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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Vol. XXIII

LETTERS

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LETTERS vn:\;;

LANILS or ; t ■
LOUIS sti:n 1

SELECTLi) A^ .> i • ! - '
NOTES AND IN ii"" '•' ^ '
BY SID.NLY 0=:A;N ^t *. .«

PUBLi.^IiF-I) V< *
NEW YOUK i
CH MILKS S( • ••■
SONS ;» i.

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Robert 1 . 7/ iiX* M f. • t"-

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LETTERS AND MISCEL-
LANIES OF ROBERT
LOUIS STEVENSON

TETTERS TO HIS FAM-
L/ ILY AND FRIENDS fe
SELECTED AND EDITED WITH
NOTES AND INTRODUCTION
BY SIDNEY COLVIN S| Sfe Sg SE

PUBLISHED IN «
NEW YORK BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S
SONS SC % 1911 %

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CONTENTS

Introduction

xv-xliM

STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

TRAVELS AND EXCURSIONS

INTRODUCTORY

Letters: —

•

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson • • • • 15

To the Same

To Mrs. Churchm Babington

To Alison Cunningham .

To Charles Baxter

To the Same

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

To the Same

To Thomas Stevenson .

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

To Charles Baxter

270842

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON
It

STUDENT DAYS {Continued)

ORDERED SOUTH

Introductory 49

Letters: —

To Mrs. Thomas Stevcnioii • • • • 52

To Mrs. Sitwell • • • • • • 53

To the Same •••••• $6

To the Same •••••• 58

To the Same •••••• 63

To the Same ...... 66

To Mrs. Thomas StevtmoQ • • • • 69

To Mrs. Sitwell . . • • ... 71

To Mrs. Thomas StevenaoQ • • • • 74

To the Same ...... t6

To Mrs. Sitwell 78

To the Same •••••• 81

To Mrs. Thomas StevenaoQ • • • • 83

To Mrs. Sitwen 84

To the Same •••••• 85

To the Same •••••• 88

To the Same •••••• 91

To the Same ...... 9}

To Sidney Colviii • • • • • 95

To Mrs. Sitwell ...... 96

To Sidney Colvin • • • • • 98

To Mrs. Sitwen • 99

To the Same 100

To the Same ...••• 104

To the Same 105

To the Same 108

To the Same ,109

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CONTENTS

ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

EDINBURGH— PARIS— FONTAINEBLBAU

Introductory .

• t

ii3

Letters: —

To Mrs. Thomas StevensoQ . • • .118

To Mrs. Sitwcll . • . ,

To Sidney Colvin

110

To Charles Baxter

«H

To Sidney Colvin

136

ToMrs. Sitwell .

•a?

To Mrs. de Mattos

12S

To Mrs. Sitwell .

130

To Sidney Colvin

131

To the Same

•3a

To Mrs. Sitwell .

•33

To W. E. Henley

•34

To Mrs. Sitwell .

«35

To Sidney Colvin

136

To Mrs. Sitwell .

«37

To A. Patchett Martlir

«39

To the Same

140

To Sidney Colvin

•43

To the Same

144

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas StevensoQ

«45

146

To the Same

146

To W. E. Henley

147

To Charles Baxter

148

To Mrs. Thomas Stevea^oa

«49

To W. E. Henley

"49

To Edmund Gosse

150

To W. E Henl^

» • 4
V

153

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

To Edmund Gosse
To Sidney Colvin
To Edmund Gosse

«55
«57
158

THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

MONTEREY AND SAN FRANOSCO

Introductory .

163

Letters:—

To Sidney Colvin 166

To the Same

167

To W. E. Henley

169

To Sidney Colvin

170

To the Stme

171

To the Same

17a

To Edmund Gosse

«73

To W. E. Henley

175

To the Same

176

To P. G. Hamerton

179

To Edmund Gosse

181

To Sidney Colvin

182

To Edmund Gosse

184

To Sidney Colvin

186

To the Same

188

To Charles Baxter

191

To Sidney Colvin

19a

To W. E. Henley

194

To Sidney Colvin

196

To Edmund Gosse

197

To Dr. W. Bamford

198

To Sidney Colvin

199

To the Same

300

To the Same

201

To C. W. Stoddard

302

To Sidney Colvin

aoj

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CONTENTS

ALPINE WINTERS
AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

Introductory . . . ,

ao9

Letters: —

To A. G. Dew-Smith ai5

To Thomas Stevenson •

• <

ai8

To Edmund Gosse

ai9

To the Same . • • ,

230

To C W. Stoddard

aai

To Sidney Colvin

226

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

aa?

To Sidney Colvin

aa9

To H. F. Brown .

aja

To the Same ....

a3l

To the Same ....

a^J

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

a35

To Edmund Gosse . • «

. 236

To Sidney Colvin

338

To Professor iEneas Mackay

^39

To the Same . . • ,

a^o

To Edmund Gosse

M«

To the Same ....

»4»

To P. G. Hamerton

To Sidney Colvin

^45

ToW.E. Henley

To the Same

a48

To Sidney Colvin

a5o

To Dr. Alexander Japp •

a5a

To Mrs. Sitwell . . • <

^53

To Edmund Gosse • • «

^55

To the Same . • • «

. a56

To the Same . • . •

2^6

ToW.E. Henley

^57

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LETTERS Of f> i. STEVENSON

VI
MARSEILLES AND HYfeRES

To Dr. Alexander Japp •

*59

To W. E. Henley

260

To Thomas Stevenson .

262

To P. G. Hamerton

26)

To Charles Baxter

263

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

266

To Alison Cunningham .

267

To Charles Baxter

26B

To W. E. Henley

268

To the Same

170

To Alexander Ireland

273

To Edmund Gosse

276

To Dr. Alexander Japp .

277

To the Same

277

To W. E. Henley

279

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

281

To Edmund Gosse

283

To the Same

284

To W. E. Henley

285

Introductory .

289

Letters:—

To the Editor of the Niw York Tribum . . 293

To R. A. M. Stevenson . . . ,

«94

To Thomas Stevenson .

295

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

296

To Charles Baxter

297

To Alison Cunningham .

399

To W. E. Henley

300

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

304

To Thomas Stevenson .

306

To Mrs. Sitwefl .

>o8

vSi

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CONTENTS

MOB

To Bdmund Gosse . . • • • 310

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

!•!

To the Same . • « ,

31a

To Edmund Gosse

3«3

To the Same . • • .

5«4

ToW.E. Henley

5«5

To the Same • • •

5«7

To the Same • • • <

3«9

To the Same • • • ,

3«9

To the Same ....

331

To Alison Cunningham .

^2%

To W. E. Henley

334

To Edmund Gosse

326

ToW.E. Henley

3^7

To Edmund Gone

33a

To Sidney Colvin

333

To W. H. Uw .

► 336

To R. A. M. Stevenson

. 338

To Thomas Stevenson • • ,

34"

To W. H. Low .

343

To W. E. Henley

345

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

347

To Sidney Colvin

348

To Mrs. Milne ....

349

To Miss Fenrier . . • <

351

To W. H. Low .

353

To Thomas Stevenson •

354

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

355

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

356

358

To Sidney Colvin

359

To Mr. Dick . . • .

. 36t

To Cosmo Monkhouse •

3<54

To Edmund Gosse • • «

• 3<^

To Miss Ferricr .

368

To W. H. Low .

369

To Thomas Stevenson • • ,

370

To Cosmo Monkhouse • • ,

37*

To W. E. Henley

^74

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

To Edmund Gosse

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevcnton

To Sidney Coivin

J75
377

VII
LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH

Introductory . . .

383

Utters:—

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson ... 386

To W. E. Henley

586

To the Rev. Professor Lewis Campbell .

389

To Andrew Chatto

390

To W. H. Low .

39«

To Thomas Stevenson .

393

To W. E. Henley

395

To Thomas Stevenson .

395

To Charles Baxter

397

To the Same . . . ,

397

To Miss Ferrier • . . ,

399

To Edmund Gosse

400

To Austin Dobson

401

To Henry James .

40a

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

405

To W. E. Henley

406

To the Same . . • <

407

To H. A. Jones .

408

To Sidney Coivin

409

To Thomas Stevenson •

4»o

To Sidney Coivin

4««

To the Same . . . ,

412

To J. A. Symonds ' . •

414

To Edmund Gosse

4i6

To W. H. Uw .

. 4i«

To P. G. Hamerton

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CONTENTS

To Williain Archer • • • • • 423

To Mrs. Fleeming Jenldn • • • • 424

To the Same •••••• 426

To W. H. Low 427

To W. E. Henley 429

To William Archer . • • . . 4>o

To Thomas Stevenson • • • . • 433

To Henry James .••••• 435

To William Archer . • • • . 436

To the Same •••••. 45S

To W. H. Uw 44a

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Portrait of R. L. Stevenson, y£T. 35 . Frontispiece

From a photograph l^ Mr, Lhfd Osbourm,

FACmO PACT

Birthplace of Robert Louis Stevenson, Edin-
burgh 6

Edinburgh Home of the Stevenson Family,

1853-1887 50

Monterey Square 178

SHOWniO ON THS LBPT THI OLD SIMONBAU USTAURAMT
BUILDING AS REMODBLLBD.

"The Plaza" (Portsmouth Square). ... 190

THE FAVOURITE LOUNGING-PLACE OF ROBERT LOUIS STBVBNSON
IN SAN FRANCISCO, WITH THE MEMORIAL TO HIM DESKSNBD
BY BRUCB PORTER AND WILLIS POLK.

ChAlet am Stein, Davos-Platz ^14

General View of Davos a6a

ChAlet La Solitude, HyAres 392

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INTRODUCTION

ONE day in the autumn of 1888, in the island of
Tahiti, during an illness which he supposed might
be his last, Stevenson put into the hands of his stepson,
Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, a sealed paper with the request
that it should be opened after his death. He recovered,
as every one knows, and had strength enough to enjoy
six years more of active life and work in the Pacific
Islands. When the end came, and the paper was
opened, it was found to contain, among other things,
the expression of his wish that I should be asked to
prepare for publication " a selection of his letters and a
sketch of his life." The journal-letters written to my-
self from his Samoan home, subsequently to the date of
the request, offered the readiest material towards ful-
filling promptly a part at least of the duty thus laid
upon me; and a selection from these was accordingly
published in the autumn following his death. ^

The scanty leisure of an official life (chiefly employed
as it was for several years in seeing'my friend's collected
and posthumous works through the press) did not allow
me to complete the remainder of my task without con-
siderable delay. For one thing, the body of corre-

1 yaiUma UiUrs: Methuen & Co., 18^.

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

spondence which came in from various quarters turned
out much larger than had been anticipated, and the
labour of sifting and arranging it much greater. The
author of Treasure Island and Across the Plains and
Weir of Hermiston did not love writing letters, and
will be found somewhere in the following pages refer-
ring to himself as one "essentially and originally in-
capable of the art epistolary." That he was a bad
correspondent had even come to be an accepted view
among his friends; but in truth it was only during one
particular period of his life (see below, vol. i. p. 117)
that he at all deserved such a reproach. At other times,
as is now apparent, he had shown a degree of industry
and spirit in letter-writing extraordinary considering
his health and occupations, and especially considering
his declared aversion for the task. His letters, it is true,
were often the most informal in the world, and he gen-
erally neglected to date them, a habit which is the de-
spair of editors; but after his own whim and fashion he
wrote a vast number ; so that for every one here included
some half a dozen at least have had to be rejected.

In considering the scale and plan on which my friend's
instruction should be carried out, it seemed necessary to
take into account, not his own always modest opinion
of himself, but the place which, as time went on, he
seemed likely to take ultimately in the world's regard.
The four or five years following the death of a writer
much applauded in his lifetime are generally the years
when the decline of his reputation begins, if it is going
to suffer decline at all. At present, certainly, Steven-
son's name seems in no danger of going down. On
the stream of daily literary reference and allusion it floats

xvi

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INTRODUCTION

more actively than ever. In another sense its vitality is
confirmed by the material test of continued sales and of
the market. Since we have lost him other writers,
whose beginnings he watched with sympathetic inter-
est, have come to fill a greater immediate place in pub-
lic attention; one especially has struck notes which
appeal to dominant fibres in our Anglo-Saxon stock
with irresistible force; but none has exercised Steven-
son's peculiar and personal power to charm, to attach,
and to inspirit By his study of perfection in form and
style — qualities for which his countrymen in general
have been apt to care little — he might seem destined to
give pleasure chiefly to the fastidious and the artistically
minded. But as to its matter, the main appeal of his
work is not to any mental tastes and fashions of the
few ; it is rather to universal, hereditary instincts, to the
primitive sources of imaginative excitement and enter-
tainment in the race.

By virtue, then, of this double appeal of form and
matter; by his especial hold upon the young, in whose
spirit so much of his best work was done ; by his un-
decaying influence on other writers ; by the spell which
he still exercises from the grave, and exercises most
strongly on those who are most familiar with the best
company whether of the living or the dead, Stevenson's
name and memory, so far as can be judged at present,
seem destined not to dwindle, but to grow. The
voice of the advocatus diaboli has been heard against
him, as it is right and proper that it should be heard
against any man before his reputation can be held fully
established. One such advocate in this country has
thought to dispose of him by the charge of "exter-

xvii

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

nality." But the reader who remembers things like the
sea-frenzy of Gordon Darnaway, or the dialogue of
Markheim with his other self in the house of murder, or
the rebaptism of the spirit of Seraphina in the forest
dews, or the failure of Herrick to find in the waters of
the island lagoon a last release from dishonour, or the
death of Goguelat, or the appeal of Kirstie Elliott in the
midnight chamber — such a reader can only smile at a
criticism like this and put it by. These and a score of
other passages breathe the essential poetry and signifi-
cance of things as they reveal themselves to true masters
only — are instinct at once with the morality and the
romance which lie deep together at the soul of nature
and experience. Not in vain had Stevenson read the
lesson of the Lantern-Bearers, and hearkened to the
music of the pipes of Pan. He was feeling his way all
his life towards a fuller mastery of his means, preferring
always to leave unexpressed what he felt that he could
not express perfectly; and in much of his work was
content merely to amuse himself and others. But even
when he is playing most fancifully with his art and his
readers, as in the shudders, tempered with laughter,
of the Suicide Club, or the airy sentimental comedy of
Providence and the Guitar, or the schoolboy historical
inventions of Dickon Crookback and the old sailor
Arblaster, a writer of his quality cannot help striking
notes from the heart of life and the inwardness of things
deeper than will ever be struck, or even apprehended,
by another who labours, with never a smile either of
his own or of his reader*s, upon the most solemn enter-
prises of realistic fiction, but is born without the magi-
cian's touch and insight.

xvni

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INTRODUCTION

Another advocate on the same side, in the United
States, has made much of the supposed dependence of
this author on his models, and classed him among
writers whose inspiration is imitative and second-hand.
But this, surely, is to be quite misled by the well-
known passage of Stevenson's own, in which he speaks
of himself as having in his prentice years played the
"sedulous ape" to many writers of different styles
and periods. In doing this he was not seeking inspi-
ration, but simply practising the use of the tools which
were to help him to express his own inspirations.
Truly he was always much of a reader; but it was life,
not books, that always in the first degree allured and
taught him.

" He loved of life the myriad sides,
Pain, prayer, or pleasure, act or sleep.
As wallowing narwhals love the deep" —

so with just self-knowledge he wrote of himself; and
the books which he most cared for and lived with were
those of which the writers seemed — to quote again a
phrase of his own — to have been "eavesdropping at
the door of his heart"; those which told of moods,
impressions, experiences or cravings after experience,
pains, pleasures, opinions, or conflicts of the spirit,
which in the eagerness of youthful living and thinking
had already been his own. No man, in fact, was ever
less inclined to take anything at second-hand. The
root of all originality was in him, in the shape of an
extreme natural vividness of perception, imagination,
and feeling. An instinctive and inbred unwillingness
to accept the accepted and conform to the conventional

xix

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

was of the essence of his character, whether in life or
art, and was a source to him both of strength and
weakness. He would not follow a general rule —
least of all if it was a prudential rule — of conduct un-
less he was clear that it was right according to his
private conscience; nor would he join, in youth, in
the ordinary social amusements of his class when he
had once found out that they did not amuse bim ; nor
wear their clothes if he could not feel at ease and be
himself in them ; nor use, whether in speech or writ-
ing, any trite or inanimate form of words that did not
feithfuUy and livingly express his thought A readier
acceptance of current usages might have been better for
him, but was simply not in his nature. "Damp gin-
ger-bread puppets" were to him the persons who
lived and thought and felt and acted only as was e;^-
pected of them. "To see people skipping all round
us with their eyes sealed up with indifference, know-
ing nothing of the earth or man or woman, going au-
tomatically to offices and saying they are happy or
unhappy, out of a sense of duty I suppose, surely at
least from no sense of happiness or unhappiness, unless
perhaps they have a tooth that twinges — is it not like
a bad dream ? " No reader of this book will close it,
I am sure, without feeling that he has been throughout
in the company of a spirit various indeed and many-
mooded, but profoundly sincere and real. Ways that
in another might easily have been mere signs of affec-
tation were in him the true expression of a nature ten
times more spontaneously itself and individually alive
than that of others. Self-consciousness, in many char-
acters that possess it, deflects and falsifies conduct;

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INTRODUCTION

and so does the dramatic instinct. Stevenson was
self-conscious in a high degree, but only as a part of
his general activity of mind ; only in so far as he could
not help being an extremely intelligent spectator of his
own doings and feelings ; these themselves came from
springs of character and impulse much too deep and
strong to be diverted. He loved also, with a child's or
actor's gusto, to play a part and make a drama out of
life;^ but the part was always for the moment his very
own : he had it not in him to pose for anything but
what he truly was.

When a man so constituted had once mastered his
craft of letters, he might take up whatever instrument
he pleased with the instinctive and just confidence that
he would play upon it to a tune and with a manner of
his own. This is indeed the true mark and test of his
originality. He has no need to be, or to seem, espe-
cially original in the form and mode of literature which
he attempts. By his choice of these he may at any
time give himself and his reader the pleasure of recall-
ing, like a familiar air, some strain of literary associ-
ation ; but in so doing he only adds a secondary charm
to his work; the vision, the temperament, the mode of
conceiving and handling, are in every case strongly
personal to himself. He may try his hand in youth at
a Sentimental Journey, but R. L. S. cannot choose but
be at the opposite pole of human character and feeling
from Laurence Sterne. In tales of mystery, allegorical
or other, he may bear in mind the precedent of Edgar
Poe, and yet there is nothing in style and temper much

^Compare yirgintbus Puirisqu$: the essay on "The English
Admirals."

xxi

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

wider apart than Markbeitn and Jehytt and Hyde are
from Tbe Murders in the Rue Morgue or IVilliam
Wilson. He may set out to tell a pirate story for boys
"exactly in the ancient way," and it will come from
him not in the ancient way at all, but reminted;
marked with a sharpness and saliency in the characters,
a private stamp of buccaneering ferocity combined with
smiling humour, an energy of vision and happy vivid-
ness of presentment, which are shiningly his own.
Another time, he may desert the paths of Kingston and
Ballantyne the brave for those of Sir Walter Scott; but
literature presents few stronger x:ontrasts than between
any scene of IVaverley or Redgauntlet anxd any scene of
Tbe Master of Ballantrae or Catriona, whether in their
strength or weakness: and it is the most loyal lovers
of the older master who take the greatest pleasure in
reading the work of the younger, so much less opu-
lently gifted as is probable — though we must remem-
ber that Stevenson died at the age when Scott wrote
IVaverley — so infinitely more careful of his gift.
Stevenson may even blow upon the pipe of Burns, and
yet his tune will be no echo, but one which utters the
heart and mind of a Scots poet who has his own out-
look on life, his own special and profitable vein of
smiling or satirical contemplation.

Not by realson, then, of "externality," for sure, nor
yet of imitativeness, will this writer lose his hold on
the attention and regard of his countrymen. The de-
bate, before his place in literature is settled, must rather
turn on other points: as whether the genial essayist
and egoist or the romantic inventor and narrator was
the stronger in him — whether the Montaigne and

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INTRODUCTION

Pepys elements prevailed in his literary composition, or
the Scott and Dumas elements — a question indeed
which among those who care for him most has always
been at issue. Or again, what degree of true inspiring
and illuminating power belongs to the gospel, or gos-
pels, airily encouraging or gravely didactic, which are
set forth in the essays with so captivating a grace ? Or
whether in romance and tale he had a power of hap-
pily inventing and soundly constructing a whole fable
comparable to his unquestionable power of conceiving
and presenting single scenes and situations in a man-
ner which stamps them indelibly on the reader's mind.
And whether his figures are sustained continuously by
the true, large, spontaneous breath of creation, or are
but transitorily animated at critical and happy moments
by flashes of spiritual and dramatic insight, aided by
the conscious devices of his singularly adroit and
spirited art. This is a question which no criticism
but that of time can solve; it takes the consenting in-
stinct of generations to feel whether the creatures of
fiction, however powerfully they may strike at first,
are durably and equably, or ephemerally and fitfully,
alive. To contend, as some do, that strong creative
impulse, and so keen an artistic self-consciousness as
Stevenson's was, cannot exist together, is quite idle.
The truth, of course, is that the deep-seated energies
of imaginative creation are found sometimes in com-
bination, and sometimes not in combination, with an
artistic intelligence thus keenly conscious of its own
purpose and watchful of its own working.

Once more, it may be questioned whether, among
the many varieties of work which Stevenson has left»

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all touched with genius, all charming and stimulating
to the literary sense, all distinguished by a grace and
precision of workmanship which are the rarest qualities
in English art, there are any which can be pointed to as
absolute masterpieces, such as the future cannot be ex-
pected to let die. Let the future decide. What is cer-
tain is that posterity must either be very well, or very
ill, occupied if it can consent to give up so much sound
entertainment, and better than entertainment, as this
writer afforded his contemporaries. In the meantime,
among judicious readers on both sides of the Atlantic,
Stevenson stands, I think it may safely be said, as a
true master of English prose; unsurpassed for the union
of lenity and lucidity with suggestive pregnancy and
poetic animation ; for harmony of cadence and the well-
knit structure of sentences; and for the art of imparting
to words the vital quality of things, and making them
convey the precise — sometimes, let it be granted, the
too curiously precise — expression of the very shade
and colour of the thought, feeling, or vision in his
mind. He stands, moreover, as the writer who, in the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, has handled with
the most of freshness and inspiriting power the widest
range of established literary forms — the moral, critical,
and personal essay, travels sentimental and other, ro-
mances and short tales both historical and modern,
parables and tales of mystery, boys' stories of adven-
ture, memoirs — nor let lyrical and meditative verse
both English and Scottish, and especially nursery verse, a
new vein for genius to work in, be forgotten. To some
of these forms Stevenson gave quite new life; through
all alike he expressed vividly an extremely personal

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way of seeing and being, a sense of nature and ror
mance» of the aspects of human existence and prob-
lems of human conduct, which was essentially his own.
And in so doing he contrived to make friends and
even lovers of his readers. Those whom he attracts at
all (and there is no writer who attracts every one) are
drawn to him over and over again, fmding familiarity
not lessen but increase the charm of his work, and de-
siring ever closer intimacy with the spirit and person-
ality which they divine behind it

As to the fitting scale, then, on which to treat the
memory of a man who fills five years after his death
such a place as this in the public regard, the words
"selection " and " sketch " have evidently to be given a
pretty liberal interpretation. Readers, it must be sup-
posed, will scarce be content without both a fairly full
biography, and the opportunity of a fairly ample inter-
course with the man as he was accustomed to reveal
himself in writing to his familiars. As to form — Ste-
venson's own words and the nature of the material alike
seem to indicate that the Life and the Letters should be
kept separate. There are some kinds of correspondence
which can conveniently be woven into the body and
texture of a biography, though indeed I think it is a
plan to which biographers are much too partial. No-
thing, surely, more checks the flow of a narrative than
its interruption by stationary blocks of correspondence;
nothing more disconcerts the reader than a too frequent
or too abrupt alternation of voices between the subject
of a biography speaking in his letters and the writer
of it speaking in his narrative. At least it is only when
letters are occupied, as Macaulay's for instance were,

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almost entirely with facts and events, that they can
without difficulty be handled in this way. But events
and facts, "sordid facts/' as he called them, were not
very often suffered to intrude into Stevenson's corre-
spondence. " I deny," he writes, •* that letters should
contain news (I mean mine; those of other people
should). But mine should contain appropriate senti-
ments and humorous nonsense, or nonsense without
the humour." Business letters, letters of information,
and letters of courtesy he had sometimes to write: but
when he wrote best was under the influence of the
affection or impression, or the mere whim or mood,
of the moment; pouring himself out in all manner of
rhapsodical confessions and speculations, grave or gay,
notes of observation and criticism, snatches of remem-
brance and autobiography, moralisings on matters up-
permost for the hour in his mind, comments on his own
work or other people's, or mere idle fun and foolery.

With a letter-writer of this character, as it seems to
me, a judicious reader desires to be left as much alone
as possible. What he wants is to relish the correspon-
dence by itself, or with only just so much in the way
of notes and introductions as may serve to make allu-
sions and situations clear. Two volumes, then, of
letters so edited, to be preceded by a separate intro-
ductory volume of narrative and critical memoir, or
itude — such was to be the njemorial to my friend
which I had planned, and hoped by this time to have
ready. Unfortunately, the needftil leisure has hitherto
failed me, and might fail me for some time yet, to com-
plete the separate volume of biography. That is now,
at the wish of the family, to be undertaken by Steven-

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son's cousin and my friend, Mr. Graham Balfour.
Meanwhile the Letters, with introductions and notes
somewhat extended from the original plan, are here-
with presented as a substantive work by themselves.

The book will enable those who know and love
their Stevenson already to know him more intimately,
and, as I hope, to love him more. It contains, cer-
tainly, much that is most essentially characteristic of
the man. To some, perhaps, that very lack of art as a
correspondent of which we have found him above ac-
cusing himself may give the reading an added charm
and flavour. What he could do as an artist we know
— what a telling power and heightened thrill he could
give to all his effects, in so many different modes of
expression and composition, by calculated skill and
the deliberate exercise of a perfectly trained faculty.
This is the quality which nobody denies him, and
which so deeply impressed his fellow craftsmen of all
kinds. I remember the late Sir John Millais, a shrewd
and very independent judge of books, calling across to
me at a dinner-table, "You know Stevenson, don't
you?" and then going on, "Well. 1 wish you would
tell him from me, if he cares to know, that to my mind
he is the very first of living artists. I don't mean
writers merely, but painters and all of us: nobody liv-
ing can see with such an eye as that fellow, and no-
body is such a master of his tools." Now in his letters,
excepting a few written in youth, and having more
or less the character of exercises, and a few in after
years which were intended for the public eye, Steven-
son the deliberate artist is scarcely forthcoming at all.
He does not care a fig for order or logical sequence or

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

congruity. or for striking a key of expression and keep-
ing it, but becomes simply the most spontaneous and
unstudied of human beings. He will write with the
most distinguished elegance on one day, with simple
good sense and good feeling on a second, with flat
triviality on another, and with the most slashing, often
ultra-colloquial, vehemence on a fourth, or will vary
through all these moods and more in one and the same
letter. He has at his command the whole vocabularies
of the English and Scottish languages, classical and
slang, with good stores of the French, and tosses and
tumbles them about irresponsibly to convey the im-
pression or affection, the mood or freak of the moment
Passages or phrases of the craziest schoolboy or sea-
faring slang come tumbling after and capping others of
classical cadence and purity, of poetical and heartfelt
eloquence. By this medley of moods and manners,
Stevenson's letters at their best — the pick, let us say,
of those In the following volumes which were written
from Hyfires or Bournemouth -r- come nearer than any-
thing else to the full-blooded charm and variety of his
conversation.

Nearer, yet not quite near; for it was in company
only that this genial spirit rose to his very best. Those
whom his writings charm or impress, but who never
knew him, can but imagine how doubly they would
have been charmed and impressed by his presence.
Few men probably, certainly none that I have ever
seen or read of, have had about them such a richness
and variety of human nature; and few can ever have
been better gifted than he wa^ to express the play of
being that was in him by means of the apt, expressive

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word and the animated look and gesture. Dwers et
andqyanU in the words of Montaigne* beyond other
men, he seemed to contain within himself a whole
troop of singularly assorted characters — the poet and
artistt the moralist and preacher, the humourist and
jester, the man of heart and conscience, the man of
eager appetite and curiosity, the Bohemian, impatient
of restraints and shams, the adventurer and lover of
travel and of action: characters, several of them, not
rare separately, especially among his Scottish fellow
countrymen, but rare indeed to be found united, and
each in such fulness and intensity, within the bounds
of a single personality.

Before all things Stevenson was a bom poet, to whom
the world was full of enchantment and of latent ro-
mance, only waiting to take shape and substance in
the forms of art It was his birthright —

" to hear
The great bell beating far and near —
The odd, unknown, enchanted gong
That on the road hales men along.
That from the mountain calls afar*
That lures the vessel from a star.
And with a still, aerial sound
Makes all the earth enchanted ground. **

At the same time, he was not less a bom preacher
and moralist after his fashion. A true son of the
Covenanters, he had about him little spirit of social or
other conformity; but an active and searching private
conscience kept him for ever calling in question both
the grounds of his own conduct and the validity of

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the accepted codes and compromises of society. He
must try to work out a scheme of morality suitable to
his own case and temperament, which found the pro-
hibitory law of Moses chill and uninspiring, but in the
Sermon on the Mount a strong incentive to all those
impulses of pity and charity to which his heart was
prone. In youth his sense of social injustice and the
inequalities of human opportunity made him inwardly
much of a rebel, who would have embraced and acted
on theories of socialism and communism, could he
have found any that did not seem to him at variance
with ineradicable instincts of human nature.^ All his
life the artist and the moralist in him alike were in re-
bellion against the bourgeois spirit — against timid,
negative, and shuffling substitutes for active and coura-
geous well-doing— and declined to worship at the shrine
of what he called the bestial goddesses Comfort and
Respectability. The moralist in him helped the artist
by backing with the force of a highly sensitive con-
science his instinctive love of perfection in his work.
The poet and artist qualified the moralist by dis-
countenancing any preference for the harsh, the sour,
or the self-mortifying forms of virtue, and encouraging
the Ipve for all tender or heroic, glowing, generous,
and cheerful forms.

In another aspect of his many-sided being Stevenson
was not less a born adventurer and practical experi*
mentalist in life. Many poets are content to dream,
and many, perhaps most, moralists to preach; but
Stevenson must ever be doing and undergoing. He

iThc fragment called Lajf Morals (Thistle edition, vol. xxii. pp.
331-588) contains the pith of his mental history on these subjects.

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INTRODUCTION

was no sentimentalist, to pay himself with fine feelings
whether for mean action or slack inaction. He had an
insatiable zest for all experiences, not the pleasurable
only, but including even the more harsh and biting —
those that bring home to a man the pinch and sting of
existence as it is realised by the disinherited of the
world, and excluding only what he thought the prim,
the conventional, the dead-alive, and the cut-and-dry.
On occasion the experimentalist and man of adventure
in him would enter into special partnership with the
moralist and man of conscience ; he loved to find him-
self in difficult social passes and ethical dilemmas for
the sake of trying to behave in them to the utmost
accordmg to his own personal sense of the obligations
of honour, duty, and kindness. In yet another part of
his being, he cherished, as his great countryman Scott
had done before him, an intense underlying longing for
the life of action, danger, and command. " Action,
G>lvin, action," I remember his crying eagerly to me
with his hand on my arm as we lay basking for his
health's sake in a boat off the scented shores of the
Cap St. Martin. Another time — this was on his way
to a winter cure at Davos — some friend had given him
General Hamley's Operations of IVar: — "in which,"
he writes to his father, **I am drowned a thousand
fathoms deep, and O that I had been a soldier is still
my cry." In so frail a tabernacle was it that the aspira-
tions of the artist, the unconventional moralist, the
lover of all experience, and the lover of daring action
had to learn to reconcile themselves as best they might
Frail as it was, it contained withal a strong animal
nature, and he was as much exposed to the storms and

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solicitations of sense as to the cravings and questionings
of the spirit. Fortunately, with all these ardent and
divers instincts, there were present two invaluable gifts
besides — that of humour, which for all his stress of
being and vivid consciousness of self saved him from
ever seeing himself for long together out of a just pro-
portion, and kept wholesome laughter always ready at
his lips ; and that of a perfectly warm, loyal, and tender
heart, which through all his experiments and agitations
made the law of kindness the one ruling law of his life.
In the end, lack of health determined his career, giving
the chief part in his life to the artist and man of imagi-
nation, and keeping the man of action a prisoner in the
sickroom until, by a singular turn of destiny, he was
able to wring a real, prolonged, and romantically suc-
cessful adventure out of that voyage to the Pacific
which had been, in its origin, the last despairing re-
source of the invalid.

To take this multiple personality from another point
of view* it was part of his genius that he never seemed
to be cramped like the rest of us, at any given time
of life, within the limits of his proper age, but to be
|f child, boy, young man, and old man all at once.
There was never a time in his life when Stevenson had
to say with St. Augustine, "Behold I my childhood
is dead, but I am alive." The child, as his Garden of
yerses vividly attests, and as will be seen by abundant
evidence in the course of the following pages, lived on
always in him, not in memory only, but in real survival,
with all its freshness of perception unimpaired, and none
of its play instincts in the least degree extinguished or
made ashamed. As for the perennial boy in Stevenson,

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that is too apparent to need remark. It was as a boy
for boys that he wrote the best known of his books,
Treasure Island ; with all boys that he met, provided
they were really boys and not prigs nor puppies, he was
instantly at home; and the ideal of a career which he
most inwardly and longingly cherished, the ideals of
practical adventure and romance, of desirable predica-
ments and gratifying modes of escape from them, were
from first to last those of a boy. At the same time, even
when I first knew him, there were about him occasional
traits and glimpses of old sagacity, of premature life-
wisdom and experience, such as find expression, for in-
stance, in the essay yirginibus Puerisque, among other
matter more according with his then age of twenty-six.
Again, it is said that in every poet there must be
something of the woman — the receptivity, the emo-
tional nature. If to be impressionable in the extreme,
quick in sympathy and feeling, ardent in attachment, and
full of pity for the weak and suffering, is to be womanly,
Stevenson was certainly all those; he was even like a
woman in being apxtSaxpoc, easily moved to tears at the
touch of pity or affection, or even at any specially
poignant impression of art or beauty. But yet, if any
one word were to be chosen for the predominant quality
of his character and example, I suppose that word would
be manly. In all his habits and instincts he was the
least effeminate of men; and effeminacy, or aught ap-
proaching sexlessness, was perhaps the only quality in
man with which he had no patience. In his gentle and
complying nature there were strains of iron tenacity and
will. He had both kinds of physical courage — the
active, delighting in danger, and the passive, unshaken

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in endurance. In the moral courage of facing situations
and consequences, of cheerful self-discipline and readi-
ness to pay for faults committed, of outspokenness, ad-
mitting no ambiguous relations and clearing away the
clouds from human intercourse, I have not known his
equal. His great countryman Scott, as this book will
prove, was not more manfully free from artistic jealousy
or the least shade of irritability under criticism, or more
modestly and unfeignedly inclined to exaggerate the
qualities of other people's work and to underrate those
of his own. His severest critic was always himself;
the next most severe, those of his own household and
intimacy, whose love made them jealous lest he should
fall short of his best; for he lived in an atmosphere of
love, indeed, but not of flattery. Of the humorous and
engaging parts of vanity and egoism, which led him to
make infinite talk and fun about himself, and use his
own experiences as a key for unlocking the confidences
of others, Stevenson had plenty ; but of the morose and
fretful parts never a shade. **A little Irish girl," he
wrote once during a painful crisis of his life, "is now
reading my book aloud to her sister at my elbow ; they
chuckle, and I feel flattered.— Yours, R. L. S. P.S.
— Now they yawn, and I am indifferent. Such a wisely
conceived thing is vanity. " If only vanity so conceived
were commoner 1 And whatever might be the ab-
stract and philosophical value of that somewhat grimly
stoical conception of the universe, of conduct and duty,
at which in mature years he had arrived, want of manli-
ness is certainly not its fault. Nor is any such want to
be found in the practice which he founded on or com-
bined with it; in his invincible gaiety and sweetness

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INTRODUCTION

under sufferings and deprivations the most galling to
him; in the temper which made his presence in health \
or sickness a perpetual sunshine to those about him. '
Take the kind of maxims of life which he was accus-
tomed to forge for himself and to act by: — " Acts may
be forgiven; not even God can forgive the hanger-
back." "Choose the best, if you can; or choose the
worst; that which hangs in the wind dangles from a
gibbet" " ' Shall I ? ' said Feeble-mind ; and the echo
said, ' Fie ! ' " " ' Do I love ? ' said Loveless ; and the echo
laughed." **A fault known is a fault cured to the
strong; but to the weak it is a fetter riveted." "The
mean man doubts, the great-hearted is deceived."
"Great-heart was deceived. 'Very well,' said Great-
heart." " 'I have not forgotten my umbrella,' said the
careful man; but the lightning struck him." "Nullity
wanted nothing; so he supposed he wanted advice."
" Evil was called Youth till he was old, and then he was
called Habit" "Fear kept the house; and still he
must pay taxes." "Shame had a fine bed, but where
was slumber? Once he was in jail he slept" With
this moralist maxims meant actions; and where shall
we easily find a much manlier spirit of wisdom than
this?

There was yet another and very different side to
Stevenson which struck others more than it struck
myself, namely, that of the perfectly freakish, not per-
fectly human, irresponsible madcap or jester which
sometimes appeared in him. It is true that his de-
moniac quickness of wit and intelligence suggested
occasionally a "spirit of air and fire" rather than one
of earth ; that he was abundantly given to all kinds of

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quirk and laughter; and that there was no jest (saving
the unkind) he would not make and relish. In the
streets of Edinburgh he had certainly been known for
queer pranks and mystifications in youth; and up to
middle life there seemed to some of his friends to be
much, if not of the Puck, at least of the Ariel, about
him. The late Mr. J. A. Symonds always called him
Sprite; qualifying the name, however, by the epithets
** most fantastic, but most human." To me the essen-
tial humanity was always the thing most apparent
In a fire well nourished of seasoned ship-timber, the
flames glance fantastically and of many colours, but the
glow at heart is ever deep and strong; it was at such a
glow that the friends of Stevenson were accustomed
to warm their hands, while they admired and were
entertained by the shifting lights.

It was only in talk, as I have said, that all the many
lights and colours of this richly compounded spirit
could be seen in full play. He would begin no matter
how — in early days often with a jest at his own ab-
surd garments, or with the recitation, in his vibrating
voice and full Scotch accent, of some snatch of poetry
that was haunting him, or with a rhapsody of analytic
delight over some minute accident of beauty or expres-
siveness that had struck his observation, and would
have escaped that of everybody else, in man, woman,
child, or external nature. And forthwith the floodgates
would be opened, and the talk would stream on in
endless, never importunate, flood and variety. A hun-
dred fictitious characters would be invented, differen-
tiated, and launched on their imaginary careers; a
hundred ingenious problems of conduct and cases of

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honour would be set and solved, in a manner often quite
opposed to conventional precept; romantic voyages
would be planned and followed out in vision, with a
thousand incidents, to all the corners of our own planet
and of others; the possibilities of life and art would be
illuminated with glancing search-lights of bewildering
range and penetration, the most sober argument alter-
nating witfk the maddest freaks of fancy, high poetic
eloquence with coruscations of insanely apposite slang
—the earthiest jape anon shooting up into the empy-
rean and changing into the most ethereal fantasy — the
stalest and most vulgarised forms of speech gaining
brilliancy and illuminating power from some hitherto
undreamt-of application — and all the while an atmo-
sphere of goodwill diffusing itself from the speaker, a
glow of eager benignity and affectionate laughter ema*
nating from his presence, till every one about him
seemed to catch something of his own gift and inspira-
tion. This sympathetic power of inspiring others was
the special and distinguishing note of Stevenson's con-
versation. He would keep a houseful or a single com-
panion entertained all day, and day after day and half
the nights, yet never seemed to dominate the talk or
absorb it; rather he helped every one about him to dis-
cover and to exercise unexpected powers of their own.
The point could hardly be better brought out than it is
in a fragment which I borrow from Mr. Henley of an
unpublished character-sketch of his friend: "I leave
his praise in this direction [the telling of Scottish ver-
nacular stories] to others. It is more to my purpose to
note that he will discourse with you of morals, music,
marbles, men, manners, metaphysics, medicine, man-

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gold-wurzel — que scays-jei — v^xWi equal insight into
essentials and equal pregnancy and felicity of utterance;
and that he will stop with you to make mud pies in the
first gutter, range in your company whatever heights
of thought and feeling you have found accessible, and
end by guiding you to altitudes far nearer the stars than
you have ever dreamed of footing it; and that at the
last he makes you wonder which to admire the more
— his easy familiarity with the Eternal Veracities or the
brilliant flashes of imbecility with which his excursions
into the Infinite are sometimes diversified. He radi-
ates talk, as the sun does light and heat; and after an
evening — or a week — with him, you come forth with
a sense of satisfaction in your own capacity which
somehow proves superior even to the inevitable con-
clusion that your brilliance was but the reflection of his
own, and that all the while you were only playing the
part of Rubinstein's piano or Sarasate's violin."

All this the reader should imagine as helped by the
most speaking of presences: a steady, penetrating fire
in the wide-set eyes, a compelling power and sweet-
ness in the smile; courteous, waving gestures of the
arms and long, nervous hands, a lit cigarette generally
held between the fingers; continual rapid shiftings and
pacings to and fro as he conversed : rapid, but not flur-
ried nor awkward, for there was a grace in his attenu-
ated but well-carried figure, and his movements were
light, deft, and full of spring. When I first knew him
he was passing through a period of neatness between
two of Bohemian carelessness as to dress ; so that the
effect of his charm was immediate. At other times of
his youth there was somethingfor strangers, and even for

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friends, to get over in the odd garments which it was
his whim to wear — the badge, as they always seemed
to me, partly of a genuine carelessness, certainly of a
genuine lack of cash (the little he had was always ab-
solutely at the disposal of his friends), partly of a delib-
erate detachment from any particular social class or caste,
partly of his love of pickles and adventures, which he
thought befell a man thus attired more readily than an-
other. But this slender, slovenly, nondescript appari-
tion, long-visaged and long-haired, had only to speak
in order to be recognised in the first minute for a witty
and charming gentleman, and within the first five for a
master spirit and man of genius. There were, indeed,
certain stolidly conventional and superciliously official
kinds of persons, both at home and abroad, who were
incapable of looking beyond the clothes, and eyed him
always with frozen suspicion. This attitude used some-
times in youth to drive him into fits of flaming anger,
which put him helplessly at a disadvantage unless, or
until, he could call the sense of humour to his help.
For the rest, his human charm was the same for all
kinds of people, without the least distinction of class or
caste; for worldly-wise old great ladies, whom he re-
minded of famous poets in their youth; for his brother
artists and men of letters, perhaps, above all; for the
ordinary clubman ; for his physicians, who could never
do enough for him ; for domestic servants, who adored
him; for the English policeman even, on whom he
often tried, quite in vain, to pass himself as one of the
criminal classes; for the common seaman, the shep-
herd, the street Arab, or the tramp. Even in the im-
posed silence and restraint of extreme sickness the

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magnetic power and attraction of the man made itself
felt, and there seemed to be more vitality and fire of
the spirit in him as he lay exhausted and speechless in
bed than in an ordinary roomful of people in health.

But I have strayed from my purpose, which is only
to indicate that in the best of these letters of Stevenson's
you have some echo, far away indeed, but yet the near-
est, of his talk — talk which could never be taken down,
and has left only an ineffaceable impression in the mem-
ory of his friends. The letters, it should be added, do
not represent him at all fully until about the thirtieth
year of his age, the beginning of the settled and married
period of his life. From then onwards, and especially
from the beginning of Part vi. (the Hydres period), they
present a pretty full and complete autobiography, if not
of doings, at any rate of moods and feelings. In the
earlier periods, his correspondence for the most part
expresses his real self either too little or else one-
sidedly. I have omitted very many letters of his
boyish and student days as being too immature or unin-
teresting; and many of the confidences and confessions
of his later youth, though they are those of a. beautiful
spirit, whether as too intimate, or as giving a dispro-
portionate prominence to passing troubles. When he is
found in these days writing in a melancholy or minor
key, it must be remembered that at the same moment,
in direct intercourse with any friend, his spirits would
instantly rise, and he would be found the gayest of
laughing companions. Very many letters or snatches
of letters of nearly all dates to his familiars have also
been omitted as not intelligible without a knowledge of
the current jests, codes, and catchwords of conversation

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INTRODUCTION

between him and them. At one very interesting period
of his life, from about his twenty-fifth to his twenty-
ninth year, he disused the habit of letter- writing almost
entirely.

In choosing from among what remained I have used
the best discretion that I could. Stevenson's feelings
and relations throughout life were in almost all direc-
tions so warm and kindly that next to nothing had to
be suppressed from fear of giving pain. On the other
hand, he drew people towards him with so much con-
fidence and affection, and met their openness with so
much of his own, that an editor could not but feel the
frequent risk of inviting readers to trespass too far on
purely private affairs and feelings, including those of the
living. This was a point upon which in his lifetime he
felt strongly. That excellent critic, Mr. Walter Raleigh,
has noticed, as one of the merits of Stevenson's per-
sonal essays and accounts of travel, that few men have
written more or more attractively of themselves with-
out ever taking the public unduly into familiarity or
overstepping proper bounds of reticence. Public pry-
ing into private lives, the propagation of gossip by the
press, and printing of private letters during the writer's
lifetime, were things he hated. Once, indeed, he very
superfluously gave himself a dangerous cold by dancing
before a bonfire in his garden at the news of a "so-
ciety" editor having been committed to prison; and
the only approach to a difference he ever had with one
of his lifelong friends arose from the publication, with-
out permission, of one of his letters written on his first
Pacific voyage (see below, vol. ii. p. 179).

How far, then, must I regard his instructions about
adi

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

publication as authorising me to go after his death
beyond the limits which he had been so careful in
observing and desiring others to observe in life ? How
much may now fairly become public of that which had
been held sacred and hitherto private among his friends ?
To cut out all that is strictly personal and intimate were
to leave his story untold and half the charm of his
character unrevealed; to put in too much were to
break all bonds of that privacy which he so carefully
regarded while he lived. I know not if I have at all
been able to hit the mean, and to succeed in making
these letters, as it has been my object to make them,
present, without offence or intrusion, a just, a living,
and a proportionate picture of the man, so far as they
will yield it. There is one respect in which his own
practice and principle has had to be in some degree
violated, if the work was to be done at all. Except in
the single case of the essay *' Ordered South," he would
never in writing for the public adopt the invalid point
of view, or invite any attention to his infirmities. *' To
me," he says, **the medicine bottles on my chimney
and the blood on my handkerchief are accidents; they
do not colour my view of life; and I should think
myself a trifler and in bad taste if I introduced the
world to these unimportant privacies." But from his
letters to his family and friends these matters could
not possibly be quite left out. The tale of his life, in
the years when he was most of a correspondent, was
in truth a tale of daily and nightly battle against weak-
ness and physical distress and danger. To those who
loved him, the incidents of this battle were communi-
cated, sometimes gravely, sometimes laughingly. I

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INTRODUCTION

have very greatly cut down such bulletins, but could
not manage to omit them altogether. Generally speak-
ing, I have used the editorial privilege of omission
without scruple where I thought it desirable. And in
regard to the text, I have not held myself bound to
reproduce all the author's minor eccentricities of spelling
and the like. As all his friends are aware, to spell in a
quite accurate and grown-up manner was a thing which
this master of English letters was never able to learn;
but to reproduce such trivial slips in print is, I think,
to distract the reader's attention from the main matter.
A normal orthography has therefore been adopted
throughout

August, i8^^

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

TRAVELS AND EXCURSIONS

(1868-1873)

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

TRAVELS AND EXCURSIONS
(1868-1873)

THE following section consists chiefly of extracts
from the correspondence and journals addressed
by Louis Stevenson, as a lad of eighteen to twenty-
two, to his father and mother during summer excur-
sions to the Scottish coast or to the Continent. There
exist enough of them to till a volume; but it is not in
letters of this kind to his family that a young man un-
bosoms himself most freely, and these are perhaps not
quite devoid of the qualities of the guide-book and the
descriptive exercise. Nevertheless, they seem to me
to contain enough signs of the future master writer,
enough of character, observation, and skill in expres-
sion, to make a few worth giving by way of an open-
ing chapter to the present book. Among them are
interspersed one or two of a different character ad-
dressed to other correspondents.

But, first, it is desirable that readers not acquainted
with the circumstances and conditions of Stevenson's
parentage and early life should be here, as briefly as

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

possible, informed of them. On both sides of the
house he came of capable and cultivated stock. His
grandfather was Robert Stevenson, civil engineer,
highly distinguished as the builder of the Bell Rock
lighthouse. By this Robert Stevenson, his three sons,
and two of his grandsons now living, the business of
civil engineers in general, and of official engineers to
the Commissioners of Northern Lights in particular, has
been carried on at Edinburgh with high credit and
public utility for almost a century. Thomas Steven-
son, the youngest of the three sons of the original
Robert, was Robert Louis Stevenson's father. He was
a man not only of mark, zeal, and inventiveness in his
profession, but of a singularly interesting personality ; a
staunch friend and sagacious adviser, trenchant in judg-
ment and demonstrative in emotion, outspoken, dog-
matic— despotic, even, in little things, but withal
essentially chivalrous and soft-hearted; apt to pass
with the swiftest transition from moods of gloom or
sternness to those of tender or freakish gaiety, and
commanding a gift of humorous and figurative speech
second only to that of his more famous son.

Thomas Stevenson was married to Margaret Isabella,
youngest daughter of the Rev. Lewis Balfour, for many
years minister of the parish of Colinton in Midlothian.
This Mr. Balfour (described by his grandson in the
essay called "The Manse") was of the stock of the
Balfours of Pilrig, and grandson to that James Balfour,
professor first of moral philosophy, and afterwards of
the law of nature and of nations, who was held in par-
ticular esteem as a philosophical controversialist by
David Hume. His wife, Henrietta Smith, a daughter

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

of the Rev. George Smith of Galston, to whose giil as
a preacher Burns refers scoffingly in The Holy Fair, is
said to have been a woman of uncommon beauty and
charm of manner. Their daughter, Mrs. Thomas
Stevenson, suffered in early and middle life from chest
and nerve troubles, and her son may have inherited
from her some of his constitutional weakness as well as
of his social and intellectual vivacity and his taste for
letters. Robert Louis (baptised Robert Lewis Balfour)
Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850, at 8 How-
ard Place, Edinburgh, and was the only child of his
parents. His health was infirm from the first, and he
was with difficulty kept alive by the combined care of
a capable and watchful mother and a perfectly devoted
nurse, Alison Cunningham, to whom his lifelong
gratitude will be found touchingly expressed in the
course of the following letters. In 1858 he was near
dying of a gastric fever, and was at all times subject to
acute catarrhal and bronchial affections and extreme
nervous excitability. In January, 1853, his parents
moved to i Inverleith Terrace, and in May, 1857, to 17
Heriot Row, which continued to be their Edinburgh
h^^^kfntil the death of Thomas Stevenson in 1887.
lAmKi his time was also spent in the manse of Colin-
ton, on the Water of Leith, the home of his maternal
grandfather. Of this place his childish recollections
were happy and idyllic, while those of city life were
coloured rather by impressions of sickness, fever, and
nocturnal terrors. If, however, he suffered much as a
child from the distresses, he also enjoyed to the full the
pleasures, of imagination. Illness confined him much
within the house, but imagination kept him always

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LETTERS OF R, L STEVENSON

content and busy. In the days of the Crimean war
some one gave the child a cheap toy sword; and when
his father depreciated it, he said, "I tell you, the sword
is of gold, and the sheath of silver, and the boy is very
well off and quite contented/' As disabilities closed in
on him in after life, he would never grumble at any
gift, however niggardly, of fortune, and the anecdote is
as characteristic of the man as of the child. He was
eager and full of invention in every kind of play,
whether solitary or sociable, and seems to have been
treated as something of a small, sickly prince among a
whole cousinhood of playmates of both the Balfour and
the Stevenson connections. He was also a greedy
reader, or rather listener to reading; for it was not
until his eighth year that he began to read easily or
habitually to himself. He has recorded how his first
conscious impression of pleasure from the sound and
cadence of words was received from certain passages
in McCheyne's hymns as recited to him by his nurse.
Bible stories, The Pilgrim's Progress^ and Mayne Reid's
tales were especially, and it would seem equally, his
delight. He began early to take pleasure in attempts
at composition of his own. A history of Mos^^fe-
tated in his sixth year, and an account of tra^PRn
Perth, in his ninth, are still extant Ill-health pre-
vented him getting much regular or continuous school-
ing. He attended first (1858-61) a preparatory school
kept by a Mr. Henderson in India Street; and next (at
intervals for some time after the autumn of 186 1) the
Edinburgh Academy. One of his tutors at the former
school writes: " He was the most delightful boy I ever
knew; full of fun, full of tender feeling, ready for his

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BIRTHPLACE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, EDINBURGH.

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

lessons, ready for a story, ready for fun." From very
early days, both as child and boy, he must have had
something of that power to charm which distin-
guished him above other men in after life. "1 loike
that bo-o-o-o-y," a heavy Dutchman was heard saying
to himself over and over again, whom at the age of
about thirteen he had held in amused conversation
during a whole passage from Ostend. The same
quality, with the signs which he always showed of
quick natural intelligence when he chose to learn,
must have helped to spare him many punishments
from teachers which he earned by persistent and in-
genious truantry. "1 think," remarks his mother,
"they liked talking to him better than teaching him."

For a few months in the autumn of 1863, when his
parents had been ordered to winter at Mentone for the
sake of his mother's health, he was sent to a boarding-
school kept by a Mr, Wyatt at Spring Grove, near Lon-
don. It is not my intention to treat the reader to the
series of childish and boyish letters of these days which
parental fondness has preserved. But here is one writ-
ten from his English school when he was about thir-
teen, which is both amusing in itself and had a certain
influence on his destiny, inasmuch as his appeal led to his
being taken out to join his parents on the French Riviera;
which from that day forward he never ceased to love,
and for which the longing, amid the gloom of Edinburgh
winters, often afterwards gripped him by the heart.

Spring Grove School, i2tb November, 186).
MA CHERE MAMAN,— Jai rccu votre lettre Aujourdhui
at comme le jour prochaine est mon jour de naisance

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

Je vous £crit ce lettre. Ma grande gatteaux est arrivi
il leve 12 livres et demi le prix etait 17 shillings. Sur la
soir6e de Monseigneur Faux il y etait quelques belles
feux d'artifice. Mais les polissons entrent dans notre
champ et nos feux d'artitice et handkerchiefs disap-
peared quickly, but we charged them out of the field.
Je suis presque driven mad par une bruit terrible tous
les garcons kik up comme grand un bruit qu'il est pos-
sible. I hope you will find your house at Mentone
nice. 1 have been obliged to stop from writing by
the want of a pen, but now I have one, so I will
continue.

My dear papa, you told me to tell you whenever I
was miserable. 1 do not feel well, and I wish to get
home. Do take me with you. R. Stevenson.

This young French scholar has yet, it will be dis-
cerned, a good way to travel; in later days he acquired
a complete reading and speaking, and pretty complete
writing, mastery of the language, and was as much at
home with French ways of thought and life as with
English.

For one more specimen of his boyish style, it may
be not amiss to give the text of another appeal which
dates from two and a half years later, and is also
typical of much in his life's conditions both then and
later.

2 SuLYARDE Terrace, Torqpay,
Thursday [April, 1866].
RESPECTED PATERNAL RELATIVE, — 1 Write to make a re-
quest of the most moderate nature. Every year 1 have

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

cost you an enormous — nay, elephantine — sum of
money for drugs and physician's fees, and the most
expensive time of the twelve months was March.

But this year the biting Oriental blasts, the howling
tempests, and the general ailments of the human race
have been successfully braved by yours truly.

Does not this deserve remuneration ?

I appeal to your charity, I appeal to your generosity,
1 appeal to your justice, I appeal to your accounts, I
appeal, in fine, to your purse.

My sense of generosity forbids the receipt of more —
my sense of justice forbids the receipt of less — than
half a crown.— Greeting from. Sir, your most affection-
ate and needy son, R. Stevenson.

Prom 1864 to 1867 Stevenson's education was con-
ducted chiefly at Mr. Thomson's private school in
Frederick Street, Edinburgh, and by private tutors in
various places to which he travelled for his own or his
parents' health. These travels included frequent visits
to such Scottish health resorts as Bridge of Allan,
Dunoon, Rothesay, North Berwick, Lasswade, and
Peebles, and occasional excursions with his father on
his nearer professional rounds to the Scottish coasts and
lighthouses, as well as several longer journeys to the
south of England or the Continent The love of wan-
dering, which was a rooted passion in Stevenson's na-
ture, thus began early to find satisfaction. Prom 1867
the family life became more settled between Edinburgh
and Swanston Cottage, Lothianburn, a country home
in the Pentlands which Mr. Stevenson first rented in
that year, and the scenery and associations of which

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

sank deeply into the young man's spirit, and vitally
affected his after thoughts and his art

By this time Louis Stevenson seemed to show signs
of outgrowing his early infirmities of health. He was
a lover, to a degree even beyond his strength, of out-
door life and exercise (though not of sports), and it
began to be hoped that as he grew up he would be fit
to enter the family profession of civil engineer. He
was accordingly entered as a student at Edinburgh
University, and for several winters attended classes
there with such regularity as his health and inclinations
permitted. This was in truth but small. The mind
on fire with its own imaginations, and eager to acquire
its own experiences in its own way, does not take
kindly to the routine of classes and repetitions, nor could
the desultory mode of schooling enforced upon him by
ill-health answer much purpose by way of discipline.
According to his own account he was at college, as he
had been at school, an inveterate idler and truant But
outside the field of school and college routine he showed
an eager curiosity and activity of mind. '• He was of
a conversable temper," so he says of himself, "and
insatiably curious in the aspects of life, and spent much
of his time scraping acquaintance with all classes of
men and womenkind. " Of one class indeed, and that
was his own, he had soon had enough, at least in so
far as it was to be studied at the dinners, dances, and
other polite entertainments of ordinary Edinburgh
society. Of these he eariy wearied. At home he made
himself pleasant to all comers, but for his own resort
chose out a very few houses, mostly those of intimate
college companions, into which he could go without

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

constraint, and where his inexhaustible flow of poetic,
imaginative, and laughing talk seems generally to have
rather puzzled his hearers than impressed them. On
the other hand, during his endless private rambles and
excursions, whether among the streets and slums, the
gardens and graveyards of the city, or farther afield
among the Pentland hills or on the shores of Forth, he
was never tired of studying character and seeking
acquaintance among the classes more nearly exposed
to the pinch and stress of life.

In the eyes of anxious elders, such vagrant ways
naturally take on the colours of idleness and a love of
low company. Stevenson was, however, in his own
fashion an eager student of books as well as of man and
nature. He read precociously and omnivorously in
the belles-lettres, including a very wide range of Eng-
lish poetry, fiction, and essays, and a fairly wide range
of French; and was a thorough student of Scottish
history, especially from the time of the persecutions
down, and to some extent of history in general. The
art of literature was already his private passion, and
something wil.iin him even already told him that it was
to be his life's work. On all his truantries he went
pencil and copy-book in hand, trying to flt his impres-
sion of the scene to words, to compose original rhymes,
tales, dialogues, and dramas, or to imitate the style and
cadences of the author he at the moment preferred.
For three or four years, nevertheless, he tried dutifully,
if half-heartedly, to prepare himself for the family pro-
fession. In 1868, the year when the following corre-
spondence opens, he went to watch the works of the
firm in progress first at Anstruther, on the coast of

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LETTERS OF R, U STEVENSOK

Fife, and afterwards at Wick. In 1869 he made the
tour of the Orkneys and Shetlands on board the steam
yacht of the Commissioners of Northern Lights, and in
1870 the tour of the Western Islands, preceded by a
stay on the Isle of Earraid (afterwards turned to
account in the tale of Kidnapped), where the works of
the Dhu Heartach Lighthouse were then in progress.
He was a favourite, although a very irregular pupil, of
the professor of engineering, Fleeming Jenkin, whose
friendship and that of Mrs. Jenkin were of great value
to him, and whose life he afterwards wrote; and must
have shown some aptitude for the family calling, inas-
much as in 1 87 1 he received the silver medal of the
Edinburgh Society of Arts for a paper on a suggested
improvement in lighthouse apparatus. The outdoor
and seafaring parts of an engineer's life were in fact
wholly to his taste. But he looked instinctively at the
powers and phenomena of waves and tide, of storm
and current, of reef, cliff, and rock, with the eye of the
poet and artist, and not that of the practician and
calculator; for desk work and office routine he had an
unconquerable aversion ; and his physical powers, had
they remained at their best, must have proved quite
unequal to the workshop training necessary to the
practical engineer. Accordingly in 1871 it was agreed,
not without natural reluctance on his father's part, that
he should give up the hereditary vocation and read for
the bar; literature, on which his heart was set, and In
which his early attempts had been encouraged, being
held to be by itself no profession, or at least one alto-
gether too irregular and undefined. For the next
several years, therefore, he attended law classes instead

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

of engineering and science classes in the University,
giving to the subject a certain amount of serious,
although fitful, attention until he was called to the bar
in 1875.

So much for the course of Stevenson's outward life
during these days at Edinburgh. To tell the story of
his inner life would be a far more complicated task,
and cannot here be attempted even briefly. The fer-
ment of youth was more acute and more prolonged in
him than inmost men even of genius; and for several
years he was torn hither and thither by fifty conflicting
currents of speculation, impulse, and desire. In the
Introduction I have tried to give some notion of the
many various strains and elements which met in him,
and which were in these days pulling one against
another in his half-formed being, at a great exp.ense of
spirit and body. Add the storms, which from time to
time attacked him, of shivering repulsion from the
climate and conditions of life in the city which he yet
deeply and imaginatively loved ; the seasons of tempta-
tion, most strongly besetting the ardent and poetic
temperament, to seek escape into freedom and the ideal
through that grotesque back-door opened by the crude
allurements of the city streets ; the moods of spiritual
revolt against the harsh doctrines of the creed in which
he had been brought up, and to which his parents
were deeply, his father even passionately, attached.

In the later and maturer correspondence which will
appear in these volumes, the agitations of the writer's
early days are often enough referred to in retrospect
In the boyish letters to his parents, which make up the
chief part of this first section, they are naturally hardly

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSOK

allowed to find expression at all ; nor will these letters
be found to differ much in any way from those of any
other lively and observant lad who is also something
of a reader and has some natural gift of writing. At
the end of the section I have indeed printed one cry of
the heart, written not to his parents, but about them,
and telling of the strain which matters of religious dif*
ference for a while brought into his home relations.
These had until now been thoroughly happy. The at-
tachment between the father and son from childhood
was exceptionally strong; and as the latter grew up,
their habits of sympathy, companionship, and affection
had grown ever closer, remaining quite unshaken by
the son's Bohemian ways, or even by disappointment
about his choice of a profession. But the father was
staunchly wedded to the hereditary creeds and dogmas
of Scottish Calvinistic Christianity ; while the course of
the young man's reading, with the spirit of the gener-
ation in which he grew up. had loosed him from the
bonds of that theology, and even of dogmatic Christi-
anity in general, and had taught him to respect all creeds
alike as expressions of the cravings and conjectures of the
human spirit in face of the unsolved mystery of things,
rather than to cling to any one of them as a revelation
of ultimate truth. This, in the main, was his attitude
throughout life towards religion, though as time went
on he grew more ready, in daily life, to use the lan-
guage and fall in with the observances of the faith in
which he had been brought up. And even in youth,
he was never, in my experience, the least blatant or
offensive in the expression of his views. But the
shock to the father was great when they came to his

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knowledge; and there ensued a time of extremely pain-
ful discussion and private tension between father and
son. In due time this cloud upon a family life other-
wise very harmonious and affectionate passed quite
away. But the greater the love, the greater the pain ;
when 1 first knew Stevenson this trouble gave him no
peace, and it has left a strong trace upon his mind and
work. See particularly the bitter parable called " The
House of Eld," in his collection oi Fables, and the many
studies of difficult paternal and filial relations which
are to be found in The Story of a Lie, The Misadven^
iutesof John Nicholson, The Wrecker, and Weir of
Hermiston.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 1868

iCT. 18

In July, 1868, R. L. S. went to watch the harbour works at Anstru^
ther, and afterwards, in the company of his father, those at Wick,
where he was presently left by himself. The following is the second
letter written home after his father had left. An early Portfolio paper
"On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places," as well as the second part
of the " Random Memories" essay, written twenty years later, refer to
the same experiences as the following letters.

Wick, Friday, September //, 1868.
MY DEAR MOTHER, — . • m Wick Hes at the end or
elbow of an open triangular bay, hemmed on either side
by shores, either cliff or steep earth-bank, of no great
height. The grey houses of Pulteney extend along the
southerly shore almost to the cape; and it is about
half-way down this shore — no, six-sevenths way
down — that the new breakwater extends athwart the
bay.

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LETTERS OP R, U STEVENSON

i8d8 Certainly Wick in itself possesses no beauty: bare
grey shores, grim grey houses, grim grey sea; not even
the gleam of red tiles; not even the greenness of a tree.
The southerly heights, when I came here, were black
with people, fishers waiting on wind and night Now
all the S. Y.S. (Stornoway boats) have beaten out of the
bay, and the Wick men stay indoors or wrangle on the
quays with dissatisfied fish-curers, knee-high in brine,
mud, and herring refuse. The day when the boats
put out to go home to the Hebrides, the girl here told
me there was *'a black wind"; and on going out, I
found the epithet as justifiable as it was picturesque.
A cold, black southerly wind, with occasional rising
showers of rain ; it was a fine sight to see the boats
beat out a-teeth of it.

In Wick 1 have never heard any one greet his neigh-
bour with the usual " Fine day" or " Good morning."
Both come shaking their heads, and both say, " Breezy,
breezy I " And such is the atrocious quality of the cli-
mate, that the remark is almost invariably justified by
the fact.

The streets are full of the Highland fishers, lubberly,
stupid, inconceivably lazy and heavy to move. You
bruise against them, tumble over them, elbow them
against the wall — all to no purpose; they will not
budge; and you are forced to leave the pavement
every step.

To the south, however, is as fine a piece of coast
scenery as I ever saw. Great black chasms, huge black
cliflfs, rugged and overhung gullies, natural arches, and
deep green pools below them, almost too deep to let
you see the gleam of sand among the darker weed:

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there are deep caves too. In one of these lives a tribe »8d8
of gipsies. The men are always drunk, simply and ""' *
truthfully always. From morning to evening the
great villainous-looking fellows are either sleeping off
the last debauch, or hulking about the cove "in the
horrors." The cave is deep, high, and airy, and might
be made comfortable enough. But they just live among
heaped boulders, damp with continual droppings from
above, with no more furniture than two or three tin
pans, a truss of rotten straw, and a few ragged cloaks.
In winter the surf bursts into the mouth and often
forces them to abandon it.

An imeute of disappointed fishers was feared, and
two ships of war are in the bay to render assistance to
the municipal authorities. This is the ides; and, to all
intents and purposes, said ides are passed. Still there
is a good deal of disturbance, many drunk men, and a
double supply of police. 1 saw them sent for by some
people and enter an inn, in a pretty good hurry: what
it was for I do not know.

You would see by papa's letter about the carpenter
who fell off the staging: I don't think I was ever so
much excited in my life. The man was back at his
work, and I asked him how he was; but he was a
Highlander, and — need I add it? — dickens a word
could I understand of his answer. What is still worse,
I find the people hereabout — that is to say, the High-
landers, not the northmen — don't understand me.

I have lost a shilling's worth of postage stamps,
which has damped my ardour for buying big lots of
'em: 1 '11 buy them one at a time as I want 'em for the
future.

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LETTERS OF R, L STEVENSON

1868 The Free Church minister and I got quite thick. He
left last night about two in the morning, when I went
to turn in. He gave me the enclosed. — 1 remain your
affectionate son, R. L Stevenson.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

Wick, September $, 1868. Monday.

MY DEAR MAMMA, — This morning 1 got a delightful
haul: your letter of the fourth (surely misdated);
papa's of same day; Virgil's Bucolics, very thankfully
received; and Aikman's Annals,^ a precious and most
acceptable donation, for which I tender my most ebul-
lient thanksgivings. I almost forgot to drink my tea
and eat mine egg.

It contains more detailed accounts than anything I
ever saw, except Wodrow, without being so porten-
tously tiresome and so desperately overborne with foot-
notes, proclamations, acts of Parliament, and citations
as that last history.

I have been reading a good deal of Herbert He 's a
clever and a devout cove; but in places awfully twad-
dley (if I may use the word). Ought n't this to rejoice
papa's heart —

''Girve or discourse; do not a famine fear.
Who carves is kind to two, who talks to all.*'

You understand ? The '* fearing a famine " is applied
to people gulping down solid vivers without a word,
•s if the ten lean kine began to-morrow.

1 Aikman's Annals oftU PitsicutUm in ScotUmd.
18

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

Do you remember condemning something of mine J^^
fcr being too obtrusively didactic ? Listen to Herbert —

•'Is it not verse except enchanted groves
And sudden arbours shadow coarse-spun lines ?
Must purling streams refresh a lover's loves ?
Must all be veiled, while be tbat reads divines
Catcbing tbe sense at two removes ? "

You see, "except" was used for "unless" before
163a

Tuesday. — The riots were a hum. No more has
been heard; and one of the war-steamers has deserted
in disgust

Tbe Moonstone is frightfully interesting: is n't the
detective prime? Don't say anything about the plot;
for 1 have only read on to the end of Betteredge's nar-
rative, so don't Icnow anything about it yet

I thought to have gone on to Thurso to-night, but
the coach was full; so I go to-morrow instead.

To-day 1 had a grouse: great glorification.

There is a drunken brute in the house who disturbed
my rest last night He 's a very respectable man in
general, but when on the "spree" a most consummate
fool. When he came in he stood on the top of the
stairs and preached in the darlc with great solemnity
and no audience from 12 p. m. to half-past one. At last
I opened my door. "Are we to have no sleep at all
for that drunken brute ? " 1 said. As I hoped, it had
tbe desired effect "Drunken brute!" he howled, in
much indignation; then after a pause, in a voice of

»9

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LETTERS OF R, L. STEVENSON

1868 some contrition, '* Well, if I am a drunken brute, it *s
only once in the twelvemonth!" And that was the
end of him; the insult rankled in his mind; and he
retired to rest He is a fish-curer, a man over fifty,
and pretty rich too. He 's as bad again to-day; but
I '11 be shot if he keeps me awake, I '11 douse him with
water if he makes a row. — Ever your affectionate son,

R. L Stevenson.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

Wick, September, 1868. Saturday, to a. m.
MY DEAR MOTHER, — ^The last two days have been
dreadfully hard, and 1 was so tired in the evenings that
I could not write. In fact, last night I went to sleep
immediately after dinner, or very nearly so. My hours
have been 10-2 and 3-7 out in the lighter or the
small boat, in a long, heavy roll from the nor'-east
When the dog was taken out, he got awfully ill; one
of the men, Geordie Grant by name and surname, fol-
lowed sboot with considerable Mat; but, wonderful to
relate! 1 kept well. My hands are all skinned, blis-
tered, discoloured, and engrained with tar, some of
which latter has established itself under my nails in a
position of such natural strength that it defies all my
eflforts to dislodge it The worst work I had was
when David (MacDonald's eldest) and 1 took the charge
ourselves. He remained in the lighter to tighten or
slacken the guys as we raised the pole towards the
perpendicular, with two men. I was with four men in

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

the boat We dropped an anchor out a good bit, then >868
tied a cord to the pole, took a turn round the sternmost
thwart with it, and pulled on the anchor line. As the
great, big, wet hawser came in it soaked you to the
skin: I was the sternest (used, by way of variety, for
sternmost) of the lot, and had to coil it — a work which
involved, from its being so stiff and your being busy
pulling with all your might, no little trouble and an
extra ducking. We got it up; and, just as we were
going to sing ''Victory I" one of the guys slipped in,
the pole tottered — went over on its side again like a
shot, and behold the end of our labour.

You see, I have been roughing it; and though some
parts of the letter may be neither very comprehensible
nor very interesting to you, I think that perhaps it
might amuse Willie Traquair, who delights in all such
dirty jobs.

The first day, I forgot to mention, was like mid-
winter for cold, and rained incessantly so hard that the
livid white of our cold-pinched faces wore a sort of
inflamed rash on the windward side.

I am not a bit the worse of it, except fore-mentioned
state of hands, a slight crick in my neck from the rain
running down, and general stiffness from pulling,
hauling, and tugging for dear life.

We have got double weights at the guys, and hope
to get it up like a shot.

What fun you three must be having! I hope the
cold don't disagree with you. — 1 remain, my dear
mother, your affectionate son, R. L Stevenson*

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1868

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

The following will help the reader to understand the passage refer*
ring to this undertaking in Stevenson's biographical essay on his
father, where he has told how in the end " the sea proved too strong
for men's arts, and after expedients hitherto unthought of, and on a
scale hyper-Cyclopean, the work must be deserted, and now standi
a ruin in that bleak, God-forsaken bay."

PuLTENEY, Wick, Sunday, September, 1868.

MY DEAR MOTHER, — Another stofm : wind higher, rain
thicker: the wind still rising as the night closes in, and
the sea slowly rising along with it; it looks like a
three days' gale.

Last week has been a blank one: always too much
sea.

I enjoyed myself very much last night at the R.'s.
There was a little dancing, much singing and supper.

Are you not well that you do not write ? I have n't
heard from you for more than a fortnight

The wind fell yesterday and rose again to-day ; it is
a dreadful evening; but the wind is keeping the sea
down as yet. Of course, nothing more has been done
to the poles; and I can't tell when I shall be able to
leave, not for a fortnight yet, I fear, at the earliest, for
the winds are persistent. Where 's Murra ? Is Cummy
struck dumb about the boots ? I wish you would get
somebody to write an interesting letter and say how
you are, for you 're on the broad of your back, I see.
There hath arrived an inroad of farmers to-night; and

I go to avoid them to M if he 's disengaged, to the

R.'sifnot

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Sunday (/afer).— Storm without: wind and rain: a «^
confused mass of wind-driven rain-squalls, wind-
ragged mist, foam, spray, and great grey waves. Of
this hereafter; in the meantime let us follow the due
course of historic narrative.

Seven p. m. found me at Breadalbane Terrace, clad in
spotless blacks, white tie, shirt, et caetera, and flnished
oflf below with a pair of navvies' boots. How true
that the devil is betrayed by his feet! A message to
Cummy at last. Why, O treacherous woman I were
my dress boots withheld ?

Dramatis personae: p^re R., amusing, long-winded,
in many points like papa; mtve R., nice, delicate, likes
hymns, knew Aunt Margaret ('t 'ould man knew Uncle
Alan); fille R., nommde Sara (no b), rather nice, lights
up well, good voice, interested face; Miss L., nice also,
washed out a little, and, I think, a trifle sentimental;
flls R., in a Leith office, smart, full of happy epithet,
amusing. They are very nice and very kind, asked
me to come back — " any night you feel dull; and any
night does n't mean no night: we '11 be so glad to see
you. " Cest la mire qui parle.

