Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson

Part 5 out of 7



the knotting up of these loose cards. 'Tis possible I may not get
that finished in time, in which case you'll receive only Chapters
XXII. to XXV. by this mail, which is all that can be required for
illustration.

I wish you would send me MEMOIRS OF BARON MARBOT (French);
INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE, Strong,
Logeman & Wheeler; PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY, William James; Morris
& Magnusson's SAGA LIBRARY, any volumes that are out; George
Meredith's ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS; LA BAS, by Huysmans (French);
O'Connor Morris's GREAT COMMANDERS OF MODERN TIMES; LIFE'S
HANDICAP, by Kipling; of Taine's ORIGINES DE LA FRANCE
CONTEMPORAINE, I have only as far as LA REVOLUTION, vol. iii.; if
another volume is out, please add that. There is for a book-box.

I hope you will like the end; I think it is rather strong meat. I
have got into such a deliberate, dilatory, expansive turn, that the
effort to compress this last yarn was unwelcome; but the longest
yarn has to come to an end sometime. Please look it over for
carelessnesses, and tell me if it had any effect upon your jaded
editorial mind. I'll see if ever I have time to add more.

I add to my book-box list Adams' HISTORICAL ESSAYS; the Plays of A.
W. Pinero - all that have appeared, and send me the rest in course
as they do appear; NOUGHTS AND CROSSES by Q.; Robertson's SCOTLAND
UNDER HER EARLY KINGS.

SUNDAY.

The deed is done, didst thou not hear a noise? 'The end' has been
written to this endless yarn, and I am once more a free man. What
will he do with it?



Letter: TO W. CRAIBE ANGUS



VAILIMA, SAMOA, NOVEMBER 1891.

MY DEAR MR. ANGUS, - Herewith the invaluable sheets. They came
months after your letter, and I trembled; but here they are, and I
have scrawled my vile name on them, and 'thocht shame' as I did it.
I am expecting the sheets of your catalogue, so that I may attack
the preface. Please give me all the time you can. The sooner the
better; you might even send me early proofs as they are sent out,
to give me more incubation. I used to write as slow as judgment;
now I write rather fast; but I am still 'a slow study,' and sit a
long while silent on my eggs. Unconscious thought, there is the
only method: macerate your subject, let it boil slow, then take
the lid off and look in - and there your stuff is, good or bad.
But the journalist's method is the way to manufacture lies; it is
will-worship - if you know the luminous quaker phrase; and the will
is only to be brought in the field for study, and again for
revision. The essential part of work is not an act, it is a state.

I do not know why I write you this trash.

Many thanks for your handsome dedication. I have not yet had time
to do more than glance at Mrs. Begg; it looks interesting. - Yours
very truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO MISS ANNIE H. IDE



VAILIMA, SAMOA [NOVEMBER 1891].

MY DEAR LOUISA, - Your picture of the church, the photograph of
yourself and your sister, and your very witty and pleasing letter,
came all in a bundle, and made me feel I had my money's worth for
that birthday. I am now, I must be, one of your nearest relatives;
exactly what we are to each other, I do not know, I doubt if the
case has ever happened before - your papa ought to know, and I
don't believe he does; but I think I ought to call you in the
meanwhile, and until we get the advice of counsel learned in the
law, my name-daughter. Well, I was extremely pleased to see by the
church that my name-daughter could draw; by the letter, that she
was no fool; and by the photograph, that she was a pretty girl,
which hurts nothing. See how virtues are rewarded! My first idea
of adopting you was entirely charitable; and here I find that I am
quite proud of it, and of you, and that I chose just the kind of
name-daughter I wanted. For I can draw too, or rather I mean to
say I could before I forgot how; and I am very far from being a
fool myself, however much I may look it; and I am as beautiful as
the day, or at least I once hoped that perhaps I might be going to
be. And so I might. So that you see we are well met, and peers on
these important points. I am VERY glad also that you are older
than your sister. So should I have been, if I had had one. So
that the number of points and virtues which you have inherited from
your name-father is already quite surprising.

I wish you would tell your father - not that I like to encourage my
rival - that we have had a wonderful time here of late, and that
they are having a cold day on Mulinuu, and the consuls are writing
reports, and I am writing to the TIMES, and if we don't get rid of
our friends this time I shall begin to despair of everything but my
name-daughter.

You are quite wrong as to the effect of the birthday on your age.
From the moment the deed was registered (as it was in the public
press with every solemnity), the 13th of November became your own
AND ONLY birthday, and you ceased to have been born on Christmas
Day. Ask your father: I am sure he will tell you this is sound
law. You are thus become a month and twelve days younger than you
were, but will go on growing older for the future in the regular
and human manner from one 13th November to the next. The effect on
me is more doubtful; I may, as you suggest, live for ever; I might,
on the other hand, come to pieces like the one-horse shay at a
moment's notice; doubtless the step was risky, but I do not the
least regret that which enables me to sign myself your revered and
delighted name-father,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO FRED ORR



VAILIMA, UPOLU, SAMOA, NOVEMBER 28TH, 1891.

DEAR SIR, - Your obliging communication is to hand. I am glad to
find that you have read some of my books, and to see that you spell
my name right. This is a point (for some reason) of great
difficulty; and I believe that a gentleman who can spell Stevenson
with a v at sixteen, should have a show for the Presidency before
fifty. By that time


I, nearer to the wayside inn,


predict that you will have outgrown your taste for autographs, but
perhaps your son may have inherited the collection, and on the
morning of the great day will recall my prophecy to your mind. And
in the papers of 1921 (say) this letter may arouse a smile.

Whatever you do, read something else besides novels and newspapers;
the first are good enough when they are good; the second, at their
best, are worth nothing. Read great books of literature and
history; try to understand the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages; be
sure you do not understand when you dislike them; condemnation is
non-comprehension. And if you know something of these two periods,
you will know a little more about to-day, and may be a good
President.

I send you my best wishes, and am yours,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,

AUTHOR OF A VAST QUANTITY OF LITTLE BOOKS.



Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME



[VAILIMA, DECEMBER 1891.]

MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - The end of THE WRECKER having but just come
in, you will, I dare say, be appalled to receive three (possibly
four) chapters of a new book of the least attractive sort: a
history of nowhere in a corner, for no time to mention, running to
a volume! Well, it may very likely be an illusion; it is very
likely no one could possibly wish to read it, but I wish to publish
it. If you don't cotton to the idea, kindly set it up at my
expense, and let me know your terms for publishing. The great
affair to me is to have per return (if it might be) four or five -
better say half a dozen - sets of the roughest proofs that can be
drawn. There are a good many men here whom I want to read the
blessed thing, and not one would have the energy to read MS. At
the same time, if you care to glance at it, and have the time, I
should be very glad of your opinion as to whether I have made any
step at all towards possibly inducing folk at home to read matter
so extraneous and outlandish. I become heavy and owlish; years sit
upon me; it begins to seem to me to be a man's business to leave
off his damnable faces and say his say. Else I could have made it
pungent and light and lively. In considering, kindly forget that I
am R. L. S.; think of the four chapters as a book you are reading,
by an inhabitant of our 'lovely but fatil' islands; and see if it
could possibly amuse the hebetated public. I have to publish
anyway, you understand; I have a purpose beyond; I am concerned for
some of the parties to this quarrel. What I want to hear is from
curiosity; what I want you to judge of is what we are to do with
the book in a business sense. To me it is not business at all; I
had meant originally to lay all the profits to the credit of Samoa;
when it comes to the pinch of writing, I judge this unfair - I give
too much - and I mean to keep (if there be any profit at all) one-
half for the artisan; the rest I shall hold over to give to the
Samoans FOR THAT WHICH I CHOOSE AND AGAINST WORK DONE. I think I
have never heard of greater insolence than to attempt such a
subject; yet the tale is so strange and mixed, and the people so
oddly charactered - above all, the whites - and the high note of
the hurricane and the warships is so well prepared to take popular
interest, and the latter part is so directly in the day's movement,
that I am not without hope but some may read it; and if they don't,
a murrain on them! Here is, for the first time, a tale of Greeks -
Homeric Greeks - mingled with moderns, and all true; Odysseus
alongside of Rajah Brooke, PROPORTION GARDEE; and all true. Here
is for the first time since the Greeks (that I remember) the
history of a handful of men, where all know each other in the eyes,
and live close in a few acres, narrated at length, and with the
seriousness of history. Talk of the modern novel; here is a modern
history. And if I had the misfortune to found a school, the
legitimate historian might lie down and die, for he could never
overtake his material. Here is a little tale that has not 'caret'-
ed its 'vates'; 'sacer' is another point.

R. L. S.



Letter: TO HENRY JAMES



DECEMBER 7TH, 1891.

MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - Thanks for yours; your former letter was
lost; so it appears was my long and masterly treatise on the TRAGIC
MUSE. I remember sending it very well, and there went by the same
mail a long and masterly tractate to Gosse about his daddy's life,
for which I have been long expecting an acknowledgment, and which
is plainly gone to the bottom with the other. If you see Gosse,
please mention it. These gems of criticism are now lost
literature, like the tomes of Alexandria. I could not do 'em
again. And I must ask you to be content with a dull head, a weary
hand, and short commons, for to-day, as I am physically tired with
hard work of every kind, the labours of the planter and the author
both piled upon me mountain deep. I am delighted beyond expression
by Bourget's book: he has phrases which affect me almost like
Montaigne; I had read ere this a masterly essay of his on Pascal;
this book does it; I write for all his essays by this mail, and
shall try to meet him when I come to Europe. The proposal is to
pass a summer in France, I think in Royat, where the faithful could
come and visit me; they are now not many. I expect Henry James to
come and break a crust or two with us. I believe it will be only
my wife and myself; and she will go over to England, but not I, or
possibly incog. to Southampton, and then to Boscombe to see poor
Lady Shelley. I am writing - trying to write in a Babel fit for
the bottomless pit; my wife, her daughter, her grandson and my
mother, all shrieking at each other round the house - not in war,
thank God! but the din is ultra martial, and the note of Lloyd
joins in occasionally, and the cause of this to-do is simply cacao,
whereof chocolate comes. You may drink of our chocolate perhaps in
five or six years from now, and not know it. It makes a fine
bustle, and gives us some hard work, out of which I have slunk for
to-day.

I have a story coming out: God knows when or how; it answers to
the name of the BEACH OF FALESA, and I think well of it. I was
delighted with the TRAGIC MUSE; I thought the Muse herself one of
your best works; I was delighted also to hear of the success of
your piece, as you know I am a dam failure, and might have dined
with the dinner club that Daudet and these parties frequented.

NEXT DAY.

I have just been breakfasting at Baiae and Brindisi, and the charm
of Bourget hag-rides me. I wonder if this exquisite fellow, all
made of fiddle-strings and scent and intelligence, could bear any
of my bald prose. If you think he could, ask Colvin to send him a
copy of these last essays of mine when they appear; and tell
Bourget they go to him from a South Sea Island as literal homage.
I have read no new book for years that gave me the same literary
thrill as his SENSATIONS D'ITALIE. If (as I imagine) my cut-and-
dry literature would be death to him, and worse than death -
journalism - be silent on the point. For I have a great curiosity
to know him, and if he doesn't know my work, I shall have the
better chance of making his acquaintance. I read THE PUPIL the
other day with great joy; your little boy is admirable; why is
there no little boy like that unless he hails from the Great
Republic?

Here I broke off, and wrote Bourget a dedication; no use resisting;
it's a love affair. O, he's exquisite, I bless you for the gift of
him. I have really enjoyed this book as I - almost as I - used to
enjoy books when I was going twenty - twenty-three; and these are
the years for reading!

R. L. S.



Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME



[VAILIMA] JAN 2ND, '92.

MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - Overjoyed you were pleased with WRECKER, and
shall consider your protests. There is perhaps more art than you
think for in the peccant chapter, where I have succeeded in packing
into one a dedication, an explanation, and a termination. Surely
you had not recognised the phrase about boodle? It was a quotation
from Jim Pinkerton, and seemed to me agreeably skittish. However,
all shall be prayerfully considered.

To come to a more painful subject. Herewith go three more chapters
of the wretched HISTORY; as you see, I approach the climax. I
expect the book to be some 70,000 words, of which you have now 45.
Can I finish it for next mail? I am going to try! 'Tis a long
piece of journalism, and full of difficulties here and there, of
this kind and that, and will make me a power of friends to be sure.
There is one Becker who will probably put up a window to me in the
church where he was baptized; and I expect a testimonial from
Captain Hand.

Sorry to let the mail go without the Scott; this has been a bad
month with me, and I have been below myself. I shall find a way to
have it come by next, or know the reason why. The mail after,
anyway.

A bit of a sketch map appears to me necessary for my HISTORY;
perhaps two. If I do not have any, 'tis impossible any one should
follow; and I, even when not at all interested, demand that I shall
be able to follow; even a tourist book without a map is a cross to
me; and there must be others of my way of thinking. I inclose the
very artless one that I think needful. Vailima, in case you are
curious, is about as far again behind Tanugamanono as that is from
the sea.

M'Clure is publishing a short story of mine, some 50,000 words, I
think, THE BEACH OF FALESA; when he's done with it, I want you and
Cassell to bring it out in a little volume; I shall send you a
dedication for it; I believe it good; indeed, to be honest, very
good. Good gear that pleases the merchant.

The other map that I half threaten is a chart for the hurricane.
Get me Kimberley's report of the hurricane: not to be found here.
It is of most importance; I MUST have it with my proofs of that
part, if I cannot have it earlier, which now seems impossible. -
Yours in hot haste,

R. L. STEVENSON.



Letter: TO J. M. BARRIE



VAILIMA, SAMOA, FEBRUARY 1892.

DEAR MR. BARRIE, - This is at least the third letter I have written
you, but my correspondence has a bad habit of not getting so far as
the post. That which I possess of manhood turns pale before the
business of the address and envelope. But I hope to be more
fortunate with this: for, besides the usual and often recurrent
desire to thank you for your work-you are one of four that have
come to the front since I was watching and had a corner of my own
to watch, and there is no reason, unless it be in these mysterious
tides that ebb and flow, and make and mar and murder the works of
poor scribblers, why you should not do work of the best order. The
tides have borne away my sentence, of which I was weary at any
rate, and between authors I may allow myself so much freedom as to
leave it pending. We are both Scots besides, and I suspect both
rather Scotty Scots; my own Scotchness tends to intermittency, but
is at times erisypelitous - if that be rightly spelt. Lastly, I
have gathered we had both made our stages in the metropolis of the
winds: our Virgil's 'grey metropolis,' and I count that a lasting
bond. No place so brands a man.

Finally, I feel it a sort of duty to you to report progress. This
may be an error, but I believed I detected your hand in an article
- it may be an illusion, it may have been by one of those
industrious insects who catch up and reproduce the handling of each
emergent man - but I'll still hope it was yours - and hope it may
please you to hear that the continuation of KIDNAPPED is under way.
I have not yet got to Alan, so I do not know if he is still alive,
but David seems to have a kick or two in his shanks. I was pleased
to see how the Anglo-Saxon theory fell into the trap: I gave my
Lowlander a Gaelic name, and even commented on the fact in the
text; yet almost all critics recognised in Alan and David a Saxon
and a Celt. I know not about England; in Scotland at least, where
Gaelic was spoken in Fife little over the century ago, and in
Galloway not much earlier, I deny that there exists such a thing as
a pure Saxon, and I think it more than questionable if there be
such a thing as a pure Celt.

But what have you to do with this? and what have I? Let us
continue to inscribe our little bits of tales, and let the heathen
rage! Yours, with sincere interest in your career,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO WILLIAM MORRIS



VAILIMA, SAMOA, FEB. 1892.

MASTER, - A plea from a place so distant should have some weight,
and from a heart so grateful should have some address. I have been
long in your debt, Master, and I did not think it could be so much
increased as you have now increased it. I was long in your debt
and deep in your debt for many poems that I shall never forget, and
for SIGURD before all, and now you have plunged me beyond payment
by the Saga Library. And so now, true to human nature, being
plunged beyond payment, I come and bark at your heels.

For surely, Master, that tongue that we write, and that you have
illustrated so nobly, is yet alive. She has her rights and laws,
and is our mother, our queen, and our instrument. Now in that
living tongue WHERE has one sense, WHEREAS another. In the
HEATHSLAYINGS STORY, p. 241, line 13, it bears one of its ordinary
senses. Elsewhere and usually through the two volumes, which is
all that has yet reached me of this entrancing publication, WHEREAS
is made to figure for WHERE.

For the love of God, my dear and honoured Morris, use WHERE, and
let us know WHEREAS we are, wherefore our gratitude shall grow,
whereby you shall be the more honoured wherever men love clear
language, whereas now, although we honour, we are troubled.

Whereunder, please find inscribed to this very impudent but yet
very anxious document, the name of one of the most distant but not
the youngest or the coldest of those who honour you.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO MRS. CHARLES FAIRCHILD



[VAILIMA, MARCH 1892.]

MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD, - I am guilty in your sight, but my affairs
besiege me. The chief-justiceship of a family of nineteen
persons is in itself no sinecure, and sometimes occupies me for
days: two weeks ago for four days almost entirely, and for two
days entirely. Besides which, I have in the last few months
written all but one chapter of a HISTORY OF SAMOA for the last
eight or nine years; and while I was unavoidably delayed in the
writing of this, awaiting material, put in one-half of DAVID
BALFOUR, the sequel to KIDNAPPED. Add the ordinary impediments of
life, and admire my busyness. I am now an old, but healthy
skeleton, and degenerate much towards the machine. By six at work:
stopped at half-past ten to give a history lesson to a step-
grandson; eleven, lunch; after lunch we have a musical performance
till two; then to work again; bath, 4.40, dinner, five; cards in
the evening till eight; and then to bed - only I have no bed, only
a chest with a mat and blankets - and read myself to sleep. This
is the routine, but often sadly interrupted. Then you may see me
sitting on the floor of my verandah haranguing and being harangued
by squatting chiefs on a question of a road; or more privately
holding an inquiry into some dispute among our familiars, myself on
my bed, the boys on the floor - for when it comes to the judicial I
play dignity - or else going down to Apia on some more or less
unsatisfactory errand. Altogether it is a life that suits me, but
it absorbs me like an ocean. That is what I have always envied and
admired in Scott; with all that immensity of work and study, his
mind kept flexible, glancing to all points of natural interest.
But the lean hot spirits, such as mine, become hypnotised with
their bit occupations - if I may use Scotch to you - it is so far
more scornful than any English idiom. Well, I can't help being a
skeleton, and you are to take this devious passage for an apology.

