The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 23

Yes, I am much better; very much better I think I may say. Although it is funny how I have ceased to be able to write with the improvement of my health. Do you notice how for some time back you have had no descriptions of anything? The reason is that I can’t describe anything. No words come to me when I see a thing. I want awfully to tell you to-day about a little “piece” of green sea, and gulls, and clouded sky with the usual golden mountain-breaks to the southward. It was wonderful, the sea near at hand was living emerald; the white breasts and wings of the gulls as they circled above – high above even – were dyed bright green by the reflection. And if you could only have seen or if any right word would only come to my pen to tell you how wonderfully these illuminated birds floated hither and thither under the grey purples of the sky!

To-day has been windy but not cold. The sea was troubled and had a fine fresh saline smell like our own seas, and the sight of the breaking waves, and above all the spray that drove now and again in my face, carried me back to storms that I have enjoyed, O how much! in other places. Still (as Madame Zassetsky justly remarked) there is something irritating in a stormy sea whose waves come always to the same spot and never farther: it looks like playing at passion: it reminds one of the loathsome sham waves in a stage ocean.

To Sidney Colvin

[Menton, January 1874.]

MY DEAR COLVIN, – I write to let you know that my cousin may possibly come to Paris before you leave; he will likely look you up to hear about me, etc. I want to tell you about him before you see him, as I am tired of people misjudging him. You know me now. Well, Bob is just such another mutton, only somewhat farther wandered. He has all the same elements of character that I have: no two people were ever more alike, only that the world has gone more unfortunately for him although more evenly. Besides which, he is really a gentleman, and an admirable true friend, which is not a common article. I write this as a letter of introduction in case he should catch you ere you leave.

Monday.– No letters to-day. Sacré chien, Dieu de Dieu– and I have written with exemplary industry. But I am hoping that no news is good news and shall continue so to hope until all is blue. – Ever yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

It had been a very cold Christmas at Monaco and Monte Carlo, and Stevenson had no adequate overcoat, so it was agreed that when I went to Paris I should try and find him a warm cloak or wrap. I amused myself looking for one suited to his taste for the picturesque and piratical in apparel, and found one in the style of 1830-40, dark blue and flowing, and fastening with a snake buckle.

[Menton, January 1874], Friday.

MY DEAR COLVIN, – Thank you very much for your note. This morning I am stupid again; can do nothing at all; am no good “comme plumitif.” I think it must be the cold outside. At least that would explain my addled head and intense laziness.

O why did you tell me about that cloak? Why didn’t you buy it? Isn’t it in Julius Cæsar that Pompey blames – no not Pompey but a friend of Pompey’s – well, Pompey’s friend, I mean the friend of Pompey – blames somebody else who was his friend – that is who was the friend of Pompey’s friend – because he (the friend of Pompey’s friend) had not done something right off, but had come and asked him (Pompey’s friend) whether he (the friend of Pompey’s friend) ought to do it or no? There I fold my hands with some complacency: that’s a piece of very good narration. I am getting into good form. These classical instances are always distracting. I was talking of the cloak. It’s awfully dear. Are there no cheap and nasty imitations? Think of that – if, however, it were the opinion (ahem) of competent persons that the great cost of the mantle in question was no more than proportionate to its durability; if it were to be a joy for ever; if it would cover my declining years and survive me in anything like integrity for the comfort of my executors; if – I have the word – if the price indicates (as it seems) the quality of perdurability in the fabric; if, in fact, it would not be extravagant, but only the leariest economy to lay out £5 .. 15 .. in a single mantle without seam and without price, and if – and if – it really fastens with an agrafe – I would Buy it. But not unless. If not a cheap imitation would be the move. – Ever yours,

R. L. S.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

The following is in answer to a set of numbered questions, of which the first three are of no general interest.

[Menton], Monday, January 19th, 1874.

Answers to a series of questions.

…

4. Nelitchka, or Nelitska, as you know already by this time, is my adorable kid’s name. Her laugh does more good to one’s health than a month at the seaside: as she said to-day herself, when asked whether she was a boy or a girl, after having denied both with gravity, she is an angel.

