Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (935 page)

R. L. S.

To Alison Cunningham

[
Chalet am Stein, Davos-Platz, February 1882.
]

MY DEAR CUMMY, — My wife and I are very much vexed to hear you are still unwell. We are both keeping far better; she especially seems quite to have taken a turn —
the
turn, we shall hope. Please let us know how you get on, and what has been the matter with you; Braemar I believe — the vile hole. You know what a lazy rascal I am, so you won’t be surprised at a short letter, I know; indeed, you will be much more surprised at my having had the decency to write at all. We have got rid of our young, pretty, and incompetent maid; and now we have a fine, canny, twinkling, shrewd, auld-farrant peasant body, who gives us good food and keeps us in good spirits. If we could only understand what she says! But she speaks Davos language, which is to German what Aberdeen-awa’ is to English, so it comes heavy. God bless you, my dear Cummy; and so says Fanny forbye. — Ever your affectionate,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Charles Baxter

[
Chalet am Stein, Davos
],
22nd February ‘82.

MY DEAR CHARLES, — Your most welcome letter has raised clouds of sulphur from my horizon....

I am glad you have gone back to your music. Life is a poor thing, I am more and more convinced, without an art, that always waits for us and is always new. Art and marriage are two very good stand-by’s.

In an article which will appear some time in the Cornhill,
Talk and Talkers
, and where I have full-lengthened the conversation of Bob, Henley, Jenkin, Simpson, Symonds, and Gosse, I have at the end one single word about yourself. It may amuse you to see it.

We are coming to Scotland after all, so we shall meet, which pleases me, and I do believe I am strong enough to stand it this time. My knee is still quite lame.

My wife is better again.... But we take it by turns; it is the dog that is ill now. — Ever yours,

R. L. S.

To W. E. Henley

In the early months of this year a hurt knee kept Stevenson more indoors than was good for him.

[
Chalet am Stein, Davos-Platz, February 1882.
]

MY DEAR HENLEY, — Here comes the letter as promised last night. And first two requests: Pray send the enclosed to c/o Blackmore’s publisher, ‘tis from Fanny; second, pray send us Routledge’s shilling book, Edward Mayhew’s
Dogs
, by return if it can be managed.

Our dog is very ill again, poor fellow, looks very ill too, only sleeps at night because of morphine; and we do not know what ails him, only fear it to be canker of the ear. He makes a bad, black spot in our life, poor, selfish, silly, little tangle; and my wife is wretched. Otherwise she is 342 better, steadily and slowly moving up through all her relapses. My knee never gets the least better; it hurts to-night, which it has not done for long. I do not suppose my doctor knows any least thing about it. He says it is a nerve that I struck, but I assure you he does not know.

I have just finished a paper,
A Gossip on Romance
, in which I have tried to do, very popularly, about one-half of the matter you wanted me to try. In a way, I have found an answer to the question. But the subject was hardly fit for so chatty a paper, and it is all loose ends. If ever I do my book on the Art of Literature, I shall gather them together and be clear.

To-morrow, having once finished off the touches still due on this, I shall tackle
San Francisco
for you. Then the tide of work will fairly bury me, lost to view and hope. You have no idea what it costs me to wring out my work now. I have certainly been a fortnight over this
Romance
, sometimes five hours a day; and yet it is about my usual length — eight pages or so, and would be a d —  — d sight the better for another curry. But I do not think I can honestly re-write it all; so I call it done, and shall only straighten words in a revision currently.

I had meant to go on for a great while, and say all manner of entertaining things. But all’s gone. I am now an idiot. — Yours ever,

R. L. S.

To W. E. Henley

The following flight of fancy refers to supposed errors of judgment on the part of an eminent firm of publishers, with whom Stevenson had at this time no connection. Very soon afterwards he entered into relations with them which proved equally pleasant and profitable to both parties, and were continued on the most cordial terms until his death.

[
Chalet am Stein, Davos, March 1882.
]

MY DEAR HENLEY, — Last night we had a dinner-party, consisting of the John Addington, curry, onions (lovely 343 onions), and beefsteak. So unusual is any excitement, that F. and I feel this morning as if we had been to a coronation. However I must, I suppose, write.

