Sam Vaknin - "Terrorists and Freedom Fighters"

George Bernard Shaw - "The Man of Destiny"

Tobias Smollett - "The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Part II."

William Morris - "The Wood Beyond the World"

The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson

R >> Robert Louis Stevenson >> The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson




ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO W. H. LOW



LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, [APRIL 1884].

MY DEAR LOW, - The blind man in these sprawled lines sends
greeting. I have been ill, as perhaps the papers told you. The
news - 'great news - glorious news - sec-ond ed-ition!' - went the
round in England.

Anyway, I now thank you for your pictures, which, particularly the
Arcadian one, we all (Bob included, he was here sick-nursing me)
much liked.

Herewith are a set of verses which I thought pretty enough to send
to press. Then I thought of the MANHATTAN, towards whom I have
guilty and compunctious feelings. Last, I had the best thought of
all - to send them to you in case you might think them suitable for
illustration. It seemed to me quite in your vein. If so, good; if
not, hand them on to MANHATTAN, CENTURY, or LIPPINCOTT, at your
pleasure, as all three desire my work or pretend to. But I trust
the lines will not go unattended. Some riverside will haunt you;
and O! be tender to my bathing girls. The lines are copied in my
wife's hand, as I cannot see to write otherwise than with the pen
of Cormoran, Gargantua, or Nimrod. Love to your wife. - Yours
ever,

R. L. S.

Copied it myself.



Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON



LA SOLITUDE, APRIL 19, 1884.

MY DEAR FATHER, - Yesterday I very powerfully stated the HERESIS
STEVENSONIANA, or the complete body of divinity of the family
theologian, to Miss Ferrier. She was much impressed; so was I.
You are a great heresiarch; and I know no better. Whaur the devil
did ye get thon about the soap? Is it altogether your own? I
never heard it elsewhere; and yet I suspect it must have been held
at some time or other, and if you were to look up you would
probably find yourself condemned by some Council.

I am glad to hear you are so well. The hear is excellent. The
CORNHILLS came; I made Miss Ferrier read us 'Thrawn Janet,' and was
quite bowled over by my own works. The 'Merry Men' I mean to make
much longer, with a whole new denouement, not yet quite clear to
me. 'The Story of a Lie,' I must rewrite entirely also, as it is
too weak and ragged, yet is worth saving for the Admiral. Did I
ever tell you that the Admiral was recognised in America?

When they are all on their legs this will make an excellent
collection.

Has Davie never read GUY MANNERING, ROB ROY, or THE ANTIQUARY? All
of which are worth three WAVERLEYS. I think KENILWORTH better than
WAVERLEY; NIGEL, too; and QUENTIN DURWARD about as good. But it
shows a true piece of insight to prefer WAVERLEY, for it IS
different; and though not quite coherent, better worked in parts
than almost any other: surely more carefully. It is undeniable
that the love of the slap-dash and the shoddy grew upon Scott with
success. Perhaps it does on many of us, which may be the granite
on which D.'s opinion stands. However, I hold it, in Patrick
Walker's phrase, for an 'old, condemned, damnable error.' Dr.
Simson was condemned by P. W. as being 'a bagful of' such. One of
Patrick's amenities!

Another ground there may be to D.'s opinion; those who avoid (or
seek to avoid) Scott's facility are apt to be continually straining
and torturing their style to get in more of life. And to many the
extra significance does not redeem the strain.

DOCTOR STEVENSON.



Letter: TO COSMO MONKHOUSE



LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, [APRIL 24, 1884].

