8th. — Mail day. All well, not yet put in prison, whatever may be in store for me. No time even to sign this lame letter.
To J. M. Barrie
Vailima Plantation, Samoan Islands, November 1st, 1892.
DEAR MR. BARRIE, — I can scarce thank you sufficiently for your extremely amusing letter. No, The Auld Licht Idyls never reached me — I wish it had, and I wonder extremely whether it would not be good for me to have a pennyworth of the Auld Licht pulpit. It is a singular thing that I should live here in the South Seas under conditions so new and so striking, and yet my imagination so continually inhabit that cold old huddle of grey hills from which we come. I have just finished David Balfour; I have another book on the stocks, The Young Chevalier, which is to be part in France and part in Scotland, and to deal with Prince Charlie about the year 1749; and now what have I done but begun a third which is to be all moorland together, and is to have for a centre-piece a figure that I think you will appreciate — that of the immortal Braxfield — Braxfield himself is my grand premier, or, since you are so much involved in the British drama, let me say my heavy lead....
Your descriptions of your dealings with Lord Rintoul are frightfully unconscientious. You should never write about anybody until you persuade yourself at least for the moment that you love him, above all anybody on whom your plot revolves. It will always make a hole in the book; and, if he has anything to do with the mechanism, 265 prove a stick in your machinery. But you know all this better than I do, and it is one of your most promising traits that you do not take your powers too seriously. The Little Minister ought to have ended badly; we all know it did; and we are infinitely grateful to you for the grace and good feeling with which you lied about it. If you had told the truth, I for one could never have forgiven you. As you had conceived and written the earlier parts, the truth about the end, though indisputably true to fact, would have been a lie, or what is worse, a discord in art. If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly from the beginning. Now your book began to end well. You let yourself fall in love with, and fondle, and smile at your puppets. Once you had done that, your honour was committed — at the cost of truth to life you were bound to save them. It is the blot on Richard Feverel, for instance, that it begins to end well; and then tricks you and ends ill. But in that case there is worse behind, for the ill-ending does not inherently issue from the plot — the story had, in fact, ended well after the great last interview between Richard and Lucy — and the blind, illogical bullet which smashes all has no more to do between the boards than a fly has to do with the room into whose open window it comes buzzing. It might have so happened; it needed not; and unless needs must, we have no right to pain our readers. I have had a heavy case of conscience of the same kind about my Braxfield story. Braxfield — only his name is Hermiston — has a son who is condemned to death; plainly, there is a fine tempting fitness about this; and I meant he was to hang. But now on considering my minor characters, I saw there were five people who would — in a sense who must — break prison and attempt his rescue. They were capable, hardy folks, too, who might very well succeed. Why should they not then? Why should not young Hermiston escape clear out of the country? and be happy, if he could, with his — — . But soft! I will not betray my secret or my heroine. 266 Suffice it to breathe in your ear that she was what Hardy calls (and others in their plain way don’t) a Pure Woman. Much virtue in a capital letter, such as yours was.
Write to me again in my infinite distance. Tell me about your new book. No harm in telling me; I am too far off to be indiscreet; there are too few near me who would care to hear. I am rushes by the riverside, and the stream is in Babylon: breathe your secrets to me fearlessly; and if the Trade Wind caught and carried them away, there are none to catch them nearer than Australia, unless it were the Tropic Birds. In the unavoidable absence of my amanuensis, who is buying eels for dinner, I have thus concluded my dispatch, like St. Paul, with my own hand.
And in the inimitable words of Lord Kames, Faur ye weel, ye bitch. — Yours very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To E. L. Burlingame
Vailima Plantation, Nov. 2nd, 1892.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME, — In the first place, I have to acknowledge receipt of your munificent cheque for three hundred and fifty dollars. Glad you liked the Scott voyage; rather more than I did upon the whole. As the proofs have not turned up at all, there can be no question of returning them, and I am therefore very much pleased to think you have arranged not to wait. The volumes of Adams arrived along with yours of October 6th. One of the dictionaries has also blundered home, apparently from the Colonies; the other is still to seek. I note and sympathise with your bewilderment as to Falesá. My own direct correspondence with Mr. Baxter is now about three months in abeyance. Altogether you see how well it would be if you could do anything to wake up the Post 267 Office. Not a single copy of the Footnote has yet reached Samoa, but I hear of one having come to its address in Hawaii. Glad to hear good news of Stoddard. — Yours sincerely,
R. L. Stevenson.
P.S. — Since the above was written an aftermath of post matter came in, among which were the proofs of My Grandfather. I shall correct and return them, but as I have lost all confidence in the Post Office, I shall mention here: first galley, 4th line from the bottom, for “AS” read “OR.”
Should I ever again have to use my work without waiting for proofs, bear in mind this golden principle. From a congenital defect, I must suppose, I am unable to write the word OR — wherever I write it the printer unerringly puts AS — and those who read for me had better, wherever it is possible, substitute or for as. This the more so since many writers have a habit of using as which is death to my temper and confusion to my face.