I was sorry about your female contributor squabble. ‘Tis very comic, but really unpleasant. But what care I? Now that I illustrate my own books, I can always offer you a situation in our house — S. L. Osbourne and Co. As an author gets a halfpenny a copy of verses, and an artist a penny a cut, perhaps a proof-reader might get several pounds a year.

O that Coronation! What a shouting crowd there was! I obviously got a firework in each eye. The king looked very magnificent, to be sure; and that great hall where we feasted on seven hundred delicate foods, and drank fifty royal wines —
quel coup d’œil
! but was it not overdone, even for a coronation — almost a vulgar luxury? And eleven is certainly too late to begin dinner. (It was really 6.30 instead of 5.30.)

Your list of books that Cassells have refused in these weeks is not quite complete; they also refused: —

1. Six undiscovered Tragedies, one romantic Comedy, a fragment of Journal extending over six years, and an unfinished Autobiography reaching up to the first performance of King John. By William Shakespeare.

2. The Journals and Private Correspondence of David, King of Israel.

3. Poetical Works of Arthur, Iron Dook of Wellington including a Monody on Napoleon.

4. Eight books of an unfinished novel,
Solomon Crabb
. By Henry Fielding.

5. Stevenson’s Moral Emblems.

You also neglected to mention, as
per contra
, that they had during the same time accepted and triumphantly published Brown’s
Handbook to Cricket
,
Jones’s First French Reader
, and Robinson’s
Picturesque Cheshire
, uniform with the same author’s
Stately Homes of Salop
.

O if that list could come true! How we would tear at 344
Solomon Crabb
! O what a bully, bully, bully business. Which would you read first — Shakespeare’s autobiography, or his journals? What sport the monody on Napoleon would be — what wooden verse, what stucco ornament! I should read both the autobiography and the journals before I looked at one of the plays, beyond the names of them, which shows that Saintsbury was right, and I do care more for life than for poetry. No — I take it back. Do you know one of the tragedies — a Bible tragedy too —
David
— was written in his third period — much about the same time as Lear? The comedy,
April Rain
, is also a late work.
Beckett
is a fine ranting piece, like
Richard II.
, but very fine for the stage. Irving is to play it this autumn when I’m in town; the part rather suits him — but who is to play Henry — a tremendous creation, sir. Betterton in his private journal seems to have seen this piece; and he says distinctly that Henry is the best part in any play. “Though,” he adds, “how it be with the ancient plays I know not. But in this I have ever feared to do ill, and indeed will not be persuaded to that undertaking.” So says Betterton.
Rufus
is not so good; I am not pleased with
Rufus
; plainly a
rifaccimento
of some inferior work; but there are some damned fine lines. As for the purely satiric ill-minded
Abelard and Heloise
, another
Troilus, quoi!
it is not pleasant, truly, but what strength, what verve, what knowledge of life, and the Canon! What a finished, humorous, rich picture is the Canon! Ah, there was nobody like Shakespeare. But what I like is the David and Absalom business: Absalom is so well felt — you love him as David did; David’s speech is one roll of royal music from the first act to the fifth.

I am enjoying
Solomon Crabb
extremely; Solomon’s capital adventure with the two highwaymen and Squire Trecothick and Parson Vance; it is as good, I think, as anything in Joseph Andrews. I have just come to the part where the highwayman with the black patch over 345 his eye has tricked poor Solomon into his place, and the squire and the parson are hearing the evidence. Parson Vance is splendid. How good, too, is old Mrs. Crabb and the coastguardsman in the third chapter, or her delightful quarrel with the sexton of Seaham; Lord Conybeare is surely a little overdone; but I don’t know either; he’s such damned fine sport. Do you like Sally Barnes? I’m in love with her. Constable Muddon is as good as Dogberry and Verges put together; when he takes Solomon to the cage, and the highwayman gives him Solomon’s own guinea for his pains, and kisses Mrs. Muddon, and just then up drives Lord Conybeare, and instead of helping Solomon, calls him all the rascals in Christendom — O Henry Fielding, Henry Fielding! Yet perhaps the scenes at Seaham are the best. But I’m bewildered among all these excellences.

