The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume II
CHAPTER VIII - LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH, CONTINUED, JANUARY 1886-JULY 1887
Letter: TO MRS. DE MATTOS
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], JANUARY 1ST, 1886.
DEAREST KATHARINE, - Here, on a very little book and accompanied
with lame verses, I have put your name. Our kindness is now
getting well on in years; it must be nearly of age; and it gets
more valuable to me with every time I see you. It is not possible
to express any sentiment, and it is not necessary to try, at least
between us. You know very well that I love you dearly, and that I
always will. I only wish the verses were better, but at least you
like the story; and it is sent to you by the one that loves you -
Jekyll, and not Hyde.
R. L. S.
AVE!
Bells upon the city are ringing in the night;
High above the gardens are the houses full of light;
On the heathy Pentlands is the curlew flying free;
And the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.
We cannae break the bonds that God decreed to bind,
Still we'll be the children of the heather and the wind;
Far away from home, O, it's still for you and me
That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie!
R. L. S.
Letter: TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], 1ST, 1886.
MY DEAR KINNICUM, - I am a very bad dog, but not for the first
time. Your book, which is very interesting, came duly; and I
immediately got a very bad cold indeed, and have been fit for
nothing whatever. I am a bit better now, and aye on the mend; so I
write to tell you, I thought of you on New Year's Day; though, I
own, it would have been more decent if I had thought in time for
you to get my letter then. Well, what can't be cured must be
endured, Mr. Lawrie; and you must be content with what I give. If
I wrote all the letters I ought to write, and at the proper time, I
should be very good and very happy; but I doubt if I should do
anything else.
I suppose you will be in town for the New Year; and I hope your
health is pretty good. What you want is diet; but it is as much
use to tell you that as it is to tell my father. And I quite admit
a diet is a beastly thing. I doubt, however, if it be as bad as
not being allowed to speak, which I have tried fully, and do not
like. When, at the same time, I was not allowed to read, it passed
a joke. But these are troubles of the past, and on this day, at
least, it is proper to suppose they won't return. But we are not
put here to enjoy ourselves: it was not God's purpose; and I am
prepared to argue, it is not our sincere wish. As for our deserts,
the less said of them the better, for somebody might hear, and
nobody cares to be laughed at. A good man is a very noble thing to
see, but not to himself; what he seems to God is, fortunately, not
our business; that is the domain of faith; and whether on the first
of January or the thirty-first of December, faith is a good word to
end on.
My dear Cummy, many happy returns to you and my best love. - The
worst correspondent in the world,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], JANUARY 1ST, 1886.
MY DEAR PEOPLE, - Many happy returns of the day to you all; I am
fairly well and in good spirits; and much and hopefully occupied
with dear Jenkin's life. The inquiry in every detail, every letter
that I read, makes me think of him more nobly. I cannot imagine
how I got his friendship; I did not deserve it. I believe the
notice will be interesting and useful.
My father's last letter, owing to the use of a quill pen and the
neglect of blotting-paper, was hopelessly illegible. Every one
tried, and every one failed to decipher an important word on which
the interest of one whole clause (and the letter consisted of two)
depended.
I find I can make little more of this; but I'll spare the blots. -
Dear people, ever your loving son,
R. L. S.
I will try again, being a giant refreshed by the house being empty.
The presence of people is the great obstacle to letter-writing. I
deny that letters should contain news (I mean mine; those of other
people should). But mine should contain appropriate sentiments and
humorous nonsense, or nonsense without the humour. When the house
is empty, the mind is seized with a desire - no, that is too strong
- a willingness to pour forth unmitigated rot, which constitutes
(in me) the true spirit of correspondence. When I have no remarks
to offer (and nobody to offer them to), my pen flies, and you see
the remarkable consequence of a page literally covered with words
and genuinely devoid of sense. I can always do that, if quite
alone, and I like doing it; but I have yet to learn that it is
beloved by correspondents. The deuce of it is, that there is no
end possible but the end of the paper; and as there is very little
left of that - if I cannot stop writing - suppose you give up
reading. It would all come to the same thing; and I think we
should all be happier...
Letter: TO W. H. LOW
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], JAN. 2ND, 1886.
MY DEAR LOW, - LAMIA has come, and I do not know how to thank you,
not only for the beautiful art of the designs, but for the handsome
and apt words of the dedication. My favourite is 'Bathes unseen,'
which is a masterpiece; and the next, 'Into the green recessed
woods,' is perhaps more remarkable, though it does not take my
fancy so imperiously. The night scene at Corinth pleases me also.
The second part offers fewer opportunities. I own I should like to
see both ISABELLA and the EVE thus illustrated; and then there's
HYPERION - O, yes, and ENDYMION! I should like to see the lot:
beautiful pictures dance before me by hundreds: I believe ENDYMION
would suit you best. It also is in faery-land; and I see a hundred
opportunities, cloudy and flowery glories, things as delicate as
the cobweb in the bush; actions, not in themselves of any mighty
purport, but made for the pencil: the feast of Pan, Peona's isle,
the 'slabbed margin of a well,' the chase of the butterfly, the
nymph, Glaucus, Cybele, Sleep on his couch, a farrago of
unconnected beauties. But I divagate; and all this sits in the
bosom of the publisher.
What is more important, I accept the terms of the dedication with a
frank heart, and the terms of your Latin legend fairly. The sight
of your pictures has once more awakened me to my right mind;
something may come of it; yet one more bold push to get free of
this prisonyard of the abominably ugly, where I take my daily
exercise with my contemporaries. I do not know, I have a feeling
in my bones, a sentiment which may take on the forms of
imagination, or may not. If it does, I shall owe it to you; and
the thing will thus descend from Keats even if on the wrong side of
the blanket. If it can be done in prose - that is the puzzle - I
divagate again. Thank you again: you can draw and yet you do not
love the ugly: what are you doing in this age? Flee, while it is
yet time; they will have your four limbs pinned upon a stable door
to scare witches. The ugly, my unhappy friend, is DE RIGUEUR: it
is the only wear! What a chance you threw away with the serpent!
Why had Apollonius no pimples? Heavens, my dear Low, you do not
know your business....
I send you herewith a Gothic gnome for your Greek nymph; but the
gnome is interesting, I think, and he came out of a deep mine,
where he guards the fountain of tears. It is not always the time
to rejoice. - Yours ever,
R. L. S.
The gnome's name is JEKYLL & HYDE; I believe you will find he is
likewise quite willing to answer to the name of Low or Stevenson.
SAME DAY. - I have copied out on the other sheet some bad verses,
which somehow your picture suggested; as a kind of image of things
that I pursue and cannot reach, and that you seem - no, not to have
reached - but to have come a thought nearer to than I. This is the
life we have chosen: well, the choice was mad, but I should make
it again.
What occurs to me is this: perhaps they might be printed in (say)
the CENTURY for the sake of my name; and if that were possible,
they might advertise your book. It might be headed as sent in
acknowledgment of your LAMIA. Or perhaps it might be introduced by
the phrases I have marked above. I dare say they would stick it
in: I want no payment, being well paid by LAMIA. If they are not,
keep them to yourself.
TO WILL H. LOW
DAMNED BAD LINES IN RETURN FOR A BEAUTIFUL BOOK
Youth now flees on feathered foot.
Faint and fainter sounds the flute;
Rarer songs of Gods.
And still,
Somewhere on the sunny hill,
Or along the winding stream,
Through the willows, flits a dream;
Flits, but shows a smiling face,
Flees, but with so quaint a grace,
None can choose to stay at home,
All must follow - all must roam.
This is unborn beauty: she
Now in air floats high and free,
Takes the sun, and breaks the blue; -
Late, with stooping pinion flew
Raking hedgerow trees, and wet
Her wing in silver streams, and set
Shining foot on temple roof.
Now again she flies aloof,
Coasting mountain clouds, and kissed
By the evening's amethyst.
In wet wood and miry lane
Still we pound and pant in vain;
Still with earthy foot we chase
Waning pinion, fainting face;
Still, with grey hair, we stumble on
Till - behold! - the vision gone!
Where has fleeting beauty led?
To the doorway of the dead!
qy. omit? [Life is gone, but life was gay:
We have come the primrose way!]
R. L. S.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JAN. 2ND, 1886.
MY DEAR GOSSE, - Thank you for your letter, so interesting to my
vanity. There is a review in the St. James's, which, as it seems
to hold somewhat of your opinions, and is besides written with a
pen and not a poker, we think may possibly be yours. The PRINCE
has done fairly well in spite of the reviews, which have been bad:
he was, as you doubtless saw, well slated in the SATURDAY; one
paper received it as a child's story; another (picture my agony)
described it as a 'Gilbert comedy.' It was amusing to see the race
between me and Justin M'Carthy: the Milesian has won by a length.
That is the hard part of literature. You aim high, and you take
longer over your work, and it will not be so successful as if you
had aimed low and rushed it. What the public likes is work (of any
kind) a little loosely executed; so long as it is a little wordy, a
little slack, a little dim and knotless, the dear public likes it;
it should (if possible) be a little dull into the bargain. I know
that good work sometimes hits; but, with my hand on my heart, I
think it is by an accident. And I know also that good work must
succeed at last; but that is not the doing of the public; they are
only shamed into silence or affectation. I do not write for the
public; I do write for money, a nobler deity; and most of all for
myself, not perhaps any more noble, but both more intelligent and
nearer home.
Let us tell each other sad stories of the bestiality of the beast
whom we feed. What he likes is the newspaper; and to me the press
is the mouth of a sewer, where lying is professed as from an
university chair, and everything prurient, and ignoble, and
essentially dull, finds its abode and pulpit. I do not like
mankind; but men, and not all of these - and fewer women. As for
respecting the race, and, above all, that fatuous rabble of
burgesses called 'the public,' God save me from such irreligion! -
that way lies disgrace and dishonour. There must be something
wrong in me, or I would not be popular.
This is perhaps a trifle stronger than my sedate and permanent
opinion. Not much, I think. As for the art that we practise, I
have never been able to see why its professors should be respected.
They chose the primrose path; when they found it was not all
primroses, but some of it brambly, and much of it uphill, they
began to think and to speak of themselves as holy martyrs. But a
man is never martyred in any honest sense in the pursuit of his
pleasure; and DELIRIUM TREMENS has more of the honour of the cross.
We were full of the pride of life, and chose, like prostitutes, to
live by a pleasure. We should be paid if we give the pleasure we
pretend to give; but why should we be honoured?
I hope some day you and Mrs. Gosse will come for a Sunday; but we
must wait till I am able to see people. I am very full of Jenkin's
life; it is painful, yet very pleasant, to dig into the past of a
dead friend, and find him, at every spadeful, shine brighter. I
own, as I read, I wonder more and more why he should have taken me
to be a friend. He had many and obvious faults upon the face of
him; the heart was pure gold. I feel it little pain to have lost
him, for it is a loss in which I cannot believe; I take it, against
reason, for an absence; if not to-day, then to-morrow, I still
fancy I shall see him in the door; and then, now when I know him
better, how glad a meeting! Yes, if I could believe in the
immortality business, the world would indeed be too good to be
true; but we were put here to do what service we can, for honour
and not for hire: the sods cover us, and the worm that never dies,
the conscience, sleeps well at last; these are the wages, besides
what we receive so lavishly day by day; and they are enough for a
man who knows his own frailty and sees all things in the proportion
of reality. The soul of piety was killed long ago by that idea of
reward. Nor is happiness, whether eternal or temporal, the reward
that mankind seeks. Happinesses are but his wayside campings; his
soul is in the journey; he was born for the struggle, and only
tastes his life in effort and on the condition that he is opposed.
How, then, is such a creature, so fiery, so pugnacious, so made up
of discontent and aspiration, and such noble and uneasy passions -
how can he be rewarded but by rest? I would not say it aloud; for
man's cherished belief is that he loves that happiness which he
continually spurns and passes by; and this belief in some ulterior
happiness exactly fits him. He does not require to stop and taste
it; he can be about the rugged and bitter business where his heart
lies; and yet he can tell himself this fairy tale of an eternal
tea-party, and enjoy the notion that he is both himself and
something else; and that his friends will yet meet him, all ironed
out and emasculate, and still be lovable, - as if love did not live
in the faults of the beloved only, and draw its breath in an
unbroken round of forgiveness! But the truth is, we must fight
until we die; and when we die there can be no quiet for mankind but
complete resumption into - what? - God, let us say - when all these
desperate tricks will lie spellbound at last.
Here came my dinner and cut this sermon short - EXCUSEZ.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO JAMES PAYN
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JAN. 2ND, 1886.
DEAR JAMES PAYN, - Your very kind letter came very welcome; and
still more welcome the news that you see -'s tale. I will now tell
you (and it was very good and very wise of me not to tell it
before) that he is one of the most unlucky men I know, having put
all his money into a pharmacy at Hyeres, when the cholera
(certainly not his fault) swept away his customers in a body. Thus
you can imagine the pleasure I have to announce to him a spark of
hope, for he sits to-day in his pharmacy, doing nothing and taking
nothing, and watching his debts inexorably mount up.
To pass to other matters: your hand, you are perhaps aware, is not
one of those that can be read running; and the name of your
daughter remains for me undecipherable. I call her, then, your
daughter - and a very good name too - and I beg to explain how it
came about that I took her house. The hospital was a point in my
tale; but there is a house on each side. Now the true house is the
one before the hospital: is that No. 11? If not, what do you
complain of? If it is, how can I help what is true? Everything in
the DYNAMITER is not true; but the story of the Brown Box is, in
almost every particular; I lay my hand on my heart and swear to it.
It took place in that house in 1884; and if your daughter was in
that house at the time, all I can say is she must have kept very
bad society.
But I see you coming. Perhaps your daughter's house has not a
balcony at the back? I cannot answer for that; I only know that
side of Queen Square from the pavement and the back windows of
Brunswick Row. Thence I saw plenty of balconies (terraces rather);
and if there is none to the particular house in question, it must
have been so arranged to spite me.
I now come to the conclusion of this matter. I address three
questions to your daughter:-
1st Has her house the proper terrace?
2nd. Is it on the proper side of the hospital?
3rd. Was she there in the summer of 1884?
You see, I begin to fear that Mrs. Desborough may have deceived me
on some trifling points, for she is not a lady of peddling
exactitude. If this should prove to be so, I will give your
daughter a proper certificate, and her house property will return
to its original value.
Can man say more? - Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
I saw the other day that the Eternal had plagiarised from LOST SIR
MASSINGBERD: good again, sir! I wish he would plagiarise the
death of Zero.
Letter: TO W. H. LOW
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JAN. SOMETHINGOROTHER-TH, 1886.
MY DEAR LOW, - I send you two photographs: they are both done by
Sir Percy Shelley, the poet's son, which may interest. The sitting
down one is, I think, the best; but if they choose that, see that
the little reflected light on the nose does not give me a turn-up;
that would be tragic. Don't forget 'Baronet' to Sir Percy's name.
We all think a heap of your book; and I am well pleased with my
dedication. - Yours ever,
R. L. STEVENSON.
P.S. - APROPOS of the odd controversy about Shelley's nose: I have
before me four photographs of myself, done by Shelley's son: my
nose is hooked, not like the eagle, indeed, but like the
accipitrine family in man: well, out of these four, only one marks
the bend, one makes it straight, and one suggests a turn-up. This
throws a flood of light on calumnious man - and the scandal-
mongering sun. For personally I cling to my curve. To continue
the Shelley controversy: I have a look of him, all his sisters had
noses like mine; Sir Percy has a marked hook; all the family had
high cheek-bones like mine; what doubt, then, but that this turn-up
(of which Jeaffreson accuses the poet, along with much other
FATRAS) is the result of some accident similar to what has happened
in my photographs by his son?
R. L. S.
Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JANUARY 25, 1886.]
MY DEAR FATHER, - Many thanks for a letter quite like yourself. I
quite agree with you, and had already planned a scene of religion
in BALFOUR; the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge
furnishes me with a catechist whom I shall try to make the man. I
have another catechist, the blind, pistol-carrying highway robber,
whom I have transferred from the Long Island to Mull. I find it a
most picturesque period, and wonder Scott let it escape. The
COVENANT is lost on one of the Tarrans, and David is cast on
Earraid, where (being from inland) he is nearly starved before he
finds out the island is tidal; then he crosses Mull to Toronsay,
meeting the blind catechist by the way; then crosses Morven from
Kinlochaline to Kingairloch, where he stays the night with the good
catechist; that is where I am; next day he is to be put ashore in
Appin, and be present at Colin Campbell's death. To-day I rest,
being a little run down. Strange how liable we are to brain fag in
this scooty family! But as far as I have got, all but the last
chapter, I think David is on his feet, and (to my mind) a far
better story and far sounder at heart than TREASURE ISLAND.
I have no earthly news, living entirely in my story, and only
coming out of it to play patience. The Shelleys are gone; the
Taylors kinder than can be imagined. The other day, Lady Taylor
drove over and called on me; she is a delightful old lady, and
great fun. I mentioned a story about the Duchess of Wellington
which I had heard Sir Henry tell; and though he was very tired, he
looked it up and copied it out for me in his own hand. - Your most
affectionate son,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO C. W. STODDARD
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, FEB. 13TH, 1886.
MY DEAR STODDARD, - I am a dreadful character; but, you see, I have
at last taken pen in hand; how long I may hold it, God knows. This
is already my sixth letter to-day, and I have many more waiting;
and my wrist gives me a jog on the subject of scrivener's cramp,
which is not encouraging.
I gather you were a little down in the jaw when you wrote your
last. I am as usual pretty cheerful, but not very strong. I stay
in the house all winter, which is base; but, as you continue to
see, the pen goes from time to time, though neither fast enough nor
constantly enough to please me.
My wife is at Bath with my father and mother, and the interval of
widowery explains my writing. Another person writing for you when
you have done work is a great enemy to correspondence. To-day I
feel out of health, and shan't work; and hence this so much overdue
reply.
I was re-reading some of your South Sea Idyls the other day: some
of the chapters are very good indeed; some pages as good as they
can be.
How does your class get along? If you like to touch on OTTO, any
day in a by-hour, you may tell them - as the author's last dying
confession - that it is a strange example of the difficulty of
being ideal in an age of realism; that the unpleasant giddy-
mindedness, which spoils the book and often gives it a wanton air
of unreality and juggling with air-bells, comes from unsteadiness
of key; from the too great realism of some chapters and passages -
some of which I have now spotted, others I dare say I shall never
spot - which disprepares the imagination for the cast of the
remainder.
Any story can be made TRUE in its own key; any story can be made
FALSE by the choice of a wrong key of detail or style: Otto is
made to reel like a drunken - I was going to say man, but let us
substitute cipher - by the variations of the key. Have you
observed that the famous problem of realism and idealism is one
purely of detail? Have you seen my 'Note on Realism' in Cassell's
MAGAZINE OF ART; and 'Elements of Style' in the CONTEMPORARY; and
'Romance' and 'Humble Apology' in LONGMAN'S? They are all in your
line of business; let me know what you have not seen and I'll send
'em.
I am glad I brought the old house up to you. It was a pleasant old
spot, and I remember you there, though still more dearly in your
own strange den upon a hill in San Francisco; and one of the most
San Francisco-y parts of San Francisco.
Good-bye, my dear fellow, and believe me your friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO J. A. SYMONDS
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH [SPRING 1886].
MY DEAR SYMONDS, - If we have lost touch, it is (I think) only in a
material sense; a question of letters, not hearts. You will find a
warm welcome at Skerryvore from both the lightkeepers; and, indeed,
we never tell ourselves one of our financial fairy tales, but a run
to Davos is a prime feature. I am not changeable in friendship;
and I think I can promise you you have a pair of trusty well-
wishers and friends in Bournemouth: whether they write or not is
but a small thing; the flag may not be waved, but it is there.
Jekyll is a dreadful thing, I own; but the only thing I feel
dreadful about is that damned old business of the war in the
members. This time it came out; I hope it will stay in, in future.
Raskolnikoff is easily the greatest book I have read in ten years;
I am glad you took to it. Many find it dull: Henry James could
not finish it: all I can say is, it nearly finished me. It was
like having an illness. James did not care for it because the
character of Raskolnikoff was not objective; and at that I divined
a great gulf between us, and, on further reflection, the existence
of a certain impotence in many minds of to-day, which prevents them
from living IN a book or a character, and keeps them standing afar
off, spectators of a puppet show. To such I suppose the book may
seem empty in the centre; to the others it is a room, a house of
life, into which they themselves enter, and are tortured and
purified. The Juge d'Instruction I thought a wonderful, weird,
touching, ingenious creation: the drunken father, and Sonia, and
the student friend, and the uncircumscribed, protaplasmic humanity
of Raskolnikoff, all upon a level that filled me with wonder: the
execution also, superb in places. Another has been translated -
HUMILIES ET OFFENSES. It is even more incoherent than LE CRIME ET
LE CHATIMENT, but breathes much of the same lovely goodness, and
has passages of power. Dostoieffsky is a devil of a swell, to be
sure. Have you heard that he became a stout, imperialist
conservative? It is interesting to know. To something of that
side, the balance leans with me also in view of the incoherency and
incapacity of all. The old boyish idea of the march on Paradise
being now out of season, and all plans and ideas that I hear
debated being built on a superb indifference to the first
principles of human character, a helpless desire to acquiesce in
anything of which I know the worst assails me. Fundamental errors
in human nature of two sorts stand on the skyline of all this modem
world of aspirations. First, that it is happiness that men want;
and second, that happiness consists of anything but an internal
harmony. Men do not want, and I do not think they would accept,
happiness; what they live for is rivalry, effort, success - the
elements our friends wish to eliminate. And, on the other hand,
happiness is a question of morality - or of immorality, there is no
difference - and conviction. Gordon was happy in Khartoum, in his
worst hours of danger and fatigue; Marat was happy, I suppose, in
his ugliest frenzy; Marcus Aurelius was happy in the detested camp;
Pepys was pretty happy, and I am pretty happy on the whole, because
we both somewhat crowingly accepted a VIA MEDIA, both liked to
attend to our affairs, and both had some success in managing the
same. It is quite an open question whether Pepys and I ought to be
happy; on the other hand, there is no doubt that Marat had better
be unhappy. He was right (if he said it) that he was LA MISERE
HUMAINE, cureless misery - unless perhaps by the gallows. Death is
a great and gentle solvent; it has never had justice done it, no,
not by Whitman. As for those crockery chimney-piece ornaments, the
bourgeois (QUORUM PARS), and their cowardly dislike of dying and
killing, it is merely one symptom of a thousand how utterly they
have got out of touch of life. Their dislike of capital punishment
and their treatment of their domestic servants are for me the two
flaunting emblems of their hollowness.
God knows where I am driving to. But here comes my lunch.
Which interruption, happily for you, seems to have stayed the
issue. I have now nothing to say, that had formerly such a
pressure of twaddle. Pray don't fail to come this summer. It will
be a great disappointment, now it has been spoken of, if you do. -
Yours ever,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Letter: TO W. H. LOW
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, MARCH 1886.]
MY DEAR LOW, - This is the most enchanting picture. Now understand
my state: I am really an invalid, but of a mysterious order. I
might be a MALADE IMAGINAIRE, but for one too tangible symptom, my
tendency to bleed from the lungs. If we could go, (1ST) We must
have money enough to travel with LEISURE AND COMFORT - especially
the first. (2ND) You must be prepared for a comrade who would go
to bed some part of every day and often stay silent (3RD) You
would have to play the part of a thoughtful courier, sparing me
fatigue, looking out that my bed was warmed, etc. (4TH) If you are
very nervous, you must recollect a bad haemorrhage is always on the
cards, with its concomitants of anxiety and horror for those who
are beside me.
Do you blench? If so, let us say no more about it.
If you are still unafraid, and the money were forthcoming, I
believe the trip might do me good, and I feel sure that, working
together, we might produce a fine book. The Rhone is the river of
Angels. I adore it: have adored it since I was twelve, and first
saw it from the train.
Lastly, it would depend on how I keep from now on. I have stood
the winter hitherto with some credit, but the dreadful weather
still continues, and I cannot holloa till I am through the wood.
Subject to these numerous and gloomy provisos, I embrace the
prospect with glorious feelings.
I write this from bed, snow pouring without, and no circumstance of
pleasure except your letter. That, however, counts for much. I am
glad you liked the doggerel: I have already had a liberal cheque,
over which I licked my fingers with a sound conscience. I had not
meant to make money by these stumbling feet, but if it comes, it is
only too welcome in my handsome but impecunious house.
Let me know soon what is to be expected - as far as it does not
hang by that inconstant quantity, my want of health. Remember me
to Madam with the best thanks and wishes; and believe me your
friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, APRIL 1886.]
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, - I try to tell myself it is good nature, but
I know it is vanity that makes me write.
I have drafted the first part of Chapter VI., Fleeming and his
friends, his influence on me, his views on religion and literature,
his part at the Savile; it should boil down to about ten pages, and
I really do think it admirably good. It has so much evoked
Fleeming for myself that I found my conscience stirred just as it
used to be after a serious talk with him: surely that means it is
good? I had to write and tell you, being alone.
I have excellent news of Fanny, who is much better for the change.
My father is still very yellow, and very old, and very weak, but
yesterday he seemed happier, and smiled, and followed what was
said; even laughed, I think. When he came away, he said to me,
'Take care of yourself, my dearie,' which had a strange sound of
childish days, and will not leave my mind.
You must get Litolf's GAVOTTES CELEBRES: I have made another
trover there: a musette of Lully's. The second part of it I have
not yet got the hang of; but the first - only a few bars! The
gavotte is beautiful and pretty hard, I think, and very much of the
period; and at the end of it, this musette enters with the most
really thrilling effect of simple beauty. O - it's first-rate. I
am quite mad over it. If you find other books containing Lully,
Rameau, Martini, please let me know; also you might tell me, you
who know Bach, where the easiest is to be found. I write all
morning, come down, and never leave the piano till about five;
write letters, dine, get down again about eight, and never leave
the piano till I go to bed. This is a fine life. - Yours most
sincerely,
R. L. S.
If you get the musette (Lully's), please tell me if I am right, and
it was probably written for strings. Anyway, it is as neat as - as
neat as Bach - on the piano; or seems so to my ignorance.
I play much of the Rigadoon but it is strange, it don't come off
QUITE so well with me!
[Musical score which cannot be reproduced]
There is the first part of the musette copied (from memory, so I
hope there's nothing wrong). Is it not angelic? But it ought, of
course, to have the gavotte before. The gavotte is in G, and ends
on the keynote thus (if I remember):-
[Musical score which cannot be reproduced]
staccato, I think. Then you sail into the musette.
N.B. - Where I have put an 'A,' is that a dominant eleventh, or
what? or just a seventh on the D? and if the latter, is that
allowed? It sounds very funny. Never mind all my questions; if I
begin about music (which is my leading ignorance and curiosity), I
have always to babble questions: all my friends know me now, and
take no notice whatever. The whole piece is marked allegro; but
surely could easily be played too fast? The dignity must not be
lost; the periwig feeling.
Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, March 1886.]
MY DEAR FATHER, - The David problem has to-day been decided. I am
to leave the door open for a sequel if the public take to it, and
this will save me from butchering a lot of good material to no
purpose. Your letter from Carlisle was pretty like yourself, sir,
as I was pleased to see; the hand of Jekyll, not the hand of Hyde.
I am for action quite unfit, and even a letter is beyond me; so
pray take these scraps at a vast deal more than their intrinsic
worth. I am in great spirits about David, Colvin agreeing with
Henley, Fanny, and myself in thinking it far the most human of my
labours hitherto. As to whether the long-eared British public may
take to it, all think it more than doubtful; I wish they would, for
I could do a second volume with ease and pleasure, and Colvin
thinks it sin and folly to throw away David and Alan Breck upon so
small a field as this one. - Ever your affectionate son,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], APRIL 15 OR 16 (THE HOUR NOT BEING
KNOWN), 1886.
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, - It is I know not what hour of the night; but
I cannot sleep, have lit the gas, and here goes.
First, all your packet arrived: I have dipped into the Schumann
already with great pleasure. Surely, in what concerns us there is
a sweet little chirrup; the GOOD WORDS arrived in the morning just
when I needed it, and the famous notes that I had lost were
recovered also in the nick of time.
And now I am going to bother you with my affairs: premising,
first, that this is PRIVATE; second, that whatever I do the LIFE
shall be done first, and I am getting on with it well; and third,
that I do not quite know why I consult you, but something tells me
you will hear with fairness.
Here is my problem. The Curtin women are still miserable
prisoners; no one dare buy their farm of them, all the manhood of
England and the world stands aghast before a threat of murder. (1)
Now, my work can be done anywhere; hence I can take up without loss
a back-going Irish farm, and live on, though not (as I had
originally written) in it: First Reason. (2) If I should be
killed, there are a good many who would feel it: writers are so
much in the public eye, that a writer being murdered would attract
attention, throw a bull's-eye light upon this cowardly business:
Second Reason. (3) I am not unknown in the States, from which the
funds come that pay for these brutalities: to some faint extent,
my death (if I should be killed) would tell there: Third Reason.
(4) NOBODY ELSE IS TAKING UP THIS OBVIOUS AND CRYING DULY: Fourth
Reason. (5) I have a crazy health and may die at any moment, my
life is of no purchase in an insurance office, it is the less
account to husband it, and the business of husbanding a life is
dreary and demoralising: Fifth Reason.
I state these in no order, but as they occur to me. And I shall do
the like with the objections.
First Objection: It will do no good; you have seen Gordon die and
nobody minded; nobody will mind if you die. This is plainly of the
devil. Second Objection: You will not even be murdered, the
climate will miserably kill you, you will strangle out in a rotten
damp heat, in congestion, etc. Well, what then? It changes
nothing: the purpose is to brave crime; let me brave it, for such
time and to such an extent as God allows. Third Objection: The
Curtin women are probably highly uninteresting females. I haven't
a doubt of it. But the Government cannot, men will not, protect
them. If I am the only one to see this public duty, it is to the
public and the Right I should perform it - not to Mesdames Curtin.
Fourth Objection: I am married. 'I have married a wife!' I seem
to have heard it before. It smells ancient! what was the context?
Fifth Objection: My wife has had a mean life (1), loves me (2),
could not bear to lose me (3). (1) I admit: I am sorry. (2) But
what does she love me for? and (3) she must lose me soon or late.
And after all, because we run this risk, it does not follow we
should fail. Sixth Objection: My wife wouldn't like it. No, she
wouldn't. Who would? But the Curtins don't like it. And all
those who are to suffer if this goes on, won't like it. And if
there is a great wrong, somebody must suffer. Seventh Objection:
I won't like it. No, I will not; I have thought it through, and I
will not. But what of that? And both she and I may like it more
than we suppose. We shall lose friends, all comforts, all society:
so has everybody who has ever done anything; but we shall have some
excitement, and that's a fine thing; and we shall be trying to do
the right, and that's not to be despised. Eighth Objection: I am
an author with my work before me. See Second Reason. Ninth
Objection: But am I not taken with the hope of excitement? I was
at first. I am not much now. I see what a dreary, friendless,
miserable, God-forgotten business it will be. And anyway, is not
excitement the proper reward of doing anything both right and a
little dangerous? Tenth Objection: But am I not taken with a
notion of glory? I dare say I am. Yet I see quite clearly how all
points to nothing coming, to a quite inglorious death by disease
and from the lack of attendance; or even if I should be knocked on
the head, as these poor Irish promise, how little any one will
care. It will be a smile at a thousand breakfast-tables. I am
nearly forty now; I have not many illusions. And if I had? I do
not love this health-tending, housekeeping life of mine. I have a
taste for danger, which is human, like the fear of it. Here is a
fair cause; a just cause; no knight ever set lance in rest for a
juster. Yet it needs not the strength I have not, only the passive
courage that I hope I could muster, and the watchfulness that I am
sure I could learn.
Here is a long midnight dissertation; with myself; with you.
Please let me hear. But I charge you this: if you see in this
idea of mine the finger of duty, do not dissuade me. I am nearing
forty, I begin to love my ease and my home and my habits, I never
knew how much till this arose; do not falsely counsel me to put my
head under the bed-clothes. And I will say this to you: my wife,
who hates the idea, does not refuse. 'It is nonsense,' says she,
'but if you go, I will go.' Poor girl, and her home and her garden
that she was so proud of! I feel her garden most of all, because
it is a pleasure (I suppose) that I do not feel myself to share.
1. Here is a great wrong.
2. " growing wrong.
3. " wrong founded on crime.
4. " crime that the Government cannot prevent.
5. " crime that it occurs to no man to defy.
6. But it has occurred to me.
7. Being a known person, some will notice my defiance.
8. Being a writer, I can MAKE people notice it.
9. And, I think, MAKE people imitate me.
10. Which would destroy in time this whole scaffolding of
oppression.
11. And if I fail, however ignominiously, that is not my concern.
It is, with an odd mixture of reverence and humorous remembrances
of Dickens, be it said - it is A-nother's.
And here, at I cannot think what hour of the morning, I shall dry
up, and remain, - Yours, really in want of a little help,
R. L S.
Sleepless at midnight's dewy hour.
" " witching "
" " maudlin "
" " etc.
NEXT MORNING. - Eleventh Objection: I have a father and mother.
And who has not? Macduff's was a rare case; if we must wait for a
Macduff. Besides, my father will not perhaps be long here.
Twelfth Objection: The cause of England in Ireland is not worth
supporting. A QUI LE DITES-VOUS? And I am not supporting that.
Home Rule, if you like. Cause of decency, the idea that
populations should not be taught to gain public ends by private
crime, the idea that for all men to bow before a threat of crime is
to loosen and degrade beyond redemption the whole fabric of man's
decency.
Letter: TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, APRIL 1886.]
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, - The Book - It is all drafted: I hope soon
to send you for comments Chapters III., IV., and V. Chapter VII.
is roughly but satisfactorily drafted: a very little work should
put that to rights. But Chapter VI. is no joke; it is a MARE
MAGNUM: I swim and drown and come up again; and it is all broken
ends and mystification: moreover, I perceive I am in want of more
matter. I must have, first of all, a little letter from Mr. Ewing
about the phonograph work: IF you think he would understand it is
quite a matter of chance whether I use a word or a fact out of it.
If you think he would not: I will go without. Also, could I have
a look at Ewing's PRECIS? And lastly, I perceive I must interview
you again about a few points; they are very few, and might come to
little; and I propose to go on getting things as well together as I
can in the meanwhile, and rather have a final time when all is
ready and only to be criticised. I do still think it will be good.
