The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 23

To Sidney Colvin

    17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh [January 1875].

MY DEAR COLVIN, – I have worked too hard; I have given myself one day of rest, and that was not enough; so I am giving myself another. I shall go to bed again likewise so soon as this is done, and slumber most potently.

9 P.M. – Slept all afternoon like a lamb.

About my coming south, I think the still small unanswerable voice of coins will make it impossible until the session is over (end of March); but for all that, I think I shall hold out jolly. I do not want you to come and bother yourself; indeed, it is still not quite certain whether my father will be quite fit for you, although I have now no fear of that really. Now don’t take up this wrongly; I wish you could come; and I do not know anything that would make me happier, but I see that it is wrong to expect it, and so I resign myself: some time after. I offered Appleton a series of papers on the modern French school – the Parnassiens, I think they call them – de Banville, Coppée, Soulary, and Sully Prudhomme. But he has not deigned to answer my letter.

I shall have another Portfolio paper so soon as I am done with this story, that has played me out; the story is to be called When the Devil was well: scene, Italy, Renaissance; colour, purely imaginary of course, my own unregenerate idea of what Italy then was. O, when shall I find the story of my dreams, that shall never halt nor wander nor step aside, but go ever before its face, and ever swifter and louder, until the pit receives it, roaring? The Portfolio paper will be about Scotland and England. – Ever yours,

    R. L. Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwell

    [Edinburgh, January 1875.]

I wish I could write better letters to you. Mine must be very dull. I must try to give you news. Well, I was at the annual dinner of my old Academy schoolfellows last night. We sat down ten, out of seventy-two! The others are scattered all over the places of the earth, some in San Francisco, some in New Zealand, some in India, one in the backwoods – it gave one a wide look over the world to hear them talk so. I read them some verses. It is great fun; I always read verses, and in the vinous enthusiasm of the moment they always propose to have them printed; Ce qui n’arrive jamais du reste: in the morning, they are more calm.

Sunday.– It occurs to me that one reason why there is no news in my letters is because there is so little in my life. I always tell you of my concerts: I was at another yesterday afternoon: a recital of Hallé and Norman Neruda. I went in the evening to the pantomime with the Mackintoshes – cousins of mine. Their little boy, aged four, was there for the first time. To see him with his eyes fixed and open like saucers, and never varying his expression save in so far as he might sometimes open his mouth a little wider, was worth the money. He laughed only once – when the giant’s dwarf fed his master as though he were a child. Coming home, he was much interested as to who made the fairies, and wanted to know if they were like berries. I should like to know how much this question was due to the idea of their coming up from under the stage, and how much to a vague idea of rhyme. When he was told that they were not like berries, he then asked if they had not been flowers before they were fairies. It was a good deal in the vein of Herbert Spencer’s primitive man all this.

I am pretty well but have not got back to work much since Tuesday. I work far too hard at the story; but I wish I had finished it before I stopped as I feel somewhat out of the swing now. – Ever your faithful

    Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

Another of the literary projects which came to naught, no one of the stories mentioned having turned out according to Stevenson’s dream and desire at its first conception, or even having been preserved for use afterwards as the foundation of riper work. “Clytie” is of course the famous Roman bust from the Townley collection in the British Museum.

    [Edinburgh, January 1875.]

MY DEAR COLVIN, – Thanks for your letter, I too am in such a state of business that I know not when to find the time to write. Look here – Seeley does not seem to me to have put that paper of mine in this month; so I remain unable to pay you; which is a sad pity and must be forgiven me.

What am I doing? Well I wrote my second John Knox, which is not a bad piece of work for me; begun and finished ready for press in nine days. Then I have since written a story called King Matthias’s Hunting Horn, and I am engaged in finishing another called The Two Falconers of Cairnstane. I find my stories affect me rather more perhaps than is wholesome. I have only been two hours at work to-day, and yet I have been crying and am shaking badly, as you can see in my handwriting, and my back is a bit bad. They give me pleasure though, quite worth all results. However I shall work no more to-day.

I am to get £1000 when I pass Advocate, it seems; which is good.

O I say, will you kindly tell me all about the bust of Clytie.

Then I had the wisdom to stop and look over Japanese picture books until lunch time.

Well, tell me all about Clytie, how old is it, who did it, what’s it about, etc. Send it on a sheet that I can forward without indiscretion to another, as I desire the information for a friend whom I wish to please.

Now, look here. When I have twelve stories ready – these twelve —

– when I have these twelve ready, should I not do better to try to get a publisher for them, call them A Book of Stories and put a good dedicatory letter at the fore end of them. I should get less coin than by going into magazines perhaps; but I should also get more notice, should I not? and so, do better for myself in the long run. Now, should I not? Besides a book with boards is a book with boards, even if it bain’t a very fat one and has no references to Ammianus Marcellinus and German critics at the foot of the pages. On all this, I shall want your serious advice. I am sure I shall stand or fall by the stories; and you’ll think so too, when you see those poor excrescences the two John Knox and Women games. However, judge for yourself and be prudent on my behalf, like a good soul.

