Chapter VI: Introduction (5)

_Friday._--I cannot endure to be dependent much longer, it stops my mouth. Something I must find shortly. I mean when I am able for anything. However I am much better already; and have been writing not altogether my worst although not very well. Walt Whitman is stopped. I have bemired it so atrociously by working at it when I was out of humour that I must let the colour dry; and alas! what I have been doing in its place doesn't seem to promise any money. However it is all practice and it interests myself extremely. I have now received L80, some L55 of which still remain; all this is more debt to civilisation and my fellowmen. When shall I be able to pay it back? You do not know how much this money question begins to take more and more importance in my eyes every day. It is an old phrase of mine that money is the _atmosphere_ of civilised life, and I do hate to take the breath out of other people's nostrils. I live here at the rate of more than L3 a week and I do nothing for it. If I didn't hope to get well and do good work yet and more than repay my debts to the world, I should consider it right to invest an extra franc or two in laudanum. But I _will_ repay it.--Always your faithful friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO CHARLES BAXTER

[_Menton, December, 1873._]

MY DEAR BAXTER,--At last, I must write. I must say straight out that I am not recovering as I could wish. I am no stronger than I was when I came here, and I pay for every walk, beyond say a quarter of a mile in length, by one or two, or even three, days of more or less prostration. Therefore let nobody be down upon me for not writing. I was very thankful to you for answering my letter; and for the princely action of Simpson in writing to me, I mean before I had written to him, I was ditto to an almost higher degree. I hope one or another of you will write again soon; and, remember, I still live in hope of reading Grahame Murray's address.

I have not made a joke, upon my living soul, since I left London. O! except one, a very small one, that I had made before, and that I very timidly repeated in a half-exhilarated state towards the close of dinner, like one of those dead-alive flies that we see pretending to be quite light and full of the frivolity of youth in the first sunshiny days. It was about mothers' meetings, and it was damned small, and it was my ewe lamb--the Lord knows I couldn't have made another to save my life--and a clergyman quarrelled with me, and there was as nearly an explosion as could be. This has not fostered my leaning towards pleasantry. I felt that it was a very cold, hard world that night.

My dear Charles, is the sky blue at Mentone? Was that your question? Well, it depends upon what you call blue; it's a question of taste, I suppose. Is the sky blue? You poor critter, you never saw blue sky worth being called blue in the same day with it. And I should rather fancy that the sun did shine I should. And the moon doesn't shine either. O no! (This last is sarcastic.) Mentone is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and has always had a very warm corner in my heart since first I knew it eleven years ago.

_11th December._--I live in the same hotel with Lord X. He has black whiskers, and has been successful in raising some kids; rather a melancholy success; they are weedy looking kids in Highland clo'. They have a tutor with them who respires Piety and that kind of humble your-lordship's-most-obedient sort of gentlemanliness that noblemen's tutors have generally. They all get livings, these men, and silvery hair and a gold watch from their attached pupil; and they sit in the porch and make the watch repeat for their little grandchildren, and tell them long stories, beginning, "When I was private tutor in the family of," etc., and the grandchildren cock snooks at them behind their backs and go away whenever they can to get the groom to teach them bad words.

Sidney Colvin will arrive here on Saturday or Sunday; so I shall have someone to jaw with. And, seriously, this is a great want. I have not been all these weeks in idleness, as you may fancy, without much thinking as to my future; and I have a great deal in view that may or may not be possible (that I do not yet know), but that is at least an object and a hope before me. I cannot help recurring to seriousness a moment before I stop; for I must say that living here a good deal alone, and having had ample time to look back upon my past, I have become very serious all over. If I can only get back my health, by God! I shall not be as useless as I have been.--Ever yours, _mon vieux_,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MRS. SITWELL

_[Menton, December, 1873], Sunday._

The first violet. There is more sweet trouble for the heart in the breath of this small flower than in all the wines of all the vineyards of Europe. I cannot contain myself. I do not think so small a thing has ever given me such a princely festival of pleasure. I feel as if my heart were a little bunch of violets in my bosom; and my brain is pleasantly intoxicated with the wonderful odour. I suppose I am writing nonsense, but it does not seem nonsense to me. Is it not a wonderful odour? is it not something incredibly subtle and perishable? It is like a wind blowing to one out of fairyland. No one need tell me that the phrase is exaggerated if I say that this violet _sings_; it sings with the same voice as the March blackbird; and the same adorable tremor goes through one's soul at the hearing of it.