I thought ALADDIN capital fun; but why, in fortune, did he pretend
it was moral at the end? The so-called nineteenth century, OU VA-
T-IL SE NICHER? 'Tis a trifle, but Pyle would do well to knock the
passage out, and leave his boguey tale a boguey tale, and a good
one at that.

The arrival of your box was altogether a great success to the
castaways. You have no idea where we live. Do you know, in all
these islands there are not five hundred whites, and no postal
delivery, and only one village - it is no more - and would be a
mean enough village in Europe? We were asked the other day if
Vailima were the name of our post town, and we laughed. Do you
know, though we are but three miles from the village metropolis, we
have no road to it, and our goods are brought on the pack-saddle?
And do you know - or I should rather say, can you believe - or (in
the famous old Tichborne trial phrase) would you be surprised to
learn, that all you have read of Vailima - or Subpriorsford, as I
call it - is entirely false, and we have no ice-machine, and no
electric light, and no water supply but the cistern of the heavens,
and but one public room, and scarce a bedroom apiece? But, of
course, it is well known that I have made enormous sums by my
evanescent literature, and you will smile at my false humility.
The point, however, is much on our minds just now. We are
expecting an invasion of Kiplings; very glad we shall be to see
them; but two of the party are ladies, and I tell you we had to
hold a council of war to stow them. You European ladies are so
particular; with all of mine, sleeping has long become a public
function, as with natives and those who go down much into the sea
in ships.

Dear Mrs. Fairchild, I must go to my work. I have but two words to
say in conclusion.

First, civilisation is rot.

Second, console a savage with more of the milk of that over
civilised being, your adorable schoolboy.

As I wrote these remarkable words, I was called down to eight
o'clock prayers, and have just worked through a chapter of Joshua
and five verses, with five treble choruses of a Samoan hymn; but
the music was good, our boys and precentress ('tis always a woman
that leads) did better than I ever heard them, and to my great
pleasure I understood it all except one verse. This gave me the
more time to try and identify what the parts were doing, and
further convict my dull ear. Beyond the fact that the soprano rose
to the tonic above, on one occasion I could recognise nothing.
This is sickening, but I mean to teach my ear better before I am
done with it or this vile carcase.

I think it will amuse you (for a last word) to hear that our
precentress - she is the washerwoman - is our shame. She is a
good, healthy, comely, strapping young wench, full of energy and
seriousness, a splendid workwoman, delighting to train our chorus,
delighting in the poetry of the hymns, which she reads aloud (on
the least provocation) with a great sentiment of rhythm. Well,
then, what is curious? Ah, we did not know! but it was told us in
a whisper from the cook-house - she is not of good family. Don't
let it get out, please; everybody knows it, of course, here; there
is no reason why Europe and the States should have the advantage of
me also. And the rest of my housefolk are all chief-people, I
assure you. And my late overseer (far the best of his race) is a
really serious chief with a good 'name.' Tina is the name; it is
not in the Almanach de Gotha, it must have got dropped at press.
The odd thing is, we rather share the prejudice. I have almost
always - though not quite always - found the higher the chief the
better the man through all the islands; or, at least, that the best
man came always from a highish rank. I hope Helen will continue to
prove a bright exception.

With love to Fairchild and the Huge Schoolboy, I am, my dear Mrs.
Fairchild, yours very sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME



[VAILIMA, MARCH 1892.]

MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - Herewith Chapters IX. and X., and I am left
face to face with the horrors and dilemmas of the present regimen:
pray for those that go down to the sea in ships. I have promised
Henley shall have a chance to publish the hurricane chapter if he
like, so please let the slips be sent QUAM PRIMUM to C. Baxter,
W.S., 11 S. Charlotte Street, Edinburgh. I got on mighty quick
with that chapter - about five days of the toughest kind of work.
God forbid I should ever have such another pirn to wind! When I
invent a language, there shall be a direct and an indirect pronoun
differently declined - then writing would be some fun.


DIRECT INDIRECT

He Tu
Him Tum
His Tus


Ex.: HE seized TUM by TUS throat; but TU at the same moment caught
HIM by HIS hair. A fellow could write hurricanes with an
inflection like that! Yet there would he difficulties too.

Do what you please about THE BEACH; and I give you CARTE BLANCHE to
write in the matter to Baxter - or telegraph if the time press - to
delay the English contingent. Herewith the two last slips of THE
WRECKER. I cannot go beyond. By the way, pray compliment the
printers on the proofs of the Samoa racket, but hint to them that
it is most unbusiness-like and unscholarly to clip the edges of the
galleys; these proofs should really have been sent me on large
paper; and I and my friends here are all put to a great deal of
trouble and confusion by the mistake. - For, as you must conceive,
in a matter so contested and complicated, the number of corrections
and the length of explanations is considerable.

Please add to my former orders -

LE CHEVALIER DES TOUCHES } by Barbey d'Aurevilly.
LES DIABOLIQUES . . . }
CORRESPONDANCE DE HENRI BEYLE (Stendahl).

Yours sincerely,

R. L. STEVENSON.



Letter: TO T. W. DOVER



VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOA, JUNE 20TH, 1892.

SIR, - In reply to your very interesting letter, I cannot fairly
say that I have ever been poor, or known what it was to want a
meal. I have been reduced, however, to a very small sum of money,
with no apparent prospect of increasing it; and at that time I
reduced myself to practically one meal a day, with the most
disgusting consequences to my health. At this time I lodged in the
house of a working man, and associated much with others. At the
same time, from my youth up, I have always been a good deal and
rather intimately thrown among the working-classes, partly as a
civil engineer in out-of-the-way places, partly from a strong and,
I hope, not ill-favoured sentiment of curiosity. But the place
where, perhaps, I was most struck with the fact upon which you
comment was the house of a friend, who was exceedingly poor, in
fact, I may say destitute, and who lived in the attic of a very
tall house entirely inhabited by persons in varying stages of
poverty. As he was also in ill-health, I made a habit of passing
my afternoon with him, and when there it was my part to answer the
door. The steady procession of people begging, and the expectant
and confident manner in which they presented themselves, struck me
more and more daily; and I could not but remember with surprise
that though my father lived but a few streets away in a fine house,
beggars scarce came to the door once a fortnight or a month. From
that time forward I made it my business to inquire, and in the
stories which I am very fond of hearing from all sorts and
conditions of men, learned that in the time of their distress it
was always from the poor they sought assistance, and almost always
from the poor they got it.

Trusting I have now satisfactorily answered your question, which I
thank you for asking, I remain, with sincere compliments,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME



VAILIMA, SUMMER 1892.

MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - First of all, YOU HAVE ALL THE CORRECTIONS ON
'THE WRECKER.' I found I had made what I meant and forgotten it,
and was so careless as not to tell you.

Second, of course, and by all means, charge corrections on the
Samoa book to me; but there are not near so many as I feared. The
Lord hath dealt bountifully with me, and I believe all my advisers
were amazed to see how nearly correct I had got the truck, at least
I was. With this you will receive the whole revise and a
typewritten copy of the last chapter. And the thing now is Speed,
to catch a possible revision of the treaty. I believe Cassells are
to bring it out, but Baxter knows, and the thing has to be crammed
through PRESTISSIMO, A LA CHASSEUR.

You mention the belated Barbeys; what about the equally belated
Pineros? And I hope you will keep your bookshop alive to supplying
me continuously with the SAGA LIBRARY. I cannot get enough of
SAGAS; I wish there were nine thousand; talk about realism!

All seems to flourish with you; I also prosper; none the less for
being quit of that abhorred task, Samoa. I could give a supper
party here were there any one to sup. Never was such a
disagreeable task, but the thing had to be told. . . .

There, I trust I am done with this cursed chapter of my career, bar
the rotten eggs and broken bottles that may follow, of course.
Pray remember, speed is now all that can be asked, hoped, or
wished. I give up all hope of proofs, revises, proof of the map,
or sic like; and you on your side will try to get it out as
reasonably seemly as may be.

Whole Samoa book herewith. Glory be to God. - Yours very
sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER



VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOAN ISLANDS, 18TH JULY 1892.

MY DEAR CHARLES,- . . . I have been now for some time contending
with powers and principalities, and I have never once seen one of
my own letters to the TIMES. So when you see something in the
papers that you think might interest the exiles of Upolu, do not
think twice, out with your saxpence, and send it flying to Vailima.
Of what you say of the past, eh, man, it was a queer time, and
awful miserable, but there's no sense in denying it was awful fun.
Do you mind the youth in Highland garb and the tableful of coppers?
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 pass 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 Masson. 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 pass your
days writing proclamations (which are never proclaimed) and
petitions (which ain't petited) 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 damned; 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.

