Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson Volume 1 Part 44

They suit me. I don't want yours; I like my own; I have had them a long while in bottle. It is my only reservation. - Yours (as you decide),

R. L. MONKHOUSE.

Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY

HYERES, MAY 1884.

DEAR BOY, - OLD MORTALITY is out, and I am glad to say Coggie likes it. We like her immensely.

I keep better, but no great shakes yet; cannot work - cannot: that is flat, not even verses: as for prose, that more active place is shut on me long since.

My view of life is essentially the comic; and the romantically comic. AS YOU LIKE IT is to me the most bird-haunted spot in letters; TEMPEST and TWELFTH NIGHT follow. These are what I mean by poetry and nature. I make an effort of my mind to be quite one with Moliere, except upon the stage, where his inimitable JEUX DE SCENE beggar belief; but you will observe they are stage-plays - things AD HOC; not great Olympian debauches of the heart and fancy; hence more perfect, and not so great. Then I come, after great wanderings, to Carmosine and to Fantasio; to one part of La Derniere Aldini (which, by the by, we might dramatise in a week), to the notes that Meredith has found, Evan and the postillion, Evan and Rose, Harry in Germany. And to me these things are the good; beauty, touched with s.e.x and laughter; beauty with G.o.d's earth for the background. Tragedy does not seem to me to come off; and when it does, it does so by the heroic illusion; the anti-masque has been omitted; laughter, which attends on all our steps in life, and sits by the deathbed, and certainly redacts the epitaph, laughter has been lost from these great-hearted lies. But the comedy which keeps the beauty and touches the terrors of our life (laughter and tragedy-in-a-good-humour having kissed), that is the last word of moved representation; embracing the greatest number of elements of fate and character; and telling its story, not with the one eye of pity, but with the two of pity and mirth.

R. L. S.

Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE

FROM MY BED, MAY 29, 1884.

DEAR GOSSE, - The news of the Professorate found me in the article of - well, of heads or tails; I am still in bed, and a very poor person. You must thus excuse my d.a.m.ned delay; but, I a.s.sure you, I was delighted. You will believe me the more, if I confess to you that my first sentiment was envy; yes, sir, on my blood-boltered couch I envied the professor. However, it was not of long duration; the double thought that you deserved and that you would thoroughly enjoy your success fell like balsam on my wounds. How came it that you never communicated my rejection of Gilder's offer for the Rhone? But it matters not. Such earthly vanities are over for the present. This has been a fine well-conducted illness. A month in bed; a month of silence; a fortnight of not stirring my right hand; a month of not moving without being lifted. Come! CA Y EST: devilish like being dead. - Yours, dear Professor, academically,

R. L. S.

I am soon to be moved to Royat; an invalid valet goes with me! I got him cheap - second-hand.

In turning over my late friend Ferrier's commonplace book, I find three poems from VIOL AND FLUTE copied out in his hand: 'When Flower-time,' 'Love in Winter,' and 'Mistrust.' They are capital too. But I thought the fact would interest you. He was no poetist either; so it means the more. 'Love in W.!' I like the best.

Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

HOTEL CHABa.s.sIERE, ROYAT, [JULY 1884].

MY DEAR PEOPLE, - The weather has been demoniac; I have had a skiff of cold, and was finally obliged to take to bed entirely; to-day, however, it has cleared, the sun s.h.i.+nes, and I begin to

(SEVERAL DAYS AFTER.)

I have been out once, but now am back in bed. I am better, and keep better, but the weather is a mere injustice. The imitation of Edinburgh is, at times, deceptive; there is a note among the chimney pots that suggests Howe Street; though I think the shrillest spot in Christendom was not upon the Howe Street side, but in front, just under the Miss Graemes' big chimney stack. It had a fine alto character - a sort of bleat that used to divide the marrow in my joints - say in the wee, slack hours. That music is now lost to us by rebuilding; another air that I remember, not regret, was the solo of the gas-burner in the little front room; a knickering, flighty, fleering, and yet spectral cackle. I mind it above all on winter afternoons, late, when the window was blue and spotted with rare rain-drops, and, looking out, the cold evening was seen blue all over, with the lamps of Queen's and Frederick's Street dotting it with yellow, and flaring east-ward in the squalls. Heavens, how unhappy I have been in such circ.u.mstances - I, who have now positively forgotten the colour of unhappiness; who am full like a fed ox, and dull like a fresh turf, and have no more spiritual life, for good or evil, than a French bagman.

We are at Chaba.s.siere's, for of course it was nonsense to go up the hill when we could not walk.

The child's poems in a far extended form are likely soon to be heard of - which c.u.mmy I dare say will be glad to know. They will make a book of about one hundred pages. - Ever your affectionate,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN

[ROYAT, JULY 1884.]

. . . HERE is a quaint thing, I have read ROBINSON, COLONEL JACK, MOLL FLANDERS, MEMOIRS OF A CAVALIER, HISTORY OF THE PLAGUE, HISTORY OF THE GREAT STORM, SCOTCH CHURCH AND UNION. And there my knowledge of Defoe ends - except a book, the name of which I forget, about Peterborough in Spain, which Defoe obviously did not write, and could not have written if he wanted. To which of these does B. J. refer? I guess it must be the history of the Scottish Church. I jest; for, of course, I KNOW it must be a book I have never read, and which this makes me keen to read - I mean CAPTAIN SINGLETON. Can it be got and sent to me? If TREASURE ISLAND is at all like it, it will be delightful. I was just the other day wondering at my folly in not remembering it, when I was writing T.

I., as a mine for pirate tips. T. I. came out of Kingsley's AT LAST, where I got the Dead Man's Chest - and that was the seed - and out of the great Captain Johnson's HISTORY OF NOTORIOUS PIRATES. The scenery is Californian in part, and in part CHIC.

I was downstairs to-day! So now I am a made man - till the next time.

R. L. STEVENSON.

If it was CAPTAIN SINGLETON, send it to me, won't you?

LATER. - My life dwindles into a kind of valley of the shadow picnic. I cannot read; so much of the time (as to-day) I must not speak above my breath, that to play patience, or to see my wife play it, is become the be-all and the end-all of my dim career. To add to my gaiety, I may write letters, but there are few to answer.

Patience and Poesy are thus my rod and staff; with these I not unpleasantly support my days.

I am very dim, dumb, dowie, and d.a.m.nable. I hate to be silenced; and if to talk by signs is my forte (as I contend), to understand them cannot be my wife's. Do not think me unhappy; I have not been so for years; but I am blurred, inhabit the debatable frontier of sleep, and have but dim designs upon activity. All is at a standstill; books closed, paper put aside, the voice, the eternal voice of R. L. S., well silenced. Hence this plaint reaches you with no very great meaning, no very great purpose, and written part in slumber by a heavy, dull, somnolent, superannuated son of a bedpost.

CHAPTER VII - LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH, SEPTEMBER 1884-DECEMBER 1885

Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

WENSLEYDALE, BOURNEMOUTH, SUNDAY, 28TH SEPTEMBER 1884.

MY DEAR PEOPLE, - I keep better, and am to-day downstairs for the first time. I find the lockers entirely empty; not a cent to the front. Will you pray send us some? It blows an equinoctial gale, and has blown for nearly a week. Nimbus Britannicus; piping wind, las.h.i.+ng rain; the sea is a fine colour, and wind-bound s.h.i.+ps lie at anchor under the Old Harry rocks, to make one glad to be ash.o.r.e.

The Henleys are gone, and two plays practically done. I hope they may produce some of the ready. - I am, ever affectionate son,

R. L. S.