Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson
Page 784
You mention the belated Barbeys; what about the equally belated
Pineros? And I hope you will keep your bookshop alive to supplying
me continuously with the SAGA LIBRARY. I cannot get enough of
SAGAS; I wish there were nine thousand; talk about realism!
All seems to flourish with you; I also prosper; none the less for being quit of that abhorred task, Samoa. I could give a supper party here were there any one to sup. Never was such a disagreeable task, but the thing had to be told. . . .
There, I trust I am done with this cursed chapter of my career, bar the rotten eggs and broken bottles that may follow, of course. Pray remember, speed is now all that can be asked, hoped, or wished. I give up all hope of proofs, revises, proof of the map, or sic like; and you on your side will try to get it out as reasonably seemly as may be.
Whole Samoa book herewith. Glory be to God. - Yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOAN ISLANDS, 18TH JULY 1892.
MY DEAR CHARLES,- . . . I have been now for some time contending with powers and principalities, and I have never once seen one of my own letters to the TIMES. So when you see something in the papers that you think might interest the exiles of Upolu, do not think twice, out with your saxpence, and send it flying to Vailima. Of what you say of the past, eh, man, it was a queer time, and awful miserable, but there’s no sense in denying it was awful fun. Do you mind the youth in Highland garb and the tableful of coppers? Do you mind the SIGNAL of Waterloo Place? - Hey, how the blood stands to the heart at such a memory! - Hae ye the notes o’t? Gie’s them. - Gude’s sake, man, gie’s the notes o’t; I mind ye made a tune o’t an’ played it on your pinanny; gie’s the notes. Dear Lord, that past.
Glad to hear Henley’s prospects are fair: his new volume is the work of a real poet. He is one of those who can make a noise of his own with words, and in whom experience strikes an individual note. There is perhaps no more genuine poet living, bar the Big Guns. In case I cannot overtake an acknowledgment to himself by this mail, please let him hear of my pleasure and admiration. How poorly - compares! He is all smart journalism and cleverness: it is all bright and shallow and limpid, like a business paper - a good one, S’ENTEND; but there is no blot of heart’s blood and the Old Night: there are no harmonics, there is scarce harmony to his music; and in Henley - all of these; a touch, a sense within sense, a sound outside the sound, the shadow of the inscrutable, eloquent beyond all definition. The First London Voluntary knocked me wholly. - Ever yours affectionately, my dear Charles,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Kind memories to your father and all friends.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOA, AUGUST 1ST, 1892.
MY DEAR HENLEY, - It is impossible to let your new volume pass in silence. I have not received the same thrill of poetry since G. M.’s JOY OF EARTH volume and LOVE IN A VALLEY; and I do not know that even that was so intimate and deep. Again and again, I take the book down, and read, and my blood is fired as it used to be in youth. ANDANTE CON MOTO in the VOLUNTARIES, and the thing about the trees at night (No. XXIV. I think) are up to date my favourites. I did not guess you were so great a magician; these are new tunes, this is an undertone of the true Apollo; these are not verse, they are poetry - inventions, creations, in language. I thank you for the joy you have given me, and remain your old friend and present huge admirer,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
The hand is really the hand of Esau, but under a course of threatened scrivener’s cramp.
For the next edition of the Book of Verses, pray accept an emendation. Last three lines of Echoes No. XLIV. read -
‘But life in act? How should the grave
Be victor over these,
Mother, a mother of men?’
The two vocatives scatter the effect of this inimitable close. If you insist on the longer line, equip ‘grave’ with an epithet.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
VAILIMA, UPOLU, AUGUST 1st, ‘92.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - Herewith MY GRANDFATHER. I have had rather a bad time suppressing the old gentleman, who was really in a very garrulous stage; as for getting him IN ORDER, I could do but little towards that; however, there are one or two points of interest which may justify us in printing. The swinging of his stick and not knowing the sailor of Coruiskin, in particular, and the account of how he wrote the lives in the Bell Book particularly please me. I hope my own little introduction is not egoistic; or rather I do not care if it is. It was that old gentleman’s blood that brought me to Samoa.
