The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson — Volume 1

    R. L. S.

Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER

608 BUSH STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, JAN. 26, '80

MY DEAR CHARLES, — I have to drop from a 50 cent. to a 25 cent. dinner; to-day begins my fall. That brings down my outlay in food and drink to 45 cents., or 1s. 10 and a half d. per day. How are the mighty fallen! Luckily, this is such a cheap place for food; I used to pay as much as that for my first breakfast in the Savile in the grand old palmy days of yore. I regret nothing, and do not even dislike these straits, though the flesh will rebel on occasion. It is to-day bitter cold, after weeks of lovely warm weather, and I am all in a chitter. I am about to issue for my little shilling and halfpenny meal, taken in the middle of the day, the poor man's hour; and I shall eat and drink to your prosperity. — Ever yours,

    R. L. S.

Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN

608 BUSH STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA [JANUARY 1880]

MY DEAR COLVIN, — I received this morning your long letter from Paris. Well, God's will be done; if it's dull, it's dull; it was a fair fight, and it's lost, and there's an end. But, fortunately, dulness is not a fault the public hates; perhaps they may like this vein of dulness. If they don't, damn them, we'll try them with another. I sat down on the back of your letter, and wrote twelve Cornhill pages this day as ever was of that same despised EMIGRANT; so you see my moral courage has not gone down with my intellect. Only, frankly, Colvin, do you think it a good plan to be so eminently descriptive, and even eloquent in dispraise? You rolled such a lot of polysyllables over me that a better man than I might have been disheartened. — However, I was not, as you see, and am not. The EMIGRANT shall be finished and leave in the course of next week. And then, I'll stick to stories. I am not frightened. I know my mind is changing; I have been telling you so for long; and I suppose I am fumbling for the new vein. Well, I'll find it.

The VENDETTA you will not much like, I dare say: and that must be finished next; but I'll knock you with THE FOREST STATE: A ROMANCE.

I'm vexed about my letters; I know it is painful to get these unsatisfactory things; but at least I have written often enough. And not one soul ever gives me any NEWS, about people or things; everybody writes me sermons; it's good for me, but hardly the food necessary for a man who lives all alone on forty-five cents. a day, and sometimes less, with quantities of hard work and many heavy thoughts. If one of you could write me a letter with a jest in it, a letter like what is written to real people in this world — I am still flesh and blood — I should enjoy it. Simpson did, the other day, and it did me as much good as a bottle of wine. A lonely man gets to feel like a pariah after awhile — or no, not that, but like a saint and martyr, or a kind of macerated clergyman with pebbles in his boots, a pillared Simeon, I'm damned if I know what, but, man alive, I want gossip.

My health is better, my spirits steadier, I am not the least cast down. If THE EMIGRANT was a failure, the PAVILION, by your leave, was not: it was a story quite adequately and rightly done, I contend; and when I find Stephen, for whom certainly I did not mean it, taking it in, I am better pleased with it than before. I know I shall do better work than ever I have done before; but, mind you, it will not be like it. My sympathies and interests are changed. There shall be no more books of travel for me. I care for nothing but the moral and the dramatic, not a jot for the picturesque or the beautiful other than about people. It bored me hellishly to write the EMIGRANT; well, it's going to bore others to read it; that's only fair.

I should also write to others; but indeed I am jack-tired, and must go to bed to a French novel to compose myself for slumber. — Ever your affectionate friend,

    R. L. S.

Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY

608 BUSH STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., FEBRUARY 1880

MY DEAR HENLEY, — Before my work or anything I sit down to answer your long and kind letter.

I am well, cheerful, busy, hopeful; I cannot be knocked down; I do not mind about the EMIGRANT. I never thought it a masterpiece. It was written to sell, and I believe it will sell; and if it does not, the next will. You need not be uneasy about my work; I am only beginning to see my true method.

