Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, page 761
I have now published on 101 small pages THE COMPLETE PROOF OF MR. R. L. STEVENSON’S INCAPACITY TO WRITE VERSE, in a series of graduated examples with table of contents. I think I shall issue a companion volume of exercises: ‘Analyse this poem. Collect and comminate the ugly words. Distinguish and condemn the CHEVILLES. State Mr. Stevenson’s faults of taste in regard to the measure. What reasons can you gather from this example for your belief that Mr. S. is unable to write any other measure?’
They look ghastly in the cold light of print; but there is something nice in the little ragged regiment for all; the blackguards seem to me to smile, to have a kind of childish treble note that sounds in my ears freshly; not song, if you will, but a child’s voice.
I was glad you enjoyed your visit to the States. Most Englishmen go there with a confirmed design of patronage, as they go to France for that matter; and patronage will not pay. Besides, in this year of - grace, said I? - of disgrace, who should creep so low as an Englishman? ‘It is not to be thought of that the flood’ - ah, Wordsworth, you would change your note were you alive to-day!
I am now a beastly householder, but have not yet entered on my domain. When I do, the social revolution will probably cast me back upon my dung heap. There is a person called Hyndman whose eye is on me; his step is beHynd me as I go. I shall call my house Skerryvore when I get it: SKERRYVORE: C’EST BON POUR LA POESHIE. I will conclude with my favourite sentiment: ‘The world is too much with me.’
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, THE HERMIT OF SKERRYVORE.
Author of ‘John Vane Tempest: a Romance,’ ‘Herbert and Henrietta:
or the Nemesis of Sentiment,’ ‘The Life and Adventures of Colonel
Bludyer Fortescue,’ ‘Happy Homes and Hairy Faces,’ ‘A Pound of
Feathers and a Pound of Lead,’ part author of ‘Minn’s Complete
Capricious Correspondent: a Manual of Natty, Natural, and Knowing
Letters,’ and editor of the ‘Poetical Remains of Samuel Burt
Crabbe, known as the melodious Bottle-Holder.’
Uniform with the above:
‘The Life and Remains of the Reverend Jacob Degray Squah,’ author
of ‘Heave-yo for the New Jerusalem.’ ‘A Box of Candles; or the
Patent Spiritual Safety Match,’ and ‘A Day with the Heavenly
Harriers.’
Letter: TO W. H. LOW
BONALLIE TOWERS, BOURNEMOUTH, MARCH 13, 1885.
MY DEAR LOW, - Your success has been immense. I wish your letter had come two days ago: OTTO, alas! has been disposed of a good while ago; but it was only day before yesterday that I settled the new volume of Arabs. However, for the future, you and the sons of the deified Scribner are the men for me. Really they have behaved most handsomely. I cannot lay my hand on the papers, or I would tell you exactly how it compares with my English bargain; but it compares well. Ah, if we had that copyright, I do believe it would go far to make me solvent, ill-health and all.
I wrote you a letter to the Rembrandt, in which I stated my views about the dedication in a very brief form. It will give me sincere pleasure, and will make the second dedication I have received, the other being from John Addington Symonds. It is a compliment I value much; I don’t know any that I should prefer.
I am glad to hear you have windows to do; that is a fine business, I think; but, alas! the glass is so bad nowadays; realism invading even that, as well as the huge inferiority of our technical resource corrupting every tint. Still, anything that keeps a man to decoration is, in this age, good for the artist’s spirit.
By the way, have you seen James and me on the novel? James, I think in the August or September - R. L. S. in the December LONGMAN. I own I think the ECOLE BETE, of which I am the champion, has the whip hand of the argument; but as James is to make a rejoinder, I must not boast. Anyway the controversy is amusing to see. I was terribly tied down to space, which has made the end congested and dull. I shall see if I can afford to send you the April CONTEMPORARY - but I dare say you see it anyway - as it will contain a paper of mine on style, a sort of continuation of old arguments on art in which you have wagged a most effective tongue. It is a sort of start upon my Treatise on the Art of Literature: a small, arid book that shall some day appear.
With every good wish from me and mine (should I not say ‘she and hers’?) to you and yours, believe me yours ever,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO P. G. HAMERTON
BOURNEMOUTH, MARCH 16, 1885.
MY DEAR HAMERTON, - Various things have been reminding me of my misconduct: First, Swan’s application for your address; second, a sight of the sheets of your LANDSCAPE book; and last, your note to Swan, which he was so kind as to forward. I trust you will never suppose me to be guilty of anything more serious than an idleness, partially excusable. My ill-health makes my rate of life heavier than I can well meet, and yet stops me from earning more. My conscience, sometimes perhaps too easily stifled, but still (for my time of life and the public manners of the age) fairly well alive, forces me to perpetual and almost endless transcriptions. On the back of all this, my correspondence hangs like a thundercloud; and just when I think I am getting through my troubles, crack, down goes my health, I have a long, costly sickness, and begin the world again. It is fortunate for me I have a father, or I should long ago have died; but the opportunity of the aid makes the necessity none the more welcome. My father has presented me with a beautiful house here - or so I believe, for I have not yet seen it, being a cage bird but for nocturnal sorties in the garden. I hope we shall soon move into it, and I tell myself that some day perhaps we may have the pleasure of seeing you as our guest. I trust at least that you will take me as I am, a thoroughly bad correspondent, and a man, a hater, indeed, of rudeness in others, but too often rude in all unconsciousness himself; and that you will never cease to believe the sincere sympathy and admiration that I feel for you and for your work.