The Master of Haggard might extend his ride a little, and return
through the marsh and by the nuns' house (I trust that has the
proper flavour), so as a little to diminish the effect of
separation. - I remain, your affectionate cousin to command,

O TUSITALA.

P.S. - It is to be thought this present year of grace will be
historical.



Letter: TO MRS. CHARLES FAIRCHILD



[VAILIMA, AUGUST 1892.]

MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD, - Thank you a thousand times for your
letter. You are the Angel of (the sort of) Information (that I
care about); I appoint you successor to the newspaper press; and I
beg of you, whenever you wish to gird at the age, or think the bugs
out of proportion to the roses, or despair, or enjoy any cosmic or
epochal emotion, to sit down again and write to the Hermit of
Samoa. What do I think of it all? Well, I love the romantic
solemnity of youth; and even in this form, although not without
laughter, I have to love it still. They are such ducks! But what
are they made of? We were just as solemn as that about atheism and
the stars and humanity; but we were all for belief anyway - we held
atheism and sociology (of which none of us, nor indeed anybody,
knew anything) for a gospel and an iron rule of life; and it was
lucky enough, or there would have been more windows broken. What
is apt to puzzle one at first sight in the New Youth is that, with
such rickety and risky problems always at heart, they should not
plunge down a Niagara of Dissolution. But let us remember the high
practical timidity of youth. I was a particularly brave boy - this
I think of myself, looking back - and plunged into adventures and
experiments, and ran risks that it still surprises me to recall.
But, dear me, what a fear I was in of that strange blind machinery
in the midst of which I stood; and with what a compressed heart and
what empty lungs I would touch a new crank and await developments!
I do not mean to say I do not fear life still; I do; and that
terror (for an adventurer like myself) is still one of the chief
joys of living.

But it was different indeed while I was yet girt with the priceless
robes of inexperience; then the fear was exquisite and infinite.
And so, when you see all these little Ibsens, who seem at once so
dry and so excitable, and faint in swathes over a play (I suppose -
for a wager) that would seem to me merely tedious, smile behind
your hand, and remember the little dears are all in a blue funk.
It must be very funny, and to a spectator like yourself I almost
envy it. But never get desperate; human nature is human nature;
and the Roman Empire, since the Romans founded it and made our
European human nature what it is, bids fair to go on and to be true
to itself. These little bodies will all grow up and become men and
women, and have heaps of fun; nay, and are having it now; and
whatever happens to the fashion of the age, it makes no difference
- there are always high and brave and amusing lives to be lived;
and a change of key, however exotic, does not exclude melody. Even
Chinamen, hard as we find it to believe, enjoy being Chinese. And
the Chinaman stands alone to be unthinkable; natural enough, as the
representative of the only other great civilisation. Take my
people here at my doors; their life is a very good one; it is quite
thinkable, quite acceptable to us. And the little dears will be
soon skating on the other foot; sooner or later, in each
generation, the one-half of them at least begin to remember all the
material they had rejected when first they made and nailed up their
little theory of life; and these become reactionaries or
conservatives, and the ship of man begins to fill upon the other
tack.

Here is a sermon, by your leave! It is your own fault, you have
amused and interested me so much by your breath of the New Youth,
which comes to me from so far away, where I live up here in my
mountain, and secret messengers bring me letters from rebels, and
the government sometimes seizes them, and generally grumbles in its
beard that Stevenson should really be deported. O, my life is the
more lively, never fear!

It has recently been most amusingly varied by a visit from Lady
Jersey. I took her over mysteriously (under the pseudonym of my
cousin, Miss Amelia Balfour) to visit Mataafa, our rebel; and we
had great fun, and wrote a Ouida novel on our life here, in which
every author had to describe himself in the Ouida glamour, and of
which - for the Jerseys intend printing it - I must let you have a
copy. My wife's chapter, and my description of myself, should, I
think, amuse you. But there were finer touches still; as when
Belle and Lady Jersey came out to brush their teeth in front of the
rebel King's palace, and the night guard squatted opposite on the
grass and watched the process; or when I and my interpreter, and
the King with his secretary, mysteriously disappeared to conspire.
- Ever yours sincerely,

R. L. STEVENSON.



Letter: TO GORDON BROWNE



VAILIMA, SAMOA, AUTUMN 1892.
TO THE ARTIST WHO DID THE ILLUSTRATIONS TO 'UMA.'

DEAR SIR, - I only know you under the initials G. B., but you have
done some exceedingly spirited and satisfactory illustrations to my
story THE BEACH OF FALESA, and I wish to write and thank you
expressly for the care and talent shown. Such numbers of people
can do good black and whites! So few can illustrate a story, or
apparently read it. You have shown that you can do both, and your
creation of Wiltshire is a real illumination of the text. It was
exactly so that Wiltshire dressed and looked, and you have the line
of his nose to a nicety. His nose is an inspiration. Nor should I
forget to thank you for Case, particularly in his last appearance.
It is a singular fact - which seems to point still more directly to
inspiration in your case - that your missionary actually resembles
the flesh-and-blood person from whom Mr. Tarleton was drawn. The
general effect of the islands is all that could be wished; indeed I
have but one criticism to make, that in the background of Case
taking the dollar from Mr. Tarleton's head - head - not hand, as
the fools have printed it - the natives have a little too much the
look of Africans.

But the great affair is that you have been to the pains to
illustrate my story instead of making conscientious black and
whites of people sitting talking. I doubt if you have left
unrepresented a single pictorial incident. I am writing by this
mail to the editor in the hopes that I may buy from him the
originals, and I am, dear sir, your very much obliged,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO MISS MORSE



VAILIMA, SAMOAN ISLANDS, OCTOBER 7TH, 1892.

DEAR MADAM, - I have a great diffidence in answering your valued
letter. It would be difficult for me to express the feelings with
which I read it - and am now trying to re-read it as I dictate
this.

You ask me to forgive what you say 'must seem a liberty,' and I
find that I cannot thank you sufficiently or even find a word with
which to qualify your letter. Dear Madam, such a communication
even the vainest man would think a sufficient reward for a lifetime
of labour. That I should have been able to give so much help and
pleasure to your sister is the subject of my grateful wonder.

That she, being dead, and speaking with your pen, should be able to
repay the debt with such a liberal interest, is one of those things
that reconcile us with the world and make us take hope again. I do
not know what I have done to deserve so beautiful and touching a
compliment; and I feel there is but one thing fit for me to say
here, that I will try with renewed courage to go on in the same
path, and to deserve, if not to receive, a similar return from
others.

You apologise for speaking so much about yourselves. Dear Madam, I
thought you did so too little. I should have wished to have known
more of those who were so sympathetic as to find a consolation in
my work, and so graceful and so tactful as to acknowledge it in
such a letter as was yours.

Will you offer to your mother the expression of a sympathy which
(coming from a stranger) must seem very airy, but which yet is
genuine; and accept for yourself my gratitude for the thought which
inspired you to write to me and the words which you found to
express it.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME



VAILIMA PLANTATION, SAMOAN ISLANDS, OCT. 10TH, 1892.

MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - It is now, as you see, the 10th of October,
and there has not reached the Island of Upolu one single copy, or
rag of a copy, of the Samoa book. I lie; there has come one, and
that in the pocket of a missionary man who is at daggers drawn with
me, who lends it to all my enemies, conceals it from all my
friends, and is bringing a lawsuit against me on the strength of
expressions in the same which I have forgotten, and now cannot see.
This is pretty tragic, I think you will allow; and I was inclined
to fancy it was the fault of the Post Office. But I hear from my
sister-in-law Mrs. Sanchez that she is in the same case, and has
received no 'Footnote.' I have also to consider that I had no
letter from you last mail, although you ought to have received by
that time 'My Grandfather and Scott,' and 'Me and my Grandfather.'
Taking one consideration with another, therefore, I prefer to
conceive that No. 743 Broadway has fallen upon gentle and
continuous slumber, and is become an enchanted palace among
publishing houses. If it be not so, if the 'Footnotes' were really
sent, I hope you will fall upon the Post Office with all the vigour
you possess. How does THE WRECKER go in the States? It seems to
be doing exceptionally well in England. - Yours sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO J. M. BARRIE



VAILIMA PLANTATION, SAMOAN ISLANDS, NOVEMBER 1ST, 1892.

DEAR MR. BARRIE, - I can scarce thank you sufficiently for your
extremely amusing letter. No, THE AULD LICHT IDYLS never reached
me - I wish it had, and I wonder extremely whether it would not be
good for me to have a pennyworth of the Auld Licht pulpit. It is a
singular thing that I should live here in the South Seas under
conditions so new and so striking, and yet my imagination so
continually inhabit that cold old huddle of grey hills from which
we come. I have just finished DAVID BALFOUR; I have another book
on the stocks, THE YOUNG CHEVALIER, which is to be part in France
and part in Scotland, and to deal with Prince Charlie about the
year 1749; and now what have I done but begun a third which is to
be all moorland together, and is to have for a centrepiece a figure
that I think you will appreciate - that of the immortal Braxfield -
Braxfield himself is my GRAND PREMIER, or, since you are so much
involved in the British drama, let me say my heavy lead. . . .