(1) As to STUDIES. There are two more already gone to Stephen. YOSHIDA TORAJIRO, which I think temperate and adequate; and THOREAU, which will want a really Balzacian effort over the proofs. But I want BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND THE ART OF VIRTUE to follow; and perhaps also WILLIAM PENN, but this last may be perhaps delayed for another volume — I think not, though. The STUDIES will be an intelligent volume, and in their latter numbers more like what I mean to be my style, or I mean what my style means to be, for I am passive. (2) The ESSAYS. Good news indeed. I think ORDERED SOUTH must be thrown in. It always swells the volume, and it will never find a more appropriate place. It was May 1874, Macmillan, I believe. (3) PLAYS. I did not understand you meant to try the draft. I shall make you a full scenario as soon as the EMIGRANT is done. (4) EMIGRANT. He shall be sent off next week. (5) Stories. You need not be alarmed that I am going to imitate Meredith. You know I was a Story-teller ingrain; did not that reassure you? The VENDETTA, which falls next to be finished, is not entirely pleasant. But it has points. THE FOREST STATE or THE GREENWOOD STATE: A ROMANCE, is another pair of shoes. It is my old Semiramis, our half-seen Duke and Duchess, which suddenly sprang into sunshine clearness as a story the other day. The kind, happy DENOUEMENT is unfortunately absolutely undramatic, which will be our only trouble in quarrying out the play. I mean we shall quarry from it. CHARACTERS — Otto Frederick John, hereditary Prince of Grunwald; Amelia Seraphina, Princess; Conrad, Baron Gondremarck, Prime Minister; Cancellarius Greisengesang; Killian Gottesacker, Steward of the River Farm; Ottilie, his daughter; the Countess von Rosen. Seven in all. A brave story, I swear; and a brave play too, if we can find the trick to make the end. The play, I fear, will have to end darkly, and that spoils the quality as I now see it of a kind of crockery, eighteenth century, high-life-below- stairs life, breaking up like ice in spring before the nature and the certain modicum of manhood of my poor, clever, feather-headed Prince, whom I love already. I see Seraphina too. Gondremarck is not quite so clear. The Countess von Rosen, I have; I'll never tell you who she is; it's a secret; but I have known the countess; well, I will tell you; it's my old Russian friend, Madame Z. Certain scenes are, in conception, the best I have ever made, except for HESTER NOBLE. Those at the end, Von Rosen and the Princess, the Prince and Princess, and the Princess and Gondremarck, as I now see them from here, should be nuts, Henley, nuts. It irks me not to go to them straight. But the EMIGRANT stops the way; then a reassured scenario for HESTER; then the VENDETTA; then two (or three) Essays — Benjamin Franklin, Thoughts on Literature as an Art, Dialogue on Character and Destiny between two Puppets, The Human Compromise; and then, at length — come to me, my Prince. O Lord, it's going to be courtly! And there is not an ugly person nor an ugly scene in it. The SLATE both Fanny and I have damned utterly; it is too morbid, ugly, and unkind; better starvation.

    R. L. S.

Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN

608 BUSH STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, [MARCH 1880]

MY DEAR COLVIN, — My landlord and landlady's little four-year-old child is dying in the house; and O, what he has suffered. It has really affected my health. O never, never any family for me! I am cured of that.

I have taken a long holiday — have not worked for three days, and will not for a week; for I was really weary. Excuse this scratch; for the child weighs on me, dear Colvin. I did all I could to help; but all seems little, to the point of crime, when one of these poor innocents lies in such misery. — Ever yours,

    R. L. S.

Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., APRIL 16 [1880]

MY DEAR GOSSE, — You have not answered my last; and I know you will repent when you hear how near I have been to another world. For about six weeks I have been in utter doubt; it was a toss-up for life or death all that time; but I won the toss, sir, and Hades went off once more discomfited. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that I have a friendly game with that gentleman. I know he will end by cleaning me out; but the rogue is insidious, and the habit of that sort of gambling seems to be a part of my nature; it was, I suspect, too much indulged in youth; break your children of this tendency, my dear Gosse, from the first. It is, when once formed, a habit more fatal than opium — I speak, as St. Paul says, like a fool. I have been very very sick; on the verge of a galloping consumption, cold sweats, prostrating attacks of cough, sinking fits in which I lost the power of speech, fever, and all the ugliest circumstances of the disease; and I have cause to bless God, my wife that is to be, and one Dr. Bamford (a name the Muse repels), that I have come out of all this, and got my feet once more upon a little hilltop, with a fair prospect of life and some new desire of living. Yet I did not wish to die, neither; only I felt unable to go on farther with that rough horseplay of human life: a man must be pretty well to take the business in good part. Yet I felt all the time that I had done nothing to entitle me to an honourable discharge; that I had taken up many obligations and begun many friendships which I had no right to put away from me; and that for me to die was to play the cur and slinking sybarite, and desert the colours on the eve of the decisive fight. Of course I have done no work for I do not know how long; and here you can triumph. I have been reduced to writing verses for amusement. A fact. The whirligig of time brings in its revenges, after all. But I'll have them buried with me, I think, for I have not the heart to burn them while I live. Do write. I shall go to the mountains as soon as the weather clears; on the way thither, I marry myself; then I set up my family altar among the pinewoods, 3000 feet, sir, from the disputatious sea. — I am, dear Weg, most truly yours,

    R. L. S.

Letter: TO DR. W. BAMFORD

[SAN FRANCISCO, APRIL 1880.]

MY DEAR SIR, — Will you let me offer you this little book? If I had anything better, it should be yours. May you not dislike it, for it will be your own handiwork if there are other fruits from the same tree! But for your kindness and skill, this would have been my last book, and now I am in hopes that it will be neither my last nor my best.

You doctors have a serious responsibility. You recall a man from the gates of death, you give him health and strength once more to use or to abuse. I hope I shall feel your responsibility added to my own, and seek in the future to make a better profit of the life you have renewed me. — I am, my dear sir, gratefully yours,

    ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN

[SAN FRANCISCO, APRIL 1880.]