I was back there again to-night. There was hymn-
singing, and general religious controversy till eight,
after which talk was secular. Mrs. S. was deeply dis-
tressed about the boot business. She consoled me
by saying that many would be glad to have such feet
whatever shoes they had on. Unfortunately, fishers
and seafaring men are too facile to be compared with!
This looks like enjoyment, better speck than Anster.

I have done with frivolity. This morning I was
awakened by Mrs. S. at the door. '' There 's a ship

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1868
Mr. i8

LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

ashore at Shaltigoel " As my senses slowly flooded, I
heard the whistling and the roaring of wind» and the
lashing of gust-blown and uncertain flaws of rain. I
got up, dressed, and went out The mizzled sky and
rain blinded you.

SHIP ASHORE AT 8HALTIGOE.

C D is the new pier.

A the schooner ashore. B the salmon house.

She was a Norwegian : coming in she saw our first
gauge-pole, standing at point E Norse skipper thought
it was a sunk smack, and dropped his anchor in full
drift of sea: chain broke: schooner came ashore. In-
sured: laden with wood: skipper owner of vessel and
cargo: bottom out.

I was in a great fright at first lest we should be liable;
but it seems that 's all right.

Some of the waves were twenty feet high. The
spray rose eighty feet at the new pier. Some wood
has come ashore, and the roadway seems carried away.
There is something fishy at the far end where the cross-
wall is building; but till we are able to get along, all
speculation is vain.

1 am so sleepy I am writing nonsense.

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I Stood a long while on the cope watching the sea 1868
below me; I hear its dull, monotonous roar at this ^'
moment below the shrieking of the wind; and there
came ever recurring to my mind the verse I am so fond
of:—

*' But yet the Lord that is on high
Is more of might by far
Than noise of many waters is
Or great sea-billows are/'

The thunder at the wall when it first struck — the
rush along ever growing higher — the great jet of
snow-white spray some forty feet above you — and the
" noise of many waters," the roar, the hiss, the " shriek-
ing'* among the shingle as it fell head over heels at
your feet I watched if it threw the big stones at the
wall; but it never moved them.

Monday. — The end of the work displays gaps, cairns
of ten-ton blocks, stones torn from their places and
turned right round. The damage above water is com-
paratively little: what there may be below, on ne sait
pas encore. The roadway is torn away, cross-heads,
broken planks tossed here and there, planks gnawn
and mumbled as if a starved bear had been trying to
eat them, planks with spales lifted from them as if they
had been dressed with a rugged plane, one pile sway-
ing to and fro clear of the bottom, the rails in one place
sunk a foot at least. This was not a great storm, the
waves were light and short. Yet when we were stand-
ing at the office, 1 felt the ground beneath me quail as

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LETTERS OF R, L. STEVENSON

1871 a huge roller thundered on the work at the last year's
*^- ^' cross-wall.

How could nosUr amicus Q, maximus appreciate a
storm at Wick ? It requires a little of the artistic tern*
perament, of which Mr. T. S.,^ C.E., possesses some,
whatever he may say. I can't look at it practically,
however: that will come, I suppose, like grey hair or
coffin nails.

Our pole is snapped: a fortnight's work and the loss
of the Norse schooner all for nothing! — except experi-
ence and dirty clothes. — Your affectionate son,

R. L. Stevenson»

To Mrs. CnuRCHia Babington

I omit the letters of 1869, which describe at great length, and not
very interestingly, a summer trip on board the lighthouse steamer to
the Orkneys and Shetlands; as well as others, not very interesting
either, of 1870. This, addressed to a favourite married cousin of the
Balfour clan, belongs to the summer of 187 1 . *' Mrs. Hutchinson " is,
of course, Lucy Hutchinson's famous Life of her husband the regicide.

[Swanston Cottage, Lothianburn,
Summer, /S7/.]
MY DEAR MAUD, — If you have forgotten the hand-
writing— as is like enough — you will find the name
of a former correspondent (don't know how to spell
that word) at the end. I have begun to write to you
before now, but always stuck somehow, and left it to
drown in a drawerful of like fiascos. This time I am

I Thomas Stevenson.
26

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iTT. 31

STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

determined to carry through, though I have nothing J187
specially to say.

We look fairly like summer this morning; the trees
are blackening out of their spring greens; the warmer
suns have melted the hoarfrost of daisies of the pad*
dock; and the blackbird, 1 fear» already beginning to
" stint his pipe of mellower days " — which is very ap-
posite (1 can't spell anything to-day — one p or two?)
and pretty. All the same, we have been having shock-
ing weather — cold winds and grey skies.

I have been reading heaps of nice books; but I can't
go back so far. I am reading Clarendon's Hist Rebell.
at present, with which I am more pleased than 1 ex-
pected, which is saying a good deal. It is a pet idea
of mine that one gets more real truth out of one avowed
partisan than out of a dozen of your sham impartialists
— wolves in sheep's clothing — simpering honesty as
they suppress documents. After all, what one wants
to know is not what people did, but why they did it —
or rather, why they thought they did it; and to learn
that, you should go to the men themselves. Their
very falsehood is often more than another man's truth.

I have possessed myself of Mrs. Hutchinson, which,
of course, I admire, etc. But is there not an irritating
deliberation and correctness about her and everybody
connected with her? If she would only write bad
grammar, or forget to finish a sentence, or do some-
thing or other that looks fallible, it would be a relief.
I sometimes wish the old Colonel had got drunk and
beaten her, in the bitterness of my spirit. I know I
felt a weight taken oflf my heart when 1 heard he was
extravagant It is quite possible to be too good for

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

"871 this evil world; and, unquestionably, Mrs. Hutchinson

^' *' was. The way in which she talks of herself makes

one's blood run cold. There — I am glad to have

got that out — but don't say it to anybody — seal of

secrecy.

Please tell Mr. Babington that I have never forgotten
one of his drawings — a Rubens, I think — a woman
holding up a model ship. That woman had more life
in her than ninety per cent of the lame humans that
you see crippling about this earth.

By the way, that is a feature in art which seems to
have come in with the Italians. Your old Greek
statues have scarce enough vitality in them to keep
their monstrous bodies fresh withal. A shrewd country
attorney, in a turned white neckcloth and rusty blacks,
would just take one of these Agamemnons and Ajaxes
quietly by his beautiful, strong arm, trot the unresisting
statue down a little gallery of legal shams, and turn
the poor fellow out at the other end, " naked, as from
the earth he came.'* There is more latent life, more
of the coiled spring in the sleeping dog, about a re-
cumbent figure of Michael Angelo's than about the
most excited of Greek statues. The very marble seems
to wrinkle with a wild energy that we never feel ex-
cept in dreams.

I think this letter has turned into a sermon, but I had
nothing interesting to talk about.

1 do wish you and Mr. Babington would think better
of it and come north this summer. We should be so
glad to see you both. Do reconsider it. — Believe me^
my dear Maud, ever your most affectionate cousin,

Louis Stevenson.

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

1871
AT. at

To Alison Cunningham

The following b the first of many letters to the admirable nurse
whose care, during his ailing childhood, had done so much both to
preserve Stevenson's life and awaken his love of tales and poetry, and
of whom until his death he thought with the utmost constancy of
affection. The letter bears no sign of date or place, but by the hand-
writing would seem to belong to this year.

MY DEAR CUMMY,— I was greatly pleased by your
letter in many ways. Of course, I was glad to hear
from you; you know, you and I have so many old stories
between us» that even if there was nothing else, even if
there was not a very sincere respect and affection, we
should always be glad to pass a nod. I say ' ' even if there
was not" But you know right well there is. Do not
suppose that I shall ever forget those long, bitter nights,
when I coughed and coughed and was so unhappy,
and you were so patient and loving with a poor, sick
child. Indeed, Cummy, 1 wish I might become a man
worth talking of, if it were only that you should not
have thrown away your pains.

Happily, it is not the result of our acts that makes
them brave and noble, but the acts themselves and the
unselfish love that moved us to do them. " Inasmuch
as you have done it unto one of the least of these." My
dear old nurse, and you know there is nothing a man can
say nearer his heart except his mother or his wife — my
dear old nurse, God will make good to you all the good
that you have done, and mercifully forgive you all the
evil. And next time when the spring comes round,

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LETTERS OF R, L. STEVENSON

187a and everything is beginning once again, if you should
happen to think that you might have had a child of your
own, and that it was hard you should have spent so
many years taking care of some one else's prodigal, just
you think this — you have been for a great deal in
my life; you have made much that there is in me, just
as surely as if you had conceived me ; and there are sons
who are more ungrateful to their own mothers than 1
am to you. For 1 am not ungrateful, my dear Cummy,
and it is with a very sincere emotion that I write myself
your little boy, Louis.

To Charles Baxter

After a winter of troubled health, Stevenson had gone to Dunblane
for a change in early spring; and thence writes to his college compan-
ion and lifelong friend, Mr. Charies Baxter.

Dunblane, Friday, $tb March, 1872.
MY dear BAXTER,— By the date you may perhaps un-
derstand the purport of my letter without any words
wasted about the matter. I cannot walk with you to-
morrow, and you must not expect me. I came yester-
day afternoon to Bridge of Allan, and have been very
happy ever since, as every place is sanctified by the
eighth sense. Memory. I walked up here this morning
(three miles, tu-dieuf a good stretch for me), and passed
one of my favourite places in the world, and one that I
very much affect in spirit when the body is tied down
and brought immovably to anchor on a sickbed. It is a
meadow and bank on a corner on the river, and is con-
nected in my mind inseparably with Virgil's Eclogues.

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

Hie corulis mistos inter consedimus ulmos, or something 187a
very like that, the passage begins (only I know my ^' ^
short-winded Latinity must have come to grief over
even this much of quotation); and here, to a wish, is
just such a cavern as Menalcas might shelter himself
withal from the bright noon, and, with his lips curled
backward, pipe himself blue in the face, while Messieurs
les Arcadiens would roll out those cloying hexameters
that sing themselves in one's mouth to such a curious
lilting chant

In such weather one has the bird's need to whistle;
and I, who am specially incompetent in this art, must
content myself by chattering away to you on this bit
of paper. All the way along I was thanking God that
he had made me and the birds and everything just as
they are and not otherwise; for although there was no
sun, the air was so thrilled with robins and blackbirds
that it made the heart tremble with joy, and the leaves
are far enough forward on the underwood to give a fine
promise for the future. Even myself, as 1 say, I would
not have had changed in one iota this forenoon, in spite
of all my idleness and Guthrie's lost paper, which is
ever present with me — a horrible phantom.

No one can be alone at home or in a quite new place.
Memory and you must go hand in hand with (at least)
decent weather if you wish to cook up a proper dish
of solitude. It is in these little flights of mine that I get
more pleasure than in anything else. Now, at present,
I am supremely uneasy and restless — almost to the ex-
tent of pain ; but O I how I enjoy it, and how I sball
enjoy it afterwards (please God), if I get years enough
allotted to me for the thing to ripen in. When I am a

3»

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LETTERS OF R, L. STEVENSON

187a very old and very respectable citizen with white hair
^' ^^ and bland manners and a gold watch, I shall hear three
crows cawing in my heart, as 1 heard them this morn-
ing: I vote for old age and eighty years of retrospect.
Yet, after all, I dare say, a short shrift and a nice green
grave are about as desirable.

Poor devil 1 how I am wearying you! Cheer up.
Two pages more, and my letter reaches its term, for I
have no more paper. What delightful things inns and
waiters and bagmen are I If we did n't travel now
and then, we should forget what the feeling of life is.
The very cushion of a railway carriage — "the things
restorative to the touch." I can't write, confound it!
That 's because I am so tired with my walk. • . .
Believe me, ever your affectionate friend,

R. L Stevenson.

To Charles Baxter

The ** Spec" is, of course, the famous and historical debating
society (the Speculative Society) of Edinburgh University, to which
Stevenson had been elected on the strength of his conversational
powers, but where it is said that in set debate he did not shine.

Dunblane, Tuesday, gtb April, 1872.
MY DEAR BAXTER, — 1 don't know what you mean. I
know nothing about the Standing Committee of the
Spec, did not know that such a body existed, and even
if it doth exist, must sadly repudiate all association
with such "goodly fellowship." I am a "Rural
Voluptuary " at present. That is what is the matter
with me. The Spec, may go whistle. As for "C

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

Baxter, Esq./' who is he ? *' One Baxter, or Bagster, ■•t*
a secretary/' I say to mine acquaintance, '' is at present
disquieting my leisure with certain illegal, uncharitable,
unchristian, and unconstitutional documents called
Business Letters: The affair is in the hands of the
Police.'* Do you hear that, you evildoer? Sending
business letters is surely a far more hateful and slimy
degree of wickedness than sending threatening letters;
the man who throws grenades and torpedoes is less
malicious; the Devil in red-hot hell rubs his hands
with glee as he reckons up the number that go forth
spreading pain and anxiety with each delivery of the
post

I have been walking to-day by a colonnade of beeches
along the brawling Allan. My character for sanity is
quite gone, seeing that I cheered my lonely way with
the following, in a triumphant chaunt: "Thank God
for the grass, and the fir-trees, and the crows, and the
sheep, and the sunshine, and the shadows of the fir-
trees." I hold that he is a poor mean devil who can
walk alone, in such a place and in such weather, and
does n't set up his lungs and cry back to the birds and
the river. Follow, follow, follow me. Come hither,
come hither, come hither — here shall you see — no
enemy — except a very slight remnant of winter and
its rough weather. My bedroom, when I awoke this
morning, was full of bird-songs, which is the greatest
pleasure in life. Come hither, come hither, come hither,
and when you come bring the third part of The Earthly
Paradise; you can get it for me in Elliot's for two and
tenpence (25. 10^.) {business habits). Also bring an
ounce of honeydew from Wilson's. R. L S.

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1873

JET. 22

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

In the previous year, 1871, It had become apparent that Stevenson
was neither fitted by bodily health nor by inclination for the family
profession of civil engineer. To the great and natural regret of his
father, who, however, wisely bowed to the inevitable, it was agreed
that he should give it up, and should read instead for the Scottish
bar. Accordingly, his summer excursions were no longer to the har-
bour works and lighthouses of Scotland, but to the ordinary scenes of
holiday travel abroad.

Brussels, Thursday, 2^tbjuly, 1872.

MY DEAR MOTHER, — I am here at last, sitting in my
room, without coat or waistcoat, and with both win-
dow and door open, and yet perspiring like a terra-cotta
jug or a Gruyfire cheese.

We had a very good passage, which we certainly
deserved, in compensation for having to sleep on the
cabin floor, and finding absolutely nothing fit for human
food in the whole filthy embarkation. We made up
for lost time by sleeping on deck a good part of the
forenoon. When I woke, Simpson was still sleeping
the sleep of the just, on a coil of ropes and (as ap-
peared afterwards) his own hat; so I got a bottle of
Bass and a pipe and laid hold of an old Frenchman of
somewhat filthy aspect {fiat experimentum in corpore
vilt) to try my French upon. I made very heavy
weather of it. The Frenchman had a very pretty young
wife; but my French always deserted me entirely when
I had to answer her, and so she soon drew away and
left me to her lord, who talked of French politics,
Africa, and domestic economy with great vivacity.
From Ostend a smoking-hot journey to Brussels. At

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

Brussels we went off after dinner to the Pare. If any 187a
person wants to be happy, I should advise the Pare. ^" ^
You sit drinking iced drinks and smoking penny cigars
under great old trees. The band place, covered walks,
etc.; are all lit up. And you can't fancy how beautiful
was the contrast of the great masses of lamplit foliage
and the dark sapphire night sky with just one blue star
set overhead in the middle of the largest patch. In the
dark walks, too, there are crowds of people whose
faces you cannot see, and here and there a colossal
white statue at the corner of an alley that gives the
place a nice, artificial, eighteenth-century sentiment
There was a good deal of summer lightning blinking
overhead, and the black avenues and white statues
leapt out every minute into short-lived distinctness.
I get up to add one thing more. There is in the
hotel a boy in whom I take the deepest interest. I can-
not tell you his age, but the very first time I saw him
(when I was at dinner yesterday) I was very much
struck with his appearance. There is something very
leonine in his face, with the dash of the negro espe-
cially, if I remember aright, in the mouth. He has a
great quantity of dark hair, curling in great rolls, not
in little corkscrews, and a pair of large, dark, and very
steady, bold, bright eyes. His manners are those of a
prince. I felt like an overgrown ploughboy beside
him. He speaks English perfectly, but with, I think,
sufficient foreign accent to stamp him as a Russian,
especially when his manners are taken into account
I don't think I ever saw any one who looked like a
hero before. After breakfast this morning I was talking
to him in the court, when he mentioned casually that

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LETTERS OF R, L STEVENSON

1^3 he had caught a snake in the Riesengebirge. " I have
^' " it here," he said ; " would you like to see it ? " I said
yes; and putting his hand into his breast-pocket, he
drew forth not a dried serpent skin, but the head and
neck of the reptile writhing and shooting out its horri-
ble tongue in my face. You may conceive what a
fright I got I send off this single sheet just now in
order to let you know I am safe across; but you must
not expect letters often. R. L Stevenson.

P. 5. — ^The snake was about a yard long, but harm-
less, and now, he says, quite tame.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

Hotel Landsberg, Frankfurt,
Monday, Tgtb July, 1872.
. . . Last night I met with rather an amusing ad-
venturette. Seeing a church door open, I went in, and
was led by most importunate finger-bills up a long
stair to the top of the tower. The father smoking at
the door, the mother and the three daughters received
me as if I was a friend of the family and had come in
for an evening visit. The youngest daughter (about
thirteen, I suppose, and a pretty little girl) had been
learning English at the school, and was anxious to play
it ofT upon a real, veritable Englander; so we had a
long talk, and I was shown photographs, etc., Marie
and I talking, and the others looking on with evident
delight at having such a linguist in the family. As all
my remarks were duly translated and communicated to

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

the rest, it was quite a good German lesson. There 1871
was only one contretemps during the whole interview ^' ^
— the arrival of another visitor, in the shape (surely)
the last of God's creatures, a wood-worm of the most
unnatural and hideous appearance, with one great
striped horn sticking out of his nose like a boltsprit
If there are many wood-worms in Germany, I shall
come home. The most courageous men in the world
must be entomologists. I had rather be a lion-tamer.

To-day 1 got rather a curiosity — Lieder und Balla-
den von Robert Burns, translated by one Silbergleit, and
not so ill done either. Armed with which, 1 had a
swim in the Main, and then bread and cheese and
Bavarian beer in a sort of caf(§, or at least the German
substitute for a caf(g; but what a falling off after the
heavenly forenoons in Brussels!

I have bought a meerschaum out of local sentiment,
and am now very low and nervous about the bargain,
having paid dearer than I shouM in England, and got a
worse article, if I can form a judgment.

Do write some more, somebody. To-morrow I ex-
pect I shall go into lodgings, as this hotel work makes
the money disappear like butter in a furnace. — Mean-
while believe me, ever your affectionate son,

R. L. Stevenson.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

Hotel Landsberg, Thursday, ist August, 1872.
• . • Yesterday I walked to Eckenheim, a village a
little way out of Frankfurt, and turned into the alehouse.
In the room, which was just such as it would have been

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

"Sya in Scotland, were the landlady, two neighbours, and an
old peasant eating raw sausage at the far end. I soon
got into 'conversation ; and was astonished when the
landlady, having asked whether I were an Englishman,
and received an answer in the affirmative, proceeded to
inquire further whether I were not also a Scotchman. It
turned out that a Scotch doctor — a professor— a poet —
who wrote books — gross wie das — had come nearly
every day out of Frankfurt to the Eckenbeimer Wirtb^
scbaft, and had left behind him a most savoury memory
in the hearts of all its customers. One man ran out to
find his name for me, and returned with the news that
it was Cobie (Scobie, I suspect) ; and during his absence
the rest were pouring into my ears the fame and ac-
quirements of my countryman. He was, in some un-
decipherable manner, connected with the Qjaeen of
England and one of the Princesses. He had been in Tur-
key, and had there married a wife of immense wealth.
They could find apparently no measure adequate to
express the size of his books. In one way or another,
he had amassed a princely fortune, and had apparently
only one sorrow, his daughter to wit, who had ab-
sconded into a Kloster, with a considerable slice of the
mother's Geld. I told them we had no klosters in
Scotland, with a certain feeling of superiority. No
more had they, 1 was told — ** Hier ist unser Klosterl "
and the speaker motioned with both arms round the
taproom. Although the first torrent was exhausted,
yet the Doctor came up again in all sorts of ways, and
with or without occasion, throughout the whole inter-
view; as, for example, when one man, taking his pipe
out of his mouth and shaking his head, remarked

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

apropos of nothing and with almost defiant conviction, 187a
'* Erwar einfeiner Mann, der Herr Doctor" and was ^' *'
answered by another with '^YaWyyaw^ und trank
immer rotten Wein,"

Setting aside the Doctor, who had evidently turned
the brains of the entire village, they were intelligent
people. One thing in particular struck me, their hon-
esty in admitting that here they spoke bad German,
and advising me to go to Coburg or Leipsic for Ger-
man. ** Sie sprecben da rein" (clean), said one; and
they all nodded their heads together like as many
mandarins, and repeated rein, so reinin chorus.

Of course we got upon Scotland. The hostess said,
" Die Scbottldnder trinhen gern Schnapps," which may
be freely translated, "Scotchmen are horrid fond of
whisky." It was impossible, of course, to combat such
a truism ; and so I proceeded to explain the construction
of toddy, interrupted by a cry of horror when I men-
tioned the Ao/ water; and thence, as I find is always the
case, to the most ghastly romancing about Scottish
scenery and manners, the Highland dress, and every-
thing national or local that I could lay my hands upon,
Now that I have got my German Burns, I lean a good
deal upon him for opening a conversation, and read a
few translations to every yawning audience that I can
gather. I am grown most insufferably national, you
see. I fancy it is a punishment for my want of it at
ordinary times. Now, what do you think, there was a
waiter in this very hotel, but, alas! he is now gone,
who sang (from morning to night, as my informant
said with a shrug at the recollection) what but 's ist
lange ber, the German version of j4uld Lang Syne; so

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

187a you see, madame, the finest lyric ever written will make
its way out of whatsoever comer of patois it found its
birth in.

" Mein Her:^^ ist im Hocbland, tnein Her^ ist nicbt biert
Mein Her:^^ ist im Hocbland, im grUnen Revier,
Im grUnen Reviere ^u jagen das Reb ;
Mein Her[ ist im Hocbland^ wo immer icb gtVl "

I don't think I need translate that for you.

There is one thing that burthens me a good deal in
my patriotic garrulage, and that is the black ignorance
In which I grope about everything, as, for example,
when I gave yesterday a full and, I fancy, a startlingly
incorrect account of Scotch education to a very stolid
German on a garden bench : he sat and perspired under
it, however, with much composure. I am generally
glad enough to fall back again, after these political in-
tertudes, upon Burns, toddy, and the Highlands.

I go every night to the theatre, except when there is
no opera. I cannot stand a play yet; but I am already
very much improved, and can understand a good deal
of what goes on.

Friday, August 2, 1872, —In the evening, at the thea-
tre, I had a great laugh. Lord Allcash in Fra Diavolo,
with his white hat, red guide-books, and bad German,
was the piice de resistance from a humorous point of
view; and I had the satisfaction of knowing that in my
own small way I could minister the same amusement
whenever I chose to open my mouth.

I am just going off to do some German with Simp-
son.—Your affectionate son, R. L. Stevenson.

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STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

To Thomas Stevenson

Frankfurt, Rosengasse 13, August 4, 1872.

MY DEAR FATHER,— You Will pcrceivc by the head of
this page that we have at last got into lodgings, and
powerfully mean ones too. If I were to call the street
anything but sbady, I should be boasting. The people
sit at their doors in shirt-sleeves, smoking as they do in
Seven Dials of a Sunday.

Last night we went to bed about ten, for the first
time bousebolders in Germany— real Teutons, with no
deception, spring, or false bottom. About half-past
one there began such a trumpeting, shouting, pealing
of bells, and scurrying hither and thither of feet as woke
every person in Frankfurt out of their first sleep with a
vague sort of apprehension that the last day was at hand.
The whole street was alive, and we could hear people
talking in their rooms, or crying to passers-by from
their windows, all around us. At last I made out what
a man was saying in the next room. It was a fire in
Sachsenhausen, he said (Sachsenhausen is the suburb
on the other side of the Main), and he wound up with
one of the most tremendous falsehoods on record,
" Hier alles r«W— here all is still.' If it can be said to
be still in an engine factory, or in the stomach of a vol-
cano when it is meditating an eruption, he might have
been justified in what he said, but not otherwise. The
tumult continued unabated for near an hour; but as one
grew used to it, it gradually resolved itself into three
bells, answering each other at short intervals across the
town, a man shouting, at ever shorter intervals and with

1873

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

«^72 superhuman energy, '* Feuer--tm Sacbsenbausen,** sixxd
^' ** the almost continuous winding of all manner of bugles
and trumpets, sometimes in stirring flourishes, and
sometimes in mere tuneless wails. Occasionally there
was another rush of feet past the window, and once
there was a mighty drumming, down between us and
the river, as though the soldiery were turning out to
keep the peace. This was all we had of the fire, except
a great cloud, all flushed red with the glare, above the
roofs on the other side of the Gasse; but it was quite
enough to put me entirely off my sleep and make me
keenly alive to three or four gentlemen who were stroll-
ing leisurely about my person, and every here and there
leaving me somewhat as a keepsake. . . . However,
everything has its compensation, and when day came
at last, and the sparrows awoke with trills and carol-ets,
the dawn seemed to fall on me like a sleeping draught
I went to the window and saw the sparrows about the
eaves, and a great troop of doves go strolling up the
paven Gasse, seeking what they may devour. And so
to sleep, despite fleas and fire-alarms and clocks chim-
ing the hours out of neighbouring houses at all sorts
of odd times and with the most charming want of
unanimity.

We have got settled down in Frankfurt, and like the
place very much, Simpson and I seem to get on very
well together. We suit each other capitally; and it is
an awful joke to be living (two would-be advocates,
and one a baronet) in this supremely mean abode.

The abode is, however, a great improvement on the
hotel, and I think we shall grow quite fond of it —
Ever your affectionate son, R. L Stevenson.

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1872

AT. 22

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

13 ROSENGASSE, FrANKFURT,

Tuesday morning, August, i8y2,
. . . Last night I was at the theatre and heard Die
Judin (Lajuive), and was thereby terribly excited. At
last, in the middle of the fifth act, which was perfectly
beastly, 1 had to slope. 1 could stand even seeing the
cauldron with the sham fire beneath, and the two hate*
ful executioners in red ; but when at last the girl's cour-
age breaks down, and, grasping her father's arm, she
cries out— O so shudderfullyi— I thought it high time
to be out of that gaUre, and so I do not know yet
whether it ends well or ill; but if I ever afterwards find
that they do carry things to the extremity, I shall think
more meanly of my species. It was raining and cold
outside, so I went into a Bierballe, and sat and brooded
over a Scbnitt (half-glass) for nearly an hour. An opera
is far more real than real life to me. It seems as if
stage illusion, and particularly this hardest to swallow
and most conventional illusion of them all— an opera-
would never stale upon me. I wish that life was an
opera. I should like to live in one; but I don't know in
what quarter of the globe I shall find a society so con-
stituted. Besides, it would soon pall: imagine asking
for three-kreuzer cigars in recitative, or giving the wash-
erwoman the inventory of your dirty clothes in a sus-
tained 2ind flourisbous aria.

I am in a right good mood this morning to sit here
and write to you; but not to give you news. There is
a great stir of life, in a quiet, almost country fashion,

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1S73 all about us here. Some one is hammering a beef-steak
^- in the rei-de-^baussie : there is a great clink of pitchers
and noise of the pump-handle at the public well in the
Mttle square-kin round the corner. The children, all
seemingly within a month, and certainly none above
five, that always go halting and stumbling up and down
the roadway, are ordinarily very quiet, and sit sedately
puddling in the gutter, trying, 1 suppose, poor little
devils! to understand their Mutterspracbe ; but they,
too, make themselves heard from time to time in little
incomprehensible antiphonies, about the drift that comes
down to them by their rivers from the strange lands
higher up the Gasse. Above all, there is here such a
twittering of canaries (I can see twelve out of our win-
dow), and such continual visitation of grey doves and
big-nosed sparrows, as make our little by-street into a
perfect aviary.

I look across the Gasse at our opposite neighbour, as
he dandles his baby about, and occasionally takes a
spoonful or two of some pale slimy nastiness that looks
like dead porridge, if you can take the conception.
These two are his only occupations. All day long you
can hear him singing over the brat when he is not eat-
ing; or see him eating when he is not keeping baby.
Besides which, there comes into his house a continual
round of visitors that puts me in mind of the luncheon
hour at home. As he has thus no ostensible avocation,
we have named him "the W. S." to give a flavour of
respectability to the street.

Enough of the Gasse. The weather is here much
colder. It rained a good deal yesterday; and though it
is fair and sunshiny again to-day, and we can still sit, of

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jet. 13

STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

course, with our windows open, yet there is no more 2?l\
excuse for the siesta; and the bathe in the river, except
for cleanliness, is no longer a necessity of life. The
Main is very swift. In one part of the baths it is next
door to impossible to swim against it, and I suspect
that, out in the open, it would be quite impossible.—
Adieu, my dear mother, and believe me, ever your
affectionate son, Robert Louis Stevenson

{Rentier).

To Charles Baxter

In the winter of 1872-75 Stevenson was out of health again; and hf
the beginning of spring there began the trouble which for the next twelve
months clouded his home life. The following, which b the only one of
many letters on the subject I shall print, shows exactly in what spirit he
took it

17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh,
Sunday, February 2, iSyj.
MY DEAR BAXTER,— The thunderbolt has fallen with a
vengeance now. On Friday night after leaving you, in
the course of conversation, my father put me one or two
questions as to beliefs, which I candidly answered. I
really hate all lying so much now— a new-found hon-
esty that has somehow come out of my late illness—
that I could not so much as hesitate at the time; but if
I had foreseen the real hell of everything since, I think
I should have lied, as I have done so often before. I so
far thought of my father, but I had forgotten my mother.
And now! they are both ill, both silent, both as down
in the mouth as if— I can find no simile. You may
fancy how happy it is for me. If it were not too late,

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1873 I think I could almost find it in my heart to retract, but
^' ^^ it is too late; and again, am I to live my whole life as
one falsehood ? Of course, it is rougher than hell upon
my father, but can I help it ? They don't see either that
my game is not the light-hearted scoffer; that I am not
(as they call me) a careless infidel. I believe as much as
they do, only generally in the inverse ratio: I am, I
think, as honest as they can be in what I hold. I have
not come hastily to my views. I reserve (as I told them)
many points until I acquire fuller information, and do
not think I am thus justly to be called " horrible atheist"

Now, what is to take place? What a curse I am to my
parents ! O Lord, what a pleasant thing it is to have
just damned the happiness of (probably) the only two
people who care a damn about you in the world 1

What is my life to be at this rate ? What, you rascal ?
Answer— I have a pistol at your throat. If all that I
hold true and most desire to spread is to be such death,
and worse than death, in the eyes of my father and
mother, what the devil am I to do ?

Here is a good heavy cross with a vengeance, and all
rough with rusty nails that tear your fingers, only it is
not I that have to carry it alone; I hold the light end,
but the heavy burden falls on these two.

Don't— I don't know what I was going to say. I am
an abject idiot, which, all things considered, is not re-
markable.—Ever your affectionate and horrible atheist,

R. L Stevenson.

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STUDENT DAYS

Contintted

ORDERED SOUTH

(September, 1875-JuLY, 1875)

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STUDENT DAYS

Continued

ORDERED SOUTH

(September, 1873-JuLY, 1875)

IT was in the summer of 1873 ^^^^ I ^rst met Ste-
venson, in the house of my kind friend and col-
league, Professor Churchill Babington, formerly of St
John's College, Cambridge, and then resident at his coun-
try living of Cockfield, near Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk.
Professor Babington was married to a granddaughter
of the Rev. Lewis Balfour of Colinton, and Louis Ste*
venson was accordingly a first cousin of his hostess (see
above, p. 26). It needed no conjurer to recognise, in
this very un-academical type of Scottish youth, a spirit
the most interesting and full of promise. His social
charm was already at its height, and quite irresistible;
but inwardly he was full of trouble and self-doubt. If
he could steer himself or be steered safely through the
difficulties of youth, and if he could learn to write with
half the charm and genius that shone from his presence
and conversation, there seemed room to hope for the
highest from him. He had not long before this made

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

friends in the same house with the lady, a connection
by marriage of his hostess, to whom so many of the
letters in the present section are addressed; had found
in her sympathy a strong encouragement; and under
her influence had begun for the first time to believe
hopefully and manfully in his own powers and future.
To encourage such hopes further, and to lend what
hand one could towards their fulfilment, became quickly
one of the flrst of cares and pleasures. He attached
himself to me, almost from our first acquaintance, with
the winning and eager warmth of heart that was natu-
ral to him, and I was able to help him with introductions
to editors, who were glad, of course, to welcome so
promising a recruit, and with such hints and criticisms
concerning his work as a beginner may in most cases
profitably take from a senior of a certain training and
experience. He went back to Edinburgh in the be-
ginning of September full of new hope and heart. It
had been agreed that while still reading, as his parents
desired, for the bar, he should try seriously to get ready
for publication some essays which he had already on
hand— one on Walt Whitman, one on John Knox, one
on Roads and the Spirit of the Road— and should so far
as possible avoid topics of dispute in the home circle.

But after a while the news of him was not favourable.
Those differences with his father, which had been
weighing almost morbidly upon his high-strung nature,
were renewed. By mid-October his letters told of fail-
ing health ; and coming to consult the late Sir Andrew
Clark in London, he was found to be suffering from
acute nerve exhaustion, with some threat of danger to
the lungs. He was ordered to break at once with Edin-

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•v.-5^.

EDINBURGH HOME OF THE STEVENSON FAMILY, iSsJ-lSSy.

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STUDENT DAYS

burgh for a time, and to spend the winter in a more
soothing climate and surroundings. He went accord-
ingly to Mentone, a place he had delighted in as a boy
ten years before, and during a stay of six months made
a slow, but for the time being a pretty complete, recov-
ery. I visited him twice during the winter, and the
second time found him coming fairly to himself again
in the southern peace and sunshine. He was busy with
the essay "Ordered South," and with that on Victor
Hugo's Romances, which was afterwards his first con-
tribution to the Cornbill Magazine; was full of a thou-
sand dreams and projects for future work; and was
passing his invalid days pleasantly meanwhile in the
companionship of two kind and accomplished Russian
ladies, who took to him warmly, and of their children.
Returning to Edinburgh in May, 1874, he went to live
with his parents at Swanston and Edinburgh, and re-
sumed his reading for the bar. Illness and absence had
done their work, and the old harmony of the home was
henceforth quite re-established. In his spare time, dur-
ing the next year, he worked hard at his chosen art, try-
ing his hand at essays, short stories, criticisms, and
prose poems. In all this experimental writing he had
neither the aims nor the facility of the journalist, but
strove always after the higher qualities of literature, and
accordingly was never satisfied with what he had done.
In the course of this summer his excursions included a
week or two spent with me at Hampstead, during which
he joined the Savile Club and made some acquaintance
with London literary society; a yachting excursion with
his friend Sir Walter Simpson in the western islands of
Scotland; a trip to the west of England with his parents

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

by way of the English lakes and Chester; and in the
late autumn a walking tour in Buckinghamshire. The
Scottish winter (1874-75) tried him severely, as Scottish
winters always did, but was enlivened by a new and
what was destined to be an extremely fruitful and inti-
mate friendship, the origin of which is described in the
following letters; namely, that with Mr. W. E. Henley.
In April, 1875, he made his first visit, in the company of
his painter cousin, Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson, to the artist
haunts of the forest of Fontainebleau, whence he re-
turned to finish his reading for the Scottish bar and face
the examination which was before him in July.

His letters to his friends in general in these days were
few and scrappy, those to myself pretty numerous, but
concerned almost entirely with the technicalities of lit-
erature. Those which I shall quote below were written,
with few exceptions, either to his parents, or to the lady
already mentioned ; who was his chief correspondent in
these years, and whom he was accustomed to keep ac-
quainted with his moods and doings by means of jour-
nal-letters made up almost weekly.

1873 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

«r. 33

Thtt b from hb cousin's house in Suffolk. Some of the impressions
then received of the contrasts between Scotland and England were later
woiked out in the essay "The Foreigner at Home,** printed at the head
of Mimoriis and Portraits.

CocKFiELD Rectory, Sudbury, Suffolk,
Tuesday, July 28, 1873.
MY DEAR MOTHER,— I am too happy to be much of a
correspondent Yesterday we were away to Melford

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STUDENT DAYS

and Lavenham, both exceptionally placid, beautiful old i^VJ
English towns. Melford scattered all round a big green,
with an Elizabethan Hall and Park, great screens of trees
that seem twice as high as trees should seem, and every-
thing else like what ought to be in a novel, and what
one never expects to see in reality, made me cry out
how good we were to live in Scotland, for the many
hundredth time. I cannot get over my astonishment—
indeed, it increases every day— at the hopeless gulf that
there is between England and Scotland, and English and
Scotch. Nothing is the same; and I feel as strange and
outlandish here as 1 do in France or Germany, Every-
thing by the wayside, in the houses, or about the peo-
ple, strikes me with an unexpected unfamiliarity : I walk
among surprises, for just where you think you have
them, something wrong turns up.

I got a little Law read yesterday, and some German
this morning, but on the whole there are too many
amusements going for much work; as for' correspon-
dence, I have neither heart nor time for it to-day.

To Mrs. Sit^eu

17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh,
Saturday, September 6, 1873.
I HAVE been to-day a very long walk with my father
through some of the most beautiful ways hereabouts;
the day was cold, with an iron, windy sky, and only
glorified now and then with autumn sunlight For it
is fully autumn with us, with a blight already over the
greens, and a keen wind in the morning that makes

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AT. a3

LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

11^3^ one rather timid of one's tub when it finds its way
indoors.

I was out this evening to call on a friend, and, com-
ing back through the wet, crowded, lamplit streets,
was singing after my own fashion, Du bast Diamanten
und Perlen, when I heard a poor cripple man in the
gutter wailing over a pitiful Scotch air, his club-foot
supported on the other knee, and his whole woebegone
body propped sideways against a crutch. The nearest
lamp threw a strong light on his worn, sordid face and
the three boxes of lucifer matches that he held for sale.
My own false notes stuck in my chest. How well off
I ami is the burthen of my songs all day long— Drwm
istsowobl mir in der IVelt/smd the ugly reality of the
cripple man was an intrusion on the beautiful world in
which I was walking. He could no more sing than I
could; and his voice was cracked and rusty, and alto-
gether perished. To think that that wreck may have
walked the street some night years ago, as glad at heart
as I was, and promising himself a future as golden and
honourable!

Sunday, 11.20 a. m.— I wonder what you are doing
now?— in church likely, at the Te Deum. Everything
here is utterly silent. 1 can hear men's footfalls streets
away ; the whole life of Edinburgh has been sucked into
sundry pious edifices ; the gardens below my windows
are steeped in a diffused sunlight, and every tree seems
standing on tiptoes, strained and silent, as though to
get its head above its neighbour's and listen. You
know what I mean, don't you ? How trees do seem
silently to assert themselves on an occasion! I have
been trying to write Roads until I feel as if I were

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STUDENT DAYS

Standing on my head; but I mean Roads, and shall do 1^73
something to them. ^' *'

I wish I could make you feel the hush that is over
everything, only made the more perfect by rare inter-
ruptions; and the rich, placid light, and the still, autum*
nal foliage. Houses, you know, stand all about our
gardens: solid, steady blocks of houses; all look empty
and asleep.

Monday w^W.— The drums and fifes up in the Castle
are sounding the guard-call through the dark, and there
is a great rattle of carriages without. I have had (I
must tell you) my bed taken out of this room, so that I
am alone in it with my books and two tables, and two
chairs, and a coal-skuttle (or scuttle) (?) and a debris of
broken pipes in a corner, and my old school play-box,
so full of papers and books that the lid will not shut
down, standing reproachfully in the midst There is
something in it that is still a little gaunt and vacant ; it
needs a little populous disorder over it to give it the feel
of homeliness, and perhaps a bit more furniture, just to
take the edge off the sense of illimitable space, eternity,
and a future state, and the like, that is brought home
to one, even in this small attic, by the wide, empty
floor.

These good booksellers of mine have at last got a
Wertber without illustrations. 1 want you to like
Charlotte. Werther himself has every feebleness and
vice that could tend to make his suicide a most virtuous
and commendable action ; and yet I like Werther too— I
don't know why, except that he has written the most
delightful letters in the world. Note, by the way, the
passage under date June 21st not far from the begin-

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

>|^73 ning; it finds a voice for a great deal of dumb» uneasy,
' '^ pleasurable longing that we have all had, times without
number. I looked that up the other day for Roads, so
I know the reference; but you will find it a garden of
flowers from beginning to end. All through the passion
keeps steadily rising, from the thunderstorm at the
country-house— there was thunder in that story too—
up to the last wild delirious interview; either Lotte was
no good at all, or else Werther should have remained
alive after that; either he knew his woman too well, or
else he was precipitate. But an idiot like that is hope-
less; and yet, he was n't an idiot— I make reparation,
and will offer eighteen pounds of best wax at his tomb.
Poor devil! he was only the weakest— or, at least, a
very weak strong man. R. L S.

To Mrs. SiTWEa

17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh,
Friday, September 12, 1873.
. . . I WAS over last night, contrary to my own wish,
in Leven, Fife; and this morning I had a conversation
of which, I think, some account might interest you.
I was up with a cousin who was fishing in a mill-lade,
and a shower of rain drove me for shelter into a tum-
bledown steading attached to the mill. There I found
a labourer cleaning a byre, with whom I fell into talk.
The man was to all appearance as heavy, as bdMtS, as
any English clodhopper; but I knew I was in Scotland,
and launched out forthright into Education and Politics
and the aims of one's life. I told him how I had found

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STUDENT DAYS

the peasantry in Suffolk, and added that their state had i^7)
made me feel quite pained and down-hearted. " It but ^' *^
to do that," he said, "to onybody that thinks at a'!"
Then, again, he said that he could not conceive how
anything could daunt or cast down a man who had an
aim in life. ** They that have had a guid schoolin' and
do nae mair, whatever they do, they have done; but
him that has aye something ayont need never be weary."
I have had to mutilate the dialect much, so that it might
be comprehensible to you; but I think the sentiment
will keep, even through a change of words, something
of the heartsome ring of encouragement that it had for
me: and that from a man cleaning a byre! You see
what John Knox and his schools have done.

Saturday.'-This has been a charming day for me
from morning to now (5 p. m.). First, I found your
letter, and went down and read it on a seat in those
Public Gardens of which you have heard already. After
lunch, my father and I went down to the coast and
walked a little way along the shore between Granton
and Cramond. This has always been with me a very
favourite walk. The Firth closes gradually together
before you, the coast runs in a series of the most beau-
tifully moulded bays, hill after hill, wooded and softly
outlined, trends away in front till the two shores join
together. When the tide is out there are great, gleam*
ing flats of wet sand, over which the gulls go flying
and crying; and every cape runs down into them with
Its little spit of wall and trees. We lay together a
long time on the beach ; the sea just babbled among the
stones; and at one time we heard the hollo W| sturdy

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1873 beat of the paddles of an unseen steamer somewhere
^' ^^ round the cape.

I am, unhappily, off my style, and can do nothing
well ; indeed, I fear I have marred Roads finally by patch-
ing at it when 1 was out of the humour. Only, I am
beginning to see something great about John Knox and
Queen Mary: I like them both so much, that I feel as if
I could write the history fairly.

I have finished Roads to-day, and send it off to you
to see. The Lord knows whether it is worth anything I
—some of it pleases me a good deal, but I fear it is quite
unfit for any possible magazine. However, I wish you
to see it, as you know the humour in which it was con-
ceived, walking alone and very happily about the Suffolk
highways and byways on several splendid sunny after-
noons.—Believe me ever your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

Monday, —X have looked over Roads again, and I am
aghast at its feebleness. It is the trial of a very " pren-
tice hand " indeed. Shall I ever learn to do anything
well? However, it shall go to you, for the reasons
given above

To Mrs. Sitweu

Edinburgh, Tuesday, September 16, iSyj,
. • . I MUST be very strong to have all this vexation
and still to be well. I was weighed the other day, and
the gross weight of my large person was eight stone
six ! Does it not seem surprising that I can keep the
lamp alight, through all this gusty weather, in so frail
a lantern ? And yet it bums cheerily.

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My mother is leaving for the country this morning, "873
and my father and I will be alone for the best part of ""' *^
the week in this house. Then on Friday I go south to
Dumfries till Monday. I must write smali, or I shall
have a tremendous budget by then.

j.x P. M.— I must tell you a thing I saw to-day. I
was going down to Portobello in the train, when there
came into the next compartment (third-class) an artizan,
strongly marked with smallpox, and with sunken, heavy
eyes— a face hard and unkind, and without anything
lovely. There was a woman on the platform seeing
him off. At first sight, with her one eye blind and the
whole cast of her features strongly plebeian, and even
vicious, she seemed as unpleasant as the man ; but there
was something beautifully soft, a sort of light of ten-
derness, as on some Dutch Madonna, that came over her
face when she looked at the man. They talked for a
while together through the window; the man seemed
to have been asking money. " Ye ken the last time,"
she said, " I gave ye two shillin's for your ludgin', and
ye said—" it died off into whisper. Plainly Falstaff and
Dame Quickly over again. The man laughed unpleas*
antly, even cruelly, and said something; and the woman
turned her back on the carriage and stood a long while
so, and, do what I might, I could catch no glimpse of
her expression, although I thought I saw the heave of
a sob in her shoulders. At last, after the train was
already in motion, she turned round and put two shil-
lings into his hand. I saw her stand and look after us
with a perfect heaven of love on her face— this poor
one-eyed Madonna— until the train was out of sight;

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

j^73^ but the man, sordidly happy with his gains, did not put
himself to the inconvenience of one glance to thank her
for her ill-deserved kindness.

I have been up at the Spec, and looked out a reference
I wanted. The whole town is drowned in white, wet
vapour off the sea. Everything drips and soaks. The
very statues seem wet to the skin. I cannot pretend to
be very cheerful; I did not see one contented face in the
streets; and the poor did look so helplessly chill and
dripping, without a stitch to change, or so much as a
fire to dry themselves at, or perhaps money to buy a
meal, or perhaps even a bed. My heart shivers for them.

Dumfries, Friday.-- All my thirst for a little warmth,
a little sun, a little comer of blue sky avails nothing.
Without, the rain falls with a long-drawn swisb, and the
night is as dark as a vault. There is no wind indeed,
and that is a blessed change after the unruly, bedlamite
gusts that have been charging against one round street
corners and utterly abolishing and destroying all that is
peaceful in life. Nothing sours my temper like these
coarse termagant winds. I hate practical joking; and
your vuigarest practical joker is your flaw of wind.

I have tried to v/rite some verses; but I find I have
nothing to say that has not been already perfectly said
and perfectly sung in Adelaide. I have so perfect an
idea out of that song I The great Alps, a wonder in the
starlight— the river, strong from the hills, and turbulent,
and loudly audible at night— the country, a scented
FrUblingsgarten of orchards and deep wood where the
nightingales harbour— a sort of German flavour over all
•—and this love-drunken man, wandering on by sleep-

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STUDENT DAYS

ing village and silent town, pours out of his full heart, 1873
Einsty O IVunder, einst, etc, I wonder if I am wrong ^^ *^
about this being the most beautiful and perfect thing in
the world— the only marriage of really accordant words
and music— both drunk with the same poignant, un-
utterable sentiment.

To-day in Glasgow my father went off on some busi-
ness, and my mother and I wandered about for two
hours. We had lunch together, and were very merry
over what the people at the restaurant would think of
us— mother and son they could not suppose us to be.

Saturday.^ And to-day it came— warmth, sunlight,
and a strong, hearty living wind among the trees. I
found myself a new being. My father and I went off a
long walk, through a country most beautifully wooded
and various, under a range of hills. You should have
seen one place where the wood suddenly fell away in
front of us down a long, steep hill between a double
row of trees, with one small fair-haired child framed in
shadow in the foreground; and when we got to the
'oot there was the little kirk and kirkyard of Irongray,
among broken fields and woods by the side of the
bright, rapid river. In the kirkyard there was a
wonderful congregation of tombstones, upright and re-
cumbent on four legs (after our Scotch fashion), and of
flat-armed fir-trees. One gravestone was erected by
Scott (at a cost, I learn, of jClo) to the poor woman who
served him as heroine in Tbe Heart of Midlothian, and
the inscription in its stiff, Jedediah Cleishbotham fash-
ion is not without something touching.' We went up

1 See Scott himsdf in the preface to the Author's edition.
61

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

«873 the Stream a little further to where two Covenanters lie

"' ^^ buried in an oakwood; the tombstone (as the custom is)

containing the details of their grim little tragedy in

funnily bad rhyme, one verse of which sticks in my

memory:—

" We died, their furious rage to stay.
Near to the kirk of Iron-gray."

We then fetched a long compass round about through
Holywood Kirk and Lincluden ruins to Dumfries. . • •

S«ni/a^.— Another beautiful day. My father and I
walked into Dumfries to church. When the service
was done I noted the two halberts laid against the pillar
of the churchyard gate; and as I had not seen the little
weekly pomp of civic dignitaries in our Scotch country
towns for some years, I made my father wait You
should have seen the provost and three bailies going
stately away down the sunlit street, and the two town
servants strutting in front of them, in red coats and
cocked hats, and with the halberts most conspicuously
shouldered. We saw Burns's house— a place that made
me deeply sad— and spent the afternoon down the
banks of the Nith. I had not spent a day by a river
since we lunched in the meadows near Sudbury. The
air was as pure and clear and sparkling as spring-water;
beautiful, graceful outlines of hill and wood shut us in
on every side; and the swift, brown river fled smoothly
away from before our eyes, rippled over with oily eddies
and dimples. White gulls had come up from the sea to
fish, and hovered and flew hither and thither among the
loops of the stream. R. L &

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1873

To Mrs. Sitweu ^- *3

On the quesdon of the authorship of the Oi# io iht Cuckoo, which
Burke thought the most beautiful lyric in our language, the debate is
between the daims of John Logan, minister of South Leith (1745-8S),
and his friend and fellow worker Michad Bruce. Those of Logan have^
1 believe, been now vindicated past doubt

[Edinburgh], Saturday^ October 4, 1873.
It is a little sharp to-day; but bright and sunny with
a sparkle in the air, which is delightful after four days
of unintermitting rain. In the streets I saw two men
meet after a long separation, it was plain. They came
forward with a little run and leaped at each other's
hands. You never saw such bright eyes as they both
had. It put one in a good humour to see it.

8 P. M.— I made a little more out of my work than I
have made for a long while back; though even now I
cannot make things fall into sentences— they only
sprawl over the paper in bald orphan clauses. Then I
was about in the afternoon with Baxter; and we had a
good deal of fun, first rhyming on the names of all the
shops we passed, and afterwards buying needles and
quack drugs from open-air vendors, and taking much
pleasure in their inexhaustible eloquence. Every now
and then as we went, Arthur's Seat showed its head at
the end of a street. Now, to-day the blue sky and the
sunshine were both entirely wintry; and there was
about the hill, in these glimpses, a sort of thin, unreal,
crystalline distinctness that I have not often seen ex-
celled. As the sun began to go down over the valley
between the new town and the old, the evening grew

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1^5 resplendent; all the gardens and low-lying buildings
^' ^^ sank back and became almost invisible in a mist of
wonderful sun. and the Castle stood up against the sky»
as thin and sharp in outline as a castle cut out of paper.
Baxter made a good remark about Princes Street, that
it was the most elastic street for length that he knew;
sometimes it looks, as it looked to-night, interminable,
a way leading right into the heart of the red sundown;
sometimes, again, it shrinks together, as if for warmth,
on one of the withering, clear east-windy days, until it
seems to lie underneath your feet

I want to let you see these verses from an Ode to the
Cuckoo, written by one of the ministers of Leith in the
middle of last century— the palmy days of Edinburgh—
who was a friend of Hume and Adam Smith and the
whole constellation. The authorship of these beautiful
verses has been most truculently fought about; but
whoever wrote them (and it seems as if this Logan had)
they are lovely—

** What time the pea puts on the bloom.
Thou fliest the vocal vale.
An annual guest, in other lands
Another spring to hail

••Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green.
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year.

•O could I fly, I 'd fly with the^l
We 'd make on joyful wing
Our annual visit o'er the globe»
Companions of the spring/*
64

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Sunday.-^l have been at church with my mother^ ««75
where we heard " Arise, shine," sung excellently well, ^* ^
and my mother was so much upset with it that she
nearly had to leave church. This was the antidote,
however, to fifty minutes of solid sermon, varra heavy,
I have been sticking in to Walt Whitman; nor do I
think I have ever laboured so hard to attain so small a
success. Still, the thing is taking shape, I think; I
know a little better what I want to say all through ; and
in process of time, possibly I shall manage to say it
I must say I am a very bad workman, maisfaidu caur*
age; I am indefatigable at rewriting and lettering, and
surely that humble quality should get me on a little.

Monday, October d.— It is a magnificent glimmering
moonlight night, with a wild, great west wind abroad,
flapping above one like an immense banner, and every
now and again swooping furiously against my windows.
The wind is too strong perhaps, and the trees are cer-
tainly too leafless for much of that wide rustle that we
both remember; there is only a sharp, angry, sibilant
hiss, like breath drawn with the strength of the ele-
ments through shut teeth, that one hears between the
gusts only. I am in excellent humour with myself, for
I have worked hard and not altogether fruitlessly; and
I wished before I turned in just to tell you that things
were so. My dear friend, I feel so happy when I think
that you remember me kindly. 1 have been up to-night
lecturing to a friend on life and duties and what a man
could do; a coal off the altar had been laid on my lips,
and 1 talked quite above my average, and hope I spread,
what you would wish to see spread, into one personal
heart; and with a new light upon it

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1873 I shall tell you a story. Last Friday I went down to
^' ^^ Portobello, in the heavy rain, with an uneasy wind
blowing par rafales off the sea (or " en rafales " should
it be ? or what ?). As I got down near the beach a poor
woman, oldish, and seemingly, lately at least, respec-
table, followed me and made signs. She was drenched
to the skin, and looked wretched below wretchedness.
You know, I did not like to look back at her; it seemed
as if she might misunderstand and be terribly hurt and
slighted; so I stood at the end of the street— there was
no one else within sight in the wet— and lifted up my
hand very high with some money in it. I heard her
steps draw heavily near behind me, and, when she was
near enough to see, I let the money fall in the mud and
went off at my best walk without ever turning round.
There is nothing in the story; and yet you will under-
stand how much there is, if one chose to set it forth.
You see, she was so ugly; and you know there is
something terribly, miserably pathetic in a certain smile,
a certain sodden aspect of invitation on such faces. It
is so terrible, that it is in a way sacred; it means the
outside of degradation and (what is worst of all in life)
false position. 1 hope you understand me rightly.—

Ever your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitweu

[Edinburgh], Tuesday, October 14, rSyj,
My father has returned in better health, and I am more
delighted than I can well tell you. The one trouble
that I can see no way through is that his health, or my

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mother's, should give way. To-night, as I was walk* 1873
ing along Princes Street, I heard the bugles sound the ^' ^^
recall. I do not think I had ever remarked it before;
there is something of unspeakable appeal in the cadence.
1 felt as if something yearningly cried to me out of the
darkness overhead to come thither and find rest; one
felt as if there must be warm hearts and bright fires
waiting for one up there, where the buglers stood on
the damp pavement and sounded their friendly invita*
tion forth into the night

Wednesday.—l may as well tell you exactly about my
health. I am not at all ill; have quite recovered; only
I am what MM. les midecins call below par; which, in
plain English, is that I am weak. With tonics, decent
weather, and a little cheerfulness, that will go away in
its turn, and I shall be all right again.

I am glad to hear what you say about the Exam. ;
until quite lately I have treated that pretty cavalierly,
for I say honestly that I do not mind being plucked; I
shall just have to go up again. We travelled with the
Lord Advocate the other day, and he strongly advised
me in my father's hearing to go to the English Bar; and
the Lord Advocate's advice goes a long way in Scotland.
It is a sort of special legal revelation. Don't misunder-
stand me. I don't, of course, want to be plucked ; but so
far as my style of knowledge suits them, I cannot make
much betterment on it in a month. If they wish scholar-
ship more exact, I must take a new lease altogether.

Thursday. --lAy head and eyes both gave in this
morning, and I had to take a day of complete idleness.

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1873 I was in the open air all day, and did no thought that 1
*^' *^ could avoid, and I think I have got my head between
my shoulders again; however, 1 am not going to do
much. I don't want you to run away with any fancy
about my being ill. Given a person weak and in some
trouble, and working longer hours than he is used to,
and you have the matter in a nutshell. You should
have seen the sunshine on the hill to-day; it has lost
now that crystalline clearness, as if the medium were
spring-water (you see, I am stupid!); but it retains that
wonderful thinness of outline that makes the delicate
shape and hue savour better in one's mouth, like fine
wine out of a finely-blown glass. The birds are all
silent now but the crows. I sat a long time on the
stairs that lead down to Duddingston Loch— a place as
busy as a great town during frost, but now solitary
and silent; and when I shut my eyes I heard nothing
but the wind in the trees; and you know all that went
through me, I dare say, without my saying it

//.—I am now all right I do not expect any tic to-
night, and shall be at work again to-morrow. I have
had a day of open air, only a little modified by Le Capi-
taine Fracasse before the dining-room fire. I must
write no more, for I am sleepy after two nights, and to
quote my book, " sinon blanches^ du mains grises ";
and so I must go to bed and faithfully, hoggishly

slumber.— Your faithful

Robert Louis Stevenson.

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To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

A week later Stevenson came to London, it having been agreed that h«
should present himself for the entrance examination at one of the London
Inns of G>urt. But he was obviously much run down in health ; it was
before the physicians and not the lawyers that he must present himself;
and the result of an examination by Dr. Andrew Qark was his prompt
and peremptory despatch to Mentone for a winter's rest and sunshine.
This episode of his life gave occasion to the essay ** Ordered South/' the
only one of his writings in which he ever took the invalid point of view,
or allowed his health troubles in any degree to colour his work.

Mentone, November 73, iSyj.
MY DEAR MOTHER,— The Place is not where I thought;
it is about where the old Post-Office was. The H6tel
de Londres is no more an hotel. I have found a charm-
ing room in the H6tel du Pavilion, just across the road
from the Prince's Villa; it has one window to the south
and one to the east, with a superb view of Mentone and
the hills, to which I move this afternoon. In the old
great Place there is a kiosque for the sale of newspapers ;
a string of omnibuses (perhaps thirty) go up and down
under the plane-trees of the Turin Road on the occasion
of each train; the Promenade has crossed both streams,
and bids fair to reach the Cap St Martin. The old
chapel near Freeman's house at the entrance to the
Gorbio valley is now entirely submerged under a shin-
ing new villa, with Pavilion annexed; over which, in
all the pride of oak and chestnut and divers-coloured
marbles, I was shown this morning by the obliging pro-
prietor. The Prince's Palace itself is rehabilitated, and
shines afar with white window-curtains from the midst
of a garden, all trim borders and greenhouses and care-

1873

AT. 33

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LETTERS OP R. U STEVENSON

»87? fully kept walks. On the other side, the villas are more
^' *^ thronged together, and they have arranged themselves,
shelf after shelf, behind each other. I see the glimmer
of new buildings, too, as far eastward as Grimaldi; and
a viaduct carries (1 suppose) the railway past the mouth
of the bone caves. F. Bacon (Lord Chancellor) made
the remark that "Time was the greatest innovator"; it
is perhaps as meaningless a remark as was ever made;
but as Bacon made it, I suppose it is better than any that
I could make. Does it not seem as if things were fluid?
They are displaced and altered in ten years so that one
has difficulty, even with a memory so very vivid and
retentive for that sort of thing as mine, in identifying
places where one lived a long while in the past, and
which one has kept piously in mind during all the in-
terval. Nevertheless, the hills, I am glad to say, are
unaltered; though I dare say the torrents have given
them many a shrewd scar, and the rains and thaws
dislodged many a boulder from their heights, if one were
only keen enough to perceive it The sea makes the
same noise in the shingle; and the lemon and orange
gardens still discharge in the still air their fresh per-
fume; and the people have still brown comely faces;
and the Pharmacie Gros still dispenses English medi-
cines ; and the invalids (eheu !) still sit on the promenade
and trifle with their fingers in the fringes of shawls and
wrappers ; and the shop of Pascal Amarante still, in its
present bright consummate flower of aggrandisement
and new paint, offers everything that it has entered into
people's hearts to wish for in the idleness of a sana-
torium; and the " Chateau des Morts " is still at the top
of the town; and the fort and the jetty are still at the

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jn, »i

STUDENT DAYS

foot, only there are now two jetties; and— I am out of J1873
breath. (To be continued in our next.)

For myself, I have come famously through the jour-
ney; and as I have written this letter (for the first time
for ever so long) v^th ease and even pleasure, I think
my head must be better. I am still no good at coming
down hills or stairs ; and my feet are more consistently
cold than is quite comfortable. But, these apart, I feel
well; and in good spirits all round.

1 have written to Nice for letters, and hope to get
them to-night Continue to address Poste Restante.
Take care of yourselves.

This is my birthday, by the way— O, I said that be-
fore. Adieu. —Ever your affectionate son,

R. L. Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwell

In the latter part of this letter will be found the germ of the essay
"Ordered South."

Mentone, Sunday, November, 187J.
MY dear friend,— 1 sat a long while up among the
olive yards to-day at a favourite comer, where one has
a fair view down the valley and on to the blue floor of
the sea. I had a Horace with me, and read a little; but
Horace, when you try to read him fairly under the open
heaven, sounds urban, and you find something of the
escaped townsman in his descriptions of the country,
just as somebody said that Morris's sea-pieces were all
taken from the coast. 1 tried for long to hit upon some
language that might catch ever so faintly the indefinable
shifting colour of olive leaves; and, above all, the
changes and little silverings that pass over them, like

7«

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LETTERS OP R. L. STEVENSON

1875 blushes over a face, when the wind tosses great branches
*"* *^ to and fro; but the Muse was not favourable. A few
birds scattered here and there at wide intervals on either
side of the valley sang the little broken songs of late
autumn; and there was a great stir of insect bfe in the
grass at my feet The path up to this coign of vantage,
where I think I shall make it a habit to ensconce myself
a while of a morning, is for a little while common to the
peasant and a little clear brooklet. It is pleasant, in
the tempered grey daylight of the olive shadows, to see
the people picking their way among the stones and the
water and the brambles; the women especially, with
the weights poised on their heads and walking all from
the hips with a certain graceful deliberation.

Tuesday.-^l have been to Nice to-day to see Dr. Ben-
net; he agrees with Clark that there is no disease; but
I finished up my day with a lamentable exhibition of
weakness. I could not remember French, or at least I
was afraid to go into any place lest I should not be able
to remember it, and so could not tell when the train
went At last I crawled up to the station and sat down
on the steps, and just steeped myself there in the sun-
shine until the evening began to fall and the air to grow
chilly. This long rest put me all right; and I came
home here triumphantly and ate dinner well. There is
the full, true, and particular account of the worst day I
have had since I left London. 1 shall not go to Nice
again for some time to come.

Tbursdqy.'-l am to-day quite recovered, and got into
Mentone to-day for a book, which is quite a creditable

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walk. As an inteDectual being I have not yet begun to "^
re-exist; my immortal soul is still very nearly extinct; ' ^
but we must hope the best Now, do take warning
by me. I am set up by a beneficent providence at the
comer of the road, to warn you to flee from the hebe-
tude that is to follow. Being sent to the South is not
much good unless you take your soul with you, you
see; and my soul is rarely with me here. I don't see
much beauty I have lost the key; I can only be placid
and inert, and see the bright days go past uselessly one
after another; therefore don't talk foolishly with your
mouth any more about getting liberty by being ill and
going south via the sickbed. It is not the old free-bom
bird that gets thus to freedom; but I know not what
manacled and hide-bound spirit, incapable of pleasure,
the clay of a man. Go south! Why, I saw more
beauty with my eyes healthfully alert to see in two wet
windy Febmary afternoons in Scotland than I can see in
my beautiful olive gardens and grey hills in a whole
week in my low and lost estate, as the Shorter Cate-
chism puts it somewhere. It is a pitiable blindness,
this blindness of the soul; I hope it may not be long
with me. So remember to keep well; and remember
rather anything than not to keep well ; and again I say,
anytbing rather than not to keep well.

Not that I am unhappy, mind you. I have found the
words already— placid and inert, that is what 1 am. I
sit in the sun and enjoy the tingle all over me, and
I am cheerfully ready to concur with any one who
says that this is a beautiful place, and I have a sneak*
ing partiality for the newspapers, which would be all
very well, if one had not fallen from heaven and were

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1^73 not troubled with some reminiscence of the ineffable
aurore.

To sit by the sea and to be conscious of nothing but
the sound of the waves, and the sunshine over all your
body, is not unpleasant; but I was an Archangel once.

Friday. —If you knew how old I felt! I am sure this
is what age brings with it— this carelessness, this dis-
enchantment this continual bodily weariness. I am a
man of seventy: O Medea, kill me, or make me young
again! ^

To-day has been cloudy and mild; and I have lain a
great while on a bench outside the garden wall (my
usual place now) and looked at the dove-coloured sea
and the broken roof of cloud, but there was no seeing
in my eye. Let us hope to-morrow will be more
profitable. R. L. S.

To Mrs- Thomas Stevenson

Soon after the date of this letter I went out to jmn my friend for a
part of the Christmas vacation, and found him without tangible disease,
but very weak and ailing; ill-health and anxiety, however, neither then
nor ever at all diminished his charm as a companion. After spending two
or three weeks between the old town of Monaco and Monte Gdo, we
returned to Mentone, to a hotel^now, I believe, defunct— at the eastern
extremity of the town, where 1 presently left him, cheered by congenial
society in the shape of an American family, two kind and accomplished
Russian ladies from Georgia, with their children (one of whom, as will be
seen, became his especial playmate and sweetheart), and a French land-
scape painter. In the intimacy of these friends he passed the winter,

1 Compare the paragraph in " Ordered South " describing the state of
mind of the invalid doubtful of recovery, and ending: " He will pray
for Medea ; when she comes, let her either rejuvenate or shy."

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unto lie hid recovered sufficient strength to return to his family in Scot- 1874
land The " M'Laren " herehi mentioned is, of course, the distinguished ^' ^4
Scotch politician and sodal reformer, the late Duncan M'Laren, for sixteen
years M. P. for Edinburgh.

HdTEL MiRABEAU, MeNTONE,

Sunday, January 4, 1874.

MY DEAR MOTHER,— We havc here fallen on the very
pink of hotels. I do not say that it is more pleasantly
conducted than the Pavilion, for that were impossible;
but the rooms are so cheery and bright and new, and
then the food! I never, I think, so fully appreciated
the phrase '' the fat of the land " as I have done since I
have been here installed. There was a dish of eggs at
d^jeHner the other day, over the memory of which I lick
my lips in the silent watches.

Now that the cold has gone again, I continue to keep
well in body, and already I begin to walk a little more.
My head is still a very feeble implement, and easily set
a-spinning; and I can do nothing in the way of work
beyond reading books that may, 1 hope, be of some use
to me afterwards.

I was very glad to see that M'Laren was sat upon,
and principally for the reason why. Deploring as I do
much of the action of the Trades Unions, these con-
spiracy clauses and the whole partiality of the Master
and Servant Act are a disgrace to our equal laws. Equal
laws become a byword when what is legal for one class
becomes a criminal offence for another. It did my heart
good to hear that man tell M'Laren how, as he had talked
much of getting the franchise for working-men, he must
now be content to see them use it now they had got it.
This is a smooth stone well planted in the foreheads of

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1874 certain dilettante radicals, after M'Laren's fashion, who
^' *^ are willing to give the working-men words and wind,
and votes and the like, and yet think to keep all the
advantages, just or unjust, of the wealthier classes with-
out abatement I do hope wise men will not attempt
to fight the working-men on the head of this notorious
injustice. Any such step will only precipitate the action
of the newly enfranchised classes, and irritate them into
acting hastily ; when what we ought to desire should be
that they should act warily and little for many years to
come, until education and habit may make them the
more fit.

All this (intended for my father) is much after the
fashion of his own correspondence. I confess it has
left my own head exhausted; I hope it may not produce
the same effect on yours. But I want him to look
really into this question (both sides of it, and not
the representations of rabid middle-class newspapers,
sworn to support all the little tyrannies of wealth), and
I know he will be convinced that this is a case of unjust
law; and that, however desirable the end may seem to
him, he will not be Jesuit enough to think that any end
will justify an unjust law.

Here ends the political sermon of your affectionate
(and somewhat dogmatical) son,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

Mentone, January 7, 1874.
MY DEAR MOTHER,— I received yesterday two most
charming letters— the nicest I have had since I left—

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December :26th and January ist: this morning I got 1874
January 3rd. ^' ^

Into the bargain with Marie, the American girl, who
is grace itself, and comes leaping and dancing simply
like a wave— like nothing else, and who yesterday was
Qyeen out of the Epiphany cake and chose Robinet (the
French painter) as her /oi^or/ with the most pretty con-
fusion possible— into the bargain with Marie, we have
two little Russian girls, with the youngest of whom, a
little polyglot button of a three-year-old, I had the most
laughable little scene at lunch to-day. I was watching
her being fed with great amusement, her face being as
broad as it is long, and her mouth capable of unlimited
extension; when suddenly, her eye catching mine, the
fashion of her countenance was changed, and regarding
me with a really admirable appearance of offended dig-
nity, she said something in Italian which made everybody
laugh much. It was explained to me that she had said
I was very polisson to stare at her. After this she was
somewhat taken up with me, and after some examina-
tion she announced emphatically to the whole table, in
German, that 1 was a Mddcben ; which word she re-
peated with shrill emphasis, as though fearing that her
proposition would be called in question— Af^^^i^^^,
Madcben, Mddcben, Mddcben. This hasty conclusion
as to my sex she was led afterwards to revise, I am
informed; but her new opinion (which seems to have
been something nearer the truth) was announced in a third
language quite unknown to me, and probably Russian.
To complete the scroll of her accomplishments, she
was brought round the table after the meal was over,
and said good-bye to me in very commendable English.

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1874 The weather I shall say nothing about, as I am in-

^* ^^ capable of explaining my sentiments upon that subject

before a lady. But my health is really greatly improved :

I begin to recognise myself occasionally now and again,

not without satisfaction.

Please remember me very kindly to Professor Swan;
I wish I had a story to send him; but story, Lord bless
you, I have none to tell, sir, ufiless it is the foregoing
adventure with the little polyglot The best of that
depends on the significance of polhsan, which is beau-
tifully out of place.

Saturday, lotb January.'-Tht little Russian kid is
only two and a half: she speaks six languages. She
and her sister (aet. 8} and May Johnstone (act. 8) are the
delight of my life. Last night I saw them all dancing
— O it was jolly; kids are what is the matter with me.
After the dancing, we all— that is, the two Russian ladies,
Robinet the French painter, Mr. and Mrs. Johnstone,
two governesses, and fitful kids joining us at intervals
—played a game of the stool of repentance in the Gallic
idiom.

O— I have not told you that Colvin is gone; however,
he is coming back again; he has left clothes in pawn to
me.— Ever your affectionate son,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwbll

Mentone, Tuesday, ijtb January, 1874.
• • • I LOST a Philippine to little Mary Johnstone last
night; so to-day I sent her a rubbishing doll's toilet,

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and a little note with it, with some verses telling how "874
happy children made every one near them happy also, ^' ^
and advising her to keep the lines, and some day, when
she was "grown a stately demoiselle," it would make
her " glad to know she gave pleasure long ago," all in a
very lame fashion, with just a note of prose at the end,
telling her to mind her doll and the dog, and not trouble
her little head just now to understand the bad verses;
for some time when she was ill, as I am now, they
would be plain to her and make her happy. She has
just been here to thank me, and has left me very happy.
Children are certainly too good to be true.

Yesterday I walked too far, and spent all the after-
noon on the outside of my bed; went finally to rest at
nine, and slept nearly twelve hours on the stretch.
Bennet (the doctor), when told of it this morning,
augured well for my recovery ; he said youth must be
putting in strong; of course I ought not to have slept
at all As it was, I dreamed horribly ; but not my usual
dreams of social miseries and misunderstandings and
all sorts of crucifixions of the spirit ; but of good, cheery,
physical things— of long successions of vaulted, dimly
lit cellars full of black water, in which I went swimming
among toads and unutterable, cold, blind fishes. Now
and then these cellars opened up into sort of domed
music-hall places, where one could land for a little on
the slope of the orchestra, but a sort of horror prevented
one from staying long, and made one plunge back again
into the dead waters. Then my dream changed, and I
was a sort of Siamese pirate, on a very high deck with
several others. The ship was almost captured, and
we were fighting desperately. The hideous engines we

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

«874 used and the perfectly incredible carnage that we effected
'"' ^ by means of them kept me cheery, as you may imagine ;
especially as I felt all the time niy sympathy with the
boarders, and knew that I was only a prisoner with
these horrid Malays. Then I saw a signal being given,
and knew they were going to blow up the ship. I
leaped right off, and heard my captors splash in the
water after me as thick as pebbles when a bit of river-
bank has given way beneath the foot. I never heard
the ship blow up; but I spent the rest of the night
swimming about some piles with the whole sea full of
Malays, searching for me with knives in their mouths.
They could swim any distance under water, and every
now and again, just as I was beginning to reckon my-
self safe, a cold hand would be laid on my ankle— ugh I
However, my long sleep, troubled as it was, put me
all right again, and I was able to work acceptably this
morning and be very jolly all day. This evening I have
had a great deal of talk with both the Russian ladies;
they talked very nicely, and are bright, likable women
both. They come from Georgia.

Wednesday, /o.^o.— We have all been to tea to-night
at the Russians' villa. Tea was made out of a samovar,
which is something like a small steam engine, and
whose principal advantage is that it burns the fingers
of all who lay their profane touch upon it. After tea
Madame Z. played Russian airs, very plaintive and
pretty; so the evening was Muscovite from beginning
to end. Madame G.'s daughter danced a tarantella,
which was very pretty.

Whenever Nelitchka cries— and she never cries ex-
80

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cept from pain— all that one has to do is to start 1^74
Malbrook s'en va^t-^n guerre. She cannot resist the ^' ^
attraction; she is drawn through her sobs into the air;
and in a moment there is Nelly singing, with the glad
look that comes into her face always when she sings,
and all the tears and pain forgotten.

It is wonderful, before I shut this up, how that child
remains ever interesting to me. Nothing can stale her
infinite variety ; and yet it is not very various. You see
her thinking what she is to do or to say next, with a
funny grave air of reserve, and then the face breaks up
into a smile, and it is probably " Berecchinol" said with
that sudden little jump of the voice that one knows in
children, as the escape of a jack-in-the-box, and, some-
how, I am quite happy after thatl R. L S.

