Chapter XIII: Introduction (12)

MY DEAR STODDARD,--I am guilty in thy sight and the sight of God. However, I swore a great oath that you should see some of my manuscript at last; and though I have long delayed to keep it, yet it was to be. You re-read your story and were disgusted; that is the cold fit following the hot. I don't say you did wrong to be disgusted, yet I am sure you did wrong to be disgusted altogether. There was, you may depend upon it, some reason for your previous vanity, as well as your present mortification. I shall hear you, years from now, timidly begin to retrim your feathers for a little self-laudation, and trot out this misdespised novelette as not the worst of your performances. I read the album extracts with sincere interest; but I regret that you spared to give the paper more development; and I conceive that you might do a great deal worse than expand each of its paragraphs into an essay or sketch, the excuse being in each case your personal intercourse; the bulk, when that would not be sufficient, to be made up from their own works and stories. Three at least--Menken, Yelverton, and Keeler--could not fail of a vivid human interest. Let me press upon you this plan; should any document be wanted from Europe, let me offer my services to procure it. I am persuaded that there is stuff in the idea.

Are you coming over again to see me some day soon? I keep returning, and now hand over fist, from the realms of Hades; I saw that gentleman between the eyes, and fear him less after each visit. Only Charon, and his rough boatmanship, I somewhat fear.

I have a desire to write some verses for your album; so, if you will give me the entry among your gods, goddesses, and godlets, there will be nothing wanting but the Muse. I think of the verses like Mark Twain; sometimes I wish fulsomely to belaud you; sometimes to insult your city and fellow-citizens; sometimes to sit down quietly, with the slender reed, and troll a few staves of Panic ecstasy--but fy! fy! as my ancestors observed, the last is too easy for a man of my feet and inches.

At least, Stoddard, you now see that, although so costive, when I once begin I am a copious letter-writer. I thank you, and _au revoir_.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

[_San Francisco, May 1880._]

MY DEAR COLVIN,--It is a long while since I have heard from you; nearly a month, I believe; and I begin to grow very uneasy. At first I was tempted to suppose that I had been myself to blame in some way; but now I have grown to fear lest some sickness or trouble among those whom you love may not be the impediment. I believe I shall soon hear; so I wait as best I can. I am, beyond a doubt, greatly stronger, and yet still useless for any work, and, I may say, for any pleasure. My affairs and the bad weather still keep me here unmarried; but not, I earnestly hope, for long. Whenever I get into the mountain, I trust I shall rapidly pick up. Until I get away from these sea fogs and my imprisonment in the house, I do not hope to do much more than keep from active harm. My doctor took a desponding fit about me, and scared Fanny into blue fits; but I have talked her over again. It is the change I want, and the blessed sun, and a gentle air in which I can sit out and see the trees and running water: these mere defensive hygienics cannot advance one, though they may prevent evil. I do nothing now, but try to possess my soul in peace, and continue to possess my body on any terms.

_Calistoga, Napa County, California._--All which is a fortnight old and not much to the point nowadays. Here we are, Fanny and I, and a certain hound, in a lovely valley under Mount Saint Helena, looking around, or rather wondering when we shall begin to look around, for a house of our own. I have received the first sheets of the _Amateur Emigrant_; not yet the second bunch, as announced. It is a pretty heavy, emphatic piece of pedantry; but I don't care; the public, I verily believe, will like it. I have excised all you proposed and more on my own movement. But I have not yet been able to rewrite the two special pieces which, as you said, so badly wanted it; it is hard work to rewrite passages in proof; and the easiest work is still hard to me. But I am certainly recovering fast; a married and convalescent being.