MY DEAR COLVIN, — You must be sick indeed of my demand for books, for you have seemingly not yet sent me one. Still, I live on promises: waiting for Penn, for H. James's HAWTHORNE, for my BURNS, etc.; and now, to make matters worse, pending your CENTURIES, etc., I do earnestly desire the best book about mythology (if it be German, so much the worse; send a bunctionary along with it, and pray for me). This is why. If I recover, I feel called on to write a volume of gods and demi-gods in exile: Pan, Jove, Cybele, Venus, Charon, etc.; and though I should like to take them very free, I should like to know a little about 'em to begin with. For two days, till last night, I had no night sweats, and my cough is almost gone, and I digest well; so all looks hopeful. However, I was near the other side of Jordan. I send the proof of THOREAU to you, so that you may correct and fill up the quotation from Goethe. It is a pity I was ill, as, for matter, I think I prefer that to any of my essays except Burns; but the style, though quite manly, never attains any melody or lenity. So much for consumption: I begin to appreciate what the EMIGRANT must be. As soon as I have done the last few pages of the EMIGRANT they shall go to you. But when will that be? I know not quite yet — I have to be so careful. — Ever yours,

    R. L. S.

Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN

[SAN FRANCISCO, APRIL 1880.]

MY DEAR COLVIN, — My dear people telegraphed me in these words: 'Count on 250 pounds annually.' You may imagine what a blessed business this was. And so now recover the sheets of the EMIGRANT, and post them registered to me. And now please give me all your venom against it; say your worst, and most incisively, for now it will be a help, and I'll make it right or perish in the attempt. Now, do you understand why I protested against your depressing eloquence on the subject? When I HAD to go on any way, for dear life, I thought it a kind of pity and not much good to discourage me. Now all's changed. God only knows how much courage and suffering is buried in that MS. The second part was written in a circle of hell unknown to Dante — that of the penniless and dying author. For dying I was, although now saved. Another week, the doctor said, and I should have been past salvation. I think I shall always think of it as my best work. There is one page in Part II., about having got to shore, and sich, which must have cost me altogether six hours of work as miserable as ever I went through. I feel sick even to think of it. — Ever your friend,

    R. L. S.

Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN

[SAN FRANCISCO, MAY 1880.]

MY DEAR COLVIN, — I received your letter and proof to-day, and was greatly delighted with the last.

I am now out of danger; in but a short while (I.E. as soon as the weather is settled), F. and I marry and go up to the hills to look for a place; 'I to the hills will lift mine eyes, from whence doth come mine aid': once the place found, the furniture will follow. There, sir, in, I hope, a ranche among the pine-trees and hard by a running brook, we are to fish, hunt, sketch, study Spanish, French, Latin, Euclid, and History; and, if possible, not quarrel. Far from man, sir, in the virgin forest. Thence, as my strength returns, you may expect works of genius. I always feel as if I must write a work of genius some time or other; and when is it more likely to come off, than just after I have paid a visit to Styx and go thence to the eternal mountains? Such a revolution in a man's affairs, as I have somewhere written, would set anybody singing. When we get installed, Lloyd and I are going to print my poetical works; so all those who have been poetically addressed shall receive copies of their addresses. They are, I believe, pretty correct literary exercises, or will be, with a few filings; but they are not remarkable for white-hot vehemence of inspiration; tepid works! respectable versifications of very proper and even original sentiments: kind of Hayleyistic, I fear — but no, this is morbid self-depreciation. The family is all very shaky in health, but our motto is now 'Al Monte!' in the words of Don Lope, in the play the sister and I are just beating through with two bad dictionaries and an insane grammar.

I to the hills. — Yours ever,

    R. L. S.

Letter: TO C. W. STODDARD

EAST OAKLAND, CAL., MAY 1880

MY DEAR STODDARD, — I am guilty in thy sight and the sight of God. However, I swore a great oath that you should see some of my manuscript at last; and though I have long delayed to keep it, yet it was to be. You re-read your story and were disgusted; that is the cold fit following the hot. I don't say you did wrong to be disgusted, yet I am sure you did wrong to be disgusted altogether. There was, you may depend upon it, some reason for your previous vanity, as well as your present mortification. I shall hear you, years from now, timidly begin to retrim your feathers for a little self-laudation, and trot out this misdespised novelette as not the worst of your performances. I read the album extracts with sincere interest; but I regret that you spared to give the paper more development; and I conceive that you might do a great deal worse than expand each of its paragraphs into an essay or sketch, the excuse being in each case your personal intercourse; the bulk, when that would not be sufficient, to be made up from their own works and stories. Three at least — Menken, Yelverton, and Keeler — could not fail of a vivid human interest. Let me press upon you this plan; should any document be wanted from Europe, let me offer my services to procure it. I am persuaded that there is stuff in the idea.