MY DEAR S. C., — Great and glorious news. Your friend, the bold unfearing chap, Aims at a professorial cap, And now besieges, do and dare, The Edinburgh History chair. Three months in summer only it Will bind him to that windy bit; The other nine to arrange abroad, Untrammel’d in the eye of God. Mark in particular one thing: He means to work that cursed thing, and to the golden youth explain Scotland and England, France and Spain.
In short, sir, I mean to try for this chair. I do believe I can make something out of it. It will be a pulpit in a sense; for I am nothing if not moral, as you know. My works are unfortunately so light and trifling they may interfere. But if you think, as I think, I am fit to fight it, send me the best kind of testimonial stating all you can in favour of me and, with your best art, turning the difficulty of my never having done anything in history, strictly speaking. Second, is there anybody else, think you, from whom I could wring one — I mean, you could wring one for me. Any party in London or Cambridge who thinks well enough of my little books to back me up with a few heartfelt words? Jenkin approves highly; but says, pile in English testimonials. Now I only know Stephen, Symonds, Lang, Gosse and you, and Meredith, to be sure. The chair is in the gift of the Faculty of Advocates, where I believe I am more wondered at than loved. I do not know the foundation; one or two hundred, I suppose. But it would be a good thing for me, out and out good. Help me to live, help me to work, for I am the better of pressure, and help me to say what I want about God, man and life.
R. L. S.
Heart-broken trying to write rightly to people.
History and Constitutional Law is the full style.
To Edmund Gosse
Kinnaird Cottage, Pitlochry, June 24,1881.
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 I 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 312 thing (which I cannot, it appears), I believe, in spite of all my imperfections, I could be decently effectual. If you can 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.
I surely need not add, dear lad, that if you don’t feel 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 Charles J. Guthrie
The next two letters are addressed to an old friend and fellow-member of the Speculative Society, who had passed Advocate six years before, on the same day as R. L. S. himself, and is now Lord Guthrie, a Senator of the Scottish Courts of Justice, and has Swanston Cottage, sacred to the memory of R. L. S., for his summer home.
Kinnaird Cottage, Pitlochry, June 30, 1881.
MY DEAR GUTHRIE, — I propose to myself to stand for Mackay’s chair. I can promise that I will not spare to work. If you can see your way to help me, I shall be glad; and you may at least not mind making my candidature known. — Believe me, yours sincerely,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Charles J. Guthrie
Kinnaird Cottage, Pitlochry, July 2nd, 1881.
MY DEAR GUTHRIE, — Many thanks for your support, and many more for the kindness and thoughtfulness of your letter. I shall take your advice in both directions; presuming that by “electors” you mean the curators. I must see to this soon; and I feel it would also do no harm 313 to look in at the P.H. As soon then as I get through with a piece of work that both sits upon me like a stone and attracts me like a piece of travel, I shall come to town and go a-visiting. Testimonial-hunting is a queer form of sport — but has its pleasures.
If I got that chair, the Spec. would have a warm defender near at hand! The sight of your fist made me Speculative on the past. — Yours most sincerely,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Edmund Gosse
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 burn 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.
I told you I 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 patronised by the royalty of the Sister Kingdoms — Victoria and the 314 Cairngorms, sir, honouring that countryside 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 for 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 I had seen the house. But a lone man I know we shall be equal to. Qu’en dis tu? Viens. — Yours,
R. L. S.
To P. G. Hamerton
Kinnaird 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 I deserved it, though I hope to show you I was less undeserving than I 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 I 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 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 whatever since the 315 February before last until quite of late. To be precise, until the beginning of last month, exactly two essays. All last winter I 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 mention 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 I ever forgot you, or your unwonted kindness; and it was not because I was in any sense rioting in pleasures.
I am glad to hear the catamaran is on her legs again; you have my warmest wishes for a good cruise down the Saône; 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 for a better time, canoes that will sa
il better to the wind, and a river grander than the Saône.
I heard, by the way, in a letter of counsel from a well-wisher, one reason of my town’s absurdity about the chair of Art: I fear it is characteristic of her manners. It was because you did not call upon the electors!
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 1881].
MY DEAR COLVIN, — I do believe I am better, mind and body; I am tired just now, for I have just been up the burn with Wogg, daily growing better and boo’f’ler; so do not judge my state by my style in this. I am working steady, four Cornhill 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, I am more than half through, and think real well of. It is a fantastic sonata about the sea and wrecks; and I 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 I 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.
Why have you not sent me a testimonial? Everybody 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 Campbell, 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 Tulloch I have not yet heard. Do help me with suggestions. This old chair, with its £250 and its light work, would make me.
It looks as if we should take Cater’s chalet after all; but O! to go back to that place, it seems cruel. I have 317 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, you would hear sweetness and light streaming from my lips.
The Merry Men.
Chap. I.
Eilean Aros.
}
Tip
Top
Tale
II.
What the Wreck had brought to Aros.
III.
Past and Present in Sandag Bay.
IV.
The Gale.
V.
A Man out of the Sea.
To W. E. Henley
Kinnaird Cottage, Pitlochry, July 1881.
MY DEAR HENLEY, — I hope, then, to have a visit from you. If before August, here; if later, at Braemar. Tupe!
And now, mon bon, 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 II. “What the Wreck had brought to Aros.” Eh, boy? what had it? Silver and clocks and brocades, and what a conscience, what a mad brain! Chapter III. “Past and Present in Sandag Bay” — the new wreck and the old — so old — the Armada treasure-ship, Santma Trinid — the grave in the heather — strangers 318 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 I 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 in it, as how should there not? He had the root of romance in such places. Aros is Earraid, where I lived lang syne; the Ross of Grisapol is the Ross of Mull; Ben Ryan, Ben More. I have written to the middle of Chapter IV. Like enough, when it is finished I shall discard all chapterings; for the thing is written straight through. It must, unhappily, be re-written — too well written not to be.
The chair is only three months in summer; that is why I try for it. If I 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 1830; you will do it well, and the subject smiles widely on the world: —
1830: A Chapter of Artistic History, by William Ernest Henley (or of Social and Artistic History, as the thing might grow to you). Sir, you might be in the Athenæum 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 Winter 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 hemorrhage. This letter answers some criticisms made by his correspondent on The Merry Men as drafted in MS.
Pitlochry, if you please [August], 1881.
Dear Henley, — To answer 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 I 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 romantic garment over my shoulders. This, without prejudice to one glorious day when standing upon some water stairs at Lerwick I 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 nautical, 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. I 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 re-write; I must first get over this copper-headed cold.
R. L. S.
To Sidney Colvin
The reference to Landor in the following is to a volume of mine in Macmillan’s series English Men of Letters. This and the next two or three years were those of the Fenian dynamite outrages at the Tower of London, the House of Lords, etc.
[Kinnaird Cottage, 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 reparatory 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 that other one thing — health. But though you will 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 already. 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 inexpressive, 321 unplanned wilderness of Forster’s; clear, readable, 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 roundabout; 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).
In germis
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) Page 721