Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson Volume 1 Part 47

BONALLIE TOWERS, BRANKSOME PARK, BOURNEMOUTH, NOV. 15, 1884.

MY DEAR GOSSE, - This Mr. Morley of yours is a most desperate fellow. He has sent me (for my opinion) the most truculent advertis.e.m.e.nt I ever saw, in which the white hairs of Gladstone are dragged round Troy behind my chariot wheels. What can I say? I say nothing to him; and to you, I content myself with remarking that he seems a desperate fellow.

All luck to you on your American adventure; may you find health, wealth, and entertainment! If you see, as you likely will, Frank R. Stockton, pray greet him from me in words to this effect:-

My Stockton if I failed to like, It were a sheer depravity, For I went down with the THOMAS HYKE And up with the NEGATIVE GRAVITY!

I adore these tales.

I hear flourishing accounts of your success at Cambridge, so you leave with a good omen. Remember me to GREEN CORN if it is in season; if not, you had better hang yourself on a sour apple tree, for your voyage has been lost. - Yours affectionately,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO AUSTIN DOBSON

BONALLIE TOWERS, BOURNEMOUTH [DECEMBER 1884?].

DEAR DOBSON, - Set down my delay to your own fault; I wished to acknowledge such a gift from you in some of my inapt and slovenly rhymes; but you should have sent me your pen and not your desk.

The verses stand up to the axles in a miry cross-road, whence the coursers of the sun shall never draw them; hence I am constrained to this uncourtliness, that I must appear before one of the kings of that country of rhyme without my singing robes. For less than this, if we may trust the book of Esther, favourites have tasted death; but I conceive the kingdom of the Muses mildlier mannered; and in particular that county which you administer and which I seem to see as a half-suburban land; a land of holly-hocks and country houses; a land where at night, in th.o.r.n.y and sequestered bypaths, you will meet masqueraders going to a ball in their sedans, and the rector steering homeward by the light of his lantern; a land of the windmill, and the west wind, and the flowering hawthorn with a little scented letter in the hollow of its trunk, and the kites flying over all in the season of kites, and the far away blue spires of a cathedral city.

Will you forgive me, then, for my delay and accept my thanks not only for your present, but for the letter which followed it, and which perhaps I more particularly value, and believe me to be, with much admiration, yours very truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO HENRY JAMES

BONALLIE TOWERS, BRANKSOME PARK, BOURNEMOUTH, DECEMBER 8, 1884.

MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - This is a very brave hearing from more points than one. The first point is that there is a hope of a sequel. For this I laboured. Seriously, from the dearth of information and thoughtful interest in the art of literature, those who try to practise it with any deliberate purpose run the risk of finding no fit audience. People suppose it is 'the stuff' that interests them; they think, for instance, that the prodigious fine thoughts and sentiments in Shakespeare impress by their own weight, not understanding that the unpolished diamond is but a stone. They think that striking situations, or good dialogue, are got by studying life; they will not rise to understand that they are prepared by deliberate artifice and set off by painful suppressions. Now, I want the whole thing well ventilated, for my own education and the public's; and I beg you to look as quick as you can, to follow me up with every circ.u.mstance of defeat where we differ, and (to prevent the flouting of the laity) to emphasise the points where we agree. I trust your paper will show me the way to a rejoinder; and that rejoinder I shall hope to make with so much art as to woo or drive you from your threatened silence. I would not ask better than to pa.s.s my life in beating out this quarter of corn with such a seconder as yourself.

Point the second - I am rejoiced indeed to hear you speak so kindly of my work; rejoiced and surprised. I seem to myself a very rude, left-handed countryman; not fit to be read, far less complimented, by a man so accomplished, so adroit, so craftsmanlike as you. You will happily never have cause to understand the despair with which a writer like myself considers (say) the park scene in Lady Barberina. Every touch surprises me by its intangible precision; and the effect when done, as light as syllabub, as distinct as a picture, fills me with envy. Each man among us prefers his own aim, and I prefer mine; but when we come to speak of performance, I recognise myself, compared with you, to be a lout and slouch of the first water.

Where we differ, both as to the design of stories and the delineation of character, I begin to lament. Of course, I am not so dull as to ask you to desert your walk; but could you not, in one novel, to oblige a sincere admirer, and to enrich his shelves with a beloved volume, could you not, and might you not, cast your characters in a mould a little more abstract and academic (dear Mrs. Pennyman had already, among your other work, a taste of what I mean), and pitch the incidents, I do not say in any stronger, but in a slightly more emphatic key - as it were an episode from one of the old (so-called) novels of adventure? I fear you will not; and I suppose I must sighingly admit you to be right. And yet, when I see, as it were, a book of Tom Jones handled with your exquisite precision and shot through with those side-lights of reflection in which you excel, I relinquish the dear vision with regret. Think upon it.