To Mrs. Sitweu

[lAsHTOHZ, January, 1874.]
. . . Last night I had a quarrel with the American on
politics. It is odd how it irritates you to hear certain
political statements made. He was excited, and he
began suddenly to abuse our conduct to America. I,
of course, admitted right and left that we had behaved
disgracefully' (as we had); until somehow I got tired of
turning alternate cheeks and getting duly buffeted; and
when he said that the Alabama money had not wiped
out the injury, I suggested, in language (I remember)
of admirable directness and force, that it was a pity
they had taken the money in that case. He lost his
temper at once, and cried out that his dearest wish was
a war with England; whereupon I also lost my temper,

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1874 and, thundering at the pitch of my voice, I left him and
^' ^ went away by myself to another part of the garden. A
very tender reconciliation took place, and I think there
will come no more harm out of it. We are both of us
nervous people, and he had had a very long walk and
a good deal of beer at dinner: that explains the scene a
little. But I regret having employed so much of the
voice with which I have been endowed, as I fear every
person in the hotel was taken into confidence as to my
sentiments, just at the very juncture when neither the
sentiments nor (perhaps) the language had been suffi-
ciently considered.

Friday. —You have not yet heard of my book f—Faur
Great Scotsmen—John Knox, David Hume, Robert
Bums, Walter Scott. These, their lives, their work,
the social media in which they lived and worked, with,
if I can so make it, the strong current of the race making
itself felt underneath and throughout— this is my idea.
You must tell me what you think of it. The Knox
will really be new matter, as his life hitherto has been
disgracefully written, and the events are romantic and
rapid; the character very strong, salient, and worthy;
much interest as to the future of Scotland, and as to
that part of him which was truly modem under his
Hebrew disguise. Hume, of course, the urbane, cheer-
ful, gentlemanly, letter-writing eighteenth century, full
of attraction, and much that I don't yet know as to his
work. Bums, the sentimental side that there is in most
Scotsmen, his poor troubled existence, how far his
poems were his personally, and how far national, the
question of the framework of society in Scotland, and

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its fatal effect upon the finest natures. Scott again, the 1874
ever delightful man, sane, courageous, admirable; the ^' ^
birth of Romance, in a dawn that was a sunset; snob-
bery, conservatism, the wrong thread in History, and
notably in that of his own land, ^^aild, madame, U
menu. Comment le irouve^-^ous} Ily a de la bonne
viande^ sianparvient d la cuire convenablemenL

R. LS.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

This describes another member of the Russian party, recently arrived at
Mentone, who did his best, very nearly with success, to persuade Steven-
son to join him in the study of law for some terms at Gottingen.

[Mentone, Marcb 28, 1874.1
MY DEAR MOTHER,— Beautiful Weather, perfect wea-
ther; sun, pleasant cooling winds; health very good;
only incapacity to write.

The only new cloud on my horizon (1 mean this in no
menacing sense) is the Prince. I have philosophical and
artistic discussions with the Prince. He is capable of
talking for two hours upon end, developing his theory of
everything under Heaven from his first position, which
is that there is no straight line. Does n't that sound
like a game of my father's— 1 beg your pardon, you
have n't read it— 1 don't mean my father, I mean Tris-
tram Shandy's. He is very clever, and it is an immense
joke to hear him unrolling all the problems of life-
philosophy, science, what you will— in this charmingly
cut-and-dry, here-we-are-again kind of manner. He is
better to listen to than to argue withal. When you
differ from him, he lifts up his voice and thunders;

«3

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LETTERS OP R. U STEVENSON

1874 and you know that the thunder of an excited foreigner
often miscarries. One stands aghast, marvelling how
such a colossus of a man, in such a great commotion
of spirit, can open his mouth so much and emit such a
still small voice at the hinder end of it all. AH this
while he walks about the room, smokes cigarettes,
occupies divers chairs for divers brief spaces, and casts
his huge arms to the four winds like the sails of a mill.
He is a most sportive Prince. R. L S.

To Mrs. Sitweu

This and the following letters were written after Stevenson's return to
Scotland. The essay ' ' Ordered South " appeared in Macmillan*s Maga*
pm at this date ; that on Victor Hugo's romances in the Combill a fittie
later.

[Swanston], May, 1874. Monday.
Wb are now at Swanston Cottage, Lothianbum,
Edinburgh. The garden is but little clothed yet, for,
you know, here we are six hundred feet above the sea.
It is very cold, and has sleeted this morning. Every-
thing wintry. I am very jolly, however, having finished
Victor Hugo, and just looking round to see what I
should next take up. I have been reading Roman Law
and Calvin this morning.

Evening.—l went up the hill a little this afternoon.
The air was invigorating, but it was so cold that my
scalp was sore. With this high wintry wind, and the
grey sky, and faint northern daylight, it was quite
wonderful to hear such a clamour of blackbirds coming
up to me out of the woods, and the bleating of sheep

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being shorn in a field near the garden, and to see golden j^74
patches of blossom already on the furze, and delicate
green shoots upright and beginning to frond out, among
last year's russet bracken. Flights of crows were pass-
ing continually between the wintry leaden sky and the
wintry cold-looking hills. It was the oddest conflict of
seasons. A wee rabbit— this year's making, beyond
question— ran out from under my feet, and was in a
pretty perturbation, until he hit upon a lucky juniper
and blotted himself there promptly. Evidently this
gentleman had not had much experience of Ufe.

I have made an arrangement with my people: I am
to have ^84 -a y5?r— I only asked for ^80 on mature
reflection— jftEd as Tihould soon make a good bit by my
pen, I^5hallie>-yery comfortable. We are all as jolly
as can J^9^^0^ther, so that is a great thing gained.

IVednesday.-'YesteTdBy I received a ietter that gave
me much pleasure from a poor fellow student of mine,
who has been all winter very ill, and seems to be but
little better even now. He seems very much pleased
with "Ordered South." "A month ago," he says, "I
could scarcely have ventured to read it; to-day I felt on
reading it as I did on the first day that I was able to sun
myself a little in the open air." And much more to the
like effect It is very gratifying.— Ever your faithful
friend, RoBERr Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwell

Mr. John Moriey had asked for a notice by R. L S. f or the Fortmgbtif
RivUw of Lord Lytton's FabUs in Song,
I 85

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

»«74 SwANSTON, Wednesday, May, 1874.

JET, 24

Struggling away at Fables in Song. I am much afraid
I am going to make a real failure; the time is so short,
and I am so out of the humour. Otherwise very calm
and jolly: cold still impossible.

Thursday.— I feel happier about the Fables, and it is
warmer a bit; but my body is most decrepit, and I can
just manage to be cheery and tread down hypochondria
under foot by work. I lead such a funny life, utterly
without interest or pleasure outside of my work : no-
thing, indeed, but work all day long, except a short
walk alone on the cold hills, and meals, and a couple of
pipes with my father in the evening. It"ls surprising
how it suits me, and how happy I keep.

Saturday.— I have received such a nice long letter
(four sides) from Leslie Stephen to-day about my Victor
Hugo. It is accepted. This ought to have made me
gay, but it has n't. I am not likely to be much of a tonic
to-night. 1 have been very cynical over myself to-day,
partly, perhaps, because I have just finished some of
the deedest rubbish about Lord Lytton's fables that an
intelligent editor ever shot into his wastepaper basket
If Morley prints it I shall be glad, but my respect for
him will be shaken.

Tuesday.— Another cold day; yet I have been along
the hillside, wondering much at idiotic sheep, and raising
partridges at every second step. One little plover is
the object of my firm adherence. I pass his nest every
day, and if you saw how he flies by me, and almost

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into my face, crying and flapping his wings, to direct •874
my attention from his little treasure, you would have as ^' ^
kind a heart to him as L To-day I saw him not, al-
though I took my usual way; and I am afraid that
some person has abused his simple wiiiness and harried
(as we say in Scotland) the nest. I feel much right-
eous indignation against such imaginary aggressor.
However, one must not be too chary of the lower
forms. To-day I sat down on a tree-stump at the skirt
of a little strip of planting, and thoughtlessly began to
dig out the touchwood with an end of twig. I found
I had carried ruin, death, and universal consternation
into a little community of ants; and this set me a-think*
ing of how close we are environed with frail lives, so
that we can do nothing without spreading havoc over
all manner of perishable homes and interests and affec*
tions; and so on to my favourite mood of an holy terror
for all action and all inaction equally— a sort of shud-
dering revulsion from the necessary responsibilities of
life. We must not be too scrupulous of others, or we
shall die. Conscientiousness is a sort of moral opium;
an excitant in small doses, perhaps, but at bottom a
strong narcotic.

Saturday.—] have been two days in Edinburgh, and
so had not the occasion to write to you. Morley has
accepted the Fables, and I have seen it in proof, and
think less of it than ever. However, of course, I shall
send you a copy of the Magazine without fail, and you
can be as disappointed as you like, or the reverse if you
can. I would willingly recall it if I could.

Try, by way of change, Byron's Ma^eppa ; you will
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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1^74 be astonished. It is grand and no mistake, and one
^' *^ sees through it a fire, and a passion, and a rapid intui-
tion of genius, that makes one rather sorry for one's
own generation of better writers, and— I don't know
what to say; I was going to say "smaller men"; but
that 's not right; read it, and you will feel what I cannot
express. Don't be put out by the beginning ; persevere^
and you will find yourself thrilled before you are at an
end with it— Ever your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs, Sitweu

Written on an expedition to the west of England with hb parents.

Train between Edinburgh and Chester,
August S, 1874,
My father and mother reading. I think I shall talk to
you for a moment or two. This morning at Swanston,
the birds, poor creatures, had the most troubled hour or
two ; evidently there was a hawk in the neighbourhood ;
not one sang; and the whole garden thrilled with little
notes of warning and terror. I did not know before
that the voice of birds could be so tragically expressive.
I had always heard them before express their trivial
satisfaction with the blue sky and the return of daylight.
Really, they almost frightened me; I could hear mothers
and wives in terror for those who were dear to them ;
it was easy to translate, 1 wish it were as easy to write;
but it is very hard in this flying train, or I would write
you more.

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Chester.— I like this place much; but somehow 1 "874
feel glad when I get among the quiet eighteenth-century ^' ^^
buildings, in cosy places with some elbow room about
them, after the older architecture. This other is be-
devilled and furtive; it seems to stoop; I am afraid of
trap-doors, and could not go pleasantly into such
houses. I don't know how much of this is legitimately
the effect of the architecture; little enough possibly;
possibly far the most part of it comes from bad histori-
cal novels and the disquieting statuary that garnishes
some fa^des.

On the way, to-day, I passed through my dear Cum-
berland country. Nowhere to as great a degree can one
find the combination of lowland and highland beauties;
the outline of the blue hills is broken by the outline of
many tumultuous tree-clumps ; and the broad spaces of
moorland are balanced by a network of deep hedgerows
that might rival Suffolk, in the foreground.— How a
railway journey shakes and discomposes one, mind and
body! I grow blacker and blacker in humour as the
day goes on; and when at last I am let out, and have
the fresh air about me, it is as though I were born
again, and the sick fancies flee away from my mind
like swans in spring.

I want to come back on what I have said about
eighteenth-century and middle-age houses: I do not
know if I have yet explained to you the sort of loyalty,
of urbanity, that there is about the one to my mind ; the
spirit of a country orderly and prosperous, a flavour of
the presence of magistrates and well-to-do merchants
in bag-wigs, the clink of glasses at night in flrelit par-
lours, something certain and civic and domestic, is all

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MT. 34

LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1874^ about these quiet, staid, shapely houses, with no char-
acter but their exceeding shapeliness, and the comely
external utterance that they make of their internal com-
fort. Now the others are, as I have said, both furtive
and bedevilled; they are sly and grotesque; they com-
bine their sort of feverish grandeur with their sort of
secretive baseness, after the manner of a Charles the
Ninth. They are peopled for me with persons of the
same fashion. Dwarfs and sinister people in cloaks are
about them ; and I seem to divine crypts, and, as I said,
trap-doors. O God be praised that we live in this good
daylight and this good peace.

Barmouth, August p/i.— To-day we saw the cathe-
dral at Chester; and, far more delightful, saw and heard
a certain inimitable verger who took us round. He was
full of a certain recondite, far-away humour that did
not quite make you laugh at the time, but was somehow
laughable to recollect. Moreover, he had so far a just
imagination, and could put one in the right humour for
seeing an old place, very much as, according to my
favourite text, Scott's novels and poems do for one.
His account of the monks in the Scriptorium, with their
cowls over their heads, in a certain sheltered angle of
the cloister where the big Cathedral building kept the
sun off the parchments, was all that could be wished;
and so too was what he added of the others pacing
solemnly behind them and dropping, ever and again, on
their knees before a little shrine there is in the wall, " to
keep 'em in the frame of mind." You will begin to
think me unduly biassed in this verger's favour if I go
on to tell you his opinion of me. We got into a little

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side chapel, whence we could hear the choir children 1874
at practice, and I stopped a moment listening to them, ^* ^^
with, I dare say, a very bright face, for the sound was
delightful to me. " Ah," says he, " you 're very fond of
music" I said I was. " Yes, I could tell that by your
head," he answered. "There 's a deal in that head."
And he shook his own solemnly. I said it might be
so, but I found it hard, at least, to get it out. Then my
father cut in brutally, said anyway I had no ear, and
left the verger so distressed and shaken in the founda-
tions of his creed that, I hear, he got my father aside
afterwards and said he was sure there was something
in my face, and wanted to know what it was, if not
music. He was relieved when he heard that I occupied
myself with litterature (which word, note here, I do
not spell correctly). Good night, and here *s the verger's
health! R. L S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

"John Knox ''and ''J. K." herein mentioned are the two papers
on "John Knox and his Relations with Women/' first printed in
MacmUan*s Maga^iiu and afterwards in Familiar Studies,

SwANSTON, IVednesday, [Autumn] 1874.
I HAVE been hard at work all yesterday, and besides
had to write a long letter to Bob, so I found no time
until quite late, and then was sleepy. Last night it
blew a fearful gale; I was kept awake about a couple
of hours, and could not get to sleep for the horror of
the wind's noise; the whole house shook; and, mind
you, our house is a house, a great castle of jointed
stone that would weigh up a street of English houses;

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1874 $0 that when it quakes, as it did last night, it means
"* ^ something. But the quaking was not what put me
about; it was the horrible howl of the wind round the
comer; the audible haunting of an incarnate anger
about the house; the evil spirit that was abroad; and,
above all, the shuddering silent pauses when the
storm's heart stands dreadfully still for a moment O
how I hate a storm at night! They have been a great
influence in my life, I am sure; for I can remember
them so far back — long before I was six at least, for
we left the house in which I remember listening to
them times without number when I was six. And in
those days the storm had for me a perfect impersona-
tion, as durable and unvarying as any heathen deity.
I always heard it, as a horseman riding past with his
cloak about his head, and somehow always carried
away, and riding past again, and being baffled yet
once more, ad infinitum, all night long. I think I
wanted him to get past, but 1 am not sure ; I know
only that I had some interest either for or against in the
matter; and 1 used to lie and hold my breath, not quite
frightened, but in a state of miserable exaltation.

My first John Knox is in proof, and my second is on
the anvil. It is very good of me so to do ; for 1 want so
much to get to my real tour and my sham tour, the
real tour first: it is always working in my head, and if
I can only turn on the right sort of style at the right
moment, 1 am not much afraid of it One thing bothers
me; what with hammering at this J. K., and writing
necessary letters, and taking necessary exercise (that
even not enough, the weather is so repulsive to me,
cold and windy), I find I have no time for reading

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except times of fatigue, when I wish merely to relax 1874
myself. O — and I read over again for this purpose ^' ^
Flaubert's Tentatian de St Antoine; it struck me a
good deal at first, but this second time it has fetched
me immensely. I am but just done with it, so you
will know the large proportion of salt to take with my
present statement, that it 's the finest thing I ever read!
Of course, it is n't that; it 's full of longueurs, and is not
quite " redd up," as we say in Scotland, not quite articu-
lated; but there are splendid things in it

Isay» do take your maccaroni with oil: do, please.
It 's beastly with butter. — Ever your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitweu

[Edinburgh], December 2), 1874*
Monday. — I have come from a concert, and the con-
cert was rather a disappointment. Not so my after-
noon skating — Duddingston, our big loch, is bearing;
and I wish you could have seen it this afternoon, cov-
ered with people, in thin driving snow flurries, the big
hill grim and white and alpine overhead in the thick air,
and the road up the gorge, as it were into the heart of
it, dotted black with traffic. Moreover^ I can skate a
little bit; and what one can do is always pleasant to do.

Tuesday. — I got your letter to-day, and was so glad
thereof. It was of good omen to me also. I worked
from ten to one (my classes are suspended now for
Xmas holidays), and wrote four or five Portfolio pages

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XT. 34

LETTERS OF R, L. STEVENSON

j>874^ of my Buckinghamshire affair. Then I went to Dud*
dingston and skated all afternoon. If you had seen the
moon rising, a perfect sphere of smoky gold, in the
dark air above the trees, and the white loch thick with
skaters, and the great hill, snow-sprinkled, overhead!
It was a sight for a king.

Wednesday. — I stayed on Duddingston to-day till
after nightfall. The little booths that hucksters set up
round the edge were marked each one by its little lamp.
There were some fires too; and the light, and the shad-
ows of the people who stood round them to warm
themselves, made a strange pattern all round on the
snow-covered ice. A few people with torches began to
travel up and down the ice, a lit circle travelling along
with them over the snow. A gigantic moon rose,
meanwhile, over the trees and the kirk on the promon-
tory, among perturbed and vacillating clouds.

The walk home was very solemn and strange. Once,
through a broken gorge, we had a glimpse of a little
space of mackerel sky, moon-litten, on the other side
of the hill; the broken ridges standing grey and spec-
tral between ; and the hilltop over all, snow-white, and
strangely magnified in size.

This must go to you to-morrow, so that you may
read it on Christmas Day for company. I hope it may
be good company to you.

Thursday.— OwtsXdt, it snows thick and steadily.
The gardens before our house are now a wonderful fairy
forest. And O, this whiteness of things, how I love it,
how it sends the blood about my body! Maurice de

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Gu^rin hated snow; what a fool he must have been! '875
Somebody tried to put me out of conceit with it by say- '"^ *'
ing that people were lost in it. As if people don't get
lost in love, too, and die of devotion to art; as if every-
thing worth were not an occasion to some people's end.
What a wintry letter this is! Only I think it is win-
ter seen from the inside of a warm greatcoat. And
there is, at least, a warm heart about it somewhere.
Do you know, what they say in Xmas stories is true ?
I think one loves their friends more dearly at this sea-
son.— Ever your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh [January, 7875].
MY DEAR COLVIN, — I have Worked too hard; I have
given myself one day of rest, and that was not enough;
so] am giving myself another. I shall go to bed again
likewise so soon as this is done, and slumber most
potently.

9 p. M. — ^Slept all afternoon like a lamb.

About my coming south, I think the still small un-
answerable voice of coins will make it impossible until
the session is over (end of March); but for all that, I
think 1 shall hold out jolly. I do not want you to come
and bother yourself; indeed, it is still not quite certain
whether my father will be quite fit for you, although I
have now no fear of that really. Now don't take up
this wrongly; I wish you could come; and I do not

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1875 know anything that would make me happier, but I see
^' ^^ that it is wrong to expect it, and so I resign myself:
some time after. I offered Appleton a series of papers
on the modern French school — the Parnassiens, 1 think
they call them — de Banville, Copp6e, Soulary, and
SuIIy-Prudhomme. But he has not deigned to answer
my letter.

I shall have another Portfolio paper so soon as I am
done with this story, that has played me out; the story
is to be called When the Devil was Well: scene, Italy,
Renaissance; colour, purely imaginary of course, my
own unregenerate idea of what Italy then was. O,
when shall I fmd the story of my dreams, that shall
never halt nor wander nor step aside, but go ever be-
fore its face, and ever swifter and louder, until the pit
receives it, roaring ? The Portfolio paper will be about
Scotland and England. — Ever yours,

R. L. Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitweu

In the following is related Stevenson's first introduction to Mr.
W. E. Henley. The acquaintance thus formed ripened quickly, as is
well known, into a close and stimulating literary friendship.

Edinburgh, Tuesday [February, 7*75].
I GOT your nice long gossiping letter to-day — I mean
by that that there was more news in it than usual —
and so, of course, I am pretty jolly. I am in the house,
however, with such a beastly cold in the head. Our
east winds begin already to be very cold.
O, I have such a longing for children of my own;

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4iT. 39

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and yet I do not think I could bear it if I had one. I J«75
&ncy I must feel more like a woman than like a man
about that I sometimes hate the children I see on the
street — you know what I mean by hate — wish they
were somewhere else, and not there to mock me; and
sometimes, again, I don't know how to go by them
for the love of them, especially the very wee ones.

Tbursday,—l have been still in the house since I
wrote, and 1 bave worked. I finished the Italian story;
not well, but as well as 1 can just now ; I must go all
over it again, some time soon, when I feel in the
humour to better and perfect it And now 1 have taken
up an old story, begun years ago; and 1 have now re-
written all I had written of it then, and mean to finish
it What I have lost and gained is odd. As far as
regards simple writing, of course, 1 am in another
world now; but in some things, though more clumsy,
1 seem to have been freer and more plucky : this is a
lesson I have taken to heart. 1 have got a jolly new
name for my old story. 1 am going to call it A Coun-
try Dance; the two heroes keep changing places, you
know; and the chapter where the most of this chang-
ing goes on is to be called '' Up the middle, down the
middle." It will be in six or (perhaps) seven chapters.
1 have never worked harder in my life than these last
four days. If 1 can only keep it up.

Saturday. — Yesterday, Leslie Stephen, who was
down here to lecture, called on me and took me up to
see a poor fellow, a poet who writes for him, and who
has been eighteen months in our infirmary, and may

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LETTERS OF R, L. STEVENSON

>875 be, for all I know, eighteen months more. It was very
^' *^ sad to see him there, in a little room with two beds,
and a couple of sick children in the other bed; a girl
came in to visit the children, and played dominoes on
the counterpane with them; the gas flared and crackled,
the fire burned in a dull economical way; Stephen and
I sat on a couple of chairs, and the poor fellow sat up
in his bed with his hair and beard all tangled, and
talked as cheerfully as if he had been in a King's palace,
or the great King's palace of the blue air. He has
taught himself two languages since he has been lying
there. I shall try to be of use to him.

We have had two beautiful spring days, mild as
milk, windy withal, and the sun hot. I dreamed last
night I was walking by moonlight round the place
where the scene of my story is laid ; it was all so quiet
and sweet, and the blackbirds were singing as if it was
day; it made my heart very cool and happy. — Ever
yours, Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

Februarys, 187$.
MY DEAR COLVIN, — Fofgive my bothering you. Here
is the proof of my second "Knox." Glance it over, like
a good fellow, and if there 's anything very flagrant send
it to me marked. 1 have no confidence in myself; I feel
such an ass. What have I been doin^ ? As near as I
can calculate, nothing. And yet I have worked all this
month from three to five hours a day, that is to say,

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XT. 25

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from one to three hours more than my doctor allows J875
me; positively no result.

No, I can write no article just now; 1 SLxn ptocbing,
like a madman, at my stories, and can make nothing of
them; my simplicity is tame and dull — my passion
tinsel, boyish, hysterical. Never mind — ten years
hence, if 1 live, I shall have learned, so help me God. I
know one must work in the meantime (so says Balzac)
comme It mineur enfoui sous un iboulement

fy parviendrai, nam de nom de nom I But it 's a long
look forward. — Ever yours, R. L S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

As the spring advanced Stevenson had again been much out of sorts,
and had gone for a change, in the company of Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson,
on his first visit to the artist haunts of Fontainebleau, which were
afterwards so much endeared to him.

[Barbizon, April, i8y$,'\
MY DEAR FRIEND, — This is just a line to say I am
well and happy. I am here in my dear forest all day in
the open air. It is very be — no, not beautiful exactly,
just now, but very bright and living. There are one or
two song birds and a cuckoo; all the fruit-trees are in
flower, and the beeches make sunshine in a shady place.
I begin to go all right; you need not be vexed about my
health; I really was ill at first, as bad as I have been for
nearly a year; but the forest begins to work, and the
air, and the sun, and the smell of the pines. If I could
stay a month here, I should be as right as possible.
Thanks for your letter. — Your faithful R. L. S.

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON
1875

■'• *5 To Mrs. Sitweu

On his way through town after his return to Scotland from Fon*
tainebleau he had been given a photograph of the Three Fates of the
Elgin Marbles, who are the " three women '' discussed in the second
part of this letter.

17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh,
Sunday [April, 187$^

Herb is my long story: yesterday night, after having
supped, I grew so restless that I was obliged to go out
in search of some excitement. There was a half-moon
lying over on its back, and incredibly bright in the midst
of a faint grey sky set with faint stars: a very inartistic
moon, that would have damned a picture.

At the most populous place of the city 1 found a little
boy, three years old perhaps, half frantic with terror, and
crying to every one for his ** Mammy." This was about
eleven, mark you. People stopped and spoke to him,
and then went on, leaving him more frightened than
before. But 1 and a good-humoured mechanic came up
together; and 1 instantly developed a latent faculty for
setting the hearts of children at rest. Master Tommy
Murphy (such was his name) soon stopped crying,
and allowed me to take him up and carry him; and
the mechanic and I trudged away along Princes Street
to find his parents. 1 was soon so tired that I had to
ask the mechanic to carry the bairn; and you should
have seen the puzzled contempt with which he looked
at me, for knocking in so soon. He was a good fellow,
however, although very impracticable and sentimental ;
and he soon bethought him that Master Murphy might
catch cold after his excitement, so we wrapped him up

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In my greatcoat " Tobauga (Tobago) Street " was the "875
address he gave us; and we deposited him in a little '*^' *'
grocer's shop and went through all the houses in the
street without being able to find any one of the name
of Murphy. Then I set oflF to the head police office,
leaving my greatcoat in pawn about Master Mur-
phy's person. As I went down one of the lowest
streets in the town, I saw a little bit of life that struck
me. It was now half-past twelve, a little shop stood
still half-open, and a boy of four or five years old was
walking up and down before it imitating cockcrow.
He was the only living creature within sight.

At the police offices no word of Master Murphy's
parents; so I went back empty-handed. The good
groceress, who had kept her shop open all this time,
could keep the child no longer; her father, bad with
bronchitis, said he must forth. So I got a large scone
with currants in it, wrapped my coat about Tommy,
got him up on my arm, and away to the police office
with him: not very easy in my mind, for th* poor
child, young as he was — he could scarce speak —
was full of terror for the ''office," as he called it
He was now very grave and quiet and communica-
tive with me; told me how his father thrashed him,
and divers household matters. Whenever he saw a
woman on our way he looked after her over my
shoulder and then gave his judgment: "That 's no
her,** adding sometimes, "She has a wean wi' her."
Meantime I was telling him how 1 was going to take
him to a gentleman who would find out his mother
for him quicker than ever I could, and how he must
not be afraid of him, but be brave, as he had been

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..::••;/: ..' LfitTERS OF R, L. STEVENSON

"875 with me. We had just arrived at our destination —
^' ^^ we were just under the lamp — when he looked me
in the face and said appealingly, " He '11 no put me
in the office?" And I had to assure him that he
would not, even as I pushed open the door and took
him in.

The sergeant was very nice, and I got Tommy com-
fortably seated on a bench, and spirited him up with
good words and the scone with the currants in it;
and then, telling him I was just going out to look
for Mammy, I got my greatcoat and slipped away.

Poor little boy! he was not called for, I learn, until
ten this morning. This is very ill written, and I 've
missed half that was picturesque in it; but to say truth,
I am very tired and sleepy : it was two before I got to
bed. However, you see, I had my excitement.

Monday. — I have written nothing all morning; I
cannot settle to it Yes — 1 will though.

70.4(5.— And I did. 1 want to say something more
to you about the three women. I wander so much
why they should have been women, and halt between
two opinions in the matter. Sometimes 1 think it is
because they were made by a man for men; some-
times, again, I think there is an abstract reason for it,
and there is something more substantive about a
woman than ever there can be about a man. I can
conceive a great mythical woman, living alone among
inaccessible mountain-tops or in some lost island in
the pagan seas, and ask no more. Whereas if I hear of
a Hercules, I ask after lole or Dejanira. I cannot think

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him a man without women. But I can think of these 1875
three deep-breasted women, living out all their days on ^' ^^
remote hilltops, seeing the white dawn and the purple
even, and the world outspread before them for ever, and
no more to them for ever than a sight of the eyes, a
hearing of the ears, a far-away interest of the inflex-
ible heart, not pausing, not pitying, but austere with
a holy austerity, rigid with a calm and passionless
rigidity; and 1 find them none the less women to the .
end.

And think, if one could love a woman like that once,
see her once grow pale with passion, and once wring
your lips out upon hers, would it not be a small thing
to die ? Not that there is not a passion of a quite other
sort, much less epic, far more dramatic and intimate,
that comes out of the very frailty of perishable women ;
out of the lines of suffering that we see written about
their eyes, and that we may wipe out if it were but for
a moment ; out of the thin hands, wrought and tem-
pered in agony to a fineness of perception that the in-
different or the merely happy cannot know; out of the
tragedy that lies about such a love, and the pathetic in-
completeness. This is another thing, and perhaps it
is a higher. I look over my shoulder at the three
great headless Madonnas, and they look back at me
and do not move; see me, and through and over me,
the foul life of the city dying to its embers already as
the night draws on; and over miles and miles of silent
country, set here and there with lit towns, thundered
through here and there with night expresses scattering
fire and smoke; and away to the ends of the earth, and
the furthest star, and the blank regions of nothing; and

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1875 they are not moved. My quiet, great-kneed, deep-
^**^ breasted, well-draped ladies of Necessity, I give my
heart to you I R. L S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

[SwANSTON, Tuesday, April, i8y$.]
MY DEAR FRIEND, — I have been so busy, away to
Bridge of Allan with my father first, and then with
Simpson and Baxter out here from Saturday till Mon-
day. I had no time to write, and, as it is, am strangely
incapable. Thanks for your letter. I have been read-
ing such lots of law, and it seems to take away the
power of writing from me. From morning to night, so
often as 1 have a spare moment, 1 am in the embrace of
a lawbook — barren embraces. I am in good spirits;
and my heart smites me as usual, when I am in good
spirits, about my parents. If I get a bit dull, I am away
to London without a scruple; but so long as my heart
keeps up, I am all for my parents.

What do you think of Henley's hospital verses?
They were to have been dedicated to me, but Stephen
would n't allow it — said it would be pretentious.

Wednesday. — I meant to have made this quite a de-
cent letter this morning, but listen. I had pain all
last night, and did not sleep well, and now am cold
and sickish, and strung up ever and again with an-
other flash of pain. Will you remember me to every-
body ? My principal characteristics are cold, poverty,
and Scots Law — three very bad things. Oo, how the
rain falls 1 The mist is quite low on the hill. The

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birds are twittering to each other about the indifferent 1875
season. O, here 's a gem for you. An old godly wo- ^' *'
man predicted the end of the world, because the seasons
were becoming indistinguishable; my cousin Dora ob-
jected that last winter had been pretty well marked.
"Yes, my dear," replied the soothsay eress ; "but I
think you '11 find the summer will be rather coampli-
cated. "— Ever your faithful R. L S.

To Mrs. SiTWEa

The rehearsals were those of Shakespeare's Twelfth Nigbt for ama*
teur theatricals at Professor Fleeming Jenkin's, in which Stevenson
played the part of Orsino.

[Edinburgh, Saturday, April, i8y$.]
I AM getting on with my rehearsals, but I find the
part very hard. I rehearsed yesterday from a quarter
to seven, and to-day from four (with interval for din-
ner) to eleven. You see the sad strait I am in for ink.
— A demain.

Sunday. — ^This is the third inkbottle I have tried,
and still it 's nothing to boast of. My journey went
off all right, and I have kept ever in good spirits.
Last night, indeed, I did think my little bit of gaiety
was going away down the wind like a whiff of tobacco
smoke, but to-day it has come back to me a little.
The influence of this place is assuredly all that can be
worst against one; mats ilfaut lutter. I was haunted
last night when I was in bed by the most cold, deso-

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1875 late recollections of my past life here; I was glad to try
^' *^ and think of the forest, and warm my hands at the
thought of it. O the quiet, grey thickets, and the
yellow butterflies, and the woodpeckers, and the out-
look over the plain as it were over a seal O for the
good, fleshly stupidity of the woods, the body con-
scious of itself all over and the mind forgotten, the clean
air nestling next your skin as though your clothes were
gossamer, the eye filled and content, the whole man
happy! Whereas here it takes a pull to hold yourself
together; it needs both hands, and a book of stoical
maxims, and a sort of bitterness at the heart by way
of armour. — Ever your faithful R. L S.

Wednesday. — I am so played out with a cold in my
eye that 1 cannot see to write or read without difficulty.
It is swollen borrible; so how I shall look as Orsino,
God knows! I have my fine clothes tho'. Henley's
sonnets have been taken for the CombiU. He is out
of hospital now, and dressed, but still not too much to
brag of in health, poor fellow, I am afraid.

Sunday. — So. I have still rather bad eyes, and a
nasty sore throat. I play Orsino every day, in all the
pomp of Solomon, splendid Francis the First clothes,
heavy with gold and stage jewellery. I play it ill
enough, I believe; but me and the clothes, and the
wedding wherewith the clothes and me are reconciled,
produce every night a thrill of admiration. Our cook
told my mother (there is a servants' night, you know)
that she and the housemaid were ** just prood to be
able to say it was oor young gentleman." To sup after-

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wards with these clothes on, and a wonderful lot of 1875

JET 2^

gaiety and Shakespearean jokes about the table, is
something to live for. It is so nice to feel you have
been dead three hundred years, and the sound of your
laughter is faint and far off in the centuries. — Ever your
faithful Robert Louis Stevenson.

IVednesday. — A moment at last These last few
days have been as jolly as days could be, and by good
fortune 1 leave to-morrow for Swanston, so that 1 shall
not feel the whole fall back to habitual self. The pride
of life could scarce go further. To live in splendid
clothes, velvet and gold and fur, upon principally
champagne and lobster salad, with a company of
people nearly all of whom are exceptionally good
talkers; when your days began about eleven and ended
about four — 1 have lost that sentence; 1 give it up; it
is very admirable sport, anyway. Then both my af-
ternoons have been so pleasantly occupied — taking
Henley drives. I had a business to carry him down the
long stair, and more of a business to get him up again,
but while he was in the carriage it was splendid. It
is now just the top of spring with us. The whole
country is mad with green. To see the cherry-blos-
soms bitten out upon the black firs, and the black firs
bitten out of the blue sky, was a sight to set before a
king. You may imagine what it was to a man who
has been eighteen months in an hospital ward. The
look of his face was a wine to me.

1 shall send this off to-day to let you know of my
new address — Swanston Cottage, Lothianbum, Edin-
burgh. Salute the faithful in my name. Salute Pris-

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

"875 cilia, salute Barnabas, salute Ebenezer — O no, he 'stoo
^' *^ much, I withdraw Ebenezer; enough of early Christians.
— Ever your feithful Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. SrrwELL

" Bums" means the article on Bums which R. L. S. had been com-
missioned to write for the Encyclopedia Britannica. The " awfully
nice man " was Mr. Seed, an ofTidal of New Zealand; and it was from
his conversation that the notion of the Samoan Islands as a place of
refuge for the sick and world-wom first entered Stevenson's mind, to
He dormant (i never heard him speak of it) and be revived fifteen years
later.

[Edinburgh, yu»^, /S75.]
Simply a scratch. All right, jolly, well, and through
with the difficulty. My father pleased about the * ' Bums. "
Never travel in the same carriage with three able-bodied
seamen and a fruiterer from Kent; the A.-B.'s speak all
night as though they were hailing vessels at sea ; and the
fruiterer as if he were crying fruit in a noisy market-place
— such, at least, is my funeste experience. I wonder if
a fruiterer from some place else — say Worcestershire —
would offer tLe same phenomena ? insoluble doubt.

K* L. S«

Later. — Forgive me, could n't get it off. Awfully
nice man here to-night Public servant — New Zealand.
Telling us all about the South Sea Islands till I was sick
with desire to go there: beautiful places, green for ever;
perfect climate; perfect shapes of men and women, with
red flowers in their hair; and nothing to do but to study
oratory and etiquette, sit in the sun, and pick up the

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STUDENT DAYS

fruits as they fall Navigator's Island is the place; ab- 1^75
solute balm for the weary. — Ever your faithful friend, ^* ^

R.L S.

To Mrs. SrrwBii

The examination for the bar at Edinburgh was approaching.
'* Fontainebleau '' is the paper called "Forest Notes," afterwards
printed in the Cornhill Maga^m, The church is Glencorse Church in
the Pentlands, to the thoughts of which Stevenson reverted in his last
days with so much emotion (see IVfir o/HtrmisUm, chap, v.)*

SwANSTON, end of June, 1875.
Thursday. — This day fortnight I shall fall or conquer.
Outside the rain still soaks; but now and again the hill-
top looks through the mist vaguely. I am very com-
fortable, very sleepy, and very much satisfied with the
arrangements of Providence.

Saturday— no, Sunday, /^.^fj.— Justbeen — notgrind-
ing, alas! — 1 could n't — but doing a bit of Fontaine-
bleau. I don't think I '11 be plucked. I am not sure
though — I am so busy, what with this d— d law, and
this Fontainebleau always at my elbow, and three plays
(three, think of that!) and a story, all crying out to me,
** Finish, finish, make an entire end, make us strong,
shapely, viable creatures ! " It 's enough to put a man
crazy. Moreover, I have my thesis given out now, which
is a fifth (is it fifth ? I can't count) incumbrance.

Sunday. — I 've been to church, and am not depressed
— a great step. I was at that beautiful church my petit
poime en prose was about. It is a little cruciform place,

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

««75 With heavy cornices and string-course to match, and a
**^* *^ steep slate roof. The small kirkyard is full of old grave-
stones. One of a Frenchman from Dunkerque — I sup-
pose he died prisoner in the military prison hard by —
and one, the most pathetic memorial I ever saw, a poor
school-slate, in a wooden frame, with the inscription
cut into it evidently by the father's own hand. In
church, old Mr. Torrence preached — over eighty, and
a reli6 of times forgotten, with his black thread gloves
and mild old foolish face. One of the nicest parts of
it was to see John Inglis, the greatest man in Scotland,
our Justice-General, and the only born lawyer I ever
heard, listening to the piping old body, as though it had
all been a revelation, grave and respectful. — Ever your
£suthlui R. L. S.

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Ill

ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

EDINBURGH — PARIS— FONTAINEBLEAU
OuLY, 1875 -July, 1879)

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Ill

ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

EDINBURGH — PARIS — FONTAINEBLE AU
(July, 1875 -July, 1879)

ON the 14th of July, 1875, Stevenson passed with
credit his examination for the bar at Edinburgh,
and thenceforth enjoyed whatever status and consider-
ation attaches to the title of Advocate. But he made
no serious attempt to practise, and by the 25th of the
same month had started with Sir Walter Simpson for
France. Here he lived and tramped for several weeks
among the artist haunts of Fontainebleau and the neigh-
bourhood, occupying himself chiefly with studies of
the French poets and poetry of the fifteenth century,
which afterwards bore fruit in his papers on Charles of
OrI6ans and Francois Villon. Thence he travelled to
join his parents at Wiesbaden and Homburg, and, re-
turning in the autumn to Scotland, made, to please
them, an effort to live the ordinary life of an Edinburgh
advocate — attending trials, and spending his mornings
in wig and gown at the Pariiament House. But this
attempt was before long abandoned as tending to waste

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

of time and being incompatible with his real occupation
of literature. Through the next winter and spring he
remained in Edinburgh, except for a winter's walking
tour in Ayrshire and Galloway, and a month spent
among his friends in London. In the late summer of
1876, after a visit to the West Highlands, he made the
canoe trip with Sir Walter Simpson which furnished
the subject of An Inland Voyage, followed by a pro-
longed autumn stay at Grez and Barbizon. The life,
atmosphere, and scenery of these forest haunts had
charmed and soothed him, as we have seen, since he
was first introduced to them by his cousin, Mr. R. A.
M. Stevenson, in the spring of 1875. An unfettered,
unconventional, open-air existence, passed face to face
with nature and in the company of congenial people
engaged, like himself, in grappling with the problems
and difficulties of an art, had been what he had longed
for most consistently through all the agitations of his
youth. And now he had found just such an existence,
and with it, as he thought, peace of mind, health, and
the spirit of unimpeded work.

What indeed awaited him in the forest was some-
thing very diflferent and more momentous, namely, his
fate; the romance which decided his life, and the com-
panion whom he resolved to make his own at all haz-
ards. But of this hereafter. To continue briefly the
annals of the time: the year 1877 was again spent be-
tween Edinburgh, London, the Fontainebleau region,
and the artists' quarter in Paris, with an excursion in
the company of his parents to the Land's End in
August. In 1878 a similar general mode of life was
varied by a visit with his parents in March to Burford

««4

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

Bridge^ where he made warm friends with a senior
to whom he had long looked up from a distance, Mr.
George Meredith ; by a spell of secretarial work under
Professor Fleeming Jenkin, who was serving as a juror
on the Paris Exhibition; and lastly, by the autumn
tramp through the C6vennes, afterwards recounted
with so much charm in Travels with a Donkey. The
first half of 1879 was again spent between London,
Scotland, and Paris.

During these four years, it should be added, Steven-
son's health was very passable. It often, indeed,
threatened to give way after any prolonged residence
in Edinburgh, but was generally soon restored by open-
air excursions (during which he was capable of fairly
vigorous and sustained daily exercise), or by a spell of
life among the woods of Fontainebleau. They were
also the years in which he settled for good into his
chosen profession of letters. He worked rather desul-
torily for the first twelve months after his call to the
bar, but afterwards with ever-growing industry and
success, winning from the critical a full measure of
recognition, though relatively little, so far, from the
general public. In 1876 he contributed as a journalist,
though not frequently, to the Academy and Inanity
Fair, and in 1877 more abundantly to London, a
weekly review newly founded under the editorship of
Mr. Glasgow Brown, an acquaintance of Edinburgh
Speculative days. But he had no great gift or liking
for journalism, or for any work not calling for the best
literary form and finish he could give. Where he
found special scope for such work was in the Cornbill
Magazine under the editorship of Mr. Leslie Stephen.

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

Here he continued his critical papers on men and
books, already begun in 1874 with "Victor Hugo," and
began in 1876 the series of papers afterwards collected
in y^irginibus Puerisque, in which he preaches, with
such captivating gaiety and vigour, his gospel of
courage and of contempt for the bourgeois timidities
and petty respectabilities of life. They were continued
in 1877, and in greater number throughout 1878. His
first published stories appeared as follows: " A Lodg-
ing for the Night," Temple Bar, October, 1877; "The
Sirede Malttroit's Door," Temple Bar, January, 1878;
and "Will o' the Mill," Cornbill Magazine, January,
1878. The first two of these were inspired by the
studies of fifteenth-century France which he had made
in the autumn of 1875, and by their energy of vision
and vividness of presentment seemed to justify the
best hopes his friends had formed of him as a story-
teller; while the third, admirable at once as parable —
the parable of the hanger-back— and as idyll of the
Alpine road and river, showed a quality still rarer and
more poetical. In May, 1878, followed his first travel
book. An Inland Voyage, containing the account of
his canoe trip from Antwerp to Grez. This was to
Stevenson a year of great and various productiveness.
Besides six or eight characteristic essays of the ^/r-
ginibus Puerisque series, there appeared in London
(now edited by Mr. Henley) the set of fantastic modern
tales called "The New Arabian Nights," conceived and
written in an entirely different key from any of his
previous work, as well as the kindly, sentimental
comedy of French artist life, "Providence and the
Guitar"; and in the Portfolio the " Picturesque Notes

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

on Edinburgh," republished at the end of the year in
book form. During the autumn and winter of this
year he wrote Travels with a Donkey in the C&oennes,
and was much engaged in the planning of plays in
collaboration with Mr. Henley; of which one, Deacon
Brodie, was finished in the. spring of 1879. This
was also the date of the much debated essay "On
some Aspects of Bums." In the same spring he
drafted in Edinburgh, but afterwards laid by, four
chapters on ethics, a study of which he once spoke as
being always his "veiled mistress," under the name of
Lay Morals.

But abounding in good work as this period was, and
momentous as it was in regard to Stevenson's future
life, it is a period which figures hardly at all in his cor-
respondence, and in this book must fill quite a dis-
proportionately scanty space. Partly his increasing
absorption in the interests of his life and work left him
little time or inclination for letter- writing; partly his
greater freedom of movement made it unnecessary.
On his way backwards and forwards between Scotland
and France, his friends in London had the chance of
seeing him much more frequently than of yore. His
visits were always a delight, and the charm of his talk
and presence unequalled. He avoided formal and
dress-coated society; but in the company of congenial
friends, whether men or women, and in places like the
Savile Club (his favourite haunt), he won and kept all
hearts by that mixture which was his own of the most
inexhaustible, far-ranging brilliancy and gaiety in dis-
course with the most sympathetic humanity of feeling
and affectionateness of nature. But I am letting myself

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

lapse too much into biography, and it is time that the
meagre correspondence of these years should speak for
itsel£

1875 To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

AT. 35

[Chez Siron, Barbizon, Seine-bt-Marne,
August, 187J;.]

MY DEAR MOTHER, — I have been three days at a place
called Grez, a pretty and very melancholy village on
the plain. A low bridge of many arches choked with
sedge; great fields of white and yellow water-lilies;
poplars and willows innumerable ; and about it all such
an atmosphere of sadness and slackness, one could do
nothing but get into the boat and out of it again, and
yawn for bedtime.

Yesterday Bob and I walked home; it came on a
very creditable thunderstorm; we were soon wet
through; sometimes the rain was so heavy that one
could only see by holding the hand over the eyes ; and
to crown all, we lost our way and wandered all over
the place, and into the artillery range, among broken
trees, with big shot lying about among the rocks. It
was near dinner-time when we got to Barbizon ; and it is
supposed that we walked from twenty-three to twenty-
five miles, which is not bad for the Advocate, who is
not tired this morning. I was very glad to be back
again in this dear place, and smell the wet forest in the
morning.

Simpson and the rest drove back in a carriage, and
got about as wet as we did.

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

Why don't you write ? I have no more to say. — «875
Ever your affectionate son, ^' ^'

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwell

At this time Stevenson was much occupied, as were several young
writers his contemporaries, with imitating the artificial forms of early
French verse. None of his attempts, I believe, have been preserved
except the two contained in this letter. The second is of course a
translation.

ChAteau Renard, Loiret, August, 187$.
. • • I have been walking these last days from place
to place; and it does make it hot for walking with a
sack in this weather. I am burned in horrid patches
of red ; my nose, I fear, is going to take the lead in
colour; Simpson is all flushed, as if he were seen by a
sunset. I send you here two rondeaux; I don't sup-
pose they will amuse anybody but me ; but this measure,
short and yet intricate, is just what I desire; and I have
had some good times walking along the glaring roads,
or down the poplar alley of the great canal, pitting my
own humour to this old ver^e.

Far have you come, my lady, from the town.
And far from all your sorrows, if you please.
To smell the good sea-winds and hear the seas,
And in green meadows lay your body down.

To find your pale face grow from pale to brown, ,
Your sad eyes growing brighter by degrees;
Far have you come, my lady, from the town,
And far from all your sorrows, if you please.
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LETTERS OF R, L. STEVENSON

1^79 Here in this seaboard land of old renown,

^' *^ In meadow grass go wading to the knees;

Bathe your whole soul a while in simple ease;
There is no sorrow but the sea can drown;
Far have you come, my lady, from the town.

Nous n'ironsplus au bois.

We '11 walk the woods no more.
But stay beside the fire.
To weep for old desire
And things that are no more.

The woods are spoiled and hoar.
The ways are full of mire;
We 'II walk the woods no more.
But stay beside the fire.

We loved, in days of yore.
Love, laughter, and the lyre.
Ah, God, but death is dire.
And death is at the door —
We '11 walk the woods no more.

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

The ''Bums'* herein mentioned is an article undertaken in the early
summer of the same year for the Encychpofdia Britannica, In the
end Stevenson's work was thought to convey a view of the poet too
frankly critical, and too little hi accordance with the accepted Scotch
tradition; and the publishers, duly paying him for his labours, trans-
ferred the task to Professor Shairp. The volume here announced on
the three Scottish eighteenth*century poets unfortunately never came
into being. The " Charles of Orians '' essay appeared fai the CorubiU

lao

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I ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

Maga^vM for December of the following year; that on Villon (with the 1875
story on the same theme, "A Lodging for the Night**) not until ^*T' *•
the autumn of 1887. The essay on B6ranger referred to at the end of
the letter was one commissioned and used by the editor of the Ew^'
dopmdia; that on "Spring" was a prose poem, of which the manu-
script, sent to me at Cambridge, was unluckily lost in the confusion
of a change of rooms.

Edinburgh, [Autumn] 187$.

MY DEAR C0LViN» — Thanks for your letter and news.
No — my " Burns " is not done yet, it has led me so far
afield that I cannot finish it; every time I think I see
my way to an end» some new game (or perhaps wild
goose) starts up, and away I go. And then, again, to
be plain, I shirk the work of the critical part, shirk it as
a man shirks a long jump. It is awful to have to ex-
press and differentiate Burns in a column or two. O
golly, I say, you know, it can*t be done at the money.
All the more as I 'm going to write a book about it.
Ramsay^ Fergusson, and Burns: an Essay (or a critic
cal essay ? but then I 'm going to give lives of the three
gentlemen, only the gist of the book is the criticism) by
Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate. How 's that for cut
and dry ? And I could write this book. Unless I de-
ceive myself, I cou^d even write it pretty adequately. I
feel as if I was really in it, and knew the game thor-
oughly. You see what comes of trying to write an
essay on Burns in ten columns.

Meantime, when I have done Bums, I shall finish
Charles of Orleans (who is in a good way, about the
fifth month, I should think, and promises to be a fine
healthy child, better than any of his elder brothers for a
while); and then perhaps a Villon, for Villon is a very
essential part of my Ramsay-Fergusson-Burns ; I mean.

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^r,

LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1875 is a note in it, and will recur again and again for compari-
*^ son and illustration; then, perhaps, I may try Fontaine-
bleau, by the way. But so soon as Charles of Orleans
is polished off, and immortalised for ever, he and his
pipings, in a solid imperishable shrine of R. L S., my
true aim and end will be this little book. Suppose I
could jerk you out 100 Cornbill pages; that would easy
make 200 pages of decent form; and then thickish
paper — eh ? would that do ? I dare say it could be
made bigger; but I know what 100 pages of copy, bright
consummate copy, imply behind the scenes of weary
manuscribing; I think if I put another nothing to it, I
should not be outside the mark; and 100 Cornbill
pages of 500 words means, I fancy (but I never was
good at figures), means 500,000 words. There 's a
prospect for an idle young gentleman who lives at
home at ease! The future is thick with inky fingers.
And then perhaps nobody would publish. Ab notn
de dieu I What do you think of all this ? will it pad-
dle, think you ?

I hope this pen will write; it is the third I have
tried.

About coming up, no, that 's impossible; for I am
worse than a bankrupt. I have at the present six
shillings and a penny; I have a sounding lot of bills
for Christmas; new dress suit, for instance, the old
one having gone for Parliament House; and new
white shirts to live up to my new profession ; I 'm as
gay and swell and gummy as can be; only all my
boots leak; one pair water, and the other two simple
black mud; so that my rig is more for the eye than a
very solid comfort to myself. That is my budget

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

Dismal enough, and no prospect of any coin coming "875
in; at least for months. So that here I am, I almost ^' *'
fear, for the winter; certainly till after Christmas, and
then it depends on how my bills "turn out" whether
it shall not be till spring. So, meantime, I must
whistle in my cage. My cage is better by one thing;
1 am an Advocate now. If you ask me why that
makes it better, I would remind you that in the most
distressing circumstances a little consequence goes a
long way, and even bereaved relatives stand on pre-
cedence round the coffin. I idle finely. 1 read Bos-
well's Life of Johnson, Martin's History of France^
Allan Ramsay, Olivier Bosselin, all sorts of rubbish
apropos of Burns, Commines, Juvenal des Ursins, etc.
I walk about the Parliament House five forenoons a
week, in wig and gown ; I have either a five or six
mile walk, or an hour or two hard skating on the rink,
every afternoon, without fail.

I have not written much; but, like the seaman's par-
rot in the tale, 1 have thought a deal. You have never,
by the way, returned me either "Spring" or **B6ranger,"
which is certainly a d — d shame. I always comforted
myself with that when my conscience pricked me
about a letter to you. "Thus conscience" — O no,
that 's not appropriate in this connection. — Ever yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

I say, is there any chance of your coming north this
year ? Mind you that promise is now more respec-
table for age than is becoming. R. L S.

«a3

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON
1879

To Charles Baxter

The foHowfaig q>isUe in verse, with its mixed flavour of Bums and
Horace, gives a lively picture of winter forenoons spent in the Parlia«
ment House.

[Edinburgh, Octobec, 1875.]

Noo lyart leaves blaw ower the green.
Red are the bonnie woods o' Dean,
An' here we 're back in Embro, freen'.

To pass the winter.
Whilk noo, wi' frosts afore, draws in.

An' snaws ahint her.

I Ve seen 's hae days to fricht us a'.
The Pentlands poothered weel wi' snaw.
The ways haif-smoored wi' liquid thaw.

An' half-congealin',
The snell an' scowtherin' norther blaw

Frae blae Brunteelan'.

I 've seen 's been unco sweir to sally.
And at the door-cheeks daff an' dally
Seen 's daidle thus an' shilly-shally

For near a minute —
Sae cauld the wind blew up the valley.

The deil was in it! —

Syne spread the silk an' tak the gate.
In blast an' blaudin' rain, deil hae 'tl
The hale toon glintin', stane an' slate,

Wi' cauld an' weet.
An' to the Court, gin we 'se be late.

Bicker oor feet

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

And at the Court, tae, aft I saw ■•75

Whaur Advocates by twa an' twa
Gang gesterin' end to end the ha'

In weeg an' goon,'
To crack o' what ye wull but Law

The hale forenoon.

That muckle ha', maist like a kirk,
1 've kent at braid mid-day sae mirk
Ye 'd seen white weegs an' faces lurk

Like ghaists frae Hell,
But whether Christian ghaists or Turk

Deil ane could tell.

The three fires lunted in the gloom.
The wind blew like the blast o' doom»
The rain upo' the roof abune

Played Peter Dick—
Ye wad nae 'd licht enough i' the room

Your teeth to pickl

But, freend, ye ken how me an' you.
The ling-lang lanely winter through,
Keep'd a guid speerit up, an' true

To lore Horatian,
We aye the ither bottle drew

To inclination.

Sae let us in the comin' days

Stand sicker on our auncient ways —

The strauchtest road in a' the maze

Since Eve ate apples;
An' let the winter weet our cla'es—

We '11 weet oor thrapples.

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1875

•«T. 35

To Sidney Colvin

This recurs to the lost ms. of the essay on " Spring." " P. P. P.»$"
are petits poimes m prase, attempts in the form, though not in the
spirit, of Baudelaire.

[Edinburgh, Autumn, iSy^.'l
MY DEAR COLVIN, — Fous fie mc gofnbrenne[ pas.
Angry with you ? No. Is the thing lost ? Well, so be it
There is one masterpiece fewer in the world. The
world can ill spare it» but I, sir, I (and here I strike my
hollow bosom so that it resounds) I am full of this sort
of bauble; I am made of it; it comes to me, sir, as the
desire to sneeze comes upon poor ordinary devils on
cold days, when they should be getting out of bed
and into their horrid cold tubs by the light of a seven
o'clock candle, with the dismal seven o'clock frost-
flowers all over the window.

Show Stephen what you please; if you could show
him how to give me money, you would oblige, sin-
cerely yours, R. L S.

I have a scroll of Springtime somewhere, but I know
that it is not in very good order, and do not feel myself
up to very much grind over it. I am damped about
Springtime, that 's the truth of it It might have been
four or five quid !

Sir, I shall shave my head, if this goes on. All men
take a pleasure to gird at me. The laws of nature are
in open war with me. The wheel of a dog-cart took
the toes off my new boots. Gout has set in with ex-
treme rigour, and cut me out of the cheap refreshment
of beer. I leant my back against an oak, I thought it

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JET. 21

ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

was a trusty tree, but first it bent, and syne — it lost J[875
the Spirit of Springtime, and so did Professor Sidney
Colvin, Trinity College, to me.— Ever yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson,

Along with this, I send you some P. P. P.'s; if you
lose them, you need not seek to look upon my face
again. Do, for God's sake, answer me about them
also; it is a horrid thing for a fond architect to find his
monuments received in silence.— Yours, R. L S. '

To Mrs. SrrwEix

[Edinburgh, November 14, iSy^.]
MY dear friend, — Since I got your letter 1 have been
able to do a little more work, and 1 have been much
better contented with myself; but I can't get away,
that is absolutely prevented by the state of my purse
and my debts, which, I may say, are red like crimson.
I don't know how I am to clear my hands of them, nor
when, not before Christmas anyway. Yesterday I was
twenty-five; so please wish me many happy returns —
directly. This one was not i^nhappy anyway. I have
got back a good deal into my old random, little-thought
way of life, and do not care whether I read, write,
speak, or walk, so long as I do something. I have a
great delight in this wheel-skating; I have made great
advance in it of late, can do a good many amusing
things (I mean amusing in my senst — amusing to do).
You know, I lose all my forenoons at Court! So it is,
but the time passes; it is a great pleasure to sit and

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

187^ hear cases argued or advised. This is quite autobio*
^* graphical, but I feel as if it was some time since we
met, and 1 can tell you, I am glad to meet you again.
In every way, you see, but that of work the world
goes well with me. My health is better than ever it
was before; I get on without any jar, nay, as if there
never had been a jar, with my parents. If it were n't
about that work, I 'd be happy. But the fact is, I don't
think — the fact is, I 'm going to trust in Providence
about work. If I could get one or two pieces I hate
out of my way all would be well, I think; but these
obstacles disgust me, and as I know I ought to do them
first, I don't do anything. I must finish this off, or I '11
just lose another day. I '11 try to write again soon. —
Ever your fiiithful friend. R. L S.

To Mrs. de Mattos

In the following letter to a favourite cousin Stevenson unbosoms
himself of one of the moods of depression to which he was sometimes
subject in Edinburgh winters.

Edwbvkgh, January, 1876.
MY DEAR KATHARINE, — The prisoner reserved his
defence. He has been seedy, however; principally
sick of the family evil, despondency ; the sun is gone
out utterly; and the breath of the people of this city lies
about as a sort of damp, unwholesome fog, in which
we go walking with bowed hearts. If I understand
what is a contrite spirit, I have one; it is to feel that
you are a small jar, or rather, as I feel myself, a very
large jar, of pottety work rather mal riussi, and to

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

make every allowance for the potter (I beg pardon; 1876
Potter with a capital P) on his ill-success, and rather ^'
wish he would reduce you as soon as possible to pot-
sherds. However, there are many things to do yet
before we go

Crossir la pdte unroerselU
Faite des formes que Dteu fond.

For instance, I have never been in a revolution yet
I pray God I may be in one at the end, if I am to make
a mucker. The best way to make a mucker is to have
your back set against a wall and a few lead pellets
whiffed into you in a moment, while yet you are all in
a heat and a fiiry of combat, with drums sounding
on all sides, and people crying, and a general smash
like the infernal orchestration at the end of the
Huguenots. . . .

Please pardon me for having been so long of writing,
and show your pardon by writing soon to me; it will
be a kindness, for I am sometimes very dull. Edin-
burgh is much changed for the worse by the absence
of Bob; and this damned weather weighs on me like a
curse. Yesterday, or the day before, there came so
black a rain squall that I was frightened — what a child
would call frightened, you know, for want of a better
word — although in reality it has nothing to do with
fright. I lit the gas and sat cowering in my chair until
it went away again. — Ever yours, R. L. S.

O, I am trying my hand at a novel just now; it may
interest you to know, I am bound to say I do not think it
will be a success. However, it 's an amusement for the

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1876 moment, and work» work is your only ally against the
''^' ^ "bearded people" that squat upon their hams in
the dark places of life and embrace people horribly as
they go by. God save us from the bearded people!
to think that the sun is still shining in some happy
places! R. L S

To Mrs. SrrwBix

[Edinburgh, January, /S76.]

• • • Our weather continues as it was, bitterly cold,
and raining often. There is not much pleasure in life
certainly as it stands at present. Nous n' irons plus au
bois, bilasl

I meant to write some more last night, but my father
was ill and it put it out of my way. He is better this
morning.

If I had written last night, I should have written a
lot. But this morning I am so dreadfully tired and
stupid that I can say nothing. I was down at Leith in
the afternoon. God bless me, what horrid women I
saw; 1 never knew what a plain-looking race it was
before. 1 was sick at heart with the looks of them.
And the children, filthy and ragged! And the smells!
And the fax black mud!

My soul was full of disgust ere I got back. And yet
the ships were beautiful to see, as they are always;
and on the pier there was a clean cold wind that smelt
a little of the sea, though it came down the Firth, and
the sunset had a certain iclai and warmth. Perhaps if
I could get more work done, I should be in a better
trim to enjoy filthy streets and people and cold grim

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

weather; but I don't much feel as if it was what I "•t^
would have chosen. I am tempted every day of my ""*
life to go off on another walking tour. I like that bet-
ter than anything else that I know. — Ever your faithful
friend, Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

" Fontainebleau " is the paper called " Forest Notes ** which ap-
peared in the Cornbill Magapns in May of this year (reprinted Thistie
cdrtion Miscellanies, vol. xx.). The " Winter's Walk," as far as it
goes one of the most charming of his essays of the Road, was for some
reason never finished; it was first printed from the ms. in the Thistle
edition Miscellanies, vol. xx.

[Edinburgh, February, i8y6.]
MY DEAR colvin, — !st. I have sent "Fontainebleau"
long ago, long ago. And Leslie Stephen is worse than
tepid about it— liked '* some parts " of it " very well,"
the son of Belial. Moreover, he proposes to shorten it;
and I, who want money, and money soon, and not
glory and the illustration of the English language, I feel
as if my poverty were going to consent.

2nd. I 'm as fit as a fiddle after my walk. I am four
inches bigger about the waist than last July! There,
that 's your prophecy did that. I am on "Charles of
Orleans" now, but I don't know where to send him.
Stephen obviously spews me out of his mouth, and I
spew him out of mine, so help mel A man who
does n't like my '' Fontainebleau " ! His head must be
turned.
jrd. If ever you do come across my "Spring" (I
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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1876 beg your pardon for referring to it again, but I don't
*'' * want you to forget) send it oflf at once.

4tb. I went to Ayr, Maybole, Girvan, Ballantrae,
Stranraer, Gleniuce, and Wigton. I shall make an
article of it some day soon, "A Winter's Walk in
Garrick and Galloway." I had a good time.— Yours,

R.LS.

To Sidney Colvin

"Baynes** in the following is Stevenson's good inend and mine,
the late Professor Spencer Baynes, who was just relinquishing the
editorship of the En^ehpmdia BriisHnica by reason of ill-health.

[SwANSTON Cottage, Lothunburn, July, 1876.]
Here I am, here, and very well too. I am glad you
liked "Walking Tours"; I like it, too; I think it 's
prose; and I own with contrition that I have not
always written prose. However, I am "endeavour-
ing after new obedience " (Scot Shorter Catechism).
You don't say aught of "Forest Notes," which is
kind. There is one, if you will, that was too sweet
to be wholesome.

I am at " Charles d'0rl6ans." About fifteen Corn-
bill pages have already coul^'d from under my facile
plume — no, 1 mean eleven, fifteen of ms.— and we are
not much more than half-way through, "Charles" and
I; but he 's a pleasant companion. My health is very
well; I am in a fme exercisy state. Baynes is gone to
London; if you see him, inquire about my "Bums."
They have sent me £^ 55. for it, which has mollified
me horrid. jC^ 35. is a good deal to pay for a read of
it in MS. ; I can't complain.— Yours, R. L &

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To Mrs. Sitweu

1876

Mi. aC

This dates from just before the canoeing trip recounted in An
Inland Voj^agt.

[SwANSTON Cottage, Lothianburn, y«^, iSyd.l
... I HAVE the strangest repugnance for writing;
indeed, I have nearly got myself persuaded into the
notion that letters don't arrive, in order to salve my
conscience for never sending them off. I 'm reading a
great deal of fifteenth century: Trial of Joan of Arc^
Paston Letters^ Basin, etc., also Boswell daily by way
of a Bible; 1 mean to read Boswell now until the day I
die. And now and again a bit of Pilgrim's Progress.
Is that all ? Yes, I think that 's all. I have a thing in
proof for the Cornbill called yirginibus Puerisque.
''Charles of Orleans " is again laid aside, but in a good
state of furtherance this time. A paper called "A
Defence of Idlers" (which is really a defence of
K. L. S.) is in a good way. So, you see, I am busy
in a tumultuous, knotless sort of fashion; and as I say,
I take lots of exercise, and I 'm as brown as a berry.

This is the first letter I 've written for — O, I don't
know how long.

July )otb. — This is, I suppose, three weeks after I
began. Do, please, forgive me.

To the Highlands, first, to the Jenkin's, then to Ant-
werp; thence, by canoe with Simpson, to Paris and
Grez (on the Loing, and an old acquaintance of mine
on the skirts of Fontainebleau), to complete our cruise
next spring (if we 're all alive and jolly) by Loing and

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1876 Loire, Sadne and Rhone, to the Mediterranean. It
^' ^ should make a jolly book of gossip, I imagine.

God bless you. Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S. — yirginibus Ptierisque is in August Cornbill.
" Charles of Orldans " is finished, and sent to Stephen ;
"Idlers" ditto, and sent to Grove; but I 've no word
of either. So I 've not been idle. R. L S.

To W. E. Henley

Ima well-known passage of An Inland Voyagi the following ind-
dent is related to the same purport, but in another style.

Chauny, Aisne [September^ 1876].
MY DEAR HENLEY, — Herc I am, you see; and if you
will take to a map, you will observe I am already more
than two doors from Antwerp, whence I started. I
have fought it through under the worst weather I ever
saw in France; I have been wet through nearly every
day of travel since the second (inclusive) ; besides this,
I have had to fight against pretty mouldy health ; so
that, on the whole, the essayist and reviewer has
shown, I think, some pluck. Four days ago I was
not a hundred miles from being miserably drowned, to
the immense regret of a large circle of friends and the
permanent impoverishment of British Essayism and
Reviewery. My boat culbutted me under a fallen tree
in a very rapid current ; and I was a good while before
I got on to the outside of that fallen tree; rather a bet-
ter while than I cared about When I got up, I lay

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

some time on my belly, panting, and exuded fluid. 1877
AH my symptoms jusqu^ici are trifling. But I 've a ^' '^
damned sore throat — Yours ever, R. L S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

" The Hair Trunk •' still exists in ms. It contains some tolerable
fooling, but is chiefly interesting from the fact that the seat of the
proposed Bohemian colony from Cambridge is to be in the Navigator
Islands; showing the direction which had been given to Stevenson's
thoughts by the conversation of the New Zealand Premier, Mr. Seed,
two years before.

17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh, h4ay, 1877.

. . . A PERFECT chorus of repudiation is sounding in
my ears; and although you say nothing, ! know you
must be repudiating me, all the same. Write I cannot
— there 's no good mincing matters, a letter frightens
me worse than the devil; and 1 am just as unfit for
correspondence as if I had never learned the three
R.'s.

Let me give my news quickly before I relapse into
my usual idleness I have a terror lest I should relapse
before I get this finished. Courage, R. L S. I On
Leslie Stephen's advice, I gave up the idea of a book
of essays. He said he did n't imagine I was rich
enough for such an amusement; and moreover, what-
ever was worth publication was worth republication.
So the best of those I had ready, "An Apology for
Idlers," is in proof for the Cornbill. I have " Villon "
to do for the same magazine, but God knows when
I '11 get it done, for drums, trumpets — I 'm engaged

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

"877 upon — trumpets, drums — a novel t "The Hair
^' *' Trunk; or, The Ideal Commonwealth." It is a most
absurd story of a lot of young Gimbridge fellows who
are going to found a new society, with no ideas on
the subject, and nothing but Bohemian tastes in the
place of ideas; and who are — well, I can't explain
about the trunk — it would take too long — but the
trunk is the fun of it — everybody steals it; burglary,
marine fight, life on desert island on west coast of
Scotland, sloops, etc. The first scene where they
make their grand schemes and get drunk is supposed
to be very funny, by Henley. I really saw him laugh
over it until he cried.

Please write to me, although I deserve it so little,
and show a Christian spirit — Ever your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

[Edinburgh, August, 1877.1
MY DEAR COLVIN, — I 'm to be whipped away to-morrow
to Penzance, where at the post-office a letter will find
me glad and grateful. I am well, but somewhat tired
out with overwork. I have only been home a fort-
night this morning, and I have already written to the
tune of forty-five Cornbill pages and upwards. The
most of it was only very laborious recasting and re-
modelling, it is true; but it took it out of me fan^ously,
all the same.

Temple Bar appears to like my '* Villon," so I may
count on another market there in the future, I hope.

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

At least* I am going to put it to the proof at once» and 1^77
send another story, *'The Sire de Malitroit's Mouse- ^" *'
trap": a true novel, in the old sense; all unities pre-
served moreover, if that 's anything, and I believe with
some little merits; not so clever perhaps as the last, but
sounder and more natural.

My *' Villon " is out this month; I should so much
like to know what you think of it. Stephen has writ-
ten to me apropos of "Idlers," that something more
in that vein would be agreeable to his views. From
Stephen I count that a devil of a lot.

I am honestly so tired this morning that I hope you
will take this for what it 's worth and give me an
answer in peace. — Ever yours, Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitweu

[Penzance, August, 18^7.']
. . . You will do well to stick to your burn ; that is
a delightful life you sketch, and a very fountain of health.
I wish I could live like that, but, alas! it is just as
well I got my "Idlers" written and done with, for I
have quite lost all power of resting. I have a goad in
my flesh continually, pushing me to work, work, work.
I have an essay pretty well through for Stephen; a
story, " The Sire de Mal6troit's Mousetrap," with which
I shall try Temple Bar ; another story, in the clouds,
" The Stepfather's Story," most pathetic work of a high
morality or immorality, according to point of view;
and lastly, also in the clouds, or perhaps a little farther

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LETTERS OF R, L STEVENSON

«877 away, an essay on the "Two St. Michael's Mounts,'*
^' ^^ historical and picturesque; perhaps if it did n't come too
long, I might throw in the ''Bass Rock," and call it
"Three Sea Fortalices," or something of that kind.
You see how work keeps bubbling in my mind. Then
I shall do another fifteenth-century paper this autumn
— La Sale and Petit Jeban de Saintri, which is a kind
of fifteenth-century Sandford and Mertan, ending in
horrid immoral cynicism, as if the author had got tired
of being didactic, and just had a good wallow in the
mire to wind up with and indemnify himself for so
much restraint

Cornwall is not much to my taste, being as bleak as
the bleakest parts of Scotland, and nothing like so
pointed and characteristic. It has a flavour of its own,
though, which I may try and catch, if I find the space,
in the proposed article. " Will o' the Mill " 1 sent, red
hot, to Stephen in a fit of haste, and have not yet had
an answer. I am quite prepared for a refusal. But I
begin to have more hope in the story line, and that
should improve my income anyway. I am glad you
liked "Villon " ; some of it was not as good as it ought
to be, but on the whole it seems pretty vivid, and the
features strongly marked. Vividness and not style is
now my line; style is all very well, but vividness is
the real line of country; if a thing is meant to be read,
it seems just as well to try and make it readable. I am
such a dull person now, I cannot keep off my own im-
mortal works. Indeed, they are scarcely ever out of
my head. And yet 1 value them less and less every
day. But occupation is the great thing; so that a man
should have his life in his own pocket, and never be

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thrown out of work by anything. I am glad to hear 1877
you are better. I must stop — going to Land's End. — ^' ^^
Always your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To A. Patchett Martin

Thb correspondent, living at the time in Australia, was, I believe,
the first to write and seek Stevenson's acquaintance from admiration
of his work, meaning especially the Cornbill essays of the yirginihus
Puifisqut series so far as they had yet appeared. The "present"
herein referred to is Mr. Martin's volume called A Swat Girl GraduaU
and other Poems (Melbourne, 1876).

VB77-'\
DEAR SIR, — It would not be very easy for me to give

you any idea of the pleasure I found in your present
People who write for the magazines (probably from a
guilty conscience) are apt to suppose their works prac-
tically unpublished. It seems unlikely that any one
would take the trouble to read a little paper buried
among so many others; and reading it, read it with any
attention or pleasure. And so, I can assure you, your
little book, coming from so far, gave me all the pleasure
and encouragement in the world.

I suppose you know and remember Charles Lamb's
essay on distant correspondents ? Well, I was some-
what of his way of thinking about my mild productions.
I did not indeed imagine they were read and (I suppose
I may say) enjoyed right round upon the other side of
the big Football we have the honour to inhabit And
as your present was the first sign to the contrary, I feel

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LETTERS OP R. L STEVENSON

■^77 I have been very ungrateful in not writing earlier to ac-
^' *^ knowledge the receipt I dare say, however, you hate
writing letters as much as I can do myself (for if you
like my article, I may presume other points of sympathy
between us) ; and on this hypothesis you will be ready
to forgive me the delay.

I may mention with regard to the piece of verses called
''Such is Life," that I am not the only one on this side
of the Football aforesaid to think it a good and bright
piece of work, and recognised a link of sympathy with
the poets who •* play in hostelries at euchre." — Believe
me, dear sir, yours truly, R. L S.

To A. Patchbtt Martin

17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh [December, 1877].
MY DEAR SIR, — 1 am afraid you must already have con-
demned me for a very idle fellow truly. Here it is more
than two months since I received your letter; I had no
fewer than three journals to acknowledge; and never a
sign upon my part If you have seen a Combill paper
of mine upon idling, you will be inclined to set it all
down to that But you will not be doing me justice.
Indeed, 1 have had a summer so troubled that I have had
little leisure and still less inclination to write letters. I
was keeping the devil at bay with all my disposable
activities; and more than once I thought he had me by
the throat The odd conditions of our acquaintance
enable me to say more to you than I would to a person
who lived at my elbow. And besides, I am too much

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

pleased and flattered at our correspondence not to go as 1^77
iar as I can to set myself right in your eyes. ^" *'

In this damnable confusion (I beg pardon) I have lost
all my possessions, or near about, and quite lost all my
wits. 1 wish I could lay my hands on the numbers of
the Review, for I know I wished to say something on
that head more particularly than I can from memory;
but where they have escaped to, only time or chance
can show. However, I can tell you so far, that 1 was
very much pleased with the article on Bret Harte; it
seemed to me just, clear, and to the point I agreed
pretty well with all you said about George Eliot: a high,
but — may we not add ? — a rather dry lady. Did you —
I forget — did you have a kick at the stem works of
that melancholy puppy and humbug Daniel Deronda
himself ?— the Prince of Prigs; the literary abomination
of desolation in the way of manhood ; a type which is
enough to make a man forswear the love of women, if
that is how it must be gained. • • . Hats off all the
same, you understand: a woman of genius.

Of your poems I have myself a kindness for "Noll
and Nell," although I don't think you have made it as
good as you ought: verse five is surely not quite melo^
dious. I confess I like the Sonnet in the last number
of the Review — the Sonnet to England.

