Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1076 page)

On May 26th, in answer to Mr. Henderson’s application for another story, he began the Black Arrow, and the first six chapters seem to have been finished in as many days. Eight years before, in studying the fifteenth century, he had read the Paston Letters, and mainly from this material he now constructed a style and story which he thought would please the public for whom he was writing, though to his friends he announced it with cynicism and described the work as ‘ Tushery.’ On June 30th the first number of the tale appeared in Young Folks; for the next 1 Letters, i. 293.

four months it continued with perfect regularity, and it was probably the one of its author’s works which suffered most from the demands of periodical publication. In June he went for a week to Marseilles, and on July ist left for Royat, and by these moves being separated from the instalments of his proof-sheets, he had at one time, according to his own account in later days, actually forgotten what had last happened to several of his principal characters. This, however, did not affect the popularity of the story, which, published like Treasure Island under the signature of 4 Captain George North/ had a vogue far beyond that of its predecessor, even raising the circulation of its paper by many hundreds of copies a week during its appearance.1

The visit to Royat was most successful, as his parents joined the party and there spent several weeks, but early in September Louis and his wife were back at La Solitude. Treasure Island had been prepared for press, and was already in the hands of the printers with the sole exception of the chart out of which the story had grown. This, having been accidentally mislaid, had now to be reconstructed from the text, and was being drawn in the Stevensons’ office in Edinburgh. In spite of what had been said about rewriting and improving the story, only a few paragraphs were altered, chiefly in the sixteenth and two following chapters, and none of the modifications were of any importance.2

On September 19th Stevenson heard of the death of his old friend Walter Ferrier, who had long been in bad health, but was not supposed to be in any immediate danger. The record of their friendship is contained in the essay called ‘ Old Mortality,’ which was written this winter; part of the letter has already been quoted 3 which Stevenson wrote to Mr. Henley at this time upon hearing of their common loss, a letter which is, moreover, given 1  The Academy, 3rd March 1900.

2     Cf. The Academy, 3rd March 1900.   3 P. 89.

at length in Mr. Colvin’s collection. Hence there is no occasion to say more here than that this was the first breach death had made in the inner circle of Stevenson’s friends.

That very spring he had written in a letter of consolation, ‘ I am like a blind man in speaking of these things, for I have never known what mourning is, and the state of my health permits me to hope that I shall carry this good fortune unbroken to the grave.’ The hope was not to be fulfilled, but never again, with the exception of his father and of Fleeming Jenkin, did any loss throughout his life so nearly affect him as the death of Walter Ferrier.

At once his thoughts turned to the past, the past that was, and that which might have been; and he again took up the fragment which he had written upon ‘ Lay Morals’ in the spring of 1879. On October 2nd he wrote to his father: —

4 This curious affair of Ferrier’s death has sent me back on our relation and my past with much unavailing wonder and regret. Truly, we are led by strange paths. A feeling of that which lacked with Ferrier and me when we were lads together has put me upon a task which I hope will not be disliked by you: a sketch of some of the more obvious provinces and truths of life for the use of young men. The difficulty and delicacy of the task cannot be exaggerated. Here is a fine opportunity to pray for me: that I may lead none into evil. I am shy of it; yet remembering how easy it would have been to help my dear Walter and me, had any one gone the right way about, spurs me to attempt it. I will try to be honest, and then there can be no harm, I am assured; but I say again: a fine opportunity to pray for me. Lord, defend me from all idle conformity, to please the face of man; from all display, to catch applause; from all bias of my own evil; in the name of Christ. Amen.’

Nevertheless he made but little more progress with his vol. 1.      o Ethics. After a new preface addressed ‘to any young man, conscious of his youth, conscious of vague powers and qualities, and fretting at the bars of life,’ he reverted to his earlier manuscript, which still remains the more effective of the two drafts.

In October he received an offer from America for a book upon the islands of the Grecian Archipelago; but in consideration of the risk involved, and of the expenses of the journey, he fortunately decided not to accept the proposal.

