Chapter M: Cowles (4)

This sudden return to an ancient favorite hangs upon an
accident. The 'Franklin County Library' contains two works of
his, _The Cavalier_ and _Morley Einstein_. I read the first
with indescribable amusement—it was worse than I feared, and
yet somehow engaging; the second (to my surprise) was better
than I dared to hope: a good, honest, dull, interesting tale,
with a genuine old-fashioned talent in the invention when not
strained; and a genuine old-fashioned feeling for the English
language. This experience awoke appetite, and you see I have
taken steps to stay it.

R. L. S.

SARANAC, February, 1888.

DEAR MR. BURLINGAME,—1. Of course then don't use it. Dear Man,
I write these to please you, not myself, and you know a main
sight better than I do what is good. In that case, however,
I enclose another paper, and return the corrected proof of
_Pulvis et Umbra_, so that we may be afloat.

2. I want to say a word as to the _Master_. (The _Master of
Ballantrae_ shall be the name by all means.) If you like and
want it, I leave it to you to make an offer. You may remember
I thought the offer you made when I was still in England too
small; by which I did not at all mean, I thought it less
than it was worth, but too little to tempt me to undergo
the disagreeables of serial publication. This tale (if you
want it) you are to have; for it is the least I can do for
you; and you are to observe that the sum you pay me for my
articles going far to meet my wants, I am quite open to be
satisfied with less than formerly. I tell you I do dislike
this battle of the dollars. I feel sure you all pay too much
here in America; and I beg you not to spoil me any more. For
I am getting spoiled; I do not want wealth, and I feel these
big sums demoralize me.

My wife came here pretty ill, she had a dreadful bad night;
to-day she is better. But now Valentine is ill; and Lloyd
and I have got breakfast, and my hand somewhat shakes after
washing-dishes.—Yours very sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

_P.S._—Please order me the _Evening Post_ for two months. My
subscription is run out. The _Mutiny_ and _Edwardes_ to hand.

SARANAC, March, 1888.

MY DEAR COLVIN,—Fanny has been very unwell. She is not long
home, has been ill again since her return, but is now better
again to a degree. You must not blame her for not writing, as
she is not allowed to write at all, not even a letter. To add
to our misfortunes, Valentine is quite ill and in bed. Lloyd
and I get breakfast; I have now, 10.15, just got the dishes
washed and the kitchen all clear, and sit down to give you
as much news as I have spirit for, after such an engagement.
Glass is a thing that really breaks my spirit: I do not like
to fail, and with glass I cannot reach the work of my high
calling—the artist's.

I am, as you may gather from this, wonderfully better: this
harsh, grey, glum, doleful climate has done me good. You
cannot fancy how sad a climate it is. When the thermometer
stays all day below 10°, it is really cold; and when the wind
blows, O commend me to the result. Pleasure in life is all
delete; there is no red spot left, fires do not radiate, you
burn your hands all the time on what seem to be cold stones.
It is odd, zero is like summer heat to us now; and we like,
when the thermometer outside is really low, a room at about
48°: 60° we find oppressive. Yet the natives keep their holes
at 90° or even 100°.

This was interrupted days ago by household labors. Since then
I have had and (I tremble to write it, but it does seem as
if I had) beaten off an influenza. The cold is exquisite.
Valentine still in bed. The proofs of the first part of
the _Master of Ballantrae_ begin to come in; soon you shall
have it in the pamphlet form; and I hope you will like it.
The second part will not be near so good; but there—we can
but do as it'll do with us. I have every reason to believe
this winter has done me real good, so far as it has gone;
and if I carry out my scheme for next winter, and succeeding
years, I should end by being a tower of strength. I want you
to save a good holiday for next winter; I hope we shall be
able to help you to some larks. Is there any Greek isle you
would like to explore? or any creek in Asia Minor?—Yours ever
affectionately,

R. L. S.

SARANAC LAKE, March, 1888.

MY DEAR, DELIGHTFUL JAMES,—To quote your heading to my
wife, I think no man writes so elegant a letter, I am sure
none so kind, unless it be Colvin, and there is more of the
stern parent about him. I was vexed at your account of my
admired Meredith; I wish I could go and see him, as it is I
will try to write. I read with indescribable admiration your
_Emerson_. I begin to long for the day when these portraits
of yours shall be collected; do put me in. But Emerson is a
higher flight. Have you a _Tourgueneff_? You have told me many
interesting things of him, and I seem to see them written,
and forming a graceful and _bildend_ sketch. My novel is a
tragedy, four parts out of six or seven are written, and gone
to Burlingame. Five parts of it are sound, human tragedy; the
last one or two, I regret to say, are not so soundly designed;
I almost hesitate to write them; they are very picturesque,
but they are fantastic; they shame, perhaps degrade, the
beginning. I wish I knew; that was how the tale came to me
however. I got the situation; it was an old taste of mine:
The older brother goes out in the '45, the younger stays;
the younger, of course, gets title and estate and marries
the bride designate of the elder—a family match, but he (the
younger) had always loved her, and she had really loved the
elder. Do you see the situation? Then the devil and Saranac
suggested this _dénouement_, and I joined the two ends in
a day or two of constant feverish thought, and began to
write. And now—I wonder if I have not gone too far with the
fantastic. The elder brother is an _Incubus_; supposed to be
killed at Culloden, he turns up again and bleeds the family of
money; on that stopping he comes and lives with them, whence
flows the real tragedy, the nocturnal duel of the brothers
(very naturally, and indeed, I think, inevitably arising),
and second supposed death of the elder. Husband and wife now
really make up, and then the cloven hoof appears. For the
third supposed death and the manner of the third reappearance
is steep; steep, sir. It is even very steep, and I fear
it shames the honest stuff so far; but then it is highly
pictorial, and it leads up to death of the elder brother at
the hands of the younger in a perfectly cold-blooded murder,
of which I wish (and mean) the reader to approve. You see how
daring is the design. There are really but six characters,
and one of these episodic, and yet it covers eighteen years,
and will be, I imagine, the longest of my works.—Yours ever,

R. L. S.

_Read Gosse's Raleigh._

First rate,—Yours ever,

R. L. S.

_To S. R. Crockett_

[SARANAC LAKE, Spring, 1888.]