Please, if you have not, and I don't suppose you
have, already read it, institute a search in all Melbourne
for one of the rarest and certainly one of the best of
books — Qarissa Harlawe. For any man who takes
an interest in the problems of the two sexes, that book
is a perfect mine of documents. And it is written, sir,
with the pen of an angel. Miss Howe and Lovelace /

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LETTERS OP R. L STEVENSON

1877 words cannot tell how good they are! And the scene
^' *^ where Clarissa beards her family, with her fan going
all the while; and some of the quarrel scenes between
her and Lovelace; and the scene where Colonel Marden
goes to Mr. Hall, with Lord M. trying to compose
matters, and the Colonel with his eternal "finest woman
in the world," and the inimitable affirmation of Mow-
bray— nothing, nothing could be better! You will
bless me when you read it for this recommendation;
but, indeed, I can do nothing but recommend Clarissa.
I am like that Frenchman of the eighteenth century who
discovered Habakkuk, and would give no one peace
about that respectable Hebrew. For my part, I never
was able to get over his eminently respectable name;
Isaiah is the boy, if you must have a prophet, no less.
About Clarissa, I meditate a choice work: A Dialogue
on Man, Woman, and ''Clarissa Harlowe." It is to
be so clever that no array of terms can give you any
idea; and very likely that particular array in which I
shall finally embody it, less than any other.

Do you know, my dear sir, what I like best in your
letter ? The egotism for which you thought necessary
to apologise. I am a rogue at egotism myself; and to
be plain, I have rarely or never liked any man who was
not. The first step to discovering the beauties of God's
universe is usually a (perhaps partial) apprehension of
such of them as adorn our own characters. When I
see a man who does not think pretty well of himself, I
always suspect him of being in the right. And besides,
if he does not like himself, whom he has seen, how is
he ever to like one whom he never can see but in dim
and artificial presentments ?

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

I cordially reciprocate your offer of a welcome ; it shall 1878
be at least a warm one. Are you not my first, my ^' *
only, admirer — a dear tie ? Besides, you are a man of
sense, and you treat me as one by writing to me as
you do, and that gives me pleasure also. Please con-
tinue to let me see your work. I have one or two
things coming out in the Cornbill: a story called " The
Sire de Malitroit's Door" in Temple Bar; and a series
of articles on Edinburgh in the Portfolio; but I don't
know if these last fly all the way to Melbourne.— Yours
very truly, Robert Louis Stevenson.

To SroNBY COLVIN

An Inland yq^agf, h must be remembered, at this time Just put
into the publisher's hands, was the author^s first boolc. The " Crane
sketch " mentioned in the second of the following notes to me was
the well-known frontispiece to that book on which Mr. Walter Crane
was then at work. The essay on " Pan's Pipes," reprinted in yirginu
bus Puifisque^ was written about this time.

H6tel des fiTRANGERs, DIEPPE, January /, iBjB.
MY DEAR COLVIN, — 1 am at the Inland Voyage again:
have finished another section, and have only two more
to execute. But one at least of these will be very long
— the longest in the book — being a great digression
on French artistic tramps. I only hope Paul may take
the thing; I want coin so badly, and besides it would
be something done — something put outside of me and
off my conscience; and 1 should not feel such a muff
as I do, if once I saw the thing in boards with a ticket

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LETTERS OF R, L STEVENSON

iM^ on its back. I think I shall frequent circulating libraries
^* a good deal. The Preface shall stand over as you sug-
gest, until the last, and then, sir, we shall see. This to
be read with a big voice.

This is New Year's Day: let me, my dear Col-
vin, wish you a very good year, free of all mis-
understanding and bereavement, and full of good
weather and good work. You know best what you
have done for me, and so you will know best how
heartily I mean this. — Ever yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To SDNBY COLVIN

[Paris, January or February^ 1878.]
MY dear COLVIN, — Many thanks for your letter. I
was much interested by all the Edinburgh gossip.
Most likely I shall arrive in London next week. I
think you know all about the Crane sketch; but it
should be a river, not a canal, you know, and the look
should be "cruel, lewd, and kindly," all at once.
There is more sense in that Greek myth of Pan than
in any other that I recollect except the luminous He-
brew one of the Fall: one of the biggest things done.
If people would remember that all religions are no
more than representations of life, they would find
them, as they are, the best representations, licking
Shakespeare.

What an inconceivable cheese is Alfred de Musset!
His comedies are, to my view, the best work of France

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

this century: a large order. Did you ever read them ? '^T^^
They are real, clear, hving work. — Ever yours,

R.L&

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

Paris, 44 Bo. Haussmann,
Friday, February 2f, 1878.
MY DEAR PEOPLE, — Do you know who is my favourite
author just now? How are the mighty fallen I Anthony
TroUope. I batten on him; he is so nearly wearying
you, and yet he never does; or rather, he never does,
until he gets near the end, when he begins to wean
you from him, so that you 're as pleased to be done
with him as you thought you would be sorry. I
wonder if it 's old age ? It is a little, I am sure. A
young person would get sickened by the dead level of
meanness and cowardliness; you require to be a little
spoiled and cynical before you can enjoy it. I have
just finished The IVay of the World; there is only one
person in it — no, there are three — who are nice: the
wild American woman, and two of the dissipated
young men, Dolly and Lord Nidderdale. All the
heroes and heroines are just ghastly. But what a tri-
umph is Lady Carbury! That is real, sound, strong,
genuine work: the man who could do that, if he had
had courage, might have written a fine book; he has
preferred to write many readable ones. I meant to
write such a long, nice letter, but I cannot hold the
pen. R. L S

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1878
AT. a8

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

The foHowing refers to the newspaper critictsms on An Inland

H6tel du Val db GrAce, Rub St. Jacques^ Paris,
Sunday \^June, iSjSl.
MY dear mother, — About criticisms, I was more
surprised at the tone of the critics than I suppose any
one else. And the effect it has produced in me is
one of shame. If they liked that so much, I ought
to have given them something better, that 's ail. And
I shall try to do so. Still, it strikes me as odd ; and
I don't understand the vogue. It should sell the
thing. — Ever your affectionate son,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

This and the two following letters tell of the preparations for the
walking tour narrated in Travels with a Donkey,

MoNASTiER, September, 1878.
my dear mother, — You must not expect to hear
much from me for the next two weeks; for I am near
starting. Donkey purchased — a love — price, 65 francs
and a glass of brandy. My route is all pretty well laid
out; I shall go near no town till 1 get to Alais. Remem-
ber, Poste Restante, Alais, Gard. * * Greyfriars *' will be in
October. You did not say whether you liked Septem-
ber; you might tell me that at Alais. The other No.'s

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

of " Edinburgh " are: " Parliament Close," "Villa Qyar- ts-fi
ters" (which perhaps may not appear), "Calton Hill," "'
•'Winter and New Year," and " To the Pentland Hills."
'T is a kind of book nobody would ever care to read ;
but none^of the young men could have done it better
than I have, which is always a consolation. 1 read
Inland Voyage the other day : what rubbish these re-
viewers did talk! It is not badly written, thin, mildly
cheery, and strained. Selon moi. I mean to visit Ham-
erton on my return journey; otherwise, I should come
by sea from Marseilles. I am very well known here
now; indeed, quite a feature of the place. — Your affec-
tionate son, R. L. S.

The Engineer is the Conductor of Roads and Bridges;
then I have the Receiver of Registrations, the First Clerk
of Excise, and the Perceiver of the Impost. That is
our dinner party. I am a sort of hovering government
official, as you see. But away — away from these great
companions!

To W. E. Henley

[MoNASTiER, September, 1878.'^
DEAR HENLEY, — I hope to leave Monastier this day
(Saturday) week; thenceforward Poste Restante, Alais,
Card, is my address. "Travels with a Donkey in the
French Highlands." I am no good to-day. I cannot
work, nor even write letters. A colossal breakfast yes-
terday at Puy has, 1 think, done for me for ever; I cer-
tainly ate more than ever I ate before in my life — a big

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LETTERS OF It L STEVENSON

187^^ slice of melon, some ham and jelly, a filet, a helping of
gudgeons, the breast and leg of a partridge, some green
peas, eight crayfish, some Mont d'Or cheese, a peach,
and a handful of biscuits, macaroons, and things. It
sounds Gargantuan; it cost three francs a head. So
that it was inexpensive to the pocket, although I fear it
may prove extravagant to the fleshly tabernacle. I can't
think how I did it or why. It is a new form of excess
for me; but I think it pays less than any of them.

R.LS.

To Charles Baxter

MoNASTiER, AT Morel's [September, 1878].
Lud knows about date, vide postmark.
MY DEAR CHARLES, — Yours (with enclosures) of the
1 6th to hand. All work done. I go to Le Puy to-
morrow to despatch baggage, get cash, stand lunch to
engineer, who has been very jolly and useful to me,
and hope by five o'clock on Saturday morning to be
driving Modestine towards the G6vaudan. Modestine
is my inesse; a darling, mouse-colour, about the size
of a Newfoundland dog (bigger, between you and me),
the colour of a mouse, costing 65 francs and a glass of
brandy. Glad you sent on all the coin; was half afraid
I might come to a stick in the mountains, donkey and
all, which would have been the deviL Have finished
Arabian Nigbts and Edinburgh book, and am a free
man. Next address, Poste Restante, Alais, Gard. Give
my servilities to the family. Health bad; spirits, I
think, looking up. — Ever yours, R. L &

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

1878

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson ^- *^

On hb way home from the Civennes country, Stevenson had paid a
brief, but to both parties extremely pleasant, visit to the late Mr. P. G.
Hamerton in his country home near Autun.

October, 1878.

MY DEAR MOTHER, — I havc Seen Hamerton; he was
very kind, all his family seemed pleased to see An Inland
Voyage, and the book seemed to be quite a household
word with them. P. G. himself promised to help me
in my bargains with publishers, which, said he, and 1
doubt not very truthfully, he could manage to much
greater advantage than I. He is also to read An Inland
N^ Voyage over again, and send me his cuts and cuffs in
private, after having liberally administered his kisses
coram publico. I liked him very much. Of all the
pleasant parts of my profession, I think the spirit of
other men of letters makes the pleasantest.

Do you know, your sunset was very good ? The
*' attack " (to speak learnedly) was so plucky and odd.
1 have thought of it repeatedly since. 1 have just made
a delightful dinner by myself in the Cafft Fdlix, where I
am an old established beggar, and am just smoking a
cigar over my coffee. I came last night from Autun, and
I am muddled about my plans. The world is such a
dance I — Ever your affectionate son,

Robert Louis Stevekson.

To W. E. Henley

Stevenson, hard at work upon " Providence and the Guitar" and
Travils with a Donkif, was at this time occupying for a few days my
rooms at Trinity in my absence. The college buildings and gardens^

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1S78 the Ideal setting and careful tutelage of English academic life— in thest
"'' ^^ respects so strongly contrasted with the Scotch— affected him always
with a sense of unreality.

[Trinity College, Cambridge, Autumn, 1878.^
MY DEAR HENLEY, — Here I am living like a fighting-
cock, and have not spoken to a real person for about
sixty hours. Those who wait on me are not reaL The
man I know to be a myth, because I have seen him acting
so often in the Palais Royal. He plays the Duke in
Tricocbe et Cacolet ; 1 knew his nose at once. The part
he plays here is very dull for him, but conscientious. As
for the bedmaker, she 's a dream, a kind of cheerful,
innocent nightmare; I never saw so poor an imitation of
humanity. I cannot work — cannot Even the "Guitar"
is still undone; I can only write ditch-water. T is
ghastly ; but I am quite cheerful, and that is more im«
portant. Do you think you could prepare the printers
for a possible breakdown this week ? I shall try all I
know on Monday; but if I can get nothing better than
I got this morning, I prefer to drop a week. Telegraph
to me if you think it necessary. I shall not leave till
Wednesday at soonest Shall write again.

R.L&

To Edmund Gossb

The matter of the loan and its repayment, here touched on, comes
up again in Stevenson's last letter of all, that which closes the book.
Stevenson and Mr. Gosse had planned a joint book of old murder
stories retold, and had been to visit the scene of one famous murder
together.

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

[17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh, AprU t6, 1879.} "^79

Pool of Siloam, by El Dorado,
Delectable Mountains, Arcadia.

MY DEAR GOSSE, — Herewith of the dibbs — a homely
fiver. How, and why, do you continue to exist ? I do
so ill, but for a variety of reasons. First, I wait an angel
to come down and trouble the waters; second, more
angels; third — well, more angels. The waters are
sluggish; the angels — well, the angels won't come,
that 's about all. But I sit waiting and waiting, and
people bring me meals, which help to pass time (I 'm
sure it 's very kind of them), and sometimes I whistle
to myself; and as there 's a very pretty echo at my pool
of Siloam, the thing 's agreeable to hear. The sun con-
tinues to rise every day, to my growing wonder. ** The
moon by night thee shall not smite." And the stars
are all doing as well as can be expected. The air of
Arcady is very brisk and pure, and we command many
enchanting prospects in space and time. I do not yet
know much about my situation ; for, to tell the truth, I
only came here by the run since I began to write this
letter; I had to go back to date it; and I am grateful to
you for having been the occasion of this little outing.
What good travellers we are, if we had only faith ; no
man need stay in Edinburgh but by unbelief; my
religious organ has been ailing for a while past, and I
have lain a great deal in Edinburgh, a sheer hulk in
consequence. But I got out my wings, and have taken
a change of air.

I read your book with great interest, and ought long
ago to have told you so. An ordinary man would say
that he had been waiting till he could pay his debts.

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LBTTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1^79 • . . The book is good reading. Your personal notes
^' of those you saw struck me as perhaps most sharp and
''best held." See as many people as you can, and
make a book of them before you die. That will be a
living book, upon my word. You have the touch re-
quired. I ask you to put hands to it in private already.
Think of what Carlyle's caricature of old Coleridge is to
us who never saw S. T. C. With that and Kubla
Khan, we have the man in the fact Carlyle's- picture,
of course, is not of the author of Kubla^ but of the
author of that surprising Friend which has knocked
the breath out of two generations of hopeful youth.
Your portraits would be milder, sweeter, more true
perhaps, and perhaps not so \x\xi\\'telling — if you will
take my meaning.

I have to thank you for an introduction to that beau-
tiful — no, that *s not the word — that jolly, with an Ar-
cadian jollity — thing of Vogelweide's. Also for your
preface. Some day I want to read a whole book in
the same picked dialect as that preface. 1 think it
must be one E. W. Gosse who must write it. He
has got himself into a fix with me by writing the
preface; 1 look for a great deal, and will not be easily
pleased.

1 never thought of it, but my new book, which
should soon be out, contains a visit to a murder scene,
but not done as we should like to see them, for, of
course, 1 was running another hare.

If you do not answer this in four pages, I shall stop
the enclosed fiver at the bank, a step which will lead
to your incarceration for life. As my visits to Arcady
are somewhat uncertain, you had better address 17

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

Heriot Row, Edinburgh, as usual. I shall walk over >879
for the note if I am not yet home.— Believe me, very ^* *^
really yours, Robert Louis Stevenson.

I charge extra for a flourish when it is successful;
this is n't, so you have it gratis. Is there any news
in Babylon the Great ? My fellow creatures are elect-
ing school boards here in the midst of the ages. It is
very composed of them. I can't think why they do it
Nor why I have written a real letter. If you write a
real letter back, damme, I '11 try to correspond with
you. A thing unknown in this age. It is a conse-
quence of the decay of faich ; we cannot believe Ihat
the fellow will be at the pains to read us.

To W. E. Henley

This is in rq>ly to some technical criticisms of his correspondent on
the poem Our lady of the SnowSf referring to the Trappist mon-
astery in the C^ennes so called, and afterwards published in
Underwoods.

17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh [April, 1879].

MY DEAR HENLEY, — Heavens! have I done the like?
•* Clarify and strain," indeed ? *• Make it like Marvel!,"
no less. I '11 tell you what — you may go to the devil;
that 's what I think. *' Be eloquent " is another of your
pregnant suggestions. I cannot sufficiently thank you
for that one. Portrait of a person about to be eloquent
at the request of a literary friend. You seem to forget,
sir, that rhyme is rhyme, sir, and — go to the deviL

1 *I1 try to improve it, but I sha'n't be able to—
O, go to the devil.

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"879 Seriously, you 're a cool hand. And then you have
^' *^ the brass to ask me wby *' my steps went one by one " ?
Why ? Powers of man ! to rhyme with sun, to be sure.
Why else could it be ? And you yourself have been a
poet! G-r-r-r-r-rl I 'H never be a poet any more.
Men are so d — d ungrateful and captious, I declare I
could weep.

0 Henley, in my hours of ease

' You may say anything you please.

But when 1 join the Muses* revel,
Begad, I wish you at the devil I
In vain my verse \ plane and bevel.
Like Banville's rhyming devotees;
In vain by many an artful swivel
Lug in my meaning by degrees;

1 'm sure to hear my Henley cavil;
And grovelling prostrate on my knees.
Devote his body to the seas.

His correspondence to the devil 1

Impromptu poem.

I 'm going to Shandon Hydropathic cum parentibus.
Write here. I heard from Lang. Ferrier prayeth to be
remembered; he means to write, likes his Tourgenieflf
greatly. Also likes my "What was on the Slate,"
which, under a new title, yet unfound, and with a
new and, on the whole, kindly Mnouement, is going
to shoot up and become a star. . . .

I see I must write some more to you about my
Monastery. I am a weak brother in verse. You ask
me to rewrite things that I have already managed just
to write with the skin of my teeth. If I don't rewrite
them, it 's because I don't see how to write them

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

better, not because I don't think they should be. But, 1879
curiously enough, you condemn two of my favourite ^' ^
passages, one of which is J. W. Ferrier's favourite of
the whole. Here I shall think it 's you who are wrong.
You see, I did not try to make good verse, but to say
what I wanted as well as verse would let me. I don't
like the rhyme "ear "and "hear." But the couplet,
"My undissuaded heart I hear Whisper courage in my
ear," is exactly what I want for the thought, and to me
seems very energetic as speech, if not as verse. Would
"daring" be better than "courage"? Je me le de--
mande. No, it would be ambiguous, as though I had
used it licentiously for "daringly," and that would
cloak the sense.

In short, your suggestions have broken the heart
of the scald. He does n't agree with them all ; and
those he does agree with, the spirit indeed is willing,
but the d — d flesh cannot, cannot, cannot see its way
to profit by. 1 think I '11 lay it by for nine years, like
Horace. I think the well of Castaly 's run out. No
more the Muses round my pillow haunt. I am fallen
once more to the mere proser. God bless you.

To Edmund Gossb

Thb letter b contemporary with the much debated Cornbill essay
''On some Aspects of Bums," afterwards published in Familiar
Studiis of MiH and Books,

SWANSTON, LOTHIANBURN, EDINBURGH,

July 24, 1879.
MY DEAR GOSSE, — I have greatly enjoyed your article,
which seems to me handsome in tone, and written like

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1879 a fine old English gentleman. But is there not a hitch
*^* ^ in the sentence at foot of page 153 ? I get lost in it

Chapters viii. and ix. of Meredith's story are very
good, I think. But who wrote the review of my book ?
Whoever he was, he cannot write; he is humane, but
a duffer; I could weep when I think of him; for surely
to be virtuous and incompetent is a hard lot I should
prefer to be a bold pirate, the gay sailor-boy of immo-
rality, and a publisher at once. My mind is extinct;
my appetite is expiring; I have fallen altogether into a
hollow-eyed, yawning way of life, like the parties in
Burne-Jones's pictures. . . • Talking of Bums. (Is this
not sad, Weg? I use the term of reproach not because
I am angry with you this time, but because I am angry
with myself and desire to give pain.) Talking, I say,
of Robert Burns, the inspired poet is a very gay subject
for study. I made a kind of chronological table of his
various loves and lusts, and have been comparatively
speechless ever since. I am sorry to say it, but there
was something in him of the vulgar, bagmanlike, pro-
fessional seducer. — Oblige me by taking down and
reading, for the hundredth time I hope, his Twa Dogs
and his Address to the Unco Quid. I am only a
Scotchman, after all, you see; and when I have beaten
Burns, I am driven at once, by my parental feelings, to
console him with a sugar-plum. But hang me if I
know anything I like so well as the Twa Dogs. Even
a common Englishman may have a glimpse, as it were
from Pisgah, of its extraordinary merits.

*' English, The : — a dull people, incapable of compre-
hending the Scottish tongue. Their history is so
intimately connected with that of Scotland, that we

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

must refer our readers to that heading. Their literature 1^79
is principally the work of venal Scots." — Stevenson's ^* ^
Handy Cyclopcedia. Glescow: Blaikie & Bannock.

Remember me in suitable fashion to Mrs. Gosse, the
offspring, and the cat. — And believe me ever yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

" Buiimikopf " was Stevenson's name for the typical pedant,
Gennan or other, who cannot clear his edifice of its scaffolding, nor
set forth the results of research without Intruding on the reader all its
processes, evidences, and supports. '* Bums " is the Cornbill essay
repfinted in Familiar Studies'^noi the rejected Encyclopedic article.

17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh [July 28, 18^9].

MY dear colvin, — 1 am just in the middle of your
'* Rembrandt" The taste for Bummkopf and his works
is agreeably dissembled so far as I have gone; and the
reins have never for an instant been thrown upon the
neck of that wooden Pegasus; he only perks up a
learned snout from a footnote in the cellarage of a para-
graph ; just, in short, where he ought to be, to inspire
confidence in a wicked and adulterous generation.
But, mind you, Bummkopf is not human;* he is Dagon
the fish god, and down he will come, sprawling on
his belly or his behind, with' his hands broken from his
helpless carcase, and his head rolling ofT into a corner.
Up will rise on the other side, sane, pleasurable, human
knowledge: a thing of beauty and a joy, etc.

I 'm three parts through ''Bums"; long, dry, unsym*
pathetic, but sound and, I think, in its dry way, inter-

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1^79 esting. Next I shall finish the story, and then perhaps

«T. 29 <« ji^Qfgjjy " Meredith has been staying with Morley,

who is about, it is believed, to write to me on a

literary scheme. Is it Keats, hope you ? My heart

leaps at the thought. — Yours ever,

R. L &

To Edmund Gosse

With reference to the '* term of reproach/' it must be explained
that Mr. Gosse, who now signs with only one initial, used in these
days to sign with two, E. W. G. The nickname Weg was fastened
on him by Stevenson, partly under a false impression as to the order
of these initials, partly in friendly derision of a passing fit of lameness,
which called up the memory of Silas Wegg, the immortal literary gen-
tleman ** with a wooden leg " of Our Mutual Friend,

17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh [July 29, 1879].
MY DEAR GOSSE, — Yours was delicious; you are a
young person of wit; one of the last of them; wit
being quite out of date, and humour confined to the
Scotch Church and the Spectator in unconscious sur-
vival. You will probably be glad to hear that I am up
again in the world ; I have breathed again, and had a
frolic on the strength of it The frolic was yesterday,
Sawbath; the scene, the Royal Hotel, Bathgate; I went
there with a humorous friend to lunch. The maid soon
showed herself a lass of character. She was looking
out of window. On being asked what she was after,
" I 'm lookin' for my lad," says she. '* Is that him ? "
** Weel, I 've been lookin' for him a' my life, and I 've
never seen him yet," was the response. I wrote her
some verses in the vernacular ; she read them. ' ' They *re

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ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

no bad for a beginner, " said she. The landlord's daugh- "879
ter, Miss Stewart, was present in oil colour; so I wrote ^' **
her a declaration in verse, and sent it by the handmaid.
She (Miss S.) was present on the stair to witness our
departure, in a warm, suffused condition. Damn it,
Gosse, you need n't suppose that you 're the only poet
in the world.

Your statement about your initials, it will be seen, I
pass over in contempt and silence. When once I have
made up my mind, let me tell you, sir, there lives no
pock-pudding who can change it. Your anger 1 defy.
Your unmanly reference to a well-known statesman I
puff from me, sir, like so much vapour. Weg is your
name; Weg. WEG.

My enthusiasm has kind of dropped from me. I
envy you your wife, your home, your child — I was
going to say your cat. There would be cats in my
home too if 1 could but get it. I may seem to you
"the impersonation of life," but my life is the imper-
sonation of waiting, and that 's a poor creature. God
help us all, and the deil be kind to the hindmost! Upon
my word, we are a brave, cheery crew, we human be-
ings, and my admiration increases daily — primarily for
myself, but by a roundabout process for the whole
crowd ; for I dare say they have all their poor little se-
crets and anxieties. And here am I, for instance, writ-
ing to you as if you were in the seventh heaven, and
yet I know you are in a sad anxiety yourself. I hope
earnestly it will soon be over, and a fine pink Gosse
sprawling in a tub, and a mother in the best of health
and spirits, glad and tired, and with another interest in
life. Man, you are out of the trouble when this is

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

««79 through. A first child is a rival, but a second is only

""■ ^^ a rival to the first; and the husband stands his ground

and may keep married all his life — a consummation

heartily to be desired. Good-bye, Gosse. Write me

a witty letter with good news of the mistress.

Itfo

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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

MONTEREY AND SAN FRANCISCO

(July, 1879-JuLY, 1880)

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IV
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

MONTEREY AND SAN FRANCISCO
(July, 1879-JuLY, 1880)

IN France, as has been already indicated, Stevenson
had met the American lady, Mrs. Osbourne, who
was afterwards to become his wife. Almost from their
first meeting, soon after the canoe voyage of 1876, Ste-
venson had conceived for her a devotion which never
swerved nor faltered. Her domestic circumstances had
not been fortunate, and on her return to America with
her children in the autumn of 1878, she determined to
seek a divorce from her husband. Hearing of her in-
tention, together with very disquieting news of her
health, Stevenson suddenly started for California at the
beginning of August, 1879.

For what he knew must seem to his friends so wild
an errand, he would ask for no supplies from home; but
resolved, risking his whole future on the issue, to test
during this adventure his power of supporting himself,
and eventually others, by his own labours in literature.
In order from the outset to save as much as possible, he

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

made the journey in the steerage and the emigrant train.
With this prime motive of economy was combined a
second — that of learning for himself the pinch of life
as it is felt by the unprivileged and the poor (he had
long ago disclaimed for himself the character of a " con-
sistent first-class passenger in life ") — and also, it should
be added, a third, that of turning his experiences to
literary account. On board ship he took daily notes
with this intent, and wrote moreover "The Story of a
Lie " for an English magazine. Arrived at his destina-
tion, he found his health, as was natural, badly shaken
by the hardships of the journey ; tried his favourite open-
air cure for three weeks at an Angora goat-ranche sonie
twenty miles from Monterey; and then lived from Sep-
tember to December in that old Californian coast-town
itself, under the conditions set forth in the earlier of
the following letters, and under a heavy combined
strain of personal anxiety and literary effort. From the
notes taken on board ship and in the emigrant train he
drafted an account of his journey, intending to make a
volume matching in form, though in contents much un-
like, the earlier Inland yqyage and Travels with a Don-
key. He wrote also the essays on Thoreau and the
Japanese reformer, Yoshida Torajiro, afterwards pub-
lished in Familiar Studies of Men and Books; one of the
most vivid of his shorter tales, The Pavilion on the
Links, as well as a great part of another and longer
story drawn from his new experiences and called A
Vendetta in tie West; but this did not satisfy him,
and was never finished. He planned at the same time
that tale in the spirit of romantic comedy, which took
final shape four years later as Prince Otto. Towards

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THB AMATEUR EMIGRANT

the end of December, 1879, Stevenson moved to San
Francisco, where he lived for three months in a work-
man's lodging, leading a life of frugality amounting, it
will be seen, to self-imposed penury, and working al-
ways with the same intensity of application, until his
health utterly broke down. One of the causes which
contributed to his illness was the fatigue he underwent
in helping to watch beside the sickbed of a child, the
son of his landlady. During March and a part of April
he lay at death's door — his first really dangerous sick-
ness since childhood — and was slowly tended back to
life by the joint ministrations of his future wife and the
physician to whom his letter of thanks will be found
below. His marriage ensued in May, 1880; imme-
diately afterwards, to try and consolidate his recovery,
he moved to a deserted mining-camp in the Californian
Coast Range; and has recorded the aspects and humours
of his life there with a master's touch in The Silverado
Squatters.

The news of his dangerous il' ness and approaching
marriage had in the meantime unlocked the parental
heart and purse; supplies were sent insuring his present
comfort, with the promise of their continuance for the
future, and of a cordial welcome for the new daughter-
in-law in his father's house. The following letters,
chosen from among those written during the period in
question, depict his way of life, and reflect at once the
anxiety of his friends and the strain of the time upon
himself.

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON
1879

^ To Sidney Colvin

On board ss.''Devonia/*

AN HOUR OR TWO OUT OF NeW YoRK

[August, 1879],
MY DEAR COLVIN, — I have finished my story.^ The
handwriting is not good because of the ship's miscon-
duct: thirty-one pages in ten days at sea is not bad.

I shall write a general procuration about this story on
another bit of paper. I am not very well ; bad food, bad
air, and hard work have brought me down. But the
spirits keep good. The voyage has been most interest-
ing, and will make, if not a series of Pall Mall articles,
at least the first part of a new book. The last weight
on me has been trying to keep notes for this purpose.
Indeed, I have worked like a horse, and am now as tired
as a donkey. If I should have to push on far by rail, I
shall bring nothing but my fine bones to port.

Good-bye to you all. I suppose it is now late after-
noon with you and all across the seas. What shall I
find over there ? I dare not wonder. — Ever yours,

R. L S-

P. S. — I go on my way to-night, if I can; if not, to-
morrow: emigrant train ten to fourteen days' journey;
warranted extreme discomfort. The only American in-
stitution which has yet won my respect is the rain. One
sees it is a new country, they are so free with their water.
I have been steadily drenched for twenty-four hours;
water-proof wet through ; immortal spirit fitfully blink-

1 "The story of a Uc.**
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ing up in spite. Bought a copy of my own work, and J879
the man said "by Stevenson." — "Indeed," says I. — ^' ^^
" Yes, sir, "says he. — Scene closes.

To Sidney Colvin

[In THE Emigrant Train

FROM New, York to San Francisco,

ytugust, iSyg.]

DEAR COLVIN, — I am in the cars between Pittsburgh
and Chicago, just now bowling through Ohio. I am
taking charge of a kid, whose mother is asleep, with one
eye, while I write you this with the other. 1 reached
N. Y. Sunday night; and by five o'clock Monday was
under way for the West. It is now about ten on
Wednesday morning, so I have already been about forty
hours in the cars. It is impossible to lie down in them,
which must end by being very wearying.

I had no idea how easy it was to commit suicide.
There seems nothing left of me; I died a while ago; I
do not know who it is that is travelling.

Of where or how, I nothing know;
And why, I do not care;
Enough if, even so.
My travelling eyes, my travelling mind

can go
By flood and field and hill, by wood

and meadow fair,
Beside the Susquehanna and along the
Delaware.
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LETTERS OF R* L. STEVENSON

1^79 I think, I hope, I dream no more

MT. 99

The dreams of otherwhere.
The cherished thoughts of yore;
I have been changed from what I was before;
And drunk too deep perchance the lotus

of the air
Beside the Susquehanna and along the
Delaware.

Unweary God me yet shall bring
To lands of brighter air,
Where 1, now half a king.
Shall with enfranchised spirit loudlier

sing,
And wear a bolder front than that which

now I wear
Beside the Susquehanna and along the
Delaware.

Exit Muse, hurried by child's games. . . .

Have at you again, being now well through Indiana.
In America you eat better than anywhere else: fact
The food is heavenly.

No man is any use until he has dared everything;
I feel just now as if 1 had, and so might become a man.
"If ye have faith like a grain of mustard-seed." That
is so true! Just now I have faith as big as a cigar-case;
I will not say die, and do not fear man nor fortune.

R. L S

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To W. E. Henley

1879

XT, 39

Crossing Nebraska [Saturday, August 2^, /S79].
MY dear HENLEY, — I am Sitting on the top of the cars
with a mill party from Missouri going west for his
health. Desolate flat prairie upon all hands. Here and
there a herd of cattle; a yellow butterfly or two; a patch
of wild sunflowers; a wooden house or two; then a
wooden church alone in miles of waste; then a wind-
mill to pump water. When we stop, which we do
often, for emigrants and freight travel together, the
kine first, the men after, the whole plain is heard sing-
ing with cicadae. This is a pause, as you may see
from the writing. What happened to the old pedes-
trian emigrants, what was the tedium suffered by the
Indians and trappers of our youth, the imagination
trembles to conceive. This is now Saturday, 23rd, and
I have been steadily travelling since I parted from you
at St Pancras. It is a strange vicissitude from the
Savile Club to this ; I sleep with a man from Pennsyl-
vania who has been in the States Navy, and mess with
him and the Missouri bird already alluded to. We
have a tin wash-bowl among four. 1 wear nothing
but a shirt and a pair of trousers, and never button my
shirt When I land for a meal, I pass my coat and feel
dressed. This life is to last till Friday, Saturday, or
Sunday next. It is a strange affair to be an emigrant,
as I hope you shal! see in a future work. I wonder if
this will be legible; my present station on the wagon
roof, though airy compared to the cars, is both dirty and
insecure. I can see the track straight before and

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

■879 Straight behind me to either horizon. Peace of mind
^' ^^ I enjoy with extreme serenity; I am doing right; I
know no one will think so; and don't care. My body,
however, is all to whistles; I don't eat; but, man, I
can sleep. The car in front of mine is chock full of
Chinese.

Monday. — What it is to be ill in an emigrant train
let those declare who know. I slept none till late in
the morning, overcome with laudanum, of which 1
had luckily a little bottle. All to-day I have eaten
nothing, and only drunk two cups of tea, for each of
which, on the pretext that the one was breakfast, and
the other dinner, I was charged fifty cents. Our jour-
ney is through ghostly deserts, sage-brush and alkali,
and rocks, without form or colour, a sad corner of the
world. I confess I am not jolly, but mighty calm, in
my distresses. My illness is a subject of great mirth
to some of my fellow travellers, and I smile rather
sickly at their jests.

We are going along Bitter Creek just now, a place
infamous in the history of emigration, a place I shall
remember myself among the blackest. I hope I may
get this posted at Ogden, Utah. R. L. S.

To Sidney Colvin

[Coast Line Mountains, Californu,
September, 1879.]
Here is another curious start in my life. I am living
at an Angora goat-ranche, in the Coast Line Mountains,
eighteen miles from Monterey. I was camping out»

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but got SO sick that the two rancheros took me in and «879
tended me. One is an old bear-hunter, seventy-two ^' ^^
years old, and a captain from the Mexican war; the
other a pilgrim, and one who was out with the bear
flag and under Fremont when California was taken by
the States. They are both true frontiersmen, and most
kind and pleasant. Captain Smith, the bear-hunter, is
my physician, and I obey him like an oracle.

The business of my life stands pretty nigh still. I work
at my notes of the voyage. It will not be very like a
book of mine; but perhaps none the less successful
for that. I will not deny that I feel lonely to-day;
but I do not fear to go on, for I am doing right. I
have not yet had a word from England, partly, I sup-
pose, because I have not yet written for my letters to
New York; do not blame me for this neglect; if you
knew all I have been through, you would wonder I had
done so much as I have. I teach the ranche children
reading in the morning, for the mother is from home
sick. — Ever your affectionate friend, R. L S.

To Sidney Colvin

Monterey, Ditto Co., California,
2ist October [iSyg].
MY DEAR cOLViN,— Although you have absolutely dis-
regarded my plaintive appeals for correspondence, and
written only once as against God knows how many
notes and notikins of mine — here goes again. I am
now all alone in Monterey, a real inhabitant, with a
box of my own at the P. O. I have splendid rooms
at the doctor's, where I get coffee in the morning (the

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1879 doctor is French), and I mess with another jolly old
^' ^^ Frenchman, the stranded fifty-eight-year-old wreck of
a good-hearted, dissipated, and once wealthy Nantais
tradesman. My health goes on better; as for work,
the draft of my book was laid aside at p. 68 or so;
and I have now, by way of change, more than seventy
pages of a novel, a one- volume novel, alas! to be
called either /I Chapter in the. Experience of Arizona
Brechonridge or A Vendetta in the West, or a combi-
nation of the two. The scene from Chapter iv. to the
end lies in Monterey and the adjacent country; of
course, with my usual luck, the plot of the story is
somewhat scandalous, containing an illegitimate father
for piece of resistance. . . . Ever yours, R. L S.

To Sidney Colvin

Monterey, California, September, 1879.
MY DEAR COLVIN, — I received your letter with delight;
it was the first word that reached me from the old
country. I am in good health now; I have been pretty
seedy, for 1 was exhausted by the journey and anxiety
below even my point of keeping up; I am still a little
weak, but that is all; I begin to ingrease,* it seems,
already. My book is about half drafted : The Amateur
Emigrant, that is. Can you find a better name ? I
believe it will be more popular than any of my others;
the canvas is so much more popular and larger too.
Fancy, it is my fourth. That voluminous writer. I
was vexed to hear about the last chapter of " The Lie,"

^ Engraisser, grow fiit
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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

and pleased to hear about the rest; it would have been "879
odd if it had no birthmark, born where and how it ^' ^
was. It should by rights have been called the Devonia,
for that is the habit with all children born in a steerage.

I write to you, hoping for more. Give me news of
all who concern me, near or far, or big or little. Here,
sir, in California you have a willing hearer.

Monterey is a place where there is no summer or
winter, and pines and sand and distant hills and a bay
all filled with real water from the Pacific You will
perceive that no expense has been spared. I now live
with a little French doctor; I take one of my meals in
a little French restaurant; for the other two, 1 sponge.
The population of Monterey is about that of a dissent-
ing chapel on a wet Sunday in a strong church neigh-
bourhood. They are mostly Mexican and Indian-
mixed. — Ever yours, R. L S

To Edmund Gosse

Monterey, Monterey Co., California,
8tb October, 1879.
MY DEAR WEG, — I kuow I am a rogue and the son of
a dog. Yet let me tell you, when I came here I had a
week's misery and a fortnight's illness, and since then
I have been more or less busy in being content This
is a kind of excuse for my laziness. I hope you will
not excuse yourself. My plans are still very uncertain,
and it is not likely that anything will happen before
Christmas. In the meanwhile, I believe I shall live on
here "between the sandhills and the sea," as I think
Mr. Swinburne hath it. I was pretty nearly slain; my

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1S79 spirit lay down and kicked for three days; I was up at
'^' ^^ an Angora goat-ranche in the Santa Lucia Mountains,
nursed by an old frontiersman, a mighty hunter of
bears, and I scarcely slept, or ate, or thought for four
days. Two nights I lay out under a tree in a sort of
stupor, doing nothing but fetch water for myself and
horse, light a fire and make coflee, and all night awake
hearing the goat-bells ringing and the tree-frogs sing-
ing, when each new noise was enough to set me
mad. Then the bear-hunter came round, pronounced
me "real sick," and ordered me up to the ranche.

It was an odd, miserable piece of my life; and
according to all rule, it should have been my death ;
but after a while my spirit got up again in a divine
frenzy, and has since kicked and spurred my vile body
forward with great emphasis and success.

My new book, The Amateur Emigrant is about
half drafted. I don't know if it will be good, but I
think it ought to sell in spite of the deil and the pub-
lishers ; for it tells an odd enough experience, and one,
I think, never yet told before. Look for my ** Burns"
in the Cornbill, and for my "Story of a Lie" in Paul's
withered babe, the New Quarterly. You may have
seen the latter ere this reaches you : tell me if it has any
interest, like a good boy, and remember that it was
written at sea in great anxiety of mind. What is your
news ? Send me your works, like an angel, aufur et
d mesure of their apparition, for I am naturally short of
literature, and I do not wish to rust.

I fear this can hardly be called a letter. To say truth,
I feel already a difficulty of approach; I do not know
if I am the same man I was in Europe, perhaps I can

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hardly claim acquaintance with you. My head went ^^19
round and looks another way now ; for when I found ^' ^^
myself over here in a new land, and all the past up-
rooted in the one tug, and I neither feeling glad nor
sorry, I got my last lesson about mankind; I mean my
latest lesson, for of course I do not know what surprises
there are yet in store for me. But that I could have so
felt astonished me beyond description. There is a
wonderful callousness in human nature which enables
us to live. I had no feeling one way or another, from
New York to California, until, at Dutch Flat, a mining-
camp in the Sierra, I heard a cock crowing with a home
voice; and then I fell to hope and regret both in the
same moment

Is there a boy or a girl ? and how is your wife ? I
thought of you more than once, to put it mildly.

I live here comfortably enough ; but I shall soon be
left all alone, perhaps till Christmas. Then you may
hope for correspondence — and may not I? — Your
friend, R. L S.

To W. E. Henley

[Monterey, California, October, 1879.1
MY DEAR HENLEY, — Herewith The Pavilion on tbe
Links, grand carpentry story in nine chapters, and I
should hesitate to say how many tableaux. Where is
it to go ? God knows. It is the dibbs that are wanted.
It is not bad, though I say it; carpentry, of course, but
not bad at that; and who else can carpenter in England,
now that Wilkie Collins is played out ? It might be
broken for magazine purposes at the end of Chapter iv.

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1879 I send it to you, as I dare say Payn may help, if all else
^ fails. Dibbs and speed are my mottoes.

Do acknowledge The Pavilion by return. I shall be
so nervous till I hear, as of course I have no copy ex-
cept of one or two places where the vein would not
run. God prosper it, poor Pavilion! May it bring
me money for myself and my sick one, who may read
it, I do not know how soon.

Love to your wife, Anthony and all. I shall write to
Colvin to-day or to-morrow. — Yours ever, R. L S

To W. E. Henley

[Monterey, California, October, 1879 J]
MY DEAR HENLEY, — Many thanks for your good letter,
which is the best way to forgive you for your previous
silence. I hope Colvin or somebody has sent me the
Cornbill and the New Quarterly, though I am trying
to get them in San Francisco. I think you might have
sent me (i) some of your articles in the P. M. G. / (2)
a paper with the announcement of second edition ; and
(3) the announcement of the essays in /Itbenceum.
This to prick you in the future. Again, choose, in
your head, the best volume of Labiche there is, and
post it to Jules Simoneau, Monterey, Monterey Co.,
California: do this at once, as he is my restaurant-man,
a most pleasant old boy with whom I discuss the uni-
verse and play chess daily. He has been out of France
for thirty-five years, and never heard of Labiche. I
have eighty-three pages written of a story called A
yendetta in the West, and about sixty pages of the

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first draft of The Amateur Emigrant. They should 1879
each cover from 130 to i^ pages when done. That is ""* ^
all my literary news. Do keep me posted, won't you ?
Your letter and Bob's made the fifth and sixth I have
had from Europe in three months.

At times I get terribly frightened about my work,
which seems to advance too slowly. I hope soon
to have a greater burthen to support, and must make
money a great deal quicker than. I used. I may get no-
thing for the yendetta; I may only get some forty quid
for the Emigrant; I cannot hope to have them both
done much before the end of November.

O, and look here, why did you not send me the
Spectator which slanged me ? Rogues and rascals, is
that all you are worth ?

Yesterday I set fire to the forest, for which, had I
been caught, I should have been hung out of hand to
the nearest tree, Judge Lynch being an active person
hereaway. You should have seen my retreat (which
was entirely for strategical purposes). I ran like hell.
It was a fine sight. At night I went out again to see it;
it was a good fire, though I say it that should not I
had a near escape for my life with a revolver: I fired
six charges, and the six bullets all remained in the bar-
rel, which was choked from end to end, from muzzle
to breech, with solid lead; it took a man three hours to
drill them out. Another shot, and I 'd have gone to
kingdom come.

This is a lovely place, which I am growing to love.
The Pacific licks all other oceans out of hand; there is
no place but the Pacific coast to hear eternal roaring
surf. When I get to the top of the woods behind Mon*

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t879 terey, I can hear the seas breaking all round over ten or
*^* ^^ twelve miles of coast from near Carmel on my left, out
to Point Pinas in front, and away to the right along the
sands of Monterey to Castroville and the mouth of the
Salinas. I was wishing yesterday that the world could
get— no, what I mean was that you should be kept in
suspense like Mahomet's coffin until the world had
made half a revolution, then dropped here at the sta-^
tion as though you had stepped from the cars; you
would then comfortably enter Walter's wagon (the sun
has just gone down, the moon beginning to throw
shadows, you hear the surf roiling, and smell the sea
and the pines). That shall deposit you at Sanchez's
saloon, where we take a drink; you are introduced to
Bronson, the local editor ("1 have no brain music," he
says; " I'm a mechanic, you see," but he 's a nice fel-
low) ; to Adolpho Sanchez, who is delightful. Mean-
time! go to the P.O. for my mail; thence we walk up
Alvarado Street together, you now floundering in the
sand, now merrily stumping on the wooden sidewalks;
I call at Hadsell's for my paper; at length behold us
installed in Simoneau's little whitewashed back-room,
round a dirty tablecloth, with Francois the baker, per-
haps an Italian flsherman, perhaps Augustin Dutra, and
Simoneau himself. Simoneau, Franfois, and I are the
three sure cards; the others mere waifs. Then home to
my great airy rooms with five windows opening on a
balcony; I sleep on the floor in my camp blankets; you
instal yourself abed; in the morning coffee with the
little doctor and his little wife; we hire a wagon and
make a day of it; and by night I should let you up
again into the air, to be returned to Mrs. Henley in the

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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

forenoon following. By God, you would enjoy your- "879
self. So should I. 1 have tales enough to keep you going ^' ^^
till five in the morning, and then they would not be at
an end. I forget if you asked me any questions, and I
sent your letter up to the city to one who will like to
read it I expect other letters now steadily. If I have
to wait another two months, I shall begin to be happy.
Will you remember me most affectionately to your
wife? Shake hands with Anthony from me; and God
bless your mother.

God bless Stephen! Does he not know that I am a
man, and cannot live by bread alone, but must have guin-
eas into the bargain ? " Burns," I believe, in my own
mind, is one of my high-watermarks ; Meiklejohn flames
me a letter about it, which is so complimentary that I
must keep it or get it published in the Monterey Cali-
fornian. Some of these days I shall send an exemplaire
of that paper; it is huge. — Ever your affectionate friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To P. G. Hamerton

The following refers to Mr. Hamerton's candidature, which was not
successful, for the Professorship of Fine Art at Edinburgh.

Monterey, California [November, 1879].
MY DEAR MR. HAMERTON, — Your letter to my father
was forwarded to me by mistake, and by mistake I
opened it. The letter to myself has not yet reached
me. This must explain my own and my father's
silence. I shall write by this or next post to the only

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1879 friends I have who, I think, would have an influence,
^' *^ as they are both professors. 1 regret exceedingly that
I am not in Edinburgh, as I could perhaps have done
more, and I need not tell you that what I might do for
you in the matter of the election is neither from friend-
ship nor gratitude, but because you are the only man (I
beg your pardon) worth a damn. I shall write to a
third friend, now I think of it, whose father will have
great influence.

I find here (of all places in the worid) your Essays an
j4rt, which 1 have read with signal interest. I believe
I shall dig an essay of my own out of one of them, for
it set me thinking; if mine could only produce yet
another in reply, we could have the marrow out
between us.

I hope, my dear sir, you will not think badly of me
for my long silence. My head has scarce been on my
shoulders. 1 had scarce recovered from a long fit of
useless ill-health than I was whirled over here double-
quick time and by cheapest conveyance.

I have been since pretty ill, but pick up, though still
somewhat of a mossy ruin. If you would view my
countenance aright, come — view it by the pale moon-
light. But that is on the mend. I believe I have
now a distant claim to tan.

A letter will be more than welcome in this distant
clime, where I have a box at the post-office — gener-
ally, I regret to say, empty. Could your recommen-
dation introduce me to an American publisher ? My
next book 1 should really try to get hold of here, as its
interest is international, and the more 1 am in this
country the more I understand the weight of your in<-

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at, 39

fluence. It is pleasant to be thus most at home abroad, 2^19
above all, when the prophet is still not without honour
in his own land. • • •

To Edmund GossB

Monterey, California, i^tb November, 1879.

MY DEAR GOSSE, — Your letter was to me such a bright
spot that 1 answer it right away to the prejudice of
other correspondents or -dants (don't know how to
spell it) who have prior claims. • • • It is the history
of our kindnesses that alone makes this world toler*
able. If it were not for that, for the effect of kind
words, kind looks, kind letters, multiplying, spread-
ing, making one happy through another and bringing
forth benefits, some thirty, some fifty, some a thousand-
fold, I should be tempted to think our life a practical
jest in the worst possible spirit. So your four pages
have confirmed my philosophy as well as consoled my
heart in these ill hours.

Yes, you are right; Monterey is a pleasant place; but
I see I can write no more to-night. I am tired and sad,
and being already in bed, have no more to do but turn
out the light. — Your affectionate friend, R. L. S.

I try it again by daylight. Once more in bed how-
ever; for to-day it is mucbo.piro, as we Spaniards say;
and 1 had no other means of keeping warm for my
work. 1 have done a good spell, 9^ foolscap pages; at
least 8 of Cornbill; ah, if 1 thought that I could get
eight guineas for it! My trouble is that I am all too
ambitious just now. A book whereof 70 out of 120 are

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

"1879^ scrolled. A novel whereof 85 out of, say, 140 are
pretty well nigh done. A short story of 50 pp., which
shall be finished to-morrow, or I *11 know the reason
why. This may bring in a lot of money : but I dread
to think that it is all on three chances. If the three
were to fail, I am in a bog. The novel is called A
Vendetta in the West I see 1 am in a grasping, dismal
humour, and should, as we Americans put it, quit
writing. In truth, 1 am so haunted by anxieties that
one or other is sure to come up in all that I write.

I will send you herewith a Monterey paper where
the works of R. L. S. appear, nor only that, but all my
life on studying the advertisements will become clear.
I lodge with Dr. Heintz; take my meals with Simoneau;
have been only two days ago shaved by the tonsorial
artist Michaels; drink daily at the Bohemia saloon; get
my daily paper from Hadsell's; was stood a drink to-
day by Albano Rodriguez; in short, there is scarce a
person advertised in that paper but 1 know him, and 1
may add scarce a person in Monterey but is there
advertised. The paper is the marrow of the place. Its
bones — pooh, I am tired of writing so sillily.

R. L« S*

To Sdney Colvin

[Monterey, December^ 'Syg.]
To-day, my dear Colvin, 1 send you the first part of
The Amateur Emigrant, 7 1 pp. , by far the longest and the
best of the whole. It is not a monument of eloquence ;
indeed, 1 have sought to be prosaic in view of the
nature of the subject ; but I almost think it is interesting.

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Whatever is done about any book publication, two '^79
things remember: I must keep a royalty; and, second, ^' ^^
I must have all my books advertised, in the French
manner, on the leaf opposite the title. I know from
my own experience how much good this does an
author with book^buyers.

The entire A. E. will be a little longer than the two
others, but not very much. Here and there, 1 fancy,
you will laugh as you read it; but it seems to me rather
a clever book than anything else: the book of a man,
that is, who has paid a great deal of attention to con-
temporary life, and not through the newspapers.

I have never seen my "Burns"! the darling of my
heart! 1 await your promised letter. Papers, maga-
zines, articles by friends ; reviews of myself, all would
be very welcome. 1 am a reporter for the Monterey
Calif orntan, at a salary of two dollars a week! Qwf-
ment trouvei-vous fa? I am also in a conspiracy with
the American editor, a French restaurant-man, and an
Italian fisherman against the Padre. The enclosed
poster is my last literary appearance. It was put up to
the number of 200 exemplaires at the witching hour;
and they were almost all destroyed by eight in the
morning. But I think the nickname will stick. Dos
Reales; deux rdaux; two bits; twenty-five cents;
about a shilling; but in practice it is worth from nine-
pence to threepence: thus two glasses of beer would
cost two bits. The Italian fisherman, an old Garibal«
dian, is a splendid fellow. R. L S

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1879
/et, 29

To Edmund Gossb

The following if in acknowledgment of Mr. Gosse't volome calleii

Monterey, Monterey Co., Caufornia,
Dec. 8, 1879.

MY DEAR WEG, — I received your book last night as I lay
abed with a pleurisy, the result, I fear, of overwork, grad-
ual decline of appetite, etc You know what a wooden-
hearted curmudgeon I am about contemporary verse.
I like none of it, except some of my own. (I look
back on that sentence with pleasure; it comes from an
honest heart.) Hence you will be kind enough to take
this from me in a kindly spirit; the piece "To my
daughter " is delicious. And yet even here I am going
to pick holes. I am a beastly curmudgeon. It is the
last verse. "Newly budded" is off the venue; and
have n't you gone ahead to make a poetry daybreak
instead of sticking to your muttons, and comparing
with the mysterious light of stars the plain, friendly,
perspicuous human day ? But this is to be a beast.
The little poem is eminently pleasant, human, and
original.

I have read nearly the whole volume, and shall read
it nearly all over again; you have no rivals 1

Bancroft's History of the United States^ even in a
centenary edition, is essentially heavy fare; a little goes
along way; I respect Bancroft, but 1 do not love him;
he has moments when he feels himself inspired to open
up his improvisations upon universal history and the
designs of God ; but I flatter myself I am more nearly

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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

acquainted with the latter than Mr. Bancroft A man, 1879
in the words of my Plymouth Brother, " who knows ""* ^
the Lord," must needs, from time to time, write less
emphatically. It is a fetter dance to the music of
minute guns — not at sea, but in a region not a
thousand miles from the Sahara. Still, I am half-way
through volume three, and shall count myself un«
worthy of the name of an Englishman if I do not see
the back of volume six. The countryman of Living-
stone, Burton, Speke, Drake, Cook, etc. I

I have been sweated not only out of my pleuritic
fever, but out of all my eating cares, and the better
part of my brains (strange coincidence!), by aconite.
I have that peculiar and delicious sense of being bom
again in an expurgated edition which belongs to con-
valescence. It will not be for long; I hear the break-
ers roar; I shall be steering head first for another rapid
before many days; nitor aquis, said a certain Eton
boy, translating for his sins a part of the Inland f^qy^
age into Latin elegiacs; and from the hour I saw it, or
rather a friend of mine, the admirable Jenkin, saw and
recognised its absurd appropriateness, 1 took it for my
device in life. I am going for thirty now ; and unless
I can snatch a little rest before long, I have, I may tell
you in confidence, no hope of seeing thirty-one. My
health began to break last winter, and has given me
but fitful times since then. This pleurisy, though but
a slight affair in itself, was a huge disappointment to
me, and marked an epoch. To start a pleurisy about
nothing, while leading a dull, regular life in a mild
climate, was not my habit in past days; and it is six
years, all but a few months, since I was obliged to

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

"879 spend twenty-four hours in bed. I may be wrong,
^* ^^ but if the niting is to continue, I believe I must go. It
is a pity in one sense, for I believe the class of work
I might yet give out is better and more real and solid
than people fancy. But death is no bad friend; a few
aches and gasps, and we are done; like the truant
child, I am beginning to grow weary and timid in this
big, jostling city, and could run to my nurse, even
although she should have to whip me before putting
me to bed.

Will you kiss your little daughter from me, and
tell her that her father has written a delightful poem
about her ? Remember me, please, to Mrs. Gosse, to
Middlemore, to whom some of these days I will write,

to , to , yes, to , and to . I know

you will gnash your teeth at some of these; wicked,
grim, catlike old poet. If 1 were God, I would sort
you — as we say in Scotland. — Your sincere friend,

K. L. o.

•* Too young to be our child " : blooming good.

To Sidney Colvin

608 Bush Street, San pRANascx)
[December 26, 1879].
MY DEAR COLVIN, — I am now writing to you in a cafe
waiting for some music to begin. For four days I
have spoken to no one but to my landlady or landlord
or to restaurant waiters. This is not a gay way to
pass Christmas, is it ? and I must own the guts are a
little knocked out of me. If I could work, I could

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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

worry through better. But I have no style at com- »879
mand for the moment, with the second part of the ^' ^^
Emigrant, the last of the novel, the essay on Thoreau,
and God knows all, waiting for me. But I trust some-
thing can be done with the first part, or, by God, I '11
starve here. . . .^

0 Colvin, you don't know how much good I have
done myself. I feared to think this out by myself. I
have made a base use of you, and it comes out so much
better than I had dreamed. But 1 have to stick to work
now; and here 's December gone pretty near useless.
But, Lord love you, October and November saw a great
harvest, it might have affected the price of paper on
the Pacific coast. As for ink, they have n't any, not
what! call ink; only stuff to write cookery-books with,
or the works of Hayley, or the pallid perambulations of
the — I can find nobody to beat Hayley. I like good,
knock-me-down black-strap to write with ; that makes
a mark and done with it. — By the way, 1 have tried to
read the Spectator, which they all say I imitate, and —
it 's very wrong of me, I know — but I can't. It 's all
very fine, you know, and all that, but it 's vapid. They
have just played the overture to Norma, and 1 know it 's
a good one, for I bitterly wanted the opera to go on; I
had just got thoroughly interested — and then no curtain
to rise.

1 have written myself into a kind of spirits, bless your
dear heart, by your leave. But this is wild work for
me, nearly nine and me not back I What will Mrs. Car-
son think of me! Quite a night-hawk, I do declare.
You are the worst correspondent in the world — no, not

^ Here follows a long calculation of ways and means.
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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

AT. 30

l^^ that, Henley is that — well, I don't know, I leave the
pair of you to Him that made you — surely with small
attention. But here 's my service, and I 'II away home
to my den 01 much the better for this crack, Professor
Colvin. R. L &

To Sidney Colvin

608 Bush Street, San Franosgo
[January 10, 1880].

MY DEAR COLVIN, — ^This is a circular letter to tell my
estate fully. You have no right to it, being the worst
of correspondents; but I wish to efface the impression
of my last, so to you it goes.

Any time between eight and half-past nine in the
morning, a slender gentleman in an ulster, w^h a vol-
ume buttoned into the breast of it, may be observed leav-
ing No. 608 Bush and descending Powell with an active
step. The gentleman is R. L. S. ; the volume relates
to Benjamin Franklin, on whom he meditates one of his
charming essays. He descends Powell, crosses Market,
and descends in Sixth on a branch of the original Pine
Street Coffee House, no less; I believe he would be
capable of going to the original itself, if he could only
find it In the branch he seats himself at a table cov-
ered with waxcloth, and a pampered menial, of High-
Dutch extraction and, indeed, as yet only partially ex-
tracted, lays before him a cup of coffee, a roll, and a pat
of butter, ail, to quote the deity, very good. A while
ago, and R. L. S. used to find the supply of butter in-
sufficient; but he has now learned the art to exactitude,
and butter and roll expire at the same moment For

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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

this refection he pays ten cents, or fivepence sterling t88o

Half an hour later, the inhabitants of Bush Street ob-
serve the same slender gentleman armed, like George
Washington, with his little hatchet, splitting kindling,
and breaking coal for his fire. He does this quasi-pub-
licly upon the window-sill; but this is not to be attrib-
uted to any love of notoriety, though he is indeed vain
of his prowess with the hatchet (which he persists in
calling an axe), and daily surprised at the perpetuation
of his fingers. The reason is this; that the sill is a
strong, supporting beam, and that blows of the same
emphasis in other parts of his room might knock the
entire shanty into hell. Thenceforth, for from three to
four hours, he is engaged darkly with an inkbottle. Yet
he is not blacking his boots, for the only pair that he
possesses are innocent of lustre and wear the natural
hue of the material turned up with caked and venerable
slush. The youngest child of his landlady remarks sev-
eral times a day, as this strange occupant enters or
quits the house, "Dere 's de author." Can it be that
this bright-haired innocent has found the true clue to
the mystery ? The being in question is, at least, poor
enough to belong to that honourable craft.

His next appearance is at the restaurant of one Dona-
dieu, in Bush Street, between Dupont and Kearney,
where a copious meal, half a bottle of wine, coffee and
brandy may be procured for the sum of four bits, alias
fifty cents, j£o2S. 2d. steriing. The wine is put down
in a whole bottleful, and it is strange and painful to
observe the greed with which the gentleman in ques-
tion seeks to secure the last drop of his allotted half,

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1880 and the scrupulousness with which he seeks to avoid
^' ^ taking the first drop of the other. This is partly ex-
plained by the fact that if he were to go over the mark
— bang would go a tenpence. He is again armed with
a book, but his best friends will learn with pain that he
seems at this hour to have deserted the more serious
studies of the morning. When last observed, he was
studying with apparent zest the exploits of one Rocam-
bole by the late Vicomte Ponson du Terrail. This
work, originally of prodigious dimensions, he had cut
into liths or thicknesses apparently for convenience of
carriage.

Then the being walks, where is not certain. But by
about half-past four a light beams from the windows
of 608 Bush, and he may be observed sometimes en-
gaged in correspondence, sometimes once again plunged
in the mysterious rites of the forenoon. About six he
returns to the Branch Original, where he once more
imbrues himself to the worth of fivepence in coffee and
roll. The evening is devoted to writing and reading,
and by eleven or half-past darkness closes over this
weird and truculent existence.

As for coin, you see I don't spend much, only you and
Henley both seem to think my work rather bosh nowa-
days, and I do want to make as much as I was making,
that is ;^20o; if I can do that, I can swim: last year,
with my ill-health 1 touched only ;^ 109, that would not
do, I could not fight it through on that; but on ^200,
as I say, I am good for the world, and can even in this
quiet way save a little, and that I must do. The worst
is my health ; it is suspected I had an ague chill yester-
day ; I shall know by to-morrow, and you know if 1 am

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**THE plaza" (PORTSMOUTH SQUARE).

THE FAVOURITE LOUNGING-PLACE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON IN SAN FRANCISCO,
WITH THE MEMORIAL TO HIM DESIGNED BY BRUCE PORTER AND WILLIS POLK.

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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

to be laid down with ague the game is pretty well lost. 1880
But I don't know ; I managed to write a good deal down ""' ^
in Monterey, when I was pretty sickly most of the time,
and, by God, I '11 try, ague and all. I have to ask you
frankly, when you write, to give me any good news you
can, and chat a little, hut just in the meantime, give me
no bad. If 1 could get *' Thoreau," Emigrant, and K(?»-
detta all finished and out of my hand, I should feel like
a man who had made half a year's income in a half
year; but until the two last are finished, you see, they
don't fairly count.

I am afraid I bore you sadly with this perpetual talk
about my affairs; I will try and stow it; but you see, it
touches me nearly. I 'm the miser in earnest now : last
night, when I felt so ill, the supposed ague chill, it seemed
strange not to be able to afford a drink. I would have
walked half a mile, tired as I felt, for a brandy and soda.
— Ever yours, R. L S.

To Charles Baxter

608 Bush Street, San FRANasco,ytf». 26, *8o.
MY DEAR CHARLES, — I have to drop from a 50 cent to
a 25 cent dinner; to-day begins my fall. That brings
down my outlay in food and drink to 45 cents, or is.
loid. per day. How are the mighty fallen! Luckily,
this is such a cheap place for food ; I used to pay as
much as that for my first breakfast in the Savile in the
grand old palmy days of yore. I regret nothing, and
do not even dislike these straits, though the flesh will
rebel on occasion. It is to-day bitter cold, after weeks
of lovely warm weather, and I am all in a chitter. I

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1880^ am about to issue for my little shilling and halfpenny
meal, taken in the middle of the day, the poor man's
hour; and I shall eat and drink to your prosperity. —
Everyoursy R. L S.

To Sidney Colvin

With reference to the following, it must be explained that the first
draft of the first part of Tbi AmaUur Emigrant, when it reached me
about Christmas, had seemed to me, compared to his previous travel
papers, but a spiritless record of squalid experiences, little likely to
advance his still only half-established reputation; and I had written
to him to that effect, inopportunely enough, with a fuller measure even
than usual of the frankness which always marked our intercourse.

608 Bush Street, San Francisco, California
[January, 1880].
MY DEAR colvin, — 1 received this morning your long
letter from Paris. Well, God's will be done; if it's
dull, it 's dull; it was a fair fight, and it 's lost, and
there 's an end. But, fortunately, dulness is not a fault
the public hates; perhaps they may like this vein of
dulness. If they don't, damn them, we '11 try them
with another. I sat down on the back of your letter,
and wrote twelve Cornbill pages this day as ever was
of that same despised Emigrant; so you see my moral
courage has not gone down with my intellect. Only,
frankly, Colvin, do you think it a good plan to be so
eminently descriptive, and even eloquent, in dispraise ?
You rolled such a lot of polysyllables over me that a
better man than I might have been disheartened. —
However, I was not, as you see, and am not. The
Emigrant shall be finished and leave in the course of

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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

next week. And then, I 'II stick to stories. I am not itto
frightened. I know my mind is changing; I have ^' ^
been telling you so for long; and I suppose I am fum*
bling for the new vein. Well, I *11 find it

The Vendetta you will not much like, I dare say: and
that must be finished next; but I'll knock you with
Tbe Forest State: A Romance.

I 'm vexed about my letters; I know it is painful to
get these unsatisfactory things; but at least I have
written often enough. And not one soul ever gives
meany««»5, about people or things; everybody writes
me sermons; it's good for me, but hardly the food
necessary for a man who lives all alone on forty-five
cents a day, and sometimes less, with quantities of
hard work and many heavy thoughts. If one of you
could write me a letter with a jest in it, a letter like
what is written to real people in this world — I am
still flesh and blood — I should enjoy it. Simpson did,
the other day, and it did me as much good as a bottle
of wine. A lonely man gets to feel like a pariah after
a while — or no, not that, but like a saint and martyr,
or a kind of macerated clergyman with pebbles in his
boots, a pillared Simeon, I 'm damned if 1 know whatt
but, man alive, I want gossip.

My health is better, my spirits steadier, I am not the
least cast down. If the Emigrant was a failure, the
Pavilion^ by your leave, was not: it was a story quite
adequately and rightly done, I contend ; and when I
find Stephen, for whom certainly I did not mean it,
taking it in, I am better pleased with it than before.
I know I shall do better work than ever I have done
before; but, mind you, it will not be like it. My sym-

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«r. 30

LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1^^ pathies and interests are changed. There shall be no
more books of travel for me. I care for nothing but the
moral and the dramatic, not a jot for the picturesque
or the beautiful, other than about people. It bored me
hellishly to write the Emigrant; well, it 's going to
bore others to read it; that 's only fair.

I should also write to others; but indeed I am jack*
tired, and must go to bed to a French novel to com-
pose myself for slumber. — Ever your affectionate friend,

R. L &

To W. E. Henley

608 Bush Street, San Franosgo, Gil.,
February, 1880.

MY DEAR HENLEY, — Before my work or anything I sit
down to answer your long and kind letter.

I am well, cheerful, busy, hopeful; I cannot be
knocked down; I do not mind about the Emigrant.
I never thought it a masterpiece. It was written to
sell, and I believe it will sell; and if it does not, the
next will. You need not be uneasy about my work; I
am only beginning to see my true method.

(i) As to Studies., There are two more already
gone to Stephen. '' Yoshida Torajiro,'' which I think
temperate and adequate; and ''Thoreau," which will
want a really Balzacian effort over the proofs. But 1
want " Benjamin Franklin and the Art of Virtue " to fol-
low; and perhaps also "William Penn," but this last
may be perhaps delayed for another volume — I think
not, though. The Studies will be an intelligent vol-
ume, and in their latter numbers more like what J

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mean to be my style, or I mean what my style means "Mo
to be, for I am passive. (2) The Essays. Good news ""* ^
indeed. I think "Ordered South" must be thrown in.
It always swells the volume, and it will never find a
more appropriate place. It was May, 1874, Macmillan,
I believe. {}) Plays. I did not understand you meant
to try the draft. I shall make you a full scenario as soon
as the Emigrant is done. (4) Emigrant. He shall be
sent off next week. (5) Stories. You need not be
alarmed that 1 am going to imitate Meredith. You
know I was a Story-teller ingrain ; did not that reassure
you ? The Vendetta, which falls next to be finished,
is not entirely pleasant But it has points. Tbe Forest
State or Tbe Greenwood State: A Romance, is another
pair of shoes. It is my old Semiramis, our half-seen
Duke and Duchess, which suddenly sprang into sun-
shine clearness as a story the other day. The kind,
happy dinouement is unfortunately absolutely undra-
matic, which will be our only trouble in quarrying out the
play. I mean we shall quarry from it. Characters — Otto
Frederick John, hereditary Prince of GrQnwald; Amelia
Seraphina, Princess; Conrad, Baron Gondremarck,
Prime Minister; Cancellarius Greisengesang; Killian
Gottesacker, Steward of the River Farm ; Ottilie, his
daughter; the Countess von Rosen. Seven in all.
A brave story, I swear; and a brave play too, if we can
find the trick to make the end. The play, I fear, will
have to end darkly, and that spoils the quality as I now
see it of a kind of crockery, eighteenth-century, high-
life-below-stairs life, breaking up like ice in spring be-
fore the nature and the certain modicum of manhood
of my poor, clever, feather-headed Prince, whom I love

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

already. I see Seraphina too. Gondremarck is not
quite so clear. The Countess von Rosen I have; I 'U
never tell you who she is; it 's a secret; but I have
known the countess; well, I will tell you; it 's my old
Russian friend, Madame Z. Certain scenes are, in con-
ception, the best I have ever made, except for Hester
Noble. Those at the end, Von Rosen and the Prin-
cess, the Prince and Princess, and the Princess and
Gondremarck, as I now see them from here, should
be nuts, Henley, nuts. It irks me not to go to them
straight But the Emigrant stops the way ; then a re-
assured scenario for Hester; then the Vendetta ; then two
(or three) Essays — "Benjamin Franklin," "Thoughts
on Literature as an Art," "Dialogue on Character and
Destiny between two Puppets," "The Human Compro-
mise"; and then, at length — come to me, my Prince.
O Lord, it 's going to be courtly! And there is not an
ugly person nor an ugly scene in it The " Slate " both
Fanny and 1 have damned utterly ; it is too morbid, ugly,
and unkind; better starvation. R« L &

To Sidney Colvin

608 Bush Street, San Francisco [March, t88o\.
MY DEAR COLVIN, — My landlord and landlady's little
four-year-old child is dying in the house; and O, what
he has suffered! It has really affected my health. O
never, never any family for me! I am cured of that.

I have taken a long holiday — have not worked for
three days, and will not for a week ; for I was really
weary. Excuse this scratch; for the child weighs on

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me, dear Colvin. I did all I could to help; but all jiSSo
seems little, to the point of crime, when one of these
poor innocents lies in such misery, — Ever yours,

R. LS.

To Edmund Gossb

In the interval between this letter and the last, the writer had been
down with the dangerous illness already referred to. A poetical
counterpart to this letter will be found in the piece beginning "Not
yet, my soul, these friendly fields desert," which was composed at the
same time and is printed in Underwoods^ p. 30.

San Francisco, Cal., April 16 [!88d\.
MY DEAR GOSSE, — You have not answered my last;
and 1 know you will repent when you hear how near
I have been to another world. For about six weeks I
have been in utter doubt; it was a toss-up for life or
death all that time; but I won the toss, sir, and
Hades went off once more discomfited. This is not
the first time, nor will it be the last, that I have a
friendly game with that gentleman. 1 know he will
end by cleaning me out; but the rogue is insidious,
and the habit of that sort of gambling seems to be a
part of my nature; it was, 1 suspect, too much in-
dulged in youth ; break your children of this tendency,
my dear Gosse, from the first. It is, when once
formed, a habit more fatal than opium — 1 speak, as St
Paul says, like a fool. 1 have been very very sick ; on
the verge of a galloping consumption, cold sweats,
prostrating attacks of cough, sinking fits in which I
lost the power of speech, fever, and all the ugliest
circumstances of the disease; and I have cause to bless

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LETTERS OF R, L. STEVENSON

1880 God, my wife that is to be, and one Dr, Bamford (a
^' ^ name the Muse repels), that I have come out of all
this, and got my feet once more upon a little hilltop,
with a fair prospect of life and some new desire of
living. Yet I did not wish to die, neither; only I felt
unable to go on farther with that rough horseplay of
human life: a man must be pretty well to take the
business in good part. Yet I felt all the time that I had
done nothing to entitle me to an honourable discharge;
that I had taken up many obligations and begun many
friendships which I had no right to put away from me;
and that for me to die was to play the cur and slinking
sybarite, and desert the colours on the eve of the de-
cisive fight. Of course I have done no work for 1 do
not know how long; and here you can triumph. I
have been reduced to writing verses for amusement.
A fact. The whirligig of time brings in its revenges,
after all. But 1 '11 have them buried with me, 1 think,
for 1 have not the heart to burn them while I live. Do
write. I shall go to the mountains as soon as the
weather clears; on the way thither, I marry myself;
then 1 set up my family altar among the pinewoods,
3000 feet, sir, from the disputatious sea. — I am, dear
Weg, most truly yours, R. L S

To Dr. W. Bamford

With a copy of Travtls witb a Donkey,

[San Francisco, j4pril, i88o.]
MY DEAR SIR,— Will you let me offer you this little
book ? If I had anything better, it should be yours.

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May you not dislike it, for it will be your own handi- jMo
work if there are other fruits from the same tree! But
for your kindness and skill, this would have been my
last book, and now I am in hopes that it will be
neither my last nor my best.

You doctors have a serious responsibility. You re-
call a man from the gates of death, you give him
health and strength once more to use or to abuse. I
hope I shall feel your responsibility added to my own,
and seek in the future to make a better profit of the
life you have renewed to me. — I am, my dear sir,
gratefully yours, Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney CoLvm

[San Francisco, April, /58t>.]
MY DEAR COLVIN, — You must be sick indeed of my
demand for books, for you have seemingly not yet sent
me one. Still, 1 live on promises : waiting for Penn, for
H. James's Hawthorne, for my *' Burns," etc. ; and now,
to make matters worse, pending your Centuries, tic, I do
earnestly desire the best book about mythology (if it be
German, so much the worse; send a bunctionary along
with it, and pray for me). This is why. If I recover, I
feel called on to write a volume of gods and demi-gods
in exile: Pan, Jove, Cybele, Venus, Charon, etc.; and
though 1 should like to take them very free, I should
like to know a little about 'em to begin with. For two
days, till last night, I had no night sweats, and my cough
is almost gone, and I digest well ; so all looks hopeful.
However, I was near the other side of Jordan. I send the

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1880 proof of " Thoreau " to you, so that you may correct and
"' ^ fill up the quotation from Goethe. It is a pity I was ill,
as, for matter, I think I prefer that to any of my essays
except * ' Burns " ; but the style, though quite manly, never
attains any melody or lenity. So much for consumption :
I begin to appreciate what the Emigrant must be. As
soon as I have done the last few pages of the Emigrant
they shall go to you. But when will that be ? I know
not quite yet — I have to be so careful. — Ever yours,

ILLS

To Sidney Colvin

[San Francisco, AprU, t88o.1
MT DEAR OOLVIN, — My dear people telegraphed me
fn these words : " Count on 250 pounds annually." You
may imagine what a blessed business this was. And so
now recover the sheets of tht Emigrant^ and post them
registered to me. And now please give me all your
venom against it; say your worst, and most incisively,
for now it will be a help, and I '11 make it right or perish
in the attempt. Now, do you understand why I protested
against your depressing eloquence on the subject?
When I bad to go on any way, for dear life, I thought it
a kind of pity and not much good to discourage me.
Now all 's changed. God only knows how much
courage and suffering is buried in that ms. The second
part was written in a circle of hell unknown to Dante —
that of the penniless and dying author. For dying I
was, although now saved. Another week, the doctor
said, and I should have been past salvation. I think I
shall always think of it as my best work. There is one

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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

mi. 30

page in Part n., about having got to shore, and sich, ^880
which must have cost me altogether six hours of work
as miserable as ever I went through. I feel sick even
to think of it — Ever your friend, R« L &

To Sidney Colvin

[San Francisco, May, 1880.}
MY DEAR GOLVIN, — I received your letter and proof
to-day, and was greatly delighted with the last

1 am now out of danger; in but a short while {ue. as
soon as the weather is settled), F. and I marry and go up
to the hills to look for a place; 'M to the hills will lift
mine eyes, from whence doth come mine aid": once
the place found, the furniture will follow. There, sir, in,
I hope, a ranche among the pine-trees and hard by a
running brook, we are to fish, hunt, sketch, study Span*
ish, French, Latin, Euclid, and History; and, if possible,
not quarrel. Far from man, sir, in the virgin forest
Thence, as my strength returns, you may expect works
of genius. 1 always feel as if I must write a work of
genius some time or other; and when is it more likely
to come ofT, than just after I have paid a visit to Styx
and go thence to the eternal mountains ? Such a revo-
lution in a man's affairs, as I have somewhere written,
would set anybody singing. When we get installed,
Lloyd and I are going to print my poetical works; so
all those who have been poetically addressed shall re-
ceive copies of their addresses. They are, I believe,
pretty correct literary exercises, or will be, with a few
filings; but they are not remarkable for white-hot

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1880 vehemence of Inspiration; tepid works! respectable
^' ^^ versifications of very proper and even original senti-
ments: kind of Hayleyistic, I fear — but no, this is
morbid self-depreciation. The family is all very shaky
in health, but our motto is now "Al Monte 1" in the
words of Don Lope, in the play the sister and I are just
beating through with two bad dictionaries and an in-
sane grammar. 1 to the hills, — Yours ever,

ILLS

To C W. Stoddard

This correspondent is Mr. Charles Warren Stoddard, author of Sum^
mer Cruising in tbs South Seas, etc., with whom Stevenson had
made friends in the manner and amid the scenes faithfully described in
The IVncksff in the chapter called " Faces on the City Front"

East Oakland, Cal., May, 1880.
MY DEAR STODDARD, — I am guilty in thy sight and the
sight of God. However, I swore a great oath that you
should see some of my manuscript at last; and though
I have long delayed to keep it, yet it was to be. You
re-read your story and were disgusted ; that is the cold
fit following the hot I don't say you did wrong to be
disgusted, but I am sure you did wrong to be disgusted
altogether. There was, you may depend upon it, some
reason for your previous vanity, as well as your present
mortification. I shall hear you, years from now, timidly
begin to retrim your feathers for a little self-laudation,
and trot out this misdespised novelette as not the worst
of your performances. I read the album extracts with
sincere interest; but I regret that you spared to give the
paper more development; ana I conceive that you might
do a great deal worse than expand each of its paragraphs

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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

into an essay or sketch, the excuse being in each case i^So
your personal intercourse; the bulk, when that would ^' ^
not be sufficient, to be made up from their own works
and stories. Three at least — Menken, Yelverton, and
Keeler — could not fail of a vivid human interest. Let
me press upon you this plan ; should any document be
wanted from Europe, let me offer my services to pro-
cure it. I am persuaded that there is stuff in the idea.

