Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson Volume 2 Part 33

Do you mind the SIGNAL of Waterloo Place? - Hey, how the blood stands to the heart at such a memory! - Hae ye the notes o't?

Gie's them. - Gude's sake, man, gie's the notes o't; I mind ye made a tune o't an' played it on your pinanny; gie's the notes. Dear Lord, that past.

Glad to hear Henley's prospects are fair: his new volume is the work of a real poet. He is one of those who can make a noise of his own with words, and in whom experience strikes an individual note. There is perhaps no more genuine poet living, bar the Big Guns. In case I cannot overtake an acknowledgment to himself by this mail, please let him hear of my pleasure and admiration. How poorly - compares! He is all smart journalism and cleverness: it is all bright and shallow and limpid, like a business paper - a good one, S'ENTEND; but there is no blot of heart's blood and the Old Night: there are no harmonics, there is scarce harmony to his music; and in Henley - all of these; a touch, a sense within sense, a sound outside the sound, the shadow of the inscrutable, eloquent beyond all definition. The First London Voluntary knocked me wholly. - Ever yours affectionately, my dear Charles,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Kind memories to your father and all friends.

Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY

VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOA, AUGUST 1ST, 1892.

MY DEAR HENLEY, - It is impossible to let your new volume pa.s.s in silence. I have not received the same thrill of poetry since G.

M.'s JOY OF EARTH volume and LOVE IN A VALLEY; and I do not know that even that was so intimate and deep. Again and again, I take the book down, and read, and my blood is fired as it used to be in youth. ANDANTE CON MOTO in the VOLUNTARIES, and the thing about the trees at night (No. XXIV. I think) are up to date my favourites. I did not guess you were so great a magician; these are new tunes, this is an undertone of the true Apollo; these are not verse, they are poetry - inventions, creations, in language. I thank you for the joy you have given me, and remain your old friend and present huge admirer,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

The hand is really the hand of Esau, but under a course of threatened scrivener's cramp.

For the next edition of the Book of Verses, pray accept an emendation. Last three lines of Echoes No. XLIV. read -

'But life in act? How should the grave Be victor over these, Mother, a mother of men?'

The two vocatives scatter the effect of this inimitable close. If you insist on the longer line, equip 'grave' with an epithet.

R. L. S.

Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME

VAILIMA, UPOLU, AUGUST 1st, '92.

MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - Herewith MY GRANDFATHER. I have had rather a bad time suppressing the old gentleman, who was really in a very garrulous stage; as for getting him IN ORDER, I could do but little towards that; however, there are one or two points of interest which may justify us in printing. The swinging of his stick and not knowing the sailor of Coruiskin, in particular, and the account of how he wrote the lives in the Bell Book particularly please me.

I hope my own little introduction is not egoistic; or rather I do not care if it is. It was that old gentleman's blood that brought me to Samoa.

By the by, vols. vii., viii., and ix. of Adams's HISTORY have never come to hand; no more have the dictionaries.

Please send me STONEHENGE ON HORSE, STORIES AND INTERLUDES by Barry Pain, and EDINBURGH SKETCHES AND MEMOIRS by David Ma.s.son. THE WRECKER has turned up. So far as I have seen, it is very satisfactory, but on pp. 548, 549, there has been a devil of a miscarriage. The two Latin quotations instead of following each other being separated (doubtless for printing considerations) by a line of prose. My compliments to the printers; there is doubtless such a thing as good printing, but there is such a thing as good sense.

The sequel to KIDNAPPED, DAVID BALFOUR by name, is about three- quarters done and gone to press for serial publication. By what I can find out it ought to be through hand with that and ready for volume form early next spring. - Yours very sincerely,

R. L. S.

Letter: TO ANDREW LANG

[VAILIMA, AUGUST 1892.]

MY DEAR LANG, - I knew you would prove a trusty purveyor. The books you have sent are admirable. I got the name of my hero out of Brown - Blair of Balmyle - Francie Blair. But whether to call the story BLAIR OF BALMYLE, or whether to call it THE YOUNG CHEVALIER, I have not yet decided. The admirable Cameronian tract - perhaps you will think this a cheat - is to be boned into DAVID BALFOUR, where it will fit better, and really furnishes me with a desired foothold over a boggy place.

LATER; no, it won't go in, and I fear I must give up 'the idolatrous occupant upon the throne,' a phrase that overjoyed me beyond expression. I am in a deuce of a flutter with politics, which I hate, and in which I certainly do not shine; but a fellow cannot stand aside and look on at such an exhibition as our government. 'Taint decent; no gent can hold a candle to it. But it's a grind to be interrupted by midnight messengers and pa.s.s your days writing proclamations (which are never proclaimed) and pet.i.tions (which ain't pet.i.ted) and letters to the TIMES, which it makes my jaws yawn to re-read, and all your time have your heart with David Balfour: he has just left Glasgow this morning for Edinburgh, James More has escaped from the castle; it is far more real to me than the Behring Sea or the Baring brothers either - he got the news of James More's escape from the Lord Advocate, and started off straight to comfort Catriona. You don't know her; she's James More's daughter, and a respectable young wumman; the Miss Grants think so - the Lord Advocate's daughters - so there can't be anything really wrong. Pretty soon we all go to Holland, and be hanged; thence to Dunkirk, and be d.a.m.ned; and the tale concludes in Paris, and be Poll-parrotted. This is the last authentic news. You are not a real hard-working novelist; not a practical novelist; so you don't know the temptation to let your characters maunder. Dumas did it, and lived. But it is not war; it ain't sportsmanlike, and I have to be stopping their chatter all the time. Brown's appendix is great reading.

My only grief is that I can't Use the idolatrous occupant.

Yours ever,

R. L. S.

Blessing and praising you for a useful (though idolatrous) occupant of Kensington.

Letter: TO THE COUNTESS OF JERSEY

AUGUST 14, 1745.

TO MISS AMELIA BALFOUR - MY DEAR COUSIN, - We are going an expedition to leeward on Tuesday morning. If a lady were perhaps to be encountered on horseback - say, towards the Gasi-gasi river - about six A.M., I think we should have an episode somewhat after the style of the '45. What a misfortune, my dear cousin, that you should have arrived while your cousin Graham was occupying my only guest-chamber - for Osterley Park is not so large in Samoa as it was at home - but happily our friend Haggard has found a corner for you!

The King over the Water - the Gasi-gasi water - will be pleased to see the clan of Balfour mustering so thick around his standard.

I have (one serious word) been so lucky as to get a really secret interpreter, so all is for the best in our little adventure into the WAVERLEY NOVELS. - I am your affectionate cousin,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Observe the stealth with which I have blotted my signature, but we must be political A OUTRANCE.

Letter: TO THE COUNTESS OF JERSEY

MY DEAR COUSIN, - I send for your information a copy of my last letter to the gentleman in question. 'Tis thought more wise, in consideration of the difficulty and peril of the enterprise, that we should leave the town in the afternoon, and by several detachments. If you would start for a ride with the Master of Haggard and Captain Lockhart of Lee, say at three o'clock of the afternoon, you would make some rencounters by the wayside which might be agreeable to your political opinions. All present will be staunch.