Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (973 page)

And now is this news, Cogia, or is it not? It all depends upon the point of view, and I call it news. The devil of it is that I can think of nothing else, except to send you all our loves, and to wish exceedingly you were here to cheer us all up. But we’ll see about that on board the yacht. — Your affectionate friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

The Mutiny novel here foreshadowed never got written.

[
Saranac Lake
]
April 9th!!
1888.

MY DEAR COLVIN, — I have been long without writing to you, but am not to blame. I had some little annoyances quite for a private eye, but they ran me so hard that I could not write without lugging them in, which (for several reasons) I did not choose to do. Fanny is off to San Francisco, and next week I myself flit to New York: address Scribner’s. Where we shall go I know not, nor (I was going to say) care; so bald and bad is my frame of mind. Do you know our — ahem! — fellow clubman, Colonel Majendie? I had such an interesting letter from him. Did you see my sermon? It has evoked the worst feeling: I fear people don’t care for the truth, or else I don’t tell it. Suffer me to wander without purpose. I 284 have sent off twenty letters to-day, and begun and stuck at a twenty-first, and taken a copy of one which was on business, and corrected several galleys of proof, and sorted about a bushel of old letters; so if any one has a right to be romantically stupid it is I — and I am. Really deeply stupid, and at that stage when in old days I used to pour out words without any meaning whatever and with my mind taking no part in the performance. I suspect that is now the case. I am reading with extraordinary pleasure the life of Lord Lawrence: Lloyd and I have a mutiny novel —

(
Next morning, after twelve other letters
) — mutiny novel on hand — a tremendous work — so we are all at Indian books. The idea of the novel is Lloyd’s: I call it a novel. ‘Tis a tragic romance, of the most tragic sort: I believe the end will be almost too much for human endurance — when the hero is thrown to the ground with one of his own (Sepoy) soldier’s knees upon his chest, and the cries begin in the Beebeeghar. O truly, you know it is a howler! The whole last part is — well the difficulty is that, short of resuscitating Shakespeare, I don’t know who is to write it.

I still keep wonderful. I am a great performer before the Lord on the penny whistle. — Dear sir, sincerely yours,

Andrew Jackson.

To Miss Adelaide Boodle

[
Saranac Lake, April
1888.]

Address, c/o Messrs. Scribner’s Sons,
743
Broadway, N.Y.

MY DEAR GAMEKEEPER, — Your p.c. (proving you a good student of Micawber) has just arrived, and it paves the way to something I am anxious to say. I wrote a paper the other day —
Pulvis et Umbra
; — I wrote it with great feeling and conviction: to me it seemed bracing and healthful, it is in such a world (so seen by me), that I am 285 very glad to fight out my battle, and see some fine sunsets, and hear some excellent jests between whiles round the camp fire. But I find that to some people this vision of mine is a nightmare, and extinguishes all ground of faith in God or pleasure in man. Truth I think not so much of; for I do not know it. And I could wish in my heart that I had not published this paper, if it troubles folk too much: all have not the same digestion, nor the same sight of things. And it came over me with special pain that perhaps this article (which I was at the pains to send to her) might give dismalness to my
Gamekeeper at Home
. Well, I cannot take back what I have said; but yet I may add this. If my view be everything but the nonsense that it may be — to me it seems self-evident and blinding truth — surely of all things it makes this world holier. There is nothing in it but the moral side — but the great battle and the breathing times with their refreshments. I see no more and no less. And if you look again, it is not ugly, and it is filled with promise.

Pray excuse a desponding author for this apology. My wife is away off to the uttermost parts of the States, all by herself. I shall be off, I hope, in a week; but where? Ah! that I know not. I keep wonderful, and my wife a little better, and the lad flourishing. We now perform duets on two D tin whistles; it is no joke to make the bass; I think I must really send you one, which I wish you would correct.... I may be said to live for these instrumental labours now, but I have always some childishness on hand. — I am, dear Gamekeeper, your indulgent but intemperate Squire,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

Having spent the last fortnight of April at New York, Stevenson and his stepson moved at the beginning of May to the small New Jersey watering-place from whence the following few letters are 286 dated: his wife having meanwhile gone to San Francisco, where she presently made arrangements for the Pacific yachting trip.

