Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (954 page)

I can add nothing more, but just that we wish to hear as soon as you have nothing else to do — not to hurry, of course, — if it takes three months, no matter — but bear us in mind.

R. L. S.

To W. E. Henley

Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth
[
Winter
1884].

MY DEAR LAD, — Here was I in bed; not writing, not hearing, and finding myself gently and agreeably ill used; and behold I learn you are bad yourself. Get your wife to send us a word how you are. I am better decidedly. Bogue got his Christmas card, and behaved well for three days after. It may interest the cynical to learn that I started my last hemorrhage by too sedulous attentions to my dear Bogue. The stick was broken; and that night Bogue, who was attracted by the extraordinary aching of his bones, and is always inclined to a serious view of his own ailments, announced with his customary pomp that he was dying. In this case, however, it was not the dog that died. (He had tried to bite his mother’s ankles.) I have written a long and peculiarly solemn paper on the technical elements of style. It is path-breaking and epoch-making; but I do not think the public will be readily convoked to its perusal. Did I tell you that S. C. had risen to the paper on James? At last! O but I was pleased; he’s (like Johnnie) been lang, lang o’ comin’, but here he is. He will not object to my future manœuvres in the same field, as he has to my former. All the family are here; my father better than I have seen him these two years; my mother the same as ever. I do trust you are better, and I am yours ever,

R. L. S.

To H. A. Jones

Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth, Dec.
30, 1884.

DEAR SIR, — I am so accustomed to hear nonsense spoken about all the arts, and the drama in particular, that I cannot refrain from saying “Thank you” for your paper. In my answer to Mr. James, in the December 134 Longman, you may see that I have merely touched, I think in a parenthesis, on the drama; but I believe enough was said to indicate our agreement in essentials.

Wishing you power and health to further enunciate and to act upon these principles, believe me, dear sir, yours truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

Stevenson had begun with great eagerness to prepare material for a volume on the Duke of Wellington for the series of
English Worthies
published by Messrs. Longman and edited by Mr. Andrew Lang, but beyond preparation the scheme never went.

Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth, Jan.
4, 1885.

DEAR S. C., — I am on my feet again, and getting on my boots to do the Iron Duke. Conceive my glee: I have refused the £100, and am to get some sort of royalty, not yet decided, instead. ‘Tis for Longman’s
English Worthies
, edited by A. Lang. Aw haw, haw!

Now, look here, could you get me a loan of the Despatches, or is that a dream? I should have to mark passages I fear, and certainly note pages on the fly. If you think it a dream, will Bain get me a second-hand copy, or who would? The sooner, and cheaper, I can get it the better. If there is anything in your weird library that bears on either the man or the period, put it in a mortar and fire it here instanter; I shall catch. I shall want, of course, an infinity of books: among which, any lives there may be; a life of the Marquis Marmont (the Maréchal),
Marmont’s Memoirs
,
Greville’s Memoirs
,
Peel’s Memoirs
,
Napier
, that blind man’s history of England you once lent me, Hamley’s
Waterloo
; can you get me any of these? Thiers, idle Thiers also. Can you help a man getting into his boots for such a huge campaign? How are you? A Good New Year to you. I mean to have a good one, but on whose funds I cannot fancy: 135 not mine leastways, as I am a mere derelict and drift beam-on to bankruptcy.

For God’s sake, remember the man who set out for to conquer Arthur Wellesley, with a broken bellows and an empty pocket. — Yours ever,

R. L. Stevenson.

To Thomas Stevenson

Stevenson had been asked by his father to look over the proofs of a paper which the latter was about to read, as President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, “On the Principal Causes of Silting in Estuaries,” in connection with the Manchester Ship Canal Scheme.

Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth, 14th January
1885.

