Fulgence Marion - "Wonderfull Balloon Ascents"

Margaret Penrose - "The Motor Girls on a Tour"

Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): 2 Timothy"

William Allen White - "The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me"

The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson

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




Poor devil! how I am wearying you! Cheer up. Two pages more, and
my letter reaches its term, for I have no more paper. What
delightful things inns and waiters and bagmen are! If we didn't
travel now and then, we should forget what the feeling of life is.
The very cushion of a railway carriage - 'the things restorative to
the touch.' I can't write, confound it! That's because I am so
tired with my walk. Believe me, ever your affectionate friend,

R. L. STEVENSON.



Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER



DUNBLANE, TUESDAY, 9TH APRIL 1872.

MY DEAR BAXTER, - I don't know what you mean. I know nothing about
the Standing Committee of the Spec., did not know that such a body
existed, and even if it doth exist, must sadly repudiate all
association with such 'goodly fellowship.' I am a 'Rural
Voluptuary' at present. THAT is what is the matter with me. The
Spec. may go whistle. As for 'C. Baxter, Esq.,' who is he? 'One
Baxter, or Bagster, a secretary,' I say to mine acquaintance, 'is
at present disquieting my leisure with certain illegal,
uncharitable, unchristian, and unconstitutional documents called
BUSINESS LETTERS: THE AFFAIR IS IN THE HANDS OF THE POLICE.' Do
you hear THAT, you evildoer? Sending business letters is surely a
far more hateful and slimy degree of wickedness than sending
threatening letters; the man who throws grenades and torpedoes is
less malicious; the Devil in red-hot hell rubs his hands with glee
as he reckons up the number that go forth spreading pain and
anxiety with each delivery of the post.

I have been walking to-day by a colonnade of beeches along the
brawling Allan. My character for sanity is quite gone, seeing that
I cheered my lonely way with the following, in a triumphant chaunt:
'Thank God for the grass, and the fir-trees, and the crows, and the
sheep, and the sunshine, and the shadows of the fir-trees.' I hold
that he is a poor mean devil who can walk alone, in such a place
and in such weather, and doesn't set up his lungs and cry back to
the birds and the river. Follow, follow, follow me. Come hither,
come hither, come hither - here shall you see - no enemy - except a
very slight remnant of winter and its rough weather. My bedroom,
when I awoke this morning, was full of bird-songs, which is the
greatest pleasure in life. Come hither, come hither, come hither,
and when you come bring the third part of the EARTHLY PARADISE; you
can get it for me in Elliot's for two and tenpence (2s. 10d.)
(BUSINESS HABITS). Also bring an ounce of honeydew from Wilson's.

R. L. S.



Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON



BRUSSELS, THURSDAY, 25TH JULY 1872.

MY DEAR MOTHER, - I am here at last, sitting in my room, without
coat or waistcoat, and with both window and door open, and yet
perspiring like a terra-cotta jug or a Gruyere cheese.

We had a very good passage, which we certainly deserved, in
compensation for having to sleep on cabin floor, and finding
absolutely nothing fit for human food in the whole filthy
embarkation. We made up for lost time by sleeping on deck a good
part of the forenoon. When I woke, Simpson was still sleeping the
sleep of the just, on a coil of ropes and (as appeared afterwards)
his own hat; so I got a bottle of Bass and a pipe and laid hold of
an old Frenchman of somewhat filthy aspect (FIAT EXPERIMENTUM IN
CORPORE VILI) to try my French upon. I made very heavy weather of
it. The Frenchman had a very pretty young wife; but my French
always deserted me entirely when I had to answer her, and so she
soon drew away and left me to her lord, who talked of French
politics, Africa, and domestic economy with great vivacity. From
Ostend a smoking-hot journey to Brussels. At Brussels we went off
after dinner to the Parc. If any person wants to be happy, I
should advise the Parc. You sit drinking iced drinks and smoking
penny cigars under great old trees. The band place, covered walks,
etc., are all lit up. And you can't fancy how beautiful was the
contrast of the great masses of lamplit foliage and the dark
sapphire night sky with just one blue star set overhead in the
middle of the largest patch. In the dark walks, too, there are
crowds of people whose faces you cannot see, and here and there a
colossal white statue at the corner of an alley that gives the
place a nice, ARTIFICIAL, eighteenth century sentiment. There was
a good deal of summer lightning blinking overhead, and the black
avenues and white statues leapt out every minute into short-lived
distinctness.

