and let me see it. Here is
a long while I have been waiting for something GOOD in art; and
what have I seen? Zola's DEBACLE and a few of Kipling's tales.
Are you a reader of Barbey d'Aurevilly? He is a never-failing
source of pleasure to me, for my sins, I suppose. What a work is
the RIDEAU CRAMOISI! and L'ENSORCELEE! and LE CHEVALIER DES
TOUCHES!
This is degenerating into mere twaddle. So please remember us all
most kindly to Mrs. Low, and believe me ever yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - Were all your privateers voiceless in the war of 1812? Did
NO ONE of them write memoirs? I shall have to do my privateer from
chic, if you can't help me. My application to Scribner has been
quite in vain. See if you can get hold of some historic sharp in
the club, and tap him; they must some of them have written memoirs
or notes of some sort; perhaps still unprinted; if that be so, get
them copied for me.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO H. B. BAILDON
VAILIMA, JANUARY 30TH, 1894.
MY DEAR BAILDON, - 'Call not blessed.' - Yes, if I could die just
now, or say in half a year, I should have had a splendid time of it
on the whole. But it gets a little stale, and my work will begin
to senesce; and parties to shy bricks at me; and now it begins to
look as if I should survive to see myself impotent and forgotten.
It's a pity suicide is not thought the ticket in the best circles.
But your letter goes on to congratulate me on having done the one
thing I am a little sorry for; a little - not much - for my father
himself lived to think that I had been wiser than he. But the
cream of the jest is that I have lived to change my mind; and think
that he was wiser than I. Had I been an engineer, and literature
my amusement, it would have been better perhaps. I pulled it off,
of course, I won the wager, and it is pleasant while it lasts; but
how long will it last? I don't know, say the Bells of Old Bow.
All of which goes to show that nobody is quite sane in judging
himself. Truly, had I given way and gone in for engineering, I
should be dead by now. Well, the gods know best.
I hope you got my letter about the RESCUE. - Adieu,
R. L. S.
True for you about the benefit: except by kisses, jests, song, ET
HOC GENUS OMNE, man CANNOT convey benefit to another. The
universal benefactor has been there before him.
Letter: TO J. H. BATES
VAILIMA, SAMOA, MARCH 25TH, 1894.
MY DEAR MR. JOE H. BATES, - I shall have the greatest pleasure in
acceding to your complimentary request. I shall think it an honour
to be associated with your chapter, and I need not remind you (for
you have said it yourself) how much depends upon your own exertions
whether to make it to me a real honour or only a derision. This is
to let you know that I accept the position that you have seriously
offered to me in a quite serious spirit. I need scarce tell you
that I shall always be pleased to receive reports of your
proceedings; and if I do not always acknowledge them, you are to
remember that I am a man very much occupied otherwise, and not at
all to suppose that I have lost interest in my chapter.
In this world, which (as you justly say) is so full of sorrow and
suffering, it will always please me to remember that my name is
connected with some efforts after alleviation, nor less so with
purposes of innocent recreation which, after all, are the only
certain means at our disposal for bettering human life.
With kind regards, to yourself, to Mr. L. C. Congdon, to E. M. G.
Bates, and to Mr. Edward Hugh Higlee Bates, and the heartiest
wishes for the future success of the chapter, believe me, yours
cordially,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO WILLIAM ARCHER
VAILIMA, SAMOA, MARCH 27TH, 1894.
MY DEAR ARCHER, - Many thanks for your THEATRICAL WORLD. Do you
know, it strikes me as being really very good? I have not yet read
much of it, but so far as I have looked, there is not a dull and
not an empty page in it. Hazlitt, whom you must often have thought
of, would have been pleased. Come to think of it, I shall put this
book upon the Hazlitt shelf. You have acquired a manner that I can
only call august; otherwise, I should have to call it such amazing
impudence. The BAUBLE SHOP and BECKET are examples of what I mean.
But it 'sets you weel.'
Marjorie Fleming I have known, as you surmise, for long. She was
possibly - no, I take back possibly - she was one of the greatest
works of God. Your note about the resemblance of her verses to
mine gave me great joy, though it only proved me a plagiarist. By
the by, was it not over THE CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES that we first
scraped acquaintance? I am sorry indeed to hear that my esteemed
correspondent Tomarcher has such poor taste in literature. I fear
he cannot have inherited this trait from his dear papa. Indeed, I
may say I know it, for I remember the energy of papa's disapproval
when the work passed through his hands on its way to a second
birth, which none regrets more than myself. It is an odd fact, or
perhaps a very natural one; I find few greater pleasures than
reading my own works, but I never, O I never read THE BLACK ARROW.
In that country Tomarcher reigns supreme. Well, and after all, if
Tomarcher likes it, it has not been written in vain.
We have just now a curious breath from Europe. A young fellow just
beginning letters, and no fool, turned up here with a letter of
introduction in the well-known blue ink and decorative hieroglyphs
of George Meredith. His name may be known to you. It is Sidney
Lysaght. He is staying with us but a day or two, and it is strange
to me and not unpleasant to hear all the names, old and new, come
up again. But oddly the new are so much more in number. If I
revisited the glimpses of the moon on your side of the ocean, I
should know comparatively few of them.
