Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (987 page)

It is suggested to me that you might like to know what will be my future society. Three consuls, all at loggerheads with one another, or at the best in a clique of two against one; three different sects of missionaries, not upon the best of terms; and the Catholics and Protestants in a condition of unhealable ill-feeling as to whether a wooden drum ought or ought not to be beaten to announce the time of school. The native population, very genteel, very songful, very agreeable, very good-looking, chronically spoiling for a fight (a circumstance not to be entirely neglected in the design of the palace). As for the white population of (technically, “The Beach”), I don’t suppose it is possible for any person not thoroughly conversant with the South Seas to form the smallest conception of 392 such a society, with its grog-shops, its apparently unemployed hangers-on, its merchants of all degrees of respectability and the reverse. The paper, of which I must really send you a copy — if yours were really a live magazine, you would have an exchange with the editor: I assure you, it has of late contained a great deal of matter about one of your contributors — rejoices in the name of Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser. The advertisements in the Advertiser are permanent, being simply subsidies for its existence. A dashing warfare of newspaper correspondence goes on between the various residents, who are rather fond of recurring to one another’s antecedents. But when all is said, there are a lot of very nice, pleasant people, and I don’t know that Apia is very much worse than half a hundred towns that I could name.

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Charles Baxter

As above indicated, on the way between Samoa and Sydney Stevenson left the
Janet Nicoll
for a week’s stay in New Caledonia, during which he was hospitably received by the French officials.

Hotel Sebastopol, Noumea, August
1890.

MY DEAR CHARLES, — I have stayed here a week while Lloyd and my wife continue to voyage in the
Janet Nicoll
; this I did, partly to see the convict system, partly to shorten my stay in the extreme cold — hear me with my extreme!
moi qui suis originaire d’Edimbourg
— of Sydney at this season. I am feeling very seedy, utterly fatigued and overborne with sleep. I have a fine old gentleman of a doctor, who attends and cheers and entertains, if he does not cure me; but even with his ministrations I am almost incapable of the exertion sufficient for this letter; and I am really, as I write, falling down with sleep. What is necessary to say, I must try to say shortly. Lloyd goes to clear out our establishments: pray keep him in funds, if I have any; if I have not, pray try to raise them. Here 393 is the idea: to install ourselves, at the risk of bankruptcy, in Samoa. It is not the least likely it will pay (although it may); but it is almost certain it will support life, with very few external expenses. If I die, it will be an endowment for the survivors, at least for my wife and Lloyd; and my mother, who might prefer to go home, has her own. Hence I believe I shall do well to hurry my installation. The letters are already in part done; in part done is a novel for Scribner; in the course of the next twelve months I should receive a considerable amount of money. I am aware I had intended to pay back to my capital some of this. I am now of opinion I should act foolishly. Better to build the house and have a roof and farm of my own; and thereafter, with a livelihood assured, save and repay.... There is my livelihood, all but books and wine, ready in a nutshell; and it ought to be more easy to save and to repay afterwards. Excellent, say you, but will you save and will you repay? I do not know, said the Bell of Old Bow.... It seems clear to me.... The deuce of the affair is that I do not know when I shall see you and Colvin. I guess you will have to come and see me: many a time already we have arranged the details of your visit in the yet unbuilt house on the mountain. I shall be able to get decent wine from Noumea. We shall be able to give you a decent welcome, and talk of old days.
Apropos
of old days, do you remember still the phrase we heard in Waterloo Place? I believe you made a piece for the piano on that phrase. Pray, if you remember it, send it me in your next. If you find it impossible to write correctly, send it me
à la récitative
, and indicate the accents. Do you feel (you must) how strangely heavy and stupid I am? I must at last give up and go sleep; I am simply a rag.