I wonder if Trelat would let me cut? But no, I think I wouldn't
after all; 'tis so quaint and pretty and clever and simple and
French, and gives such a good sight of Fleeming: the plum of the
book, I think.
You misunderstood me in one point: I always hoped to found such a
society; that was the outside of my dream, and would mean entire
success. BUT - I cannot play Peter the Hermit. In these days of
the Fleet Street journalist, I cannot send out better men than
myself, with wives or mothers just as good as mine, and sisters (I
may at least say) better, to a danger and a long-drawn dreariness
that I do not share. My wife says it's cowardice; what brave men
are the leader-writers! Call it cowardice; it is mine. Mind you,
I may end by trying to do it by the pen only: I shall not love
myself if I do; and is it ever a good thing to do a thing for which
you despise yourself? - even in the doing? And if the thing you do
is to call upon others to do the thing you neglect? I have never
dared to say what I feel about men's lives, because my own was in
the wrong: shall I dare to send them to death? The physician must
heal himself; he must honestly TRY the path he recommends: if he
does not even try, should he not be silent?
I thank you very heartily for your letter, and for the seriousness
you brought to it. You know, I think when a serious thing is your
own, you keep a saner man by laughing at it and yourself as you go.
So I do not write possibly with all the really somewhat sickened
gravity I feel. And indeed, what with the book, and this business
to which I referred, and Ireland, I am scarcely in an enviable
state. Well, I ought to be glad, after ten years of the worst
training on earth - valetudinarianism - that I can still be
troubled by a duty. You shall hear more in time; so far, I am at
least decided: I will go and see Balfour when I get to London.
We have all had a great pleasure: a Mrs. Rawlinson came and
brought with her a nineteen-year-old daughter, simple, human, as
beautiful as - herself; I never admired a girl before, you know it
was my weakness: we are all three dead in love with her. How nice
to be able to do so much good to harassed people by - yourself!
Ever yours,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MISS RAWLINSON
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, APRIL 1886.]
OF the many flowers you brought me,
Only some were meant to stay,
And the flower I thought the sweetest
Was the flower that went away.
Of the many flowers you brought me,
All were fair and fresh and gay,
But the flower I thought the sweetest
Was the blossom of the May.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MISS MONROE
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, MAY 25TH, 1886.
DEAR MISS MONROE, - (I hope I have this rightly) I must lose no
time in thanking you for a letter singularly pleasant to receive.
It may interest you to know that I read to the signature without
suspecting my correspondent was a woman; though in one point (a
reference to the Countess) I might have found a hint of the truth.
You are not pleased with Otto; since I judge you do not like
weakness; and no more do I. And yet I have more than tolerance for
Otto, whose faults are the faults of weakness, but never of ignoble
weakness, and who seeks before all to be both kind and just.
Seeks, not succeeds. But what is man? So much of cynicism to
recognise that nobody does right is the best equipment for those
who do not wish to be cynics in good earnest. Think better of
Otto, if my plea can influence you; and this I mean for your own
sake - not his, poor fellow, as he will never learn your opinion;
but for yours, because, as men go in this world (and women too),
you will not go far wrong if you light upon so fine a fellow; and
to light upon one and not perceive his merits is a calamity. In
the flesh, of course, I mean; in the book the fault, of course, is
with my stumbling pen. Seraphina made a mistake about her Otto; it
begins to swim before me dimly that you may have some traits of
Seraphina?
With true ingratitude you see me pitch upon your exception; but it
is easier to defend oneself gracefully than to acknowledge praise.
I am truly glad that you should like my books; for I think I see
from what you write that you are a reader worth convincing. Your
name, if I have properly deciphered it, suggests that you may be
also something of my countrywoman; for it is hard to see where
Monroe came from, if not from Scotland. I seem to have here a
double claim on your good nature: being myself pure Scotch and
having appreciated your letter, make up two undeniable merits
which, perhaps, if it should be quite without trouble, you might
reward with your photograph. - Yours truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MISS MONROE
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JUNE 1886.]
MY DEAR MISS MONROE, - I am ill in bed and stupid, incoherently
stupid; yet I have to answer your letter, and if the answer is
incomprehensible you must forgive me. You say my letter caused you
pleasure; I am sure, as it fell out, not near so much as yours has
brought to me. The interest taken in an author is fragile: his
next book, or your next year of culture, might see the interest
frosted or outgrown; and himself, in spite of all, you might
probably find the most distasteful person upon earth. My case is
different. I have bad health, am often condemned to silence for
days together - was so once for six weeks, so that my voice was
awful to hear when I first used it, like the whisper of a shadow -
have outlived all my chief pleasures, which were active and
adventurous, and ran in the open air: and being a person who
prefers life to art, and who knows it is a far finer thing to be in
love, or to risk a danger, than to paint the finest picture or
write the noblest book, I begin to regard what remains to me of my
life as very shadowy. From a variety of reasons, I am ashamed to
confess I was much in this humour when your letter came. I had a
good many troubles; was regretting a high average of sins; had been
recently reminded that I had outlived some friends, and wondering
if I had not outlived some friendships; and had just, while
boasting of better health, been struck down again by my haunting
enemy, an enemy who was exciting at first, but has now, by the
iteration of his strokes, become merely annoying and inexpressibly
irksome. Can you fancy that to a person drawing towards the
elderly this sort of conjunction of circumstances brings a rather
aching sense of the past and the future? Well, it was just then
that your letter and your photograph were brought to me in bed; and
there came to me at once the most agreeable sense of triumph. My
books were still young; my words had their good health and could go
about the world and make themselves welcome; and even (in a shadowy
and distant sense) make something in the nature of friends for the
sheer hulk that stays at home and bites his pen over the
manuscripts. It amused me very much to remember that I had been in
Chicago, not so many years ago, in my proper person; where I had
failed to awaken much remark, except from the ticket collector; and
to think how much more gallant and persuasive were the fellows that
I now send instead of me, and how these are welcome in that quarter
to the sitter of Herr Platz, while their author was not very
welcome even in the villainous restaurant where he tried to eat a
meal and rather failed.
And this leads me directly to a confession. The photograph which
shall accompany this is not chosen as the most like, but the best-
looking. Put yourself in my place, and you will call this
pardonable. Even as it is, even putting forth a flattered
presentment, I am a little pained; and very glad it is a photograph
and not myself that has to go; for in this case, if it please you,
you can tell yourself it is my image - and if it displeased you,
you can lay the blame on the photographer; but in that, there were
no help, and the poor author might belie his labours.
KIDNAPPED should soon appear; I am afraid you may not like it, as
it is very unlike PRINCE OTTO in every way; but I am myself a great
admirer of the two chief characters, Alan and David. VIRGINIBUS
PUERISQUE has never been issued in the States. I do not think it
is a book that has much charm for publishers in any land; but I am
to bring out a new edition in England shortly, a copy of which I
must try to remember to send you. I say try to remember, because I
have some superficial acquaintance with myself: and I have
determined, after a galling discipline, to promise nothing more
until the day of my death: at least, in this way, I shall no more
break my word, and I must now try being churlish instead of being
false.
I do not believe you to be the least like Seraphina. Your
photograph has no trace of her, which somewhat relieves me, as I am
a good deal afraid of Seraphinas - they do not always go into the
woods and see the sunrise, and some are so well-mailed that even
that experience would leave them unaffected and unsoftened. The
'hair and eyes of several complexions' was a trait taken from
myself; and I do not bind myself to the opinions of Sir John. In
this case, perhaps - but no, if the peculiarity is shared by two
such pleasant persons as you and I (as you and me - the grammatical
nut is hard), it must be a very good thing indeed, and Sir John
must be an ass.
The BOOK READER notice was a strange jumble of fact and fancy. I
wish you could have seen my father's old assistant and present
partner when he heard my father described as an 'inspector of
lighthouses,' for we are all very proud of the family achievements,
and the name of my house here in Bournemouth is stolen from one of
the sea-towers of the Hebrides which are our pyramids and
monuments. I was never at Cambridge, again; but neglected a
considerable succession of classes at Edinburgh. But to correct
that friendly blunderer were to write an autobiography. - And so
now, with many thanks, believe me yours sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JULY 1886.
SIR, - Your foolish letter was unduly received. There may be
hidden fifths, and if there are, it shows how dam spontaneous the
thing was. I could tinker and tic-tac-toe on a piece of paper, but
scorned the act with a Threnody, which was poured forth like blood
and water on the groaning organ. If your heart (which was what I
addressed) remained unmoved, let us refer to the affair no more:
crystallised emotion, the statement and the reconciliation of the
sorrows of the race and the individual, is obviously no more to you
than supping sawdust. Well, well. If ever I write another
Threnody! My next op. will probably be a Passepied and fugue in G
(or D).
The mind is in my case shrunk to the size and sp. gr. of an aged
Spanish filbert. O, I am so jolly silly. I now pickle with some
freedom (1) the refrain of MARTINI'S MOUTONS; (2) SUL MARGINE D'UN
RIO, arranged for the infant school by the Aged Statesman; (3) the
first phrase of Bach's musette (Sweet Englishwoman, No. 3), the
rest of the musette being one prolonged cropper, which I take daily
for the benefit of my health. All my other works (of which there
are many) are either arranged (by R. L. Stevenson) for the manly
and melodious forefinger, or else prolonged and melancholy
croppers. . . . I find one can get a notion of music very nicely.
I have been pickling deeply in the Magic Flute; and have arranged
LA DOVE PRENDE, almost to the end, for two melodious forefingers.
I am next going to score the really nobler COLOMBA O TORTORELLA for
the same instruments.
This day is published
The works of Ludwig van Beethoven
arranged
and wiederdurchgearbeiteted
for two melodious forefingers
by,
Sir, - Your obedient servant,
PIMPERLY STIPPLE.
That's a good idea? There's a person called Lenz who actually does
it - beware his den; I lost eighteenpennies on him, and found the
bleeding corpses of pieces of music divorced from their keys,
despoiled of their graces, and even changed in time; I do not wish
to regard music (nor to be regarded) through that bony Lenz. You
say you are 'a spumfed idiot'; but how about Lenz? And how about
me, sir, me?
I yesterday sent Lloyd by parcel post, at great expense, an empty
matchbox and empty cigarette-paper book, a bell from a cat's
collar, an iron kitchen spoon, and a piece of coal more than half
the superficies of this sheet of paper. They are now
(appropriately enough) speeding towards the Silly Isles; I hope he
will find them useful. By that, and my telegram with prepaid
answer to yourself, you may judge of my spiritual state. The
finances have much brightened; and if KIDNAPPED keeps on as it has
begun, I may be solvent. - Yours,
THRENODIAE AVCTOR
(The authour of ane Threnodie).
Op. 2: Scherzo (in G Major) expressive of the Sense of favours to
come.
Letter: TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
SKERRYVORE [BOURNEMOUTH, JULY 1886].
DEAR BOB, - Herewith another shy; more melancholy than before, but
I think not so abjectly idiotic. The musical terms seem to be as
good as in Beethoven, and that, after all, is the great affair.
Bar the dam bareness of the base, it looks like a piece of real
music from a distance. I am proud to say it was not made one hand
at a time; the base was of synchronous birth with the treble; they
are of the same age, sir, and may God have mercy on their souls! -
Yours,
THE MAESTRO.
Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JULY 7TH, 1886.
MY DEAR PEOPLE, - It is probably my fault, and not yours, that I
did not understand. I think it would be well worth trying the
winter in Bournemouth; but I would only take the house by the month
- this after mature discussion. My leakage still pursues its
course; if I were only well, I have a notion to go north and get in
(if I could) at the inn at Kirkmichael, which has always smiled
upon me much. If I did well there, we might then meet and do what
should most smile at the time.
Meanwhile, of course, I must not move, and am in a rancid box here,
feeling the heat a great deal, and pretty tired of things.
Alexander did a good thing of me at last; it looks like a mixture
of an aztec idol, a lion, an Indian Rajah, and a woman; and
certainly represents a mighty comic figure. F. and Lloyd both
think it is the best thing that has been done of me up to now.
You should hear Lloyd on the penny whistle, and me on the piano!
Dear powers, what a concerto! I now live entirely for the piano,
he for the whistle; the neighbours, in a radius of a furlong and a
half, are packing up in quest of brighter climes. - Ever yours,
R. L. S.
P.S. - Please say if you can afford to let us have money for this
trip, and if so, how much. I can see the year through without
help, I believe, and supposing my health to keep up; but can scarce
make this change on my own metal.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JULY 1886].
DEAR CHARLES, - Doubtless, if all goes well, towards the 1st of
August we shall be begging at your door. Thanks for a sight of the
papers, which I return (you see) at once, fearing further
responsibility.
Glad you like Dauvit; but eh, man, yon's terrible strange conduc'
o' thon man Rankeillor. Ca' him a legal adviser! It would make a
bonny law-shuit, the Shaws case; and yon paper they signed, I'm
thinking, wouldnae be muckle thought o' by Puggy Deas. - Yours
ever,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], JULY 28, 1886.
MY DEAR FATHER, - We have decided not to come to Scotland, but just
to do as Dobell wished, and take an outing. I believe this is
wiser in all ways; but I own it is a disappointment. I am weary of
England; like Alan, 'I weary for the heather,' if not for the deer.
Lloyd has gone to Scilly with Katharine and C., where and with whom
he should have a good time. David seems really to be going to
succeed, which is a pleasant prospect on all sides. I am, I
believe, floated financially; a book that sells will be a pleasant
novelty. I enclose another review; mighty complimentary, and
calculated to sell the book too.
Coolin's tombstone has been got out, honest man! and it is to be
polished, for it has got scratched, and have a touch of gilding in
the letters, and be sunk in the front of the house. Worthy man,
he, too, will maybe weary for the heather, and the bents of
Gullane, where (as I dare say you remember) he gaed clean gyte, and
jumped on to his crown from a gig, in hot and hopeless chase of
many thousand rabbits. I can still hear the little cries of the
honest fellow as he disappeared; and my mother will correct me, but
I believe it was two days before he turned up again at North
Berwick: to judge by his belly, he had caught not one out of these
thousands, but he had had some exercise.
I keep well. - Ever your affectionate son,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
BRITISH MUSEUM [AUGUST 10TH, 1886].
MY DEAR MOTHER, - We are having a capital holiday, and I am much
better, and enjoying myself to the nines. Richmond is painting my
portrait. To-day I lunch with him, and meet Burne-Jones; to-night
Browning dines with us. That sounds rather lofty work, does it
not? His path was paved with celebrities. To-morrow we leave for
Paris, and next week, I suppose, or the week after, come home.
Address here, as we may not reach Paris. I am really very well. -
Ever your affectionate son,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO T. WATTS-DUNTON
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH [SEPTEMBER 1886].
DEAR MR. WATTS, The sight of the last ATHENAEUM reminds me of you,
and of my debt, now too long due. I wish to thank you for your
notice of KIDNAPPED; and that not because it was kind, though for
that also I valued it, but in the same sense as I have thanked you
before now for a hundred articles on a hundred different writers.
A critic like you is one who fights the good fight, contending with
stupidity, and I would fain hope not all in vain; in my own case,
for instance, surely not in vain.
What you say of the two parts in KIDNAPPED was felt by no one more
painfully than by myself. I began it partly as a lark, partly as a
pot-boiler; and suddenly it moved, David and Alan stepped out from
the canvas, and I found I was in another world. But there was the
cursed beginning, and a cursed end must be appended; and our old
friend Byles the butcher was plainly audible tapping at the back
door. So it had to go into the world, one part (as it does seem to
me) alive, one part merely galvanised: no work, only an essay.
For a man of tentative method, and weak health, and a scarcity of
private means, and not too much of that frugality which is the
artist's proper virtue, the days of sinecures and patrons look very
golden: the days of professional literature very hard. Yet I do
not so far deceive myself as to think I should change my character
by changing my epoch; the sum of virtue in our books is in a
relation of equality to the sum of virtues in ourselves; and my
KIDNAPPED was doomed, while still in the womb and while I was yet
in the cradle, to be the thing it is.
And now to the more genial business of defence. You attack my
fight on board the COVENANT: I think it literal. David and Alan
had every advantage on their side - position, arms, training, a
good conscience; a handful of merchant sailors, not well led in the
first attack, not led at all in the second, could only by an
accident have taken the round-house by attack; and since the
defenders had firearms and food, it is even doubtful if they could
have been starved out. The only doubtful point with me is whether
the seamen would have ever ventured on the second onslaught; I half
believe they would not; still the illusion of numbers and the
authority of Hoseason would perhaps stretch far enough to justify
the extremity. - I am, dear Mr. Watts, your very sincere admirer,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
SKERRYVORE, SEPTEMBER 4, 1886.
NOT roses to the rose, I trow,
The thistle sends, nor to the bee
Do wasps bring honey. Wherefore now
Should Locker ask a verse from me?
Martial, perchance, - but he is dead,
And Herrick now must rhyme no more;
Still burning with the muse, they tread
(And arm in arm) the shadowy shore.
They, if they lived, with dainty hand,
To music as of mountain brooks,
Might bring you worthy words to stand
Unshamed, dear Locker, in your books.
But tho' these fathers of your race
Be gone before, yourself a sire,
To-day you see before your face
Your stalwart youngsters touch the lyre -
On these - on Lang, or Dobson - call,
Long leaders of the songful feast.
They lend a verse your laughing fall -
A verse they owe you at the least.
Letter: TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
[SKERRYVORE], BOURNEMOUTH, SEPTEMBER 1886.
DEAR LOCKER, - You take my verses too kindly, but you will admit,
for such a bluebottle of a versifier to enter the house of
Gertrude, where her necklace hangs, was not a little brave. Your
kind invitation, I fear, must remain unaccented; and yet - if I am
very well - perhaps next spring - (for I mean to be very well) - my
wife might.... But all that is in the clouds with my better
health. And now look here: you are a rich man and know many
people, therefore perhaps some of the Governors of Christ's
Hospital. If you do, I know a most deserving case, in which I
would (if I could) do anything. To approach you, in this way, is
not decent; and you may therefore judge by my doing it, how near
this matter lies to my heart. I enclose you a list of the
Governors, which I beg you to return, whether or not you shall be
able to do anything to help me.
The boy's name is -; he and his mother are very poor. It may
interest you in her cause if I tell you this: that when I was
dangerously ill at Hyeres, this brave lady, who had then a sick
husband of her own (since dead) and a house to keep and a family of
four to cook for, all with her own hands, for they could afford no
servant, yet took watch-about with my wife, and contributed not
only to my comfort, but to my recovery in a degree that I am not
able to limit. You can conceive how much I suffer from my
impotence to help her, and indeed I have already shown myself a
thankless friend. Let not my cry go up before you in vain! - Yours
in hope,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, SEPTEMBER 1886.
MY DEAR LOCKER, - That I should call myself a man of letters, and
land myself in such unfathomable ambiguities! No, my dear Locker,
I did not want a cheque; and in my ignorance of business, which is
greater even than my ignorance of literature, I have taken the
liberty of drawing a pen through the document and returning it;
should this be against the laws of God or man, forgive me. All
that I meant by my excessively disgusting reference to your
material well-being was the vague notion that a man who is well off
was sure to know a Governor of Christ's Hospital; though how I
quite arrived at this conclusion I do not see. A man with a cold
in the head does not necessarily know a ratcatcher; and the
connection is equally close - as it now appears to my awakened and
somewhat humbled spirit. For all that, let me thank you in the
warmest manner for your friendly readiness to contribute. You say
you have hopes of becoming a miser: I wish I had; but indeed I
believe you deceive yourself, and are as far from it as ever. I
wish I had any excuse to keep your cheque, for it is much more
elegant to receive than to return; but I have my way of making it
up to you, and I do sincerely beg you to write to the two
Governors. This extraordinary outpouring of correspondence would
(if you knew my habits) convince you of my great eagerness in this
matter. I would promise gratitude; but I have made a promise to
myself to make no more promises to anybody else, having broken such
a host already, and come near breaking my heart in consequence; and
as for gratitude, I am by nature a thankless dog, and was spoiled
from a child up. But if you can help this lady in the matter of
the Hospital, you will have helped the worthy. Let me continue to
hope that I shall make out my visit in the spring, and believe me,
yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
It may amuse you to know that a very long while ago, I broke my
heart to try to imitate your verses, and failed hopelessly. I saw
some of the evidences the other day among my papers, and blushed to
the heels.
R. L. S.
I give up finding out your name in the meantime, and keep to that
by which you will be known - Frederick Locker.
Letter: TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], 24TH SEPTEMBER 1886.
MY DEAR LOCKER, - You are simply an angel of light, and your two
letters have gone to the post; I trust they will reach the hearts
of the recipients - at least, that could not be more handsomely
expressed. About the cheque: well now, I am going to keep it; but
I assure you Mrs. - has never asked me for money, and I would not
dare to offer any till she did. For all that I shall stick to the
cheque now, and act to that amount as your almoner. In this way I
reward myself for the ambiguity of my epistolary style.
I suppose, if you please, you may say your verses are thin (would
you so describe an arrow, by the way, and one that struck the gold?
It scarce strikes me as exhaustively descriptive), and, thin or
not, they are (and I have found them) inimitably elegant. I thank
you again very sincerely for the generous trouble you have taken in
this matter which was so near my heart, and you may be very certain
it will be the fault of my health and not my inclination, if I do
not see you before very long; for all that has past has made me in
more than the official sense sincerely yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
SKERRYVORE, DEC. 14, 1886.
MY DEAR COLVIN, - This is first-rate of you, the Lord love you for
it! I am truly much obliged. He - my father - is very changeable;
at times, he seems only a slow quiet edition of himself; again, he
will be very heavy and blank; but never so violent as last spring;
and therefore, to my mind, better on the whole.
Fanny is pretty peepy; I am splendid. I have been writing much
verse - quite the bard, in fact; and also a dam tale to order,
which will be what it will be: I don't love it, but some of it is
passable in its mouldy way, THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON.
All my bardly exercises are in Scotch; I have struck my somewhat
ponderous guitar in that tongue to no small extent: with what
success, I know not, but I think it's better than my English verse;
more marrow and fatness, and more ruggedness.
How goes KEATS? Pray remark, if he (Keats) hung back from Shelley,
it was not to be wondered at, WHEN SO MANY OF HIS FRIENDS WERE
SHELLEY'S PENSIONERS. I forget if you have made this point; it has
been borne in upon me reading Dowden and the SHELLEY PAPERS; and it
will do no harm if you have made it. I finished a poem to-day, and
writ 3000 words of a story, TANT BIEN QUE MAL; and have a right to
be sleepy, and (what is far nobler and rarer) am so. - My dear
Colvin, ever yours,
THE REAL MACKAY.
Letter: TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, FEBRUARY 5TH, 1887.
MY DEAR LOCKER, - Here I am in my bed as usual, and it is indeed a
long while since I went out to dinner. You do not know what a
crazy fellow this is. My winter has not so far been luckily
passed, and all hope of paying visits at Easter has vanished for
twelve calendar months. But because I am a beastly and indurated
invalid, I am not dead to human feelings; and I neither have
forgotten you nor will forget you. Some day the wind may round to
the right quarter and we may meet; till then I am still truly
yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO HENRY JAMES
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, FEBRUARY 1887.]
MY DEAR JAMES, - My health has played me it in once more in the
absurdest fashion, and the creature who now addresses you is but a
stringy and white-faced BOUILLI out of the pot of fever, with the
devil to pay in every corner of his economy. I suppose (to judge
by your letter) I need not send you these sheets, which came during
my collapse by the rush. I am on the start with three volumes,
that one of tales, a second one of essays, and one of - ahem -
verse. This is a great order, is it not? After that I shall have
empty lockers. All new work stands still; I was getting on well
with Jenkin when this blessed malady unhorsed me, and sent me back
to the dung-collecting trade of the republisher. I shall re-issue
VIRG. PUER. as Vol. I. of ESSAYS, and the new vol. as Vol. II. of
ditto; to be sold, however, separately. This is but a dry
maundering; however, I am quite unfit - 'I am for action quite
unfit Either of exercise or wit.' My father is in a variable
state; many sorrows and perplexities environ the house of
Stevenson; my mother shoots north at this hour on business of a
distinctly rancid character; my father (under my wife's tutorage)
proceeds to-morrow to Salisbury; I remain here in my bed and
whistle; in no quarter of heaven is anything encouraging apparent,
except that the good Colvin comes to the hotel here on a visit.
This dreary view of life is somewhat blackened by the fact that my
head aches, which I always regard as a liberty on the part of the
powers that be. This is also my first letter since my recovery.
God speed your laudatory pen!
My wife joins in all warm messages. - Yours,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO W. H. LOW
(APRIL 1887.)
MY DEAR LOW, - The fares to London may be found in any continental
Bradshaw or sich; from London to Bournemouth impoverished parties
who can stoop to the third class get their ticket for the matter of
10s., or, as my wife loves to phrase it, 'a half a pound.' You
will also be involved in a 3s. fare to get to Skerryvore; but this,
I dare say, friends could help you in on your arrival; so that you
may reserve your energies for the two tickets - costing the matter
of a pound - and the usual gratuities to porters. This does not
seem to me much: considering the intellectual pleasures that await
you here, I call it dirt cheap. I BELIEVE the third class from
Paris to London (VIA Dover) is ABOUT forty francs, but I cannot
swear. Suppose it to be fifty.
50x2=100
The expense of spirit or spontaneous lapse of coin on the journey,
at 5 frcs. a head, 5x2=10
Victuals on ditto, at 5 frcs. a head, 5x2 = 10
Gratuity to stewardess, in case of severe prostration, at 3 francs
One night in London, on a modest footing, say 20
Two tickets to Bournemouth at 12.50, 12.50x2=25
Porters and general devilment, say 5
Cabs in London, say 2 shillings, and in Bournemouth, 3 shillings=5
shillings, 6 frcs. 25
Total frcs. 179.25
Or, the same in pounds, 7 pounds, 3s. 6 and a half d.
Or, the same in dollars, $35.45,
if there be any arithmetical virtue in me. I have left out dinner
in London in case you want to blow out, which would come extry, and
with the aid of VANGS FANGS might easily double the whole amount -
above all if you have a few friends to meet you.
In making this valuable project, or budget, I discovered for the
first time a reason (frequently overlooked) for the singular
costliness of travelling with your wife. Anybody would count the
tickets double; but how few would have remembered - or indeed has
any one ever remembered? - to count the spontaneous lapse of coin
double also? Yet there are two of you, each must do his daily
leakage, and it must be done out of your travelling fund. You will
tell me, perhaps, that you carry the coin yourself: my dear sir,
do you think you can fool your Maker? Your wife has to lose her
quota; and by God she will - if you kept the coin in a belt. One
thing I have omitted: you will lose a certain amount on the
exchange, but this even I cannot foresee, as it is one of the few
things that vary with the way a man has. - I am, dear sir, yours
financially,
SAMUEL BUDGETT.
Letter: TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
SKERRYVORE, APRIL 16TH, 1887.
MY DEAREST CUMMY, - As usual, I have been a dreary bad fellow and
not written for ages; but you must just try to forgive me, to
believe (what is the truth) that the number of my letters is no
measure of the number of times I think of you, and to remember how
much writing I have to do. The weather is bright, but still cold;
and my father, I'm afraid, feels it sharply. He has had - still
has, rather - a most obstinate jaundice, which has reduced him
cruelly in strength, and really upset him altogether. I hope, or
think, he is perhaps a little better; but he suffers much, cannot
sleep at night, and gives John and my mother a severe life of it to
wait upon him. My wife is, I think, a little better, but no great
shakes. I keep mightily respectable myself.
Coolin's Tombstone is now built into the front wall of Skerryvore,
and poor Bogie's (with a Latin inscription also) is set just above
it. Poor, unhappy wee man, he died, as you must have heard, in
fight, which was what he would have chosen; for military glory was
more in his line than the domestic virtues. I believe this is
about all my news, except that, as I write, there is a blackbird
singing in our garden trees, as it were at Swanston. I would like
fine to go up the burnside a bit, and sit by the pool and be young
again - or no, be what I am still, only there instead of here, for
just a little. Did you see that I had written about John Todd? In
this month's LONGMAN it was; if you have not seen it, I will try
and send it you. Some day climb as high as Halkerside for me (I am
never likely to do it for myself), and sprinkle some of the well
water on the turf. I am afraid it is a pagan rite, but quite
harmless, and YE CAN SAIN IT WI' A BIT PRAYER. Tell the Peewies
that I mind their forbears well. My heart is sometimes heavy, and
sometimes glad to mind it all. But for what we have received, the
Lord make us truly thankful. Don't forget to sprinkle the water,
and do it in my name; I feel a childish eagerness in this.
Remember me most kindly to James, and with all sorts of love to
yourself, believe me, your laddie,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - I suppose Mrs. Todd ought to see the paper about her man;
judge of that, and if you think she would not dislike it, buy her
one from me, and let me know. The article is called 'Pastoral,' in
LONGMAN'S MAGAZINE for April. I will send you the money; I would
to-day, but it's the Sabbie day, and I cannae.
R. L. S.
Remembrances from all here.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
[EDINBURGH, JUNE 1887.]
MY DEAR S. C., - At last I can write a word to you. Your little
note in the P. M. G. was charming. I have written four pages in
the CONTEMPORARY, which Bunting found room for: they are not very
good, but I shall do more for his memory in time.
About the death, I have long hesitated, I was long before I could
tell my mind; and now I know it, and can but say that I am glad.
If we could have had my father, that would have been a different
thing. But to keep that changeling - suffering changeling - any
longer, could better none and nothing. Now he rests; it is more
significant, it is more like himself. He will begin to return to
us in the course of time, as he was and as we loved him.
My favourite words in literature, my favourite scene - 'O let him
pass,' Kent and Lear - was played for me here in the first moment
of my return. I believe Shakespeare saw it with his own father. I
had no words; but it was shocking to see. He died on his feet, you
know; was on his feet the last day, knowing nobody - still he would
be up. This was his constant wish; also that he might smoke a pipe
on his last day. The funeral would have pleased him; it was the
largest private funeral in man's memory here.
We have no plans, and it is possible we may go home without going
through town. I do not know; I have no views yet whatever; nor can
have any at this stage of my cold and my business. - Ever yours,
R. L. S.
CHAPTER IX - THE UNITED STATES AGAIN: WINTER IN THE ADIRONDACKS,
AUGUST 1887-OCTOBER 1888
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], AUGUST 1887.
DEAR LAD, - I write to inform you that Mr. Stevenson's well-known
work, VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE, is about to be reprinted. At the same
time a second volume called MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS will issue from
the roaring loom. Its interest will be largely autobiographical,
Mr. S. having sketched there the lineaments of many departed
friends, and dwelt fondly, and with a m'istened eye, upon byegone
pleasures. The two will be issued under the common title of
FAMILIAR ESSAYS; but the volumes will be vended separately to those
who are mean enough not to hawk at both.
The blood is at last stopped: only yesterday. I began to think I
should not get away. However, I hope - I hope - remark the word -
no boasting - I hope I may luff up a bit now. Dobell, whom I saw,
gave as usual a good account of my lungs, and expressed himself,
like his neighbours, hopefully about the trip. He says, my uncle
says, Scott says, Brown says - they all say - You ought not to be
in such a state of health; you should recover. Well, then, I mean
to. My spirits are rising again after three months of black
depression: I almost begin to feel as if I should care to live: I
would, by God! And so I believe I shall. - Yours, BULLETIN
M'GURDER.
How has the Deacon gone?
Letter: TO W. H. LOW
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], August 6TH, 1887.
MY DEAR LOW, - We - my mother, my wife, my stepson, my maidservant,
and myself, five souls - leave, if all is well, Aug. 20th, per
Wilson line SS. LUDGATE HILL. Shall probably evade N. Y. at first,
cutting straight to a watering-place: Newport, I believe, its
name. Afterwards we shall steal incognito into LA BONNE VILLA, and
see no one but you and the Scribners, if it may be so managed. You
must understand I have been very seedy indeed, quite a dead body;
and unless the voyage does miracles, I shall have to draw it dam
fine. Alas, 'The Canoe Speaks' is now out of date; it will figure
in my volume of verses now imminent. However, I may find some
inspiration some day. - Till very soon, yours ever,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
BOURNEMOUTH, AUGUST 19TH, 1887.
MY DEAR MISS BOODLE, - I promise you the paper-knife shall go to
sea with me; and if it were in my disposal, I should promise it
should return with me too. All that you say, I thank you for very
much; I thank you for all the pleasantness that you have brought
about our house; and I hope the day may come when I shall see you
again in poor old Skerryvore, now left to the natives of Canada, or
to worse barbarians, if such exist. I am afraid my attempt to jest
is rather A CONTRE-COEUR. Good-bye - AU REVOIR - and do not forget
your friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MESSRS. CHATTO AND WINDUS
BOURNEMOUTH [AUGUST 1887].
DEAR SIRS, - I here enclose the two titles. Had you not better
send me the bargains to sign? I shall be here till Saturday; and
shall have an address in London (which I shall send you) till
Monday, when I shall sail. Even if the proofs do not reach you
till Monday morning, you could send a clerk from Fenchurch Street
Station at 10.23 A.M. for Galleons Station, and he would find me
embarking on board the LUDGATE HILL, Island Berth, Royal Albert
Dock. Pray keep this in case it should be necessary to catch this
last chance. I am most anxious to have the proofs with me on the
voyage. - Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
H.M.S. 'VULGARIUM,'
OFF HAVRE DE GRACE, THIS 22ND DAY OF AUGUST [1887].
SIR, - The weather has been hitherto inimitable. Inimitable is the
only word that I can apply to our fellow-voyagers, whom a
categorist, possibly premature, has been already led to divide into
two classes - the better sort consisting of the baser kind of
Bagman, and the worser of undisguised Beasts of the Field. The
berths are excellent, the pasture swallowable, the champagne of H.
James (to recur to my favourite adjective) inimitable. As for the
Commodore, he slept awhile in the evening, tossed off a cup of
Henry James with his plain meal, walked the deck till eight, among
sands and floating lights and buoys and wrecked brigantines, came
down (to his regret) a minute too soon to see Margate lit up,
turned in about nine, slept, with some interruptions, but on the
whole sweetly, until six, and has already walked a mile or so of
deck, among a fleet of other steamers waiting for the tide, within
view of Havre, and pleasantly entertained by passing fishing-boats,
hovering sea-gulls, and Vulgarians pairing on deck with endearments
of primitive simplicity. There, sir, can be viewed the sham
quarrel, the sham desire for information, and every device of these
two poor ancient sexes (who might, you might think, have learned in
the course of the ages something new) down to the exchange of head-
gear. - I am, sir, yours,
BOLD BOB BOLTSPRIT.