DEAR MONKHOUSE, - If you are in love with repose, here is your
occasion: change with me. I am too blind to read, hence no
reading; I am too weak to walk, hence no walking; I am not allowed
to speak, hence no talking; but the great simplification has yet to
be named; for, if this goes on, I shall soon have nothing to eat -
and hence, O Hallelujah! hence no eating. The offer is a fair one:
I have not sold myself to the devil, for I could never find him. I
am married, but so are you. I sometimes write verses, but so do
you. Come! HIC QUIES! As for the commandments, I have broken
them so small that they are the dust of my chambers; you walk upon
them, triturate and toothless; and with the Golosh of Philosophy,
they shall not bite your heel. True, the tenement is falling. Ay,
friend, but yours also. Take a larger view; what is a year or two?
dust in the balance! 'Tis done, behold you Cosmo Stevenson, and me
R. L. Monkhouse; you at Hyeres, I in London; you rejoicing in the
clammiest repose, me proceeding to tear your tabernacle into rags,
as I have already so admirably torn my own.

My place to which I now introduce you - it is yours - is like a
London house, high and very narrow; upon the lungs I will not
linger; the heart is large enough for a ballroom; the belly greedy
and inefficient; the brain stocked with the most damnable
explosives, like a dynamiter's den. The whole place is well
furnished, though not in a very pure taste; Corinthian much of it;
showy and not strong.

About your place I shall try to find my way alone, an interesting
exploration. Imagine me, as I go to bed, falling over a blood-
stained remorse; opening that cupboard in the cerebellum and being
welcomed by the spirit of your murdered uncle. I should probably
not like your remorses; I wonder if you will like mine; I have a
spirited assortment; they whistle in my ear o' nights like a north-
easter. I trust yours don't dine with the family; mine are better
mannered; you will hear nought of them till, 2 A.M., except one, to
be sure, that I have made a pet of, but he is small; I keep him in
buttons, so as to avoid commentaries; you will like him much - if
you like what is genuine.

Must we likewise change religions? Mine is a good article, with a
trick of stopping; cathedral bell note; ornamental dial; supported
by Venus and the Graces; quite a summer-parlour piety. Of yours,
since your last, I fear there is little to be said.

There is one article I wish to take away with me: my spirits.
They suit me. I don't want yours; I like my own; I have had them a
long while in bottle. It is my only reservation. - Yours (as you
decide),

R. L. MONKHOUSE.



Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY



HYERES, MAY 1884.

DEAR BOY, - OLD MORTALITY is out, and I am glad to say Coggie likes
it. We like her immensely.

I keep better, but no great shakes yet; cannot work - cannot: that
is flat, not even verses: as for prose, that more active place is
shut on me long since.

My view of life is essentially the comic; and the romantically
comic. AS YOU LIKE IT is to me the most bird-haunted spot in
letters; TEMPEST and TWELFTH NIGHT follow. These are what I mean
by poetry and nature. I make an effort of my mind to be quite one
with Moliere, except upon the stage, where his inimitable JEUX DE
SCENE beggar belief; but you will observe they are stage-plays -
things AD HOC; not great Olympian debauches of the heart and fancy;
hence more perfect, and not so great. Then I come, after great
wanderings, to Carmosine and to Fantasio; to one part of La
Derniere Aldini (which, by the by, we might dramatise in a week),
to the notes that Meredith has found, Evan and the postillion, Evan
and Rose, Harry in Germany. And to me these things are the good;
beauty, touched with sex and laughter; beauty with God's earth for
the background. Tragedy does not seem to me to come off; and when
it does, it does so by the heroic illusion; the anti-masque has
been omitted; laughter, which attends on all our steps in life, and
sits by the deathbed, and certainly redacts the epitaph, laughter
has been lost from these great-hearted lies. But the comedy which
keeps the beauty and touches the terrors of our life (laughter and
tragedy-in-a-good-humour having kissed), that is the last word of
moved representation; embracing the greatest number of elements of
fate and character; and telling its story, not with the one eye of
pity, but with the two of pity and mirth.

R. L. S.



Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE



FROM MY BED, MAY 29, 1884.

