Chapter I (3)

DEAREST KATHARINE,--Here, on a very little book and accompanied with lame verses, I have put your name. Our kindness is now getting well on in years; it must be nearly of age; and it gets more valuable to me with every time I see you. It is not possible to express any sentiment, and it is not necessary to try, at least between us. You know very well that I love you dearly, and that I always will. I only wish the verses were better, but at least you like the story; and it is sent to you by the one that loves you--Jekyll, and not Hyde.

_R. L. S._

_Ave!_

Bells upon the city are ringing in the night;
High above the gardens are the houses full of light;
On the heathy Pentlands is the curlew flying free;
And the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.

We cannae break the bonds that God decreed to bind,
Still we'll be the children of the heather and the wind;
Far away from home, O, it's still for you and me
That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.

R. L. S.

TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM

_[Skerryvore, Bournemouth] Jan. 1st, 1886._

MY DEAR KINNICUM,[14]--I am a very bad dog, but not for the first time. Your book, which is very interesting, came duly; and I immediately got a very bad cold indeed, and have been fit for nothing whatever. I am a bit better now, and aye on the mend; so I write to tell you, I thought of you on New Year's Day; though, I own, it would have been more decent if I had thought in time for you to get my letter then. Well, what can't be cured must be endured, Mr. Lawrie; and you must be content with what I give. If I wrote all the letters I ought to write, and at the proper time, I should be very good and very happy; but I doubt if I should do anything else.

I suppose you will be in town for the New Year; and I hope your health is pretty good. What you want is diet; but it is as much use to tell you that as it is to tell my father. And I quite admit a diet is a beastly thing. I doubt, however, if it be as bad as not being allowed to speak, which I have tried fully, and do not like. When, at the same time, I was not allowed to read, it passed a joke. But these are troubles of the past, and on this day, at least, it is proper to suppose they won't return. But we are not put here to enjoy ourselves: it was not God's purpose; and I am prepared to argue, it is not our sincere wish. As for our deserts, the less said of them the better, for somebody might hear, and nobody cares to be laughed at. A good man is a very noble thing to see, but not to himself; what he seems to God is, fortunately, not our business; that is the domain of faith; and whether on the first of January or the thirty-first of December, faith is a good word to end on.

My dear Cummy, many happy returns to you and my best love.--The worst correspondent in the world,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

[_Skerryvore, Bournemouth_] _January 1st, 1886_.

MY DEAR PEOPLE,--Many happy returns of the day to you all; I am fairly well and in good spirits; and much and hopefully occupied with dear Jenkin's life. The inquiry in every detail, every letter that I read, makes me think of him more nobly. I cannot imagine how I got his friendship; I did not deserve it. I believe the notice will be interesting and useful.

My father's last letter, owing to the use of a quill pen and the neglect of blotting-paper, was hopelessly illegible. Every one tried, and every one failed to decipher an important word on which the interest of one whole clause (and the letter consisted of two) depended.

I find I can make little more of this; but I'll spare the blots.--Dear people, ever your loving son,

R. L. S.

I will try again, being a giant refreshed by the house being empty. The presence of people is the great obstacle to letter-writing. I deny that letters should contain news (I mean mine; those of other people should). But mine should contain appropriate sentiments and humorous nonsense, or nonsense without the humour. When the house is empty, the mind is seized with a desire--no, that is too strong--a willingness to pour forth unmitigated rot, which constitutes (in me) the true spirit of correspondence. When I have no remarks to offer (and nobody to offer them to), my pen flies, and you see the remarkable consequence of a page literally covered with words and genuinely devoid of sense. I can always do that, if quite alone, and I like doing it; but I have yet to learn that it is beloved by correspondents. The deuce of it is, that there is no end possible but the end of the paper; and as there is very little left of that--if I cannot stop writing--suppose you give up reading. It would all come to the same thing; and I think we should all be happier....

TO W. H. LOW

In the following letter R. L. S. accepts the dedication of Mr. Low's
illustrated edition of Keats's _Lamia_, and sends him in return the
newly published _Jekyll and Hyde_, and a set of verses afterwards
printed in the Century Magazine and _Underwoods_, and inscribed by
Mr. St. Gaudens on his medallion portrait of the author. The terms of
the _Lamia_ dedication are as follows: "In testimony of loyal
friendship and of a common faith in doubtful tales from Faery-Land, I
dedicate to Robert Louis Stevenson my work in this book." The Latin
legend inscribed above the design runs: "Neque est ullum certius
amicitiae vinculum quam consensus et societas consiliorum et
voluntatum."