_Monday._--All yesterday I was under the influence of opium. I had been rather seedy during the night and took a dose in the morning, and for the first time in my life it took effect upon me. I had a day of extraordinary happiness; and when I went to bed there was something almost terrifying in the pleasures that besieged me in the darkness. Wonderful tremors filled me; my head swam in the most delirious but enjoyable manner; and the bed softly oscillated with me, like a boat in a very gentle ripple. It does not make me write a good style apparently, which is just as well, lest I should be tempted to renew the experiment; and some verses which I wrote turn out on inspection to be not quite equal to _Kubla Khan_. However, I was happy, and the recollection is not troubled by any reaction this morning.

_Wednesday._--Do you know, I think I am much better. I really enjoy things, and I really feel dull occasionally, neither of which was possible with me before; and though I am still tired and weak, I almost think I feel a stirring among the dry bones. O, I should like to recover, and be once more well and happy and fit for work! And then to be able to begin really to my life; to have done, for the rest of time, with preluding and doubting; and to take hold of the pillars strongly with Samson--to burn my ships with (whoever did it). O, I begin to feel my spirits come back to me again at the thought!

_Thursday._--I sat along the beach this morning under some reeds (or canes--I know not which they are): everything was so tropical; nothing visible but the glaring white shingle, the blue sea, the blue sky, and the green plumes of the canes thrown out against the latter some ten or fifteen feet above my head. The noise of the surf alone broke the quiet. I had somehow got _Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh_ into my head; and I was happy for I do not know how long, sitting there and repeating to myself these lines. It is wonderful how things somehow fall into a full satisfying harmony, and out of the fewest elements there is established a sort of small perfection. It was so this morning. I did not want anything further.

TO MRS. SITWELL

In the third week of December I went out to join my friend for a part
of the Christmas vacation, and found him without tangible disease,
but very weak and ailing: ill-health and anxiety, however, neither
then nor at any time diminished his charm as a companion. He left
Mentone to meet me at the old town of Monaco, where we spent a few
days and from whence these stray notes of nature and human nature
were written.

_Monaco, Tuesday [December 1873]._

We have been out all day in a boat; lovely weather and almost dead calm, only the most infinitesimal and indeterminate of oscillations moved us hither and thither; the sails were duly set, and flapped about idly overhead. Our boatman was a man of a delightful humour, who told us many tales of the sea, notably one of a doctor, who was an Englishman, and who seemed almost an epitome of vices--drunken, dishonest, and utterly without faith; and yet he was a _charmant garcon_. He told us many amusing circumstances of the doctor's incompetence and dishonesty, and imitated his accent with a singular success. I couldn't quite see that he was a charming _garcon_--"_O, oui_--_comme caractere, un charmant garcon_." We landed on that Cap Martin, the place of firs and rocks and myrtle and rosemary of which I spoke to you. As we pulled along in the fresh shadow, the wonderfully clean scents blew out upon us, as if from islands of spice--only how much better than cloves and cinnamon!

_Friday._--Colvin and I are sitting on a seat on the battlemented gardens of Old Monaco. The day is grey and clouded, with a little red light on the horizon, and the sea, hundreds of feet below us, is a sort of purple dove-colour. Shrub-geraniums, firs, and aloes cover all available shelves and terraces, and where these become impossible, the prickly pear precipitates headlong downwards its bunches of oval plates; so that the whole face of the cliff is covered with an arrested fall (please excuse clumsy language), a sort of fall of the evil angels petrified midway on its career. White gulls sail past below us every now and then, sometimes singly, sometimes by twos and threes, and sometimes in a great flight. The sharp perfume of the shrub-geraniums fills the air.

