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

Here I am, here, and very well too. I am glad you liked Walking Tours; I like it, too; I think it’s prose; and I own with contrition that I have not always written prose. However, I am “endeavouring after new obedience” (Scot. Shorter Catechism). You don’t say aught of Forest Notes, which is kind. There is one, if you will, that was too sweet to be wholesome.

I am at Charles d’Orléans. About fifteen Cornhill pages have already coulé’d from under my facile plume – no, I mean eleven, fifteen of MS. – and we are not much more than half-way through, Charles and I; but he’s a pleasant companion. My health is very well; I am in a fine exercisy state. Baynes is gone to London; if you see him, inquire about my Burns. They have sent me £5, 5s. for it, which has mollified me horrid. £5, 5s. is a good deal to pay for a read of it in MS.; I can’t complain. – Yours,

    R. L. S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

This dates from just before the canoeing trip recounted in the Inland Voyage.

    [Swanston, July 1876.]

Well, here I am at last; it is a Sunday, blowing hard, with a grey sky with the leaves flying; and I have nothing to say. I ought to have no doubt; since it’s so long since last I wrote; but there are times when people’s lives stand still. If you were to ask a squirrel in a mechanical cage for his autobiography, it would not be very gay. Every spin may be amusing in itself, but is mighty like the last; you see I compare myself to a lighthearted animal; and indeed I have been in a very good humour. For the weather has been passable; I have taken a deal of exercise, and done some work. But I have the strangest repugnance for writing; indeed, I have nearly got myself persuaded into the notion that letters don’t arrive, in order to salve my conscience for never sending them off. I’m reading a great deal of fifteenth century: Trial of Joan of Arc, Paston Letters, Basin,[21 - Thomas Basin or Bazin, the historian of Charles VIII. and Louis XI.] etc., also Boswell daily by way of a Bible; I mean to read Boswell now until the day I die. And now and again a bit of Pilgrim’s Progress. Is that all? Yes, I think that’s all. I have a thing in proof for the Cornhill called Virginibus Puerisque. Charles of Orleans is again laid aside, but in a good state of furtherance this time. A paper called A Defence of Idlers (which is really a defence of R. L. S.) is in a good way. So, you see, I am busy in a tumultuous, knotless sort of fashion; and as I say, I take lots of exercise, and I’m as brown as a berry.

This is the first letter I’ve written for – O I don’t know how long.

July 30th.– This is, I suppose, three weeks after I began. Do, please, forgive me.

To the Highlands, first, to the Jenkins’; then to Antwerp; thence, by canoe with Simpson, to Paris and Grez (on the Loing, and an old acquaintance of mine on the skirts of Fontainebleau) to complete our cruise next spring (if we’re all alive and jolly) by Loing and Loire, Saone and Rhone to the Mediterranean. It should make a jolly book of gossip, I imagine.

God bless you.

    Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.—Virginibus Puerisque is in August Cornhill. Charles of Orleans is finished, and sent to Stephen; Idlers ditto, and sent to Grove; but I’ve no word of either. So I’ve not been idle.

    R. L. S.

To W. E. Henley

In a well-known passage of the Inland Voyage the following incident is related to the same purport, but in another style: —

    Chauny, Aisne [September 1876].

MY DEAR HENLEY, – Here I am, you see; and if you will take to a map, you will observe I am already more than two doors from Antwerp, whence I started. I have fought it through under the worst weather I ever saw in France; I have been wet through nearly every day of travel since the second (inclusive); besides this, I have had to fight against pretty mouldy health; so that, on the whole, the essayist and reviewer has shown, I think, some pluck. Four days ago I was not a hundred miles from being miserably drowned, to the immense regret of a large circle of friends and the permanent impoverishment of British Essayism and Reviewery. My boat culbutted me under a fallen tree in a very rapid current; and I was a good while before I got on to the outside of that fallen tree; rather a better while than I cared about. When I got up, I lay some time on my belly, panting, and exuded fluid. All my symptoms jusqu’ ici are trifling. But I’ve a damned sore throat. – Yours ever,

    R. L. S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

Part of The Hair Trunk still exists in MS. It contains some tolerable fooling, but is chiefly interesting from the fact that the seat of the proposed Bohemian colony from Cambridge is to be in the Navigator Islands; showing the direction which had been given to Stevenson’s thoughts by the conversation of the New Zealand official, Mr. Seed, two years before.

    17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh, May 1877.

… A perfect chorus of repudiation is sounding in my ears; and although you say nothing, I know you must be repudiating me, all the same. Write I cannot – there’s no good mincing matters, a letter frightens me worse than the devil; and I am just as unfit for correspondence as if I had never learned the three R.’s.

Let me give my news quickly before I relapse into my usual idleness. I have a terror lest I should relapse before I get this finished. Courage, R. L. S.! On Leslie Stephen’s advice, I gave up the idea of a book of essays. He said he didn’t imagine I was rich enough for such an amusement; and moreover, whatever was worth publication was worth republication. So the best of those I had already, An Apology for Idlers, is in proof for the Cornhill. I have Villon to do for the same magazine, but God knows when I’ll get it done, for drums, trumpets – I’m engaged upon – trumpets, drums – a novel! “The Hair Trunk; or, the Ideal Commonwealth.” It is a most absurd story of a lot of young Cambridge fellows who are going to found a new society, with no ideas on the subject, and nothing but Bohemian tastes in the place of ideas; and who are – well, I can’t explain about the trunk – it would take too long – but the trunk is the fun of it – everybody steals it; burglary, marine fight, life on desert island on west coast of Scotland, sloops, etc. The first scene where they make their grand schemes and get drunk is supposed to be very funny, by Henley. I really saw him laugh over it until he cried.

Please write to me, although I deserve it so little, and show a Christian spirit. – Ever your faithful friend,

    Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

    [Edinburgh, August 1877.]

MY DEAR COLVIN, – I’m to be whipped away to-morrow to Penzance, where at the post-office a letter will find me glad and grateful. I am well, but somewhat tired out with overwork. I have only been home a fortnight this morning, and I have already written to the tune of forty-five Cornhill pages and upwards. The most of it was only very laborious re-casting and re-modelling, it is true; but it took it out of me famously, all the same.

Temple Bar appears to like my Villon, so I may count on another market there in the future, I hope. At least, I am going to put it to the proof at once, and send another story, The Sire de Malétroit’s Mousetrap: a true novel, in the old sense; all unities preserved moreover, if that’s anything, and I believe with some little merits; not so clever perhaps as the last, but sounder and more natural.

My Villon is out this month; I should so much like to know what you think of it. Stephen has written to me à propos of Idlers, that something more in that vein would be agreeable to his views. From Stephen I count that a devil of a lot.

I am honestly so tired this morning that I hope you will take this for what it’s worth and give me an answer in peace. – Ever yours,

    Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwell

Neither The Stepfather’s Story nor the St. Michael’s Mounts essay here mentioned ever, to my knowledge, came into being.

    [Penzance, August 1877.]

… You will do well to stick to your burn, that is a delightful life you sketch, and a very fountain of health. I wish I could live like that, but, alas! it is just as well I got my “Idlers” written and done with, for I have quite lost all power of resting. I have a goad in my flesh continually, pushing me to work, work, work. I have an essay pretty well through for Stephen; a story, The Sire de Malétroit’s Mousetrap, with which I shall try Temple Bar; another story, in the clouds, The Stepfather’s Story, most pathetic work of a high morality or immorality, according to point of view; and lastly, also in the clouds, or perhaps a little farther away, an essay on The Two St. Michael’s Mounts, historical and picturesque; perhaps if it didn’t come too long, I might throw in the Bass Rock, and call it Three Sea Fortalices, or something of that kind. You see how work keeps bubbling in my mind. Then I shall do another fifteenth century paper this autumn – La Sale and Petit Jehan de Saintré, which is a kind of fifteenth century Sandford and Merton, ending in horrid immoral cynicism, as if the author had got tired of being didactic, and just had a good wallow in the mire to wind up with and indemnify himself for so much restraint.

Cornwall is not much to my taste, being as bleak as the bleakest parts of Scotland, and nothing like so pointed and characteristic. It has a flavour of its own, though, which I may try and catch, if I find the space, in the proposed article. Will o’ the Mill I sent, red hot, to Stephen in a fit of haste, and have not yet had an answer. I am quite prepared for a refusal. But I begin to have more hope in the story line, and that should improve my income anyway. I am glad you liked Villon; some of it was not as good as it ought to be, but on the whole it seems pretty vivid, and the features strongly marked. Vividness and not style is now my line; style is all very well, but vividness is the real line of country; if a thing is meant to be read, it seems just as well to try and make it readable. I am such a dull person now, I cannot keep off my own immortal works. Indeed, they are scarcely ever out of my head. And yet I value them less and less every day. But occupation is the great thing; so that a man should have his life in his own pocket, and never be thrown out of work by anything. I am glad to hear you are better. I must stop – going to Land’s End. – Always your faithful friend,

    Robert Louis Stevenson.

To A. Patchett Martin

This correspondent, living at the time in Australia, was, I believe, the first to write and seek Stevenson’s acquaintance from admiration of his work, meaning especially the Cornhill essays of the Virginibus Puerisque series so far as they had yet appeared. The “present” herein referred to is Mr. Martin’s volume called A Sweet Girl Graduate and other Poems (Melbourne, 1876).

    [1877]

DEAR SIR, – It would not be very easy for me to give you any idea of the pleasure I found in your present. People who write for the magazines (probably from a guilty conscience) are apt to suppose their works practically unpublished. It seems unlikely that any one would take the trouble to read a little paper buried among so many others; and reading it, read it with any attention or pleasure. And so, I can assure you, your little book, coming from so far, gave me all the pleasure and encouragement in the world.

I suppose you know and remember Charles Lamb’s essay on distant correspondents? Well, I was somewhat of his way of thinking about my mild productions. I did not indeed imagine they were read, and (I suppose I may say) enjoyed right round upon the other side of the big Football we have the honour to inhabit. And as your present was the first sign to the contrary, I feel I have been very ungrateful in not writing earlier to acknowledge the receipt. I dare say, however, you hate writing letters as much as I can do myself (for if you like my article, I may presume other points of sympathy between us); and on this hypothesis you will be ready to forgive me the delay.

I may mention with regard to the piece of verses called Such is Life that I am not the only one on this side of the Football aforesaid to think it a good and bright piece of work, and recognised a link of sympathy with the poets who “play in hostelries at euchre.” – Believe me, dear sir, yours truly,

    R. L. S.

To A. Patchett Martin

    17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh [December 1877].

MY DEAR SIR, – I am afraid you must already have condemned me for a very idle fellow truly. Here it is more than two months since I received your letter; I had no fewer than three journals to acknowledge; and never a sign upon my part. If you have seen a Cornhill paper of mine upon idling, you will be inclined to set it all down to that. But you will not be doing me justice. Indeed, I have had a summer so troubled that I have had little leisure and still less inclination to write letters. I was keeping the devil at bay with all my disposable activities; and more than once I thought he had me by the throat. The odd conditions of our acquaintance enable me to say more to you than I would to a person who lived at my elbow. And besides, I am too much pleased and flattered at our correspondence not to go as far as I can to set myself right in your eyes.

In this damnable confusion (I beg pardon) I have lost all my possessions, or near about, and quite lost all my wits. I wish I could lay my hands on the numbers of the Review, for I know I wished to say something on that head more particularly than I can from memory; but where they have escaped to, only time or chance can show. However, I can tell you so far, that I was very much pleased with the article on Bret Harte; it seemed to me just, clear, and to the point. I agreed pretty well with all you said about George Eliot: a high, but, may we not add? – a rather dry lady. Did you – I forget – did you have a kick at the stern works of that melancholy puppy and humbug Daniel Deronda himself? – the Prince of Prigs; the literary abomination of desolation in the way of manhood; a type which is enough to make a man forswear the love of women, if that is how it must be gained… Hats off all the same, you understand: a woman of genius.