The morrow.
— I feel better, but still dim and groggy. To-night I go to the governor’s; such a lark — no dress clothes — twenty-four hours’ notice — able-bodied Polish tailor — suit made for a man with the figure of a puncheon — same 394 hastily altered for self with the figure of a bodkin — sight inconceivable. Never mind; dress clothes, “which nobody can deny”; and the officials have been all so civil that I liked neither to refuse nor to appear in mufti. Bad dress clothes only prove you are a grisly ass; no dress clothes, even when explained, indicate a want of respect. I wish you were here with me to help me dress in this wild raiment, and to accompany me to M. Noel-Pardon’s. I cannot say what I would give if there came a knock now at the door and you came in. I guess Noel-Pardon would go begging, and we might burn the fr. 200 dress clothes in the back garden for a bonfire; or what would be yet more expensive and more humorous, get them once more expanded to fit you, and when that was done, a second time cut down for my gossamer dimensions.

I hope you never forget to remember me to your father, who has always a place in my heart, as I hope I have a little in his. His kindness helped me infinitely when you and I were young; I recall it with gratitude and affection in this town of convicts at the world’s end. There are very few things, my dear Charles, worth mention: on a retrospect of life, the day’s flash and colour, one day with another, flames, dazzles, and puts to sleep; and when the days are gone, like a fast-flying thaumatrope, they make but a single pattern. Only a few things stand out; and among these — most plainly to me — Rutland Square. — Ever, my dear Charles, your affectionate friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.
— Just returned from trying on the dress clo’. Lord, you should see the coat! It stands out at the waist like a bustle, the flaps cross in front, the sleeves are like bags.

To E. L. Burlingame

Proceeding from New Caledonia to Sydney, Stevenson again made a stay there of about a month, before going to settle in his new island home and superintend the operations of planting and building. 395 The next letter is in acknowledgment of proofs received from Messrs. Scribner of a proposed volume of verse to contain, besides
Ticonderoga
and the two ballads on Marquesan and Tahitian legends, a number of the other miscellaneous verses which he had written in the course of his travels. In the end, the ballads only stood for publication at this time; the other verses were reserved, and have been posthumously published under the title
Songs of Travel
.

Union Club, Sydney
[
August
1890].

MY DEAR BURLINGAME, —

Ballads.

The deuce is in this volume. It has cost me more botheration and dubiety than any other I ever took in hand. On one thing my mind is made up: the verses at the end have no business there, and throw them down. Many of them are bad, many of the rest want nine years’ keeping, and the remainder are not relevant — throw them down; some I never want to hear of more, others will grow in time towards decent items in a second
Underwoods
— and in the meanwhile, down with them! At the same time, I have a sneaking idea the ballads are not altogether without merit — I don’t know if they’re poetry, but they’re good narrative, or I’m deceived. (You’ve never said one word about them, from which I astutely gather you are dead set against: “he was a diplomatic man” — extract from epitaph of E. L. B. — ”and remained on good terms with Minor Poets.”) You will have to judge: one of the Gladstonian trinity of paths must be chosen. (1st) Either publish the five ballads, such as they are, in a volume called
Ballads
; in which case pray send sheets at once to Chatto and Windus. Or (2nd) write and tell me you think the book too small, and I’ll try and get into the mood to do some more. Or (3rd) write and tell me the whole thing is a blooming illusion; in which case draw off some twenty copies for my private entertainment, and charge me with the expense of the whole dream.

In the matter of rhyme no man can judge himself; I am at the world’s end, have no one to consult, and my publisher holds his tongue. I call it unfair and almost 396 unmanly. I do indeed begin to be filled with animosity; Lord, wait till you see the continuation of
The Wrecker
, when I introduce some New York publishers.... It’s a good scene; the quantities you drink and the really hideous language you are represented as employing may perhaps cause you one tithe of the pain you have inflicted by your silence on, sir, The Poetaster,

R. L. S.

Lloyd is off home; my wife and I dwell sundered: she in lodgings, preparing for the move; I here in the club, and at my old trade — bedridden. Naturally, the visit home is given up; we only wait our opportunity to get to Samoa, where, please, address me.

Have I yet asked you to despatch the books and papers left in your care to me at Apia, Samoa? I wish you would,
quam primum
.

R. L. S.

To Henry James

Union Club, Sydney, August
1890.

MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, — Kipling is too clever to live. The
Bête Humaine
I had already perused in Noumea, listening the while to the strains of the convict band. He is a Beast; but not human, and, to be frank, not very interesting. “Nervous maladies: the homicidal ward,” would be the better name: O, this game gets very tedious.

