The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 24

    R. L. Stevenson.

To Edmund Gosse

    La Solitude, Hyères-les-Palmiers, Var, France, May 21, 1883.

MY DEAR GOSSE, – The night giveth advice, generally bad advice; but I have taken it. And I have written direct to Gilder to tell him to keep the book[4 - Silverado Squatters.] back and go on with it in November at his leisure. I do not know if this will come in time; if it doesn’t, of course things will go on in the way proposed. The £40, or, as I prefer to put it, the 1000 francs, has been such a piercing sun-ray as my whole grey life is gilt withal. On the back of it I can endure. If these good days of Longman and the Century only last, it will be a very green world, this that we dwell in and that philosophers miscall. I have no taste for that philosophy; give me large sums paid on the receipt of the MS. and copyright reserved, and what do I care about the non-bëent? Only I know it can’t last. The devil always has an imp or two in every house, and my imps are getting lively. The good lady, the dear, kind lady, the sweet, excellent lady, Nemesis, whom alone I adore, has fixed her wooden eye upon me. I fall prone; spare me, Mother Nemesis! But catch her!

I must now go to bed; for I have had a whoreson influenza cold, and have to lie down all day, and get up only to meals and the delights, June delights, of business correspondence.

You said nothing about my subject for a poem. Don’t you like it? My own fishy eye has been fixed on it for prose, but I believe it could be thrown out finely in verse, and hence I resign and pass the hand. Twig the compliment? – Yours affectionately,

    R. L. S.

To W. E. Henley

“Tushery” had been a name in use between Stevenson and Mr. Henley for romances of the Ivanhoe type. He now applies it to his own tale of the Wars of the Roses, The Black Arrow, written for Mr. Henderson’s Young Folks, of which the office was in Red Lion Court.

    [Hyères, May 1883.]

… The influenza has busted me a good deal; I have no spring, and am headachy. So, as my good Red Lion Courier begged me for another Butcher’s Boy – I turned me to – what thinkest ’ou? – to Tushery, by the mass! Ay, friend, a whole tale of tushery. And every tusher tushes me so free, that may I be tushed if the whole thing is worth a tush. The Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest is his name: tush! a poor thing!

Will Treasure Island proofs be coming soon, think you?

I will now make a confession. It was the sight of your maimed strength and masterfulness that begot John Silver in Treasure Island. Of course, he is not in any other quality or feature the least like you; but the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded by the sound, was entirely taken from you.

Otto is, as you say, not a thing to extend my public on. It is queer and a little, little bit free; and some of the parties are immoral; and the whole thing is not a romance, nor yet a comedy; nor yet a romantic comedy; but a kind of preparation of some of the elements of all three in a glass jar. I think it is not without merit, but I am not always on the level of my argument, and some parts are false, and much of the rest is thin; it is more a triumph for myself than anything else; for I see, beyond it, better stuff. I have nine chapters ready, or almost ready, for press. My feeling would be to get it placed anywhere for as much as could be got for it, and rather in the shadow, till one saw the look of it in print. – Ever yours,

    Pretty Sick.

To W. E. Henley

    La Solitude, Hyères-les-Palmiers, May 1883.

MY DEAR LAD, – The books came some time since, but I have not had the pluck to answer: a shower of small troubles having fallen in, or troubles that may be very large.

I have had to incur a huge vague debt for cleaning sewers; our house was (of course) riddled with hidden cesspools, but that was infallible. I have the fever, and feel the duty to work very heavy on me at times; yet go it must. I have had to leave Fontainebleau, when three hours would finish it, and go full-tilt at tushery for a while. But it will come soon.

I think I can give you a good article on Hokusai; but that is for afterwards; Fontainebleau is first in hand.

By the way, my view is to give the Penny Whistles to Crane or Greenaway. But Crane, I think, is likeliest; he is a fellow who, at least, always does his best.

Shall I ever have money enough to write a play?

O dire necessity!

A word in your ear: I don’t like trying to support myself. I hate the strain and the anxiety; and when unexpected expenses are foisted on me, I feel the world is playing with false dice. – Now I must Tush, adieu.

    An Aching, Fevered, Penny-Journalist.

A lytle Jape of TUSHERIE

    By A. Tusher.

The pleasant river gushes
Among the meadows green;
At home the author tushes;
For him it flows unseen.

The Birds among the Bŭshes
May wanton on the spray;
But vain for him who tushes
The brightness of the day!

The frog among the rushes
Sits singing in the blue.
By’r la’kin! but these tushes
Are wearisome to do!

The task entirely crushes
The spirit of the bard:
God pity him who tushes —
His task is very hard.

The filthy gutter slushes,
The clouds are full of rain,
But doomed is he who tushes
To tush and tush again.

At morn with his hair-brushes,
Still “tush” he says, and weeps;
At night again he tushes,
And tushes till he sleeps.

And when at length he pŭshes
Beyond the river dark —
’Las, to the man who tushes,
“Tush,” shall be God’s remark!

To Sidney Colvin

    [Chalet la Solitude, Hyères, May 1883.]

COLVIN, – The attempt to correspond with you is vain. Well, well, then so be it. I will from time to time write you an insulting letter, brief but monstrous harsh. I regard you in the light of a genteel impostor. Your name figures in the papers but never to a piece of letter-paper: well, well.

News. I am well: Fanny been ill but better: Otto about three-quarters done; Silverado proofs a terrible job – it is a most unequal work – new wine in old bottles – large rats, small bottles:[5 - The allusion is to a specimen I had been used to hear quoted of the Duke of Wellington’s table-talk in his latter years. He had said that musk-rats were sometimes kept alive in bottles in India. Curate, or other meek dependent: “I presume, your Grace, they are small rats and large bottles.” His Grace: “No, large rats, small bottles; large rats, small bottles; large rats, small bottles.”] as usual, penniless – O but penniless: still, with four articles in hand (say £35) and the £100 for Silverado imminent, not hopeless.

Why am I so penniless, ever, ever penniless, ever, ever penny-penny-penniless and dry?

The birds upon the thorn,