Trusting I have now satisfactorily answered your question, which I
thank you for asking, I remain, with sincere compliments,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
VAILIMA, SUMMER 1892.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - First of all, YOU HAVE ALL THE CORRECTIONS ON
'THE WRECKER.' I found I had made what I meant and forgotten it,
and was so careless as not to tell you.
Second, of course, and by all means, charge corrections on the
Samoa book to me; but there are not near so many as I feared. The
Lord hath dealt bountifully with me, and I believe all my advisers
were amazed to see how nearly correct I had got the truck, at least
I was. With this you will receive the whole revise and a
typewritten copy of the last chapter. And the thing now is Speed,
to catch a possible revision of the treaty. I believe Cassells are
to bring it out, but Baxter knows, and the thing has to be crammed
through PRESTISSIMO, A LA CHASSEUR.
You mention the belated Barbeys; what about the equally belated
Pineros? And I hope you will keep your bookshop alive to supplying
me continuously with the SAGA LIBRARY. I cannot get enough of
SAGAS; I wish there were nine thousand; talk about realism!
All seems to flourish with you; I also prosper; none the less for
being quit of that abhorred task, Samoa. I could give a supper
party here were there any one to sup. Never was such a
disagreeable task, but the thing had to be told. . . .
There, I trust I am done with this cursed chapter of my career, bar
the rotten eggs and broken bottles that may follow, of course.
Pray remember, speed is now all that can be asked, hoped, or
wished. I give up all hope of proofs, revises, proof of the map,
or sic like; and you on your side will try to get it out as
reasonably seemly as may be.
Whole Samoa book herewith. Glory be to God. - Yours very
sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOAN ISLANDS, 18TH JULY 1892.
MY DEAR CHARLES,- . . . I have been now for some time contending
with powers and principalities, and I have never once seen one of
my own letters to the TIMES. So when you see something in the
papers that you think might interest the exiles of Upolu, do not
think twice, out with your saxpence, and send it flying to Vailima.
Of what you say of the past, eh, man, it was a queer time, and
awful miserable, but there's no sense in denying it was awful fun.
Do you mind the youth in Highland garb and the tableful of coppers?
Do you mind the SIGNAL of Waterloo Place? - Hey, how the blood
stands to the heart at such a memory! - Hae ye the notes o't?
Gie's them. - Gude's sake, man, gie's the notes o't; I mind ye made
a tune o't an' played it on your pinanny; gie's the notes. Dear
Lord, that past.
Glad to hear Henley's prospects are fair: his new volume is the
work of a real poet. He is one of those who can make a noise of
his own with words, and in whom experience strikes an individual
note. There is perhaps no more genuine poet living, bar the Big
Guns. In case I cannot overtake an acknowledgment to himself by
this mail, please let him hear of my pleasure and admiration. How
poorly - compares! He is all smart journalism and cleverness: it
is all bright and shallow and limpid, like a business paper - a
good one, S'ENTEND; but there is no blot of heart's blood and the
Old Night: there are no harmonics, there is scarce harmony to his
music; and in Henley - all of these; a touch, a sense within sense,
a sound outside the sound, the shadow of the inscrutable, eloquent
beyond all definition. The First London Voluntary knocked me
wholly. - Ever yours affectionately, my dear Charles,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Kind memories to your father and all friends.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOA, AUGUST 1ST, 1892.
MY DEAR HENLEY, - It is impossible to let your new volume pass in
silence. I have not received the same thrill of poetry since G.
M.'s JOY OF EARTH volume and LOVE IN A VALLEY; and I do not know
that even that was so intimate and deep. Again and again, I take
the book down, and read, and my blood is fired as it used to be in
youth. ANDANTE CON MOTO in the VOLUNTARIES, and the thing about
the trees at night (No. XXIV. I think) are up to date my
favourites. I did not guess you were so great a magician; these
are new tunes, this is an undertone of the true Apollo; these are
not verse, they are poetry - inventions, creations, in language. I
thank you for the joy you have given me, and remain your old friend
and present huge admirer,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
The hand is really the hand of Esau, but under a course of
threatened scrivener's cramp.
For the next edition of the Book of Verses, pray accept an
emendation. Last three lines of Echoes No. XLIV. read -
'But life in act? How should the grave
Be victor over these,
Mother, a mother of men?'
The two vocatives scatter the effect of this inimitable close. If
you insist on the longer line, equip 'grave' with an epithet.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
VAILIMA, UPOLU, AUGUST 1st, '92.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - Herewith MY GRANDFATHER. I have had rather a
bad time suppressing the old gentleman, who was really in a very
garrulous stage; as for getting him IN ORDER, I could do but little
towards that; however, there are one or two points of interest
which may justify us in printing. The swinging of his stick and
not knowing the sailor of Coruiskin, in particular, and the account
of how he wrote the lives in the Bell Book particularly please me.
I hope my own little introduction is not egoistic; or rather I do
not care if it is. It was that old gentleman's blood that brought
me to Samoa.
By the by, vols. vii., viii., and ix. of Adams's HISTORY have never
come to hand; no more have the dictionaries.
Please send me STONEHENGE ON HORSE, STORIES AND INTERLUDES by Barry
Pain, and EDINBURGH SKETCHES AND MEMOIRS by David Masson. THE
WRECKER has turned up. So far as I have seen, it is very
satisfactory, but on pp. 548, 549, there has been a devil of a
miscarriage. The two Latin quotations instead of following each
other being separated (doubtless for printing considerations) by a
line of prose. My compliments to the printers; there is doubtless
such a thing as good printing, but there is such a thing as good
sense.