By the by, vols. vii., viii., and ix. of Adams’s HISTORY have never come to hand; no more have the dictionaries.
Please send me STONEHENGE ON HORSE, STORIES AND INTERLUDES by Barry Pain, and EDINBURGH SKETCHES AND MEMOIRS by David Masson. THE WRECKER has turned up. So far as I have seen, it is very satisfactory, but on p, 549, there has been a devil of a miscarriage. The two Latin quotations instead of following each other being separated (doubtless for printing considerations) by a line of prose. My compliments to the printers; there is doubtless such a thing as good printing, but there is such a thing as good sense.
The sequel to KIDNAPPED, DAVID BALFOUR by name, is about three- quarters done and gone to press for serial publication. By what I can find out it ought to be through hand with that and ready for volume form early next spring. - Yours very sincerely,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO ANDREW LANG
[VAILIMA, AUGUST 1892.]
MY DEAR LANG, - I knew you would prove a trusty purveyor. The books you have sent are admirable. I got the name of my hero out of Brown - Blair of Balmyle - Francie Blair. But whether to call the story BLAIR OF BALMYLE, or whether to call it THE YOUNG CHEVALIER, I have not yet decided. The admirable Cameronian tract - perhaps you will think this a cheat - is to be boned into DAVID BALFOUR, where it will fit better, and really furnishes me with a desired foothold over a boggy place.
LATER; no, it won’t go in, and I fear I must give up ‘the idolatrous occupant upon the throne,’ a phrase that overjoyed me beyond expression. I am in a deuce of a flutter with politics, which I hate, and in which I certainly do not shine; but a fellow cannot stand aside and look on at such an exhibition as our government. ‘Taint decent; no gent can hold a candle to it. But it’s a grind to be interrupted by midnight messengers and pass your days writing proclamations (which are never proclaimed) and petitions (which ain’t petited) and letters to the TIMES, which it makes my jaws yawn to re-read, and all your time have your heart with David Balfour: he has just left Glasgow this morning for Edinburgh, James More has escaped from the castle; it is far more real to me than the Behring Sea or the Baring brothers either - he got the news of James More’s escape from the Lord Advocate, and started off straight to comfort Catriona. You don’t know her; she’s James More’s daughter, and a respectable young wumman; the Miss Grants think so - the Lord Advocate’s daughters - so there can’t be anything really wrong. Pretty soon we all go to Holland, and be hanged; thence to Dunkirk, and be damned; and the tale concludes in Paris, and be Poll-parrotted. This is the last authentic news. You are not a real hard-working novelist; not a practical novelist; so you don’t know the temptation to let your characters maunder. Dumas did it, and lived. But it is not war; it ain’t sportsmanlike, and I have to be stopping their chatter all the time. Brown’s appendix is great reading.
My only grief is that I can’t
Use the idolatrous occupant.
Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Blessing and praising you for a useful (though idolatrous) occupant of Kensington.
Letter: TO THE COUNTESS OF JERSEY
AUGUST 14, 1745.
TO MISS AMELIA BALFOUR - MY DEAR COUSIN, - We are going an expedition to leeward on Tuesday morning. If a lady were perhaps to be encountered on horseback - say
, towards the Gasi-gasi river - about six A.M., I think we should have an episode somewhat after the style of the ‘45. What a misfortune, my dear cousin, that you should have arrived while your cousin Graham was occupying my only guest-chamber - for Osterley Park is not so large in Samoa as it was at home - but happily our friend Haggard has found a corner for you!
The King over the Water - the Gasi-gasi water - will be pleased to see the clan of Balfour mustering so thick around his standard.
I have (one serious word) been so lucky as to get a really secret interpreter, so all is for the best in our little adventure into the WAVERLEY NOVELS. - I am your affectionate cousin,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Observe the stealth with which I have blotted my signature, but we must be political A OUTRANCE.
Letter: TO THE COUNTESS OF JERSEY
MY DEAR COUSIN, - I send for your information a copy of my last letter to the gentleman in question. ’Tis thought more wise, in consideration of the difficulty and peril of the enterprise, that we should leave the town in the afternoon, and by several detachments. If you would start for a ride with the Master of Haggard and Captain Lockhart of Lee, say at three o’clock of the afternoon, you would make some rencounters by the wayside which might be agreeable to your political opinions. All present will be staunch.
