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

To Mrs. Sitwell

The special mood or occasion of unaccustomed bitterness which prompted this rhapsody has passed from memory beyond recall. The date must be after his return from his second excursion to Fontainebleau.

[Swanston, late Summer 1875] Thursday.

I have been staying in town, and could not write a word. It is a fine strong night, full of wind; the trees are all crying out in the darkness; funny to think of the birds asleep outside, on the tossing branches, the little bright eyes closed, the brave wings folded, the little hearts that beat so hard and thick (so much harder and thicker than ever human heart) all stilled and quieted in deep slumber, in the midst of this noise and turmoil. Why, it will be as much as I can do to sleep in here in my walled room; so loud and jolly the wind sounds through the open window. The unknown places of the night invite the travelling fancy; I like to think of the sleeping towns and sleeping farm-houses and cottages, all the world over, here by the white road poplar-lined, there by the clamorous surf. Isn’t that a good dormitive?

Saturday.– I cannot tell how I feel, who can ever? I feel like a person in a novel of George Sand’s; I feel I desire to go out of the house, and begin life anew in the cool blue night; never to come back here; never, never. Only to go on for ever by sunny day and grey day, by bright night and foul, by high-way and by-way, town and hamlet, until somewhere by a road-side or in some clean inn clean death opened his arms to me and took me to his quiet heart for ever. If soon, good; if late, well then, late – there would be many a long bright mile behind me, many a goodly, many a serious sight; I should die ripe and perfect, and take my garnered experience with me into the cool, sweet earth. For I have died already and survived a death; I have seen the grass grow rankly on my grave; I have heard the train of mourners come weeping and go laughing away again. And when I was alone there in the kirk-yard, and the birds began to grow familiar with the grave-stone, I have begun to laugh also, and laughed and laughed until night-flowers came out above me. I have survived myself, and somehow live on, a curious changeling, a merry ghost; and do not mind living on, finding it not unpleasant; only had rather, a thousandfold, died and been done with the whole damned show for ever. It is a strange feeling at first to survive yourself, but one gets used to that as to most things. Et puis, is it not one’s own fault? Why did not one lie still in the grave? Why rise again among men’s troubles and toils, where the wicked wag their shock beards and hound the weary out to labour? When I was safe in prison, and stone walls and iron bars were an hermitage about me, who told me to burst the mild constraint and go forth where the sun dazzles, and the wind pierces, and the loud world sounds and jangles all through the weary day? I mind an old print of a hermit coming out of a great wood towards evening and shading his bleared eyes to see all the kingdoms of the earth before his feet, where towered cities and castled hills, and stately rivers, and good corn lands made one great chorus of temptation for his weak spirit, and I think I am the hermit, and would to God I had dwelt ever in the wood of penitence20—

R. L. S.

To Sidney Colvin

The Burns herein mentioned is an article undertaken in the early summer of the same year for the Encyclopædia Britannica. In the end Stevenson’s work was thought to convey a view of the poet too frankly critical, and too little in accordance with the accepted Scotch tradition; and the publishers, duly paying him for his labours, transferred the task to Professor Shairp. The volume here announced on the three Scottish eighteenth-century poets unfortunately never came into being. The Charles of Orleans essay appeared in the Cornhill Magazine for December of the following year; that on Villon (with the story on the same theme, A Lodging for the Night) not until the autumn of 1877. The essay on Béranger referred to at the end of the letter was one commissioned and used by the editor of the Encyclopædia; Spring was a prose poem, of which the manuscript, sent to me at Cambridge, was unluckily lost in the confusion of a change of rooms.

[Edinburgh, Autumn 1875.]

MY DEAR COLVIN, – Thanks for your letter and news. No – my Burns is not done yet, it has led me so far afield that I cannot finish it; every time I think I see my way to an end, some new game (or perhaps wild goose) starts up, and away I go. And then, again, to be plain, I shirk the work of the critical part, shirk it as a man shirks a long jump. It is awful to have to express and differentiate Burns in a column or two. O golly, I say, you know, it can’t be done at the money. All the more as I’m going to write a book about it. Ramsay, Fergusson, and Burns: an Essay (or a critical essay? but then I’m going to give lives of the three gentlemen, only the gist of the book is the criticism) by Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate. How’s that for cut and dry? And I could write this book. Unless I deceive myself, I could even write it pretty adequately. I feel as if I was really in it, and knew the game thoroughly. You see what comes of trying to write an essay on Burns in ten columns.

