Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson Volume 1 Part 40

LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, 12TH OCTOBER 1883.

MY DEAR FATHER, - I have just lunched; the day is exquisite, the air comes though the open window rich with odour, and I am by no means spiritually minded. Your letter, however, was very much valued, and has been read oftener than once. What you say about yourself I was glad to hear; a little decent resignation is not only becoming a Christian, but is likely to be excellent for the health of a Stevenson. To fret and fume is undignified, suicidally foolish, and theologically unpardonable; we are here not to make, but to tread predestined, pathways; we are the foam of a wave, and to preserve a proper equanimity is not merely the first part of submission to G.o.d, but the chief of possible kindnesses to those about us. I am lecturing myself, but you also. To do our best is one part, but to wash our hands smilingly of the consequence is the next part, of any sensible virtue.

I have come, for the moment, to a pause in my moral works; for I have many irons in the fire, and I wish to finish something to bring coin before I can afford to go on with what I think doubtfully to be a duty. It is a most difficult work; a touch of the parson will drive off those I hope to influence; a touch of overstrained laxity, besides disgusting, like a grimace, may do harm. Nothing that I have ever seen yet speaks directly and efficaciously to young men; and I do hope I may find the art and wisdom to fill up a gap. The great point, as I see it, is to ask as little as possible, and meet, if it may be, every view or absence of view; and it should be, must be, easy. Honesty is the one desideratum; but think how hard a one to meet. I think all the time of Ferrier and myself; these are the pair that I address.

Poor Ferrier, so much a better man than I, and such a temporal wreck. But the thing of which we must divest our minds is to look partially upon others; all is to be viewed; and the creature judged, as he must be by his Creator, not dissected through a prism of morals, but in the unrefracted ray. So seen, and in relation to the almost omnipotent surroundings, who is to distinguish between F. and such a man as Dr. Candlish, or between such a man as David Hume and such an one as Robert Burns? To compare my poor and good Walter with myself is to make me startle; he, upon all grounds above the merely expedient, was the n.o.bler being. Yet wrecked utterly ere the full age of manhood; and the last skirmishes so well fought, so humanly useless, so pathetically brave, only the leaps of an expiring lamp. All this is a very pointed instance.

It shuts the mouth. I have learned more, in some ways, from him than from any other soul I ever met; and he, strange to think, was the best gentleman, in all kinder senses, that I ever knew. - Ever your affectionate son,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO W H LOW

[CHALET LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, OCT. 23, 1883.]

MY DEAR LOW, - C'EST D'UN BON CAMARADE; and I am much obliged to you for your two letters and the inclosure. Times are a lityle changed with all of us since the ever memorable days of Lavenue: hallowed be his name! hallowed his old Fleury! - of which you did not see - I think - as I did - the glorious apotheosis: advanced on a Tuesday to three francs, on the Thursday to six, and on Friday swept off, holus bolus, for the proprietor's private consumption.

Well, we had the start of that proprietor. Many a good bottle came our way, and was, I think, worthily made welcome.

I am pleased that Mr. Gilder should like my literature; and I ask you particularly to thank Mr. Bunner (have I the name right?) for his notice, which was of that friendly, headlong sort that really pleases an author like what the French call a 'shake-hands.' It pleased me the more coming from the States, where I have met not much recognition, save from the buccaneers, and above all from pirates who misspell my name. I saw my book advertised in a number of the CRITIC as the work of one R. L. Stephenson; and, I own, I boiled. It is so easy to know the name of the man whose book you have stolen; for there it is, at full length, on the t.i.tle-page of your booty. But no, d.a.m.n him, not he! He calls me Stephenson.

These woes I only refer to by the way, as they set a higher value on the CENTURY notice.

I am now a person with an established ill-health - a wife - a dog possessed with an evil, a Gadarene spirit - a chalet on a hill, looking out over the Mediterranean - a certain reputation - and very obscure finances. Otherwise, very much the same, I guess; and were a bottle of Fleury a thing to be obtained, capable of developing theories along with a fit spirit even as of yore. Yet I now draw near to the Middle Ages; nearly three years ago, that fatal Thirty struck; and yet the great work is not yet done - not yet even conceived. But so, as one goes on, the wood seems to thicken, the footpath to narrow, and the House Beautiful on the hill's summit to draw further and further away. We learn, indeed, to use our means; but only to learn, along with it, the paralysing knowledge that these means are only applicable to two or three poor commonplace motives. Eight years ago, if I could have slung ink as I can now, I should have thought myself well on the road after Shakespeare; and now - I find I have only got a pair of walking- shoes and not yet begun to travel. And art is still away there on the mountain summit. But I need not continue; for, of course, this is your story just as much as it is mine; and, strange to think, it was Shakespeare's too, and Beethoven's, and Phidias's. It is a blessed thing that, in this forest of art, we can pursue our wood- lice and sparrows, AND NOT CATCH THEM, with almost the same fervour of exhilaration as that with which Sophocles hunted and brought down the Mastodon.