B. B. B. (ALIAS the Commodore) will now turn to his proofs. Havre
de Grace is a city of some show. It is for-ti-fied; and, so far as
I can see, is a place of some trade. It is situ-ated in France, a
country of Europe. You always complain there are no facts in my
letters.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
NEWPORT, R. I. U.S.A. [SEPTEMBER 1887].
MY DEAR COLVIN, - So long it went excellent well, and I had a time
I am glad to have had; really enjoying my life. There is nothing
like being at sea, after all. And O, why have I allowed myself to
rot so long on land? But on the Banks I caught a cold, and I have
not yet got over it. My reception here was idiotic to the last
degree.... It is very silly, and not pleasant, except where humour
enters; and I confess the poor interviewer lads pleased me. They
are too good for their trade; avoided anything I asked them to
avoid, and were no more vulgar in their reports than they could
help. I liked the lads.
O, it was lovely on our stable-ship, chock full of stallions. She
rolled heartily, rolled some of the fittings out of our state-room,
and I think a more dangerous cruise (except that it was summer) it
would be hard to imagine. But we enjoyed it to the masthead, all
but Fanny; and even she perhaps a little. When we got in, we had
run out of beer, stout, cocoa, soda-water, water, fresh meat, and
(almost) of biscuit. But it was a thousandfold pleasanter than a
great big Birmingham liner like a new hotel; and we liked the
officers, and made friends with the quartermasters, and I (at
least) made a friend of a baboon (for we carried a cargo of apes),
whose embraces have pretty near cost me a coat. The passengers
improved, and were a very good specimen lot, with no drunkard, no
gambling that I saw, and less grumbling and backbiting than one
would have asked of poor human nature. Apes, stallions, cows,
matches, hay, and poor men-folk, all, or almost all, came
successfully to land. - Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO HENRY JAMES
[NEWPORT, U.S.A., SEPTEMBER 1887.]
MY DEAR JAMES, - Here we are at Newport in the house of the good
Fairchilds; and a sad burthen we have laid upon their shoulders. I
have been in bed practically ever since I came. I caught a cold on
the Banks after having had the finest time conceivable, and enjoyed
myself more than I could have hoped on board our strange floating
menagerie: stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and
the vast continent of these incongruities rolled the while like a
haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotised by the motion, looking
through the ports at our dinner-table, and winked when the crockery
was broken; and the little monkeys stared at each other in their
cages, and were thrown overboard like little bluish babies; and the
big monkey, Jacko, scoured about the ship and rested willingly in
my arms, to the ruin of my clothing; and the man of the stallions
made a bower of the black tarpaulin, and sat therein at the feet of
a raddled divinity, like a picture on a box of chocolates; and the
other passengers, when they were not sick, looked on and laughed.
Take all this picture, and make it roll till the bell shall sound
unexpected notes and the fittings shall break lose in our state-
room, and you have the voyage of the LUDGATE HILL. She arrived in
the port of New York, without beer, porter, soda-water, curacoa,
fresh meat, or fresh water; and yet we lived, and we regret her.
My wife is a good deal run down, and I am no great shakes.
America is, as I remarked, a fine place to eat in, and a great
place for kindness; but, Lord, what a silly thing is popularity! I
envy the cool obscurity of Skerryvore. If it even paid, said
Meanness! and was abashed at himself. - Yours most sincerely,
R. L S.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
[NEW YORK: END OF SEPTEMBER 1887.]
MY DEAR S. C., - Your delightful letter has just come, and finds me
in a New York hotel, waiting the arrival of a sculptor (St.
Gaudens) who is making a medallion of yours truly and who is (to
boot) one of the handsomest and nicest fellows I have seen. I
caught a cold on the Banks; fog is not for me; nearly died of
interviewers and visitors, during twenty-four hours in New York;
cut for Newport with Lloyd and Valentine, a journey like fairy-land
for the most engaging beauties, one little rocky and pine-shaded
cove after another, each with a house and a boat at anchor, so that
I left my heart in each and marvelled why American authors had been
so unjust to their country; caught another cold on the train;
arrived at Newport to go to bed and to grow worse, and to stay in
bed until I left again; the Fairchilds proving during this time
kindness itself; Mr. Fairchild simply one of the most engaging men
in the world, and one of the children, Blair, AET. ten, a great joy
and amusement in his solemn adoring attitude to the author of
TREASURE ISLAND.
Here I was interrupted by the arrival of my sculptor. I have
begged him to make a medallion of himself and give me a copy. I
will not take up the sentence in which I was wandering so long, but
begin fresh. I was ten or twelve days at Newport; then came back
convalescent to New York. Fanny and Lloyd are off to the
Adirondacks to see if that will suit; and the rest of us leave
Monday (this is Saturday) to follow them up. I hope we may manage
to stay there all winter. I have a splendid appetite and have on
the whole recovered well after a mighty sharp attack. I am now on
a salary of 500 pounds a year for twelve articles in SCRIBNER'S
MAGAZINE on what I like; it is more than 500 pounds, but I cannot
calculate more precisely. You have no idea how much is made of me
here; I was offered 2000 pounds for a weekly article - eh heh! how
is that? but I refused that lucrative job. The success of
UNDERWOODS is gratifying. You see, the verses are sane; that is
their strong point, and it seems it is strong enough to carry them.
A thousand thanks for your grand letter, ever yours,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
NEW YORK [SEPTEMBER 1887]
MY DEAR LAD, - Herewith verses for Dr. Hake, which please
communicate. I did my best with the interviewers; I don't know if
Lloyd sent you the result; my heart was too sick: you can do
nothing with them; and yet - literally sweated with anxiety to
please, and took me down in long hand!
I have been quite ill, but go better. I am being not busted, but
medallioned, by St. Gaudens, who is a first-rate, plain, high-
minded artist and honest fellow; you would like him down to the
ground. I believe sculptors are fine fellows when they are not
demons. O, I am now a salaried person, 600 pounds a year, to write
twelve articles in SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE; it remains to be seen if it
really pays, huge as the sum is, but the slavery may overweigh me.
I hope you will like my answer to Hake, and specially that he will.
Love to all. - Yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
(LE SALARIE).
Letter: To R. A. M. STEVENSON
SARANAC LAKE, ADIRONDACKS, NEW YORK, U.S.A. [OCTOBER 1887].
MY DEAR BOB, - The cold [of Colorado] was too rigorous for me; I
could not risk the long railway voyage, and the season was too late
to risk the Eastern, Cape Hatteras side of the steamer one; so here
we stuck and stick. We have a wooden house on a hill-top,
overlooking a river, and a village about a quarter of a mile away,
and very wooded hills; the whole scene is very Highland, bar want
of heather and the wooden houses.
I have got one good thing of my sea voyage: it is proved the sea
agrees heartily with me, and my mother likes it; so if I get any
better, or no worse, my mother will likely hire a yacht for a month
or so in summer. Good Lord! What fun! Wealth is only useful for
two things: a yacht and a string quartette. For these two I will
sell my soul. Except for these I hold that 700 pounds a year is as
much as anybody can possibly want; and I have had more, so I know,
for the extry coins were for no use, excepting for illness, which
damns everything.
I was so happy on board that ship, I could not have believed it
possible. We had the beastliest weather, and many discomforts; but
the mere fact of its being a tramp-ship gave us many comforts; we
could cut about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel-house,
discuss all manner of things, and really be a little at sea. And
truly there is nothing else. I had literally forgotten what
happiness was, and the full mind - full of external and physical
things, not full of cares and labours and rot about a fellow's
behaviour. My heart literally sang; I truly care for nothing so
much as for that. We took so north a course, that we saw
Newfoundland; no one in the ship had ever seen it before.
It was beyond belief to me how she rolled; in seemingly smooth
water, the bell striking, the fittings bounding out of our state-
room. It is worth having lived these last years, partly because I
have written some better books, which is always pleasant, but
chiefly to have had the joy of this voyage. I have been made a lot
of here, and it is sometimes pleasant, sometimes the reverse; but I
could give it all up, and agree that - was the author of my works,
for a good seventy ton schooner and the coins to keep her on. And
to think there are parties with yachts who would make the exchange!
I know a little about fame now; it is no good compared to a yacht;
and anyway there is more fame in a yacht, more genuine fame; to
cross the Atlantic and come to anchor in Newport (say) with the
Union Jack, and go ashore for your letters and hang about the pier,
among the holiday yachtsmen - that's fame, that's glory, and nobody
can take it away; they can't say your book is bad; you HAVE crossed
the Atlantic. I should do it south by the West Indies, to avoid
the damned Banks; and probably come home by steamer, and leave the
skipper to bring the yacht home.
Well, if all goes well, we shall maybe sail out of Southampton
water some of these days and take a run to Havre, and try the
Baltic, or somewhere.
Love to you all. - Ever your afft.,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
SARANAC LAKE, OCT. 8TH, 1887.
MY DEAR GOSSE, - I have just read your article twice, with cheers
of approving laughter. I do not believe you ever wrote anything so
funny: Tyndall's 'shell,' the passage on the Davos press and its
invaluable issues, and that on V. Hugo and Swinburne, are
exquisite; so, I say it more ruefully, is the touch about the
doctors. For the rest, I am very glad you like my verses so well;
and the qualities you ascribe to them seem to me well found and
well named. I own to that kind of candour you attribute to me:
when I am frankly interested, I suppose I fancy the public will be
so too; and when I am moved, I am sure of it. It has been my luck
hitherto to meet with no staggering disillusion. 'Before' and
'After' may be two; and yet I believe the habit is now too
thoroughly ingrained to be altered. About the doctors, you were
right, that dedication has been the subject of some pleasantries
that made me grind, and of your happily touched reproof which made
me blush. And to miscarry in a dedication is an abominable form of
book-wreck; I am a good captain, I would rather lose the tent and
save my dedication.
I am at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, I suppose for the winter:
it seems a first-rate place; we have a house in the eye of many
winds, with a view of a piece of running water - Highland, all but
the dear hue of peat - and of many hills - Highland also, but for
the lack of heather. Soon the snow will close on us; we are here
some twenty miles - twenty-seven, they say, but this I profoundly
disbelieve - in the woods; communication by letter is slow and (let
me be consistent) aleatory; by telegram is as near as may be
impossible.
I had some experience of American appreciation; I liked a little of
it, but there is too much; a little of that would go a long way to
spoil a man; and I like myself better in the woods. I am so damned
candid and ingenuous (for a cynic), and so much of a 'cweatu' of
impulse - aw' (if you remember that admirable Leech), that I begin
to shirk any more taffy; I think I begin to like it too well. But
let us trust the Gods; they have a rod in pickle; reverently I doff
my trousers, and with screwed eyes await the AMARI ALIQUID of the
great God Busby.
I thank you for the article in all ways, and remain yours
affectionately,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO W. H. LOW
[SARANAC, OCTOBER 1887.]
SIR, - I have to trouble you with the following PAROLES BIEN
SENTIES. We are here at a first-rate place. 'Baker's' is the name
of our house, but we don't address there; we prefer the tender care
of the Post-Office, as more aristocratic (it is no use to telegraph
even to the care of the Post-Office who does not give a single
damn). Baker's has a prophet's chamber, which the hypercritical
might describe as a garret with a hole in the floor: in that
garret, sir, I have to trouble you and your wife to come and
slumber. Not now, however: with manly hospitality, I choke off
any sudden impulse. Because first, my wife and my mother are gone
(a note for the latter, strongly suspected to be in the hand of
your talented wife, now sits silent on the mantel shelf), one to
Niagara and t'other to Indianapolis. Because, second, we are not
yet installed. And because third, I won't have you till I have a
buffalo robe and leggings, lest you should want to paint me as a
plain man, which I am not, but a rank Saranacker and wild man of
the woods. - Yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO WILLIAM ARCHER.
SARANAC LAKE, OCTOBER 1887.
DEAR ARCHER, - Many thanks for the Wondrous Tale. It is scarcely a
work of genius, as I believe you felt. Thanks also for your
pencillings; though I defend 'shrew,' or at least many of the
shrews.
We are here (I suppose) for the winter in the Adirondacks, a hill
and forest country on the Canadian border of New York State, very
unsettled and primitive and cold, and healthful, or we are the more
bitterly deceived. I believe it will do well for me; but must not
boast.
My wife is away to Indiana to see her family; my mother, Lloyd, and
I remain here in the cold, which has been exceeding sharp, and the
hill air, which is inimitably fine. We all eat bravely, and sleep
well, and make great fires, and get along like one o'clock,
I am now a salaried party; I am a BOURGEOIS now; I am to write a
weekly paper for Scribner's, at a scale of payment which makes my
teeth ache for shame and diffidence. The editor is, I believe, to
apply to you; for we were talking over likely men, and when I
instanced you, he said he had had his eye upon you from the first.
It is worth while, perhaps, to get in tow with the Scribners; they
are such thorough gentlefolk in all ways that it is always a
pleasure to deal with them. I am like to be a millionaire if this
goes on, and be publicly hanged at the social revolution: well, I
would prefer that to dying in my bed; and it would be a godsend to
my biographer, if ever I have one. What are you about? I hope you
are all well and in good case and spirits, as I am now, after a
most nefast experience of despondency before I left; but indeed I
was quite run down. Remember me to Mrs. Archer, and give my
respects to Tom. - Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO HENRY JAMES
[SARANAC LAKE, OCTOBER 1887.] I know not the day; but the month it
is the drear October by the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - This is to say FIRST, the voyage was a huge
success. We all enjoyed it (bar my wife) to the ground: sixteen
days at sea with a cargo of hay, matches, stallions, and monkeys,
and in a ship with no style on, and plenty of sailors to talk to,
and the endless pleasures of the sea - the romance of it, the sport
of the scratch dinner and the smashing crockery, the pleasure - an
endless pleasure - of balancing to the swell: well, it's over.
SECOND, I had a fine time, rather a troubled one, at Newport and
New York; saw much of and liked hugely the Fairchilds, St. Gaudens
the sculptor, Gilder of the CENTURY - just saw the dear Alexander -
saw a lot of my old and admirable friend Will Low, whom I wish you
knew and appreciated - was medallioned by St. Gaudens, and at last
escaped to
THIRD, Saranac Lake, where we now are, and which I believe we mean
to like and pass the winter at. Our house - emphatically 'Baker's'
- is on a hill, and has a sight of a stream turning a corner in the
valley - bless the face of running water! - and sees some hills
too, and the paganly prosaic roofs of Saranac itself; the Lake it
does not see, nor do I regret that; I like water (fresh water I
mean) either running swiftly among stones, or else largely
qualified with whisky. As I write, the sun (which has been long a
stranger) shines in at my shoulder; from the next room, the bell of
Lloyd's typewriter makes an agreeable music as it patters off (at a
rate which astonishes this experienced novelist) the early chapters
of a humorous romance; from still further off - the walls of
Baker's are neither ancient nor massive - rumours of Valentine
about the kitchen stove come to my ears; of my mother and Fanny I
hear nothing, for the excellent reason that they have gone sparking
off, one to Niagara, one to Indianapolis. People complain that I
never give news in my letters. I have wiped out that reproach.
But now, FOURTH, I have seen the article; and it may be from
natural partiality, I think it the best you have written. O - I
remember the Gautier, which was an excellent performance; and the
Balzac, which was good; and the Daudet, over which I licked my
chops; but the R. L. S. is better yet. It is so humorous, and it
hits my little frailties with so neat (and so friendly) a touch;
and Alan is the occasion for so much happy talk, and the quarrel is
so generously praised. I read it twice, though it was only some
hours in my possession; and Low, who got it for me from the
CENTURY, sat up to finish it ere he returned it; and, sir, we were
all delighted. Here is the paper out, nor will anything, not even
friendship, not even gratitude for the article, induce me to begin
a second sheet; so here with the kindest remembrances and the
warmest good wishes, I remain, yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
SARANAC, 18TH NOVEMBER 1887.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - No likely I'm going to waste a sheet of paper. .
. . I am offered 1600 pounds ($8000) for the American serial
rights on my next story! As you say, times are changed since the
Lothian Road. Well, the Lothian Road was grand fun too; I could
take an afternoon of it with great delight. But I'm awfu' grand
noo, and long may it last!
Remember me to any of the faithful - if there are any left. I wish
I could have a crack with you. - Yours ever affectionately,
R. L. S.
I find I have forgotten more than I remembered of business. . . .
Please let us know (if you know) for how much Skerryvore is let;
you will here detect the female mind; I let it for what I could
get; nor shall the possession of this knowledge (which I am happy
to have forgot) increase the amount by so much as the shadow of a
sixpenny piece; but my females are agog. - Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO CHARLES SCRIBNER
[SARANAC, NOVEMBER 20 OR 21, 1887.]
MY DEAR MR. SCRIBNER, - Heaven help me, I am under a curse just
now. I have played fast and loose with what I said to you; and
that, I beg you to believe, in the purest innocence of mind. I
told you you should have the power over all my work in this
country; and about a fortnight ago, when M'Clure was here, I calmly
signed a bargain for the serial publication of a story. You will
scarce believe that I did this in mere oblivion; but I did; and all
that I can say is that I will do so no more, and ask you to forgive
me. Please write to me soon as to this.
Will you oblige me by paying in for three articles, as already
sent, to my account with John Paton & Co., 52 William Street? This
will be most convenient for us.
The fourth article is nearly done; and I am the more deceived, or
it is A BUSTER.
Now as to the first thing in this letter, I do wish to hear from
you soon; and I am prepared to hear any reproach, or (what is
harder to hear) any forgiveness; for I have deserved the worst. -
Yours sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
SARANAC, NOVEMBER 1887.
DEAR MR. BURLINGAME, - I enclose corrected proof of BEGGARS, which
seems good. I mean to make a second sermon, which, if it is about
the same length as PULVIS ET UMBRA, might go in along with it as
two sermons, in which case I should call the first 'The Whole
Creation,' and the second 'Any Good.' We shall see; but you might
say how you like the notion.
One word: if you have heard from Mr. Scribner of my unhappy
oversight in the matter of a story, you will make me ashamed to
write to you, and yet I wish to beg you to help me into quieter
waters. The oversight committed - and I do think it was not so bad
as Mr. Scribner seems to think it-and discovered, I was in a
miserable position. I need not tell you that my first impulse was
to offer to share or to surrender the price agreed upon when it
should fall due; and it is almost to my credit that I arranged to
refrain. It is one of these positions from which there is no
escape; I cannot undo what I have done. And I wish to beg you -
should Mr. Scribner speak to you in the matter - to try to get him
to see this neglect of mine for no worse than it is: unpardonable
enough, because a breach of an agreement; but still pardonable,
because a piece of sheer carelessness and want of memory, done, God
knows, without design and since most sincerely regretted. I have
no memory. You have seen how I omitted to reserve the American
rights in JEKYLL: last winter I wrote and demanded, as an
increase, a less sum than had already been agreed upon for a story
that I gave to Cassell's. For once that my forgetfulness has, by a
cursed fortune, seemed to gain, instead of lose, me money, it is
painful indeed that I should produce so poor an impression on the
mind of Mr. Scribner. But I beg you to believe, and if possible to
make him believe, that I am in no degree or sense a FAISEUR, and
that in matters of business my design, at least, is honest. Nor
(bating bad memory and self-deception) am I untruthful in such
affairs.
If Mr. Scribner shall have said nothing to you in the matter,
please regard the above as unwritten, and believe me, yours very
truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
SARANAC, NOVEMBER 1887.
DEAR MR. BURLINGAME, - The revise seemed all right, so I did not
trouble you with it; indeed, my demand for one was theatrical, to
impress that obdurate dog, your reader. Herewith a third paper:
it has been a cruel long time upon the road, but here it is, and
not bad at last, I fondly hope. I was glad you liked the LANTERN
BEARERS; I did, too. I thought it was a good paper, really
contained some excellent sense, and was ingeniously put together.
I have not often had more trouble than I have with these papers;
thirty or forty pages of foul copy, twenty is the very least I have
had. Well, you pay high; it is fit that I should have to work
hard, it somewhat quiets my conscience. - Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO J. A. SYMONDS
SARANAC LAKE, ADIRONDACK MOUNTAINS, NEW YORK, U.S.A., NOVEMBER 21,
1887.
MY DEAR SYMONDS, - I think we have both meant and wanted to write
to you any time these months; but we have been much tossed about,
among new faces and old, and new scenes and old, and scenes (like
this of Saranac) which are neither one nor other. To give you some
clue to our affairs, I had best begin pretty well back. We sailed
from the Thames in a vast bucket of iron that took seventeen days
from shore to shore. I cannot describe how I enjoyed the voyage,
nor what good it did me; but on the Banks I caught friend catarrh.
In New York and then in Newport I was pretty ill; but on my return
to New York, lying in bed most of the time, with St. Gaudens the
sculptor sculping me, and my old friend Low around, I began to pick
up once more. Now here we are in a kind of wilderness of hills and
firwoods and boulders and snow and wooden houses. So far as we
have gone the climate is grey and harsh, but hungry and somnolent;
and although not charming like that of Davos, essentially bracing
and briskening. The country is a kind of insane mixture of
Scotland and a touch of Switzerland and a dash of America, and a
thought of the British Channel in the skies. We have a decent
house -
DECEMBER 6TH.
- A decent house, as I was saying, sir, on a hill-top, with a look
down a Scottish river in front, and on one hand a Perthshire hill;
on the other, the beginnings and skirts of the village play hide
and seek among other hills. We have been below zero, I know not
how far (10 at 8 A.M. once), and when it is cold it is delightful;
but hitherto the cold has not held, and we have chopped in and out
from frost to thaw, from snow to rain, from quiet air to the most
disastrous north-westerly curdlers of the blood. After a week of
practical thaw, the ice still bears in favoured places. So there
is hope.
I wonder if you saw my book of verses? It went into a second
edition, because of my name, I suppose, and its PROSE merits. I do
not set up to be a poet. Only an all-round literary man: a man
who talks, not one who sings. But I believe the very fact that it
was only speech served the book with the public. Horace is much a
speaker, and see how popular! most of Martial is only speech, and I
cannot conceive a person who does not love his Martial; most of
Burns, also, such as 'The Louse,' 'The Toothache,' 'The Haggis,'
and lots more of his best. Excuse this little apology for my
house; but I don't like to come before people who have a note of
song, and let it be supposed I do not know the difference.
To return to the more important - news. My wife again suffers in
high and cold places; I again profit. She is off to-day to New
York for a change, as heretofore to Berne, but I am glad to say in
better case than then. Still it is undeniable she suffers, and you
must excuse her (at least) if we both prove bad correspondents. I
am decidedly better, but I have been terribly cut up with business
complications: one disagreeable, as threatening loss; one, of the
most intolerable complexion, as involving me in dishonour. The
burthen of consistent carelessness: I have lost much by it in the
past; and for once (to my damnation) I have gained. I am sure you
will sympathise. It is hard work to sleep; it is hard to be told
you are a liar, and have to hold your peace, and think, 'Yes, by
God, and a thief too!' You remember my lectures on Ajax, or the
Unintentional Sin? Well, I know all about that now. Nothing seems
so unjust to the sufferer: or is more just in essence. LAISSEZ
PASSER LA JUSTICE DE DIEU.
Lloyd has learned to use the typewriter, and has most gallantly
completed upon that the draft of a tale, which seems to me not
without merit and promise, it is so silly, so gay, so absurd, in
spots (to my partial eyes) so genuinely humorous. It is true, he
would not have written it but for the New Arabian Nights; but it is
strange to find a young writer funny. Heavens, but I was
depressing when I took the pen in hand! And now I doubt if I am
sadder than my neighbours. Will this beginner move in the inverse
direction?
Let me have your news, and believe me, my dear Symonds, with
genuine affection, yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
SARANAC [DECEMBER 1887].
MY DEAR LAD, - I was indeed overjoyed to hear of the Dumas. In the
matter of the dedication, are not cross dedications a little
awkward? Lang and Rider Haggard did it, to be sure. Perpend. And
if you should conclude against a dedication, there is a passage in
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS written AT you, when I was most desperate
(to stir you up a bit), which might be quoted: something about
Dumas still waiting his biographer. I have a decent time when the
weather is fine; when it is grey, or windy, or wet (as it too often
is), I am merely degraded to the dirt. I get some work done every
day with a devil of a heave; not extra good ever; and I regret my
engagement. Whiles I have had the most deplorable business
annoyances too; have been threatened with having to refund money;
got over that; and found myself in the worse scrape of being a kind
of unintentional swindler. These have worried me a great deal;
also old age with his stealing steps seems to have clawed me in his
clutch to some tune.
Do you play All Fours? We are trying it; it is still all haze to
me. Can the elder hand BEG more than once? The Port Admiral is at
Boston mingling with millionaires. I am but a weed on Lethe wharf.
The wife is only so-so. The Lord lead us all: if I can only get
off the stage with clean hands, I shall sing Hosanna. 'Put' is
described quite differently from your version in a book I have;
what are your rules? The Port Admiral is using a game of put in a
tale of his, the first copy of which was gloriously finished about
a fortnight ago, and the revise gallantly begun: THE FINSBURY
TONTINE it is named, and might fill two volumes, and is quite
incredibly silly, and in parts (it seems to me) pretty humorous. -
Love to all from
AN OLD, OLD MAN.
I say, Taine's ORIGINES DE LA FRANCE CONTEMPORAINE is no end; it
would turn the dead body of Charles Fox into a living Tory.
Letter: TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
[SARANAC LAKE, DECEMBER 1887.]
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, - The Opal is very well; it is fed with
glycerine when it seems hungry. I am very well, and get about much
more than I could have hoped. My wife is not very well; there is
no doubt the high level does not agree with her, and she is on the
move for a holiday to New York. Lloyd is at Boston on a visit, and
I hope has a good time. My mother is really first-rate; she and I,
despairing of other games for two, now play All Fours out of a
gamebook, and have not yet discovered its niceties, if any.
You will have heard, I dare say, that they made a great row over me
here. They also offered me much money, a great deal more than my
works are worth: I took some of it, and was greedy and hasty, and
am now very sorry. I have done with big prices from now out.
Wealth and self-respect seem, in my case, to be strangers.
We were talking the other day of how well Fleeming managed to grow
rich. Ah, that is a rare art; something more intellectual than a
virtue. The book has not yet made its appearance here; the life
alone, with a little preface, is to appear in the States; and the
Scribners are to send you half the royalties. I should like it to
do well, for Fleeming's sake.
Will you please send me the Greek water-carrier's song? I have a
particular use for it.
Have I any more news, I wonder? - and echo wonders along with me.
I am strangely disquieted on all political matters; and I do not
know if it is 'the signs of the times' or the sign of my own time
of life. But to me the sky seems black both in France and England,
and only partly clear in America. I have not seen it so dark in my
time; of that I am sure.
Please let us have some news; and, excuse me, for the sake of my
well-known idleness; and pardon Fanny, who is really not very well,
for this long silence. - Very sincerely your friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
[SARANAC LAKE, DECEMBER 1887.]
MY DEAR MISS BOODLE, - I am so much afraid, our gamekeeper may
weary of unacknowledged reports! Hence, in the midst of a perfect
horror of detestable weathers of a quite incongruous strain, and
with less desire for correspondence than - well, than - well, with
no desire for correspondence, behold me dash into the breach. Do
keep up your letters. They are most delightful to this exiled
backwoods family; and in your next, we shall hope somehow or other
to hear better news of you and yours - that in the first place -
and to hear more news of our beasts and birds and kindly fruits of
earth and those human tenants who are (truly) too much with us.
I am very well; better than for years: that is for good. But then
my wife is no great shakes; the place does not suit her - it is my
private opinion that no place does - and she is now away down to
New York for a change, which (as Lloyd is in Boston) leaves my
mother and me and Valentine alone in our wind-beleaguered hilltop
hatbox of a house. You should hear the cows butt against the walls
in the early morning while they feed; you should also see our back
log when the thermometer goes (as it does go) away - away below
zero, till it can be seen no more by the eye of man - not the
thermometer, which is still perfectly visible, but the mercury,
which curls up into the bulb like a hibernating bear; you should
also see the lad who 'does chores' for us, with his red stockings
and his thirteen year old face, and his highly manly tramp into the
room; and his two alternative answers to all questions about the
weather: either 'Cold,' or with a really lyrical movement of the
voice, 'LOVELY - raining!'
Will you take this miserable scarp for what it is worth? Will you
also understand that I am the man to blame, and my wife is really
almost too much out of health to write, or at least doesn't write?
- And believe me, with kind remembrance to Mrs. Boodle and your
sisters, very sincerely yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
SARANAC, 12TH DECEMBER '87.
Give us news of all your folk. A Merry Christmas from all of us.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - Will you please send 20 pounds to - for a
Christmas gift from -? Moreover, I cannot remember what I told you
to send to - ; but as God has dealt so providentially with me this
year, I now propose to make it 20 pounds.
I beg of you also to consider my strange position. I jined a club
which it was said was to defend the Union; and had a letter from
the secretary, which his name I believe was Lord Warmingpan (or
words to that effect), to say I am elected, and had better pay up a
certain sum of money, I forget what. Now I cannae verra weel draw
a blank cheque and send to -
LORD WARMINGPAN (or words to that effect),
London, England.
And, man, if it was possible, I would be dooms glad to be out o'
this bit scrapie. Mebbe the club was ca'd 'The Union,' but I
wouldnae like to sweir; and mebbe it wasnae, or mebbe only words to
that effec' - but I wouldnae care just exac'ly about sweirin'. Do
ye no think Henley, or Pollick, or some o' they London fellies,
micht mebbe perhaps find out for me? and just what the soom was?
And that you would aiblins pay for me? For I thocht I was sae dam
patriotic jinin', and it would be a kind o' a come-doun to be
turned out again. Mebbe Lang would ken; or mebbe Rider Haggyard:
they're kind o' Union folks. But it's my belief his name was
Warmingpan whatever. Yours,
THOMSON,
ALIAS ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Could it be Warminster?
Letter: TO MISS MONROE
SARANAC LAKE, NEW YORK [DECEMBER 19, 1887].
DEAR MISS MONROE, - Many thanks for your letter and your good
wishes. It was much my desire to get to Chicago: had I done - or
if I yet do - so, I shall hope to see the original of my
photograph, which is one of my show possessions; but the fates are
rather contrary. My wife is far from well; I myself dread worse
than almost any other imaginable peril, that miraculous and really
insane invention the American Railroad Car. Heaven help the man -
may I add the woman - that sets foot in one! Ah, if it were only
an ocean to cross, it would be a matter of small thought to me -
and great pleasure. But the railroad car - every man has his weak
point; and I fear the railroad car as abjectly as I do an earwig,
and, on the whole, on better grounds. You do not know how bitter
it is to have to make such a confession; for you have not the
pretension nor the weakness of a man. If I do get to Chicago, you
will hear of me: so much can be said. And do you never come east?
I was pleased to recognise a word of my poor old Deacon in your
letter. It would interest me very much to hear how it went and
what you thought of piece and actors; and my collaborator, who
knows and respects the photograph, would be pleased too. - Still in
the hope of seeing you, I am, yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO HENRY JAMES
SARANAC LAKE, WINTER 1887-8.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - It may please you to know how our family has
been employed. In the silence of the snow the afternoon lamp has
lighted an eager fireside group: my mother reading, Fanny, Lloyd,
and I devoted listeners; and the work was really one of the best
works I ever heard; and its author is to be praised and honoured;
and what do you suppose is the name of it? and have you ever read
it yourself? and (I am bound I will get to the bottom of the page
before I blow the gaff, if I have to fight it out on this line all
summer; for if you have not to turn a leaf, there can be no
suspense, the conspectory eye being swift to pick out proper names;
and without suspense, there can be little pleasure in this world,
to my mind at least) - and, in short, the name of it is RODERICK
HUDSON, if you please. My dear James, it is very spirited, and
very sound, and very noble too. Hudson, Mrs. Hudson, Rowland, O,
all first-rate: Rowland a very fine fellow; Hudson as good as he
can stick (did you know Hudson? I suspect you did), Mrs. H. his
real born mother, a thing rarely managed in fiction.
We are all keeping pretty fit and pretty hearty; but this letter is
not from me to you, it is from a reader of R. H. to the author of
the same, and it says nothing, and has nothing to say, but thank
you.
We are going to re-read CASAMASSIMA as a proper pendant. Sir, I
think these two are your best, and care not who knows it.
May I beg you, the next time RODERICK is printed off, to go over
the sheets of the last few chapters, and strike out 'immense' and
'tremendous'? You have simply dropped them there like your pocket-
handkerchief; all you have to do is to pick them up and pouch them,
and your room - what do I say? - your cathedral! - will be swept
and garnished. - I am, dear sir, your delighted reader,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - Perhaps it is a pang of causeless honesty, perhaps. I hope
it will set a value on my praise of RODERICK, perhaps it's a burst
of the diabolic, but I must break out with the news that I can't
bear the PORTRAIT OF A LADY. I read it all, and I wept too; but I
can't stand your having written it; and I beg you will write no
more of the like. INFRA, sir; Below you: I can't help it - it may
be your favourite work, but in my eyes it's BELOW YOU to write and
me to read. I thought RODERICK was going to be another such at the
beginning; and I cannot describe my pleasure as I found it taking
bones and blood, and looking out at me with a moved and human
countenance, whose lineaments are written in my memory until my
last of days.
R. L. S.
My wife begs your forgiveness; I believe for her silence.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
SARANAC LAKE [DECEMBER 1887].
MY DEAR COLVIN, - This goes to say that we are all fit, and the
place is very bleak and wintry, and up to now has shown no such
charms of climate as Davos, but is a place where men eat and where
the cattarh, catarrh (cattarrh, or cattarrhh) appears to be
unknown. I walk in my verandy in the snaw, sir, looking down over
one of those dabbled wintry landscapes that are (to be frank) so
chilly to the human bosom, and up at a grey, English - nay,
MEHERCLE, Scottish - heaven; and I think it pretty bleak; and the
wind swoops at me round the corner, like a lion, and fluffs the
snow in my face; and I could aspire to be elsewhere; but yet I do
not catch cold, and yet, when I come in, I eat. So that hitherto
Saranac, if not deliriously delectable, has not been a failure;
nay, from the mere point of view of the wicked body, it has proved
a success. But I wish I could still get to the woods; alas, NOUS
N'IRONS PLUS AU BOIS is my poor song; the paths are buried, the
dingles drifted full, a little walk is grown a long one; till
spring comes, I fear the burthen will hold good.
I get along with my papers for SCRIBNER not fast, nor so far
specially well; only this last, the fourth one (which makes a third
part of my whole task), I do believe is pulled off after a fashion.