Meantime, when I have done Burns, I shall finish Charles of Orleans (who is in a good way, about the fifth month, I should think, and promises to be a fine healthy child, better than any of his elder brothers for a while); and then perhaps a Villon, for Villon is a very essential part of my Ramsay-Fergusson-Burns; I mean, is a note in it, and will recur again and again for comparison and illustration; then, perhaps, I may try Fontainebleau, by the way. But so soon as Charles of Orleans is polished off, and immortalised for ever, he and his pipings, in a solid imperishable shrine of R. L. S., my true aim and end will be this little book. Suppose I could jerk you out 10 °Cornhill pages; that would easy make 200 pages of decent form; and then thickish paper – eh? would that do? I dare say it could be made bigger; but I know what 100 pages of copy, bright consummate copy, imply behind the scenes of weary manuscribing; I think if I put another nothing to it, I should not be outside the mark; and 10 °Cornhill pages of 500 words means, I fancy (but I never was good at figures), means 50,000 words. There’s a prospect for an idle young gentleman who lives at home at ease! The future is thick with inky fingers. And then perhaps nobody would publish. Ah nom de dieu! What do you think of all this? will it paddle, think you?

I hope this pen will write; it is the third I have tried.

About coming up, no, that’s impossible; for I am worse than a bankrupt. I have at the present six shillings and a penny; I have a sounding lot of bills for Christmas; new dress suit, for instance, the old one having gone for Parliament House; and new white shirts to live up to my new profession; I’m as gay and swell and gummy as can be; only all my boots leak; one pair water, and the other two simple black mud; so that my rig is more for the eye than a very solid comfort to myself. That is my budget. Dismal enough, and no prospect of any coin coming in; at least for months. So that here I am, I almost fear, for the winter; certainly till after Christmas, and then it depends on how my bills “turn out” whether it shall not be till spring. So, meantime, I must whistle in my cage. My cage is better by one thing; I am an Advocate now. If you ask me why that makes it better, I would remind you that in the most distressing circumstances a little consequence goes a long way, and even bereaved relatives stand on precedence round the coffin. I idle finely. I read Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Martin’s History of France, Allan Ramsay, Olivier Basselin, all sorts of rubbish àpropos of Burns, Commines, Juvénal des Ursins, etc. I walk about the Parliament House five forenoons a week, in wig and gown; I have either a five or six mile walk, or an hour or two hard skating on the rink, every afternoon, without fail.

I have not written much; but, like the seaman’s parrot in the tale, I have thought a deal. You have never, by the way, returned me either Spring or Béranger, which is certainly a d – d shame. I always comforted myself with that when my conscience pricked me about a letter to you. “Thus conscience“ – O no, that’s not appropriate in this connection. – Ever yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

I say, is there any chance of your coming north this year? Mind you that promise is now more respectable for age than is becoming.

R. L. S.

To Charles Baxter

The following epistle in verse, with its mixed flavour of Burns and Horace, gives a lively picture of winter forenoons spent in the Parliament House: —

[Edinburgh, October 1875.]Noo lyart leaves blaw ower the green,Red are the bonny woods o’ Dean,An’ here we’re back in Embro, freen’,To pass the winter.Whilk noo, wi’ frosts afore, draws in,An’ snaws ahint her.I’ve seen’s hae days to fricht us a’,The Pentlands poothered weel wi’ snaw,The ways half-smoored wi’ liquid thaw,An’ half-congealin’,The snell an’ scowtherin’ norther blawFrae blae Brunteelan’.I’ve seen’s been unco sweir to sally,And at the door-cheeks daff an’ dally,Seen’s daidle thus an’ shilly-shallyFor near a minute —Sae cauld the wind blew up the valley,The deil was in it! —Syne spread the silk an’ tak the gateIn blast an’ blaudin’ rain, deil hae’t!The hale toon glintin’, stane an’ slate,Wi’ cauld an’ weet,An’ to the Court, gin we’se be late,Bicker oor feet.And at the Court, tae, aft I sawWhaur Advocates by twa an’ twaGang gesterin’ end to end the ha’In weeg an’ goon,To crack o’ what ye wull but LawThe hale forenoon.That muckle ha’, maist like a kirk,I’ve kent at braid mid-day sae mirkYe’d seen white weegs an’ faces lurkLike ghaists frae Hell,But whether Christian ghaists or TurkDeil ane could tell.The three fires lunted in the gloom,The wind blew like the blast o’ doom,The rain upo’ the roof abunePlayed Peter Dick —Ye wad nae’d licht enough i’ the roomYour teeth to pick!But, freend, ye ken how me an’ you,The ling-lang lanely winter through,Keep’d a guid speerit up, an’ trueTo lore Horatian,We aye the ither bottle drewTo inclination.Sae let us in the comin’ daysStand sicker on our auncient ways —The strauchtest road in a’ the mazeSince Eve ate apples;An’ let the winter weet our cla’es —We’ll weet our thrapples.