 — Ever yours,

R. L. S.

To Alexander Ireland

The following is in reply to a letter Stevenson had received on some questions connected with his proposed Life of Hazlitt from the veteran critic and bibliographer since deceased, Mr. Alexander Ireland. At the foot is to be found the first reference to his new amusement of wood engraving for the Davos Press: —

[
Chalet am Stein, Davos, March 1882.
]

MY DEAR SIR, — This formidable paper need not alarm you; it argues nothing beyond penury of other sorts, and is not at all likely to lead me into a long letter. If I were at all grateful it would, for yours has just passed for me a considerable part of a stormy evening. And speaking of gratitude, let me at once and with becoming eagerness accept your kind invitation to Bowdon. I shall hope, if we can agree as to dates when I am nearer hand, to come to you sometime in the month of May. I was 346 pleased to hear you were a Scot; I feel more at home with my compatriots always; perhaps the more we are away, the stronger we feel that bond.

You ask about Davos; I have discoursed about it already, rather sillily I think, in the
Pall Mall
, and I mean to say no more, but the ways of the Muse are dubious and obscure, and who knows? I may be wiled again. As a place of residence, beyond a splendid climate, it has to my eyes but one advantage — the neighbourhood of J. A. Symonds — I dare say you know his work, but the man is far more interesting. It has done me, in my two winters’ Alpine exile, much good; so much, that I hope to leave it now for ever, but would not be understood to boast. In my present unpardonably crazy state, any cold might send me skipping, either back to Davos, or further off. Let us hope not. It is dear; a little dreary; very far from many things that both my taste and my needs prompt me to seek; and altogether not the place that I should choose of my free will.

I am chilled by your description of the man in question, though I had almost argued so much from his cold and undigested volume. If the republication does not interfere with my publisher, it will not interfere with me; but there, of course, comes the hitch. I do not know Mr. Bentley, and I fear all publishers like the devil from legend and experience both. However, when I come to town, we shall, I hope, meet and understand each other as well as author and publisher ever do. I liked his letters; they seemed hearty, kind, and personal. Still — I am notedly suspicious of the trade — your news of this republication alarms me.

The best of the present French novelists seems to me, incomparably, Daudet.
Les Rois en Exil
comes very near being a masterpiece. For Zola I have no toleration, though the curious, eminently bourgeois, and eminently French creature has power of a kind. But I would he were deleted. I would not give a chapter of old Dumas (meaning 347 himself, not his collaborators) for the whole boiling of the Zolas. Romance with the smallpox — as the great one: diseased anyway and blackhearted and fundamentally at enmity with joy.

I trust that Mrs. Ireland does not object to smoking; and if you are a teetotaller, I beg you to mention it before I come — I have all the vices; some of the virtues also, let us hope — that, at least, of being a Scotchman, and yours very sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.
— My father was in the old High School the last year, and walked in the procession to the new. I blush to own I am an Academy boy; it seems modern, and smacks not of the soil.

P.P.S.
— I enclose a good joke — at least, I think so — my first efforts at wood engraving printed by my stepson, a boy of thirteen. I will put in also one of my later attempts. I have been nine days at the art — observe my progress.

R. L. S.

To Mrs. Gosse

Mrs. Gosse had sent R. L. S. a miniature Bible illustrated with rude cuts, picked up at an outdoor stall. “Lloyd’s new work” is
Black Canyon
.

[
Chalet am Stein, Davos, March 16, 1882.
]

DEAR MRS. GOSSE, — Thank you heartily for the Bible, which is exquisite. I thoroughly appreciate the whole; but have you done justice to the third lion in Daniel (like the third murderer in Macbeth) — a singular animal — study him well. The soldier in the fiery furnace beats me.

I enclose a programme of Lloyd’s new work. The work I shall send to-morrow, for the publisher is out and I dare not touch his “plant”:
il m’en cuirait
. The 348 work in question I think a huge lark, but still droller is the author’s attitude. Not one incident holds with another from beginning to end; and whenever I discover a new inconsistency, Sam is the first to laugh — with a kind of humorous pride at the thing being so silly.