Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (907 page)

My cloak is the most admirable of all garments. For warmth, unequalled; for a sort of pensive, Roman stateliness, sometimes warming into Romantic guitarism, it is simply without concurrent; it starts alone. If you could see me in my cloak, it would impress you. I am hugely better, I think: I stood the cold these last few days without trouble, instead of taking to bed, as I did at Monte Carlo. I hope you are going to send the Scotch music.

I am stupid at letter-writing again; I don’t know why. I hope it may not be permanent; in the meantime, you must take what you can get and be hopeful. The Russian ladies are as kind and nice as ever. — Ever your affectionate son,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwell

[
Menton, February 6, 1874
],
Friday.

Last night we had a masquerade at the Villa Marina. Pella was dressed as a contadina and looked beautiful; and little Nellie, in red satin cap and wonderful red satin jacket and little breeches as of a nondescript impossible boy; to which Madame Garschine had slily added a little black tail that wagged comically behind her as she danced about the room, and got deliriously tilted up over the middle bar of the back of her chair as she sat at tea, with an irresistible suggestion of Puss in Boots — well, Nellie thus masqueraded (to get back to my sentence again) was all that I could have imagined. She held herself so straight and stalwart, and had such an infinitesimal dignity of carriage; and then her big baby face, already quite definitely marked with her sex, came in so funnily atop that she got clear away from all my power 116 of similes and resembled nothing in the world but Nellie in masquerade. Then there was Robinet in a white night gown, old woman’s cap (
mutch
, in my vernacular), snuff-box and crutch doubled up and yet leaping and gyrating about the floor with incredible agility; and lastly, Mademoiselle in a sort of elderly walking-dress and with blue spectacles. And all this incongruous impossible world went tumbling and dancing and going hand in hand, in flying circles to the music; until it was enough to make one forget one was in this wicked world, with Conservative majorities and Presidents MacMahon and all other abominations about one.

Also last night will be memorable to me for another reason, Madame Zassetsky having given me a light as to my own intellect. They were talking about things in history remaining in their minds because they had assisted them to generalisations. And I began to explain how things remained in my mind yet more vividly for no reason at all. She got interested, and made me give her several examples; then she said, with her little falsetto of discovery, “Mais c’est que vous êtes tout simplement enfant!” This
mot
I have reflected on at leisure and there is some truth in it. Long may I be so. Yesterday too I finished
Ordered South
and at last had some pleasure and contentment with it. S. C. has sent it off to Macmillan’s this morning and I hope it may be accepted; I don’t care whether it is or no except for the all-important lucre; the end of it is good, whether the able editor sees it or no. — Ever your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

[
Menton
],
February 22nd, 1874.

MY DEAR MOTHER, — I am glad to hear you are better again: nobody can expect to be
quite
well in February, that is the only consolation I can offer you.

Madame Garschine is ill, I am sorry to say, and was confined to bed all yesterday, which made a great difference to our little society. À propos of which, what keeps me here is just precisely the said society. These people are so nice and kind and intelligent, and then as I shall never see them any more I have a disagreeable feeling about making the move. With ordinary people in England, you have more or less chance of re-encountering one another; at least you may see their death in the papers; but with these people, they die for me and I die for them when we separate.

Andrew Lang, O you of little comprehension, called on Colvin.

You had not told me before about the fatuous person who thought
Roads
like Ruskin — surely the vaguest of contemporaneous humanity. Again my letter writing is of an enfeebled sort. — Ever your affectionate son,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

[
Menton
],
March 1st, 1874.

MY DEAR MOTHER, — The weather is again beautiful, soft, warm, cloudy and soft again, in provincial sense. Very interesting, I find Robertson; and Dugald Stewart’s life of him a source of unquenchable laughter. Dugald Stewart is not much better than McCrie, and puts me much in mind of him. By the way, I want my father to find out whether any more of Knox’s Works was ever issued than the five volumes, as I have them. There are some letters that I am very anxious to see, not printed in any of the five, and perhaps still in MS.

