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.
Letter: TO ALISON 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 surprised 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, 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 language, 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 affectionate,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: 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, I am more and more convinced, without an art, that always waits for us and is always new. Art and marriage are two very good stand- by’s.
In an article which will appear sometime in the CORNHILL, ‘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 I do believe I 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.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
[CHALET AM STEIN, DAVOS-PLATZ, FEBRUARY 1882.]
MY DEAR HENLEY, - Here comes the letter as promised last night. And first two requests: Pray send the enclosed to c/o Blackmore’s publisher, ’tis 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 subject was hardly fit for so chatty a paper, and it is all loose ends. If ever I do my book on the Art of Literature, I shall gather them together and be clear.
To-morrow, having once finished off the touches still due on this, I 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 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-d sight the better for another curry. But I do not think I can honestly re-write 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.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
[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 beefsteak. So unusual is any excitement, 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. ’Tis very comic, but really unpleasant. But what care I? Now that I 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 pounds a year.
O that Coronation! What a shouting crowd there was! 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’OEIL! but was it not over-done, 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 performance 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 Wellington, 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 triumphantly published Brown’s HANDBOOK
TO CRICKET, Jones’s FIRST FRENCH READER, and Robinson’s PICTURESQUE
CHESHIRE, 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 business. Which would you read first - Shakespeare’s autobiography, or his journals? What sport the monody on Napoleon would be - what wooden verse, what stucco ornament! I should read both the autobiography and the journals before I looked at one of the plays, beyond the names of them, which shows that Saintsbury was right, and I do care more for life than for poetry. No - I take it back. Do you know one of the 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 RIFACCIMENTO of some inferior work; but there are some damned fine lines. As for the purely satiric ill-minded ABELARD AND HELOISE, another TROILUS, QUOI! it is not pleasant, truly, but what strength, what verve, what knowledge of life, and the Canon! What a finished, humorous, rich picture is the Canon! Ah, there was nobody like Shakespeare. But what I like is 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 Trecothick and Parson Vance; it is as good, I think, as 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 he
aring 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; 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 her. Constable Muddon is as good as Dogberry and Verges put together; when he takes Solomon to the cage, and the highwayman gives him 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 all the rascals in Christendom - O Henry Fielding, Henry Fielding! 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 BLACK!
- Ever yours,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO ALEXANDER IRELAND
[CHALET AM STEIN, DAVOS, MARCH 1882.]
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 becoming 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 I think, in the PALL MALL, and I 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 question, though I had almost argued so much from his cold and undigested volume. If the republication does not 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 understand 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 ROIS EN EXIL 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 collaborators) for the whole boiling of the Zolas. Romance with the smallpox - as the great one: diseased anyway and blackhearted 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 before 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.
P.P.S. - I 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.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE.
DAVOS, MARCH 23, 1882.
MY DEAR WEG, - And I had just written the best note to Mrs. Gosse that was in my power. Most blameable.
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 proportions of the voyager, and the fine impression of tropical scenes and the untrodden WASTE, so aptly rendered 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 Osbourne.
I hope you will be able to decipher this, written at steam speed with a breaking pen, the hotfast postman at my heels. No excuse, says you. None, sir, says I, and touches my ‘at most civil (extraordinary evolution 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 bloodstain - maybe a fortnight. For I am beginning to combine an extraordinary laborious slowness while at work, with the most surprisingly quick results in the way of finished manuscripts. How goes Gray? Colvin is to do Keats. My wife is still not well. - Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Letter: 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 publishing hereaway. I shall hope to see you in town in May. - Always yours faithfully,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO DR. ALEXANDER JAPP
CHALET BUOL, DAVOS, APRIL 1, 1882.
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 lost a great quire of corrected proofs. This is one of the results; I hope there are none more serious. I was never so sick of any volume as I was of that; was continually 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 remarks. . . . He is a far better and more interesting thing than any of his books.
The Elephant was my wife’s; so she is proportionately 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 together wonderfully. In addition to many other things, and a volume of travel, I find I have written, since December, 90 CORNHILL pages of magazine work - essays and stories: 40,000 words, and I am none the worse - I am the better. I begin to hope I 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 might perhaps send them to me. I believe you know 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 HE HAS EVER GIVEN ONE AWAY. I have to buy my own works, I can tell you. - You
rs very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
[CHALET AM STEIN, DAVOS, APRIL 1882.]
MY DEAR HENLEY, - I 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 introduction 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 sentiment, it’s not ductile, not dramatic.
If Chatto should take both, CUI DEDICARE? I am running out of
dedikees; if I do, the whole fun of writing is stranded. TREASURE
ISLAND, if it comes out, and I 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’ll 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 I shall have read it the sixth or seventh, I 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 discovery; a complete set of nerves, not heretofore examined, 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 MONSTRUOSITES. Vernon’s conduct makes a wonderful odd contrast with Daniel Deronda’s. I see more and more that Meredith is built for immortality.
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson Page 751