Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (915 page)

R. L. S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

The examination for the Bar at Edinburgh was approaching.
Fontainebleau
is the paper called
Forest Notes
, afterwards printed in the Cornhill Magazine. The church is Glencorse Church in the Pentlands, to the thoughts of which Stevenson reverted in his last days with so much emotion (see
Weir of Hermiston
, chap. v.).

[
Swanston. End of June 1875.
]

Thursday.
— This day fortnight I shall fall or conquer. Outside the rain still soaks; but now and again the hilltop looks through the mist vaguely. I am very comfortable, very sleepy, and very much satisfied with the arrangements of Providence.

Saturday — no, Sunday
, 12.45. — Just been — not grinding, alas! — I couldn’t — but doing a bit of
Fontainebleau
. I don’t think I’ll be plucked. I am not sure though — I am so busy, what with this d —  — d law, and this
Fontainebleau
always at my elbow, and three plays (three, think of that!) and a story, all crying out to me, “Finish, finish, make an entire end, make us strong, shapely, viable creatures!” It’s enough to put a man crazy. Moreover, I have my thesis given out now, which is a fifth (is it fifth? I can’t count) incumbrance.

Sunday.
— I’ve been to church, and am not depressed — a great step. I was at that beautiful church my
petit poëme en prose
was about. It is a little cruciform place, with heavy cornices and string course to match, and a steep slate roof. The small kirkyard is full of old gravestones. One of a Frenchman from Dunkerque — I suppose he died prisoner in the military prison hard by — and one, the most pathetic memorial I ever saw, a poor school-slate, in a wooden frame, with the inscription cut into it evidently by the father’s own hand. In church, old Mr. Torrence preached — over eighty, and a relic of times forgotten, with his black thread gloves and mild old foolish face. One of the nicest parts of it was to see John Inglis, the greatest man in Scotland, our Justice-General, and the only born lawyer I ever heard, listening to the piping old body, as though it had all been a revelation, grave and respectful. — Ever your faithful

R. L. S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

[
Edinburgh, July 15, 1875.
]

Passed.

Ever your
R.
L.
S.

 
L’Homme qui rit.

 This letter, accepting the first contribution of R. L. S., has by an accident been preserved, and is so interesting, both for its occasion and for the light it throws on the writer’s care and kindness as an editor, that by permission of his representatives I here print it. ‘93 stands, of course, for the novel
Quatre-vingt Treize
.

15 Waterloo Place, S. W., 15/5/74

DEAR SIR, — I have read with great interest your article on Victor Hugo and also that which appeared in the last number of Macmillan. I shall be happy to accept Hugo, and if I have been rather long in answering you, it is only because I wished to give a second reading to the article, and have lately been very much interrupted.

I will now venture to make a few remarks, and by way of preface I must say that I do not criticise you because I take a low view of your powers: but for the very contrary reason. I think very highly of the promise shown in your writings and therefore think it worth while to write more fully than I can often to contributors. Nor do I set myself up as a judge — I am very sensible of my own failings in the critical department and merely submit what has occurred to me for your consideration.

I fully agree with the greatest portion of your opinions and think them very favourably expressed. The following points struck me as doubtful when I read and may perhaps be worth notice.

First, you seem to make the distinction between dramatic and novelistic art coincide with the distinction between romantic and 18th century. This strikes me as doubtful, as at least to require qualification. To my mind Hugo is far more dramatic in spirit than Fielding, though his method involves (as you show exceedingly well) a use of scenery and background which would hardly be admissible in drama. I am not able — I fairly confess — to define the dramatic element in Hugo or to say why I think it absent from Fielding and Richardson. Yet surely Hugo’s own dramas are a sufficient proof that a drama may be romantic as well as a novel: though, of course, the pressure of the great moral forces, etc., must be indicated by different means. The question is rather a curious one and too wide to discuss in a letter. I merely suggest what seems to me to be an obvious criticism on your argument.

