Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1075 page)

During one war Stevenson chronicled the operations in a series of extracts from the Glendarule Times and the Yallobally Record, until the editor of the latter sheet was hanged by order of General Osbourne and its place supplied by the less offensive Herald.

1 Scribbler’s Magazine, December 1898, p. 709.

Year after year he reverted to the game, and even in Samoa there was a campaign room with the map coloured on the floor, although the painful realities of actual warfare, either present or imminent, occupied all our thoughts for the closing period of Stevenson’s life.

But busy as he was this winter, he had time not only for this game, but also, turning aside to help young Osbourne with his printing, he first wrote verses for the toy-press, and then, getting hold of a bit of rough wood, began to design and cut illustrations for his text, or in some cases to create pictures which a text must elucidate.

In February he sent to his parents 1 two woodcuts of my own cutting; they are moral emblems; one represents “ anger,” the other “ pride scorning poverty.” They will appear among others, accompanied by verses, in my new work published by S. L. Osbourne. If my father does not enjoy these, he is no true man.’ And to his mother: ‘Wood-engraving has suddenly drave between me and the sun. I dote on wood-engraving. I’m a made man for life. I’ve an amusement at last.’

Of these blocks about two dozen in all were cut, most of them by Stevenson’s own hands, though the elephant, at any rate, was due to his wife, and 1 the sacred ibis in the distance’ was merely the result of an accident turned to advantage. He had in his boyhood received a few lessons in drawing as a polite accomplishment: later he found great difficulty in the mechanical work of his original profession, in which of course he had been specially trained. Thus, in 1868, he wrote to his mother, ‘ It is awful how slowly I draw and how ill. Barbizon seemed to rouse in him no tendency to express himself in line or colour, and it was not till he was alone at Monastier in 1878 that he made for his own pleasure such sketches as any grown man with no technical education might attempt.

Art criticism is for the expert; I will only say that to me these sketches seem to show an excellent eye for the configuration of the country. But after this Stevenson seems to have drawn no more landscape until, his camera being lost, he tried his hand at representing some of the coast scenery in the Marquesas, and his sketch, redrawn by Mr. Charles Wyllie, gives me a very vivid impression of the scenery of an island I have never visited.

It would be very easy to overrate not merely the importance but even the interest of these blocks. Stevenson soon obtained some pear-wood, and then, after he returned to Scotland, he procured box; on this latter material the illustrations of The Graver and the Pen were cut, but their merits are impaired rather than heightened by the improved technique.

That Stevenson had an eye for country, as I have said, for clouds, for water, and for the action of the human figure, the cuts are a clear proof. The most ridiculous of his puppets are full of life, from the ‘industrious pirate’ with his spyglass, to Robin ‘who has that Abbot stuck as the red hunter spears the buck.’ One and all, they show in their rough state a touch full of spirit and original quality, that teaching might have refined away.1

In April again the family quitted the Alps, but this year with welcome news. ‘ We now leave Davos for good, I trust, Dr. Ruedi giving me leave to live in France, fifteen miles as the crow flies from the sea, and if possible near a fir wood. This is a great blessing: I hope I am grateful.’

They crossed the Channel with little delay; Louis stayed first at Weybridge, and then at Burford Bridge, where he renewed his friendship with Mr. George Meredith. By May 20th he was in Edinburgh, and there spent most of June, though he made a week’s expedition with his father to Lochearnhead, hard by the Braes of Balquhidder. Here he made inquiries about 1 The Studio, Winter number, 1896-97. Robert Louis Stevenson, Illustrator. By Joseph Pennell. With twelve illustrations.

the Appin murder, perpetrated only forty miles away, and was successful in finding some local traditions about the murderer still extant.1

The flow of work at the beginning of the year was followed by a long period of unproductiveness after he returned to this country. He had an article in each number of the Cornhill from April to August, but except the second part of ‘Talk and Talkers’ these had been written at Davos. After this his connection with the magazine came to an end. During the past seven years its readers had grown accustomed to look eagerly every month in hope of finding an article by R. L. S., and all its rivals have, by comparison, ever since seemed conventional and dull. Mr. Leslie Stephen resigned the editorship in 1883 to the late James Payn, who was no less a friend of Stevenson and an admirer of his work, but the price of the magazine was reduced and its character somewhat modified. In August the New Arabian Nights, long withheld by the advice of an experienced publisher, were issued in two volumes by Messrs. Chatto and Windus, and reached a second edition before the end of the year.

