Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (972 page)

My wife came here pretty ill; she had a dreadful bad night; to-day she is better. But now Valentine is ill; and Lloyd and I have got breakfast, and my hand somewhat shakes after washing dishes. — Yours very sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.
— Please order me the Evening Post for two months. My subscription is run out. The
Mutiny
and
Edwardes
to hand.

To Sidney Colvin

[
Saranac Lake, March
1888.]

MY DEAR COLVIN, — Fanny has been very unwell. She is not long home, has been ill again since her return, but is now better again to a degree. You must not blame her for not writing, as she is not allowed to write at all, not even a letter. To add to our misfortunes, Valentine is quite ill and in bed. Lloyd and I get breakfast; I have now, 10.15, just got the dishes washed and the kitchen all clear, and sit down to give you as much news as I have spirit for, after such an engagement. Glass is a thing that really breaks my spirit: I do not like to fail, and with glass I cannot reach the work of my high calling — the artist’s.

I am, as you may gather from this, wonderfully better: this harsh, grey, glum, doleful climate has done me good. You cannot fancy how sad a climate it is. When the thermometer stays all day below 10°, it is really cold; and when the wind blows, O commend me to the result. Pleasure in life is all delete; there is no red spot left, fires 276 do not radiate, you burn your hands all the time on what seem to be cold stones. It is odd, zero is like summer heat to us now; and we like, when the thermometer outside is really low, a room at about 48°: 60° we find oppressive. Yet the natives keep their holes at 90° or even 100°.

This was interrupted days ago by household labours. Since then I have had and (I tremble to write it, but it does seem as if I had) beaten off an influenza. The cold is exquisite. Valentine still in bed. The proofs of the first part of
The Master of Ballantrae
begin to come in; soon you shall have it in the pamphlet form; and I hope you will like it. The second part will not be near so good; but there — we can but do as it’ll do with us. I have every reason to believe this winter has done me real good, so far as it has gone; and if I carry out my scheme for next winter, and succeeding years, I should end by being a tower of strength. I want you to save a good holiday for next winter; I hope we shall be able to help you to some larks. Is there any Greek Isle you would like to explore? or any creek in Asia Minor? — Yours ever affectionately,

R. L. S.

To the Rev. Dr. Charteris

The Rev. Dr. Charteris, of Edinburgh, had been one of the most intimate and trusted friends of Stevenson’s father, and R. L. S. turns to him accordingly for memories and impressions.

[
Saranac Lake, Winter
1887-88.]

MY DEAR DR. CHARTERIS, — I have asked Douglas and Foulis to send you my last volume, so that you may possess my little paper on my father in a permanent shape; not for what that is worth, but as a tribute of respect to one whom my father regarded with such love, esteem, and affection. Besides, as you will see, I have brought you under contribution, and I have still to thank you for your letter to my mother; so more than kind; in much, so just. It is my hope, when time and health permit, to do 277 something more definite for my father’s memory. You are one of the very few who can (if you will) help me. Pray believe that I lay on you no obligation; I know too well, you may believe me, how difficult it is to put even two sincere lines upon paper, where all, too, is to order. But if the spirit should ever move you, and you should recall something memorable of your friend, his son will heartily thank you for a note of it. — With much respect, believe me, yours sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Edmund Gosse

[
Saranac Lake, March
31, 1888.]

MY DEAR GOSSE, — Why so plaintive? Either the post-office has played us false, or you were in my debt. In case it should be my letter that has failed to come to post, I must tell again the fate of Mrs. Gosse’s thermometer. It hangs in our sitting-room, where it has often marked freezing point and below; “See what Gosse says,” is a common word of command. But the point is this: in the verandah hangs another thermometer, condemned to register minus 40° and that class of temperatures; and to him, we have given the name of the Quarterly Reviewer. I hope the jape likes you.

Please tell the Fortnightly man that I am sorry but I can do nothing of that sort this year, as I am under a pledge to Scribner’s; and indeed my monthly articles take the best of my time. It was a project I went into with horrid diffidence; and lucre was my only motive. I get on better than I expected, but it is difficult to find an article of the sort required for each date, and to vary the matter and keep up (if possible) the merit. I do not know if you think I have at all succeeded; it seemed to me this really worked paper was more money’s worth (as well as probably better within my means) than the Lang 278 business at the Sign of the Ship. Indeed I feel convinced I could never have managed that; it takes a gift to do it. Here is lunch. — Yours afftly.,

R. L. S.

To Henry James

[
Saranac Lake, March
1888.]