Your descriptions of your dealings with Lord Rintoul are
frightfully unconscientious. You should never write about anybody
until you persuade yourself at least for the moment that you love
him, above all anybody on whom your plot revolves. It will always
make a hole in the book; and, if he has anything to do with the
mechanism, prove a stick in your machinery. But you know all this
better than I do, and it is one of your most promising traits that
you do not take your powers too seriously. The LITTLE MINISTER
ought to have ended badly; we all know it did; and we are
infinitely grateful to you for the grace and good feeling with
which you lied about it. If you had told the truth, I for one
could never have forgiven you. As you had conceived and written
the earlier parts, the truth about the end, though indisputably
true to fact, would have been a lie, or what is worse, a discord in
art. If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly
from the beginning. Now your book began to end well. You let
yourself fall in love with, and fondle, and smile at your puppets.
Once you had done that, your honour was committed - at the cost of
truth to life you were bound to save them. It is the blot on
RICHARD FEVEREL, for instance, that it begins to end well; and then
tricks you and ends ill. But in that case there is worse behind,
for the ill-ending does not inherently issue from the plot - the
story HAD, in fact, ENDED WELL after the great last interview
between Richard and Lucy - and the blind, illogical bullet which
smashes all has no more to do between the boards than a fly has to
do with the room into whose open window it comes buzzing. It MIGHT
have so happened; it needed not; and unless needs must, we have no
right to pain our readers. I have had a heavy case of conscience
of the same kind about my Braxfield story. Braxfield - only his
name is Hermiston - has a son who is condemned to death; plainly,
there is a fine tempting fitness about this; and I meant he was to
hang. But now on considering my minor characters, I saw there were
five people who would - in a sense who must - break prison and
attempt his rescue. They were capable, hardy folks, too, who might
very well succeed. Why should they not then? Why should not young
Hermiston escape clear out of the country? and be happy, if he
could, with his - But soft! I will not betray my secret of my
heroine. Suffice it to breathe in your ear that she was what Hardy
calls (and others in their plain way don't) a Pure Woman. Much
virtue in a capital letter, such as yours was.

Write to me again in my infinite distance. Tell me about your new
book. No harm in telling ME; I am too far off to be indiscreet;
there are too few near me who would care to hear. I am rushes by
the riverside, and the stream is in Babylon: breathe your secrets
to me fearlessly; and if the Trade Wind caught and carried them
away, there are none to catch them nearer than Australia, unless it
were the Tropic Birds. In the unavoidable absence of my
amanuensis, who is buying eels for dinner, I have thus concluded my
despatch, like St. Paul, with my own hand.

And in the inimitable words of Lord Kames, Faur ye weel, ye bitch.
- Yours very truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO E. L. BURLINGAME



VAILIMA PLANTATION, NOV. 2ND, 1892.

MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - In the first place, I have to acknowledge
receipt of your munificent cheque for three hundred and fifty
dollars. Glad you liked the Scott voyage; rather more than I did
upon the whole. As the proofs have not turned up at all, there can
be no question of returning them, and I am therefore very much
pleased to think you have arranged not to wait. The volumes of
Adams arrived along with yours of October 6th. One of the
dictionaries has also blundered home, apparently from the Colonies;
the other is still to seek. I note and sympathise with your
bewilderment as to FALESA. My own direct correspondence with Mr.
Baxter is now about three months in abeyance. Altogether you see
how well it would be if you could do anything to wake up the Post
Office. Not a single copy of the 'Footnote' has yet reached Samoa,
but I hear of one having come to its address in Hawaii. Glad to
hear good news of Stoddard. - Yours sincerely,

R. L. STEVENSON.

P.S. - Since the above was written an aftermath of post matter came
in, among which were the proofs of MY GRANDFATHER. I shall correct
and return them, but as I have lost all confidence in the Post
Office, I shall mention here: first galley, 4th line from the
bottom, for 'AS' read 'OR.'

Should I ever again have to use my work without waiting for proofs,
bear in mind this golden principle. From a congenital defect, I
must suppose, I am unable to write the word OR - wherever I write
it the printer unerringly puts AS - and those who read for me had
better, wherever it is possible, substitute OR for AS. This the
more so since many writers have a habit of using AS which is death
to my temper and confusion to my face.

R. L. S.



Letter: TO LIEUTENANT EELES



VAILIMA PLANTATION, UPOLU, SAMOAN ISLANDS, NOVEMBER 15TH, 1892.

DEAR EELES, - In the first place, excuse me writing to you by
another hand, as that is the way in which alone all my
correspondence gets effected. Before I took to this method, or
rather before I found a victim, it SIMPLY didn't get effected.

Thank you again and again, first for your kind thought of writing
to me, and second for your extremely amusing and interesting
letter. You can have no guess how immediately interesting it was
to our family. First of all, the poor soul at Nukufetau is an old
friend of ours, and we have actually treated him ourselves on a
former visit to the island. I don't know if Hoskin would approve
of our treatment; it consisted, I believe, mostly in a present of
stout and a recommendation to put nails in his water-tank. We also
(as you seem to have done) recommended him to leave the island; and
I remember very well how wise and kind we thought his answer. He
had half-caste children (he said) who would suffer and perhaps be
despised if he carried them elsewhere; if he left them there alone,
they would almost certainly miscarry; and the best thing was that
he should stay and die with them. But the cream of the fun was
your meeting with Burn. We not only know him, but (as the French
say) we don't know anybody else; he is our intimate and adored
original; and - prepare your mind - he was, is, and ever will be,
TOMMY HADDON! As I don't believe you to be inspired, I suspect you
to have suspected this. At least it was a mighty happy suspicion.
You are quite right: Tommy is really 'a good chap,' though about
as comic as they make them.

I was extremely interested in your Fiji legend, and perhaps even
more so in your capital account of the CURACOA'S misadventure.
Alas! we have nothing so thrilling to relate. All hangs and fools
on in this isle of misgovernment, without change, though not
without novelty, but wholly without hope, unless perhaps you should
consider it hopeful that I am still more immediately threatened
with arrest. The confounded thing is, that if it comes off, I
shall be sent away in the Ringarooma instead of the CURACOA. The
former ship burst upon by the run - she had been sent off by
despatch and without orders - and to make me a little more easy in
my mind she brought newspapers clamouring for my incarceration.
Since then I have had a conversation with the German Consul. He
said he had read a review of my Samoa book, and if the review were
fair, must regard it as an insult, and one that would have to be
resented. At the same time, I learn that letters addressed to the
German squadron lie for them here in the Post Office. Reports are
current of other English ships being on the way - I hope to
goodness yours will be among the number. And I gather from one
thing and another that there must be a holy row going on between
the powers at home, and that the issue (like all else connected
with Samoa) is on the knees of the gods. One thing, however, is
pretty sure - if that issue prove to be a German Protectorate, I
shall have to tramp. Can you give us any advice as to a fresh
field of energy? We have been searching the atlas, and it seems
difficult to fill the bill. How would Rarotonga do? I forget if
you have been there. The best of it is that my new house is going
up like winking, and I am dictating this letter to the
accompaniment of saws and hammers. A hundred black boys and about
a score draught-oxen perished, or at least barely escaped with
their lives, from the mud-holes on our road, bringing up the
materials. It will be a fine legacy to H.I.G.M.'s Protectorate,
and doubtless the Governor will take it for his country-house. The
Ringarooma people, by the way, seem very nice. I liked Stansfield
particularly.

Our middy has gone up to San Francisco in pursuit of the phantom
Education. We have good word of him, and I hope he will not be in
disgrace again, as he was when the hope of the British Navy - need
I say that I refer to Admiral Burney? - honoured us last. The next
time you come, as the new house will be finished, we shall be able
to offer you a bed. Nares and Meiklejohn may like to hear that our
new room is to be big enough to dance in. It will be a very
pleasant day for me to see the Curacoa in port again and at least a
proper contingent of her officers 'skipping in my 'all.'

We have just had a feast on my birthday at which we had three of
the Ringaromas, and I wish they had been three CURACOAS - say
yourself, Hoskin, and Burney the ever Great. (Consider this an
invitation.) Our boys had got the thing up regardless. There were
two huge sows - oh, brutes of animals that would have broken down a
hansom cab - four smaller pigs, two barrels of beef, and a horror
of vegetables and fowls. We sat down between forty and fifty in a
big new native house behind the kitchen that you have never seen,
and ate and public spoke till all was blue. Then we had about half
an hour's holiday with some beer and sherry and brandy and soda to
restrengthen the European heart, and then out to the old native
house to see a siva. Finally, all the guests were packed off in a
trackless black night and down a road that was rather fitted for
the CURACOA than any human pedestrian, though to be sure I do not
know the draught of the CURACOA. My ladies one and all desire to
be particularly remembered to our friends on board, and all look
forward, as I do myself, in the hope of your return. - Yours
sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

And let me hear from you again!



Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER



1ST DEC. '92.

