Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1032 page)

A man brought in a head to Mulinuu in great glory; they washed the black paint off, and behold! it was his brother. When I last heard he was sitting in his house, with the head upon his lap, and weeping. Barbarous war is an ugly business; but I believe the civilised is fully uglier; but Lord! what fun!

I should say we now have definite news that there are
three
women’s heads; it was difficult to get it out of the natives, who are all ashamed, and the women all in terror of reprisals. Nothing has been done to punish or disgrace these hateful innovators. It was a false report that the head had been returned.

Thursday, 13th.
— Maatafa driven away from Savaii. I cannot write about this, and do not know what should be the end of it.

Monday, 17th.
— Haggard and Ahrens (a German clerk) to lunch yesterday. There is no real certain news yet: I must say, no man could
swear
to any result; but the sky looks horribly black for Mataafa and so many of our friends along with him. The thing has an abominable, a beastly, nightmare interest. But it’s wonderful generally 334 how little one cares about the wounded; hospital sights, etc.; things that used to murder me. I was far more struck with the excellent way in which things were managed; as if it had been a peep-show; I held some of the things at an operation, and did not care a dump.

Tuesday, 18th.
— Sunday came the
Katoomba
, Captain Bickford, C.M.G. Yesterday, Graham and I went down to call, and find he has orders to suppress Mataafa at once, and has to go down to-day before daybreak to Manono. He is a very capable, energetic man; if he had only come ten days ago, all this would have gone by; but now the questions are thick and difficult. (1) Will Mataafa surrender? (2) Will his people allow themselves to be disarmed? (3) What will happen to them if they do? (4) What will any of them believe after former deceptions? The three consuls were scampering on horseback to Leulumoega to the king; no Cusack-Smith, without whose accession I could not send a letter to Mataafa. I rode up here, wrote my letter in the sweat of the concordance and with the able-bodied help of Lloyd — and dined. Then down in continual showers and pitchy darkness, and to Cusack-Smith’s; not returned. Back to the inn for my horse, and to C.-S.’s, when I find him just returned and he accepts my letter. Thence home, by 12.30, jolly tired and wet. And to-day have been in a crispation of energy and ill-temper, raking my wretched mail together. It is a hateful business, waiting for the news; it may come to a fearful massacre yet. — Yours ever,

R. L. S.

To James S. Stevenson

This is addressed to a very remote cousin in quest of information about the origins of the family.

Vailima, Samoa, June 19th, 1893.

DEAR MR. STEVENSON, — I am reminded by coming across some record of relations between my grandfather, 335 Robert Stevenson, C.E., Edinburgh, and Robert Stevenson, Esq., Secretary to the Royal Exchange, Glasgow, and I presume a son of Hugh Stevenson who died in Tobago 16th April 1774, that I have not yet consulted my cousins in Glasgow.

I am engaged in writing a Life of my grandfather, my uncle Alan, and my father, Thomas, and I find almost inconceivable difficulty in placing and understanding their (and my) descent.

Might I ask if you have any material to go upon? The smallest notes would be like found gold to me; and an old letter invaluable.

I have not got beyond James Stevenson and Jean Keir his spouse, to whom Robert the First (?) was born in 1675. Could you get me further back? Have you any old notes of the trouble in the West Indian business which took Hugh and Alan to their deaths? How had they acquired so considerable a business at an age so early? You see how the queries pour from me; but I will ask nothing more in words. Suffice it to say that any information, however insignificant, as to our common forbears, will be very gratefully received. In case you should have any original documents, it would be better to have copies sent to me in this outlandish place, for the expense of which I will account to you as soon as you let me know the amount, and it will be wise to register your letter. — Believe me, in the old, honoured Scottish phrase, your affectionate cousin,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Henry James

Apia, July 1893.

MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, — Yes.
Les Trophées
is, on the whole, a book. It is excellent; but is it a life’s work? 336 I always suspect
you
of a volume of sonnets up your sleeve; when is it coming down? I am in one of my moods of wholesale impatience with all fiction and all verging on it, reading instead, with rapture,
Fountainhall’s Decisions
. You never read it: well, it hasn’t much form, and is inexpressibly dreary, I should suppose, to others — and even to me for pages. It’s like walking in a mine underground, and with a damned bad lantern, and picking out pieces of ore. This, and war, will be my excuse for not having read your (doubtless) charming work of fiction. The revolving year will bring me round to it; and I know, when fiction shall begin to feel a little
solid
to me again, that I shall love it, because it’s James. Do you know, when I am in this mood, I would rather try to read a bad book? It’s not so disappointing, anyway. And
Fountainhall
is prime, two big folio volumes, and all dreary, and all true, and all as terse as an obituary; and about one interesting fact on an average in twenty pages, and ten of them unintelligible for technicalities. There’s literature, if you like! It feeds; it falls about you genuine like rain. Rain: nobody has done justice to rain in literature yet: surely a subject for a Scot. But then you can’t do rain in that ledger-book style that I am trying for — or between a ledger-book and an old ballad. How to get over, how to escape from, the besotting
particularity
of fiction. “Roland approached the house; it had green doors and window blinds; and there was a scraper on the upper step.” To hell with Roland and the scraper! — Yours ever,

R. L. S.

To A. Conan Doyle

Vailima, July 12, 1893.

MY DEAR DR. CONAN DOYLE, — The
White Company
has not yet turned up; but when it does — which I suppose will be next mail — you shall hear news of me. I have a 337 great talent for compliment, accompanied by a hateful, even a diabolic frankness.

Delighted to hear I have a chance of seeing you and Mrs. Doyle; Mrs. Stevenson bids me say (what is too true) that our rations are often spare. Are you Great Eaters? Please reply.

As to ways and means, here is what you will have to do. Leave San Francisco by the down mail, get off at Samoa, and twelve days or a fortnight later, you can continue your journey to Auckland per Upolu, which will give you a look at Tonga and possibly Fiji by the way. Make this a
first part of your plans
. A fortnight, even of Vailima diet, could kill nobody.

We are in the midst of war here; rather a nasty business, with the head-taking; and there seems signs of other trouble. But I believe you need make no change in your design to visit us. All should be well over; and if it were not, why! you need not leave the steamer. — Yours very truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Charles Baxter

19th July ‘93.

... We are in the thick of war — see Illustrated London News — we have only two outside boys left to us. Nothing is doing, and
per contra
little paying.... My life here is dear; but I can live within my income for a time at least — so long as my prices keep up — and it seems a clear duty to waste none of it on gadding about. ... My Life of my family fills up intervals, and should be an excellent book when it is done, but big, damnably big.

My dear old man, I perceive by a thousand signs that we grow old, and are soon to pass away; I hope with dignity; if not, with courage at least. I am myself very ready; or would be — will be — when I have made a little 338 money for my folks. The blows that have fallen upon you are truly terrifying; I wish you strength to bear them. It is strange, I must seem to you to blaze in a Birmingham prosperity and happiness; and to myself I seem a failure. The truth is, I have never got over the last influenza yet, and am miserably out of heart and out of kilter. Lungs pretty right, stomach nowhere, spirits a good deal overshadowed; but we’ll come through it yet, and cock our bonnets. (I confess with sorrow that I am not yet quite sure about the
intellects
; but I hope it is only one of my usual periods of non-work. They are more unbearable now, because I cannot rest.
No rest but the grave for Sir Walter!
O the words ring in a man’s head.)

R. L. S.

To Sidney Colvin

[
Vailima
]
August 1893.

