They, if they lived, with dainty hand,
To music as of mountain brooks,
Might bring you worthy words to stand
Unshamed, dear Locker, in your books.
But tho’ these fathers of your race
Be gone before, yourself a sire,
To-day you see before your face
Your stalwart youngsters touch the lyre.
On these — on Lang or Dobson — call,
Long leaders of the songful feast.
They lend a verse your laughing fall —
A verse they owe you at the least.
To Frederick Locker-Lampson
To Mr. Locker’s acknowledgment of these verses Stevenson replied as follows, asking his correspondent’s interest on behalf of a friend who had been kind to him at Hyères, in procuring a nomination for her son to the Blue-Coat School.
Skerryvore, Bournemouth, September 1886.
DEAR LOCKER, — You take my verses too kindly, but you will admit, for such a bluebottle of a versifier to enter the house of Gertrude, where her necklace hangs, was not a little brave. Your kind invitation, I fear, must remain unaccepted; and yet — if I am very well — perhaps next spring — (for I mean to be very well) — my wife might.... But all that is in the clouds with my better health. And now look here: you are a rich man and know many people, therefore perhaps some of the Governors of Christ’s Hospital. If you do, I know a most deserving case, in which I would (if I could) do anything. To approach you, in this way, is not decent; and you may therefore judge by my doing it, how near this matter lies to my heart. I enclose you a list of the Governors, which I beg you to return, whether or not you shall be able to do anything to help me.
The boy’s name is — — ; he and his mother are very poor. It may interest you in her cause if I tell you this: that when I was dangerously ill at Hyères, this brave lady, who had then a sick husband of her own (since dead) and a house to keep and a family of four to cook for, all with her own hands, for they could afford no servant, yet took watch-about with my wife, and contributed not only to my comfort, but to my recovery in a degree that 207 I am not able to limit. You can conceive how much I suffer from my impotence to help her, and indeed I have already shown myself a thankless friend. Let not my cry go up before you in vain! — Yours in hope,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Frederick Locker-Lampson
Mr. Locker, apparently misunderstanding the application, had replied with a cheque.
Skerryvore, Bournemouth, September 1886.
MY DEAR LOCKER, — That I should call myself a man of letters, and land myself in such unfathomable ambiguities! No, my dear Locker, I did not want a cheque; and in my ignorance of business, which is greater even than my ignorance of literature, I have taken the liberty of drawing a pen through the document and returning it; should this be against the laws of God or man, forgive me. All that I meant by my excessively disgusting reference to your material well-being was the vague notion that a man who is well off was sure to know a Governor of Christ’s Hospital; though how I quite arrived at this conclusion I do not see. A man with a cold in the head does not necessarily know a ratcatcher; and the connection is equally close — as it now appears to my awakened and somewhat humbled spirit. For all that, let me thank you in the warmest manner for your friendly readiness to contribute. You say you have hopes of becoming a miser: I wish I had; but indeed I believe you deceive yourself, and are as far from it as ever. I wish I had any excuse to keep your cheque, for it is much more elegant to receive than to return; but I have my way of making it up to you, and I do sincerely beg you to write to the two Governors. This extraordinary out-pouring of correspondence would (if you knew my habits) convince you of my great eagerness in this matter. I 208 would promise gratitude; but I have made a promise to myself to make no more promises to anybody else, having broken such a host already, and come near breaking my heart in consequence; and as for gratitude, I am by nature a thankless dog, and was spoiled from a child up. But if you can help this lady in the matter of the Hospital, you will have helped the worthy. Let me continue to hope that I shall make out my visit in the spring, and believe me, yours very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
It may amuse you to know that a very long while ago, I broke my heart to try to imitate your verses, and failed hopelessly. I saw some of the evidences the other day among my papers, and blushed to the heels.
R. L. S.
I give up finding out your name in the meantime, and keep to that by which you will be known — Frederick Locker.
To Frederick Locker-Lampson
[Skerryvore, Bournemouth] 24th September 1886.
MY DEAR LOCKER, — You are simply an angel of light, and your two letters have gone to the post; I trust they will reach the hearts of the recipients — at least, that could not be more handsomely expressed. About the cheque: well now, I am going to keep it; but I assure you Mrs. — — has never asked me for money, and I would not dare to offer any till she did. For all that I shall stick to the cheque now, and act to that amount as your almoner. In this way I reward myself for the ambiguity of my epistolary style.