The Master of Haggard might extend his ride a little, and return through the marsh and by the nuns’ house (I trust that has the proper flavour), so as a little to diminish the effect of separation. - I remain, your affectionate cousin to command,
O TUSITALA.
P.S. - It is to be thought this present year of grace will be historical.
Letter: TO MRS. CHARLES FAIRCHILD
[VAILIMA, AUGUST 1892.]
MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD, - Thank you a thousand times for your letter. You are the Angel of (the sort of) Information (that I care about); I appoint you successor to the newspaper press; and I beg of you, whenever you wish to gird at the age, or think the bugs out of proportion to the roses, or despair, or enjoy any cosmic or epochal emotion, to sit down again and write to the Hermit of Samoa. What do I think of it all? Well, I love the romantic solemnity of youth; and even in this form, although not without laughter, I have to love it still. They are such ducks! But what are they made of? We were just as solemn as that about atheism and the stars and humanity; but we were all for belief anyway - we held atheism and sociology (of which none of us, nor indeed anybody, knew anything) for a gospel and an iron rule of life; and it was lucky enough, or there would have been more windows broken. What is apt to puzzle one at first sight in the New Youth is that, with such rickety and risky problems always at heart, they should not plunge down a Niagara of Dissolution. But let us remember the high practical timidity of youth. I was a particularly brave boy - this I think of myself, looking back - and plunged into adventures and experiments, and ran risks that it still surprises me to recall. But, dear me, what a fear I was in of that strange blind machinery in the midst of which I stood; and with what a compressed heart and what empty lungs I would touch a new crank and await developments! I do not mean to say I do not fear life still; I do; and that terror (for an adventurer like myself) is still one of the chief joys of living.
But it was different indeed while I was yet girt with the priceless robes of inexperience; then the fear was exquisite and infinite. And so, when you see all these little Ibsens, who seem at once so dry and so excitable, and faint in swathes over a play (I suppose - for a wager) that would seem to me merely tedious, smile behind your hand, and remember the little dears are all in a blue funk. It must be very funny, and to a spectator like yourself I almost envy it. But never get desperate; human nature is human nature; and the Roman Empire, since the Romans founded it and made our European human nature what it is, bids fair to go on and to be true to itself. These little bodies will all grow up and become men and women, and have heaps of fun; nay, and are having it now; and whatever happens to the fashion of the age, it makes no difference - there are always high and brave and amusing lives to be lived; and a change of key, however exotic, does not exclude melody. Even Chinamen, hard as we find it to believe, enjoy being Chinese. And the Chinaman stands alone to be unthinkable; natural enough, as the representative of the only other great civilisation. Take my people here at my doors; their life is a very good one; it is quite thinkable, quite acceptable to us. And the little dears will be soon skating on the other foot; sooner or later, in each generation, the one-half of them at least begin to remember all the material they had rejected when first they made and nailed up their little theory of life; and these become reactionaries or conservatives, and the ship of man begins to fill upon the other tack.
Here is a sermon, by your leave! It is your own fault, you have amused and interested me so much by your breath of the New Youth, which comes to me from so far away, where I live up here in my mountain, and secret messengers bring me letters from rebels, and the government sometimes seizes them, and generally grumbles in its beard that Stevenson should really be deported. O, my life is the more lively, never fear!
It has recently been most amusingly varied by a visit from Lady Jersey. I took her over mysteriously (under the pseudonym of my cousin, Miss Amelia Balfour) to visit Mataafa, our rebel; and we had great fun, and wrote a Ouida novel on our life here, in which every author had to describe himself in the Ouida glamour, and of which - for the Jerseys intend printing it - I must let you have a copy. My wife’s chapter, and my description of myself, should, I think, amuse you. But there were finer touches still; as when Belle and Lady Jersey came out to brush their teeth in front of the rebel King’s palace, and the night guard squatted opposite on the grass and watched the process; or when I and my interpreter, and the King with his secretary, mysteriously disappeared to conspire. - Ever yours sincerely,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO GORDON BROWNE
VAILIMA, SAMOA, AUTUMN 1892. TO THE ARTIST WHO DID THE ILLUSTRATIONS TO ‘UMA.’
