Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

by Robert Louis Stevenson

  Our difference as to pity I suspect was a logomachy of my making. No pitiful acts on his part would surprise me; I know he would be more pitiful in practice than most of the whiners; but the spirit of that practice would still seem to be unjustly described by the word pity.

  When I try to be measured, I find myself usually suspected of a sneaking unkindness for my subject; but you may be sure, sir, I would give up most other things to be so good a man as Thoreau. Even my knowledge of him leads me thus far.

  Should you find yourself able to push on to Braemar - it may even be on your way - believe me, your visit will be most welcome. The weather is cruel, but the place is, as I dare say you know, the very ‘wale’ of Scotland - bar Tummelside. - Yours very sincerely,

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

  Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL

  THE COTTAGE, CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR, AUGUST 1881.

  … WELL, I have been pretty mean, but I have not yet got over my cold so completely as to have recovered much energy. It is really extraordinary that I should have recovered as well as I have in this blighting weather; the wind pipes, the rain comes in squalls, great black clouds are continually overhead, and it is as cold as March. The country is delightful, more cannot be said; it is very beautiful, a perfect joy when we get a blink of sun to see it in. The Queen knows a thing or two, I perceive; she has picked out the finest habitable spot in Britain.

  I have done no work, and scarce written a letter for three weeks, but I think I should soon begin again; my cough is now very trifling. I eat well, and seem to have lost but I little flesh in the meanwhile. I was WONDERFULLY well before I caught this horrid cold. I never thought I should have been as well again; I really enjoyed life and work; and, of course, I now have a good hope that this may return.

  I suppose you heard of our ghost stories. They are somewhat delayed by my cold and a bad attack of laziness, embroidery, etc., under which Fanny had been some time prostrate. It is horrid that we can get no better weather. I did not get such good accounts of you as might have been. You must imitate me. I am now one of the most conscientious people at trying to get better you ever saw. I have a white hat, it is much admired; also a plaid, and a heavy stoop; so I take my walks abroad, witching the world.

  Last night I was beaten at chess, and am still grinding under the blow. - Ever your faithful friend,

  R. L. S.

  Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE

  THE COTTAGE (LATE THE LATE MISS M’GREGOR’S), CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR, AUGUST 10, 1881.

  MY DEAR GOSSE, - Come on the 24th, there is a dear fellow. Everybody else wants to come later, and it will be a godsend for, sir - Yours sincerely.

  You can stay as long as you behave decently, and are not sick of, sir - Your obedient, humble servant.

  We have family worship in the home of, sir - Yours respectfully.

  Braemar is a fine country, but nothing to (what you will also see) the maps of, sir - Yours in the Lord.

  A carriage and two spanking hacks draw up daily at the hour of two before the house of, sir - Yours truly.

  The rain rains and the winds do beat upon the cottage of the late

  Miss Macgregor and of, sir - Yours affectionately.

  It is to be trusted that the weather may improve ere you know the halls of, sir - Yours emphatically.

  All will be glad to welcome you, not excepting, sir - Yours ever.

  You will now have gathered the lamentable intellectual collapse of, sir - Yours indeed.

  And nothing remains for me but to sign myself, sir - Yours,

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

  N.B. - Each of these clauses has to be read with extreme glibness, coming down whack upon the ‘Sir.’ This is very important. The fine stylistic inspiration will else be lost.

  I commit the man who made, the man who sold, and the woman who supplied me with my present excruciating gilt nib to that place where the worm never dies.

  The reference to a deceased Highland lady (tending as it does to foster unavailing sorrow) may be with advantage omitted from the address, which would therefore run - The Cottage, Castleton of Braemar.

  Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE

  THE COTTAGE, CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR, AUGUST 19, 1881.

  IF you had an uncle who was a sea captain and went to the North Pole, you had better bring his outfit. VERBUM SAPIENTIBUS. I look towards you.

  R. L. STEVENSON.

  Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE

  [BRAEMAR], AUGUST 19, 1881.

  MY DEAR WEG, - I have by an extraordinary drollery of Fortune sent off to you by this day’s post a P. C. inviting you to appear in sealskin. But this had reference to the weather, and not at all, as you may have been led to fancy, to our rustic raiment of an evening.

  As to that question, I would deal, in so far as in me lies, fairly with all men. We are not dressy people by nature; but it sometimes occurs to us to entertain angels. In the country, I believe, even angels may be decently welcomed in tweed; I have faced many great personages, for my own part, in a tasteful suit of sea-cloth with an end of carpet pending from my gullet. Still, we do maybe twice a summer burst out in the direction of blacks . . . and yet we do it seldom. . . . In short, let your own heart decide, and the capacity of your portmanteau. If you came in camel’s hair, you would still, although conspicuous, be welcome.

  The sooner the better after Tuesday. - Yours ever,

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

  Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY

  BRAEMAR [AUGUST 25, 1881].

  MY DEAR HENLEY, - Of course I am a rogue. Why, Lord, it’s known, man; but you should remember I have had a horrid cold. Now, I’m better, I think; and see here - nobody, not you, nor Lang, nor the devil, will hurry me with our crawlers. They are coming. Four of them are as good as done, and the rest will come when ripe; but I am now on another lay for the moment, purely owing to Lloyd, this one; but I believe there’s more coin in it than in any amount of crawlers: now, see here, ‘The Sea Cook, or Treasure Island: A Story for Boys.’

  If this don’t fetch the kids, why, they have gone rotten since my day. Will you be surprised to learn that it is about Buccaneers, that it begins in the ADMIRAL BENBOW public-house on Devon coast, that it’s all about a map, and a treasure, and a mutiny, and a derelict ship, and a current, and a fine old Squire Trelawney (the real Tre, purged of literature and sin, to suit the infant mind), and a doctor, and another doctor, and a sea-cook with one leg, and a sea-song with the chorus ‘Yo-ho-ho-and a bottle of rum’ (at the third Ho you heave at the capstan bars), which is a real buccaneer’s song, only known to the crew of the late Captain Flint (died of rum at Key West, much regretted, friends will please accept this intimation); and lastly, would you be surprised to hear, in this connection, the name of ROUTLEDGE? That’s the kind of man I am, blast your eyes. Two chapters are written, and have been tried on Lloyd with great success; the trouble is to work it off without oaths. Buccaneers without oaths - bricks without straw. But youth and the fond parient have to be consulted.

  And now look here - this is next day - and three chapters are written and read. (Chapter I. The Old Sea-dog at the ADMIRAL BENBOW. Chapter II. Black Dog appears and disappears. Chapter III. The Black Spot) All now heard by Lloyd, F., and my father and mother, with high approval. It’s quite silly and horrid fun, and what I want is the BEST book about the Buccaneers that can be had - the latter B’s above all, Blackbeard and sich, and get Nutt or Bain to send it skimming by the fastest post. And now I know you’ll write to me, for ‘The Sea Cook’s’ sake.

  Your ‘Admiral Guinea’ is curiously near my line, but of course I’m fooling; and your Admiral sounds like a shublime gent. Stick to him like wax - he’ll do. My Trelawney is, as I indicate, several thousand sea-miles off the lie of the original or your Admiral Guinea; and besides, I have no more about him yet but one mention of his name, and I think it likely he may turn yet farther from the model in the course of handling. A chapter a day I mean to do; they are short; and perhaps in a month the ‘Sea Cook’ may to R
outledge go, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! My Trelawney has a strong dash of Landor, as I see him from here. No women in the story, Lloyd’s orders; and who so blithe to obey? It’s awful fun boys’ stories; you just indulge the pleasure of your heart, that’s all; no trouble, no strain. The only stiff thing is to get it ended - that I don’t see, but I look to a volcano. O sweet, O generous, O human toils. You would like my blind beggar in Chapter III. I believe; no writing, just drive along as the words come and the pen will scratch!

  R. L. S.

  Author of BOYS’ STORIES.

  Letter: TO DR. ALEXANDER JAPP

  BRAEMAR, 1881.

  MY DEAR DR. JAPP, - My father has gone, but I think may take it upon me to ask you to keep the book. Of all things you could do to endear yourself to me, you have done the best, for my father and you have taken a fancy to each other.

  I do not know how to thank you for all your kind trouble in the matter of ‘The Sea-Cook,’ but I am not unmindful. My health is still poorly, and I have added intercostal rheumatism - a new attraction - which sewed me up nearly double for two days, and still gives me a list to starboard - let us be ever nautical!

  I do not think with the start I have there will be any difficulty in letting Mr. Henderson go ahead whenever he likes. I will write my story up to its legitimate conclusion; and then we shall be in a position to judge whether a sequel would be desirable, and I would then myself know better about its practicability from the story- teller’s point of view. - Yours ever very sincerely,

  R. L. STEVENSON.

  Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY

  BRAEMAR, SEPTEMBER 1881.

  MY DEAR HENLEY, - Thanks for your last. The 100 pounds fell through, or dwindled at least into somewhere about 30 pounds. However, that I’ve taken as a mouthful, so you may look out for ‘The Sea Cook, or Treasure Island: A Tale of the Buccaneers,’ in YOUNG FOLKS. (The terms are 2 pounds, 10s. a page of 4500 words; that’s not noble, is it? But I have my copyright safe. I don’t get illustrated - a blessing; that’s the price I have to pay for my copyright.)

  I’ll make this boys’ book business pay; but I have to make a beginning. When I’m done with YOUNG FOLKS, I’ll try Routledge or some one. I feel pretty sure the ‘Sea Cook’ will do to reprint, and bring something decent at that.

  Japp is a good soul. The poet was very gay and pleasant. He told me much: he is simply the most active young man in England, and one of the most intelligent. ‘He shall o’er Europe, shall o’er earth extend.’ (13) He is now extending over adjacent parts of Scotland.

  I propose to follow up the ‘Sea Cook’ at proper intervals by ‘Jerry Abershaw: A Tale of Putney Heath’ (which or its site I must visit), ‘The Leading Light: A Tale of the Coast,’ ‘The Squaw Men: or the Wild West,’ and other instructive and entertaining work. ‘Jerry Abershaw’ should be good, eh? I love writing boys’ books. This first is only an experiment; wait till you see what I can make ’em with my hand in. I’ll be the Harrison Ainsworth of the future; and a chalk better by St. Christopher; or at least as good. You’ll see that even by the ‘Sea Cook.’

  Jerry Abershaw - O what a title! Jerry Abershaw: d-n it, sir, it’s a poem. The two most lovely words in English; and what a sentiment! Hark you, how the hoofs ring! Is this a blacksmith’s? No, it’s a wayside inn. Jerry Abershaw. ‘It was a clear, frosty evening, not 100 miles from Putney,’ etc. Jerry Abershaw. Jerry Abershaw. Jerry Abershaw. The ‘Sea Cook’ is now in its sixteenth chapter, and bids for well up in the thirties. Each three chapters is worth 2 pounds, 10s. So we’ve 12 pounds, 10s. already.

  Don’t read Marryat’s’ PIRATE anyhow; it is written in sand with a salt-spoon: arid, feeble, vain, tottering production. But then we’re not always all there. He was all somewhere else that trip. It’s DAMNABLE, Henley. I don’t go much on the ‘Sea Cook’; but, Lord, it’s a little fruitier than the PIRATE by Cap’n. Marryat.

  Since this was written ‘The Cook’ is in his nineteenth chapter.

  Yo-heave ho!

  R. L. S.

  Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON

  [CHALET AM STEIN, DAVOS, AUTUMN 1881.]

  MY DEAR FATHER, - It occurred to me last night in bed that I could write

  The Murder of Red Colin,

  A Story of the Forfeited Estates.

  This I have all that is necessary for, with the following exceptions:-

  TRIALS OF THE SONS OF ROY ROB WITH ANECDOTES: Edinburgh, 1818, and

  The second volume of BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE.

  You might also look in Arnot’s CRIMINAL TRIALS up in my room, and see what observations he has on the case (Trial of James Stewart in Appin for murder of Campbell of Glenure, 1752); if he has none, perhaps you could see - O yes, see if Burton has it in his two vols. of trial stories. I hope he hasn’t; but care not; do it over again anyway.

  The two named authorities I must see. With these, I could soon pull off this article; and it shall be my first for the electors. - Ever affectionate son,

  R. L. S.

  Letter: TO P. G. HAMERTON

  CHALET AM STEIN, DAVOS, AUTUMN .

  MY DEAR MR. HAMERTON, - My conscience has long been smiting me, till it became nearly chronic. My excuses, however, are many and not pleasant. Almost immediately after I last wrote to you, I had a hemorreage (I can’t spell it), was badly treated by a doctor in the country, and have been a long while picking up - still, in fact, have much to desire on that side. Next, as soon as I got here, my wife took ill; she is, I fear, seriously so; and this combination of two invalids very much depresses both.

  I have a volume of republished essays coming out with Chatto and Windus; I wish they would come, that my wife might have the reviews to divert her. Otherwise my news is NIL. I am up here in a little chalet, on the borders of a pinewood, overlooking a great part of the Davos Thal, a beautiful scene at night, with the moon upon the snowy mountains, and the lights warmly shining in the village. J. A. Symonds is next door to me, just at the foot of my Hill Difficulty (this you will please regard as the House Beautiful), and his society is my great stand-by.

  Did you see I had joined the band of the rejected? ‘Hardly one of us,’ said my CONFRERES at the bar.

  I was blamed by a common friend for asking you to give me a testimonial; in the circumstances he thought it was indelicate. Lest, by some calamity, you should ever have felt the same way, I must say in two words how the matter appeared to me. That silly story of the election altered in no tittle the value of your testimony: so much for that. On the other hand, it led me to take quite a particular pleasure in asking you to give it; and so much for the other. I trust, even if you cannot share it, you will understand my view.

  I am in treaty with Bentley for a life of Hazlitt; I hope it will not fall through, as I love the subject, and appear to have found a publisher who loves it also. That, I think, makes things more pleasant. You know I am a fervent Hazlittite; I mean regarding him as THE English writer who has had the scantiest justice. Besides which, I am anxious to write biography; really, if I understand myself in quest of profit, I think it must be good to live with another man from birth to death. You have tried it, and know.

  How has the cruising gone? Pray remember me to Mrs. Hamerton and your son, and believe me, yours very sincerely,

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

  Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER

  [CHALET AM STEIN], DAVOS, DECEMBER 5, 1881.

  MY DEAR CHARLES, - We have been in miserable case here; my wife worse and worse; and now sent away with Lloyd for sick nurse, I not being allowed to go down. I do not know what is to become of us; and you may imagine how rotten I have been feeling, and feel now, alone with my weasel-dog and my German maid, on the top of a hill here, heavy mist and thin snow all about me, and the devil to pay in general. I don’t care so much for solitude as I used to; results, I suppose, of marriage.

  Pray write me something cheery. A little Edinburgh gossip, in Heaven’s name. Ah! what would I not give to steal this evening with you through the big, echoin
g, college archway, and away south under the street lamps, and away to dear Brash’s, now defunct! But the old time is dead also, never, never to revive. It was a sad time too, but so gay and so hopeful, and we had such sport with all our low spirits and all our distresses, that it looks like a kind of lamplit fairyland behind me. O for ten Edinburgh minutes - sixpence between us, and the ever-glorious Lothian Road, or dear mysterious Leith Walk! But here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling; here in this strange place, whose very strangeness would have been heaven to him then; and aspires, yes, C. B., with tears, after the past. See what comes of being left alone. Do you remember Brash? the sheet of glass that we followed along George Street? Granton? the blight at Bonny mainhead? the compass near the sign of the TWINKLING EYE? the night I lay on the pavement in misery?

  I swear it by the eternal sky

  Johnson - nor Thomson - ne’er shall die!

  Yet I fancy they are dead too; dead like Brash.

  R. L. S.

  Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

  CHALET BUOL, DAVOS-PLATZ, DECEMBER 26, 1881.

  MY DEAR MOTHER, - Yesterday, Sunday and Christmas, we finished this eventful journey by a drive in an OPEN sleigh - none others were to be had - seven hours on end through whole forests of Christmas trees. The cold was beyond belief. I have often suffered less at a dentist’s. It was a clear, sunny day, but the sun even at noon falls, at this season, only here and there into the Prattigau. I kept up as long as I could in an imitation of a street singer:-

  Away, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses, etc.

  At last Lloyd remarked, a blue mouth speaking from a corpse- coloured face, ‘You seem to be the only one with any courage left?’ And, do you know, with that word my courage disappeared, and I made the rest of the stage in the same dumb wretchedness as the others. My only terror was lest Fanny should ask for brandy, or laudanum, or something. So awful was the idea of putting my hands out, that I half thought I would refuse.

  Well, none of us are a penny the worse, Lloyd’s cold better; I, with a twinge of the rheumatic; and Fanny better than her ordinary.