DEAR GOSSE, - The news of the Professorate found me in the article
of - well, of heads or tails; I am still in bed, and a very poor
person. You must thus excuse my damned delay; but, I assure you, I
was delighted. You will believe me the more, if I confess to you
that my first sentiment was envy; yes, sir, on my blood-boltered
couch I envied the professor. However, it was not of long
duration; the double thought that you deserved and that you would
thoroughly enjoy your success fell like balsam on my wounds. How
came it that you never communicated my rejection of Gilder's offer
for the Rhone? But it matters not. Such earthly vanities are over
for the present. This has been a fine well-conducted illness. A
month in bed; a month of silence; a fortnight of not stirring my
right hand; a month of not moving without being lifted. Come! CA
Y EST: devilish like being dead. - Yours, dear Professor,
academically,

R. L. S.

I am soon to be moved to Royat; an invalid valet goes with me! I
got him cheap - second-hand.

In turning over my late friend Ferrier's commonplace book, I find
three poems from VIOL AND FLUTE copied out in his hand: 'When
Flower-time,' 'Love in Winter,' and 'Mistrust.' They are capital
too. But I thought the fact would interest you. He was no poetist
either; so it means the more. 'Love in W.!' I like the best.



Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON



HOTEL CHABASSIERE, ROYAT, [JULY 1884].

MY DEAR PEOPLE, - The weather has been demoniac; I have had a skiff
of cold, and was finally obliged to take to bed entirely; to-day,
however, it has cleared, the sun shines, and I begin to

(SEVERAL DAYS AFTER.)

I have been out once, but now am back in bed. I am better, and
keep better, but the weather is a mere injustice. The imitation of
Edinburgh is, at times, deceptive; there is a note among the
chimney pots that suggests Howe Street; though I think the
shrillest spot in Christendom was not upon the Howe Street side,
but in front, just under the Miss Graemes' big chimney stack. It
had a fine alto character - a sort of bleat that used to divide the
marrow in my joints - say in the wee, slack hours. That music is
now lost to us by rebuilding; another air that I remember, not
regret, was the solo of the gas-burner in the little front room; a
knickering, flighty, fleering, and yet spectral cackle. I mind it
above all on winter afternoons, late, when the window was blue and
spotted with rare rain-drops, and, looking out, the cold evening
was seen blue all over, with the lamps of Queen's and Frederick's
Street dotting it with yellow, and flaring east-ward in the
squalls. Heavens, how unhappy I have been in such circumstances -
I, who have now positively forgotten the colour of unhappiness; who
am full like a fed ox, and dull like a fresh turf, and have no more
spiritual life, for good or evil, than a French bagman.

We are at Chabassiere's, for of course it was nonsense to go up the
hill when we could not walk.

The child's poems in a far extended form are likely soon to be
heard of - which Cummy I dare say will be glad to know. They will
make a book of about one hundred pages. - Ever your affectionate,

R. L. S.



Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN



[ROYAT, JULY 1884.]

. . . HERE is a quaint thing, I have read ROBINSON, COLONEL JACK,
MOLL FLANDERS, MEMOIRS OF A CAVALIER, HISTORY OF THE PLAGUE,
HISTORY OF THE GREAT STORM, SCOTCH CHURCH AND UNION. And there my
knowledge of Defoe ends - except a book, the name of which I
forget, about Peterborough in Spain, which Defoe obviously did not
write, and could not have written if he wanted. To which of these
does B. J. refer? I guess it must be the history of the Scottish
Church. I jest; for, of course, I KNOW it must be a book I have
never read, and which this makes me keen to read - I mean CAPTAIN
SINGLETON. Can it be got and sent to me? If TREASURE ISLAND is at
all like it, it will be delightful. I was just the other day
wondering at my folly in not remembering it, when I was writing T.
I., as a mine for pirate tips. T. I. came out of Kingsley's AT
LAST, where I got the Dead Man's Chest - and that was the seed -
and out of the great Captain Johnson's HISTORY OF NOTORIOUS
PIRATES. The scenery is Californian in part, and in part CHIC.

I was downstairs to-day! So now I am a made man - till the next
time.

R. L. STEVENSON.

If it was CAPTAIN SINGLETON, send it to me, won't you?