Tell me something of your work, and your wife. - My dear fellow, I am yours ever,

R. L. STEVENSON.

My wife begs to be remembered to both of you; I cannot say as much for my dog, who has never seen you, but he would like, on general principles, to bite you.

Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY

[HYERES, NOVEMBER 1883.]

MY DEAR LAD, - . . . Of course, my seamans.h.i.+p is jimmy: did I not beseech you I know not how often to find me an ancient mariner - and you, whose own wife's own brother is one of the ancientest, did nothing for me? As for my seamen, did Runciman ever know eighteenth century buccaneers? No? Well, no more did I. But I have known and sailed with seamen too, and lived and eaten with them; and I made my put-up shot in no great ignorance, but as a put-up thing has to be made, I.E. to be coherent and picturesque, and d.a.m.n the expense. Are they fairly lively on the wires? Then, favour me with your tongues. Are they wooden, and dim, and no sport? Then it is I that am silent, otherwise not. The work, strange as it may sound in the ear, is not a work of realism. The next thing I shall hear is that the etiquette is wrong in Otto's Court! With a warrant, and I mean it to be so, and the whole matter never cost me half a thought. I make these paper people to please myself, and Skelt, and G.o.d Almighty, and with no ulterior purpose. Yet am I mortal myself; for, as I remind you, I begged for a supervising mariner. However, my heart is in the right place. I have been to sea, but I never crossed the threshold of a court; and the courts shall be the way I want 'em.

I'm glad to think I owe you the review that pleased me best of all the reviews I ever had; the one I liked best before that was -'s on the ARABIANS. These two are the flowers of the collection, according to me. To live reading such reviews and die eating ortolans - sich is my aspiration.

Whenever you come you will be equally welcome. I am trying to finish OTTO ere you shall arrive, so as to take and be able to enjoy a well-earned - O yes, a well-earned - holiday. Longman fetched by Otto: is it a spoon or a spoilt horn? Momentous, if the latter; if the former, a spoon to dip much praise and pudding, and to give, I do think, much pleasure. The last part, now in hand, much smiles upon me. - Ever yours,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, [NOVEMBER 1883].

MY DEAR MOTHER, - You must not blame me too much for my silence; I am over head and ears in work, and do not know what to do first. I have been hard at OTTO, hard at SILVERADO proofs, which I have worked over again to a tremendous extent; cutting, adding, rewriting, until some of the worst chapters of the original are now, to my mind, as good as any. I was the more bound to make it good, as I had such liberal terms; it's not for want of trying if I have failed.

I got your letter on my birthday; indeed, that was how I found it out about three in the afternoon, when postie comes. Thank you for all you said. As for my wife, that was the best investment ever made by man; but 'in our branch of the family' we seem to marry well. I, considering my piles of work, am wonderfully well; I have not been so busy for I know not how long. I hope you will send me the money I asked however, as I am not only penniless, but shall remain so in all human probability for some considerable time. I have got in the ma.s.s of my expectations; and the 100 pounds which is to float us on the new year can not come due till SILVERADO is all ready; I am delaying it myself for the moment; then will follow the binders and the travellers and an infinity of other nuisances; and only at the last, the jingling-tingling.

Do you know that TREASURE ISLAND has appeared? In the November number of Henley's Magazine, a capital number anyway, there is a funny publisher's puff of it for your book; also a bad article by me. Lang dotes on TREASURE ISLAND: 'Except TOM SAWYER and the ODYSSEY,' he writes, 'I never liked any romance so much.' I will inclose the letter though. The Bogue is angelic, although very dirty. It has rained - at last! It was jolly cold when the rain came.

I was overjoyed to hear such good news of my father. Let him go on at that! Ever your affectionate,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN

LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, [NOVEMBER 1883].

MY DEAR COLVIN, - I have been bad, but as you were worse, I feel no shame. I raise a blooming countenance, not the evidence of a self- righteous spirit.

I continue my uphill fight with the twin spirits of bankruptcy and indigestion. Duns rage about my portal, at least to fancy's ear.

I suppose you heard of Ferrier's death: my oldest friend, except Bob. It has much upset me. I did not fancy how much. I am strangely concerned about it.

My house is the loveliest spot in the universe; the moonlight nights we have are incredible; love, poetry and music, and the Arabian Nights, inhabit just my corner of the world - nest there like mavises.

Here lies The carcase of Robert Louis Stevenson, An active, austere, and not inelegant writer, who, at the termination of a long career, wealthy, wise, benevolent, and honoured by the attention of two hemispheres, yet owned it to have been his crowning favour TO INHABIT LA SOLITUDE.

(With the consent of the intelligent edility of Hyeres, he has been interred, below this frugal stone, in the garden which he honoured for so long with his poetic presence.)

I must write more solemn letters. Adieu. Write.

R. L. S.

Letter: TO MRS. MILNE