MY DEAR FATHER, — I am glad you like the changes. I own I was pleased with my hand’s darg; you may observe, I have corrected several errors which (you may tell Mr. Dick) he had allowed to pass his eagle eye; I wish there may be none in mine; at least, the order is better. The second title, “Some New Engineering Questions involved in the M. S. C. Scheme of last Session of P.,” likes me the best. I think it a very good paper; and I am vain enough to think I have materially helped to polish the diamond. I ended by feeling quite proud of the paper, as if it had been mine; the next time you have as good a one, I will overhaul it for the wages of feeling as clever as I did when I had managed to understand and helped to set it clear. I wonder if I anywhere misapprehended you? I rather think not at the last; at the first shot I know I missed a point or two. Some of what may appear to you to be wanton changes, a little study will show to be necessary.

Yes, Carlyle was ashamed of himself as few men have been; and let all carpers look at what he did. He prepared all these papers for publication with his own hand; all his wife’s complaints, all the evidence of his own misconduct: who else would have done so much? Is repentance, which God accepts, to have no avail with men? 136 nor even with the dead? I have heard too much against the thrawn, discomfortable dog: dead he is, and we may be glad of it; but he was a better man than most of us, no less patently than he was a worse. To fill the world with whining is against all my views: I do not like impiety. But — but — there are two sides to all things, and the old scalded baby had his noble side. — Ever affectionate son,

R. L. S.

To Sidney Colvin

Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth, January
1885.

DEAR S. C., — I have addressed a letter to the G. O. M.
à propos
of Wellington; and I became aware, you will be interested to hear, of an overwhelming respect for the old gentleman. I can
blaguer
his failures; but when you actually address him, and bring the two statures and records to confrontation, dismay is the result. By mere continuance of years, he must impose; the man who helped to rule England before I was conceived, strikes me with a new sense of greatness and antiquity, when I must actually beard him with the cold forms of correspondence. I shied at the necessity of calling him plain “Sir”! Had he been “My lord,” I had been happier; no, I am no equalitarian. Honour to whom honour is due; and if to none, why, then, honour to the old!

These, O Slade Professor, are my unvarnished sentiments: I was a little surprised to find them so extreme, and therefore I communicate the fact.

Belabour thy brains, as to whom it would be well to question. I have a small space; I wish to make a popular book, nowhere obscure, nowhere, if it can be helped, unhuman. It seems to me the most hopeful plan to tell the tale, so far as may be, by anecdote. He did not die till so recently, there must be hundreds who remember him, and thousands who have still ungarnered stories. Dear man, to the breach! Up, soldier of the iron dook, 137 up, Slades, and at ‘em! (which, conclusively, he did not say: the at ‘em-ic theory is to be dismissed). You know piles of fellows who must reek with matter; help! help! I am going to try Happy-and-Glorious-long-to-reign-over-us. H.M. must remember things: and it is my belief, if my letter could be discreetly introduced, she would like to tell them. So I jest, when I don’t address my mind to it: when I do, shall I be smit louting to my knee, as before the G. O. M.? Problème! — Yours ever,

R. L. S.

To Sidney Colvin

In the two following letters are expressed some of the distress and bitterness with which, in common with most Englishmen, Stevenson felt the circumstances of Gordon’s abandonment in the Soudan and the failure of the belated attempt to rescue him. The advice to go on with “my book” refers, if I remember right, to some scheme for the republication in book form of stray magazine papers of mine of a more or less personal or biographical nature.

Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth, February
1885.

MY DEAR COLVIN, — You are indeed a backward correspondent, and much may be said against you. But in this weather, and O dear! in this political scene of degradation, much must be forgiven. I fear England is dead of Burgessry, and only walks about galvanised. I do not love to think of my countrymen these days; nor to remember myself. Why was I silent? I feel I have no right to blame any one; but I won’t write to the G. O. M. I do really not see my way to any form of signature, unless “your fellow criminal in the eyes of God,” which might disquiet the proprieties.