I suppose, if you please, you may say your verses are thin (would you so describe an arrow, by the way, and one that struck the gold? It scarce strikes me as exhaustively 209 descriptive), and, thin or not, they are (and I have found them) inimitably elegant. I thank you again very sincerely for the generous trouble you have taken in this matter which was so near my heart, and you may be very certain it will be the fault of my health and not my inclination, if I do not see you before very long; for all that has past has made me in more than the official sense sincerely yours,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Auguste Rodin
Written after another visit to me in London, in November, which had been cut short by fogs. “Le Printemps” is Rodin’s group so called.
[Skerryvore, Bournemouth, December 1886.]
MON CHER AMI, — Il y a bien longtemps déjà que je vous dois des lettres par dizaines; mais bien que je vais mieux, je ne vais toujours que doucement. Il a fallu faire le voyage à Bournemouth comme une fuite en Egypte, par crainte des brouillards qui me tuaient; et j’en ressentais beaucoup de fatigue. Mais maintenant celà commence à aller, et je puis vous donner de mes nouvelles.
Le Printemps est arrivé, mais il avait le bras cassé, et nous l’avons laissé, lors de notre fuite, aux soins d’un médecin-de-statues. Je l’attends de jour en jour; et ma maisonette en resplendira bientôt. Je regrette beaucoup le dédicace; peutêtre, quand vous viendrez nous voir, ne serait-il pas trop tard de l’ajouter? Je n’en sais rien, je l’espère. L’œuvre, c’est pour tout le monde; le dédicace est pour moi. L’œuvre est un cadeau, trop beau même; c’est le mot d’amitié qui me le donne pour de bon. Je suis si bête que je m’embrouille, et me perds; mais vous me comprendrez, je pense.
Je ne puis même pas m’exprimer en Anglais; comment voudriez vous que je le pourrais en Français? Plus heureux que vous, le Némésis des arts ne me visite pas 210 sous le masque du désenchantement; elle me suce l’intelligence et me laisse bayer aux corneilles, sans capacité mais sans regret; sans espérance, c’est vrai, mais aussi, Dieu merci, sans désespoir. Un doux étonnement me tient; je ne m’habitue pas à me trouver si bûche, mais je m’y résigne; même si celà durait, ce ne serait pas désagréable — mais comme je mourrais certainement de faim, ce serait tout au moins regrettable pour moi et ma famille.
Je voudrais pouvoir vous écrire; mais ce n’est pas moi qui tiens la plume — c’est l’autre, le bête, celui qui ne connaît pas le Français, celui qui n’aime pas mes amis comme je les aime, qui ne goûte pas aux choses de l’art comme j’y goûte; celui que je renie, mais auquel je commande toujours assez pour le faire prendre la plume en main et écrire des tristes bavardages. Celui-là, mon cher Rodin, vous ne l’aimez pas; vous ne devez jamais le connaître. Votre ami, qui dort à present, comme un ours, au plus profond de mon être, se
réveillera sous peu. Alors, il vous écrira de sa propre main. Attendez lui. L’autre ne compte pas; ce n’est qu’un secrétaire infidèle et triste, à l’âme gelée, à la tête de bois.
Celui qui dort est toujours, mon cher ami, bien à vous; celui qui écrit est chargé de vous en faire part et de signer de la raison sociale,
Robert Louis Stevenson et Triple-Brute.
To Sidney Colvin
The following refers first, if I remember right, to some steps that were being taken to obtain recognition in the form of a knighthood for the elder Stevenson’s public services; next, to the writer’s own work at the time in hand; and lastly, to my volume on Keats then in preparation for the English Men of Letters series.
Skerryvore, Dec. 14, 1886.
MY DEAR COLVIN, — This is first-rate of you, the Lord love you for it! I am truly much obliged. He — my father — is very changeable; at times, he seems only a slow 211 quiet edition of himself; again, he will be very heavy and blank; but never so violent as last spring; and therefore, to my mind, better on the whole.
Fanny is pretty peepy; I am splendid. I have been writing much verse — quite the bard, in fact; and also a dam tale to order, which will be what it will be: I don’t love it, but some of it is passable in its mouldy way, The Misadventures of John Nicholson. All my bardly exercises are in Scotch; I have struck my somewhat ponderous guitar in that tongue to no small extent: with what success, I know not, but I think it’s better than my English verse; more marrow and fatness, and more ruggedness.