5. O no, her brain is not in a chaos; it is only the brains of those who hear her. It is all plain sailing for her. She wishes to refuse or deny anything, and there is the English “No fank you” ready to her hand; she wishes to admire anything, and there is the German “schön“; she wishes to sew (which she does with admirable seriousness and clumsiness), and there is the French “coudre“; she wishes to say she is ill, and there is the Russian “bulla“; she wishes to be down on any one, and there is the Italian “Berecchino“; she wishes to play at a railway train, and there is her own original word “Collie” (say the o with a sort of Gaelic twirl). And all these words are equally good.

7. I am called M. Stevenson by everybody except Nelitchka, who calls me M. Berecchino.

8. The weather to-day is no end: as bright and as warm as ever. I have been out on the beach all afternoon with the Russians. Madame Garschine has been reading Russian to me; and I cannot tell prose from verse in that delectable tongue, which is a pity. Johnson came out to tell us that Corsica was visible, and there it was over a white, sweltering sea, just a little darker than the pallid blue of the sky, and when one looked at it closely, breaking up into sun-brightened peaks.

I may mention that Robinet has never heard an Englishman with so little accent as I have – ahem – ahem – eh? – What do you say to that? I don’t suppose I have said five sentences in English to-day; all French; all bad French, alas!

I am thought to be looking better. Madame Zassetsky said I was all green when I came here first, but that I am all right in colour now, and she thinks fatter. I am very partial to the Russians; I believe they are rather partial to me. I am supposed to be an esprit observateur! À mon age, c’est étonnant comme je suis observateur!

The second volume of Clément Marot has come. Where and O where is the first? – Ever your affectionate

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

The Bottle here mentioned is a story that had been some time in hand called The Curate of Anstruther’s Bottle; afterwards abandoned like so many early attempts of the same kind.

[Menton, January 1874.]

MY DEAR S. C., – I suppose this will be my last note then. I think you will find everything very jolly here, I am very jolly myself. I worked six hours to-day. I am occupied in transcribing The Bottle, which is pleasant work to me; I find much in it that I still think excellent and much that I am doubtful about; my convention is so terribly difficult that I have to put out much that pleases me, and much that I still preserve I only preserve with misgiving. I wonder if my convention is not a little too hard and too much in the style of those decadent curiosities, poems without the letter E, poems going with the alphabet and the like. And yet the idea, if rightly understood and treated as a convention always and not as an abstract principle, should not so much hamper one as it seems to do. The idea is not, of course, to put in nothing but what would naturally have been noted and remembered and handed down, but not to put in anything that would make a person stop and say – how could this be known? Without doubt it has the advantage of making one rely on the essential interest of a situation and not cocker up and validify feeble intrigue with incidental fine writing and scenery, and pyrotechnic exhibitions of inappropriate cleverness and sensibility. I remember Bob once saying to me that the quadrangle of Edinburgh University was a good thing and our having a talk as to how it could be employed in different arts. I then stated that the different doors and staircases ought to be brought before a reader of a story not by mere recapitulation but by the use of them, by the descent of different people one after another by each of them. And that the grand feature of shadow and the light of the one lamp in the corner should also be introduced only as they enabled people in the story to see one another or prevented them. And finally that whatever could not thus be worked into the evolution of the action had no right to be commemorated at all. After all, it is a story you are telling; not a place you are to describe; and everything that does not attach itself to the story is out of place.

This is a lecture not a letter, and it seems rather like sending coals to Newcastle to write a lecture to a subsidised professor. I hope you have seen Bob by this time. I know he is anxious to meet you and I am in great anxiety to know what you think of his prospects – frankly, of course: as for his person, I don’t care a damn what you think of it: I am case-hardened in that matter.

I wrote a French note to Madame Zassetsky the other day, and there were no errors in it. The complete Gaul, as you may see. – Ever yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwell

[Menton, January, 1874.]