Are you coming over again to see me some day soon ?
I keep returning, and now hand over fist, from the
realms of Hades: I saw that gentleman between the
eyes, and fear him less after each visit Only Charon,
and his rough boatmanship, I somewhat fear.

1 have a desire to write some verses for your album;
so, if you will give me the entry among your gods, god-
desses, and godlets, there will be nothing wanting but
the Muse. I think of the verses like Mark Twain;
sometimes I wish fulsomely to belaud you; sometimes
to insult your city and fellow citizens; sometimes to sit
down quietly, with the slender reed, and troll a few staves
of Panic ecstasy — but fy ! fy! as my ancestors observed,
the last is too easy for a man of my feet and inches.

At least, Stoddard, you now see that, although so
costive, when I once begin 1 am a copious letter- writer.
I thank you, and au revair.

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

[San Franosgo, May, 1880.]
MY dear colvin, — It is a long while since I have heard
from you; nearly a month, I believe; and I begin to

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1880 grow very uneasy. At first I was tempted to suppose
* ^ that I had been myself to blame in someway; but now
I have grown to fear lest some sickness or trouble among
those whom you love may not be the impediment I
believe I shall soon hear, so I wait as best I can. I am,
beyond a doubt, greatly stronger, and yet still useless
for any work, and, I may say, for any pleasure. My af-
fairs and the bad weather still keep me here unmarried;
but not, I earnestly hope, for long. Whenever I get
into the mountain, I trust I shall rapidly pick up. Until
I get away from these sea fogs and my imprisonment
in the house, I do not hope to do much more than keep
from active harm. My doctor took a desponding fit
about me, and scared Fanny into blue fits; but I have
talked her over again. It is the change I want, and the
blessed sun, and a gentle air in which I can sit out and
see the trees and running water: these mere defensive
hygienics cannot advance one, though they may pre-
vent evil. I do nothing now, but try to possess my
soul in peace, and continue to possess my body on any
terms.

Caustoga, Napa County, Caufornia.
All which is a fortnight old and not much to the point
nowadays. Here we are, Fanny and I, and a certain
hound, in a lovely valley under Mount Saint Helena,
looking around, or rather wondering when we shall
begin to look around, for a house of our own. I have
received the first sheets of The Amateur Emigrant; not
yet the second bunch, as announced. It is a pretty
heavy, emphatic piece of pedantry; but I don't care;
the public, I verily believe, will like it. I have excised
all you proposed and more on my own movement

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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT

But I have not yet been able to rewrite the two special iMo
pieces which, as you said, so badly wanted it; it is '*^' ^°
hard work to rewrite passages in proof; and the easiest
work is still hard to me. But I am certainly recovering
fast; a married and convalescent being.

Received James's Hawthorne, on which I meditate a
blast. Miss Bird Dixon's Penn, a wrong Cornhill (like
my luck), and Coquelin: for all which, and especially
the last, I tender my best thanks. I have opened only
James; it is very clever, very well written, and out of
sight the most inside-out thing in the world ; I have
dug up the hatchet; a scalp shall flutter at my belt ere
long. I think my new book should be good; it will
contain our adventures for the summer, so far as these
are worth narrating; and I have already a few pages
of diary which should make up bright. . I am going to
repeat my old experiment, after buckling to a while to
write more correctly, lie down and have a wallow.
Whether I shall get any of my novels done this
summer I do not know; I wish to finish the l^en^
detta first, for it really could not come after Prince
Otto. Lewis Campbell has made some noble work
in that Agamemnon; it surprised me. We hope
to get a house at Silverado, a deserted mining-camp
eight miles up the mountain, now solely inhabited by
a mighty hunter answering to the name of Rufe Han-
some, who slew last year a hundred and fifty deer.
This is the motto I propose for the new volume: " K«p-
erunt nonnuUi in agris, delectati re sua familiari. His
idem propositum fuit quod regibus, ut ne qua re egerent,
ne cui parerent, libertate uterentur; cujus proprium est
sic vivere utvelis/' I always have a terror lest the wish

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

itto should have been father to the translation, when I come
^* ^ to quote; but that seems too plain sailing. I should put
regibus in capitals for the pleasantry's sake. We are in
the Coast Range, that being so much cheaper to reach;
the family p I hope, will soon follow. — Love to all, ever
youn, R. L S.

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i88o

ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND
SUMMERS

(August, iSSo-October, 1882)

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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND
SUMMERS

(August, 1880 -October, 1882)

AFTER spending the months of June and July, 1880^
. in the rough Califomian mountain quarters described
in Tbe Silverado Squatters, Stevenson took passage
with his wife and young stepson from New York on
the 7th of August, and arrived on the 17th at Liverpool*
where his parents and I were waiting to meet him.
Of her new family, Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson,
brought thus strangely and from far into their midst,
made an immediate conquest To her husband's espe-
cial happiness, there sprang up between her and his
father the closest possible affection and confidence.
Parents and friends — if it is permissible to one of the
latter to say as much — rejoiced to recognise in Steven-
son's wife a character as strong, interesting, and
romantic almost as his own; an inseparable sharer of
all his thoughts, and staunch companion of all his
adventures; the most open-hearted of friends to all who
loved him; the most shrewd and stimulating critic of

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LETTERS OF R, L. STEVENSON

his work; and in sickness, despite her own precarious
health, the most devoted and most efficient of nurses.
But there must be limits to the praise of the living;
and what his wife was to him Stevenson has himself
expressed, in words which are the fittest, and than
which none ever came more truly from the heart.

From Liverpool the Stevenson party went on to make
a stay in Scotland, first at Edinburgh, and afterwards
for a few weeks at Strathpeffer, resting at Blair Athol
on the way. It was now, in his thirtieth year,
among the woods of Tummelside and under the
shoulder of Ben Wyvis, that Stevenson acknowledged
for the first time the full power and beauty of the High-
land scenery, which in youth, with his longings fixed
ever upon the South, he had been accustomed to think
too bleak and desolate. In the history of the country
and its clans, on the other hand, and especially of their
political and social transformation during the eighteenth
century, he had been always keenly interested. In
conversations with Principal Tulloch at Strathpeffer this
interest was now revived, and he resolved to attempt
a book on the subject, his father undertaking to keep
him supplied with books and authorities; for it had
quickly become apparent that he could not winter in
Scotland. The state of his health continued to be very
threatening. He suffered from acute chronic catarrh,
accompanied by disquieting lung symptoms and great
weakness; and was told accordingly that he must go
for the winter, and probably for several succeeding
winters, to the mountain valley of Davos in Switzer-
land, which within the last few years had been coming
into repute as a place of recovery, or at least of arrested

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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

mischief, for lung patients. Thither he and his wife
and stepson travelled accordingly at the end of October.
Nor must another member of the party be forgotten, a
black thoroughbred Skye terrier, the gift of Sir Walter
Simpson (Stevenson's companion on the Inland Voy-
age). This creature was named, after his giver, Walter
— a name subsequently corrupted into Watlie, Woggie,
Wogg, Woggin, Bogie, Bogue, and a number of other
affectionate diminutives which will be found occurring
often enough in the following pages. He was a re-
markably pretty, engaging, excitable, capricious little
specimen of his race, the occasion of infinite anxiety
and laughing care to his devoted master and mistress
until his death six years later.

The Davos of 1880, approached by an eight hours*
laborious drive up the valley of the Pr^ttigau, was a
very different place from the extended and embellished
Davos of to-day, which to many readers is doubtless
familiar, with its railway, its modern shops, its elec-
tric lighting, and its crowd of winter visitors bent on
outdoor and indoor entertainment. The Stevensons'
quarters for the first winter were at the H6tel Belve-
dere, then a mere nucleus of the huge establishment
it has since become. Besides the usual society of an
invalid hotel, with its mingled tragedies and come-
dies, they had there the great advantage of the pres-
ence, in a neighbouring house, of an accomplished
man of letters and one of the most charming of com-
panions, John Addington Symonds, with his family.
Mr. Symonds, whose health had been desperate before
he tried the place, was a living testimony to its virtues,
and was at this time engaged in building the chalet

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LETTERS OF R, L. STEVENSON

which became his home until he died fourteen years
later. During Stevenson's first season at Davos, though
his mind was full of literary enterprises, he was too ill
to do much actual work. For the Highland history he
read much, but composed little or nothing, and even-
tually this history went to swell the long list of his un-
written books. He saw through the press his first
volume of collected essays, yirginibus Puerisque,
which came out early in 1881 ; and wrote the essay on
Pepys afterwards published in Familiar Studies of Men
and Books. Beyond this, he only amused himself with
verses. Leaving the Alps at the en4 of April, 1881, he
returned, after a short stay in France (at Fontainebleau,
Paris, and St. Germain), to his family in Edinburgh.
Thence the whole party again went to the Highlands,
this time to Pitlochry and Braemar.

During the summer Stevenson heard of the intended
retirement of Professor -/Eneas Mackay from the chair
of History and Constitutional Law at Edinburgh Uni-
versity. He determined, with the encouragement of
the outgoing professor and of several of his literary
friends, to become a candidate for the post, which had
to be filled by the Faculty of Advocates from among
their own number. The duties were limited to the
delivery of a short course of lectures in the summer
term, and Stevenson thought that he might be equal
to them, and might prove, though certainly a new,
yet perhaps a stimulating, type of professor. But
knowing the nature of his public reputation, especially
in Edinburgh, where the recollection of his daft student
days was as yet stronger than the impression made by
his recent performances in literature, he was well

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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

aware that his candidature must seem paradoxical,
and stood little chance of success. The election took
place in the late autumn of the same year, and he was
defeated, receiving only three votes.

At Pitlochry Stevenson was for a while able to enjoy
his life and to work well, writing two of the strongest
of his short stories of Scottish life and superstition,
Tbrawn Janet 2Lnd The Merry Men, originally designed
to form part of a volume to be written by himself and
his wife in collaboration. At Braemar he made a be-
ginning of the nursery verses which afterwards grew
into the volume called j4 Child's Garden, and con-
ceived and half executed the fortunate project of Trea*
sure Island, the book which was destined first to make
him famous. But one of the most inclement of Scottish
summers had before long undone all the good gained in
the previous winter at Davos, and in the autumn of the
year 1881 he repaired thither again.

This time his quarters were in a small chalet belonging
to the proprietors of the Buol Hotel, the Chalet am Stein,
in the near neighbourhood of the Symonds's house.
The beginning of his second stay was darkened by the
serious illness of his wife; nevertheless, the winter was
one of much greater literary activity than the last A
Life of Hazlitt was projected, and studies were made
for it, but for some reason the project was never carried
out. Treasure Island was finished; the greater part
of Tbe Silverado Squatters written ; 50 were the essays
"Talk and Talkers," " A Gossip on Romance," and sev-
eral other of his best papers for magazines. By way of
whim and pastime he occupied himself, to his own and
his stepson's delight, with the little set of woodcuts

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

and verses printed by the latter at his toy press — " The
Davos Press," as they called it — as well as with mimic
campaigns carried on between the man and boy with
armies of lead soldiers in the spacious loft which filled
the upper floor of the chalet. For the first and almost
the only time in his life there awoke in him during these
winters in Davos the spirit of lampoon ; and he poured
forth sets of verses, not without touches of a Swiftean
fire, against commercial frauds in general, and those of
certain local tradesmen in particular, as well as others in
memory of a defunct publican of Edinburgh who had
been one of his butts in youth. Finally, much revived
in health by the beneficent air of the Alpine valley, he
left it again in mid-spring of 1882, to return once more
to Scotland, and to be once more thrown back to, or
below, the point where he had started. After a short
excursion from Edinburgh into the Appin country, where
he made inquiries on the spot into the traditions con-
cerning the murder of Campbell of Glenure, his three
resting-places in Scotland during this summer were
Stobo Manse, near Peebles, Lochearnhead, and Kingus-
sie. At Stobo the dampness of the season and the
place quickly threw him again into a very low state of
health, from which three subsequent weeks of brilliant
sunshine in Speyside did but little to restore him. In
spite of this renewed breakdown, when autumn came
he would not face the idea of returning for a third sea-
son to Davos. He had himself felt deeply the austerity
and monotony of the white Alpine worid in winter;
and though he had unquestionably gained in health
there, his wife on her part had suffered much. So he
made up his mind once again to try the Mediterranean
coast of France, and Davos knew him no more.

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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

To A. G. Dew-Smith

I print It the head of the first winter's letters from the Alps some
verses from one in rhyme which he addressed by way of thanlcs to a
friend at Cambridge, Mr. A. G. Dew-Smith, who had sent him a
present of a box of cigarettes. It gives his first general impressions of
the place, some of which he presently found cause to modify; and is
very characteristic in its comments on the tame behaviour of the
valley stream, the Landwasser, at this part of its course.

[H6TEL Belvedere, Davos, November^ t88a\
Figure me to yourself, I pray —

A man of my peculiar cut —
Apart from dancing and deray.

Into an Alpine valley shut;

Shut in a kind of damned Hotel»
Discountenanced by God and man;

The food ? — Sir, you would do as well
To cram your belly full of bran.

The company ? Alas, the day
That I should dwell with such a crew.

With devil anything to say,
Nor any one to say it to!

The place ? Although they call it Platz^
I will be bold and state my view;

It 's not a place at all — and that 's
The bottom verity, my Dew.

i^'The whole front of the house was lighted, and there were pipes and
fiddles, and as much dancing and deray within as used to be in Sir
Robert's house at Pace and Yule, and such high seasons."— From
«* Wandering Willie's Tale" in RedgauntUt.

«i5

1880

ATT. 30

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON
1880 There are, as I will not deny.

Af JO

Innumerable inns; a road;
Several Alps indifferent high;
The snow's inviolable abode;

Eleven English parsons, all

Entirely inoffensive; four
True human beings — what I call

Human — the deuce a cipher more;

A climate of surprising worth;

Innumerable dogs that bark;
Some air, some weather, and some earth;

A native race — God save the mark!—

A race that works, yet cannot work.
Yodels, but cannot yodel right,

Such as, unhelp'd, with rusty dirk,
I vow that I could wholly smite.

A river that from mom to night
Down all the valley plays the fool;

Not once she pauses in her flight,
Nor knows the comfort of a pool;

But still keeps up, by straight or bend,
The selfsame pace she hath begun—

Still hurry, hurry, to the end —
Good God, is that the way to run ?
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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

If I a river were, I hope «88o

That 1 should better realise * ^

The opportunities and scope
Of that romantic enterprise.

I should not ape the merely strange^

But aim besides at the divine;
And continuity and change

I still should labour to combine.

Here should I gallop down the race,

Here charge the sterling like a bull;
There, as a man might wipe his face,

Lie, pleased and panting, in a pooL

But what, my Dew, in idle mood,
What prate I, minding not my debt t

What do I talk of bad or good ?
The best is still a cigarette.

Me whether evil fate assault,

Or smiling providences crown —
Whether on high the eternal vault

Be blue, or crash with thunder down—

I judge the best, whatever befall,

Is still to sit on one's behind.
And, having duly moistened all.

Smoke with an unperturbed mind.

R. L S.

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UTTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

t88o
Mr. ¥>

To Thomas Stevenson

R. L. S. here sketches for his father the plan of the work on High«
land History which they had discussed together in the preceding
summer, and which Principal Tulloch had urged him to attempt

[H6TEL Belvedere], Davos, December 12 [1880].
MY DEAR FATHER, — Here IS the scheme as well as I
can foresee. I begin the book immediately after the
'13, as then began the attempt to suppress the High-
lands.

I. Thirty Years' Interval

(1) Rob Roy.

{2) The Independent Companies: the Watches.

(3) Story of Lady Grange.

(4) The Military Roads, and Disarmament: Wade;

and

(5) Burt.

II. The Heroic Age

(i) Duncan Forbes of CuUoden.

{2) Flora Macdonald.

(3) The Forfeited Estates; including Hereditary

Jurisdictions; and the admirable conduct of

the tenants.

III. LrrERATURE here intervenes

(1) The Ossianic Controversy.

(2) Boswell and Johnson.

(3) Mrs. Grant of Laggan.

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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

IV. Economy >»>

ATT. 90

(i) Highland Economics.

(2) The Reinstatement of the Proprietors.

(3) The Evictions.

(4) Emigration.

(5) Present State.

V. Reugion

(i) The Catholics, Episcopals, and Kirk, and Soc.

Prop. Christ Knowledge.
{2) The Men.
(3) The Disruption.

All this, of course, will greatly change in form, scope*
and order; this is just a bird's-eye glance. Thank you
for Burt, which came, and for your Union notes. I
have read one-half (about 900 pages) of Wodrow's
Correspondence, with some improvement, but great
fatigue. The doctor thinks well of my recovery, which
puts me in good hope for the future. I should cer*
tainly be able to make a fine history of this.

My Essays are going through the press, and should
be out in January or February. — Ever affectionate son»

R. L S.

To Edmund Gossb

The suggestions contained in the following letters to Mr. Gosse
refer to the collection of English Odes which that gentleman was then
engaged in editing (Kegan Paul, 1881).

H6TEL Bei.vedere, Davos-Platz [Dec. 6, 1880].
MY DEAR WEG, — I have many letters that I ought to
write in preference to this; but a duty to letters and to

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1880 you prevails over any private consideration. You are
' ^ going to collect odes ; I could not wish a better man to
do so; but I tremble lest you should commit two sins
of omission. You will not, I am sure, be so far left to
yourself as to give us no more of Dryden than the hack-
neyed St. Cecilia; I know you will give us some others
of those surprising masterpieces where there is more
sustained eloquence and harmony of English numbers
than in all that has been written since; there is a ma-
chine about a poetical young lady, and another about
either Charles or James, I know not which ; and they
are both indescribably fine. (Is Marvell's Horatian Ode
good enough ? I half think so.) But my great point
is a fear that you are one of those who are unjust to our
old Tennyson's Duke of Wellington. I have just been
talking it over with Symonds; and we agreed that
whether for its metrical effects, for its brief, plain, stir-
ring words of portraiture, as — he " that never lost an
English gun," or — the soldier salute; or for the heroic
apostrophe to Nelson, that ode has never been sur-
passed in any tongue or time. Grant me the Duke, O
Weg! I suppose you must not put in yours about the
warship; you will have to admit worse ones, how-
ever.— Ever yours, R. L S.

To Edmund Gosse

[HAtel Belvedere], Davos, Dec. /p, t88o.
This letter is a report of a long sederunt, also steterunt,
in small committee at Davos-Platz, Dec. 15, i88a
Its results are unhesitatingly shot at your head«
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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

MY DEAR WEG,— We both insist on the Duke of Wei- i8ao
lington. Really it cannot be left out. Symonds said ^' ^
you would cover yourself with shame, and I add, your
friends with confusion, if you leave it out. Really, you
know it is the only thing you have, since Dryden, where
that irregular odic, odal, odous (?) verse is used with
mastery and sense. And it 's one of our few English
blood-boilers.

(2) Byron: if anything: Prometheus.

(3) Shelley, (i) The world's great age from
Hettas; we are both dead on. After that you have, of
course. The West Wind \hmg. But we think (i) would
maybe be enough ; no more than two anyway.

(4) Herrick. Meddowes and Come, my Co^
rinna. After that Mr. Wiches: two anyway.

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

(6) Milton. Time and the Solemn Music. We
both agree we would rather go without L Allegro and
II Penseroso than these; for the reason that these are
not so well known to the brutish herd.

(7) Is Tbe Royal George an ode, or only an
elegy ? It 's so good.

(8) We leave Campbell to you.

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

(10) Qyite right about Dryden. 1 had a han-
kering after Tbrenodia Augustalis; but I find it Jong and
with very prosaic holes: though, O! what fine stuff
between whiles.

(11) Right with Collins.

(12) Rightabout Pope's Ode. But what can

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSOK

you give ? Tbe Dying Cbristian ? or one of his inimita-
ble courtesies ? These last are fairly odes, by the Horatian
model, just as my dear Meddowes is an ode in the name
and for the sake of Bandusia.

(13) Whatever you do, you '11 give us the
Greek yase.

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

We will have the Duke of Wellington by God. Pro
Symonds and Stevenson. R* L S.

To C W. Stoddard

The prospect here afluded to of a cheap edition of the little travel
books did not get realised. The volume of essays in the printer^
hands was yirginihus Piurisqui, I do not Icnow what were the
pages in broad Scotch copied by way of enclosure.

H6TEL Belvedere, Davos- Platz, SwrrzERLAND
[December, 1880].

DEAR CHARLES WARREN STODDARD, — Many thankS tO

you for the letter and the photograph. Will you think
it mean if I ask you to wait till there appears a prom-
ised cheap edition ? Possibly the canny Scot does feel
pleasure in the superior cheapness ; but the true reason
is this, that I think to put a few words, by way of
notes, to each book in its new form, because that will
be the Standard Edition, without which no g.'s I.^ will
be complete. The edition, briefly, sine qua nan. Be*

^ Gentleman's library,
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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

fore that, I shall hope to send you my essays, which i^^
are in the printer's hands. I look to get yours soon. ^' ^
I am sorry to hear that the Custom House has proved
fallible, like all other human houses and customs. Life
consists of that sort of business, and I fear that there is
a class of man, of which you offer no inapt type,
doomed to a kind of mild, general disappointment
through life. I do not believe that a man is the more
unhappy for that Disappointment, except with one's
self, is not a very capital affair; and the sham beati-
tude, *' Blessed is he that expecteth little," one of
the truest and, in a sense, the most Christlike things in
literature.

Alongside of you, 1 have been all my days a red can-
non ball of dissipated effort; here I am by the heels in
this Alpine valley, with just so much of a prospect of
future restoration as shall make my present caged estate
easily tolerable to me — shall or should, I would not
swear to the word before the trial 's done. I miss all my
objects in the meantime; and, thank God, I have enough
of my old, and maybe somewhat base, philosophy to
keep me on a good understanding with myself and
Providence.

The mere extent of a man's travels has in it some-
thing consolatory. That he should have left friends
and enemies in many different and distant quarters gives
a sort of earthly dignity to his existence. And I think
the better of myself for the belief that I have left some
in California interested in me and my successes. Let
me assure you, you who have made friends already
among such various and distant races, that there is a
certain phthisical Scot who will always be pleased to

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSOK

%98o hear good news of you, and would be better pleased

^' ^ by nothing than to learn that you had thrown off your

present incubus, largely consisting of letters, I believe,

and had sailed into some square work by way of

change.

And by way of change in itself, let me copy on the
other pages some broad Scotch I wrote for you when I
was ill last spring in Oakland. It is no muckle worth :
but ye should na look a gien horse in the moo'. — Yours
ever, R. L Stevenson.

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

The verses, here mentioned, to John Brown (the admired author of
Rob and bis Frunds) were meant as a reply to a letter of congratula-
tion on ^n Inland yoyagi, received from him the year before. They
are printed in Underwoods, p. 166.

December 2/, t88o. Davos.
MY DEAR PEOPLE, — I do not Understand these re*
proaches. The letters come between seven and nine
in the evening; and every one about the books was
answered that same night, and the answer left Davos
by seven o'clock next morning. Perhaps the snow de-
layed them; if so, 't is a good hint to you not to be un-
easy at apparent silences. There is no hurry about my
Other's notes; I shall not be writing anything till I
get home again, I believe. Only 1 want to be able to
keep reading ad hoc all winter, as it seems about all I
shall be fit for. About John Brown, I have been break-
ing my heart to finish a Scotch poem to him. Some

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ALPINE Winters akd highland summers

of it is not really bad, but the rest will not come, and I iSSo
mean to get it right before I do anything else. ^' ^

The bazaar is over, ;^i6o gained, and everybody's
health lost: altogether, 1 never had a more uncomfor-
table time ; apply to Fanny for further details of the dis-
comfort

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

Thanks for your notes; that fishery question will
come in, as you notice, in the Highland Book, as well
as under the Union; it is very important I hear no
word of Hugh Miller's Evictions; I count on that
What you say about the old and new Statistical is odd.
It seems to me very much as if I were gingerly embark-
ing on a History of Modern Scotland. Probably TuUoch
will never carry it out And, you see, once I have studied
and written these two vols.. The Transformation of
the Scottish Highlands and Scotland and the Union, i
shall have a good ground to go upon. The effect on
my mind of what I have read has been to awaken a
livelier sympathy for the Irish; although they never
had the remarkable virtues, I fear they have suffered
many of the injustices, of the Scottish Highlanders.
Ruedi has seen me this morning; he says the disease is
at a standstill, and I am to profit by it to take more
exercise. Altogether, he seemed quite hopeful and
pleased. — I am your ever affectionate son, R. L. S.

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1880

To Sidney Colvin

[H6tel Belvedere, Davos, Christmas, 1880.]
MY dear colvin, — Thanks for yours; I waited, as I
said I would. I now expect no answer from you, re-
garding you as a mere dumb cock-shy, or a target, at
which we fire our arrows diligently all day long, with
no anticipation it will bring them back to us. We are
both sadly mortified you are not coming, but health
comes first; alas, that man should be so crazy 1 What
fun we could have, if we were all well, what work we
could do, what a happy place we could make it for
each other! If I were able to do what I want; but
then I am not, and may leave that vein.

No. I do not think I shall require to know the
Gaelic; few things are written in that language, or
ever were; if you come to that, the number of those
who could write, or even read it, through almost all
my period, must, by all accounts, have been incredibly
smalL Of course, until the book is done, I must live
as much as possible in the Highlands, and that suits my
book as to health. It is a most interesting and sad
story, and from the '45 it is all to be written for the
first time. This, of course, will cause me a far greater
difficulty about authorities; but I have already learned
much, and where to look for more. One pleasant
feature is the vast number of delightful writers I shall
have to deal with: Burt, Johnson, Boswell, Mrs.
Grant of Laggan, Scott. There will be .interesting
sections on the Ossianic controversy and the growth
of the taste for Highland scenery. I have to touch

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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

upon Rob Roy, Rora Macdonald, the strange story of J1880
Lady Grange, the beautiful story of the tenants on the
Forfeited Estates, and the odd, inhuman problem of
the great evictions. The religious conditions are wild,
unknown, very surprising. And three out of my five
parts remain hitherto entirely unwritten. Smack I—
Yours ever, R. L S

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

Cbristmas Sermon

[HAtel Belvedere, Davos, December 26, 1880.]
MY DEAR MOTHER, — I was Very tired yesterday and
could not write; tobogganed so furiously all morning;
we had a delightful day, crowned by an incredible
dinner — more courses than 1 have fingers on my
hands. Your letter arrived duly at night, and I thank
you for it as I should. You need not suppose I am
at all insensible to my father's extraordinary kindness
about this book; he is a brick; I vote for him freely.

. . . The assurance you speak of is what we all ought
to have, and might have, and should not consent to live
without. That people do not have it more than they do
is, I believe, because persons speak so much in large-^
drawn, theological similitudes, and won't say out what
they mean about life, and man, and God, in fair and square
human language. I wonder if you or my father evet
thought of the obscurities that lie upon human duty
from the negative form in which the Ten Command-
ments are stated, or of how Christ was so continually
substituting affirmations. "Thou shalt not " is but ah

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSOK

1880 example; "Thou shalf'is the law of God. It was
^' ^ this that seems meant in the phrase that " not one jot
nor tittle of the law should pass." But what led me
to the remark is this: A kind of black, angry look goes
with that statement of the law of negatives. * ' To love
one's neighbour as oneself" is certainly much harder,
but states life so much more actively, gladly, and
kindly, that you can begin to see some pleasure in it;
and till you can see pleasure in these hard choices and
bitter necessities, where is there any Good News to
men ? It is much more important to do right than not
to do wrong; further, the one is possible, the other has
always been and will ever be impossible; and the faith-
ful design to do right is accepted by God ; that seems
to me to be the Gospel, and that was how Christ deliv*
ered us from the Law. After people are told that,
surely they might hear more encouraging sermons. To
blow the trumpet for good would seem the Parson's
business ; and since it is not in our own strength, but
by faith and perseverance (no account made of slips),
that we are to run the race, I do not see where they
get the material for their gloomy discourses. Faith is
not to believe the Bible, but to believe in God; if you
believe in God (or, for it 's the same thing, have that
assurance you speak about), where is there any more
room for terror ? There are only three possible atti-
tudes— Optimism, which has gone to smash; Pessi-
mism, which is on the rising hand, and very popular
with many clergymen who seem to think they are
Christians; and this Faith, which is the Gospel.
Once you hold the last, it is your business (i) to find
out what is right in any given case, and (2) to try to

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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

do it; if you fail in the last, that is by commissioiit >8So
Christ tells you to hope; if you fail in the first, that ""' ^
is by omission, his picture of the last day gives you
but a black lookout The whole necessary morality
is kindness; and it should spring, of itself, from the
one fundamental doctrine, Faith. If you are sure that
God, in the long run, means kindness by you, you
should be happy; and if happy, surely you should be
kind.

I beg your pardon for this long discourse; it is not
all right, of course, but I am sure there is something in
it. One thing I have not got clearly; that about the
omission and the commission ; but there is truth some-
where about it, and I have no time to clear it just now.
Do you know, you have had about a CornbUl page of
sermon ? It is, however, true.

Lloyd heard with dismay Fanny was not going to
give me a present; so F. and I had to go and buy things
for ourselves, and go through a representation of surprise
when they were presented next morning. It gave us
both quite a Santa Claus feeling on Xmas Eve to see
him so excited and hopeful; 1 enjoyed it hugely.—
Your affectionate son,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

I did go out to my (Kend after all in January; found him apparently
little improved in health, and depressed by a sad turn of destiny which
had brought out to the same place, at the same time, his old friend of
Suffolk and Edinburgh days to watch beside the deathbed of her son—
the youth commemorated in the verses headed F. A, 5., In Mimoriam^

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LETTERS OF R, L STEVENSON

1881 afterwards published in Underwoods. The following tetter lefers to a
BT. 51 copy Qf Carlyle's Riminiscinen which I had sent out to him aome time
after I came bade to England.

[HAtel Belvedere, Davos, Springs t88tJ\
MY DEAR COLVIN, — My health is not just what it should
be; I have lost weight, pulse, respiration, etc., and gained
nothing in the way of my old bellows. But these last
few days, with tonic, cod-liver oil, better wine (there
is some better now), and perpetual beef-tea, I think I
have progressed. To say truth, I have been here a lit-
tle over long. I was reckoning up, and since I have
known you, already quite a while, I have not, I believe,
remained so long fn any one place as here in Davos.
That tells on my old gipsy nature; like a violin hung
up, I begin to lose what music there was in me; and
with the music, 1 do not know what besides, or do not
know what to call it, but something radically part of
life, a rhythm, perhaps, in one's old and so brutally over-
ridden nerves, or perhaps a kind of variety of blood that
the heart has come to look for.

1 purposely knocked myself off first As to F. A. S.,
I believe I am no sound authority; I alternate between
a stiff disregard and a kind of horror. In neither mood
can a man judge at alL I know the thing to be terri-
bly perilous, 1 fear it to be now altogether hopeless.
Luck has failed; the weather has not been favourable;
and in her true heart, the mother hopes no more. But
—well, I feel a great deal, that I either cannot or will
not say, as you well know, it has helped to make me
more consdous of the wolverine on my own shoulders,
and that also makes me a poor judge and poor adviser.
Perhaps, if we were all marched out in a row, and a

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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

piece of platoon firing to the drums performed, it would »88t
be well for us; although, 1 suppose— and yet 1 wonder I ^* ^'
—so ill for the poor mother and for the dear wife. But
you can see this makes me morbid. Sufficit; explicit

You are right about the Carlyle book; F. and 1 are in
a world not ours; but pardon me, as far as sending on
goes, we take another view : the first volume, d la bonne
beurel but not — never — the second. Two hours of
hysterics can be no good matter for a sick-nurse, and
the strange, hard, old being in so lamentable and yet
human a desolation— crying out like a burnt child, and
yet always wisely and beautifully — how can that end»
as a piece of reading, even to the strong — but on the
brink of the most cruel kind of weeping ? 1 observe
the old man's style is stronger on me than ever it was,
and by rights, too, since I have just laid down his most
attaching book. God rest the baith o' them ! But even
if they do not meet again, how we should all be strength-
ened to be kind, and not only in act, in speech also, that
so much more important part See what this apostle
of silence most regrets, not speaking out his heart

1 was struck as you were by the admirable, sudden,
clear sunshine upon Southey — even on his works. Sy-
monds, to whom I repeated it, remarked at once, a man
who was thus respected by both Carlyle and Landor
must have had more in him than we can trace. So I
feel with true humility.

It was to save my brain that Symonds proposed re-
viewing. He and, it appears, Leslie Stephen fear a lit-
tle some eclipse; I am not quite without sharing the
fear. 1 know my own languor as no one else does; it
is a dead down-draught, a heavy fardel. Yet if 1 could

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1^1 shake off the wolverine aforesaid, and his fangs are
'^^ " lighter, though perhaps I feel them more, I believe I
could be myself again a while. I have not written any
letter for a great time; none saying what I feel, since
you were here, 1 fancy. Be duly obliged for it, and
take my most earnest thanks not only for the books
but for your letter. — Your affectionate R. L S.

The eflfectof reading this on Fanny shows me I must
tell you 1 am very happy, peaceful, and jolly, except for
questions of work and the states of other people.

Woggin sends his love.

To H. F. Brown

A dose intimate of J. A. Symonds, and frequent visitor at Davos,
was Mr. Horatio F. Brown, author of Uff on its Lagoons, etc He
took warmly, as did every one, to Stevenson. The following two
notes are from a copy of Penn's Fruits of Solitude^ printed at Phila-
delphia, which Stevenson sent him as a gift this winter after his return
to Venice.

Davos, i88i.
MY DEAR BROWN,— Here it is, with the mark of a San
Francisco bouquiniste. And if ever in all my " human
conduct" 1 have done a better thing to any fellow
creature than handing on to you this sweet, dignified,
and wholesome book, 1 know I shall hear of it on the
last day. To write a book like this were impossible;
at least one can hand it on— with a wrench— one to
another. My wife cries out and my own heart mis-
gives me, but still here it is. I could scarcely better
prove myself yours affectionately,

R. L Stevenson.

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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

1881

MT. 31

To H. F. Brown

Davos, 188!.
MY DEAR BROWN,— I hopc, if you get thus far, you will
know what an invaluable present I have made you«
Even the copy was dear to me, printed in the colony
that Penn established, and carried in my pocket all
about the San Francisco streets, read in street cars and
ferry-boats, when I was sick unto death, and found in
all times and places a peaceful and sweet companion.
But I hope, when you shall have reached this note, my
gift will not have been in vain ; for while just now we
are so busy and intelligent, there is not the man living,
no, nor recently dead, that could put, with so lovely a
spirit, so much honest, kind wisdom into words.

R.L&

To H. F. Brown

The following experiment in English alcaics was suggested by con-
versations with Mr. Brown and J. A. Symonds on metrical forms,
followed by the despatch of some translations from old Venetian boat*
songs by the former after his return to Venice. There is evidently
something wrong with stanza ii., line 3, but I print it as written.

[HAtel Belvedere, Davos, Spring, 1881.]
MY DEAR BROWN,— Nine years I have conded them.

Brave lads in olden musical centuries
Sang, night by night, adorable choruses.
Sat late by alehouse doors in April
Chaunting in joy as the moon was rising:
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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON
1881 Moon-seen and merry, under the trellises,

mr, }i

Flush-faced they played with old polysyllables;
Spring scents inspired, old wine diluted,

Love and Apollo were there to chorus.
•
Now these, the songs, remain to eternity.
Those, only those, the bountiful choristers

Gone— those are gone, those unremembered
Sleep and are silent in earth for ever.

So man himself appears and evanishes,

So smiles and goes; as wanderers halting at

Some green-embowered house, play their music,
Play and are gone on the windy highway;

Yet dwells the strain enshrined in the memory

Long after they departed eternally,

Forth-faring tow'rd far mountain summits*
Cities of men on the sounding Ocean.

Youth sang the song in years immemorial;

Brave chanticleer, he sang and was beautiful;
Bird-haunted, green tree-tops in springtime
Heard and were pleased by the voice of singing;

Youth goes, and leaves behind him a prodigy-
Songs sent by thee afar from Venetian

Sea-grey lagunes, sea-paven highways,

Dear to me here in my Alpine exile.

Please, my dear Brown, forgive my horrid delay.
Symonds overworked and knocked up. 1 off my
sleep; my wife gone to Paris. Weather lovely.—
Yours ever, Robert Louis Stevenson.

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ALPINE WIKTEIIS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

Monte Generoso in May; here, I think, till the end iS^i
of April; write again, to prove you are forgiving. ^' ^'

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

Monte Generoso was given up; and on the way home to Scotland
Stevenson had stopped for a while at Fontainebleau, and then in
Paris; whence, finding himself unpleasantly affected by the climate,
he presently took refuge at St. Germain.

HdTEL Du Pa VILLON Henri IV.,
St. Germain-en-Laye, Sunday, May ist, i88i.
MY dear people,— a Week in Paris reduced me to
the limpness and lack of appetite peculiar to a kid glove,
and gave Fanny a jumping sore throat. It 's my belief
there is death in the kettle there; a pestilence or the
like. We came out here, pitched on the Star and
Garter (they call it Somebody's pavilion), found the
place a bed of lilacs and nightingales (first time I ever
heard one), and also of a bird called the piasseur, cheer-
fulest of sylvan creatures, an ideal comic opera in itself.
''Come along, what fun, here 's Pan in the next glade
at picnic, and this-yer 's Arcadia, and it 's awful fun,
and I 've had a glass, I will not deny, but not to see it
on me," that is his meaning as near as I can gather.
Well, the place (forest of beeches all new-fledged,
grass like velvet, fleets of hyacinth) pleased us and
did us good. We tried all ways to And a cheaper place,
but could find nothing safe; cold, damp, brick-floored
rooms and sich; we could not leave Paris till your
seven days' sight on draft expired; we dared not go
back to be miasmatised in these homes of putridity;

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

i88i SO here we are till Tuesday in the Star and Garter.
My throat is quite cured, appetite and strength on the
mend. Fanny seems also picking up.

If we are to come to Scotland, I will have fir-trees,
and I want a bum, the firs for my physical, the water
for my moral health.— Ever affectionate son,

R. LS.

To Edmund Gossb

At Pitlochry, Stevenson was for some weeks in good health
and working order. The inquiries about the later life of Jean
Cavalier, the Protestant leader in the C^vennes, refer to a literary
scheme, whether of romance or history I forget, which had been in
his mind ever since the Travels with a Donkey.

Pitlochry, Perthshire, June 6, 1881.
MY DEAR WEG,— Here I am in my native land, being
gently blown and hailed upon, and sitting nearer and
nearer to the fire. A cottage near a moor is soon to
receive our human forms; it is also near a bum to
which Professor Blackie (no lessl) has written some
verses in his hot old age, and near a farm from whence
we shall draw cream and fatness. Should I be moved
to join Blackie, I shall go upon my knees and pray
hard against temptation ; although, since the new Ver-
sion, I do not know the proper form of words. The
swollen, childish, and pedantic vanity that moved the
said revisers to put ** bring" for " lead," is a sort of
literary fault that calls for an eternal hell; it may be
quite a small place, a star of the least magnitude, and

shabbily furnished; there shall , , the revisers

of the Bible and other absolutely loathsome iiteraiy

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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

lepers* dwell among broken pens, bad, graundy ink 1881
and ruled blotting-paper made in France — all eagerly ^' '*
burning to write, and all inflicted with incurable aphasia.
I should not have thought upon that torture had 1 not
suffered it in moderation myself, but it is too horrid
even for a hell; let 's let 'em off with an eternal tooth-
ache.

All this talk is partly to persuade you that I write to
you out of good feeling only, which is not the case.
I am a beggar: ask Dobson, Saintsbury, yourself, and
any other of these cheeses who know something of the
eighteenth century, what became of Jean Cavalier be-
tween his coming to England and his death in 1740.
Is anything interesting known about him? Whom
did he marry ? The happy French, smilingly follow-
ing one another in a long procession headed by the
loud and empty Napoleon Peyrat, say Olympe Dunoyer,
Voltaire's old flame. Vacquerie even thinks that they
were rivals, and is very French and very literary and
very silly in his comments. Now I may almost say
it consists with my knowledge that all this has not
a shadow to rest upon. It is very odd and very an-
noying; I have splendid materials for Cavalier till
becomes to my own country; and there, though he
continues to advance in the service, he becomes en-
tirely invisible to me. Any information about him will
be greatly welcome: I may mention that I know as
much as I desire about the other prophets, Marion,
Fage, Cavalier (de Sonne), my Cavalier's cousin, the
unhappy Lions, and the idiotic Mr. Lacy; so if any
erudite starts upon that track, you may choke him off.
If you can fmd aught for me, or if you will but try,

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1881 count on my undying gratitude. Lang's "Library" is
'"'' ^* very pleasant reading. My book wUl reach you soon,
for I write about it to-day.— Yours ever,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

Woik on a series of tales of terror, or, as he called them, ''crawU
ers/' planned in collaboration with his wife, soon superseded for the
moment other literary interests in his mind.

KiNNAiRD Cottage, Pitlochry, Perthshire,
June, 1881.
MY DEAR COLVIN,— Tbc Black Man and Otber Tales.

The Black Man:

I. Thrawn Janet

II. The Devil on Cramond Sands.
The Shadow on the Bed.

The Body Snatchers.

The Case Bottle.

The King's Horn.

The Actor's Wife.

The Wreck of the Susanna.

This is the new work on which I am engaged with
Fanny; they are all supernatural. " Thrawn Janet "
is off to Stephen, but as it is all in Scotch he cannot
take it, I know. It was so good, I could not help send-
ing it My health improves. We have a lovely spot
here: a little green glen with a bum, a wonderful bum,
gold and green and snow-white, singing loud and low

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in different steps of its career, now pouring over minia- «88i
ture crags, now fretting itself to death in a maze of ""* ^^
rocky stairs and pots; never was so sweet a little river.
Behind, great purple moorlands reaching to Ben Vrackie,
Hunger lives here, alone with larks and sheep. Sweet
spot, sweet spot

Write me a word about Bob's professoriate and
Landor, and what you think of The Black Man. The
tales are all ghastly. " Thrawn Janet " frightened me
to death. There will maybe be another— "The Dead
Man's Letter." I believe I shall recover; and I am, in
this blessed hope, yours exuberantly, R. L S.

To Professor i^NEAS Mackay

This and the next four or five letters refer to the candidature of
R. L S. for the Edinburgh Chair.

KiNNAiRD Cottage, Pitlochry,
Wednesday, June 21, 1881.
MY DEAR MACKAY,— What is this 1 hear ?— that you are
retiring from your chair. It is not, I hope, from ill-
health ?

But if you are retiring, may I ask if you have prom-
ised your support to any successor ? I have a great
mind to try. The summer session would suit me; the
chair would suit me— if only 1 would suit it; 1 certainly
should work it hard: that I can promise. I only wish
it were a few years from now, when I hope to have
something more substantial to show for myself. Up
to the present time, all that 1 have published, even bor-

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1881 dering on history* has been in an occasional form, and
*'' ^" I fear this is much against me.

Please let me hear a word in answer, and believe me,
yours very sincerely, Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Professor i^NEAS Mackay

KiNNAiRD Cottage, Pitlochry, Perthshire
[June, 1881].

MY DEAR MACKAY,— Thank you very much for your
kind letter, and still more for your good opinion. You
are not the only one who has regretted my absence from
your lectures; but you were to me, then, only a part of
a mangle through which 1 was being slowly and unwill-
ingly dragged— part of a course which I had not chosen
^part, in a word, of an organised boredom.

I am glad to have your reasons for giving up tfie chair;
they are partly pleasant, and partly honourable to you.
And 1 think one may say that every man who publicly
declines a plurality of offices makes it perceptibly more
difficult for the next man to accept them.

Every one tells me that 1 come too late upon the field,
every one being pledged, which, seeing it is yet too early
for any one to come upon the field, I must regard as a
polite evasion. Yet all advise me to stand, as it might
serve me against the next vacancy. So stand I shall,
unless things are changed. As it is, with my health this
summer class is a great attraction ; it is perhaps the only
hope I may have of a permanent income. I had sup-
posed the needs of the chair might be met by choosing
every year some period of history in which questions of

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Constitutional Law were involved; but this is to look 1881
too far forward. ""• '*

I understand (isf) that no overt steps can be taken
till your resignation is accepted; {2nd) that in the
meantime I may, without offence, mention my design
to stand.

If I am mistaken about these, please correct me, as I
do not wish to appear where I should not.

Again thanking you very heartily for your coals of
fire, I remain yours very sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Edmund Gossb

KiNNAiRD Cottage, PiruoaiKYf June 24, !88t.

MY dear gosse,— I wonder if I misdirected my last
to you. I begin to fear it I hope, however, this will
go right I am in act to do a mad thing— to stand for
the Edinburgh Chair of History; it is elected for by the
advocates, quorum pars; I am told that 1 am too late
this year; but advised on all hands to go on, as it is
likely soon to be once more vacant; and I shall have
done myself good for the next time. Now, if I
got the thing (which I cannot, it appears), I believe,
in spite of all my imperfections, I could be decently
effectual. If you cai\ think so also, do put it in a
testimonial

Heavens! Je me sauve, I have something else to say
to you, but after that (which is not a joke) I shall keep
It for another shoot— Yours testimonially,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1881 I surely need not add, dear lad, that if you don't fed
like it, you will only have to pacify me by a long letter
on general subjects, when I shall hasten to respond in
recompense for my assault upon the postal highway.

To Edmund Gossb

KiNNAiRD Cottage, Pitlochry {July, 1881].

MY DEAR WEG,— Many thanks for the testimonial;
many thanks for your blind, wondering letter; many
wishes, lastly, for your swift recovery. Insomnia is
the opposite pole from my complaint; which brings
with it a nervous lethargy, an unkind, unwholesome,
and ungentle somnolence, fruitful in heavy heads and
heavy eyes at morning. You cannot sleep; well, I can
best explain my state thus: I cannot wake. Sleep,
like the lees of a posset, lingers all day, lead-heavy, in
my knees and ankles. Weight on the shoulders, torpor
on the brain. And there is more than too much of
that from an ungrateful hound who is now enjoying
his first decently competent and peaceful weeks for
close upon two years; happy in a big brown moor
behind him, and an incomparable bum by his side;
happy, above all, in some work — for at last I am at
work with that appetite and confidence that alone
makes work supportable.

1 told you 1 had something else to say. I am very
tedious — it is another request. In August and a good
part of September we shall be in Braemar, in a house
with some accommodation. Now Braemar is a place

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patronised by the royalty of the Sister Kingdoms — "88i
Victoria and the Cairngorms, sir, honouring that coun- ""' ^'
try-side by their conjunct presence. This seems to
me the spot for A Bard. Now can you come to see
us for a little while ? I can promise you, you must
like my father, because you are a human being; you
ought to like Braemar, because of your avocation;
and you ought to like me, because I like you; and
again, you must like my wife, because she likes cats;
and as fpr my mother — well, come and see, what do
you think ? that is best. Mrs. Gosse, my wife tells
me, will have other fish to fry; and to be plain, I
should not like to ask her till 1 had seen the house.
But a lone man 1 know we shall be equal to. Qu'en
dis4ui l^iens.-^ Yours, R. L. S.

To P. G. Hamerton

KwNAiRD Cottage, Pitlochry [July, 1881].

MY DEAR MR. HAMMERTON, — (There goes the second
M; it is a certainty.) Thank you for your prompt and
kind answer, little as 1 deserved it, though 1 hope to
show you I was less undeserving than 1 seemed. But
just might I delete two words in your testimonial ?
The two words "and legal" were unfortunately
winged by chance against my weakest spot, and
would go far to damn me.

It was not my bliss that 1 was interested in when I
was married ; it was a sort of marriage in extremis;
and if I am where I am, it is thanks to the care of that

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

i88' lady who married me when I was a mere complication
^' ^ of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of
mortality than a bridegroom.

I had a fair experience of that kind of illness when
all the women (God bless them !) turn round upon the
streets and look after you with a look that is only too
kind not to be cruel. I have had nearly two years of
more or less prostration. I have done no work what-
ever since the February before last until quite of late.
To be precise, until the beginning of last month, ex-
actly two essays. All last winter 1 was at Davos; and
indeed I am home here just now against the doctor's
orders, and must soon be back again to that unkindly
haunt " upon the mountains visitant " — there goes no
angel there but the angel of death. ^ The deaths of
last winter are still sore spots to me. ... So, you see,
I am not very likely to go on a ** wild expedition," cis-
Stygian at least. The truth is, I am scarce justified in
standing for the chair, though I hope you will not men-
tion this ; and yet my health is one of my reasons, for
the class is in summer.

I hope this statement of my case will make my long
neglect appear less unkind. It was certainly not because
1 ever forgot you, or your unwonted kindness; and it
was not because I was in any sense rioting in pleasures.

1 am glad to hear the catamaran is on her legs again;
you have my warmest wishes for a good cruise down
the Sadne; and yet there comes some envy to that
wish, for when shall I go cruising? Here a sheer
hulk, alas! lies R. L. S. But I will continue to hope

1 The reference is of course to Wordsworth's Song at ih$ Feast oj
Brougham Castle.

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for a better time, canoes that will sail better to the '^'
wind, and a river grander than the Sadne.

I heard, by the way, in a letter of counsel from a
well-wisher, oqe reason of my town's absurdity about
the chair of Art: 1 fear it is characteristic of her man-
ners. It was because you did not call upon the electors I

Will you remember me to Mrs. Hamerton and your
son ? — And believe me, etc., etc.,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

KiNNAiRD Cottage, Pitlochry [July, i88i].

MY DEAR colvin,— I do believe 1 am better, mind and
body; I am tired just now, for 1 have just been up the
burn with Wogg, daily growing better and boo'fler;
so do not judge my state by my style in this. I am
working steady, four Cornbill pages scrolled every day,
besides the correspondence about this chair, which is
heavy in itself. My first story, " Thrawn Janet," all in
Scotch, is accepted by Stephen; my second, "The
Body Snatchers," is laid aside in a justifiable disgust, the
tale being horrid; my third, "The Merry Men," 1 am
more than half through, and think real well of. It is a
fantastic sonata about the sea and wrecks; and 1 like it
much above all my other attempts at story-telling; I
think it is strange; if ever I shall make a hit, I have the
line now, as 1 believe.

Fanny has finished one of hers, " The Shadow on the
Bed," and is now hammering at a second, for which
we have " no name" as yet — not by Wilkie Collins.

Tales for Winter Nights. Yes, that, I think, we
will call the lot of them when republished.

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LETTERS OF R. t. STEVENSON

1861 Why have you not sent me a testimonial? Every-
^' '* body else but you has responded, and Symonds, but
I 'm afraid he 's ill. Do think, too, if anybody else
would write me a testimonial. I am told quantity
goes far. I have good ones from Rev. Professor Camp-
bell, Professor Meiklejohn, Leslie Stephen, Lang, Gosse,
and a very shaky one from Hamerton.

Grant is an elector, so can't, but has written me
kindly. From TuUoch I have not yet heard. Do help
me with suggestions. This old chair, with its jC^^o
and its light work, would make me.

It looks as if we should take eater's chalet^ after all;
but O ! to go back to that place, it seems cruel. I have
not yet received the Landor; but it may be at home,
detained by my mother, who returns to-morrow.

Believe me, dear Colvin, ever yours, R. L S.

Yours came; the class is in summer; many thanks
for the testimonial, it is bully; arrived along with it
another from Symonds, also bully; he is ill, but not
lungs, thank God — fever got in Italy. We have taken
Cater's chalet; so we are now the aristo's of the valley.
There is no hope for me, but if there were, ypu would
hear sweetness and light streaming from my lips.

'• The Merry Men": —

Chap. I. Eilean Aros.

II. What the Wreck had brought to

Aros.
in. Past and Present in Sandag Bay.

IV. The Gale.

V. A Man out of the Sea.

1 At Davos-Plati.

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To W. E. Henley

KiNNAiRD Cottage, Pitlochry, July, i88i.

MY DEAR HENLEY, — I hope, then, to have a visit from
you. If before August, here; if later, at Braemar.
Tupe!

And now, mon ban, I must babble about ** The Merry
Men," my favourite work. It is a fantastic sonata about
the sea and wrecks. Chapter i. "Eilean Aros" — the
island, the roost, the "merry men," the three people
there living — sea superstitions. Chapter n. "What
the Wreck had brought to Aros." Eh, boy ? what had
it ? Silver and clocks and brocades, and what a con-
science, what a mad brain! Chapter m. "Past and
Present in Sandag Bay" — the new wreck and the old
— so old — the Armada treasure-ship, Sant"* Trini** —
the grave in the heather — strangers there. Chapter iv.
"The Gale" — the doomed ship — the storm — the
drunken madman on the head — cries in the night.
Chapter v. "A Man out of the Sea." But 1 must not
breathe to you my plot. It is, I fancy, my first real
shoot at a story; an odd thing, sir, but, I believe, my
own, though there is a little of Scott's Pirate irt it, as
how should there not ? He had the root of romance in
such places. Aros is Earraid, where 1 lived lang syne;
the Ross ofGrisapol is the Ross of Mull; Ben Ryan, Ben
More. I have written to the middle of Chapter iv.
Like enough, when it is finished 1 shall discard all chap-
terings; for the thing is written straight through. It
must, unhappily, be rewritten — too well written not
to be.

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

i88i^ The chair is only three months in summer; that is
why I try for it. If 1 get it, which I shall not, I should
be independent at once. Sweet thought I liked your
Byron well ; your Berlioz better. No one would remark
these cuts ; even I, who was looking for it, knew it not
at all to be a torso. The paper strengthens me in my
recommendation to you to follow Colvin's hint. Give
us an 1850; you will do it well, and the subject smiles
widely on the world: —

\Zy>: A Chapter of Ariistic History, by William Er-
nest Henley (or of Social and Artistic History, as the
thing might grow to you). Sir, you might be in the
Athenaeum yet with that; and, believe me, you might
and would be far better, the author of a readable book.
— Yours ever, R. L. S

The following names have been invented for Wogg
by his dear papa; —
Grunty-pig (when he is scratched),
Rose-mouth (when he comes flying up with his rose-
leaf tongue depending), and
Hoofen-boots (when he has had his foots wet).
How would Tales for ]Vinter Nights do ?

To W. E. Henley

The spell of good health did not last long, and with a break of the
weather came a return of catarrhal troubles and haemorrhage. This let-
ter answers some criticisms made by his correspondent on " The Merry
Men " as drafted in ms.

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Pitlochry, if you please, [August] 1881. »88i
DEAR HENLEY, — To answcF a point or two. First, the ^' ^'
Spanish ship was sloop-rigged and clumsy, because she
was fitted out by some private adventurers, not over
wealthy, and glad to take what they could get. Is
that not right ? Tell me if you think not. That, at
least, was how I meant it As for the boat-cloaks, I am
afraid they are, as you say, false imagination ; but I love
the name, nature, and being of them so dearly, that I
feel as if 1 would almost rather ruin a story than omit
the reference. The proudest moments of my life have
been passed in the stern-sheets of a boat with that ro-
mantic garment over my shoulders. This, without
prejudice to one glorious day when standing upon some
water stairs at Lerwick 1 signalled with my pocket-
handkerchief for a boat to come ashore for me. I was
then aged fifteen or sixteen ; conceive my glory.

Several of the phrases you object to are proper nauti-
cal or long-shore phrases, and therefore, I think, not
out of place in this long-shore story. As for the two
members which you thought at first so ill-united ; I
confess they seem perfectly so to me. 1 have chosen
to sacrifice a long-projected story of adventure because
the sentiment of that is identical with the sentiment of
"My uncle." My uncle himself is not the story as I
see it, only the leading episode of that story. It 's
really a story of wrecks, as they appear to the dweller
on the coast. It 's a view of the sea. Goodness knows
when I shall be able to rewrite; I must first get over
this copper-headed cold. R. L S.

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1881

To Sidney Colvim

The Teference to Ltndor in the following b to a volume of mine in
Mr. Moriey*s series of *' English Men of Letters.** This and the next
two or three years were those of the Fenian dynamite outrages at
Qerlcenwell Prison, the Tower of London^ the House of Lx>rds, etc

Pitlochry, August, 1881.
MY DEAR COLVIN, — This is the first letter I have written
this good while. I have had a brutal cold, not perhaps
very wisely treated; lots of blood — for me, I mean. I
was so well, however, before, that I seem to be sailing
through with it splendidly. My appetite never failed;
indeed, as I got worse, it sharpened — a sort of repara-
tory instinct Now I feel in a fair way to get round
soon.

Monday, August {2nd, is it ?). — ^We set out for the
Spital of Glenshee, and reach Braemar on Tuesday.
The Braemar address we cannot learn; it looks as if
••Braemar" were all that was necessary; if particular,
you can address 17 Heriot Row. We shall be delighted
to see you whenever, and as soon as ever, you can
make it possible.

... I hope heartily you will survive me, and do not
doubt it. There are seven or eight people it is no part
of my scheme in life to survive — yet if I could but heal
me of my bellowses, I could have a jolly life — have it,
even now, when I can work and stroll a little, as I have
been doing till this cold. I have so many things to
make life sweet to me, it seems a pity I cannot have

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that Other one thing — health. But though you will 1881
be angry to hear it, I believe, for myself at least, what "" ^'
is is best. I believed it all through my worst days,
and I am not ashamed to profess it now.

Landor has just turned up; but I had read him al-
ready. I like him extremely; I wonder if the "cuts"
were perhaps not advantageous. It seems quite full
enough; but then you know I am a compressionist.

If I am to criticise, it is a little staid ; but the classical
is apt to look so. It is in curious contrast to that inex-
pressive, unplanned wilderness of Forster's; clear, read-
able, precise, and sufficiently human. I see nothing
lost in it, though I could have wished, in my Scotch
capacity, a trifle clearer and fuller exposition of his
moral attitude, which is not quite clear "from here."

He and his tyrannicide! I am in a mad fury about
these explosions. If that is the new world! Damn
O'Donovan Rossa; damn him behind and before, above,
below, and round about; damn, deracinate, and destroy
him, root and branch, self and company, world without
end. Amen. I write that for sport if you like, but I
will pray in earnest, O Lord, if you cannot convert,
kindly delete him !

Stories naturally at — halt Henley has seen one
and approves. I believe it to be good myself, even
real good. He has also seen and approved one of
Fanny's. It will make a good volume. We have
now: —

Thrawn Janet (with Stephen), proof to-day.

The Shadow on the Bed (Fanny's copying).

The Merry Men (scrolled).

The Body Snatchers (scrolled).
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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1881 Ingermis: —

XT. 31

The Travelling Companion.
The Torn Surplice {not final title).
Yours ever, R. L &

To Dr. Alexander Japp

Dr. Japp had written to R. L S. aiticising statements of fact and
opinion in his essay on Thoreau, and expressing the hope that they
might meet and discuss their difTerences. In the interval between
the last letter and this Stevenson with all his family had moved to
Braemar.

The Cottage, Castleton of Braemar,
Sunday, August, 1881.

MY DEAR SIR, — I should long ago have written to
thank you for your kind and frank letter; but in my
state of health papers are apt to get mislaid, and your
letter has been vainly hunted for until this (Sunday)
morning.

I regret I shall not be able to see you in Edinburgh ;
one visit to Edinburgh has already cost me too dear in
that invaluable particular, health ; but if it should be at
all possible for you to push on as far as Braemar, I be-
lieve you would find an attentive listener, and I can
offer you a bed, a drive, and necessary food, etc.

If, however, you should not be able to come thus
far, I can promise you two things: First, I shall reli-
giously revise what 1 have written, and bring out more
clearly the point of view from which I regarded Tho-
reau ; second, 1 shall in the Preface record your objection.

The point of view (and I must ask you not to forget
that any such short paper is essentially only a section

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tbrougb a man) was this: I desired to look at the man i^i
through his books. Thus, for instance, when I men- ^* '*
tioned his return to the pencil-making, I did it only in
passing (perhaps I was wrong), because it seemed to
me not an illustration of his principles, but a brave de-
parture from them. Thousands of such there were, I
do not doubt; still, they might be hardly to my pur-
pose, though, as you say so, some of them would be.

Our difference as to pity I suspect was a logomachy
of my making. No pitiful acts on his part would sur-
prise me; I know he would be more pitiful in practice
than most of the whiners; but the spirit of that practice
would still seem to be unjustly described by the word
pity.

When I try to be measured, I find myself usually
suspected of a sneaking unkindness for my subject; but
you may be sure, sir, I would give up most other things
to be so good a man as Thoreau. Even my knowledge
of him leads me thus far.

Should you find yourself able to push on to Braemar
— it may even be on your way — believe me, your
visit will be most welcome. The weather is cruel, but
the place is, as I dare say you know, the very " wale **
of Scotland — bar Tummelside. — Yours very sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. SmwEix

The Cottage, Castleton of Braemar,
August, i88i.
• • • Well, I have been pretty mean, but I have not
yet got over my cold so completely as to have recov-

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1881 ered much energy. It is really extraordinary that I
^' ^' should have recovered as well as I have in this blight*
ing weather; the wind pipes, the rain comes in squalls,
great black clouds are continually overhead, and it is as
cold as March. The country is delightful, more cannot
be said; it is very beautiful, a perfect joy when we get
a blink of sun to see it in. The Qyeen knows a thing
or two, I perceive; she has picked out the finest habi-
table spot in Britain.

I have done no work, and scarce written a letter for
three weeks, but I think 1 should soon begin again ; my
cough is now very trifling. I eat well, and seem to have
lost but Uttle flesh in the meanwhile. I was wonder-'
fully well before I caught this horrid cold. I never
thought T should have been as well again; I really
enjoyed life and work; and, of course, I now have a
good hope that this may return.

I suppose you heard of our ghost stories. They are
somewhat delayed by my cold and a bad attack of
laziness, embroidery, etc., under which Fanny had been
some time prostrate. It is horrid that we can get no
better weather. I did not get such good accounts of
you as might have been. You must imitate me. I am
now one of the most conscientious people at trying to
get better you ever saw. I have a white hat, it is much
admired; also a plaid, and a heavy stoop; so I take my
walks abroad, witching the world.

Last night I was beaten at chess, and am still grinding
under the blow. — Ever your faithful friend,

R.LS

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To Edmund Gosse

The Cottage (late the late Miss M'Gregor*s),
Castleton of Braemar, August lo, 1881.

MY DEAR GOSSE, — Come OH the 24th, there is a dear
fellow. Everybody else wants to come later, and it will
be a godsend for, sir — Yours sincerely.

You can stay as long as you behave decently, and are
not sick of, sir — Your obedient, humble servant.

We have family worship in the home of, sir — Yours
respectfully.

Braemar is a fine country, but nothing to (what you
will also see) the maps of, sir — Yours in the Lord.

A carriage and two spanking hacks draw up daily at
the hour of two before the house of, sir — Yours truly.

The rain rains and the winds do beat upon the cottage
of the late Miss Macgregor and of, sir— Yours affection-
ately.

It is to be trusted that the weather may improve ere
you know the halls of, sir — Yours emphatically.

All will be glad to welcome you, not excepting, sir— *
Yours ever.

You will now have gathered the lamentable intellect
tual collapse of, sir — Yours indeed.

And nothing remains for me but to sign myself, sir— *
Yours, Robert Louis Stevenson.

N. B. — Each of these clauses has to be read with
extreme glibness, coming down whack upon the " Sir.**
This is very important The fine stylistic inspiration
will else be lost

s»

1861

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

•88i I commit the man who made, the man who sold, and
^* ^' the woman who supplied me with my present excru-
ciating gilt nib to that place where the worm never
dies.

The reference to a deceased Highland lady (tending
as it does to foster unavailing sorrow) may be with
advantage omitted from the address, which would
therefore run — The Cottage, Castleton of Braemar.

To Edmund Gossb

The Cottage, Castleton of Braemar,
August 19, 1881.
If you had an uncle who was a sea captain and went
to the North Pole, you had better bring his outfit l^er--
bum sapientibus. I look towards you.

R. L Stevenson.

To Edmund Gossb

[Braemar], August 19* 1881.

MY dear weg, — I have by an extraordinary drollery
of Fortune sent off to you by this day's post a P. C in-
viting you to appear in sealskin. But this had refer-
ence to the weather, and not at all, as you may have
been led to fancy, to our rustic raiment of an evening.

As to that question, I would deal, in so far as in me
lies, fairly with all men. We are not dressy people
by nature; but it sometimes occurs to us to entertain
angels. In the country, 1 believe, even angels may be

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decently welcomed in tweed ; I have faced many great 188*
personages, for my own part, in a tasteful suit of ""' ^*
sea-cloth with an end of carpet pending from my
gullet Still, we do maybe twice a summer burst out
in the direction of blacks • • . and yet we do it seldom.
• • . In short, let your own heart decide, and the capa-
city of your portmanteau. If you came in camel's hair,
you would still, although conspicuous, be welcome.
The sooner the better after Tuesday. — Yours ever,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To W. E. Henley

The fonowfng records the beginning of work upon Tnasun island^
the name originally proposed for which was "The Sea-G>ok.''

Braemar, At^gust 25, 1881.

MY DEAR HENLEY,— Of course I am a rogue. Why,
Lord, it 's known, man ; but you should remember I
have had a horrid cold. Now I 'm better, I think;
and see here — nobody, not you, nor Lang, nor the
devil, will hurry me with our crawlers. They are
coming. Four of them are as good as done, and the
rest will come when ripe; but I am now on another
lay for the moment, purely owing to Lloyd, this one;
but I believe there's more coin in it than in any amount
of crawlers: now, see here, "The Sea-Cook, or Trea-
sure Island: A Story for Boys."

If this don't fetch the kids, why, they have gone rotten
since my day. Will you be surprised to learn that it is
about Buccaneers, that it begins in iht Admiral Benbow
public-house on Devon coast, that it 's all about a map,

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1881 and a treasure, and a mutiny, and a derelict ship, and
'*'' ^' a current, and a fine old Squire Trelawney (the real
Tre, purged of literature and sin, to suit the infant
mind), and a doctor, and another doctor, and a sea-
cook with one leg, and a sea-song with the chorus
*' Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum" (at the third Ho you
heave at the capstan bars), which is a real buccaneer's
song, only known to the crew of the late Captain Flint
(died of rum at Key West, much regretted, friends will
please accept this intimation) ; and lastly, would you
be surprised to hear, in this connection, the name of
Routledge? That 's the kind of man I am, blast your
eyes. Two chapters are written, and have been tried
on Lloyd with great success; the trouble is to work it
off without oaths. Buccaneers without oaths — bricks
without straw. But youth and the fond parent have
to be consulted.

And now look here — this is next day — and three
chapters are written and read. (Chapter !. The Old
Seadog at the Admiral Benbow. Chapter 11. Black Dog
appears and disappears. Chapter iii. The Black Spot.)
All now heard by Lloyd, F., and my father and mother,
with high approval. It 's quite silly and horrid fun,
and what I want is the best book about the Buccaneers
that can be had — the latter B's above all, Blackbeard
and sich, and get Nutt or Bain to send it skimming by
the fastest post And now I know you '11 write to me,
for " The Sea-Cook's " sake.

Your "Admiral Guinea" is curiously near my line,
but of course 1 'm fooling; and your Admiral sounds
like a shublime gent. Stick to him like wax — he '11
do. My Trelawney is, as I indicate, several thousand

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sea-miles off the lie of the original or your Admiral j88
Guinea; and besides, 1 have no more about him yet
but one mention of his name» and 1 think it likely he
may turn yet farther from the model in the course of
handling. A chapter a day I mean to do; they are
short; and perhaps in a month '*The Sea-Cook" may
to Routledge go, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum ! My
Trelawney has a strong dash of Landor, as 1 see him
from here. No women in the story, Lloyd's orders;
and who so blithe to obey? It's awful fun boys'
stories; you just indulge the pleasure of your heart,
that's all; no trouble, no strain. The only stiff thing
is to get it ended — that I don't see, but I look to a
volcano. O sweet, O generous, O human toils! You
would like my blind beggar in Chapter iii., 1 believe;
no writing, just drive along as the words come and the
pen will scratch I R. L. S.,

Author of Bqy^ Stories.

To Dr. Alexander Japp

This correspondent had paid his visit as proposed, discussed the
Thoreau differences, listened delightedly to the first chapters of Tra^'
sure Island, and proposed to ofTer the story for publication to his (rlend
Mr. Henderson, proprietor and editor of Young Folks.

Braemar, 1881,
MY TOAR DR. JAPP, — My father has gone, but 1 think
I may take it upon me to ask you to keep the book.
Of all things you could do to endear yourself to me,
you have done the best, for my father and you have
taken a fancy to each other.

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

i88t I do not know how to thank you for all your kind
*^' ^' trouble In the matter of " The Sea-Cook/' but I am not
unmindful. My health is still poorly, and I have added
intercostal rheumatism — a new attraction — which
sewed me up nearly double for two days, and still gives
me a list to starboard — let us be ever nautical I

I do not think with the start 1 have there will be any
difficulty in letting Mr. Henderson go ahead whenever
he likes. I will write my story up to its legitimate
conclusion ; and then we shall be in a position to judge
whether a sequel would be desirable, and I would then
myself know better about its practicability from the
story-teller's point of view.— Yours ever very sincerely,

R. L Stevenson.

To W. E. Henley

This tells of the farther progress of Trtasurt Island, of the price
paid for it, and of the modest hopes with which it was launched.
"The poet" is Mr. Gosse. The project of a highway story, "Jerry
Abershaw,'' remained a fevourite one with Stevenson, until it was
superseded three or four years later by another, that of " The Great
North Road," which in its turn had to be abandoned, from la 'k of
health and leisure, after some six or eight chapters had been writtx-D.

Braemar, September, 1881.
MY DEAR HENLEY, — Thanks for your last The ;;^ioo
fell through, or dwindled at least into somewhere about
jC^o, However, that 1 Ve taken as a mouthful, so you
may look out for *'The Sea-Cook, or Treasure Island;
A Tale of the Buccaneers," in Young Folks. (The
terms are ^£2 los. a page of 4500 words; that 's not

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noble, is It ? But I have my copyright safe. I don't «»i
get illustrated — a blessing; that 's the price I have to ""* ^'
pay for my copyright.)

I '11 make this boys' book business pay; but I have
to make a beginning. When 1 'm done with Young
Folks, I 'U try Routledge or some one. I feel pretty
sure "The Sea-Cook" will do to reprint, and bring
something decent at that.

Japp is a good soul. The poet was very gay and
pleasant. He told me much: he is simply the most
active young man in England, and one of the most in-
telligent •* He shall o'er Europe, shall o'er earth ex-
tend."* He is now extending over adjacent parts of
Scotland.

I propose to foHow up " The Sea-Cook " at proper in-
tervals by "Jerry Abershaw: A Tale of Putney Heath "
(which or its site I must visit), "The Leading Light:
A Tale of the Coast," "The Squaw Men: or the Wild
West," and other instructive and entertaining work.
"Jerry Abershaw" should be good, eh? I love writ-
ing boys' books. This first is only an experiment;
wait till you see what I can make 'em with my hand
in. I '11 be the Harrison Ains worth of the future; and
a chalk better by St. Christopher, or at least as good.
You '11 see that even by "The Sea-Cook."

Jerry Abershaw — O what a title I Jerry Abershaw:
d — n it, sir, it 's a poem. The two most lovely words
in English; and what a sentiment! Hark you, how
the hoofs ring! Is this a blacksmith's? No, it 's a
wayside inn. Jerry Abershaw. "It was a clear,
frosty evening, not lOO miles from Putney," etc.

I From Lander's dbir : the line refers to Napoleon Bonaparte.
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1881 Jerry Abershaw. Jerry Abershaw. Jerry Abershaw.
^' ^* *'The Sea-Cook" is now in its sixteenth chapter, and
bids for well up in the thirties. Each three chapters is
worth jC^ 105. So we 've ;^I2 105. already.

Don't read Marryat's Pirate anyhow; it is written in
sand with a salt-spoon : arid, feeble, vain, tottering pro-
duction. But then we 're not always all there. He
was all somewhere else that trip. It 's damnable,
Henley. I don't go much on "The Sea-Cook"; but,
Lord, it 's a little fruitier than the Pirate by Cap'n
Marryat

Since this was written "The Cook" is in his
nineteenth chapter. Yo-heave» hoi R* L S.

To Thomas Stevenson

With all his throat and lung troubles actively renewed, Stevenson
fled to Davos again in October. This time he and his wife and step«
son occupied a small house by themselves, the Chalet am Stein, near
the Buol Hotel. The election to the Edinburgh professorship was still
pending, and the following note to his father shows that he thought
for a moment of giving the electors a specimen of his qualifications in
the shape of a magazine article on the Appin murder — a theme after-
wards turned to so much more vital account in the tales of Kidnapptd
and Catriona.

[Chalet am Stein, Davos, Autumn, i88i.]
MY dear father, — It occurred to nne last night in bed
that I could write

The Murder of Red Colin,

A Story of the Forfeited Estates.

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This I have all that is necessary for, with the following 1881
exceptions:— ^' ^'

Trials of the Sons of Rob Roy with Anecdotes:
Edinburgh, x8i8, and

The second volume of Blackwood* s Magazine.