It is a mere sermon: 'Smith opens out'; but it is true, and I find
it touching and beneficial, to me at least; and I think there is
some fine writing in it, some very apt and pregnant phrases.
PULVIS ET UMBRA, I call it; I might have called it a Darwinian
Sermon, if I had wanted. Its sentiments, although parsonic, will
not offend even you, I believe. The other three papers, I fear,
bear many traces of effort, and the ungenuine inspiration of an
income at so much per essay, and the honest desire of the incomer
to give good measure for his money. Well, I did my damndest
anyway.
We have been reading H. James's RODERICK HUDSON, which I eagerly
press you to get at once: it is a book of a high order - the last
volume in particular. I wish Meredith would read it. It took my
breath away.
I am at the seventh book of the AENEID, and quite amazed at its
merits (also very often floored by its difficulties). The Circe
passage at the beginning, and the sublime business of Amata with
the simile of the boy's top - O Lord, what a happy thought! - have
specially delighted me. - I am, dear sir, your respected friend,
JOHN GREGG GILLSON, J.P., M.R.I.A., etc
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
[SARANAC, DECEMBER 24, 1887.]
MY DEAR COLVIN, - Thank you for your explanations. I have done no
more Virgil since I finished the seventh book, for I have, first
been eaten up with Taine, and next have fallen head over heels into
a new tale, THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE. No thought have I now apart
from it, and I have got along up to page ninety-two of the draft
with great interest. It is to me a most seizing tale: there are
some fantastic elements; the most is a dead genuine human problem -
human tragedy, I should say rather. It will be about as long, I
imagine, as KIDNAPPED.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
(1) My old Lord Durrisdeer.
(2) The Master of Ballantrae, AND
(3) Henry Durie, HIS SONS.
(4) Clementina, ENGAGED TO THE FIRST, MARRIED TO THE SECOND.
(5) Ephraim Mackellar, LAND STEWARD AT DURRISDEER AND NARRATOR OF
THE MOST OF THE BOOK.
(6) Francis Burke, Chevalier de St. Louis, ONE OF PRINCE CHARLIE'S
IRISHMEN AND NARRATOR OF THE REST.
Besides these, many instant figures, most of them dumb or nearly
so: Jessie Brown the whore, Captain Crail, Captain MacCombie, our
old friend Alan Breck, our old friend Riach (both only for an
instant), Teach the pirate (vulgarly Blackbeard), John Paul and
Macconochie, servants at Durrisdeer. The date is from 1745 to '65
(about). The scene, near Kirkcudbright, in the States, and for a
little moment in the French East Indies. I have done most of the
big work, the quarrel, duel between the brothers, and announcement
of the death to Clementina and my Lord - Clementina, Henry, and
Mackellar (nicknamed Squaretoes) are really very fine fellows; the
Master is all I know of the devil. I have known hints of him, in
the world, but always cowards; he is as bold as a lion, but with
the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much
surprise in my two cowards. 'Tis true, I saw a hint of the same
nature in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things
to attend to; the Master has nothing else but his devilry. Here
come my visitors - and have now gone, or the first relay of them;
and I hope no more may come. For mark you, sir, this is our 'day'
- Saturday, as ever was, and here we sit, my mother and I, before a
large wood fire and await the enemy with the most steadfast
courage; and without snow and greyness: and the woman Fanny in New
York for her health, which is far from good; and the lad Lloyd at
the inn in the village because he has a cold; and the handmaid
Valentine abroad in a sleigh upon her messages; and to-morrow
Christmas and no mistake. Such is human life: LA CARRIERE
HUMAINE. I will enclose, if I remember, the required autograph.
I will do better, put it on the back of this page. Love to all,
and mostly, my very dear Colvin, to yourself. For whatever I say
or do, or don't say or do, you may be very sure I am, - Yours
always affectionately,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
SARANAC LAKE, ADIRONDACKS, N.Y., U.S.A., CHRISTMAS 1887.
MY DEAR MISS BOODLE, - And a very good Christmas to you all; and
better fortune; and if worse, the more courage to support it -
which I think is the kinder wish in all human affairs. Somewhile -
I fear a good while - after this, you should receive our Christmas
gift; we have no tact and no taste, only a welcome and (often)
tonic brutality; and I dare say the present, even after my friend
Baxter has acted on and reviewed my hints, may prove a White
Elephant. That is why I dread presents. And therefore pray
understand if any element of that hamper prove unwelcome, IT IS TO
BE EXCHANGED. I will not sit down under the name of a giver of
White Elephants. I never had any elephant but one, and his
initials were R. L. S.; and he trod on my foot at a very early age.
But this is a fable, and not in the least to the point: which is
that if, for once in my life, I have wished to make things nicer
for anybody but the Elephant (see fable), do not suffer me to have
made them ineffably more embarrassing, and exchange - ruthlessly
exchange!
For my part, I am the most cockered up of any mortal being; and one
of the healthiest, or thereabout, at some modest distance from the
bull's eye. I am condemned to write twelve articles in SCRIBNER'S
MAGAZINE for the love of gain; I think I had better send you them;
what is far more to the purpose, I am on the jump with a new story
which has bewitched me - I doubt it may bewitch no one else. It is
called THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE - pronounce Ballan-tray. If it is
not good, well, mine will be the fault; for I believe it is a good
tale.
The greetings of the season to you, and your mother, and your
sisters. My wife heartily joins. - And I am, yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - You will think me an illiterate dog: I am, for the first
time, reading ROBERTSON'S SERMONS. I do not know how to express
how much I think of them. If by any chance you should be as
illiterate as I, and not know them, it is worth while curing the
defect.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
SARANAC LAKE, JANUARY '88.
DEAR CHARLES, - You are the flower of Doers. . . . Will my doer
collaborate thus much in my new novel? In the year 1794 or 5, Mr.
Ephraim Mackellar, A.M., late. steward on the Durrisdeer estates,
completed a set of memoranda (as long as a novel) with regard to
the death of the (then) late Lord Durrisdeer, and as to that of his
attainted elder brother, called by the family courtesy title the
Master of Ballantrae. These he placed in the hands of John
Macbrair. W.S., the family agent, on the understanding they were
to be sealed until 1862, when a century would have elapsed since
the affair in the wilderness (my lord's death). You succeeded Mr.
Macbrair's firm; the Durrisdeers are extinct; and last year, in an
old green box, you found these papers with Macbrair's indorsation.
It is that indorsation of which I want a copy; you may remember,
when you gave me the papers, I neglected to take that, and I am
sure you are a man too careful of antiquities to have let it fall
aside. I shall have a little introduction descriptive of my visit
to Edinburgh, arrival there, denner with yoursel', and first
reading of the papers in your smoking-room: all of which, of
course, you well remember. - Ever yours affectionately,
R. L S.
Your name is my friend Mr. Johnstone Thomson, W.S.!!!
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
SARANAC, WINTER 1887-8.
DEAR MR. BURLINGAME, - I am keeping the sermon to see if I can't
add another. Meanwhile, I will send you very soon a different
paper which may take its place. Possibly some of these days soon I
may get together a talk on things current, which should go in (if
possible) earlier than either. I am now less nervous about these
papers; I believe I can do the trick without great strain, though
the terror that breathed on my back in the beginning is not yet
forgotten.
THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE I have had to leave aside, as I was quite
worked out. But in about a week I hope to try back and send you
the first four numbers: these are all drafted, it is only the
revision that has broken me down, as it is often the hardest work.
These four I propose you should set up for me at once, and we'll
right 'em in a pamphlet. I will tell you the names of the BONA
FIDE purchasers in England.
The numbers will run from twenty to thirty pages of my manuscript.
You can give me that much, can you not? It is a howling good tale
- at least these first four numbers are; the end is a trifle more
fantastic, but 'tis all picturesque.
Don't trouble about any more French books; I am on another scent,
you see, just now. Only the FRENCH IN HINDUSTAN I await with
impatience, as that is for BALLANTRAE. The scene of that romance
is Scotland - the States - Scotland - India - Scotland - and the
States again; so it jumps like a flea. I have enough about the
States now, and very much obliged I am; yet if Drake's TRAGEDIES OF
the WILDERNESS is (as I gather) a collection of originals, I should
like to purchase it. If it is a picturesque vulgarisation, I do
not wish to look it in the face. Purchase, I say; for I think it
would be well to have some such collection by me with a view to
fresh works. - Yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - If you think of having the MASTER illustrated, I suggest
that Hole would be very well up to the Scottish, which is the
larger part. If you have it done here, tell your artist to look at
the hall of Craigievar in Billing's BARONIAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
ANTIQUITIES, and he will get a broad hint for the hall at
Durrisdeer: it is, I think, the chimney of Craigievar and the roof
of Pinkie, and perhaps a little more of Pinkie altogether; but I
should have to see the book myself to be sure. Hole would be
invaluable for this. I dare say if you had it illustrated, you
could let me have one or two for the English edition.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO WILLIAM ARCHER
[SARANAC, WINTER 1887-8.]
MY DEAR ARCHER, - What am I to say? I have read your friend's book
with singular relish. If he has written any other, I beg you will
let me see it; and if he has not, I beg him to lose no time in
supplying the deficiency. It is full of promise; but I should like
to know his age. There are things in it that are very clever, to
which I attach small importance; it is the shape of the age. And
there are passages, particularly the rally in presence of the Zulu
king, that show genuine and remarkable narrative talent - a talent
that few will have the wit to understand, a talent of strength,
spirit, capacity, sufficient vision, and sufficient self-sacrifice,
which last is the chief point in a narrator.
As a whole, it is (of course) a fever dream of the most feverish.
Over Bashville the footman I howled with derision and delight; I
dote on Bashville - I could read of him for ever; DE BASHVILLE JE
SUIS LE FERVENT - there is only one Bashville, and I am his devoted
slave; BASHVILLE EST MAGNIFIQUE, MAIS IL N'EST GUERE POSSIBLE. He
is the note of the book. It is all mad, mad and deliriously
delightful; the author has a taste in chivalry like Walter Scott's
or Dumas', and then he daubs in little bits of socialism; he soars
away on the wings of the romantic griffon - even the griffon, as he
cleaves air, shouting with laughter at the nature of the quest -
and I believe in his heart he thinks he is labouring in a quarry of
solid granite realism.
It is this that makes me - the most hardened adviser now extant -
stand back and hold my peace. If Mr. Shaw is below five-and-
twenty, let him go his path; if he is thirty, he had best be told
that he is a romantic, and pursue romance with his eyes open; - or
perhaps he knows it; - God knows! - my brain is softened.
It is HORRID FUN. All I ask is more of it. Thank you for the
pleasure you gave us, and tell me more of the inimitable author.
(I say, Archer, my God, what women!) - Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO WILLIAM ARCHER
SARANAC, FEBRUARY 1888.
MY DEAR ARCHER, - Pretty sick in bed; but necessary to protest and
continue your education.
Why was Jenkin an amateur in my eyes? You think because not
amusing (I think he often was amusing). The reason is this: I
never, or almost never, saw two pages of his work that I could not
have put in one without the smallest loss of material. That is the
only test I know of writing. If there is anywhere a thing said in
two sentences that could have been as clearly and as engagingly and
as forcibly said in one, then it's amateur work. Then you will
bring me up with old Dumas. Nay, the object of a story is to be
long, to fill up hours; the story-teller's art of writing is to
water out by continual invention, historical and technical, and yet
not seem to water; seem on the other hand to practise that same wit
of conspicuous and declaratory condensation which is the proper art
of writing. That is one thing in which my stories fail: I am
always cutting the flesh off their bones.
I would rise from the dead to preach!
Hope all well. I think my wife better, but she's not allowed to
write; and this (only wrung from me by desire to Boss and Parsonise
and Dominate, strong in sickness) is my first letter for days, and
will likely be my last for many more. Not blame my wife for her
silence: doctor's orders. All much interested by your last, and
fragment from brother, and anecdotes of Tomarcher. - The sick but
still Moral
R. L. S.
Tell Shaw to hurry up: I want another.
Letter: TO WILLIAM ARCHER
[SARANAC, SPRING 1888?]
MY DEAR ARCHER, - It happened thus. I came forth from that
performance in a breathing heat of indignation. (Mind, at this
distance of time and with my increased knowledge, I admit there is
a problem in the piece; but I saw none then, except a problem in
brutality; and I still consider the problem in that case not
established.) On my way down the FRANCAIS stairs, I trod on an old
gentleman's toes, whereupon with that suavity that so well becomes
me, I turned about to apologise, and on the instant, repenting me
of that intention, stopped the apology midway, and added something
in French to this effect: No, you are one of the LACHES who have
been applauding that piece. I retract my apology. Said the old
Frenchman, laying his hand on my arm, and with a smile that was
truly heavenly in temperance, irony, good-nature, and knowledge of
the world, 'Ah, monsieur, vous etes bien jeune!' - Yours very
truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
SARANAC [FEBRUARY 1888].
DEAR MR. BURLINGAME, - Will you send me (from the library) some of
the works of my dear old G. P. R. James. With the following
especially I desire to make or to renew acquaintance: THE
SONGSTER, THE GIPSY, THE CONVICT, THE STEPMOTHER, THE GENTLEMAN OF
THE OLD SCHOOL, THE ROBBER.
EXCUSEZ DU PEU.
This sudden return to an ancient favourite hangs upon an accident.
The 'Franklin County Library' contains two works of his, THE
CAVALIER and MORLEY ERNSTEIN. I read the first with indescribable
amusement - it was worse than I had feared, and yet somehow
engaging; the second (to my surprise) was better than I had dared
to hope: a good honest, dull, interesting tale, with a genuine
old-fashioned talent in the invention when not strained; and a
genuine old-fashioned feeling for the English language. This
experience awoke appetite, and you see I have taken steps to stay
it.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
[SARANAC, FEBRUARY 1888.]
DEAR MR. BURLINGAME, - 1. Of course then don't use it. Dear Man,
I write these to please you, not myself, and you know a main sight
better than I do what is good. In that case, however, I enclose
another paper, and return the corrected proof of PULVIS ET UMBRA,
so that we may be afloat.
2. I want to say a word as to the MASTER. (THE MASTER OF
BALLANTRAE shall be the name by all means.) If you like and want
it, I leave it to you to make an offer. You may remember I thought
the offer you made when I was still in England too small; by which
I did not at all mean, I thought it less than it was worth, but too
little to tempt me to undergo the disagreeables of serial
publication. This tale (if you want it) you are to have; for it is
the least I can do for you; and you are to observe that the sum you
pay me for my articles going far to meet my wants, I am quite open
to be satisfied with less than formerly. I tell you I do dislike
this battle of the dollars. I feel sure you all pay too much here
in America; and I beg you not to spoil me any more. For I am
getting spoiled: I do not want wealth, and I feel these big sums
demoralise me.
My wife came here pretty ill; she had a dreadful bad night; to-day
she is better. But now Valentine is ill; and Lloyd and I have got
breakfast, and my hand somewhat shakes after washing dishes. -
Yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - Please order me the EVENING POST for two months. My
subscription is run out. The MUTINY and EDWARDES to hand.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
[SARANAC, MARCH 1888.]
MY DEAR COLVIN, - Fanny has been very unwell. She is not long
home, has been ill again since her return, but is now better again
to a degree. You must not blame her for not writing, as she is not
allowed to write at all, not even a letter. To add to our
misfortunes, Valentine is quite ill and in bed. Lloyd and I get
breakfast; I have now, 10.15, just got the dishes washed and the
kitchen all clear, and sit down to give you as much news as I have
spirit for, after such an engagement. Glass is a thing that really
breaks my spirit: I do not like to fail, and with glass I cannot
reach the work of my high calling - the artist's.
I am, as you may gather from this, wonderfully better: this harsh,
grey, glum, doleful climate has done me good. You cannot fancy how
sad a climate it is. When the thermometer stays all day below 10
degrees, it is really cold; and when the wind blows, O commend me
to the result. Pleasure in life is all delete; there is no red
spot left, fires do not radiate, you burn your hands all the time
on what seem to be cold stones. It is odd, zero is like summer
heat to us now; and we like, when the thermometer outside is really
low, a room at about 48 degrees: 60 degrees we find oppressive.
Yet the natives keep their holes at 90 degrees or even 100 degrees.
This was interrupted days ago by household labours. Since then I
have had and (I tremble to write it, but it does seem as if I had)
beaten off an influenza. The cold is exquisite. Valentine still
in bed. The proofs of the first part of the MASTER OF BALLANTRAE
begin to come in; soon you shall have it in the pamphlet form; and
I hope you will like it. The second part will not be near so good;
but there - we can but do as it'll do with us. I have every reason
to believe this winter has done me real good, so far as it has
gone; and if I carry out my scheme for next winter, and succeeding
years, I should end by being a tower of strength. I want you to
save a good holiday for next winter; I hope we shall be able to
help you to some larks. Is there any Greek Isle you would like to
explore? or any creek in Asia Minor? - Yours ever affectionately,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO THE REV. DR. CHARTERIS
[SARANAC LAKE, WINTER 1887-1888.]
MY DEAR DR. CHARTERIS, - I have asked Douglas and Foulis to send
you my last volume, so that you may possess my little paper on my
father in a permanent shape; not for what that is worth, but as a
tribute of respect to one whom my father regarded with such love,
esteem, and affection. Besides, as you will see, I have brought
you under contribution, and I have still to thank you for your
letter to my mother; so more than kind; in much, so just. It is my
hope, when time and health permit, to do something more definite
for my father's memory. You are one of the very few who can (if
you will) help me. Pray believe that I lay on you no obligation; I
know too well, you may believe me, how difficult it is to put even
two sincere lines upon paper, where all, too, is to order. But if
the spirit should ever move you, and you should recall something
memorable of your friend, his son will heartily thank you for a
note of it. - With much respect, believe me, yours sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO HENRY JAMES
[SARANAC LAKE, MARCH 1888.]
MY DEAR DELIGHTFUL JAMES, - To quote your heading to my wife, I
think no man writes so elegant a letter, I am sure none so kind,
unless it be Colvin, and there is more of the stern parent about
him. I was vexed at your account of my admired Meredith: I wish I
could go and see him; as it is I will try to write. I read with
indescribable admiration your EMERSON. I begin to long for the day
when these portraits of yours shall be collected: do put me in.
But Emerson is a higher flight. Have you a TOURGUENEFF? You have
told me many interesting things of him, and I seem to see them
written, and forming a graceful and BILDEND sketch. My novel is a
tragedy; four parts out of six or seven are written, and gone to
Burlingame. Five parts of it are sound, human tragedy; the last
one or two, I regret to say, not so soundly designed; I almost
hesitate to write them; they are very picturesque, but they are
fantastic; they shame, perhaps degrade, the beginning. I wish I
knew; that was how the tale came to me however. I got the
situation; it was an old taste of mine: The older brother goes out
in the '45, the younger stays; the younger, of course, gets title
and estate and marries the bride designate of the elder - a family
match, but he (the younger) had always loved her, and she had
really loved the elder. Do you see the situation? Then the devil
and Saranac suggested this DENOUEMENT, and I joined the two ends in
a day or two of constant feverish thought, and began to write. And
now - I wonder if I have not gone too far with the fantastic? The
elder brother is an INCUBUS: supposed to be killed at Culloden, he
turns up again and bleeds the family of money; on that stopping he
comes and lives with them, whence flows the real tragedy, the
nocturnal duel of the brothers (very naturally, and indeed, I
think, inevitably arising), and second supposed death of the elder.
Husband and wife now really make up, and then the cloven hoof
appears. For the third supposed death and the manner of the third
reappearance is steep; steep, sir. It is even very steep, and I
fear it shames the honest stuff so far; but then it is highly
pictorial, and it leads up to the death of the elder brother at the
hands of the younger in a perfectly cold-blooded murder, of which I
wish (and mean) the reader to approve. You see how daring is the
design. There are really but six characters, and one of these
episodic, and yet it covers eighteen years, and will be, I imagine,
the longest of my works. - Yours ever,
R. L. S.
READ GOSSE'S RALEIGH. First-rate. - Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO THE REV. DR. CHARTERIS
SARANAC LAKE, ADIRONDACKS, NEW YORK, U.S.A., SPRING 1888.
MY DEAR DR. CHARTERIS, - The funeral letter, your notes, and many
other things, are reserved for a book, MEMORIALS OF A SCOTTISH
FAMILY, if ever I can find time and opportunity. I wish I could
throw off all else and sit down to it to-day. Yes, my father was a
'distinctly religious man,' but not a pious. The distinction
painfully and pleasurably recalls old conflicts; it used to be my
great gun - and you, who suffered for the whole Church, know how
needful it was to have some reserve artillery! His sentiments were
tragic; he was a tragic thinker. Now, granted that life is tragic
to the marrow, it seems the proper function of religion to make us
accept and serve in that tragedy, as officers in that other and
comparable one of war. Service is the word, active service, in the
military sense; and the religious man - I beg pardon, the pious man
- is he who has a military joy in duty - not he who weeps over the
wounded. We can do no more than try to do our best. Really, I am
the grandson of the manse - I preach you a kind of sermon. Box the
brat's ears!
My mother - to pass to matters more within my competence - finely
enjoys herself. The new country, some new friends we have made,
the interesting experiment of this climate-which (at least) is
tragic - all have done her good. I have myself passed a better
winter than for years, and now that it is nearly over have some
diffident hopes of doing well in the summer and 'eating a little
more air' than usual.
I thank you for the trouble you are taking, and my mother joins
with me in kindest regards to yourself and Mrs. Charteris. - Yours
very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO S. R. CROCKETT
[SARANAC LAKE, SPRING 1888.]
DEAR MINISTER OF THE FREE KIRK AT PENICUIK, - For O, man, I cannae
read your name! - That I have been so long in answering your
delightful letter sits on my conscience badly. The fact is I let
my correspondence accumulate until I am going to leave a place; and
then I pitch in, overhaul the pile, and my cries of penitence might
be heard a mile about. Yesterday I despatched thirty-five belated
letters: conceive the state of my conscience, above all as the
Sins of Omission (see boyhood's guide, the Shorter Catechism) are
in my view the only serious ones; I call it my view, but it cannot
have escaped you that it was also Christ's. However, all that is
not to the purpose, which is to thank you for the sincere pleasure
afforded by your charming letter. I get a good few such; how few
that please me at all, you would be surprised to learn - or have a
singularly just idea of the dulness of our race; how few that
please me as yours did, I can tell you in one word - NONE. I am no
great kirkgoer, for many reasons - and the sermon's one of them,
and the first prayer another, but the chief and effectual reason is
the stuffiness. I am no great kirkgoer, says I, but when I read
yon letter of yours, I thought I would like to sit under ye. And
then I saw ye were to send me a bit buik, and says I, I'll wait for
the bit buik, and then I'll mebbe can read the man's name, and
anyway I'll can kill twa birds wi' ae stane. And, man! the buik
was ne'er heard tell o'!
That fact is an adminicle of excuse for my delay.
And now, dear minister of the illegible name, thanks to you, and
greeting to your wife, and may you have good guidance in your
difficult labours, and a blessing on your life.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
(No just so young sae young's he was, though -
I'm awfae near forty, man.)
Address c/o CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS,
743 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.
Don't put 'N.B.' in your paper: put SCOTLAND, and be done with it.
Alas, that I should be thus stabbed in the home of my friends! The
name of my native land is not NORTH BRITAIN, whatever may be the
name of yours.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MISS FERRIER
[SARANAC LAKE, APRIL 1888.]
MY DEAREST COGGIE, - I wish I could find the letter I began to you
some time ago when I was ill; but I can't and I don't believe there
was much in it anyway. We have all behaved like pigs and beasts
and barn-door poultry to you; but I have been sunk in work, and the
lad is lazy and blind and has been working too; and as for Fanny,
she has been (and still is) really unwell. I had a mean hope you
might perhaps write again before I got up steam: I could not have
been more ashamed of myself than I am, and I should have had
another laugh.
They always say I cannot give news in my letters: I shall shake
off that reproach. On Monday, if she is well enough, Fanny leaves
for California to see her friends; it is rather an anxiety to let
her go alone; but the doctor simply forbids it in my case, and she
is better anywhere than here - a bleak, blackguard, beggarly
climate, of which I can say no good except that it suits me and
some others of the same or similar persuasions whom (by all rights)
it ought to kill. It is a form of Arctic St. Andrews, I should
imagine; and the miseries of forty degrees below zero, with a high
wind, have to be felt to be appreciated. The greyness of the
heavens here is a circumstance eminently revolting to the soul; I
have near forgot the aspect of the sun - I doubt if this be news;
it is certainly no news to us. My mother suffers a little from the
inclemency of the place, but less on the whole than would be
imagined. Among other wild schemes, we have been projecting yacht
voyages; and I beg to inform you that Cogia Hassan was cast for the
part of passenger. They may come off! - Again this is not news.
The lad? Well, the lad wrote a tale this winter, which appeared to
me so funny that I have taken it in hand, and some of these days
you will receive a copy of a work entitled 'A GAME OF BLUFF, by
Lloyd Osbourne and Robert Louis Stevenson.'
Otherwise he (the lad) is much as usual. There remains, I believe,
to be considered only R. L. S., the house-bond, prop, pillar,
bread-winner, and bully of the establishment. Well, I do think him
much better; he is making piles of money; the hope of being able to
hire a yacht ere long dances before his eyes; otherwise he is not
in very high spirits at this particular moment, though compared
with last year at Bournemouth an angel of joy.
And now is this news, Cogia, or is it not? It all depends upon the
point of view, and I call it news. The devil of it is that I can
think of nothing else, except to send you all our loves, and to
wish exceedingly you were here to cheer us all up. But we'll see
about that on board the yacht. - Your affectionate friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
[SARANAC LAKE], APRIL 9TH!! 1888
MY DEAR COLVIN, - I have been long without writing to you, but am
not to blame, I had some little annoyances quite for a private eye,
but they ran me so hard that I could not write without lugging them
in, which (for several reasons) I did not choose to do. Fanny is
off to San Francisco, and next week I myself flit to New York:
address Scribner's. Where we shall go I know not, nor (I was going
to say) care; so bald and bad is my frame of mind. Do you know our
- ahem! - fellow clubman, Colonel Majendie? I had such an
interesting letter from him. Did you see my sermon? It has evoked
the worst feeling: I fear people don't care for the truth, or else
I don't tell it. Suffer me to wander without purpose. I have sent
off twenty letters to-day, and begun and stuck at a twenty-first,
and taken a copy of one which was on business, and corrected
several galleys of proof, and sorted about a bushel of old letters;
so if any one has a right to be romantically stupid it is I - and I
am. Really deeply stupid, and at that stage when in old days I
used to pour out words without any meaning whatever and with my
mind taking no part in the performance. I suspect that is now the
case. I am reading with extraordinary pleasure the life of Lord
Lawrence: Lloyd and I have a mutiny novel -
(NEXT MORNING, AFTER TWELVE OTHER LETTERS) - mutiny novel on hand -
a tremendous work - so we are all at Indian books. The idea of the
novel is Lloyd's: I call it a novel. 'Tis a tragic romance, of
the most tragic sort: I believe the end will be almost too much
for human endurance - when the hero is thrown to the ground with
one of his own (Sepoy) soldier's knees upon his chest, and the
cries begin in the Beebeeghar. O truly, you know it is a howler!
The whole last part is - well the difficulty is that, short of
resuscitating Shakespeare, I don't know who is to write it.
I still keep wonderful. I am a great performer before the Lord on
the penny whistle. Dear sir, sincerely yours,
ANDREW JACKSON.
Letter: TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
[SARANAC LAKE, APRIL 1888.] ADDRESS C/O MESSRS. SCRIBNER'S SONS,
743 BROADWAY, N.Y.
MY DEAR GAMEKEEPER, - Your p. c. (proving you a good student of
Micawber) has just arrived, and it paves the way to something I am
anxious to say. I wrote a paper the other day - PULVIS ET UMBRA; -
I wrote it with great feeling and conviction: to me it seemed
bracing and healthful, it is in such a world (so seen by me), that
I am very glad to fight out my battle, and see some fine sunsets,
and hear some excellent jests between whiles round the camp fire.
But I find that to some people this vision of mine is a nightmare,
and extinguishes all ground of faith in God or pleasure in man.
Truth I think not so much of; for I do not know it. And I could
wish in my heart that I had not published this paper, if it
troubles folk too much: all have not the same digestion, nor the
same sight of things. And it came over me with special pain that
perhaps this article (which I was at the pains to send to her)
might give dismalness to my GAMEKEEPER AT HOME. Well, I cannot
take back what I have said; but yet I may add this. If my view be
everything but the nonsense that it may be - to me it seems self-
evident and blinding truth - surely of all things it makes this
world holier. There is nothing in it but the moral side - but the
great battle and the breathing times with their refreshments. I
see no more and no less. And if you look again, it is not ugly,
and it is filled with promise.
Pray excuse a desponding author for this apology. My wife is away
off to the uttermost parts of the States, all by herself. I shall
be off, I hope, in a week; but where? Ah! that I know not. I keep
wonderful, and my wife a little better, and the lad flourishing.
We now perform duets on two D tin whistles; it is no joke to make
the bass; I think I must really send you one, which I wish you
would correct . . . I may be said to live for these instrumental
labours now, but I have always some childishness on hand. - I am,
dear Gamekeeper, your indulgent but intemperate Squire,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
UNION HOUSE, MANASQUAN, N.J., BUT ADDRESS TO SCRIBNER'S, 11TH MAY
1888.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - I have found a yacht, and we are going the full
pitch for seven months. If I cannot get my health back (more or
less), 'tis madness; but, of course, there is the hope, and I will
play big. . . . If this business fails to set me up, well, 2000
pounds is gone, and I know I can't get better. We sail from San
Francisco, June 15th, for the South Seas in the yacht CASCO. - With
a million thanks for all your dear friendliness, ever yours
affectionately,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: To HOMER ST. GAUDENS
MANASQUAN, NEW JERSEY, 27TH MAY 1888.
DEAR HOMER ST. GAUDENS, - Your father has brought you this day to
see me, and he tells me it is his hope you may remember the
occasion. I am going to do what I can to carry out his wish; and
it may amuse you, years after, to see this little scrap of paper
and to read what I write. I must begin by testifying that you
yourself took no interest whatever in the introduction, and in the
most proper spirit displayed a single-minded ambition to get back
to play, and this I thought an excellent and admirable point in
your character. You were also (I use the past tense, with a view
to the time when you shall read, rather than to that when I am
writing) a very pretty boy, and (to my European views) startlingly
self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you
must pardon me if I can say no more: what else I marked, what
restlessness of foot and hand, what graceful clumsiness, what
experimental designs upon the furniture, was but the common
inheritance of human youth. But you may perhaps like to know that
the lean flushed man in bed, who interested you so little, was in a
state of mind extremely mingled and unpleasant: harassed with work
which he thought he was not doing well, troubled with difficulties
to which you will in time succeed, and yet looking forward to no
less a matter than a voyage to the South Seas and the visitation of
savage and desert islands. -Your father's friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO HENRY JAMES
MANASQUAN (AHEM!), NEW JERSEY, MAY 28TH, 1888.
MY DEAR JAMES, - With what a torrent it has come at last! Up to
now, what I like best is the first number of a LONDON LIFE. You
have never done anything better, and I don't know if perhaps you
have ever done anything so good as the girl's outburst: tip-top.
I have been preaching your later works in your native land. I had
to present the Beltraffio volume to Low, and it has brought him to
his knees; he was AMAZED at the first part of Georgina's Reasons,
although (like me) not so well satisfied with Part II. It is
annoying to find the American public as stupid as the English, but
they will waken up in time: I wonder what they will think of TWO
NATIONS? . .
This, dear James, is a valedictory. On June 15th the schooner
yacht CASCO will (weather and a jealous providence permitting)
steam through the Golden Gates for Honolulu, Tahiti, the Galapagos,
Guayaquil, and - I hope NOT the bottom of the Pacific. It will
contain your obedient 'umble servant and party. It seems too good
to be true, and is a very good way of getting through the green-
sickness of maturity which, with all its accompanying ills, is now
declaring itself in my mind and life. They tell me it is not so
severe as that of youth; if I (and the CASCO) are spared, I shall
tell you more exactly, as I am one of the few people in the world
who do not forget their own lives.
Good-bye, then, my dear fellow, and please write us a word; we
expect to have three mails in the next two months: Honolulu,
Tahiti, and Guayaquil. But letters will be forwarded from
Scribner's, if you hear nothing more definite directly. In 3
(three) days I leave for San Francisco. - Ever yours most
cordially,
R. L. S.
CHAPTER X - PACIFIC VOYAGES, JUNE 1888-NOVEMBER 1890
TO SIDNEY COLVIN
YACHT 'CASCO,' ANAHO BAY, NUKAHIVA, MARQUESAS ISLANDS [JULY 1888].
MY DEAR COLVIN, - From this somewhat (ahem) out of the way place, I
write to say how d'ye do. It is all a swindle: I chose these
isles as having the most beastly population, and they are far
better, and far more civilised than we. I know one old chief Ko-o-
amua, a great cannibal in his day, who ate his enemies even as he
walked home from killing 'em, and he is a perfect gentleman and
exceedingly amiable and simple-minded: no fool, though.
The climate is delightful; and the harbour where we lie one of the
loveliest spots imaginable. Yesterday evening we had near a score
natives on board; lovely parties. We have a native god; very rare
now. Very rare and equally absurd to view.
This sort of work is not favourable to correspondence: it takes me
all the little strength I have to go about and see, and then come
home and note, the strangeness around us. I shouldn't wonder if
there came trouble here some day, all the same. I could name a
nation that is not beloved in certain islands - and it does not
know it! Strange: like ourselves, perhaps, in India! Love to all
and much to yourself.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
YACHT 'CASCO,' AT SEA, NEAR THE PAUMOTUS, 7 A.M., SEPTEMBER 6TH,
1888, WITH A DREADFUL PEN.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - Last night as I lay under my blanket in the
cockpit, courting sleep, I had a comic seizure. There was nothing
visible but the southern stars, and the steersman there out by the
binnacle lamp; we were all looking forward to a most deplorable
landfall on the morrow, praying God we should fetch a tuft of palms
which are to indicate the Dangerous Archipelago; the night was as
warm as milk, and all of a sudden I had a vision of - Drummond
Street. It came on me like a flash of lightning: I simply
returned thither, and into the past. And when I remember all I
hoped and feared as I pickled about Rutherford's in the rain and
the east wind; how I feared I should make a mere shipwreck, and yet
timidly hoped not; how I feared I should never have a friend, far
less a wife, and yet passionately hoped I might; how I hoped (if I
did not take to drink) I should possibly write one little book,
etc. etc. And then now - what a change! I feel somehow as if I
should like the incident set upon a brass plate at the corner of
that dreary thoroughfare for all students to read, poor devils,
when their hearts are down. And I felt I must write one word to
you. Excuse me if I write little: when I am at sea, it gives me a
headache; when I am in port, I have my diary crying 'Give, give.'