The sequel to KIDNAPPED, DAVID BALFOUR by name, is about three-
quarters done and gone to press for serial publication. By what I
can find out it ought to be through hand with that and ready for
volume form early next spring. - Yours very sincerely,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO ANDREW LANG
[VAILIMA, AUGUST 1892.]
MY DEAR LANG, - I knew you would prove a trusty purveyor. The
books you have sent are admirable. I got the name of my hero out
of Brown - Blair of Balmyle - Francie Blair. But whether to call
the story BLAIR OF BALMYLE, or whether to call it THE YOUNG
CHEVALIER, I have not yet decided. The admirable Cameronian tract
- perhaps you will think this a cheat - is to be boned into DAVID
BALFOUR, where it will fit better, and really furnishes me with a
desired foothold over a boggy place.
LATER; no, it won't go in, and I fear I must give up 'the
idolatrous occupant upon the throne,' a phrase that overjoyed me
beyond expression. I am in a deuce of a flutter with politics,
which I hate, and in which I certainly do not shine; but a fellow
cannot stand aside and look on at such an exhibition as our
government. 'Taint decent; no gent can hold a candle to it. But
it's a grind to be interrupted by midnight messengers and pass your
days writing proclamations (which are never proclaimed) and
petitions (which ain't petited) and letters to the TIMES, which it
makes my jaws yawn to re-read, and all your time have your heart
with David Balfour: he has just left Glasgow this morning for
Edinburgh, James More has escaped from the castle; it is far more
real to me than the Behring Sea or the Baring brothers either - he
got the news of James More's escape from the Lord Advocate, and
started off straight to comfort Catriona. You don't know her;
she's James More's daughter, and a respectable young wumman; the
Miss Grants think so - the Lord Advocate's daughters - so there
can't be anything really wrong. Pretty soon we all go to Holland,
and be hanged; thence to Dunkirk, and be damned; and the tale
concludes in Paris, and be Poll-parrotted. This is the last
authentic news. You are not a real hard-working novelist; not a
practical novelist; so you don't know the temptation to let your
characters maunder. Dumas did it, and lived. But it is not war;
it ain't sportsmanlike, and I have to be stopping their chatter all
the time. Brown's appendix is great reading.
My only grief is that I can't
Use the idolatrous occupant.
Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Blessing and praising you for a useful (though idolatrous) occupant
of Kensington.
Letter: TO THE COUNTESS OF JERSEY
AUGUST 14, 1745.
TO MISS AMELIA BALFOUR - MY DEAR COUSIN, - We are going an
expedition to leeward on Tuesday morning. If a lady were perhaps
to be encountered on horseback - say, towards the Gasi-gasi river -
about six A.M., I think we should have an episode somewhat after
the style of the '45. What a misfortune, my dear cousin, that you
should have arrived while your cousin Graham was occupying my only
guest-chamber - for Osterley Park is not so large in Samoa as it
was at home - but happily our friend Haggard has found a corner for
you!
The King over the Water - the Gasi-gasi water - will be pleased to
see the clan of Balfour mustering so thick around his standard.
I have (one serious word) been so lucky as to get a really secret
interpreter, so all is for the best in our little adventure into
the WAVERLEY NOVELS. - I am your affectionate cousin,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Observe the stealth with which I have blotted my signature, but we
must be political A OUTRANCE.
Letter: TO THE COUNTESS OF JERSEY
MY DEAR COUSIN, - I send for your information a copy of my last
letter to the gentleman in question. 'Tis thought more wise, in
consideration of the difficulty and peril of the enterprise, that
we should leave the town in the afternoon, and by several
detachments. If you would start for a ride with the Master of
Haggard and Captain Lockhart of Lee, say at three o'clock of the
afternoon, you would make some rencounters by the wayside which
might be agreeable to your political opinions. All present will be
staunch.
The Master of Haggard might extend his ride a little, and return
through the marsh and by the nuns' house (I trust that has the
proper flavour), so as a little to diminish the effect of
separation. - I remain, your affectionate cousin to command,
O TUSITALA.
P.S. - It is to be thought this present year of grace will be
historical.
Letter: TO MRS. CHARLES FAIRCHILD
[VAILIMA, AUGUST 1892.]
MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD, - Thank you a thousand times for your
letter. You are the Angel of (the sort of) Information (that I
care about); I appoint you successor to the newspaper press; and I
beg of you, whenever you wish to gird at the age, or think the bugs
out of proportion to the roses, or despair, or enjoy any cosmic or
epochal emotion, to sit down again and write to the Hermit of
Samoa. What do I think of it all? Well, I love the romantic
solemnity of youth; and even in this form, although not without
laughter, I have to love it still. They are such ducks! But what
are they made of? We were just as solemn as that about atheism and
the stars and humanity; but we were all for belief anyway - we held
atheism and sociology (of which none of us, nor indeed anybody,
knew anything) for a gospel and an iron rule of life; and it was
lucky enough, or there would have been more windows broken. What
is apt to puzzle one at first sight in the New Youth is that, with
such rickety and risky problems always at heart, they should not
plunge down a Niagara of Dissolution. But let us remember the high
practical timidity of youth. I was a particularly brave boy - this
I think of myself, looking back - and plunged into adventures and
experiments, and ran risks that it still surprises me to recall.