How goes Keats? Pray remark, if he (Keats) hung back from Shelley, it was not to be wondered at, when so many of his friends were Shelley’s pensioners. I forget if you have made this point; it has been borne in upon me reading Dowden and the Shelley Papers; and it will do no harm if you have made it. I finished a poem to-day, and writ 3000 words of a story, tant bien que mal; and have a right to be sleepy, and (what is far nobler and rarer) am so. — My dear Colvin, ever yours,
The Real Mackay.
To Lady Taylor
Stevenson’s volume of tales The Merry Men, so called from the story which heads the collection, was about to appear with a dedication to Lady Taylor. Professor Dowden’s Shelley had lately come out, and had naturally been read with eager interest in a circle where Sir Percy (the poet’s son) and Lady Shelley were intimate friends and neighbours.
Skerryvore, Bournemouth [New Year, 1887].
MY DEAR LADY TAYLOR, — This is to wish you all the salutations of the year, with some regret that I cannot offer them in person; yet less than I had supposed. For hitherto your flight to London seems to have worked well; and time flies and will soon bring you back again. Though 212 time is ironical, too; and it would be like his irony if the same tide that brought you back carried me away. That would not be, at least, without some meeting.
I feel very sorry to think the book to which I have put your name will be no better, and I can make it no better. The tales are of all dates and places; they are like the box, the goose, and the cottage of the ferryman; and must go floating down time together as best they can. But I am after all a (superior) penny-a-liner; I must do, in the Scotch phrase, as it will do with me; and I cannot always choose what my books are to be, only seize the chance they offer to link my name to a friend’s. I hope the lot of them (the tales) will look fairly disciplined when they are clapped in binding; but I fear they will be but an awkward squad. I have a mild wish that you at least would read them no further than the dedication.
I suppose we have all been reading Dowden. It seems to me a really first-rate book, full of justice, and humour without which there can be no justice; and of fine intelligence besides. Here and there, perhaps a trifle precious, but this is to spy flaws in a fine work. I was weary at my resemblances to Shelley; I seem but a Shelley with less oil, and no genius; though I have had the fortune to live longer and (partly) to grow up. He was growing up. There is a manlier note in the last days; in spite of such really sickening aberrations as the Emillia Viviani business. I try to take a humorously-genial view of life; but Emillia Viviani, if I have her detested name aright, is too much for my philosophy. I cannot smile when I see all these grown folk waltzing and piping the eye about an insubordinate and perfectly abominable schoolgirl, as silly and patently as false as Blanche Amory. I really think it is one of those episodes that make the angels weep.
With all kind regards and affectionate good wishes to and for you and yours, believe me, your affectionate friend,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Lady Taylor
The reference in the last paragraph to a “vision” cannot be explained, his correspondent’s daughters retaining no memory on the subject.
[Skerryvore, Bournemouth, January 1887.]
MY DEAR LADY TAYLOR, — I don’t know but what I agree fairly well with all you say, only I like The Merry Men, as a fantasia or vision of the sea, better than you do. The trouble with Olalla is that it somehow sounds false; and I think it must be this that gives you the feeling of irreverence. Of Thrawn Janet, which I like very much myself, you say nothing, thus uttering volumes; but it is plain that people cannot always agree. I do not think it is a wholesome part of me that broods on the evil in the world and man; but I do not think that I get harm from it; possibly my readers may, which is more serious; but at any account, I do not purpose to write more in this vein. But the odd problem is: what makes a story true? Markheim is true; Olalla false; and I don’t know why, nor did I feel it while I worked at them; indeed I had more inspiration with Olalla, as the style shows. I am glad you thought that young Spanish woman well dressed; I admire the style of it myself, more than is perhaps good for me; it is so solidly written. And that again brings back (almost with the voice of despair) my unanswerable: why is it false?
Here is a great deal about my works. I am in bed again; and my wife but so-so; and we have no news recently from Lloyd; and the cat is well; and we see, or I see, no one; so that other matters are all closed against me.