[_Skerryvore, Bournemouth_] _Jan. 2nd, 1886._

MY DEAR LOW,--_Lamia_ has come, and I do not know how to thank you, not only for the beautiful art of the designs, but for the handsome and apt words of the dedication. My favourite is "Bathes unseen," which is a masterpiece; and the next, "Into the green recessed woods," is perhaps more remarkable, though it does not take my fancy so imperiously. The night scene at Corinth pleases me also. The second part offers fewer opportunities. I own I should like to see both _Isabella_ and the _Eve_ thus illustrated; and then there's _Hyperion_--O, yes, and _Endymion_! I should like to see the lot: beautiful pictures dance before me by hundreds: I believe _Endymion_ would suit you best. It also is in faery-land; and I see a hundred opportunities, cloudy and flowery glories, things as delicate as the cobweb in the bush; actions, not in themselves of any mighty purport, but made for the pencil: the feast of Pan, Peona's isle, the "slabbed margin of a well," the chase of the butterfly, the nymph, Glaucus, Cybele, Sleep on his couch, a farrago of unconnected beauties. But I divagate; and all this sits in the bosom of the publisher.

What is more important, I accept the terms of the dedication with a frank heart, and the terms of your Latin legend fairly. The sight of your pictures has once more awakened me to my right mind; something may come of it; yet one more bold push to get free of this prison-yard of the abominably ugly, where I take my daily exercise with my contemporaries. I do not know, I have a feeling in my bones, a sentiment which may take on the forms of imagination, or may not. If it does, I shall owe it to you; and the thing will thus descend from Keats even if on the wrong side of the blanket. If it can be done in prose--that is the puzzle--I divagate again. Thank you again: you can draw and yet you do not love the ugly: what are you doing in this age? Flee, while it is yet time; they will have your four limbs pinned upon a stable door to scare witches. The ugly, my unhappy friend, is _de rigueur_: it is the only wear! What a chance you threw away with the serpent! Why had Apollonius no pimples? Heavens, my dear Low, you do not know your business....

I send you herewith a Gothic gnome for your Greek nymph; but the gnome is interesting, I think, and he came out of a deep mine, where he guards the fountain of tears. It is not always the time to rejoice.--Yours ever,

R. L. S.

The gnome's name is _Jekyll & Hyde_; I believe you will find he is likewise quite willing to answer to the name of Low or Stevenson.

_Same day._--I have copied out on the other sheet some bad verses, which somehow your picture suggested; as a kind of image of things that I pursue and cannot reach, and that you seem--no, not to have reached--but to have come a thought nearer to than I. This is the life we have chosen: well, the choice was mad, but I should make it again.

What occurs to me is this: perhaps they might be printed in (say) the Century for the sake of my name; and if that were possible, they might advertise your book. It might be headed as sent in acknowledgment of your _Lamia_. Or perhaps it might be introduced by the phrases I have marked above. I dare say they would stick it in: I want no payment, being well paid by _Lamia_. If they are not, keep them to yourself.

TO WILL H. LOW

_Damned bad lines in return for a beautiful book_

YOUTH now flees on feathered foot.
Faint and fainter sounds the flute;
Rarer songs of Gods.
And still,
Somewhere on the sunny hill,
Or along the winding stream.
Through the willows, flits a dream;
Flits, but shows a smiling face,
Flees, but with so quaint a grace,
None can choose to stay at home,
All must follow--all must roam.

This is unborn beauty: she
Now in air floats high and free,
Takes the sun, and breaks the blue;--
Late, with stooping pinion flew
Raking hedgerow trees, and wet
Her wing in silver streams, and set
Shining foot on temple roof.
Now again she flies aloof,
Coasting mountain clouds, and kissed
By the evening's amethyst.