I suppose you are now home again in Auld Reekie: that abode of bliss does not much attract me yet a bit.

Colvin leaves at the end of this week, I fancy.

How badly yours sincerely writes. O! Madame Zassetsky has a theory that “Dumbarton Drums” is an epitome of my character and talents. She plays it, and goes into ecstasies over it, taking everybody to witness that each note, as she plays it, is the moral of Berecchino. Berecchino is my stereotype name in the world now. I am announced as M. Berecchino; a German hand-maiden came to the hotel, the other night, asking for M. Berecchino; said hand-maiden supposing in good faith that sich was my name.

Your letter come. O, I am all right now about the parting, because it will not be death, as we are to write. Of course the correspondence will drop off: but that’s no odds, it breaks the back of the trouble. — Ever your affectionate son,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

[
Menton
],
Monday, March 9th, 1874.

We have all been getting photographed, and the proofs are to be seen to-day. How they will look I know not. Madame Zassetsky arranged me for mine, and then said to the photographer: “
C’est mon fils. Il vient d’avoir dix-neuf ans. Il est tout fier de sa jeune moustache. Tâchez de la faire paraître
,” and then bolted leaving me solemnly alone with the artist. The artist was quite serious, and explained that he would try to “
faire ressortir ce que veut Madame la Princesse
” to the best of his ability; he bowed very much to me, after this, in quality of Prince you see. I bowed in return and handled the flap of my cloak after the most princely fashion I could command. — Ever your affectionate son,

R. L. S.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

[
Menton
],
March 20, 1874.

I.
My Cloak.
— An exception occurs to me to the frugality described a letter (or may be two) ago; my 119 cloak: it would certainly have been possible to have got something less expensive; still it is a fine thought for absent parents that their son possesses simply the greatest vestment in Mentone. It is great in size, and unspeakably great in design;
qua
raiment, it has not its equal.

........

III.
About Spain.
— Well, I don’t know about
me
and Spain. I am certainly in no humour and in no state of health for voyages and travels. Towards the end of May (see end), up to which time I seem to see my plans, I might be up to it, or I might not; I think
not
myself. I have given up all idea of going on to Italy, though it seems a pity when one is so near; and Spain seems to me in the same category. But for all that, it need not interfere with your voyage thither: I would not lose the chance, if I wanted.

IV.
Money.
— I am much obliged. That makes £180 now. This money irks me, one feels it more than when living at home. However, if I have health, I am in a fair way to make a bit of a livelihood for myself. Now please don’t take this up wrong; don’t suppose I am thinking of the transaction between you and me; I think of the transaction between me and mankind. I think of all this money wasted in keeping up a structure that may never be worth it — all this good money sent after bad. I shall be seriously angry if you take me up wrong.

V.
Roads.
— The familiar false concord is not certainly a form of colloquialism that I should feel inclined to encourage. It is very odd; I wrote it very carefully, and you seem to have read it very carefully, and yet none of us found it out. The Deuce is in it.

VI.
Russian Prince.
— A cousin of these ladies is come to stay with them — Prince Léon Galitzin. He is the image of — whom? — guess now — do you give it up? — Hillhouse.

VII.
Miscellaneous.
— I send you a pikler of me in the 120 cloak. I think it is like a hunchback. The moustache is clearly visible to the naked eye — O diable! what do I hear in my lug? A mosquito — the first of the season. Bad luck to him!

Good nicht and joy be wi’ you a’. I am going to bed. — Ever your affectionate son,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

Note to III.
— I had counted on being back at Embro’ by the last week or so of May.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

This describes another member of the Russian party, recently arrived at Mentone, who did his best, very nearly with success, to persuade Stevenson to join him in the study of law for some terms under the celebrated Professor Jhering at Göttingen.

[
Menton
],
March 28, 1874.

MY DEAR MOTHER, — Beautiful weather, perfect weather; sun, pleasant cooling winds; health very good; only incapacity to write.