But, dear me, what a fear I was in of that strange blind machinery
in the midst of which I stood; and with what a compressed heart and
what empty lungs I would touch a new crank and await developments!
I do not mean to say I do not fear life still; I do; and that
terror (for an adventurer like myself) is still one of the chief
joys of living.
But it was different indeed while I was yet girt with the priceless
robes of inexperience; then the fear was exquisite and infinite.
And so, when you see all these little Ibsens, who seem at once so
dry and so excitable, and faint in swathes over a play (I suppose -
for a wager) that would seem to me merely tedious, smile behind
your hand, and remember the little dears are all in a blue funk.
It must be very funny, and to a spectator like yourself I almost
envy it. But never get desperate; human nature is human nature;
and the Roman Empire, since the Romans founded it and made our
European human nature what it is, bids fair to go on and to be true
to itself. These little bodies will all grow up and become men and
women, and have heaps of fun; nay, and are having it now; and
whatever happens to the fashion of the age, it makes no difference
- there are always high and brave and amusing lives to be lived;
and a change of key, however exotic, does not exclude melody. Even
Chinamen, hard as we find it to believe, enjoy being Chinese. And
the Chinaman stands alone to be unthinkable; natural enough, as the
representative of the only other great civilisation. Take my
people here at my doors; their life is a very good one; it is quite
thinkable, quite acceptable to us. And the little dears will be
soon skating on the other foot; sooner or later, in each
generation, the one-half of them at least begin to remember all the
material they had rejected when first they made and nailed up their
little theory of life; and these become reactionaries or
conservatives, and the ship of man begins to fill upon the other
tack.
Here is a sermon, by your leave! It is your own fault, you have
amused and interested me so much by your breath of the New Youth,
which comes to me from so far away, where I live up here in my
mountain, and secret messengers bring me letters from rebels, and
the government sometimes seizes them, and generally grumbles in its
beard that Stevenson should really be deported. O, my life is the
more lively, never fear!
It has recently been most amusingly varied by a visit from Lady
Jersey. I took her over mysteriously (under the pseudonym of my
cousin, Miss Amelia Balfour) to visit Mataafa, our rebel; and we
had great fun, and wrote a Ouida novel on our life here, in which
every author had to describe himself in the Ouida glamour, and of
which - for the Jerseys intend printing it - I must let you have a
copy. My wife's chapter, and my description of myself, should, I
think, amuse you. But there were finer touches still; as when
Belle and Lady Jersey came out to brush their teeth in front of the
rebel King's palace, and the night guard squatted opposite on the
grass and watched the process; or when I and my interpreter, and
the King with his secretary, mysteriously disappeared to conspire.
- Ever yours sincerely,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO GORDON BROWNE
VAILIMA, SAMOA, AUTUMN 1892.
TO THE ARTIST WHO DID THE ILLUSTRATIONS TO 'UMA.'
DEAR SIR, - I only know you under the initials G. B., but you have
done some exceedingly spirited and satisfactory illustrations to my
story THE BEACH OF FALESA, and I wish to write and thank you
expressly for the care and talent shown. Such numbers of people
can do good black and whites! So few can illustrate a story, or
apparently read it. You have shown that you can do both, and your
creation of Wiltshire is a real illumination of the text. It was
exactly so that Wiltshire dressed and looked, and you have the line
of his nose to a nicety. His nose is an inspiration. Nor should I
forget to thank you for Case, particularly in his last appearance.
It is a singular fact - which seems to point still more directly to
inspiration in your case - that your missionary actually resembles
the flesh-and-blood person from whom Mr. Tarleton was drawn. The
general effect of the islands is all that could be wished; indeed I
have but one criticism to make, that in the background of Case
taking the dollar from Mr. Tarleton's head - head - not hand, as
the fools have printed it - the natives have a little too much the
look of Africans.
But the great affair is that you have been to the pains to
illustrate my story instead of making conscientious black and
whites of people sitting talking. I doubt if you have left
unrepresented a single pictorial incident. I am writing by this
mail to the editor in the hopes that I may buy from him the
originals, and I am, dear sir, your very much obliged,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MISS MORSE
VAILIMA, SAMOAN ISLANDS, OCTOBER 7TH, 1892.
DEAR MADAM, - I have a great diffidence in answering your valued
letter. It would be difficult for me to express the feelings with
which I read it - and am now trying to re-read it as I dictate
this.
You ask me to forgive what you say 'must seem a liberty,' and I
find that I cannot thank you sufficiently or even find a word with
which to qualify your letter. Dear Madam, such a communication
even the vainest man would think a sufficient reward for a lifetime
of labour. That I should have been able to give so much help and
pleasure to your sister is the subject of my grateful wonder.
That she, being dead, and speaking with your pen, should be able to
repay the debt with such a liberal interest, is one of those things
that reconcile us with the world and make us take hope again. I do
not know what I have done to deserve so beautiful and touching a
compliment; and I feel there is but one thing fit for me to say
here, that I will try with renewed courage to go on in the same
path, and to deserve, if not to receive, a similar return from
others.
You apologise for speaking so much about yourselves. Dear Madam, I
thought you did so too little. I should have wished to have known
more of those who were so sympathetic as to find a consolation in
my work, and so graceful and so tactful as to acknowledge it in
such a letter as was yours.