Secondly, you speak very sensibly of the melodramatic and clap-trap element in Hugo. I confess that it seems to me to go deeper into his work than you would apparently allow. I think it, for example, very palpable even in
Notre Dame
, and I doubt the historical fidelity though my ignorance of mediæval history prevents me from putting my finger on many faults. The consequence is that in my opinion you are scarcely just to Scott or Fielding as compared with Hugo. Granting fully his amazing force and fire, he seems to me to be deficient often in that kind of healthy realism which is so admirable in Scott’s best work. For example, though my Scotch blood (for I can boast of some) may prejudice me I am profoundly convinced that Balfour of Burley would have knocked M. Lantenac into a cocked hat and stormed la Tourgue if it had been garrisoned by 19 x 19 French spouters of platitude in half the time that Gauvain and Cimourdain took about it. In fact, Balfour seems to me to be flesh and blood and Gauvain & Co. to be too often mere personified bombast: and therefore I fancy that
Old Mortality
will outlast ‘93, though
Notre Dame
is far better than
Quentin Durward
, and
Les Misérables
, perhaps, better than any. This is, of course, fair matter of opinion.

Thirdly, I don’t think that you quite bring out your meaning in saying that ‘93 is a decisive symptom. I confess that I don’t quite see in what sense it decides precisely what question. A sentence or so would clear this up.

Fourthly, as a matter of form, I think (but I am very doubtful) that it might possibly have been better not to go into each novel in succession; but to group the substance of your remarks a little differently. Of course I don’t want you to alter the form, I merely notice the point as suggesting a point in regard to any future article.

Many of your criticisms in detail strike me as very good. I was much pleased by your remarks on the storm in the
Travailleurs
. There was another very odd storm, as it struck me on a hasty reading in ‘93, where there is mention of a beautiful summer evening and yet the wind is so high that you can’t hear the tocsin. You do justice also and more than justice to Hugo’s tenderness about children. That, I think, points to one great source of his power.

It would be curious to compare Hugo to a much smaller man, Chas. Reade, who is often a kind of provincial or Daily Telegraph Hugo. However that would hardly do in the Cornhill. I shall send your article to the press and hope to use it in July. Any alterations can be made when the article is in type, if any are desirable. I cannot promise definitely in advance; but at any rate it shall appear as soon as may be.

Excuse this long rigmarole and believe me to be, yours very truly,

Leslie Stephen.

I shall hope to hear from you again. If ever you come to town you will find me at 8 Southwell Gardens (close to the Gloucester Road Station of the Underground). I am generally at home, except from 3 to 5.

 Portfolio.

 Richmond Seeley.

 The essay
Notes on the Movements of Young Children
.

 I remember nothing of either the title or the tenor of this story.

 Printed by Mr. Leslie Stephen in the Cornhill.

IV

ADVOCATE AND AUTHOR

EDINBURGH — PARIS — FONTAINEBLEAU

July 1875-July 1879

Having on the 14th of July 1875 passed with credit his examination for the Bar at Edinburgh, Stevenson thenceforth enjoyed whatever status and consideration attaches to the title of Advocate. But he made no serious attempt to practise, and by the 25th of the same month had started with Sir Walter Simpson for France. Here he lived and tramped for several weeks among the artist haunts of Fontainebleau and the neighbourhood, occupying himself chiefly with studies of the French poets and poetry of the fifteenth century, which afterwards bore fruit in his papers on Charles of Orleans and François Villon. Thence he travelled to join his parents at Wiesbaden and Homburg. Returning in the autumn to Scotland, he made, to please them, an effort to live the ordinary life of an Edinburgh advocate — attending trials and spending his mornings in wig and gown at the Parliament House. But this attempt was before long abandoned as tending to waste of time and being incompatible with his real occupation of literature. Through the next winter and spring he remained in Edinburgh, except for a short winter walking tour in Ayrshire and Galloway, and a month spent among his friends in London. In the late summer of 1876, after a 183 visit to the West Highlands, he made the canoe trip with Sir Walter Simpson which furnished the subject of the
Inland Voyage
, followed by a prolonged autumn stay at Grez and Barbizon. The life, atmosphere, and scenery of these forest haunts had charmed and soothed him, as we have seen, since he was first introduced to them by his cousin, Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson, in the spring of 1875. An unfettered, unconventional, open-air existence, passed face to face with nature and in the company of congenial people engaged, like himself, in grappling with the problems and difficulties of an art, had been what he had longed for most consistently through all the agitations of his youth. And now he had found just such an existence, and with it, as he thought, peace of mind, health, and the spirit of unimpeded work.