I get up to add one thing more. There is in the hotel a boy in
whom I take the deepest interest. I cannot tell you his age, but
the very first time I saw him (when I was at dinner yesterday) I
was very much struck with his appearance. There is something very
leonine in his face, with a dash of the negro especially, if I
remember aright, in the mouth. He has a great quantity of dark
hair, curling in great rolls, not in little corkscrews, and a pair
of large, dark, and very steady, bold, bright eyes. His manners
are those of a prince. I felt like an overgrown ploughboy beside
him. He speaks English perfectly, but with, I think, sufficient
foreign accent to stamp him as a Russian, especially when his
manners are taken into account. I don't think I ever saw any one
who looked like a hero before. After breakfast this morning I was
talking to him in the court, when he mentioned casually that he had
caught a snake in the Riesengebirge. 'I have it here,' he said;
'would you like to see it?' I said yes; and putting his hand into
his breast-pocket, he drew forth not a dried serpent skin, but the
head and neck of the reptile writhing and shooting out its horrible
tongue in my face. You may conceive what a fright I got. I send
off this single sheet just now in order to let you know I am safe
across; but you must not expect letters often.

R. L. STEVENSON.

P.S. - The snake was about a yard long, but harmless, and now, he
says, quite tame.



Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON



HOTEL LANDSBERG, FRANKFURT, MONDAY, 29TH JULY 1872.

... LAST night I met with rather an amusing adventurette. Seeing a
church door open, I went in, and was led by most importunate
finger-bills up a long stair to the top of the tower. The father
smoking at the door, the mother and the three daughters received me
as if I was a friend of the family and had come in for an evening
visit. The youngest daughter (about thirteen, I suppose, and a
pretty little girl) had been learning English at the school, and
was anxious to play it off upon a real, veritable Englander; so we
had a long talk, and I was shown photographs, etc., Marie and I
talking, and the others looking on with evident delight at having
such a linguist in the family. As all my remarks were duly
translated and communicated to the rest, it was quite a good German
lesson. There was only one contretemps during the whole interview
- the arrival of another visitor, in the shape (surely) the last of
God's creatures, a wood-worm of the most unnatural and hideous
appearance, with one great striped horn sticking out of his nose
like a boltsprit. If there are many wood-worms in Germany, I shall
come home. The most courageous men in the world must be
entomologists. I had rather be a lion-tamer.

To-day I got rather a curiosity - LIEDER UND BALLADEN VON ROBERT
BURNS, translated by one Silbergleit, and not so ill done either.
Armed with which, I had a swim in the Main, and then bread and
cheese and Bavarian beer in a sort of cafe, or at least the German
substitute for a cafe; but what a falling off after the heavenly
forenoons in Brussels!

I have bought a meerschaum out of local sentiment, and am now very
low and nervous about the bargain, having paid dearer than I should
in England, and got a worse article, if I can form a judgment.

Do write some more, somebody. To-morrow I expect I shall go into
lodgings, as this hotel work makes the money disappear like butter
in a furnace. - Meanwhile believe me, ever your affectionate son,

R. L. STEVENSON.



Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON



HOTEL LANDSBERG, THURSDAY, 1ST AUGUST 1872.

... YESTERDAY I walked to Eckenheim, a village a little way out of
Frankfurt, and turned into the alehouse. In the room, which was
just such as it would have been in Scotland, were the landlady, two
neighbours, and an old peasant eating raw sausage at the far end.
I soon got into conversation; and was astonished when the landlady,
having asked whether I were an Englishman, and received an answer
in the affirmative, proceeded to inquire further whether I were not
also a Scotchman. It turned out that a Scotch doctor - a professor
- a poet - who wrote books - GROSS WIE DAS - had come nearly every
day out of Frankfurt to the ECKENHEIMER WIRTHSCHAFT, and had left
behind him a most savoury memory in the hearts of all its
customers. One man ran out to find his name for me, and returned
with the news that it was COBIE (Scobie, I suspect); and during his
absence the rest were pouring into my ears the fame and
acquirements of my countryman. He was, in some undecipherable
manner, connected with the Queen of England and one of the
Princesses. He had been in Turkey, and had there married a wife of
immense wealth. They could find apparently no measure adequate to
express the size of his books. In one way or another, he had
amassed a princely fortune, and had apparently only one sorrow, his
daughter to wit, who had absconded into a KLOSTER, with a
considerable slice of the mother's GELD. I told them we had no
klosters in Scotland, with a certain feeling of superiority. No
more had they, I was told - 'HIER IST UNSER KLOSTER!' and the
speaker motioned with both arms round the taproom. Although the
first torrent was exhausted, yet the Doctor came up again in all
sorts of ways, and with or without occasion, throughout the whole
interview; as, for example, when one man, taking his pipe out of
his mouth and shaking his head, remarked APROPOS of nothing and
with almost defiant conviction, 'ER WAR EIN FEINER MANN, DER HERR
DOCTOR,' and was answered by another with 'YAW, YAW, UND TRANK
IMMER ROTHEN WEIN.'

