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

To Trevor Haddon

MY DEAR SIR, – I see nothing “cheekie” in anything you have done. Your letters have naturally given me much pleasure, for it seems to me you are a pretty good young fellow, as young fellows go; and if I add that you remind me of myself, you need not accuse me of retrospective vanity.

You now know an address which will always find me; you might let me have your address in London; I do not promise anything – for I am always overworked in London – but I shall, if I can arrange it, try to see you.

I am afraid I am not so rigid on chastity: you are probably right in your view; but this seems to me a dilemma with two horns, the real curse of a man’s life in our state of society – and a woman’s too, although, for many reasons, it appears somewhat differently with the enslaved sex. By your “fate” I believe I meant your marriage, or that love at least which may befall any one of us at the shortest notice and overthrow the most settled habits and opinions. I call that your fate, because then, if not before, you can no longer hang back, but must stride out into life and act. – Believe me, yours sincerely,

To Edmund Gosse

Mr. Gosse had mistaken the name of the Peeblesshire manse, and is reproached accordingly. “Gray” is Mr. Gosse’s volume on that poet in Mr. Morley’s series of English Men of Letters.

First, we shall be gone in September. But if you think of coming in August, my mother will hunt for you with pleasure. We should all be overjoyed – though Stobo it could not be, as it is but a kirk and manse, but possibly somewhere within reach. Let us know.

Second, I have read your Gray with care. A more difficult subject I can scarce fancy; it is crushing; yet I think you have managed to shadow forth a man, and a good man too; and honestly, I doubt if I could have done the same. This may seem egoistic; but you are not such a fool as to think so. It is the natural expression of real praise. The book as a whole is readable; your subject peeps every here and there out of the crannies like a shy violet – he could do no more – and his aroma hangs there.

I write to catch a minion of the post. Hence brevity. Answer about the house. – Yours affectionately,

To W. E. Henley

In the heat of conversation Stevenson was accustomed to invent any number of fictitious personages, generally Scottish, and to give them names and to set them playing their imaginary parts in life, reputable or otherwise. Many of these inventions, including Mr. Pirbright Smith and Mr. Pegfurth Bannatyne, were a kind of incarnations of himself, or of special aspects of himself; they assumed for him and his friends a kind of substantial existence; and constantly in talk, and occasionally in writing, he would keep up the play of reporting their sayings and doings quite gravely, as in the following: —

DEAR HENLEY… I am not worth an old damn. I am also crushed by bad news of Symonds; his good lung going; I cannot help reading it as a personal hint; God help us all! Really, I am not very fit for work; but I try, try, and nothing comes of it.

I believe we shall have to leave this place; it is low, damp, and mauchy; the rain it raineth every day; and the glass goes tol-de-rol-de-riddle.

Yet it’s a bonny bit; I wish I could live in it, but doubt. I wish I was well away somewhere else. I feel like flight some days; honour bright.

Pirbright Smith is well. Old Mr. Pegfurth Bannatyne is here staying at a country inn. His whole baggage is a pair of socks and a book in a fishing-basket; and he borrows even a rod from the landlord. He walked here over the hills from Sanquhar, “singin’,” he says, “like a mavis.” I naturally asked him about Hazlitt. “He wouldnae take his drink,” he said, “a queer, queer fellow.” But did not seem further communicative. He says he has become “releegious,” but still swears like a trooper. I asked him if he had no headquarters. “No likely,” said he. He says he is writing his memoirs, which will be interesting. He once met Borrow; they boxed; “and Geordie,” says the old man chuckling, “gave me the damnedest hiding.” Of Wordsworth he remarked, “He wasnae sound in the faith, sir, and a milk-blooded, blue-spectacled bitch forbye. But his po’mes are grand – there’s no denying that.” I asked him what his book was. “I havenae mind,” said he – that was his only book! On turning it out, I found it was one of my own, and on showing it to him, he remembered it at once. “O aye,” he said, “I mind now. It’s pretty bad; ye’ll have to do better than that, chieldy,” and chuckled, chuckled. He is a strange old figure, to be sure. He cannot endure Pirbright Smith – “a mere æsthatic,” he said. “Pooh!” “Fishin’ and releegion – these are my aysthatics,” he wound up.

I thought this would interest you, so scribbled it down. I still hope to get more out of him about Hazlitt, though he utterly pooh-poohed the idea of writing H.’s life. “Ma life now,” he said, “there’s been queer things in it.” He is seventy-nine! but may well last to a hundred! – Yours ever,

1

From 1876 to 1879 – see p. 185.