You might also look in Arnot's Criminal Trials up
in my room, and see what observations he has on the
case (Trial of James Stewart in Appin for murder of
Campbell of Glenure, 1752); if he has none, perhaps
you could see— O yes, see if Burton has it in his two
vols, of trial stories. I hope he has n't; but care not;
do it over again, anyway.

The two named authorities I must see. With these,
I could soon pull off this article; and it shall be my
first for the electors. — Ever affectionate son,

R. L S.

To P. G. Hamerton

The volume of republished essays here mentioned b Familiar
Studies of Men and Books, ** The silly story of the election " refers
to his correspondent's failure as a candidate for the Edinburgh Chair of
Fine Arts.

Chalet am Stein, Davos, Autumn [/55/].
MY DEAR MR. HAMERTON, — My conscience has long
been smiting me, till it became nearly chronic. My
excuses, however, are many and not pleasant. Almost
immediately after I last wrote to you, I had a hemor-
reage (I can't spell it), was badly treated by a doctor in
the country, and have been a long while picking up —
still, in fact, have much to desire on that side. Next«
as soon as 1 got here, my wife took ill; she is, I fear»

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

>^> seriously so; and this combination of two Invalids very
"* ^' much depresses both.

I have a volume of republished essays coming out with
Chatto and Windus; I wish they would come, that my
wife might have the reviews to divert her. Otherwise
my news is nil. I am up here in a little chalet, on the
borders of a pinewood, overlooking a great part of the
Davos Thai, a beautiful scene at night, with the moon
upon the snowy mountains, and the lights warmly
shining in the village. J. A. Symonds is next door to
me, just at the foot of my Hill Difficulty (this you will
please regard as the House Beautiful), and his society
is my great stand-by.

Did you see I had joined the band of the rejected }
** Hardly one of us," said my conf tires at the bar.

I was blamed by a common friend for asking you to
give me a testimonial; in the circumstances bethought
it was indelicate. Lest, by some calamity, you should
ever have felt the same way, I must say in two words
how the matter appeared to me. That silly story of
the election altered in no tittle the value of your testi-
mony: so much for that. On the other hand, it led me
to take quite a particular pleasure in asking you to give
it; and so much for the other. I trust, even if you
cannot share it, you will understand my view.

I am in treaty with Bentley for a life of Hazlitt; I hope
it will not fall through, as 1 love the subject, and appear
to have found a publisher who loves it also. That, I
think, makes things more pleasant. You know I am a
fervent Hazlittite; I mean regarding him as the English
writer who has had the scantiest justice. Besides which,
I am anxious to write biography; really, if I understand

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myself in quest of profit, I think it must be good to live iS8i
with another man from birth to death. You have tried ^' ''
it» and know.

How has the cruising gone ? Pray remember me to
Mrs. Hamerton and your son, and believe me, yours
very sincerely, Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Charles Baxter

[Chalet am Stein], Davos, December 5, 1881.

MY dear CHARLES, — We have been in miserable case
here; my wife worse and worse; and now sent away
with Lloyd for sick-nurse, I not being allowed to go
down. I do not know what is to become of us ; and
you may imagine how rotten I have been feeling, and
feel now, alone with my weasel-dog and my German
maid, on the top of a hill here, heavy mist and thin
snow all about me, and the devil to pay in general. I
don't care so much for solitude as I used to; results, I
suppose, of marriage.

Pray write me something cheery. A little Edinburgh
gossip, in Heaven's name. Ah I what would I not give
to steal this evening with you through the big, echoing
college archway, and away south under the street lamps,
and away to dear Brash's, now defunct! But the old
time is dead also, never, never to revive. It was a sad
time too, but so gay and so hopeful, and we had such
sport with all our low spirits and all our distresses, that it
looks like a kind of lamplit fairyland behind me. O for
ten Edinburgh minutes — sixpence between us, and the
ever-glorious Lothian Road, or dear mysterious Leith
Walk 1 But here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling;

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

«88« here in this strange place, whose very strangeness would
^* ^' have been heaven to him then; and aspires, yes, C. B.,
with tears, after the past. See what comes of being
left alone. Do you remember Brash ? the sheet of glass
that we followed along George Street ? Granton ? the
night at Bonny mainhead ? the compass near the sign
of the Twinkling Eye? the night I lay on the pavement
in misery ?

I swear it by the eternal sky
Johnson — nor Thomson — ne*er shall die I

Yet I fancy they are dead too; dead like Brash.

R.LS.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

The next is after going down to meet his wife and stepson, after the
former had left the doctor's hands at Berne.

Chalet Buol, Davos-Platz, Decemoer 26, 1881.
MY dear mother, — Yesterday, Sunday and Christ-
mas, we finished this eventful journey by a drive in an
open sleigh — none others were to be had — seven
hours on end through whole forests of Christmas trees.
The cold was beyond belief. I have often suffered less
at a dentist's. It was a clear, sunny day, but the suil
even at noon falls, at this season, only here and there
into the Prattigau. I kept up as long as I could in an
imitation of a street singer: —

Away, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses, etc

At last Lloyd remarked, a blue mouth speaking from a
corpse-coloured face, " You seem to be the only one

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with any courage left?" And, do you know, with jSSa
that word my courage disappeared, and I made the rest
of the stage in the same dumb wretchedness as the
others. My only terror was lest Fanny should ask for
brandy, or laudanum, or something. So awful was the
idea of putting my hands out, that I half thought I
would refuse.

Well, none of us are a penny the worse, Lloyd's cold
better; I, with a twinge of the rheumatiz; and Fanny
better than her ordinary.

General conclusion between Lloyd and me as to the
journey: A prolonged visit to the dentist's, complicated
with the fear of death.

Never, O never, do you get me there again.— Ever
affectionate son, R. L S.

To AusoN Cunningham

[Chalet am Stein, Davos-Platz,
February, 1882.]
my dear cummy, — My wife and I are very much vexed
to hear you are still unwell. We are both keeping far
better; she especially seems quite to have taken a turn
— the turn, we shall hope. Please let us know how
you get on, and what has been the matter with you;
Braemar, I believe — the vile hole. You know what a
lazy rascal I am, so you won't be surprised at a short
letter, I know; indeed, you will be much more sur-
prised at my having had the decency to write at alL
We have got rid of our young, pretty, and incompetent
maid; and now we have a fine, canny, twinkling,

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

«883^ shrewd, auld-farrant peasant body, who gives us good
food and keeps us in good spirits. If we could only
understand what she says! But she speaks Davos lan-
guage, which is to German what Aberdeen-awa' is to
English, so it comes heavy. God bless you, my dear
Cummy ; and so says Fanny forbye. — Ever your affec-
tionate Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Charles Baxter

[Chalet am Stein, Davos], 22nd February^ '82.

MY dear CHARLES, — Your most welcome letter has
raised clouds of sulphur from my horizon. . • •

I am glad you have gone back to your music. Life
is a poor thing, 1 am more and more convinced, with-
out an art, that always waits for us and is always new*
Art and marriage are two very good stand-bys.

In an article which will appear sometime in the
Cornbill, "Talk and Talkers," and where I have full-
lengthened the conversation of Bob, Henley, Jenkin,
Simpson, Symonds, and Gosse, I have at the end one
single word about yourself. It may amuse you to see it.

We are coming to Scotland after all, so we shall meet,
which pleases me, and 1 do believe 1 am strong enough
to stand it this time. My knee is still quite lame.

My wife is better again. • . . But we take it by turns;
it is the dog that is ill now.— Ever yours, R. L. S.

To W. E. Henley

Mr. Henley was at this time and for some years following editor of
the Maga^m ofArt^ and had enrolled R. L. S. among his contiibu-

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tors : this is the meaning of the words below about " San Francisco.** 1881
In the early months of this year a hurt knee kept Stevenson more ^^' ^
indoors than was good for him.

[Chalet am Stein, Davos-Platz,
February, 1882.]

MY DEAR HENLEY, — Here comcs the letter as promised
last night. And first two requests: Pray send the en-
closed to c/o Blackmore's publisher, 't is from Fanny;
second, pray send us Routledge's shilling book, Edward
Mayhew's Dogs, by return if it can be managed.

Our dog is very ill again, poor fellow, looks very ill
too, only sleeps at night because of morphine; and we
do not know what ails him, only fear it to be canker of
the ear. He makes a bad, black spot in our life, poor,
selfish, silly little tangle; and my wife is wretched.
Otherwise she is better, steadily and slowly moving up
through all her relapses. My knee never gets the least
better; it hurts to-night, which it has not done for long.
I do not suppose my doctor knows any least thing
about it He says it is a nerve that I struck, but I
assure you he does not know.

I have just finished a paper, ** A Gossip on Romance/'
in which I have tried to do, very popularly, about one-
half of the matter you wanted me to try. In a way,
I have found an answer to the question. But the sub-
ject was hardly fit for so chatty a paper, and it is all
loose ends. If ever I do my book on the Art of Litera-
ture, I shall gather them together and be clear.

To-morrow, having once finished off the touches still
due on this, 1 shall tackle * ' San Francisco " for you. Then
the tide of work will fairly bury me, lost to view and
hope. You have no idea what it costs me to wring out

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

^883^ my work now. I have certainly been a fortnight over
this Romance, sometimes five hours a day; and yet it is
about my usual length — eight pages or so —and would
be a d— <i sight the better for another curry. But I do
not think I can honestly rewrite it all; so I call it done,
and shall only straighten words in a revision currently.
I had meant to go on for a great while, and say all
manner of entertaining things. But all 's gone. I am
now an idiot. — Yours ever, R. L S.

To W. E. Henley

The following flight of fancy refers to supposed errors of Judgment
on the part of an eminent firm of publishers, with whom Stevenson
had at this time no connection. Very soon afterwards, it should be
noted, he entered into relations with them which proved equally
pleasant and profitable to both parties, and were continued on the most
cordial terms until his death.

[Chalet am Stein, Davos, March, 1882.]
MY dear HENLEY, — . . . Last night we had a dinner
party, consisting of the John Addington, curry, onions
(lovely onions), and beef-steak. So unusual is any ex-
citement, that F. and I feel this morning as if we had
been to a coronation. However, I must, I suppose,
write.

I was sorry about your female contributor squabble.
T is very comic, but really unpleasant. But what care I ?
Now that 1 illustrate my own books, I can always offer
you a situation in our house — S. L. Osbourne and Co.
As an author gets a halfpenny a copy of verses, and an
artist a penny a cut, perhaps a proof-reader might get
several pound/* a year.

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O that Coronation 1 What a shouting crowd there «Ma

was I I obviously got a firework in each eye. The
king looked very magnificent, to be sure; and that
great hall where we feasted on seven hundred delicate
foods, and drank fifty royal wines — quel coup d'osill
but was it not overdone, even for a coronation — almost
a vulgar luxury? And eleven is certainly too late to
begin dinner. (It was really 6.30 instead of 5.30.)

Your list of books that Cassells have refused in these
weeks is not quite complete; they also refused: —

1 . Six undiscovered Tragedies, one romantic Comedy,
a fragment of Journal extending over six years, and an
unfinished Autobiography reaching up to the first per-
formance of King John. By William Shakespeare.

2. The Journals and Private Correspondence of
David, King of Israel.

3. Poetical Works of Arthur, Iron Dook of Welling-
ton, including a Monody on Napoleon.

4. Eight books of an unfinished novel, Solomon
Crabb. By Henry Fielding.

5. Stevenson's Moral Emblems.

You also neglected to mention, as per contra, that
they had during the same time accepted and trium-
phantly published Brown's Handbook to Cricket, Jones's
First French Reader, and Robinson's Picturesque
Cbesbire^ uniform with the same author's Stately Homes
of Salop.

O if that list could come true! How we would tear
at Solomon Crabb! O what a bully, bully, bully busi-
ness! Which would you read first — Shakespeare's
autobiography, or his journals ? What sport the mon-
ody on Napoleon would be— what wooden verse, what

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ifiSa stucco ornament I I should read both the autobiography
*^' ^* and the journals before I looked at one of the plays,
beyond the names of tliem, which shows that Saints-
bury was right, and I do care more for life than for
poetry. No— I take it back. Do you know one of
Che tragedies — a Bible tragedy too— David — was
written in his third period — much about the same time
as Lear? The comedy, April Rain, is also a late work.
Beckett is a fine ranting piece, like Richard II. ^ but
very fine for the stage. Irving is to play it this autumn
when I *m in town; the part rather suits him — but
who is to play Henry? — a tremendous creation, sir.
Betterton in his private journal seems to have seen this
piece; and he says distinctly that Henry is the best
part in any play. "Though," he adds, "how it be
with the ancient plays I know not But in this I have
ever feared to do ill, and indeed will not be persuaded
to that undertaking." So says Betterton. Rufus is
not so good; I am not pleased with Rufus; plainly a
rifacimento of some inferior work; but there are some
damned fine lines. As for the purely satiric ill-minded
Abelard and Heloise, another Trailus, quail it is not
pleasant, truly, but what strength, what verve, what
knowledge of life ! And the Canon 1 What a finished,
humorous, rich picture is the Canon! Ah, there was
nobody like Shakespeare. But what I like ts the David
and Absalom business: Absalom is so well felt — you
love him as David did ; David's speech is one roll of
royal music from the first act to the fifth.

I am enjoying Solomon Crabb extremely; Solomon's
capital adventure with the two highwaymen and Squire
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anything in Joseph Andrews. I have just come to the »«»
part where the highwayman with the black patch over ^* ^
his eye has tricked poor Solomon into his place, and
the squire and the parson are hearing the evidence.
Parson Vance is splendid. How good, too, is old Mrs.
Crabb and the coastguardsman in the third chapter, or
her delightful quarrel with the sexton of Seaham 1 Lord
Conybeare is surely a little overdone; but I don't know
either; he 's such damned fine sport Do you like Sally
Barnes ? I 'm in love with hen Constable Muddon is
as good as Dogberry and Verges put together; when
he takes Solomon to the cage, and the highwayman
gives hira Solomon's own guinea for his pains, and
kisses Mrs. Muddon, and just then up drives Lord
Conybeare, and instead of helping Solomon, calls him
ail the rascals in Christendom — O Henry Fielding,
Henry Fielding I Yet perhaps the scenes at Seaham
are the best. But I 'm bewildered among all these
excellences.

Stay, cried a voice that made the welkin crack —
This here *s a dream, return and study BlaocI

— Ever yours, R. L S

To Alexander Ireland

The foltowing b in reply to a letter Stevenson had received on somt
questions connected with his proposed Ufe of i^azlitt from the veteran
critic and bibliographer since deceased, Mr. Alexander Ireland. At
the foot is to be found the first reference to hb new amusement of
wood-engraving for the Davos Press.

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

i88a [Chalet am Stein, Davos, March, 1882.}

AT. ^

MY DEAR SIR, — This formidable paper need not alarm
you ; it argues nothing beyond penury of other sorts,
and is not at all likely to lead me into a long letter. If
I were at all grateful it would, for yours has just passed
for me a considerable part of a stormy evening. And
speaking of gratitude, let me at once and with becom-
ing eagerness accept your kind invitation to Bowdon.
I shall hope, if we can agree as to dates when I am
nearer hand, to come to you sometime in the month of
May. I was pleased to hear you were a Scot; I feel
more at home with my compatriots always ; perhaps
the more we are away, the stronger we feel that bond.

You ask about Davos; I have discoursed about it
already, rather sillily 1 think, in the Pall Mall, and 1
mean to say no more, but the ways of the Muse are
dubious and obscure, and who knows? I may be
wiled again. As a place of residence, beyond a splendid
climate, it has to my eyes but one advantage — the
neighbourhood of J. A. Symonds — I dare say you
know his work, but the man is far more interesting.
It has done me, in my two winters' Alpine exile, much
good; so much, that I hope to leave it now for ever,
but would not be understood to boast. In my present
unpardonably crazy state, any cold might send me
skipping, either back to Davos, or further off. Let us
hope not. It is dear; a little dreary; very far from
many things that both my taste and my needs prompt
me to seek; and altogether not the place that I should
choose of my free will.

I am chilled by your description of the man in ques-
tion, though I had almost argued so much from his cold

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and undigested volume. If the republication does not J;;
interfere with my publisher, it will not interfere with
me; but there, of course, comes the hitch. I do not
know Mr. Bentley, and I fear all publishers like the
devil from legend and experience both. However,
when I come to town, we shall, I hope, meet and un-
derstand each other as well as author and publisher
ever do. I liked his letters; they seemed hearty, kind,
and personal. Still — I am notedly suspicious of the
trade — your news of this republication alarms me.

The best of the present French novelists seems to
me, incomparably, Daudet Les Rots en Exit comes
very near being a masterpiece. For Zola I have no
toleration, though the curious, eminently bourgeois,
and eminently French creature has power of a kind.
But I would he were deleted. I would not give a
chapter of old Dumas (meaning himself, not his collab-
orators) for the whole boiling of the Zolas. Romance
with the smallpox — as the great one: diseased any-
way and black-hearted and fundamentally at enmity
with joy.

I trust that Mrs. Ireland does not object to smoking;
and if you are a teetotaller, I beg you to mention it be-
fore I come — I have all the vices; some of the virtues
also, let us hope — that, at least, of being a Scotchman,
and yours very sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S. — My father was in the old High School the last
year, and walked in the procession to the new. I blush
to own I am an Academy boy; it seems modern, and
smacks not of the soil.

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1863 p. p. 5.^1 enclose a good joke — at least, I think so

*^' ^ — my first efforts at wood-engraving printed by my

stepson, a boy of thirteen. I will put in also one of

my later attempts. I have been nine days at the art —

observe my progress. R* L S.

To Edmund Gosse

Stevenson and Mr. Gosse had been planning a volume in which
tome of the famous historical murder cases should be retold.

Davos, March 2j, 1882.
MYDEAR WEG, — And I had just written the best note
to Mrs. Gosse that was in my power. Most blamable.
I now send (for Mrs. Gosse)

BLACK CANYON.

Also an advertisement of my new appearance as poet
(bard, rather) and hartis on wood. The cut represents
the Hero and the Eagle, and is emblematic of Cortez
first viewing the Pacific Ocean, which (according to the
bard Keats) it took place in Darien. The cut is much
admired for the sentiment of discovery, the manly pro-
portions of the voyager, and the fine impression of
tropical scenes and the untrodden waste, so aptly ren-
dered by the hartis.

I would send you the book; but I declare I 'm ruined.
I got a penny a cut and a halfpenny a set of verses from
the flint-hearted publisher, and only one specimen copy,

as I 'm a sinner. was apostolic alongside of Os-

bourne.

I hope you will be able to decipher this, written at
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Steam speed with a breaking pen, the hotfast postman ^88a
at my heels. No excuse, says you. None, sir, says
I, and touches my 'at most civil (extraordinary evolu-
tion of pen, now quite doomed — to resume — ) I have
not put pen to the Bloody Murder yet. But it is early
on my list; and when once I get to it, three weeks
should see the last blood-stain — maybe a fortnight.
For I am beginning to combine an extraordinary labo-
rious slowness while at work, with the most surpris-
ingly quick results in the way of finished manuscripts.
How goes Gray ? Colvin is to do Keats. My wife b
still not well — Yours ever, R. L S.

To Dr. Alexander Japp

[Chalet am Stein, Davos, March, 1882.]
MY DEAR DR. JAPP, — You must think me a forgetful
rogue, as indeed I am; for I have but now told my
publisher to send you a copy of the Familiar Studies.
However, I own I have delayed this letter till I could
send you the enclosed. Remembering the nights at
Braemar when we visited the Picture Gallery, I hoped
they might amuse you. You see, we do some pub-
lishing hereaway. I shall hope to see you in town in
May. — Always yours faithfully,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Dr. Alexander Japp

The references in the first paragraph are to the volume FamiUaf
Studies ofMin and Books.

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

«B8a Chalet Buol, Davos, April /, 1882.

«T. 3a

MY DEAR DR. JAPP, — A good day to date this letter,
which is in fact a confession of incapacity. During my
wife's illness I somewhat lost my head, and entirely
!ost a great quire of corrected proofs. This is one of
the results; I hope there are none more serious. I was
never so sicic of any volume as I was of that ; I was con-
tinually receiving fresh proofs with fresh infinitesimal
difficulties. I was ill — I did really fear my wife was
worse than ill. Well, it 's out now; and though I
have observed several carelessnesses myself, and now
here 's another of your finding — of which, indeed, I
ought to be ashamed — it will only justify the sweeping
humility of the Preface.

Symonds was actually dining with us when your
letter came, and I communicated your remarlcs. • • • He
is a far better and more interesting thing than any of
his books.

The Elephant was my wife's; so she is proportion-
ately elate you should have picked it out for praise —
from a collection, let me add, so replete with the highest
qualities of art.

My wicked carcase, as John Knox calls it, holds to-
gether wonderfully. In addition to many other things,
and a volume of travel, 1 find I have written, since De-
cember, 90 CornbUl pages of magazine work— essays
and stories: 40,000 words, and I am none the worse —
I am the better. I begin to hope 1 may, if not outlive
this wolverine upon my shoulders, at least carry him
bravely like Symonds and Alexander Pope. I begin to
take a pride in that hope.

I shall be much interested to see your criticisms; you
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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

might perhaps send them to me. I believe you know «88a
that is not dangerous; one folly I have not — I am not ^' ^*
touchy under criticism.

Lloyd and my wife both beg to be remembered; and
Lloyd sends as a present a work of his own. I hope
you feel flattered; for this is simply the first time be bos
ever given one away. I have to buy my own works, 1
can tell you. — Yours very sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevens<m.

ToW E. Henley

From about this time until 1885 Mr. Henley acted in an Informal
way as agent for R. L S. in most of his dealings with publishers in
London. '' Both " in the second paragraph means, 1 think, Tr$asur$
Island and Silverado Squatters.

[Chalet am Stein, Davos, April, 1882.]
MY DEAR HENLEY,—! hope and hope for a long letter —
soon, I hope, to be superseded by long talks — and it
comes not. I remember I have never formally thanked
you for that hundred quid, nor in general for the intro-
duction to Chatto and Windus, and continue to bury
you in copy as if you were my private secretary. Well,
I am not unconscious of it all ; but I think least said is
often best, generally best; gratitude is a tedious senti-
ment, it 's not ductile, not dramatic.

If Chatto should take both, cui dedicare ? I am run-
ning out of dedikees; if 1 do, the whole fun of writing
is stranded. Treasure Island, if it comes out, and I

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1883 mean it shall, of course goes to Lloyd. Lemme see^ I
'"' ^* have now dedicated to

W. E. H. [William Ernest Henley].
S. C. [Sidney Colvin].
T. S. [Thomas Stevenson].
Simp. [Sir Walter Simpson].

There remain: C. B., the Williamses — you know
they were the parties who stuck up for us about our
marriage, and Mrs. W. was my guardian angel, and
our Best Man and Bridesmaid rolled in one, and the
only third of the wedding party — ^.my sister-in-law,
who is booked for Prince Otto — Jenkin I suppose
sometime — George Meredith, the only man of genius
of my acquaintance, and then I believe I 'U have to take
to the dead, the immortal memory business.

Talking of Meredith, I have just re-read for the third
and fourth time The Egoist. When 1 shall have read it
the sixth or seventh, 1 begin to see I shall know about
it You will be astonished when you come to re-read
it; I had no idea of the matter — human, red matter— he
has contrived to plug and pack into that strange and
admirable book. Willoughby is, of course, a pure dis-
covery ; a complete set of nerves, not heretofore exam-
ined, and yet running all over the human body — a suit
of nerves. Clara is the best girl ever I saw anywhere.
Vernon is almost as good. The manner and the faults
of the book greatly justify themselves on further study.
Only Dr. Middleton does not hang together; and Ladies
Busshe and Culmer sont des monsiruositis. Vernon's
conduct makes a wonderful odd contrast with Daniel

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Deronda's. I see more and more that Meredith b built i^Sa
for immortality. ^* ^

Talking of which, Heywood, as a small immortal,
an immortalet, claims some attention. Tbe IVoman
killed with Kindness is one of the most striking novels
— not plays, though it 's more of a play than anything
else of his — I ever read. He had such a sweet, sound
soul, the old boy. The death of the two pirates in
Fortune by Sea and Land is a document. He had ob*
viously been present, and heard Purser and Clinton
take death by the beard with similar braggadocios.
Purser and Clinton, names of pirates; Scarlet and Bob-
bington, names of highwaymen. He had the touch of
names, I think. No man 1 ever knew had such a sense,
such a tact, for English nomenclature; Rainsforth,
Lacy, Audley, Forrest, Acton, Spencer, Frankford —
so his names run.

Byron not only wrote Don Juan ; he called Joan of
Arc **a fanatical strumpet." These are his words. I
think the double shame, first to a great poet, second to
an English noble, passes words.

Here is a strange gossip. — I am yours loquaciously,

R. L. S

My lungs are said to be in a splendid state. A cruel ex-
amination, an exafitmation 1 may call it, had this brave
result Tafautl Hillol Hey! Stand byl Avast 1 Hurrah I

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

[Chalet am Stein, Davos, April p, 1882.1
MY DEAR MOTHER, — Herewith please find belated
birthday present Fanny has another.

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

i889

Cockshot = Jenkin.

But

rr. 3a

Jack = Bob.

pray

Burly = Henley.

regard

Athelred ^Simpson.

these

Opalstein = Symonds.

Purcel = Gosse.

secrets.

My dear mother, how can I keep up with your
breathless changes ? Innerleithen, Cramond, Bridge of
Allan, Dunblane, Selkirk. 1 lean to Cramond, but I
shall be pleased anywhere, any respite from Davos;
never mind, it has been a good, though a dear lesson.
Now, with my improved health, if 1 can pass the sum-
mer, I believe I shall be able no more to exceed, no
more to draw on you. It is time I sufficed for myself
indeed. And 1 believe I can.

I am still far from satisfied about Fanny; she is cer-
tainly better, but it is by fits a good deal, and the symp-
toms continue, which should not be. 1 had her per-
suaded to leave without me this very day (Saturday
8th), but the disclosure of my mismanagement broke
up that pbn; she would not leave me lest 1 should
mismanage more. I think this an unfair revenge; but
I have been so bothered that I cannot struggle. All
Davos has been drinking our wine. During the month
of March, three litres a day were drunk — O, it is too
sickening — and that is only a specimen. It is enough
to make any one a misanthrope, but the right thing is
to hate the donkey that was duped — which I de-
voutly do.

I have this winter finished Treasure Island, written
the preface to the Studies, a small book about the /n-

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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

land Fqyage size, The Silverado Squatters, and over J[88a
and above that upwards of ninety (90) Cornbill pages
of magazine work. No man can say I have been idle.
— Your affectionate son, R. L Stevenson.

To Edmund Gossb

The few remaining letters of this period are dated from Edinburgh
tnd from Stobo Manse, near Peebles. This, in the matter of weather
and health, was the most disappointing of all Stevenson's attempts
at summer residence in Scotland. Before going to Stobo he made a
short excursion with his father to Locheamhead, and later spent some
six weeks at Kingussie, but from neither place wrote any letters worth
preserving.

[Edinburgh], Sunday [June, 1882].

. . . Note turned up, but no grey opuscule, which,
however, will probably turn up to-morrow in time to
go out with me to Stobo Manse, Peeblesshire, where,
if you can make it out, you will be a good soul to pay
a visit. I shall write again about the opuscule; and
about Stobo, which I have not seen since I was
thirteen, though my memory speaks delightfully of it.

I have been very tired and seedy, or I should have
written before, inter alia, to tell you that 1 had visited
my murder place and found living traditions not yet in
any printed book; most startling. I also got photo-
graphs taken, but the negatives have not yet turned up.
I lie on the sofa to write this, whence the pencil; having
slept yesterday — i+4+7i= i^i hours and being
(9 A. M.) very anxious to sleep again. The arms of
Porpus, quoil A poppy gules, etc.

From Stobo you can conquer Peebles and Selkirk^
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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

i88a or to give them their old decent names, Tweeddale
' ^ and Ettrick. Think of having been called Tweeddale,
and being called Peebles! Did I ever tell you my skit
on my own travel books? We understand that Mr.
Stevenson has in the press another volume of uncon-
ventional travels : Personal Adventures in Peeblesshire.
Jela irouve micbante. — Yours affectionately,

tv* Lm S«

Did I say I had seen a verse on two of the Buccaneers?
1 did, and fa-y^est

To Edmund Gossb

Mr. Gosse had mistaken the name of the Peeblesshire manse, and b
reproached accordingly. " Gray " is Mr. Gosse's volume on that poet
ki Mr. Morley's series oi English Men of Letters.

Stobo Manse, Peeblesshire [July^ 1882].

I WOULD shoot you, but I have no bow:
The place is not called Stobs, but Stobo.
As Gallic Kids complain of " Bobo,"
I mourn for your mistake of Stobo.

First, we shall be gone in September. But if you think
of coming in August, my mother will hunt for you
with pleasure. We should all be overjoyed — though
Stobo it could not be, as it is but a kirk and manse,
but possibly somewhere within reach. Let us know.

Second, I have read your Gray with care. A more
difficult subject I can scarce fancy; it is crushing; yet
I think you have managed to shadow forth a man, and
a good man too; and honestly, I doubt if 1 could have

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ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

done the same. This may seem egoistic; but you are i^^
not such a fool as to think so. It is the natural expres- ""* ^
sion of real praise. The book as a whole is readable;
your subject peeps every here and there out of the
crannies like a shy violet — he could do no more — and
his aroma hangs there.

I write to catch a minion of the post Hence brevity.
Answer about the house. — Yours affectionately^

R. LS

To W. E. Henley

In the hett ot conversation Stevenson was accustomed to invent any
number of fictitious personages, generally Scottish, and to give them
' names and to set them playing their imaginary parts in life, reputable
or otherwise. Many of these inventions, of whom Mr. Pirbright Smith
and Mr. Pegfurth Bannatyne were two, assumed for himself and his
friends a kind of substantial existence; and constantly in talk, and
occasionally in writing^ he would keep up the play of reporting their
sayings and doings quite gravely, as in the following.

[Stobo Manse, y«/v, 1882.]

DEAR HENLEY,—. . . I am not worth an old damn. I
am also crushed by bad news of Symonds; his good
lung going; I cannot help reading it as a personal hint;
God help us all I Really 1 am not very fit for work;
but I try, try, and nothing comes of it.

I believe we shall have to leave this place; it is low»
damp, and maucby; the rain it raineth every day; and
the glass goes toMe-rol-de-riddle.

Yet it 's a bonnie bit; I wish I could live in it, but
doubt. I wish I was well away somewhere else. I
feel like flight some days; honour bright.

Pirbright Smith is well. Old Mr. Pegfurth Bannatyne
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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

i88a is here staying at a country inn. His whole baggage
^* ^^ is a pair of socks and a book in a fishing-basket; and
he borrows even a rod from the landlord. He walked
here over the hills from Sanquhar, "singin'/' he says,
"like a mavis." I naturally asked him about Hazlitt.
" He wouldnae take his drink," he said, " a queer, queer
fellow." But did not seem further communicative.
He says he has become "releegious," but still swears
like a trooper. I asked him if he had no headquarters.
"No likely," said he. He says he is writing his mem-
oirs, which will be interesting. He once met Borrow;
they boxed ; " and Geordie, " says the old man, chuckling,
" gave me the damnedest hiding." Of Wordsworth he
remarked, " He wasnae sound in the faith, sir, and a
milk-blooded, blue-spectacled bitch forbye. But his
po'mes are grand— there 's no denying that." I asked
him what his book was. "I havenae mind," said he
—that was his only book! On turning it out, I found
it was one of my own, and on showing it to him, he
remembered it at once. "O ay," he said, "I mind
now. It 's pretty bad; ye '11 have to do better than
that, chieldy," and chuckled, chuckled. He is a strange
old figure, to be sure. He cannot endure Pirbright
Smith—" a mere aesthetic, " he said. " Pooh ! " " Fish«
in* and releegion— these are my aysthatics," he
wound up.

I thought this would interest you, so scribbled it
down. 1 still hope to get more out of him about Haz-
litt, though he utterly pooh-poohed the idea of writing
H.'s life. " Ma life now," he said. " there 's been queer
things in //." He is seventy-nine! but may well last
to a hundred!— Yours ever, R. L S.

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MARSEILLES AND HYERES
(October, 1882-AucusT, 1884)

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MARSEILLES AND HYERES
(October, 1882-AuGusT, 1884)

IN the two years and odd months since his return
from California, Stevenson had made no solid gain
of health. His winters, and especially his second win-
ter, at Davos had seemed to do him much temporary
good; but during the summers in Scotland he had lost
as much as he had gained, or more. Loving Provence
and the Mediterranean shore from of old, he now made
up his mind to try them once again.

As the ways and restrictions of a settled invalid were
repugnant to Stevenson's character and instincts, so
were the life and society of a regular invalid station
depressing and uncongenial to him. He determined,
accordingly, to avoid settling in one of these, and hoped
to find a suitable climate and habitation that should be
near, though not in, some centre of the active and
ordinary life of man, with accessible markets, libraries,
and other resources. In September, 1883, he started
with his cousin Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson in search of a
new home, and thought first of Western Provence, a

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

region new to him. Arriving at Montpellier, he was
laid up again with a bad bout of his lung troubles ; and,
the doctor not recommending him to stay, returned to
Marseilles, Here he was rejoined by his wife, and after
a few days' exploration in the neighbourhood they
lighted on what seemed exactly the domicile they
wanted. This was a roomy and attractive enough house
and garden called the Campagne Defli, near the manu-
facturing suburb of St. Marcel, in a sheltered position
in full view of the shapely coastward hills. By the
third week in October they were installed, and in eager
hopes of pleasant days to come and a return to working
health. These hopes were not realised. Week after
week went on, and the haemorrhages and fits of fever
and exhaustion did not diminish. Work, except occa-
sional verses, and a part of the story called The Trea-^
sure of Francbard, would not flow, and the time had
to be whiled away with games of patience and other
resources of the sick man. Neariy two months were
thus passed; during the whole of one of them Steven-
son had not been able to go beyond the garden; and by
Christmas he had to face the fact that the air of the
place was tainted. An epidemic of fever, due to some
defect of drainage, broke out, and it became clear that
this could be no home for Stevenson. Accordingly,
at his wife's instance, though having scarce the strength
to travel, he left suddenly for Nice, she staying behind
to pack their chattels and wind up their affairs and re-
sponsibilities as well as might be. Various misadven-
tures, miscarriages of telegrams, journeys taken at cross
purposes, and the like, making existence uncomfortably
dramatic at the moment, but not needful to be recounted

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MARSEILLES AND HY^RES

here, caused the couple to believe for a while that they
had fairly lost each other. They came together, how-
ever, at Marseilles in the course of January. Next they
made a few weeks' stay together at Nice, where Ste-
venson's health quickly mended, and thence returned
as far as Hydres. Staying here through the greater part
of February, at the H6tel des lies d'Or, and finding the
place to their liking, they cast about once more for a
resting-place, and were this time successful.

The house chosen by the Stevensons at HySres was
not near the sea, but inland, on the road above the old
town and beneath the ruins of the castle. The Chalet
La Solitude it was called; a cramped but habitable cot-
tage built in the Swiss manner, with a pleasant strip of
garden, and a view and situation hardly to be bettered.
Here he and his family lived for the next sixteen
months (March, 1883, to July, 1884). To the first part of
this period he often afterwards referred as the happiest
time of his life. His malady remained quiescent enough
to afford, at least to his own buoyant spirit, a strong
hope of ultimate recovery. He delighted in his sur-
roundings, and realised for the first time the joys of a
true home of his own. The last shadow of a cloud
between himself and his parents had long passed away;
and towards his father, now in declining health, and
often suffering from moods of constitutional depression,
the son begins on his part to assume, how touchingly
and tenderly will be seen from the following letters, a
quasi-paternal attitude of encouragement and monition.
At the same time his work on the completion of The
Silverado Squatters, on Prince Otto, A Child's Garden
of yerses (for which his own name was Penny H^bis^

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

ties), on Tbe Black Arrow (designated hereinafter, on
account of its Old English dialect, as " tushery "), and
other undertakings prospered well. In the autumn the
publication of Treasure Island in book form brought
with it the first breath of popular applause. The reader
will see how modest a price Stevenson was content,
nay, delighted, to receive for this classic. It was two
or three years yet before he could earn enough to sup-
port himself and his family by literature: a thing he had
always been earnestly bent on doing, regarding it as
the only justification for his chosen way of life. In the
meantime, it must be understood, whatever help he
needed from his father was from the hour of his mar-
riage always amply and ungrudgingly given.

In September of the same year, 1883, Stevenson had
felt deeply the death of his old friend James Walter Fer-
rier (see the essay "Old Mortality" and the references
in the following letters). But still his health held out
fairly, until, in January, 1884, on a visit to Nice, he was
unexpectedly prostrated anew by an acute congestion
of the internal organs, which for the time being brought
him to death's door. Returning to his home, his re-
covery had been only partial when, after four months
(May, 1884), a recurrence of violent haemorrhages from
the lung once more prostrated him completely; soon
after which he quitted Hy^res, and the epidemic of
cholera which broke out there the same summer pre-
vented all thoughts of his return.

The time, both during the happy and hard-working
months of March-December, 1883, and the semi-con-
valescence of February-May, 1884, was a prolific one in
the way of correspondence; and there is perhaps no

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MARSEILLES AND HY^RES

period of his life when his letters reflect so fully the
variety of his moods and the eagerness of his occupa*
tions.

To THE EorroR of the "New York Tribune" iMa

At Marseilles, whfle waiting to occupy the house which he had
leased in the suburbs of that city, Stevenson learned that his old friend
and kind adviser, Mr. James Payn, with whom he had been intimate
as sub-editor of the Cornbill Maga^ne under Mr. Leslie Stephen in
the seventies, had been inadvertently represented in the columns of the
New York Tribune as a plagiarist of R. L. S. In order to put matters
right, he at once sent the following letter both to the Tribune and to
the London Atbetueum.

Terminus Hotel, Marseilles, October j6, 1882.

SIR,— It has come to my ears that you have lent the
authority of your columns to an error.

More than half in pleasantry— and I now think the
pleasantry ill-judged— I complained in a note to my
New Arabian Nigbts that some one, who shall remain
nameless for me, had borrowed the idea of a story from
one of mine. As if I had not borrowed the ideas of
the half of my own! As if any one who had written
a story ill had a right to complain of any other who
should have written it better! I am indeed thoroughly
ashamed of the note, and of the principle which it implies.

But it is no mere abstract penitence which leads me
to beg a comer of your paper— it is the desire to de-
fend the honour of a man of letters equally known in
America and England, of a man who could afford to
lend to me and yet be^none the poorer; and who, if he
would so far condescend, has my free permission to
borrow from me all that he can find worth borrowing.

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

i88a^ Indeed, sir, I am doubly surprised at your correspon-
dent's error. That James Payn should have borrowed
from me is already a strange conception. The author
of Lost Sir Massingberd and By Proxy may be trusted
to invent his own stories. The author of A Grape
from a Tborn knows enough, in his own right, of the
humorous and pathetic sides of human nature.

But what is far more monstrous— what argues total
ignorance of the man in question— is the idea that
James Payn could ever have transgressed the limits of
professional propriety. I may tell his thousands of
readers on your side of the Atlantic that there breathes
no man of letters more inspired by kindness and gene-
rosity to his brethren of the profession, and, to put an
end to any possibility of error, 1 may be allowed to
add that I often have recourse, and that I had 'recourse
once more but a few weeks ago, to the valuable prac-
tical help which he makes it his pleasure to extend to
younger men.

I send a duplicate of this letter to a London weekly ;
for the mistake, first set forth in your columns, has
already reached England, and my wanderings have
made me perhaps last of the persons interested to hear
a word of it— I am, etc.,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To R. A. M. Stevenson

Terminus Hotel, Marseille,
Saturday [October, 1882].
MY DEAR BOB,— We have found a house!— at Saint
Marcel Banlieue de Marseille. In a lovely valley be-

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tween hills part wooded, part white cliffs; a house of «88a
a dining-room, of a fine salon— one side lined with a ^' ^^
long divan— three good bedrooms (two of them with
dressing-rooms), three small rooms (chambers of bonne
and sich), a large kitchen, a lumber-room, many cup-
boards, a back court, a large, large olive yard, cultivated
by a resident paysan, a well, a berceau, a good deal of
rockery, a little pine shruj)bery, a railway station in
front, two lines of omnibus to Marseille.

;^48 per annum.

It is called Campagne Defli! query Campagne Debug}
The Campagne Demosquito goes on here nightly, and
is very deadly. Ere we can get installed, we shall be
beggared to the door, I see.

I vote for separations; F/s arrival here, after our
separation, was better fun to me than being married
was by far. A separation completed is a most valuable
property; worth piles.— Ever your affectionate cousin,

R. L S.

To Thomas Stevenson

Terminus Hotel, Marseille, le lytb October, 1882.
MY DEAR father,—. . . We grow, every time we see
it, more delighted with our house. It is five miles out
of Marseilles, in a lovely spot, among lovely wooded
and cliffy hills— most mountainous in line— far lovelier,
to my eyes, than any Alps. To-day we have been out
inventorying; and though a mistral blew, it was de-
lightful in an open cab, and our house with the win-
dows open was heavenly, soft, dry, sunny, southern.

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1883 I fear there are fleas— it is called Campagne Defli--and

^* ^ I look forward to tons of insecticide being employed

I have had to write a letter to the New York TrUmne

and the Atbenctum. Payn was accused of stealing my

stories! 1 think I have put things handsomely for him.

Just got a servant! ! !— Ever affectionate son,

R. L Stevenson.

Our servant is a Muckle Hash of a Weedy I

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

Th^ next two months' letters had perforce to consist of little save
buHetins of backgoing health, and consequent disafipointment and
incapacity for work.

Campagne Defli, St. Marcel,
Banlieue de Marseille, November ij, 1882.
MY DEAR mother,— Your delightful letters duly arrived
this morning. They were the only good feature of the
day, which was not a success. Fanny was in bed— she
begged 1 would not split upon her, she felt so guilty;
but as I believe she is better this evening, and has a
good chance to be right again in a day or two, I will
disregard her orders. I do not go back, but do not go
forward— or not much. It is, in one way, miserable—
for 1 can do no work; a very little wood-cutting, the
newspapers, and a note about every two days to write,
completely exhausts my surplus energy; even Patience
I have to cultivate with parsimony. 1 see, if I could
only get to work, that we could live here with comfort,
almost with luxury. Even as it is, we should be able

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to get through a considerable time of idleness. I like >^3
the place immensely, though I have seen so little of it '
—I have only been once outside the gate since I was
here! It puts me in mind of a summer at Prestonpans
and a sickly child you once told me of.

Thirty-two years now finished! My twenty-ninth
was in San Francisco, 1 remember— rather a bleak
birthday. The twenty-eighth was not much better;
but the rest have been usually pleasant days in pleasant
circumstances.

Love to you and to my father and to Cummy.
From me and Fanny and Wogg. R. L S.

To Charles Baxter

After his Christmas flight to Marseilles, and thence to Nice, Steven-
son began to mend quickly. In this letter to Mr. Baxter he acknow*
ledges the receipt of a specimen proof, set up for their private amusement,
of Brasbiana, the series of burlesque sonnets he had written at Davos
in memory of the Edinburgh publican already mentioned. It should
be explained that in their correspondence Stevenson and Mr. Baxter
were accustomed to merge their identities in those of two fictitious per-
sonages, Thomson and Johnson, imaginary types of Edinburgh char-
acter, and ex-elders of the Scottish Kirk. The Pile-on is, of course,
the PaiUon.

Grand Hotel, Nice, i2tb January, *8).

DEAR CHARLES,— Thanks for your good letter. It is
true, man, God's trQth, what ye say about the body
Stevison. The deil himsel, it 's my belief, could nae
get the soul harled oot o* the creature's wame, or he
had seen the hinder end o' they proofs. Ye crack o*
Maecenas, he 's naebody by you! He gied the lad
Horace a rax forrit by all accounts ; but he never gied

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1^5 him proofs like yon. Horace may hae been a better
^' ^^ hand at the clink than Stevison— mind, I 'm no sayin' 't
—but onyway he was never sae weel prentiL Damned,
but it 's bonnie! Hoo mony pages will there be, think
ye? Stevison maun hae sent ye the feck o' twenty
sangs— fifteen I 'se warrant Weel, that 'D can make
thretty pages, gin ye were to prent on ae side only,
whilk wad be perhaps what a man o' your great idees
would be ettlin' at, man Johnson. Then there wad be
the Pre-face, an' prose ye ken prents oot langer than
po'try at the hinder end, for ye hae to say things in 't
An' then there '11 be a title-page and a dedication and
an index wi' the first lines like, and the deil an' a*.
Man, it '11 be grand. Nae copies to be given to the
Liberys.

I am alane myself, in Nice, they ca' 't, but damned, I
think they micht as well ca' 't Nesty. The Pile-on, 's
they ca' 't, '$ aboot as big as the river Tay at Perth;
and it 's rainin' maist like Greenock. Dod, I 've seen 's
had mair o' what they ca' the I-talian at Muttonhole.
I-talian! 1 haenae seen the sun for eicht and forty
hours. Thomson 's better, 1 believe. But the body 's
fair attenyated. He 's doon to seeven stane eleeven,
an' he sooks awa' at cod-liver ile, till it 's a fair disgrace.
Ye see he tak's it on a drap brandy; and it 's my belief,
it 's just an excuse for a dram. He an' Stevison gang
aboot their lane, maistly; they 're company to either,
like, an' whiles they '11 speak o* Johnson. But be 's far
awa', losh me I Stevison*s last book 's in a third
edeetion; an' it 's bein' translated (like the psaulms o'
David, nae less) into French; and an eediot they ca'
Asher— a kind o' rival of Tauchnitz— is bringin' him

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oot in a paper book for the Frenchies and the German "883
folk in twa volumes. Sae he 's in luck, ye see.— Yours, ^' ^^

Thomson.

To AusoN Cunningham

The verses referred to in the following are those of j4 Child's
Cardsn,

[Nice, February, i88j.]
MY DEAR CUMMY,— You must think, and quite justly,
that I am one of the meanest rogues in creation. But
though I do not write (which is a thing I hate), it by
no means follows that people are out of my mind. It
is natural that 1 should always think more or less about
you, and still more natural that I should think of you
when I went back to Nice. But the real reason why
you have been more in my mind than usual is because
of some little verses that I have been writing, and that
I mean to make a book of; and the real reason of this
letter (although I ought to have written to you anyway)
is that I have just seen that the book in question must
be dedicated to

Alison Cunningham,

the only person who will really understand it. I don't
know when it may be ready, for it has to be illustrated,
but I hope in the meantime you may like the idea of
what is to be; and when the time comes, 1 shall try to
make the dedication as pretty as I can make it. Of
course, this is only a flourish, like taking off one's hat;
but still, a person who has taken the trouble to write
things does not dedicate them to any one without
meaning it; and you must just try to take this dedica«

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

l^^^ tion in place of a great many things that I might have
said, and that I ought to have done, to prove that I am
not altogether unconscious of the great debt of gratitude
1 owe you. This little book, which is all about my
childhood, should indeed go to no other person but you,
who did so much to make that childhood happy.

Do you know, we came very near sending for you
this winter. If we had not had news that you were ill
too, I almost believe we should have done so, we were
so much in trouble.

I am now very well; but my wife has had a very,
very bad spell, through overwork and anxiety, when I
was lost/ I suppose you heard of that. She sends
you her love, and hopes you will write to her, though
she no more than I deserves it. She would add a word
herself, but she is too played out— I am, ever your old
boy, R. L S.

To W. E. Henley

Stevenson was by this time beginning to send home some of the ms.
ofj4 Child's Garden, the title of which had not yet been settled.
The pieces as first numbered are in a different order from that afterwards
adopted, but the reader will easily identify the references.

[Nice, Marcb, iSSj.]
MY DEAR LAD,— This is to announcc to you the ms. of
Nursery Verses, now numbering xlviii. pieces or 599
verses, which, of course, one might augment ad iti"
finitum.
But here is my notion to make all clear.
I do not want a big ugly quarto; my soul sickens at -
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the look of a quarto. I want a refined octavo, not i^3
large— not larger than the Donkey book, at any price. ""* ^^

I think the full page might hold four verses of four
lines, that is to say, counting their blanks at two, of
twenty-two lines in height. The first page of each
number would only hold two verses or ten lines, the
title being low down. At this rate, we should have
seventy-eight or eighty pages of letterpress.

The designs should not be in the text, but facing the
poem; so that if the artist liked, he might give two
pages of design to every poem that turned the leaf, i.e.
longer than eight lines, i.e. to twenty-eight out of the
forty-six. I should say he would not use this privilege
(?) above five times, and some he might scorn to illus-
trate at all, so we may say fifty drawings. I shall come
to the drawings next.

But now you see my book of the thickness, since the
drawings count two pages, of 180 pages; and since the
paper will perhaps be thicker, of near two hundred by
bulk. It is bound in a quiet green, with the words in
thin gilt. Its shape is a slender, tall octavo. And it
sells for the publisher's fancy, and it will be a darling
to look at; in short, it would be like one of the original
Heine books in type and spacing.

Now for the pictures. I take another sheet and begin
to jot notes for them when my imagination serves : I
will run through the book, writing when I have an
idea. There, I have jotted enough to give the artist a
notion. Of course, I don't do more than contribute
ideas, but I will be happy to help in any and every
way. I may as well add another idea: when the artist
finds nothing much to illustrate, a good drawing of any

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1883 object mentioned in the text, were it only a loaf of
^* ^^ bread or a candlestick, is a most delightful thing to a
young child. I remember this keenly.

Of course, if the artist insists on a larger form, I
must, 1 suppose, bow my head. But my idea I am
convinced is the best, and would make the book truly,
not fashionably, pretty.

1 forgot to mention that I shall have a dedication; I
am going to dedicate 'em to Cummy ; it will please her,
and lighten a little my burthen of ingratitude. A low
affair is the Muse business.

I will add no more to this lest you should want to
communicate with the artist; try another sheet I
wonder how many I '11 keep wandering to.

0, 1 forgot. As for the title, I think " Nursery Verses "
the best. Poetry is not the strong point of the text,
and I shrink from any title that might seem to claim
that quality; otherwise we might have "Nursery
Muses " or " New Songs of Innocence " (but that were
a blasphemy), or " Rimes of Innocence": the last not
bad, or— an idea— "The Jews' Harp/' or— now I have
lt-"The Penny Whistle."

THE PENNY WHISTLE:

NURSERY VERSES

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

ILLUSTRATED BY —

And here we have an excellent frontispiece, of a party
playing on a P. W. to a little ring of dancing children.

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THE PENNY WHISTLE 1883

is the name for me. ^' ^^

Fool! this is all wrong, here is the true name:—

PENNY WHISTLES
FOR SMALL WHISTLERS.

The second title is queried, it is perhaps better, as

simply PENNY WHISTLES.

Nor you, O Penny Whistler, grudge

That I your instrument debase:
By worse performers still we judge,

And give that fife a second place!

Crossed penny whistles on the cover, or else a sheaf
of 'em.

SUGGESTIONS

IV. The procession— the child running behind it.
The procession tailing off through the gates of a
cloudy city.

IX. Foreign Lands. —This will, 1 think, want two
plates— the child climbing, his first glimpse over the
garden wall, with what he sees— the tree shooting
higher and higher like the beanstalk, and the view
widening. The river slipping in. The road arriving
in Fairyland.

X. IVindy M]fife.— The child in bed listening— the
horseman galloping.

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1883 xn. The child helplessly watching his ship— then he
*'' ^^ gets smaller, and the doll joyfully comes alive— the
pair landing on the island— the ship's deck with the
doll steering and the child firing the penny cannon.
Query two plates ? The doll should never come prop-
erly alive.

XV. Building of the ship— storing her— Navigation-
Tom's accident, the other child paying no attention.

XXXI. The tVind.—l sent you my notion of already.

xxxvn. Foreign Children.— The foreign types dan-
cing in a jing-a-ring, with the English child pushing in
the middle. The foreign children looking at and show-
ing each other marvels. The English child at the leeside
of a roast of beef. The English child sitting thinking
with his picture-books all round him, and the jing-a-ring
of the foreign children in miniature dancing over the
picture-books.

xxxix. Dear artist, can you do me that ?

XLii. The child being started off— the bed sailing,
curtains and all, upon the sea— the child waking and
finding himself at home; the corner of toilette might be
worked in to look like the pier.

XLvii. The lighted part of the room, to be carefully
distinguished from my child's dark hunting grounds.
A shaded lamp. R. L S.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

H6tel des Iles d'Or, Hy^res, Var,
March 2 [/SS?].
MY dear mother,— It must be at least a fortnight
since we have had a scratch of a pen from you; and if

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it had not been for Cummy's letter, I should have feared 1883
you were worse again: as it is, I hope we shall hear ""' ^^
from you to-day or to*morrow at latest

Heam

Our news is good: Fanny never got so bad as we
feared, and we hope now that this attack may pass off
in threatenings. I am greatly better, have gained flesh,
strength, spirits; eat well, walk a good deal, and do
some work without fatigue. I am off the sick-list

Lodging

We have found a house^up the hill, close to the town,
an excellent place, though very, very little. If 1 can get
the landlord to agree to let us take it by the month just
now, and let our month's rent count for the year in
case we take it on, you may expect to hear we are again
installed, and to receive a letter dated thus:—

La Solitude,

Hy^res^les-Palmien,
Var.

If the man won't agree to that, of course I must just
give it up, as the house would be dear enough anyway
at 2000 f. However, I hope we may get it, as it is
healthy, cheerful, and close to shops, and society, and
civilisation. The garden, which is above, is lovely, and

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1883 will be cool in summer. There are two rooms below
^' ^^ with a kitchen, and four rooms above, all told.— Ever
your affectionate son, R. L Stevenson.

To Thomas Stevenson

"Cassandra" was a nickname of the elder Mr. Stevenson for his
daughter-in-law. The scheme of a play to be founded on Gnat £»-
pectations was one of a hundred formed in these days and afterwards
given up.

H6TEL DES IlES D'Or, BUT MY ADDRESS WILL BE

Chalet La Solitude, HvfeREs-LEs-PALMiERs, Var,
France, March 77, 188^.

DEAR SIR,— Your undated favour from Eastbourne
came to hand in course of post, and I now hasten to
acknowledge its receipt. We must ask you in future,
for the convenience of our business arrangements, to
struggle with and tread below your feet this most un-
satisfactory and uncommercial habit. Our Mr. Cas-
sandra is better; our Mr. Wogg expresses himself
dissatisfied with our new place of business; when left
alone in the front shop, he bawled like a parrot; it is
supposed the offices are haunted.

To turn to the matter of your letter, your remarks on
Great Expectations are very good. We have both re-
read it this winter, and I, in a manner, twice. The object
being a play; the play, in its rough outline, I now see;
and it is extraordinary how much of Dickens had to
be discarded as unhuman, impossible, and ineffective:
all that really remains is the loan of a file (but from a
grown-up young man who knows what he was doing,
and to a convict who, although he does not know it, is

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his father— the father knows it is his son), and the fact «Wj
of the convict-father's return and disclosure of himself ^' ^^
to the son whom he has made rich. Everything else
has been thrown aside; and the position has had to be
explained by a prologue which is pretty strong. I have
great hopes of this piece, which is very amiable and, in
places, very strong indeed: but it was curious how
Dickens had to be rolled away ; he had made his story
turn on such improbabilities, such fantastic trifles, not
on a good human basis, such as I recognised. You are
right about the casts, they were a capital idea; a good
description of them at first, and then afterwards, say
second, for the lawyer to have illustrated points out of
the history of the originals, dusting the particular bust
—that was all the development the thing would bear.
Dickens killed them. The only really wtll-executed
scenes are the riverside ones ; the escape in particular is
excellent; and I may add, the capture of the two con-
victs at the beginning. Miss Havisham is, probably,
the worst thing in human fiction. But Wemmick I
like; and I like Trabb's boy; and Mr. Wopsle as Hamlet
is splendid.

The weather here is greatly improved, and I hope in
three days to be in the chalet That is, if I get some
money to float me there.

I hope you are all right again, and will keep better.
The month of March is past its mid-career; it must soon
begin to turn towards the lamb ; here it has already begun
to do so; and I hope milder weather will pick you up.
Wogg has eaten a forpet of rice and milk, his beard is
streaming, his eyes wild. I am besieged by demands
of work from America.

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

"®3 The j£^o has just arrived; many thanks; I am novv
^' ^^ at ease.— Ever your affectionate son, pro Cassandra,
Wogg and Co., R. L S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

Chalet La Solitude, HvfeREs [April, i88j].

MY DEAR FRIEND,— I am one of the lowest of the— but
that *s understood. I received the copy,^ excellently
written, with I think only one slip from first to last I
have struck out two, and added five or six; so they now
number forty-five; when they are fifty, they shall out
on the world. I have not written a letter for a cruel
time; I have been, and am, so busy, drafting a long
story (for me, I mean), about a hundred Carnbill pages,
or say about as long as the Donkey book: Prince Otto
it is called, and is, at the present hour, a sore burthen,
but a hopeful. If I had him all drafted, I should whistle
and sing. But no: then I '11 have to rewrite him; and
then there will be the publishers, alas! But some time
or other, I shall whistle and sing, I make no doubt.

I am going to make a fortune, it has not yet begun,
for I am not yet clear of debt; but as soon as I can, I
begin upon the fortune. I shall begin it with a half-
penny, and it shall end with horses and yachts and all
the fun of the fair. This is the first real grey hair in
my character: rapacity has begun to show, the greed of
the protuberant guttler. Well, doubtless, when the
hour strikes, we must all guttle and protube. But it
comes hard on one who was always so willow-slender
and as careless as the daisies.

1 Fair copy of some of the Child* s Gardnt verses.
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Truly I am in excellent spirits. I have crushed i^Sj

through a financial crisis; Fanny is much better; I am
in excellent health, and work from four to five hours a
day— from one to two above my average, that is; and
we all dwell together and make fortunes in the loveliest
house you ever saw, with a garden like a fairy story,
and a view like a classical landscape.

Little? Well, it is not large. And when you come
to see us, you will probably have to bed at the hotel,
which is hard by. But it is Eden, madam, Eden and
Beulah and the Delectable Mountains and El Dorado and
the Hesperidean* Isles and Bimini.

We both look forward, my dear friend, with the
greatest eagerness to have you here. It seems it is not
to be this season ; but I appoint you with an appoint-
ment for next season. You cannot see us else: re-
member that. Till my health has grown solid like an
oak-tree, till my fortune begins really to spread its
boughs like the same monarch of the woods (and the
acorn, ay de mi! is not yet planted), I expect to be a
prisoner among the palms.

Yes, it is like old times to be writing you from the
Riviera, and after all that has come and gone, who can
predict anything? How fortune tumbles men about 1
Yet I have not found that they change their friends,
thank God.

Both of our loves to your sister and yourself. As
for me, if I am here and happy, I know to whom I owe
it; I know who made my way for me in life, if that
were all, and 1 remain, with love, your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1883

To Edmund Gossb

Chalet La Solitude, HvfeREs [April, i88ji].

MY DEAR GOSSE,— I am Very guilty; I should have
written to you long ago; and now, though it must be
done, I am so stupid that I can only boldly recapitu-
late. A phrase of three members is the outside of my
syntax.

First, I liked the Raver better than any of your other
verse. I believe you are right, and can make stories in
verse. The last two stanzas and one or two in the
beginning— but the two last above all— I thought ex-
cellent. I suggest a pursuit of the vein. If you want
a good story to treat, get the Memoirs of the Cbevalier
Johnstone, and do his passage of the Tay; it would be
excellent: the dinner in the field, the woman he has to
follow, the dragoons, the timid boatmen, the brave
lasses. It would go like a charm ; look at it, and you
will say you owe me one.

Second, Gilder asking me for fiction, I suddenly took
a great resolve, and have packed oflF to him my new
work. The Silverado Squatters. I do not for a moment
suppose he will take it; but pray say all the good
words you can for it. I should be awfully glad to get
it taken. But if it does not mean dibbs at once, I shall
be ruined for life. Pray write soon and beg Gilder
your prettiest for a poor gentleman in pecuniary sloughs.

Fourth, next time 1 am supposed to be at death's door,
write to me Hke a Christian, and let not your corre-
spondence attend on business.— Yours ever,

R.L&
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P.S.— I see I have led you to conceive the Squatters «883
are fiction. They are not, alas! ^* ^^

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

Chalet Solitude, May 5 [i88j].

MY DEAREST PEOPLE,— 1 have had a great piece of news.
There has been offered for Treasure Island—hov/ much
do you suppose ? 1 believe it would be an excellent jest
to keep the answer till my next letter. For two cents
I would do so. Shall I ? Anyway, I '11 turn the page
first. No— well— A hundred pounds, all alive, O! A
hundred jingling, tingling, golden, minted quid. Is
not this wonderful ? Add that I have now finished, in
draft, the fifteenth chapter of my novel, and have only
five before me, and you will see what cause of gratitude
I have.

The weather, to look at the per contra sheet, continues
vomitable; and Fanny is quite out of sorts. But, really,
with such cause of gladness, I have not the heart to be
dispirited by anything. My child's verse book is finished,
dedication and all, and out of my hands— you may tell
Cummy; Silverado is done, too, and cast upon the
waters; and this novel so near completion, it does look
as if I should support myself without trouble in the
future. If I have only health, I can, I thank God. It
is dreadful to be a great, big man, and not be able to buy
bread.

0 that this may last!

1 have to-day paid my rent for the half year, till the
middle of September, and got my lease: why they have
been so long, I know not.

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

>S83 I wish you all sorts of good things.
^' ^^ When is our marriage day?— Your loving and ecstatic
son» Treesure Eilaan.

It has been for me a Treasure Island verily.

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

La SoLrruDE, Hy^res, May 8, 1883.

MY DEAR people,—! was disgusted to hear my father
was not so well. I have a most troubled existence of
work and business. But the work goes well, which is
the great affair. I meant to have written a most de-
lightful letter; too tired, however, and must stop.
Perhaps I '11 find time to add to it ere post

1 have returned refreshed from eating, but have little
time, as Lloyd will go soon with the letters on his way
to his tutor, Louis Robert (.Mil), with whom he learns
Latin in French, and French, 1 suppose, in Latin, which
seems to me a capital education. He, Lloyd, is a great
bicycler already, and has been long distances; he is
most newfangled over his instrument, and does not
willingly converse on other subjects.

Our lovely garden is a prey to snails ; I have gathered
about a bushel, which, not having the heart to slay, I
steal forth withal and deposit near my neighbour's
garden wall. As a case of casuistry, this presents
many points of interest. 1 loathe the snails, but from
loathing to actual butchery, trucidation of multitudes,
there is still a step that 1 hesitate to take. What, then,
to do with them ? My neighbour's vineyard, pardy)

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It is a rich villa pleasure-garden of course; if it were "883
a peasant's patch, the snails, I suppose, would have to ^' ^^
perish.

The weather these last three days has been much
better, though it is still windy and unkind. I keep
splendidly well, and am cruelly busy, with mighty little
time even for a walk. And to write at all, under such
pressure, must be held to lean to virtue's side.

My financial prospects are shining. O, if the health
will hold, I should easily support myself.— Your ever
affectionate son, R. L S

To Edmund Gossb

The following refers to an arrangement (see above, p. 510) made
through Mr. Gosse for the publication of a part of The Silverado Squat"
Urs in the New York Century Magazine, of which Mr. Gilder was, and
is, as is well known, the admirable editor.

La Soutude, HySres-les-Palmiers, Var
[May 20, 1883].
my dear gosse,— I enclose the receipt and the correc-
tions. As for your letter and Gilder's, I must take an
hour or so to think; the matter much importing— to
me. The ;^40 was a heavenly thing.

I send the MS. by Henley, because he acts for me in
all matters, and had the thing, like all my other books,
in his detention. He is my unpaid agent— an admirable
arrangement for me, and one that has rather more than
doubled my income on the spot

If I have been long silent, think how long you were
so, and blush, sir, blush.

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

^883^ I was rendered unwell by the arrival of your cheque;
and, like Pepys, " my hand still shakes to write of it**
To this grateful emotion, and not to D. T., please attrib-
ute the raggedness of my hand.

This year 1 should be able to live and keep my family
on my own earnings, and that in spite of eight months
and more of perfect idleness at the end of last and
beginning of this. It is a sweet thought.

This spot, our garden and our view, are sub-celestial.
I sing daily with my Bunyan, that great bard,

" I dwell already the next door to Heaven! "

If you could see my roses, and my aloes, and my fig-
marigolds, and my olives, and my view over a plain,
and my view of certain mountains as graceful as Apollo,
as severe as Zeus, you would not think the phrase ex-
aggerated.

It is blowing to-day a bot mistral, which is the devil
or a near connection of his.

This to catch the post.— Yours affectionately,

R. L Stevenson.

To Edmund Gosse

La SOUTUDB, HvfeRES-LES-PALMIERS, VaR,

France, May 21, i88j.
MY DEAR GOSSE,— The night giveth advice, generally
bad advice; but 1 have taken it. And I have written
direct to Gilder to tell him to keep the book ^ back and

i Tbe Silverado SquatUrs.
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go on with it in November at his leisure. I do not 1883
know if this will come in time; if it does n't, of course ^* ^^
things will go on in the way proposed. The jQ/^o, or,
as 1 prefer to put it, the 1000 francs, has been such a
piercing sun-ray as my whole grey life is gilt withal.
On the back of it I can endure. If these good days of
Longman and the Century only last, it will be a very
green world, this that we dwell in and that philosophers
miscall. I have no taste for that philosophy; give me
large sums paid on the receipt of the ms. and copyright
reserved, and what do I care about the non-be€nt?
Only I know it can't last. The devil always has an imp
or two in every house, and my imps are getting lively.
The good lady, the dear, kind lady, the sweet, excel-
lent lady. Nemesis, whom alone I adore, has fixed her
wooden eye upon me. I fall prone; spare me, Mother
Nemesis! But catch her I

I must now go to bed; for I have had a whoreson
influenza cold, and have to lie down all day, and get up
only to meals and the delights, June delights, of busi-
ness correspondence.

You said nothing about my subject for a poem.
Don't you like it ? My own fishy eye has been fixed
on it for prose, but I believe it could be thrown out
finely in verse, and hence I resign and pass the hand.
Twig the compliment?— Yours affectionately,

R. LS.

To W. E. Henley

" Tushery " had been a name in use between Stevenson and Mr.
Henley for romances of the Ivanhoe type. He now applies it to his

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1883 own tale of the Wan of the Roses, Tb$ Black Arron^ written fbi
^* ^3 Mr. Henderson's Young Folks, of which the office was in Red Lion
Square.

[HvfeRES, May, i88j.]

. • • The influenza has busted me a good deal; I
have no spring, and am headachy. So, as my good
Red Lion Counter begged me for another Butcher's Boy
—I turned me to— what thinkest 'ou ?— to Tushery, by
the mass! Ay, friend, a whole tale of tushery. And
every tusher tushes me so free, that may 1 be tushed if
the whole thing is worth a tush. The Black Atraa:
A Tale of Tunstall Forest is his name: tush I a poor
thing I

Will Treasure Island proofs be coming soon, think
you?

I will now make a confession. It was the sight of
your maimed strength and masterfulness that begot
John Silver in Treasure Island. Of course, he is not
in any other quality or feature the least like you; but
the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded by the
sound, was entirely taken from you.

Otto is, as you say, not a thing to extend my public
on. It is queer and a little, little bit free; and some of
the parties are immoral; and the whole thing is not a
romance, nor yet a comedy ; nor yet a romantic comedy;
but a kind of preparation of some of the elements of all
three in a glass jar. I think it is not without merit, but
I am not always on the level of my argument, and some
parts are false, and much of the rest is thin; it is more
a triumph for myself than anything else; for I see, be-
yond it, better stuff. I have nine chapters ready, or
almost ready, for press. My feeling would be to get it

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placed anywhere for as much as could be got for ft, 18S3
and rather in the shadow, till one saw the look of it in ^* ^^
print— Ever yours, Pretty Sick.

To W. E. Henlet

La Soutude, HvfeRES-LES-PALMiERS, May, i88j.

MY DEAR LAD,— The books came some time since, but
I have not had the pluck to answer: a shower of small
troubles having fallen in, or troubles that may be very
large.

I have had to incur a huge vague debt for cleaning
sewers; our house was (of course) riddled with hidden
cesspools, but that was infallible. I have the fever, and
feel the duty to work very heavy on me at times; yet
go it must I have had to leave " Fontainebleau," when
three hours would finish it, and go full-tilt at tushery
for a while. But it will come soon.

I think I can give you a good article on Hokusai;
but that is for afterwards; " Fontainebleau " is first in
hand.

By the way, my view is to give the Penny Whistles
to Crane or Greenaway. But Crane, I think, is likeliest;
he is a fellow who, at least, always does his best

Shall I ever have money enough to write a play ?

O dire necessity!

A word in your ear: I don't like trying to support
myself. I hate the strain and the anxiety; and when
unexpected expenses are foisted on me, I feel the world
is playing with false dice.— Now I must Tush, adieu,
An Aching, Fevered, Penny-Journaust,
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»^5 A lytle Jape of tusherib

By A. Tushd

The pleasant river gushes
Among the meadows green;

At home the author tushes;
For him it flows unseen.

The Birds among the BQshes
May wanton on the spray;

But vain for him who tushes
The brightness of the day!

The frog among the rushes
Sits singing in the blue.

By 'r la'kin! but these tushes
Are wearisome to dol

The task entirely crushes
The spirit of the bard:

God pity him who tushes—
His task is very hard.

The filthy gutter slushes,
The clouds are full of rain.

But doomed is he who tushes
To tush and tush again.

At morn with his hair-brwshes.
Still " tush " he says, and weeps;

At night again he tushes,
And tushes till he sleeps.
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And when at length he pQshes 1883

Beyond the river dark— "* ^

'Las, to the man who tushes,
- Tush " shall be God's remarkl

To W, E. Henley

The verses aUoded to are some of those afterwards collected in
Underwoods,

[Chalet La Soutude, HYfeRES, May, iSSj."]
DEAR HENLEY,— You may be surprised to hear that I
am now a great writer of verses; that is, however, so.
I have the mania now like my betters, and faith, if I
live till 1 am forty, I shall have a book of rhymes like
Pollock, Gosse, or whom you please. Really, I have
begun to learn some of the rudiments of that trade, and
have written three or four pretty enough pieces of octo-
syllabic nonsense, semi-serious, semi-smiling. A kind
of prose Herrick, divested of the gift of verse, and you
behold the Bard. But I like it R. L S

To W. E. Henley

The ''new dictionary " means, of course, the first instalments of Iht
great Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, edited by Dr. J. A. H.
Murray.

HvfeRES [June, 1883].

DEAR LAD,— I was delighted to hear the good news

about . Bravo, he goes uphill fast. Let him beware

of vanity, and he will go higher; let him be still dis-
contented, and let him (if it might be) see the merits
and not the faults of his rivals, and he may swarm at

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

"883 last to the topgallant. There is no other way. Ad-
*^' ^^ miration is the only road to excellence; and the critical
spirit kills, but envy and injustice are putrefaction on
its feet

Thus far the moralist The eager author now begs
to know whether you may have got the other Whis-
tles, and whether a fresh proof is to be taken; also
whether in that case the dedication should not be
printed therewith ; Bulk Delights Aiblishers (original
aphorism ; to be said sixteen times in succession as a
test of sobriety).

Your wild and ravening commands were received;
but cannot be obeyed. And anyway, I do assure you
I am getting better every day; and if the weather would
but turn, I should soon be observed to walk in horn-
pipes. Truly I am on the mend. I am still very careful
I have the new dictionary; a joy, a thing of beauty, and
—bulk. I shall be raked i' the mools before it 's finished ;
that is the only pity; but meanwhile I sing.

I beg to inform you that I, Robert Louis Stevenson,
author of Brasbiana and other works, am merely begin-
ning to commence to prepare to make a first start at
trying to understand my profession. O the height and
depth of novelty and worth in any artl and O that I
am privileged to swim and shoulder through such
oceans! Could one get out of sight of land— all in the
blue ? Alas not, being anchored here in flesh, and the
bonds of logic being still about us.

But what a great space and a great air there is in these
small shallows where alone we venture! and how new
each sight, squall, calm, or sunrise! An art is a fine
fortune, a palace in a park, a band of music, health,

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and physical beauty; all but love— to any worthy tW^
practiser. I sleep upon my art for a pillow; 1 waken ^* ^^
in my art; I am unready for death, because 1 hate to
leave it I love my wife, 1 do not know how much,
nor can, nor shall, unless I lost her; but while 1 can
conceive my being widowed, I refuse the offering of
life without my art. I am not but in my art; it is me;
I am the body of it merely.

And yet I produce nothing, am the author of Bra^
sbiana and other works: tiddy-iddity— as if the works
one wrote were anything but prentice's experiments.
Dear reader, I deceive you with husks, the real works
and all the pleasure are still mine and incommunicable.
After this break in my work, beginning to return to it»
as from light sleep, I wax exclamatory, as you see.

Sursum Corda:

Heave ahead:

Here 's luck.

Art and Blue Heaven,

April and God's Larks.

Green reeds and the sky-scattering river.

A stately music

Enter God! R. L S.

Ay, but you know, until a man can write that " Enter
God/' he has made no art! None! Come, let us take
counsel together and make some!

To W. E. Henley

The first paragraph of the following refers to contributions of R. U &
to the Maga^m of Art under Mr. Henley's editorship.

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LETTERS OF R, L. STEVENSON

»883 La Solitude, HvfeRES [Summer, i88j].

^' ^' DEAR UD, —Glad you like " Fontainebleau. " I am going
to be the means, under heaven, of aerating or literating
your pages. The idea that because a thing is a picture-
book all the writing should be on the wrong tack is triste
but widespread. Thus Hokusai will be really a gossip
on convention, or in great part And the Skelt will be
as like a Charles Lamb as I can get it The writer
should write, and not illustrate pictures: else it 's
bosh. • • •

Your remarks about the ugly are my eye. Ugliness
is only the prose of horror. It is when you are not able
to write Macbeth that you write Tbirise Raquin. Fash-
ions are external: the essence of art only varies in so
far as fashion widens the field of its application; art is
a mill whose thirlage, in different ages, widens and
contracts; but, in any case and under any fashion, the
great man produces beauty, terror, and mirth, and the
little man produces cleverness (personalities, psychol-
ogy) instead of beauty, ugliness instead of terror, and
jokes instead of mirth. As it was in the beginning, is
now, and shall be ever, world without end. Amen!

And even as you read, you say, ** Of course, quelle
rengatnef' ILLS

To AUSON CtmNINOHAM

The persons mentioned below in the fourth paragraph are cousins of
the writer and playmates of his childhood; two of them, named L.ewis
like himself, after their Balfour grandfather, had been niclcnamed after
their birthplaces " Delhi ^ and '' Cramond " to avoid confusion.

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La Solitude, Hy£res [Summer, iSS)]. '885

MY DEAR CUMMY,— Yes, 1 owD I am a real bad corre- ^' ^^
spondent, and am as bad as can be in most directions.

I have been adding some more poems to your book.
I wish they would look sharp about it; but, you see,
they are trying to find a good artist to make the illustra-
tions, without which no child would give a kick for it
It will be quite a fine work, I hope. The dedication is
a poem too, and has been quite a long while written,
but I do not mean you to see it till you get the book;
keep the jelly for the last, you know, as you would
often recommend in former days, so now you can take
your own medicine.

