Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson Volume 1 Part 49

My father has presented us with a very pretty home in this place, into which we hope to move by May. My CHILD'S VERSES come out next week. OTTO begins to appear in April; MORE NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS as soon as possible. Moreover, I am neck deep in Wellington; also a story on the stocks, GREAT NORTH ROAD. O, I am busy! Lloyd is at college in Edinburgh. That is, I think, all that can be said by way of news.

Have you read HUCKLEBERRY FINN? It contains many excellent things; above all, the whole story of a healthy boy's dealings with his conscience, incredibly well done.

My own conscience is badly seared; a want of piety; yet I pray for it, tacitly, every day; believing it, after courage, the only gift worth having; and its want, in a man of any claims to honour, quite unpardonable. The tone of your letter seemed to me very sound. In these dark days of public dishonour, I do not know that one can do better than carry our private trials piously. What a picture is this of a nation! No man that I can see, on any side or party, seems to have the least sense of our ineffable shame: the desertion of the garrisons. I tell my little parable that Germany took England, and then there was an Indian Mutiny, and Bismarck said: 'Quite right: let Delhi and Calcutta and Bombay fall; and let the women and children be treated Sepoy fas.h.i.+on,' and people say, 'O, but that is very different!' And then I wish I were dead.

Millais (I hear) was painting Gladstone when the news came of Gordon's death; Millais was much affected, and Gladstone said, 'Why? IT IS THE MAN'S OWN TEMERITY!' Voila le Bourgeois! le voila nu! But why should I blame Gladstone, when I too am a Bourgeois?

when I have held my peace? Why did I hold my peace? Because I am a sceptic: I.E. a Bourgeois. We believe in nothing, Symonds; you don't, and I don't; and these are two reasons, out of a handful of millions, why England stands before the world dripping with blood and daubed with dishonour. I will first try to take the beam out of my own eye, trusting that even private effort somehow betters and braces the general atmosphere. See, for example, if England has shown (I put it hypothetically) one spark of manly sensibility, they have been shamed into it by the spectacle of Gordon. Police- Officer Cole is the only man that I see to admire. I dedicate my NEW ARABS to him and c.o.x, in default of other great public characters. - Yours ever most affectionately,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE

BONALLIE TOWERS, BOURNEMOUTH, MARCH 12, 1885.

MY DEAR GOSSE, - I was indeed much exercised how I could be worked into Gray; and lo! when I saw it, the pa.s.sage seemed to have been written with a single eye to elucidate the - worst? - well, not a very good poem of Gray's. Your little life is excellent, clean, neat, efficient. I have read many of your notes, too, with pleasure. Your connection with Gray was a happy circ.u.mstance; it was a suitable conjunction.

I did not answer your letter from the States, for what was I to say? I liked getting it and reading it; I was rather flattered that you wrote it to me; and then I'll tell you what I did - I put it in the fire. Why? Well, just because it was very natural and expansive; and thinks I to myself, if I die one of these fine nights, this is just the letter that Gosse would not wish to go into the hands of third parties. Was I well inspired? And I did not answer it because you were in your high places, sailing with supreme dominion, and seeing life in a particular glory; and I was peddling in a corner, confined to the house, overwhelmed with necessary work, which I was not always doing well, and, in the very mild form in which the disease approaches me, touched with a sort of bustling cynicism. Why throw cold water? How ape your agreeable frame of mind? In short, I held my tongue.

I have now published on 101 small pages THE COMPLETE PROOF OF MR.

R. L. STEVENSON'S INCAPACITY TO WRITE VERSE, in a series of graduated examples with table of contents. I think I shall issue a companion volume of exercises: 'a.n.a.lyse this poem. Collect and comminate the ugly words. Distinguish and condemn the CHEVILLES.

State Mr. Stevenson's faults of taste in regard to the measure.

What reasons can you gather from this example for your belief that Mr. S. is unable to write any other measure?'

They look ghastly in the cold light of print; but there is something nice in the little ragged regiment for all; the blackguards seem to me to smile, to have a kind of childish treble note that sounds in my ears freshly; not song, if you will, but a child's voice.

