Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson Volume 2 Part 27

Letter: TO MARCEL SCHWOB

SYDNEY, JANUARY 19th, 1891.

MY DEAR SIR, - SAPRISTI, COMME VOUS Y ALLEZ! Richard III. and Dumas, with all my heart; but not Hamlet. Hamlet is great literature; Richard III. a big, black, gross, sprawling melodrama, writ with infinite spirit but with no refinement or philosophy by a man who had the world, himself, mankind, and his trade still to learn. I prefer the Vicomte de Bragelonne to Richard III.; it is better done of its kind: I simply do not mention the Vicomte in the same part of the building with Hamlet, or Lear, or Oth.e.l.lo, or any of those masterpieces that Shakespeare survived to give us.

Also, COMME VOUS Y ALLEZ in my commendation! I fear my SOLIDE EDUCATION CLa.s.sIQUE had best be described, like Shakespeare's, as 'little Latin and no Greek,' and I was educated, let me inform you, for an engineer. I shall tell my bookseller to send you a copy of MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS, where you will see something of my descent and education, as it was, and hear me at length on my dear Vicomte.

I give you permission gladly to take your choice out of my works, and translate what you shall prefer, too much honoured that so clever a young man should think it worth the pains. My own choice would lie between KIDNAPPED and the MASTER OF BALLANTRAE. Should you choose the latter, pray do not let Mrs. Henry thrust the sword up to the hilt in the frozen ground - one of my inconceivable blunders, an exaggeration to stagger Hugo. Say 'she sought to thrust it in the ground.' In both these works you should be prepared for Scotticisms used deliberately.

I fear my stepson will not have found time to get to Paris; he was overwhelmed with occupation, and is already on his voyage back. We live here in a beautiful land, amid a beautiful and interesting people. The life is still very hard: my wife and I live in a two- roomed cottage, about three miles and six hundred and fifty feet above the sea; we have had to make the road to it; our supplies are very imperfect; in the wild weather of this (the hurricane) season we have much discomfort: one night the wind blew in our house so outrageously that we must sit in the dark; and as the sound of the rain on the roof made speech inaudible, you may imagine we found the evening long. All these things, however, are pleasant to me.

You say L'ARTISTE INCONSCIENT set off to travel: you do not divide me right. 0.6 of me is artist; 0.4, adventurer. First, I suppose, come letters; then adventure; and since I have indulged the second part, I think the formula begins to change: 0.55 of an artist, 0.45 of the adventurer were nearer true. And if it had not been for my small strength, I might have been a different man in all things,

Whatever you do, do not neglect to send me what you publish on Villon: I look forward to that with lively interest. I have no photograph at hand, but I will send one when I can. It would be kind if you would do the like, for I do not see much chance of our meeting in the flesh: and a name, and a handwriting, and an address, and even a style? I know about as much of Tacitus, and more of Horace; it is not enough between contemporaries, such as we still are. I have just remembered another of my books, which I re- read the other day, and thought in places good - PRINCE OTTO. It is not as good as either of the others; but it has one recommendation - it has female parts, so it might perhaps please better in France.

I will ask Chatto to send you, then - PRINCE OTTO, MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS, UNDERWOODS, and BALLADS, none of which you seem to have seen. They will be too late for the New Year: let them be an Easter present.

You must translate me soon; you will soon have better to do than to transverse the work of others. - Yours very truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,

With the worst pen in the South Pacific.

Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER

SS. 'LUBECK,' AT SEA [ON THE RETURN VOYAGE FROM SYDNEY, MARCH 1891].

MY DEAR CHARLES, - Perhaps in my old days I do grow irascible; 'the old man virulent' has long been my pet name for myself. Well, the temper is at least all gone now; time is good at lowering these distemperatures; far better is a sharp sickness, and I am just (and scarce) afoot again after a smoking hot little malady at Sydney.

And the temper being gone, I still think the same. . . . We have not our parents for ever; we are never very good to them; when they go and we have lost our front-file man, we begin to feel all our neglects mighty sensibly. I propose a proposal. My mother is here on board with me; to-day for once I mean to make her as happy as I am able, and to do that which I know she likes. You, on the other hand, go and see your father, and do ditto, and give him a real good hour or two. We shall both be glad hereafter. - Yours ever,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO H. B. BAILDON

VAILIMA, UPOLU [UNDATED, BUT WRITTEN IN 1891].