I cannot write, in any sense of the word; but I am as happy as can be, and wish to notify the fact, before it passes. The sea is blue, grey, purple and green; very subdued and peaceful; earlier in the day it was marbled by small keen specks of sun and larger spaces of faint irradiation; but the clouds have closed together now, and these appearances are no more. Voices of children and occasional crying of gulls; the mechanical noise of a gardener somewhere behind us in the scented thicket; and the faint report and rustle of the waves on the precipice far below, only break in upon the quietness to render it more complete and perfect.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

After spending a few days in one of the more retired hotels of Monte
Carlo, we went on to Mentone and settled at the Hotel Mirabeau, long
since, I believe, defunct, near the eastern extremity of the town.
The little American girl mentioned in the last paragraph is the same
we shall meet later under her full name of Marie Johnstone.

_[Hotel Mirabeau, Menton], January 2nd, 1874._

Here I am over in the east bay of Mentone, where I am not altogether sorry to find myself. I move so little that I soon exhaust the immediate neighbourhood of my dwelling places. Our reason for coming here was however very simple. Hobson's choice. Mentone during my absence has filled marvellously.

Continue to address P. R.[11] Menton; and try to conceive it as possible that I am not a drivelling idiot. When I wish an address changed, it is quite on the cards that I shall be able to find language explicit enough to express the desire. My whole desire is to avoid complication of addresses. It is quite fatal. If two P. R.'s have contradictory orders they will continue to play battledoor and shuttlecock with an unhappy epistle, which will never get farther afield but perish there miserably.

You act too much on the principle that whatever I do is done unwisely; and that whatever I do not, has been culpably forgotten. This is wounding to my nat'ral vanity.

I have not written for three days I think; but what days! They were very cold; and I must say I was able thoroughly to appreciate the blessings of Mentone. Old Smoko this winter would evidently have been very summary with me. I could not stand the cold at all. I exhausted all my own and all Colvin's clothing; I then retired to the house, and then to bed; in a condition of sorrow for myself unequalled. The sun is forth again (laus Deo) and the wind is milder, and I am greatly re-established. A certain asperity of temper still lingers, however, which Colvin supports with much mildness.

In this hotel, I have a room on the first floor! Luxury, however, is not altogether regardless of expense. We only pay 13 francs per day--3-1/2 more than at the Pavillon on the third floor.--And beggars must not be choosers. We were very nearly houseless, the night we came. And it is rarely that such winds of adversity blow men into king's Palaces.

Looking over what has gone before, it seems to me that it is not strictly polite. I beg to withdraw all that is offensive.

At _table d'hote_, we have some people who amuse us much; two Americans, who would try to pass for French people, and their daughter, the most charming of little girls. Both Colvin and I have planned an abduction already. The whole hotel is devoted to her; and the waiters continually do smuggle out comfits and fruit and pudding to her.

All well.--Ever your affectionate son,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

The M'Laren herein mentioned was of course the distinguished Scotch
politician and social reformer, Duncan M'Laren, for sixteen years
M.P. for Edinburgh.

_[Menton], Sunday, January 4, 1874._

MY DEAR MOTHER,--We have here fallen on the very pink of hotels. I do not say that it is more pleasantly conducted than the Pavillon, for that were impossible; but the rooms are so cheery and bright and new, and then the food! I never, I think, so fully appreciated the phrase "the fat of the land" as I have done since I have been here installed. There was a dish of eggs at _dejeuner_ the other day, over the memory of which I lick my lips in the silent watches.

Now that the cold has gone again, I continue to keep well in body, and already I begin to walk a little more. My head is still a very feeble implement, and easily set a-spinning; and I can do nothing in the way of work beyond reading books that may, I hope, be of some use to me afterwards.