2

The point was one on which Stevenson himself felt strongly. In a letter of instructions to his wife found among his posthumous papers he writes: “It is never worth while to inflict pain upon a snail for any literary purpose; and where events may appear to be favourable to me and contrary to others, I would rather be misunderstood than cause a pang to any one whom I have known, far less whom I have loved.” Whether an editor or biographer would be justified in carrying out this principle to the full may perhaps be doubted.

3

It was the father who, from dislike of a certain Edinburgh Lewis, changed the sound and spelling of his son’s second name to Louis (spoken always with the “s” sounded), and it was the son himself who about his eighteenth year dropped the use of his third name and initial altogether.

4

See a paper on R. L. Stevenson in Wick, by Margaret H. Roberton, in Magazine of Wick Literary Society, Christmas 1903.

5

Aikman’s Annals of the Persecution in Scotland.

6

Thomas Stevenson.

7

See Scott himself, in the preface to the Author’s edition.

8

i. e. on his book, The Reign of Law.

9

Compare the paragraph in Ordered South describing the state of mind of the invalid doubtful of recovery, and ending: “He will pray for Medea; when she comes, let her either rejuvenate or slay.”

10

Alluding to Heine’s Ritter von dem heiligen Geist.

11

Poste Restante

12

Thomas McCrie, D.D., author of the Life of John Knox, Life of Andrew Melville, etc.

13

L’Homme qui rit.

14

This letter, accepting the first contribution of R. L. S., has by an accident been preserved, and is so interesting, both for its occasion and for the light it throws on the writer’s care and kindness as an editor, that by permission of his representatives I here print it. ’93 stands, of course, for the novel Quatre-vingt Treize.

DEAR SIR, – I have read with great interest your article on Victor Hugo and also that which appeared in the last number of Macmillan. I shall be happy to accept Hugo, and if I have been rather long in answering you, it is only because I wished to give a second reading to the article, and have lately been very much interrupted.

I will now venture to make a few remarks, and by way of preface I must say that I do not criticise you because I take a low view of your powers: but for the very contrary reason. I think very highly of the promise shown in your writings and therefore think it worth while to write more fully than I can often to contributors. Nor do I set myself up as a judge – I am very sensible of my own failings in the critical department and merely submit what has occurred to me for your consideration.

I fully agree with the greatest portion of your opinions and think them very favourably expressed. The following points struck me as doubtful when I read and may perhaps be worth notice.

First, you seem to make the distinction between dramatic and novelistic art coincide with the distinction between romantic and 18th century. This strikes me as doubtful, as at least to require qualification. To my mind Hugo is far more dramatic in spirit than Fielding, though his method involves (as you show exceedingly well) a use of scenery and background which would hardly be admissible in drama. I am not able – I fairly confess – to define the dramatic element in Hugo or to say why I think it absent from Fielding and Richardson. Yet surely Hugo’s own dramas are a sufficient proof that a drama may be romantic as well as a novel: though, of course, the pressure of the great moral forces, etc., must be indicated by different means. The question is rather a curious one and too wide to discuss in a letter. I merely suggest what seems to me to be an obvious criticism on your argument.

Secondly, you speak very sensibly of the melodramatic and clap-trap element in Hugo. I confess that it seems to me to go deeper into his work than you would apparently allow. I think it, for example, very palpable even in Notre Dame, and I doubt the historical fidelity though my ignorance of mediæval history prevents me from putting my finger on many faults. The consequence is that in my opinion you are scarcely just to Scott or Fielding as compared with Hugo. Granting fully his amazing force and fire, he seems to me to be deficient often in that kind of healthy realism which is so admirable in Scott’s best work. For example, though my Scotch blood (for I can boast of some) may prejudice me I am profoundly convinced that Balfour of Burley would have knocked M. Lantenac into a cocked hat and stormed la Tourgue if it had been garrisoned by 19 x 19 French spouters of platitude in half the time that Gauvain and Cimourdain took about it. In fact, Balfour seems to me to be flesh and blood and Gauvain & Co. to be too often mere personified bombast: and therefore I fancy that Old Mortality will outlast ’93, though Notre Dame is far better than Quentin Durward, and Les Misérables, perhaps, better than any. This is, of course, fair matter of opinion.

Thirdly, I don’t think that you quite bring out your meaning in saying that ’93 is a decisive symptom. I confess that I don’t quite see in what sense it decides precisely what question. A sentence or so would clear this up.

