Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson Volume 1 Part 24

Please, my dear Brown, forgive my horrid delay. Symonds overworked and knocked up. I off my sleep; my wife gone to Paris. Weather lovely. - Yours ever,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Monte Generoso in May; here, I think, till the end of April; write again, to prove you are forgiving.

Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

HOTEL DU PAVILLON HENRY IV., ST. GERMAIN-EN-LAYE, SUNDAY, MAY 1ST, 1881.

MY DEAR PEOPLE, - A week in Paris reduced me to the limpness and lack of appet.i.te peculiar to a kid glove, and gave f.a.n.n.y a jumping sore throat. It's my belief there is death in the kettle there; a pestilence or the like. We came out here, pitched on the STAR and GARTER (they call it Somebody's pavilion), found the place a bed of lilacs and nightingales (first time I ever heard one), and also of a bird called the PIa.s.sEUR, cheerfulest of sylvan creatures, an ideal comic opera in itself. 'Come along, what fun, here's Pan in the next glade at picnic, and this-yer's Arcadia, and it's awful fun, and I've had a gla.s.s, I will not deny, but not to see it on me,' that is his meaning as near as I can gather. Well, the place (forest of beeches all new-fledged, gra.s.s like velvet, fleets of hyacinth) pleased us and did us good. We tried all ways to find a cheaper place, but could find nothing safe; cold, damp, brick- floored rooms and sich; we could not leave Paris till your seven days' sight on draft expired; we dared not go back to be miasmatised in these homes of putridity; so here we are till Tuesday in the STAR AND GARTER. My throat is quite cured, appet.i.te and strength on the mend. f.a.n.n.y seems also picking up.

If we are to come to Scotland, I WILL have fir-trees, and I want a burn, the firs for my physical, the water for my moral health. - Ever affectionate son,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE

PITLOCHRY, PERTHSHIRE, JUNE 6, 1881.

MY DEAR WEG, - Here I am in my native land, being gently blown and hailed upon, and sitting nearer and nearer to the fire. A cottage near a moor is soon to receive our human forms; it is also near a burn to which Professor Blackie (no less!) has written some verses in his hot old age, and near a farm from whence we shall draw cream and fatness. Should I be moved to join Blackie, I shall go upon my knees and pray hard against temptation; although, since the new Version, I do not know the proper form of words. The swollen, childish, and pedantic vanity that moved the said revisers to put 'bring' for 'lead,' is a sort of literary fault that calls for an eternal h.e.l.l; it may be quite a small place, a star of the least magnitude, and shabbily furnished; there shall -, -, the revisers of the Bible and other absolutely loathsome literary lepers, dwell among broken pens, bad, GROUNDY ink and ruled blotting-paper made in France - all eagerly burning to write, and all inflicted with incurable aphasia. I should not have thought upon that torture had I not suffered it in moderation myself, but it is too horrid even for a h.e.l.l; let's let 'em off with an eternal toothache.

All this talk is partly to persuade you that I write to you out of good feeling only, which is not the case. I am a beggar: ask Dobson, Saintsbury, yourself, and any other of these cheeses who know something of the eighteenth century, what became of Jean Cavalier between his coming to England and his death in 1740. Is anything interesting known about him? Whom did he marry? The happy French, smilingly following one another in a long procession headed by the loud and empty Napoleon Peyrat, say, Olympe Dunoyer, Voltaire's old flame. Vacquerie even thinks that they were rivals, and is very French and very literary and very silly in his comments. Now I may almost say it consists with my knowledge that all this has not a shadow to rest upon. It is very odd and very annoying; I have splendid materials for Cavalier till he comes to my own country; and there, though he continues to advance in the service, he becomes entirely invisible to me. Any information about him will be greatly welcome: I may mention that I know as much as I desire about the other prophets, Marion, f.a.ge, Cavalier (de Sonne), my Cavalier's cousin, the unhappy Lions, and the idiotic Mr. Lacy; so if any erudite starts upon that track, you may choke him off. If you can find aught for me, or if you will but try, count on my undying grat.i.tude. Lang's 'Library' is very pleasant reading.

My book will reach you soon, for I write about it to-day - Yours ever,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN

KINNAIRD COTTAGE, PITLOCHRY, PERTHSHIRE, JUNE 1881.

MY DEAR COLVIN, - THE BLACK MAN AND OTHER TALES.

The Black Man:

I. Thrawn Janet.

II. The Devil on Cramond Sands.

The Shadow on the Bed.

The Body s.n.a.t.c.hers.

The Case Bottle.

The King's Horn.

The Actor's Wife.

The Wreck of the SUSANNA.

This is the new work on which I am engaged with f.a.n.n.y; they are all supernatural. 'Thrawn Janet' is off to Stephen, but as it is all in Scotch he cannot take it, I know. It was SO GOOD, I could not help sending it. My health improves. We have a lovely spot here: a little green glen with a burn, a wonderful burn, gold and green and snow-white, singing loud and low in different steps of its career, now pouring over miniature crags, now fretting itself to death in a maze of rocky stairs and pots; never was so sweet a little river. Behind, great purple moorlands reaching to Ben Vrackie. Hunger lives here, alone with larks and sheep. Sweet spot, sweet spot.

Write me a word about Bob's professoriate and Landor, and what you think of THE BLACK MAN. The tales are all ghastly. 'Thrawn Janet'

frightened me to death. There will maybe be another - 'The Dead Man's A Letter.' I believe I shall recover; and I am, in this blessed hope, yours exuberantly,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO PROFESSOR AENEAS MACKAY

KINNAIRD COTTAGE, PITLOCHRY, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 1881.

MY DEAR MACKAY, - What is this I hear? - that you are retiring from your chair. It is not, I hope, from ill-health?

But if you are retiring, may I ask if you have promised your support to any successor? I have a great mind to try. The summer session would suit me; the chair would suit me - if only I would suit it; I certainly should work it hard: that I can promise. I only wish it were a few years from now, when I hope to have something more substantial to show for myself. Up to the present time, all that I have published, even bordering on history, has been in an occasional form, and I fear this is much against me.

Please let me hear a word in answer, and believe me, yours very sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO PROFESSOR AENEAS MACKAY

KINNAIRD COTTAGE, PITLOCHRY, PERTHSHIRE [JUNE 1881].

MY DEAR MACKAY, - Thank you very much for your kind letter, and still more for your good opinion. You are not the only one who has regretted my absence from your lectures; but you were to me, then, only a part of a mangle through which I was being slowly and unwillingly dragged - part of a course which I had not chosen - part, in a word, of an organised boredom.

I am glad to have your reasons for giving up the chair; they are partly pleasant, and partly honourable to you. And I think one may say that every man who publicly declines a plurality of offices, makes it perceptibly more difficult for the next man to accept them.

Every one tells me that I come too late upon the field, every one being pledged, which, seeing it is yet too early for any one to come upon the field, I must regard as a polite evasion. Yet all advise me to stand, as it might serve me against the next vacancy.

So stand I shall, unless things are changed. As it is, with my health this summer cla.s.s is a great attraction; it is perhaps the only hope I may have of a permanent income. I had supposed the needs of the chair might be met by choosing every year some period of history in which questions of Const.i.tutional Law were involved; but this is to look too far forward.

I understand (1ST) that no overt steps can be taken till your resignation is accepted; and (2ND) that in the meantime I may, without offence, mention my design to stand.

If I am mistaken about these, please correct me, as I do not wish to appear where I should not.