I am very sorry to hear you have been so poorly; I
have been very well; it used to be quite the other way,
used it not ? Do you remember making the whistle at
Mount Chessie ? I do not think it was my knife; I be-
lieve it was yours; but rhyme is a very great monarch,
and goes before honesty, in these affairs at least Do
you remember, at Warriston, one autumn Sunday,
when the beechnuts were on the ground, seeing heaven
open ? 1 would like to make a rhyme of that, but
cannot

Is it not strange to think of all the changes: Bob,
Cramond, Delhi, Minnie, and Henrietta, all married, and
fathers and mothers, and your humble servant just the
one point better off? And such a little while ago all
children together! The time goes swift and wonder-
fully even; and if we are no worse than we are, we
should be grateful to the power that guides us. For
more than a generation I have now been to the fore in
this rough world, and been most tenderly helped, and

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1883 done cruelly wrong, and yet escaped; and here I am
^' still, the worse for wear, but with some fight in me
still, and not unthankful— no, surely not unthankful,
or I were then the worst of human beings!

My little dog is a very much better child in every way,
both more loving and more amiable; but he is not fond
of strangers, and is, like most of his kind, a great, spe-
cious humbug.

Fanny has been ill, but is much better again ; she now
goes donkey rides with an old woman, who compli-
ments her on her French. That old woman— seventy
odd— is in a parlous spiritual state.

Pretty soon, in the new sixpenny illustrated magazine,
Wogg's picture is to appear: this is a great honour!
And the poor soul, whose vanity would just explode if
he could understand it, will never be a bit the wiser! —
With much love, in which Fanny joins, believe me,
your affectionate boy, Robert Louis Stevenson.

To W. E. Henley

La Solitude/ HySres, Summer, 1883.

DEAR LAD,— Snatches in return for yours; for this little
once, I *m well to windward of you.

Seventeen chapters of Otto are now drafted, and find-
ing I was working through my voice and getting
screechy, I have turned back again to rewrite the earlier
part. It has, I do believe, some merit: of what order,
of course, 1 am the last to know; and, triumph of tri-
umphs, my wife— my wife who hates and loathes and

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shtes my women— admits a great part of my Countess iSS^
to be on the spot. ^' ^^

Yes, I could borrow, but it is the joy of being before
the public, for once. Really, ;^ioo is a sight more than
Treasure Island is worth.

The reason of my dicbe ? Well, if you begin one
house, have to desert it, begin another, and are eight
months without doing any work, you will be in a dicbe
too. I am not in a dicbe. however $ dtstinguo^l would
fain distinguish ; I am rather a swell, but not solvent.
At a touch the edifice, cedificium, might collapse. If
my creditors began to babble around me, 1 would sink
with a slow strain of music into the crimson west
The difficulty in my elegant villa is to find oil, oleum.
for the dam axles. But I 've paid my rent until Sep-
tember; and beyond the chemist, the grocer, the baker,
the doctor, the gardener, Lloyd's teacher, and the great
chief creditor Death, 1 can snap my fingers at all men.
Why will people spring bills on you ? I try to make
'em charge me at the moment; they won't, the money
goes, the debt remains.— The Required Play is in "The
Merry Men." Q. E. F.

1 thus render honour \6 your flair; it came on me of
a clap; 1 do not see it yet beyond a kind of sunset glory.
But it 's there : passion, romance, the picturesque, in-
volved: startling, simple, horrid: a sea-pink in sea-
froth ! Sagit de la disenterrer. " Help ! " cries a buried
masterpiece.

Once 1 see my way to the year's end, clear, I turn to
plays; till then I grind at letters; finish Otto; write,
say, a couple of my Traveller's Tales; and then, if all

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1S83 my ships come home, I will attack the drama in earnest
^' ^^ I cannot mix the skeins. Thus, though I 'm morally
sure there is a play in Otto, I dare not look for it: I
shoot straight at the story.

As a story, a comedy, 1 think Otto very well con-
structed ; the echoes are very good, all the sentiments
change round, and the points of view are continually,
and, I think (if you please), happily contrasted. None
of it is exactly funny, but some of it is smiling.

K,» L* o«

To Edmund Gosse

The reference b to Mr. Gosse's volume called Stoentuntb Cinturf
Studi$s,

La Solitude, HvfeREs [Summer, 188)].

MY DEAR GOSSE,— I have now leisurely read your vol-
ume; pretty soon, by the way, you will receive one of
mine.

It is a pleasant, instructive, and scholarly volume.
The three best being, quite out of sight— Crashaw,
Otway, and Etherege. They are excellent; I hesitate
between them ; but perhaps Crashaw is the most bril*
liant.

Your Webster is not my Webster; nor your Herrick
my Herrick. On these matters we must fire a gun to
leeward, show our colours, and go by. Argument is
impossible. They are two of my favourite authors:
Herrick above all: 1 suppose they are two of yours.
Well, Janus-like, they do behold us two with diverse
countenances, few features are common to these differ-
ent avatars; and we can but agree to differ, but still

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with gratitude to our entertainers, like two guests at j^l.
the same dinner, one of whom takes clear and one
white soup. By my way of thinking, neither of us
need be wrong.

The other papers are all interesting, adequate, clear,
and with a pleasant spice of the romantic. It is a book
you may be well pleased to have so finished, and will
do you much good. The Crashaw is capital: capital;
I like the taste of it. Preface clean and dignified. The
handling throughout workmanlike, with some four or
five touches of preciosity, which I regret

With my thanks for information, entertainment, and
a pleasurable envy here and there. — Yours affection-
ately, . R. L S

To W. E. Henley

During th« height of the Provencal summer, Stevenson went with
his wife to meet his parents at the Baths of Royat in Auvergne, where
he stayed for six weelcs, and where all passed pleasantly with no re-
turn of illness. Soon after he was settled again at Hyeres, he had a
great shock in the death of one of the oldest and most intimate of his
friends of Edinburgh days, Mr. James Walter Ferrier (see the essay
"Old Mortality" in Memoriis and Portraits). It is in accordance
with the expressed wish of this gentleman's surviving sister that pub-
licity is given to the following letter.

La Solitude, Hy£res-les-Palmiers, Var,
September ig, i88j.
dear boy,— Our letters vigorously cross: you will
ere this have received a note to Coggie: God knows
what was in it.

It is strange, a little before the first word you sent
me — so late — kindly late, I know and feel — 1 was

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LETTERS OF R, U STEVENSON

1883 thinking in my bed, when I knew you I had six fnends
^' ^^ — Bob I had by nature; then came the good James
Walter — with all his failings — the gentleman of the
lot, alas to sink so low, alas to do so little, but now,
thank God, in his quiet rest; next 1 found Baxter —
well do 1 remember telling Walter I had unearthed "a
W. S. that 1 thought would do " — it was in the Academy
Lane, and he questioned me as to the Signet's qualifi-
cations; fourth came Simpson; somewhere about the
same time, I began to get intimate with Jenkin; last
came Colvin. Then, one black winter afternoon, long
Leslie Stephen, in his velvet jacket, met me in the Spec,
by appointment, took me over to the infirmary, and in
the crackling, blighting gaslight showed me that old
head whose excellent representation 1 see before me in
the photograph. Now when a man has six friends, to
introduce a seventh is usually hopeless. Yet when
you were presented, you took to them and they to you
upon the nail. You must have been a fine fellow; but
what a singular fortune I must have had in my six
fnends that you should take to all. 1 don't know if it
is good Latin, most probably not; but this is enscrolled
before my eyes for Walter: Tandem e nubibus in
apricum properat Rest, I suppose, I know, was all
that remained; but O to look back, to remember all the
mirth, all the kindness, all the humorous limitations and
loved defects of that character; to think that he was
young with me, sharing that weather-beaten, Fergus-
sonian youth, looking forward through the clouds to
the sunburst; and now clean gone from my path, silent
— well, well. This has been a strange awakening.
Last night, when I was alone in the house, with the

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window open on the lovely still night, I could have «883
sworn he was in the room with me; I could show you ^' ^^
the spot; and, what was very curious, I heard his rich
laughter, a thing I had not called to mind for 1 know
not how long.

I see his coral waistcoat studs that he wore the fiist
time he dined in my house; I see his attitude, leaning
back a little, already with something of a portly air,
and laughing internally. How I admired him! And
now in the West Kirk.

I am trying to write out this haunting bodily sense
of absence; besides, what else should 1 write of?

Yes, looking back, 1 think of him as one who was
good, though sometimes clouded. He was the only
gentle one of all my friends, save perhaps the other
Walter. And he was certainly the only modest man
among the lot. He never gave himself away; he kept
back his secret; there was always a gentle problem
behind all. Dear, dear, what a wreck; and yet how
pleasant is the retrospect! God doeth all things well,
though by what strange, solemn, and murderous con-
trivances!

It is strange: he was the only man I ever loved who
did not habitually interrupt. The fact draws my own
portrait. And it is one of the many reasons why I count
myself honoured by his friendship. A man like you bad
to like me; you could not help yourself ; but Ferrierwas
above me, we were not equals; his true self humoured
and smiled paternally upon my failings, even as I
humoured and sorrowed over his.

Well, first his mother, then himself, they are gone:
"in their resting graves."

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1883 When I come to think of it, I do not know what I said
^ ^^ to his sister, and I fear to try again. Could you send her
this ? There is too much both about yourself and me in
i* ; but that, if you do not mind, is but a mark of sincerity.
It would let her know how entirely, in the mind of (I
suppose) his oldest friend, the good, true Ferrier obliter-
ates the memory of the other, who was only his " lunatic
brother."

Judge of this for me and do as you please; anyway,
I will try to write to her again ; my last was some kind
of scrawl that I could not see fo crying This came
upon me, remember, with terrible suddenness ; I was
surprised by this death; and it is fifteen or sixteen
years since first I saw the handsome face in the Spec
I made sure, besides, to have died first Love to you,
your wife, and her sisters. — Ever yours, dear boy,

K.. L* ^*

I never knew any man so superior to himself as poor
James Walter. The best of him only came as a vision,
like Corsica from the Corniche. He never gave his
measure either morally or intellectually. The curse was
on him. Even his friends did not know him but by fits.
1 have passed hours with him when he was so wise,
good, and sweet, that I never knew the like of it in any
other. And for a beautiful good humour he had no
match. I remember breaking in upon him once with
a whole red-hot story (in my worst manner), pouring
words upon him by the hour about some truck not
worth an egg that had befallen me; and suddenly,
some half hour after, finding that the sweet fellow had
some concern of his own of infinitely greater import,

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that he was patiently and smilingly waiting to consult 1^3
me on. It sounds nothing; but the courtesy and the ""* ^^
unselfishness were perfect. It makes me rage to think
how few knew him, and how many had the chance to
sneer at their better.

Well, he was not wasted, that we know; though if
anything looked liker irony than this fitting o^ a man
out with these rich qualities and faculties to be wrecked
and aborted from the very stocks, I do not know the
name of it. Yet we see that he has left an influence;
the memory of his patient courtesy has often checked
me in rudeness; has it not you ?

You can form no idea of how handsome Walter was.
At twenty he was splendid to see; then, too, he had the
sense of power in him, and great hopes; he looked for-
ward, ever jesting of course, but he looked to see himself
where he had the right to expect. He believed in him-
self profoundly ; but be never disbelieved in otbers. To the
roughest Highland student he always had his fine, kind,
open dignity of manner ; and a good word behind his back.

The last time that I saw him before leaving for America
— it was a sad blow to both of us. When he heard I
was leaving, and that might be the last time we might
meet — it almost was so — he was terribly upset, and
came round at once. We sat late, in Baxter's empty
house, where I was sleeping. My dear friend Walter
Ferrier: O if I had only written to him more! if only
one of us in these last days had been well! But I ever
cherished the honour of his friendship, and now when
he is gone, I know what I have lost still better. We
live on, meaning to meet; but when the hope is gone,
the pang comes, R. L S.

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LETTERS OP R. U STEVENSON

1883

To Edmund Gosse

La Solitude, Hy£res-les-Palmiers,
26tb September. i88j.

MY dear gosse» — It appears a bolt from Transatlantica
is necessary to produce four lines from you. It is not
flattering; but as I was always a bad correspondent,
't is a vice to which I am lenient I give you to know,
however, that I have already twice (this makes three
times) sent you what I please to call a letter, and received
from you in return a subterfuge — or nothing. . . .

My present purpose, however, which must not be
postponed, is to ask you to telegraph to the Americans.

After a summer of good health of a very radiant order,
toothache and the death of a very old friend, which
came upon me like a thunderclap, have rather shelved
my powers. I stare upon the paper, not write. I wish
I could write like your Sculptors; yet I am well aware
that I should not try in that direction. A certain
warmth (tepid enough) and a certain dash of the pic*
turesque are my poor essential qualities; and if I went
fooling after the too classical, I might lose even these.
But I envied you that page.

I am, of course, deep in schemes; I was so ever.
Execution alone somewhat halts. How much do you
make per annum, I wonder ? This year, for the first
time, I shall pass £yx)] I may even get halfway to the
next milestone. This seems but a faint remuneration;
and the devil of it is, that I manage, with sickness, and
moves, and education, and the like, to keep steadily in
front of my income. However, 1 console myself with

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this» that if I were anything else under God's Heaven, 1883
and had the same crank health, I should make an even ^' ^^
zero. If I had, with my present knowledge, twelve
months of my old health, I would, could, and should
do something neat As it is, I have to tinker at my
things in little sittings; and the rent, or the butcher, or
something, is always calling me off to rattle up a pot-
boiler. And then comes a back-set of my health, and
I have to twiddle my fingers and play patience.

Well, I do not complain, but I do envy strong health
where it is squandered. Treasure your strength, and
may you never learn by experience the profound ennui
and irritation of the shelved artist. For then, what is
life ? All that one has done to make one's life effective
then doubles the itch of inefficiency.

I trust also you may be long without finding out the
devil that there is in a bereavement. After love it is
the one great surprise that life preserves for us. Now
I don't think I can be astonished any more. — ^Yours
affectionately, R. L. S.

To Sidney Colvin

The foHowing is in answer to a letter containing remarks on th«
proofs of /Y Cbild*s Gardgn, then going round among some of his
friends, and on the instalments of Silvitado Squattits and Tbt Black
Arrow^ which were appearing in the Ctniuty Maga^ins and Young
Folks respectively. The proposal for an excursion among the Greek
islands, to be made the subject of a book, had come, if I remember
right, from a firm of American publishers, and was declined on the
ground of health risks. The remarks on Professor Seeley's literary
manner are apropos of Tbi Expansion of England, which I had
lately sent him.

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

«883 La Soutude. Hy^res-les-Palmiers. Var

"• '^ [October. 188)1

COLVIN, COLVIN, COLVIN, — ^Yours reccived; also Inter-
esting copy of P. IVbistUs. " In the multitude of coun-
sellors the Bible declares there is wisdom/' said my
great-uncle, ''but I have always found in them de-
traction/' It is extraordinary how tastes vary: these
proofs have been handed about, it appears, and I have
had several letters; and— distraction. ''i'Esop: the
Miller and the Ass/'

Notes on details: —

1. I love the occasional trochaic line; and so did
many excellent writers before me.

2. If you don't like A Good Boy. I do.

3. In Escape at Bedtime. I found two suggestions.
"Shove" for "above" is a correction of the press; it
was so written. '* Twinkled " is just the error; to the
child the stars appear to be there; any word that sug-
gests illusion is a horror.

4. 1 don't care; 1 take a different view of the voca-
tive.

5. ' ' Bewildering " and ' ' childering " are good enough
for me. These are rhymes, jingles; I don't go for
eternity and the three unities.

I will delete some of those condemned, but not alL
I don't care for the name Penny Whistles; 1 sent a sheaf
to Henley when I sent em. But I 've forgot the others.
I would just as soon call 'em " Rimes for Children " as
anything else. I am not proud nor particular.

Your remarks on The Black Arrow are to the point
I am pleased you liked Crookback; he is a fellow whose
hellish energy has always fired my attention. I wish

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Shakespeare had written the play after he had learned «883
some of the rudiments of literature and art rather than ^* ^^
before. Some day I will retickle the Sable Missile^
and shoot it, mqyennant finances, once more into the
air; I can lighten it of much» and devote some more
attention to Dick o' Gloucester. It *s great sport to
write tushery.

By this I reckon you will have heard of my proposed
excursiolorum to the Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece,
and kindred sites. If the excursiolorum goes on, that
is, \i mqyennant finances comes off, I shall write to beg
you to collect introductiolorums for me.

Distinguo: i. Silverado was not written in America,
but in Switzerland's icy mountains. 2. What you read
is the bleeding and disembowelled remains of what I
wrote. 3. The good stuff is all to come — so I think.
*'The Sea Fogs," "The Hunter's Family," "Toils and
Pleasures " — belles pages.— Yours ever,

Ramnugger.

O I — Seeley is too clever to live, and the book a gem.
But why has he read too much Arnold ? Why will he
avoid — obviously avoid — fine writing up to which he
has led ? This is a winking, curied-and-oiled, ultra-
cultured, Oxford-don sort of an affectation that infuriates
my honest soul. "You see" — they say— "how
unbombastic ive are; we come right up to eloquence,
and, when it *s hanging on the pen, dammy, we scorn
it!" It is literary Deronda-ism. If you don't want
the woman, the image, or the phrase, mortify your
vanity and avoid the appearance of wanting them.

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UTTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1883

To W. H. Low

Manbaitan mentioned below is the ntme of t short-lived New York
magazine, the editor of which had asked through Mr. Low for t con*
tribution from R. L S.

La Soutude, HvfeRES, October [t88j].

MY DEAR LOW,— . . . Somc day Of Other, in CasscU's
Magazine of Art, you will see a paper which will inter-
est you, and where your name appears. It is called
*' Fontainebleau : Village Communities of Artists," and
the signature of R. L. Stevenson will be found annexed.

Please tell the editor of Manhattan the following
secrets for me: ist. That I am a beast; and, that I owe
him a letter; jrd, that I have lost his, and cannot recall
either his name or address; 4tb, that I am very deep in
engagements, which my absurd health makes it hard for
me to overtake; but $tb, that I will bear him in mind;
6tb and last, that I am a brute.

My address is still the same, and I live in a most
sweet corner of the universe, sea and fine hills before
me, and a rich, variegated plain ; and at my back a
craggy hill, loaded with vast feudal ruins. I am very
quiet; a person passing by my door half startles me;
but I enjoy the most aromatic airs, and at night the
most wonderful view into a moonlit garden. By day
this garden fades into nothing, overpowered by its
surroundings and the luminous distance; but at night
and when the moon is out, that garden, the arbour,
the flight of stairs that mount the artificial hillock, the

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plumed blue gum-trees that hang trembling, become i^3
the very skirts of Paradise. Angels I know frequent it; ^' ^^
and it thrills all night with the thrills of silence. Damn
that garden; — and by day it is gone.

Continue to testify boldly against realism. Down
with Dagon, the fish godl All art swings down to-
wards imitation, in these days, fatally. But the man
who loves art with wisdom sees the joke; it is the lust-
ful that tremble and respect her ladyship; but the honest
and romantic lovers of the Muse can see a joke and sit
down to laugh with Apollo.

The prospect of your return to Europe is very agree-
able; and I was pleased by what you said about your
parents. One of my oldest friends died recently, and
this has given me new thoughts of death. Up to now
I had rather thought of him as a mere personal enemy
of my own; but now that I see him hunting after my
friends, he looks altogether darker. My own father is
not well; and Henley, of whom you must have heard
me speak, is in a questionable state of health. These
things are very solemn, and take some of the colour out
of life. It is a great thing, after all, to be a man of rea-
sonable honour and kindness. Do you remember once
consulting me in Paris whether you had not better sac-
rifice honesty to art; and how, after much confabula-
tion, we agreed that your art would suffer if you did ?
We decided better than we knew. In this strange
welter where we live, all hangs together by a million
filaments ; and to do reasonably well by others, is the
first prerequisite of art. Art is a virtue; and if I were
the man I should be, my art would rise in the propor*
tion of my life.

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

>W3 If you were privileged to give some happiness to
^* ^^ your parents, I know your art will gain by it By Gad,
it wiUI Sic subscribOuft R. L S.

To R. A. M. Stevenson

La Soutude, Hy&res-les-Palmiers
[October, t88ji\.

MY DEAR BOB, — Yes, I got both your letters at Lyons,
but have been since then decading in several steps.
Toothache; fever; Ferrier's death; lung. Now it is
decided I am to leave to-morrow, penniless, for Nice to
see Dr. Williams.

I was much struck by your last I have written a
breathless note on Realism for Henley; a fifth part of
the subject hurriedly touched, which will show you
how my thoughts arc driving. You are now at last
beginning to think upon the problems of executive,
plastic art, for you are now for the first time attacking
them. Hitherto you have spoken and thought of two
things — technique and the ars artiutn, or common
background of all arts. Studio work is the real touch.
That is the genial error of the present French teaching.
Realism I regard as a mere question of method. The
*' brown foreground," "old mastery," and the like,
ranking with villanelles, as technical sports and pas-
times. Real art, whether ideal or realistic, addresses
precisely the same feeling, and seeks the same qualities
— significance or charm. And the same — very same
— inspiration is only methodically differentiated accord-
ing as the artist is an arrant realist or an arrant idealist

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Each, by his own method, seeks to save and perpetuate i383
the same significance or charm ; the one by suppressing, ^' ^^
the other by forcing, detail. All other idealism is the
brown foreground over again, and hence only art in the
sense of a game, like cup and ball. All other realism is
not art at all — but not at all. It is, then, an insincere
and showy handicraft.

Were you to re-read some Balzac, as I have been
doing, it would greatly help to clear your eyes. He
was a man who never found his method. An inarticu-
late Shakespeare, smothered under forcible-feeble detail.
It is astounding to the riper mind how bad he is, how
feeble, how untrue, how tedious; and, of course, when
he surrendered to his temperament, how good and
powerful. And yet never plain nor clear. He could
not consent to be dull, and thus became so. He would
leave nothing undeveloped, and thus drowned out of
sight of land amid the multitude of crying and incon-
gruous details. There is but one art — to omit! O if I
knew how to omit, I would ask no other knowledge.
A man who knew how to omit would make an Iliad
of a daily paper.

Your definition of seeing is quite right. It is the first
part of omission to be partly blind. Artistic sight is
judicious blindness. Sam Bough ^ must have been a
jolly blind old boy. He would turn a corner, look for
one-half or quarter minute, and then say, "This '11 do,
lad." Down he sat, there and then, with whole
artistic plan, scheme of colour, and the like, and began
by laying a foundation of powerful and seemingly in-

1 The well-known Scottish landscape painter, who had been a fnend
of Stevenson's in youth.

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1883 congruous colour on the block. He saw. not the scene,
^* ^^ but the water-colour sketch. Every artist by sixty
should so behold nature. Where does he learn that ?
In the studio, I swear. He goes to nature for facts,
relations, values — material; as a man, before writing
a historical novel, reads up memoirs. But it is not by
reading memoirs that he has learned the selective cri-
terion. He has learned that in the practice of his art;
and he will never learn it well, but when disengaged
from the ardent struggle of immediate representation,
of realistic and ex facto art He learns it in the crystal-
lisation of day-dreams; in changing, not in copying,
fact; in the pursuit of the ideal, not in the study of
nature. These temples of art are, as you say, inacces-
sible to the realistic climber. If is not by looking at
the sea that you get

'*The multitudinous seas incarnadine^"

nor by looking at Mont Blanc that you find

'* And visited all night by troops of stars."

A kind of ardour of the blood is the mother of all this;
and according as this ardour is swayed by knowledge
and seconded by craft, the art expression flows clear, and
significance and charm, like a moon rising, are bom
above the barren juggle of mere symbols.

The painter must study more from nature than the
man of words. But why? Because literature deals
with men's business and passions which, in the game
of life, we are irresistibly obliged to study; but paint*

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ing with relations of light, and colour, and significances, 1883
and form, which, from the immemorial habit of the ^' ^^
race, we pass over with an unregardrul eye. Hence
this crouching upon camp-stools, and these crusts.^
But neither one nor other is a part of art, only prelim-
inary studies.

1 want you to help me to get people to understand
that realism is a method, and only methodic in its con-
sequences; when the realist is an artist, that is, and
supposing the idealist with whom you compare him to
be anything but a farceur and a dilettante. The two
schools of working do, and should, lead to the choice
of different subjects. But that is a consequence, not a
cause. See my chaotic note, which will appear, I
fancy, in November in Henley's sheet.

Poor Ferrier, it bust me horrid. He was, after you,
the oldest of my friends.

I am now very tired, and will go to bed having
prelected freely. Fanny will fmish. R. U S

To Thomas Stevenson

Some pages of manuscript exist in which the writer at this time at-
tempted to recast and expand a portion of the Lay Morals of 1879.

La Solttude, HyfeREs-LEs-PALMiERS, Var,
I2tb October, 188}.
MY DEAR FATHER, — I have just lunchcd ; the day is ex-
quisite, the air comes through the open window rich
with odour, and I am by no means spiritually minded

^ Cfo^Us : crude studies or daubs from nature.
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i«3 Your letter, however, was very much valued, and has
'^' been read oftener than once. What you say about
yourself I was glad to hear; a little decent resignation
is not only becoming a Christian, but is likely to be ex-
cellent for the health of a Stevenson. To fret and
fume is undignified, suicidally foolish, and theologi-
cally unpardonable; we are here not to make, but to
tread predestined, pathways; we are the foam of a
wave, and to preserve a proper equanimity is not
merely the first part of submission to God, but the
chief of possible kindnesses to those about us. I am
lecturing myself, but you also. To do our best is
one part, but to wash our hands smilingly of the
consequence is the next part, of any sensible virtue.
I have come, for the moment, to a pause in my moral
works; for I have many irons in the fire, and I wish to
finish something to bring coin before I can afford to go
on with what I think doubtfully to be a duty. It is
a most difficult work ; a touch of the parson will drive
off those I hope to influence; a touch of overstrained
laxity, besides disgusting, like a grimace, may do harm.
Nothing that I have ever seen yet speaks directly
and efficaciously to young men ; and I do hope I may
find the art and wisdom to fill up a gap. The great
point, as I see it, is to ask as little as possible, and
meet, if it may be, every view or absence of view; and
it .should be, must be, easy. Honesty is the one de-
sideratum ; but think how hard a one to meet. I think
all the time of Ferrier and myself; these are the pair
that I address. Poor Ferrier, so much a better man than
I, and such a temporal wreck. But the thing of which
we must divest our minds is to look partially upon

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Others; all is to be viewed; and the creature judged, >8S3
as he must be by his Creator, not dissected through a ^' ^^
prism of morals, but in the unrefracted ray. So seen,
and in relation to the almost omnipotent surroundings,
who is to distinguish between F. and such a man as
Dr. Candlish, or between such a man as David Hume
and such an one as Robert Burns ? To compare my
poor and good Walter with myself is to make me
startle; he, upon all grounds above the merely expedi-
ent, was the nobler being. Yet wrecked utterly ere
the full age of manhood; and the last skirmishes so
well fought, so humanly useless, so pathetically brave,
only the leaps of an expiring lamp. All this is a very
pointed instance. It shuts the mouth. I have learned
more, in some ways, from him than from any other
soul I ever met; and he, strange to think, was the best
gentleman, in all kinder senses, that I ever knew. —
Ever your affectionate son,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To W. H. Low

The paper referred to at the beginning of the second paragraph b
one on R. L. S. in the dntury Maga^ntf the first seriously critical
notice, says Mr. Low, which appeared of him in the States.

[Chalet La Solitude, Hy6res, Oct 2j, t88j.]
MY DEAR LOW, — Cest d'uft boH camaradc ; and I am
much obliged to you for your two letters and the en-
closure. Times are a lityle changed with all of us since
the ever memorable days of Lavenue: hallowed be his

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1883 name 1 hallowed his old Fleury 1 — of which you did not
^' ^^ see — I think — as I did — the glorious apotheosis: ad-
vanced on a Tuesday to three francs, on the Thursday
to six, and on Friday swept off, holus bolus, for the
proprietor's private consumption. Well, we had the
start of that proprietor. Many a good bottle came our
way, and was, I think, worthily made welcome.

I am pleased that Mr. Gilder should like my literature;
and I ask you particularly to thank Mr. Bunner (have I
the name right?) for his notice, which was of that friendly,
headlong sort that really pleases an author like what the
French call a ''shake-hands." It pleased me the more
coming from the States, where I have met not much
recognition, save from the buccaneers, and above all from
pirates who misspell my name. I saw my book adver-
tised in a number of the Cri/iV as the work of one R. L
Stephenson ; and, I own, I boiled. It is so easy to know
the name of a man whose book you have stolen ; for
there it is, at full length, on the title-page of your booty.
But no, damn him, not hel He calls me Stephenson.
These woes I only refer to by the way, as they set a
higher value on the Century notice.

I am now a person with an established ill-health — a
wife — a dog possessed with an evil, a Gadarene spirit —
a chalet on a hill, looking out over the Mediterranean —
a certain reputation — and very obscure finances. Oth-
erwise, very much the same, I guess; and were a bottle
of Fleury a thing to be obtained, capable of developing
theories along with a fit spirit even as of yore. Yet I
now draw near to the Middle Ages; nearly three years
ago, that fatal Thirty struck; and yet the great work is
not yet done — not yet even conceived. But so, as one

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goes on, the wood seems to thicken, the footpath to 1883
narrow, and the House Beautiful on the hill's summit '^' ^^
to draw further and further away. We learn, indeed, to
use our means; but only to learn, along with it, the
paralysing knowledge that these means are only applica-
ble to two or three poor commonplace motives. Eight
years ago, if I could have slung ink as I can now, I
should have thought myself well on the road after
Shakespeare; and now — I find I have only got a pair
of walking-shoes and not yet begun to travel. And
art is still away there on the mountain summit. But I
need not continue; for, of course, this is your story just
as much as it is mine; and, strange to think, it was
Shakespeare's too, and Beethoven's, and Phidias's. It
is a blessed thing that, in this forest of art, we can pur-
sue our wood-lice and sparrows, and not catcb tbem,
with almost the same fervour of exhilaration as that
with which Sophocles hunted and brought down the
Mastodon.

Tell me something of your work, and your wife. —
My dear fellow, I am yours ever, R. L. Stevenson.

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

To W. E. Henley

By this time Treasur$ Island was out in book form, and the follow*
ing is in reply to some reflections on its seamanship which had been
conveyed to him through Mr. Henley.

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«M3 [HYfeRES, November, 188}.]

*"' ^^ MY DEAR LAD, — . . . Of course, my seamanship is
jimmy: did I not beseech you 1 know not how often to
find me an ancient mariner — and you, whose own
wife's own brother is one of the ancientest, did nothing
for me ? As for my seamen, did Runciman ever know
eighteenth-century Buccaneers ? No ? Well, no more
did I. But I have known and sailed with seamen too,
and lived and eaten with them ; and I made my put-up
shot in no great ignorance, but as a put-up thing has to
be made, i.e, to be coherent and picturesque, and damn
the expense. Are they fairly lively on the wires ? Then,
favour me with your tongues. Are they wooden, and
dim, and no sport ? Then it is I that am silent, other-
wise not. The work, strange as it may sound in the
ear, is not a work of realism. The next thing I shall
hear is that the etiquette is wrong in Otto's Court I
With a warrant, and I mean it to be so, and the whole
matter never cost me half a thought. I make these
paper people to please myself, and Skelt, and God
Almighty, and with no ulterior purpose. Yet am I
mortal myself; for, as I remind you, I begged for a
supervising mariner. However, my heart is in the right
place. I have been to sea, but I never crossed the
threshold of a court; and the courts shall be the way I
want 'em.

I 'm glad to think I owe you the review that pleased
me best of all the reviews I ever had; the one I

liked best before that was *s on the Arabians.

These two are the flowers of the collection, according
to me. To live reading such reviews and die eating
ortolans — sich is my aspiration.

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Whenever you come you will be equally welcome. 1883
I am trying to finish Otto ere you shall arrive, so as to ^* '^
take and be able to enjoy a well-earned — O yes, a
well-earned — holiday. Longman fetched by Otio: is
it a spoon or a spoilt horn ? Momentous, if the latter;
if the former, a spoon to dip much praise and pudding,
and to give, I do think, much pleasure. The last part^
now in hand, much smiles upon me. — Ever yours,

R. LS.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

La SoLnruDE, Hy&res [November, i88j].

MY dear mother, — You must not blame me too
much for my silence; I am over head and ears in work,
and do not know what to do first. I have been hard
at Otto, hard at Silverado proofs, which I have worked
over again to a tremendous extent; cutting, adding,
rewriting, until some of the worst chapters of the
original are now, to my mind, as good as any. I was
the more bound to make it good, as 1 had such liberal
terms; it's not for want of trying if I. have failed.

I got your letter on my birthday; indeed, that was
how I found it out about three in the afternoon, when
postie comes. Thank you for all you said. As for my
wife, that was .the best investment ever made by man;
but "in our branch of the family" we seem to marry
well. I, considering my piles of work, am wonder-
fully well; I have not been so busy for I know not how
long. I hope you will send me the money 1 asked,
however, as I am not only penniless, but shall remain

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1883 so in all human probability for some considerable time.
^' ^^ I have got in the mass of my expectations; and the
;^ioo which is to float us on the new year cannot
come due till Silverado is all ready; I am delaying it
myself for the moment; then will follow the binders
and the travellers and an infinity of other nuisances;
and only at the last, the jingling-tingling.

Do you know that Treasure Island has appeared ?
In the November number of Henley's magazine, a capital
number anyway, there is a funny publisher's puflF of it
for your book; also a bad article by me. Lang dotes
on Treasure Island: "Except Tom Sawyer and the
Odyssey,** he writes, *M never liked any romance so
much." I will enclose the letter though. The Bogue
is angelic, although very dirty. It has rained — at
last I It was jolly cold when the rain came.

1 was overjoyed to hear such good news of my
fitther. Let him go on at that t — Ever your affectionate

Ki. L* ^.

To Sidney Colvin

La Solitude, HYfeRES-LES-PALMiERS, Var
[November, i88j],
MY DEAR colvin, — I have been bad, but as you were
worse, I feel no shame. I raise a blooming counte-
nance, not the evidence of a self-righteous spirit

I continue my uphill fight with the twin spirits of
bankruptcy and indigestion. Duns rage about my por-
tal, at least to fancy's ear.
1 suppose you heard of Ferrier's death: my oldest
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friend, except Bob. It has much upset me. I did not 1883
fancy how much. I am strangely concerned about it. ^' ^^

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

Here lies

The carcase

Robert Louis Stevenson,

An active, austere, and not inelegant

writer,

who,

at the termination of a long career,

wealthy, wise, benevolent, and honoured by

the attention of two hemispheres,
yet owned it to have been his crowning favour

TO INHABIT
LA SOLITUDE.

(With the consent of the intelligent edility of Hyferes,
he has been interred, below this frugal stone, in the
garden which he honoured for so long with his poetic
presence.)
I must write more solemn letters. Adieu. Write.

In. L. C^

To Mrs. Milne

The next is to a cousin who had been one of his favourite playmates
in childhood, and had recognised some allusions in the proof slips of
M Child's Garden (the piece called A PrivaU SUny).

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

•Wj La Solitude, HvtRES [November, !88ji].

^' ^^ MY DEAR HENRIETTA, — Certainly; who else would they
be ? More by token, on that particular occasion, you
were sailing under the title of Princess Royal ; I, after a
furious contest, under that of Prince Alfred; and Willie,
still a little sulky, as the Prince of Wales. We were all
In a buck basket about halfway between the swing
and the gate; and I can still see the Pirate Squadron
heave in sight upon the weather bow.

I wrote a piece besides on Giant Bunker; but I was
not happily inspired, and it is condemned. Perhaps
I *II try again; he was a horrid fellow. Giant Bunker I
and some of my happiest hours were passed in pursuit
of him. You were a capital fellow to play: how few
there were who could! None better than yourself. 1
shall never forget some of the days at Bridge of Allan;
they were one golden dream. See A Good Bay in
the Penny Wbistles, much of the sentiment of which is
taken direct from one evening at B. of A. when we had
had a great play with the little Glasgow girl. Hal-
lowed be that fat book of fairy tales! Do you remem-
ber acting the Fair One with Golden Locks ? What a
romantic drama! Generally speaking, whenever I
think of play, it Is pretty certain that you will come
into my head. I wrote a paper called "Child's Play "
once, where, I believe, you or Willie would recognise
things. • • •

Surely Willie is just the man to marry ; and if his wife
was n't a happy woman, I think I could tell her who
was to blame. Is there no word of it ? Well, these
things are beyond arrangement; and the wind bloweth
where it listeth — which, I observe, is generally to-

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wards the west in Scotland. Here it prefers a south- 1883
easterly course, and is called the Mistral — usually with ^' ^^
an adjective in front But if you will remember my
yesterday's toothache and this morning's crick, you will
be in a position to choose an adjective for yourself.
Not that the wind is unhealthy; only when it comes
strong, it is both very high and very cold, which makes
it the d-v-1. But as I am writing to a lady, I had
better avoid this topic; winds requiring a great scope
of language.

Please remember me to all at home; give Ramsay a
pennyworth of acidulated drops for his good taste. —
And believe me, your affectionate cousin,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Miss Ferrier

La SoLrruDE, Hy^res, Var, November 22, t88j.

dear miss ferrier, — Many thanks for the photograph.
It is — well, it is like most photographs. The sun is
an artist of too much renown; and, at any rate, we
who knew Walter " in the brave days of old " will be
difficult to please.

I was inexpressibly touched to get a letter from some
lawyers as to some money. I have never had any
account with my friends; some have gained and some
lost; and I should feel there was something dishonest
in a partial liquidation even if I could recollect the facts,
wbicb I cannot But the fact of his having put aside
this memorandum touched me greatly.

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1883 The mystery of his life is great. Our chemist in this
* ^^ place, who had been at Malvern, recognised the picture.
You may remember Walter had a romantic affection for
all pharmacies ? and the bottles in the window were
for him a poem P He said once that he knew no plea-
sure like driving through a lamplit city, waiting for the
chemists to go by.

All these things return now.

He had a pretty full translation of Schiller's /Esthetic
Letters^ which we read together, as well as the second
part of Faust^ in Gladstone Terrace, he helping me
with the German. There is no keepsake I should more
value than the MS. of that translation. They were the
best days I ever had with him, little dreaming all would
so soon be over. It needs a blow like this to convict
a man of mortality and its burthen. I always thought
I should go by myself; not to survive. But now I feel
as if the earth were undermined, and all my friends
have lost one thickness of reality since that one passed.
Those are happy who can take it otherwise; with that
I found things all beginning to dislimn. Here we have
no abiding city, and one felt as though he had — and

0 too much acted.

But if you tell me, he did not feel my silence. How-
ever, he must have done so; and my guilt is irreparable
now. I thank God at least heartily that he did not
resent it

Please remember me to Sir Alexander and Lady
Grant, to whose care I will address this. When next

1 am in Edinburgh I will take flowers, alas! to the
West Kirk. Many a long hour we passed in grave-
yards, the man who has gone and I — or rather not

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that man — but the beautiful, genial, witty youth who 1^3
so betrayed him. — Dear Miss Ferrier, i am yours most ^' ^^
sincerely, Robert Louis Stevenson.

To W. H. Low

La Soutude, HvfeRES, Var, i}tb December, i88j.
MY DEAR LOW, — . • • I was much pleased with what
you send about my work. Ill-health is a great handi-
capper in the race. I have never at command that
press of spirits tiut are necessary to strike out a thing
red hot Silver^. lo is an example of stuff worried and
pawed about, G* i knows how often, in poor health,
and you can see /or yourself the result : good pages, an
imperfect fusion, a certain languor of the whole. Not,
in short, art. I have told Roberts to send you a copy
of the book when it appears, where there are some fair
passages that will be new to you. My brief romance,
Prince Otto — far my most difficult adventure up to
now— is near an end. I have still one chapter to write
de fond en comble, and three or four to strengthen or
recast. The rest is done. I do not know if I have
made a spoon, or only spoiled a horn ; but 1 am tempted
to hope the first. If the present bargain hold, it will
not see the light of day for some thirteen months.
Then I shall be glad to know how it strikes you.
There Is a good deal of stuff in it, both dramatic and, 1
think, poetic; and the story is not like these purpose-
less fables of to-day. but is, at least, intended to stand
firm upon a base of philosophy — or morals — as you
please. It has been long gestated, and is wrought

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1883 with care. Enfin, nous verrons. My labours have this

^' ^^ year for the first time been rewarded with upwards of

;£35o; that of itself, so base we are! encourages me;

and the better tenor of my health yet more. — Remember

me to Mrs. Low, and believe me, yours most sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Thomas Stevenson

La Soutude, December 20, 188}.

MY DEAR father, — I do not know which of us is to
blame; I suspect it is you this time. The last accounts
of you were pretty good, I was pleased to see; I am,
on the whole, very well — suffering a little still from
my fever and liver complications, but better.

I have just finished re-reading a book, which I coun-
sel you above all things not to read, as it has made me
very ill, and would make you worse — Lockhart's
Scott. It is worth reading, as all things are from time
to time that keep us nose to nose with fact; though I
think such reading may be abused, and that a great
deal of life is better spent in reading of a light and yet
chivalrous strain. Thus, no Waverley novel approaches
in power, blackness, bitterness, and moral elevation to
the diary and Lockhart's narrative of the end ; and yet
the IVaverley Novels are better reading for every day
than the Life. You may take a tonic daily, but not
phlebotomy.

The great double danger of taking life too easily, and
taking it too hard, how difficult it is to balance thatl
But we are all too little inclined to faith; we are all, in

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our serious moments, too much inclined to forget that JJW3
all are sinners, and fall justly by their faults, and there*
fore that we have no more to do with that than with
the thunder-cloud ; only to trust, and do our best, and
wear as smiling a face as may be for others and our-
selves. But there is no royal road among this com-
plicated business. Hegel the German got the best
word of all philosophy with his antinomies: the con-
trary of everything is its postulate. That is, of course,
grossly expressed, but gives a hint of the idea, which
contains a great deal of the mysteries of religion, and a
vast amount of the practical wisdom of life. For your
part, there is no doubt as to your duty — to take things
easy and be as happy as you can, for your sake, and
my mother's, and that of many besides. Excuse this
sermon. — Ever your loving son, R. L S

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

La Solitude, December 25, i88j.

MY DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER, — This it is SUppOSed

will reach you about Christmas, and I believe 1 should
include Lloyd in the greeting. But I want to lecture
my father; he is not grateful enough; he is like Fanny;
his resignation is not the ''true blue." A man who
has gained a stone; whose son is better, and, after so
many fears to the contrary, 1 dare to say, a credit to
him; whose business is arranged; whose marriage is a
picture — what I should call resignation in such a case
as his would be to '' take down his fiddle and play as
lood as ever he could." That and naught else. And

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1883 now, you dear old pious ingrate, on this Christmas
^' ^^ morning, think what your mercies have been; and do
not walk too far before your breakfast — as far as to
the top of India Street, then to the top of Dundas Street,
and then to your ain stair heid; and do not forget that
even as laborare, so joculari, est orate; and to be
happy the first step to being pious.

I have as good as finished my novel, and a hard job
it has been — but now practically over, laus deot My
financial prospects better than ever before; my excellent
wife a touch dolorous, like Mr. Tommy; my Bogue
quite converted, and myself in good spirits. O, send
Curry Powder per Baxter. R. L S.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

[La Soutudb, HvfeREs], last Sunday of '83.

MY DEAR MOTHER, — I give my father up. I give him
a parable: that the IVaverley Novels are better reading
for every day than the tragic Life. And he takes it
backside foremost, and shakes his head, and is gloomier
than ever. Tell him that I give him up. 1 don't want
no such a parent. This is not the man for my money.
I do not call that by the name of religion which fills a
man with bile. I write him a whole letter, bidding
him beware of extremes, and telling him that his gloom
is gallows- worthy; and I get back an answer — Perish
the thought of it

Here am I on the threshold of another year, when,
according to all human foresight, I should long ago

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have been resolved into my elements; here am I, who 1883
you were persuaded was born to disgrace you — and, I ""' ^^
will do you the justice to add, on no such insufficient
grounds — no very burning discredit when all is done;
here am I married, and the marriage recognised to be a
blessing of the first order, A i at Lloyd's. There is he,
at his not first youth, able to take more exercise than I
at thirty-three, and gaining a stone's weight, a thing
of which I am incapable. There are you; has the man
no gratitude ? There is Smeoroch :* is he blind ? Tell
him from me that all this is

NOT THE TRUE BLUB I

I will think more of his prayers when I see in him a
spirit oi praise. Piety is a more childlike and happy
attitude than he admits. Martha, Martha, do you hear
the knocking at the door ? But Mary was happy. Even
the Shorter Catechism, not the merriest epitome of re-
ligion, and a work exactly as pious although not quite
so true as the multiplication table — even that dry-as-
dust epitome begins with a heroic note. What is man's
chief end? Let him study that; and ask himself if to
refuse to enjoy God's kindest gifts is in the spirit indi-
cated. , Up, Dullard! It is better service to enjoy a
novel than to mump.

I have been most unjust to the Shorter Catechism, I
perceive. I wish to say that I keenly admire its merits
as a performance; and that all that was in my mind
was its peculiarly unreligious and unmoral texture;
from which defect it can never, of course, exercise the

^ A favourite Skye terrier. Mr. Stevenson was a great lover of dogs.
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LETTERS OF R, L. STEVENSON

1884 least influence on the minds of children. But they learn
^' ^^ fine style and some austere thinking unconsciously.^
Ever your loving son, R. L S.

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

La Solitude, HvfeREs-LES-PALMiERS, Var,
January i [1884].

MY DEAR PEOPLE, — A Good New Year to you. The
year closes, leaving me with £^0 in the bank, owing
no man nothing, ;f 100 more due to me in a week or
so, and ;£i50 more in the course of the month; and I
can look back on a total receipt of £46^ os. 6d. for the
last twelve months !

And yet I am not happy I

Yet I begl Here is my beggary:—

1. Sellar's Trial,

2. George Sorrow's Book about Wales.

3. My Grandfather's Trip to Holland.

4. And (but this is, I fear, impossible) the Bell Rock

Book.

When I think of how last year began, after four
months of sickness and idleness, all my plans gone to
walsr, myself starting alone, a kind of spectre, for Nice
— should I not be grateful? Come, let us sing unto
the Lord!

Nor should I forget the expected visit, but 1 will not
believe in that till it befall ; I am no cultivator of disap-
pointments, 't is a herb that does not grow in my gar-
den; but I get some good crops both of remorse and

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gratitude. The last I can recommend to all gardeners; "884
it grows best in shiny weather, but once well grown, ^' ^
is very hardy; it does not require much labour; only
that the husbandman should smoke his pipe about the
flower-plots and admire God's pleasant wonders.
Winter green (otherwise known as Resignation, or the
" false gratitude plant") springs in much the same soil;
is little hardier, if at all; and requires to be so dug
about and dunged, that there is little margin left for
profit. The variety known as the Black Winter green
(H. V. Stevensoniana) is rather for ornament than
profit.

"John, do you see that bed of resignation ? " — ** It 's
doin' bravely, sir." — "John, 1 will not have it in my
garden; it flatters not the eye and comforts not the
stomach; root it out."— "Sir, I hae seen o* them
that rase as high as nettles; gran' plants!" — "What
then ? Were they as tall as alp^, if still unsavoury and
bleak, what matters it ? Out with it, then ; and in its
place put Laughter and a Good Conceit (that capital
home evergreen), and a bush of Flowering Piety — but
see it be the flowering sort — the other species is no
ornament to any gentleman's Back Garden."

Jno. Bunyan.

To Sidney Colvin

In the interval between the last letter and this, the writer had been
at death's door from a sudden attaclc of internal congestion, which
happened during a visit to Nice early in January. Afier a slow
recovery he had returned to his house at Hyeres, and for a time
seemed to be picking up again.

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LETTERS OF (t I- STEVENSON

>M4 La Solitude, HyfeREs-LES-PALMiERs, Var,

"• ^ 9tb March, 1884.

MY DEAR s. c, — You will already have received a not
very sane note from me; so your patience was re-
warded — may I say, your patient silence ? However,
now comes a letter, which, on receipt, I thus acknow-
ledge,

I have already expressed myself as to the political
aspect. About Grahame, I feel happier; it does seem
to have been really a good, neat, honest piece of work.
We do not seem to be so badly off for commanders:
Wolseley and Roberts, and this pile of Woods, Stewarts,
Alisons, Grahames, and the like. Had we but one
statesman on any side of the house I

Two chapters of Otto do remain : one to rewrite, one
to create; and I am not yet able to tackle them. For
me, it is my chief 0' works; hence probably not so for
others, since it only means that 1 have here attacked
the greatest difficulties. But some chapters towards
the end — three in particular — I do think come off. I
find them stirring, dramatic, and not unpoetical. We
shall see, however; as like as not, the effort will be
more obvious than the success. For, of course, I strung
myself hard to carry it out. The next will come easier,
and possibly be more popular. I believe in the cover-
ing of much paper, each time with a definite and not too
diflFicuIt artistic purpose; and then, from time to time,
drawing oneself up and trying, in a superior effort, to
combine the facilities thus acquired or improved. Thus
one progresses. But, mind, it is very likely that the
big effort, instead of being the masterpiece, may be the
blotted copy, the gymnastic exercise. This no man

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can tell; only the brutal and licentious public, snouting t984
in Mudie's wash-trough, can return a dubious answer. ^' ^^

I am to-day, thanks to a pure heaven and a benefi-
cent, loud-talking, antiseptic mistral, on the high
places as to health and spirits. Money holds out won-
derfully. Fanny has gone for a drive to certain mea-
dows which are now one sheet of jonquils: sea-bound
meadows, the thought of which may freshen you in
Bloomsbury. " Ye have been fresh and fair. Ye have
been filled with flowers *' — 1 fear I misquote. Why do
people babble ? Surely Herrick, in his true vein, is supe-
riorto Martial himself, though Martial is a very pretty poet

Did you ever read St. Augustine ? The first chapters
of the Confessions are marked by a commanding genius:
Shakespearean in depth. I was struck dumb, but, alas!
when you begin to wander into controversy, the poet
drops out. His description of infancy is most seizing.
And how is this: *' Sed majorum nugae negotia vocan-
tur; puerorum autem talia cum sint puniuntura majori-
bus." Which is quite after the heart of R. L. S. See
also his splendid passage about the "luminosus limen
amicitiae" and the ''nebula de limosa concupiscentia
carnis"; going on: "t//rimyw^inconfusoaestuabat et
rapiebat imbecillam aetatem per abrupta cupiditatum."
That " Utrumque " is a real contribution to life's science.
Lust alone is but a pigmy ; but it never, or rarely, attacks
us single-handed.

Do you ever read (to go miles off, indeed) the incredible
Barbey d' Aurdvilly ? A psychological. Poe — to be for a
moment Henley. 1 own with pleasure 1 prefer him with
all his folly, rot, sentiment, and mixed metaphors, to the
whole modern school in France. It makes me laugh

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1884 when it 's nonsense ; and when he gets an effect (though
^' ^ it 's still nonsense and mere Poery, not poesy) it wakens
me. Ce qui ne meurtpas nearly killed me with laughing,
and left me — well, it left me very nearly ad miring the old
ass. At least, it 's the kind of thing one feels one
could n't do. The dreadful moonlight, when they all
three sit silent in the room — by George, sir, it 's ima-
gined— and the brief scene between the husband and
wife is all there. Quant au fond, the whole thing, of
. course, is a fever dream, and worthy of eternal laughter.
Had the young man broken stones, and the two women
been hard-working honest prostitutes, there had been
an end of the whole immoral and baseless business:
you could at least have respected them in that case.

I also read Petronius Arbiter^ which is a rum work,
not so immoral as most modern works, but singularly
silly. 1 tackled some Tacitus too. I got them with a
dreadful French crib on the same page with the text,
which helps me along and drives me mad. The French
do not even try to translate. They try to be much more
classical than the classics, with astounding results of
barrenness and tedium. Tacitus, I fear, was too solid
for me. I liked the war part; but the dreary intriguing
at Rome was too much. R. L. S.

To Mr. Dick

This correspondent was for many years head clerk and confidential
assistant in the family firm at Edinburgh.

La Solitude, HvfeREs, Var, i2tb March, 1884.
MY DEAR MR. DICK, — 1 have been a great while owing
you a letter; but I am not without excuses, as you have

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heard. I overworked to get a piece of work finished 1884
before I had my holiday, thinking to enjoy it more; and ^* ^
instead of that, the machinery near hand came sundry in
my hands! like Murdie's uniform. However, I am now,
I think, in a fair way of recovery; I think I was made,
what there is of me, of whipcord and thorn-switches;
surely 1 am tough I But I fancy I shall not overdrive
again, or not so long. It is my theory that work is
highly beneficial, but that it should, if possible, and cer-
tainly for such partially broken-down instruments as the
thing I call my body, be taken in batches, with a clear
break and breathing space between. I always do vary
my work, laying one thing aside to take up another, not
merely because I believe it rests the brain, but because I
have found it most beneficial to the result. Reading,
Bacon says, makes a full man, but what makes me full
on any subject is to banish it for a time from all my
thoughts. However, what I now propose is, out of every
quarter, to work two months and rest the third. I
believe I shall get more done, as I generally manage, on
my present scheme, to have four months' impotent ill-
ness and two of imperfect health — one before, one after,
I break down. This, at least, is not an economical
division of the year.

1 re-read the other day that heart-breaking book, the
Life of Scott. One should read such works now and
then, but O, not often. As I live, I feel more and more
that literature should be cheerful and brave-spirited,
even if it cannot be made beautiful and pious and
heroic. We wish it to be a green place; the W^averUy
Novels are better to re-read than the over-true Life, fine
9!^ dear Sir Walter was. The Bible, in most parts, is a

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

"^ cheerful book; it is our little piping theologies, tractSt
""' ^ and sermons that are dull and dowie; and even the
Shorter Catechism, which is scarcely a work of conso-
lation, opens with the best and shortest and completest
sermon ever written — upon Man's chief end. — Believe
mfe, my dear Mr. Dick, very sincerely yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P. S.— You seel have changed my hand. I was
threatened apparently with scrivener's cramp, and at
any rate had got to write so small that the revisal
of my MS. tried my eyes, hence my signature alone re-
mains upon the old model; for it appears that if 1
changed that, I should be cut off from my '' vivers."

R. L S

To G>SMO MONKHOUSB

This correspondent was a friend of old Savile Gub days; the drift
of his letter can easily be guessed from this reply. The reference to
Lamb is to the essay on the Restoration dramatists.

La Soutude, Hy£res-les-Palmiers, Var,
March i6, 1884.

MY DEAR MONKHOUSB, — You see with what prompti-
tude I plunge into correspondence; but the truth is, I
am condemned to a complete inaction, stagnate dis-
mally, and love a letter. Yours, which would have
been welcome at any time, was thus doubly precious.

Dover sounds somewhat shiveringly in my ears.
You should see the weather / have — cloudless, clear as
crystal, with just a punkah-draft of the most aromatic

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MARSEILLES AND HY^RES

air, all pine and gum tree. You would be ashamed of 1884
Dover; you would scruple to refer, sir, to a spot so ^' ^
paltry. To be idle at Dover is a strange pretension;
pray, how do you warm yourself? If I were there I

should grind knives or write blank verse, or But

at least you do not bathe ? It is idle to deny it: I have
— I may say I nourish — a growing jealousy of the
robust, large-legged, healthy Britain-dwellers, patient
of grog, scorners of the timid umbrella, innocuously
breathing fog: all which I once was, and I am ashamed
to say liked it How ignorant is youth! grossly roll-
ing among unselected pleasures; and how nobler,
purer, sweeter, and lighter, to sip the choice tonic, to
recline in the luxurious invalid chair, and to tread, well-
shawled, the little round of the constitutional. Seri-
ously, do you like to repose ? Ye gods, I hate it. I
never rest with any acceptation; I do not know
what people mean who say they like sleep and that
damned bedtime which, since long ere I was breeched,
has rung a knell to all my day's doings and beings.
And when a man, seemingly sane, tells me he has
"fallen in love with stagnation," I can only say to
him, "You will never be a Pirate I" This may
not cause any regret to Mrs. Monkhouse; but in your
own soul it will clang hollow — think of it! Never!
After all boyhood's aspirations and youth's immoral
day-dreams, you are condemned to sit down, grossly
draw in your chair to the fat board, and be a beastly
Burgess till you die. Can it be? Is there not some
escape, some furlough from the Moral Law, some holi-
day jaunt contrivable into a Better Land ? Shall we
never shed blood ? This prospect is too grey.

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1884 *< Here lies a man who never did

'"' ^ Anything but what he was bid;

Who lived his life in paltry ease.
And died of commonplace disease.**

To confess plainly, I had intended to spend my life
(or any leisure I might have from Piracy upon the high
seas) as the leader of a great horde of irregular cavalry,
devastating whole valleys. I can stilly looking back,
see myself in many favourite attitudes; signalling for a
boat from my pirate ship with a pocket-handkerchief,
* I at the jetty end, and one or two of my bold blades
keeping the crowd at bay; or else turning in the saddle
to look back at my whole command (some five thou-
sand strong) following me at the hand-gallop up the
road out of the burning valley: this last by moonlight

Et point du tout I am a poor scribe, and have scarce
broken a commandment to mention, and have recently
dined upon cold veal! As for you (who probably had
some ambitions), I hear of you living at Dover, in lodg-
ings, like the beasts of the field. But in heaven, when
we get there, we shall have a good time, and see some
real carnage. For heaven is — must be — that great
Kingdom of Antinomia, which Lamb saw dimly adum-
brated in the Country IVife, where the worm which
never dies (the conscience) peacefully expires, and the
sinner lies down beside the Ten Commandments. Till
then, here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling, with
neither health nor vice for anything more spirited than
procrastination, which I may well call the Consolation
Stakes of Wickedness; and by whose diligent practice,
without the least amusement to ourselves, we can rob

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the orphan and bring down grey hairs with sorrow to J884
the dust.

This astonishing gush of nonsense I now hasten to
close, envelope, and expedite to Shakespeare's Cliff.
Remember me to Shakespeare, and believe me, yours
very sincerely, Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Edmund Gossb

Mr. Gosse had written describing the office which he then occupied,
a picturesque old-fashioned chamber in the upper stories of the Board
of Trade.

La Solitude, Hy6res-les-Palmiers, Var,
March 77, 1884.

my dear gosse, — Your office — office is profanely
said — your bower upon the leads is divine. Hare
you, like Pepys, "the right to fiddle" there? I see
you mount the companion, barbiton in hand, and,
fluttered about by city sparrows, pour forth your spirit
in a voluntary. Now when the spring begins, you
must lay in your flowers: how do you say about a
potted hawthorn ? Would it bloom ? Wallflower is
a choice pot-herb; lily-of-the-valley, too, and carna-
tion, and Indian cress trailed about the window, is not
only beautiful by colour, but the leaves are good to eat
I recommend thyme and rosemary for the aroma,
which should not be left upon one side; they are good
quiet growths.

On one of your tables keep a great map spread out;
a chart is still better — it takes one further — the havens
with their little anchors, the rocks, banks, and sound-
ings, are adorably marine; and such furniture will suit

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1884 your shipshape habitation. I wish 1 could see those
cabins; they smile upon me with the most intimate
charm. From your leads, do you behold St. Paul's ?
I always like to see the Foolscap; it is London ^^rstf,
and no spot from which it is visible is without ro-
mance. Then it is good company for the man of letters,
whose veritable nursing Pater-Noster is so near at hand.
I am all at a standstill; as idle as a painted ship, but not
so pretty. My romance, which has so nearly butchered
me in the writing, not even finished; though so near,
thank God, that a few days of tolerable strength will
see the roof upon that structure. I have worked very
hard at it, and so do not expect any great public favour.
In moments of effort, one learns to do the easy things
that people like. There is the golden maxim; thus one
should strain and then play, strain again and play again.
The strain is for us, it educates; the play is for the
reader, and pleases. Do you not feel so? We are
ever threatened by two contrary faults: both deadly.
To sink into what my forefathers would have called
*'rank conformity," and to pour forth cheap replicas,
upon the one hand; upon the other, and still more in-
sidiously present, to forget that art is a diversion and a
decoration, that no triumph or effort is of value, nor
anything worth reaching except charm. — Yours affec-
tionately* R. L S.

To Miss Ferrier

La SOUTUDE, HvfeRES-LES-PALMIERS, VaR

[March 22, i884\.
MY DEAR Miss FERRIER,— Are you really going to fail
us ? This seems a dreadful thing. My poor wife, who

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is not well oflT for friends on this bare coast, has been i^
promising herself, and 1 have been promising her, a '"' '^
rare acquisition. And now Miss Burn has failed, and
you utter a very doubtful note. You do not know how
delightful this place is, nor how anxious we are for a
visit Look at the names: "The Solitude"— is that
romantic ? The palm-trees ? — how is that for the gor-
geous East? "Var"? the name of a river — "the
quiet waters by " I 'T is true, they are in another de-
partment, and consist of stones and a biennial spate;
but what a music, what a plash of brooks, for the ima-
gination! We have hills; we have skies; the roses
are putting forth, as yet sparsely ; the meadows by the
sea are one sheet of jonquils; the birds sing as in an
English May — for, considering we are in France and
serve up our song-birds, I am ashamed to say, on a
little field of toast and with a sprig of thyme (my own
receipt) in their most innocent and now unvocal bellies
— considering all this, we have a wonderfully fair
wood-music round this Solitude of ours. What can I
say more ?— All this awaits you. Kennst du das Land,
in short— Your sincere friend,

Robert Louis Stevensom.

To W. H. Low

The verses enclosed were the set entitled Thi Ctfifo# Spiaks^
afterwards printed in Underwoods. Stevenson was suffering at this
time from a temporary weakness of the eyesight.

La SoLrruDE, Hy£res-les-Palmiers, Var
[Apra, 1884].
MY DEAR LOW, — The blind man in these sprawled
lines sends greeting. I have been ill, as perhaps the

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1884 papers told you. The news — *' great news — glorious
^* ^ news — sec-ond ed-ition!" — went the round in Eng-
land.

Anyway, I now thank you for your pictures, which,
particularly the Arcadian one, we all (Bob included, he
was here sick-nursing me) much liked.

Herewith are a set of verses which 1 thought pretty
enough to send to press. Then I thought of the
Manbattan, towards whom I have guilty and compunc-
tious feelings. Last, I had the best thought of all — to
send them to you in case you might think them suitable
for illustration. It seemed to me quite in your vein.
If so, good ; if not, hand them on to Manhattan, Century ^
or Lippincott, at your pleasure, as all three desire my
work or pretend to. But 1 trust the lines will not go
unattended. Some riverside will haunt you; and O!
be tender to my bathing girls. The lines are copied in
my wife's hand, as I cannot see to write otherwise
than with the pen of Cormoran, Gargantua, or Nimrod.
Love to your wife. — Yours ever, R. L. S.

Copied it mysel£

To Thomas Stevenson

La Solitude, j4pril 19, 1884.
MY DEAR FATHER, — Yesterday 1 very powerfully stated
the Heresis Stevensoniana, or the complete body of di-
vinity of the family theologian, to Miss Ferrier. She
was much impressed; so was I. You are a great
heresiarch; and I know no better. Whaur the devil

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did ye get thon about the soap ? Is it altogether your 18S4
own ? I never heard it elsewhere; and yet I suspect it ""' ^
must have been held at some time or other, and if you
were to look up you would probably find yourself con-
demned by some Council

I am glad to hear you are so well. The hear is ex-
cellent. The Carnbills came; I made Miss Ferrier read
us *'Thrawn Janet/' and was quite bowled over by
my own works. "The Merry Men" I mean to make
much longer, with a whole new dinouement, not yet
quite clear to me. "The Story of a Lie" I must re-
write entirely also, as it is too weak and ragged, yet is '
worth saving for the AdmiraL Did I ever tell you that
the Admiral was recognised in America ?

When they are all on their legs this will make an ex-
cellent collection.

Has Davie never read Guy Mannertng, Rob Roy, or
The Antiquary ? All of which are worth three Waver-
leys. I think Kenilwortb better than Waverley ; Nigel,
too; and Quentin Durward about as good. But it
shows a true piece of insight to prefer Waverley, for it
is different; and though not quite coherent, better
worked in parts than almost any other: surely more
carefully. It is undeniable that the love of the slap-dash
and the shoddy grew upon Scott with success. Per-
haps it does on many of us, which may be the granite
on which D.'s opinion stands. However, 1 hold it, in
Patrick Walker's phrase, for an "old, condemned,
damnable error." Dr. Simson was condemned by
P. W. as being "a bagful of" such. One of Patrick's
amenities I

Another ground there may be to D.'s opinion; those
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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1884 who avoid (or seek to avoid) Scott's facility are apt to
*^* ^^ be continually straining and torturing their style to get
in more of life. And to many the extra significance
does not redeem the strain. Doctor Stevenson.

To Cosmo Monkhousb

La SoLrruDB, HvfeRES [AprU 24. 1884].

DEAR MONKHOUSE, — If you are in love with repose,
here is your occasion : change with me. I am too blind
to read, hence no reading; I am too weak to walk,
hence no walking; lam not allowed to speak, hence
no talking; but the great simplification has yet to be
named ; for, if this goes on, I shall soon have nothing to
eat — and hence, O Hallelujah! hence no eating. The
offer is a fair one: 1 have not sold myself to the devil, for I
could never find him. I am married, but so are you. I
sometimes write verses, but so do you. Come! Hie
quies t As for the commandments, I have broken them
so small that they are the dust of my chambers; you
walk upon them, triturate and toothless; and with the
Golosh of Philosophy, they shall not bite your heeL
True, the tenement is falling. Ay, friend, but yours
also. Take a larger view; what is a year or two?
dust in the balance! T is done, behold you Cosmo
Stevenson, and me R. L. Monkhouse; you at Hy£res«
1 in London; you rejoicing in the clammiest repose, me
proceeding to tear your tabernacle into rags, as I have
already so admirably torn my own.

My place to which I now introduce you — it is yours

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— is like a London house, high and very narrow; >^
upon the lungs 1 will not linger; the heart is large ^* ^
enough for a ballroom; the belly greedy and inefficient;
the brain stocked with the most damnable explosives,
like a dynamiter's den. The whole place is well fur-
nished, though not in a very pure taste; Corinthian
much of it; showy and not strong.

About your place 1 shall try to find my way alone,
an interesting exploration. Imagine me, as I go to bed,
falling over a blood-stained remorse; opening that
cupboard in the cerebellum and being welcomed by
the spirit of your murdered uncle. I should probably
not like your remorses; 1 wonder if you will like mine;
I have a spirited assortment ; they whistle in my ear o'
nights like a north-easter. 1 trust yours don't dine with
the family; mine are better mannered; you will hear
naught of them till 2 a.m., except one, to be sure, that
1 have made a pet of, but he is small; I keep him in
buttons, so as to avoid commentaries; you will like
him much — if you like what is genuine.

Must we likewise change religions ? Mine is a good
article, with a trick of stopping; cathedral bell note;
ornamental dial; supported by Venus and the Graces;
quite a summer-parlour piety. Of yours, since your
last, 1 fear there is little to be said.

There is one article 1 wish to take away with me:
my spirits. They suit me. I don't want yours; 1 like
my own; 1 have had them a long while in bottle. It
is my only reservation. — Yours (as you decide),

R. L MONKHOUSE.

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LETTERS OF R, L STEVENSON

1884

XT. 34

To W, E. Henley

HvfeRES, Afoy, 1884.

DEAR BOY, — '* Old Mortality " ^ is out, and I am glad to
say Coggie likes it. We like her immensely.

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

My view of life is essentially the comic; and the
romantically comic. As You Like It is to me the most
bird-haunted spot in letters; Tempest and Twelftb
Night follow. These are what I mean by poetry and
nature. I make an effort of my mind to be quite one
with Moli^re, except upon the stage, where his ImmX''
tBblt jeux de seine heggsiv belief; but you will observe
they are stage-plays — things ad hoc; not great Olym-
pian debauches of the heart and fancy; hence more
perfect, and not so great. Then 1 come, after great
wanderings, to Carmosine and to Fantasio; to one part
of La Derniire Aldini (which, by the by, we might
dramatise in a week), to the notes that Meredith has
found, Evan and the postilion, Evan and Rose, Harry
in Germany. And to me these things are the good;
beauty, touched with sex and laughter; beauty with
God's earth for the background. Tragedy does not
seem to me to come off; and when it does, it does so
by the heroic illusion; the anti-masque has been
omitted; laughter, which attends on ail our steps in
life, and sits by the death-bed, and certainly redacts the
epitaph, laughter has been lost from these great-hearted

^ The essay so called. See Memories and PoriraiU.
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lies. But the comedy which keeps the beauty and 1884
touches the terrors of our life (laughter and tragedy-in- ^' ^
a-good-humour having kissed), that is the last word
of moved representation ; embracing the greatest num-
ber of elements of fate and character; and telling its
story, not with the one eye of pity, but with the two
of pity and mirth. R. L S.

To Edmund Gossb

Early in May Stevenson had been again very dangerously ill from
haemorrhage of the lungs, and lay for several wee1(s between life and
death, until about the beginning of July he was brought sufficiently
round to venture by slow stages on the journey to England, staying for
two or three weeks at Royat on the way. His correspondent had
lately been appointed Clark Reader in English Literature at Trinity
College, Cambridge.

From my Bed, hfay 29, 1884.
DEAR GOSSB, — The news of the Professorate found
me in the article of — well, of heads or tails; I am still
in bed, and a very poor person. You must thus ex-
cuse my damned delay; but, I assure you, I was de-
lighted. You will believe me the more, if I confess'
to you that my first sentiment was envy; yes, sir, on
my blood-boltered couch 1 envied the professor. How-
ever, it was not of long duration ; the double thought
that you deserved and that you would thoroughly en-
joy your success fell like balsam on my wounds. How
came it that you never communicated my rejection of
Gilder's offer for the Rhone? But it matters not.
Such earthly vanities are over for the present This

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1^4 has been a fine well-conducted illness. A month in

^' ^ bed; a month of silence; a fortnight of not stirring my

right hand; a month of not moving without being

lifted. Come! Qay est: devilish like being dead.— -

Yours, dear Professor, academically, R. L S.

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

In turning over my late friend Ferrier's common-
place book, I find three poems from l^iol and Flute
copied out in his hand: When Flawer^time^ Love in
Winter, and Mistrust They are capital too. But I
thought the fact would interest you. He was no poetist
either; so it means the more. Loroe in IV.I I like the
best

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

H6TEL CHABASSlfeRE, ROYAT [Jufy, 1884].

MY DEAR PEOPLE, — The Weather has been demoniac;
I have had a skiff of cold, and was finally obliged to
take to bed entirely; to-day, however, it has cleared,
the sun shines, and I begin to

[Several days after.]
I have been out once, but now am back in bed. I
am better, and keep better, but the weather is a mere
injustice. The imitation of Edinburgh is, at times, de-
ceptive; there is a note among the chimney-pots that
suggests Howe Street; though 1 think the shrillest spot
in Christendom was not upon the Howe Street side,
but in front, just under the Miss Graemes' big chimney-

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Stack. It had a fine alto character— a sort of bleat 1884
that used to divide the marrow in my joints — say in ^* ^
the wee, slack hours. That music is now lost to us
by rebuilding; another air that I remember, not regret,
was the solo of the gas-burner in the little front room ;
a knickering, flighty, fleering, and yet spectral cackle.
I mind it above all on winter afternoons, late, when
the window was blue and spotted with rare raindrops,
and, looking out, the cold evening was seen blue all
over, with the lamps of Qyeen's and Frederick's Street
dotting it with yellow, and flaring eastward in the
squalls. Heavens, how unhappy I have been in such
circumstances — 1, who have now positively forgotten
the colour of unhappiness; who am full like a fed ox,
and dull like a fresh turf, and have no more spiritual
life, for good or evil, than a French bagman.

We are at Chabassidre's, for of course it was non-
sense to go up the hill when we could not walk.

The child's poems in a far extended form are likely
soon to be heard of— which Cummy I dare say will be
glad to know. They will make a book of about one
hundred pages. — Ever your affectionate R. L S

To Sidney Colvin

I had reported to Stevenson a remark made by one of his greatest
admirers, Sir E. Bume-Jones, on some particular analogy, I forget
what, between a passage of Defoe and one in Treasure island,

[ROYAT July, 1884.]
• . . Here is a quaint thing. 1 have read Robinson,
Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders, Memoirs of a Cavalier^

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1884 History of tbe Plague, History of the Great Storm, Scotch
^' ^^ Cburcb and Union. And there my knowledge of Defoe
ends— except a book, the name of which I forget, about
Peterborough in Spain, which Defoe obviously did not
write, and could not have written if he wanted. To
which of these does B. J. refer ? I guess it must be the
history of the Scottish Church. I jest; for, of course,
1 know it must be a book I have never read, and which
this makes me keen to read— I mean Captain Singleton.
Can it be got and sent to me ? If Treasure Island is at
all like it, it will be delightful. I was just the other day
wondering at my folly in not remembering it, when I
was writing T. A, as a mine for pirate tips. T. L came
out of Kingsley's At Last, where I got the Dead Man's
Chest— and that was the seed— and out of the great
Captain Johnson's History of Notorious Pirates. The
scenery is Calif omian in part, and in part cbic. '

I was down-stairs to-day 1 So now I am a made man I

—till the next time. R. L Stevenson. |

I
If it was Captain Singleton, send it to me, won't |

you? i

Later.— My life dwindles into a kind of valley of the
shadow picnic. I cannot read; so much of the time (as |

to-day) I must not speak above my breath, that to play
patience, or to see my wife play it, is become the be-all
and the end-all of my dim career. To add to my gaiety,
I may write letters, but there are few to answer. Pa-
tience and Poesy are thus my rod and staff; with these
I not unpleasantly support my days.

I am very dim, dumb, dowie, and damnable. I hate
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to be silenced; and if to talk by signs is my forte (as I 1S84
contend), to understand them cannot be my wife's. ^' ^
Do not think me unhappy ; I have not been so for years ;
but I am blurred, inhabit the debatable frontier of sleep,
and have but dim designs upon activity. AH is at a
standstill; books closed, paper put aside, the voice, the
eternal voice of R. L S., well silenced. Hence this
plaint reaches you with no very great meaning, no very
great purpose, and written part in slumber by a heavy,
dull, somnolent, superannuated son of a bedpost

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VII
LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH

(SlI>TBMBER. I884-DECBMBER, 1885)

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VII

LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH
(September, i884-December, 1885)

ARRIVING in England at the end of July, 1884, Ste-
^ venson took up his quarters first for a few weeks at
Richmond. He was compelled to abandon the hope of
making his permanent home at Hydres, partly by the
renewed failure there of his own health, partly by a
bad outbreak of cholera which occurred in the old Pro-
vencal town about the time he left it. After consulta-
tion with several doctors, all of whom held out hopes
of ultimate recovery despite the gravity of his present
symptoms, he moved to Bournemouth. Here he found
in the heaths and pinewoods some distant semblance
of the landscape of his native Scotland, and in the sandy
curves of the Channel coast a passable substitute for
the bays and promontories of his beloved Mediterranean.
At all events, he liked the place well enough to be will-
ing to try it for a home; and such it became for all but
three years, from September, 1884, to August, 1887.
These, although in the matter of health the worst and
most trying years of his life, were in the matter of

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

work some of the most active and successful. For the
first two or three months the Stevensons occupied a
lodging on the West Cliff called Wensleydale; for the
next four or five, from mid-November, 1884, to March^
1885, they were tenants of a house named Bonallie
Towers, pleasantly situated amid the pinewoods of
Branksome Park, and by its name recalling familiar
Midlothian associations. Lastly, about Easter, 1885,
they entered into occupation of a house of their own,
given by the elder Mr. Stevenson as a special gift to his
daughter-in-law, and renamed by its new occupants
Skerryvore, in reminiscence of one of the great light-
house works carried out by the family firm off the
Scottish coast.