MY DEAR BAILDON, - This is a real disappointment. It was so long since we had met, I was anxious to see where time had carried and stranded us. Last time we saw each other - it must have been all ten years ago, as we were new to the thirties - it was only for a moment, and now we're in the forties, and before very long we shall be in our graves. Sick and well, I have had a splendid life of it, grudge nothing, regret very little - and then only some little corners of misconduct for which I deserve hanging, and must infallibly be d.a.m.ned - and, take it all over, d.a.m.nation and all, would hardly change with any man of my time, unless perhaps it were Gordon or our friend Chalmers: a man I admire for his virtues, love for his faults, and envy for the really A1 life he has, with everything heart - my heart, I mean - could wish. It is curious to think you will read this in the grey metropolis; go the first grey, east-windy day into the Caledonian Station, if it looks at all as it did of yore: I met Satan there. And then go and stand by the cross, and remember the other one - him that went down - my brother, Robert Fergusson. It is a pity you had not made me out, and seen me as patriarch and planter. I shall look forward to some record of your time with Chalmers: you can't weary me of that fellow, he is as big as a house and far bigger than any church, where no man warms his hands. Do you know anything of Thomson? Of A-, B-, C-, D-, E-, F-, at all? As I write C.'s name mustard rises my nose; I have never forgiven that weak, amiable boy a little trick he played me when I could ill afford it: I mean that whenever I think of it, some of the old wrath kindles, not that I would hurt the poor soul, if I got the world with it. And Old X-?

Is he still afloat? Harmless bark! I gather you ain't married yet, since your sister, to whom I ask to be remembered, goes with you. Did you see a silly tale, JOHN NICHOLSON'S PREDICAMENT, or some such name, in which I made free with your home at Murrayfield?

There is precious little sense in it, but it might amuse.

Ca.s.sell's published it in a thing called YULE-TIDE years ago, and n.o.body that ever I heard of read or has ever seen YULE-TIDE. It is addressed to a cla.s.s we never met - readers of Ca.s.sell's series and that cla.s.s of conscientious chaff, and my tale was dull, though I don't recall that it was conscientious. Only, there's the house at Murrayfield and a dead body in it. Glad the BALLADS amused you.

They failed to entertain a coy public, at which I wondered, not that I set much account by my verses, which are the verses of Prosator; but I do know how to tell a yarn, and two of the yarns are great. RAHERO is for its length a perfect folk-tale: savage and yet fine, full of tailforemost morality, ancient as the granite rocks; if the historian, not to say the politician, could get that yarn into his head, he would have learned some of his A B C. But the average man at home cannot understand antiquity; he is sunk over the ears in Roman civilisation; and a tale like that of RAHERO falls on his ears inarticulate. The SPECTATOR said there was no psychology in it; that interested me much: my grandmother (as I used to call that able paper, and an able paper it is, and a fair one) cannot so much as observe the existence of savage psychology when it is put before it. I am at bottom a psychologist and ashamed of it; the tale seized me one-third because of its picturesque features, two-thirds because of its astonishing psychology, and the SPECTATOR says there's none. I am going on with a lot of island work, exulting in the knowledge of a new world, 'a new created world' and new men; and I am sure my income will DECLINE and FALL off; for the effort of comprehension is death to the intelligent public, and sickness to the dull.

I do not know why I pester you with all this trash, above all as you deserve nothing. I give you my warm TALOFA ('my love to you,'

Samoan salutation). Write me again when the spirit moves you. And some day, if I still live, make out the trip again and let us hob- a-n.o.b with our grey pows on my verandah. - Yours sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO W. CRAIBE ANGUS

VAILIMA, SAMOA, APRIL 1891.

DEAR MR. ANGUS, - Surely I remember you! It was W. C. Murray who made us acquainted, and we had a pleasant crack. I see your poet is not yet dead. I remember even our talk - or you would not think of trusting that invaluable JOLLY BEGGARS to the treacherous posts, and the perils of the sea, and the carelessness of authors. I love the idea, but I could not bear the risk. However -

'Hale be your heart, hale be your fiddle - '

it was kindly thought upon.

My interest in Burns is, as you suppose, perennial. I would I could be present at the exhibition, with the purpose of which I heartily sympathise; but the NANCY has not waited in vain for me, I have followed my chest, the anchor is weighed long ago, I have said my last farewell to the hills and the heather and the lynns: like Leyden, I have gone into far lands to die, not stayed like Burns to mingle in the end with Scottish soil. I shall not even return like Scott for the last scene. Burns Exhibitions are all over. 'Tis a far cry to Lochow from tropical Vailima.

'But still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland, And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.'

When your hand is in, will you remember our poor Edinburgh Robin?

Burns alone has been just to his promise; follow Burns, he knew best, he knew whence he drew fire - from the poor, white-faced, drunken, vicious boy that raved himself to death in the Edinburgh madhouse. Surely there is more to be gleaned about Fergusson, and surely it is high time the task was set about. I way tell you (because your poet is not dead) something of how I feel: we are three Robins who have touched the Scots lyre this last century.

