The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson — Volume 1

First, we shall be gone in September. But if you think of coming in August, my mother will hunt for you with pleasure. We should all be overjoyed — though Stobo it could not be, as it is but a kirk and manse, but possibly somewhere within reach. Let us know.

Second, I have read your Gray with care. A more difficult subject I can scarce fancy; it is crushing; yet I think you have managed to shadow forth a man, and a good man too; and honestly, I doubt if I could have done the same. This may seem egoistic; but you are not such a fool as to think so. It is the natural expression of real praise. The book as a whole is readable; your subject peeps every here and there out of the crannies like a shy violet — he could do no more — and his aroma hangs there.

I write to catch a minion of the post. Hence brevity. Answer about the house. — Yours affectionately,

    R. L S.

Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY

[STOBO MANSE, JULY 1882.]

DEAR HENLEY... I am not worth an old damn. I am also crushed by bad news of Symonds; his good lung going; I cannot help reading it as a personal hint; God help us all! Really I am not very fit for work; but I try, try, and nothing comes of it.

I believe we shall have to leave this place; it is low, damp, and MAUCHY; the rain it raineth every day; and the glass goes tol-de- rol-de riddle.

Yet it's a bonny bit; I wish I could live in it, but doubt. I wish I was well away somewhere else. I feel like flight some days; honour bright.

Pirbright Smith is well. Old Mr. Pegfurth Bannatyne is here staying at a country inn. His whole baggage is a pair of socks and a book in a fishing-basket; and he borrows even a rod from the landlord. He walked here over the hills from Sanquhar, 'singin', he says, 'like a mavis.' I naturally asked him about Hazlitt. 'He wouldnae take his drink,' he said, 'a queer, queer fellow.' But did not seem further communicative. He says he has become 'releegious,' but still swears like a trooper. I asked him if he had no headquarters. 'No likely,' said he. He says he is writing his memoirs, which will be interesting. He once met Borrow; they boxed; 'and Geordie,' says the old man chuckling, 'gave me the damnedest hiding.' Of Wordsworth he remarked, 'He wasnae sound in the faith, sir, and a milk-blooded, blue-spectacled bitch forbye. But his po'mes are grand — there's no denying that.' I asked him what his book was. 'I havenae mind,' said he — that was his only book! On turning it out, I found it was one of my own, and on showing it to him, he remembered it at once. 'O aye,' he said, 'I mind now. It's pretty bad; ye'll have to do better than that, chieldy,' and chuckled, chuckled. He is a strange old figure, to be sure. He cannot endure Pirbright Smith — 'a mere aesthAtic,' he said. 'Pooh!' 'Fishin' and releegion — these are my aysthatics,' he wound up.

I thought this would interest you, so scribbled it down. I still hope to get more out of him about Hazlitt, though he utterly pooh- poohed the idea of writing H.'s life. 'Ma life now,' he said, 'there's been queer things in IT.' He is seventy-nine! but may well last to a hundred! — Yours ever,

    R. L S.

CHAPTER VI — MARSEILLES AND HYERES, OCTOBER 1882-AUGUST 1884

Letter: TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'NEW YORK TRIBUNE'

TERMINUS HOTEL, MARSEILLES, OCTOBER 16, 1882

SIR, — It has come to my ears that you have lent the authority of your columns to an error.

More than half in pleasantry — and I now think the pleasantry ill- judged — I complained in a note to my NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS that some one, who shall remain nameless for me, had borrowed the idea of a story from one of mine. As if I had not borrowed the ideas of the half of my own! As if any one who had written a story ill had a right to complain of any other who should have written it better! I am indeed thoroughly ashamed of the note, and of the principle which it implies.

But it is no mere abstract penitence which leads me to beg a corner of your paper — it is the desire to defend the honour of a man of letters equally known in America and England, of a man who could afford to lend to me and yet be none the poorer; and who, if he would so far condescend, has my free permission to borrow from me all that he can find worth borrowing.

Indeed, sir, I am doubly surprised at your correspondent's error. That James Payn should have borrowed from me is already a strange conception. The author of LOST SIR MASSINGBERD and BY PROXY may be trusted to invent his own stories. The author of A GRAPE FROM A THORN knows enough, in his own right, of the humorous and pathetic sides of human nature.

But what is far more monstrous — what argues total ignorance of the man in question — is the idea that James Payn could ever have transgressed the limits of professional propriety. I may tell his thousands of readers on your side of the Atlantic that there breathes no man of letters more inspired by kindness and generosity to his brethren of the profession, and, to put an end to any possibility of error, I may be allowed to add that I often have recourse, and that I had recourse once more but a few weeks ago, to the valuable practical help which he makes it his pleasure to extend to younger men.

I send a duplicate of this letter to a London weekly; for the mistake, first set forth in your columns, has already reached England, and my wanderings have made me perhaps last of the persons interested to hear a word of it. — I am, etc.,

    ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO R. A. M. STEVENSON

TERMINUS HOTEL, MARSEILLE, SATURDAY (OCTOBER 1882)

MY DEAR BOB, — We have found a house! — at Saint Marcel, Banlieue de Marseille. In a lovely valley between hills part wooded, part white cliffs; a house of a dining-room, of a fine salon — one side lined with a long divan — three good bedrooms (two of them with dressing-rooms), three small rooms (chambers of BONNE and sich), a large kitchen, a lumber room, many cupboards, a back court, a large, large olive yard, cultivated by a resident PAYSAN, a well, a berceau, a good deal of rockery, a little pine shrubbery, a railway station in front, two lines of omnibus to Marseille.

48 pounds per annum.

It is called Campagne Defli! query Campagne Debug? The Campagne Demosquito goes on here nightly, and is very deadly. Ere we can get installed, we shall be beggared to the door, I see.

I vote for separations; F.'s arrival here, after our separation, was better fun to me than being married was by far. A separation completed is a most valuable property; worth piles. — Ever your affectionate cousin,

    R. L. S.

Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON

TERMINUS HOTEL, MARSEILLE, LE 17TH OCTOBER 1882

MY DEAR FATHER, — . We grow, every time we see it, more delighted with our house. It is five miles out of Marseilles, in a lovely spot, among lovely wooded and cliffy hills — most mountainous in line — far lovelier, to my eyes, than any Alps. To- day we have been out inventorying; and though a mistral blew, it was delightful in an open cab, and our house with the windows open was heavenly, soft, dry, sunny, southern. I fear there are fleas — it is called Campagne Defli — and I look forward to tons of insecticide being employed.

I have had to write a letter to the NEW YORK TRIBUNE and the ATHENAEUM. Payn was accused of stealing my stories! I think I have put things handsomely for him.

Just got a servant!!! — Ever affectionate son,

    R. L. STEVENSON.

Our servant is a Muckle Hash of a Weedy!

Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

CAMPAGNE DEFLI, ST. MARCEL, BANLIEUE DE MARSEILLE, NOVEMBER 13, 1882

MY DEAR MOTHER, — Your delightful letters duly arrived this morning. They were the only good feature of the day, which was not a success. Fanny was in bed — she begged I would not split upon her, she felt so guilty; but as I believe she is better this evening, and has a good chance to be right again in a day or two, I will disregard her orders. I do not go back, but do not go forward — or not much. It is, in one way, miserable — for I can do no work; a very little wood-cutting, the newspapers, and a note about every two days to write, completely exhausts my surplus energy; even Patience I have to cultivate with parsimony. I see, if I could only get to work, that we could live here with comfort, almost with luxury. Even as it is, we should be able to get through a considerable time of idleness. I like the place immensely, though I have seen so little of it — I have only been once outside the gate since I was here! It puts me in mind of a summer at Prestonpans and a sickly child you once told me of.

Thirty-two years now finished! My twenty-ninth was in San Francisco, I remember — rather a bleak birthday. The twenty-eighth was not much better; but the rest have been usually pleasant days in pleasant circumstances.

Love to you and to my father and to Cummy.

From me and Fanny and Wogg.

    R. L. S.

Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER

GRAND HOTEL, NICE, 12TH JANUARY '83

DEAR CHARLES, — Thanks for your good letter. It is true, man, God's truth, what ye say about the body Stevison. The deil himsel, it's my belief, couldnae get the soul harled oot o' the creature's wame, or he had seen the hinder end o' they proofs. Ye crack o' Maecenas, he's naebody by you! He gied the lad Horace a rax forrit by all accounts; but he never gied him proofs like yon. Horace may hae been a better hand at the clink than Stevison — mind, I'm no sayin' 't — but onyway he was never sae weel prentit. Damned, but it's bonny! Hoo mony pages will there be, think ye? Stevison maun hae sent ye the feck o' twenty sangs — fifteen I'se warrant. Weel, that'll can make thretty pages, gin ye were to prent on ae side only, whilk wad be perhaps what a man o' your GREAT idees would be ettlin' at, man Johnson. Then there wad be the Pre-face, an' prose ye ken prents oot langer than po'try at the hinder end, for ye hae to say things in't. An' then there'll be a title-page and a dedication and an index wi' the first lines like, and the deil an' a'. Man, it'll be grand. Nae copies to be given to the Liberys.

I am alane myself, in Nice, they ca't, but damned, I think they micht as well ca't Nesty. The Pile-on, 's they ca't, 's aboot as big as the river Tay at Perth; and it's rainin' maist like Greenock. Dod, I've seen 's had mair o' what they ca' the I-talian at Muttonhole. I-talian! I haenae seen the sun for eicht and forty hours. Thomson's better, I believe. But the body's fair attenyated. He's doon to seeven stane eleeven, an' he sooks awa' at cod liver ile, till it's a fair disgrace. Ye see he tak's it on a drap brandy; and it's my belief, it's just an excuse for a dram. He an' Stevison gang aboot their lane, maistly; they're company to either, like, an' whiles they'll speak o'Johnson. But HE'S far awa', losh me! Stevison's last book's in a third edeetion; an' it's bein' translated (like the psaulms o' David, nae less) into French; and an eediot they ca' Asher — a kind o' rival of Tauchnitz — is bringin' him oot in a paper book for the Frenchies and the German folk in twa volumes. Sae he's in luck, ye see. — Yours,

    THOMSON.

Letter: TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM

[NICE FEBRUARY 1883.]