Chapter II: Part 2

In order of date the letters now to be quoted follow next on those from the French Riviera which were printed in the April number. When in the late spring of 1884 Stevenson was prostrated by the worst of all his many attacks of hemorrhage from the lung, he was still residing in that chalet at Hyères which he had hoped to make his permanent abode. Partly the renewed failure of his health, and partly a bad outbreak of cholera in the old Provençal town, which occurred in the ensuing summer, compelled him to abandon this hope. As soon as he recovered strength enough to be able to travel by even the easiest stages, he moved to Royat in Auvergne, and thence in the course of July to England. After consultation with several doctors, all of whom held out good hopes of ultimate recovery in spite of the gravity of his present symptoms, he moved to Bournemouth. Here he found in the heaths and pine-woods some distant semblance of the landscape of his native Scotland, and in sandy curves of the Channel coast a passable substitute for the bays and promontories of his beloved Mediterranean. At all events he liked the place well enough to be willing to try it for a home: and such it became for all but three years, from September, 1884, to August, 1887. These, although in the matter of health the worst and most trying years of his life, were in the matter of work some of the most active and successful. For the first two or three months the Stevensons occupied a lodging on the West Cliff called Wensleydale; for the next three or four, from December, 1884, to March, 1885, they were tenants of a house named Bonallie Towers, pleasantly situated amid the pine-woods of Branksome Park; and lastly, about Easter, 1885, they entered into occupation of a house of their own, given by the elder Stevenson to his son, and re-named by the latter Skerryvore, in reminiscence of one of the great lighthouse works carried out by the family firm off the Scottish coast. During all the time of Stevenson's residence at Bournemouth he was compelled to lead the life, irksome to him above all men, but borne with invincible sweetness and patience, of a chronic invalid and almost constant prisoner to the house. He was hardly ever free for more than a few weeks at a time from fits of hemorrhage, fever, and prostration, accompanied by the nervous exhaustion and general distress consequent equally upon the attacks themselves and upon the remedies which the physicians were constrained to employ against them. A great part of his time was spent in bed, and there almost all his literary work was produced. Often for days, and sometimes for weeks together, he was forbidden to speak aloud, and compelled to carry on conversation with his family and friends in whispers or with the help of pencil and paper. The few excursions to a distance which he attempted--most commonly to my house, at the British Museum, once to Matlock, once to Exeter, and once in 1886 as far as Paris--these excursions almost always ended in a break-down and a hurried retreat to home and bed. Nevertheless, seizing on and making the most of every week, nay, every day and hour of respite, he contrived to produce work surprising alike, under the circumstances, by quantity and quality. During the first two months of his life at Bournemouth the two plays _Admiral Guinea_ and _Beau Austin_ were written in collaboration with Mr. Henley. In 1885 he published three volumes, viz.: _More New Arabian Nights_, the _Child's Garden of Verses_, and _Prince Otto_ (the two latter, it is true, having been for the most part written a year or two earlier, at Hyères). In 1886 appeared _The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ and _Kidnapped_, the two books which, together with _Treasure Island_, did most to win for him the fame and honor which he ever afterward enjoyed among readers on both sides of the Atlantic. At the same time he was a fairly frequent contributor of essays to magazines and of stories to Christmas annuals and other periodical collections. The year 1887, the last of his life in the old country, was chiefly, with the exception of the _Life of Fleeming Jenkin_, a year of collections and re-prints; in it were published _Underwoods, The Merry Men_, _Memories and Portraits_, and the _Black Arrow_ in volume form.

The correspondence of these three invalid years at Bournemouth is naturally in a less buoyant key than that of the relatively flourishing and happy year at Hyères which preceded them. But it is none the less full of interest, and of that vivid play of mood and character which never failed in him whether he was sick or well. The specimens which I shall here give will be taken, with a few exceptions, from his communications with his brother men of letters, including some whose acquaintance or friendship he had now for the first time formed, as Mr. Henry James, Mr. William Archer, and Mr. Locker-Lampson, besides such intimate friends and associates of earlier days as Mr. Henley, Mr. Gosse, Mr. Symonds and myself.

But first come two or three to his parents and other correspondents:

BOURNEMOUTH,
Sunday, 28th September, 1884.