About your book, I have always said: go on. The drawing of character is a different thing from publishing the details of a private career. No one objects to the first, or should object, if his name be not put upon it; at the other, I draw the line. In a preface, if you chose, you might distinguish; it is, besides, a thing for which you are eminently well equipped, and which you would do 138 with taste and incision. I long to see the book. People like themselves (to explain a little more); no one likes his life, which is a misbegotten issue, and a tale of failure. To see these failures either touched upon, or
coasted
, to get the idea of a spying eye and blabbing tongue about the house, is to lose all privacy in life. To see that thing, which we do love, our character, set forth, is ever gratifying. See how my
Talk and Talkers
went; every one liked his own portrait, and shrieked about other people’s; so it will be with yours. If you are the least true to the essential, the sitter will be pleased; very likely not his friends, and that from
various motives
.

R. L. S.

When will your holiday be? I sent your letter to my wife, and forget. Keep us in mind, and I hope we shall be able to receive you.

To J. A. Symonds

Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth, February
1885.

MY DEAR SYMONDS, — Yes we have both been very neglectful. I had horrid luck, catching two thundering influenzas in August and November. I recovered from the last with difficulty, but have come through this blustering winter with some general success; in the house, up and down. My wife, however, has been painfully upset by my health. Last year, of course, was cruelly trying to her nerves; Nice and Hyères are bad experiences; and though she is not ill, the doctor tells me that prolonged anxiety may do her a real mischief.

I feel a little old and fagged, and chary of speech, and not very sure of spirit in my work; but considering what a year I have passed, and how I have twice sat on Charon’s pierhead, I am surprising.

My father has presented us with a very pretty home in this place, into which we hope to move by May. My
Child’s Verses
come out next week.
Otto
begins to appear 139 in April;
More New Arabian Nights
as soon as possible. Moreover, I am neck deep in Wellington; also a story on the stocks,
The Great North Road
. O, I am busy! Lloyd is at college in Edinburgh. That is, I think, all that can be said by way of news.

Have you read
Huckleberry Finn
? It contains many excellent things; above all, the whole story of a healthy boy’s dealings with his conscience, incredibly well done.

My own conscience is badly seared; a want of piety; yet I pray for it, tacitly, every day; believing it, after courage, the only gift worth having; and its want, in a man of any claims to honour, quite unpardonable. The tone of your letter seemed to me very sound. In these dark days of public dishonour, I do not know that one can do better than carry our private trials piously. What a picture is this of a nation! No man that I can see, on any side or party, seems to have the least sense of our ineffable shame: the desertion of the garrisons. I tell my little parable that Germany took England, and then there was an Indian Mutiny, and Bismarck said: “Quite right: let Delhi and Calcutta and Bombay fall; and let the women and children be treated Sepoy fashion,” and people say, “O, but that is very different!” And then I wish I were dead. Millais (I hear) was painting Gladstone when the news came of Gordon’s death; Millais was much affected, and Gladstone said, “Why?
It is the man’s own temerity!
” Voilà le Bourgeois! le voilà nu! But why should I blame Gladstone, when I too am a Bourgeois? when I have held my peace? Why did I hold my peace? Because I am a sceptic:
i.e.
a Bourgeois. We believe in nothing, Symonds; you don’t, and I don’t; and these are two reasons, out of a handful of millions, why England stands before the world dripping with blood and daubed with dishonour. I will first try to take the beam out of my own eye, trusting that even private effort somehow betters and braces the general 140 atmosphere. See, for example, if England has shown (I put it hypothetically) one spark of manly sensibility, they have been shamed into it by the spectacle of Gordon. Police-Officer Cole is the only man that I see to admire. I dedicate my
New Arabs
to him and Cox, in default of other great public characters. — Yours ever most affectionately,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Edmund Gosse

The following refers to an edition of Gray, with notes and a short prefatory Life by Mr. Gosse; and to the publication of the
Child’s Garden of Verses
.

Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth, March
12, 1885.

MY DEAR GOSSE, — I was indeed much exercised how I could be worked into Gray; and lo! when I saw it, the passage seemed to have been written with a single eye to elucidate the — worst? — well, not a very good poem of Gray’s. Your little life is excellent, clean, neat, efficient. I have read many of your notes, too, with pleasure. Your connection with Gray was a happy circumstance; it was a suitable conjunction.