I was very glad to see that M'Laren was sat upon, and principally for the reason why. Deploring as I do much of the action of the Trades Unions, these conspiracy clauses and the whole partiality of the Master and Servant Act are a disgrace to our equal laws. Equal laws become a byeword when what is legal for one class becomes a criminal offence for another. It did my heart good to hear that man tell M'Laren how, as he had talked much of getting the franchise for working men, he must now be content to see them use it now they had got it. This is a smooth stone well planted in the foreheads of certain dilettanti radicals, after M'Laren's fashion, who are willing to give the working men words and wind, and votes and the like, and yet think to keep all the advantages, just or unjust, of the wealthier classes without abatement. I do hope wise men will not attempt to fight the working men on the head of this notorious injustice. Any such step will only precipitate the action of the newly enfranchised classes, and irritate them into acting hastily; when what we ought to desire should be that they should act warily and little for many years to come, until education and habit may make them the more fit.

All this (intended for my father) is much after the fashion of his own correspondence. I confess it has left my own head exhausted; I hope it may not produce the same effect on yours. But I want him to look really into this question (both sides of it, and not the representations of rabid middle-class newspapers, sworn to support all the little tyrannies of wealth), and I know he will be convinced that this is a case of unjust law; and that, however desirable the end may seem to him, he will not be Jesuit enough to think that any end will justify an unjust law.

Here ends the political sermon of your affectionate (and somewhat dogmatical) son,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

In the first week of January I went for some necessary work to Paris,
with the intention of returning towards the end of the month. The
following letter introduces the Russian sisters, Madame Zassetsky
and Madame Garschine, whose society and that of their children was to
do so much to cheer Stevenson during his remaining months on the
Riviera. The French painter Robinet (sometimes in his day known as
_le Raphael des cailloux_, from the minuteness of detail which he put
into his Provencal coast landscapes) was a chivalrous and
affectionate soul, in whom R. L. S. delighted in spite of his fervent
clerical and royalist opinions.

_[Menton], January 7, 1874._

MY DEAR MOTHER,--I received yesterday two most charming letters--the nicest I have had since I left--December 26th and January 1st: this morning I got January 3rd.

Into the bargain with Marie, the American girl, who is grace itself, and comes leaping and dancing simply like a wave--like nothing else, and who yesterday was Queen out of the Epiphany cake and chose Robinet (the French painter) as her _favori_ with the most pretty confusion possible--into the bargain with Marie, we have two little Russian girls, with the youngest of whom, a little polyglot button of a three-year old, I had the most laughable little scene at lunch to-day. I was watching her being fed with great amusement, her face being as broad as it is long, and her mouth capable of unlimited extension; when suddenly, her eye catching mine, the fashion of her countenance was changed, and regarding me with a really admirable appearance of offended dignity, she said something in Italian which made everybody laugh much. It was explained to me that she had said I was very _polisson_ to stare at her. After this she was somewhat taken up with me, and after some examination she announced emphatically to the whole table, in German, that I was a _Maedchen_; which word she repeated with shrill emphasis, as though fearing that her proposition would be called in question--_Maedchen, Maedchen, Maedchen, Maedchen_. This hasty conclusion as to my sex she was led afterwards to revise, I am informed; but her new opinion (which seems to have been something nearer the truth) was announced in a third language quite unknown to me, and probably Russian. To complete the scroll of her accomplishments, she was brought round the table after the meal was over, and said good-bye to me in very commendable English.

The weather I shall say nothing about, as I am incapable of explaining my sentiments upon that subject before a lady. But my health is really greatly improved: I begin to recognise myself occasionally now and again, not without satisfaction.

Please remember me very kindly to Professor Swan; I wish I had a story to send him; but story, Lord bless you, I have none to tell, sir, unless it is the foregoing adventure with the little polyglot. The best of that depends on the significance of _polisson_, which is beautifully out of place.

_Saturday, 10th January._--The little Russian kid is only two and a half: she speaks six languages. She and her sister (aet. 8) and May Johnstone (aet. 8) are the delight of my life. Last night I saw them all dancing--O it was jolly; kids are what is the matter with me. After the dancing, we all--that is the two Russian ladies, Robinet the French painter, Mr. and Mrs. Johnstone, two governesses, and fitful kids joining us at intervals--played a game of the stool of repentance in the Gallic idiom.