MY DEAR PEOPLE,--I keep better, and am to-day downstairs for the first time. I find the lockers entirely empty; not a cent to the front. Will you pray send us some? It blows an equinoctial gale, and has blown for nearly a week. Nimbus Britannicus; piping wind, lashing rain; the sea is a fine colour, and wind-bound ships lie at anchor under the Old Harry rocks, to make one glad to be ashore.

The Henleys are gone, and two plays practically done. I hope they may produce some of the ready.--I am, ever affectionate son,

R. L. S.

WENSLEYDALE, BOURNEMOUTH,
October 3rd, 1884.

DEAR MR. CHATTO.--I have an offer of £25 for Otto from America. I do not know if you mean to have the American rights; from the nature of the contract, I think not; but if you understood that you were to sell the sheets, I will either hand over the bargain to you, or finish it myself and hand you over the money if you are pleased with the amount. You see, I leave this quite in your hands. To parody an old Scotch story of servant and master: if you don't know that you have a good author, I know that I have a good publisher. Your fair, open, and handsome dealings are a good point in my life, and do more for my crazy health than has yet been done by any doctor.--Very truly yours,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

[Mr. Stevenson, the elder, had read the play of _Admiral Guinea_, written in September by his son and Mr. Henley in collaboration, and had objected, with his usual energy of expression, to the stage confrontation of profane blackguarding, in the person of Pew, with evangelical piety in that of the reformed slaving captain who gives his name to the piece.]

BONALLIE TOWERS,
BRANKSOME PARK,
BOURNEMOUTH,
(The three B's),
(November 5th, 1884).

MY DEAR FATHER,--Allow me to say, in a strictly Pickwickian sense, that you are a silly fellow. I am pained indeed, but how should I be offended? I think you exaggerate; I cannot forget that you had the same impression of the _Deacon;_ and yet, when you saw it played, were less revolted than you looked for; and I will still hope that the _Admiral_ also is not so bad as you suppose. There is one point, however, where I differ from you very frankly. Religion is in the world; I do not think you are the man to deny the importance of its rôle; and I have long decided not to leave it on one side in art. The opposition of the _Admiral_ and Mr. Pew is not, to my eyes, either horrible or irreverent; but it may be, and it probably is, very ill done: what then? This is a failure; better luck next time; more power to the elbow, more discretion, more wisdom in the design, and the old defeat becomes the scene of the new victory. Concern yourself about no failure; they do not cost lives, as in engineering; they are the _pierres perdues_ of successes. Fame is (truly) a vapour; do not think of it; if the writer means well and tries hard, no failure will injure him, whether with God or man.

I wish I could hear a brighter account of yourself; but I am inclined to acquit the _Admiral_ after having a share in the responsibility. My very heavy cold is, I hope, drawing off; and the change to this charming house in the forest will, I hope, complete my re-establishment.--With love to all, believe me, your ever affectionate,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

[About the same time, Mr. T. Stevenson was in some hesitation as to letting himself be proposed for the office of President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.]

BONALLIE TOWERS, BOURNEMOUTH,
November, 1884.

MY DEAR FATHER,--I have no hesitation in recommending you to let your name go up; please yourself about an address; though, I think, if we could meet, we could arrange something suitable; but what you propose would be well enough in a way; but so modest as to suggest a whine. From that point of view it would be better to change a little; but this, whether we meet or not, we must discuss. Tait, Crystal, the Royal Society, and I, all think you amply deserve this honour and far more; it is not the True Blue to call this serious compliment a "trial"; you should be glad of this recognition. As for resigning, that is easy enough if found necessary; but to refuse would be husky, unsatisfactory, and a trifle rotten. _Sic subs._

R. L. S.

My cold is still very heavy; but I carry it well. Fanny is very much out of sorts, principally through perpetual misery with me. I fear I have been a little in the dumps, which, _as you know, sir_, is a very great sin. I must try to be more cheerful; but my cough is so severe--my uvula, larynx, and pharynx being all to pot--that I have sometimes most exhausting nights and very peevish wakenings. However, this shall be remedied, and last night I was distinctly better than the night before. There is, my dear Mr. Stevenson (so I moralise blandly as we sit together on the devil's garden-wall), no more abominable sin than this gloom, this plaguey peevishness; why (say I) what matters it if we be a little uncomfortable--that is no reason for mangling our unhappy wives. And then I turn and _girn_ on the unfortunate Cassandra.--Your fellow culprit, R. L. S.