Setting aside the Doctor, who had evidently turned the brains of
the entire village, they were intelligent people. One thing in
particular struck me, their honesty in admitting that here they
spoke bad German, and advising me to go to Coburg or Leipsic for
German. - 'SIE SPRECHEN DA REIN' (clean), said one; and they all
nodded their heads together like as many mandarins, and repeated
REIN, SO REIN in chorus.

Of course we got upon Scotland. The hostess said, 'DIE
SCHOTTLANDER TRINKEN GERN SCHNAPPS,' which may be freely
translated, 'Scotchmen are horrid fond of whisky.' It was
impossible, of course, to combat such a truism; and so I proceeded
to explain the construction of toddy, interrupted by a cry of
horror when I mentioned the HOT water; and thence, as I find is
always the case, to the most ghastly romancing about Scottish
scenery and manners, the Highland dress, and everything national or
local that I could lay my hands upon. Now that I have got my
German Burns, I lean a good deal upon him for opening a
conversation, and read a few translations to every yawning audience
that I can gather. I am grown most insufferably national, you see.
I fancy it is a punishment for my want of it at ordinary times.
Now, what do you think, there was a waiter in this very hotel, but,
alas! he is now gone, who sang (from morning to night, as my
informant said with a shrug at the recollection) what but 'S IST
LANGE HER, the German version of Auld Lang Syne; so you see,
madame, the finest lyric ever written will make its way out of
whatsoever corner of patois it found its birth in.


'MEITZ HERZ IST IM HOCHLAND, MEAN HERZ IST NICHT HIER,
MEIN HERZ IST IM HOCHLAND IM GRUNEN REVIER.
IM GRUNEN REVIERE ZU JAGEN DAS REH;
MEIN HERZ IST IM HOCHLAND, WO IMMER ICH GEH.'


I don't think I need translate that for you.

There is one thing that burthens me a good deal in my patriotic
garrulage, and that is the black ignorance in which I grope about
everything, as, for example, when I gave yesterday a full and, I
fancy, a startlingly incorrect account of Scotch education to a
very stolid German on a garden bench: he sat and perspired under
it, however with much composure. I am generally glad enough to
fall back again, after these political interludes, upon Burns,
toddy, and the Highlands.

I go every night to the theatre, except when there is no opera. I
cannot stand a play yet; but I am already very much improved, and
can understand a good deal of what goes on.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 1872. - In the evening, at the theatre, I had a
great laugh. Lord Allcash in FRA DIAVOLO, with his white hat, red
guide-books, and bad German, was the PIECE-DE-RESISTANCE from a
humorous point of view; and I had the satisfaction of knowing that
in my own small way I could minister the same amusement whenever I
chose to open my mouth.

I am just going off to do some German with Simpson. - Your
affectionate son,

R. L. STEVENSON.



Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON



FRANKFURT, ROSENGASSE 13, AUGUST 4, 1872.

MY DEAR FATHER, - You will perceive by the head of this page that
we have at last got into lodgings, and powerfully mean ones too.
If I were to call the street anything but SHADY, I should be
boasting. The people sit at their doors in shirt-sleeves, smoking
as they do in Seven Dials of a Sunday.