In wet wood and miry lane
Still we pound and pant in vain;
Still with earthy foot we chase
Waning pinion, fainting face;
Still, with grey hair, we stumble on
Till--behold!--the vision gone!
Where has fleeting beauty led?
To the doorway of the dead!
[Life is gone, but life was gay:
We have come the primrose way!][15]

R. L. S.

TO EDMUND GOSSE

_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, Jan. 2nd, 1886._

MY DEAR GOSSE,--Thank you for your letter, so interesting to my vanity. There is a review in the St. James's, which, as it seems to hold somewhat of your opinions, and is besides written with a pen and not a poker, we think may possibly be yours. The _Prince_[16] has done fairly well in spite of the reviews, which have been bad: he was, as you doubtless saw, well slated in the Saturday; one paper received it as a child's story; another (picture my agony) described it as a "Gilbert comedy." It was amusing to see the race between me and Justin M'Carthy: the Milesian has won by a length.

That is the hard part of literature. You aim high, and you take longer over your work, and it will not be so successful as if you had aimed low and rushed it. What the public likes is work (of any kind) a little loosely executed; so long as it is a little wordy, a little slack, a little dim and knotless, the dear public likes it; it should (if possible) be a little dull into the bargain. I know that good work sometimes hits; but, with my hand on my heart, I think it is by an accident. And I know also that good work must succeed at last; but that is not the doing of the public; they are only shamed into silence or affectation. I do not write for the public; I do write for money, a nobler deity; and most of all for myself, not perhaps any more noble, but both more intelligent and nearer home.

Let us tell each other sad stories of the bestiality of the beast whom we feed. What he likes is the newspaper; and to me the press is the mouth of a sewer, where lying is professed as from an university chair, and everything prurient, and ignoble, and essentially dull, finds its abode and pulpit. I do not like mankind; but men, and not all of these--and fewer women. As for respecting the race, and, above all, that fatuous rabble of burgesses called "the public," God save me from such irreligion!--that way lies disgrace and dishonour. There must be something wrong in me, or I would not be popular.

This is perhaps a trifle stronger than my sedate and permanent opinion. Not much, I think. As for the art that we practise, I have never been able to see why its professors should be respected. They chose the primrose path; when they found it was not all primroses, but some of it brambly, and much of it uphill, they began to think and to speak of themselves as holy martyrs. But a man is never martyred in any honest sense in the pursuit of his pleasure; and _delirium tremens_ has more of the honour of the cross. We were full of the pride of life, and chose, like prostitutes, to live by a pleasure. We should be paid if we give the pleasure we pretend to give; but why should we be honoured?

I hope some day you and Mrs. Gosse will come for a Sunday; but we must wait till I am able to see people. I am very full of Jenkin's life; it is painful, yet very pleasant, to dig into the past of a dead friend, and find him, at every spadeful, shine brighter. I own, as I read, I wonder more and more why he should have taken me to be a friend. He had many and obvious faults upon the face of him; the heart was pure gold. I feel it little pain to have lost him, for it is a loss in which I cannot believe; I take it, against reason, for an absence; if not to-day, then to-morrow, I still fancy I shall see him in the door; and then, now when I know him better, how glad a meeting! Yes, if I could believe in the immortality business, the world would indeed be too good to be true; but we were put here to do what service we can, for honour and not for hire: the sods cover us, and the worm that never dies, the conscience, sleeps well at last; these are the wages, besides what we receive so lavishly day by day; and they are enough for a man who knows his own frailty and sees all things in the proportion of reality. The soul of piety was killed long ago by that idea of reward. Nor is happiness, whether eternal or temporal, the reward that mankind seeks. Happinesses are but his wayside campings; his soul is in the journey; he was born for the struggle, and only tastes his life in effort and on the condition that he is opposed. How, then, is such a creature, so fiery, so pugnacious, so made up of discontent and aspiration, and such noble and uneasy passions--how can he be rewarded but by rest? I would not say it aloud; for man's cherished belief is that he loves that happiness which he continually spurns and passes by; and this belief in some ulterior happiness exactly fits him. He does not require to stop and taste it; he can be about the rugged and bitter business where his heart lies; and yet he can tell himself this fairy tale of an eternal tea-party, and enjoy the notion that he is both himself and something else; and that his friends will yet meet him, all ironed out and emasculate, and still be lovable,--as if love did not live in the faults of the beloved only, and draw its breath in an unbroken round of forgiveness! But the truth is, we must fight until we die; and when we die there can be no quiet for mankind but complete resumption into--what?--God, let us say--when all these desperate tricks will lie spellbound at last.

Here came my dinner and cut this sermon short--_excusez_.