Will you offer to your mother the expression of a sympathy which
(coming from a stranger) must seem very airy, but which yet is
genuine; and accept for yourself my gratitude for the thought which
inspired you to write to me and the words which you found to
express it.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
VAILIMA PLANTATION, SAMOAN ISLANDS, OCT. 10TH, 1892.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - It is now, as you see, the 10th of October,
and there has not reached the Island of Upolu one single copy, or
rag of a copy, of the Samoa book. I lie; there has come one, and
that in the pocket of a missionary man who is at daggers drawn with
me, who lends it to all my enemies, conceals it from all my
friends, and is bringing a lawsuit against me on the strength of
expressions in the same which I have forgotten, and now cannot see.
This is pretty tragic, I think you will allow; and I was inclined
to fancy it was the fault of the Post Office. But I hear from my
sister-in-law Mrs. Sanchez that she is in the same case, and has
received no 'Footnote.' I have also to consider that I had no
letter from you last mail, although you ought to have received by
that time 'My Grandfather and Scott,' and 'Me and my Grandfather.'
Taking one consideration with another, therefore, I prefer to
conceive that No. 743 Broadway has fallen upon gentle and
continuous slumber, and is become an enchanted palace among
publishing houses. If it be not so, if the 'Footnotes' were really
sent, I hope you will fall upon the Post Office with all the vigour
you possess. How does THE WRECKER go in the States? It seems to
be doing exceptionally well in England. - Yours sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO J. M. BARRIE
VAILIMA PLANTATION, SAMOAN ISLANDS, NOVEMBER 1ST, 1892.
DEAR MR. BARRIE, - I can scarce thank you sufficiently for your
extremely amusing letter. No, THE AULD LICHT IDYLS never reached
me - I wish it had, and I wonder extremely whether it would not be
good for me to have a pennyworth of the Auld Licht pulpit. It is a
singular thing that I should live here in the South Seas under
conditions so new and so striking, and yet my imagination so
continually inhabit that cold old huddle of grey hills from which
we come. I have just finished DAVID BALFOUR; I have another book
on the stocks, THE YOUNG CHEVALIER, which is to be part in France
and part in Scotland, and to deal with Prince Charlie about the
year 1749; and now what have I done but begun a third which is to
be all moorland together, and is to have for a centrepiece a figure
that I think you will appreciate - that of the immortal Braxfield -
Braxfield himself is my GRAND PREMIER, or, since you are so much
involved in the British drama, let me say my heavy lead. . . .
Your descriptions of your dealings with Lord Rintoul are
frightfully unconscientious. You should never write about anybody
until you persuade yourself at least for the moment that you love
him, above all anybody on whom your plot revolves. It will always
make a hole in the book; and, if he has anything to do with the
mechanism, prove a stick in your machinery. But you know all this
better than I do, and it is one of your most promising traits that
you do not take your powers too seriously. The LITTLE MINISTER
ought to have ended badly; we all know it did; and we are
infinitely grateful to you for the grace and good feeling with
which you lied about it. If you had told the truth, I for one
could never have forgiven you. As you had conceived and written
the earlier parts, the truth about the end, though indisputably
true to fact, would have been a lie, or what is worse, a discord in
art. If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly
from the beginning. Now your book began to end well. You let
yourself fall in love with, and fondle, and smile at your puppets.
Once you had done that, your honour was committed - at the cost of
truth to life you were bound to save them. It is the blot on
RICHARD FEVEREL, for instance, that it begins to end well; and then
tricks you and ends ill. But in that case there is worse behind,
for the ill-ending does not inherently issue from the plot - the
story HAD, in fact, ENDED WELL after the great last interview
between Richard and Lucy - and the blind, illogical bullet which
smashes all has no more to do between the boards than a fly has to
do with the room into whose open window it comes buzzing. It MIGHT
have so happened; it needed not; and unless needs must, we have no
right to pain our readers. I have had a heavy case of conscience
of the same kind about my Braxfield story. Braxfield - only his
name is Hermiston - has a son who is condemned to death; plainly,
there is a fine tempting fitness about this; and I meant he was to
hang. But now on considering my minor characters, I saw there were
five people who would - in a sense who must - break prison and
attempt his rescue. They were capable, hardy folks, too, who might
very well succeed. Why should they not then? Why should not young
Hermiston escape clear out of the country? and be happy, if he
could, with his - But soft! I will not betray my secret of my
heroine. Suffice it to breathe in your ear that she was what Hardy
calls (and others in their plain way don't) a Pure Woman. Much
virtue in a capital letter, such as yours was.
Write to me again in my infinite distance. Tell me about your new
book. No harm in telling ME; I am too far off to be indiscreet;
there are too few near me who would care to hear. I am rushes by
the riverside, and the stream is in Babylon: breathe your secrets
to me fearlessly; and if the Trade Wind caught and carried them
away, there are none to catch them nearer than Australia, unless it
were the Tropic Birds. In the unavoidable absence of my
amanuensis, who is buying eels for dinner, I have thus concluded my
despatch, like St. Paul, with my own hand.
And in the inimitable words of Lord Kames, Faur ye weel, ye bitch.
- Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
VAILIMA PLANTATION, NOV. 2ND, 1892.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - In the first place, I have to acknowledge
receipt of your munificent cheque for three hundred and fifty
dollars. Glad you liked the Scott voyage; rather more than I did
upon the whole. As the proofs have not turned up at all, there can
be no question of returning them, and I am therefore very much
pleased to think you have arranged not to wait. The volumes of
Adams arrived along with yours of October 6th. One of the
dictionaries has also blundered home, apparently from the Colonies;
the other is still to seek. I note and sympathise with your
bewilderment as to FALESA. My own direct correspondence with Mr.
Baxter is now about three months in abeyance. Altogether you see
how well it would be if you could do anything to wake up the Post
Office. Not a single copy of the 'Footnote' has yet reached Samoa,
but I hear of one having come to its address in Hawaii. Glad to
hear good news of Stoddard. - Yours sincerely,
R. L. STEVENSON.
P.S. - Since the above was written an aftermath of post matter came
in, among which were the proofs of MY GRANDFATHER. I shall correct
and return them, but as I have lost all confidence in the Post
Office, I shall mention here: first galley, 4th line from the
bottom, for 'AS' read 'OR.'
Should I ever again have to use my work without waiting for proofs,
bear in mind this golden principle. From a congenital defect, I
must suppose, I am unable to write the word OR - wherever I write
it the printer unerringly puts AS - and those who read for me had
better, wherever it is possible, substitute OR for AS. This the
more so since many writers have a habit of using AS which is death
to my temper and confusion to my face.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO LIEUTENANT EELES
VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOAN ISLANDS, NOVEMBER 15TH, 1892.
DEAR EELES, - In the first place, excuse me writing to you by
another hand, as that is the way in which alone all my
correspondence gets effected. Before I took to this method, or
rather before I found a victim, it SIMPLY didn't get effected.
Thank you again and again, first for your kind thought of writing
to me, and second for your extremely amusing and interesting
letter. You can have no guess how immediately interesting it was
to our family. First of all, the poor soul at Nukufetau is an old
friend of ours, and we have actually treated him ourselves on a
former visit to the island. I don't know if Hoskin would approve
of our treatment; it consisted, I believe, mostly in a present of
stout and a recommendation to put nails in his water-tank. We also
(as you seem to have done) recommended him to leave the island; and
I remember very well how wise and kind we thought his answer. He
had half-caste children (he said) who would suffer and perhaps be
despised if he carried them elsewhere; if he left them there alone,
they would almost certainly miscarry; and the best thing was that
he should stay and die with them. But the cream of the fun was
your meeting with Burn. We not only know him, but (as the French
say) we don't know anybody else; he is our intimate and adored
original; and - prepare your mind - he was, is, and ever will be,
TOMMY HADDON! As I don't believe you to be inspired, I suspect you
to have suspected this. At least it was a mighty happy suspicion.
You are quite right: Tommy is really 'a good chap,' though about
as comic as they make them.
I was extremely interested in your Fiji legend, and perhaps even
more so in your capital account of the CURACOA'S misadventure.
Alas! we have nothing so thrilling to relate. All hangs and fools
on in this isle of misgovernment, without change, though not
without novelty, but wholly without hope, unless perhaps you should
consider it hopeful that I am still more immediately threatened
with arrest. The confounded thing is, that if it comes off, I
shall be sent away in the Ringarooma instead of the CURACOA. The
former ship burst upon by the run - she had been sent off by
despatch and without orders - and to make me a little more easy in
my mind she brought newspapers clamouring for my incarceration.
Since then I have had a conversation with the German Consul. He
said he had read a review of my Samoa book, and if the review were
fair, must regard it as an insult, and one that would have to be
resented. At the same time, I learn that letters addressed to the
German squadron lie for them here in the Post Office. Reports are
current of other English ships being on the way - I hope to
goodness yours will be among the number. And I gather from one
thing and another that there must be a holy row going on between
the powers at home, and that the issue (like all else connected
with Samoa) is on the knees of the gods. One thing, however, is
pretty sure - if that issue prove to be a German Protectorate, I
shall have to tramp. Can you give us any advice as to a fresh
field of energy? We have been searching the atlas, and it seems
difficult to fill the bill. How would Rarotonga do? I forget if
you have been there. The best of it is that my new house is going
up like winking, and I am dictating this letter to the
accompaniment of saws and hammers. A hundred black boys and about
a score draught-oxen perished, or at least barely escaped with
their lives, from the mud-holes on our road, bringing up the
materials. It will be a fine legacy to H.I.G.M.'s Protectorate,
and doubtless the Governor will take it for his country-house. The
Ringarooma people, by the way, seem very nice. I liked Stansfield
particularly.
Our middy has gone up to San Francisco in pursuit of the phantom
Education. We have good word of him, and I hope he will not be in
disgrace again, as he was when the hope of the British Navy - need
I say that I refer to Admiral Burney? - honoured us last. The next
time you come, as the new house will be finished, we shall be able
to offer you a bed. Nares and Meiklejohn may like to hear that our
new room is to be big enough to dance in. It will be a very
pleasant day for me to see the Curacoa in port again and at least a
proper contingent of her officers 'skipping in my 'all.'