As you know, I belong to that besotted cla.s.s of man, the invalid: this puts me to a stand in the way of visits. But it is possible that some day you may feel that a day near the sea and among pinewoods would be a pleasant change from town. If so, please let us know; and my wife and I will be delighted to put you up, and give you what we can to eat and drink (I have a fair bottle of claret). - On the back of which, believe me, yours sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

P.S. - I reopen this to say that I have re-read my paper, and cannot think I have at all succeeded in being either veracious or polite. I knew, of course, that I took your paper merely as a pin to hang my own remarks upon; but, alas! what a thing is any paper!

What fine remarks can you not hang on mine! How I have sinned against proportion, and with every effort to the contrary, against the merest rudiments of courtesy to you! You are indeed a very acute reader to have divined the real att.i.tude of my mind; and I can only conclude, not without closed eyes and shrinking shoulders, in the well-worn words

Lay on, Macduff!

Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

BONALLIE TOWERS, BOURNEMOUTH, DECEMBER 9, 1884.

MY DEAR PEOPLE, - The dreadful tragedy of the PALL MALL has come to a happy but ludicrous ending: I am to keep the money, the tale writ for them is to be buried certain fathoms deep, and they are to flash out before the world with our old friend of Kinnaird, 'The Body s.n.a.t.c.her.' When you come, please to bring -

(1) My MONTAIGNE, or, at least, the two last volumes.

(2) My MILTON in the three vols. in green.

(3) The SHAKESPEARE that Babington sent me for a wedding-gift.

(4) Hazlitt's TABLE TALK AND PLAIN SPEAKER.

If you care to get a box of books from Douglas and Foulis, let them be SOLID. CROKER PAPERS, CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON, HISTORY OF HENRY IV., Lang's FOLK LORE, would be my desires.

I had a charming letter from Henry James about my LONGMAN paper. I did not understand queries about the verses; the pictures to the Seagull I thought charming; those to the second have left me with a pain in my poor belly and a swimming in the head.

About money, I am afloat and no more, and I warn you, unless I have great luck, I shall have to fall upon you at the New Year like a hundredweight of bricks. Doctor, rent, chemist, are all threatening; sickness has bitterly delayed my work; and unless, as I say, I have the mischief's luck, I shall completely break down.

VERb.u.m SAPIENTIBUS. I do not live cheaply, and I question if I ever shall; but if only I had a halfpenny worth of health, I could now easily suffice. The last breakdown of my head is what makes this bankruptcy probable.

f.a.n.n.y is still out of sorts; Bogue better; self fair, but a stranger to the blessings of sleep. - Ever affectionate son,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY

BONALLIE TOWERS, BOURNEMOUTH, [DECEMBER 1884].

DEAR LAD, - I have made up my mind about the P. M. G., and send you a copy, which please keep or return. As for not giving a reduction, what are we? Are we artists or city men? Why do we sneer at stock-brokers? O nary; I will not take the 40 pounds. I took that as a fair price for my best work; I was not able to produce my best; and I will be d.a.m.ned if I steal with my eyes open.

SUFFICIT. This is my lookout. As for the paper being rich, certainly it is; but I am honourable. It is no more above me in money than the poor slaveys and cads from whom I look for honesty are below me. Am I Pepys, that because I can find the countenance of 'some of our ablest merchants,' that because - and - pour forth languid twaddle and get paid for it, I, too, should 'cheerfully continue to steal'? I am not Pepys. I do not live much to G.o.d and honour; but I will not wilfully turn my back on both. I am, like all the rest of us, falling ever lower from the bright ideas I began with, falling into greed, into idleness, into middle-aged and slippered fireside cowardice; but is it you, my bold blade, that I hear crying this sordid and rank twaddle in my ear? Preaching the dankest Grundyism and upholding the rank customs of our trade - you, who are so cruel hard upon the customs of the publishers? O man, look at the Beam in our own Eyes; and whatever else you do, do not plead Satan's cause, or plead it for all; either embrace the bad, or respect the good when you see a poor devil trying for it.

If this is the honesty of authors - to take what you can get and console yourself because publishers are rich - take my name from the rolls of that a.s.sociation. 'Tis a caucus of weaker thieves, jealous of the stronger. - Ever yours,

THE ROARING R. L. S.

You will see from the enclosed that I have stuck to what I think my dues pretty tightly in spite of this flourish: these are my words for a poor ten-pound note!

Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY