Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, page 788
Alas! they are all my fancy painted, but the price is prohibitive. I cannot do it. It is another day-dream burst. Another gable of Abbotsford has gone down, fortunately before it was builded, so there’s nobody injured - except me. I had a strong conviction that I was a great hand at writing inscriptions, and meant to exhibit and test my genius on the walls of my house; and now I see I can’t. It is generally thus. The Battle of the Golden Letters will never be delivered. On making preparation to open the campaign, the King found himself face to face with invincible difficulties, in which the rapacity of a mercenary soldiery and the complaints of an impoverished treasury played an equal part. - Ever yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
I enclose a bill for the medallion; have been trying to find your letter, quite in vain, and therefore must request you to pay for the bronze letters yourself and let me know the damage.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO J. HORNE STEVENSON
VAILIMA, SAMOA, NOVEMBER 5TH, 1893.
MY DEAR STEVENSON, - A thousand thanks for your voluminous and delightful collections. Baxter - so soon as it is ready - will let you see a proof of my introduction, which is only sent out as a sprat to catch whales. And you will find I have a good deal of what you have, only mine in a perfectly desultory manner, as is necessary to an exile. My uncle’s pedigree is wrong; there was never a Stevenson of Caldwell, of course, but they were tenants of the Muirs; the farm held by them is in my introduction; and I have already written to Charles Baxter to have a search made in the Register House. I hope he will have had the inspiration to put it under your surveillance. Your information as to your own family is intensely interesting, and I should not wonder but what you and we and old John Stevenson, ‘land labourer in the parish of Dailly,’ came all of the same stock. Ayrshire - and probably Cunningham - seems to be the home of the race - our part of it. From the distribution of the name - which your collections have so much extended without essentially changing my knowledge of - we seem rather pointed to a British origin. What you say of the Engineers is fresh to me, and must be well thrashed out. This introduction of it will take a long while to walk about! - as perhaps I may be tempted to let it become long; after all, I am writing THIS for my own pleasure solely. Greetings to you and other Speculatives of our date, long bygone, alas! - Yours very sincerely,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
P.S. - I have a different version of my grandfather’s arms - or my father had if I could find it.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO JOHN P-N
VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 3RD, 1893.
DEAR JOHNNIE, - Well, I must say you seem to be a tremendous fellow! Before I was eight I used to write stories - or dictate them at least - and I had produced an excellent history of Moses, for which I got 1 pound from an uncle; but I had never gone the length of a play, so you have beaten me fairly on my own ground. I hope you may continue to do so, and thanking you heartily for your nice letter, I shall beg you to believe me yours truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO RUSSELL P-N
VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 3RD, 1893.
DEAR RUSSELL, - I have to thank you very much for your capital letter, which came to hand here in Samoa along with your mother’s. When you ‘grow up and write stories like me,’ you will be able to understand that there is scarce anything more painful than for an author to hold a pen; he has to do it so much that his heart sickens and his fingers ache at the sight or touch of it; so that you will excuse me if I do not write much, but remain (with compliments and greetings from one Scot to another - though I was not born in Ceylon - you’re ahead of me there). - Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
VAILIMA, DECEMBER 5, 1893.
MY DEAREST CUMMY, - This goes to you with a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. The Happy New Year anyway, for I think it should reach you about NOOR’S DAY. I dare say it may be cold and frosty. Do you remember when you used to take me out of bed in the early morning, carry me to the back windows, show me the hills of Fife, and quote to me.
‘A’ the hills are covered wi’ snaw,
An’ winter’s noo come fairly’?
There is not much chance of that here! I wonder how my mother is going to stand the winter. If she can, it will be a very good thing for her. We are in that part of the year which I like the best - the Rainy or Hurricane Season. ‘When it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is horrid,’ and our fine days are certainly fine like heaven; such a blue of the sea, such green of the trees, and such crimson of the hibiscus flowers, you never saw; and the air as mild and gentle as a baby’s breath, and yet not hot!
The mail is on the move, and I must let up. - With much love, I am, your laddie,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
6TH DECEMBER 1893.
‘OCTOBER 25, 1685. - At Privy Council, George Murray, Lieutenant of the King’s Guard, and others, did, on the 21st of September last, obtain a clandestine order of Privy Council to apprehend the person of Janet Pringle, daughter to the late Clifton, and she having retired out of the way upon information, he got an order against Andrew Pringle, her uncle, to produce her. . . . But she having married Andrew Pringle, her uncle’s son (to disappoint all their designs of selling her), a boy of thirteen years old.’ But my boy is to be fourteen, so I extract no further. - FOUNTAINHALL, i. 320.
‘MAY 6, 1685. - Wappus Pringle of Clifton was still alive after all, and in prison for debt, and transacts with Lieutenant Murray, giving security for 7000 marks.’ - i. 372.
No, it seems to have been HER brother who had succeeded.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - The above is my story, and I wonder if any light can be thrown on it. I prefer the girl’s father dead; and the question is, How in that case could Lieutenant George Murray get his order to ‘apprehend’ and his power to ‘sell’ her in marriage?
Or - might Lieutenant G. be her tutor, and she fugitive to the
Pringles, and on the discovery of her whereabouts hastily married?
A good legal note on these points is very ardently desired by me; it will be the corner-stone of my novel.
This is for - I am quite wrong to tell you - for you will tell others - and nothing will teach you that all my schemes are in the air, and vanish and reappear again like shapes in the clouds - it is for HEATHERCAT: whereof the first volume will be called THE KILLING TIME, and I believe I have authorities ample for that. But the second volume is to be called (I believe) DARIEN, and for that I want, I fear, a good deal of truck:-
DARIEN PAPERS, CARSTAIRS PAPERS, MARCHMONT PAPERS, JERVISWOODE CORRESPONDENCE,
I hope may do me. Some sort of general history of the Darien affair (if there is a decent one, which I misdoubt), it would also be well to have - the one with most details, if possible. It is singular how obscure to me this decade of Scots history remains, 1690-1700 - a deuce of a want of light and grouping to it! However, I believe I shall be mostly out of Scotland in my tale; first in Carolina, next in Darien. I want also - I am the daughter of the horse-leech truly - ‘Black’s new large map of Scotland,’ sheets 3, 4, and 5, a 7s. 6d. touch. I believe, if you can get the
CALDWELL PAPERS,
they had better come also; and if there be any reasonable work - but no, I must call a halt. . . .
I fear the song looks doubtful, but I’ll consider of it, and I can promise you some reminiscences which it will amuse me to write, whether or not it will amuse the public to read of them. But it’s an unco business to SUPPLY deid-heid coapy.
Letter: TO J. M. BARRIE
VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 7TH, 1893.
MY DEAR BARRIE, - I have received duly the MAGNUM OPUS, and it really is a MAGNUM OPUS. It is a beautiful specimen of Clark’s printing, paper sufficient, and the illustrations all my fancy painted. But the particular flower of the flock to whom I have hopelessly lost my heart is Tibby Birse. I must have known Tibby Birse when she was a servant’s mantua-maker in Edinburgh and answered to the name of Miss BRODDIE. She used to come and sew with my nurse, sitting with her legs crossed in a masculine manner; and swinging her foot emphatically, she used to pour forth a perfectly unbroken stream of gossip. I didn’t hear it, I was immersed in far more important business with a box of bricks, but the recollection of that thin, perpetual, shrill sound of a voice has echoed in my ears sinsyne. I am bound to say she was younger than Tibbie, but there is no mistaking that and the indescribable and eminently Scottish expression.
I have been very much prevented of late, having carried out thoroughly to my own satisfaction two considerable illnesses, had a birthday, and visited Honolulu, where politics are (if possible) a shade more exasperating than they are with us. I am told that it was just when I was on the point of leaving that I received your superlative epistle about the cricket eleven. In that case it is impossible I should have answered it, which is inconsistent with my own recollection of the fact. What I remember is, that I sat down under your immediate inspiration and wrote an answer in every way worthy. If I didn’t, as it seems proved that I couldn’t, it will never be done now. However, I did the next best thing, I equipped my cousin Graham Balfour with a letter of introduction, and from him, if you know how - for he is rather of the Scottish character - you may elicit all the information you can possibly wish to have as to us and ours. Do not be bluffed off by the somewhat stern and monumental first impression that he may make upon you. He is one of the best fellows in the world, and the same sort of fool that we are, only better-looking, with all the faults of Vailimans and some of his own - I say nothing about virtues.
I have lately been returning to my wallowing in the mire. When I was a child, and indeed until I was nearly a man, I consistently read Covenanting books. Now that I am a grey-beard - or would be, if I could raise the beard - I have returned, and for weeks back have read little else but Wodrow, Walker, Shields, etc. Of course this is with an idea of a novel, but in the course of it I made a very curious discovery. I have been accustomed to hear refined and intelligent critics - those who know so much better what we are than we do ourselves, - trace down my literary descent from all sorts of people, including Addison, of whom I could never read a word. Well, laigh i’ your lug, sir - the clue was found. My style is from the Covenanting writers. Take a particular case - the fondness for rhymes. I don’t know of any English prose-writer who rhymes except by accident, and then a stone had better be tied around his neck and himself cast into the sea. But my Covenanting buckies rhyme all the time - a beautiful example of the unconscious rhyme above referred to.
Do you know, and have you really tasted, these delightful works? If not, it should be remedied; there is enough of the Auld Licht in you to be ravished.
I suppose you know that success has so far attended my banners - my political banners I mean, and not my literary. In conjunction with the Three Great Powers I have succeeded in getting rid of My President and My Chief-Justice. They’ve gone home, the one to Germany, the other to Souwegia. I hear little echoes of footfalls of their departing footsteps through the medium of the newspapers. . . .
Whereupon I make you my salute with the firm remark that it is time to be done with trifling and give us a great book, and my ladies fall into line with me to pay you a most respectful courtesy, and we all join in the cry, ‘Come to Vailima!’
My dear sir, your soul’s health is in it - you will never do the great book, you will never cease to work in L., etc., till you come to Vailima.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO R. LE GALLIENNE
VAILIMA, SAMOA, DECEMBER 28TH, 1893.
DEAR MR. LE GALLIENNE, - I have received some time ago, through our friend Miss Taylor, a book of yours. But that was by no means my first introduction to your name. The same book had stood already on my shelves; I had read articles of yours in the ACADEMY; and by a piece of constructive criticism (which I trust was sound) had arrived at the conclusion that you were ‘Log-roller.’ Since then I have seen your beautiful verses to your wife. You are to conceive me, then, as only too ready to make the acquaintance of a man who loved good literature and could make it. I had to thank you, besides, for a triumphant exposure of a paradox of my own: the literary-prostitute disappeared from view at a phrase of yours - ‘The essence is not in the pleasure but the sale.’ True: you are right, I was wrong; the author is not the whore, but the libertine; and yet I shall let the passage stand. It is an error, but it illustrated the truth for which I was contending, that literature - painting - all art, are no other than pleasures, which we turn into trades.
And more than all this, I had, and I have to thank you for the intimate loyalty you have shown to myself; for the eager welcome you give to what is good - for the courtly tenderness with which you touch on my defects. I begin to grow old; I have given my top note, I fancy; - and I have written too many books. The world begins to be weary of the old booth; and if not weary, familiar with the familiarity that breeds contempt. I do not know that I am sensitive to criticism, if it be hostile; I am sensitive indeed, when it is friendly; and when I read such criticism as yours, I am emboldened to go on and praise God.
You are still young, and you may live to do much. The little, artificial popularity of style in England tends, I think, to die out; the British pig returns to his true love, the love of the styleless, of the shapeless, of the slapdash and the disorderly. There is trouble coming, I think; and you may have to hold the fort for us in evil days.
Lastly, let me apologise for the crucifixion that I am inflicting on you (BIEN A CONTRE-COEUR) by my bad writing. I was once the best of writers; landladies, puzzled as to my ‘trade,’ used to have their honest bosoms set at rest by a sight of a page of manuscript. - ‘Ah,’ they would say, ‘no wonder they pay you for that’; - and when I sent it in to the printers, it was given to the boys! I was about thirty-nine, I think, when I had a turn of scrivener’s palsy; my hand got worse; and for the first time, I received clean proofs. But it has gone beyond that now, I know I am like my old friend James Payn, a terror to correspondents; and you would not believe the care with which this has been written. - Believe me to be, very sincerely yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MRS. A. BAKER
DECEMBER 1893.
DEAR MADAM, - There is no trouble, and I wish I could help instead. As it is, I fear I am only going to put you to trouble and vexation. This Braille writing is a kind of consecration, and I would like if I could to have your copy perfect. The two volumes are to be published as Vols. I. and II. of THE ADVENTURES OF DAVID BALFOUR. 1st, KIDNAPPED; 2nd, CATRIONA. I am just sending home a corrected KIDNAPPED for this purpose to Messrs. Cassell, and in order that I may if possible be in time, I send it to you first of all. Please, as soon as you have noted the changes, forward the same to Cassell and Co., La Belle Sauvage Yard, Ludgate Hill.
I am writing to them by this mail to send you CATRIONA.
You say, dear madam, you are good enough to say, it is ‘a keen pleasure’ to you to bring my book within the reach of the blind.
Conceive then what it is to me! and believe me, sincerely yours,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
I was a barren tree before,
I blew a quenched coal,
I could not, on their midnight shore,
The lonely blind console.
A moment, lend your hand, I bring
My sheaf for you to bind,
And you can teach my words to sing
In the darkness of the blind.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO HENRY JAMES
APIA, DECEMBER 1893.
MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - The mail has come upon me like an armed man three days earlier than was expected; and the Lord help me! It is impossible I should answer anybody the way they should be. Your jubilation over CATRIONA did me good, and still more the subtlety and truth of your remark on the starving of the visual sense in that book. ’Tis true, and unless I make the greater effort - and am, as a step to that, convinced of its necessity - it will be more true I fear in the future. I HEAR people talking, and I FEEL them acting, and that seems to me to be fiction. My two aims may be described as -
1ST. War to the adjective. 2ND. Death to the optic nerve.
Admitted we live in an age of the optic nerve in literature. For how many centuries did literature get along without a sign of it? However, I’ll consider your letter.
How exquisite is your character of the critic in ESSAYS IN LONDON! I doubt if you have done any single thing so satisfying as a piece of style and of insight. - Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
1ST JANUARY ‘94.
MY DEAR CHARLES, - I am delighted with your idea, and first, I will here give an amended plan and afterwards give you a note of some of the difficulties.
[Plan of the Edinburgh edition - 14 vols.]
. . . It may be a question whether my TIMES letters might not be appended to the ‘Footnote’ with a note of the dates of discharge of Cedercrantz and Pilsach.
I am particularly pleased with this idea of yours, because I am come to a dead stop. I never can remember how bad I have been before, but at any rate I am bad enough just now, I mean as to literature; in health I am well and strong. I take it I shall be six months before I’m heard of again, and this time I could put in to some advantage in revising the text and (if it were thought desirable) writing prefaces. I do not know how many of them might be thought desirable. I have written a paper on TREASURE ISLAND, which is to appear shortly. MASTER OF BALLANTRAE - I have one drafted. THE WRECKER is quite sufficiently done already with the last chapter, but I suppose an historic introduction to DAVID BALFOUR is quite unavoidable. PRINCE OTTO I don’t think I could say anything about, and BLACK ARROW don’t want to. But it is probable I could say something to the volume of TRAVELS. In the verse business I can do just what I like better than anything else, and extend UNDERWOODS with a lot of unpublished stuff. APROPOS, if I were to get printed off a very few poems which are somewhat too intimate for the public, could you get them run up in some luxuous manner, so that fools might be induced to buy them in just a sufficient quantity to pay expenses and the thing remain still in a manner private? We could supply photographs of the illustrations - and the poems are of Vailima and the family - I should much like to get this done as a surprise for Fanny.