Union House, Manasquan, New Jersey
[
May
1888].

MY DEAR COLVIN, — We are here at a delightful country inn, like a country French place, the only people in the house, a cat-boat at our disposal, the sea always audible on the outer beach, the lagoon as smooth as glass, all the little, queer, many coloured villas standing shuttered and empty; in front of ours, across the lagoon, two long wooden bridges; one for the rail, one for the road, sounding with intermittent traffic. It is highly pleasant, and a delightful change from Saranac. My health is much better for the change; I am sure I walked about four miles yesterday, one time with another — well, say three and a half; and the day before, I was out for four hours in the cat-boat, and was as stiff as a board in consequence. More letters call. — Yours ever,

R. L. S.

To Charles Baxter

Union House, Manasquan, N. J., but address to
Scribner’s, 11th May
1888.

MY DEAR CHARLES
, — I have found a yacht, and we are going the full pitch for seven months. If I cannot get my health back (more or less), ‘tis madness; but, of course, there is the hope, and I will play big.... If this business fails to set me up, well, £2000 is gone, and I know I can’t get better. We sail from San Francisco, June 15th, for the South Seas in the yacht
Casco
. — With a million thanks for all your dear friendliness, ever yours affectionately,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Lady Taylor

[
Manasquan, May
1888.]

MY DEAR LADY TAYLOR, — I have to announce our great news. On June 15th we sail from San Francisco in the 287 schooner yacht
Casco
, for a seven months’ cruise in the South Seas. You can conceive what a state of excitement we are in; Lloyd perhaps first; but this is an old dream of mine which actually seems to be coming true, and I am sun-struck. It seems indeed too good to be true; and that we have not deserved so much good fortune. From Skerryvore to the Galapagos is a far cry! And from poking in a sick-room all winter to the deck of one’s own ship, is indeed a heavenly change.

All these seven months I doubt if we can expect more than three mails at the best of it: and I do hope we may hear something of your news by each. I have no very clear views as to where the three addresses ought to be, but if you hear no later news, Charles Scribner’s Sons will always have the run of our intended movements. And an early letter there would probably catch us at the Sandwich Islands. Tahiti will probably be the second point: and (as I roughly guess) Quito the third. But the whole future is invested with heavenly clouds.

I trust you are all well and content, and have good news of the Shelleys, to whom I wish you would pass on ours. They should be able to sympathise with our delight.

Now I have all my miserable Scribner articles to rake together in the inside of a fortnight: so you must not expect me to be more copious. I have you all in the kindest memory, and am, your affectionate friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

Remember me to Aubrey de Vere.

To Homer St. Gaudens

The following is addressed from Manasquan to a boy, the son of the writer’s friend, the sculptor St. Gaudens; for the rest, it explains itself.

Manasquan, New Jersey, 27th May
1888.

DEAR HOMER ST. GAUDENS, — Your father has brought you this day to see me, and he tells me it is his hope you 288 may remember the occasion. I am going to do what I can to carry out his wish; and it may amuse you, years after, to see this little scrap of paper and to read what I write. I must begin by testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in the introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and admirable point in your character. You were also (I use the past tense, with a view to the time when you shall read, rather than to that when I am writing) a very pretty boy, and (to my European views) startlingly self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you must pardon me if I can say no more: what else I marked, what restlessness of foot and hand, what graceful clumsiness, what experimental designs upon the furniture, was but the common inheritance of human youth. But you may perhaps like to know that the lean flushed man in bed, who interested you so little, was in a state of mind extremely mingled and unpleasant: harassed with work which he thought he was not doing well, troubled with difficulties to which you will in time succeed, and yet looking forward to no less a matter than a voyage to the South Seas and the visitation of savage and desert islands. — Your father’s friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Henry James

Manasquan (ahem!), New Jersey, May 28th,
1888.

