Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (913 page)

Wednesday.
— I stayed on Duddingston to-day till after nightfall. The little booths that hucksters set up round the edge were marked each one by its little lamp. There were some fires too; and the light, and the shadows of the people who stood round them to warm themselves, made a strange pattern all round on the snow-covered ice. A few people with torches began to travel up and down the ice, a lit circle travelling along with them over the snow. A gigantic moon rose, meanwhile, over the trees and the kirk on the promontory among perturbed and vacillating clouds.

The walk home was very solemn and strange. Once, through a broken gorge, we had a glimpse of a little space of mackerel sky, moon-litten, on the other side of the hill; the broken ridges standing grey and spectral between; and the hilltop over all, snow-white, and strangely magnified in size.

This must go to you to-morrow, so that you may read it on Christmas Day for company. I hope it may be good company to you.

Thursday.
— Outside, it snows thick and steadily. The gardens before our house are now a wonderful fairy forest. And O, this whiteness of things, how I love it, how it sends the blood about my body! Maurice de Guérin hated snow; what a fool he must have been! Somebody tried to put me out of conceit with it by saying that people were lost in it. As if people don’t get lost in love, too, and die of devotion to art; as if everything worth were not an occasion to some people’s end.

What a wintry letter this is! Only I think it is winter seen from the inside of a warm greatcoat. And there is, at least, a warm heart about it somewhere. Do you know, what they say in Xmas stories is true. I think one loves their friends more dearly at this season. — Ever your faithful friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwell

The Portfolio article here mentioned is
An Autumn Effect
(see
Essays of Travel
). The Italian story so delightedly begun was by and by condemned and destroyed like all the others of this time.

[
Edinburgh, January 1875
],
Monday
.

Have come from a concert. Sinico sang,
tant bien que mal
, “Ah perfido spergiuro!”; and then we had the Eroica symphony (No. 3). I can, and need, say no more; I am rapt out of earth by it; Beethoven is certainly the greatest man the world has yet produced. I wonder, is there anything so superb — I can find no word for it more specific than superb — all I know is that all my knowledge is transcended. I finished to-day and sent off (and a mighty mean detail it is, to set down after Beethoven’s grand passion) my Portfolio article about Buckinghamshire. In its own way I believe it to be a good thing; and I hope you will find something in it to like; it touches, in a dry enough manner, upon most things under heaven, and if you like me, I think you ought to like this intellectual — no, I withdraw the word — this artistic dog of mine. Thaw — thaw — thaw, up here; and farewell skating, and farewell the clear dry air and the wide, bright, white snow-surface, and all that was so pleasant in the past.

Wednesday.
— Yesterday I wasn’t well and to-night I have been ever so busy. There came a note from the Academy, sent by John H. Ingram, the editor of the edition of Poe’s works I have been reviewing, challenging me to find any more faults. I have found nearly sixty; so I may be happy; but that makes me none the less sleepy; so I must go to bed.

Friday.
— I am awfully out of the humour to write; I am very inert although quite happy; I am informed by those who are more expert that I am bilious.
Bien
; let it be so; I am still content; and though I can do no original work, I get forward making notes for my Knox at a good trot.

Saturday.
— I am so happy. I am no longer here in Edinburgh. I have been all yesterday evening and this forenoon in Italy, four hundred years ago, with one Sannazzaro, a sculptor, painter, poet, etc., and one Ippolita, a beautiful Duchess. O I like it badly! I wish you could hear it at once; or rather I wish you could see it immediately in beautiful type on such a page as it ought to be, in my first little volume of stories. What a change this is from collecting dull notes for
John Knox
, as I have been all the early part of the week — the difference between life and death. — I am quite well again and in such happy spirits, as who would not be, having spent so much of his time at that convent on the hills with these sweet people.
Vous verrez
, and if you don’t like this story — well, I give it up if you don’t like it. Not but what there’s a long way to travel yet; I am no farther than the threshold; I have only set the men, and the game has still to be played, and a lot of dim notions must become definite and shapely, and a deal be clear to me that is anything but clear as yet. The story shall be called, I think,
When the Devil was well
, in allusion to the old proverb.

Good-bye.

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh
[
January 1875
].

MY DEAR COLVIN, — I have worked too hard; I have given myself one day of rest, and that was not enough; so I am giving myself another. I shall go to bed again likewise so soon as this is done, and slumber most potently.

9 P.M. — Slept all afternoon like a lamb.

About my coming south, I think the still small unanswerable voice of coins will make it impossible until the session is over (end of March); but for all that, I think I shall hold out jolly. I do not want you to come and bother yourself; indeed, it is still not quite certain 168 whether my father will be quite fit for you, although I have now no fear of that really. Now don’t take up this wrongly; I wish you could come; and I do not know anything that would make me happier, but I see that it is wrong to expect it, and so I resign myself: some time after. I offered Appleton a series of papers on the modern French school — the Parnassiens, I think they call them — de Banville, Coppée, Soulary, and Sully Prudhomme. But he has not deigned to answer my letter.

I shall have another Portfolio paper so soon as I am done with this story, that has played me out; the story is to be called
When the Devil was well
: scene, Italy, Renaissance; colour, purely imaginary of course, my own unregenerate idea of what Italy then was. O, when shall I find the story of my dreams, that shall never halt nor wander nor step aside, but go ever before its face, and ever swifter and louder, until the pit receives it, roaring? The Portfolio paper will be about Scotland and England. — Ever yours,

R. L. Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwell

[
Edinburgh, January 1875.
]

I wish I could write better letters to you. Mine must be very dull. I must try to give you news. Well, I was at the annual dinner of my old Academy schoolfellows last night. We sat down ten, out of seventy-two! The others are scattered all over the places of the earth, some in San Francisco, some in New Zealand, some in India, one in the backwoods — it gave one a wide look over the world to hear them talk so. I read them some verses. It is great fun; I always read verses, and in the vinous enthusiasm of the moment they always propose to have them printed;
Ce qui n’arrive jamais du reste
: in the morning, they are more calm.

Sunday.
— It occurs to me that one reason why there is 169 no news in my letters is because there is so little in my life. I always tell you of my concerts: I was at another yesterday afternoon: a recital of Hallé and Norman Neruda. I went in the evening to the pantomime with the Mackintoshes — cousins of mine. Their little boy, aged four, was there for the first time. To see him with his eyes fixed and open like saucers, and never varying his expression save in so far as he might sometimes open his mouth a little wider, was worth the money. He laughed only once — when the giant’s dwarf fed his master as though he were a child. Coming home, he was much interested as to who made the fairies, and wanted to know if they were like
berries
. I should like to know how much this question was due to the idea of their coming up from under the stage, and how much to a vague idea of rhyme. When he was told that they were not like berries, he then asked if they had not been flowers before they were fairies. It was a good deal in the vein of Herbert Spencer’s primitive man all this.

I am pretty well but have not got back to work much since Tuesday. I work far too hard at the story; but I wish I had finished it before I stopped as I feel somewhat out of the swing now. — Ever your faithful

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Sidney Colvin

Another of the literary projects which came to naught, no one of the stories mentioned having turned out according to Stevenson’s dream and desire at its first conception, or even having been preserved for use afterwards as the foundation of riper work. “Clytie” is of course the famous Roman bust from the Townley collection in the British Museum.

[
Edinburgh, January 1875.
]

MY DEAR COLVIN, — Thanks for your letter, I too am in such a state of business that I know not when to find the time to write. Look here — Seeley does not seem to me to have put that paper of mine in this month; so I 170 remain unable to pay you; which is a sad pity and must be forgiven me.

What am I doing? Well I wrote my second
John Knox
, which is not a bad piece of work for me; begun and finished ready for press in nine days. Then I have since written a story called
King Matthias’s Hunting Horn
, and I am engaged in finishing another called
The Two Falconers of Cairnstane
. I find my stories affect me rather more perhaps than is wholesome. I have only been two hours at work to-day, and yet I have been crying and am shaking badly, as you can see in my handwriting, and my back is a bit bad. They give me pleasure though, quite worth all results. However I shall work no more to-day.

I am to get £1000 when I pass Advocate, it seems; which is good.

O I say, will you kindly tell me all about the bust of Clytie.

Then I had the wisdom to stop and look over Japanese picture books until lunch time.

Well, tell me all about Clytie, how old is it, who did it, what’s it about, etc. Send it on a sheet that I can forward without indiscretion to another, as I desire the information for a friend whom I wish to please.

Now, look here. When I have twelve stories ready — these twelve —

 — when I have these twelve ready, should I not do better to try to get a publisher for them, call them
A Book of Stories
and put a good dedicatory letter at the fore end of them. I should get less coin than by going into magazines perhaps; but I should also get more notice, should I not? and so, do better for myself in the long run. Now, should I not? Besides a book with boards is a book with boards, even if it bain’t a very fat one and has no references to Ammianus Marcellinus and German critics at the foot of the pages. On all this, I shall want your serious advice. I am sure I shall stand or fall by the stories; and you’ll think so too, when you see those poor excrescences the two John Knox and Women games. However, judge for yourself and be prudent on my behalf, like a good soul.

Yes, I’ll come to Cambridge then or thereabout, if God doesn’t put a real tangible spoke in my wheel.

My terms with my parents are admirable; we are a very united family.

Good-bye,
mon cher, je ne puis plus écrire
. I have not quite got over a damned affecting part in my story this morning. O cussed stories, they will never affect any one but me I fear. — Ever yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Mrs. Sitwell

In the following is related Stevenson’s first introduction to Mr. W. E. Henley. The acquaintance thus formed ripened quickly, as is well known, into a close and stimulating friendship. Of the story called
A Country Dance
no trace remains.

Edinburgh, Tuesday
[
February 1875
].

I got your nice long gossiping letter to-day — I mean by that that there was more news in it than usual — and 172 so, of course, I am pretty jolly. I am in the house, however, with such a beastly cold in the head. Our east winds begin already to be very cold.

O, I have such a longing for children of my own; and yet I do not think I could bear it if I had one. I fancy I must feel more like a woman than like a man about that. I sometimes hate the children I see on the street — you know what I mean by hate — wish they were somewhere else, and not there to mock me; and sometimes, again, I don’t know how to go by them for the love of them, especially the very wee ones.

Thursday.
— I have been still in the house since I wrote, and I
have
worked. I finished the Italian story; not well, but as well as I can just now; I must go all over it again, some time soon, when I feel in the humour to better and perfect it. And now I have taken up an old story, begun years ago; and I have now re-written all I had written of it then, and mean to finish it. What I have lost and gained is odd. As far as regards simple writing, of course, I am in another world now; but in some things, though more clumsy, I seem to have been freer and more plucky: this is a lesson I have taken to heart. I have got a jolly new name for my old story. I am going to call it
A Country Dance
; the two heroes keep changing places, you know; and the chapter where the most of this changing goes on is to be called “Up the middle, down the middle.” It will be in six or (perhaps) seven chapters. I have never worked harder in my life than these last four days. If I can only keep it up.