We have just had a feast on my birthday at which we had three of
the Ringaromas, and I wish they had been three CURACOAS - say
yourself, Hoskin, and Burney the ever Great. (Consider this an
invitation.) Our boys had got the thing up regardless. There were
two huge sows - oh, brutes of animals that would have broken down a
hansom cab - four smaller pigs, two barrels of beef, and a horror
of vegetables and fowls. We sat down between forty and fifty in a
big new native house behind the kitchen that you have never seen,
and ate and public spoke till all was blue. Then we had about half
an hour's holiday with some beer and sherry and brandy and soda to
restrengthen the European heart, and then out to the old native
house to see a siva. Finally, all the guests were packed off in a
trackless black night and down a road that was rather fitted for
the CURACOA than any human pedestrian, though to be sure I do not
know the draught of the CURACOA. My ladies one and all desire to
be particularly remembered to our friends on board, and all look
forward, as I do myself, in the hope of your return. - Yours
sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
And let me hear from you again!
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
1ST DEC. '92.
. . . I have a novel on the stocks to be called THE JUSTICE-CLERK.
It is pretty Scotch, the Grand Premier is taken from Braxfield -
(Oh, by the by, send me Cockburn's MEMORIALS) - and some of the
story is - well - queer. The heroine is seduced by one man, and
finally disappears with the other man who shot him. . . . Mind you,
I expect the JUSTICE-CLERK to be my masterpiece. My Braxfield is
already a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, and so far as he has
gone FAR my best character.
[LATER.]
Second thought. I wish Pitcairn's CRIMINAL TRIALS QUAM PRIMUM.
Also, an absolutely correct text of the Scots judiciary oath.
Also, in case Pitcairn does not come down late enough, I wish as
full a report as possible of a Scotch murder trial between 1790-
1820. Understand, THE FULLEST POSSIBLE.
Is there any book which would guide me as to the following facts?
The Justice-Clerk tries some people capitally on circuit. Certain
evidence cropping up, the charge is transferred to the J.-C.'s own
son. Of course, in the next trial the J.-C. is excluded, and the
case is called before the Lord-Justice General.
Where would this trial have to be? I fear in Edinburgh, which
would not suit my view. Could it be again at the circuit town?
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. JENKIN
DECEMBER 5TH, 1892.
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, - . . . So much said, I come with guilty speed
to what more immediately concerns myself. Spare us a month or two
for old sake's sake, and make my wife and me happy and proud. We
are only fourteen days from San Francisco, just about a month from
Liverpool; we have our new house almost finished. The thing CAN be
done; I believe we can make you almost comfortable. It is the
loveliest climate in the world, our political troubles seem near an
end. It can be done, it must! Do, please, make a virtuous effort,
come and take a glimpse of a new world I am sure you do not dream
of, and some old friends who do often dream of your arrival.
Alas, I was just beginning to get eloquent, and there goes the
lunch bell, and after lunch I must make up the mail.
Do come. You must not come in February or March - bad months.
From April on it is delightful. - Your sincere friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO HENRY JAMES
DECEMBER 5TH, 1892.
MY DEAR JAMES, - How comes it so great a silence has fallen? The
still small voice of self-approval whispers me it is not from me.
I have looked up my register, and find I have neither written to
you nor heard from you since June 22nd, on which day of grace that
invaluable work began. This is not as it should be. How to get
back? I remember acknowledging with rapture the - of the MASTER,
and I remember receiving MARBOT: was that our last relation?
Hey, well! anyway, as you may have probably gathered from the
papers, I have been in devilish hot water, and (what may be new to
you) devilish hard at work. In twelve calendar months I finished
THE WRECKER, wrote all of FALESA but the first chapter (well, much
of), the HISTORY OF SAMOA, did something here and there to my LIFE
OF MY GRANDFATHER, and began And Finished DAVID BALFOUR. What do
you think of it for a year? Since then I may say I have done
nothing beyond draft three chapters of another novel, THE JUSTICE-
CLERK, which ought to be shorter and a blower - at least if it
don't make a spoon, it will spoil the horn of an Aurochs (if that's
how it should be spelt).
On the hot water side it may entertain you to know that I have been
actually sentenced to deportation by my friends on Mulinuu, C. J.
Cedercrantz, and Baron Senfft von Pilsach. The awful doom,
however, declined to fall, owing to Circumstances over Which. I
only heard of it (so to speak) last night. I mean officially, but
I had walked among rumours. The whole tale will be some day put
into my hand, and I shall share it with humorous friends.
It is likely, however, by my judgment, that this epoch of gaiety in
Samoa will soon cease; and the fierce white light of history will
beat no longer on Yours Sincerely and his fellows here on the
beach. We ask ourselves whether the reason will more rejoice over
the end of a disgraceful business, or the unregenerate man more
sorrow over the stoppage of the fun. For, say what you please, it
has been a deeply interesting time. You don't know what news is,
nor what politics, nor what the life of man, till you see it on so
small a scale and with your own liberty on the board for stake. I
would not have missed it for much. And anxious friends beg me to
stay at home and study human nature in Brompton drawing-rooms!
FARCEURS! And anyway you know that such is not my talent. I could
never be induced to take the faintest interest in Brompton QUA
Brompton or a drawing-room QUA a drawing-room. I am an Epick
Writer with a k to it, but without the necessary genius.
Hurry up with another book of stories. I am now reduced to two of
my contemporaries, you and Barrie - O, and Kipling - you and Barrie
and Kipling are now my Muses Three. And with Kipling, as you know,
there are reservations to be made. And you and Barrie don't write
enough. I should say I also read Anstey when he is serious, and
can almost always get a happy day out of Marion Crawford - CE N'EST
PAS TOUJOURS LA GUERRE, but it's got life to it and guts, and it
moves. Did you read the WITCH OF PRAGUE? Nobody could read it
twice, of course; and the first time even it was necessary to skip.