Received James's _Hawthorne_, on which I meditate a blast, Miss Bird, Dixon's _Penn_, a _wrong_ Cornhill (like my luck) and _Coquelin_: for all which, and especially the last, I tender my best thanks. I have opened only James; it is very clever, very well written, and out of sight the most inside-out thing in the world; I have dug up the hatchet; a scalp shall flutter at my belt ere long. I think my new book should be good; it will contain our adventures for the summer, so far as these are worth narrating; and I have already a few pages of diary which should make up bright. I am going to repeat my old experiment, after buckling-to a while to write more correctly, lie down and have a wallow. Whether I shall get any of my novels done this summer I do not know; I wish to finish the _Vendetta_ first, for it really could not come after _Prince Otto_. Lewis Campbell has made some noble work in that Agamemnon; it surprised me. We hope to get a house at Silverado, a deserted mining-camp eight miles up the mountain, now solely inhabited by a mighty hunter answering to the name of Rufe Hansome, who slew last year a hundred and fifty deer. This is the motto I propose for the new volume: "_Vixerunt nonnulli in agris, delectati re sua familiari. His idem propositum fuit quod regibus, ut ne qua re egerent, ne cui parerent, libertate uterentur; cujus proprium est sic vivere ut velis._" I always have a terror lest the wish should have been father to the translation, when I come to quote; but that seems too plain sailing. I should put _regibus_ in capitals for the pleasantry's sake. We are in the Coast range, that being so much cheaper to reach; the family, I hope, will soon follow. Love to all.--Ever yours,

R. L. S.

FOOTNOTES:

[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.

VI

ALPINE WINTERS AND HIGHLAND SUMMERS

AUGUST 1880-OCTOBER 1882

After spending the months of June and July 1880 in the rough Californian mountain quarters described in the _Silverado Squatters_, Stevenson took passage with his wife and young stepson from New York on the 7th of August, and arrived on the 17th at Liverpool, where his parents and I were waiting to meet him. Of her new family, the Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson brought thus strangely and from far into their midst made an immediate conquest. To her husband's especial happiness, there sprang up between her and his father the closest possible affection and confidence. Parents and friends--if it is permissible to one of the latter to say as much--rejoiced to recognise in Stevenson's wife a character as strong, interesting, and romantic almost as his own; an inseparable sharer of all his thoughts and staunch companion of all his adventures; the most open-hearted of friends to all who loved him; the most shrewd and stimulating critic of his work; and in sickness, despite her own precarious health, the most devoted and most efficient of nurses.

From Liverpool the Stevenson party went on to make a stay in Scotland, first at Edinburgh, and afterwards for a few weeks at Strathpeffer, resting at Blair Athol on the way. It was now, in his thirtieth year, among the woods of Tummelside and under the shoulder of Ben Wyvis, that Stevenson acknowledged for the first time the full power and beauty of the Highland scenery, which in youth, with his longings fixed ever upon the South, he had been accustomed to think too bleak and desolate. In the history of the country and its clans, on the other hand, and especially of their political and social transformation during the eighteenth century, he had been always keenly interested. In conversations with Principal Tulloch at Strathpeffer this interest was now revived, and he resolved to attempt a book on the subject, his father undertaking to keep him supplied with books and authorities; for it had quickly become apparent that he could not winter in Scotland. The state of his health continued to be very threatening. He suffered from acute chronic catarrh, accompanied by disquieting lung symptoms and great weakness; and was told accordingly that he must go for the winter, and probably for several succeeding winters, to the mountain valley of Davos in Switzerland, which within the last few years had been coming into repute as a place of recovery, or at least of arrested mischief, for lung patients. Thither he and his wife and stepson travelled accordingly at the end of October. Nor must another member of the party be forgotten, a black thoroughbred Skye terrier, the gift of Sir Walter Simpson. This creature was named, after his giver, Walter--a name subsequently corrupted into Wattie, Woggie, Wogg, Woggin, Bogie, Bogue, and a number of other affectionate diminutives which will be found occurring often enough in the following pages. He was a remarkably pretty, engaging, excitable, ill-behaved little specimen of his race, the occasion of infinite anxiety and laughing care to his devoted master and mistress until his death six years later.

The Davos of 1880, approached by an eight-hours' laborious drive up the valley of the Praettigau, was a very different place from the extended and embellished Davos of to-day, with its railway, its modern shops, its electric lighting, and its crowd of winter visitors bent on outdoor and indoor entertainment. The Stevensons' quarters for the first winter were at the Hotel Belvedere, then a mere nucleus of the huge establishment it has since become. Besides the usual society of an invalid hotel, with its mingled tragedies and comedies, they had there the great advantage of the presence, in a neighbouring house, of an accomplished man of letters and one of the most charming of companions, John Addington Symonds, with his family. Mr. Symonds, whose health had been desperate before he tried the place, was a living testimony to its virtues, and was at this time engaged in building the chalet which became his home until he died fourteen years later. During Stevenson's first season at Davos, though his mind was full of literary enterprises, he was too ill to do much actual work. For the Highland history he read much, but composed little or nothing, and eventually this history went to swell the long list of his unwritten books. He saw through the press his first volume of collected essays, _Virginibus Puerisque_, which came out early in 1881; wrote the essays _Samuel Pepys_ and _The Morality of the Profession of Letters_, for the Cornhill and the Fortnightly Review respectively, and sent to the Pall Mall Gazette the papers on the life and climate of Davos, posthumously reprinted in _Essays of Travel_. Beyond this, he only amused himself with verses, some of them afterwards published in _Underwoods_. Leaving the Alps at the end of April 1881, he returned, after a short stay in France (at Fontainebleau, Paris, and St. Germain), to his family in Edinburgh. Thence the whole party again went to the Highlands, this time to Pitlochry and Braemar.

During the summer Stevenson heard of the intended retirement of Professor AEneas Mackay from the chair of History and Constitutional Law at Edinburgh University. He determined, with the encouragement of the outgoing professor and of several of his literary friends, to become a candidate for the post, which had to be filled by the Faculty of Advocates from among their own number. The duties were limited to the delivery of a short course of lectures in the summer term, and Stevenson thought that he might be equal to them, and might prove, though certainly a new, yet perhaps a stimulating, type of professor. But knowing the nature of his public reputation, especially in Edinburgh, where the recollection of his daft student days was as yet stronger than the impression made by his recent performances in literature, he was well aware that his candidature must seem paradoxical, and stood little chance of success. The election took place in the late autumn of the same year, and he was defeated, receiving only three votes.

At Pitlochry Stevenson was for a while able to enjoy his life and to work well, writing two of the strongest of his short stories of Scottish life and superstition, _Thrawn Janet_ and _The Merry Men_, originally designed to form part of a volume to be written by himself and his wife in collaboration. At Braemar he made a beginning of the nursery verses which afterwards grew into the volume called _The Child's Garden_, and conceived and half executed the fortunate project of _Treasure Island_, the book which was destined first to make him famous. But one of the most inclement of Scottish summers had before long undone all the good gained in the previous winter at Davos, and in the autumn of the year 1881 he repaired thither again.

This time his quarters were in a small chalet belonging to the proprietors of the Buol Hotel, the Chalet am Stein, or Chalet Buol, in the near neighbourhood of the Symonds's house. The beginning of his second stay was darkened by the serious illness of his wife; nevertheless the winter was one of much greater literary activity than the last. A Life of Hazlitt was projected, and studies were made for it, but for various reasons the project was never carried out. _Treasure Island_ was finished; the greater part of the _Silverado Squatters_ written; so were the essays _Talk and Talkers_, _A Gossip on Romance_, and several other of his best papers for magazines. By way of whim and pastime he occupied himself, to his own and his stepson's delight, with a little set of woodcuts and verses printed by the latter at his toy press--"The Davos Press," as they called it--as well as with mimic campaigns carried on between the man and boy with armies of lead soldiers in the spacious loft which filled the upper floor of the chalet. For the first and almost the only time in his life there awoke in him during these winters in Davos the spirit of lampoon; and he poured forth sets of verses, not without touches of a Swiftean fire, against commercial frauds in general, and those of certain local tradesmen in particular, as well as others in memory of a defunct publican of Edinburgh who had been one of his butts in youth (_Casparidea_ and _Brashiana_, both unpublished: see pp. 14, 15, 38 in vol. 24 of the present edition). Finally, much revived in health by the beneficent air of the Alpine valley, he left it again in mid-spring of 1882, to return once more to Scotland, and to be once more thrown back to, or below, the point whence he had started. After a short excursion from Edinburgh into the Appin country, where he made inquiries on the spot into the traditions concerning the murder of Campbell of Glenure, his three resting-places in Scotland during this summer were Stobo Manse near Peebles, Lochearnhead, and Kingussie. At Stobo the dampness of the season and the place quickly threw him again into a very low state of health, from which three subsequent weeks of brilliant sunshine in Speyside did but little to restore him. In spite of this renewed breakdown, when autumn came he would not face the idea of returning for a third season to Davos. He had himself felt deeply the austerity and monotony of the white Alpine world in winter; and though he had unquestionably gained in health there, his wife on her part had suffered much. So he made up his mind once again to try the Mediterranean coast of France, and Davos knew him no more.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

I forget what were the two sets of verses (apparently satirical) here
mentioned. The volume of essays must be _Virginibus Puerisque_,
published the following spring; but it is dedicated in prose to W. E.
Henley.

_Ben Wyvis Hotel, Strathpeffer [July 1880]._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--One or two words. We are here: all goes exceeding well with the wife and with the parents. Near here is a valley; birch woods, heather, and a stream; I have lain down and died; no country, no place, was ever for a moment so delightful to my soul. And I have been a Scotchman all my life, and denied my native land! Away with your gardens of roses, indeed! Give me the cool breath of Rogie waterfall, henceforth and for ever, world without end.

I enclose two poems of, I think, a high order. One is my dedication for my essays; it was occasioned by that delicious article in the Spectator. The other requires no explanation; c'est tout bonnement un petit chef d'oeuvre de grace, de delicatesse, et de bon sens humanitaire. Celui qui ne s'en sent pas touche jusqu'aux larmes--celui-la n'a pas vecu. I wish both poems back, as I am copyless: but they might return _via_ Henley.

My father desires me still to withdraw the _Emigrant_. Whatever may be the pecuniary loss, he is willing to bear it; and the gain to my reputation will be considerable.

I am writing against time and the post runner. But you know what kind messages we both send to you. May you have as good a time as possible so far from Rogie!

R. L. S.

TO CHARLES BAXTER

A further stay at Strathpeffer led to disenchantment, not with
outdoor nature but with human nature as there represented, and he
relieves his feelings as follows:--

_Ben Wyvis Hotel, Strathpeffer, July 1880._

MY DEAR CHERLS,--I am well but have a little over-tired myself which is disgusting. This is a heathenish place near delightful places, but inhabited, alas! by a wholly bestial crowd.

ON SOME GHOSTLY COMPANIONS AT A SPA

I had an evil day when I
To Strathpeffer drew anigh,
For there I found no human soul,
But Ogres occupied the whole.
They had at first a human air
In coats and flannel underwear.
They rose and walked upon their feet
And filled their bellies full of meat,
Then wiped their lips when they had done--
But they were ogres every one.
Each issuing from his secret bower
I marked them in the morning hour.
By limp and totter, list and droop,
I singled each one from the group.
Detected ogres, from my sight
Depart to your congenial night
From these fair vales: from this fair day
Fleet, spectres, on your downward way,
Like changing figures in a dream
To Muttonhole and Pittenweem!
Or, as by harmony divine
The devils quartered in the swine,
If any baser place exist
In God's great registration list--
Some den with wallow and a trough--
Find it, ye ogres, and be off!

Yours, R. L. S.

TO ISOBEL STRONG

Further letters from Scotland during these months are lacking. The
next was written, in answer to an inquiry from his stepdaughter at
San Francisco, on the second day after his arrival at Davos.

