Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson Volume 1 Part 22

HOTEL BELVEDERE, DAVOS PLATZ [DEC. 6, 1880].

MY DEAR WEG, - I have many letters that I ought to write in preference to this; but a duty to letters and to you prevails over any private consideration. You are going to collect odes; I could not wish a better man to do so; but I tremble lest you should commit two sins of omission. You will not, I am sure, be so far left to yourself as to give us no more of Dryden than the hackneyed St. Cecilia; I know you will give us some others of those surprising masterpieces where there is more sustained eloquence and harmony of English numbers than in all that has been written since; there is a machine about a poetical young lady, and another about either Charles or James, I know not which; and they are both indescribably fine. (Is Marvell's Horatian Ode good enough? I half think so.) But my great point is a fear that you are one of those who are unjust to our old Tennyson's Duke of Wellington. I have just been talking it over with Symonds; and we agreed that whether for its metrical effects, for its brief, plain, stirring words of portraiture, as - he 'that never lost an English gun,' or - the soldier salute; or for the heroic apostrophe to Nelson; that ode has never been surpa.s.sed in any tongue or time. Grant me the Duke, O Weg! I suppose you must not put in yours about the wars.h.i.+p; you will have to admit worse ones, however. - Ever yours,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE

[HOTEL BELVEDERE], DAVOS, DEC. 19, 1880.

This letter is a report of a long sederunt, also steterunt in small committee at Davos Platz, Dec. 15, 1880.

Its results are unhesitatingly shot at your head.

MY DEAR WEG, - We both insist on the Duke of Wellington. Really it cannot be left out. Symonds said you would cover yourself with shame, and I add, your friends with confusion, if you leave it out.

Really, you know it is the only thing you have, since Dryden, where that irregular odic, odal, odous (?) verse is used with mastery and sense. And it's one of our few English blood-boilers.

(2) Byron: if anything: PROMETHEUS.

(3) Sh.e.l.ley (1) THE WORLD'S GREAT AGE from h.e.l.las; we are both dead on. After that you have, of course, THE WEST WIND thing. But we think (1) would maybe be enough; no more than two any way.

(4) Herrick. MEDDOWES and COME, MY CORINNA. After that MR.

WICKES: two any way.

(5) Leave out stanza 3rd of Congreve's thing, like a dear; we can't stand the 'sigh' nor the 'peruke.'

(6) Milton. TIME and the SOLEMN MUSIC. We both agree we would rather go without L'Allegro and Il Penseroso than these; for the reason that these are not so well known to the brutish herd.

(7) Is the ROYAL GEORGE an ode, or only an elegy? It's so good.

(8) We leave Campbell to you.

(9) If you take anything from Clough, but we don't either of us fancy you will, let it be COME BACK.

(10) Quite right about Dryden. I had a hankering after THRENODIA AUGUSTALIS; but I find it long and with very prosaic holes: though, O! what fine stuff between whiles.

(11) Right with Collins.

(12) Right about Pope's Ode. But what can you give? THE DYING CHRISTIAN? or one of his inimitable courtesies? These last are fairly odes, by the Horatian model, just as my dear MEDDOWES is an ode in the name and for the sake of Bandusia.

(13) Whatever you do, you'll give us the Greek Vase.

(14) Do you like Jonson's 'loathed stage'? Verses 2, 3, and 4 are so bad, also the last line. But there is a fine movement and feeling in the rest.

We will have the Duke of Wellington by G.o.d. Pro Symonds and Stevenson.

R. L. S.

Letter: TO CHARLES WARREN STODDARD

HOTEL BELVEDERE, DAVOS PLATZ, SWITZERLAND [DECEMBER 1880].