MY DEAR JAMES, — With what a torrent it has come at last! Up to now, what I like best is the first number of a
London Life
. You have never done anything better, and I don’t know if perhaps you have ever done anything so good as the girl’s outburst: tip-top. I have been preaching your later works in your native land. I had to present the Beltraffio volume to Low, and it has brought him to his knees; he was
amazed
at the first part of Georgina’s 289 Reasons, although (like me) not so well satisfied with Part II. It is annoying to find the American public as stupid as the English, but they will waken up in time: I wonder what they will think of
Two Nations
?...

This, dear James, is a valedictory. On June 15th the schooner yacht
Casco
will (weather and a jealous providence permitting) steam through the Golden Gates for Honolulu, Tahiti, the Galapagos, Guayaquil, and — I hope
not
the bottom of the Pacific. It will contain your obedient ‘umble servant and party. It seems too good to be true, and is a very good way of getting through the green-sickness of maturity which, with all its accompanying ills, is now declaring itself in my mind and life. They tell me it is not so severe as that of youth; if I (and the
Casco
) are spared, I shall tell you more exactly, as I am one of the few people in the world who do not forget their own lives.

Good-bye, then, my dear fellow, and please write us a word; we expect to have three mails in the next two months: Honolulu, Tahiti, and Guayaquil. But letters will be forwarded from Scribner’s, if you hear nothing more definite directly. In 3 (three) days I leave for San Francisco. — Ever yours most cordially,

R. L. S.

 For the actual sum, see below, .

Marjorie Fleming.

 Of the play
Deacon Brodie
.

The Rev. George Smith of Galston, the minister thus referred to by Burns (in the
Holy Fair
), was a great-grandfather of Stevenson on the mother’s side; and against Stevenson himself, in his didactic moods, the passage was often quoted by his friends when they wished to tease him.

 Afterwards changed to Alison.

 Alluding to a kind of lofty, posturing manner of G. M.’s in mind and speech, quite different from any real insincerity.

X

PACIFIC VOYAGES

YACHT
CASCO
— SCHOONER
EQUATOR
— S.S.
JANET NICOLL

June 1888-October 1890

In the following section are printed nearly all the letters which reached Stevenson’s correspondents in England and the United States, at intervals necessarily somewhat rare, during the eighteen months of his Pacific voyages. It was on the 28th of June 1888 that he started from the harbour of San Francisco on what was only intended to be a health and pleasure excursion of a few months’ duration, but turned into a voluntary exile prolonged until the hour of his death. His company consisted, besides himself, of his wife, his mother, his stepson Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, and the servant Valentine Roch. They sailed on board the schooner yacht
Casco
, Captain Otis, and made straight for the Marquesas, dropping anchor on the 28th of July in Anaho Bay, the harbour of the island of Nukahiva. The magic effect of this first island landfall on his mind he has described in the opening chapter of his book
In the South Seas
. After spending six weeks in this group they sailed south-eastwards, visiting (a sufficiently perilous piece of navigation) several of the coral atolls of the Paumotus or Low Archipelago. Thence they arrived in the first week of October at the Tahitian group or 291 “Society” islands. In these their longest stay was not at the chief town, Papeete, where Stevenson fell sharply ill, but in a more secluded and very beautiful station, Tautira, whither he went to recruit, and where they were detained by the necessity of remasting the schooner. Here Stevenson and one of the local chiefs, Ori a Ori, made special friends and parted with heartfelt mutual regret. Mrs. Stevenson is good enough to allow me to supplement the somewhat fragmentary account of these adventures given in his letters with one or two of her own, in which they are told with full vividness and detail.