_Hotel Belvedere, Davos, November 1880._

No my che-ild--not Kamschatka this trip, only the top of the Alps, or thereby; up in a little valley in a wilderness of snowy mountains; the Rhine not far from us, quite a little highland river; eternal snow-peaks on every hand. Yes; just this once I should like to go to the Vienna gardens[28] with the family and hear Tweedledee and drink something and see Germans--though God knows we have seen Germans enough this while back. Naturally some in the Customs House on the Alsatian frontier, who would have made one die from laughing in a theatre, and provoked a smile from us even in that dismal juncture. To see them, big, blond, sham-Englishmen, but with an unqualifiable air of not quite fighting the sham through, diving into old women's bags and going into paroxysms of arithmetic in white chalk, three or four of them (in full uniform) in full cry upon a single sum, with their brows bent and a kind of arithmetical agony upon their mugs. Madam, the diversion of cock-fighting has been much commended, but it was not a circumstance to that Custom House. They only opened one of our things: a basket. But when they met from within the intelligent gaze of _Woggs_, they all lay down and died. Woggs is a fine dog....

God bless you! May coins fall into your coffee and the finest wines and wittles lie smilingly about your path, with a kind of dissolving view of fine scenery by way of background; and may all speak well of you--and me too for that matter--and generally all things be ordered unto you totally regardless of expense and with a view to nothing in the world but enjoyment, edification, and a portly and honoured age.--Your dear papa,

R. L. S.

TO A. G. DEW-SMITH

This, from the same place and about the same date, is addressed by
way of thanks to a friend at Cambridge, the late Mr. A. G. Dew-Smith,
who had sent him a present of a box of cigarettes. Mr. Dew-Smith, a
man of fine artistic tastes and mechanical genius, with a silken,
somewhat foreign, urbanity of bearing, was the original, so far as
concerns manner and way of speech, of Attwater in the _Ebb-Tide_.

[_Hotel Belvedere, Davos, November 1880_].

Figure me to yourself, I pray--
A man of my peculiar cut--
Apart from dancing and deray,[29]
Into an Alpine valley shut;

Shut in a kind of damned Hotel,
Discountenanced by God and man;
The food?--Sir, you would do as well
To cram your belly full of bran.

The company? Alas, the day
That I should dwell with such a crew,
With devil anything to say,
Nor any one to say it to!

The place? Although they call it Platz,
I will be bold and state my view;
It's not a place at all--and that's
The bottom verity, my Dew.

There are, as I will not deny,
Innumerable inns; a road;
Several Alps indifferent high;
The snow's inviolable abode;

Eleven English parsons, all
Entirely inoffensive; four
True human beings--what I call
Human--the deuce a cipher more;

A climate of surprising worth;
Innumerable dogs that bark;
Some air, some weather, and some earth;
A native race--God save the mark!--

A race that works, yet cannot work,
Yodels, but cannot yodel right,
Such as, unhelp'd, with rusty dirk,
I vow that I could wholly smite.

A river[30] that from morn to night
Down all the valley plays the fool;
Not once she pauses in her flight,
Nor knows the comfort of a pool;

But still keeps up, by straight or bend,
The selfsame pace she hath begun--
Still hurry, hurry, to the end--
Good God, is that the way to run?

If I a river were, I hope
That I should better realise
The opportunities and scope
Of that romantic enterprise.

I should not ape the merely strange,
But aim besides at the divine;
And continuity and change
I still should labour to combine.

Here should I gallop down the race,
Here charge the sterling[31] like a bull;
There, as a man might wipe his face,
Lie, pleased and panting, in a pool.

But what, my Dew, in idle mood,
What prate I, minding not my debt?
What do I talk of bad or good?
The best is still a cigarette.

Me whether evil fate assault,
Or smiling providences crown--
Whether on high the eternal vault
Be blue, or crash with thunder down--

I judge the best, whate'er befall,
Is still to sit on one's behind,
And, having duly moistened all,
Smoke with an unperturbed mind.

R. L. S.

TO THOMAS STEVENSON

R. L. S. here sketches for his father the plan of the work on
Highland history which they had discussed together in the preceding
summer, and which Principal Tulloch had urged him to attempt.

_Hotel Belvedere, Davos [December 12, 1880]._

MY DEAR FATHER,--Here is the scheme as well as I can foresee. I begin the book immediately after the '15, as then began the attempt to suppress the Highlands.