My amanuensis deserts me - I should have said you, for yours is the
loss, my script having lost all bond with humanity. One touch of
nature makes the whole world kin: that nobody can read my hand.
It is a humiliating circumstance that thus evens us with printers!
You must sometimes think it strange - or perhaps it is only I that
should so think it - to be following the old round, in the gas
lamps and the crowded theatres, when I am away here in the tropical
forest and the vast silences!
My dear Archer, my wife joins me in the best wishes to yourself and
Mrs. Archer, not forgetting Tom; and I am yours very cordially,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO W. B. YEATS
VAILIMA, SAMOA, APRIL 14, 1894.
DEAR SIR, - Long since when I was a boy I remember the emotions
with which I repeated Swinburne's poems and ballads. Some ten
years ago, a similar spell was cast upon me by Meredith's LOVE IN
THE VALLEY; the stanzas beginning 'When her mother tends her'
haunted me and made me drunk like wine; and I remember waking with
them all the echoes of the hills about Hyeres. It may interest you
to hear that I have a third time fallen in slavery: this is to
your poem called the LAKE ISLE OF INNISFRAE. It is so quaint and
airy, simple, artful, and eloquent to the heart - but I seek words
in vain. Enough that 'always night and day I hear lake water
lapping with low sounds on the shore,' and am, yours gratefully,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO GEORGE MEREDITH
VAILIMA, SAMOA, APRIL 17TH, 1894.
MY DEAR MEREDITH, - Many good things have the gods sent to me of
late. First of all there was a letter from you by the kind hand of
Mariette, if she is not too great a lady to be remembered in such a
style; and then there came one Lysaght with a charming note of
introduction in the well-known hand itself. We had but a few days
of him, and liked him well. There was a sort of geniality and
inward fire about him at which I warmed my hands. It is long since
I have seen a young man who has left in me such a favourable
impression; and I find myself telling myself, 'O, I must tell this
to Lysaght,' or, 'This will interest him,' in a manner very unusual
after so brief an acquaintance. The whole of my family shared in
this favourable impression, and my halls have re-echoed ever since,
I am sure he will be amused to know, with WIDDICOMBE FAIR.
He will have told you doubtless more of my news than I could tell
you myself; he has your European perspective, a thing long lost to
me. I heard with a great deal of interest the news of Box Hill.
And so I understand it is to be enclosed! Allow me to remark, that
seems a far more barbaric trait of manners than the most barbarous
of ours. We content ourselves with cutting off an occasional head.
I hear we may soon expect the AMAZING MARRIAGE. You know how long,
and with how much curiosity, I have looked forward to the book.
Now, in so far as you have adhered to your intention, Gower
Woodsere will be a family portrait, age twenty-five, of the highly
respectable and slightly influential and fairly aged TUSITALA. You
have not known that gentleman; console yourself, he is not worth
knowing. At the same time, my dear Meredith, he is very sincerely
yours - for what he is worth, for the memories of old times, and in
the expectation of many pleasures still to come. I suppose we
shall never see each other again; flitting youths of the Lysaght
species may occasionally cover these unconscionable leagues and
bear greetings to and fro. But we ourselves must be content to
converse on an occasional sheet of notepaper, and I shall never see
whether you have grown older, and you shall never deplore that
Gower Woodsere should have declined into the pantaloon TUSITALA.
It is perhaps better so. Let us continue to see each other as we
were, and accept, my dear Meredith, my love and respect.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - My wife joins me in the kindest messages to yourself and
Mariette.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
[VAILIMA], APRIL 17, '94.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - ST. IVES is now well on its way into the second
volume. There remains no mortal doubt that it will reach the three
volume standard.
I am very anxious that you should send me -
1ST. TOM AND JERRY, a cheap edition.
2nd. The book by Ashton - the DAWN OF THE CENTURY, I think it was
called - which Colvin sent me, and which has miscarried, and
3rd. If it is possible, a file of the EDINBURGH COURANT for the
years 1811, 1812, 1813, or 1814. I should not care for a whole
year. If it were possible to find me three months, winter months
by preference, it would do my business not only for ST. IVES, but
for the JUSTICE-CLERK as well. Suppose this to be impossible,
perhaps I could get the loan of it from somebody; or perhaps it
would be possible to have some one read a file for me and make
notes. This would be extremely bad, as unhappily one man's food is
another man's poison, and the reader would probably leave out
everything I should choose. But if you are reduced to that, you
might mention to the man who is to read for me that balloon
ascensions are in the order of the day.
4th. It might be as well to get a book on balloon ascension,
particularly in the early part of the century.
. . . . .
III. At last this book has come from Scribner, and, alas! I have
the first six or seven chapters of ST. IVES to recast entirely.
Who could foresee that they clothed the French prisoners in yellow?
But that one fatal fact - and also that they shaved them twice a
week - damns the whole beginning. If it had been sent in time, it
would have saved me a deal of trouble. . . .