Yes, I’ll come to Cambridge then or thereabout, if God doesn’t put a real tangible spoke in my wheel.

My terms with my parents are admirable; we are a very united family.

Good-bye, mon cher, je ne puis plus écrire. I have not quite got over a damned affecting part in my story this morning. O cussed stories, they will never affect any one but me I fear. – Ever yours,

    Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwell

In the following is related Stevenson’s first introduction to Mr. W. E. Henley. The acquaintance thus formed ripened quickly, as is well known, into a close and stimulating friendship. Of the story called A Country Dance no trace remains.

    Edinburgh, Tuesday [February 1875].

I got your nice long gossiping letter to-day – I mean by that that there was more news in it than usual – and so, of course, I am pretty jolly. I am in the house, however, with such a beastly cold in the head. Our east winds begin already to be very cold.

O, I have such a longing for children of my own; and yet I do not think I could bear it if I had one. I fancy I must feel more like a woman than like a man about that. I sometimes hate the children I see on the street – you know what I mean by hate – wish they were somewhere else, and not there to mock me; and sometimes, again, I don’t know how to go by them for the love of them, especially the very wee ones.

Thursday.– I have been still in the house since I wrote, and I have worked. I finished the Italian story; not well, but as well as I can just now; I must go all over it again, some time soon, when I feel in the humour to better and perfect it. And now I have taken up an old story, begun years ago; and I have now re-written all I had written of it then, and mean to finish it. What I have lost and gained is odd. As far as regards simple writing, of course, I am in another world now; but in some things, though more clumsy, I seem to have been freer and more plucky: this is a lesson I have taken to heart. I have got a jolly new name for my old story. I am going to call it A Country Dance; the two heroes keep changing places, you know; and the chapter where the most of this changing goes on is to be called “Up the middle, down the middle.” It will be in six or (perhaps) seven chapters. I have never worked harder in my life than these last four days. If I can only keep it up.

Saturday.– Yesterday, Leslie Stephen, who was down here to lecture, called on me and took me up to see a poor fellow, a sort of poet who writes for him, and who has been eighteen months in our infirmary, and may be, for all I know, eighteen months more. It was very sad to see him there, in a little room with two beds, and a couple of sick children in the other bed; a girl came in to visit the children, and played dominoes on the counterpane with them; the gas flared and crackled, the fire burned in a dull economical way; Stephen and I sat on a couple of chairs, and the poor fellow sat up in his bed with his hair and beard all tangled, and talked as cheerfully as if he had been in a King’s palace, or the great King’s palace of the blue air. He has taught himself two languages since he has been lying there. I shall try to be of use to him.

We have had two beautiful spring days, mild as milk, windy withal, and the sun hot. I dreamed last night I was walking by moonlight round the place where the scene of my story is laid; it was all so quiet and sweet, and the blackbirds were singing as if it was day; it made my heart very cool and happy. – Ever yours,

    Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

    [Edinburgh] February 8, 1875.

MY DEAR COLVIN, – Forgive my bothering you. Here is the proof of my second Knox. Glance it over, like a good fellow, and if there’s anything very flagrant send it to me marked. I have no confidence in myself; I feel such an ass. What have I been doing? As near as I can calculate, nothing. And yet I have worked all this month from three to five hours a day, that is to say, from one to three hours more than my doctor allows me; positively no result.

No, I can write no article just now; I am pioching, like a madman, at my stories, and can make nothing of them; my simplicity is tame and dull – my passion tinsel, boyish, hysterical. Never mind – ten years hence, if I live, I shall have learned, so help me God. I know one must work, in the meantime (so says Balzac) comme le mineur enfoui sous un éboulement.

J’y parviendrai, nom de nom de nom! But it’s a long look forward. – Ever yours,

    R. L. S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

As the spring advanced Stevenson had again been much out of sorts, and had gone for a change, in the company of Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson, on his first visit to the artist haunts of Fontainebleau which were afterwards so much endeared to him.

    [Barbizon, April 1875.]

MY DEAR FRIEND, – This is just a line to say I am well and happy. I am here in my dear forest all day in the open air. It is very be – no, not beautiful exactly, just now, but very bright and living. There are one or two song birds and a cuckoo; all the fruit-trees are in flower, and the beeches make sunshine in a shady place. I begin to go all right; you need not be vexed about my health; I really was ill at first, as bad as I have been for nearly a year; but the forest begins to work, and the air, and the sun, and the smell of the pines. If I could stay a month here, I should be as right as possible. Thanks for your letter. – Your faithful

    R. L. S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

    [Swanston, Tuesday, April 1875.]