. . . I have a novel on the stocks to be called THE JUSTICE-CLERK.
It is pretty Scotch, the Grand Premier is taken from Braxfield -
(Oh, by the by, send me Cockburn's MEMORIALS) - and some of the
story is - well - queer. The heroine is seduced by one man, and
finally disappears with the other man who shot him. . . . Mind you,
I expect the JUSTICE-CLERK to be my masterpiece. My Braxfield is
already a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, and so far as he has
gone FAR my best character.

[LATER.]

Second thought. I wish Pitcairn's CRIMINAL TRIALS QUAM PRIMUM.
Also, an absolutely correct text of the Scots judiciary oath.

Also, in case Pitcairn does not come down late enough, I wish as
full a report as possible of a Scotch murder trial between 1790-
1820. Understand, THE FULLEST POSSIBLE.

Is there any book which would guide me as to the following facts?

The Justice-Clerk tries some people capitally on circuit. Certain
evidence cropping up, the charge is transferred to the J.-C.'s own
son. Of course, in the next trial the J.-C. is excluded, and the
case is called before the Lord-Justice General.

Where would this trial have to be? I fear in Edinburgh, which
would not suit my view. Could it be again at the circuit town?

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO MRS. JENKIN



DECEMBER 5TH, 1892.

MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, - . . . So much said, I come with guilty speed
to what more immediately concerns myself. Spare us a month or two
for old sake's sake, and make my wife and me happy and proud. We
are only fourteen days from San Francisco, just about a month from
Liverpool; we have our new house almost finished. The thing CAN be
done; I believe we can make you almost comfortable. It is the
loveliest climate in the world, our political troubles seem near an
end. It can be done, it must! Do, please, make a virtuous effort,
come and take a glimpse of a new world I am sure you do not dream
of, and some old friends who do often dream of your arrival.

Alas, I was just beginning to get eloquent, and there goes the
lunch bell, and after lunch I must make up the mail.

Do come. You must not come in February or March - bad months.
From April on it is delightful. - Your sincere friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO HENRY JAMES



DECEMBER 5TH, 1892.

MY DEAR JAMES, - How comes it so great a silence has fallen? The
still small voice of self-approval whispers me it is not from me.
I have looked up my register, and find I have neither written to
you nor heard from you since June 22nd, on which day of grace that
invaluable work began. This is not as it should be. How to get
back? I remember acknowledging with rapture the - of the MASTER,
and I remember receiving MARBOT: was that our last relation?

Hey, well! anyway, as you may have probably gathered from the
papers, I have been in devilish hot water, and (what may be new to
you) devilish hard at work. In twelve calendar months I finished
THE WRECKER, wrote all of FALESA but the first chapter (well, much
of), the HISTORY OF SAMOA, did something here and there to my LIFE
OF MY GRANDFATHER, and began And Finished DAVID BALFOUR. What do
you think of it for a year? Since then I may say I have done
nothing beyond draft three chapters of another novel, THE JUSTICE-
CLERK, which ought to be shorter and a blower - at least if it
don't make a spoon, it will spoil the horn of an Aurochs (if that's
how it should be spelt).

On the hot water side it may entertain you to know that I have been
actually sentenced to deportation by my friends on Mulinuu, C. J.
Cedercrantz, and Baron Senfft von Pilsach. The awful doom,
however, declined to fall, owing to Circumstances over Which. I
only heard of it (so to speak) last night. I mean officially, but
I had walked among rumours. The whole tale will be some day put
into my hand, and I shall share it with humorous friends.

It is likely, however, by my judgment, that this epoch of gaiety in
Samoa will soon cease; and the fierce white light of history will
beat no longer on Yours Sincerely and his fellows here on the
beach. We ask ourselves whether the reason will more rejoice over
the end of a disgraceful business, or the unregenerate man more
sorrow over the stoppage of the fun. For, say what you please, it
has been a deeply interesting time. You don't know what news is,
nor what politics, nor what the life of man, till you see it on so
small a scale and with your own liberty on the board for stake. I
would not have missed it for much. And anxious friends beg me to
stay at home and study human nature in Brompton drawing-rooms!
FARCEURS! And anyway you know that such is not my talent. I could
never be induced to take the faintest interest in Brompton QUA
Brompton or a drawing-room QUA a drawing-room. I am an Epick
Writer with a k to it, but without the necessary genius.

Hurry up with another book of stories. I am now reduced to two of
my contemporaries, you and Barrie - O, and Kipling - you and Barrie
and Kipling are now my Muses Three. And with Kipling, as you know,
there are reservations to be made. And you and Barrie don't write
enough. I should say I also read Anstey when he is serious, and
can almost always get a happy day out of Marion Crawford - CE N'EST
PAS TOUJOURS LA GUERRE, but it's got life to it and guts, and it
moves. Did you read the WITCH OF PRAGUE? Nobody could read it
twice, of course; and the first time even it was necessary to skip.
E PUR SI MUOVE. But Barrie is a beauty, the LITTLE MINISTER and
the WINDOW IN THRUMS, eh? Stuff in that young man; but he must see
and not be too funny. Genius in him, but there's a journalist at
his elbow - there's the risk. Look, what a page is the glove
business in the WINDOW! knocks a man flat; that's guts, if you
please.

Why have I wasted the little time that is left with a sort of naked
review article? I don't know, I'm sure. I suppose a mere
ebullition of congested literary talk I am beginning to think a
visit from friends would be due. Wish you could come!

Let us have your news anyway, and forgive this silly stale
effusion. - Yours ever,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO J. M. BARRIE



[VAILIMA, DECEMBER 1892.]

DEAR J. M. BARRIE, - You will be sick of me soon; I cannot help it.
I have been off my work for some time, and re-read the EDINBURGH
ELEVEN, and had a great mind to write a parody and give you all
your sauce back again, and see how you would like it yourself. And
then I read (for the first time - I know not how) the WINDOW IN
THRUMS; I don't say that it is better than THE MINISTER; it's less
of a tale - and there is a beauty, a material beauty, of the tale
IPSE, which clever critics nowadays long and love to forget; it has
more real flaws; but somehow it is - well, I read it last anyway,
and it's by Barrie. And he's the man for my money. The glove is a
great page; it is startlingly original, and as true as death and
judgment. Tibbie Birse in the Burial is great, but I think it was
a journalist that got in the word 'official.' The same character
plainly had a word to say to Thomas Haggard. Thomas affects me as
a lie - I beg your pardon; doubtless he was somebody you knew, that
leads people so far astray. The actual is not the true.

I am proud to think you are a Scotchman - though to be sure I know
nothing of that country, being only an English tourist, quo' Gavin
Ogilvy. I commend the hard case of Mr. Gavin Ogilvy to J. M.
Barrie, whose work is to me a source of living pleasure and
heartfelt national pride. There are two of us now that the Shirra
might have patted on the head. And please do not think when I thus
seem to bracket myself with you, that I am wholly blinded with
vanity. Jess is beyond my frontier line; I could not touch her
skirt; I have no such glamour of twilight on my pen. I am a
capable artist; but it begins to look to me as if you were a man of
genius. Take care of yourself, for my sake. It's a devilish hard
thing for a man who writes so many novels as I do, that I should
get so few to read. And I can read yours, and I love them.

A pity for you that my amanuensis is not on stock to-day, and my
own hand perceptibly worse than usual. - Yours,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

DECEMBER 5TH, 1892.

P.S. - They tell me your health is not strong. Man, come out here
and try the Prophet's chamber. There's only one bad point to us -
we do rise early. The Amanuensis states that you are a lover of
silence - and that ours is a noisy house - and she is a chatterbox
- I am not answerable for these statements, though I do think there
is a touch of garrulity about my premises. We have so little to
talk about, you see. The house is three miles from town, in the
midst of great silent forests. There is a burn close by, and when
we are not talking you can hear the burn, and the birds, and the
sea breaking on the coast three miles away and six hundred feet
below us, and about three times a month a bell - I don't know where
the bell is, nor who rings it; it may be the bell in Hans
Andersen's story for all I know. It is never hot here - 86 in the
shade is about our hottest - and it is never cold except just in
the early mornings. Take it for all in all, I suppose this island
climate to be by far the healthiest in the world - even the
influenza entirely lost its sting. Only two patients died, and one
was a man nearly eighty, and the other a child below four months.
I won't tell you if it is beautiful, for I want you to come here
and see for yourself. Everybody on the premises except my wife has
some Scotch blood in their veins - I beg your pardon - except the
natives - and then my wife is a Dutchwoman - and the natives are
the next thing conceivable to Highlanders before the forty-five.
We would have some grand cracks!

R. L. S.

COME, it will broaden your mind, and be the making of me.




CHAPTER XII - LIFE IN SAMOA, CONTINUED, JANUARY 1893-DECEMBER 1894




Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER



[APRIL, 1893.]