I have had a long letter from Dr. Scott Dalgleish, 25 Mayfield
Terrace, asking me to put my name down to the Ballantyne Memorial
Committee. I have sent him a pretty sharp answer in favour of
cutting down the memorial and giving more to the widow and
children. If there is to be any foolery in the way of statues or
other trash, please send them a guinea; but if they are going to
take my advice and put up a simple tablet with a few heartfelt
words, and really devote the bulk of the subscriptions to the wife
and family, I will go to the length of twenty pounds, if you will
allow me (and if the case of the family be at all urgent), and at
least I direct you to send ten pounds. I suppose you had better
see Scott Dalgleish himself on the matter. I take the opportunity
here to warn you that my head is simply spinning with a multitude
of affairs, and I shall probably forget a half of my business at
last.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
VAILIMA, APRIL 1894.
MY DEAR FRIEND, - I have at last got some photographs, and hasten
to send you, as you asked, a portrait of Tusitala. He is a strange
person; not so lean, say experts, but infinitely battered; mighty
active again on the whole; going up and down our break-neck road at
all hours of the day and night on horseback; holding meetings with
all manner of chiefs; quite a political personage - God save the
mark! - in a small way, but at heart very conscious of the
inevitable flat failure that awaits every one. I shall never do a
better book than CATRIONA, that is my high-water mark, and the
trouble of production increases on me at a great rate - and mighty
anxious about how I am to leave my family: an elderly man, with
elderly preoccupations, whom I should be ashamed to show you for
your old friend; but not a hope of my dying soon and cleanly, and
'winning off the stage.' Rather I am daily better in physical
health. I shall have to see this business out, after all; and I
think, in that case, they should have - they might have - spared me
all my ill-health this decade past, if it were not to unbar the
doors. I have no taste for old age, and my nose is to be rubbed in
it in spite of my face. I was meant to die young, and the gods do
not love me.
This is very like an epitaph, bar the handwriting, which is
anything but monumental, and I dare say I had better stop. Fanny
is down at her own cottage planting or deplanting or replanting, I
know not which, and she will not be home till dinner, by which time
the mail will be all closed, else she would join me in all good
messages and remembrances of love. I hope you will congratulate
Burne Jones from me on his baronetcy. I cannot make out to be
anything but raspingly, harrowingly sad; so I will close, and not
affect levity which I cannot feel. Do not altogether forget me;
keep a corner of your memory for the exile
LOUIS.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
[VAILIMA, MAY 1894.]
MY DEAR CHARLES, - My dear fellow, I wish to assure you of the
greatness of the pleasure that this Edinburgh Edition gives me. I
suppose it was your idea to give it that name. No other would have
affected me in the same manner. Do you remember, how many years
ago - I would be afraid to hazard a guess - one night when I
communicated to you certain intimations of early death and
aspirations after fame? I was particularly maudlin; and my remorse
the next morning on a review of my folly has written the matter
very deeply in my mind; from yours it may easily have fled. If any
one at that moment could have shown me the Edinburgh Edition, I
suppose I should have died. It is with gratitude and wonder that I
consider 'the way in which I have been led.' Could a more
preposterous idea have occurred to us in those days when we used to
search our pockets for coppers, too often in vain, and combine
forces to produce the threepence necessary for two glasses of beer,
or wander down the Lothian Road without any, than that I should be
strong and well at the age of forty-three in the island of Upolu,
and that you should be at home bringing out the Edinburgh Edition?
If it had been possible, I should almost have preferred the Lothian
Road Edition, say, with a picture of the old Dutch smuggler on the
covers. I have now something heavy on my mind. I had always a
great sense of kinship with poor Robert Fergusson - so clever a
boy, so wild, of such a mixed strain, so unfortunate, born in the
same town with me, and, as I always felt, rather by express
intimation than from evidence, so like myself. Now the injustice
with which the one Robert is rewarded and the other left out in the
cold sits heavy on me, and I wish you could think of some way in
which I could do honour to my unfortunate namesake. Do you think
it would look like affectation to dedicate the whole edition to his
memory? I think it would. The sentiment which would dictate it to
me is too abstruse; and besides, I think my wife is the proper
person to receive the dedication of my life's work. At the same
time, it is very odd - it really looks like the transmigration of
souls - I feel that I must do something for Fergusson; Burns has
been before me with the gravestone. It occurs to me you might take
a walk down the Canongate and see in what condition the stone is.
If it be at all uncared for, we might repair it, and perhaps add a
few words of inscription.
I must tell you, what I just remembered in a flash as I was walking
about dictating this letter - there was in the original plan of the
MASTER OF BALLANTRAE a sort of introduction describing my arrival
in Edinburgh on a visit to yourself and your placing in my hands
the papers of the story. I actually wrote it, and then condemned
the idea - as being a little too like Scott, I suppose. Now I must
really find the MS. and try to finish it for the E. E. It will
give you, what I should so much like you to have, another corner of
your own in that lofty monument.
Suppose we do what I have proposed about Fergusson's monument, I
wonder if an inscription like this would look arrogant -
This stone originally erected
by Robert Burns has been
repaired at the
charges of Robert Louis Stevenson,
and is by him re-dedicated to
the memory of Robert Fergusson,
as the gift of one Edinburgh
lad to another.
In spacing this inscription I would detach the names of Fergusson
and Burns, but leave mine in the text.
Or would that look like sham modesty, and is it better to bring out
the three Roberts?
Letter: TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
VAILIMA, JUNE 1894.