On June 26th the family went to the manse of Stobo in Peeblesshire for the summer. But the weather was bad, the house shut in by trees, and the result most unbeneficial. In a fortnight Louis was ordered away, went to London to consult Dr. Andrew Clark, and in accordance with his advice started on July 22nd for Speyside in the company of Mr. Colvin. The rest of the family soon joined him at Kingussie, and here again by a burn — ’ the golden burn that pours and sulks,’2 he spent the last entire month he ever passed in Scotland. Having gone to France to write about Edinburgh, in the Highlands he turned again to France, and now wrote most of the Treasure of Franchard. The weather 1        Introduction to Kidnapped.

2     Memories and Portraits, p. 145.

again did its worst; he had an invitation to meet Cluny Macpherson, and was eagerly looking forward to a talk about the Highlands. But a hemorrhage intervened, Stevenson had to leave in haste, and by September 9th he was in London, again asking the advice of Dr. Clark. The opinion was so far favourable that there was no need to return to Davos, which disagreed with Mrs. Stevenson, and of which they were both heartily tired. They were thus at liberty to seek a home in some more congenial spot.

CHAPTER X

THE RIVIERA — 1882-84

‘ Happy (said I), I was only happy once, that was at Hy&res; it came to end from a variety of reasons, decline of health, change of place, increase of money, age with his stealing steps; since then, as before then, I know not what it means.’ — Vailima Letters, p. 53.

Accordingly about the middle of September Stevenson started for the south of France, and since he was unfit to go alone, and his wife was too ill to undertake the journey, he started in the charge and company of his cousin, R. A. M. Stevenson. Their object was to discover some place suitable for both husband and wife, possessing more of the advantages of a town and fewer of the drawbacks of a health-resort than the Alpine valley from which they were now finally released. Paris was left without delay, and Montpellier was next tried and rejected, but not until Louis had a slight hemorrhage. He wrote to his wife: ‘ I spent a very pleasant afternoon in the doctor’s consulting-room among the curious, meridional peasants, who quarrelled and told their complaints. I made myself very popular there, I don’t know how.’

His companion had to return home, and Louis made his way to Marseilles, where, a few days later, on October nth, he was joined by his wife.

No time was wasted; within three days a house that seemed all they could desire was found and taken. It was a commodious maison de campagne with a large garden, situated about five miles from Marseilles, with such facilities of communication with the city as a considerable suburb ensures. * In a lovely spot, among lovely wooded and cliffy hills — most mountainous in line — far lovelier to my eyes than any Alps.’

In another week they were installed in Campagne Defli, and had sent for such property as they needed. Here they proposed to make their home for several years. ‘The tragic folly of my summers is at an end for me,’ Louis wrote; ‘twice have I gone home and escaped with a flea in my ear; the third or fourth time I should leave my bones with a general verdict of “sarve him right for a fool.”‘ ‘The white cliffs of Albion shall not see me,’ he wrote in January; ‘ I am sick of relapsing; I want to get well.’ ‘ As for my living in England, three years hence will be early enough to talk of it.’

But whether the house or the neighbourhood or the season was unhealthy, St. Marcel proved a most unfortunate choice. Stevenson was never well there, and never for more than three or four days at a time capable of any work. He had several slight hemorrhages and mended very slowly. By Christmas he wrote: ‘ I had to give up wood-engraving, chess, latterly even Patience, and could read almost nothing but newspapers. It was dull but necessary. I seem hopelessly hidebound, as you see; nothing comes out of me but chips.’

At the end of the year an epidemic of fever broke out in St. Marcel, and he found himself so unwell, that in desperation he went to Nice lest he should become too ill to move. They were unprepared for the move, and his wife stayed behind until they could obtain further supplies. In the meantime telegrams and letters went astray, and at the end of a week Mrs. Stevenson arrived at Nice quite distraught. She had received no news whatever of her husband, having telegraphed in all directions for three days in vain, and had been assured by every one that he must have had a fresh hemorrhage, have left the train at some wayside station, and there died and been buried.