… Last night I had a quarrel with the American on politics. It is odd how it irritates you to hear certain political statements made. He was excited, and he began suddenly to abuse our conduct to America. I, of course, admitted right and left that we had behaved disgracefully (as we had); until somehow I got tired of turning alternate cheeks and getting duly buffeted; and when he said that the Alabama money had not wiped out the injury, I suggested, in language (I remember) of admirable directness and force, that it was a pity they had taken the money in that case. He lost his temper at once, and cried out that his dearest wish was a war with England; whereupon I also lost my temper, and, thundering at the pitch of my voice, I left him and went away by myself to another part of the garden. A very tender reconciliation took place, and I think there will come no more harm out of it. We are both of us nervous people, and he had had a very long walk and a good deal of beer at dinner: that explains the scene a little. But I regret having employed so much of the voice with which I have been endowed, as I fear every person in the hotel was taken into confidence as to my sentiments, just at the very juncture when neither the sentiments nor (perhaps) the language had been sufficiently considered.

Friday.– You have not yet heard of my book? —Four Great Scotsmen– John Knox, David Hume, Robert Burns, Walter Scott. These, their lives, their work, the social media in which they lived and worked, with, if I can so make it, the strong current of the race making itself felt underneath and throughout – this is my idea. You must tell me what you think of it. The Knox will really be new matter, as his life hitherto has been disgracefully written, and the events are romantic and rapid; the character very strong, salient, and worthy; much interest as to the future of Scotland, and as to that part of him which was truly modern under his Hebrew disguise. Hume, of course, the urbane, cheerful, gentlemanly, letter-writing eighteenth century, full of attraction, and much that I don’t yet know as to his work. Burns, the sentimental side that there is in most Scotsmen, his poor troubled existence, how far his poems were his personally, and how far national, the question of the framework of society in Scotland, and its fatal effect upon the finest natures. Scott again, the ever delightful man, sane, courageous, admirable; the birth of Romance, in a dawn that was a sunset; snobbery, conservatism, the wrong thread in History, and notably in that of his own land. Voilà, madame, le menu. Comment le trouvez-vous? Il y a de la bonne viande, si on parvient à la cuire convenablement.

R. L. S.

To Thomas Stevenson

[Menton], Monday, January 26th, 1874.

MY DEAR FATHER, – Heh! Heh! business letter finished. Receipt acknowledged without much ado, and I think with a certain commercial decision and brevity. The signature is good but not original.

I should rather think I had lost my heart to the wee princess. Her mother demanded the other day “À quand les noces?” which Mrs. Stevenson will translate for you in case you don’t see it yourself.

I had a political quarrel last night with the American; it was a real quarrel for about two minutes; we relieved our feelings and separated; but a mutual feeling of shame led us to a most moving reconciliation, in which the American vowed he would shed his best blood for England. In looking back upon the interview, I feel that I have learned something; I scarcely appreciated how badly England had behaved, and how well she deserves the hatred the Americans bear her. It would have made you laugh if you could have been present and seen your unpatriotic son thundering anathemas in the moonlight against all those that were not the friend of England. Johnson being nearly as nervous as I, we were both very ill after it, which added a further pathos to the reconciliation.

There is no good in sending this off to-day, as I have sent another letter this morning already.

O, a remark of the Princess’s amused me the other day. Somebody wanted to give Nelitchka garlic as a medicine. “Quoi? Une petite amour comme ça, qu’on ne pourrait pas baiser? Il n’y a pas de sens en cela!“

I am reading a lot of French histories just now, and the spelling keeps one in a good humour all day long – I mean the spelling of English names. – Your affectionate son,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

[Menton, January 29, 1874], Thursday.

Marot vol. 1 arrived. The post has been at its old games. A letter of the 31st and one of the 2nd arrive at the same moment.