About the LANDSCAPE, which I had a glimpse of while a friend of mine was preparing a review, I was greatly interested, and could write and wrangle for a year on every page; one passage particularly delighted me, the part about Ulysses - jolly. Then, you know, that is just what I fear I have come to think landscape ought to be in literature; so there we should be at odds. Or perhaps not so much as I suppose, as Montaigne says it is a pot with two handles, and I own I am wedded to the technical handle, which (I likewise own and freely) you do well to keep for a mistress. I should much like to talk with you about some other points; it is only in talk that one gets to understand. Your delightful Wordsworth trap I have tried on two hardened Wordsworthians, not that I am not one myself. By covering up the context, and asking them to guess what the passage was, both (and both are very clever people, one a writer, one a painter) pronounced it a guide-book. ‘Do you think it an unusually good guide-book?’ I asked, and both said, ‘No, not at all!’ Their grimace was a picture when I showed the original.
I trust your health and that of Mrs. Hamerton keep better; your last account was a poor one. I was unable to make out the visit I had hoped, as (I do not know if you heard of it) I had a very violent and dangerous haemorrhage last spring. I am almost glad to have seen death so close with all my wits about me, and not in the customary lassitude and disenchantment of disease. Even thus clearly beheld I find him not so terrible as we suppose. But, indeed, with the passing of years, the decay of strength, the loss of all my old active and pleasant habits, there grows more and more upon me that belief in the kindness of this scheme of things, and the goodness of our veiled God, which is an excellent and pacifying compensation. I trust, if your health continues to trouble you, you may find some of the same belief. But perhaps my fine discovery is a piece of art, and belongs to a character cowardly, intolerant of certain feelings, and apt to self-deception. I don’t think so, however; and when I feel what a weak and fallible vessel I was thrust into this hurly-burly, and with what marvellous kindness the wind has been tempered to my frailties, I think I should be a strange kind of ass to feel anything but gratitude.
I do not know why I should inflict this talk upon you; but when I summon the rebellous pen, he must go his own way; I am no Michael Scott, to rule the fiend of correspondence. Most days he will none of me; and when he comes, it is to rape me where he will. - Yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO WILLIAM ARCHER
BOURNEMOUTH, MARCH 29, 1885.
DEAR MR. ARCHER, - Yes, I have heard of you and read some of your work; but I am bound in particular to thank you for the notice of my verses. ‘There,’ I said, throwing it over to the friend who was staying with me, ‘it’s worth writing a book to draw an article like that.’ Had you been as hard upon me as you were amiable, I try to tell myself I should have been no blinder to the merits of your notice. For I saw there, to admire and to be very grateful for, a most sober, agile pen; an enviable touch; the marks of a reader, such as one imagines for one’s self in dreams, thoughtful, critical, and kind; and to put the top on this memorial column, a greater readiness to describe the author criticised than to display the talents of his censor.
I am a man BLASE to injudicious praise (though I hope some of it may be judicious too), but I have to thank you for THE BEST CRITICISM I EVER HAD; and am therefore, dear Mr. Archer, the most grateful critickee now extant.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - I congratulate you on living in the corner of all London that I like best. A PROPOS, you are very right about my voluntary aversion from the painful sides of life. My childhood was in reality a very mixed experience, full of fever, nightmare, insomnia, painful days and interminable nights; and I can speak with less authority of gardens than of that other ‘land of counterpane.’ But to what end should we renew these sorrows? The sufferings of life may be handled by the very greatest in their hours of insight; it is of its pleasures that our common poems should be formed; these are the experiences that we should seek to recall or to provoke; and I say with Thoreau, ‘What right have I to complain, who have not ceased to wonder?’ and, to add a rider of my own, who have no remedy to offer.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JUNE 1885.]
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, - You know how much and for how long I have loved, respected, and admired him; I am only able to feel a little with you. But I know how he would have wished us to feel. I never knew a better man, nor one to me more lovable; we shall all feel the loss more greatly as time goes on. It scarce seems life to me; what must it be to you? Yet one of the last things that he said to me was, that from all these sad bereavements of yours he had learned only more than ever to feel the goodness and what we, in our feebleness, call the support of God; he had been ripening so much - to other eyes than ours, we must suppose he was ripe, and try to feel it. I feel it is better not to say much more. It will be to me a great pride to write a notice of him: the last I can now do. What more in any way I can do for you, please to think and let me know. For his sake and for your own, I would not be a useless friend: I know, you know me a most warm one; please command me or my wife, in any way. Do not trouble to write to me; Austin, I have no doubt, will do so, if you are, as I fear you will be, unfit.