To Sidney Colvin

The two following letters refer to the essay on the Spirit of Spring which I was careless enough to lose in the process of a change of rooms at Cambridge. The Petits Poèmes en Prose were attempts, not altogether successful, in the form though not in the spirit of Baudelaire.

Swanston [Autumn 1875].

MY DEAR COLVIN, – Thanks. Only why don’t you tell me if I can get my Spring printed? I want to print it; because it’s nice, and genuine to boot, and has got less side on than my other game. Besides I want coin badly.

I am writing Petits Poèmes en Prose. Their principal resemblance to Baudelaire’s is that they are rather longer and not quite so good. They are ve-ry cle-ver (words of two syllables), O so aw-ful-ly cle-ver (words of three), O so dam-na-bly cle-ver (words of a devil of a number of syllables). I have written fifteen in a fortnight. I have also written some beautiful poetry. I would like a cake and a cricket-bat; and a pass-key to Heaven if you please, and as much money as my friend the Baron Rothschild can spare. I used to look across to Rothschild of a morning when we were brushing our hair, and say – (this is quite true, only we were on the opposite side of the street, and though I used to look over I cannot say I ever detected the beggar, he feared to meet my eagle eye) – well, I used to say to him, “Rothschild, old man, lend us five hundred francs,” and it is characteristic of Rothy’s dry humour that he used never to reply when it was a question of money. He was a very humorous dog indeed, was Rothy. Heigh-ho! those happy old days. Funny, funny fellow, the dear old Baron.

How’s that for genuine American wit and humour? Take notice of this in your answer; say, for instance, “Even although the letter had been unsigned, I could have had no difficulty in guessing who was my dear, lively, witty correspondent. Yours, Letitia Languish.”

O! – my mind has given way. I have gone into a mild, babbling, sunny idiocy. I shall buy a Jew’s harp and sit by the roadside with a woman’s bonnet on my manly head begging my honest livelihood. Meantime, adieu.

I would send you some of these PP. Poèmes of mine, only I know you would never acknowledge receipt or return them. – Yours, and Rothschild’s,

R. L. Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

[Edinburgh, Autumn 1875.]

MY DEAR COLVIN, —Fous ne me gombrennez pas. Angry with you? No. Is the thing lost? Well, so be it. There is one masterpiece fewer in the world. The world can ill spare it, but I, sir, I (and here I strike my hollow bosom so that it resounds) I am full of this sort of bauble; I am made of it; it comes to me, sir, as the desire to sneeze comes upon poor ordinary devils on cold days, when they should be getting out of bed and into their horrid cold tubs by the light of a seven o’clock candle, with the dismal seven o’clock frost-flowers all over the window.

Show Stephen what you please; if you could show him how to give me money, you would oblige, sincerely yours, R. L. S.

I have a scroll of Springtime somewhere, but I know that it is not in very good order, and do not feel myself up to very much grind over it. I am damped about Springtime, that’s the truth of it. It might have been four or five quid!

Sir, I shall shave my head, if this goes on. All men take a pleasure to gird at me. The laws of nature are in open war with me. The wheel of a dog-cart took the toes off my new boots. Gout has set in with extreme rigour, and cut me out of the cheap refreshment of beer. I leant my back against an oak, I thought it was a trusty tree, but first it bent, and syne – it lost the Spirit of Springtime, and so did Professor Sidney Colvin, Trinity College, to me. – Ever yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

Along with this, I send you some P.P.P.’s; if you lose them, you need not seek to look upon my face again. Do, for God’s sake, answer me about them also; it is a horrid thing for a fond architect to find his monuments received in silence. – Yours,

R. L. S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

[Edinburgh, November 12, 1875.]