I shall have a fine book of travels, I feel sure; and will tell you
more of the South Seas after very few months than any other writer
has done - except Herman Melville perhaps, who is a howling cheese.
Good luck to you, God bless you. - Your affectionate friend,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
FAKARAVA, LOW ARCHIPELAGO, SEPTEMBER 21ST, 1888.
MY DEAR COLVIN, - Only a word. Get out your big atlas, and imagine
a straight line from San Francisco to Anaho, the N.E. corner of
Nukahiva, one of the Marquesas Islands; imagine three weeks there:
imagine a day's sail on August 12th round the eastern end of the
island to Tai-o-hae, the capital; imagine us there till August
22nd: imagine us skirt the east side of Ua-pu - perhaps Rona-Poa
on your atlas - and through the Bondelais straits to Taaka-uku in
Hiva-Oa, where we arrive on the 23rd; imagine us there until
September 4th, when we sailed for Fakarava, which we reached on the
9th, after a very difficult and dangerous passage among these
isles. Tuesday, we shall leave for Taiti, where I shall knock off
and do some necessary work ashore. It looks pretty bald in the
atlas; not in fact; nor I trust in the 130 odd pages of diary which
I have just been looking up for these dates: the interest, indeed,
has been INCREDIBLE: I did not dream there were such places or
such races. My health has stood me splendidly; I am in for hours
wading over the knees for shells; I have been five hours on
horseback: I have been up pretty near all night waiting to see
where the CASCO would go ashore, and with my diary all ready -
simply the most entertaining night of my life. Withal I still have
colds; I have one now, and feel pretty sick too; but not as at
home: instead of being in bed, for instance, I am at this moment
sitting snuffling and writing in an undershirt and trousers; and as
for colour, hands, arms, feet, legs, and face, I am browner than
the berry: only my trunk and the aristocratic spot on which I sit
retain the vile whiteness of the north.
Please give my news and kind love to Henley, Henry James, and any
whom you see of well-wishers. Accept from me the very best of my
affection: and believe me ever yours,
THE OLD MAN VIRULENT.
TAITI, OCTOBER 7TH, 1888.
Never having found a chance to send this off, I may add more of my
news. My cold took a very bad turn, and I am pretty much out of
sorts at this particular, living in a little bare one-twentieth-
furnished house, surrounded by mangoes, etc. All the rest are
well, and I mean to be soon. But these Taiti colds are very severe
and, to children, often fatal; so they were not the thing for me.
Yesterday the brigantine came in from San Francisco, so we can get
our letters off soon. There are in Papeete at this moment, in a
little wooden house with grated verandahs, two people who love you
very much, and one of them is
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
TAITI, AS EVER WAS, 6TH OCTOBER 1888.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - . . . You will receive a lot of mostly very bad
proofs of photographs: the paper was so bad. Please keep them
very private, as they are for the book. We send them, having
learned so dread a fear of the sea, that we wish to put our eggs in
different baskets. We have been thrice within an ace of being
ashore: we were lost (!) for about twelve hours in the Low
Archipelago, but by God's blessing had quiet weather all the time;
and once, in a squall, we cam' so near gaun heels ower hurdies,
that I really dinnae ken why we didnae athegither. Hence, as I
say, a great desire to put our eggs in different baskets,
particularly on the Pacific (aw-haw-haw) Pacific Ocean.
You can have no idea what a mean time we have had, owing to
incidental beastlinesses, nor what a glorious, owing to the
intrinsic interest of these isles. I hope the book will be a good
one; nor do I really very much doubt that - the stuff is so
curious; what I wonder is, if the public will rise to it. A copy
of my journal, or as much of it as is made, shall go to you also;
it is, of course, quite imperfect, much being to be added and
corrected; but O, for the eggs in the different baskets.
All the rest are well enough, and all have enjoyed the cruise so
far, in spite of its drawbacks. We have had an awfae time in some
ways, Mr. Baxter; and if I wasnae sic a verra patient man (when I
ken that I HAVE to be) there wad hae been a braw row; and ance if I
hadnae happened to be on deck about three in the marnin', I THINK
there would have been MURDER done. The American Mairchant Marine
is a kent service; ye'll have heard its praise, I'm thinkin'; an'
if ye never did, ye can get TWA YEARS BEFORE THE MAST, by Dana,
whaur forbye a great deal o' pleisure, ye'll get a' the needcessary
information. Love to your father and all the family. - Ever your
affectionate friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
TAITI, OCTOBER 10TH, 1888.
DEAR GIVER, - I am at a loss to conceive your object in giving me
to a person so locomotory as my proprietor. The number of thousand
miles that I have travelled, the strange bed-fellows with which I
have been made acquainted, I lack the requisite literary talent to
make clear to your imagination. I speak of bed-fellows; pocket-
fellows would be a more exact expression, for the place of my abode
is in my master's righthand trouser-pocket; and there, as he waded
on the resounding beaches of Nukahiva, or in the shallow tepid
water on the reef of Fakarava, I have been overwhelmed by and
buried among all manner of abominable South Sea shells, beautiful
enough in their way, I make no doubt, but singular company for any
self-respecting paper-cutter. He, my master - or as I more justly
call him, my bearer; for although I occasionally serve him, does
not he serve me daily and all day long, carrying me like an African
potentate on my subject's legs? - HE is delighted with these isles,
and this climate, and these savages, and a variety of other things.
He now blows a flageolet with singular effects: sometimes the poor
thing appears stifled with shame, sometimes it screams with agony;
he pursues his career with truculent insensibility. Health appears
to reign in the party. I was very nearly sunk in a squall. I am
sorry I ever left England, for here there are no books to be had,
and without books there is no stable situation for, dear Giver,
your affectionate
WOODEN PAPER-CUTTER.
A neighbouring pair of scissors snips a kiss in your direction.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
TAITI, OCTOBER 16TH, 1888.
MY DEAR COLVIN, - The cruiser for San Francisco departs to-morrow
morning bearing you some kind of a scratch. This much more
important packet will travel by way of Auckland. It contains a
ballant; and I think a better ballant than I expected ever to do.
I can imagine how you will wag your pow over it; and how ragged you
will find it, etc., but has it not spirit all the same? and though
the verse is not all your fancy painted it, has it not some life?
And surely, as narrative, the thing has considerable merit! Read
it, get a typewritten copy taken, and send me that and your opinion
to the Sandwiches. I know I am only courting the most excruciating
mortification; but the real cause of my sending the thing is that I
could bear to go down myself, but not to have much MS. go down with
me. To say truth, we are through the most dangerous; but it has
left in all minds a strong sense of insecurity, and we are all for
putting eggs in various baskets.
We leave here soon, bound for Uahiva, Reiatea, Bora-Bora, and the
Sandwiches.
O, how my spirit languishes
To step ashore on the Sanguishes;
For there my letters wait,
There shall I know my fate.
O, how my spirit languidges
To step ashore on the Sanguidges.
18TH. - I think we shall leave here if all is well on Monday. I am
quite recovered, astonishingly recovered. It must be owned these
climates and this voyage have given me more strength than I could
have thought possible. And yet the sea is a terrible place,
stupefying to the mind and poisonous to the temper, the sea, the
motion, the lack of space, the cruel publicity, the villainous
tinned foods, the sailors, the captain, the passengers - but you
are amply repaid when you sight an island, and drop anchor in a new
world. Much trouble has attended this trip, but I must confess
more pleasure. Nor should I ever complain, as in the last few
weeks, with the curing of my illness indeed, as if that were the
bursting of an abscess, the cloud has risen from my spirits and to
some degree from my temper. Do you know what they called the CASCO
at Fakarava? The SILVER SHIP. Is that not pretty? Pray tell Mrs.
Jenkin, DIE SILBERNE FRAU, as I only learned it since I wrote her.
I think of calling the book by that name: THE CRUISE OF THE SILVER
SHIP - so there will be one poetic page at least - the title. At
the Sandwiches we shall say farewell to the S. S. with mingled
feelings. She is a lovely creature: the most beautiful thing at
this moment in Taiti.
Well, I will take another sheet, though I know I have nothing to
say. You would think I was bursting: but the voyage is all stored
up for the book, which is to pay for it, we fondly hope; and the
troubles of the time are not worth telling; and our news is little.
Here I conclude (Oct. 24th, I think), for we are now stored, and
the Blue Peter metaphorically flies.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO WILLIAM AND THOMAS ARCHER
TAITI, OCTOBER 17TH, 1888.
DEAR ARCHER, - Though quite unable to write letters, I nobly send
you a line signifying nothing. The voyage has agreed well with
all; it has had its pains, and its extraordinary pleasures; nothing
in the world can equal the excitement of the first time you cast
anchor in some bay of a tropical island, and the boats begin to
surround you, and the tattooed people swarm aboard. Tell
Tomarcher, with my respex, that hide-and-seek is not equal to it;
no, nor hidee-in-the-dark; which, for the matter of that, is a game
for the unskilful: the artist prefers daylight, a good-sized
garden, some shrubbery, an open paddock, and - come on, Macduff.
TOMARCHER, I am now a distinguished litterytour, but that was not
the real bent of my genius. I was the best player of hide-and-seek
going; not a good runner, I was up to every shift and dodge, I
could jink very well, I could crawl without any noise through
leaves, I could hide under a carrot plant, it used to be my
favourite boast that I always WALKED into the den. You may care to
hear, Tomarcher, about the children in these parts; their parents
obey them, they do not obey their parents; and I am sorry to tell
you (for I dare say you are already thinking the idea a good one)
that it does not pay one halfpenny. There are three sorts of
civilisation, Tomarcher: the real old-fashioned one, in which
children either had to find out how to please their dear papas, or
their dear papas cut their heads off. This style did very well,
but is now out of fashion. Then the modern European style: in
which children have to behave reasonably well, and go to school and
say their prayers, or their dear papas WILL KNOW THE REASON WHY.
This does fairly well. Then there is the South Sea Island plan,
which does not do one bit. The children beat their parents here;
it does not make their parents any better; so do not try it.
Dear Tomarcher, I have forgotten the address of your new house, but
will send this to one of your papa's publishers. Remember us all
to all of you, and believe me, yours respectably,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
TAUTIRA (THE GARDEN OF THE WORLD), OTHERWISE CALLED HANS-CHRISTIAN-
ANDERSEN-VILLE [NOVEMBER 1888].
MY DEAR CHARLES, - Whether I have a penny left in the wide world, I
know not, nor shall know, till I get to Honolulu, where I
anticipate a devil of an awakening. It will be from a mighty
pleasant dream at least: Tautira being mere Heaven. But suppose,
for the sake of argument, any money to be left in the hands of my
painful doer, what is to be done with it? Save us from exile would
be the wise man's choice, I suppose; for the exile threatens to be
eternal. But yet I am of opinion - in case there should be SOME
dibs in the hand of the P.D., I.E. painful doer; because if there
be none, I shall take to my flageolet on the high-road, and work
home the best way I can, having previously made away with my family
- I am of opinion that if - and his are in the customary state, and
you are thinking of an offering, and there should be still some
funds over, you would be a real good P.D. to put some in with yours
and tak' the credit o't, like a wee man! I know it's a beastly
thing to ask; but it, after all, does no earthly harm, only that
much good. And besides, like enough there's nothing in the till,
and there is an end. Yet I live here in the full lustre of
millions; it is thought I am the richest son of man that has yet
been to Tautira: I! - and I am secretly eaten with the fear of
lying in pawn, perhaps for the remainder of my days, in San
Francisco. As usual, my colds have much hashed my finances.
Do tell Henley I write this just after having dismissed Ori the
sub-chief, in whose house I live, Mrs. Ori, and Pairai, their
adopted child, from the evening hour of music: during which I
Publickly (with a k) Blow on the Flageolet. These are words of
truth. Yesterday I told Ori about W. E. H., counterfeited his
playing on the piano and the pipe, and succeeded in sending the six
feet four there is of that sub-chief somewhat sadly to his bed;
feeling that his was not the genuine article after all. Ori is
exactly like a colonel in the Guards. - I am, dear Charles, ever
yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
Letter: TAUTIRA, 10TH NOVEMBER '88.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - Our mainmast is dry-rotten, and we are all to
the devil; I shall lie in a debtor's jail. Never mind, Tautira is
first chop. I am so besotted that I shall put on the back of this
my attempt at words to Wandering Willie; if you can conceive at all
the difficulty, you will also conceive the vanity with which I
regard any kind of result; and whatever mine is like, it has some
sense, and Burns's has none.
Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?
Hunger my driver, I go where I must.
Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather;
Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust.
Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree.
The true word of welcome was spoken in the door -
Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight,
Kind folks of old, you come again no more.
Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces,
Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.
Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland;
Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.
Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland,
Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.
Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed,
The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO J. A. SYMONDS
NOVEMBER 11TH 1888.
One November night, in the village of Tautira, we sat at the high
table in the hall of assembly, hearing the natives sing. It was
dark in the hall, and very warm; though at times the land wind blew
a little shrewdly through the chinks, and at times, through the
larger openings, we could see the moonlight on the lawn. As the
songs arose in the rattling Tahitian chorus, the chief translated
here and there a verse. Farther on in the volume you shall read
the songs themselves; and I am in hopes that not you only, but all
who can find a savour in the ancient poetry of places, will read
them with some pleasure. You are to conceive us, therefore, in
strange circumstances and very pleasing; in a strange land and
climate, the most beautiful on earth; surrounded by a foreign race
that all travellers have agreed to be the most engaging; and taking
a double interest in two foreign arts.
We came forth again at last, in a cloudy moonlight, on the forest
lawn which is the street of Tautira. The Pacific roared outside
upon the reef. Here and there one of the scattered palm-built
lodges shone out under the shadow of the wood, the lamplight
bursting through the crannies of the wall. We went homeward
slowly, Ori a Ori carrying behind us the lantern and the chairs,
properties with which we had just been enacting our part of the
distinguished visitor. It was one of those moments in which minds
not altogether churlish recall the names and deplore the absence of
congenial friends; and it was your name that first rose upon our
lips. 'How Symonds would have enjoyed this evening!' said one, and
then another. The word caught in my mind; I went to bed, and it
was still there. The glittering, frosty solitudes in which your
days are cast arose before me: I seemed to see you walking there
in the late night, under the pine-trees and the stars; and I
received the image with something like remorse.
There is a modern attitude towards fortune; in this place I will
not use a graver name. Staunchly to withstand her buffets and to
enjoy with equanimity her favours was the code of the virtuous of
old. Our fathers, it should seem, wondered and doubted how they
had merited their misfortunes: we, rather how we have deserved our
happiness. And we stand often abashed and sometimes revolted, at
those partialities of fate by which we profit most. It was so with
me on that November night: I felt that our positions should be
changed. It was you, dear Symonds, who should have gone upon that
voyage and written this account. With your rich stores of
knowledge, you could have remarked and understood a thousand things
of interest and beauty that escaped my ignorance; and the brilliant
colours of your style would have carried into a thousand sickrooms
the sea air and the strong sun of tropic islands. It was otherwise
decreed. But suffer me at least to connect you, if only in name
and only in the fondness of imagination, with the voyage of the
'SILVER SHIP.'
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
DEAR SYMONDS, - I send you this (November 11th), the morning of its
completion. If I ever write an account of this voyage, may I place
this letter at the beginning? It represents - I need not tell you,
for you too are an artist - a most genuine feeling, which kept me
long awake last night; and though perhaps a little elaborate, I
think it a good piece of writing. We are IN HEAVEN HERE. Do not
forget
R. L. S.
Please keep this: I have no perfect copy.
TAUTIRA, ON THE PENINSULA OF TAHITI.
Letter: TO THOMAS ARCHER
TAUTIRA, ISLAND OF TAHITI [NOVEMBER 1888].
DEAR TOMARCHER, - This is a pretty state of things! seven o'clock
and no word of breakfast! And I was awake a good deal last night,
for it was full moon, and they had made a great fire of cocoa-nut
husks down by the sea, and as we have no blinds or shutters, this
kept my room very bright. And then the rats had a wedding or a
school-feast under my bed. And then I woke early, and I have
nothing to read except Virgil's AENEID, which is not good fun on an
empty stomach, and a Latin dictionary, which is good for naught,
and by some humorous accident, your dear papa's article on
Skerryvore. And I read the whole of that, and very impudent it is,
but you must not tell your dear papa I said so, or it might come to
a battle in which you might lose either a dear papa or a valued
correspondent, or both, which would be prodigal. And still no
breakfast; so I said 'Let's write to Tomarcher.'
This is a much better place for children than any I have hitherto
seen in these seas. The girls (and sometimes the boys) play a very
elaborate kind of hopscotch. The boys play horses exactly as we do
in Europe; and have very good fun on stilts, trying to knock each
other down, in which they do not often succeed. The children of
all ages go to church and are allowed to do what they please,
running about the aisles, rolling balls, stealing mamma's bonnet
and publicly sitting on it, and at last going to sleep in the
middle of the floor. I forgot to say that the whips to play
horses, and the balls to roll about the church - at least I never
saw them used elsewhere - grow ready made on trees; which is rough
on toy-shops. The whips are so good that I wanted to play horses
myself; but no such luck! my hair is grey, and I am a great, big,
ugly man. The balls are rather hard, but very light and quite
round. When you grow up and become offensively rich, you can
charter a ship in the port of London, and have it come back to you
entirely loaded with these balls; when you could satisfy your mind
as to their character, and give them away when done with to your
uncles and aunts. But what I really wanted to tell you was this:
besides the tree-top toys (Hush-a-by, toy-shop, on the tree-top!),
I have seen some real MADE toys, the first hitherto observed in the
South Seas.
This was how. You are to imagine a four-wheeled gig; one horse; in
the front seat two Tahiti natives, in their Sunday clothes, blue
coat, white shirt, kilt (a little longer than the Scotch) of a blue
stuff with big white or yellow flowers, legs and feet bare; in the
back seat me and my wife, who is a friend of yours; under our feet,
plenty of lunch and things: among us a great deal of fun in broken
Tahitian, one of the natives, the sub-chief of the village, being a
great ally of mine. Indeed we have exchanged names; so that he is
now called Rui, the nearest they can come to Louis, for they have
no L and no S in their language. Rui is six feet three in his
stockings, and a magnificent man. We all have straw hats, for the
sun is strong. We drive between the sea, which makes a great
noise, and the mountains; the road is cut through a forest mostly
of fruit trees, the very creepers, which take the place of our ivy,
heavy with a great and delicious fruit, bigger than your head and
far nicer, called Barbedine. Presently we came to a house in a
pretty garden, quite by itself, very nicely kept, the doors and
windows open, no one about, and no noise but that of the sea. It
looked like a house in a fairy-tale, and just beyond we must ford a
river, and there we saw the inhabitants. Just in the mouth of the
river, where it met the sea waves, they were ducking and bathing
and screaming together like a covey of birds: seven or eight
little naked brown boys and girls as happy as the day was long; and
on the banks of the stream beside them, real toys - toy ships, full
rigged, and with their sails set, though they were lying in the
dust on their beam ends. And then I knew for sure they were all
children in a fairy-story, living alone together in that lonely
house with the only toys in all the island; and that I had myself
driven, in my four-wheeled gig, into a corner of the fairy-story,
and the question was, should I get out again? But it was all
right; I guess only one of the wheels of the gig had got into the
fairy-story; and the next jolt the whole thing vanished, and we
drove on in our sea-side forest as before, and I have the honour to
be Tomarcher's valued correspondent, TERIITEPA, which he was
previously known as
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
YACHT 'CASCO,' AT SEA, 14TH JANUARY, 1889.
MY DEAR COLVIN, - Twenty days out from Papeete. Yes, sir, all
that, and only (for a guess) in 4 degrees north or at the best 4
degrees 30 minutes, though already the wind seems to smell a little
of the North Pole. My handwriting you must take as you get, for we
are speeding along through a nasty swell, and I can only keep my
place at the table by means of a foot against the divan, the
unoccupied hand meanwhile gripping the ink-bottle. As we begin (so
very slowly) to draw near to seven months of correspondence, we are
all in some fear; and I want to have letters written before I shall
be plunged into that boiling pot of disagreeables which I
constantly expect at Honolulu. What is needful can be added there.
We were kept two months at Tautira in the house of my dear old
friend, Ori a Ori, till both the masts of this invaluable yacht had
been repaired. It was all for the best: Tautira being the most
beautiful spot, and its people the most amiable, I have ever found.
Besides which, the climate suited me to the ground; I actually went
sea-bathing almost every day, and in our feasts (we are all huge
eaters in Taiarapu) have been known to apply four times for pig.
And then again I got wonderful materials for my book, collected
songs and legends on the spot; songs still sung in chorus by
perhaps a hundred persons, not two of whom can agree on their
translation; legends, on which I have seen half a dozen seniors
sitting in conclave and debating what came next. Once I went a
day's journey to the other side of the island to Tati, the high
chief of the Tevas - MY chief that is, for I am now a Teva and
Teriitera, at your service - to collect more and correct what I had
already. In the meanwhile I got on with my work, almost finished
the MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, which contains more human work than
anything of mine but KIDNAPPED, and wrote the half of another
ballad, the SONG OF RAHERO, on a Taiarapu legend of my own clan,
sir - not so much fire as the FEAST OF FAMINE, but promising to be
more even and correct. But the best fortune of our stay at Tautira
was my knowledge of Ori himself, one of the finest creatures
extant. The day of our parting was a sad one. We deduced from it
a rule for travellers: not to stay two months in one place - which
is to cultivate regrets.
At last our contemptible ship was ready; to sea we went, bound for
Honolulu and the letter-bag, on Christmas Day; and from then to now
have experienced every sort of minor misfortune, squalls, calms,
contrary winds and seas, pertinacious rains, declining stores, till
we came almost to regard ourselves as in the case of Vanderdecken.
Three days ago our luck seemed to improve, we struck a leading
breeze, got creditably through the doldrums, and just as we looked
to have the N.E. trades and a straight run, the rains and squalls
and calms began again about midnight, and this morning, though
there is breeze enough to send us along, we are beaten back by an
obnoxious swell out of the north. Here is a page of complaint,
when a verse of thanksgiving had perhaps been more in place. For
all this time we must have been skirting past dangerous weather, in
the tail and circumference of hurricanes, and getting only
annoyance where we should have had peril, and ill-humour instead of
fear.
I wonder if I have managed to give you any news this time, or
whether the usual damn hangs over my letter? 'The midwife
whispered, Be thou dull!' or at least inexplicit. Anyway I have
tried my best, am exhausted with the effort, and fall back into the
land of generalities. I cannot tell you how often we have planned
our arrival at the Monument: two nights ago, the 12th January, we
had it all planned out, arrived in the lights and whirl of
Waterloo, hailed a hansom, span up Waterloo Road, over the bridge,
etc. etc., and hailed the Monument gate in triumph and with
indescribable delight. My dear Custodian, I always think we are
too sparing of assurances: Cordelia is only to be excused by Regan
and Goneril in the same nursery; I wish to tell you that the longer
I live, the more dear do you become to me; nor does my heart own
any stronger sentiment. If the bloody schooner didn't send me
flying in every sort of direction at the same time, I would say
better what I feel so much; but really, if you were here, you would
not be writing letters, I believe; and even I, though of a more
marine constitution, am much perturbed by this bobbery and wish - O
ye Gods, how I wish! - that it was done, and we had arrived, and I
had Pandora's Box (my mail bag) in hand, and was in the lively hope
of something eatable for dinner instead of salt horse, tinned
mutton, duff without any plums, and pie fruit, which now make up
our whole repertory. O Pandora's Box! I wonder what you will
contain. As like as not you will contain but little money: if
that be so, we shall have to retire to 'Frisco in the CASCO, and
thence by sea VIA Panama to Southampton, where we should arrive in
April. I would like fine to see you on the tug: ten years older
both of us than the last time you came to welcome Fanny and me to
England. If we have money, however, we shall do a little
differently: send the CASCO away from Honolulu empty of its high-
born lessees, for that voyage to 'Frisco is one long dead beat in
foul and at last in cold weather; stay awhile behind, follow by
steamer, cross the States by train, stay awhile in New York on
business, and arrive probably by the German Line in Southampton.
But all this is a question of money. We shall have to lie very
dark awhile to recruit our finances: what comes from the book of
the cruise, I do not want to touch until the capital is repaid.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
HONOLULU, JANUARY 1889.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - Here at last I have arrived. We could not
get away from Tahiti till Christmas Day, and then had thirty days
of calms and squalls, a deplorable passage. This has thrown me all
out of gear in every way. I plunge into business.
1. THE MASTER: Herewith go three more parts. You see he grows in
balk; this making ten already, and I am not yet sure if I can
finish it in an eleventh; which shall go to you QUAM PRIMUM - I
hope by next mail.
2. ILLUSTRATIONS TO M. I totally forgot to try to write to Hole.
It was just as well, for I find it impossible to forecast with
sufficient precision. You had better throw off all this and let
him have it at once. PLEASE DO: ALL, AND AT ONCE: SEE FURTHER;
and I should hope he would still be in time for the later numbers.
The three pictures I have received are so truly good that I should
bitterly regret having the volume imperfectly equipped. They are
the best illustrations I have seen since I don't know when.
3. MONEY. To-morrow the mail comes in, and I hope it will bring
me money either from you or home, but I will add a word on that
point.
4. My address will be Honolulu - no longer Yacht CASCO, which I am
packing off - till probably April.
5. As soon as I am through with THE MASTER, I shall finish the
GAME OF BLUFF - now rechristened THE WRONG BOX. This I wish to
sell, cash down. It is of course right in the States; and I
offer it to you for five thousand dollars. Please reply on this by
return. Also please tell the typewriter who was so good as to be
amused by our follies that I am filled with admiration for his
piece of work.
6. MASTER again. Please see that I haven't the name of the
Governor of New York wrong (1764 is the date) in part ten. I have
no book of reference to put me right. Observe you now have up to
August inclusive in hand, so you should begin to feel happy.
Is this all? I wonder, and fear not. Henry the Trader has not yet
turned up: I hope he may to-morrow, when we expect a mail. Not
one word of business have I received either from the States or
England, nor anything in the shape of coin; which leaves me in a
fine uncertainty and quite penniless on these islands. H.M. (who
is a gentleman of a courtly order and much tinctured with letters)
is very polite; I may possibly ask for the position of palace
doorkeeper. My voyage has been a singular mixture of good and ill-
fortune. As far as regards interest and material, the fortune has
been admirable; as far as regards time, money, and impediments of
all kinds, from squalls and calms to rotten masts and sprung spars,
simply detestable. I hope you will be interested to hear of two
volumes on the wing. The cruise itself, you are to know, will make
a big volume with appendices; some of it will first appear as (what
they call) letters in some of M'Clure's papers. I believe the book
when ready will have a fair measure of serious interest: I have
had great fortune in finding old songs and ballads and stories, for
instance, and have many singular instances of life in the last few
years among these islands.
The second volume is of ballads. You know TICONDEROGA. I have
written another: THE FEAST OF FAMINE, a Marquesan story. A third
is half done: THE SONG OF RAHERO, a genuine Tahitian legend. A
fourth dances before me. A Hawaiian fellow this, THE PRIEST'S
DROUGHT, or some such name. If, as I half suspect, I get enough
subjects out of the islands, TICONDEROGA shall be suppressed, and
we'll call the volume SOUTH SEA BALLADS. In health, spirits,
renewed interest in life, and, I do believe, refreshed capacity for
work, the cruise has proved a wise folly. Still we're not home,
and (although the friend of a crowned head) are penniless upon
these (as one of my correspondents used to call them) 'lovely but
FATIL islands.' By the way, who wrote the LION OF THE NILE? My
dear sir, that is Something Like. Overdone in bits, it has a true
thought and a true ring of language. Beg the anonymous from me, to
delete (when he shall republish) the two last verses, and end on
'the lion of the Nile.' One Lampman has a good sonnet on a 'Winter
Evening' in, I think, the same number: he seems ill named, but I
am tempted to hope a man is not always answerable for his name.
For instance, you would think you knew mine. No such matter. It
is - at your service and Mr. Scribner's and that of all of the
faithful - Teriitera (pray pronounce Tayree-Tayra) or (GALLICE)
Teri-tera.
R. L. S.
More when the mail shall come.
I am an idiot. I want to be clear on one point. Some of Hole's
drawings must of course be too late; and yet they seem to me so
excellent I would fain have the lot complete. It is one thing for
you to pay for drawings which are to appear in that soul-swallowing
machine, your magazine: quite another if they are only to
illustrate a volume. I wish you to take a brisk (even a fiery)
decision on the point; and let Hole know. To resume my desultory
song, I desire you would carry the same fire (hereinbefore
suggested) into your decision on the WRONG BOX; for in my present
state of benighted ignorance as to my affairs for the last seven
months - I know not even whether my house or my mother's house have
been let - I desire to see something definite in front of me -
outside the lot of palace doorkeeper. I believe the said WRONG BOX
is a real lark; in which, of course, I may be grievously deceived;
but the typewriter is with me. I may also be deceived as to the
numbers of THE MASTER now going and already gone; but to me they
seem First Chop, sir, First Chop. I hope I shall pull off that
damned ending; but it still depresses me: this is your doing, Mr.
Burlingame: you would have it there and then, and I fear it - I
fear that ending.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
HONOLULU, FEBRUARY 8TH, 1889.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - Here we are at Honolulu, and have dismissed the
yacht, and lie here till April anyway, in a fine state of haze,
which I am yet in hopes some letter of yours (still on the way) may
dissipate. No money, and not one word as to money! However, I
have got the yacht paid off in triumph, I think; and though we stay
here impignorate, it should not be for long, even if you bring us
no extra help from home. The cruise has been a great success, both
as to matter, fun, and health; and yet, Lord, man! we're pleased to
be ashore! Yon was a very fine voyage from Tahiti up here, but -
the dry land's a fine place too, and we don't mind squalls any
longer, and eh, man, that's a great thing. Blow, blow, thou wintry
wind, thou hast done me no appreciable harm beyond a few grey
hairs! Altogether, this foolhardy venture is achieved; and if I
have but nine months of life and any kind of health, I shall have
both eaten my cake and got it back again with usury. But, man,
there have been days when I felt guilty, and thought I was in no
position for the head of a house.
Your letter and accounts are doubtless at S. F., and will reach me
in course. My wife is no great shakes; she is the one who has
suffered most. My mother has had a Huge Old Time; Lloyd is first
chop; I so well that I do not know myself - sea-bathing, if you
please, and what is far more dangerous, entertaining and being
entertained by His Majesty here, who is a very fine intelligent
fellow, but O, Charles! what a crop for the drink! He carries it,
too, like a mountain with a sparrow on its shoulders. We
calculated five bottles of champagne in three hours and a half
(afternoon), and the sovereign quite presentable, although
perceptibly more dignified at the end. . . .
The extraordinary health I enjoy and variety of interests I find
among these islands would tempt me to remain here; only for Lloyd,
who is not well placed in such countries for a permanency; and a
little for Colvin, to whom I feel I owe a sort of filial duty. And
these two considerations will no doubt bring me back - to go to bed
again - in England. - Yours ever affectionately,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO R. A. M. STEVENSON
HONOLULU, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS, FEBRUARY 1889.
MY DEAR BOB, - My extremely foolhardy venture is practically over.
How foolhardy it was I don't think I realised. We had a very small
schooner, and, like most yachts, over-rigged and over-sparred, and
like many American yachts on a very dangerous sail plan. The
waters we sailed in are, of course, entirely unlighted, and very
badly charted; in the Dangerous Archipelago, through which we were
fools enough to go, we were perfectly in ignorance of where we were
for a whole night and half the next day, and this in the midst of
invisible islands and rapid and variable currents; and we were
lucky when we found our whereabouts at last. We have twice had all
we wanted in the way of squalls: once, as I came on deck, I found
the green sea over the cockpit coamings and running down the
companion like a brook to meet me; at that same moment the foresail
sheet jammed and the captain had no knife; this was the only
occasion on the cruise that ever I set a hand to a rope, but I
worked like a Trojan, judging the possibility of haemorrhage better
than the certainty of drowning. Another time I saw a rather
singular thing: our whole ship's company as pale as paper from the
captain to the cook; we had a black squall astern on the port side
and a white squall ahead to starboard; the complication passed off
innocuous, the black squall only fetching us with its tail, and the
white one slewing off somewhere else. Twice we were a long while
(days) in the close vicinity of hurricane weather, but again luck
prevailed, and we saw none of it. These are dangers incident to
these seas and small craft. What was an amazement, and at the same
time a powerful stroke of luck, both our masts were rotten, and we
found it out - I was going to say in time, but it was stranger and
luckier than that. The head of the mainmast hung over so that
hands were afraid to go to the helm; and less than three weeks
before - I am not sure it was more than a fortnight - we had been
nearly twelve hours beating off the lee shore of Eimeo (or Moorea,
next island to Tahiti) in half a gale of wind with a violent head
sea: she would neither tack nor wear once, and had to be boxed off
with the mainsail - you can imagine what an ungodly show of kites
we carried - and yet the mast stood. The very day after that, in
the southern bight of Tahiti, we had a near squeak, the wind
suddenly coming calm; the reefs were close in with, my eye! what a
surf! The pilot thought we were gone, and the captain had a boat
cleared, when a lucky squall came to our rescue. My wife, hearing
the order given about the boats, remarked to my mother, 'Isn't that
nice? We shall soon be ashore!' Thus does the female mind
unconsciously skirt along the verge of eternity. Our voyage up
here was most disastrous - calms, squalls, head sea, waterspouts of
rain, hurricane weather all about, and we in the midst of the
hurricane season, when even the hopeful builder and owner of the
yacht had pronounced these seas unfit for her. We ran out of food,
and were quite given up for lost in Honolulu: people had ceased to
speak to Belle about the CASCO, as a deadly subject.
But the perils of the deep were part of the programme; and though I
am very glad to be done with them for a while and comfortably
ashore, where a squall does not matter a snuff to any one, I feel
pretty sure I shall want to get to sea again ere long. The
dreadful risk I took was financial, and double-headed. First, I
had to sink a lot of money in the cruise, and if I didn't get
health, how was I to get it back? I have got health to a wonderful
extent; and as I have the most interesting matter for my book, bar
accidents, I ought to get all I have laid out and a profit. But,
second (what I own I never considered till too late), there was the
danger of collisions, of damages and heavy repairs, of disablement,
towing, and salvage; indeed, the cruise might have turned round and
cost me double. Nor will this danger be quite over till I hear the
yacht is in San Francisco; for though I have shaken the dust of her
deck from my feet, I fear (as a point of law) she is still mine
till she gets there.