My heart is sore for you. At least you know what you have been to him; how he cherished and admired you; how he was never so pleased as when he spoke of you; with what a boy’s love, up to the last, he loved you. This surely is a consolation. Yours is the cruel part - to survive; you must try and not grudge to him his better fortune, to go first. It is the sad part of such relations that one must remain and suffer; I cannot see my poor Jenkin without you. Nor you indeed without him; but you may try to rejoice that he is spared that extremity. Perhaps I (as I was so much his confidant) know even better than you can do what your loss would have been to him; he never spoke of you but his face changed; it was - you were - his religion.
I write by this post to Austin and to the ACADEMY. - Yours most sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,
Letter: TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, JUNE 1885.]
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, - I should have written sooner, but we are in a bustle, and I have been very tired, though still well. Your very kind note was most welcome to me. I shall be very much pleased to have you call me Louis, as he has now done for so many years. Sixteen, you say? is it so long? It seems too short now; but of that we cannot judge, and must not complain.
I wish that either I or my wife could do anything for you; when we can, you will, I am sure, command us.
I trust that my notice gave you as little pain as was possible. I found I had so much to say, that I preferred to keep it for another place and make but a note in the ACADEMY. To try to draw my friend at greater length, and say what he was to me and his intimates, what a good influence in life and what an example, is a desire that grows upon me. It was strange, as I wrote the note, how his old tests and criticisms haunted me; and it reminded me afresh with every few words how much I owe to him.
I had a note from Henley, very brief and very sad. We none of us yet feel the loss; but we know what he would have said and wished.
Do you know that Dew Smith has two photographs of him, neither very bad? and one giving a lively, though not flattering air of him in conversation? If you have not got them, would you like me to write to Dew and ask him to give you proofs?
I was so pleased that he and my wife made friends; that is a great pleasure. We found and have preserved one fragment (the head) of the drawing he made and tore up when he was last here. He had promised to come and stay with us this summer. May we not hope, at least, some time soon to have one from you? - Believe me, my dear Mrs. Jenkin, with the most real sympathy, your sincere friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Dear me, what happiness I owe to both of you!
Letter: TO W. H. LOW
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, OCTOBER 22, 1885.
MY DEAR LOW, - I trust you are not annoyed with me beyond forgiveness; for indeed my silence has been devilish prolonged. I can only tell you that I have been nearly six months (more than six) in a strange condition of collapse, when it was impossible to do any work, and difficult (more difficult than you would suppose) to write the merest note. I am now better, but not yet my own man in the way of brains, and in health only so-so. I suppose I shall learn (I begin to think I am learning) to fight this vast, vague feather-bed of an obsession that now overlies and smothers me; but in the beginnings of these conflicts, the inexperienced wrestler is always worsted, and I own I have been quite extinct. I wish you to know, though it can be no excuse, that you are not the only one of my friends by many whom I have thus neglected; and even now, having come so very late into the possession of myself, with a substantial capital of debts, and my work still moving with a desperate slowness - as a child might fill a sandbag with its little handfuls - and my future deeply pledged, there is almost a touch of virtue in my borrowing these hours to write to you. Why I said ‘hours’ I know not; it would look blue for both of us if I made good the word.
I was writing your address the other day, ordering a copy of my next, PRINCE OTTO, to go your way. I hope you have not seen it in parts; it was not meant to be so read; and only my poverty (dishonourably) consented to the serial evolution.
I will send you with this a copy of the English edition of the CHILD’S GARDEN. I have heard there is some vile rule of the post- office in the States against inscriptions; so I send herewith a piece of doggerel which Mr. Bunner may, if he thinks fit, copy off the fly leaf.
Sargent was down again and painted a portrait of me walking about in my own dining-room, in my own velveteen jacket, and twisting as I go my own moustache; at one corner a glimpse of my wife, in an Indian dress, and seated in a chair that was once my grandfather’s; but since some months goes by the name of Henry James’s, for it was there the novelist loved to sit - adds a touch of poesy and comicality. It is, I think, excellent, but is too eccentric to be exhibited. I am at one extreme corner; my wife, in this wild dress, and looking like a ghost, is at the extreme other end; between us an open door exhibits my palatial entrance hall and a part of my respected staircase. All this is touched in lovely, with that witty touch of Sargent’s; but, of course, it looks dam queer as a whole.
Pray let me hear from you, and give me good news of yourself and your wife, to whom please remember me. -
Yours most sincerely, my dear Low,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, AUTUMN 1885.]
DEAR LAD, - If there was any more praise in what you wrote, I think [the editor] has done us both a service; some of it stops my throat. What, it would not have been the same if Dumas or Musset had done it, would it not? Well, no, I do not think it would, do you know, now; I am really of opinion it would not; and a dam good job too. Why, think what Musset would have made of Otto! Think how gallantly Dumas would have carried his crowd through! And whatever you do, don’t quarrel with -. It gives me much pleasure to see your work there; I think you do yourself great justice in that field; and I would let no annoyance, petty or justifiable, debar me from such a market. I think you do good there. Whether (considering our intimate relations) you would not do better to refrain from reviewing me, I will leave to yourself: were it all on my side, you could foresee my answer; but there is your side also, where you must be the judge.