MY DEAR DELIGHTFUL JAMES, — To quote your heading to my wife, I think no man writes so elegant a letter, I am sure none so kind, unless it be Colvin, and there is more of the stern parent about him. I was vexed at your account of my admired Meredith: I wish I could go and see him; as it is I will try to write; and yet (do you understand me?) there is something in that potent,
genialisch
affectation that puts one on the strain even to address him in a letter. He is not an easy man to be yourself with: there is so much of him, and veracity and the high athletic intellectual humbug are so intermixed. I read with indescribable admiration your
Emerson
. I begin to long for the day when these portraits of yours shall be collected: do put me in. But Emerson is a higher flight. Have you a
Tourgueneff
? You have told me many interesting things of him, and I seem to see them written, and forming a graceful and
bildend
sketch. (I wonder whence comes this flood of German — I haven’t opened a German book since I teethed.) My novel is a tragedy; four parts out of six or seven are written, and gone to Burlingame. Five parts of it are sound, human tragedy; the last one or two, I regret to say, not so soundly designed; I almost hesitate to write them; they are very picturesque, but they are fantastic; they shame, perhaps degrade, the beginning. I wish I knew; that was how the tale came to me however. I got the situation; it was an old taste of mine: The older brother goes out in the 279 ‘45, the younger stays; the younger, of course, gets title and estate and marries the bride designate of the elder — a family match, but he (the younger) had always loved her, and she had really loved the elder. Do you see the situation? Then the devil and Saranac suggested this
dénouement
, and I joined the two ends in a day or two of constant feverish thought, and began to write. And now — I wonder if I have not gone too far with the fantastic? The elder brother is an INCUBUS: supposed to be killed at Culloden, he turns up again and bleeds the family of money; on that stopping he comes and lives with them, whence flows the real tragedy, the nocturnal duel of the brothers (very naturally, and indeed, I think, inevitably arising), and second supposed death of the elder. Husband and wife now really make up, and then the cloven hoof appears. For the third supposed death and the manner of the third reappearance is steep; steep, sir. It is even very steep, and I fear it shames the honest stuff so far; but then it is highly pictorial, and it leads up to the death of the elder brother at the hands of the younger in a perfectly cold-blooded murder, of which I wish (and mean) the reader to approve. You see how daring is the design. There are really but six characters, and one of these episodic, and yet it covers eighteen years, and will be, I imagine, the longest of my works. — Yours ever,

R. L. S.

Read Gosse’s Raleigh.
First-rate. — Yours ever,

R. L. S.

To the Rev. Dr. Charteris

Saranac Lake, Adirondacks, New York, U.S.A.
[
Spring
1888].

MY DEAR DR. CHARTERIS, — The funeral letter, your notes, and many other things, are reserved for a book,
Memorials of a Scottish Family
, if ever I can find time and opportunity. I wish I could throw off all else and sit down 280 to it to-day. Yes, my father was a “distinctly religious man,” but not a pious. The distinction painfully and pleasurably recalls old conflicts; it used to be my great gun — and you, who suffered for the whole Church, know how needful it was to have some reserve artillery! His sentiments were tragic; he was a tragic thinker. Now, granted that life is tragic to the marrow, it seems the proper function of religion to make us accept and serve in that tragedy, as officers in that other and comparable one of war. Service is the word, active service, in the military sense; and the religious man — I beg pardon, the pious man — is he who has a military joy in duty — not he who weeps over the wounded. We can do no more than try to do our best. Really, I am the grandson of the manse — I preach you a kind of sermon. Box the brat’s ears!

My mother — to pass to matters more within my competence — finely enjoys herself. The new country, some new friends we have made, the interesting experiment of this climate — which (at least) is tragic — all have done her good. I have myself passed a better winter than for years, and now that it is nearly over have some diffident hopes of doing well in the summer and “eating a little more air” than usual.