R. L. S.
To Lieutenant Eeles
The following is addressed to one of Stevenson’s best friends among the officers of H.M.S. the Curaçoa, which had been for some time on the South Pacific station.
Vailima Plantation, Upolu, Samoan Islands, November 15th, 1892.
DEAR EELES, — In the first place, excuse me writing to you by another hand, as that is the way in which alone all my correspondence gets effected. Before I took to this method, or rather before I found a victim, it simply didn’t get effected.
Thank you again and again, first for your kind thought of writing to me, and second for your extremely amusing and interesting letter. You can have no guess how immediately interesting it was to our family. First of all, the 268 poor soul at Nukufetau is an old friend of ours, and we have actually treated him ourselves on a former visit to the island. I don’t know if Hoskin would approve of our treatment; it consisted, I believe, mostly in a present of stout and a recommendation to put nails in his watertank. We also (as you seem to have done) recommended him to leave the island; and I remember very well how wise and kind we thought his answer. He had half-caste children (he said) who would suffer and perhaps be despised if he carried them elsewhere; if he left them there alone, they would almost certainly miscarry; and the best thing was that he should stay and die with them. But the cream of the fun was your meeting with Buckland. We not only know him, but (as the French say) we don’t know anybody else; he is our intimate and adored original; and — prepare your mind — he was, is, and ever will be, Tommy Haddon! As I don’t believe you to be inspired, I suspect you to have suspected this. At least it was a mighty happy suspicion. You are quite right: Tommy is really “a good chap,” though about as comic as they make them.
I was extremely interested in your Fiji legend, and perhaps even more so in your capital account of the Curaçoa’s misadventure. Alas! we have nothing so thrilling to relate. All hangs and fools on in this isle of mis-government, without change, though not without novelty, but wholly without hope, unless perhaps you should consider it hopeful that I am still more immediately threatened with arrest. The confounded thing is, that if it comes off, I shall be sent away in the Ringarooma instead of the Curaçoa. The form
er ship burst upon us by the run — she had been sent off by despatch and without orders — and to make me a little more easy in my mind she brought newspapers clamouring for my incarceration. Since then I have had a conversation with the German Consul. He said he had read a review of my Samoa book, 269 and if the review were fair, must regard it as an insult, and one that would have to be resented. At the same time, I learn that letters addressed to the German squadron lie for them here in the Post Office. Reports are current of other English ships being on the way — I hope to goodness yours will be among the number. And I gather from one thing and another that there must be a holy row going on between the powers at home, and that the issue (like all else connected with Samoa) is on the knees of the gods. One thing, however, is pretty sure — if that issue prove to be a German protectorate, I shall have to tramp. Can you give us any advice as to a fresh field of energy? We have been searching the atlas, and it seems difficult to fill the bill. How would Rarotonga do? I forget if you have been there. The best of it is that my new house is going up like winking, and I am dictating this letter to the accompaniment of saws and hammers. A hundred black boys and about a score draught oxen perished, or at least barely escaped with their lives, from the mud holes on our road, bringing up the materials. It will be a fine legacy to H.I.G.M.’s protectorate, and doubtless the Governor will take it for his country house. The Ringarooma people, by the way, seem very nice. I liked Stansfield particularly.
Our middy has gone up to San Francisco in pursuit of the phantom Education. We have good word of him, and I hope he will not be in disgrace again, as he was when the hope of the British Navy — need I say that I refer to Admiral Burney? — honoured us last. The next time you come, as the new house will be finished, we shall be able to offer you a bed. Nares and Meiklejohn may like to hear that our new room is to be big enough to dance in. It will be a very pleasant day for me to see the Curaçoa in port again and at least a proper contingent of her officers “skipping in my ‘all.”
We have just had a feast on my birthday at which we had three of the Ringaroomas, and I wish they had been three Curaçoas — say yourself, Hoskin, and Burney the ever Great. (Consider this an invitation.) Our boys had got the thing up regardless. There were two huge sows — O, brutes of animals that would have broken down a hansom cab — four smaller pigs, two barrels of beef, and a horror of vegetables and fowls. We sat down between forty and fifty in a big new native house behind the kitchen that you have never seen, and ate and public spoke till all was blue. Then we had about half an hour’s holiday with some beer and sherry and brandy and soda to restrengthen the European heart, and then out to the old native house to see a siva. Finally, all the guests were packed off in a trackless black night and down a road that was rather fitted for the Curaçoa than any human pedestrian, though to be sure I do not know the draught of the Curaçoa. My ladies one and all desire to be particularly remembered to our friends on board, and all look forward, as I do myself, in the hope of your return. — Yours sincerely,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
And let me hear from you again!
To Charles Baxter
The following extract gives a hint of Stevenson’s intended management of one of the most difficult points in the plot of Weir of Hermiston.
1st Dec. ‘92.
...I have a novel on the stocks to be called The Justice-Clerk. It is pretty Scotch, the Grand Premier is taken from Braxfield — (Oh, by the by, send me Cockburn’s Memorials) — and some of the story is — well — queer. The heroine is seduced by one man, and finally disappears with the other man who shot him.... Mind you, I expect The Justice-Clerk to be my masterpiece. My 271 Braxfield is already a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, and so far as he has gone far my best character.