With reference to the two following letters, it should be explained that Stevenson and his old Edinburgh friend and comrade, Mr. Baxter (who was also his man of business), were accustomed in their correspondence, as the whim took them, to merge their own identities in those of two fictitious personages, Johnson-Thomson and Thomson-Johnson, ex-elders of the Kirk and types of a certain cast of Edinburgh character. Their language is of the broadest Scots; and for some readers it may be desirable to mention that "hoast" means cough and "sculduddery" loose talk.

BONALLIE TOWERS, BRANKSOME PARK,
BOURNEMOUTH,
November 11th.

MY DEAR CHARLES,--I am in my new house, thus proudly styled, as you perceive: but the deevil a tower ava' can be perceived (except out of window); this is not as it should be; one might have hoped, at least, a turret. We are all vilely unwell. I put in the dark watches imitating a donkey with some success, but little pleasure; and in the afternoon I indulge in a smart fever, accompanied by aches and shivers. There is thus little monotony to be deplored; and what might still weigh upon me my wife lightens by various inexplicable attacks, now in the pleasant morn, now at the noon of night. I, at least, am a _regular_ invalid; I would scorn to bray in the afternoon; I would indignantly refuse the proposal to fever in the night. What is bred in the bone will come out, sir, in the flesh; and the same spirit that prompted me to date my letter regulates the hour and character of my attacks.--I am, sir, yours,

THOMSON.

Postmark, BOURNEMOUTH,
13th November, 1884.

MY DEAR THOMSON,--It's a maist remarkable fac', but nae shüner had I written yon braggin', blawin' letter aboot ma business habits, when bang! that very day, my hoast begude in the aifternune. It is really remaurkable; it's providenshle, I believe. The ink wasnae fair dry, the wards werenae well ooten ma mouth, when bang, I got the lee. The mair ye think o't, Thomson, the less ye'll like the looks o't. Proavidence (I'm no sayin') is all verra weel _in its place_; but if proavidence has nae mainners, wha's to learn't? Proavidence is a fine thing, but hoo would you like proavidence to keep your till for ye? The richt place for proavidence is in the Kirk; it has naething to do wi' private correspondence between twa gentlemen, nor freendly cracks, nor a wee bit word of sculduddery ahint the door, nor, in shoart, wi' ony _hole-and-corner wark_, what I would call. I'm pairfec'ly willin' to meet in wi' Proavidence, I'll be prood to meet in wi' him, when my time's come and I _cannae doe nae_ better; but if he's to come skinking aboot my stairfit, damned, I might as weel be deid for a' the comfort I'll can get in life. Cannae he no be made to understand that it's beneath him? Gosh, if I was in his business, I wouldnae steer my heid for a plain, auld ex-elder that, tak him the way he taks himsel', 's just aboot as honest as he can weel afford, an' but for a wheen auld scandals, near forgotten noo, is a pairfectly respectable and thoroughly decent man. Or if I fashed wi' him ava', it wad be kind o' handsome like; a punnote under his stair door, or a bottle o' auld, blended malt to his bit marnin', as a teshtymonial like you ye ken sae weel aboot, but mair successfu'.

Dear Thomson, have I ony money. If I have, _send it_ for the loard's sake.

JOHNSON.

[The following to Mr. Henry James, who from about this time began to be a frequent and ever welcome visitor at the Bournemouth home, refers to the essay of R. L. S. called a "Humble Remonstrance," which had just appeared in Longman's Magazine. Mr. James had written holding out the prospect of a continuance of the friendly controversy which had thus been opened up between them on the aims and qualities of fiction.]

BONALLIE TOWERS, BRANKSOME PARK,
BOURNEMOUTH,
December 8th, 1884.

MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,--This is a very brave hearing from more points than one. The first point is that there is a hope of a sequel. For this I laboured. Seriously, from the dearth of information and thoughtful interest in the art of literature, those who try to practice it with any deliberate purpose run the risk of finding no fit audience. People suppose it is "the stuff" that interests them; they think, for instance, that the prodigious fine thoughts and sentiments in Shakespeare impress by their own weight, not understanding that the unpolished diamond is but a stone. They think that striking situations, or good dialogue, are got by studying life; they will not rise to understand that they are prepared by deliberate artifice and set off by painful suppressions. Now, I want the whole thing well ventilated, for my own education and the public's; and I beg you to look as quick as you can, to follow me up with every circumstance of defeat where we differ, and (to prevent the flouting of the laity) to emphasise the points where we agree. I trust your paper will show me the way to a rejoinder; and that rejoinder I shall hope to make with so much art as to woo or drive you from your threatened silence. I would not ask better than to pass my life in beating out this quarter of corn with such a seconder as yourself.