Your vision is strange indeed; but I see not how to use it; I fear I am earthy enough myself to regard it as a case of disease, but certainly it is a thrilling case to hear of. — Ever affectionately yours,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Henry James
This letter is written on the front page of a set of proofs of Memories and Portraits. The “silly Xmas story” is The Misadventures of John Nicholson; the “volume of verse” appeared later in the year as Underwoods. The signature refers to the two Scots poets of whom, “in his native speech,” he considered himself the follower.
Skerryvore, Bournemouth, January 1887.
All the salutations!
MY DEAR JAMES, — I send you the first sheets of the new volume, all that has yet reached me, the rest shall follow in course. I am really a very fair sort of a fellow all things considered, have done some work; a silly Xmas story (with some larks in it) which won’t be out till I don’t know when. I am also considering a volume of verse, much of which will be cast in my native speech, that very dark oracular medium: I suppose this is a folly, but what then? As the nurse says in Marryat, “It was only a little one.”
My wife is peepy and dowie: two Scotch expressions with which I will leave you to wrestle unaided, as a preparation for my poetical works. She is a woman (as you know) not without art: the art of extracting the gloom of the eclipse from sunshine; and she has recently laboured in this field not without success or (as we used to say) not without a blessing. It is strange: “we fell out my wife and I” the other night; she tackled me savagely for being a canary-bird; I replied (bleatingly) protesting that there was no use in turning life into King Lear; presently it was discovered that there were two dead combatants upon the field, each slain by an arrow of the truth, and we tenderly carried off each other’s corpses. Here is a little comedy for Henry James to write! The beauty was each thought the other quite unscathed at first. But we had dealt shrewd stabs.
You say nothing of yourself, which I
shall take to be 215 good news. Archer’s note has gone. He is, in truth, a very clever fellow that Archer, and I believe a good one. It is a pleasant thing to see a man who can use a pen; he can: really says what he means, and says it with a manner; comes into print like one at his ease, not shame-faced and wrong-foot-foremost like the bulk of us. Well, here is luck, and here are the kindest recollections from the canary-bird and from King Lear, from the Tragic Woman and the Flimsy Man.
Robert Ramsay Fergusson Stevenson.
To Frederick Locker-Lampson
Stevenson suffered more even than usual after the turn of the year and during the spring of 1887, and for several months his correspondence almost entirely fails. This is in reply to an invitation to Rowfant for Easter.
Skerryvore, Bournemouth, February 5th, 1887.
MY DEAR LOCKER, — Here I am in my bed as usual, and it is indeed a long while since I went out to dinner. You do not know what a crazy fellow this is. My winter has not so far been luckily passed, and all hope of paying visits at Easter has vanished for twelve calendar months. But because I am a beastly and indurated invalid, I am not dead to human feelings; and I neither have forgotten you nor will forget you. Some day the wind may round to the right quarter and we may meet; till then I am still truly yours,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Henry James
The volume of tales here mentioned is The Merry Men; that of essays, Memories and Portraits; that of verse, Underwoods.
[Skerryvore, Bournemouth, February 1887.]
MY DEAR JAMES, — My health has played me it in once more in the absurdest fashion, and the creature who now 216 addresses you is but a stringy and white-faced bouilli out of the pot of fever, with the devil to pay in every corner of his economy. I suppose (to judge by your letter) I need not send you these sheets, which came during my collapse by the rush. I am on the start with three volumes, that one of tales, a second one of essays, and one of — ahem — verse. This is a great order, is it not? After that I shall have empty lockers. All new work stands still; I was getting on well with Jenkin when this blessed malady unhorsed me, and sent me back to the dung-collecting trade of the republisher. I shall re-issue Virg. Puer. as vol. I. of Essays, and the new vol. as vol. II. of ditto; to be sold, however, separately. This is but a dry maundering; however, I am quite unfit — ”I am for action quite unfit Either of exercise or wit.” My father is in a variable state; many sorrows and perplexities environ the house of Stevenson; my mother shoots north at this hour on business of a distinctly rancid character; my father (under my wife’s tutorage) proceeds to-morrow to Salisbury; I remain here in my bed and whistle; in no quarter of heaven is anything encouraging apparent, except that the good Colvin comes to the hotel here on a visit. This dreary view of life is somewhat blackened by the fact that my head aches, which I always regard as a liberty on the part of the powers that be. This is also my first letter since my recovery. God speed your laudatory pen!
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) Page 745