I thank you for the trouble you are taking, and my mother joins with me in kindest regards to yourself and Mrs. Charteris. — Yours very truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To S. R. Crockett

[
Saranac Lake, Spring
1888].

DEAR MINISTER OF THE FREE KIRK AT PENICUIK, — For O, man, I cannae read your name! — That I have been so long in answering your delightful letter sits on my conscience badly. The fact is I let my correspondence accumulate 281 until I am going to leave a place; and then I pitch in, overhaul the pile, and my cries of penitence might be heard a mile about. Yesterday I despatched thirty-five belated letters: conceive the state of my conscience, above all as the Sins of Omission (see boyhood’s guide, the Shorter Catechism) are in my view the only serious ones; I call it my view, but it cannot have escaped you that it was also Christ’s. However, all that is not to the purpose, which is to thank you for the sincere pleasure afforded by your charming letter. I get a good few such; how few that please me at all, you would be surprised to learn — or have a singularly just idea of the dulness of our race; how few that please me as yours did, I can tell you in one word —
None
. I am no great kirkgoer, for many reasons — and the sermon’s one of them, and the first prayer another, but the chief and effectual reason is the stuffiness. I am no great kirkgoer, says I, but when I read yon letter of yours, I thought I would like to sit under ye. And then I saw ye were to send me a bit buik, and says I, I’ll wait for the bit buik, and then I’ll mebbe can read the man’s name, and anyway I’ll can kill twa birds wi’ ae stane. And, man! the buik was ne’er heard tell o’!

That fact is an adminicle of excuse for my delay.

And now, dear minister of the illegible name, thanks to you, and greeting to your wife, and may you have good guidance in your difficult labours, and a blessing on your life.

Robert Louis Stevenson.

(No just sae young’s he was, though —

I’m awfae near forty, man.)

Address c/o Charles Scribner’s Sons,

743 Broadway, New York.

Don’t put “N.B.” in your paper: put Scotland, and be done with it. Alas, that I should be thus stabbed in the home of my friends! The name of my native land is not North Britain, whatever may be the name of yours.

R. L. S.

To Miss Ferrier

[
Saranac Lake, April
1888.]

MY DEAREST COGGIE, — I wish I could find the letter I began to you some time ago when I was ill; but I can’t and I don’t believe there was much in it anyway. We have all behaved like pigs and beasts and barn-door poultry to you; but I have been sunk in work, and the lad is lazy and blind and has been working too; and as for Fanny, she has been (and still is) really unwell. I had a mean hope you might perhaps write again before I got up steam: I could not have been more ashamed of myself than I am, and I should have had another laugh.

They always say I cannot give news in my letters: I shall shake off that reproach. On Monday, if she is well enough, Fanny leaves for California to see her friends; it is rather an anxiety to let her go alone; but the doctor simply forbids it in my case, and she is better anywhere than here — a bleak, blackguard, beggarly climate, of which I can say no good except that it suits me and some others of the same or similar persuasions whom (by all rights) it ought to kill. It is a form of Arctic St. Andrews, I should imagine; and the miseries of forty degrees below zero, with a high wind, have to be felt to be appreciated. The greyness of the heavens here is a circumstance eminently revolting to the soul; I have near forgot the aspect of the sun — I doubt if this be news; it is certainly no news to us. My mother suffers a little from the inclemency of the place, but less on the whole than would be imagined. Among other wild schemes, we have been projecting yacht voyages; and I beg to inform you that Cogia Hassan was cast for the part of passenger. They may come off! — Again this is not news. The lad? Well, the lad wrote a tale this winter, which appeared to me so funny that I have taken it in hand, and some of these days you will 283 receive a copy of a work entitled “
A Game of Bluff
, by Lloyd Osbourne and Robert Louis Stevenson.”

Otherwise he (the lad) is much as usual. There remains, I believe, to be considered only R. L. S., the house-bond, prop, pillar, bread-winner, and bully of the establishment. Well, I do not think him much better; he is making piles of money; the hope of being able to hire a yacht ere long dances before his eyes; otherwise he is not in very high spirits at this particular moment, though compared with last year at Bournemouth an angel of joy.