Point the second, I am rejoiced indeed to hear you speak so kindly of my work: rejoiced and surprised. I seem to myself a very rude, left-handed countryman; not fit to be read, far less complimented, by a man so accomplished, so adroit, so craftsmanlike as you. You will happily never have cause to understand the despair with which a writer like myself considers (say) the park scene in Lady Barberina. Every touch surprises me by its intangible precision; and the effect when done, as light as syllabub, as distinct as a picture, fills me with envy. Each man among us prefers his own aim, and I prefer mine; but when we come to speak of performance, I recognise myself, compared with you, to be a lout and slouch of the first water.

Where we differ, both as to the design of stories and the delineation of character, I begin to lament. Of course, I am not so dull as to ask you to desert your walk; but could you not, in one novel, to oblige a sincere admirer, and to enrich his shelves with a beloved volume, could you not, and might you not, cast your characters in a mould a little more abstract and academic (dear Mrs. Pennyman had already, among your other work, a taste of what I mean), and pitch the incidents, I do not say, in any stronger, but in a slightly more emphatic key--as it were an episode from one of the old (so-called) novels of adventure? I fear you will not; and I suppose I must sighingly admit you to be right. And yet, when I see, as it were, a book of Tom Jones handled with your exquisite precision and shot through with those side-lights of reflection in which you excel, I relinquish the dear vision with regret. Think upon it.

As you know, I belong to that besotted class of man, the invalid; this puts me to a stand in the way of visits. But it is possible that some day you may feel that a day near the sea and among pinewoods would be a pleasant change from town. If so, please let us know; and my wife and I will be delighted to put you up and give you what we can to eat and drink (I have a fair bottle of claret).--On the back of which, believe me, yours sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

P.S.--I reopen this to say that I have re-read my paper, and cannot think I have at all succeeded in being either veracious or polite. I knew, of course, that I took your paper merely as a pin to hang my own remarks upon; but, alas! what a thing is any paper! What fine remarks can you not hang on mine! How I have sinned against proportion and, with every effort to the contrary, against the merest rudiments of courtesy to you! You are, indeed, a very acute reader to have divined the real attitude of my mind, and I can only conclude, not without closed eyes and shrinking shoulders, in the well-worn words

Lay on, Macduff!

[During a crippling fit of ill-health, Stevenson had received a commission for a sensational story for the Christmas number of the _Pall Mall Gazette_. The commission ended in his sending the managers of the paper a recast of a gruesome tale which he had written and condemned in the Highlands three years before, _The Body-Snatcher_. He rightly thought this beneath his own standard of merit, and would not take the full fee which had been offered for it. Two of the following letters to Mr. Henley refer to this matter: Bloody Jack, or Jacques, let it be understood, was his regular nickname for his arch-enemy, hemorrhage from the lungs.]

[Dec. 1884.]

DEAR MAN,--1st Disagreeable. Do try and lay your hands on these three poems; they were surely not lost in transmission? It seems hard I should have to make them a _third_ time.

2d Disagreeable. I have done a kind of a damned machine for the P. M. G., and have near died of it--(weakness, insomnia, Bloody Jacquerie)--and am now so dissatisfied that I have told them not to pay me till I see a proof. I think, or I fear I will think, it is not worth the money offered; in which case, of course, I will not take it.--Yours ever,

The pale wreck, }
The spectral phantom, } R. L. S.
The abhorred miscarriage, }

[Dec. 1884.]