From my point of view, up to now the cruise has been a wonderful
success. I never knew the world was so amusing. On the last
voyage we had grown so used to sea-life that no one wearied, though
it lasted a full month, except Fanny, who is always ill. All the
time our visits to the islands have been more like dreams than
realities: the people, the life, the beachcombers, the old stories
and songs I have picked up, so interesting; the climate, the
scenery, and (in some places) the women, so beautiful. The women
are handsomest in Tahiti, the men in the Marquesas; both as fine
types as can be imagined. Lloyd reminds me, I have not told you
one characteristic incident of the cruise from a semi-naval point
of view. One night we were going ashore in Anaho Bay; the most
awful noise on deck; the breakers distinctly audible in the cabin;
and there I had to sit below, entertaining in my best style a
negroid native chieftain, much the worse for rum! You can imagine
the evening's pleasure.
This naval report on cruising in the South Seas would be incomplete
without one other trait. On our voyage up here I came one day into
the dining-room, the hatch in the floor was open, the ship's boy
was below with a baler, and two of the hands were carrying buckets
as for a fire; this meant that the pumps had ceased working.
One stirring day was that in which we sighted Hawaii. It blew
fair, but very strong; we carried jib, foresail, and mainsail, all
single-reefed, and she carried her lee rail under water and flew.
The swell, the heaviest I have ever been out in - I tried in vain
to estimate the height, AT LEAST fifteen feet - came tearing after
us about a point and a half off the wind. We had the best hand -
old Louis - at the wheel; and, really, he did nobly, and had noble
luck, for it never caught us once. At times it seemed we must have
it; Louis would look over his shoulder with the queerest look and
dive down his neck into his shoulders; and then it missed us
somehow, and only sprays came over our quarter, turning the little
outside lane of deck into a mill race as deep as to the cockpit
coamings. I never remember anything more delightful and exciting.
Pretty soon after we were lying absolutely becalmed under the lee
of Hawaii, of which we had been warned; and the captain never
confessed he had done it on purpose, but when accused, he smiled.
Really, I suppose he did quite right, for we stood committed to a
dangerous race, and to bring her to the wind would have been rather
a heart-sickening manoeuvre.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MARCEL SCHWOB
HONOLULU, SANDWICH ISLANDS, FEBRUARY 8TH, 1889.
DEAR SIR, - I thank you - from the midst of such a flurry as you
can imagine, with seven months' accumulated correspondence on my
table - for your two friendly and clever letters. Pray write me
again. I shall be home in May or June, and not improbably shall
come to Paris in the summer. Then we can talk; or in the interval
I may be able to write, which is to-day out of the question. Pray
take a word from a man of crushing occupations, and count it as a
volume. Your little CONTE is delightful. Ah yes, you are right, I
love the eighteenth century; and so do you, and have not listened
to its voice in vain. - The Hunted One,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
HONOLULU, 8TH MARCH 1889.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - At last I have the accounts: the Doer has done
excellently, and in the words of -, 'I reciprocate every step of
your behaviour.' . . I send a letter for Bob in your care, as I
don't know his Liverpool address, by which (for he is to show you
part of it) you will see we have got out of this adventure - or
hope to have - with wonderful fortune. I have the retrospective
horrors on me when I think of the liabilities I incurred; but,
thank God, I think I'm in port again, and I have found one climate
in which I can enjoy life. Even Honolulu is too cold for me; but
the south isles were a heaven upon earth to a puir, catarrhal party
like Johns'one. We think, as Tahiti is too complete a banishment,
to try Madeira. It's only a week from England, good
communications, and I suspect in climate and scenery not unlike our
dear islands; in people, alas! there can be no comparison. But
friends could go, and I could come in summer, so I should not be
quite cut off.
Lloyd and I have finished a story, THE WRONG BOX. If it is not
funny, I am sure I do not know what is. I have split over writing
it. Since I have been here, I have been toiling like a galley
slave: three numbers of THE MASTER to rewrite, five chapters of
the WRONG BOX to write and rewrite, and about five hundred lines of
a narrative poem to write, rewrite, and re-rewrite. Now I have THE
MASTER waiting me for its continuation, two numbers more; when
that's done, I shall breathe. This spasm of activity has been
chequered with champagne parties: Happy and Glorious, Hawaii Ponoi
paua: kou moi - (Native Hawaiians, dote upon your monarch!)
Hawaiian God save the King. (In addition to my other labours, I am
learning the language with a native moonshee.) Kalakaua is a
terrible companion; a bottle of fizz is like a glass of sherry to
him, he thinks nothing of five or six in an afternoon as a whet for
dinner. You should see a photograph of our party after an
afternoon with H. H. M.: my! what a crew! - Yours ever
affectionately,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO HENRY JAMES
HONOLULU [MARCH 1889].
MY DEAR JAMES, - Yes - I own up - I am untrue to friendship and
(what is less, but still considerable) to civilisation. I am not
coming home for another year. There it is, cold and bald, and now
you won't believe in me at all, and serve me right (says you) and
the devil take me. But look here, and judge me tenderly. I have
had more fun and pleasure of my life these past months than ever
before, and more health than any time in ten long years. And even
here in Honolulu I have withered in the cold; and this precious
deep is filled with islands, which we may still visit; and though
the sea is a deathful place, I like to be there, and like squalls
(when they are over); and to draw near to a new island, I cannot
say how much I like. In short, I take another year of this sort of
life, and mean to try to work down among the poisoned arrows, and
mean (if it may be) to come back again when the thing is through,
and converse with Henry James as heretofore; and in the meanwhile
issue directions to H. J. to write to me once more. Let him
address here at Honolulu, for my views are vague; and if it is sent
here it will follow and find me, if I am to be found; and if I am
not to be found the man James will have done his duty, and we shall
be at the bottom of the sea, where no post-office clerk can be
expected to discover us, or languishing on a coral island, the
philosophic drudges of some barbarian potentate: perchance, of an
American Missionary. My wife has just sent to Mrs. Sitwell a
translation (TANT BIEN QUE MAL) of a letter I have had from my
chief friend in this part of the world: go and see her, and get a
hearing of it; it will do you good; it is a better method of
correspondence 'than even Henry James's. I jest, but seriously it
is a strange thing for a tough, sick, middle-aged scrivener like R.
L. S. to receive a letter so conceived from a man fifty years old,
a leading politician, a crack orator, and the great wit of his
village: boldly say, 'the highly popular M.P. of Tautira.' My
nineteenth century strikes here, and lies alongside of something
beautiful and ancient. I think the receipt of such a letter might
humble, shall I say even -? and for me, I would rather have
received it than written REDGAUNTLET or the SIXTH AENEID. All
told, if my books have enabled or helped me to make this voyage, to
know Rui, and to have received such a letter, they have (in the old
prefatorial expression) not been writ in vain. It would seem from
this that I have been not so much humbled as puffed up; but, I
assure you, I have in fact been both. A little of what that letter
says is my own earning; not all, but yet a little; and the little
makes me proud, and all the rest ashamed; and in the contrast, how
much more beautiful altogether is the ancient man than him of to-
day!
Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he IS of the
nineteenth century, and that glaringly. And to curry favour with
him, I wish I could be more explicit; but, indeed, I am still of
necessity extremely vague, and cannot tell what I am to do, nor
where I am to go for some while yet. As soon as I am sure, you
shall hear. All are fairly well - the wife, your countrywoman,
least of all; troubles are not entirely wanting; but on the whole
we prosper, and we are all affectionately yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
HONOLULU, APRIL 2ND, 1889.
MY DEAR COLVIN, - I am beginning to be ashamed of writing on to you
without the least acknowledgment, like a tramp; but I do not care -
I am hardened; and whatever be the cause of your silence, I mean to
write till all is blue. I am outright ashamed of my news, which is
that we are not coming home for another year. I cannot but hope it
may continue the vast improvement of my health: I think it good
for Fanny and Lloyd; and we have all a taste for this wandering and
dangerous life. My mother I send home, to my relief, as this part
of our cruise will be (if we can carry it out) rather difficult in
places. Here is the idea: about the middle of June (unless the
Boston Board objects) we sail from Honolulu in the missionary ship
(barquentine auxiliary steamer) MORNING STAR: she takes us through
the Gilberts and Marshalls, and drops us (this is my great idea) on
Ponape, one of the volcanic islands of the Carolines. Here we stay
marooned among a doubtful population, with a Spanish vice-governor
and five native kings, and a sprinkling of missionaries all at
loggerheads, on the chance of fetching a passage to Sydney in a
trader, a labour ship, or (maybe, but this appears too bright) a
ship of war. If we can't get the MORNING STAR (and the Board has
many reasons that I can see for refusing its permission) I mean to
try to fetch Fiji, hire a schooner there, do the Fijis and
Friendlies, hit the course of the RICHMOND at Tonga Tabu, make back
by Tahiti, and so to S. F., and home: perhaps in June 1890. For
the latter part of the cruise will likely be the same in either
case. You can see for yourself how much variety and adventure this
promises, and that it is not devoid of danger at the best; but if
we can pull it off in safety, gives me a fine book of travel, and
Lloyd a fine lecture and diorama, which should vastly better our
finances.
I feel as if I were untrue to friendship; believe me, Colvin, when
I look forward to this absence of another year, my conscience sinks
at thought of the Monument; but I think you will pardon me if you
consider how much this tropical weather mends my health. Remember
me as I was at home, and think of me sea-bathing and walking about,
as jolly as a sandboy: you will own the temptation is strong; and
as the scheme, bar fatal accidents, is bound to pay into the
bargain, sooner or later, it seems it would be madness to come home
now, with an imperfect book, no illustrations to speak of, no
diorama, and perhaps fall sick again by autumn. I do not think I
delude myself when I say the tendency to catarrh has visibly
diminished.
It is a singular tiring that as I was packing up old papers ere I
left Skerryvore, I came on the prophecies of a drunken Highland
sibyl, when I was seventeen. She said I was to be very happy, to
visit America, and TO BE MUCH UPON THE SEA. It seems as if it were
coming true with a vengeance. Also, do you remember my strong,
old, rooted belief that I shall die by drowning? I don't want that
to come true, though it is an easy death; but it occurs to me
oddly, with these long chances in front. I cannot say why I like
the sea; no man is more cynically and constantly alive to its
perils; I regard it as the highest form of gambling; and yet I love
the sea as much as I hate gambling. Fine, clean emotions; a world
all and always beautiful; air better than wine; interest
unflagging; there is upon the whole no better life. - Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
[HONOLULU, APRIL 1889.]
MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - This is to announce the most prodigious
change of programme. I have seen so much of the South Seas that I
desire to see more, and I get so much health here that I dread a
return to our vile climates. I have applied accordingly to the
missionary folk to let me go round in the MORNING STAR; and if the
Boston Board should refuse, I shall get somehow to Fiji, hire a
trading schooner, and see the Fijis and Friendlies and Samoa. He
would be a South Seayer, Mr. Burlingame. Of course, if I go in the
MORNING STAR, I see all the eastern (or western?) islands.
Before I sail, I shall make out to let you have the last of THE
MASTER: though I tell you it sticks! - and I hope to have had some
proofs forbye, of the verses anyway. And now to business.
I want (if you can find them) in the British sixpenny edition, if
not, in some equally compact and portable shape - Seaside Library,
for instance - the Waverley Novels entire, or as entire as you can
get 'em, and the following of Marryat: PHANTOM SHIP, PETER SIMPLE,
PERCIVAL KEENE, PRIVATEERSMAN, CHILDREN OF THE NEW FOREST, FRANK
MILDMAY, NEWTON FORSTER, DOG FIEND (SNARLEYYOW). Also MIDSHIPMAN
EASY, KINGSBURN, Carlyle's FRENCH REVOLUTION, Motley's DUTCH
REPUBLIC, Lang's LETTERS ON LITERATURE, a complete set of my works,
JENKIN, in duplicate; also FAMILIAR STUDIES, ditto.
I have to thank you for the accounts, which are satisfactory
indeed, and for the cheque for $1000. Another account will have
come and gone before I see you. I hope it will be equally roseate
in colour. I am quite worked out, and this cursed end of THE
MASTER hangs over me like the arm of the gallows; but it is always
darkest before dawn, and no doubt the clouds will soon rise; but it
is a difficult thing to write, above all in Mackellarese; and I
cannot yet see my way clear. If I pull this off, THE MASTER will
be a pretty good novel or I am the more deceived; and even if I
don't pull it off, it'll still have some stuff in it.
We shall remain here until the middle of June anyway; but my mother
leaves for Europe early in May. Hence our mail should continue to
come here; but not hers. I will let you know my next address,
which will probably be Sydney. If we get on the MORNING STAR, I
propose at present to get marooned on Ponape, and take my chance of
getting a passage to Australia. It will leave times and seasons
mighty vague, and the cruise is risky; but I shall know something
of the South Seas when it is done, or else the South Seas will
contain all there is of me. It should give me a fine book of
travels, anyway.
Low will probably come and ask some dollars of you. Pray let him
have them, they are for outfit. O, another complete set of my
books should go to Captain A. H. Otis, care of Dr. Merritt, Yacht
CASCO, Oakland, Cal. In haste,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE
HONOLULU, APRIL 6TH, 1889.
MY DEAR MISS BOODLE, - Nobody writes a better letter than my
Gamekeeper: so gay, so pleasant, so engagingly particular,
answering (by some delicate instinct) all the questions she
suggests. It is a shame you should get such a poor return as I can
make, from a mind essentially and originally incapable of the art
epistolary. I would let the paper-cutter take my place; but I am
sorry to say the little wooden seaman did after the manner of
seamen, and deserted in the Societies. The place he seems to have
stayed at - seems, for his absence was not observed till we were
near the Equator - was Tautira, and, I assure you, he displayed
good taste, Tautira being as 'nigh hand heaven' as a paper-cutter
or anybody has a right to expect.
I think all our friends will be very angry with us, and I give the
grounds of their probable displeasure bluntly - we are not coming
home for another year. My mother returns next month. Fanny,
Lloyd, and I push on again among the islands on a trading schooner,
the EQUATOR - first for the Gilbert group, which we shall have an
opportunity to explore thoroughly; then, if occasion serve, to the
Marshalls and Carolines; and if occasion (or money) fail, to Samoa,
and back to Tahiti. I own we are deserters, but we have excuses.
You cannot conceive how these climates agree with the wretched
house-plant of Skerryvore: he wonders to find himself sea-bathing,
and cutting about the world loose, like a grown-up person. They
agree with Fanny too, who does not suffer from her rheumatism, and
with Lloyd also. And the interest of the islands is endless; and
the sea, though I own it is a fearsome place, is very delightful.
We had applied for places in the American missionary ship, the
MORNING STAR, but this trading schooner is a far preferable idea,
giving us more time and a thousandfold more liberty; so we
determined to cut off the missionaries with a shilling.
The Sandwich Islands do not interest us very much; we live here,
oppressed with civilisation, and look for good things in the
future. But it would surprise you if you came out to-night from
Honolulu (all shining with electric lights, and all in a bustle
from the arrival of the mail, which is to carry you these lines)
and crossed the long wooden causeway along the beach, and came out
on the road through Kapiolani park, and seeing a gate in the
palings, with a tub of gold-fish by the wayside, entered casually
in. The buildings stand in three groups by the edge of the beach,
where an angry little spitfire sea continually spirts and thrashes
with impotent irascibility, the big seas breaking further out upon
the reef. The first is a small house, with a very large summer
parlour, or LANAI, as they call it here, roofed, but practically
open. There you will find the lamps burning and the family sitting
about the table, dinner just done: my mother, my wife, Lloyd,
Belle, my wife's daughter, Austin her child, and to-night (by way
of rarity) a guest. All about the walls our South Sea curiosities,
war clubs, idols, pearl shells, stone axes, etc.; and the walls are
only a small part of a lanai, the rest being glazed or latticed
windows, or mere open space. You will see there no sign of the
Squire, however; and being a person of a humane disposition, you
will only glance in over the balcony railing at the merry-makers in
the summer parlour, and proceed further afield after the Exile.
You look round, there is beautiful green turf, many trees of an
outlandish sort that drop thorns - look out if your feet are bare;
but I beg your pardon, you have not been long enough in the South
Seas - and many oleanders in full flower. The next group of
buildings is ramshackle, and quite dark; you make out a coach-house
door, and look in - only some cocoanuts; you try round to the left
and come to the sea front, where Venus and the moon are making
luminous tracks on the water, and a great swell rolls and shines on
the outer reef; and here is another door - all these places open
from the outside - and you go in, and find photography, tubs of
water, negatives steeping, a tap, and a chair and an inkbottle,
where my wife is supposed to write; round a little further, a third
door, entering which you find a picture upon the easel and a table
sticky with paints; a fourth door admits you to a sort of court,
where there is a hen sitting - I believe on a fallacious egg. No
sign of the Squire in all this. But right opposite the studio door
you have observed a third little house, from whose open door
lamplight streams and makes hay of the strong moonlight shadows.
You had supposed it made no part of the grounds, for a fence runs
round it lined with oleander; but as the Squire is nowhere else, is
it not just possible he may be here? It is a grim little wooden
shanty; cobwebs bedeck it; friendly mice inhabit its recesses; the
mailed cockroach walks upon the wall; so also, I regret to say, the
scorpion. Herein are two pallet beds, two mosquito curtains,
strung to the pitch-boards of the roof, two tables laden with books
and manuscripts, three chairs, and, in one of the beds, the Squire
busy writing to yourself, as it chances, and just at this moment
somewhat bitten by mosquitoes. He has just set fire to the insect
powder, and will be all right in no time; but just now he
contemplates large white blisters, and would like to scratch them,
but knows better. The house is not bare; it has been inhabited by
Kanakas, and - you know what children are! - the bare wood walls
are pasted over with pages from the GRAPHIC, HARPER'S WEEKLY, etc.
The floor is matted, and I am bound to say the matting is filthy.
There are two windows and two doors, one of which is condemned; on
the panels of that last a sheet of paper is pinned up, and covered
with writing. I cull a few plums:-
'A duck-hammock for each person.
A patent organ like the commandant's at Taiohae.
Cheap and bad cigars for presents.
Revolvers.
Permanganate of potass.
Liniment for the head and sulphur.
Fine tooth-comb.'
What do you think this is? Simply life in the South Seas
foreshortened. These are a few of our desiderata for the next
trip, which we jot down as they occur.
There, I have really done my best and tried to send something like
a letter - one letter in return for all your dozens. Pray remember
us all to yourself, Mrs. Boodle, and the rest of your house. I do
hope your mother will be better when this comes. I shall write and
give you a new address when I have made up my mind as to the most
probable, and I do beg you will continue to write from time to time
and give us airs from home. To-morrow - think of it - I must be
off by a quarter to eight to drive in to the palace and breakfast
with his Hawaiian Majesty at 8.30: I shall be dead indeed. Please
give my news to Scott, I trust he is better; give him my warm
regards. To you we all send all kinds of things, and I am the
absentee Squire,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
HONOLULU, APRIL 1889.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - As usual, your letter is as good as a cordial,
and I thank you for it, and all your care, kindness, and generous
and thoughtful friendship, from my heart. I was truly glad to hear
a word of Colvin, whose long silence has terrified me; and glad to
hear that you condoned the notion of my staying longer in the South
Seas, for I have decided in that sense. The first idea was to go
in the MORNING STAR, missionary ship; but now I have found a
trading schooner, the EQUATOR, which is to call for me here early
in June and carry us through the Gilberts. What will happen then,
the Lord knows. My mother does not accompany us: she leaves here
for home early in May, and you will hear of us from her; but not, I
imagine, anything more definite. We shall get dumped on
Butaritari, and whether we manage to go on to the Marshalls and
Carolines, or whether we fall back on Samoa, Heaven must decide;
but I mean to fetch back into the course of the RICHMOND - (to
think you don't know what the RICHMOND is! - the steamer of the
Eastern South Seas, joining New Zealand, Tongatabu, the Samoas,
Taheite, and Rarotonga, and carrying by last advices sheep in the
saloon!) - into the course of the RICHMOND and make Taheite again
on the home track. Would I like to see the SCOTS OBSERVER?
Wouldn't I not? But whaur? I'm direckit at space. They have nae
post offishes at the Gilberts, and as for the Car'lines! Ye see,
Mr. Baxter, we're no just in the punkshewal CENTRE o' civ'lisation.
But pile them up for me, and when I've decided on an address, I'll
let you ken, and ye'll can send them stavin' after me. - Ever your
affectionate,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
HONOLULU, 10TH MAY 1889.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - I am appalled to gather from your last just to
hand that you have felt so much concern about the letter. Pray
dismiss it from your mind. But I think you scarce appreciate how
disagreeable it is to have your private affairs and private
unguarded expressions getting into print. It would soon sicken any
one of writing letters. I have no doubt that letter was very
wisely selected, but it just shows how things crop up. There was a
raging jealousy between the two yachts; our captain was nearly in a
fight over it. However, no more; and whatever you think, my dear
fellow, do not suppose me angry with you or -; although I was
ANNOYED AT THE CIRCUMSTANCE - a very different thing. But it is
difficult to conduct life by letter, and I continually feel I may
be drifting into some matter of offence, in which my heart takes no
part.
I must now turn to a point of business. This new cruise of ours is
somewhat venturesome; and I think it needful to warn you not to be
in a hurry to suppose us dead. In these ill-charted seas, it is
quite on the cards we might be cast on some unvisited, or very
rarely visited, island; that there we might lie for a long time,
even years, unheard of; and yet turn up smiling at the hinder end.
So do not let me be 'rowpit' till you get some certainty we have
gone to Davie Jones in a squall, or graced the feast of some
barbarian in the character of Long Pig.
I have just been a week away alone on the lee coast of Hawaii, the
only white creature in many miles, riding five and a half hours one
day, living with a native, seeing four lepers shipped off to
Molokai, hearing native causes, and giving my opinion as AMICUS
CURIAE as to the interpretation of a statute in English; a lovely
week among God's best - at least God's sweetest works -
Polynesians. It has bettered me greatly. If I could only stay
there the time that remains, I could get my work done and be happy;
but the care of my family keeps me in vile Honolulu, where I am
always out of sorts, amidst heat and cold and cesspools and beastly
HAOLES. What is a haole? You are one; and so, I am sorry to say,
am I. After so long a dose of whites, it was a blessing to get
among Polynesians again even for a week.
Well, Charles, there are waur haoles than yoursel', I'll say that
for ye; and trust before I sail I shall get another letter with
more about yourself. - Ever your affectionate friend
R. L. S.
Letter: TO W. H. LOW
HONOLULU, (ABOUT) 20TH MAY '89.
MY DEAR LOW, - The goods have come; many daughters have done
virtuously, but thou excellest them all. - I have at length
finished THE MASTER; it has been a sore cross to me; but now he is
buried, his body's under hatches, - his soul, if there is any hell
to go to, gone to hell; and I forgive him: it is harder to forgive
Burlingame for having induced me to begin the publication, or
myself for suffering the induction. - Yes, I think Hole has done
finely; it will be one of the most adequately illustrated books of
our generation; he gets the note, he tells the story - MY story: I
know only one failure - the Master standing on the beach. - You
must have a letter for me at Sydney - till further notice.
Remember me to Mrs. Will. H., the godlike sculptor, and any of the
faithful. If you want to cease to be a republican, see my little
Kaiulani, as she goes through - but she is gone already. You will
die a red, I wear the colours of that little royal maiden, NOUS
ALLONS CHANTER A LA RONDE, SI VOUS VOULEZ! only she is not blonde
by several chalks, though she is but a half-blood, and the wrong
half Edinburgh Scots like mysel'. But, O Low, I love the
Polynesian: this civilisation of ours is a dingy, ungentlemanly
business; it drops out too much of man, and too much of that the
very beauty of the poor beast: who has his beauties in spite of
Zola and Co. As usual, here is a whole letter with no news: I am
a bloodless, inhuman dog; and no doubt Zola is a better
correspondent. - Long live your fine old English admiral - yours, I
mean - the U.S.A. one at Samoa; I wept tears and loved myself and
mankind when I read of him: he is not too much civilised. And
there was Gordon, too; and there are others, beyond question. But
if you could live, the only white folk, in a Polynesian village;
and drink that warm, light VIN DU PAYS of human affection, and
enjoy that simple dignity of all about you - I will not gush, for I
am now in my fortieth year, which seems highly unjust, but there it
is, Mr. Low, and the Lord enlighten your affectionate
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. R. L. STEVENSON
KALAWAO, MOLOKAI [MAY 1889].
DEAR FANNY, - I had a lovely sail up. Captain Cameron and Mr.
Gilfillan, both born in the States, yet the first still with a
strong Highland, and the second still with a strong Lowland accent,
were good company; the night was warm, the victuals plain but good.
Mr. Gilfillan gave me his berth, and I slept well, though I heard
the sisters sick in the next stateroom, poor souls. Heavy rolling
woke me in the morning; I turned in all standing, so went right on
the upper deck. The day was on the peep out of a low morning bank,
and we were wallowing along under stupendous cliffs. As the lights
brightened, we could see certain abutments and buttresses on their
front where wood clustered and grass grew brightly. But the whole
brow seemed quite impassable, and my heart sank at the sight. Two
thousand feet of rock making 19 degrees (the Captain guesses)
seemed quite beyond my powers. However, I had come so far; and, to
tell you the truth, I was so cowed with fear and disgust that I
dared not go back on the adventure in the interests of my own self-
respect. Presently we came up with the leper promontory: lowland,
quite bare and bleak and harsh, a little town of wooden houses, two
churches, a landing-stair, all unsightly, sour, northerly, lying
athwart the sunrise, with the great wall of the pali cutting the
world out on the south. Our lepers were sent on the first boat,
about a dozen, one poor child very horrid, one white man, leaving a
large grown family behind him in Honolulu, and then into the second
stepped the sisters and myself. I do not know how it would have
been with me had the sisters not been there. My horror of the
horrible is about my weakest point; but the moral loveliness at my
elbow blotted all else out; and when I found that one of them was
crying, poor soul, quietly under her veil, I cried a little myself;
then I felt as right as a trivet, only a little crushed to be there
so uselessly. I thought it was a sin and a shame she should feel
unhappy; I turned round to her, and said something like this:
'Ladies, God Himself is here to give you welcome. I'm sure it is
good for me to be beside you; I hope it will be blessed to me; I
thank you for myself and the good you do me.' It seemed to cheer
her up; but indeed I had scarce said it when we were at the
landing-stairs, and there was a great crowd, hundreds of (God save
us!) pantomime masks in poor human flesh, waiting to receive the
sisters and the new patients.
Every hand was offered: I had gloves, but I had made up my mind on
the boat's voyage NOT to give my hand; that seemed less offensive
than the gloves. So the sisters and I went up among that crew, and
presently I got aside (for I felt I had no business there) and set
off on foot across the promontory, carrying my wrap and the camera.
All horror was quite gone from me: to see these dread creatures
smile and look happy was beautiful. On my way through Kalaupapa I
was exchanging cheerful ALOHAS with the patients coming galloping
over on their horses; I was stopping to gossip at house-doors; I
was happy, only ashamed of myself that I was here for no good. One
woman was pretty, and spoke good English, and was infinitely
engaging and (in the old phrase) towardly; she thought I was the
new white patient; and when she found I was only a visitor, a
curious change came in her face and voice - the only sad thing,
morally sad, I mean - that I met that morning. But for all that,
they tell me none want to leave. Beyond Kalaupapa the houses
became rare; dry stone dykes, grassy, stony land, one sick
pandanus; a dreary country; from overhead in the little clinging
wood shogs of the pali chirruping of birds fell; the low sun was
right in my face; the trade blew pure and cool and delicious; I
felt as right as ninepence, and stopped and chatted with the
patients whom I still met on their horses, with not the least
disgust. About half-way over, I met the superintendent (a leper)
with a horse for me, and O, wasn't I glad! But the horse was one
of those curious, dogged, cranky brutes that always dully want to
go somewhere else, and my traffic with him completed my crushing
fatigue. I got to the guest-house, an empty house with several
rooms, kitchen, bath, etc. There was no one there, and I let the
horse go loose in the garden, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep.
Dr. Swift woke me and gave me breakfast, then I came back and slept
again while he was at the dispensary, and he woke me for dinner;
and I came back and slept again, and he woke me about six for
supper; and then in about an hour I felt tired again, and came up
to my solitary guest-house, played the flageolet, and am now
writing to you. As yet, you see, I have seen nothing of the
settlement, and my crushing fatigue (though I believe that was
moral and a measure of my cowardice) and the doctor's opinion make
me think the pali hopeless. 'You don't look a strong man,' said
the doctor; 'but are you sound?' I told him the truth; then he
said it was out of the question, and if I were to get up at all, I
must be carried up. But, as it seems, men as well as horses
continually fall on this ascent: the doctor goes up with a change
of clothes - it is plain that to be carried would in itself be very
fatiguing to both mind and body; and I should then be at the
beginning of thirteen miles of mountain road to be ridden against
time. How should I come through? I hope you will think me right
in my decision: I mean to stay, and shall not be back in Honolulu
till Saturday, June first. You must all do the best you can to
make ready.
Dr. Swift has a wife and an infant son, beginning to toddle and
run, and they live here as composed as brick and mortar - at least
the wife does, a Kentucky German, a fine enough creature, I
believe, who was quite amazed at the sisters shedding tears! How
strange is mankind! Gilfillan too, a good fellow I think, and far
from a stupid, kept up his hard Lowland Scottish talk in the boat
while the sister was covering her face; but I believe he knew, and
did it (partly) in embarrassment, and part perhaps in mistaken
kindness. And that was one reason, too, why I made my speech to
them. Partly, too, I did it, because I was ashamed to do so, and
remembered one of my golden rules, 'When you are ashamed to speak,
speak up at once.' But, mind you, that rule is only golden with
strangers; with your own folks, there are other considerations.
This is a strange place to be in. A bell has been sounded at
intervals while I wrote, now all is still but a musical humming of
the sea, not unlike the sound of telegraph wires; the night is
quite cool and pitch dark, with a small fine rain; one light over
in the leper settlement, one cricket whistling in the garden, my
lamp here by my bedside, and my pen cheeping between my inky
fingers.
Next day, lovely morning, slept all night, 80 degrees in the shade,
strong, sweet Anaho trade-wind.
LOUIS.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
HONOLULU, JUNE 1889.
MY DEAR COLVIN, - I am just home after twelve days journey to
Molokai, seven of them at the leper settlement, where I can only
say that the sight of so much courage, cheerfulness, and devotion
strung me too high to mind the infinite pity and horror of the
sights. I used to ride over from Kalawao to Kalaupapa (about three
miles across the promontory, the cliff-wall, ivied with forest and
yet inaccessible from steepness, on my left), go to the Sisters'
home, which is a miracle of neatness, play a game of croquet with
seven leper girls (90 degrees in the shade), got a little old-maid
meal served me by the Sisters, and ride home again, tired enough,
but not too tired. The girls have all dolls, and love dressing
them. You who know so many ladies delicately clad, and they who
know so many dressmakers, please make it known it would be an
acceptable gift to send scraps for doll dressmaking to the Reverend
Sister Maryanne, Bishop Home, Kalaupapa, Molokai, Hawaiian Islands.
I have seen sights that cannot be told, and heard stories that
cannot be repeated: yet I never admired my poor race so much, nor
(strange as it may seem) loved life more than in the settlement. A
horror of moral beauty broods over the place: that's like bad
Victor Hugo, but it is the only way I can express the sense that
lived with me all these days. And this even though it was in great
part Catholic, and my sympathies flew never with so much difficulty
as towards Catholic virtues. The pass-book kept with heaven stirs
me to anger and laughter. One of the sisters calls the place 'the
ticket office to heaven.' Well, what is the odds? They do their
darg and do it with kindness and efficiency incredible; and we must
take folk's virtues as we find them, and love the better part. Of
old Damien, whose weaknesses and worse perhaps I heard fully, I
think only the more. It was a European peasant: dirty, bigoted,
untruthful, unwise, tricky, but superb with generosity, residual
candour and fundamental good-humour: convince him he had done
wrong (it might take hours of insult) and he would undo what he had
done and like his corrector better. A man, with all the grime and
paltriness of mankind, but a saint and hero all the more for that.
The place as regards scenery is grand, gloomy, and bleak. Mighty
mountain walls descending sheer along the whole face of the island
into a sea unusually deep; the front of the mountain ivied and
furred with clinging forest, one viridescent cliff: about half-way
from east to west, the low, bare, stony promontory edged in between
the cliff and the ocean; the two little towns (Kalawao and
Kalaupapa) seated on either side of it, as bare almost as bathing
machines upon a beach; and the population - gorgons and chimaeras
dire. All this tear of the nerves I bore admirably; and the day
after I got away, rode twenty miles along the opposite coast and up
into the mountains: they call it twenty, I am doubtful of the
figures: I should guess it nearer twelve; but let me take credit
for what residents allege; and I was riding again the day after, so
I need say no more about health. Honolulu does not agree with me
at all: I am always out of sorts there, with slight headache,
blood to the head, etc. I had a good deal of work to do and did it
with miserable difficulty; and yet all the time I have been gaining
strength, as you see, which is highly encouraging. By the time I
am done with this cruise I shall have the material for a very
singular book of travels: names of strange stories and characters,
cannibals, pirates, ancient legends, old Polynesian poetry, - never
was so generous a farrago. I am going down now to get the story of
a shipwrecked family, who were fifteen months on an island with a
murderer: there is a specimen. The Pacific is a strange place;
the nineteenth century only exists there in spots: all round, it
is a no man's land of the ages, a stir-about of epochs and races,
barbarisms and civilisations, virtues and crimes.
It is good of you to let me stay longer, but if I had known how ill
you were, I should be now on my way home. I had chartered my
schooner and made all arrangements before (at last) we got definite
news. I feel highly guilty; I should be back to insult and worry
you a little. Our address till further notice is to be c/o R.
Towns and Co., Sydney. That is final: I only got the arrangement
made yesterday; but you may now publish it abroad. - Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO JAMES PAYN
HONOLULU, H.I., JUNE 13TH, 1889.