O--I have not told you that Colvin is gone; however, he is coming back again; has left clothes in pawn to me.--Ever your affectionate son,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

_[Menton], Sunday, 11th January 1874._

In many ways this hotel is more amusing than the Pavillon. There are the children, to begin with; and then there are games every evening--the stool of repentance, question and answer, etc.; and then we speak French, although that is not exactly an advantage in so far as personal brilliancy is concerned.

I am in lovely health again to-day: I-walked as far as the Pont St. Louis very nearly, besides walking and knocking about among the olives in the afternoon. I do not make much progress with my French; but I do make a little, I think. I was pleased with my success this evening, though I do not know if others shared the satisfaction.

The two Russian ladies are from Georgia all the way. They do not at all answer to the description of Georgian slaves however, being graceful and refined, and only good-looking after you know them a bit.

Please remember me very kindly to the Jenkins, and thank them for having asked about me. Tell Mrs. J. that I am engaged perfecting myself in the "Gallic idiom," in order to be a worthier Vatel for the future. Monsieur Follete, our host, is a Vatel by the way. He cooks himself, and is not insensible to flattery on the score of his table. I began, of course, to complain of the wine (part of the routine of life at Mentone); I told him that where one found a kitchen so exquisite, one astonished oneself that the wine was not up to the same form. "Et voila precisement mon cote faible, monsieur," he replied, with an indescribable amplitude of gesture. "Que voulez-vous? Moi, je suis cuisinier!" It was as though Shakespeare, called to account for some such peccadillo as the Bohemian seaport, should answer magnificently that he was a poet. So Follete lives in a golden zone of a certain sort--a golden, or rather torrid zone, whence he issues twice daily purple as to his face--and all these clouds and vapours and ephemeral winds pass far below him and disturb him not.

He has another hobby however--his garden, round which it is his highest pleasure to lead the unwilling guest. Whenever he is not in the kitchen, he is hanging round loose, seeking whom he may show his garden to. Much of my time is passed in studiously avoiding him, and I have brought the art to a very extreme pitch of perfection. The fox, often hunted, becomes wary.--Ever your affectionate son,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MRS. SITWELL

_[Menton], Tuesday, 13th January 1874._

... I lost a Philipine to little Mary Johnstone last night; so to-day I sent her a rubbishing doll's toilet, and a little note with it, with some verses telling how happy children made every one near them happy also, and advising her to keep the lines, and some day, when she was "grown a stately demoiselle," it would make her "glad to know she gave pleasure long ago," all in a very lame fashion, with just a note of prose at the end, telling her to mind her doll and the dog, and not trouble her little head just now to understand the bad verses; for some time when she was ill, as I am now, they would be plain to her and make her happy. She has just been here to thank me, and has left me very happy. Children are certainly too good to be true.

Yesterday I walked too far, and spent all the afternoon on the outside of my bed; went finally to rest at nine, and slept nearly twelve hours on the stretch. Bennet (the doctor), when told of it this morning, augured well for my recovery; he said youth must be putting in strong; of course I ought not to have slept at all. As it was, I dreamed _horridly_; but not my usual dreams of social miseries and misunderstandings and all sorts of crucifixions of the spirit; but of good, cheery, physical things--of long successions of vaulted, dimly lit cellars full of black water, in which I went swimming among toads and unutterable, cold, blind fishes. Now and then these cellars opened up into sort of domed music-hall places, where one could land for a little on the slope of the orchestra, but a sort of horror prevented one from staying long, and made one plunge back again into the dead waters. Then my dream changed, and I was a sort of Siamese pirate, on a very high deck with several others. The ship was almost captured, and we were fighting desperately. The hideous engines we used and the perfectly incredible carnage that we effected by means of them kept me cheery, as you may imagine; especially as I felt all the time my sympathy with the boarders, and knew that I was only a prisoner with these horrid Malays. Then I saw a signal being given, and knew they were going to blow up the ship. I leaped right off, and heard my captors splash in the water after me as thick as pebbles when a bit of river bank has given way beneath the foot. I never heard the ship blow up; but I spent the rest of the night swimming about some piles with the whole sea full of Malays, searching for me with knives in their mouths. They could swim any distance under water, and every now and again, just as I was beginning to reckon myself safe, a cold hand would be laid on my ankle--ugh!