LATER. - My life dwindles into a kind of valley of the shadow
picnic. I cannot read; so much of the time (as to-day) I must not
speak above my breath, that to play patience, or to see my wife
play it, is become the be-all and the end-all of my dim career. To
add to my gaiety, I may write letters, but there are few to answer.
Patience and Poesy are thus my rod and staff; with these I not
unpleasantly support my days.

I am very dim, dumb, dowie, and damnable. I hate to be silenced;
and if to talk by signs is my forte (as I contend), to understand
them cannot be my wife's. Do not think me unhappy; I have not been
so for years; but I am blurred, inhabit the debatable frontier of
sleep, and have but dim designs upon activity. All is at a
standstill; books closed, paper put aside, the voice, the eternal
voice of R. L. S., well silenced. Hence this plaint reaches you
with no very great meaning, no very great purpose, and written part
in slumber by a heavy, dull, somnolent, superannuated son of a
bedpost.




CHAPTER VII - LIFE AT BOURNEMOUTH, SEPTEMBER 1884-DECEMBER 1885




Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON



WENSLEYDALE, BOURNEMOUTH, SUNDAY, 28TH SEPTEMBER 1884.

MY DEAR PEOPLE, - I keep better, and am to-day downstairs for the
first time. I find the lockers entirely empty; not a cent to the
front. Will you pray send us some? It blows an equinoctial gale,
and has blown for nearly a week. Nimbus Britannicus; piping wind,
lashing rain; the sea is a fine colour, and wind-bound ships lie at
anchor under the Old Harry rocks, to make one glad to be ashore.

The Henleys are gone, and two plays practically done. I hope they
may produce some of the ready. - I am, ever affectionate son,

R. L. S.



Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY



[WENSLEYDALE, BOURNEMOUTH, OCTOBER 1884?]

DEAR BOY, - I trust this finds you well; it leaves me so-so. The
weather is so cold that I must stick to bed, which is rotten and
tedious, but can't be helped.

I find in the blotting book the enclosed, which I wrote to you the
eve of my blood. Is it not strange? That night, when I naturally
thought I was coopered, the thought of it was much in my mind; I
thought it had gone; and I thought what a strange prophecy I had
made in jest, and how it was indeed like to be the end of many
letters. But I have written a good few since, and the spell is
broken. I am just as pleased, for I earnestly desire to live.
This pleasant middle age into whose port we are steering is quite
to my fancy. I would cast anchor here, and go ashore for twenty
years, and see the manners of the place. Youth was a great time,
but somewhat fussy. Now in middle age (bar lucre) all seems mighty
placid. It likes me; I spy a little bright cafe in one corner of
the port, in front of which I now propose we should sit down.
There is just enough of the bustle of the harbour and no more; and
the ships are close in, regarding us with stern-windows - the ships
that bring deals from Norway and parrots from the Indies. Let us
sit down here for twenty years, with a packet of tobacco and a
drink, and talk of art and women. By-and-by, the whole city will
sink, and the ships too, and the table, and we also; but we shall
have sat for twenty years and had a fine talk; and by that time,
who knows? exhausted the subject.

I send you a book which (or I am mistook) will please you; it
pleased me. But I do desire a book of adventure - a romance - and
no man will get or write me one. Dumas I have read and re-read too
often; Scott, too, and I am short. I want to hear swords clash. I
want a book to begin in a good way; a book, I guess, like TREASURE
ISLAND, alas! which I have never read, and cannot though I live to
ninety. I would God that some one else had written it! By all
that I can learn, it is the very book for my complaint. I like the
way I hear it opens; and they tell me John Silver is good fun. And
to me it is, and must ever be, a dream unrealised, a book
unwritten. O my sighings after romance, or even Skeltery, and O!
the weary age which will produce me neither!


CHAPTER I


The night was damp and cloudy, the ways foul. The single horseman,
cloaked and booted, who pursued his way across Willesden Common,
had not met a traveller, when the sound of wheels -


CHAPTER I


'Yes, sir,' said the old pilot, 'she must have dropped into the bay
a little afore dawn. A queer craft she looks.'