During all the time of Stevenson's residence at Bourne-
mouth he was compelled to lead the life, irksome to him
above all men, but borne with invincible sweetness and
patience, of a chronic invalid and almost constant
prisoner to the house. A great part of his time had
perforce to be spent in bed, and there almost all his
literary work was produced. Often for days, and some-
times for whole weeks together, he was forbidden to
speak aloud, and compelled to carry on conversation
with his family and friends in whispers or with the
help of pencil and paper. The few excursions to a dis-
tance which he attempted— most commonly to my
house at the British Museum, once to Cambridge, once
to Matlock, once to Exeter, and once in 1886 as far as
Paris— these excursions generally ended in a breakdown
and a hurried retreat to home and bed. Nevertheless,
he was able in intervals of comparative ease to receive
and enjoy the visits of friends from a distance* both old

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LIFE -AT BOURNEMOUTH

and new— among the most welcome of the latter being
Mr. Henry James, Mr. William Archer, and Mr. John S.
Sargent; while among Bournemouth residents who
attached themselves to him on terms of special intimacy
and affection were the late Sir Percy and Lady Shelley
and the family of Sir Henry Taylor the poet At the
same time, seizing and making the most of every week,
nay, every day and hour of respite, he contrived to
produce work surprising alike, under the circumstances,
by quantity and quality. During the first two months
of his life at Bournemouth the two plays Admiral
Guinea and Beau Austin were written in collaboration
with Mr. Henley, and many other dramatic schemes
were broached which health and leisure failed him to
carry out. In the course of the next few months he
finished Prince Otto, A Child's Garden of Verses, and
More New Arabian Nights, all three of which had been
begun, and the two first nearly completed, before he
left Hy6res. He at the same time attacked two new
tasks— a highway novel called The Great North Road^
and a Life of IVellington for a series edited by Mr. An-
drew Lang, both of which he had in the sequel to
abandon; and a third, the boys* story of Kidnapped,
which turned out one of the most brilliant of his suc-
cesses. About midsummer of the year 1885 he was
distressed by the sudden death of his old and kind friend
Professor Fleeming Jenkin, and after a while undertook
the task of writing a memoir of him to be prefixed to
his collected papers. Towards the close of the same
year he was busy with what proved to be the most pop-
ular of all his writings, The Strange Case of Dr. Jehyll
and Mr. Hyde, and with the Christmas story of OlalU.

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

MT. 34

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

Wensleydale, Bournemouth*
Sunday, 28tb September, 1884.

MY DEAR people,— I keep better, and am to-day down*
stairs for the first time. I find the lockers entirely
empty; not a cent to the front. Will you pray send us
some P It blows an equinoctial gale, and has blown
for nearly a week. Nimbus Britannicus; piping wind,
lashing rain; the sea is a fine colour, and wind-bound
ships lie at anchor under the Old Harry rocks, to make
one glad to be ashore.

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

To W. E. Henley

There b no certain clue to the date of the following; neither has H
been possible to make sure what was the enclosure mentioned. The
special illness referred to seems to be that of the preceding May at
Hyeres.

[Wensleydale, Bournemouth, October, 1884?]
dear boy,— 1 trust this finds you well; it leaves me
so-so. The weather is so cold that I must stick to bed,
which is rotten and tedious, but can't be helped.

I find in the blotting-book the enclosed, which I
wrote to you the eve of my blood. Is it not strange ?
That night, when I naturally thought I was coopered,
the thought of it was much in my mind; I thought it

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LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH

had gone; and I thought what a strange prophecy I had 18^
made in jest, and how it was indeed like to be the end ^' ^
of many letters. But I have written a good few since,
and the spell is broken. I am just as pleased, for I
earnestly desire to live. This pleasant middle age into
whose port we are steering is quite to my fancy. I
would cast anchor here, and go ashore for twenty years,
and see the manners of the place. Youth was a great
time, but somewhat fussy. Now in middle age (bar
lucre) all seems mighty placid. It likes me; I spy a
little bright caf6 in one comer of the port, in front of
which I now propose we should sit down. There is
just enough of the bustle of the harbour and no fnore;
and the ships are close in, regarding us with stern-win-
dows—the ships that bring deals from Norway and
parrots from the Indies. Let us sit down here for
twenty years, with a packet of tobacco and a drink,
and talk of art and women. By and by, the whole city
will sink, and the ships too, and the table, and we also;
but we shall have sat for twenty years and had a fine
talk; and by that time, who knows? exhausted the
subject.

I send you a book which (or 1 am mistook) will please
you; it pleased me. But 1 do desire, a book of adven-
ture— a romance — and no man will get or write me
one. Dumas 1 have read and re-read too often ; Scott,
too, and I am short I want to hear swords clash. I
want a book to begin in a good way; a book, 1 guess,
like Treasure Island, alas! which 1 have never read,
and cannot though 1 live to ninety. I would God that
some one else had written it! By all that I can learn,
it is the very book for my complaint. I like the way I

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«T. 34

LETTERS OF IL L. STEVENSON

188^ hear it opens; and they tell me John Silver is good fua
And to me it is, and must ever be, a dream unrealised,
a book unwritten. O my sighings after romance^ or
even Skeltery, and Ol the weary age which will pro-
duce me neither 1

CHAPTER I

The night was damp and cloudy, the ways foul.
The single horseman, cloaked and booted, who pursued
his way across Willesden Common, had not met a
traveller, when the sound of wheels

CHAPTER I

"Yes, sir,** said the old pilot, "she must have
dropped into the bay a little afore dawn. A queer
craft she looks."

" She shows no colours," returned the young gentle-
man, musingly.

"They 're a-lowering of a quarter-boat, Mr. Mark,"
resumed the old salt " We shall soon know more of
her."

"Ay," replied the young gentleman called Mark,
"and here, Mr. Seadrift, comes your sweet daughter
Nancy tripping down the cliflf."

"God bless her kind heart, sir," ejaculated old
Seadrift.

CHAPTER I

The notary, Jean Rossignol, had been summoned to
the top of a great house in the Isle St Louis to make

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UFE AT BOURNEMOUTH

a will; and now, his duties finished, wrapped in a j^
warm roquelaure and with a lantern swinging from one
hand, he issued from the mansion on his homeward
way. Little did he think what strange adventures were
to befall him !

That is how stories should begin. And I am offered
HUSKS instead.

What should be: What is:

The Filibuster's Cache. Aunt Anne's Tea Cosy.

Jerry Abershaw. Mrs. Brierly's Niece.

Blood Money: A Tale. Society: A Novel.

To THE Rev. Professor Lewis Campbell

[Wensleydale, Bournemouth, November, 1884.]
MY dear CAMPBELL, — The books came duly to hand.
My wife has occupied the translation ^ ever since, nor
have 1 yet been able to dislodge her. As for the primer,
1 have read it with a very strange result: that I find no
fault. If you knew how, dogmatic and pugnacious, i
stand warden on the Uterary art, you would the more
appreciate your success and my — well, 1 will own it —
disappointment. For I love to put people right (or
wrong) about the arts. But what you say of Tragedy
and of Sophocles very amply satisfies me; it is well
felt and well said ;, a little less technically than it is my
weakness to desire to see it put, but clear and adequate.

iOfSophodes.
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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

i»4 You are very right to express your admiration for the
^' ^ resource displayed in CEdipus King; it is a miracle.
Would it not have been well to mention Voltaire's in-
teresting onslaught a thing which gives the best lesson
of the difference of neighbour arts ? — since all his criti-
cisms, which had been fatal to a narrative, do not
amount among them to exhibit one flaw in this master-
piece of drama. For the drama, it is perfect; though
such a fable in a romance might make the reader crack
his sides, so imperfect, so ethereally slight is the verisi-
militude required of these conventional, rigid, and egg-
dancing arts.

I was sorry to see no more of you; but shall conclude
by hoping for better luck next time. My wife begs to
be remembered to both of you. — Yours sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Andrew Chatto

Wensleydale, Bournemouth, October j, 1884.
DEAR MR. chatto, — I have an offer of £2^ for Otto
from America. I do not know if you mean to have the
American rights; from the nature of the contract, I think
not: but if you understood that you were to sell the
sheets, I will either hand over the bargain to you, or
finish it myself and hand you over the money if you are
pleased with the amount. You see, I leave this quite
in your hands. To parody an old Scotch story of ser-
vant and master: if you don't know that you have a
good author, 1 know that I have a good publisher.

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LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH

Your fair, open, and handsome dealings are a good 1884
point in my life, and do more for my crazy health than ^' ^
has yet been done by any doctor. — Very truly yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To W. H. Low

It was some twenty months since the plan of publishing ^ Chiid*s
Garden in the first instance as a picture-^boolc had been mooted (see
above, p. 301). But it had never taken effect, and in the following
March the volume appeared without illustrations in England, and also,
1 believe, in America.

BONALLIE TOWERS, BRANKSOME PARK,
BOURNEMOUTH, HANTS, ENGLAND,

First week in November, I guess, 1884.

MY DEAR LOW, — ^Now, look here, the above is my
address for three months, I hope; continue, on your part,
if you please, to write to Edinburgh, which is safe; but
if Mrs. Low thinks of coming to England, she might take
a run down from London (four hours from Waterloo,
main line) and stay a day or two with us among the
pines. If not, I hope it will be only a pleasure deferred
till you can join her.

My Children's Verses will be published here in a
volume called A Child's Garden. The sheets are in
hand ; I will see if I cannot send you the lot, so that you
might have a bit of a start. In that case I would do
nothing to publish in the States, and you might trv an
illustrated edition there; which, if the book went fairlv
over here, might, when ready, be imported. But of this
more fully ere long. You will see some verses of mine
in the last Magazine of Art, with pictures by a young

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1884 lady; rather pretty, I think. If we find a market for
*'• ^^ Pbasellulus loquitur, we can try another. I hope it
is n't necessary to put the verse into that rustic printing.
I am Philistine enough to prefer clean printer's type;
indeed, I can form no idea of the verses thus transcribed
by the incult and tottering hand of the draughtsman,
nor gather any impression beyond one of weariness to
the eyes. Yet the other day, in the Century, I saw it
imputed as a crime to Vedder that he had not thus
travestied Omar Khayyam. We live in a rum age of
music without airs, stories without incident, pictures
without beauty, American wood-engravings that should
have been etchings, and dry-point etchings that ought
to have been mezzotints^ 1 think of giving 'em litera-
ture without words; and I believe if you were to try
invisible Illustration, it would enjoy a considerable
vogue. So long as an artist is on his head, is painting
with a flute, or writes with an etcher's needle, or con-
ducts the orchestra with a meat-axe, all is well; and
plaudits shower along with roses. But any plain man
who tries to follow the obtrusive canons of his art, is but
a commonplace figure. To hell with him is the motto,
or at least not that; for he will have his reward, but he
will never be thought a person of parts.

January ), 188$.
And here has this been lying near two months. I
have failed to get together a preliminary copy of the
Child's Verses for you, in spite of doughty efforts; but
yesterday I sent you the first sheet of the definitive edi-
tion, and shall continue to send the others as they come.
If you can, and care to, work them — why so, welL

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LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH

If not, I send you fodder. But the time presses ; for '884
though I will delay a little over the proofs, and though ^' ^
it is even possible they may delay the English issue
until Easter, it will certainly not be later. Therefore
perpend, and do not get caught out. Of course, if you
can do pictures, it will be a great pleasure to me to see
our names joined ; and more than that, a great advan-
tage, as I dare say you may be able to make a bargain
for some share a little less spectral than the common
for the poor author. But this is all as you shall
choose; I give you carte blancbe to do or not to do. —
Yours most sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

O, Sargent has been and painted my portrait; a very
nice fellow he is, and is supposed to have done well ; it
is a poetical but very chicken-boned figure-head, as
thus represented. R. L. S. Go on.

P.P.S. — Your picture came; and let me thank you
for it very much. I am so hunted I had near forgotten.
I find it very graceful ; and I mean to have it framed.

To Thomas Stevenson

About this time Mr. Stevenson was in some hesitation as to letting
himself be proposed for the office of President of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh.

BoNALLiE Towers, Bournemouth,
November^ 1884.
MY DEAR FATHER, — I have no hesitation in recom-
mending you to let your name go up ; please yourself

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m. 34

LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

«884^ about an address; though I think, if we could meet, v/e
could arrange something suitable. What you propose
would be well enough in a way, but so modest as to sug-
gest a whine. From that point of view it would be
better to change a little; but this, whether we meet or
not, we must discuss. Tait, Chrystal, the Royal Soci-
ety, and 1, all think you amply deserve this honour and
far more ; it is not the True Blue to call this serious com-
pliment a " trial "; you should be glad of this recogni-
tion. As for resigning, that is easy enough if found
necessary; but to refuse would be husky and unsatis-
factory. Sic subs. 9 R. L S,

My cold is still very heavy; but I carry it well.
Fanny is very very much out of sorts, principally through
perpetual misery with me. I fear I have been a little
in the dumps, which, as you know, sir, is a very great
sin. I must try to be more cheerful; but my cough is
so severe that I have sometimes most exhausting nights
and very peevish wakenings. However, this shall be
remedied, and last night I was distinctly better than
the night before. There is, my dear Mr. Stevenson (so
1 moralise blandly as we sit together on the devil's gar-
den wall), no more abominable sin than this gloom,
this plaguey peevishness; why (say I) what matters it
if we be a little uncomfortable — that is no reason for
mangling our unhappy wives. And then I turn and
girn on the unfortunate Cassandra. — Your fellow culprit,

R- L. S.

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UFE AT BOURNEMOUTH

To W. E. Henley

1884

Mr. 34

The ''Anbs" mentioned below are the stories comprisfaig the
vohime Mori Niw Arabian Nights : Tb$ DjmamiUr.

Wensleydale, Bournemouth, November, 1884.

DEAR HENLEY,— We are all to pieces in health, and
heavily handicapped with Arabs. I have a dreadful
cough, whose attacks leave me cetat. 90. I never let up
on the Arabs, all the same, and rarely get less than
eight pages out of hand, though hardly able to come
down-stairs for twittering knees.

I shall put in 's letter. He says so little of his

circumstances that I am in an impossibility to give him
advice more specific than a copy-book. Give him my
love, however, and tell him it is the mark of the paro-
chial gentleman who has never .travelled to find all
wrong in a foreign land. Let him hold on, and he
will find one country as good as another; and in the
meanwhile let him resist the fatal British tendency to
communicate his dissatisfaction with a country to its
inhabitants. T is a good idea, but it somehow fails to
please. In a fortnight, if I can keep my spirit in the
box at all, I should be nearly through this Arabian
desert; so can tackle something fresh. — Yours ever,

R. LS.

To Thomas Stevenson

Mr. Stevenson, the elder, had read the play of Admiral Cuima,
written in September by his son and Mr. Henley in collaboration, and
had protested, with his usual vehemence of feeling and expression,

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1884 against the stage confrontation of profane blackguardly in the person
^T* 34 of Pew with evangelical piety in that of the reformed slaving captain
who gives his name to the piece.

BoNALLiB Towers, Branksomb Park,
Bournemouth (The three B's)
[November^, 1884].

MY DEAR FATHER, — Allow me to Say, in a strictly
Pickwickian sense, that you are a silly fellow. I am
pained indeed, but how should I be oflFended? I think
you exaggerate; I cannot forget that you had the same
impression of the Deacon; and yet, when you saw it
played, were less revolted than you looked for; and I
will still hope that the Admiral also is not so bad as
you suppose. There is one point, however, where I
differ from you very frankly. Religion is in the world ;
I do not think you are the man to deny the importance
of its rdle; and I have long decided not to leave it on
one side in art The opposition of the Admiral and
Mr. Pew is not, to my eyes, either horrible or irreverent;
but it may be, and it probably is, very ill done: what
then? This is a failure; better luck next time; more
power to the elbow, more discretion, more wisdom in
the design, and the old defeat becomes the scene of the
new victory. Concern yourself about no failure; they
do not cost lives, as in engineering; they are the pierres
per dues of successes. Fame is (truly) a vapour; do not
think of it; if the writer means well and tries hard, no
failure will injure him, whether with God or man.

I wish 1 could hear a brighter account of yourself; but
I am inclined to acquit the Admiral of having a share
in the responsibility. My very heavy cold is, I hope,
drawing off; and the change to this charming house in

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UFE AT BOURNEMOUTH

the forest will, I hope, complete my re-establishment — J884
With love to all, believe me, your ever affectionate

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Charles Baxter

Bonallie Towers, Branksome Park,
Bournemouth, November n [i884\.
MY DEAR CHARLES, — I am in my new house, thus
proudly styled, as you perceive ; but the deevil a tower
ava* can be perceived (except out of window) ; this is
not as it should be; one might have hoped, at least, a
turret. We are all vilely unwell. I put in the dark
watches imitating a donkey with some success, but
little pleasure; and in the afternoon I indulge in a smart
fever, accompanied by aches and shivers. There is
thus little monotony to be deplored. I at least am a
regular invalid; I would scorn to bray in the afternoon;
I would indignantly refuse the proposal to fever in the
night. What is bred in the bone will come out, sir, in
the flesh; and the same spirit that prompted me to
date my letter regulates the hour and character of my
attacks.— I am» sir, yours» Thomson.

To Charles Baxter

The next, on the same subject, is written in the style and character
of the Edinburgh ex-elder, Johnson

Postmark, Bournemouth, ipb November^ 1884.
MY DEAR THOMSON, — It 's a maist remaurkable fac', but
nae shQner had I written yon braggin', blawin' letter
aboot ma business habits, when bang I that very day,

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LETTERS OP R. U STEVENSON

1884 ma hoast^ begude in the aiftemune. It is really re<
^' ^ maurkable; it 's providenshle, I believe. The ink was«
nae fair dry, the words werenae weel ooten ma mouth,
when bang! I got the lee. The mair ye think o't,
Thomson, the less ye '11 like the looks o't Proavidence
(I 'm no sayin') is all vera weel in its place; but if
Proavidence has nae mainners, wha 's to learn 't?
Proavidence is a fine thing, but hoo would you like
Proavidence to keep your till for ye ? The richt place
for Proavidence is in the kirk; it has naethingto do vn*
private correspondence between twa gentlemen, nor
freendly cracks, nor a wee bit word of sculduddery '
ahint the door, nor, in shoart, wi* ony hoU^and-cor^
net warK what I would call I 'm pairfec'Iy willin'
to meet in wi' Proavidence, I '11 be prood to meet in
wi' him, when my time 's come and I cannae dae nae
better; but if he 's to come skinking aboot my stair-fit,
damned, I micht as weel be deid for a' the comfort I 'II
can get in life. Cannae he no be made to understand
that it 's beneath him ? Gosh, if I was in his business, I
wouidnae steir my heid for a plain, auid ex-elder that,
tak' him the way he taks' himsel', 's just aboot as honest
as he can weel afford, an' but for a wheen auld scandals,
near forgotten noo, is a pairfec'Iy respectable and thor-
oughly decent man. Or if I fashed wi' him ava', it wad
be kind o' handsome like, a pun'-note under his stair
door, or a bottle o' auld, blended malt to his bit mam-
in', as a teshtymonial like yon ye ken sae weel aboot,
but mair successfu'.

Dear Thomson, have I ony money ? If I have, send
it. for the loard's sake. Johnson.

1 Cough. t Loose talk.

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UFE AT BOURNEMOUTH

To Miss pERRiBit

1884

BoNALLiE Towers, Bournemouth,
November 12^ 1884.

MY DEAR cocx}iE,— Many thanks for the two photos
which now decorate my room. I was particularly glad
to have the Bell Rock. I wonder if you saw me plunge,
lance in rest, into a controversy thereanent ? It was a
very one-sided affair. I slept upon the field of battle,
paraded, sang Te Deum, and came home after a review
rather than a campaign.

Please tell Campbell I got his letter. The Wild
Woman of the West has been much amiss and com-
plaining sorely. 1 hope nothing more serious is wrong
with her than just my ill-health, and consequent anxiety
and labour; but the deuce of it is, that the cause
continues. I am about knocked out of time now:
a miserable, snuffling, shivering, fever-stricken,
nightmare-ridden, knee-jottering, hoast-hoast-hoasting
shadow and remains of man. But we 'II no gie ower
jist yet a bittie. We 've seen waur; and dod, mem,
it 's my belief that we '11 see better. I dinna ken 'at
I 've muckle mair to say to ye, or, indeed, ony thing;
but jist here 's guid-fallowship, guid health, and the
wale o' guid fortune to your bonnie sel'; and my re-
spec's to the Perfessor and his wife, and the Prinshiple,
an' the Bell Rock, an' ony ither public chara'ters that
I 'm acquaunt wi'. R. L &

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

To Edmund Gossb

Just before the crippling fit of iflness above recorded, Stevenson had
accepted a commission from the Pall Mall Ga^eits for a '' crawler*' or
Christmas story of the blood-curdling kind. He had been unable to
finish for this purpose the tale he had first intended; had tried the
publishers with " MaHcheim " (afterwards printed in the collection called
'* Merry Men *% which proved too short; had then furbished up as well
as he could a tale drafted in the Pitlochry days, " The Body Snatcher,"
which was advertised in the streets of London by sandwich-men cany-
mg posters so horrific that they were suppressed, if 1 remember right,
by the police. Stevenson rightly thought the tale not up to his best
mark, and would not take the full payment which had been bargained
for. His correspondent was just about to start on a tour to the
United States.

BoNALLiE Towers, Branksome Park,
Bournemouth, Nov, 75, 1884.

MY DEAR GOSSE,— This Mr. Morley^ of yours is a
most desperate fellow. He has sent me (for my opin-
ion) the most truculent advertisement I ever saw,
in which the white hairs of Gladstone are dragged
round Troy behind my chariot wheels. What can
I say? I say nothing to him; and to you, I content
myself with remarking that he seems a desperate
fellow.

All luck to you on your American adventure; may
you find health, wealth, and entertainment! If you
see, as you likely will, Frank R. Stockton, pray greet
him from me in words to this effect: —

^ Mr. Charles Morley, at this time manager or assistant manager of
the Pall Mall Ca^etU.

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UFE AT BOURNEMOUTH

My Stockton if I failed to like, JjM4

It were a sheer depravity, ^ ^

For I went down with the Tbamas Hyke
And up with the Negative Gravity/

I adore these tales.

1 hear flourishing accounts of your success at Cam-
bridge, so you leave with a good omen. Remember
me to green corn if it is in season ; if not, you had
better hang yourself on a sour-apple tree, for your voy-
age has been lost. — Yours aflFectionately,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Austin Dobson

Written in acknowledgment of the gift of a desk.

BoNALLiE Towers, Bournemouth [December, 1884?].

DEAR DOBSON, —Set down my delay to your own
fault; 1 wished to acknowledge such a gift from you
in some of my inapt and slovenly rhymes; but you
should have sent me your pen and not your desk,
'"'he verses stand up to the axles in a miry cross-road,
whence the coursers of the sun shall never draw them;
hence 1 am constrained to this uncourtliness, that I
must appear before one of the kings of that country of
rhyme without my singing-robes. For less than this,
if we may trust the book of Esther, favourites have
tasted death ; but 1 conceive the kingdom of the Muses
mildlier mannered ; and in particular that county which
you administer and which I seem to see as a half-sub-

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1884 urban land; a land of hollyhocks and country houses;

*^' ^ a land where at night, in thorny and sequestered by-
paths, you will meet masqueraders going to a ball in
their sedans, and the rector steering homeward by the
light of his lantern; a land of the windmill, and the
west wind, and the flowering hawthorn with a little
scented letter in the hollow of its trunk, and the kites
flying over all in the season of kites, and the far-away
blue spires of a cathedral city.

Will you forgive me, then, for my delay and accept
my thanks not only for your present, but for the letter
which followed it, and which perhaps I more partic-
ularly value, and believe me to be, with much admira-
tion, yours very truly, Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Henry James

The following to Mr. Henry James refers to the essay of R. L S.
caHed "A Humble Remonstrance," which had just appeared in Long'
man's Magapng. Mr. James had written holding out the prospect
of a continuance of the friendly controversy which had thus been
opened up between them on the aims and qualities of fiction.

Bonallie Towers, Branksome Park,
Bournemouth, December 8, 1884.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, — This is a Very brave hearing
from more points than one. The first point is that
there is a hope of a sequel. For this I laboured. Seri-
ously, from the dearth of information and thoughtful
interest in the art of literature, those who try to prac-
tise it with any deliberate purpose run the risk of find-
ing no fit audience. People suppose it is ''the stuff*

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LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH

that interests them ; they think, for instance, that the «M4
prodigious fine thoughts and sentiments in Shakespeare ^' ^
impress by their own weight, not understanding that
the unpolished diamond is but a stone. They think
that striking situations, or good dialogue, are got by
studying life; they will not rise to understand that
they are prepared by deliberate artifice and set off by
painful suppressions. Now, I want the whole thing
well ventilated, for my own education and the public's;
and I beg you to look as quick as you can, to follow
me up with every circumstance of defeat where we
differ, and (to prevent the flouting of the laity) to em-
phasise the points where we agree. I trust your paper
will show me the way to a rejoinder; and that rejoinder
I shall hope to make with so much art as to woo or
drive you from your threatened silence. I would not
ask better than to pass my life in beating out this
quarter of corn with such a seconder as yourself.

Point the second — I am rejoiced indeed to hear you
speak so kindly of my work; rejoiced and surprised.
I seem to mysdf a very rude, left-handed countryman;
not fit to be read, far less complimented, by a man so
accomplished, so adroit, so craftsmanlike as you. You
will happily never have cause to understand the despair
with which a writer like myself considers (say) the
park scene in Lady Barberina. Every touch surprises
me by its intangible precision; and the effect when
done, as light as syllabub, as distinct as a picture, fills
me with envy. Each man among us prefers his own
aim, and I prefer mine; but when we come to speak
of performance, I recognise myself, compared with you,
to be a lout and slouch of the first water.

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1884 Where we differ, both as to the design of stories and
^* ^^ the delineation of character, I begin to lament Of
course, 1 am not so dull as to ask you to desert your
walk; but could you not, in one novel, to oblige a sin-
cere admirer, and to enrich his shelves with a beloved
volume, could you not, and might you not, cast your
characters in a mould a little more abstract and academic
(dear Mrs. Pennyman had already, among your other
work, a taste of what I mean), and pitch the incidents,
I do not say in any stronger, but in a slightly more
emphatic key — as it were an episode from one of the
old (so-called) novels of adventure ? I fear you will
not; and I suppose I must sighingly admit you to be
right. And yet, when 1 see, as it were, a book of Tom
Jones handled with your exquisite precision and shot
through with those side-lights of reflection in which
you excel, I relinquish the dear vision with regret.
Think upon it.

As you know, I belong to that besotted class of man,
the invalid: this puts me to a stand in the way of visits.
But it is possible that some day you may feel that a day
near the sea and among pinewoods would be a pleasant
change from town. If so, please let us know; and my
wife and I will be delighted to put you up, and give you
what wecan to eat and drink(I have a fair bottle of claret).
— On the back of which, believe me, yours sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P. S. — I reopen this to say that I have re-read my
paper, and cannot think I have at all succeeded in be-
ing either veracious or polite. I knew, of course, that 1
took your paper merely as a pin to hang my own re-

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marks upon; but, alas! what a thing is any paper! i^
What fine remarks can you not hang on mine I How ^* ^
I have sinned against proportion, and, with every effort
to the contrary, against the merest rudiments of cour-
tesy to you ! You are indeed a very acute reader to
have divined the real attitude of my mind ; and I can
only conclude, not without closed eyes and shrinking
shoulders, in the well-worn words —

Lay on, Macduff I

To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

BoNALLiE Towers, Bournemouth,
December 9y 1884.
MY dear people,— The dreadful tragedy of the Pall
Mall has come to a happy but ludicrous ending: I am
to keep the money, the tale writ for them is to be buried
certain fathoms deep, and they are to flash out before
the world with our old friend of Kinnaird, "The Body
Snatcher." When you come, please to bring —

(i) My Montaigne, or, at least, the two last volumes.

(2) My Milton in the three vols, in green.

(3) The Shakespeare that Babington sent me for a

wedding-gift.

(4) Hazlitt's Table Talk and Plain Speaker.

If you care to get a box of books from Douglas and
Foulis, let them be solid. Croker Papers, Correspond
dence of Napoleon, History of Henry ly., Lang's Folk
Lore, would be my desires.

I had a charming letter from Henry James about my
Longman paper. I did not understand queries about

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1884 the verses; the pictures to the Seagull I thought charm-
^' ^ ing; those to the second have left me with a pain in
my poor belly and a swimming in the head.

About money, 1 am afloat and no more, and I warn
you, unless I have great luck, I shall have to fall upon
you at the New Year like a hundredweight of bricks.
Doctor, rent, chemist, are all threatening; sickness has
bitterly delayed my work; and unless, as I say, I have
the mischiefs luck, I shall completely break down.
y^erbum sapientibus. I do not live cheaply, and I ques-
tion if I ever shall; but if only I had a halfpenny worth
of health, I could now easily suffice. The last breakdown
of my head is what makes this bankruptcy probable.

Fanny is still out of sorts; Bogue better; self fair, but
a stranger to the blessings of sleep.— Ever affectionate
son, R. L S.

To W. E. Henley

BoNALUE Towers, Bournemouth [December^ ^884],
DEAR LAD, — I have made up my mind about the
P. Af. G., and send you a copy, which please keep or
return. As for not giving a reduction, what are we ?
Are we artists or city men ? Why do we sneer at
stock-brokers ? O nary ; I will not take the ;;^4a I
took that as a fair price for my best work; I was not
able to produce my best; and 1 will be damned if I
steal with my eyes open. Sufflcit This is my lookout
As for the paper being rich, certainly it is; but I am
honourable. It is no more above me in money than
the poor slaveys and cads from whom I look for honesty
are below me. Am I Pepys, that because I can find the

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countenance of "some of our ablest merchants," that i^
because — and -^ pour forth languid twaddle and get ^"* ^
paid for it. If too, should "cheerfully continue to steal " ?
I am not Pepys. I do not live much to God and honour;
but 1 will not wilfully turn my back on both. I am, j

like all the rest of us, falling ever lower from the bright
ideas I began with, falling into greed, into idleness, into
middle-aged and slippered fireside cowardice; but is it
you, my bold blade, that I hear crying this sordid and
rank twaddle in my ear? Preaching the dankest Grundy-
ism and upholding the rank customs of our trade — you,
who are so cruel hard upon the customs of the publishers ?
O man, look at the Beam in our own Eyes; and what-
ever else you do, do not plead Satan's cause, or plead
it for all; either embrace the bad, or respect the good
when you see a poor devil trying for it. If this is the
honesty of authors — to take what you can get and con-
sole yourself because publishers are rich — take my name
from the rolls of that association. T is a caucus of
weaker thieves, jealous of the stronger. — Ever yours,

The Roaring R. L. S.

You will see from the enclosed that I have stuck to
what 1 think my dues pretty tightly in spite of thb
flourish: these are my words for a poor ten-pound
note!

To W. E. Henley

BoNALUE Towers, Bournemouth
[IVinUr, /SS^].
MY DEAR LAD, — Here was I in bed; not writing, not
hearing, and finding myself gently and agreeably iU

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1884 used; and behold I learn you are bad yourself. Get
^' ^^ your wife to send us a word how you are. I am better
decidedly. Bogue got his Christmas card, and behaved
well for three days after. It may interest the cynical to
learn that I started my last haemorrhage by too sedulous
attentions to my dear Bogue. The stick was broken ;
and that night Bogue, who was attracted by the extraor-
dinary aching of his bones, and is always inclined to
a serious view of his own ailments, announced with his
customary pomp that he was dying. In this case, how-
ever, it was not the dog that died. (He had tried to
bite his mother's ankles.) I have written a long and
peculiarly solemn paper on the technical elements of
style. It is path-breaking and epoch-making; but I do
not think the public will be readily convoked to its pe-
rusal. Did I tell you that S. C had risen to the paper
on James ? At last I O but I was pleased; he 's (like
Johnnie) been lang, lang 0' comin', but here he is. He
will not object to my future manoeuvres in the same
field, as he has to my former. All the family are here ;
my father better than I have seen him these two years;
my mother the same as ever. 1 do trust you are better,
and I am yours ever, R. L S.

To H. A. Jones

BoNALLiE Towers, Branksome Park,
Bournemouth, Dec. jo, 1884.
DEAR SIR, — I am so accustomed to hear nonsense
spoken about all the arts, and the drama in particular,
that I cannot refrain from saying *' Thank you" for

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your paper. In my answer to Mr. James, in the De- «M5
cember Longman, you may see that I have merely ^' ^^
touched, I think in a parenthesis, on the drama ; but I
believe enough was said to indicate our agreement in
essentials.

Wishing you power and health to further enunciate
and to act upon these principles, believe me, dear sir,
yours truly, Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

Bonallie Towers, Branksome Park,
Bournemouth, y^w. 4, 188^.

dear s. c, — I am on my feet again, and getting on
my boots to do the Iron Duke. Conceive my glee: I
have refused the ;;^ioo, and am to get some sort of roy-
alty, not yet decided, instead. T is for Longman's
English IVortbies, edited by A. Lang. Aw haw, haw I

Now, look here, could you get me a loan of the
Despatches, or is that a dream ? I should have to mark
passages, I fear, and certainly note pages on the fly. If
you think it a dream, will Bain get me a second-hand
copy, or who would ? The sooner, and cheaper, I can
get it the better. If there is anything in your weird
library that bears on either the man or the period, put
it in a mortar and fire it here instanter; I shall catch.
I shall want, of course, an infinity of books: among
which, any lives there may be; a life of the Marquis
Marmont (the Mar^chal), Marmonfs Memoirs.Greville's
Memoirs, PeeVs Memoirs, Napier, that blind man's
history of England you once lent me, Hamley's Water'-

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^885^ loo; can you get me any of these ? Thiers, idle Thiers i

also. Can you help a man getting into his boots for
such a huge campaign ? How are you ? A Good Ne^v
Year to you. I mean to have a good one, but on whose
funds I cannot fancy: not mine leastways, as I am a
mere derelict and drift beam-on to bankruptcy.

For God's sake, remember the man who set out for
to conquer Arthur Wellesley, with a broken belloAVS
and an empty pocket. — Yours ever,

R. L Stevenson.

To Thomas Stevenson

Stevenson had been asked by his father to look over the proofs of a
paper which the latter was about to read, as President of the Royal
Sodety of Edinburgh, " On the Principal Causes of Silting in Estu*
aries," in connection with the Manchester Ship Canal Scheme.

[Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth],
1 4tb January, 1885.
MY DEAR father, — I am glad you like the changes.
I own I was pleased with my hand's darg; you may
observe, I have corrected several errors which (you may
tell Mr. Dick) he had allowed to pass his eagle eye; I
wish there may be none in mine; at least, the order is
better. The second title, "Some new Engineering
Qyestions involved in the M. S. C. Scheme of last Ses-
sion of P.," likes me the best. I think it a very good
paper; and I am vain enough to think I have materially
helped to polish the diamond. I ended by feeling quite
proud of the paper, as if it had been mine; the next
time you have as good a one, I will overhaul it for the
wages of feeling as clever as I did when 1 had managed

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to understand and helped to set it clear. I wonder if I i^5
anywhere misapprehended you ? I rather think not at ^' ^^
the last; at the first shot I know I missed a point or
two. Some of what may appear to you to be wanton
changes, a little study will show to be necessary.

Yes, Carlyle was ashamed of himself as few men have
been ; and let all carpers look at what he did. He pre-
pared all these papers for publication with his own
hand; all his wife's complaints, all the evidence of his
own misconduct: who else would have done so much ?
Is repentance, which God accepts, to have no avail with
men ? nor even with the dead ? I have heard too much
against the thrawn, discomfortable dog: dead he is, and
we may be glad of it; but he was a better man than
most of us, no less patently than he was a worse. To
fill the world with whining is against all my views: I
do not like impiety. But — but — there are two sides
to all things, and the old scalded baby had his noble
side. — ^Ever affectionate son, R. L. S.

To Sidney Colvw

BoNALUE Towers, Bournemouth, January, i88^.
DEAR s. c, — I have addressed a letter to the G. O. M.
apropos of Wellington ; and I became aware, you will
be interested to hear, of an overwhelming respect for
the old gentleman. I can blaguer his failures; but
when you actually address him, and bring the two
statures and records to confrontation, dismay is the re-
sult By mere continuance of years, he must impose;
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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

f^^^ ceived, strikes me with a new sense of greatness and
antiquity, when I must actually beard him with the cold
forms of correspondence. I shied at the necessity of
calling him plain "Sir"! Had he been "My lord," I
had been happier; no, I am no equalitarian. Honour
to whom honour is due; and if to none, why, then,
honour to the old I

These, O Slade Professor, are my unvarnished senti-
ments: 1 was a little surprised to find them so ex-
treme, and therefore I communicate the fact

Belabour thy brains, as to whom it would be well to
question. I have a small space; I wish to make a
popular book, nowhere obscure, nowhere, if it can be
helped, unhuman. It seems to me the most hopeful
plan to tell the tale, so far as may be, by anecdote. He
did not die till so recently, there must be hundreds
who remember him, and thousands who have still un-
garnered stories. Dear man, to the breach I Up,
soldier of the iron dook, up, Slades, and at 'em I (which,
conclusively, he did not say: the at 'em-ic theory is to
be dismissed). You know piles of fellows who must
reek with matter; help ! help! — Yours ever,

R. US.

To Sidney Colvin

In the two following letters is expressed some of the distress and
bitterness with which, in common with most Englishmen, Stevenson
felt the circumstances of Gordon's abandonment in the Soudan and
the failure of the belated attempt to rescue him. The advice to go on
with ** my book " refers, if I remember right, to some scheme for the
i-epublication in book form of stray magazine papers of mine of a more
or less personal or biographical nature.

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BoNALLiE Towers, Bournemouth, February, i88^. 1885
MY DEAR COLVIN,— You are indeed a backward cor- ^' ^^
respondent, and much may be said against you. But
in this weather, and O dear! in this political scene of
degradation, much must be forgiven. I fear England is
dead of Burgessry, and only walks about galvanised.
I do not love to think of my countrymen these days;
nor to remember myself. Why was I silent ? I feel
I have no right to blame any one; but I won't write to
the G. O. M. I do really not see my way to any form
of signature, unless ''your fellow criminal in the eyes
of God," which might disquiet the proprieties.

About your book, I have always said : go on. The
drawing of character is a different thing from publish-
ing the details of a private career. No one objects to
the first, or should object, if his name be not put upon it;
at the other, I draw the line. In a preface, if you chose,
you might distinguish ; it is, besides, a thing for which
you are eminently well equipped, and which you would
do with taste and incision. 1 long to see the book.
People like themselves (to explain a little more); no
one likes his life, which is a misbegotten issue, and a
tale of failure. To see these failures either touched
upon, or coasted, to get the idea of a spying eye and
blabbing tongue about the house, is to lose all privacy
in life. To see that thing, which we do love, our
character, set forth, is ever gratifying. See how my
"Talk and Talkers" went; every one liked his own por-
trait, and shrieked about other people's; so it will be
with yours. If you are the least true to the essential,
the sitter will be pleased ; very likely not his friends*
and that from various motives. R. L S.

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

«W5 When will your holiday be ? I sent your letter to
^' '' my wife, and forget Keep us in mind, and I hope we
shall be able to receive you.

To J, A. Symonds

Bournemouth, February, 188^.

MY DEAR SYMONDS, — Yes, we have both been very
neglectful. I had horrid luck, catching two thunder-
ing influenzas in August and November. I recovered
from the last with diflficulty, but have come through
this blustering winter with some general success; in
the house, up and down. My wife, however, has
been painfully upset by my health. Last year, of
course, was cruelly trying to her nerves; Nice and
Hydres are bad experiences; and though she is not tU,
the doctor tells me that prolonged anxiety may do her
a real mischief.

I feel a little old and fagged, and chary of speech^
and not very sure of spirit in my work; but consider-
ing what a year I have passed, and how I have twice
sat on Charon's pierhead, I am surprising.

My father has presented us with a very pretty home
in this place, into which we hope to move by May. My
Child's Verses come out next week. Otto begins to
appear in April ; Mare New Arabian Ntgbts as soon as
possible. Moreover, 1 am neck deep in Wellington ; also
a story on the stocks, The Great North Road. O, I am
busy! Lloyd is at college in Edinburgh. That is, I
think, all that can be said by way of news.

Have you read Huckleberry Finn} It contains
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many excellent things; above all, the whole story of a i^
healthy boy's dealings with his conscience, incredibly *^' ^*
well done.

My own conscience is badly seared ; a want of piety;
yet I pray for it, tacitly, every day; believing it, after
courage, the only gift worth having; and its want, in
a man of any claims to honour, quite unpardonable.
The tone of your letter seemed to me very sound. In
these dark days of public dishonour, I do not know
that one can do better than carry our private trials
piously. What a picture is this of a nation! No man
that I can see, on any side or party, seems to have the
least sense of our ineflable shame: the desertion of the
garrisons. I tell my little parable that Germany took
England, and then there was an Indian Mutiny, and
Bismarck said: "Qyite right: let Delhi and Calcutta
and Bombay fall; and let the women and children be
treated Sepoy fashion," and people say, "O, but that
is very diflerent!" And then I wish I were dead.
Millais (I hear) was painting Gladstone when the news
came of Gordon's death ; Millais was much aflected, and
Gladstone said, " Why f Itis the man's own temerity T
f^oild le Bourgeois/ le voild nut But why should I
blame Gladstone, when I too am a Bourgeois ? when I
have held my peace ? Why did I hold my peace ?
Because I am a sceptic: ue. a Bourgeois. We believe
in nothing, Symonds; you don't, and I don't; and
these are two reasons, out of a handful of millions,
why England stands before the world dripping with
blood and daubed with dishonour. I will first try to
take the beam out of my own eye, trusting that even
private effort somehow betters and braces the general

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

■885^ atmosphere. See, for example, if England has shown
(1 put it hypothetically) one spark of manly sensibility,
they have been shamed into it by the spectacle of
Gordon. Police-Officer Cole is the only man that I
see to admire. I dedicate my New Arabs to him and
Cox, in default of other great public characters. —
Yours ever most affectionately,

Robert Louis Steveksoh.

To Edmund Gossb

The following refers to an edition of Gray, with notes and a shoit
prefatory Life by Mr. Gosse; and to the publication of A Child*s
GsfiUn ofVtrut.

BoNALUE Towers, Bournemouth,
March 12, 188$. .

MY dear gosse, — I was indeed much exercised how
I could be worked into Gray; and lol when I saw it,
the passage seemed to have been written with a single
eye to elucidate the — worst ? — well, not a very good
poem of Gray's. Your little Life is excellent, clean,
neat, efficient I have read many of your notes, too,
with pleasure. Your connection with Gray was a
happy circumstance; it was a suitable conjunction.

I did not answer your letter from the States, for what
was 1 to say ? I liked getting it and reading it; 1 was
rather flattered that you wrote it to me; and then I '11
tell you what 1 did — I put it in the fire. Why?
Well, just because it was very natural and expansive;
and thinks I to myself, if 1 die one of these fine nights,
this is just the letter that Gosse would not wish to go
into the hands of third parties. Was I well inspired ?

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And I did not answer it because you were in your high 1885
places, sailing with supreme dominion, and seeing life ^' ^'
in a particular glory ; and I was peddling in a corner,
confined to the house, overwhelmed with necessary
work, which I was not always doing well, and, in the
very mild form in which the disease approaches me,
touched with a sort of bustling cynicism. Why throw
cold water ? How ape your agreeable frame of mind ?
In short, I held my tongue.

I have now published on loi small pages The Cam*
plete Proof of Mr. R. L Stevenson's Incapacity to Write
yerse^ in a series of graduated examples with table of
contents. I think I shall issue a companion volume of
exercises: ''Analyse this poem. Collect and commi-
nate the ugly words. Distinguish and condemn the
cbevilles. State Mr. Stevenson's faults of taste in re-
gard to the measure. What reasons can you gather
from this example for your belief that Mr. S. is unable
to write any other measure ? "

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

I was glad you enjoyed your visit to the States.
Most Englishmen go there with a confirmed design of
patronage, as they go to France for that matter; and
patronage will not pay. Besides, in this year of —
grace, said I? — of disgrace, who should creep so low
as an Englishman? "It is not to be thought of that
the flood " — ah, Wordsworth, you would change your
note were you alive to-day 1

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>885 I am now a beastly householder, but have not yet
^' '^ entered on my domain. When 1 do, the social revolu-
tion will probably cast me back upon my dung-heap.
There is a person called Hyndman whose eye is on me;
his step is beHynd me as I go. 1 shall call my house
Skerry vore when I get it: skerryvore: ffest ban
. pour la poisbte. I will conclude with my favourite
sentiment: ''The worid is too much with me."

Robert Louis Stevenson,
The Hermit of Skerryvore.

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

Uniform with the above:

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

To W. H. Low

The " dedication ** referred to b that of a forthcoming illustrated
•dition of KeaU's UmU.

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BoNALLiE Towers, Bournemouth, 1885
Marcb /i, 1885. ""' ^^

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

I wrote you a letter to the Rembrandt, in which I
stated my views about the dedication in a very brief
form. It will give me sincere pleasure, and will make
the second dedication I have received, the other being
from John Addington Symonds. It is a compliment I
value much ; 1 don't know any that I should prefer.

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

By the way, have you seen James and me on the
novel ? James, I think, in the August or September
— R. L S. in the December Longman. I own I think
the ^cole bite, of which I am the champion, has the
whip hand of the argument; but as James is to make a
rejoinder, I must not boast. Anyway the controversy
is amusing to see. I was terribly tied down to space,

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1885 which has made the end congested and dull. I shall
^' ^^ see if I can afford to send you the April Contemporary
— but I dare say you see it anyway — as it will con-
tain a paper of mine on style, a sort of continuation of
old arguments on art in which you have wagged a
most effective tongue. It is a sort of start upon my
Treatise on the Art of Literature: a small, arid book
that shall some day appear.

With every good wish from me and mine (should I
not say **she and hers"?) to you and yours, believe
me yours ever, Robert Louis Stevenson.

To P. G. Hamerton

The work of his correspondent's which R. L S. notices in the fol-
lowing is, of course, the sumptuous \o\ume Landscape : Seeley & Co.,
1885. The passages specially referred to will be found pp. 46-62 of
that work.

Bournemouth, March 16, 188$.
MY DEAR HAMERTON, — Various things have been re-
minding me of my misconduct: First, Swan's applica-
tion for your address; second, a sight of the sheets of
your Landscape book; and last, your note to Swan,
which he was so kind as to forward. I trust you will
never suppose me to be guilty of anything more serious
than an idleness, partially excusable. My ill-health
makes my rate of life heavier than I can well meet, and
yet stops me from earning more. My conscience,
sometimes perhaps too easily stifled, but still (for my
time of life and the public manners of the age) fairly
well alive, forces me to perpetual and almost endless

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transcriptions. On the back of all this, my correspon- i385
dence hangs like a thunder-cloud ; and just when I think ^' ^^
I am getting through my troubles, crack, down goes
my health, I have a long, costly sickness, and begin
the world again. It is fortunate for me I have a father,
or I should long ago have died ; but the opportunity of
the aid makes the necessity none the more welcome.
My father has presented me with a beautiful house
here — or so 1 believe, for I have not yet seen it, being
a cage bird but for nocturnal sorties in the garden. 1
hope we shall soon move into it, and I tell myself that
some day perhaps we may have the pleasure of seeing
you as our guest. I trust at least that you will take
me as I am, a thoroughly bad correspondent, and a
man, a hater, indeed, of rudeness in others, but too
often rude in all unconsciousness himself; and that you
will never cease to believe the sincere sympathy and
admiration that I feel for you and for your work.

About the Landscape, which I had a glimpse of
while a friend of mine was preparing a review, I was
greatly interested, and could write and wrangle for a
year on every page; one passage particularly delighted
me, the part about Ulysses — jolly. Then, you know,
that is just what I fear 1 have come to think landscape
ought to be in literature; so there we should be at
odds. Or perhaps not so much as I suppose, as Mon-
taigne says it is a pot with two handles, and I own I
am wedded to the technical handle, which (1 likewise
own and freely) you do well to keep for a mistress. I
should much like to talk with you about some other
points; it is only in talk that one gets to understand.
Your delightful Wordsworth trap I have tried on two

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

•885 hardened Wordsworthians, not that I am not one my-
^' ^' self. By covering up the context, and asking them to
guess what the passage was, both (and both are very
clever people, one a writer, one a painter) pronounced
it a guide-book. " Do you think it an unusually good
guide-book?'' I asked, and both said, ''No, not at
all! " Their grimace was a picture when 1 showed the
original.

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

1 do not know why I should inflict this talk upon you;
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but when I summon the rebellious pen» he must go his 1885
own way; I am no Michael Scott, to rule the fiend of ^' ''
correspondence. Most days he will none of me; and
when he comes, it is to rape me where he will. — Yours
very sincerely, Robert Louis Stevenson.

To William Archer

An tnonymous review of ^ CbiWs Garden^ appearing in March, gave
R. L. S. so much pleasure that he wrote (in the four words, " Now
who are you ? ") to inquire the name of its writer, and learned that it
was Mr. Archer, with whom he had hitherto had no acquaintance.
He thereupon entered into friendly correspondence with his critic

Bournemouth, March 29, 1885.

dear MR. ARCHER, — Yes, I have heard of you and read
some of your work; but 1 am bound in particular to
thank you for the notice of my verses. "There," I
said, throwing it over to the friend who was staying
with me, *Mt 's worth writing a book to draw an article
like that" Had you been as hard upon me as you were
amiable, I try to tell myself I should have been no
blinder to the merits of your notice. For I saw there,
to admire and to be very grateful for, a most sober,
agile pen ; an enviable touch ; the marks of a reader,
such as one imagines for one's self in dreams, thought-
ful, critical, and kind; and to put the top on this me-
morial column, a greater readiness to describe the author
criticised than to display the talents of his censor.

I am a man blasi to injudicious praise (though 1 hope
some of it may be judicious too), but I have to thank

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1885 you for THE BEST CRITICISM I EVER HAD; and am therefore.
^' dear Mr. Archer, the most grateful critickee now extant,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

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

To Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin

The next two or three months yielded few or no letters of interest ;
the following refer to the death of Professor Fleeming Jenkin, who m
Stevenson's early student days at Edinburgh had been both the
warmest and the wisest of his elder friends (died Jtme 12, 1885).

[Skerry voRE, Bournemouth, y»ii^, 188$.]
MY dear MRS. JENKIN, — You know how much and for
how long I have loved, respected, and admired him; I
am only able to feel a little with you. But I know how
he would h^ve wished us to feel. I never knew a better
man, nor one to me more lovable; we shall all feel

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the loss more greatly as time goes on. It scarce seems 1885
life to me; what must it be to you ? Yet one of the ^' ^^
last things that he said to me was, that from all these sad
bereavements of yours he had learned only more than
ever to feel the goodness and what we, in our feebleness,
call the support of God ; he had been ripening so much
— to other eyes than ours, we must suppose he was ripe,
and try to feel it I feel it is better not to say much
more. It will be to me a great pride to write a notice
of him : the last I can now do. What more in any way
I can do for you, please to think and let me know. For
his sake and for your own, I would not be a useless
friend : I know, you know me a most warm one; please
command me or my wife, in any way. Do not trouble
to write to me; Austin, I have no doubt, will do so, if
you are, as I fear you will be, unfit.

My heart is sore for you. At least you know what
you have been to him ; how he cherished and admired
you ; how he was never so pleased as when he spoke
of you; with what a boy's love, up to the last, he loved
you. This surely is a consolation. Yours is the cruel
part— to survive; you must try and not grudge to him
his better fortune, to go first. It is the sad part of such
relations that one must remain and suffer; I cannot see
my poorjenkin without you. Nor you indeed without
him ; but you may try to rejoice that he is spared that
extremity. Perhaps I (as I was so much his confidant)
know even better than you can do what your loss
would have been to him ; he never spoke of you but
his face changed; it was — you were — his religion.

I write by this post to Austin and to the Academy.^
Yours most sincerely* Robert Louis Stevens(M.

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LtTl ERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1885
JET. 35

To Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin

[Skerryvore, Bournemouth, June, 188;.]

MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, — I should have written sooner,
but we are in a bustle, and I have been very tired,
though still well. Your very kind note was most wel-
come to me. I shall be very much pleased to have you
call me Louis, as he has now done for so many years.
Sixteen, you say ? is it so long ? It seems too short
now; but of that we cannot judge, and* must not
complain.

1 wish that either I or my wife could do anything for
you; when we can, you will, I am sure, command us.

I trust that my notice gave you as little pain as was
possible. I found I had so much to say, that I preferred
to keep it for another place and make but a note in the
Academy. To try to draw my friend at greater length,
and say what he was to me and his intimates, what a
good influence in life and what an example, is a desire
that grows upon me. It was strange, as I wrote the
note, how his old tests and criticisms haunted me; and
it reminded me afresh with every few words how much
I owe to him.

I had a note from Henley, very brief and very sad.
We none of us yet feel the loss; but we know what he
would have said and wished.

Do you know that Dew-Smith has two photographs
of him, neither very bad ? and one giving a lively,
though not flattering air of him in conversation ? If
you have not got them, would you like me to write to
Dew and ask him to give you proofs ?

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I was SO pleased that he and my wife made friends; 1885
that is a great pleasure. We found and have preserved ^' ^^
one fragment (the head) of the drawing he made and
tore up when he was last here. He had promised to
come and stay with us this summer. May we not
hope, at least, some time soon to have one from you ?
— Believe me, my dear Mrs. Jen kin, with the most real
sympathy, your sincere friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

Dear me, what happiness I owe to both of you 1

To W. H. Low

In August of this year Stevenson made with his wife an excursion to
the west (stopping at Dorchester on the way, for the pleasure of seeing
Mr. Thomas Hardy at home), and was detained for several weeks at
Exeter by a bad fit of hemorrhage. His correspondence is not re-
sumed until the autumn.

Skerryvore, Bournemouth, October 22, 188$.
MY DEAR LOW, — I trust you are not annoyed with
me beyond forgiveness ; for indeed my silence has been
devilish prolonged. I can only tell you that 1 have been
nearly six months (more than six) in a strange condition
of collapse, when it was impossible to do any work,
and difficult (more difficult than you would suppose)
to write the merest note. I am now better, but not
yet my own man in the way of brains, and in health
only so-so. I suppose I shall learn (I begin to think I
am learning) to fight this vast, vague feather-bed of an
obsession that now overlies and smothers me; but in
the beginnings of these conflicts, the inexperienced

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LETTERS OF R. L. STEVENSON

1885 wrestler is always worsted, and I own I have been quite
^' ^^ extinct I wish you to know, though it can be no.
excuse, that you are not the only one of my friends by
many whom I have thus neglected ; and even no>v,
having come so very late into the possession of myself,
with a substantial capital of debts, and my work still
moving with a desperate slowness — as a child might
fill a sandbag with its little handfuls — and my future
deeply pledged, there is almost a touch of virtue in my
borrowing these hours to write to you. Why I said
*' hours" I know not; it would look blue for both of
us if I made good the word.

I was writing your address the other day, ordering a
copy of my next. Prince Otto, to go your way. I hope
you have not seen it in parts; it was not meant to be
so read ; and only my poverty (dishonourably) consented
to the serial evolution.

I will send you with this a copy of the English edition
of the Child* s Garden. I have heard there is some vile
rule of the post-office in the States against inscriptions;
so I send herewith a piece of doggerel which Mr. Bun-
ner may, if he thinks fit, copy off the fly-leaf.

Sargent was down again and painted a portrait of me
walking about in my own dining-room, in my own
velveteen jacket, and twisting as I go my own mous-
tache; at one corner a glimpse of my wife, in an Indian
dress, and seated in a chair that was once my grand-
father's ; but since some months goes by the name of
Henry James's, for it was there the novelist loved to sit
— adds a touch of poesy and comicality. It is, I think,
excellent, but is too eccentric to be exhibited. I am at
one extreme comer; my wife, in this wild dress» and

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looking like a ghost, is at the extreme other end; be- '885
tween us an open door exhibits my palatial entrance ^' ^'
hall and a part of my respected staircase. AH this is
touched in lovely, with that witty touch of Sargent's;
but, of course, it looks dam queer as a whole.

Pray let me hear from you, and give me good news
of yourself and your wife, to whom please remember
me. — Yours most sincerely, my dear Low,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To W. E. Henley

Princi Otto had been published in October of this year; and the fol-
lowing refers to two reviews of it— one of them by Mr. Henley, which
to the writer's displeasure had been pruned by the editor before print-
ing; the other by a writer in the Saturday Review, who declared that
Otto was " a fool and a wittol/' and could see nothing but false style
in the story of Seraphina's flight through the forest.

[Skerry voRE, Bournemouth, Autumn, /SS5.]
dear lad, — If there was any more praise in what
you wrote, I think [the editor] has done us both a
service; some of it stops my throat. What, it would
not have been the same if Dumas or Musset had done
it would it not ? Well, no, 1 do not think it would,
do you know, now; 1 am really of opinion it would not;
and a dam good job too. Why, think what Musset
would have made of Otto ! Think how gallantly Dumas
would have carried his crowd through ! And whatever

you do, don't quarrel with . It gives me much

pleasure to see your work there ; I think you do your-
self great justice in that field ; and I would let no an-
noyance, petty or justifiable, debar me from such a

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«T. 35

LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

1885^ market I think you do good there. Whether (con-
sidering our intimate relations) you would not do
better to refrain from reviewing me» I will leave to
yourself: were it all on my side, you could foresee
my answer; but there is your side also, where you
must be the judge.

As for the Saturday. Otto is no "fool," the reader
is left in no doubt as to whether or not Seraphina was
a Messalina (though much it would matter, if you come
to that); and therefore on both these points the re-
viewer has been unjust. Secondly, the ronfiance lies
precisely in the freeing of two spirits from these court
intrigues; and here I think the reviewer showed him-
self dull. Lastly, if Otto's speech is offensive to him,
he is one of the large class of unmanly and ungenerous
dogs who arrogate and defile the name of manly. As
for the passages quoted, I do confess that some of them
reek gorgonically ; they are excessive, but they are not
inelegant after all. However, had he attacked me only
there, he would have scored.

Your criticism on Gondremark is, I fancy, right. I
thought all your criticisms were indeed; only your
praise — chokes me. — Yours ever, R. L S.

To WiLUAM Archer

The paper referred to in this and the following letters Is one which
Mr. Archer wrote over his own signature in the November number of
Timi, a magazine now extinct.

Skerryvorb, Bournemouth, October 28, 1885.
DEAR MR. ARCHER, — 1 have read your paper with my
customary admiration; it is very witty, very adroit; it

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contains a great deal that is excellently true (particularly 1M5
the parts about my stories and the description of me as ^' ^^
an artist in life) ; but you will not be surprised if I do
not think it altogether just It seems to me, in particu-
lar, that you have wilfully read all my works in terms
of my earliest; my aim, even in style, has quite changed
in the last six or seven years; and this I should
have thought you would have noticed. Again, your
first remark upon the affectation of the italic names; a
practice only followed in my two affected little books
of travel, where a typographical minauderie of the sort
appeared to me in character; and what you say of it,
then, is quite just But why should you forget your-
self and use these same italics as an index to my
theology some pages further on ? This is lightness
of touch indeed; may I say, it is almost sharpness of
practice ?

Excuse these remarks. I have been on the whole
much interested, and sometimes amused. Are you
aware that the praiser of this " brave gymnasium " has
not seen a canoe nor taken a long walk since '79 ? that
he is rarely out of the house nowadays, and carries his
arm in a sling ? Can you imagine that he is a back-
slidden communist, and is sure he will go to hell (if
there be such an excellent institution) for the luxury in
which he lives ? And can you believe that, though it
is gaily expressed, the thought is hag and skeleton in
every moment of vacuity or depression? Can you
conceive how profoundly I am irritated by the opposite
affectation to my own, when 1 see strong men and rich
men bleating about their sorrows and the burthen of
life, in a world full of "cancerous paupers," and poor

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1M5 sick children, and the fatally bereaved, ay, and down
^' ^' even to such happy creatures as myself, who has yet
been obliged to strip himself, one after another, of all
the pleasures that he had chosen except smoking (and
the days of that I know in my heart ought to be over),
I forgot eating, which 1 still enjoy, and who sees the
circle of impotence closing very slowly but quite
steadily around him? In my view, one dank, dis-
pirited word is harmful, a crime of lise-bumanM, a
piece of acquired evil; every gay, every bright word or
picture, like every pleasant air of music, is a piece of
pleasure set afloat; the reader catches it, and, if he be
healthy, goes on his way rejoicing; and it is the busi-
ness of art so to send him, as often as possible.

For what you say, so kindly, so prettily, so precisely,
of my style, 1 must in particular thank you; though
even here, 1 am vexed you should not have remarked
on my attempted change of manner: seemingly this
attempt is still quite unsuccessful! Well, we shall
fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.

And now for my last word : Mrs. Stevenson is very
anxious that you should see me, and that she should
see you, in the flesh. If you at all share in these views,
I am a fixture. Write or telegraph (giving us time,
however, to telegraph in reply, lest the day be impos*
sible), and come down here to a bed and a dinner.
What do you say, my dear critic? I shall be truly
pleased to see you; and to explain at greater length
what 1 meant by saying narrative was the most char*
acteristic mood of literature, on which point I have
great hopes I shall persuade you.— Yours truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.
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AX— My opinion about Thoreau, and the passage "^
In Tbe Week^ is perhaps a fad, but it is sincere and ^' ^
stable. I am still of the same mind five years later;
did you observe that I had said '' modem '* authors ?
and will you observe again that this passage touches
the very joint of our division ? It is one that appeals
to me, deals with that part of life that I think the most
important, and you, if I gather rightly, so much less
so ? You believe in the extreme moment of the facts
that humanity has acquired and is acquiring; I think
them of moment, but still of much less than those
inherent or inherited brute principles and laws that sit
upon us (in the character of conscience) as heavy as a
shirt of mail, and that (in the character of the affections
and the airy spirit of pleasure) make all the light of our
lives. The house is» indeed, a great thing, and should
be rearranged on sanitary principles; but my heart and
all my interest are with the dweller, that ancient of
days and day-old infant man. R. L S.

An excellent touch is p. 584. ^ By instinct or design
he eschews what demands constructive patience." I
believe it is both; my theory is that literature must
always be most at home in treating movement and
change; hence I look for them.

To Thomas Stbvenson

[Skerryvore, Bournemouth], October 28, 188^.
MY dearest father,— Get the November number of
Timet and you will see a review of me by a very clever

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1^ fellow, who is quite furious at bottom because I am too
^' ^^ orthodox, just as Purcell was savage because I am not
orthodox enough. I fail between two stools. It is odd,
too, to see how this man thinks me a full-blooded fox-
hunter, and tells me my philosophy would fail if 1 lost
my health or had to give up exercise I

An illustrated Treasure Island will be out next
month. 1 have had an early copy, and the French
pictures are admirable. The artist has got his types
up in Hogarth ; he is full of fire and spirit, can draw and
can compose, and has understood the book as I meant
it, all but one or two little accidents, such as making
the Hispaniola a brig. I would send you my copy,
but I cannot; it is my new toy, and I cannot divorce
myself from this enjoyment

I am keeping really better, and have been out about
every second day, though the weather is cold and very
wild.

I was delighted to hear you were keeping better;
you and Archer would agree, more shame to you!
(Archer is my pessimist critic.) Good-bye to all of
you, with my best love. We had a dreadful overhaul-
ing of my conduct as a son the other night; and my
wife stripped me of my illusions and made me admit 1
had been a detestable bad one. Of one thing in par-
ticular she convicted me in my own eyes: I mean, a
most unkind reticence, which hung on me then, and I
confess still hangs on me now, when I try to assure
you that I do love you.— Ever your bad son,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

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To Henry James

Skerryvore, Bournemouth, October 28, i88j.

MY dear henry JAMES, —At last, my wife being at a
concert, and a story being done, I am at some liberty
to write and give you of my views. And first, many
thanks for the works that came to my sickbed. And
second, and more important, as to the Princess.^ Well,
I think you are going to do it this time; I cannot, of
course, foresee, but these two first numbers seem to
me picturesque and sound and full of lineament, and
very much a new departure. As for your young lady,
she is all there; yes, sir, you can do low life, I believe.
The prison was excellent; it was of that nature of
touch that I sometimes achingly miss from your former
work; with some of the grime, that is, and some of
the emphasis of skeleton there is in nature. I pray you
to take grime in a good sense; it need not be ignoble:
dirt may have dignity; in nature it usually has; and
your prison was imposing.

And now to the main point: why do we not see
you ? Do not fail us. Make an alarming sacrifice, and
let us see " Henry James's chair " properly occupied. I
never sit in it myself (though it was my grandfather's) ;
it has been consecrated to guests by your approval, and
now stands at my elbow gaping. We have a new
room, too, to introduce to you— our last baby, the
drawing-room; it never cries, and has cut its teeth.
Likewise, there is a cat now. It promises to be a
monster of laziness and self-sufficiency.

^ Princess Casamassima.
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1885
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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

«885 Pray see, in the November Time (a dread name for a
^' ^^ magazine of light reading), a very clever fellow, W.
Archer, stating his views of me; the rosy-gilled "ath-
letico-aesthete "; and warning me, in a fatherly manner,
that a rheumatic fever would try my philosophy (as
indeed it would), and that my gospel would not do for
"those who are shut out from the exercise of any
manly virtue save renunciation." To those who know
that rickety and cloistered spectre, the real R. L S.,
the paper, besides being clever in itself, presents rare
elements of sport. The critical parts are in particular
very bright and neat, and often excellently true. Get
it by all manner of means.

I hear on all sides I am to be attacked as an immoral
writer; this is painful. Have I at last got, like you, to
the pitch of being attacked ? T is the consecration I
lack— and could do without. Not that Archer's paper
is an attack, or what either he or I, I believe, would
call one; 't is the attacks on my morality (which I had
thought a gem of the first water) I referred to.

Now, my dear James, come— come— come. The
spirit (that is me) says, Come; and the bride (and that is
my wife) says, Come; and the best thing you can do
for us and yourself and your work is to get up and do
so right away.— Yours affectionately,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To WiLUAM Archer

[Skerryvore, Bournemouth], October jo, i88$.
DEAR MR, archer,— It is possible my father may be
soon down with me; he is an old man and in bad

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health and spirits; and I could neither leave him alone, 1^5
nor could we talk freely before him. If he should be ^' ^^
here when you offer your visit, you will understand if
I have to say no, and put you off.

I quite understand your not caring to refer to things
of private knowledge. What still puzzles me is how
you ("in the witness-box"— ha! I like the phrase)
should have made your argument actually hinge on a
contention which the facts answered.

I am pleased to hear of the correctness of my guess.
It is then as I supposed ; you are of the school of the
generous and not the sullen pessimists; and I can feel
with you. I used myself to rage when I saw sick folk
going by in their Bath-chairs; since I have been sick
myself (and always when I was sick myself), I found
life, even in its rough places, to have a property of
easiness. That which we suffer ourselves has no longer
the same air of monstrous injustice and wanton cruelty
that suffering wears when we see it in the case of
others. So we begin gradually to see that things are
not black, but have their strange compensations; and
when they draw towards their worst, the idea of death
is like a bed to lie on. I should bear false witness if I
did not declare life happy. And your wonderful state-
ment that happiness tends to die out and misery to
continue, which was what put me on the track of your
frame of mind, is diagnostic of the happy man raging
over the misery of others; it could never be written by
the man who had tried what unhappiness was like.
And at any rate, it was a slip of the pen: the ugliest
word that science has to declare is a reserved indiffer-
ence to happiness and misery in the individual; it de-

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LETTERS OF R. U STEVENSON

■8S5 Clares no leaning towards the black, no iniquity on the
^' ^^ large scale in fate's doings, rather a marble equality,
dread not cruel, giving and taking away and recon-
ciling.

Why have I not written my Timon ? Well, here is
my worst quarrel with you. You take my young
books as my last word. The tendency to try to say
more has passed unperceived (my fault, that). And
you make no allowance for the slowness with which a
man finds and tries to learn his tools. I began with a
neat brisk little style, and a sharp little knack of partial
observation; I have tried to expand my means, but still
I can only utter a part of what 1 wish to say, and am
bound to feel; and much of it will die unspoken. But
if I had the pen of Shakespeare, I have no Timan to
give forth. 1 feel kindly to the powers that be; 1
marvel they should use me so well; and when I think
of the case of others, I wonder too, but in another vein,
whether they may not, whether they must not, be like
me, still with some compensation, some delight To
have suffered, nay, to suffer, sets a keen edge on what
remains of the agreeable. This is a great truth, and
has to be learned in the fire.— Yours very truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

We expect you, remember that

To William Archer

Skbrryvore, Bournemouth, November /, i88$.
DEAR MR. archer,— You will See that I had already
had a sight of your article and what were my thoughts.

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LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH

One thing in your letter puzzles me. Are you, too, "885
not in the witness-box ? And if you are, why take a ^' ^'
wilfully false hypothesis P If you knew I was a chronic
invalid, why say that my philosophy was unsuitable to
such a case ? My call for facts is not so general as
yours, but an essential fact should not be put the other
way about.

The fact is, consciously or not, you doubt my
honesty; you think I am making faces, and at heart
disbelieve my utterances. And this I am disposed to
think must spring from your not having had enough of
pain, sorrow, and trouble in your existence. It is easy
to have too much; easy also or possible to have too
little; enough is required that a man may appreciate
what elements of consolation and joy there are in every-
thing but absolutely overpowering physical pain or dis-
grace, and how in almost all circumstances the human
soul can play a fair part. You fear life, I fancy, on the
principle of the hand of little employment. But per-
haps my hypothesis is as unlike the truth as the one
you chose. Well, if it be so, if you have had trials,
sickness, the approach of death, the alienation of
friends, poverty at the heels, and have not felt your
soul turn round upon these things and spurn them
under— you must be very differently made from me,
and I earnestly believe from the majority of men.
But at least you are in the right to wonder and com-
plain.

To "say all"? Stay here. All at once? That
would require a word from the pen of Gargantua.
We say each particular thing as it comes up, and
"with that sort of emphasis that for the time there

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LETTERS OF R. L STEVENSON

1885 seems to be no other/' Words will not otherwise
'"' '' serve us; no, nor even Shakespeare, who could not
have put j4s You Like It and Timan into one without
ruinous loss both of emphasis and substance. Is it
quite fair then to keep your face so steadily on my
most light-hearted works, and then say I recognise no
evil ? Yet in the paper on Burns, for instance, I show
myself alive to some sorts of evil. But then, perhaps,
they are not your sorts.

And again: to "say air? All: yes. Everything:
no. The task were endless, the effect nil. But my
all, in such a vast field as this of life, is what interests
me, what stands out, what takes on itself a presence
for my imagination or makes a figure in that little
tricky abbreviation which is the best that my reason can
conceive. That I must treat, or I shall be fooling with
my readers. That, and not the all of some one else.

And here we come to the divisi:>n: not only do I
believe that literature should give joy, but 1 see a uni-
verse, I suppose, eternally different from yours; a
solemn, a terrible, but a very joyous and noble uni-
verse, where suffering is not at least wantonly inflicted,
though it falls with dispassionate partiality, but where
it may be and generally is nobly borne; where, above
all (this I believe; probably you don't: I think he may,
with cancer), any brave man may make out a life which
shall be happy for himself, and, by so being, benefl-
cent to those about him. And if he fails, why should
I hear him weeping ? I mean if I fail, why should I
weep? Why should you hear me} Then to me
morals, the conscience, the affections, and the pas-
sions are, I will own frankly and sweepingly, so in-

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UPE AT BOURNEMOUTH

finitely more important than the other parts of life, 1885
that I conceive men rather triflers who become im- ^* ^
mersed in the latter; and I will always think the man
who keeps his lip stiff, and makes " a happy fireside
clime/' and carries a pleasant face about to friends and
neighbours, infinitely greater (in the abstract) than an
atrabilious Shakespeare or a backbiting Kant or Darwin.
No offence to any of these gentlemen, two of whom
probably (one for certain) came up to my standard.

And now enough said; it were hard if a poor man
could not criticise another without having so much ink
shed against 'him. But I shall still regret you should
have written on an hypothesis you knew to be unten-
able, and that you should thus have made your paper,
for those who do not know me, essentially unfair.
The rich, fox-hunting squire speaks with one voice;
the sick man of letters with another.— Yours very truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson
(Prometbeus-Heine in minimis).

P.Sl— Here I go again. To me, the medicine bottles
on my chimney and the blood on my handkerchief are
accidents; they do not colour my view of life, as you
would know, I think, if you had experience of sick-
ness; they do not exist in my prospect; I would as
soon drag them under the eyes of my readers as I
would mention a pimple I might chance to have (sav-
ing your presence) on my posteriors. What does it
prove ? what does it change ? it has not hurt, it has not
changed me in any essential part; and I should think
myself a trifler and in bad taste if I introduced the
world to these unimportant privacies.

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LETTERS OF R, L. STEVENSON

1^5 But, again, there is this mountain-range between us
' ^' —that you do not believe me. It is not flattering, but
the fault is probably in my literary art

To W. H. Low

The ''other thing coming out" mentioned below in the last para-
graph but one was Tb$ Strange Cau ofDr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Skerryvore, Bournemouth, December 26, 1885.

MY DEAR LOYr,— Lamia has not yet turned up, but
your letter came to me this evening with a scent of
the Boulevard Montpamasse that was irresistible. The
sand of Lavenue's crumbled under my heel; and the
bouquet of the old Fleury came back to me, and I
remembered the day when I found a twenty franc
piece under my fetish. Have you that fetish still ? and
has it brought you luck ? I remembered, too, my first
sight of you in a frock coat and a smoking-cap, when
we passed the evening at the Caf^ de Mddicis; and my
last when we sat and talked in the Pare Monceau; and
all these things made me feel a little young again,
which, to one who has been mostly in bed for a month,
was a vivifying change.

Yes, you are lucky to have a bag that holds you
comfortably. Mine is a strange contrivance; I don't
die, damme, and 1 can't get along on both feet to save
my soul; 1 am a chronic sickist; and my work cripples
along between bed and the parlour, between the medi-
cine bottle and the cupping glass. Well, 1 like my life
all the same; and should like it none the worse if I
could have another talk with you, though even my

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UFE AT BOURNEMOUTH

talks now are measured out to me by the minute hand 1^5
like poisons in a minim glass. ""* ^-

A photograph will be taken of my ugly mug and
sent to you for ulterior purposes: I have another thing
coming out, which 1 did not put in the way of the
Scribners, I can scarce tell how; but I was sick and
penniless and rather back on the world, and misman-
aged it. I trust they will forgive me.

I am sorry to hear of Mrs. Low's illness, and glad to
hear of her recovery. I will announce the coming
Lamia to Bob: he steams away at literature like smoke.
I have a beautiful Bob on my walls, and a good Sargent,
and a delightful Lemon; and your etching now hangs
framed in the dining-room. So the arts surround
me.— Yours, R. L S

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UNIVERSnT OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
This txx>k is DUE on die last dftte stamped below.

OCT 15 1947

22Feb^58JT

2iMar'63tf

MA^ «

ICD:

JUL 2 9 191)0

LD 21-100m-12/i6(A2012Bl6)4120

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