I have had a great pleasure. Mrs. Andrews had a book of Scotch airs, which I brought over here, and set Madame Z. to work upon. They are so like Russian airs that they cannot contain their astonishment. I was quite out of my mind with delight. “The Flowers of the Forest“ – “Auld Lang Syne“ – “Scots wha hae“ – “Wandering Willie“ – “Jock o’ Hazeldean“ – “My Boy Tammie,” which my father whistles so often – I had no conception how much I loved them. The air which pleased Madame Zassetsky the most was “Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin yet?” It is certainly no end. And I was so proud that they were appreciated. No triumph of my own, I am sure, could ever give me such vain-glorious satisfaction. You remember, perhaps, how conceited I was to find “Auld Lang Syne” popular in its German dress; but even that was nothing to the pleasure I had yesterday at the success of our dear airs.

The edition is called The Songs of Scotland without Words for the Pianoforte, edited by J. T. Surenne, published by Wood in George Street. As these people have been so kind to me, I wish you would get a copy of this and send it out. If that should be too dear, or anything, Mr. Mowbray would be able to tell you what is the best substitute, would he not? This I really would like you to do, as Madame proposes to hire a copyist to copy those she likes, and so it is evident she wants them. – Ever your affectionate son,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Thomas Stevenson

With reference to the political allusions in the following it will be remembered that this was the date of Mr. Gladstone’s dissolution, followed by his defeat at the polls notwithstanding his declared intention of abolishing the income-tax.

[Menton], February 1st, 1874.

I am so sorry to hear of poor Mr. M.’s death. He was really so amiable and kind that no one could help liking him, and carrying away a pleasant recollection of his simple, happy ways. I hope you will communicate to all the family how much I feel with them.

Madame Zassetsky is Nelitchka’s mamma. They have both husbands, and they are in Russia, and the ladies are both here for their health. They make it very pleasant for me here. To-day we all went a drive to the Cap Martin, and the Cap was adorable in the splendid sunshine.

I read J. H. A. Macdonald’s speech with interest; his sentiments are quite good, I think. I would support him against M’Laren at once. What has disgusted me most as yet about this election is the detestable proposal to do away with the income tax. Is there no shame about the easy classes? Will those who have nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of the advantage of our society, never consent to pay a single tax unless it is to be paid also by those who have to bear the burthen and heat of the day, with almost none of the reward? And the selfishness here is detestable, because it is so deliberate. A man may not feel poverty very keenly and may live a quiet self-pleasing life in pure thoughtlessness; but it is quite another matter when he knows thoroughly what the issues are, and yet wails pitiably because he is asked to pay a little more, even if it does fall hardly sometimes, than those who get almost none of the benefit. It is like the healthy child crying because they do not give him a goody, as they have given to his sick brother to take away the taste of the dose. I have not expressed myself clearly; but for all that, you ought to understand, I think.

Friday, February 6th.– The wine has arrived, and a dozen of it has been transferred to me; it is much better than Folleté’s stuff. We had a masquerade last night at the Villa Marina; Nellie in a little red satin cap, in a red satin suit of boy’s clothes, with a funny little black tail that stuck out behind her, and wagged as she danced about the room, and gave her a look of Puss in Boots; Pella as a contadina; Monsieur Robinet as an old woman, and Mademoiselle as an old lady with blue spectacles.

Yesterday we had a visit from one of whom I had often heard from Mrs. Sellar – Andrew Lang. He is good-looking, delicate, Oxfordish, etc.

My cloak is the most admirable of all garments. For warmth, unequalled; for a sort of pensive, Roman stateliness, sometimes warming into Romantic guitarism, it is simply without concurrent; it starts alone. If you could see me in my cloak, it would impress you. I am hugely better, I think: I stood the cold these last few days without trouble, instead of taking to bed, as I did at Monte Carlo. I hope you are going to send the Scotch music.

I am stupid at letter-writing again; I don’t know why. I hope it may not be permanent; in the meantime, you must take what you can get and be hopeful. The Russian ladies are as kind and nice as ever. – Ever your affectionate son,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwell

[Menton, February 6, 1874], Friday.