'She shows no colours,' returned the young gentleman musingly.

'They're a-lowering of a quarter-boat, Mr. Mark,' resumed the old
salt. 'We shall soon know more of her.'

'Ay,' replied the young gentleman called Mark, 'and here, Mr.
Seadrift, comes your sweet daughter Nancy tripping down the cliff.'

'God bless her kind heart, sir,' ejaculated old Seadrift.


CHAPTER I


The notary, Jean Rossignol, had been summoned to the top of a great
house in the Isle St. Louis to make a will; and now, his duties
finished, wrapped in a warm roquelaure and with a lantern swinging
from one hand, he issued from the mansion on his homeward way.
Little did he think what strange adventures were to befall him! -

That is how stories should begin. And I am offered HUSKS instead.

What should be: What is:
The Filibuster's Cache. Aunt Anne's Tea Cosy.
Jerry Abershaw. Mrs. Brierly's Niece.
Blood Money: A Tale. Society: A Novel

R. L. S.



Letter: TO THE REV. PROFESSOR LEWIS CAMPBELL



[WENSLEYDALE, BOURNEMOUTH, NOVEMBER 1884.]

MY DEAR CAMPBELL, - The books came duly to hand. My wife has
occupied the translation ever since, nor have I yet been able to
dislodge her. As for the primer, I have read it with a very
strange result: that I find no fault. If you knew how, dogmatic
and pugnacious, I stand warden on the literary art, you would the
more appreciate your success and my - well, I will own it -
disappointment. For I love to put people right (or wrong) about
the arts. But what you say of Tragedy and of Sophocles very amply
satisfies me; it is well felt and well said; a little less
technically than it is my weakness to desire to see it put, but
clear and adequate. You are very right to express your admiration
for the resource displayed in OEdipus King; it is a miracle. Would
it not have been well to mention Voltaire's interesting onslaught,
a thing which gives the best lesson of the difference of neighbour
arts? - since all his criticisms, which had been fatal to a
narrative, do not amount among them to exhibit one flaw in this
masterpiece of drama. For the drama, it is perfect; though such a
fable in a romance might make the reader crack his sides, so
imperfect, so ethereally slight is the verisimilitude required of
these conventional, rigid, and egg-dancing arts.

I was sorry to see no more of you; but shall conclude by hoping for
better luck next time. My wife begs to be remembered to both of
you. - Yours sincerely,



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO ANDREW CHATTO



WENSLEYDALE, BOURNEMOUTH, OCTOBER 3, 1884.

DEAR MR. CHATTO, - I have an offer of 25 pounds for OTTO from
America. I do not know if you mean to have the American rights;
from the nature of the contract, I think not; but if you understood
that you were to sell the sheets, I will either hand over the
bargain to you, or finish it myself and hand you over the money if
you are pleased with the amount. You see, I leave this quite in
your hands. To parody an old Scotch story of servant and master:
if you don't know that you have a good author, I know that I have a
good publisher. Your fair, open, and handsome dealings are a good
point in my life, and do more for my crazy health than has yet been
done by any doctor. - Very truly yours,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO W. H. LOW



BONALLIE TOWERS, BRANKSOME PARK, BOURNEMOUTH, HANTS, ENGLAND, FIRST
WEEK IN NOVEMBER, I GUESS, 1884.

MY DEAR LOW, - NOW, look here, the above is my address for three
months, I hope; continue, on your part, if you please, to write to
Edinburgh, which is safe; but if Mrs. Low thinks of coming to
England, she might take a run down from London (four hours from
Waterloo, main line) and stay a day or two with us among the pines.
If not, I hope it will be only a pleasure deferred till you can
join her.

