Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson Volume 2 Part 40

sheets 3, 4, and 5, a 7s. 6d. touch. I believe, if you can get the

CALDWELL PAPERS,

they had better come also; and if there be any reasonable work - but no, I must call a halt. . . .

I fear the song looks doubtful, but I'll consider of it, and I can promise you some reminiscences which it will amuse me to write, whether or not it will amuse the public to read of them. But it's an unco business to SUPPLY deid-heid coapy.

Letter: TO J. M. BARRIE

VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 7TH, 1893.

MY DEAR BARRIE, - I have received duly the MAGNUM OPUS, and it really is a MAGNUM OPUS. It is a beautiful specimen of Clark's printing, paper sufficient, and the ill.u.s.trations all my fancy painted. But the particular flower of the flock to whom I have hopelessly lost my heart is Tibby Birse. I must have known Tibby Birse when she was a servant's mantua-maker in Edinburgh and answered to the name of Miss BRODDIE. She used to come and sew with my nurse, sitting with her legs crossed in a masculine manner; and swinging her foot emphatically, she used to pour forth a perfectly unbroken stream of gossip. I didn't hear it, I was immersed in far more important business with a box of bricks, but the recollection of that thin, perpetual, shrill sound of a voice has echoed in my ears sinsyne. I am bound to say she was younger than Tibbie, but there is no mistaking that and the indescribable and eminently Scottish expression.

I have been very much prevented of late, having carried out thoroughly to my own satisfaction two considerable illnesses, had a birthday, and visited Honolulu, where politics are (if possible) a shade more exasperating than they are with us. I am told that it was just when I was on the point of leaving that I received your superlative epistle about the cricket eleven. In that case it is impossible I should have answered it, which is inconsistent with my own recollection of the fact. What I remember is, that I sat down under your immediate inspiration and wrote an answer in every way worthy. If I didn't, as it seems proved that I couldn't, it will never be done now. However, I did the next best thing, I equipped my cousin Graham Balfour with a letter of introduction, and from him, if you know how - for he is rather of the Scottish character - you may elicit all the information you can possibly wish to have as to us and ours. Do not be bluffed off by the somewhat stern and monumental first impression that he may make upon you. He is one of the best fellows in the world, and the same sort of fool that we are, only better-looking, with all the faults of Vailimans and some of his own - I say nothing about virtues.

I have lately been returning to my wallowing in the mire. When I was a child, and indeed until I was nearly a man, I consistently read Covenanting books. Now that I am a grey-beard - or would be, if I could raise the beard - I have returned, and for weeks back have read little else but Wodrow, Walker, Shields, etc. Of course this is with an idea of a novel, but in the course of it I made a very curious discovery. I have been accustomed to hear refined and intelligent critics - those who know so much better what we are than we do ourselves, - trace down my literary descent from all sorts of people, including Addison, of whom I could never read a word. Well, laigh i' your lug, sir - the clue was found. My style is from the Covenanting writers. Take a particular case - the fondness for rhymes. I don't know of any English prose-writer who rhymes except by accident, and then a stone had better be tied around his neck and himself cast into the sea. But my Covenanting buckies rhyme all the time - a beautiful example of the unconscious rhyme above referred to.

Do you know, and have you really tasted, these delightful works?

If not, it should be remedied; there is enough of the Auld Licht in you to be ravished.

I suppose you know that success has so far attended my banners - my political banners I mean, and not my literary. In conjunction with the Three Great Powers I have succeeded in getting rid of My President and My Chief-Justice. They've gone home, the one to Germany, the other to Souwegia. I hear little echoes of footfalls of their departing footsteps through the medium of the newspapers.

Whereupon I make you my salute with the firm remark that it is time to be done with trifling and give us a great book, and my ladies fall into line with me to pay you a most respectful courtesy, and we all join in the cry, 'Come to Vailima!'

My dear sir, your soul's health is in it - you will never do the great book, you will never cease to work in L., etc., till you come to Vailima.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO R. LE GALLIENNE

VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 28TH, 1893.

