MY DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER, - This it is supposed will reach you about Christmas, and I believe I 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, I 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 nought else. And 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 ORARE; 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 DEO! 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.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
[LA SOLITUDE, HYERES], LAST SUNDAY OF ‘83.
MY DEAR MOTHER, - I give my father up. I give him a parable: that the Waverley 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. I 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 have been resolved into my elements; here am I, who 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, A1 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 BLUE!
I will think more of his prayers when I see in him a spirit of 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 religion, 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 indicated. 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 least influence on the minds of children. But they learn fine style and some austere thinking unconsciously. - Ever your loving son,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, JANUARY 1 (1884).
MY DEAR PEOPLE, - A Good New Year to you. The year closes, leaving me with 50 pounds in the bank, owing no man nothing, 100 pounds more due to me in a week or so, and 150 pounds more in the course of the month; and I can look back on a total receipt of 465 pounds, 0s. 6d. for the last twelve months!
And yet I am not happy!
Yet I beg! Here is my beggary:-
1. Sellar’s Trial. 2. George Borrow’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 water, 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 I will not believe in that till it befall; I am no cultivator of disappointments, ’tis a herb that does not grow in my garden; but I get some good crops both of remorse and gratitude. The last I can recommend to all gardeners; 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, I will not have it in my garden; it flatters not the eye and comforts not the stomach; root it out.’ - ‘Sir, I ha’e seen o’ them that rase as high as nettles; gran’ plants!’ - ‘What then? Were they as tall as alps, 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.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, 9TH MARCH 1884.
MY DEAR S. C., - You will already have received a not very sane note from me; so your patience was rewarded - may I say, your patient silence? However, now comes a letter, which on receipt, I thus acknowledge.
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!
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 o’ works; hence probably not so for others, since it only means that I 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 covering of much paper, each time with a definite and not too difficult 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 can tell; only the brutal and licentious public, snouting in Mudie’s wash-trough, can return a dubious answer.
I am to-day, thanks to a pure heaven and a beneficent, loud- talking, antiseptic mistral, on the high places as to health and spirits. Money holds out wonderfully. Fanny has gone for a drive to certain meadows 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’ - I fear I misquote. Why do people babble? Surely Herrick, in his true vein, is superior to 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. Shakespearian 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 vocantur; pu
erorum autem talia cum sint puniuntur a majoribus.’ Which is quite after the heart of R. L. S. See also his splendid passage about the ‘luminosus limes amicitiae’ and the ‘nebulae de limosa concupiscentia carnis’; going on ‘UTRUMQUE in confuso aestuabat 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’Aurevilly? A psychological Poe - to be for a moment Henley. I own with pleasure I prefer him with all his folly, rot, sentiment, and mixed metaphors, to the whole modern school in France. It makes me laugh 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 MEURT PAS nearly killed me with laughing, and left me - well, it left me very nearly admiring the old ass. At least, it’s the kind of thing one feels one couldn’t do. The dreadful moonlight, when they all three sit silent in the room - by George, sir, it’s imagined - 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. I 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.
Letter: TO MR. DICK
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, VAR, 12TH MARCH 1884.
MY DEAR MR. DICK, - I have been a great while owing you a letter; but I am not without excuses, as you have heard. I overworked to get a piece of work finished 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 I am tough! 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 certainly 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 illness and two of imperfect health - one before, one after, I break down. This, at least, is not an economical division of the year.
I re-read the other day that heartbreaking 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 WAVERLEY NOVELS are better to re-read than the over-true life, fine as dear Sir Walter was. The Bible, in most parts, is a cheerful book; it is our little piping theologies, tracts, and sermons that are dull and dowie; and even the Shorter Catechism, which is scarcely a work of consolation, opens with the best and shortest and completest sermon ever written - upon Man’s chief end. - Believe me, my dear Mr. Dick, very sincerely yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - You see I 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 remains upon the old model; for it appears that if I changed that, I should be cut off from my ‘vivers.’
R. L. S.
Letter: TO COSMO MONKHOUSE
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, MARCH 16, 1884.
MY DEAR MONKHOUSE, - You see with what promptitude I plunge into correspondence; but the truth is, I am condemned to a complete inaction, stagnate dismally, 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 I have - cloudless, clear as crystal, with just a punkah- draft of the most aromatic air, all pine and gum tree. You would be ashamed of 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 rolling 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. Seriously, 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!’ 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 holiday jaunt contrivable into a Better Land? Shall we never shed blood? This prospect is too grey.
‘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 still, 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 thousand 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 lodgings, 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 adumbrated in the COUNTRY WIFE, 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 the orphan and bring down grey hairs with sorrow to 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.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, MARCH 17, 1884.
MY DEAR GOSSE, - Your office - office is profanely said - your bower upon the leads is divine. Have 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 carnation, 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 soundings, are adorably marine; and such furniture will suit your ship-shape habitation. I wish I 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 PER SE and no spot from which it is visible is without romance. 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 insidiously 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 affectionately,
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson Page 757