. . . About THE JUSTICE-CLERK, I long to go at it, but will first
try to get a short story done. Since January I have had two severe
illnesses, my boy, and some heart-breaking anxiety over Fanny; and
am only now convalescing. I came down to dinner last night for the
first time, and that only because the service had broken down, and
to relieve an inexperienced servant. Nearly four months now I have
rested my brains; and if it be true that rest is good for brains, I
ought to be able to pitch in like a giant refreshed. Before the
autumn, I hope to send you some JUSTICE-CLERK, or WEIR OF
HERMISTON, as Colvin seems to prefer; I own to indecision.
Received SYNTAX, DANCE OF DEATH, and PITCAIRN, which last I have
read from end to end since its arrival, with vast improvement.
What a pity it stops so soon! I wonder is there nothing that seems
to prolong the series? Why doesn't some young man take it up? How
about my old friend Fountainhall's DECISIONS? I remember as a boy
that there was some good reading there. Perhaps you could borrow
me that, and send it on loan; and perhaps Laing's MEMORIALS
therewith; and a work I'm ashamed to say I have never read,
BALFOUR'S LETTERS. . . . I have come by accident, through a
correspondent, on one very curious and interesting fact - namely,
that Stevenson was one of the names adopted by the MacGregors at
the proscription. The details supplied by my correspondent are
both convincing and amusing; but it would be highly interesting to
find out more of this.

R. L. S.



Letter: TO A. CONAN DOYLE



VAILIMA, APIA, SAMOA, APRIL 5TH, 1893.

DEAR SIR, - You have taken many occasions to make yourself very
agreeable to me, for which I might in decency have thanked you
earlier. It is now my turn; and I hope you will allow me to offer
you my compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting
adventures of Sherlock Holmes. That is the class of literature
that I like when I have the toothache. As a matter of fact, it was
a pleurisy I was enjoying when I took the volume up; and it will
interest you as a medical man to know that the cure was for the
moment effectual. Only the one thing troubles me: can this be my
old friend Joe Bell? - I am, yours very truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

P.S. - And lo, here is your address supplied me here in Samoa! But
do not take mine, O frolic fellow Spookist, from the same source;
mine is wrong.

R. L. S.



Letter: TO S. R. CROCKETT



VAILIMA, SAMOA, MAY 17TH, 1893.

DEAR MR. CROCKETT, - I do not owe you two letters, nor yet nearly
one, sir! The last time I heard of you, you wrote about an
accident, and I sent you a letter to my lawyer, Charles Baxter,
which does not seem to have been presented, as I see nothing of it
in his accounts. Query, was that lost? I should not like you to
think I had been so unmannerly and so inhuman. If you have written
since, your letter also has miscarried, as is much the rule in this
part of the world, unless you register.

Your book is not yet to hand, but will probably follow next month.
I detected you early in the BOOKMAN, which I usually see, and noted
you in particular as displaying a monstrous ingratitude about the
footnote. Well, mankind is ungrateful; 'Man's ingratitude to man
makes countless thousands mourn,' quo' Rab - or words to that
effect. By the way, an anecdote of a cautious sailor: 'Bill,
Bill,' says I to him, 'OR WORDS TO THAT EFFECT.'

I shall never take that walk by the Fisher's Tryst and Glencorse.
I shall never see Auld Reekie. I shall never set my foot again
upon the heather. Here I am until I die, and here will I be
buried. The word is out and the doom written. Or, if I do come,
it will be a voyage to a further goal, and in fact a suicide;
which, however, if I could get my family all fixed up in the money
way, I might, perhaps, perform, or attempt. But there is a plaguey
risk of breaking down by the way; and I believe I shall stay here
until the end comes like a good boy, as I am. If I did it, I
should put upon my trunks: 'Passenger to - Hades.' How strangely
wrong your information is! In the first place, I should never
carry a novel to Sydney; I should post it from here. In the second
place, WEIR OF HERMISTON is as yet scarce begun. It's going to be
excellent, no doubt; but it consists of about twenty pages. I have
a tale, a shortish tale in length, but it has proved long to do,
THE EBB TIDE, some part of which goes home this mail. It is by me
and Mr. Osbourne, and is really a singular work. There are only
four characters, and three of them are bandits - well, two of them
are, and the third is their comrade and accomplice. It sounds
cheering, doesn't it? Barratry, and drunkenness, and vitriol, and
I cannot tell you all what, are the beams of the roof. And yet - I
don't know - I sort of think there's something in it. You'll see
(which is more than I ever can) whether Davis and Attwater come off
or not.

WEIR OF HERMISTON is a much greater undertaking, and the plot is
not good, I fear; but Lord Justice-Clerk Hermiston ought to be a
plum. Of other schemes, more or less executed, it skills not to
speak.

I am glad to hear so good an account of your activity and
interests, and shall always hear from you with pleasure; though I
am, and must continue, a mere sprite of the inkbottle, unseen in
the flesh. Please remember me to your wife and to the four-year-
old sweetheart, if she be not too engrossed with higher matters.
Do you know where the road crosses the burn under Glencorse Church?
Go there, and say a prayer for me: MORITURUS SALUTAT. See that
it's a sunny day; I would like it to be a Sunday, but that's not
possible in the premises; and stand on the right-hand bank just
where the road goes down into the water, and shut your eyes, and if
I don't appear to you! well, it can't be helped, and will be
extremely funny.

I have no concern here but to work and to keep an eye on this
distracted people. I live just now wholly alone in an upper room
of my house, because the whole family are down with influenza, bar
my wife and myself. I get my horse up sometimes in the afternoon
and have a ride in the woods; and I sit here and smoke and write,
and rewrite, and destroy, and rage at my own impotence, from six in
the morning till eight at night, with trifling and not always
agreeable intervals for meals.

I am sure you chose wisely to keep your country charge. There a
minister can be something, not in a town. In a town, the most of
them are empty houses - and public speakers. Why should you
suppose your book will be slated because you have no friends? A
new writer, if he is any good, will be acclaimed generally with
more noise than he deserves. But by this time you will know for
certain. - I am, yours sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

P.S. - Be it known to this fluent generation that I R. L. S., in
the forty-third of my age and the twentieth of my professional
life, wrote twenty-four pages in twenty-one days, working from six
to eleven, and again in the afternoon from two to four or so,
without fail or interruption. Such are the gifts the gods have
endowed us withal: such was the facility of this prolific writer!

R. L. S.



Letter: TO AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS



VAILIMA, SAMOA, MAY 29TH, 1893

MY DEAR GOD-LIKE SCULPTOR, - I wish in the most delicate manner in
the world to insinuate a few commissions:-

No. 1. Is for a couple of copies of my medallion, as gilt-edged and
high-toned as it is possible to make them. One is for our house
here, and should be addressed as above. The other is for my friend
Sidney Colvin, and should be addressed - Sidney Colvin, Esq.,
Keeper of the Print Room, British Museum, London.

No. 2. This is a rather large order, and demands some explanation.
Our house is lined with varnished wood of a dark ruddy colour, very
beautiful to see; at the same time, it calls very much for gold;
there is a limit to picture frames, and really you know there has
to be a limit to the pictures you put inside of them. Accordingly,
we have had an idea of a certain kind of decoration, which, I
think, you might help us to make practical. What we want is an
alphabet of gilt letters (very much such as people play with), and
all mounted on spikes like drawing-pins; say two spikes to each
letter, one at top, and one at bottom. Say that they were this
height,

I
I
I

and that you chose a model of some really exquisitely fine, clear
type from some Roman monument, and that they were made either of
metal or some composition gilt - the point is, could not you, in
your land of wooden houses, get a manufacturer to take the idea and
manufacture them at a venture, so that I could get two or three
hundred pieces or so at a moderate figure? You see, suppose you
entertain an honoured guest, when he goes he leaves his name in
gilt letters on your walls; an infinity of fun and decoration can
be got out of hospitable and festive mottoes; and the doors of
every room can be beautified by the legend of their names. I
really think there is something in the idea, and you might be able
to push it with the brutal and licentious manufacturer, using my
name if necessary, though I should think the name of the god-like
sculptor would be more germane. In case you should get it started,
I should tell you that we should require commas in order to write
the Samoan language, which is full of words written thus: la'u,
ti'e ti'e. As the Samoan language uses but a very small proportion
of the consonants, we should require a double or treble stock of
all vowels and of F, G, L, U, N, P, S, T, and V.

The other day in Sydney, I think you might be interested to hear, I
was sculpt a second time by a man called -, as well as I can
remember and read. I mustn't criticise a present, and he had very
little time to do it in. It is thought by my family to be an
excellent likeness of Mark Twain. This poor fellow, by the by, met
with the devil of an accident. A model of a statue which he had
just finished with a desperate effort was smashed to smithereens on
its way to exhibition.

Please be sure and let me know if anything is likely to come of
this letter business, and the exact cost of each letter, so that I
may count the cost before ordering. - Yours sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.



Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE



JUNE 10TH, 1893.

MY DEAR GOSSE, - My mother tells me you never received the very
long and careful letter that I sent you more than a year ago; or is
it two years?

I was indeed so much surprised at your silence that I wrote to
Henry James and begged him to inquire if you had received it; his
reply was an (if possible) higher power of the same silence;
whereupon I bowed my head and acquiesced. But there is no doubt
the letter was written and sent; and I am sorry it was lost, for it
contained, among other things, an irrecoverable criticism of your
father's LIFE, with a number of suggestions for another edition,
which struck me at the time as excellent.