DEAR MR. LE GALLIENNE, - I have received some time ago, through our friend Miss Taylor, a book of yours. But that was by no means my first introduction to your name. The same book had stood already on my shelves; I had read articles of yours in the ACADEMY; and by a piece of constructive criticism (which I trust was sound) had arrived at the conclusion that you were 'Log-roller.' Since then I have seen your beautiful verses to your wife. You are to conceive me, then, as only too ready to make the acquaintance of a man who loved good literature and could make it. I had to thank you, besides, for a triumphant exposure of a paradox of my own: the literary-prost.i.tute disappeared from view at a phrase of yours - 'The essence is not in the pleasure but the sale.' True: you are right, I was wrong; the author is not the wh.o.r.e, but the libertine; and yet I shall let the pa.s.sage stand. It is an error, but it ill.u.s.trated the truth for which I was contending, that literature - painting - all art, are no other than pleasures, which we turn into trades.

And more than all this, I had, and I have to thank you for the intimate loyalty you have shown to myself; for the eager welcome you give to what is good - for the courtly tenderness with which you touch on my defects. I begin to grow old; I have given my top note, I fancy; - and I have written too many books. The world begins to be weary of the old booth; and if not weary, familiar with the familiarity that breeds contempt. I do not know that I am sensitive to criticism, if it be hostile; I am sensitive indeed, when it is friendly; and when I read such criticism as yours, I am emboldened to go on and praise G.o.d.

You are still young, and you may live to do much. The little, artificial popularity of style in England tends, I think, to die out; the British pig returns to his true love, the love of the styleless, of the shapeless, of the slapdash and the disorderly.

There is trouble coming, I think; and you may have to hold the fort for us in evil days.

Lastly, let me apologise for the crucifixion that I am inflicting on you (BIEN A CONTRE-COEUR) by my bad writing. I was once the best of writers; landladies, puzzled as to my 'trade,' used to have their honest bosoms set at rest by a sight of a page of ma.n.u.script.

- 'Ah,' they would say, 'no wonder they pay you for that'; - and when I sent it in to the printers, it was given to the boys! I was about thirty-nine, I think, when I had a turn of scrivener's palsy; my hand got worse; and for the first time, I received clean proofs.

But it has gone beyond that now, I know I am like my old friend James Payn, a terror to correspondents; and you would not believe the care with which this has been written. - Believe me to be, very sincerely yours,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO MRS. A. BAKER

DECEMBER 1893.

DEAR MADAM, - There is no trouble, and I wish I could help instead.

As it is, I fear I am only going to put you to trouble and vexation. This Braille writing is a kind of consecration, and I would like if I could to have your copy perfect. The two volumes are to be published as Vols. I. and II. of THE ADVENTURES OF DAVID BALFOUR. 1st, KIDNAPPED; 2nd, CATRIONA. I am just sending home a corrected KIDNAPPED for this purpose to Messrs. Ca.s.sell, and in order that I may if possible be in time, I send it to you first of all. Please, as soon as you have noted the changes, forward the same to Ca.s.sell and Co., La Belle Sauvage Yard, Ludgate Hill.

I am writing to them by this mail to send you CATRIONA.

You say, dear madam, you are good enough to say, it is 'a keen pleasure' to you to bring my book within the reach of the blind.

Conceive then what it is to me! and believe me, sincerely yours,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

I was a barren tree before, I blew a quenched coal, I could not, on their midnight sh.o.r.e, The lonely blind console.

A moment, lend your hand, I bring My sheaf for you to bind, And you can teach my words to sing In the darkness of the blind.

R. L. S.

Letter: TO HENRY JAMES

APIA, DECEMBER 1893.

MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - The mail has come upon me like an armed man three days earlier than was expected; and the Lord help me! It is impossible I should answer anybody the way they should be. Your jubilation over CATRIONA did me good, and still more the subtlety and truth of your remark on the starving of the visual sense in that book. 'Tis true, and unless I make the greater effort - and am, as a step to that, convinced of its necessity - it will be more true I fear in the future. I HEAR people talking, and I FEEL them acting, and that seems to me to be fiction. My two aims may be described as -

1ST. War to the adjective.

2ND. Death to the optic nerve.

Admitted we live in an age of the optic nerve in literature. For how many centuries did literature get along without a sign of it?

However, I'll consider your letter.

How exquisite is your character of the critic in ESSAYS IN LONDON!

I doubt if you have done any single thing so satisfying as a piece of style and of insight. - Yours ever,