DEAR LAD,--I have made up my mind about the P. M. G., and send you a copy, which please keep or return. As for not giving a reduction, what are we? Are we artists or city men? Why do we sneer at stockbrokers? O nary; I will not take the £40. I took that as a fair price for my best work; I was not able to produce my best; and I will be damned if I steal with my eyes open. _Sufficit._ This is my lookout. As for the paper being rich, certainly it is; but I am honourable. It is no more above me in money than the poor slaveys and cads from whom I look for honesty are below me. Am I Pepys, that because I can find the countenance of "some of our ablest merchants," that because ---- and ---- pour forth languid twaddle and get paid for it, I, too, should "cheerfully continue to steal"? I am not Pepys. I do not live much to God and honour; but I will not wilfully turn my back on both. I am, like all the rest of us, falling ever lower from the bright ideas I began with, falling into greed, into idleness, into middle-aged and slippered fireside cowardice; but is it you, my bold blade, that I hear crying this sordid and rank twaddle in my ear? Preaching the dankest Grundyism and upholding the rank customs of our trade--you, who are so cruel hard upon the customs of the publishers? O man, look at the Beam in our own Eyes; and whatever else you do, do not plead Satan's cause, or plead it for all; either embrace the bad, or respect the good when you see a poor devil trying for it. If this is the honesty of authors--to take what you can get and console yourself because publishers are rich--take my name from the rolls of that association. 'Tis a caucus of weaker thieves, jealous of the stronger.--Ever yours,

THE ROARING R. L. S.

You will see from the enclosed that I have stuck to what I think my dues pretty tightly in spite of this flourish; these are my words for a poor ten-pound note!

[Christmas, 1884.]

MY DEAR LAD,--Here was I in bed; Bloody Jack; 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 this hæmorrhage 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, with the aid of bloudie Jack, 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 manoeuvres 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.

[Winter, 1884-5.]

DEAR HENLEY,--We are all to pieces in health, and heavily handicapped with Arabs. [Stories for the _New Arabian Nights_.] I have a dreadful cough, whose attacks leave me _ætat 90_. Fanny is quite gone up with my bad health. I never let up on the Arabs, all the same, and rarely get less than eight pages out of hand, though hardly able to come downstairs for twittering knees.

I shall put in ----'s letter. He says so little of his circumstances that I am in an impossibility to give him advice more specific than a copybook. Give him my love, however, and tell him it is the mark of the parochial gentleman who has never travelled to find all wrong in a foreign land. Let him hold on, and he will find one country as good as another; and in the meanwhile let him resist the fatal British tendency to communicate his dissatisfaction with a country to its inhabitants. 'Tis a good idea, but it somehow fails to please. In a fortnight, if I can keep my spirit in the box at all, I should be nearly through this Arabian desert; so can tackle something fresh.--Yours ever, R. L. S.

[BOURNEMOUTH,
Winter, 1884-5.]

DEAR BOY,--I trust this finds you well; it leaves me so-so. The weather is so cold that I must stick to bed, which is rotten and tedious, but can't be helped.

I find in the blotting book the enclosed, which I wrote to you the eve of my blood. Is it not strange? That night, when I naturally thought I was coopered, the thought of it was much in my mind; I thought it had gone; and I thought what a strange prophecy I had made in jest, and how it was indeed like to be the end of many letters. But I have written a good few since, and the spell is broken. I am just as pleased, for I earnestly desire to live. This pleasant middle age into whose port we are steering is quite to my fancy. I would cast anchor here, and go ashore for twenty years, and see the manners of the place. Youth was a great time, but somewhat fussy. Now in middle age (bar lucre) all seems mighty placid. It likes me; I spy a little bright café in one corner of the port, in front of which I now propose we should sit down. There is just enough of the bustle of the harbour and no more; and the ships are close in, regarding us with stern-windows--the ships that bring deals from Norway and parrots from the Indies. Let us sit down here for twenty years, with a packet of tobacco and a drink, and talk of art and women. By the by, the whole city will sink, and the ships too, and the table, and we also; but we shall have sat for twenty years and had a fine talk; and by that time, who knows? exhausted the subject.

I send you a book which (or I am mistook) will please you; it pleased me. But I do desire a book of adventure--a romance--and no man will get or write me one. Dumas I have read and re-read too often; Scott, too, and I am short. I want to hear swords clash. I want a book to begin in a good way; a book, I guess, like _Treasure Island_, alas! which I have never read, and cannot though I live to ninety. I would God that some one else had written it! By all that I can learn, it is the very book for my complaint. I like the way I hear it opens; and they tell me John Silver is good fun. And to me it is, and must ever be, a dream unrealised, a book unwritten: O my sighings after romance, or even Skeltery, and O! the weary age which will produce me neither!