R. L. S.

TO JAMES PAYN

The late Mrs. Buckle, a daughter of Mr. James Payn married to the
editor of the Times, had laughingly remonstrated, through her father,
on recognising some features of her own house in Queen Square,
Bloomsbury, in the description of that tenanted by the fair Cuban in
the section of Stevenson's _Dynamiter_ which tells the story of the
Brown Box.

_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, Jan. 2nd, 1886._

DEAR JAMES PAYN,--Your very kind letter came very welcome; and still more welcome the news that you see ----'s tale. I will now tell you (and it was very good and very wise of me not to tell it before) that he is one of the most unlucky men I know, having put all his money into a pharmacy at Hyeres, when the cholera (certainly not his fault) swept away his customers in a body. Thus you can imagine the pleasure I have to announce to him a spark of hope, for he sits to-day in his pharmacy, doing nothing and taking nothing, and watching his debts inexorably mount up.

To pass to other matters: your hand, you are perhaps aware, is not one of those that can be read running; and the name of your daughter remains for me undecipherable. I call her, then, your daughter--and a very good name too--and I beg to explain how it came about that I took her house. The hospital was a point in my tale; but there is a house on each side. Now the true house is the one before the hospital: is that No. 11? If not, what do you complain of? If it is, how can I help what is true? Everything in the _Dynamiter_ is not true; but the story of the Brown Box is, in almost every particular; I lay my hand on my heart and swear to it. It took place in that house in 1884; and if your daughter was in that house at the time, all I can say is she must have kept very bad society.

But I see you coming. Perhaps your daughter's house has not a balcony at the back? I cannot answer for that; I only know that side of Queen Square from the pavement and the back windows of Brunswick Row. Thence I saw plenty of balconies (terraces rather); and if there is none to the particular house in question, it must have been so arranged to spite me.

I now come to the conclusion of this matter. I address three questions to your daughter:--

1st. Has her house the proper terrace?
2nd. Is it on the proper side of the hospital?
3rd. Was she there in the summer of 1884?

You see, I begin to fear that Mrs. Desborough may have deceived me on some trifling points, for she is not a lady of peddling exactitude. If this should prove to be so, I will give your daughter a proper certificate, and her house property will return to its original value.

Can man say more?--Yours very truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

I saw the other day that the Eternal had plagiarised from _Lost Sir Massingberd_: good again, sir! I wish he would plagiarise the death of Zero.

TO W. H. LOW

The late Sir Percy and Lady Shelley had in these days attached
themselves warmly to R. L. S., and saw in his ways and character a
living image of those of the poet, Sir Percy's father, as they
imagined him.

_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, Jan. Somethingorother-th, 1886._

MY DEAR LOW,--I send you two photographs: they are both done by Sir Percy Shelley, the poet's son, which may interest. The sitting down one is, I think, the best; but if they choose that, see that the little reflected light on the nose does not give me a turn-up; that would be tragic. Don't forget "Baronet" to Sir Percy's name.

We all think a heap of your book; and I am well pleased with my dedication.--Yours ever,

R. L. STEVENSON.

_P.S._--Apropos of the odd controversy about Shelley's nose: I have before me four photographs of myself, done by Shelley's son: my nose is hooked, not like the eagle, indeed, but like the accipitrine family in man: well, out of these four, only one marks the bend, one makes it straight, and one suggests a turn-up. This throws a flood of light on calumnious man--and the scandal-mongering sun. For personally I cling to my curve. To continue the Shelley controversy: I have a look of him, all his sisters had noses like mine: Sir Percy has a marked hook; all the family had high cheek-bones like mine; what doubt, then, but that this turn-up (of which Jeaffreson accuses the poet, along with much other _fatras_) is the result of some accident similar to what has happened in my photographs by his son?

R. L. S.

TO CHARLES J. GUTHRIE

"The lad" is Lloyd Osbourne, at this time a student at Edinburgh
University.

_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, Jan. 18th, 1886._

MY DEAR GUTHRIE,--I hear the lad has got into the Spec. and I write to thank you very warmly for the part you have played. I only wish we were both going there together to-morrow night, and you would be in the secretary's place (that so well became you, sir) and I were to open a debate or harry you on "Private Business," and Omond perhaps to read us a few glowing pages on--the siege of Saragossa, was it? or the Battle of Saratoga? my memory fails me, but I have not forgotten a certain white charger that careered over the fields of incoherent fight with a prodigious consequence of laughter: have you? I wonder, has Omond?

Well, well, _perierunt_, but, I hope, _non imputantur_. We have had good fun.