MY DEAR BOB, - I must make out a letter this mail or perish in the
attempt. All the same, I am deeply stupid, in bed with a cold,
deprived of my amanuensis, and conscious of the wish but not the
furnished will. You may be interested to hear how the family
inquiries go. It is now quite certain that we are a second-rate
lot, and came out of Cunningham or Clydesdale, therefore BRITISH
folk; so that you are Cymry on both sides, and I Cymry and Pict.
We may have fought with King Arthur and known Merlin. The first of
the family, Stevenson of Stevenson, was quite a great party, and
dates back to the wars of Edward First. The last male heir of
Stevenson of Stevenson died 1670, 220 pounds, 10s. to the bad, from
drink. About the same time the Stevensons, who were mostly in
Cunningham before, crop up suddenly in the parish of Neilston, over
the border in Renfrewshire. Of course, they may have been there
before, but there is no word of them in that parish till 1675 in
any extracts I have. Our first traceable ancestor was a tenant
farmer of Muir of Cauldwells - James in Nether-Carsewell.
Presently two families of maltmen are found in Glasgow, both, by
re-duplicated proofs, related to James (the son of James) in Nether
Carsewell. We descend by his second marriage from Robert; one of
these died 1733. It is not very romantic up to now, but has
interested me surprisingly to fish out, always hoping for more -
and occasionally getting at least a little clearness and
confirmation. But the earliest date, 1655, apparently the marriage
of James in Nether Carsewell, cannot as yet be pushed back. From
which of any number of dozen little families in Cunningham we
should derive, God knows! Of course, it doesn't matter a hundred
years hence, an argument fatal to all human enterprise, industry,
or pleasure. And to me it will be a deadly disappointment if I
cannot roll this stone away! One generation further might be
nothing, but it is my present object of desire, and we are so near
it! There is a man in the same parish called Constantine; if I
could only trace to him, I could take you far afield by that one
talisman of the strange Christian name of Constantine. But no such
luck! And I kind of fear we shall stick at James.
So much, though all inchoate, I trouble you with, knowing that you,
at least, must take an interest in it. So much is certain of that
strange Celtic descent, that the past has an interest for it
apparently gratuitous, but fiercely strong. I wish to trace my
ancestors a thousand years, if I trace them by gallowses. It is
not love, not pride, not admiration; it is an expansion of the
identity, intimately pleasing, and wholly uncritical; I can expend
myself in the person of an inglorious ancestor with perfect
comfort; or a disgraced, if I could find one. I suppose, perhaps,
it is more to me who am childless, and refrain with a certain shock
from looking forwards. But, I am sure, in the solid grounds of
race, that you have it also in some degree.
I. JAMES, a tenant of the Muirs, in Nether-Carsewell,
Neilston, married (1665?) Jean Keir.
|| |
|| |
|| |
+-----------------------------------------+
II. ROBERT (Maltman in Glasgow), died 1733,
| married 1st; married second,
| Elizabeth Cumming.
| ||
| ||
William (Maltman in ||
Glasgow). +--------------+
| |
| |
+-------------+--------------+ III. ROBERT (Maltman
ROBERT, MARION, ELIZABETH. in Glasgow), married
Margaret Fulton (had
NOTE. - Between 1730-1766 flourished a large family).
in Glasgow Alan the Coppersmith, who ||
acts as a kind of a pin to the whole ||
Stevenson system there. He was caution IV. ALAN, West India
to Robert the Second's will, and to merchant, married
William's will, and to the will of a Jean Lillie.
John, another maltman. ||
||
V. ROBERT, married
Jean Smith.
|
VI. ALAN. - Margaret
Jones
|
VII. R. A. M. S.
Enough genealogy. I do not know if you will be able to read my
hand. Unhappily, Belle, who is my amanuensis, is out of the way on
other affairs, and I have to make the unwelcome effort. (O this is
beautiful, I am quite pleased with myself.) Graham has just
arrived last night (my mother is coming by the other steamer in
three days), and has told me of your meeting, and he said you
looked a little older than I did; so that I suppose we keep step
fairly on the downward side of the hill. He thought you looked
harassed, and I could imagine that too. I sometimes feel harassed.
I have a great family here about me, a great anxiety. The loss (to
use my grandfather's expression), the 'loss' of our family is that
we are disbelievers in the morrow - perhaps I should say, rather,
in next year. The future is ALWAYS black to us; it was to Robert
Stevenson; to Thomas; I suspect to Alan; to R. A. M. S. it was so
almost to his ruin in youth; to R. L. S., who had a hard hopeful
strain in him from his mother, it was not so much so once, but
becomes daily more so. Daily so much more so, that I have a
painful difficulty in believing I can ever finish another book, or
that the public will ever read it.
I have so huge a desire to know exactly what you are doing, that I
suppose I should tell you what I am doing by way of an example. I
have a room now, a part of the twelve-foot verandah sparred in, at
the most inaccessible end of the house. Daily I see the sunrise
out of my bed, which I still value as a tonic, a perpetual tuning
fork, a look of God's face once in the day. At six my breakfast
comes up to me here, and I work till eleven. If I am quite well, I
sometimes go out and bathe in the river before lunch, twelve. In
the afternoon I generally work again, now alone drafting, now with
Belle dictating. Dinner is at six, and I am often in bed by eight.