CHAPTER I

The night was damp and cloudy, the ways foul. The single horseman, cloaked and booted, who pursued his way across Willesden Common, had not met a traveller, when the sound of wheels--

CHAPTER I

"Yes, sir," said the old pilot, "she must have dropped into the bay a little afore dawn. A queer craft she looks."

"She shows no colours," returned the young gentleman musingly.

"They're a-lowerin' of a quarter-boat, Mr. Mark," resumed the old salt. "We shall soon know more of her."

"Ay," replied the young gentleman called Mark, "and here, Mr. Seadrift, comes your sweet daughter Nancy tripping down the cliff."

"God bless her kind heart, sir," ejaculated old Seadrift.

CHAPTER I

The notary, Jean Rossignol, had been summoned to the top of a great house in the Isle St. Louis to make a will; and now, his duties finished, wrapped in a warm roquelaure and with a lantern swinging from one hand, he issued from the mansion on his homeward way. Little did he think what strange adventures were to befall him!--

That is how stories should begin. And I am offered HUSKS instead.

What should be: What is:

The Filibuster's Cache. Aunt Anne's Tea Cosy.
Jerry Abershaw. Mrs. Brierly's Niece.
Blood Money: A Tale. Society: A Novel.

R. L. S.

[The following letters to myself refer to a project, eagerly embraced at first, but afterward abandoned for want of time and strength, for a short life of Wellington to be contributed to a series edited by Mr. Andrew Lang for Messrs. Longman. In the third letter to me, and in that to Mr. J. A. Symonds which follows it, are expressed something of the feelings of distress and bitterness with which, in common with, but even more deeply than most Englishmen of sense and spirit, Stevenson at this time felt the national disgrace of Gordon's fate in the Soudan.]

BONALLIE TOWER, BRANKSOME PARK,
BOURNEMOUTH,
Jan. 4th, 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!

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: 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. SHORTHOUSE.

BOURNEMOUTH,
Jan. or Feb. 1885.

DEAR S. C.,--I have addressed a letter to the G. O. M. _à propos_ of Villainton; 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, 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!

R. L. S.

[BOURNEMOUTH,
Feb. 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. [This refers to some kind of a scheme, I forget what, for the republication of stray magazine-work of mine under the title Pictures, Places, and People.] 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 choose, you might distinguish: it is besides, a thing for which you are eminently well equipped, and which you would do 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 misgotten 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; everyone 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.

BOURNEMOUTH,
Feb. 1885.

MY DEAR SYMONDS,--Yes, we have both been very neglectful. I had horrid luck: catching (from kind friends) two thundering influenzas in August and November; I recovered from the last with difficulty: also had great annoyance from hæmorrhagic leaking; 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 doctors tell me that prolonged anxiety may do her a real mischief. She is now at Hyères collecting our goods; and she has been ill there, which has upset my liver and driven me to the friendly calomel on which I now mainly live: it is the only thing that stops the bleeding, which seems directly connected with the circulation of the liver.

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 pier-head, I am surprising. The doctors all seem agreed in saying that my complaint is quite unknown, and will allow of no prognosis.

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 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 the 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!_" 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 there 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 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.

BOURNEMOUTH,
March 16th, 1885.

MY DEAR HAMERTON,--Various things have been reminding me of my misconduct: First, Swan's application for your address; second, a sight of the sheets of your _Landscape_ book; and last, your note to Swan, which he was so kind as to forward. I trust you will never suppose me to be guilty of anything more serious than an idleness, partially excusable. My ill-health makes my rate of life heavier than I can well meet, and yet stops me from earning more. My conscience, sometimes perhaps too easily stifled, but still (for my time of life and the public manners of the age) fairly well alive, forces me to perpetual and almost endless transcriptions. On the back of all this, any correspondence hangs like a thunder-cloud; and just when I think I am getting through my troubles, crack, down goes my health, I have a long costly sickness, and begin the world again. It is fortunate for me I have a father, or I should long ago have died; but the opportunity of the aid makes the necessity none the more welcome. My father has presented me with a beautiful house here--or so I believe, for I have not yet seen it, being a cage bird but for nocturnal sorties in the garden. I hope we shall soon move into it, and I tell myself that some day perhaps we may have the pleasure of seeing you as our guest. I trust at least that you will take me as I am, a thoroughly bad correspondent, and a man, a hater, indeed, of rudeness in others, but too often rude in all unconsciousness himself; and that you will never cease to believe the sincere sympathy and admiration that I feel for you and for your work.

About the _Landscape_ [Mr. Hamerton's book so called], which I had a glimpse of while a friend of mine was preparing a review, I was greatly interested, and could write and wrangle for a year on every page; one passage particularly delighted me, the part about Ulysses--jolly. Then, you know, that is just what I fear I have come to think landscape ought to be in literature; so there we should be at odds. Or perhaps not so much as I suppose, as Montaigne says it is a pot with two handles, and I own I am wedded to the technical handle, which (I likewise own and freely) you do well to keep for a mistress. I should much like to talk with you about some other points; it is only in talk that one gets to understand. Your delightful Wordsworth trap I have tried on two hardened Wordsworthians, not that I am one myself. By covering up the context, and asking them to guess what the passage was, both (and both are very clever people, one a writer, one a painter) pronounced it a guide-book. "Do you think it an unusually good guide-book?" I asked, and both said, "No, not at all!" Their grimace was a picture when I showed the original.

I trust your health and that of Mrs. Hamerton keep better; your last account was a poor one. I was unable to make out the visit I had hoped, as (I do not know if you heard of it) I had a very violent and dangerous hæmorrhage last spring. I am almost glad to have seen death so close with all my wits about me, and not in the customary lassitude and disenchantment of disease. Even thus clearly beheld I find him not so terrible as we suppose. But, indeed, with the passing of years, the decay of strength, the loss of all my old active and pleasant habits, there grows more and more upon me that belief in the kindness of this scheme of things, and the goodness of our veiled God, which is an excellent and pacifying compensation. I trust, if your health continues to trouble you, you may find some of the same belief. But perhaps my fine discovery is a piece of art, and belongs to a character cowardly, intolerant of certain feelings, and apt to self-deception. I don't think so, however; and when I feel what a weak and fallible vessel I was thrust into this hurly-burly, and with what marvellous kindness the wind has been tempered to my frailties, I think I should be a strange kind of ass to feel anything but gratitude.

I do not know why I should inflict this talk upon you; but when I summon the rebellious pen, he must go his own way; I am no Michael Scott, to rule the fiend of correspondence. Most days he will none of me; and when he comes, it is to rape me where he will,--Yours very sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

[With Mr. Will H. Low as intermediary, Stevenson had now been entering into relations with Messrs. Scribner's Sons for the publication of his works in America. The following letter refers to this matter and to Mr. Low's proposed dedication to R. L. S. of one of the poems of Keats which he had been illustrating.]

BONALLIE TOWER, BOURNEMOUTH,
March 13th, 1885.

MY DEAR LOW,--Your success has been immense. I wish your letter had come two days ago: _Otto_, alas! has been disposed of a good while ago; but it was only day before yesterday that I settled the new volume of Arabs. However, for the future, you and the sons of the deified Scribner are the men for me. Really they have behaved most handsomely. I cannot lay my hand on the papers, or I would tell you exactly how it compares with my English bargain: but it compares well. Ah! if we had that copyright, I do believe it would go far to make me solvent, ill health and all.

I wrote you a letter to the Rembrandt, in which I stated my views about the dedication in a very brief form. It will give me sincere pleasure; and will make the second dedication I have received: the other being from John Addington Symonds. It is a compliment I value much; I don't know any that I should prefer.

I am glad to hear you have windows to do; that is a fine business, I think; but alas! the glass is so bad nowadays; realism invading even that, as well as the huge inferiority of our technical resource corrupting every tint. Still, anything that keeps a man to decoration is in this age, good for the artist's spirit.

By the way, have you seen James and me on the novel? James, I think in the August or September--R. L. S. in the December _Longman_. I own I think the _école bête_, of which I am the champion, has the whiphand of the argument; but as James is to make a rejoinder, I must not boast. Anyway the controversy is amusing to see. I was terribly tied down to space, which has made the end congested and dull. I shall see if I can afford to send you the April _Contemporary_--but I daresay you see it anyway--as it will contain a paper of mine on style, a sort of continuation of old arguments on art in which you have wagged a most effective tongue. It is a sort of start upon my Treatise on the Art of Literature: a small, arid book that shall some day appear.

With every good wish from me and mine (should I not say "she and hers"?) to you and yours, believe me yours ever,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Do you see much of Marius Townsend? Are you next door to the Doctor's Daughter? or does "North" refer to another "Washington Square" than Henry James's?

[The following to Mr. Gosse refers to the publication of that gentleman's life of Gray, in Mr. Morley's series of English Men of Letters, and of the writer's own, now classic, volume, _A Child's Garden of Verses_.]

BONALLIE TOWER, 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.

I did not answer your letter from the States, for what was I to say? I liked getting it and reading it; I was rather flattered that you wrote it to me; and then I'll tell you what I did--I put it in the fire. Why? Well, just because it was very natural and expansive; and thinks I to myself, if I die one of these fine nights, this is just the letter that Gosse would not wish to go into the hands of third parties. Was I well inspired? And I did not answer it because you were in your high places, sailing with supreme dominion, and seeing life in a particular glory; and I was peddling in a corner, confined to the house, overwhelmed with necessary work, which I was not always doing well, and, in the very mild form in which the disease approaches me, touched with a sort of bustling cynicism. Why throw cold water? How ape your agreeable frame of mind? In short, I held my tongue.

I have now published on 101 small pages _The Complete Proof of Mr. R. L. Stevenson's Incapacity to Write Verse_, in a series of graduated examples with table of contents. I think I shall issue a companion volume of exercises: "Analyse this poem. Collect and comminate the ugly words. Distinguish and condemn the _chevilles_. State Mr. Stevenson's faults of taste in regard to the measure. What reasons can you gather from this example for your belief that Mr. S. is unable to write any other measure?"

They look ghastly in the cold light of print; but there is something nice in the little ragged regimen; for all; the blackguards seem to me to smile; to have a kind of childish treble note that sounds in my ears freshly; not song, if you will, but a child's voice.

I was glad you enjoyed your visit to the States. Most Englishmen go there with a confirmed design of patronage, as they go to France for that matter; and patronage will not pay. Besides, in this year of--grace, said I?--of disgrace, who should creep so low as an Englishman? "It is not to be thought of that the flood"--ah, "Wordsworth," you would change your note were you alive to-day!

I am now a beastly householder, but have not yet entered on my domain. When I do, the social revolution will probably cast me back upon my dung heap. There is a person called Hyndman whose eye is on me; his step is beHynd me as I go. I shall call my house Skerryvore when I get it: SKERRYVORE: _c'est bon pour la poéshie_. I will conclude with my favourite sentiment: "The world is too much with me."

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,
The Hermit of Skerryvore.

Author of "John Vane Tempest: a Romance," "Herbert and Henrietta: or
the Nemesis of Sentiment," "The Life and Adventures of Colonel Bludyer
Fortescue," "Happy Homes and Hairy Faces," "A Pound of Feathers and a
Pound of Lead," part author of "Minn's Complete Capricious
Correspondent: a Manual of Natty, Natural, and Knowing Letters," and
editor of the "Poetical Remains of Samuel Burt Crabbe, known as the
melodious Bottle-Holder."

Uniform with the above:

"The Life and Remains of the Reverend Jacob Degray Squah," author of
"Heave-yo for the New Jerusalem." "A Box of Candles; or the Patent
Spiritual Safety Match," and "A Day with the Heavenly Harriers."

[The two following letters refer to the sudden death of Professor Fleeming Jenkin, with whom, and with his wife, Stevenson from his early student days maintained unbroken kindness and friendship.]

SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH
[Midsummer, 1885].

MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,--You know how much and for how long I have loved, respected, and admired him; I am only able to feel a little with you. But I know how he would have wished us to feel. I never knew a better man, nor one to me more lovable; we shall all feel the loss more greatly as time goes on. It scarce seems life to me; what must it be to you? Yet one of the last things that he said to me was, that from all these sad bereavements of yours he had learned only more than ever to feel the goodness and what we, in our feebleness, call the support of God; he had been ripening so much--to other eyes than ours, we must suppose he was ripe, and try to feel it. I feel it is better not to say much more. It will be to me a great pride to write a notice of him: the last I can now do. What more in any way I can do for you, please to think and let me know. For his sake and for your own, I would not be a useless friend: I know, you know me a most warm one; please command me or my wife, in any way. Do not trouble to write to me; Austin, I have no doubt, will do so, if you are, as I fear you will be, unfit.