All through the autumn his house continued to afford him fresh satisfaction. ‘ My address is still the same,’ he writes to Mr. Low,1’ and I live in a most sweet corner of the universe, sea and fine hills before me, and a rich variegated plain; and at my back a craggy hill, loaded with vast feudal ruins. I am very quiet; a person passing by my door half startles me; but I enjoy the most aromatic airs, and at night the most wonderful view into a moonlit garden. By day this garden fades into nothing, overpowered by its surroundings and the luminous distance; but at night, and when the moon is out, that garden, the arbour, the flight of stairs that mount the artificial hillock, the plumed blue gum-trees that hang trembling, become the very skirts of Paradise. Angels I know frequent it; and it thrills all night with the flutes of silence.’

This enchanting abode and the excellence of the climate were to Stevenson the chief recommendations of Hy&res, for of the residents and of the outside country he saw little or nothing, restricting himself to his own house and almost entirely to the circle of his own household. It was in the days of Fontainebleau and of the journeys that he acquired his knowledge of France and its inhabitants; to whatever use he may afterwards have turned them, his immediate surroundings for the time but seldom affected his work. And few foreigners have 1 Letters, i. 287.

shown such understanding as is to be found in the stories of The Treasure of Franchard and Providence and the Guitar.

It is to this period that the reminiscence belongs, recorded in his letter to Mr. W. B. Yeats, of the spell cast upon him by Meredith’s Love in the Valley; ‘ the stanzas beginning “ When her mother tends her “ haunted me and made me drunk like wine; and I remember waking with them all the echoes of the hills about Hyeres.’1

He began a story called The Travelling Companion, afterwards refused by a publisher as ‘a work of genius but indecent,’ and two years later condemned by Stevenson as having 4 no urbanity and glee, and no true tragedy’; later still it was burned on the ground that’ it was not a work of genius, and fekyll had supplanted it.’ The Note on Realism was written for the Magazine of Art, and Prince Otto, by the beginning of December, was wanting only the last two chapters. And at the end of this year or the beginning of next the copyright of his first three books was bought back from the publishers by his father. The Donkey had gone into a third edition, the Voyage into a second; of the essays only nine hundred copies had been sold, and so badly were all three selling that the price was no more than a hundred pounds.

Treasure Island was published as a book in the end of November, when Stevenson obtained his first popular success. Its reception reads like a fairy-tale. Statesmen and judges and all sorts of staid and sober men became boys once more, sitting up long after bedtime to read their new book. The story goes that Mr. Gladstone got a glimpse of it at a colleague’s house, and spent the next day hunting over London for a second-hand copy. The editor of the Saturday Review, the superior, cynical ‘ Saturday’ of old days, wrote excitedly to say that he thought Treasure Island was the best book that had 1 Letters, ii. 324.

appeared since Robinson Crusoe; and James Payn, who, if not a great novelist himself, yet held an undisputed position among novelists and critics, sent a note hardly less enthusiastic. Mr. Andrew Lang spent over it’ several hours of unmingled bliss.’ ‘ This is the kind of stuff a fellow wants. I don’t know, except Tom Sawyer and the Odyssey, that I ever liked any romance so well.’ It was translated and pirated in all directions, appearing within a couple of years as a feuilleton even in Greek and Spanish papers. For all this, it brought Stevenson no very great emolument, for during its first twelve months no more than five thousand six hundred copies were sold.

Its author, at all events, did not lose his head or overestimate his merits. Writing to his parents he says: ‘This gives one strange thoughts of how very bad the common run of books must be; and generally all the books that the wiseacres think too bad to print are the very ones that bring me praise and pudding.’

One link with the past had snapped, one friendship had vanished, and Stevenson was looking forward all the more eagerly to seeing two of his oldest friends, Mr. Henley and Mr. Baxter, who were coming out to spend a long-promised holiday with him. Before it could begin, Prince Otto ought to be finished, and to this end he devoted all his powers. The New Year came, his friends arrived at Hyeres, and for about a week he enjoyed the delights to which he had looked forward But the house was too small for their reception, and Stevenson proposed that they should all go away together to some other place, that he might share with them the benefit of a change. Accordingly the party of four went to Nice, and there almost at once Stevenson took cold. At first it seemed slight, and his friends who were due to return home went away without thought of anxiety. The cold, however, resulted in congestion of the lungs, and suddenly the situation became grave. ‘ At a consultation of doctors,’ Mrs. Stevenson says, 11 was told there was no hope, and I had better send for some member of the family to be with me at the end. Bob Stevenson came, and I can never be grateful enough for what he did for me then. He helped me to nurse Louis, and he kept me from despair as I believe no one else could have done; he inspired me with hope when there seemed no hope.’