I was glad you enjoyed your visit to the States. Most Englishmen go there with a confirmed design of patronage, as they go to France for that matter; and patronage will not pay. Besides, in this year of - grace, said I? - of disgrace, who should creep so low as an Englishman? 'It is not to be thought of that the flood' - ah, Wordsworth, you would change your note were you alive to-day!

I am now a beastly householder, but have not yet entered on my domain. When I do, the social revolution will probably cast me back upon my dung heap. There is a person called Hyndman whose eye is on me; his step is beHynd me as I go. I shall call my house Skerryvore when I get it: SKERRYVORE: C'EST BON POUR LA POEs.h.i.+E.

I will conclude with my favourite sentiment: 'The world is too much with me.'

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, THE HERMIT OF SKERRYVORE.

Author of 'John Vane Tempest: a Romance,' 'Herbert and Henrietta: or the Nemesis of Sentiment,' 'The Life and Adventures of Colonel Bludyer Fortescue,' 'Happy Homes and Hairy Faces,' 'A Pound of Feathers and a Pound of Lead,' part author of 'Minn's Complete Capricious Correspondent: a Manual of Natty, Natural, and Knowing Letters,' and editor of the 'Poetical Remains of Samuel Burt Crabbe, known as the melodious Bottle-Holder.'

Uniform with the above:

'The Life and Remains of the Reverend Jacob Degray Squah,' author of 'Heave-yo for the New Jerusalem.' 'A Box of Candles; or the Patent Spiritual Safety Match,' and 'A Day with the Heavenly Harriers.'

Letter: TO W. H. LOW

BONALLIE TOWERS, BOURNEMOUTH, MARCH 13, 1885.

MY DEAR LOW, - Your success has been immense. I wish your letter had come two days ago: OTTO, alas! has been disposed of a good while ago; but it was only day before yesterday that I settled the new volume of Arabs. However, for the future, you and the sons of the deified Scribner are the men for me. Really they have behaved most handsomely. I cannot lay my hand on the papers, or I would tell you exactly how it compares with my English bargain; but it compares well. Ah, if we had that copyright, I do believe it would go far to make me solvent, ill-health and all.

I wrote you a letter to the Rembrandt, in which I stated my views about the dedication in a very brief form. It will give me sincere pleasure, and will make the second dedication I have received, the other being from John Addington Symonds. It is a compliment I value much; I don't know any that I should prefer.

I am glad to hear you have windows to do; that is a fine business, I think; but, alas! the gla.s.s is so bad nowadays; realism invading even that, as well as the huge inferiority of our technical resource corrupting every tint. Still, anything that keeps a man to decoration is, in this age, good for the artist's spirit.

By the way, have you seen James and me on the novel? James, I think in the August or September - R. L. S. in the December LONGMAN. I own I think the ECOLE BETE, of which I am the champion, has the whip hand of the argument; but as James is to make a rejoinder, I must not boast. Anyway the controversy is amusing to see. I was terribly tied down to s.p.a.ce, which has made the end congested and dull. I shall see if I can afford to send you the April CONTEMPORARY - but I dare say you see it anyway - as it will contain a paper of mine on style, a sort of continuation of old arguments on art in which you have wagged a most effective tongue.

It is a sort of start upon my Treatise on the Art of Literature: a small, arid book that shall some day appear.

With every good wish from me and mine (should I not say 'she and hers'?) to you and yours, believe me yours ever,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO P. G. HAMERTON

BOURNEMOUTH, MARCH 16, 1885.

MY DEAR HAMERTON, - Various things have been reminding me of my misconduct: First, Swan's application for your address; second, a sight of the sheets of your LANDSCAPE book; and last, your note to Swan, which he was so kind as to forward. I trust you will never suppose me to be guilty of anything more serious than an idleness, partially excusable. My ill-health makes my rate of life heavier than I can well meet, and yet stops me from earning more. My conscience, sometimes perhaps too easily stifled, but still (for my time of life and the public manners of the age) fairly well alive, forces me to perpetual and almost endless transcriptions. On the back of all this, my correspondence hangs like a thundercloud; and just when I think I am getting through my troubles, crack, down goes my health, I have a long, costly sickness, and begin the world again. It is fortunate for me I have a father, or I should long ago have died; but the opportunity of the aid makes the necessity none the more welcome. My father has presented me with a beautiful house here - or so I believe, for I have not yet seen it, being a cage bird but for nocturnal sorties in the garden. I hope we shall soon move into it, and I tell myself that some day perhaps we may have the pleasure of seeing you as our guest. I trust at least that you will take me as I am, a thoroughly bad correspondent, and a man, a hater, indeed, of rudeness in others, but too often rude in all unconsciousness himself; and that you will never cease to believe the sincere sympathy and admiration that I feel for you and for your work.