[Later.] — Second thought. I wish Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials quam primum. Also, an absolutely correct text of the Scots judiciary oath.
Also, in case Pitcairn does not come down late enough, I wish as full a report as possible of a Scotch murder trial between 1790-1820. Understand, the fullest possible.
Is there any book which would guide me as to the following facts?
The Justice-Clerk tries some people capitally on circuit. Certain evidence cropping up, the charge is transferred to the J.-C.’s own son. Of course, in the next trial the J.-C. is excluded, and the case is called before the Lord-Justice General.
Where would this trial have to be? I fear in Edinburgh, which would not suit my view. Could it be again at the circuit town?
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Sidney Colvin
[Nov. 30, 1892.]
MY DEAR COLVIN, — Another grimy little odd and end of paper, for which you shall be this month repaid in kind, and serve you jolly well right.... This is a strange life I live, always on the brink of deportation, men’s lives in the scale — and, well, you know my character: if I were to pretend to you that I was not amused, you would justly scorn me. The new house is roofed; it will be a braw house, and what is better, I have my yearly bill in, and I find I can pay for it. For all which mercies, etc. I must have made close on £4,000 this year all told; but, what is not so pleasant, I seem to have come near to spending them. I have been in great alarm, with this new house on the cards, all summer, and came very near to 272 taking in sail, but I live here so entirely on credit, that I determined to hang on.
Dec. 1st. — I was saying yesterday that my life was strange and did not think how well I spoke. Yesterday evening I was briefed to defend a political prisoner before the Deputy Commissioner. What do you think of that for a vicissitude?
Dec. 3rd. — Now for a confession. When I heard you and Cassells had decided to print The Bottle Imp along with Falesá, I was too much disappointed to answer. The Bottle Imp was the pièce de résistance for my volume, Island Nights’ Entertainments. However, that volume might have never got done; and I send you two others in case they should be in time.
First have The Beach of Falesá.
Then a fresh false title: Island Nights’ Entertainments; and then
The Bottle Imp: a cue from an old melodrama.
The Isle of Voices.
The Waif Woman; a cue from a saga.
Of course these two others are not up to the mark of The Bottle Imp; but they each have a certain merit, and they fit in style. By saying “a cue from an old melodrama” after the B. I., you can get rid of my note. If this is in time, it will be splendid, and will make quite a volume.
Should you and Cassells prefer, you can call the whole volume I. N. E. — though the Beach of Falesá is the child of a quite different inspiration. They all have a queer realism, even the most extravagant, even the Isle of Voices; the manners are exact.
Should they come too late, have them type-written and return to me here the type-written copies.
Sunday, Dec 4th. — 3rd start, — But now more humbly and with the aid of an Amanuensis. First one word about page 2. My wife protests against The Waif Woman and I am instructed to report the same to you....
Dec. 5th. — A horrid alarm rises that our October mail was burned crossing the Plains. If so, you lost a beautiful long letter — I am sure it was beautiful though I remember nothing about it — and I must say I think it serves you properly well. That I should continue writing to you at such length is simply a vicious habit for which I blush. At the same time, please communicate at once with Charles Baxter whether you have or have not received a letter posted here Oct. 12th, as he is going to cable me the fate of my mail.
Now to conclude my news. The German Firm have taken my book like angels, and the result is that Lloyd and I were down there at dinner on Saturday, where we partook of fifteen several dishes and eight distinct forms of intoxicating drink. To the credit of Germany, I must say there was not a shadow of a headache the next morning. I seem to have done as well as my neighbours, for I hear one of the clerks expressed the next morning a gratified surprise that Mr. Stevenson stood his drink so well. It is a strange thing that any race can s
till find joy in such athletic exercises. I may remark in passing that the mail is due and you have had far more than you deserve.
R. L. S.
To Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin
December 5th, 1892.
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, — ... So much said, I come with guilty speed to what more immediately concerns myself. Spare us a month or two for old sake’s sake, and make my wife and me happy and proud. We are only fourteen days from San Francisco, just about a month from Liverpool; we have our new house almost finished. The thing can be done; I believe we can make you almost comfortable. It is the loveliest climate in the world, our political troubles seem near an end. It can 274 be done, it must! Do, please, make a virtuous effort, come and take a glimpse of a new world I am sure you do not dream of, and some old friends who do often dream of your arrival.
Alas, I was just beginning to get eloquent, and there goes the lunch bell, and after lunch I must make up the mail.
Do come. You must not come in February or March — bad months. From April on it is delightful. — Your sincere friend,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Henry James
December 5th, 1892.
MY DEAR JAMES, — How comes it so great a silence has fallen? The still small voice of self-approval whispers me it is not from me. I have looked up my register, and find I have neither written to you nor heard from you since June 22nd, on which day of grace that invaluable work began. This is not as it should be. How to get back? I remember acknowledging with rapture The Lesson of the Master, and I remember receiving Marbot: was that our last relation?
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) Page 790