This is supposing me to stay at home. But I must often be away,
sometimes all day long, sometimes till twelve, one, or two at
night, when you might see me coming home to the sleeping house,
sometimes in a trackless darkness, sometimes with a glorious tropic
moon, everything drenched with dew - unsaddling and creeping to
bed; and you would no longer be surprised that I live out in this
country, and not in Bournemouth - in bed.
My great recent interruptions have (as you know) come from
politics; not much in my line, you will say. But it is impossible
to live here and not feel very sorely the consequences of the
horrid white mismanagement. I tried standing by and looking on,
and it became too much for me. They are such illogical fools; a
logical fool in an office, with a lot of red tape, is conceivable.
Furthermore, he is as much as we have any reason to expect of
officials - a thoroughly common-place, unintellectual lot. But
these people are wholly on wires; laying their ears down, skimming
away, pausing as though shot, and presto! full spread on the other
tack. I observe in the official class mostly an insane jealousy of
the smallest kind, as compared to which the artist's is of a grave,
modest character - the actor's, even; a desire to extend his little
authority, and to relish it like a glass of wine, that is
IMPAYABLE. Sometimes, when I see one of these little kings
strutting over one of his victories - wholly illegal, perhaps, and
certain to be reversed to his shame if his superiors ever heard of
it - I could weep. The strange thing is that they HAVE NOTHING
ELSE. I auscultate them in vain; no real sense of duty, no real
comprehension, no real attempt to comprehend, no wish for
information - you cannot offend one of them more bitterly than by
offering information, though it is certain that you have MORE, and
obvious that you have OTHER, information than they have; and
talking of policy, they could not play a better stroke than by
listening to you, and it need by no means influence their action.
TENEZ, you know what a French post office or railway official is?
That is the diplomatic card to the life. Dickens is not in it;
caricature fails.
All this keeps me from my work, and gives me the unpleasant side of
the world. When your letters are disbelieved it makes you angry,
and that is rot; and I wish I could keep out of it with all my
soul. But I have just got into it again, and farewell peace!
My work goes along but slowly. I have got to a crossing place, I
suppose; the present book, SAINT IVES, is nothing; it is in no
style in particular, a tissue of adventures, the central character
not very well done, no philosophic pith under the yarn; and, in
short, if people will read it, that's all I ask; and if they won't,
damn them! I like doing it though; and if you ask me why! - after
that I am on WEIR OF HERMISTON and HEATHERCAT, two Scotch stories,
which will either be something different, or I shall have failed.
The first is generally designed, and is a private story of two or
three characters in a very grim vein. The second - alas! the
thought - is an attempt at a real historical novel, to present a
whole field of time; the race - our own race - the west land and
Clydesdale blue bonnets, under the influence of their last trial,
when they got to a pitch of organisation in madness that no other
peasantry has ever made an offer at. I was going to call it THE
KILLING TIME, but this man Crockett has forestalled me in that.
Well, it'll be a big smash if I fail in it; but a gallant attempt.
All my weary reading as a boy, which you remember well enough, will
come to bear on it; and if my mind will keep up to the point it was
in a while back, perhaps I can pull it through.
For two months past, Fanny, Belle, Austin (her child), and I have
been alone; but yesterday, as I mentioned, Graham Balfour arrived,
and on Wednesday my mother and Lloyd will make up the party to its
full strength. I wish you could drop in for a month or a week, or
two hours. That is my chief want. On the whole, it is an
unexpectedly pleasant corner I have dropped into for an end of it,
which I could scarcely have foreseen from Wilson's shop, or the
Princes Street Gardens, or the Portobello Road. Still, I would
like to hear what my ALTER EGO thought of it; and I would sometimes
like to have my old MAITRE ES ARTS express an opinion on what I do.
I put this very tamely, being on the whole a quiet elderly man; but
it is a strong passion with me, though intermittent. Now, try to
follow my example and tell me something about yourself, Louisa, the
Bab, and your work; and kindly send me some specimens of what
you're about. I have only seen one thing by you, about Notre Dame
in the WESTMINSTER or ST. JAMES'S, since I left England, now I
suppose six years ago.
I have looked this trash over, and it is not at all the letter I
wanted to write - not truck about officials, ancestors, and the
like rancidness - but you have to let your pen go in its own
broken-down gait, like an old butcher's pony, stop when it pleases,
and go on again as it will. - Ever, my dear Bob, your affectionate
cousin,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO HENRY JAMES
VAILIMA, JULY 7TH, 1894.
DEAR HENRY JAMES, - I am going to try and dictate to you a letter
or a note, and begin the same without any spark of hope, my mind
being entirely in abeyance. This malady is very bitter on the
literary man. I have had it now coming on for a month, and it
seems to get worse instead of better. If it should prove to be
softening of the brain, a melancholy interest will attach to the
present document. I heard a great deal about you from my mother
and Graham Balfour; the latter declares that you could take a First
in any Samoan subject. If that be so, I should like to hear you on
the theory of the constitution. Also to consult you on the force
of the particles O LO 'O and UA, which are the subject of a dispute
among local pundits. You might, if you ever answer this, give me
your opinion on the origin of the Samoan race, just to complete the
favour.