MY DEAR JAMES PAYN, - I get sad news of you here at my offsetting
for further voyages: I wish I could say what I feel. Sure there
was never any man less deserved this calamity; for I have heard you
speak time and again, and I remember nothing that was unkind,
nothing that was untrue, nothing that was not helpful, from your
lips. It is the ill-talkers that should hear no more. God knows,
I know no word of consolation; but I do feel your trouble. You are
the more open to letters now; let me talk to you for two pages. I
have nothing but happiness to tell; and you may bless God you are a
man so sound-hearted that (even in the freshness of your calamity)
I can come to you with my own good fortune unashamed and secure of
sympathy. It is a good thing to be a good man, whether deaf or
whether dumb; and of all our fellow-craftsmen (whom yet they count
a jealous race), I never knew one but gave you the name of honesty
and kindness: come to think of it gravely, this is better than the
finest hearing. We are all on the march to deafness, blindness,
and all conceivable and fatal disabilities; we shall not all get
there with a report so good. My good news is a health
astonishingly reinstated. This climate; these voyagings; these
landfalls at dawn; new islands peaking from the morning bank; new
forested harbours; new passing alarms of squalls and surf; new
interests of gentle natives, - the whole tale of my life is better
to me than any poem.
I am fresh just now from the leper settlement of Molokai, playing
croquet with seven leper girls, sitting and yarning with old,
blind, leper beachcombers in the hospital, sickened with the
spectacle of abhorrent suffering and deformation amongst the
patients, touched to the heart by the sight of lovely and effective
virtues in their helpers: no stranger time have I ever had, nor
any so moving. I do not think it a little thing to be deaf, God
knows, and God defend me from the same! - but to be a leper, of one
of the self-condemned, how much more awful! and yet there's a way
there also. 'There are Molokais everywhere,' said Mr. Dutton,
Father Damien's dresser; you are but new landed in yours; and my
dear and kind adviser, I wish you, with all my soul, that patience
and courage which you will require. Think of me meanwhile on a
trading schooner, bound for the Gilbert Islands, thereafter for the
Marshalls, with a diet of fish and cocoanut before me; bound on a
cruise of - well, of investigation to what islands we can reach,
and to get (some day or other) to Sydney, where a letter addressed
to the care of R. Towns & Co. will find me sooner or later; and if
it contain any good news, whether of your welfare or the courage
with which you bear the contrary, will do me good. - Yours
affectionately (although so near a stranger),
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
SCHOONER 'EQUATOR,' APAIANG LAGOON, AUGUST 22ND, 1889.
MY DEAR COLVIN, - The missionary ship is outside the reef trying
(vainly) to get in; so I may have a chance to get a line off. I am
glad to say I shall be home by June next for the summer, or we
shall know the reason why. For God's sake be well and jolly for
the meeting. I shall be, I believe, a different character from
what you have seen this long while. This cruise is up to now a
huge success, being interesting, pleasant, and profitable. The
beachcomber is perhaps the most interesting character here; the
natives are very different, on the whole, from Polynesians: they
are moral, stand-offish (for good reasons), and protected by a dark
tongue. It is delightful to meet the few Hawaiians (mostly
missionaries) that are dotted about, with their Italian BRIO and
their ready friendliness. The whites are a strange lot, many of
them good, kind, pleasant fellows; others quite the lowest I have
ever seen even in the slums of cities. I wish I had time to
narrate to you the doings and character of three white murderers
(more or less proven) I have met. One, the only undoubted assassin
of the lot, quite gained my affection in his big home out of a
wreck, with his New Hebrides wife in her savage turban of hair and
yet a perfect lady, and his three adorable little girls in Rob Roy
Macgregor dresses, dancing to the hand organ, performing circus on
the floor with startling effects of nudity, and curling up together
on a mat to sleep, three sizes, three attitudes, three Rob Roy
dresses, and six little clenched fists: the murderer meanwhile
brooding and gloating over his chicks, till your whole heart went
out to him; and yet his crime on the face of it was dark:
disembowelling, in his own house, an old man of seventy, and him
drunk.
It is lunch-time, I see, and I must close up with my warmest love
to you. I wish you were here to sit upon me when required. Ah! if
you were but a good sailor! I will never leave the sea, I think;
it is only there that a Briton lives: my poor grandfather, it is
from him I inherit the taste, I fancy, and he was round many
islands in his day; but I, please God, shall beat him at that
before the recall is sounded. Would you be surprised to learn that
I contemplate becoming a shipowner? I do, but it is a secret.
Life is far better fun than people dream who fall asleep among the
chimney stacks and telegraph wires.
Love to Henry James and others near. - Ever yours, my dear fellow,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
EQUATOR TOWN, APEMAMA, OCTOBER 1889.
No MORNING STAR came, however; and so now I try to send this to you
by the schooner J. L. TIERNAN. We have been about a month ashore,
camping out in a kind of town the king set up for us: on the idea
that I was really a 'big chief' in England. He dines with us
sometimes, and sends up a cook for a share of our meals when he
does not come himself. This sounds like high living! alas,
undeceive yourself. Salt junk is the mainstay; a low island,
except for cocoanuts, is just the same as a ship at sea: brackish
water, no supplies, and very little shelter. The king is a great
character - a thorough tyrant, very much of a gentleman, a poet, a
musician, a historian, or perhaps rather more a genealogist - it is
strange to see him lying in his house among a lot of wives (nominal
wives) writing the History of Apemama in an account-book; his
description of one of his own songs, which he sang to me himself,
as 'about sweethearts, and trees, and the sea - and no true, all-
the-same lie,' seems about as compendious a definition of lyric
poetry as a man could ask. Tembinoka is here the great attraction:
all the rest is heat and tedium and villainous dazzle, and yet more
villainous mosquitoes. We are like to be here, however, many a
long week before we get away, and then whither? A strange trade
this voyaging: so vague, so bound-down, so helpless. Fanny has
been planting some vegetables, and we have actually onions and
radishes coming up: ah, onion-despiser, were you but awhile in a
low island, how your heart would leap at sight of a coster's
barrow! I think I could shed tears over a dish of turnips. No
doubt we shall all be glad to say farewell to low islands - I had
near said for ever. They are very tame; and I begin to read up the
directory, and pine for an island with a profile, a running brook,
or were it only a well among the rocks. The thought of a mango
came to me early this morning and set my greed on edge; but you do
not know what a mango is, so -.
I have been thinking a great deal of you and the Monument of late,
and even tried to get my thoughts into a poem, hitherto without
success. God knows how you are: I begin to weary dreadfully to
see you - well, in nine months, I hope; but that seems a long time.
I wonder what has befallen me too, that flimsy part of me that
lives (or dwindles) in the public mind; and what has befallen THE
MASTER, and what kind of a Box the Merry Box has been found. It is
odd to know nothing of all this. We had an old woman to do devil-
work for you about a month ago, in a Chinaman's house on Apaiang
(August 23rd or 24th). You should have seen the crone with a noble
masculine face, like that of an old crone [SIC], a body like a
man's (naked all but the feathery female girdle), knotting cocoanut
leaves and muttering spells: Fanny and I, and the good captain of
the EQUATOR, and the Chinaman and his native wife and sister-in-
law, all squatting on the floor about the sibyl; and a crowd of
dark faces watching from behind her shoulder (she sat right in the
doorway) and tittering aloud with strange, appalled, embarrassed
laughter at each fresh adjuration. She informed us you were in
England, not travelling and now no longer sick; she promised us a
fair wind the next day, and we had it, so I cherish the hope she
was as right about Sidney Colvin. The shipownering has rather
petered out since I last wrote, and a good many other plans beside.
Health? Fanny very so-so; I pretty right upon the whole, and
getting through plenty work: I know not quite how, but it seems to
me not bad and in places funny.
South Sea Yarns:
1. THE WRECKER }
} R. L. S.
2. THE PEARL FISHER } by and
} Lloyd O.
3. THE BEACHCOMBERS }
THE PEARL FISHER, part done, lies in Sydney. It is THE WRECKER we
are now engaged upon: strange ways of life, I think, they set
forth: things that I can scarce touch upon, or even not at all, in
my travel book; and the yarns are good, I do believe. THE PEARL
FISHER is for the NEW YORK LEDGER: the yarn is a kind of Monte
Cristo one. THE WRECKER is the least good as a story, I think; but
the characters seem to me good. THE BEACHCOMBERS is more
sentimental. These three scarce touch the outskirts of the life we
have been viewing; a hot-bed of strange characters and incidents:
Lord, how different from Europe or the Pallid States! Farewell.
Heaven knows when this will get to you. I burn to be in Sydney and
have news.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
SCHOONER 'EQUATOR,' AT SEA. 190 MILES OFF SAMOA. MONDAY, DECEMBER
2ND, 1889
MY DEAR COLVIN, - We are just nearing the end of our long cruise.
Rain, calms, squalls, bang - there's the foretopmast gone; rain,
calm, squalls, away with the staysail; more rain, more calm, more
squalls; a prodigious heavy sea all the time, and the EQUATOR
staggering and hovering like a swallow in a storm; and the cabin, a
great square, crowded with wet human beings, and the rain
avalanching on the deck, and the leaks dripping everywhere: Fanny,
in the midst of fifteen males, bearing up wonderfully. But such
voyages are at the best a trial. We had one particularity: coming
down on Winslow Reef, p. d. (position doubtful): two positions in
the directory, a third (if you cared to count that) on the chart;
heavy sea running, and the night due. The boats were cleared,
bread put on board, and we made up our packets for a boat voyage of
four or five hundred miles, and turned in, expectant of a crash.
Needless to say it did not come, and no doubt we were far to
leeward. If we only had twopenceworth of wind, we might be at
dinner in Apia to-morrow evening; but no such luck: here we roll,
dead before a light air - and that is no point of sailing at all
for a fore and aft schooner - the sun blazing overhead, thermometer
88 degrees, four degrees above what I have learned to call South
Sea temperature; but for all that, land so near, and so much grief
being happily astern, we are all pretty gay on board, and have been
photographing and draught-playing and sky-larking like anything. I
am minded to stay not very long in Samoa and confine my studies
there (as far as any one can forecast) to the history of the late
war. My book is now practically modelled: if I can execute what
is designed, there are few better books now extant on this globe,
bar the epics, and the big tragedies, and histories, and the choice
lyric poetics and a novel or so - none. But it is not executed
yet; and let not him that putteth on his armour, vaunt himself. At
least, nobody has had such stuff; such wild stories, such beautiful
scenes, such singular intimacies, such manners and traditions, so
incredible a mixture of the beautiful and horrible, the savage and
civilised. I will give you here some idea of the table of
contents, which ought to make your mouth water. I propose to call
the book THE SOUTH SEAS: it is rather a large title, but not many
people have seen more of them than I, perhaps no one - certainly no
one capable of using the material.
PART I. GENERAL. 'OF SCHOONERS, ISLANDS, AND MAROONS.'
CHAPTER I. Marine.
II. Contraband (smuggling, barratry, labour traffic).
III. The Beachcomber.
IV. Beachcomber stories. i. The Murder of the Chinaman. ii. Death
of a Beachcomber. iii. A Character. iv. The Apia Blacksmith.
PART II. THE MARQUESAS.
V. Anaho. i. Arrival. ii. Death. iii. The Tapu. iv. Morals. v.
Hoka.
VI. Tai-o-hae. i. Arrival. ii. The French. iii. The Royal
Family. iv. Chiefless Folk. v. The Catholics. vi. Hawaiian
Missionaries.
VII. Observations of a Long Pig. i. Cannibalism. ii. Hatiheu.
iii. Frere Michel. iv. Toahauka and Atuona. v. The Vale of
Atuona. vi. Moipu. vii. Captain Hati.
PART III. THE DANGEROUS ARCHIPELAGO.
VIII. The Group.
IX. A House to let in a Low Island.
X. A Paumotuan Funeral. i. The Funeral. ii. Tales of the Dead.
PART IV. TAHITI.
XI. Tautira.
XII. Village Government in Tahiti.
XIII. A Journey in Quest of Legends.
XIV. Legends and Songs.
XV. Life in Eden.
XVI. Note on the French Regimen.
PART V. THE EIGHT ISLANDS.
XVII. A Note on Missions.
XVIII. The Kona Coast of Hawaii. i. Hookena. ii. A Ride in the
Forest. iii. A Law Case. iv. The City of Refuge. v. The Lepers.
XIX. Molokai. i. A Week in the Precinct. ii. History of the Leper
Settlement. iii. The Mokolii. iv. The Free Island.
PART VI. THE GILBERTS.
XX. The Group. ii. Position of Woman. iii. The Missions. iv.
Devilwork. v. Republics.
XXI. Rule and Misrule on Makin. i. Butaritari, its King and Court.
ii. History of Three Kings. iii. The Drink Question.
XXII. A Butaritarian Festival.
XXIII. The King of Apemama. i. First Impressions. ii. Equator
Town and the Palace. iii. The Three Corselets.
PART VII. SAMOA.
which I have not yet reached.
Even as so sketched it makes sixty chapters, not less than 300
CORNHILL pages; and I suspect not much under 500. Samoa has yet to
be accounted for: I think it will be all history, and I shall work
in observations on Samoan manners, under the similar heads in other
Polynesian islands. It is still possible, though unlikely, that I
may add a passing visit to Fiji or Tonga, or even both; but I am
growing impatient to see yourself, and I do not want to be later
than June of coming to England. Anyway, you see it will be a large
work, and as it will be copiously illustrated, the Lord knows what
it will cost. We shall return, God willing, by Sydney, Ceylon,
Suez and, I guess, Marseilles the many-masted (right epithet).
I shall likely pause a day or two in Paris, but all that is too far
ahead - although now it begins to look near - so near, and I can
hear the rattle of the hansom up Endell Street, and see the gates
swing back, and feel myself jump out upon the Monument steps -
Hosanna! - home again. My dear fellow, now that my father is done
with his troubles, and 17 Heriot Row no more than a mere shell, you
and that gaunt old Monument in Bloomsbury are all that I have in
view when I use the word home; some passing thoughts there may be
of the rooms at Skerryvore, and the black-birds in the chine on a
May morning; but the essence is S. C. and the Museum. Suppose, by
some damned accident, you were no more: well, I should return just
the same, because of my mother and Lloyd, whom I now think to send
to Cambridge; but all the spring would have gone out of me, and
ninety per cent. of the attraction lost. I will copy for you here
a copy of verses made in Apemama.
I heard the pulse of the besieging sea
Throb far away all night. I heard the wind
Fly crying, and convulse tumultuous palms.
I rose and strolled. The isle was all bright sand,
And flailing fans and shadows of the palm:
The heaven all moon, and wind, and the blind vault -
The keenest planet slain, for Venus slept.
The King, my neighbour, with his host of wives,
Slept in the precinct of the palisade:
Where single, in the wind, under the moon,
Among the slumbering cabins, blazed a fire,
Sole street-lamp and the only sentinel.
To other lands and nights my fancy turned,
To London first, and chiefly to your house,
The many-pillared and the well-beloved.
There yearning fancy lighted; there again
In the upper room I lay and heard far off
The unsleeping city murmur like a shell;
The muffled tramp of the Museum guard
Once more went by me; I beheld again
Lamps vainly brighten the dispeopled street;
Again I longed for the returning morn,
The awaking traffic, the bestirring birds,
The consentaneous trill of tiny song
That weaves round monumental cornices
A passing charm of beauty: most of all,
For your light foot I wearied, and your knock
That was the glad reveille of my day.
Lo, now, when to your task in the great house
At morning through the portico you pass,
One moment glance where, by the pillared wall,
Far-voyaging island gods, begrimed with smoke,
Sit now unworshipped, the rude monument
Of faiths forgot and races undivined;
Sit now disconsolate, remembering well
The priest, the victim, and the songful crowd,
The blaze of the blue noon, and that huge voice
Incessant, of the breakers on the shore.
As far as these from their ancestral shrine,
So far, so foreign, your divided friends
Wander, estranged in body, not in mind.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
SCHOONER 'EQUATOR,' AT SEA, WEDNESDAY, 4TH DECEMBER 1889.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - We are now about to rise, like whales, from
this long dive, and I make ready a communication which is to go to
you by the first mail from Samoa. How long we shall stay in that
group I cannot forecast; but it will be best still to address at
Sydney, where I trust, when I shall arrive, perhaps in one month
from now, more probably in two or three, to find all news.
BUSINESS. - Will you be likely to have a space in the Magazine for
a serial story, which should be, ready, I believe, by April, at
latest by autumn? It is called THE WRECKER; and in book form will
appear as number 1 of South Sea Yarns by R. L. S. and Lloyd
Osbourne. Here is the table as far as fully conceived, and indeed
executed. ...
The story is founded on fact, the mystery I really believe to be
insoluble; the purchase of a wreck has never been handled before,
no more has San Francisco. These seem all elements of success.
There is, besides, a character, Jim Pinkerton, of the advertising
American, on whom we build a good deal; and some sketches of the
American merchant marine, opium smuggling in Honolulu, etc. It
should run to (about) three hundred pages of my MS. I would like
to know if this tale smiles upon you, if you will have a vacancy,
and what you will be willing to pay. It will of course be
right in both the States and England. I am a little anxious to
have it tried serially, as it tests the interest of the mystery.
PLEASURE. - We have had a fine time in the Gilbert group, though
four months on low islands, which involves low diet, is a largish
order; and my wife is rather down. I am myself, up to now, a
pillar of health, though our long and vile voyage of calms,
squalls, cataracts of rain, sails carried away, foretopmast lost,
boats cleared and packets made on the approach of a p. d. reef,
etc., has cured me of salt brine, and filled me with a longing for
beef steak and mangoes not to be depicted. The interest has been
immense. Old King Tembinoka of Apemama, the Napoleon of the group,
poet, tyrant, altogether a man of mark, gave me the woven corselets
of his grandfather, his father and his uncle, and, what pleased me
more, told me their singular story, then all manner of strange
tales, facts and experiences for my South Sea book, which should be
a Tearer, Mr. Burlingame: no one at least has had such stuff.
We are now engaged in the hell of a dead calm, the heat is cruel -
it is the only time when I suffer from heat: I have nothing on but
a pair of serge trousers, and a singlet without sleeves of Oxford
gauze - O, yes, and a red sash about my waist; and yet as I sit
here in the cabin, sweat streams from me. The rest are on deck
under a bit of awning; we are not much above a hundred miles from
port, and we might as well be in Kamschatka. However, I should be
honest: this is the first calm I have endured without the added
bane of a heavy swell, and the intoxicated blue-bottle wallowings
and knockings of the helpless ship.
I wonder how you liked the end of THE MASTER; that was the hardest
job I ever had to do; did I do it?
My wife begs to be remembered to yourself and Mrs. Burlingame.
Remember all of us to all friends, particularly Low, in case I
don't get a word through for him. - I am, yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
SAMOA, [DECEMBER 1889].
MY DEAR BAXTER, - . . . I cannot return until I have seen either
Tonga or Fiji or both: and I must not leave here till I have
finished my collections on the war - a very interesting bit of
history, the truth often very hard to come at, and the search (for
me) much complicated by the German tongue, from the use of which I
have desisted (I suppose) these fifteen years. The last two days I
have been mugging with a dictionary from five to six hours a day;
besides this, I have to call upon, keep sweet, and judiciously
interview all sorts of persons - English, American, German, and
Samoan. It makes a hard life; above all, as after every interview
I have to come and get my notes straight on the nail. I believe I
should have got my facts before the end of January, when I shall
make our Tonga or Fiji. I am down right in the hurricane season;
but they had so bad a one last year, I don't imagine there will be
much of an edition this. Say that I get to Sydney some time in
April, and I shall have done well, and be in a position to write a
very singular and interesting book, or rather two; for I shall
begin, I think, with a separate opuscule on the Samoan Trouble,
about as long as KIDNAPPED, not very interesting, but valuable -
and a thing proper to be done. And then, hey! for the big South
Sea Book: a devil of a big one, and full of the finest sport.
This morning as I was going along to my breakfast a little before
seven, reading a number of BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, I was startled by
a soft TALOFA, ALII (note for my mother: they are quite courteous
here in the European style, quite unlike Tahiti), right in my ear:
it was Mataafa coming from early mass in his white coat and white
linen kilt, with three fellows behind him. Mataafa is the nearest
thing to a hero in my history, and really a fine fellow; plenty
sense, and the most dignified, quiet, gentle manners. Talking of
BLACKWOOD - a file of which I was lucky enough to find here in the
lawyer's - Mrs. Oliphant seems in a staggering state: from the
WRONG BOX to THE MASTER I scarce recognise either my critic or
myself. I gather that THE MASTER should do well, and at least that
notice is agreeable reading. I expect to be home in June: you
will have gathered that I am pretty well. In addition to my
labours, I suppose I walk five or six miles a day, and almost every
day I ride up and see Fanny and Lloyd, who are in a house in the
bush with Ah Fu. I live in Apia for history's sake with Moors, an
American trader. Day before yesterday I was arrested and fined for
riding fast in the street, which made my blood bitter, as the wife
of the manager of the German Firm has twice almost ridden me down,
and there seems none to say her nay. The Germans have behaved
pretty badly here, but not in all ways so ill as you may have
gathered: they were doubtless much provoked; and if the insane
Knappe had not appeared upon the scene, might have got out of the
muddle with dignity. I write along without rhyme or reason, as
things occur to me.
I hope from my outcries about printing you do not think I want you
to keep my news or letters in a Blue Beard closet. I like all
friends to hear of me; they all should if I had ninety hours in the
day, and strength for all of them; but you must have gathered how
hard worked I am, and you will understand I go to bed a pretty
tired man.
29TH DECEMBER, [1889].
To-morrow (Monday, I won't swear to my day of the month; this is
the Sunday between Christmas and New Year) I go up the coast with
Mr. Clarke, one of the London Society missionaries, in a boat to
examine schools, see Tamasese, etc. Lloyd comes to photograph.
Pray Heaven we have good weather; this is the rainy season; we
shall be gone four or five days; and if the rain keep off, I shall
be glad of the change; if it rain, it will be beastly. This
explains still further how hard pressed I am, as the mail will be
gone ere I return, and I have thus lost the days I meant to write
in. I have a boy, Henry, who interprets and copies for me, and is
a great nuisance. He said he wished to come to me in order to
learn 'long expressions.' Henry goes up along with us; and as I am
not fond of him, he may before the trip is over hear some 'strong
expressions.' I am writing this on the back balcony at Moors',
palms and a hill like the hill of Kinnoull looking in at me; myself
lying on the floor, and (like the parties in Handel's song) 'clad
in robes of virgin white'; the ink is dreadful, the heat delicious,
a fine going breeze in the palms, and from the other side of the
house the sudden angry splash and roar of the Pacific on the reef,
where the warships are still piled from last year's hurricane, some
under water, one high and dry upon her side, the strangest figure
of a ship was ever witnessed; the narrow bay there is full of
ships; the men-of-war covered with sail after the rains, and
(especially the German ship, which is fearfully and awfully top
heavy) rolling almost yards in, in what appears to be calm water.
Samoa, Apia at least, is far less beautiful than the Marquesas or
Tahiti: a more gentle scene, gentler acclivities, a tamer face of
nature; and this much aided, for the wanderer, by the great German
plantations with their countless regular avenues of palms. The
island has beautiful rivers, of about the bigness of our waters in
the Lothians, with pleasant pools and waterfalls and overhanging
verdure, and often a great volume of sound, so that once I thought
I was passing near a mill, and it was only the voice of the river.
I am not specially attracted by the people; but they are courteous;
the women very attractive, and dress lovely; the men purposelike,
well set up, tall, lean, and dignified. As I write the breeze is
brisking up, doors are beginning to slam: and shutters; a strong
draught sweeps round the balcony; it looks doubtful for to-morrow.
Here I shut up. - Ever your affectionate,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO DR. SCOTT
APIA, SAMOA, JANUARY 20TH, 1890.
MY DEAR SCOTT, - Shameful indeed that you should not have heard of
me before! I have now been some twenty months in the South Seas,
and am (up to date) a person whom you would scarce know. I think
nothing of long walks and rides: I was four hours and a half gone
the other day, partly riding, partly climbing up a steep ravine. I
have stood a six months' voyage on a copra schooner with about
three months ashore on coral atolls, which means (except for
cocoanuts to drink) no change whatever from ship's food. My wife
suffered badly - it was too rough a business altogether - Lloyd
suffered - and, in short, I was the only one of the party who 'kept
my end up.'
I am so pleased with this climate that I have decided to settle;
have even purchased a piece of land from three to four hundred
acres, I know not which till the survey is completed, and shall
only return next summer to wind up my affairs in England;
thenceforth I mean to be a subject of the High Commissioner.
Now you would have gone longer yet without news of your truant
patient, but that I have a medical discovery to communicate. I
find I can (almost immediately) fight off a cold with liquid
extract of coca; two or (if obstinate) three teaspoonfuls in the
day for a variable period of from one to five days sees the cold
generally to the door. I find it at once produces a glow, stops
rigour, and though it makes one very uncomfortable, prevents the
advance of the disease. Hearing of this influenza, it occurred to
me that this might prove remedial; and perhaps a stronger
exhibition - injections of cocaine, for instance - still better.
If on my return I find myself let in for this epidemic, which seems
highly calculated to nip me in the bud, I shall feel very much
inclined to make the experiment. See what a gulf you may save me
from if you shall have previously made it on ANIMA VILI, on some
less important sufferer, and shall have found it worse than
useless.
How is Miss Boodle and her family? Greeting to your brother and
all friends in Bournemouth, yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
FEBRUAR DEN 3EN 1890.
DAMPFER LUBECK ZWISCHEN APIA UND SYDNEY.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - I have got one delightful letter from you, and
heard from my mother of your kindness in going to see her. Thank
you for that: you can in no way more touch and serve me. . . . Ay,
ay, it is sad to sell 17; sad and fine were the old days: when I
was away in Apemama, I wrote two copies of verse about Edinburgh
and the past, so ink black, so golden bright. I will send them, if
I can find them, for they will say something to you, and indeed one
is more than half addressed to you. This is it -
TO MY OLD COMRADES
Do you remember - can we e'er forget? -
How, in the coiled perplexities of youth,
In our wild climate, in our scowling town,
We gloomed and shivered, sorrowed, sobbed, and feared?
The belching winter wind, the missile rain,
The rare and welcome silence of the snows,
The laggard morn, the haggard day, the night,
The grimy spell of the nocturnal town,
Do you remember? - Ah, could one forget!
As when the fevered sick that all night long
Listed the wind intone, and hear at last
The ever-welcome voice of the chanticleer
Sing in the bitter hour before the dawn, -
With sudden ardour, these desire the day:
(Here a squall sends all flying.)
So sang in the gloom of youth the bird of hope;
So we, exulting, hearkened and desired.
For lo! as in the palace porch of life
We huddled with chimeras, from within -
How sweet to hear! - the music swelled and fell,
And through the breach of the revolving doors
What dreams of splendour blinded us and fled!
I have since then contended and rejoiced;
Amid the glories of the house of life
Profoundly entered, and the shrine beheld:
Yet when the lamp from my expiring eyes
Shall dwindle and recede, the voice of love
Fall insignificant on my closing ears,
What sound shall come but the old cry of the wind
In our inclement city? what return
But the image of the emptiness of youth,
Filled with the sound of footsteps and that voice
Of discontent and rapture and despair?
So, as in darkness, from the magic lamp,
The momentary pictures gleam and fade
And perish, and the night resurges - these
Shall I remember, and then all forget.
They're pretty second-rate, but felt. I can't be bothered to copy
the other.
I have bought 314 and a half acres of beautiful land in the bush
behind Apia; when we get the house built, the garden laid, and
cattle in the place, it will be something to fall back on for
shelter and food; and if the island could stumble into political
quiet, it is conceivable it might even bring a little income. . . .
We range from 600 to 1500 feet, have five streams, waterfalls,
precipices, profound ravines, rich tablelands, fifty head of cattle
on the ground (if any one could catch them), a great view of
forest, sea, mountains, the warships in the haven: really a noble
place. Some day you are to take a long holiday and come and see
us: it has been all planned.
With all these irons in the fire, and cloudy prospects, you may be
sure I was pleased to hear a good account of business. I believed
THE MASTER was a sure card: I wonder why Henley thinks it grimy;
grim it is, God knows, but sure not grimy, else I am the more
deceived. I am sorry he did not care for it; I place it on the
line with KIDNAPPED myself. We'll see as time goes on whether it
goes above or falls below.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
SS. LUBECK, [BETWEEN APIA AND SYDNEY, FEBRUARY] 1890.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - I desire nothing better than to continue my
relation with the Magazine, to which it pleases me to hear I have
been useful. The only thing I have ready is the enclosed barbaric
piece. As soon as I have arrived in Sydney I shall send you some
photographs, a portrait of Tembinoka, perhaps a view of the palace
or of the 'matted men' at their singing; also T.'s flag, which my
wife designed for him: in a word, what I can do best for you. It
will be thus a foretaste of my book of travels. I shall ask you to
let me have, if I wish it, the use of the plates made, and to make
up a little tract of the verses and illustrations, of which you
might send six copies to H. M. Tembinoka, King of Apemama VIA
Butaritari, Gilbert Islands. It might be best to send it by
Crawford and Co., S. F. There is no postal service; and schooners
must take it, how they may and when. Perhaps some such note as
this might be prefixed:
AT MY DEPARTURE FROM THE ISLAND OF APEMAMA, FOR WHICH YOU WILL LOOK
IN VAIN IN MOST ATLASES, THE KING AND I AGREED, SINCE WE BOTH SET
UP TO BE IN THE POETICAL WAY, THAT WE SHOULD CELEBRATE OUR
SEPARATION IN VERSE. WHETHER OR NOT HIS MAJESTY HAS BEEN TRUE TO
HIS BARGAIN, THE LAGGARD POSTS OF THE PACIFIC MAY PERHAPS INFORM ME
IN SIX MONTHS, PERHAPS NOT BEFORE A YEAR. THE FOLLOWING LINES
REPRESENT MY PART OF THE CONTRACT, AND IT IS HOPED, BY THEIR
PICTURES OF STRANGE MANNERS, THEY MAY ENTERTAIN A CIVILISED
AUDIENCE. NOTHING THROUGHOUT HAS BEEN INVENTED OR EXAGGERATED; THE
LADY HEREIN REFERRED TO AS THE AUTHOR'S MUSE, HAS CONFINED HERSELF
TO STRINGING INTO RHYME FACTS AND LEGENDS THAT I SAW OR HEARD
DURING TWO MONTHS' RESIDENCE UPON THE ISLAND.
R. L. S.
You will have received from me a letter about THE WRECKER. No
doubt it is a new experiment for me, being disguised so much as a
study of manners, and the interest turning on a mystery of the
detective sort, I think there need be no hesitation about beginning
it in the fall of the year. Lloyd has nearly finished his part,
and I shall hope to send you very soon the MS. of about the first
four-sevenths. At the same time, I have been employing myself in
Samoa, collecting facts about the recent war; and I propose to
write almost at once and to publish shortly a small volume, called
I know not what - the War In Samoa, the Samoa Trouble, an Island
War, the War of the Three Consuls, I know not - perhaps you can
suggest. It was meant to be a part of my travel book; but material
has accumulated on my hands until I see myself forced into volume
form, and I hope it may be of use, if it come soon. I have a few
photographs of the war, which will do for illustrations. It is
conceivable you might wish to handle this in the Magazine, although
I am inclined to think you won't, and to agree with you. But if
you think otherwise, there it is. The travel letters (fifty of
them) are already contracted for in papers; these I was quite bound
to let M'Clure handle, as the idea was of his suggestion, and I
always felt a little sore as to one trick I played him in the
matter of the end-papers. The war-volume will contain some very
interesting and picturesque details: more I can't promise for it.
Of course the fifty newspaper letters will be simply patches chosen
from the travel volume (or volumes) as it gets written.
But you see I have in hand:-
Say half done. 1. THE WRECKER.
Lloyd's copy half done, mine not touched. 2. THE PEARL FISHER (a
novel promised to the LEDGER, and which will form, when it comes in
book form, No. 2 of our SOUTH SEA YARNS).
Not begun, but all material ready. 3. THE WAR VOLUME.
Ditto. 4. THE BIG TRAVEL BOOK, which includes the letters.
You know how they stand. 5. THE BALLADS.
EXCUSEZ DU PEU! And you see what madness it would be to make any
fresh engagement. At the same time, you have THE WRECKER and the
WAR VOLUME, if you like either - or both - to keep my name in the
Magazine.
It begins to look as if I should not be able to get any more
ballads done this somewhile. I know the book would sell better if
it were all ballads; and yet I am growing half tempted to fill up
with some other verses. A good few are connected with my voyage,
such as the 'Home of Tembinoka' sent herewith, and would have a
sort of slight affinity to the SOUTH SEA BALLADS. You might tell
me how that strikes a stranger.
In all this, my real interest is with the travel volume, which
ought to be of a really extraordinary interest
I am sending you 'Tembinoka' as he stands; but there are parts of
him that I hope to better, particularly in stanzas III. and II. I
scarce feel intelligent enough to try just now; and I thought at
any rate you had better see it, set it up if you think well, and
let me have a proof; so, at least, we shall get the bulk of it
straight. I have spared you Tenkoruti, Tenbaitake, Tembinatake,
and other barbarous names, because I thought the dentists in the
States had work enough without my assistance; but my chiefs name is
TEMBINOKA, pronounced, according to the present quite modern habit
in the Gilberts, Tembinok'. Compare in the margin Tengkorootch; a
singular new trick, setting at defiance all South Sea analogy, for
nowhere else do they show even the ability, far less the will, to
end a word upon a consonant. Loia is Lloyd's name, ship becomes
shipe, teapot, tipote, etc. Our admirable friend Herman Melville,
of whom, since I could judge, I have thought more than ever, had no
ear for languages whatever: his Hapar tribe should be Hapaa, etc.
But this is of no interest to you: suffice it, you see how I am as
usual up to the neck in projects, and really all likely bairns this
time. When will this activity cease? Too soon for me, I dare to
say.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO JAMES PAYN
FEBRUARY 4TH, 1890, SS. 'LUBECK.'
MY DEAR JAMES PAYN, - In virtue of confessions in your last, you
would at the present moment, if you were along of me, be sick; and
I will ask you to receive that as an excuse for my hand of write.
Excuse a plain seaman if he regards with scorn the likes of you
pore land-lubbers ashore now. (Reference to nautical ditty.)
Which I may however be allowed to add that when eight months' mail
was laid by my side one evening in Apia, and my wife and I sat up
the most of the night to peruse the same - (precious indisposed we
were next day in consequence) - no letter, out of so many, more
appealed to our hearts than one from the pore, stick-in-the-mud,
land-lubbering, common (or garden) Londoner, James Payn. Thank you
for it; my wife says, 'Can't I see him when we get back to London?'