However, my long sleep, troubled as it was, put me all right again, and I was able to work acceptably this morning and be very jolly all day. This evening I have had a great deal of talk with both the Russian ladies; they talked very nicely, and are bright, likable women both. They come from Georgia.

_Wednesday, 10.30._--We have all been to tea to-night at the Russians' villa. Tea was made out of a samovar, which is something like a small steam engine, and whose principal advantage is that it burns the fingers of all who lay their profane touch upon it. After tea Madame Z. played Russian airs, very plaintive and pretty; so the evening was Muscovite from beginning to end. Madame G.'s daughter danced a tarantella, which was very pretty.

Whenever Nelitchka cries--and she never cries except from pain--all that one has to do is to start "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre." She cannot resist the attraction; she is drawn through her sobs into the air; and in a moment there is Nellie singing, with the glad look that comes into her face always when she sings, and all the tears and pain forgotten.

It is wonderful, before I shut this up, how that child remains ever interesting to me. Nothing can stale her infinite variety; and yet it is not very various. You see her thinking what she is to do or to say next, with a funny grave air of reserve, and then the face breaks up into a smile, and it is probably "Berecchino!" said with that sudden little jump of the voice that one knows in children, as the escape of a jack-in-the-box, and, somehow, I am quite happy after that!

R. L. S.

TO MRS. SITWELL

_[Menton, January 1874], Wednesday._

MY DEAR FRIEND,--It is still so cold, I cannot tell you how miserable the weather is. I have begun my "Walt Whitman" again seriously. Many winds have blown since I last laid it down, when sickness took me in Edinburgh. It seems almost like an ill-considered jest to take up these old sentences, written by so different a person under circumstances so different, and try to string them together and organise them into something anyway whole and comely; it is like continuing another man's book. Almost every word is a little out of tune to me now but I shall pull it through for all that and make something that will interest you yet on this subject that I had proposed to myself and partly planned already, before I left for Cockfield last July.

I am very anxious to hear how you are. My own health is quite very good; I am a healthy octogenarian; very old, I thank you and of course not so active as a young man, but hale withal: a lusty December. This is so; such is R. L. S.

I am a little bothered about Bob, a little afraid that he is living too poorly. The fellow he chums with spends only two francs a day on food, with a little excess every day or two to keep body and soul together, and though Bob is not so austere I am afraid he draws it rather too fine himself.

_Friday._--We have all got our photographs; it is pretty fair, they say, of me and as they are particular in the matter of photographs, and besides partial judges I suppose I may take that for proven. Of Nellie there is one quite adorable. The weather is still cold. My "Walt Whitman" at last looks really well: I think it is going to get into shape in spite of the long gestation.

_Sunday._--Still cold and grey, and a high imperious wind off the sea. I see nothing particularly _couleur de rose_ this morning: but I am trying to be faithful to my creed and hope. O yes, one can do something to make things happier and better; and to give a good example before men and show them how goodness and fortitude and faith remain undiminished after they have been stripped bare of all that is formal and outside. We must do that; you have done it already; and I shall follow and shall make a worthy life, and you must live to approve of me.

R. L. S.

TO MRS. SITWELL

The following are two different impressions of the Mediterranean,
dated on two different Mondays in January:--

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. _Sacre 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 Caesar_ 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 L5 .. 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 "schoen"; 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! A mon age, c'est etonnant comme je suis observateur!_

The second volume of _Clement 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. _Voila, madame, le menu. Comment le trouvez-vous? Il y a de la bonne viande, si on parvient a 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 "_A 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 ca, 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 Follete'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._