E PUR SI MUOVE. But Barrie is a beauty, the LITTLE MINISTER and
the WINDOW IN THRUMS, eh? Stuff in that young man; but he must see
and not be too funny. Genius in him, but there's a journalist at
his elbow - there's the risk. Look, what a page is the glove
business in the WINDOW! knocks a man flat; that's guts, if you
please.
Why have I wasted the little time that is left with a sort of naked
review article? I don't know, I'm sure. I suppose a mere
ebullition of congested literary talk I am beginning to think a
visit from friends would be due. Wish you could come!
Let us have your news anyway, and forgive this silly stale
effusion. - Yours ever,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO J. M. BARRIE
[VAILIMA, DECEMBER 1892.]
DEAR J. M. BARRIE, - You will be sick of me soon; I cannot help it.
I have been off my work for some time, and re-read the EDINBURGH
ELEVEN, and had a great mind to write a parody and give you all
your sauce back again, and see how you would like it yourself. And
then I read (for the first time - I know not how) the WINDOW IN
THRUMS; I don't say that it is better than THE MINISTER; it's less
of a tale - and there is a beauty, a material beauty, of the tale
IPSE, which clever critics nowadays long and love to forget; it has
more real flaws; but somehow it is - well, I read it last anyway,
and it's by Barrie. And he's the man for my money. The glove is a
great page; it is startlingly original, and as true as death and
judgment. Tibbie Birse in the Burial is great, but I think it was
a journalist that got in the word 'official.' The same character
plainly had a word to say to Thomas Haggard. Thomas affects me as
a lie - I beg your pardon; doubtless he was somebody you knew, that
leads people so far astray. The actual is not the true.
I am proud to think you are a Scotchman - though to be sure I know
nothing of that country, being only an English tourist, quo' Gavin
Ogilvy. I commend the hard case of Mr. Gavin Ogilvy to J. M.
Barrie, whose work is to me a source of living pleasure and
heartfelt national pride. There are two of us now that the Shirra
might have patted on the head. And please do not think when I thus
seem to bracket myself with you, that I am wholly blinded with
vanity. Jess is beyond my frontier line; I could not touch her
skirt; I have no such glamour of twilight on my pen. I am a
capable artist; but it begins to look to me as if you were a man of
genius. Take care of yourself, for my sake. It's a devilish hard
thing for a man who writes so many novels as I do, that I should
get so few to read. And I can read yours, and I love them.
A pity for you that my amanuensis is not on stock to-day, and my
own hand perceptibly worse than usual. - Yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
DECEMBER 5TH, 1892.
P.S. - They tell me your health is not strong. Man, come out here
and try the Prophet's chamber. There's only one bad point to us -
we do rise early. The Amanuensis states that you are a lover of
silence - and that ours is a noisy house - and she is a chatterbox
- I am not answerable for these statements, though I do think there
is a touch of garrulity about my premises. We have so little to
talk about, you see. The house is three miles from town, in the
midst of great silent forests. There is a burn close by, and when
we are not talking you can hear the burn, and the birds, and the
sea breaking on the coast three miles away and six hundred feet
below us, and about three times a month a bell - I don't know where
the bell is, nor who rings it; it may be the bell in Hans
Andersen's story for all I know. It is never hot here - 86 in the
shade is about our hottest - and it is never cold except just in
the early mornings. Take it for all in all, I suppose this island
climate to be by far the healthiest in the world - even the
influenza entirely lost its sting. Only two patients died, and one
was a man nearly eighty, and the other a child below four months.
I won't tell you if it is beautiful, for I want you to come here
and see for yourself. Everybody on the premises except my wife has
some Scotch blood in their veins - I beg your pardon - except the
natives - and then my wife is a Dutchwoman - and the natives are
the next thing conceivable to Highlanders before the forty-five.
We would have some grand cracks!
R. L. S.
COME, it will broaden your mind, and be the making of me.
CHAPTER XII - LIFE IN SAMOA, CONTINUED, JANUARY 1893-DECEMBER 1894
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
[APRIL, 1893.]
. . . About THE JUSTICE-CLERK, I long to go at it, but will first
try to get a short story done. Since January I have had two severe
illnesses, my boy, and some heart-breaking anxiety over Fanny; and
am only now convalescing. I came down to dinner last night for the
first time, and that only because the service had broken down, and
to relieve an inexperienced servant. Nearly four months now I have
rested my brains; and if it be true that rest is good for brains, I
ought to be able to pitch in like a giant refreshed. Before the
autumn, I hope to send you some JUSTICE-CLERK, or WEIR OF
HERMISTON, as Colvin seems to prefer; I own to indecision.
Received SYNTAX, DANCE OF DEATH, and PITCAIRN, which last I have
read from end to end since its arrival, with vast improvement.
What a pity it stops so soon! I wonder is there nothing that seems
to prolong the series? Why doesn't some young man take it up? How
about my old friend Fountainhall's DECISIONS? I remember as a boy
that there was some good reading there. Perhaps you could borrow
me that, and send it on loan; and perhaps Laing's MEMORIALS
therewith; and a work I'm ashamed to say I have never read,
BALFOUR'S LETTERS. . . . I have come by accident, through a
correspondent, on one very curious and interesting fact - namely,
that Stevenson was one of the names adopted by the MacGregors at
the proscription. The details supplied by my correspondent are
both convincing and amusing; but it would be highly interesting to
find out more of this.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO A. CONAN DOYLE
VAILIMA, APIA, SAMOA, APRIL 5TH, 1893.