Well, suppose we call that cried off, and begin as before? It is
fortunate indeed that we can do so, being both for a while longer
in the day. But, alas! when I see 'works of the late J. A. S.,' I
can see no help and no reconciliation possible. I wrote him a
letter, I think, three years ago, heard in some roundabout way that
he had received it, waited in vain for an answer (which had
probably miscarried), and in a humour between frowns and smiles
wrote to him no more. And now the strange, poignant, pathetic,
brilliant creature is gone into the night, and the voice is silent
that uttered so much excellent discourse; and I am sorry that I did
not write to him again. Yet I am glad for him; light lie the turf!
The SATURDAY is the only obituary I have seen, and I thought it
very good upon the whole. I should be half tempted to write an IN
MEMORIAM, but I am submerged with other work. Are you going to do
it? I very much admire your efforts that way; you are our only
academician.

So you have tried fiction? I will tell you the truth: when I saw
it announced, I was so sure you would send it to me, that I did not
order it! But the order goes this mail, and I will give you news
of it. Yes, honestly, fiction is very difficult; it is a terrible
strain to CARRY your characters all that time. And the difficulty
of according the narrative and the dialogue (in a work in the third
person) is extreme. That is one reason out of half a dozen why I
so often prefer the first. It is much in my mind just now, because
of my last work, just off the stocks three days ago, THE EBB TIDE:
a dreadful, grimy business in the third person, where the strain
between a vilely realistic dialogue and a narrative style pitched
about (in phrase) 'four notes higher' than it should have been, has
sown my head with grey hairs; or I believe so - if my head escaped,
my heart has them.

The truth is, I have a little lost my way, and stand bemused at the
cross-roads. A subject? Ay, I have dozens; I have at least four
novels begun, they are none good enough; and the mill waits, and
I'll have to take second best. THE EBB TIDE I make the world a
present of; I expect, and, I suppose, deserve to be torn to pieces;
but there was all that good work lying useless, and I had to finish
it!

All your news of your family is pleasant to hear. My wife has been
very ill, but is now better; I may say I am ditto, THE EBB TIDE
having left me high and dry, which is a good example of the mixed
metaphor. Our home, and estate, and our boys, and the politics of
the island, keep us perpetually amused and busy; and I grind away
with an odd, dogged, down sensation - and an idea IN PETTO that the
game is about played out. I have got too realistic, and I must
break the trammels - I mean I would if I could; but the yoke is
heavy. I saw with amusement that Zola says the same thing; and
truly the DEBACLE was a mighty big book, I have no need for a
bigger, though the last part is a mere mistake in my opinion. But
the Emperor, and Sedan, and the doctor at the ambulance, and the
horses in the field of battle, Lord, how gripped it is! What an
epical performance! According to my usual opinion, I believe I
could go over that book and leave a masterpiece by blotting and no
ulterior art. But that is an old story, ever new with me. Taine
gone, and Renan, and Symonds, and Tennyson, and Browning; the suns
go swiftly out, and I see no suns to follow, nothing but a
universal twilight of the demi-divinities, with parties like you
and me and Lang beating on toy drums and playing on penny whistles
about glow-worms. But Zola is big anyway; he has plenty in his
belly; too much, that is all; he wrote the DEBACLE and he wrote LA
BETE HUMAINE, perhaps the most excruciatingly silly book that I
ever read to an end. And why did I read it to an end, W. E. G.?
Because the animal in me was interested in the lewdness. Not
sincerely, of course, my mind refusing to partake in it; but the
flesh was slightly pleased. And when it was done, I cast it from
me with a peal of laughter, and forgot it, as I would forget a
Montepin. Taine is to me perhaps the chief of these losses; I did
luxuriate in his ORIGINES; it was something beyond literature, not
quite so good, if you please, but so much more systematic, and the
pages that had to be 'written' always so adequate. Robespierre,
Napoleon, were both excellent good.

JUNE 18TH, '93

Well, I have left fiction wholly, and gone to my GRANDFATHER, and
on the whole found peace. By next month my GRANDFATHER will begin
to be quite grown up. I have already three chapters about as good
as done; by which, of course, as you know, I mean till further
notice or the next discovery. I like biography far better than
fiction myself: fiction is too free. In biography you have your
little handful of facts, little bits of a puzzle, and you sit and
think, and fit 'em together this way and that, and get up and throw
'em down, and say damn, and go out for a walk. And it's real
soothing; and when done, gives an idea of finish to the writer that
is very peaceful. Of course, it's not really so finished as quite
a rotten novel; it always has and always must have the incurable
illogicalities of life about it, the fathoms of slack and the miles
of tedium. Still, that's where the fun comes in; and when you have
at last managed to shut up the castle spectre (dulness), the very
outside of his door looks beautiful by contrast. There are pages
in these books that may seem nothing to the reader; but you
REMEMBER WHAT THEY WERE, YOU KNOW WHAT THEY MIGHT HAVE BEEN, and
they seem to you witty beyond comparison. In my GRANDFATHER I've
had (for instance) to give up the temporal order almost entirely;
doubtless the temporal order is the great foe of the biographer; it
is so tempting, so easy, and lo! there you are in the bog! - Ever
yours,

R. L. STEVENSON.

With all kind messages from self and wife to you and yours. My
wife is very much better, having been the early part of this year
alarmingly ill. She is now all right, only complaining of trifles,
annoying to her, but happily not interesting to her friends. I am
in a hideous state, having stopped drink and smoking; yes, both.
No wine, no tobacco; and the dreadful part of it is that - looking
forward - I have - what shall I say? - nauseating intimations that
it ought to be for ever.



Letter: TO HENRY JAMES



VAILIMA PLANTATION, SAMOAN ISLANDS, JUNE 17TH, 1893.

MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - I believe I have neglected a mail in
answering yours. You will be very sorry to hear that my wife was
exceedingly ill, and very glad to hear that she is better. I
cannot say that I feel any more anxiety about her. We shall send
you a photograph of her taken in Sydney in her customary island
habit as she walks and gardens and shrilly drills her brown
assistants. She was very ill when she sat for it, which may a
little explain the appearance of the photograph. It reminds me of
a friend of my grandmother's who used to say when talking to
younger women, 'Aweel, when I was young, I wasnae just exactly what
ye wad call BONNY, but I was pale, penetratin', and interestin'.'
I would not venture to hint that Fanny is 'no bonny,' but there is
no doubt but that in this presentment she is 'pale, penetratin',
and interesting.'

As you are aware, I have been wading deep waters and contending
with the great ones of the earth, not wholly without success. It
is, you may be interested to hear, a dreary and infuriating
business. If you can get the fools to admit one thing, they will
always save their face by denying another. If you can induce them
to take a step to the right hand, they generally indemnify
themselves by cutting a caper to the left. I always held (upon no
evidence whatever, from a mere sentiment or intuition) that
politics was the dirtiest, the most foolish, and the most random of
human employments. I always held, but now I know it! Fortunately,
you have nothing to do with anything of the kind, and I may spare
you the horror of further details.

I received from you a book by a man by the name of Anatole France.
Why should I disguise it? I have no use for Anatole. He writes
very prettily, and then afterwards? Baron Marbot was a different
pair of shoes. So likewise is the Baron de Vitrolles, whom I am
now perusing with delight. His escape in 1814 is one of the best
pages I remember anywhere to have read. But Marbot and Vitrolles
are dead, and what has become of the living? It seems as if
literature were coming to a stand. I am sure it is with me; and I
am sure everybody will say so when they have the privilege of
reading THE EBB TIDE. My dear man, the grimness of that story is
not to be depicted in words. There are only four characters, to be
sure, but they are such a troop of swine! And their behaviour is
really so deeply beneath any possible standard, that on a
retrospect I wonder I have been able to endure them myself until
the yarn was finished. Well, there is always one thing; it will
serve as a touchstone. If the admirers of Zola admire him for his
pertinent ugliness and pessimism, I think they should admire this;
but if, as I have long suspected, they neither admire nor
understand the man's art, and only wallow in his rancidness like a
hound in offal, then they will certainly be disappointed in THE EBB
TIDE. ALAS! poor little tale, it is not EVEN rancid.

By way of an antidote or febrifuge, I am going on at a great rate
with my HISTORY OF THE STEVENSONS, which I hope may prove rather
amusing, in some parts at least. The excess of materials weighs
upon me. My grandfather is a delightful comedy part; and I have to
treat him besides as a serious and (in his way) a heroic figure,
and at times I lose my way, and I fear in the end will blur the
effect. However, A LA GRACE DE DIEU! I'll make a spoon or spoil a
horn. You see, I have to do the Building of the Bell Rock by
cutting down and packing my grandsire's book, which I rather hope I
have done, but do not know. And it makes a huge chunk of a very
different style and quality between Chapters II. and IV. And it
can't be helped! It is just a delightful and exasperating
necessity. You know, the stuff is really excellent narrative:
only, perhaps there's too much of it! There is the rub. Well,
well, it will be plain to you that my mind is affected; it might be
with less. THE EBB TIDE and NORTHERN LIGHTS are a full meal for
any plain man.

I have written and ordered your last book, THE REAL THING, so be
sure and don't send it. What else are you doing or thinking of
doing? News I have none, and don't want any. I have had to stop
all strong drink and all tobacco, and am now in a transition state
between the two, which seems to be near madness. You never smoked,
I think, so you can never taste the joys of stopping it. But at


 


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