MY DEAR FRIEND, – Since I got your letter I have been able to do a little more work, and I have been much better contented with myself; but I can’t get away, that is absolutely prevented by the state of my purse and my debts, which, I may say, are red like crimson. I don’t know how I am to clear my hands of them, nor when, not before Christmas anyway. Yesterday I was twenty-five; so please wish me many happy returns – directly. This one was not unhappy anyway. I have got back a good deal into my old random, little-thought way of life, and do not care whether I read, write, speak, or walk, so long as I do something. I have a great delight in this wheel-skating; I have made great advance in it of late, can do a good many amusing things (I mean amusing in my sense – amusing to do). You know, I lose all my forenoons at Court! So it is, but the time passes; it is a great pleasure to sit and hear cases argued or advised. This is quite autobiographical, but I feel as if it was some time since we met, and I can tell you, I am glad to meet you again. In every way, you see, but that of work the world goes well with me. My health is better than ever it was before; I get on without any jar, nay, as if there never had been a jar, with my parents. If it weren’t about that work, I’d be happy. But the fact is, I don’t think – the fact is, I’m going to trust in Providence about work. If I could get one or two pieces I hate out of my way all would be well, I think; but these obstacles disgust me, and as I know I ought to do them first, I don’t do anything. I must finish this off, or I’ll just lose another day. I’ll try to write again soon. – Ever your faithful friend,

R. L. S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

The review of Robert Browning’s Inn Album here mentioned appears in Vanity Fair, Dec. 11, 1875. The matter of the poem is praised; the “slating” is only for the form and metres.

[Edinburgh, December 1875.]

Well, I am hardy! Here I am in the midst of this great snowstorm, sleeping with my window open and smoking in my cold tub in the morning so as it would do your heart good to see. Moreover I am in pretty good form otherwise. Fontainebleau lags; it has turned out more difficult than I expected in some places, but there is a deal of it ready, and (I think) straight.

I was at a concert on Saturday and heard Hallé and Norman Neruda play that Sonata of Beethoven’s you remember, and I felt very funny. But I went and took a long spanking walk in the dark and got quite an appetite for dinner. I did; that’s not bragging.

As you say, a concert wants to be gone to with someone, and I know who. I have done rather an amusing paragraph or two for Vanity Fair on the Inn Album. I have slated R. B. pretty handsomely. I am in a desperate hurry; so good-bye. – Ever your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. de Mattos

The state of health and spirits mentioned in the last soon gave way to one of the fits of depression, frequent with him in Edinburgh winters. In the following letter he unbosoms himself to a favourite cousin (sister to R. A. M. Stevenson).

Edinburgh, January 1876.

MY DEAR KATHARINE, – The prisoner reserved his defence. He has been seedy, however; principally sick of the family evil, despondency; the sun is gone out utterly; and the breath of the people of this city lies about as a sort of damp, unwholesome fog, in which we go walking with bowed hearts. If I understand what is a contrite spirit, I have one; it is to feel that you are a small jar, or rather, as I feel myself, a very large jar, of pottery work rather mal réussi, and to make every allowance for the potter (I beg pardon; Potter with a capital P.) on his ill-success, and rather wish he would reduce you as soon as possible to potsherds. However, there are many things to do yet before we go

Grossir la pâte universelleFaite des formes que Dieu fond.

For instance, I have never been in a revolution yet. I pray God I may be in one at the end, if I am to make a mucker. The best way to make a mucker is to have your back set against a wall and a few lead pellets whiffed into you in a moment, while yet you are all in a heat and a fury of combat, with drums sounding on all sides, and people crying, and a general smash like the infernal orchestration at the end of the Huguenots…

Please pardon me for having been so long of writing, and show your pardon by writing soon to me; it will be a kindness, for I am sometimes very dull. Edinburgh is much changed for the worse by the absence of Bob; and this damned weather weighs on me like a curse. Yesterday, or the day before, there came so black a rain squall that I was frightened – what a child would call frightened, you know, for want of a better word – although in reality it has nothing to do with fright. I lit the gas and sat cowering in my chair until it went away again. – Ever yours,

R. L. S.

O, I am trying my hand at a novel just now; it may interest you to know, I am bound to say I do not think it will be a success. However, it’s an amusement for the moment, and work, work is your only ally against the “bearded people” that squat upon their hams in the dark places of life and embrace people horribly as they go by. God save us from the bearded people! to think that the sun is still shining in some happy places!

R. L. S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

[Edinburgh, January 1876.]

… Our weather continues as it was, bitterly cold, and raining often. There is not much pleasure in life certainly as it stands at present. Nous n’irons plus au bois, hélas!

I meant to write some more last night, but my father was ill and it put it out of my way. He is better this morning.