DEAR SIR, - You have taken many occasions to make yourself very
agreeable to me, for which I might in decency have thanked you
earlier. It is now my turn; and I hope you will allow me to offer
you my compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting
adventures of Sherlock Holmes. That is the class of literature
that I like when I have the toothache. As a matter of fact, it was
a pleurisy I was enjoying when I took the volume up; and it will
interest you as a medical man to know that the cure was for the
moment effectual. Only the one thing troubles me: can this be my
old friend Joe Bell? - I am, yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - And lo, here is your address supplied me here in Samoa! But
do not take mine, O frolic fellow Spookist, from the same source;
mine is wrong.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO S. R. CROCKETT
VAILIMA, SAMOA, MAY 17TH, 1893.
DEAR MR. CROCKETT, - I do not owe you two letters, nor yet nearly
one, sir! The last time I heard of you, you wrote about an
accident, and I sent you a letter to my lawyer, Charles Baxter,
which does not seem to have been presented, as I see nothing of it
in his accounts. Query, was that lost? I should not like you to
think I had been so unmannerly and so inhuman. If you have written
since, your letter also has miscarried, as is much the rule in this
part of the world, unless you register.
Your book is not yet to hand, but will probably follow next month.
I detected you early in the BOOKMAN, which I usually see, and noted
you in particular as displaying a monstrous ingratitude about the
footnote. Well, mankind is ungrateful; 'Man's ingratitude to man
makes countless thousands mourn,' quo' Rab - or words to that
effect. By the way, an anecdote of a cautious sailor: 'Bill,
Bill,' says I to him, 'OR WORDS TO THAT EFFECT.'
I shall never take that walk by the Fisher's Tryst and Glencorse.
I shall never see Auld Reekie. I shall never set my foot again
upon the heather. Here I am until I die, and here will I be
buried. The word is out and the doom written. Or, if I do come,
it will be a voyage to a further goal, and in fact a suicide;
which, however, if I could get my family all fixed up in the money
way, I might, perhaps, perform, or attempt. But there is a plaguey
risk of breaking down by the way; and I believe I shall stay here
until the end comes like a good boy, as I am. If I did it, I
should put upon my trunks: 'Passenger to - Hades.' How strangely
wrong your information is! In the first place, I should never
carry a novel to Sydney; I should post it from here. In the second
place, WEIR OF HERMISTON is as yet scarce begun. It's going to be
excellent, no doubt; but it consists of about twenty pages. I have
a tale, a shortish tale in length, but it has proved long to do,
THE EBB TIDE, some part of which goes home this mail. It is by me
and Mr. Osbourne, and is really a singular work. There are only
four characters, and three of them are bandits - well, two of them
are, and the third is their comrade and accomplice. It sounds
cheering, doesn't it? Barratry, and drunkenness, and vitriol, and
I cannot tell you all what, are the beams of the roof. And yet - I
don't know - I sort of think there's something in it. You'll see
(which is more than I ever can) whether Davis and Attwater come off
or not.
WEIR OF HERMISTON is a much greater undertaking, and the plot is
not good, I fear; but Lord Justice-Clerk Hermiston ought to be a
plum. Of other schemes, more or less executed, it skills not to
speak.
I am glad to hear so good an account of your activity and
interests, and shall always hear from you with pleasure; though I
am, and must continue, a mere sprite of the inkbottle, unseen in
the flesh. Please remember me to your wife and to the four-year-
old sweetheart, if she be not too engrossed with higher matters.
Do you know where the road crosses the burn under Glencorse Church?
Go there, and say a prayer for me: MORITURUS SALUTAT. See that
it's a sunny day; I would like it to be a Sunday, but that's not
possible in the premises; and stand on the right-hand bank just
where the road goes down into the water, and shut your eyes, and if
I don't appear to you! well, it can't be helped, and will be
extremely funny.
I have no concern here but to work and to keep an eye on this
distracted people. I live just now wholly alone in an upper room
of my house, because the whole family are down with influenza, bar
my wife and myself. I get my horse up sometimes in the afternoon
and have a ride in the woods; and I sit here and smoke and write,
and rewrite, and destroy, and rage at my own impotence, from six in
the morning till eight at night, with trifling and not always
agreeable intervals for meals.
I am sure you chose wisely to keep your country charge. There a
minister can be something, not in a town. In a town, the most of
them are empty houses - and public speakers. Why should you
suppose your book will be slated because you have no friends? A
new writer, if he is any good, will be acclaimed generally with
more noise than he deserves. But by this time you will know for
certain. - I am, yours sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - Be it known to this fluent generation that I R. L. S., in
the forty-third of my age and the twentieth of my professional
life, wrote twenty-four pages in twenty-one days, working from six
to eleven, and again in the afternoon from two to four or so,
without fail or interruption. Such are the gifts the gods have
endowed us withal: such was the facility of this prolific writer!
R. L. S.
Letter: TO AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS
VAILIMA, SAMOA, MAY 29TH, 1893
MY DEAR GOD-LIKE SCULPTOR, - I wish in the most delicate manner in
the world to insinuate a few commissions:-