Your two long and kind letters have helped to entertain the old familiar sickbed. So has a book called
The Bondman
, by Hall Caine; I wish you would look at it. I am not half-way through yet. Read the book, and communicate your views. Hall Caine, by the way, appears to take Hugo’s view of History and Chronology (
Later
; the book doesn’t keep up; it gets very wild.)

I must tell you plainly — I can’t tell Colvin — I do not think I shall come to England more than once, and then it’ll be to die. Health I enjoy in the tropics; even here, which they call sub- or semi-tropical, I come only to 397 catch cold. I have not been out since my arrival; live here in a nice bedroom by the fireside, and read books and letters from Henry James, and send out to get his
Tragic Muse
, only to be told they can’t be had as yet in Sydney, and have altogether a placid time. But I can’t go out! The thermometer was nearly down to 50° the other day — no temperature for me, Mr. James: how should I do in England? I fear not at all. Am I very sorry? I am sorry about seven or eight people in England, and one or two in the States. And outside of that, I simply prefer Samoa. These are the words of honesty and soberness. (I am fasting from all but sin, coughing,
The Bondman
, a couple of eggs and a cup of tea.) I was never fond of towns, houses, society, or (it seems) civilisation. Nor yet it seems was I ever very fond of (what is technically called) God’s green earth. The sea, islands, the islanders, the island life and climate, make and keep me truly happier. These last two years I have been much at sea, and I have
never wearied
; sometimes I have indeed grown impatient for some destination; more often I was sorry that the voyage drew so early to an end; and never once did I lose my fidelity to blue water and a ship. It is plain, then, that for me my exile to the place of schooners and islands can be in no sense regarded as a calamity.

Good-bye just now: I must take a turn at my proofs.

N.B.
— Even my wife has weakened about the sea. She wearied, the last time we were ashore, to get afloat again. — Yours ever,

R. L. S.

To Marcel Schwob

Union Club, Sydney, August 19th,
1890.

MY DEAR MR. SCHWOB, —
Mais, alors, vous avez tous les bonheurs, vous!
More about Villon; it seems incredible: when it is put in order, pray send it me.

You wish to translate the
Black Arrow
: dear sir, you 398 are hereby authorised; but I warn you, I do not like the work. Ah, if you, who know so well both tongues, and have taste and instruction — if you would but take a fancy to translate a book of mine that I myself admired — for we sometimes admire our own — or I do — with what satisfaction would the authority be granted! But these things are too much to expect.
Vous ne détestez pas alors mes bonnes femmes? moi, je les déteste.
I have never pleased myself with any women of mine save two character parts, one of only a few lines — the Countess of Rosen, and Madame Desprez in the
Treasure of Franchard
.

I had indeed one moment of pride about my poor
Black Arrow
: Dickon Crookback I did, and I do, think is a spirited and possible figure. Shakespeare’s — O, if we can call that cocoon Shakespeare! — Shakespeare’s is spirited — one likes to see the untaught athlete butting against the adamantine ramparts of human nature, head down, breech up; it reminds us how trivial we are to-day, and what safety resides in our triviality. For spirited it may be, but O, sure not possible! I love Dumas and I love Shakespeare: you will not mistake me when I say that the Richard of the one reminds me of the Porthos of the other; and if by any sacrifice of my own literary baggage I could clear the
Vicomte de Bragelonne
of Porthos,
Jekyll
might go, and the
Master
, and the
Black Arrow
, you may be sure, and I should think my life not lost for mankind if half a dozen more of my volumes must be thrown in.

The tone of your pleasant letters makes me egotistical; you make me take myself too gravely. Comprehend how I have lived much of my time in France, and loved your country, and many of its people, and all the time was learning that which your country has to teach — breathing in rather that atmosphere of art which can only there be breathed; and all the time knew — and raged to know — that I might write with the pen of angels or of heroes, and no Frenchman be the least the wiser! And now steps in M. Marcel Schwob, writes me the most kind encouragement, 399 and reads and understands, and is kind enough to like my work.