MY DEAR COLVIN, — Quite impossible to write. Your letter is due to-day; a nasty, rainy-like morning with huge blue clouds, and a huge indigo shadow on the sea, and my lamp still burning at near 7. Let me humbly give you news. Fanny seems on the whole the most, or the only, powerful member of the family; for some days she has been the Flower of the Flock. Belle is begging for quinine. Lloyd and Graham have both been down with “belly belong him” (Black Boy speech). As for me, I have to lay aside my lawn tennis, having (as was to be expected) had a smart but eminently brief hemorrhage. I am also on the quinine flask. I have been re-casting the beginning of the
Hanging Judge
or
Weir of Hermiston
; then I have been cobbling on my Grandfather, whose last chapter (there are only to be four) is in the form of pieces of paper, a huge welter of inconsequence, and that glimmer of faith (or hope) which one learns at this trade, that somehow and some time, by perpetual staring and glowering 339 and re-writing, order will emerge. It is indeed a queer hope; there is one piece for instance that I want in — I cannot put it one place for a good reason — I cannot put it another for a better — and every time I look at it, I turn sick and put the MS. away.

Well, your letter hasn’t come, and a number of others are missing. It looks as if a mail-bag had gone on, so I’ll blame nobody, and proceed to business.

It looks as if I was going to send you the first three chapters of my Grandfather.... If they were set up, it would be that much anxiety off my mind. I have a strange feeling of responsibility, as if I had my ancestors’
souls
in my charge, and might miscarry with them.

There’s a lot of work gone into it, and a lot more is needed. Still Chapter I. seems about right to me, and much of Chapter II. Chapter III. I know nothing of, as I told you. And Chapter IV. is at present all ends and beginnings; but it can be pulled together.

This is all I have been able to screw up to you for this month, and I may add that it is not only more than you deserve, but just about more than I was equal to. I have been and am entirely useless; just able to tinker at my Grandfather. The three chapters — perhaps also a little of the fourth — will come home to you next mail by the hand of my cousin Graham Balfour, a very nice fellow whom I recommend to you warmly — and whom I think you will like. This will give you time to consider my various and distracted schemes.

All our wars are over in the meantime, to begin again as soon as the war-ships leave. Adieu.

R. L. S.

To A. Conan Doyle

Vailima, August 23rd, 1893.

MY DEAR DR. CONAN DOYLE, — I am reposing after a somewhat severe experience upon which I think it my 340 duty to report to you. Immediately after dinner this evening it occurred to me to re-narrate to my native overseer Simelé your story of
The Engineer’s Thumb
. And, sir, I have done it. It was necessary, I need hardly say, to go somewhat farther afield than you have done. To explain (for instance) what a railway is, what a steam hammer, what a coach and horse, what coining, what a criminal, and what the police. I pass over other and no less necessary explanations. But I did actually succeed; and if you could have seen the drawn, anxious features and the bright, feverish eyes of Simelé, you would have (for the moment at least) tasted glory. You might perhaps think that, were you to come to Samoa, you might be introduced as the Author of
The Engineer’s Thumb
. Disabuse yourself. They do not know what it is to make up a story.
The Engineer’s Thumb
(God forgive me) was narrated as a piece of actual and factual history. Nay, and more, I who write to you have had the indiscretion to perpetrate a trifling piece of fiction entitled
The Bottle Imp
. Parties who come up to visit my unpretentious mansion, after having admired the ceilings by Vanderputty and the tapestry by Gobbling, manifest towards the end a certain uneasiness which proves them to be fellows of an infinite delicacy. They may be seen to shrug a brown shoulder, to roll up a speaking eye, and at last secret burst from them: “Where is the bottle?” Alas, my friends (I feel tempted to say), you will find it by the Engineer’s Thumb! Talofa-soifua.

O a’u, o lau uo moni, O Tusitala. More commonly known as

R. L. Stevenson.

Have read the
Refugees
; Condé and old P. Murat very good; Louis xiv. and Louvois with the letter bag very rich. You have reached a trifle wide perhaps; too
many
celebrities? Though I was delighted to re-encounter my old friend Du Chaylu. Old Murat is perhaps your high-water mark; ‘tis excellently human, cheerful and 341 real. Do it again. Madame de Maintenon struck me as quite good. Have you any document for the decapitation? It sounds steepish. The devil of all that first part is that you see old Dumas; yet your Louis XIV. is
distinctly good
. I am much interested with this book, which fulfils a good deal, and promises more. Question: How far a Historical Novel should be wholly episodic? I incline to that view, with trembling. I shake hands with you on old Murat.