They both say that you are looking well, and I suppose I may
conclude from that that you are feeling passably. I wish I was.
Do not suppose from this that I am ill in body; it is the numskull
that I complain of. And when that is wrong, as you must be very
keenly aware, you begin every day with a smarting disappointment,
which is not good for the temper. I am in one of the humours when
a man wonders how any one can be such an ass as to embrace the
profession of letters, and not get apprenticed to a barber or keep
a baked-potato stall. But I have no doubt in the course of a week,
or perhaps to-morrow, things will look better.
We have at present in port the model warship of Great Britain. She
is called the CURACOA, and has the nicest set of officers and men
conceivable. They, the officers, are all very intimate with us,
and the front verandah is known as the Curacoa Club, and the road
up to Vailima is known as the Curacoa Track. It was rather a
surprise to me; many naval officers have I known, and somehow had
not learned to think entirely well of them, and perhaps sometimes
ask myself a little uneasily how that kind of men could do great
actions? and behold! the answer comes to me, and I see a ship that
I would guarantee to go anywhere it was possible for men to go, and
accomplish anything it was permitted man to attempt. I had a
cruise on board of her not long ago to Manu'a, and was delighted.
The goodwill of all on board; the grim playfulness of - quarters,
with the wounded falling down at the word; the ambulances hastening
up and carrying them away; the Captain suddenly crying, 'Fire in
the ward-room!' and the squad hastening forward with the hose; and,
last and most curious spectacle of all, all the men in their dust-
coloured fatigue clothes, at a note of the bugle, falling
simultaneously flat on deck, and the ship proceeding with its
prostrate crew - QUASI to ram an enemy; our dinner at night in a
wild open anchorage, the ship rolling almost to her gunwales, and
showing us alternately her bulwarks up in the sky, and then the
wild broken cliffy palm-crested shores of the island with the surf
thundering and leaping close aboard. We had the ward-room mess on
deck, lit by pink wax tapers, everybody, of course, in uniform but
myself, and the first lieutenant (who is a rheumaticky body)
wrapped in a boat cloak. Gradually the sunset faded out, the
island disappeared from the eye, though it remained menacingly
present to the ear with the voice of the surf; and then the captain
turned on the searchlight and gave us the coast, the beach, the
trees, the native houses, and the cliffs by glimpses of daylight, a
kind of deliberate lightning. About which time, I suppose, we must
have come as far as the dessert, and were probably drinking our
first glass of port to Her Majesty. We stayed two days at the
island, and had, in addition, a very picturesque snapshot at the
native life. The three islands of Manu'a are independent, and are
ruled over by a little slip of a half-caste girl about twenty, who
sits all day in a pink gown, in a little white European house with
about a quarter of an acre of roses in front of it, looking at the
palm-trees on the village street, and listening to the surf. This,
so far as I could discover, was all she had to do. 'This is a very
dull place,' she said. It appears she could go to no other village
for fear of raising the jealousy of her own people in the capital.
And as for going about 'tafatafaoing,' as we say here, its cost was
too enormous. A strong able-bodied native must walk in front of
her and blow the conch shell continuously from the moment she
leaves one house until the moment she enters another. Did you ever
blow the conch shell? I presume not; but the sweat literally
hailed off that man, and I expected every moment to see him burst a
blood-vessel. We were entertained to kava in the guest-house with
some very original features. The young men who run for the KAVA
have a right to misconduct themselves AD LIBITUM on the way back;
and though they were told to restrain themselves on the occasion of
our visit, there was a strange hurly-burly at their return, when
they came beating the trees and the posts of the houses, leaping,
shouting, and yelling like Bacchants.
I tasted on that occasion what it is to be great. My name was
called next after the captain's, and several chiefs (a thing quite
new to me, and not at all Samoan practice) drank to me by name.
And now, if you are not sick of the CURACOA and Manu'a, I am, at
least on paper. And I decline any longer to give you examples of
how not to write.
By the by, you sent me long ago a work by Anatole France, which I
confess I did not TASTE. Since then I have made the acquaintance
of the ABBE COIGNARD, and have become a faithful adorer. I don't
think a better book was ever written.
And I have no idea what I have said, and I have no idea what I
ought to have said, and I am a total ass, but my heart is in the
right place, and I am, my dear Henry James, yours,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MR. MARCEL SCHWOB
VAILIMA, UPOLU, SAMOA, JULY 7, 1894.
DEAR MR. MARCEL SCHWOB, - Thank you for having remembered me in my
exile. I have read MIMES twice as a whole; and now, as I write, I
am reading it again as it were by accident, and a piece at a time,
my eye catching a word and travelling obediently on through the
whole number. It is a graceful book, essentially graceful, with
its haunting agreeable melancholy, its pleasing savour of
antiquity. At the same time, by its merits, it shows itself rather
as the promise of something else to come than a thing final in
itself. You have yet to give us - and I am expecting it with
impatience - something of a larger gait; something daylit, not
twilit; something with the colours of life, not the flat tints of a
temple illumination; something that shall be SAID with all the
clearnesses and the trivialities of speech, not SUNG like a semi-
articulate lullaby. It will not please yourself as well, when you
come to give it us, but it will please others better. It will be
more of a whole, more worldly, more nourished, more commonplace -
and not so pretty, perhaps not even so beautiful. No man knows
better than I that, as we go on in life, we must part from
prettiness and the graces. We but attain qualities to lose them;
life is a series of farewells, even in art; even our proficiencies
are deciduous and evanescent. So here with these exquisite pieces
the XVIIth, XVIIIth, and IVth of the present collection. You will
perhaps never excel them; I should think the 'Hermes,' never.