DEAR MINISTER OF THE FREE KIRK AT PENICUIK,—For O, man, I
cannae read your name!—That I have been so long in answering
your delightful letter sits on my conscience badly. The fact
is I let my correspondence accumulate until I am going to
leave a place; and then I pitch in, overhaul the pile, and my
cries of penitence might be heard a mile about. Yesterday I
despatched thirty-five belated letters; conceive the state of
my conscience, above all the Sins of Omission (see boyhood's
guide, the Shorter Catechism) are in my view the only serious
ones; I call it my view, but it cannot have escaped you that
it was also Christ's. However, all that is not to the purpose,
which is to thank you for the sincere pleasure afforded by
your charming letter. I get a good few such; how few that
please me at all, you would be surprised to learn—or have a
singularly just idea of the dulness of our race; how few that
please me as yours did, I can tell you in one word—_None_.
I am no great kirkgoer, for many reasons—and the sermon's
one of them, and the first prayer another, but the chief and
effectual reason is the stuffiness. I am no great kirkgoer,
says I, but when I read yon letter of yours, I thought I would
like to sit under ye. And then I saw ye were to send me a bit
buik, and says I, I'll wait for the bit buik, and then I'll
mebbe can read the man's name, and anyway I'll can kill twa
birds wi' ae stane. And, man! the buik was ne'er heard tell
o'!

That fact is an adminicle of excuse for my delay.

And now, dear minister of the illegible name, thanks to you,
and greeting to your wife, and may you have good guidance in
your difficult labors, and a blessing on your life.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

(No just so young sae young's he was, though—I'm
awfae near forty, man).

Address c/o CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS,
743 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.

Don't put "N.B." in your paper, put _Scotland_, and be done
with it. Alas, that I should be thus stabbed in the home of
my friends! The name of my native land is not _North Britain_,
whatever may be the name of yours.

R. L. S.

[SARANAC], April 9th!! 1888.

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

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

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

ANDREW JACKSON.

[SARANAC LAKE, April, 1888.]

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

Pray excuse a desponding author for this apology. My wife is
away off to the uttermost parts of the States, all by herself.
I shall be off, I hope, in a week; but where? Ah! that I know
not. I keep wonderful, and my wife a little better, and the
lad flourishing. We now perform duets on two D tin whistles;
it is no joke to make the bass; I think I must really send
you one, which I wish you would correct....

I may be said to live for these instrumental labours now;
but I have always some childishness on hand.—I am, dear
Gamekeeper, your indulgent, but intemperate Squire,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

[On the 16th of April Stevenson and his party left Saranac. After spending a fortnight in New York, where, as always in cities, his health quickly flagged again, he went for the month of May into seaside quarters at Union House, Manasquan, on the New Jersey coast, for the sake of fresh air and boating. Here he enjoyed the society of some of his New York friends, including Mr. St. Gaudens and Mr. W. H. Low, and was initiated in the congenial craft of cat-boat sailing. In the meantime Mrs. Stevenson had gone to San Francisco, to see whether a sailing yacht was to be found available for a few months' cruise in the Pacific. The _Casco_, Captain Otis, was found accordingly; Stevenson signified by telegraph his assent to the arrangement; determined to risk in the adventure the sum of £2,000, of which his father's death had put him in possession, hoping to recoup himself by a book of Letters recounting his experiences; and on the 2d of June started with his mother and stepson for San Francisco, and thence for that island cruise from which he was never to return.]

UNION HOUSE, MANASQUAN, N. J., but address
to Scribner's.

May 11, 1888.

MY DEAR CHARLES,—I have found a yacht, and we are going the
full pitch for seven months. If I cannot get my health back
(more or less), 'tis madness; but, of course, there is the
hope, and I will play big.... If this business fails to set
me up, well, £2,000 is gone, and I know I can't get better.
We sail from San Francisco, June 15th, for the South Seas in
the yacht _Casco_.—With a million thanks for all your dear
friendliness, ever yours affectionately,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

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

MANASQUAN, NEW JERSEY,
27th May, 1888.

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

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

THE VEERY-THRUSH

By J. Russell Taylor

Blow softly, thrush, upon the hush
That makes the least leaf loud,
Blow, wild of heart, remote, apart
From all the vocal crowd,
Apart, remote, a spirit note
That dances meltingly afloat,
Blow faintly, thrush!
And build the green-hill waterfall
I hated for its beauty, and all
The unloved vernal rapture and flush,
The old forgotten lonely time,
Delicate thrush!
Spring's at the prime, the world's in chime,
And my love is listening nearly,
O lightly blow the ancient woe,
Flute of the wood, blow clearly!
Blow, she is here, and the world all dear,
Melting flute of the hush,
Old sorrow estranged, enriched, sea-changed,
Breathe it, veery-thrush!

THE SHIP OF STARS

By A. T. Quiller-Couch

(Q.)