DEAR SIR, - I only know you under the initials G. B., but you have done some exceedingly spirited and satisfactory illustrations to my story THE BEACH OF FALESA, and I wish to write and thank you expressly for the care and talent shown. Such numbers of people can do good black and whites! So few can illustrate a story, or apparently read it. You have shown that you can do both, and your creation of Wiltshire is a real illumination of the text. It was exactly so that Wiltshire dressed and looked, and you have the line of his nose to a nicety. His nose is an inspiration. Nor should I forget to thank you for Case, particularly in his last appearance. It is a singular fact - which seems to point still more directly to inspiration in your case - that your missionary actually resembles the flesh-and-blood person from whom Mr. Tarleton was drawn. The general effect of the islands is all that could be wished; indeed I have but one criticism to make, that in the background of Case taking the dollar from Mr. Tarleton’s head - head - not hand, as the fools have printed it - the natives have a little too much the look of Africans.
But the great affair is that you have been to the pains to illustrate my story instead of making conscientious black and whites of people sitting talking. I doubt if you have left unrepresented a single pictorial incident. I am writing by this mail to the editor in the hopes that I may buy from him the originals, and I am, dear sir, your very much obliged,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MISS MORSE
VAILIMA, SAMOAN ISLANDS, OCTOBER 7TH, 1892.
DEAR MADAM, - I have a great diffidence in answering your valued letter. It would be difficult for me to express the feelings with which I read it - and am now trying to re-read it as I dictate this.
You ask me to forgive what you say ‘must seem a liberty,’ and I find that I cannot thank you sufficiently or even find a word with which to qualify your letter. Dear Madam, such a communication even the vainest man would think a sufficient reward for a lifetime of labour. That I should have been able to give so much help and pleasure to
your sister is the subject of my grateful wonder.
That she, being dead, and speaking with your pen, should be able to repay the debt with such a liberal interest, is one of those things that reconcile us with the world and make us take hope again. I do not know what I have done to deserve so beautiful and touching a compliment; and I feel there is but one thing fit for me to say here, that I will try with renewed courage to go on in the same path, and to deserve, if not to receive, a similar return from others.
You apologise for speaking so much about yourselves. Dear Madam, I thought you did so too little. I should have wished to have known more of those who were so sympathetic as to find a consolation in my work, and so graceful and so tactful as to acknowledge it in such a letter as was yours.
Will you offer to your mother the expression of a sympathy which (coming from a stranger) must seem very airy, but which yet is genuine; and accept for yourself my gratitude for the thought which inspired you to write to me and the words which you found to express it.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME
VAILIMA PLANTATION, SAMOAN ISLANDS, OCT. 10TH, 1892.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - It is now, as you see, the 10th of October, and there has not reached the Island of Upolu one single copy, or rag of a copy, of the Samoa book. I lie; there has come one, and that in the pocket of a missionary man who is at daggers drawn with me, who lends it to all my enemies, conceals it from all my friends, and is bringing a lawsuit against me on the strength of expressions in the same which I have forgotten, and now cannot see. This is pretty tragic, I think you will allow; and I was inclined to fancy it was the fault of the Post Office. But I hear from my sister-in-law Mrs. Sanchez that she is in the same case, and has received no ‘Footnote.’ I have also to consider that I had no letter from you last mail, although you ought to have received by that time ‘My Grandfather and Scott,’ and ‘Me and my Grandfather.’ Taking one consideration with another, therefore, I prefer to conceive that No. 743 Broadway has fallen upon gentle and continuous slumber, and is become an enchanted palace among publishing houses. If it be not so, if the ‘Footnotes’ were really sent, I hope you will fall upon the Post Office with all the vigour you possess. How does THE WRECKER go in the States? It seems to be doing exceptionally well in England. - Yours sincerely,