DEAR CHARLES WARREN STODDARD, - Many thanks to you for the letter and the photograph. Will you think it mean if I ask you to wait till there appears a promised cheap edition? Possibly the canny Scot does feel pleasure in the superior cheapness; but the true reason is this, that I think to put a few words, by way of notes, to each book in its new form, because that will be the Standard Edition, without which no g.'s l. will be complete. The edition, briefly, SINE QUA NON. Before that, I shall hope to send you my essays, which are in the printer's hands. I look to get yours soon. I am sorry to hear that the Custom House has proved fallible, like all other human houses and customs. Life consists of that sort of business, and I fear that there is a cla.s.s of man, of which you offer no inapt type, doomed to a kind of mild, general disappointment through life. I do not believe that a man is the more unhappy for that. Disappointment, except with one's self, is not a very capital affair; and the sham beat.i.tude, 'Blessed is he that expecteth little,' one of the truest, and in a sense, the most Christlike things in literature.

Alongside of you, I have been all my days a red cannon ball of dissipated effort; here I am by the heels in this Alpine valley, with just so much of a prospect of future restoration as shall make my present caged estate easily tolerable to me - shall or should, I would not swear to the word before the trial's done. I miss all my objects in the meantime; and, thank G.o.d, I have enough of my old, and maybe somewhat base philosophy, to keep me on a good understanding with myself and Providence.

The mere extent of a man's travels has in it something consolatory.

That he should have left friends and enemies in many different and distant quarters gives a sort of earthly dignity to his existence.

And I think the better of myself for the belief that I have left some in California interested in me and my successes. Let me a.s.sure you, you who have made friends already among such various and distant races, that there is a certain phthisical Scot who will always be pleased to hear good news of you, and would be better pleased by nothing than to learn that you had thrown off your present incubus, largely consisting of letters I believe, and had sailed into some square work by way of change.

And by way of change in itself, let me copy on the other pages some broad Scotch I wrote for you when I was ill last spring in Oakland.

It is no muckle worth: but ye should na look a gien horse in the moo'. - Yours ever,

R. L. STEVENSON.

Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

DECEMBER 21, 1880. DAVOS.

MY DEAR PEOPLE, - I do not understand these reproaches. The letters come between seven and nine in the evening; and every one about the books was answered that same night, and the answer left Davos by seven o'clock next morning. Perhaps the snow delayed then; if so, 'tis a good hint to you not to be uneasy at apparent silences. There is no hurry about my father's notes; I shall not be writing anything till I get home again, I believe. Only I want to be able to keep reading AD HOC all winter, as it seems about all I shall be fit for. About John Brown, I have been breaking my heart to finish a Scotch poem to him. Some of it is not really bad, but the rest will not come, and I mean to get it right before I do anything else.

The bazaar is over, 160 pounds gained, and everybody's health lost: altogether, I never had a more uncomfortable time; apply to f.a.n.n.y for further details of the discomfort.

We have our Wogg in somewhat better trim now, and vastly better spirits. The weather has been bad - for Davos, but indeed it is a wonderful climate. It never feels cold; yesterday, with a little, chill, small, northerly draught, for the first time, it was pinching. Usually, it may freeze, or snow, or do what it pleases, you feel it not, or hardly any.

Thanks for your notes; that fishery question will come in, as you notice, in the Highland Book, as well as under the Union; it is very important. I hear no word of Hugh Miller's EVICTIONS; I count on that. What you say about the old and new Statistical is odd.

It seems to me very much as if I were gingerly embarking on a HISTORY OF MODERN SCOTLAND. Probably Tulloch will never carry it out. And, you see, once I have studied and written these two vols., THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS and SCOTLAND AND THE UNION, I shall have a good ground to go upon. The effect on my mind of what I have read has been to awaken a livelier sympathy for the Irish; although they never had the remarkable virtues, I fear they have suffered many of the injustices, of the Scottish Highlanders. Ruedi has seen me this morning; he says the disease is at a standstill, and I am to profit by it to take more exercise. Altogether, he seemed quite hopeful and pleased. - I am your ever affectionate son,

R. L S.

Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN