EDIFYING LETTERS OF THE RUTHERFORD FAMILY
Letter I
WILLIAM RUTHERFORD TO PAUL SOMERSET
Oct. — th I. a m.
My dear Paul, If I only knew where you were, or when you would be anywhere in particular, I could find it in my heart to write you a real, good downright letter in the exhaustive sense and put you in possession of all my last thoughts and adventures. But there is something very chilling in correspondence to a poste restante; to send an arrow to the moon is a hopeless endeavour; but to empty one’s spiritual quiver at a moving object is a thing I never will consent to try. The wanderer may plump home upon me the day after I have posted my letter; or he may find it convenient to decamp, drop his address for the moment and make an anonymous dive among the millions of Europe; and there would be all my red hot words left to cool in a dead letter office.
Indeed, letter writing is a terrible venture of a man’s soul; and the farther the destination the worse the business is. For you may have changed your mind, or seen reason to feel quite coldly towards your correspondent, long before your production finds its way into his hands. And think how foolish people would look if all their old letters were returned upon them once a year. For my part I think I would rather have my conversation retailed to me; for that comes more freshly; and we scarcely give ourselves time to get completely silly in a talk. But once it comes to pen and ink, and an imperious need for sympathy spurring you up, and a stress of fine language and fine notions, and a late hour of the night with nothing but clocks ticking and stars twinkling all about you — and how you unbutton all your morbid fancies, and give vent to all your silly aspirations and grow young and florid and vehement and gloriously unashamed.
And to think of all this stuff missing its aim, and coming back upon you, like a boomerang, a month afterwards when you are in the cold fit of life! It is like overhearing yourself in the rhapsodies. How very anxious people are to communicate their feelings that they run such risks of mortification! But it is better to do anything than hold your tongue; for I find silence eat into my vitals.
And so, Paul, I care nothing for my part, whether this ever find you, or who reads it. Whoever he is, let me tell him by way of introduction, that I am no fool for my age; and that I write this letter under the pressure of great thoughts. Yes, I’ll give that in capitals. Great Thoughts. I do not suppose them to be peculiar to me. I am too old for that. The thoughts that come to persons are of small account; and high ideas fill whole generations and whole races as they struggle towards some adequate expression. I shall never be a great man, although I may have thought so in the past like other boys; I have learned my own measure. I am only a cipher in the sum, a soldier in the vast army of mankind; I am of no account but that I feel the great march music tingling in my blood, and gleefully follow the drums. Is not every woman, for as dull and ugly as she may be in herself, an absorbing piece of nature while she lies in childbed? And so I would say of myself — to you, Paul, if this reach your hands — to you, O fat clerk in the dead letter office, if my cry shall come to no more sympathetic bosom — that I, who am quite a common young man, with no transcendencies to plume myself upon, am something almost sublime for the moment because I am at the height of my position, a young man such as young men ought to be, vehemently scornful of what is past, vehemently aspiring after what is still before.
I am all alone here in the dark; no one is by to encourage or direct me; they all snore and grovel around me on their rubbish heaps, gorged with sawdust and dead verbiage. But I have a light in my heart. I hate falsehood by nature; and I will follow and attain the truth.
Just then a cock crew in the stable lane. I threw open my window, and found the night making ready for the morning; and the whole city dead asleep but the policemen. What a figure of how things are in the spiritual order also! Superstitions outlast their utility like street lamps burning on into the daylight. Nobody is afoot but the Preventive Service — call them the clergy if you like. And still the light grows and grows, and the cocks send up their signals, only listened to by wakeful youth.
Looking back on what I have written, I came upon a word that staggered me. I said I hated falsehood by nature. Indeed, and so I do. I will have the heart out of the truth; I will not go on any longer in this vain show; I feel as if the wisdom I have been taught is no more than shadows and a jargon; and I will be out of it all and see things face to face, or no longer carry about with me this dishonourable life. And yet, my dear Paul, I am a liar. This is an ugly quandary for a man to be in. I profess such high notions, do I? and meanwhile my practice is all in the mud. A liar, that is what I am — an habitual and conscious liar.
Why, no later ago than this evening, I was at it; and that on such a small occasion as makes me truly ashamed to confess. For it was about nothing more serious than our old chronic irritation of late hours. I do not think we are ever likely to get done with this quarrel, at least as long as the clocks go so fast whenever I am out of the house, or so long as I am so anxious to avoid them and they keep so resolute to sit up for me. For really I fancy they must do it on purpose. I may come in when I please, they are up and broad awake; I apply my stealthy pass key in the small hours and behold the dining room is lighted up like day, and there is a domestic group about the fireplace, waiting in rosy respectability for the prodigal. This is a sort of anti-climax that my soul cannot abide. I may have been out all night climbing the heavens of invention, drinking deep, thinking high; I go home, with my heart stirred to all its depths and my brain sparkling like wine and starlight; I open a door, and the whole of this gaudy and lighthearted life must pass away in a moment, and give place to a few words of course and a pair of formal kisses. The sky-raker must give some account of his evening, if you please; and the spirit which has just been reconstructing the universe and debating the attributes of God, must bring down its proud stomach, and screw up its somewhat hazy eyes, to read a chapter from the authorised version of the Holy Bible! To be thus knocked off the apex of apotheosis, and sent to bed with a renewed sense of all one’s troubles and sober after all, is, as Butler would say, a sheer waste of drink.
Butler, by the bye, is the very man I was with this evening. I met him at the station, where we had a true starry night of intellect and sherry. We pulled about the infinites at a great rate, I can promise you; and undermined Society from end to end, until it seemed as if we had only to lift up our voices for the whole pasteboard Jericho to crash together and tumble in the dust. We kept going out and in between the platform and the bar, the one with its cool and solemn spaces, and here and there a bit of a bustle and a night train preparing to flame forth on its adventurous journey — the other with all its lights and coloured bottles and redheaded barmaids. Both Butler and I delight greatly in these contrasts, which keep a man conscious of either pole of his being; like a town and a country life; or love and sea bathing; or Shakespeare and Voltaire. And we pleased ourselves besides with elaborate pieces of childishness; making believe that we were going to start with all the trains, and looking forward to the pleasant waking in a new place with new air to breathe and a new accent in people’s speech; making believe, by the slender aid of a marble table, that this refreshment bar was a Parisian Cafe, and we were free people with our pockets full of gold; making believe, in short, in all sorts of ways, that we had slipped the leash, and were gotten clean away out of our old life and out into the world as young men ought to be, among their rivals and their aspirations. In Paris we ordered many choice little dinners, went to many different plays at different theatres and laid out some very gay evenings in imagination; and I declare the whole thing so grew upon my mind that I went home quite flushed with the idea that I was indeed free, and could come and go at my own will. I need not tell you which would be my first movement, Paul Somerset; for go I emphatically should; I am like a bird in a cage, like a prisoner in his cell; just let me see a crevice, and I will show my heels to this dismal city in a trice, and land where the sun shines and neig
hbours mind their own business. Perhaps there is no such place, no such place, all the wide world over; and nothing but rain and carping and sour looks, and the damned wearisome ten commandments, and their ten million corollaries, dinned in people’s ears to perpetuity. There’s always the grave, Paul; the grave where the sabbath bells are silent; the grave, where the elders cease from troubling and the wicked are at rest.
As I was saying, I went home in a fine tip-toe transcendental frame of mind, all golden credulity, golden outlooks on the future, and the blue sky of liberty overhead. And when I had deftly turned the passkey, and thought to slip off to bed and trail all these clouds of glory direct into my dreams, what should I find but the house all lit up from top to bottom, and the sound of knives and forks in the dining room. I hate late hours on the part of my superiors! — Gregory it seems had dropped in on some business, and they had given him a late supper.
I buttoned myself together as best I could and took a place at table. My father looked a little lowering, my mother a bit anxious; the uncalled for Gregory smiled and ate, unconscious of the threatening weather.
‘You are late,’ said my father. ‘Where have you been?’
I gave the first excuse that came into my head, and told him I had been at the Theatre to hear the Grande Duchesse. I declare when they ask me these pistolling questions, I would rather tell them anything but the truth; I will not tell the truth upon compulsion; and I hate to tell the truth about my own life anyway, unless it come spontaneously, and I am on the openest terms with the person to whom I tell it; the least suspicion of strain or misconstruction, the least shade of authority, and my mouth is closed. But on this occasion I had to pay for my refinements pretty dear. For no sooner had I said I had been at the theatre, than out came Gregory with a smile.
‘Were you?’ says he. ‘Why, so was I!’
‘Mr Gregory has been here this half hour,’ said my mother. ‘How come you to be so much behind him?’
‘I suppose he didn’t sit it out,’ returned I.
‘Ah, but I did though,’ cries Gregory— ‘to the bitter end.’
My father looked at me more heavily than ever, and his resemblance to my grandfather’s bust became appalling. I murmured something about seeing a fellow home. I think my mother must have been struck with the discrepancy of my two answers; and with the natural leniency of women towards falsehood, cut in at once to protect me from further badgering in that direction. For she demanded in quite an animated manner, who it was that I had seen home. She really could not have cared greatly for an answer; but it cost me dear to give her one. I first thought of naming Butler, from the wish of a person in my circumstances to get some little patch of truth into his inventions; but I remembered how often he meets my father in the morning and fearing some clashing of evidence, in a bold spirit, I created a personage for my use.
‘A fellow McDowel,’ said I, ‘a medical student.’ And I was conscious of blushing as I said it.
I hoped I was through the wood then; but my fate was not yet weary; the accursed Gregory had yet another arrow in his quiver. He asked me in what part of the house I had been; and when I risked the stalls, ‘So was I!’ cried he. ‘How odd I didn’t see you!’
And then you can imagine how I bogged myself in all sorts of difficulties about the right hand of the actors and the right hand of the audience, about the number of benches counted from the front and the number of benches counted from the back; and with what sort of hang dog looks I finally issued from the discussion. They must, I say they must have observed my tribulation. My face was the colour of beet-root and my shirt was all damp in the inside; and I had to feign sleep and slink off to my own room, to put a period to my confusion. Will they remark upon it in the morning, I wonder? I wish I was dead, Paul Somerset. A man of my high-looking aspirations caught wriggling in such pitiful imbroglios! A person who speaks such big words across the dinner-table, taken in petty falsehood over supper! Think of it, for God’s sake, and tell me what it means.
After such humiliations, I feel inclined to give it all up and drink myself comfortably to death like my betters. What is the good of making an elaborate toilette when one has a humpback? Humpbacked you must remain. Yes, but the humpback may have a true heart about him: the liar may go to the slake; the coward may renew the hearts of heroes with brave words. There is nothing quite useless in the world except stupidity; and even that may dance profitably enough upon the treadmill. I who am daily making allowances for others, may surely treat myself to a little of my own toleration and take the benefit of my own theories, may I not? or there’s no justice in life, and no good theorising.
Goodbye, Paul. Write soon, and I’ll answer. I am full of matter like a champagne bottle; and like all persons lying in a state of siege, I have plenty of incidents from day to day to chronicle. Do you wish the history? The Siege of Mansoul, by a beleaguered Resident, with an appendix on the intestine broils and revolutions. The world is all a war to me, where I lose battles and lose honour daily. I am sick and I wish you were home. ever yours, W. Rutherford
Letter II
MR RUTHERFORD TO PROFESSOR DAUBENY FISHER IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN
My dear Daubeny, I am sure you will be very sorry to hear of poor Nathaniel’s illness. There is now little hope of his recovery according to the doctors; and I wish I could report better of his spiritual health, which seems to be in as doubtful a state as the other. He has spat a great deal of blood lately, poor fellow. When I went to see him the other day, he seemed quite conscious that he was nearing the end, but I could get no satisfaction when I spoke to him. To look about his rooms, with his foils hanging up, and his prints (more or less indecent according to me) upon the walls and his tobacco pipes over the chimney, really cut me to the heart. The notions of death and of a man’s last smoke have got inextricably connected in my mind; and when I thought that poor Nathaniel had very likely taken his last whiff, I found it almost a harder task than I was able for, to speak to him of indifferent subjects and try to keep his spirits up. Of serious matters, he would hear nothing; at least, he would hear nothing from me; but that, of course, does not mean so much; for you know my miserable weakness on such occasions, and how much I hate even the least shadow of cant.
And yet surely in the presence of the King of Terrors, such nonsensical feelings (for nonsensical they are) ought to be laid aside. The time will come for all of us to get into bed for the last time; and I feel sure we shall be most obliged at such a time to those of our friends who are most plain-spoken. Life will cut a very poor figure; and Eternity look perhaps as ugly as it must always be momentous.
After I had seen Nathaniel I walked round the Calton Hill with the dogs, in a very dispirited temper. Of course, I was reminded at every turn of our old doings as high school boys; but as often as I was inclined to smile, the thought of that poor fellow who has smoked his last pipe, came into my head and spoiled the joke. We are neither of us young men, my dear Daubeny; the body is beginning to wear threadbare; and soon the hearse will be at the door, plumes and all! We have all had our Saturday Holidays; but to think of that poor Nathaniel and his Saturday holidays really comes between me and my work. I could not help moralising rather bitterly over the body, which is such a bad companion through so much of life, and makes such an uncomfortable bedfellow as death approaches. I pray God with all my heart for all people who are beginning to go down; it is a sad trial, without Christ’s grace. Think, Daubeny, of seeing the gas lit for the last time, some gurly, gousty winter afternoon. I have heard people boasting of courage for such circumstances, but I doubt if anybody’s blood would not run cold, even of the most faithful Christians.
William has several classes at the University this session; but I am more than doubtful whether he gives his mind to the business in hand. I am afraid he has an excursive and discursive mind, tending to nothing in particular. I see no signs of steady work, although much desultory reading. You are brought so much into contact with young men by your universi
ty position, that I often envy your experience and sometimes feel inclined to consult it. It is a terrible responsibility before God and one’s own heart, to have the upbringing of an only child; and Nathaniel’s illness, which I am afraid has cast a gloom over all my letter, has made me consider this more seriously than I think I have ever done before. I thought of my brother, and I was indeed harassed by the thought. How would that truly Christian man have been cast down, to see his son go towards death with a thoroughly pagan carelessness and (if I may say so) equally without hope or fear? A father must surely rank very low and feel with great bitterness, if he finds himself in the Kingdom of Heaven and all his offspring elsewhere. But I have great hopes of William. He keeps irregular hours, but we have all been young, and we know that many things come right by the mere course of time. And I believe he is the son of my own heart in many particulars; above all in one; that he would never tell me what was false. When he was quite a child, I had several alarms about him on this head; but he has quite outgrown the fault; and I can rely entirely on his lightest expression. Moreover, as I have always laid myself out to be his friend rather than his father (perhaps wrongly), I feel sure there is no unnatural strain in our relations, and that he can speak to me with perfect ease and freedom. Still, the turn of youth is a ticklish time. So perhaps is the turn of age, Daubeny; and perhaps we all require to give and take a little.
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson Page 385