Well, you will do something else, and of that I am in expectation.
- Yours cordially,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO A. ST. GAUDENS
VAILIMA, SAMOA, JULY 8, 1894.
MY DEAR ST. GAUDENS, - This is to tell you that the medallion has
been at last triumphantly transported up the hill and placed over
my smoking-room mantelpiece. It is considered by everybody a
first-rate but flattering portrait. We have it in a very good
light, which brings out the artistic merits of the god-like
sculptor to great advantage. As for my own opinion, I believe it
to be a speaking likeness, and not flattered at all; possibly a
little the reverse. The verses (curse the rhyme) look remarkably
well.
Please do not longer delay, but send me an account for the expense
of the gilt letters. I was sorry indeed that they proved beyond
the means of a small farmer. - Yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
VAILIMA, JULY 14, 1894.
MY DEAR ADELAIDE, - . . . So, at last, you are going into mission
work? where I think your heart always was. You will like it in a
way, but remember it is dreary long. Do you know the story of the
American tramp who was offered meals and a day's wage to chop with
the back of an axe on a fallen trunk. 'Damned if I can go on
chopping when I can't see the chips fly!' You will never see the
chips fly in mission work, never; and be sure you know it
beforehand. The work is one long dull disappointment, varied by
acute revulsions; and those who are by nature courageous and
cheerful and have grown old in experience, learn to rub their hands
over infinitesimal successes. However, as I really believe there
is some good done in the long run - GUTTA CAVAT LAPIDEM NON VI in
this business - it is a useful and honourable career in which no
one should be ashamed to embark. Always remember the fable of the
sun, the storm, and the traveller's cloak. Forget wholly and for
ever all small pruderies, and remember that YOU CANNOT CHANGE
ANCESTRAL FEELINGS OF RIGHT AND WRONG WITHOUT WHAT IS PRACTICALLY
SOUL-MURDER. Barbarous as the customs may seem, always hear them
with patience, always judge them with gentleness, always find in
them some seed of good; see that you always develop them; remember
that all you can do is to civilise the man in the line of his own
civilisation, such as it is. And never expect, never believe in,
thaumaturgic conversions. They may do very well for St. Paul; in
the case of an Andaman islander they mean less than nothing. In
fact, what you have to do is to teach the parents in the interests
of their great-grandchildren.
Now, my dear Adelaide, dismiss from your mind the least idea of
fault upon your side; nothing is further from the fact. I cannot
forgive you, for I do not know your fault. My own is plain enough,
and the name of it is cold-hearted neglect; and you may busy
yourself more usefully in trying to forgive me. But ugly as my
fault is, you must not suppose it to mean more than it does; it
does not mean that we have at all forgotten you, that we have
become at all indifferent to the thought of you. See, in my life
of Jenkin, a remark of his, very well expressed, on the friendships
of men who do not write to each other. I can honestly say that I
have not changed to you in any way; though I have behaved thus ill,
thus cruelly. Evil is done by want of - well, principally by want
of industry. You can imagine what I would say (in a novel) of any
one who had behaved as I have done, DETERIORA SEQUOR. And you must
somehow manage to forgive your old friend; and if you will be so
very good, continue to give us news of you, and let us share the
knowledge of your adventures, sure that it will be always followed
with interest - even if it is answered with the silence of
ingratitude. For I am not a fool; I know my faults, I know they
are ineluctable, I know they are growing on me. I know I may
offend again, and I warn you of it. But the next time I offend,
tell me so plainly and frankly like a lady, and don't lacerate my
heart and bludgeon my vanity with imaginary faults of your own and
purely gratuitous penitence. I might suspect you of irony!
We are all fairly well, though I have been off work and off - as
you know very well - letter-writing. Yet I have sometimes more
than twenty letters, and sometimes more than thirty, going out each
mail. And Fanny has had a most distressing bronchitis for some
time, which she is only now beginning to get over. I have just
been to see her; she is lying - though she had breakfast an hour
ago, about seven - in her big cool, mosquito-proof room,
ingloriously asleep. As for me, you see that a doom has come upon
me: I cannot make marks with a pen - witness 'ingloriously' above;
and my amanuensis not appearing so early in the day, for she is
then immersed in household affairs, and I can hear her 'steering
the boys' up and down the verandahs - you must decipher this
unhappy letter for yourself and, I fully admit, with everything
against you. A letter should be always well written; how much more
a letter of apology! Legibility is the politeness of men of
letters, as punctuality of kings and beggars. By the punctuality
of my replies, and the beauty of my hand-writing, judge what a fine
conscience I must have!
Now, my dear gamekeeper, I must really draw to a close. For I have
much else to write before the mail goes out three days hence.
Fanny being asleep, it would not be conscientious to invent a
message from her, so you must just imagine her sentiments. I find
I have not the heart to speak of your recent loss. You remember
perhaps, when my father died, you told me those ugly images of
sickness, decline, and impaired reason, which then haunted me day
and night, would pass away and be succeeded by things more happily
characteristic. I have found it so. He now haunts me, strangely
enough, in two guises; as a man of fifty, lying on a hillside and
carving mottoes on a stick, strong and well; and as a younger man,
running down the sands into the sea near North Berwick, myself -
AETAT. II - somewhat horrified at finding him so beautiful when
stripped! I hand on your own advice to you in case you have
forgotten it, as I know one is apt to do in seasons of bereavement.
- Ever yours, with much love and sympathy,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. BAKER
VAILIMA, SAMOA, JULY 16, 1894.
DEAR MRS. BAKER, - I am very much obliged to you for your letter
and the enclosure from Mr. Skinner. Mr. Skinner says he 'thinks
Mr. Stevenson must be a very kind man'; he little knows me. But I
am very sure of one thing, that you are a very kind woman. I envy
you - my amanuensis being called away, I continue in my own hand,
or what is left of it - unusually legible, I am thankful to see - I
envy you your beautiful choice of an employment. There must be no
regrets at least for a day so spent; and when the night falls you
need ask no blessing on your work.
'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these.' - Yours truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO J. M. BARRIE
VAILIMA, JULY 13, 1894.
MY DEAR BARRIE, - This is the last effort of an ulcerated
conscience. I have been so long owing you a letter, I have heard
so much of you, fresh from the press, from my mother and Graham
Balfour, that I have to write a letter no later than to-day, or
perish in my shame. But the deuce of it is, my dear fellow, that
you write such a very good letter that I am ashamed to exhibit
myself before my junior (which you are, after all) in the light of
the dreary idiot I feel. Understand that there will be nothing
funny in the following pages. If I can manage to be rationally
coherent, I shall be more than satisfied.
In the first place, I have had the extreme satisfaction to be shown
that photograph of your mother. It bears evident traces of the
hand of an amateur. How is it that amateurs invariably take better
photographs than professionals? I must qualify invariably. My own
negatives have always represented a province of chaos and old night
in which you might dimly perceive fleecy spots of twilight,
representing nothing; so that, if I am right in supposing the
portrait of your mother to be yours, I must salute you as my
superior. Is that your mother's breakfast? Or is it only
afternoon tea? If the first, do let me recommend to Mrs. Barrie to
add an egg to her ordinary. Which, if you please, I will ask her
to eat to the honour of her son, and I am sure she will live much
longer for it, to enjoy his fresh successes. I never in my life
saw anything more deliciously characteristic. I declare I can hear
her speak. I wonder my mother could resist the temptation of your
proposed visit to Kirriemuir, which it was like your kindness to
propose. By the way, I was twice in Kirriemuir, I believe in the
year '71, when I was going on a visit to Glenogil. It was
Kirriemuir, was it not? I have a distinct recollection of an inn
at the end - I think the upper end - of an irregular open place or
square, in which I always see your characters evolve. But, indeed,
I did not pay much attention; being all bent upon my visit to a
shooting-box, where I should fish a real trout-stream, and I
believe preserved. I did, too, and it was a charming stream, clear
as crystal, without a trace of peat - a strange thing in Scotland -
and alive with trout; the name of it I cannot remember, it was
something like the Queen's River, and in some hazy way connected
with memories of Mary Queen of Scots. It formed an epoch in my
life, being the end of all my trout-fishing. I had always been
accustomed to pause and very laboriously to kill every fish as I
took it. But in the Queen's River I took so good a basket that I
forgot these niceties; and when I sat down, in a hard rain shower,
under a bank, to take my sandwiches and sherry, lo! and behold,
there was the basketful of trouts still kicking in their agony. I
had a very unpleasant conversation with my conscience. All that
afternoon I persevered in fishing, brought home my basket in
triumph, and sometime that night, 'in the wee sma' hours ayont the
twal,' I finally forswore the gentle craft of fishing. I dare say
your local knowledge may identify this historic river; I wish it
could go farther and identify also that particular Free kirk in
which I sat and groaned on Sunday. While my hand is in I must tell
you a story. At that antique epoch you must not fall into the
vulgar error that I was myself ancient. I was, on the contrary,
very young, very green, and (what you will appreciate, Mr. Barrie)
very shy. There came one day to lunch at the house two very
formidable old ladies - or one very formidable, and the other what
you please - answering to the honoured and historic name of the
Miss C- A-'s of Balnamoon. At table I was exceedingly funny, and
entertained the company with tales of geese and bubbly-jocks. I
was great in the expression of my terror for these bipeds, and
suddenly this horrid, severe, and eminently matronly old lady put
up a pair of gold eye-glasses, looked at me awhile in silence, and
pronounced in a clangorous voice her verdict. 'You give me very
much the effect of a coward, Mr. Stevenson!' I had very nearly
left two vices behind me at Glenogil - fishing and jesting at
table. And of one thing you may be very sure, my lips were no more
opened at that meal.