Last night we went to bed about ten, for the first time
HOUSEHOLDERS in Germany - real Teutons, with no deception, spring,
or false bottom. About half-past one there began such a
trumpeting, shouting, pealing of bells, and scurrying hither and
thither of feet as woke every person in Frankfurt out of their
first sleep with a vague sort of apprehension that the last day was
at hand. The whole street was alive, and we could hear people
talking in their rooms, or crying to passers-by from their windows,
all around us. At last I made out what a man was saying in the
next room. It was a fire in Sachsenhausen, he said (Sachsenhausen
is the suburb on the other side of the Main), and he wound up with
one of the most tremendous falsehoods on record, 'HIER ALLES RUHT -
here all is still.' If it can be said to be still in an engine
factory, or in the stomach of a volcano when it is meditating an
eruption, he might have been justified in what he said, but not
otherwise. The tumult continued unabated for near an hour; but as
one grew used to it, it gradually resolved itself into three bells,
answering each other at short intervals across the town, a man
shouting, at ever shorter intervals and with superhuman energy,
'FEUER, - IM SACHSENHAUSEN, and the almost continuous winding of
all manner of bugles and trumpets, sometimes in stirring
flourishes, and sometimes in mere tuneless wails. Occasionally
there was another rush of feet past the window, and once there was
a mighty drumming, down between us and the river, as though the
soldiery were turning out to keep the peace. This was all we had
of the fire, except a great cloud, all flushed red with the glare,
above the roofs on the other side of the Gasse; but it was quite
enough to put me entirely off my sleep and make me keenly alive to
three or four gentlemen who were strolling leisurely about my
person, and every here and there leaving me somewhat as a keepsake.
. . . However, everything has its compensation, and when day came
at last, and the sparrows awoke with trills and CAROL-ETS, the dawn
seemed to fall on me like a sleeping draught. I went to the window
and saw the sparrows about the eaves, and a great troop of doves go
strolling up the paven Gasse, seeking what they may devour. And so
to sleep, despite fleas and fire-alarms and clocks chiming the
hours out of neighbouring houses at all sorts of odd times and with
the most charming want of unanimity.

We have got settled down in Frankfurt, and like the place very
much. Simpson and I seem to get on very well together. We suit
each other capitally; and it is an awful joke to be living (two
would-be advocates, and one a baronet) in this supremely mean
abode.

The abode is, however, a great improvement on the hotel, and I
think we shall grow quite fond of it. - Ever your affectionate son,

R. L. STEVENSON.



Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON



13 ROSENGASSE, FRANKFURT, TUESDAY MORNING, AUGUST 1872.

. . . Last night I was at the theatre and heard DIE JUDIN (LA
JUIVE), and was thereby terribly excited. At last, in the middle
of the fifth act, which was perfectly beastly, I had to slope. I
could stand even seeing the cauldron with the sham fire beneath,
and the two hateful executioners in red; but when at last the
girl's courage breaks down, and, grasping her father's arm, she
cries out - O so shudderfully! - I thought it high time to be out
of that GALERE, and so I do not know yet whether it ends well or
ill; but if I ever afterwards find that they do carry things to the
extremity, I shall think more meanly of my species. It was raining
and cold outside, so I went into a BIERHALLE, and sat and brooded
over a SCHNITT (half-glass) for nearly an hour. An opera is far
more REAL than real life to me. It seems as if stage illusion, and
particularly this hardest to swallow and most conventional illusion
of them all - an opera - would never stale upon me. I wish that
life was an opera. I should like to LIVE in one; but I don't know
in what quarter of the globe I shall find a society so constituted.
Besides, it would soon pall: imagine asking for three-kreuzer
cigars in recitative, or giving the washerwoman the inventory of
your dirty clothes in a sustained and FLOURISHOUS aria.

I am in a right good mood this morning to sit here and write to
you; but not to give you news. There is a great stir of life, in a
quiet, almost country fashion, all about us here. Some one is
hammering a beef-steak in the REZ-DE-CHAUSSEE: there is a great
clink of pitchers and noise of the pump-handle at the public well
in the little square-kin round the corner. The children, all
seemingly within a month, and certainly none above five, that
always go halting and stumbling up and down the roadway, are
ordinarily very quiet, and sit sedately puddling in the gutter,
trying, I suppose, poor little devils! to understand their
MUTTERSPRACHE; but they, too, make themselves heard from time to
time in little incomprehensible antiphonies, about the drift that
comes down to them by their rivers from the strange lands higher up
the Gasse. Above all, there is here such a twittering of canaries
(I can see twelve out of our window), and such continual visitation
of grey doves and big-nosed sparrows, as make our little bye-street
into a perfect aviary.

I look across the Gasse at our opposite neighbour, as he dandles
his baby about, and occasionally takes a spoonful or two of some
pale slimy nastiness that looks like DEAD PORRIDGE, if you can take
the conception. These two are his only occupations. All day long
you can hear him singing over the brat when he is not eating; or
see him eating when he is not keeping baby. Besides which, there
comes into his house a continual round of visitors that puts me in
mind of the luncheon hour at home. As he has thus no ostensible
avocation, we have named him 'the W.S.' to give a flavour of
respectability to the street.

Enough of the Gasse. The weather is here much colder. It rained a
good deal yesterday; and though it is fair and sunshiny again to-
day, and we can still sit, of course, with our windows open, yet
there is no more excuse for the siesta; and the bathe in the river,
except for cleanliness, is no longer a necessity of life. The Main
is very swift. In one part of the baths it is next door to
impossible to swim against it, and I suspect that, out in the open,
it would be quite impossible. - Adieu, my dear mother, and believe
me, ever your affectionate son,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

(RENTIER).



Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER



17 HERIOT ROW, EDINBURGH, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1873.

MY DEAR BAXTER, - The thunderbolt has fallen with a vengeance now.
On Friday night after leaving you, in the course of conversation,
my father put me one or two questions as to beliefs, which I
candidly answered. I really hate all lying so much now - a new
found honesty that has somehow come out of my late illness - that I
could not so much as hesitate at the time; but if I had foreseen
the real hell of everything since, I think I should have lied, as I
have done so often before. I so far thought of my father, but I
had forgotten my mother. And now! they are both ill, both silent,
both as down in the mouth as if - I can find no simile. You may
fancy how happy it is for me. If it were not too late, I think I
could almost find it in my heart to retract, but it is too late;
and again, am I to live my whole life as one falsehood? Of course,
it is rougher than hell upon my father, but can I help it? They
don't see either that my game is not the light-hearted scoffer;
that I am not (as they call me) a careless infidel. I believe as
much as they do, only generally in the inverse ratio: I am, I
think, as honest as they can be in what I hold. I have not come
hastily to my views. I reserve (as I told them) many points until
I acquire fuller information, and do not think I am thus justly to
be called 'horrible atheist.'

Now, what is to take place? What a curse I am to my parents! O
Lord, what a pleasant thing it is to have just DAMNED the happiness
of (probably) the only two people who care a damn about you in the
world.

What is my life to be at this rate? What, you rascal? Answer - I
have a pistol at your throat. If all that I hold true and most
desire to spread is to be such death, and a worse than death, in
the eyes of my father and mother, what the DEVIL am I to do?

Here is a good heavy cross with a vengeance, and all rough with
rusty nails that tear your fingers, only it is not I that have to
carry it alone; I hold the light end, but the heavy burden falls on
these two.

Don't - I don't know what I was going to say. I am an abject
idiot, which, all things considered, is not remarkable. - Ever your
affectionate and horrible atheist,

R. L. STEVENSON.




CHAPTER II - STUDENT DAYS - ORDERED SOUTH, SEPTEMBER 1873-JULY 1875




Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON



COCKFIELD RECTORY, SUDBURY, SUFFOLK, TUESDAY, JULY 28, 1873.

MY DEAR MOTHER, - I am too happy to be much of a correspondent.
Yesterday we were away to Melford and Lavenham, both exceptionally
placid, beautiful old English towns. Melford scattered all round a
big green, with an Elizabethan Hall and Park, great screens of
trees that seem twice as high as trees should seem, and everything
else like what ought to be in a novel, and what one never expects
to see in reality, made me cry out how good we were to live in
Scotland, for the many hundredth time. I cannot get over my
astonishment - indeed, it increases every day - at the hopeless
gulf that there is between England and Scotland, and English and
Scotch. Nothing is the same; and I feel as strange and outlandish
here as I do in France or Germany. Everything by the wayside, in
the houses, or about the people, strikes me with an unexpected
unfamiliarity: I walk among surprises, for just where you think
you have them, something wrong turns up.

I got a little Law read yesterday, and some German this morning,
but on the whole there are too many amusements going for much work;
as for correspondence, I have neither heart nor time for it to-day.

R. L. S.



Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL



17 HERIOT ROW, EDINBURGH, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1873.

I HAVE been to-day a very long walk with my father through some of
the most beautiful ways hereabouts; the day was cold with an iron,
windy sky, and only glorified now and then with autumn sunlight.
For it is fully autumn with us, with a blight already over the
greens, and a keen wind in the morning that makes one rather timid
of one's tub when it finds its way indoors.

I was out this evening to call on a friend, and, coming back
through the wet, crowded, lamp-lit streets, was singing after my
own fashion, DU HAST DIAMANTEN UND PERLEN, when I heard a poor
cripple man in the gutter wailing over a pitiful Scotch air, his
club-foot supported on the other knee, and his whole woebegone body
propped sideways against a crutch. The nearest lamp threw a strong
light on his worn, sordid face and the three boxes of lucifer
matches that he held for sale. My own false notes stuck in my
chest. How well off I am! is the burthen of my songs all day long
- DRUM IST SO WOHL MIR IN DER WELT! and the ugly reality of the
cripple man was an intrusion on the beautiful world in which I was
walking. He could no more sing than I could; and his voice was
cracked and rusty, and altogether perished. To think that that
wreck may have walked the streets some night years ago, as glad at
heart as I was, and promising himself a future as golden and
honourable!

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