If I had written last night, I should have written a lot. But this morning I am so dreadfully tired and stupid that I can say nothing. I was down at Leith in the afternoon. God bless me, what horrid women I saw; I never knew what a plain-looking race it was before. I was sick at heart with the looks of them. And the children, filthy and ragged! And the smells! And the fat black mud!

My soul was full of disgust ere I got back. And yet the ships were beautiful to see, as they are always; and on the pier there was a clean cold wind that smelt a little of the sea, though it came down the Firth, and the sunset had a certain éclat and warmth. Perhaps if I could get more work done, I should be in a better trim to enjoy filthy streets and people and cold grim weather; but I don’t much feel as if it was what I would have chosen. I am tempted every day of my life to go off on another walking tour. I like that better than anything else that I know. – Ever your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

Fontainebleau is the paper called Forest Notes which appeared in the Cornhill Magazine in May of this year (reprinted in Essays of Travel). The Winter’s Walk, as far as it goes one of the most charming of his essays of the Road, was for some reason never finished; reprinted ibidem.

[Edinburgh, February 1876.]

MY DEAR COLVIN, —1st. I have sent Fontainebleau long ago, long ago. And Leslie Stephen is worse than tepid about it – liked “some parts” of it “very well,” the son of Belial. Moreover, he proposes to shorten it; and I, who want money, and money soon, and not glory and the illustration of the English language, I feel as if my poverty were going to consent.

2nd. I’m as fit as a fiddle after my walk. I am four inches bigger about the waist than last July! There, that’s your prophecy did that. I am on Charles of Orleans now, but I don’t know where to send him. Stephen obviously spews me out of his mouth, and I spew him out of mine, so help me! A man who doesn’t like my Fontainebleau! His head must be turned.

3rd. If ever you do come across my Spring (I beg your pardon for referring to it again, but I don’t want you to forget) send it off at once.

4th. I went to Ayr, Maybole, Girvan, Ballantrae, Stranraer, Glenluce, and Wigton. I shall make an article of it some day soon, A Winter’s Walk in Carrick and Galloway. I had a good time. – Yours,

R. L. S.

To Sidney Colvin

“Baynes” in the following is Stevenson’s good friend and mine, the late Professor Spencer Baynes, who was just relinquishing the editorship of the Encyclopædia Britannica by reason of ill-health.

[Swanston, July 1876.]

Here I am, here, and very well too. I am glad you liked Walking Tours; I like it, too; I think it’s prose; and I own with contrition that I have not always written prose. However, I am “endeavouring after new obedience” (Scot. Shorter Catechism). You don’t say aught of Forest Notes, which is kind. There is one, if you will, that was too sweet to be wholesome.

I am at Charles d’Orléans. About fifteen Cornhill pages have already coulé’d from under my facile plume – no, I mean eleven, fifteen of MS. – and we are not much more than half-way through, Charles and I; but he’s a pleasant companion. My health is very well; I am in a fine exercisy state. Baynes is gone to London; if you see him, inquire about my Burns. They have sent me £5, 5s. for it, which has mollified me horrid. £5, 5s. is a good deal to pay for a read of it in MS.; I can’t complain. – Yours,

R. L. S.

To Mrs. Sitwell

This dates from just before the canoeing trip recounted in the Inland Voyage.

[Swanston, July 1876.]

Well, here I am at last; it is a Sunday, blowing hard, with a grey sky with the leaves flying; and I have nothing to say. I ought to have no doubt; since it’s so long since last I wrote; but there are times when people’s lives stand still. If you were to ask a squirrel in a mechanical cage for his autobiography, it would not be very gay. Every spin may be amusing in itself, but is mighty like the last; you see I compare myself to a lighthearted animal; and indeed I have been in a very good humour. For the weather has been passable; I have taken a deal of exercise, and done some work. But I have the strangest repugnance for writing; indeed, I have nearly got myself persuaded into the notion that letters don’t arrive, in order to salve my conscience for never sending them off. I’m reading a great deal of fifteenth century: Trial of Joan of Arc, Paston Letters, Basin,21 etc., also Boswell daily by way of a Bible; I mean to read Boswell now until the day I die. And now and again a bit of Pilgrim’s Progress. Is that all? Yes, I think that’s all. I have a thing in proof for the Cornhill called Virginibus Puerisque. Charles of Orleans is again laid aside, but in a good state of furtherance this time. A paper called A Defence of Idlers (which is really a defence of R. L. S.) is in a good way. So, you see, I am busy in a tumultuous, knotless sort of fashion; and as I say, I take lots of exercise, and I’m as brown as a berry.