Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1040 page)

Suppose we do what I have proposed about Fergusson’s monument, I wonder if an inscription like this would look arrogant —

In spacing this inscription I would detach the names of Fergusson and Burns, but leave mine in the text.

Or would that look like sham modesty, and is it better to bring out the three Roberts?

To Sidney Colvin

Vailima, May 18th, 1894.

MY DEAR COLVIN, — Your proposals for the Edinburgh Edition are entirely to my mind. About the
Amateur Emigrant
, it shall go to you by this mail well slashed. If you like to slash some more on your own account, I give you permission. ‘Tis not a great work; but since it goes to make up the two first volumes as proposed, I 397 presume it has not been written in vain. —
Miscellanies
. I see with some alarm the proposal to print
Juvenilia
; does it not seem to you taking myself a little too much as Grandfather William? I am certainly not so young as I once was — a lady took occasion to remind me of the fact no later agone than last night. “Why don’t you leave that to the young men, Mr. Stevenson?” said she — but when I remember that I felt indignant at even John Ruskin when he did something of the kind I really feel myself blush from head to heel. If you want to make up the first volume, there are a good many works which I took the trouble to prepare for publication and which have never been republished. In addition to
Roads
and
Dancing Children
, referred to by you, there is
An Autumn Effect
in the Portfolio, and a paper on Fontainebleau —
Forest Notes
is the name of it — in Cornhill. I have no objection to any of these being edited, say with a scythe, and reproduced. But I heartily abominate and reject the idea of reprinting
The Pentland Rising
. For God’s sake let me get buried first.

Tales and Fantasies.
Vols. I. and II. have my hearty approval. But I think III. and IV. had better be crammed into one as you suggest. I will reprint none of the stories mentioned. They are below the mark. Well, I dare say the beastly
Body-Snatcher
has merit, and I am unjust to it from my recollections of the Pall Mall. But the other two won’t do. For vols. V. and VI., now changed into IV. and V., I propose the common title of
South Sea Yarns
. There! These are all my differences of opinion. I agree with every detail of your arrangement, and, as you see, my objections have turned principally on the question of hawking unripe fruit. I dare say it is all pretty green, but that is no reason for us to fill the barrow with trash. Think of having a new set of type cast, paper especially 398 made, etc., in order to set up rubbish that is not fit for the Saturday Scotsman. It would be the climax of shame.

I am sending you a lot of verses, which had best, I think, be called
Underwoods
Book III., but in what order are they to go? Also, I am going on every day a little, till I get sick of it, with the attempt to get
The Emigrant
compressed into life; I know I can — or you can after me — do it. It is only a question of time and prayer and ink, and should leave something, no, not good, but not all bad — a very genuine appreciation of these folks. You are to remember besides there is that paper of mine on Bunyan in the Magazine of Art. O, and then there’s another thing in Seeley called some spewsome name, I cannot recall it.

Well — come, here goes for
Juvenilia
.
Dancing Infants
,
Roads
,
An Autumn Effect
,
Forest Notes
(but this should come at the end of them, as it’s really rather riper), the t’other thing from Seeley, and I’ll tell you, you may put in my letter to the Church of Scotland — it’s not written amiss, and I dare say
The Philosophy of Umbrellas
might go in, but there I stick — and remember
that
was a collaboration with James Walter Ferrier. O, and there was a little skit called
The Charity Bazaar
, which you might see; I don’t think it would do. Now, I do not think there are two other words that should be printed. — By the way, there is an article of mine called
The Day after To-morrow
in the Contemporary which you might find room for somewhere; it’s no’ bad.

Very busy with all these affairs and some native ones also.

To R. A. M. Stevenson

[
Vailima, June 17th, 1894.
]

MY DEAR BOB, — I must make out a letter this mail or perish in the attempt. All the same, I am deeply stupid, 399 in bed with a cold, deprived of my amanuensis, and conscious of the wish but not the furnished will. You may be interested to hear how the family inquiries go. It is now quite certain that we are a second-rate lot, and came out of Cunningham or Clydesdale, therefore
British
folk; so that you are Cymry on both sides, and I Cymry and Pict. We may have fought with King Arthur and known Merlin. The first of the family, Stevenson of Stevenson, was quite a great party, and dates back to the wars of Edward First. The last male heir of Stevenson of Stevenson died 1670, £220, 10s. to the bad, from drink. About the same time the Stevensons, who were mostly in Cunningham before, crop up suddenly in the parish of Neilston, over the border in Renfrewshire. Of course, they may have been there before, but there is no word of them in that parish till 1675 in any extracts I have. Our first traceable ancestor was a tenant farmer of Mure of Cauldwell’s — James in Nether Carsewell. Presently two families of maltmen are found in Glasgow, both, by re-duplicated proofs, related to James (the son of James) in Nether Carsewell. We descend by his second marriage from Robert; one of these died 1733. It is not very romantic up to now, but has interested me surprisingly to fish out, always hoping for more — and occasionally getting at least a little clearness and confirmation. But the earliest date, 1655, apparently the marriage of James in Nether Carsewell, cannot as yet be pushed back. From which of any number of dozen little families in Cunningham we should derive, God knows! Of course, it doesn’t matter a hundred years hence, an argument fatal to all human enterprise, industry, or pleasure. And to me it will be a deadly disappointment if I cannot roll this stone away! One generation further might be nothing, but it is my present object of desire, and we are so near it! There is a man in the same parish called Constantine; if I could only trace to him, I could take you far afield by that one talisman of the strange Christian name of Constantine. 400 But no such luck! And I kind of fear we shall stick at James.

So much, though all inchoate, I trouble you with, knowing that you, at least, must take an interest in it. So much is certain of that strange Celtic descent, that the past has an interest for it apparently gratuitous, but fiercely strong. I wish to trace my ancestors a thousand years, if I trace them by gallowses. It is not love, not pride, not admiration; it is an expansion of the identity, intimately pleasing, and wholly uncritical; I can expend myself in the person of an inglorious ancestor with perfect comfort; or a disgraced, if I could find one. I suppose, perhaps, it is more to me who am childless, and refrain with a certain shock from looking forwards. But, I am sure, in the solid grounds of race, that you have it also in some degree.

Enough genealogy. I do not know if you will be able 401 to read my hand. Unhappily, Belle, who is my amanuensis, is out of the way on other affairs, and I have to make the unwelcome effort. (O this is beautiful, I am quite pleased with myself.) Graham has just arrived last night (my mother is coming by the other steamer in three days), and has told me of your meeting, and he said you looked a little older than I did; so that I suppose we keep step fairly on the downward side of the hill. He thought you looked harassed, and I could imagine that too. I sometimes feel harassed. I have a great family here about me, a great anxiety. The loss (to use my grandfather’s expression), the “loss” of our family is that we are disbelievers in the morrow — perhaps I should say, rather, in next year. The future is
always
black to us; it was to Robert Stevenson; to Thomas; I suspect to Alan; to R. A. M. S. it was so almost to his ruin in youth; to R. L. S., who had a hard hopeful strain in him from his mother, it was not so much so once, but becomes daily more so. Daily so much more so, that I have a painful difficulty in believing I can ever finish another book, or that the public will ever read it.

I have so huge a desire to know exactly what you are doing, that I suppose I should tell you what I am doing by way of an example. I have a room now, a part of the twelve-foot verandah sparred in, at the most inaccessible end of the house. Daily I see the sunrise out of my bed, which I still value as a tonic, a perpetual tuning fork, a look of God’s face once in the day. At six my breakfast comes up to me here, and I work till eleven. If I am quite well, I sometimes go out and bathe in the river before lunch, twelve. In the afternoon I generally work again, now alone drafting, now with Belle dictating. Dinner is at six, and I am often in bed by eight. This is supposing me to stay at home. But I must often be away, sometimes all day long, sometimes till twelve, one, or two at night, when you might see me coming home to the sleeping house, sometimes in a trackless darkness, sometimes 402 with a glorious tropic moon, everything drenched with dew — unsaddling and creeping to bed; and you would no longer be surprised that I live out in this country, and not in Bournemouth — in bed.