Last night we had a masquerade at the Villa Marina. Pella was dressed as a contadina and looked beautiful; and little Nellie, in red satin cap and wonderful red satin jacket and little breeches as of a nondescript impossible boy; to which Madame Garschine had slily added a little black tail that wagged comically behind her as she danced about the room, and got deliriously tilted up over the middle bar of the back of her chair as she sat at tea, with an irresistible suggestion of Puss in Boots – well, Nellie thus masqueraded (to get back to my sentence again) was all that I could have imagined. She held herself so straight and stalwart, and had such an infinitesimal dignity of carriage; and then her big baby face, already quite definitely marked with her sex, came in so funnily atop that she got clear away from all my power of similes and resembled nothing in the world but Nellie in masquerade. Then there was Robinet in a white night gown, old woman’s cap (mutch, in my vernacular), snuff-box and crutch doubled up and yet leaping and gyrating about the floor with incredible agility; and lastly, Mademoiselle in a sort of elderly walking-dress and with blue spectacles. And all this incongruous impossible world went tumbling and dancing and going hand in hand, in flying circles to the music; until it was enough to make one forget one was in this wicked world, with Conservative majorities and Presidents MacMahon and all other abominations about one.

Also last night will be memorable to me for another reason, Madame Zassetsky having given me a light as to my own intellect. They were talking about things in history remaining in their minds because they had assisted them to generalisations. And I began to explain how things remained in my mind yet more vividly for no reason at all. She got interested, and made me give her several examples; then she said, with her little falsetto of discovery, “Mais c’est que vous êtes tout simplement enfant!” This mot I have reflected on at leisure and there is some truth in it. Long may I be so. Yesterday too I finished Ordered South and at last had some pleasure and contentment with it. S. C. has sent it off to Macmillan’s this morning and I hope it may be accepted; I don’t care whether it is or no except for the all-important lucre; the end of it is good, whether the able editor sees it or no. – Ever your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

[Menton], February 22nd, 1874.

MY DEAR MOTHER, – I am glad to hear you are better again: nobody can expect to be quite well in February, that is the only consolation I can offer you.

Madame Garschine is ill, I am sorry to say, and was confined to bed all yesterday, which made a great difference to our little society. À propos of which, what keeps me here is just precisely the said society. These people are so nice and kind and intelligent, and then as I shall never see them any more I have a disagreeable feeling about making the move. With ordinary people in England, you have more or less chance of re-encountering one another; at least you may see their death in the papers; but with these people, they die for me and I die for them when we separate.

Andrew Lang, O you of little comprehension, called on Colvin.

You had not told me before about the fatuous person who thought Roads like Ruskin – surely the vaguest of contemporaneous humanity. Again my letter writing is of an enfeebled sort. – Ever your affectionate son,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

[Menton], March 1st, 1874.

MY DEAR MOTHER, – The weather is again beautiful, soft, warm, cloudy and soft again, in provincial sense. Very interesting, I find Robertson; and Dugald Stewart’s life of him a source of unquenchable laughter. Dugald Stewart is not much better than McCrie,12 and puts me much in mind of him. By the way, I want my father to find out whether any more of Knox’s Works was ever issued than the five volumes, as I have them. There are some letters that I am very anxious to see, not printed in any of the five, and perhaps still in MS.

I suppose you are now home again in Auld Reekie: that abode of bliss does not much attract me yet a bit.

Colvin leaves at the end of this week, I fancy.

How badly yours sincerely writes. O! Madame Zassetsky has a theory that “Dumbarton Drums” is an epitome of my character and talents. She plays it, and goes into ecstasies over it, taking everybody to witness that each note, as she plays it, is the moral of Berecchino. Berecchino is my stereotype name in the world now. I am announced as M. Berecchino; a German hand-maiden came to the hotel, the other night, asking for M. Berecchino; said hand-maiden supposing in good faith that sich was my name.

Your letter come. O, I am all right now about the parting, because it will not be death, as we are to write. Of course the correspondence will drop off: but that’s no odds, it breaks the back of the trouble. – Ever your affectionate son,