Very slowly he grew better; it was some time before he was out of danger, and a month before he was able to set foot outside the house; but at last they returned to La Solitude. Before his return he wrote in answer to his mother’s inquiries: * I survived, where a stronger man would not. There were never two opinions as to my immediate danger; of course it was chuck-farthing for my life. That is over, and I have only weakness to contend against. . . . Z       told me to leave off wine, to regard myself as “ an old man,” and to “ sit by my fire.” None of which I wish to do. . . . As for my general health, as for my consumption, we can learn nothing till Vidal1 sees me, but I believe the harm is little, my lungs are so tough.’

This illness, however, marked the beginning of a new and protracted period of ill-health, which lasted with but little intermission until he had left Europe.

Miss Ferrier, his friend’s sister, came out at this time and stayed with them until their return to England, proving an unfailing support to them in their increasing troubles. For in the first week in May Stevenson was attacked with the most violent and dangerous hemorrhage he ever experienced. It occurred late at night, but in a moment his wife was by his side. Being choked with the flow of blood and unable to speak, he made signs to her for a paper and pencil, and wrote in a neat firm hand, ‘ Don’t be frightened; if this is death, it is an easy one.’ Mrs. Stevenson had always a small bottle of ergotin and 1 His own extremely clever doctor at Hyeres.

a minim glass in readiness; these she brought in order to administer the prescribed quantity. Seeing her alarm, he took bottle and glass away from her, measured the dose correctly with a perfectly steady hand, and gave the things back to her with a reassuring smile.

Recovery was very slow and attended by numerous complications, less dangerous, but even more painful than the original malady. The dust of street refuse gave him Egyptian ophthalmia, and sciatica descending upon him caused him the more pain, as he was suffering already from restlessness. The hemorrhage was not yet healed, and We now hear for the first time of the injunctions to absolute silence, orders patiently obeyed, distasteful as they were. In silence and the dark, and in acute suffering, he was still cheery and undaunted. When the ophthalmia began and the doctor first announced his diagnosis, Mrs. Stevenson felt that it was more than any one could be expected to bear, and went into another room, and there, in her own phrase, ‘sat and gloomed.’ Louis rang his bell and she went to him, saying, in the bitterness of her spirit, as she entered the room,’ Well, I suppose that this is the very best thing that could have happened!’ ‘ Why, how odd!’ wrote Louis on a piece of paper,’ I was just going to say those very words.’ When darkness fell upon him and silence was imposed, and his right arm was in a sling on account of the hemorrhage, his wife used to amuse him for part of the day by making up tales, some of which they afterwards used in the Dynamiter; when these were at an end, he continued the Child’s Garden, writing down the new verses for himself in the dim light with his left hand. And at this time he wrote the best of all his poems, the ‘ Requiem’ beginning ‘ Under the wide and starry sky,’ which ten years later was to mark his grave upon the lonely hill-top in Samoa.

When he got a little better he wrote to his mother,’ I

do nothing but play patience and write verse, the true sign of my decadence.’ With careful nursing he began to mend. Here, as everywhere, he excited the utmost sympathy, which manifested itself sometimes in embarrassing and unexpected ways. ‘The washerwoman’s little boy brought, of all things in the world, a canary to amuse the sick gentleman! Fortunately it doesn’t sing, or it would drive the sick gentleman mad.’

Thomas Stevenson was in too precarious health even to be told of his son’s illness, but the two friends who had visited Louis at Nice in January took counsel and on their own responsibility sent their doctor from London to see what could be done, and at any rate to learn the exact condition of the patient. In a few days Mrs. Stevenson was able to write to her mother-in-law: —