Well, the one is the world's, he did it, he came off, he is for ever; but I and the other - ah! what bonds we have - born in the same city; both sickly, both pestered, one nearly to madness, one to the madhouse, with a d.a.m.natory creed; both seeing the stars and the dawn, and wearing shoe-leather on the same ancient stones, under the same pends, down the same closes, where our common ancestors clashed in their armour, rusty or bright. And the old Robin, who was before Burns and the flood, died in his acute, painful youth, and left the models of the great things that were to come; and the new, who came after, outlived his greensickness, and has faintly tried to parody the finished work. If you will collect the strays of Robin Fergusson, fish for material, collect any last re-echoing of gossip, command me to do what you prefer - to write the preface - to write the whole if you prefer: anything, so that another monument (after Burns's) be set up to my unhappy predecessor on the causey of Auld Reekie. You will never know, nor will any man, how deep this feeling is: I believe Fergusson lives in me. I do, but tell it not in Gath; every man has these fanciful superst.i.tions, coming, going, but yet enduring; only most men are so wise (or the poet in them so dead) that they keep their follies for themselves. - I am, yours very truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE

VAILIMA, APRIL 1891.

MY DEAR GOSSE, - I have to thank you and Mrs. Gosse for many mementoes, chiefly for your LIFE of your father. There is a very delicate task, very delicately done. I noted one or two carelessnesses, which I meant to point out to you for another edition; but I find I lack the time, and you will remark them for yourself against a new edition. They were two, or perhaps three, flabbinesses of style which (in your work) amazed me. Am I right in thinking you were a shade bored over the last chapters? or was it my own fault that made me think them susceptible of a more athletic compression? (The flabbinesses were not there, I think, but in the more admirable part, where they showed the bigger.) Take it all together, the book struck me as if you had been hurried at the last, but particularly hurried over the proofs, and could still spend a very profitable fortnight in earnest revision and (towards the end) heroic compression. The book, in design, subject, and general execution, is well worth the extra trouble.

And even if I were wrong in thinking it specially wanted, it will not be lost; for do we not know, in Flaubert's dread confession, that 'prose is never done'? What a medium to work in, for a man tired, perplexed among different aims and subjects, and spurred by the immediate need of 'siller'! However, it's mine for what it's worth; and it's one of yours, the devil take it; and you know, as well as Flaubert, and as well as me, that it is NEVER DONE; in other words, it is a torment of the pit, usually neglected by the bards who (lucky beggars!) approached the Styx in measure. I speak bitterly at the moment, having just detected in myself the last fatal symptom, three blank verses in succession - and I believe, G.o.d help me, a hemistich at the tail of them; hence I have deposed the labourer, come out of h.e.l.l by my private trap, and now write to you from my little place in purgatory. But I prefer h.e.l.l: would I could always dig in those red coals - or else be at sea in a schooner, bound for isles unvisited: to be on sh.o.r.e and not to work is emptiness - suicidal vacancy.

I was the more interested in your LIFE of your father, because I meditate one of mine, or rather of my family. I have no such materials as you, and (our objections already made) your attack fills me with despair; it is direct and elegant, and your style is always admirable to me - lenity, lucidity, usually a high strain of breeding, an elegance that has a pleasant air of the accidental.

But beware of purple pa.s.sages. I wonder if you think as well of your purple pa.s.sages as I do of mine? I wonder if you think as ill of mine as I do of yours? I wonder; I can tell you at least what is wrong with yours - they are treated in the spirit of verse. The spirit - I don't mean the measure, I don't mean you fall into b.a.s.t.a.r.d cadences; what I mean is that they seem vacant and smoothed out, ironed, if you like. And in a style which (like yours) aims more and more successfully at the academic, one purple word is already much; three - a whole phrase - is inadmissible. Wed yourself to a clean austerity: that is your force. Wear a linen ephod, splendidly candid. Arrange its folds, but do not fasten it with any brooch. I swear to you, in your talking robes, there should be no patch of adornment; and where the subject forces, let it force you no further than it must; and be ready with a twinkle of your pleasantry. Yours is a fine tool, and I see so well how to hold it; I wonder if you see how to hold mine? But then I am to the neck in prose, and just now in the 'dark INTERSTYLAR cave,' all methods and effects wooing me, myself in the midst impotent to follow any. I look for dawn presently, and a full flowing river of expression, running whither it wills. But these useless seasons, above all, when a man MUST continue to spoil paper, are infinitely weary.