The only new cloud on my horizon (I mean this in no menacing sense) is the Prince, I have philosophical and artistic discussions with the Prince. He is capable of talking for two hours upon end, developing his theory of everything under Heaven from his first position, which is that there is no straight line. Doesn’t that sound like a game of my father’s — I beg your pardon, you haven’t read it — I don’t mean
my
father, I mean Tristram Shandy’s. He is very clever, and it is an immense joke to hear him unrolling all the problems of life — philosophy, science, what you will — in this charmingly cut-and-dry, here-we-are-again kind of manner. He is better to listen to than to argue withal. When you differ from him, he lifts up his voice and thunders; and you know that the thunder of an excited foreigner often miscarries. One stands aghast, marvelling how such a colossus of a man, 121 in such a great commotion of spirit, can open his mouth so much and emit such a still small voice at the hinder end of it all. All this while he walks about the room, smokes cigarettes, occupies divers chairs for divers brief spaces, and casts his huge arms to the four winds like the sails of a mill. He is a most sportive Prince.

R. L. S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

[
Menton, April 1874
],
Monday.

My last night at Mentone. I cannot tell how strange and sad I feel. I leave behind me a dear friend whom I have but little hope of seeing again between the eyes.

To-day, I hadn’t arranged all my plans till five o’clock: I hired a poor old cabman, whose uncomfortable vehicle and sorry horse make everyone despise him, and set off to get money and say farewells. It was a dark misty evening; the mist was down over all the hills; the peach-trees in beautiful pink bloom. Arranged my plans; that merits a word by the way if I can be bothered. I have half arranged to go to Göttingen in summer to a course of lectures. Galitzin is responsible for this. He tells me the professor is to law what Darwin has been to Natural History, and I should like to understand Roman Law and a knowledge of law is so necessary for all I hope to do.

My poor old cabman; his one horse made me three-quarters of an hour too late for dinner, but I had not the heart to discharge him and take another. Poor soul, he was so pleased with his pourboire, I have made Madame Zassetsky promise to employ him often; so he will be something the better for me, little as he will know it.

I have read
Ordered South
; it is pretty decent I think, but poor, stiff, limping stuff at best — not half so well straightened up as
Roads
. However the stuff is good.

God help us all, this is a rough world: address Hotel St. Romain, rue St. Roch, Paris. I draw the line: a chapter finished. — Ever your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

The line.

That bit of childishness has made me laugh, do you blame me?

 See Scott himself, in the preface to the Author’s edition.

 
i.e.
on his book,
The Reign of Law
.

 Compare the paragraph in
Ordered South
describing the state of mind of the invalid doubtful of recovery, and ending: “He will pray for Medea; when she comes, let her either rejuvenate or slay.”

 Alluding to Heine’s
Ritter von dem heiligen Geist
.

 
Poste Restante

 Thomas McCrie, D.D., author of the
Life of John Knox
,
Life of Andrew Melville
, etc.

III

STUDENT DAYS —
Concluded

HOME AGAIN — LITERATURE AND LAW

May 1874 — June 1875

Returning to Edinburgh by way of Paris in May 1874, Stevenson went to live with his parents at Swanston and Edinburgh and resumed his reading for the Bar. Illness and absence had done their work, and the old harmony of the home was henceforth quite re-established. In his spare time during the next year he worked hard at his chosen art, trying his hand at essays, short stories, criticisms, and prose poems. In all this experimental writing he had neither the aims nor the facility of the journalist, but strove always after the higher qualities of literature, and was never satisfied with what he had done. To find for all he had to say words of vital aptness and animation — to communicate as much as possible of what he has somewhere called “the incommunicable thrill of things” — was from the first his endeavour in literature, nay more, it was the main passion of his life: and the instrument that should serve his purpose could not be forged in haste. Neither was it easy for this past master of the random, the unexpected, the brilliantly back-foremost and topsy-turvy in talk, to learn in writing the habit of orderly arrangement and organic sequence which even the lightest forms of literature cannot lack.