But peace of mind was not to be his for long. What indeed awaited him in the forest was something different and more momentous: it was his fate: the romance which decided his life, and the companion whom he resolved to make his own at all hazards. But of this hereafter. To continue briefly the annals of the time: the year 1877 was again spent between Edinburgh, London, the Fontainebleau region, and several different temporary abodes in the artists’ and other quarters of Paris; with an excursion in the company of his parents to the Land’s End in August. In 1878 a similar general mode of life was varied by a visit with his parents in March to Burford Bridge, where he made warm friends with a senior to whom he had long looked up from a distance, Mr. George Meredith; by a spell of secretarial work under Professor Fleeming Jenkin, who was serving as a juror on the Paris Exhibition; and lastly, by the autumn tramp through the Cévennes, afterwards recounted with 184 so much charm in
Travels with a Donkey
. The first half of 1879 was again spent between London, Scotland, and France.

During these four years, it should be added, Stevenson’s health was very passable. It often, indeed, threatened to give way after any prolonged residence in Edinburgh, but was generally soon restored by open-air excursions (during which he was capable of fairly vigorous and sustained daily exercise), or by a spell of life among the woods of Fontainebleau. They were also the years in which he settled for good into his chosen profession of letters. He worked rather desultorily for the first twelve months after his call to the Bar, but afterwards with ever-growing industry and success, winning from the critical a full measure of recognition, though relatively little, so far, from the general public. In 1875 and 1876 he contributed as a journalist, though not frequently, to the Academy and Vanity Fair, and in 1877 more abundantly to London, a weekly review founded by Mr. Glasgow Brown, an acquaintance of Edinburgh Speculative days, and carried on, after the failure of that gentleman’s health, by Mr. Henley. But he had no great gift or liking for journalism, or for any work not calling for the best literary form and finish he could give. Where he found special scope for such work was in the Cornhill Magazine under the editorship of Mr. Leslie Stephen. Here he continued his critical papers on men and books, already begun in 1874 with
Victor Hugo
, and began in 1876 the series of papers afterwards collected in
Virginibus Puerisque
. They were continued in 1877, and in greater number throughout 1878. His first published stories appeared as follows: —
A Lodging for the Night
, Temple Bar, October 1877;
The Sire de Malétroit’s Door
, Temple Bar, January 1878; and 185
Will o’ the Mill
, Cornhill Magazine, January 1878. In May 1878 followed his first travel book,
The Inland Voyage
, containing the account of his canoe trip from Antwerp to Grez. This was to Stevenson a year of great and various productiveness. Besides six or eight characteristic essays of the
Virginibus Puerisque
series, there appeared in London the set of fantastic modern tales called the
New Arabian Nights
, conceived and written in an entirely different key from any of his previous work, as well as the kindly, sentimental comedy of French artist life,
Providence and the Guitar
; and in the Portfolio the
Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh
, republished at the end of the year in book form. During the autumn and winter of this year he wrote
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes
, and was much and eagerly engaged in the planning of plays in collaboration with Mr. Henley; of which one,
Deacon Brodie
, was finished in the spring of 1879. In the same spring he drafted in Edinburgh, but afterwards laid by, four chapters on ethics, a study of which he once spoke as being always his “veiled mistress,” under the name of
Lay Morals
.

But abounding in good work as this period was, and momentous as it was in regard to Stevenson’s future life, it is a period which figures but meagrely in his correspondence, and in this book must fill disproportionately little space. Without the least breach of friendship, or even of intimate confidence on occasion, Stevenson had begun, as was natural and necessary, to wean himself from his entire dependence on his friend and counsellor of the last two years; to take his life more into his own hands; and to intermit the regularity of his correspondence with her. A few new correspondents appear; but to none of us in these days did he write more than scantily. Partly 186 his growing absorption by the complications of his life and the interests of his work left him little time or inclination for letter-writing; partly his greater freedom of movement made it unnecessary. On his way backwards and forwards between Scotland and France, his friends in London had the chance of seeing him much more frequently than of yore. He avoided formal and dress-coated society; but in the company of congenial friends, whether men or women, and in places like the Savile Club (his favourite haunt), he was as brilliant and stimulating as ever, and however acute his inward preoccupations, his visits were always a delight.