About the LANDSCAPE, which I had a glimpse of while a friend of mine was preparing a review, I was greatly interested, and could write and wrangle for a year on every page; one pa.s.sage particularly delighted me, the part about Ulysses - jolly. Then, you know, that is just what I fear I have come to think landscape ought to be in literature; so there we should be at odds. Or perhaps not so much as I suppose, as Montaigne says it is a pot with two handles, and I own I am wedded to the technical handle, which (I likewise own and freely) you do well to keep for a mistress. I should much like to talk with you about some other points; it is only in talk that one gets to understand. Your delightful Wordsworth trap I have tried on two hardened Wordsworthians, not that I am not one myself. By covering up the context, and asking them to guess what the pa.s.sage was, both (and both are very clever people, one a writer, one a painter) p.r.o.nounced it a guide-book. 'Do you think it an unusually good guide-book?' I asked, and both said, 'No, not at all!' Their grimace was a picture when I showed the original.

I trust your health and that of Mrs. Hamerton keep better; your last account was a poor one. I was unable to make out the visit I had hoped, as (I do not know if you heard of it) I had a very violent and dangerous haemorrhage last spring. I am almost glad to have seen death so close with all my wits about me, and not in the customary la.s.situde and disenchantment of disease. Even thus clearly beheld I find him not so terrible as we suppose. But, indeed, with the pa.s.sing of years, the decay of strength, the loss of all my old active and pleasant habits, there grows more and more upon me that belief in the kindness of this scheme of things, and the goodness of our veiled G.o.d, which is an excellent and pacifying compensation. I trust, if your health continues to trouble you, you may find some of the same belief. But perhaps my fine discovery is a piece of art, and belongs to a character cowardly, intolerant of certain feelings, and apt to self-deception. I don't think so, however; and when I feel what a weak and fallible vessel I was thrust into this hurly-burly, and with what marvellous kindness the wind has been tempered to my frailties, I think I should be a strange kind of a.s.s to feel anything but grat.i.tude.

I do not know why I should inflict this talk upon you; but when I summon the rebellous pen, he must go his own way; I am no Michael Scott, to rule the fiend of correspondence. Most days he will none of me; and when he comes, it is to rape me where he will. - Yours very sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO WILLIAM ARCHER

BOURNEMOUTH, MARCH 29, 1885.

DEAR MR. ARCHER, - Yes, I have heard of you and read some of your work; but I am bound in particular to thank you for the notice of my verses. 'There,' I said, throwing it over to the friend who was staying with me, 'it's worth writing a book to draw an article like that.' Had you been as hard upon me as you were amiable, I try to tell myself I should have been no blinder to the merits of your notice. For I saw there, to admire and to be very grateful for, a most sober, agile pen; an enviable touch; the marks of a reader, such as one imagines for one's self in dreams, thoughtful, critical, and kind; and to put the top on this memorial column, a greater readiness to describe the author criticised than to display the talents of his censor.

I am a man BLASE to injudicious praise (though I hope some of it may be judicious too), but I have to thank you for THE BEST CRITICISM I EVER HAD; and am therefore, dear Mr. Archer, the most grateful critickee now extant.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

P.S. - I congratulate you on living in the corner of all London that I like best. A PROPOS, you are very right about my voluntary aversion from the painful sides of life. My childhood was in reality a very mixed experience, full of fever, nightmare, insomnia, painful days and interminable nights; and I can speak with less authority of gardens than of that other 'land of counterpane.' But to what end should we renew these sorrows? The sufferings of life may be handled by the very greatest in their hours of insight; it is of its pleasures that our common poems should be formed; these are the experiences that we should seek to recall or to provoke; and I say with Th.o.r.eau, 'What right have I to complain, who have not ceased to wonder?' and, to add a rider of my own, who have no remedy to offer.

R. L. S.