Fourthly, as a matter of form, I think (but I am very doubtful) that it might possibly have been better not to go into each novel in succession; but to group the substance of your remarks a little differently. Of course I don’t want you to alter the form, I merely notice the point as suggesting a point in regard to any future article.

Many of your criticisms in detail strike me as very good. I was much pleased by your remarks on the storm in the Travailleurs. There was another very odd storm, as it struck me on a hasty reading in ’93, where there is mention of a beautiful summer evening and yet the wind is so high that you can’t hear the tocsin. You do justice also and more than justice to Hugo’s tenderness about children. That, I think, points to one great source of his power.

It would be curious to compare Hugo to a much smaller man, Chas. Reade, who is often a kind of provincial or Daily Telegraph Hugo. However that would hardly do in the Cornhill. I shall send your article to the press and hope to use it in July. Any alterations can be made when the article is in type, if any are desirable. I cannot promise definitely in advance; but at any rate it shall appear as soon as may be.

Excuse this long rigmarole and believe me to be, yours very truly,

I shall hope to hear from you again. If ever you come to town you will find me at 8 Southwell Gardens (close to the Gloucester Road Station of the Underground). I am generally at home, except from 3 to 5.

15

Portfolio.

16

Richmond Seeley.

17

The essay Notes on the Movements of Young Children.

18

I remember nothing of either the title or the tenor of this story.

19

Printed by Mr. Leslie Stephen in the Cornhill.

20

The letter breaks off here.

21

Thomas Basin or Bazin, the historian of Charles VIII. and Louis XI.

22

R. Glasgow Brown lay dying in the Riviera.

23

Engraisser, grow fat.

24

Pall Mall Gazette.

25

Here follows a long calculation of ways and means.

26

Addison’s.

27

In reference to the father’s estrangement at this time, Sir James Dewar, an old friend of the elder Stevenson, tells a story which would have touched R. L. S. infinitely had he heard it. Sir James (then Professor) Dewar and Mr. Thomas Stevenson were engaged together on some official scientific work near Duns in Berwickshire. “Spending the evening together,” writes Sir James, “at an hotel in Berwick-on-Tweed, the two, after a long day’s work, fell into close fireside talk over their toddy, and Mr. Stevenson opened his heart upon what was to him a very sore grievance. He spoke with anger and dismay of his son’s journey and intentions, his desertion of the old firm, and taking to the devious and barren paths of literature. The Professor took up the cudgels in the son’s defence, and at last, by way of ending the argument, half jocularly offered to wager that in ten years from that moment R. L. S. would be earning a bigger income than the old firm had ever commanded. To his surprise, the father became furious, and repulsed all attempts at reconciliation. But six and a half years later, Mr. Stevenson, broken in health, came to London to seek medical advice, and although so feeble that he had to be lifted out and into his cab, called at the Royal Institute to see the Professor. He said: “I am here to consult a doctor, but I couldna be in London without coming to shake your hand and confess that you were richt after a’ about Louis, and I was wrang.” The frail old frame shook with emotion, and he muttered, “I ken this is my last visit to the south.” A few weeks later he was dead.

28

In San Francisco.

29

“The whole front of the house was lighted, and there were pipes and fiddles, and as much dancing and deray within as used to be in Sir Robert’s house at Pace and Yule, and such high seasons.” – See Wandering Willie’s Tale in Redgauntlet, borrowed perhaps from Christ’s Kirk of the Green.

30

The Davoser Landwasser.

31

In architecture, a series of piles to defend the pier of a bridge.

32

The translator of Sophocles in Bohn’s Classics.

33

Anne Killigrew.

34

Gentleman’s library.

35

i. e. breathed in, inhaled: a rare but legitimate use of the word.

36

Parliament House.

37

Wordsworth’s Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle.

38

Mr. Hamerton had been an unsuccessful candidate for the Professorship of Fine Art at Edinburgh University.

39

The Chalet am Stein (or Chalet Buol) at Davos.

40

In the summer of 1870: see above, pp. 24-30, and the essay Memories of an Islet in Memories and Portraits.

41

From Landor’s Gebir: the line refers to Napoleon Bonaparte.

42

The Editor’s defence was in the following terms: “That which you condemn is really the best story now appearing in the paper, and the impress of an able writer is stamped on every paragraph of the Treasure Island. You will probably share this opinion when you have read a little more of it.”

43

I struggle as hard as I know how against both, but a judicious postcard would sometimes save me the expense of the second.