My Children's Verses will be published here in a volume called A
CHILD'S GARDEN. The sheets are in hand; I will see if I cannot
send you the lot, so that you might have a bit of a start. In that
case I would do nothing to publish in the States, and you might try
an illustrated edition there; which, if the book went fairly over
here, might, when ready, be imported. But of this more fully ere
long. You will see some verses of mine in the last MAGAZINE OF
ART, with pictures by a young lady; rather pretty, I think. If we
find a market for PHASELLULUS LOQUITUR, we can try another. I hope
it isn't necessary to put the verse into that rustic printing. I
am Philistine enough to prefer clean printer's type; indeed, I can
form no idea of the verses thus transcribed by the incult and
tottering hand of the draughtsman, nor gather any impression beyond
one of weariness to the eyes. Yet the other day, in the CENTURY, I
saw it imputed as a crime to Vedder that he had not thus travestied
Omar Khayyam. We live in a rum age of music without airs, stories
without incident, pictures without beauty, American wood engravings
that should have been etchings, and dry-point etchings that ought
to have been mezzo-tints. I think of giving 'em literature without
words; and I believe if you were to try invisible illustration, it
would enjoy a considerable vogue. So long as an artist is on his
head, is painting with a flute, or writes with an etcher's needle,
or conducts the orchestra with a meat-axe, all is well; and
plaudits shower along with roses. But any plain man who tries to
follow the obtrusive canons of his art, is but a commonplace
figure. To hell with him is the motto, or at least not that; for
he will have his reward, but he will never be thought a person of
parts.

JANUARY 3, 1885.

And here has this been lying near two months. I have failed to get
together a preliminary copy of the Child's Verses for you, in spite
of doughty efforts; but yesterday I sent you the first sheet of the
definitive edition, and shall continue to send the others as they
come. If you can, and care to, work them - why so, well. If not,
I send you fodder. But the time presses; for though I will delay a
little over the proofs, and though - it is even possible they may
delay the English issue until Easter, it will certainly not be
later. Therefore perpend, and do not get caught out. Of course,
if you can do pictures, it will be a great pleasure to me to see
our names joined; and more than that, a great advantage, as I
daresay you may be able to make a bargain for some share a little
less spectral than the common for the poor author. But this is all
as you shall choose; I give you CARTE BLANCHE to do or not to do. -
Yours most sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

O, Sargent has been and painted my portrait; a very nice fellow he
is, and is supposed to have done well; it is a poetical but very
chicken-boned figure-head, as thus represented. R. L. S. Go on.

P.P.S. - Your picture came; and let me thank you for it very much.
I am so hunted I had near forgotten. I find it very graceful; and
I mean to have it framed.



Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON



BONALLIE TOWERS, BOURNEMOUTH, NOVEMBER 1884.

MY DEAR FATHER, - I have no hesitation in recommending you to let
your name go up; please yourself about an address; though I think,
if we could meet, we could arrange something suitable. What you
propose would be well enough in a way, but so modest as to suggest
a whine. From that point of view it would be better to change a
little; but this, whether we meet or not, we must discuss. Tait,
Chrystal, the Royal Society, and I, all think you amply deserve
this honour and far more; it is not the True Blue to call this
serious compliment a 'trial'; you should be glad of this
recognition. As for resigning, that is easy enough if found
necessary; but to refuse would be husky and unsatisfactory. SIC
SUBS.

R. L. S.

My cold is still very heavy; but I carry it well. Fanny is very
very much out of sorts, principally through perpetual misery with
me. I fear I have been a little in the dumps, which, AS YOU KNOW,
SIR, is a very great sin. I must try to be more cheerful; but my
cough is so severe that I have sometimes most exhausting nights and
very peevish wakenings. However, this shall be remedied, and last
night I was distinctly better than the night before. There is, my
dear Mr. Stevenson (so I moralise blandly as we sit together on the
devil's garden-wall), no more abominable sin than this gloom, this
plaguey peevishness; why (say I) what matters it if we be a little
uncomfortable - that is no reason for mangling our unhappy wives.
And then I turn and GIRN on the unfortunate Cassandra. - Your
fellow culprit,

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