I have told her the thing appeared to me within the spear of
practical politix. (Why can't I spell and write like an honest,
sober, god-fearing litry gent? I think it's the motion of the
ship.) Here I was interrupted to play chess with the chief
engineer; as I grow old, I prefer the 'athletic sport of cribbage,'
of which (I am sure I misquote) I have just been reading in your
delightful LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS. How you skim along, you and
Andrew Lang (different as you are), and yet the only two who can
keep a fellow smiling every page, and ever and again laughing out
loud. I joke wi' deeficulty, I believe; I am not funny; and when I
am, Mrs. Oliphant says I'm vulgar, and somebody else says (in
Latin) that I'm a whore, which seems harsh and even uncalled for:
I shall stick to weepers; a 5s. weeper, 2s. 6d. laugher, 1s.
shocker.
My dear sir, I grow more and more idiotic; I cannot even feign
sanity. Sometime in the month of June a stalwart weather-beaten
man, evidently of seafaring antecedents, shall be observed wending
his way between the Athenaeum Club and Waterloo Place. Arrived off
No. 17, he shall be observed to bring his head sharply to the wind,
and tack into the outer haven. 'Captain Payn in the harbour?' -
'Ay, ay, sir. What ship?' - 'Barquentin R. L. S., nine hundred and
odd days out from the port of Bournemouth, homeward bound, with
yarns and curiosities.'
Who was it said, 'For God's sake, don't speak of it!' about Scott
and his tears? He knew what he was saying. The fear of that hour
is the skeleton in all our cupboards; that hour when the pastime
and the livelihood go together; and - I am getting hard of hearing
myself; a pore young child of forty, but new come frae my Mammy, O!
Excuse these follies, and accept the expression of all my regards.
- Yours affectionately,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
UNION CLUB, SYDNEY, MARCH 7TH, 1890.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - I did not send off the enclosed before from
laziness; having gone quite sick, and being a blooming prisoner
here in the club, and indeed in my bedroom. I was in receipt of
your letters and your ornamental photo, and was delighted to see
how well you looked, and how reasonably well I stood. . . . I am
sure I shall never come back home except to die; I may do it, but
shall always think of the move as suicidal, unless a great change
comes over me, of which as yet I see no symptom. This visit to
Sydney has smashed me handsomely; and yet I made myself a prisoner
here in the club upon my first arrival. This is not encouraging
for further ventures; Sydney winter - or, I might almost say,
Sydney spring, for I came when the worst was over - is so small an
affair, comparable to our June depression at home in Scotland. . .
. The pipe is right again; it was the springs that had rusted, and
ought to have been oiled. Its voice is now that of an angel; but,
Lord! here in the club I dare not wake it! Conceive my impatience
to be in my own backwoods and raise the sound of minstrelsy. What
pleasures are to be compared with those of the Unvirtuous Virtuoso.
- Yours ever affectionately, the Unvirtuous Virtuoso,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
SS. 'JANET NICOLL,' OFF UPOLU [SPRING 1890].
MY DEAREST COLVIN, - I was sharply ill at Sydney, cut off, right
out of bed, in this steamer on a fresh island cruise, and have
already reaped the benefit. We are excellently found this time, on
a spacious vessel, with an excellent table; the captain,
supercargo, our one fellow-passenger, etc., very nice; and the
charterer, Mr. Henderson, the very man I could have chosen. The
truth is, I fear, this life is the only one that suits me; so long
as I cruise in the South Seas, I shall be well and happy - alas,
no, I do not mean that, and ABSIT OMEN! - I mean that, so soon as I
cease from cruising, the nerves are strained, the decline
commences, and I steer slowly but surely back to bedward. We left
Sydney, had a cruel rough passage to Auckland, for the JANET is the
worst roller I was ever aboard of. I was confined to my cabin,
ports closed, self shied out of the berth, stomach (pampered till
the day I left on a diet of perpetual egg-nogg) revolted at ship's
food and ship eating, in a frowsy bunk, clinging with one hand to
the plate, with the other to the glass, and using the knife and
fork (except at intervals) with the eyelid. No matter: I picked
up hand over hand. After a day in Auckland, we set sail again;
were blown up in the main cabin with calcium fires, as we left the
bay. Let no man say I am unscientific: when I ran, on the alert,
out of my stateroom, and found the main cabin incarnadined with the
glow of the last scene of a pantomime, I stopped dead: 'What is
this?' said I. 'This ship is on fire, I see that; but why a
pantomime?' And I stood and reasoned the point, until my head was
so muddled with the fumes that I could not find the companion. A
few seconds later, the captain had to enter crawling on his belly,
and took days to recover (if he has recovered) from the fumes. By
singular good fortune, we got the hose down in time and saved the
ship, but Lloyd lost most of his clothes and a great part of our
photographs was destroyed. Fanny saw the native sailors tossing
overboard a blazing trunk; she stopped them in time, and behold, it
contained my manuscripts. Thereafter we had three (or two) days
fine weather: then got into a gale of wind, with rain and a
vexatious sea. As we drew into our anchorage in a bight of Savage
Island, a man ashore told me afterwards the sight of the JANET
NICOLL made him sick; and indeed it was rough play, though nothing
to the night before. All through this gale I worked four to six
hours per diem, spearing the ink-bottle like a flying fish, and
holding my papers together as I might. For, of all things, what I
was at was history - the Samoan business - and I had to turn from
one to another of these piles of manuscript notes, and from one
page to another in each, until I should have found employment for
the hands of Briareus. All the same, this history is a godsend for
a voyage; I can put in time, getting events co-ordinated and the
narrative distributed, when my much-heaving numskull would be
incapable of finish or fine style. At Savage we met the missionary
barque JOHN WILLIAMS. I tell you it was a great day for Savage
Island: the path up the cliffs was crowded with gay islandresses
(I like that feminine plural) who wrapped me in their embraces, and
picked my pockets of all my tobacco, with a manner which a touch
would have made revolting, but as it was, was simply charming, like
the Golden Age. One pretty, little, stalwart minx, with a red
flower behind her ear, had searched me with extraordinary zeal; and
when, soon after, I missed my matches, I accused her (she still
following us) of being the thief. After some delay, and with a
subtle smile, she produced the box, gave me ONE MATCH, and put the
rest away again. Too tired to add more. - Your most affectionate,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
S.S. 'JANET NICOLL,' OFF PERU ISLAND, KINGSMILLS GROUP, JULY 13th,
'90.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - I am moved to write to you in the matter of
the end papers. I am somewhat tempted to begin them again. Follow
the reasons PRO and CON:-
1st. I must say I feel as if something in the nature of the end
paper were a desirable finish to the number, and that the
substitutes of occasional essays by occasional contributors somehow
fail to fill the bill. Should you differ with me on this point, no
more is to be said. And what follows must be regarded as lost
words.
2nd. I am rather taken with the idea of continuing the work. For
instance, should you have no distaste for papers of the class
called RANDOM MEMORIES, I should enjoy continuing them (of course
at intervals), and when they were done I have an idea they might
make a readable book. On the other hand, I believe a greater
freedom of choice might be taken, the subjects more varied and more
briefly treated, in somewhat approaching the manner of Andrew Lang
in the SIGN OF THE SHIP; it being well understood that the broken
sticks method is one not very suitable (as Colonel Burke would say)
to my genius, and not very likely to be pushed far in my practice.
Upon this point I wish you to condense your massive brain. In the
last lot I was promised, and I fondly expected to receive, a vast
amount of assistance from intelligent and genial correspondents. I
assure you, I never had a scratch of a pen from any one above the
level of a village idiot, except once, when a lady sowed my head
full of grey hairs by announcing that she was going to direct her
life in future by my counsels. Will the correspondents be more
copious and less irrelevant in the future? Suppose that to be the
case, will they be of any use to me in my place of exile? Is it
possible for a man in Samoa to be in touch with the great heart of
the People? And is it not perhaps a mere folly to attempt, from so
hopeless a distance, anything so delicate as a series of papers?
Upon these points, perpend, and give me the results of your
perpensions.
3rd. The emolument would be agreeable to your humble servant.
I have now stated all the PROS, and the most of the CONS are come
in by the way. There follows, however, one immense Con (with a
capital 'C'), which I beg you to consider particularly. I fear
that, to be of any use for your magazine, these papers should begin
with the beginning of a volume. Even supposing my hands were free,
this would be now impossible for next year. You have to consider
whether, supposing you have no other objection, it would be worth
while to begin the series in the middle of a volume, or desirable
to delay the whole matter until the beginning of another year.
Now supposing that the CONS have it, and you refuse my offer, let
me make another proposal, which you will be very inclined to refuse
at the first off-go, but which I really believe might in time come
to something. You know how the penny papers have their answers to
correspondents. Why not do something of the same kind for the
'culchawed'? Why not get men like Stimson, Brownell, Professor
James, Goldwin Smith, and others who will occur to you more readily
than to me, to put and to answer a series of questions of
intellectual and general interest, until at last you should have
established a certain standard of matter to be discussed in this
part of the Magazine?
I want you to get me bound volumes of the Magazine from its start.
The Lord knows I have had enough copies; where they are I know not.
A wandering author gathers no magazines.
THE WRECKER is in no forrader state than in last reports. I have
indeed got to a period when I cannot well go on until I can refresh
myself on the proofs of the beginning. My respected collaborator,
who handles the machine which is now addressing you, has indeed
carried his labours farther, but not, I am led to understand, with
what we used to call a blessing; at least, I have been refused a
sight of his latest labours. However, there is plenty of time
ahead, and I feel no anxiety about the tale, except that it may
meet with your approval.
All this voyage I have been busy over my TRAVELS, which, given a
very high temperature and the saloon of a steamer usually going
before the wind, and with the cabins in front of the engines, has
come very near to prostrating me altogether. You will therefore
understand that there are no more poems. I wonder whether there
are already enough, and whether you think that such a volume would
be worth the publishing? I shall hope to find in Sydney some
expression of your opinion on this point. Living as I do among -
not the most cultured of mankind ('splendidly educated and perfect
gentlemen when sober') - I attach a growing importance to friendly
criticisms from yourself.
I believe that this is the most of our business. As for my health,
I got over my cold in a fine style, but have not been very well of
late. To my unaffected annoyance, the blood-spitting has started
again. I find the heat of a steamer decidedly wearing and trying
in these latitudes, and I am inclined to think the superior
expedition rather dearly paid for. Still, the fact that one does
not even remark the coming of a squall, nor feel relief on its
departure, is a mercy not to be acknowledged without gratitude.
The rest of the family seem to be doing fairly well; both seem less
run down than they were on the EQUATOR, and Mrs. Stevenson very
much less so. We have now been three months away, have visited
about thirty-five islands, many of which were novel to us, and some
extremely entertaining; some also were old acquaintances, and
pleasant to revisit. In the meantime, we have really a capital
time aboard ship, in the most pleasant and interesting society, and
with (considering the length and nature of the voyage) an excellent
table. Please remember us all to Mr. Scribner, the young chieftain
of the house, and the lady, whose health I trust is better. To
Mrs. Burlingame we all desire to be remembered, and I hope you will
give our news to Low, St. Gaudens, Faxon, and others of the
faithful in the city. I shall probably return to Samoa direct,
having given up all idea of returning to civilisation in the
meanwhile. There, on my ancestral acres, which I purchased six
months ago from a blind Scots blacksmith, you will please address
me until further notice. The name of the ancestral acres is going
to be Vailima; but as at the present moment nobody else knows the
name, except myself and the co-patentees, it will be safer, if less
ambitious, to address R. L. S., Apia, Samoa. The ancestral acres
run to upwards of three hundred; they enjoy the ministrations of
five streams, whence the name. They are all at the present moment
under a trackless covering of magnificent forest, which would be
worth a great deal if it grew beside a railway terminus. To me, as
it stands, it represents a handsome deficit. Obliging natives from
the Cannibal Islands are now cutting it down at my expense. You
would be able to run your magazine to much greater advantage if the
terms of authors were on the same scale with those of my cannibals.
We have also a house about the size of a manufacturer's lodge.
'Tis but the egg of the future palace, over the details of which on
paper Mrs. Stevenson and I have already shed real tears; what it
will be when it comes to paying for it, I leave you to imagine.
But if it can only be built as now intended, it will be with
genuine satisfaction and a growunded pride that I shall welcome you
at the steps of my Old Colonial Home, when you land from the
steamer on a long-merited holiday. I speak much at my ease; yet I
do not know, I may be now an outlaw, a bankrupt, the abhorred of
all good men. I do not know, you probably do. Has Hyde turned
upon me? Have I fallen, like Danvers Carew?
It is suggested to me that you might like to know what will be my
future society. Three consuls, all at logger-heads with one
another, or at the best in a clique of two against one; three
different sects of missionaries, not upon the best of terms; and
the Catholics and Protestants in a condition of unhealable ill-
feeling as to whether a wooden drum ought or ought not to be beaten
to announce the time of school. The native population, very
genteel, very songful, very agreeable, very good-looking,
chronically spoiling for a fight (a circumstance not to be entirely
neglected in the design of the palace). As for the white
population of (technically, 'The Beach'), I don't suppose it is
possible for any person not thoroughly conversant with the South
Seas to form the smallest conception of such a society, with its
grog-shops, its apparently unemployed hangers-on, its merchants of
all degrees of respectability and the reverse. The paper, of which
I must really send you a copy - if yours were really a live
magazine, you would have an exchange with the editor: I assure
you, it has of late contained a great deal of matter about one of
your contributors - rejoices in the name of SAMOA TIMES AND SOUTH
SEA ADVERTISER. The advertisements in the ADVERTISER are
permanent, being simply subsidies for its existence. A dashing
warfare of newspaper correspondence goes on between the various
residents, who are rather fond of recurring to one another's
antecedents. But when all is said, there are a lot of very nice,
pleasant people, and I don't know that Apia is very much worse than
half a hundred towns that I could name.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
HOTEL SEBASTOPOL, NOUMEA, AUGUST 1890.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - I have stayed here a week while Lloyd and my
wife continue to voyage in the JANET NICOLL; this I did, partly to
see the convict system, partly to shorten my stay in the extreme
cold - hear me with my extreme! MOI QUI SUIS ORIGINAIRE D'EDINBOURG
- of Sydney at this season. I am feeling very seedy, utterly
fatigued, and overborne with sleep. I have a fine old gentleman of
a doctor, who attends and cheers and entertains, if he does not
cure me; but even with his ministrations I am almost incapable of
the exertion sufficient for this letter; and I am really, as I
write, falling down with sleep. What is necessary to say, I must
try to say shortly. Lloyd goes to clear out our establishments:
pray keep him in funds, if I have any; if I have not, pray try to
raise them. Here is the idea: to install ourselves, at the risk
of bankruptcy, in Samoa. It is not the least likely it will pay
(although it may); but it is almost certain it will support life,
with very few external expenses. If I die, it will be an endowment
for the survivors, at least for my wife and Lloyd; and my mother,
who might prefer to go home, has her own. Hence I believe I shall
do well to hurry my installation. The letters are already in part
done; in part done is a novel for Scribner; in the course of the
next twelve months I should receive a considerable amount of money.
I am aware I had intended to pay back to my capital some of this.
I am now of opinion I should act foolishly. Better to build the
house and have a roof and farm of my own; and thereafter, with a
livelihood assured, save and repay . . . There is my livelihood,
all but books and wine, ready in a nutshell; and it ought to be
more easy to save and to repay afterwards. Excellent, say you, but
will you save and will you repay? I do not know, said the Bell of
Old Bow. . . . It seems clear to me. . . . The deuce of the affair
is that I do not know when I shall see you and Colvin. I guess you
will have to come and see me: many a time already we have arranged
the details of your visit in the yet unbuilt house on the mountain.
I shall be able to get decent wine from Noumea. We shall be able
to give you a decent welcome, and talk of old days. APROPOS of old
days, do you remember still the phrase we heard in Waterloo Place?
I believe you made a piece for the piano on that phrase. Pray, if
you remember it, send it me in your next. If you find it
impossible to write correctly, send it me A LA RECITATIVE, and
indicate the accents. Do you feel (you must) how strangely heavy
and stupid I am? I must at last give up and go sleep; I am simply
a rag.
The morrow: I feel better, but still dim and groggy. To-night I
go to the governor's; such a lark - no dress clothes - twenty-four
hours' notice - able-bodied Polish tailor - suit made for a man
with the figure of a puncheon - same hastily altered for self with
the figure of a bodkin - sight inconceivable. Never mind; dress
clothes, 'which nobody can deny'; and the officials have been all
so civil that I liked neither to refuse nor to appear in mufti.
Bad dress clothes only prove you are a grisly ass; no dress
clothes, even when explained, indicate a want of respect. I wish
you were here with me to help me dress in this wild raiment, and to
accompany me to M. Noel-Pardon's. I cannot say what I would give
if there came a knock now at the door and you came in. I guess
Noel-Pardon would go begging, and we might burn the fr. 200 dress
clothes in the back garden for a bonfire; or what would be yet more
expensive and more humorous, get them once more expanded to fit
you, and when that was done, a second time cut down for my gossamer
dimensions.
I hope you never forget to remember me to your father, who has
always a place in my heart, as I hope I have a little in his. His
kindness helped me infinitely when you and I were young; I recall
it with gratitude and affection in this town of convicts at the
world's end. There are very few things, my dear Charles, worth
mention: on a retrospect of life, the day's flash and colour, one
day with another, flames, dazzles, and puts to sleep; and when the
days are gone, like a fast-flying thaumatrope, they make but a
single pattern. Only a few things stand out; and among these -
most plainly to me - Rutland Square, - Ever, my dear Charles, your
affectionate friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - Just returned from trying on the dress clo'. Lord, you
should see the coat! It stands out at the waist like a bustle, the
flaps cross in front, the sleeves are like bags.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
UNION CLUB, SYDNEY [AUGUST 1890].
MY DEAR BURLINGAME
BALLADS.
The deuce is in this volume. It has cost me more botheration and
dubiety than any other I ever took in hand. On one thing my mind
is made up: the verses at the end have no business there, and
throw them down. Many of them are bad, many of the rest want nine
years' keeping, and the remainder are not relevant - throw them
down; some I never want to hear of more, others will grow in time
towards decent items in a second UNDERWOODS - and in the meanwhile,
down with them! At the same time, I have a sneaking idea the
ballads are not altogether without merit - I don't know if they're
poetry, but they're good narrative, or I'm deceived. (You've never
said one word about them, from which I astutely gather you are dead
set against: 'he was a diplomatic man' - extract from epitaph of
E. L. B. - 'and remained on good terms with Minor Poets.') You
will have to judge: one of the Gladstonian trinity of paths must
be chosen. (1st) Either publish the five ballads, such as they
are, in a volume called BALLADS; in which case pray send sheets at
once to Chatto and Windus. Or (2nd) write and tell me you think
the book too small, and I'll try and get into the mood to do some
more. Or (3rd) write and tell me the whole thing is a blooming
illusion; in which case draw off some twenty copies for my private
entertainment, and charge me with the expense of the whole dream.
In the matter of rhyme no man can judge himself; I am at the
world's end, have no one to consult, and my publisher holds his
tongue. I call it unfair and almost unmanly. I do indeed begin to
be filled with animosity; Lord, wait till you see the continuation
of THE WRECKER, when I introduce some New York publishers. . . It's
a good scene; the quantities you drink and the really hideous
language you are represented as employing may perhaps cause you one
tithe of the pain you have inflicted by your silence on, sir, The
Poetaster,
R. L. S.
Lloyd is off home; my wife and I dwell sundered: she in lodgings,
preparing for the move; I here in the club, and at my old trade -
bedridden. Naturally, the visit home is given up; we only wait our
opportunity to get to Samoa, where, please, address me.
Have I yet asked you to despatch the books and papers left in your
care to me at Apia, Samoa? I wish you would, QUAM PRIMUM.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO HENRY JAMES
UNION CLUB, SYDNEY, AUGUST 1890.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - Kipling is too clever to live. The BETE
HUMAINE I had already perused in Noumea, listening the while to the
strains of the convict band. He a Beast; but not human, and, to be
frank, not very interesting. 'Nervous maladies: the homicidal
ward,' would be the better name: O, this game gets very tedious.
Your two long and kind letters have helped to entertain the old
familiar sickbed. So has a book called THE BONDMAN, by Hall Caine;
I wish you would look at it. I am not half-way through yet. Read
the book, and communicate your views. Hall Caine, by the way,
appears to take Hugo's view of History and Chronology. (LATER; the
book doesn't keep up; it gets very wild.)
I must tell you plainly - I can't tell Colvin - I do not think I
shall come to England more than once, and then it'll be to die.
Health I enjoy in the tropics; even here, which they call sub- or
semi-tropical, I come only to catch cold. I have not been out
since my arrival; live here in a nice bedroom by the fireside, and
read books and letters from Henry James, and send out to get his
TRAGIC MUSE, only to be told they can't be had as yet in Sydney,
and have altogether a placid time. But I can't go out! The
thermometer was nearly down to 50 degrees the other day - no
temperature for me, Mr. James: how should I do in England? I fear
not at all. Am I very sorry? I am sorry about seven or eight
people in England, and one or two in the States. And outside of
that, I simply prefer Samoa. These are the words of honesty and
soberness. (I am fasting from all but sin, coughing, THE BONDMAN,
a couple of eggs and a cup of tea.) I was never fond of towns,
houses, society, or (it seems) civilisation. Nor yet it seems was
I ever very fond of (what is technically called) God's green earth.
The sea, islands, the islanders, the island life and climate, make
and keep me truly happier. These last two years I have been much
at sea, and I have NEVER WEARIED; sometimes I have indeed grown
impatient for some destination; more often I was sorry that the
voyage drew so early to an end; and never once did I lose my
fidelity to blue water and a ship. It is plain, then, that for me
my exile to the place of schooners and islands can be in no sense
regarded as a calamity.
Good-bye just now: I must take a turn at my proofs.
N.B. - Even my wife has weakened about the sea. She wearied, the
last time we were ashore, to get afloat again. - Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MARCEL SCHWOB
UNION CLUB, SYDNEY, AUGUST 19TH, 1890.
MY DEAR MR. SCHWOB, - MAIS, ALORS, VOUS AVEZ TOUS LES BONHEURS,
VOUS! More about Villon; it seems incredible: when it is put in
order, pray send it me.
You wish to translate the BLACK ARROW: dear sir, you are hereby
authorised; but I warn you, I do not like the work. Ah, if you,
who know so well both tongues, and have taste and instruction - if
you would but take a fancy to translate a book of mine that I
myself admired - for we sometimes admire our own - or I do - with
what satisfaction would the authority be granted! But these things
are too much to expect. VOUS NE DETESTEZ PAS ALORS MES BONNES
FEMMES? MOI, JE LES DETESTE. I have never pleased myself with any
women of mine save two character parts, one of only a few lines -
the Countess of Rosen, and Madame Desprez in the TREASURE OF
FRANCHARD.
I had indeed one moment of pride about my poor BLACK ARROW: Dickon
Crookback I did, and I do, think is a spirited and possible figure.
Shakespeare's - O, if we can call that cocoon Shakespeare! -
Shakespeare's is spirited - one likes to see the untaught athlete
butting against the adamantine ramparts of human nature, head down,
breach up; it reminds us how trivial we are to-day, and what safety
resides in our triviality. For spirited it may be, but O, sure not
possible! I love Dumas and I love Shakespeare: you will not
mistake me when I say that the Richard of the one reminds me of the
Porthos of the other; and if by any sacrifice of my own literary
baggage I could clear the VICOMTE DE BRAGELONNE of Porthos, JEKYLL
might go, and the MASTER, and the BLACK ARROW, you may be sure, and
I should think my life not lost for mankind if half a dozen more of
my volumes must be thrown in.
The tone of your pleasant letters makes me egotistical; you make me
take myself too gravely. Comprehend how I have lived much of my
time in France, and loved your country, and many of its people, and
all the time was learning that which your country has to teach -
breathing in rather that atmosphere of art which can only there be
breathed; and all the time knew - and raged to know - that I might
write with the pen of angels or of heroes, and no Frenchman be the
least the wiser! And now steps in M. Marcel Schwob, writes me the
most kind encouragement, and reads and understands, and is kind
enough to like my work.
I am just now overloaded with work. I have two huge novels on hand
- THE WRECKER and the PEARL FISHER, in collaboration with my
stepson: the latter, the PEARL FISHER, I think highly of, for a
black, ugly, trampling, violent story, full of strange scenes and
striking characters. And then I am about waist-deep in my big book
on the South Seas: THE big book on the South Seas it ought to be,
and shall. And besides, I have some verses in the press, which,
however, I hesitate to publish. For I am no judge of my own verse;
self-deception is there so facile. All this and the cares of an
impending settlement in Samoa keep me very busy, and a cold (as
usual) keeps me in bed.
Alas, I shall not have the pleasure to see you yet awhile, if ever.
You must be content to take me as a wandering voice, and in the
form of occasional letters from recondite islands; and address me,
if you will be good enough to write, to Apia, Samoa. My stepson,
Mr. Osbourne, goes home meanwhile to arrange some affairs; it is
not unlikely he may go to Paris to arrange about the illustrations
to my South Seas; in which case I shall ask him to call upon you,
and give you some word of our outlandish destinies. You will find
him intelligent, I think; and I am sure, if (PAR HASARD) you should
take any interest in the islands, he will have much to tell you. -
Herewith I conclude, and am your obliged and interested
correspondent,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - The story you refer to has got lost in the post.
Letter: TO ANDREW LANG
UNION CLUB, SYDNEY [AUGUST 1890].
MY DEAR LANG, - I observed with a great deal of surprise and
interest that a controversy in which you have been taking sides at
home, in yellow London, hinges in part at least on the Gilbert
Islanders and their customs in burial. Nearly six months of my
life has been passed in the group: I have revisited it but the
other day; and I make haste to tell you what I know. The upright
stones - I enclose you a photograph of one on Apemama - are
certainly connected with religion; I do not think they are adored.
They stand usually on the windward shore of the islands, that is to
say, apart from habitation (on ENCLOSED ISLANDS, where the people
live on the sea side, I do not know how it is, never having lived
on one). I gathered from Tembinoka, Rex Apemamae, that the pillars
were supposed to fortify the island from invasion: spiritual
martellos. I think he indicated they were connected with the cult
of Tenti - pronounce almost as chintz in English, the T being
explosive; but you must take this with a grain of salt, for I knew
no word of Gilbert Island; and the King's English, although
creditable, is rather vigorous than exact. Now, here follows the
point of interest to you: such pillars, or standing stones, have
no connection with graves. The most elaborate grave that I have
ever seen in the group - to be certain - is in the form of a RAISED
BORDER of gravel, usually strewn with broken glass. One, of which
I cannot be sure that it was a grave, for I was told by one that it
was, and by another that it was not - consisted of a mound about
breast high in an excavated taro swamp, on the top of which was a
child's house, or rather MANIAPA - that is to say, shed, or open
house, such as is used in the group for social or political
gatherings - so small that only a child could creep under its
eaves. I have heard of another great tomb on Apemama, which I did
not see; but here again, by all accounts, no sign of a standing
stone. My report would be - no connection between standing stones
and sepulture. I shall, however, send on the terms of the problem
to a highly intelligent resident trader, who knows more than
perhaps any one living, white or native, of the Gilbert group; and
you shall have the result. In Samoa, whither I return for good, I
shall myself make inquiries; up to now, I have neither seen nor
heard of any standing stones in that group. - Yours,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. CHARLES FAIRCHILD
UNION CLUB, SYDNEY [SEPTEMBER 1890].
MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD, - I began a letter to you on board the
JANET NICOLL on my last cruise, wrote, I believe, two sheets, and
ruthlessly destroyed the flippant trash. Your last has given me
great pleasure and some pain, for it increased the consciousness of
my neglect. Now, this must go to you, whatever it is like.
. . . You are quite right; our civilisation is a hollow fraud, all
the fun of life is lost by it; all it gains is that a larger number
of persons can continue to be contemporaneously unhappy on the
surface of the globe. O, unhappy! - there is a big word and a
false - continue to be not nearly - by about twenty per cent. - so
happy as they might be: that would be nearer the mark.
When - observe that word, which I will write again and larger -
WHEN you come to see us in Samoa, you will see for yourself a
healthy and happy people.
You see, you are one of the very few of our friends rich enough to
come and see us; and when my house is built, and the road is made,
and we have enough fruit planted and poultry and pigs raised, it is
undeniable that you must come - must is the word; that is the way
in which I speak to ladies. You and Fairchild, anyway - perhaps my
friend Blair - we'll arrange details in good time. It will be the
salvation of your souls, and make you willing to die.
Let me tell you this: In '74 or 5 there came to stay with my
father and mother a certain Mr. Seed, a prime minister or something
of New Zealand. He spotted what my complaint was; told me that I
had no business to stay in Europe; that I should find all I cared
for, and all that was good for me, in the Navigator Islands; sat up
till four in the morning persuading me, demolishing my scruples.
And I resisted: I refused to go so far from my father and mother.
O, it was virtuous, and O, wasn't it silly! But my father, who was
always my dearest, got to his grave without that pang; and now in
1890, I (or what is left of me) go at last to the Navigator
Islands. God go with us! It is but a Pisgah sight when all is
said; I go there only to grow old and die; but when you come, you
will see it is a fair place for the purpose.
Flaubert has not turned up; I hope he will soon; I knew of him only
through Maxime Descamps. - With kindest messages to yourself and
all of yours, I remain,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
CHAPTER XI - LIFE IN SAMOA, NOVEMBER 1890-DECEMBER 1892
Letter: TO E. L BURLINGAME
VAILIMA, APIA, SAMOA, NOV. 7, 1890.
I WISH you to add to the words at the end of the prologue; they
run, I think, thus, 'And this is the yarn of Loudon Dodd'; add,
'not as he told, but as he wrote it afterwards for his diversion.'
This becomes the more needful, because, when all is done, I shall
probably revert to Tai-o-hae, and give final details about the
characters in the way of a conversation between Dodd and Havers.
These little snippets of information and FAITS-DIVERS have always a
disjointed, broken-backed appearance; yet, readers like them. In
this book we have introduced so many characters, that this kind of
epilogue will be looked for; and I rather hope, looking far ahead,
that I can lighten it in dialogue.
We are well past the middle now. How does it strike you? and can
you guess my mystery? It will make a fattish volume!
I say, have you ever read the HIGHLAND WIDOW? I never had till
yesterday: I am half inclined, bar a trip or two, to think it
Scott's masterpiece; and it has the name of a failure! Strange
things are readers.
I expect proofs and revises in duplicate.
We have now got into a small barrack at our place. We see the sea
six hundred feet below filling the end of two vales of forest. On
one hand the mountain runs above us some thousand feet higher;
great trees stand round us in our clearing; there is an endless
voice of birds; I have never lived in such a heaven; just now, I
have fever, which mitigates but not destroys my gusto in my
circumstances. - You may envy
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
. . . O, I don't know if I mentioned that having seen your new tail
to the magazine, I cried off interference, at least for this trip.
Did I ask you to send me my books and papers, and all the bound
volumes of the mag.? QUORUM PARS. I might add that were there a
good book or so - new - I don't believe there is - such would be
welcome.
I desire - I positively begin to awake - to be remembered to
Scribner, Low, St. Gaudens, Russell Sullivan. Well, well, you
fellows have the feast of reason and the flow of soul; I have a
better-looking place and climate: you should hear the birds on the
hill now! The day has just wound up with a shower; it is still
light without, though I write within here at the cheek of a lamp;
my wife and an invaluable German are wrestling about bread on the
back verandah; and how the birds and the frogs are rattling, and
piping, and hailing from the woods! Here and there a throaty
chuckle; here and there, cries like those of jolly children who
have lost their way; here and there, the ringing sleigh-bell of the
tree frog. Out and away down below me on the sea it is still
raining; it will be wet under foot on schooners, and the house will
leak; how well I know that! Here the showers only patter on the
iron roof, and sometimes roar; and within, the lamp burns steady on
the tafa-covered walls, with their dusky tartan patterns, and the
book-shelves with their thin array of books; and no squall can rout
my house or bring my heart into my mouth. - The well-pleased South
Sea Islander,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
[VAILIMA, DECEMBER 1890.]
MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - By some diabolical accident, I have mislaid
your last. What was in it? I know not, and here I am caught
unexpectedly by the American mail, a week earlier than by
computation. The computation, not the mail, is supposed to be in
error. The vols. of SCRIBNER'S have arrived, and present a noble
appearance in my house, which is not a noble structure at present.
But by autumn we hope to be sprawling in our verandah, twelve feet,
sir, by eighty-eight in front, and seventy-two on the flank; view
of the sea and mountains, sunrise, moonrise, and the German fleet
at anchor three miles away in Apia harbour. I hope some day to
offer you a bowl of kava there, or a slice of a pineapple, or some
lemonade from my own hedge. 'I know a hedge where the lemons grow'
- SHAKESPEARE. My house at this moment smells of them strong; and
the rain, which a while ago roared there, now rings in minute drops
upon the iron roof. I have no WRECKER for you this mail, other
things having engaged me. I was on the whole rather relieved you
did not vote for regular papers, as I feared the traces. It is my
design from time to time to write a paper of a reminiscential
(beastly word) description; some of them I could scarce publish
from different considerations; but some of them - for instance, my
long experience of gambling places - Homburg, Wiesbaden, Baden-
Baden, old Monaco, and new Monte Carlo - would make good magazine
padding, if I got the stuff handled the right way. I never could
fathom why verse was put in magazines; it has something to do with
the making-up, has it not? I am scribbling a lot just now; if you
are taken badly that way, apply to the South Seas. I could send
you some, I believe, anyway, only none of it is thoroughly ripe.
If kept back the volume of ballads, I'll soon make it a respectable
size if this fit continue. By the next mail you may expect some
more WRECKER, or I shall be displeased. Probably no more than a
chapter, however, for it is a hard one, and I am denuded of my
proofs, my collaborator having walked away with them to England;
hence some trouble in catching the just note.
I am a mere farmer: my talk, which would scarce interest you on
Broadway, is all of fuafua and tuitui, and black boys, and planting
and weeding, and axes and cutlasses; my hands are covered with
blisters and full of thorns; letters are, doubtless, a fine thing,
so are beer and skittles, but give me farmering in the tropics for
real interest. Life goes in enchantment; I come home to find I am
late for dinner; and when I go to bed at night, I could cry for the
weariness of my loins and thighs. Do not speak to me of vexation,
the life brims with it, but with living interest fairly.
Christmas I go to Auckland, to meet Tamate, the New Guinea
missionary, a man I love. The rest of my life is a prospect of
much