In the meantime all went well, but it was obviously impossible for Stevenson to think of returning to St. Marcel; by the middle of February they got the Campagne Defli off their hands, and were at liberty to seek a fresh settlement. They thought of Geneva, but, after a short visit to Marseilles, they went to a hotel at Hy&res, and there by the end of March were once more established in a house of their own — Chalet La Solitude. It was situated just above the town, on a slope of the hill on which the castle stands, commanding a view of Les Oiseaux and the lies d’Or; a cottage scarce as large as the Davos chalet,’ with a garden like a fairy-story and a view like a classical landscape.’

Here for a year, or, to be strictly accurate, for a little more than nine months, Stevenson was to find happiness, a greater happiness than ever came to him again, except perhaps at moments in his exile. Hardly anything seemed wanting; his wife was always able to be with him, and he had besides the company of his stepson, in which he delighted. There was the affectionate intercourse with his parents, clouded only by the gradual failure in his father’s spirits; there was the correspondence with his friends; already in March he had been able to welcome Mr. Colvin as the first of his visitors; and, not least, he found a measure of health once more and a renewed capacity for employing his increased skill.

Of the first of these elements in his happiness he wrote to his mother in 1884: ‘My wife is in pretty good feather; I love her better than ever and admire her more; and I cannot think what I have done to deserve so good a gift. This sudden remark came out of my pen; it is not like me; but in case you did not know, I may as well tell you, that my marriage has been the most successful in the world. I say so, and being the child of my parents, I can speak with knowledge. She is everything to me: wife, brother, sister, daughter and dear companion; and I would not change to get a goddess or a saint. So far, after four years of matrimony/ And of his delight in his surroundings he said in 1883: ‘This house and garden of ours still seem to go between us and our wits.’ Their material comfort was further increased in May when Valentine Roch entered their service, an extremely clever and capable French girl, who remained with them for six years, and even accompanied them on their first cruise in the Pacific.

For a period of nearly eight months he had been unable to earn any money or to carry any work to a conclusion, and it was therefore with the greatest delight that in the beginning of May he received an offer from Messrs. Cassell for the book-rights of Treasure Island. 1 How much do you suppose? I believe it would be an excellent jest to keep the answer till my next letter. For two cents I would do so. Shall I? Anyway I ‘11 turn the page first. No — well, a hundred pounds, all alive, O! A hundred jingling, tingling, golden, minted quid. Is not this wonderful?’ . . „ ‘ It is dreadful to be a great, big man, and not to be able to buy bread.’

Already, before he reached La Solitude, his enforced leisure had come to an end. Verse writing with him was almost always a resource of illness or of convalescence, and he now took advantage of his recovery to increase the poems of childhood (for which his first name was Penny Whistles), until they amounted to some eight-and- forty numbers. Now also in answer to an application from Mr. Gilder, the editor of the Century Magazine, the Silverado Squatters was finished and despatched to New York, and so began his first important connection with any of the American publishers who were afterwards to prove so lucrative to him. Of course, like others, he had suffered at the hands of persons who had not only appropriated his books without licence, but even, a less usual outrage, had wantonly misspelt his name. £ I saw my name advertised in a number of the Critic as the work of one R. L. Stephenson; and, I own, I boiled. It is so easy to know the name of the man whose book you have stolen; for there it is, at full length, on the title-page of your booty. But no, damn him, not he! He calls me Stephenson.’1

The ground was now clear before him, and on April 10th he set to work once more from the beginning upon Prince Otto, which he had left untouched for three years. Ten days later he wrote: ‘ I am up to the waist in a story; a kind of one volume novel; how do they ever puff them out into three? Lots of things happen in this thing of mine, and one volume will swallow it without a strain.’ At first all went swimmingly. By May 5th — in five-and-twenty days — he had drafted fifteen chapters. But there was a stumbling-block in his path — he had yet to reckon with his women characters. When he came to the scenes where the intervention of the Countess von Rosen is described, his resources were taxed to their utmost, and when the battle went against him, he renewed his attack again and again. No less than seven times was the fifteenth chapter now rewritten, and it was only the eighth version which finally was suffered to pass.