Again thanking you sincerely, I remain, my dear Guthrie, your old comrade,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO THOMAS STEVENSON

_Kidnapped_ had at this time just been taken up again, and Stevenson
explains the course of the story to his father, who had taken the
deepest interest in it since they visited together the scene of the
Appin murder.

[_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, January 25, 1886._]

MY DEAR FATHER,--Many thanks for a letter quite like yourself. I quite agree with you, and had already planned a scene of religion in _Balfour_; the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge furnishes me with a catechist whom I shall try to make the man. I have another catechist, the blind, pistol-carrying highway robber, whom I have transferred from the Long Island to Mull. I find it a most picturesque period, and wonder Scott let it escape. The _Covenant_ is lost on one of the Tarrans, and David is cast on Earraid, where (being from inland) he is nearly starved before he finds out the island is tidal; then he crosses Mull to Toronsay, meeting the blind catechist by the way; then crosses Morven from Kinlochaline to Kingairloch, where he stays the night with the good catechist; that is where I am; next day he is to be put ashore in Appin, and be present at Colin Campbell's death. To-day I rest, being a little run down. Strange how liable we are to brain fag in this scooty family! But as far as I have got, all but the last chapter, I think David is on his feet, and (to my mind) a far better story and far sounder at heart than _Treasure Island_.

I have no earthly news, living entirely in my story, and only coming out of it to play patience. The Shelleys are gone; the Taylors kinder than can be imagined. The other day, Lady Taylor drove over and called on me; she is a delightful old lady, and great fun. I mentioned a story about the Duchess of Wellington--which I had heard Sir Henry tell; and though he was very tired, he looked it up and copied it out for me in his own hand.--Your most affectionate son,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO C. W. STODDARD

_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, Feb. 13th, 1886._

MY DEAR STODDARD,--I am a dreadful character; but, you see, I have at last taken pen in hand; how long I may hold it, God knows. This is already my sixth letter to-day, and I have many more waiting; and my wrist gives me a jog on the subject of scrivener's cramp, which is not encouraging.

I gather you were a little down in the jaw when you wrote your last. I am as usual pretty cheerful, but not very strong. I stay in the house all winter, which is base; but, as you continue to see, the pen goes from time to time, though neither fast enough nor constantly enough to please me.

My wife is at Bath with my father and mother, and the interval of widowery explains my writing. Another person writing for you when you have done work is a great enemy to correspondence. To-day I feel out of health, and shan't work; and hence this so much over-due reply.

I was re-reading some of your _South Sea Idyls_ the other day: some of the chapters are very good indeed; some pages as good as they can be.

How does your class get along? If you like to touch on _Otto_, any day in a by-hour, you may tell them--as the author's last dying confession--that it is a strange example of the difficulty of being ideal in an age of realism; that the unpleasant giddy-mindedness, which spoils the book and often gives it a wanton air of unreality and juggling with air-bells, comes from unsteadiness of key; from the too great realism of some chapters and passages--some of which I have now spotted, others I dare say I shall never spot--which disprepares the imagination for the cast of the remainder.

Any story can be made _true_ in its own key; any story can be made _false_ by the choice of a wrong key of detail or style: _Otto_ is made to reel like a drunken--I was going to say man, but let us substitute cipher--by the variations of the key. Have you observed that the famous problem of realism and idealism is one purely of detail? Have you seen my _Note on Realism_ in Cassell's Magazine of Art; and _Elements of Style_ in the Contemporary; and _Romance_ and _Humble Apology_ in Longman's? They are all in your line of business; let me know what you have not seen and I'll send 'em.

I am glad I brought the old house up to you. It was a pleasant old spot, and I remember you there, though still more dearly in your own strange den upon a hill in San Francisco; and one of the most San Francisco-y parts of San Francisco.

Good-bye, my dear fellow, and believe me your friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO EDMUND GOSSE

Concerning the payment which Mr. Gosse had procured him from an
American magazine for the set of verses addressed to Mr. Low (see
above, p. 172).

[_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, Feb. 17, 1886._]

DEAR GOSSE,--Non, c'est honteux! for a set of shambling lines that don't know whether they're trochees or what they are, that you or any of the crafty ones would blush all over if you had so much as thought upon, all by yourselves, in the water-closet. But God knows, I am glad enough of five pounds; and this is almost as honest a way to get it as plain theft, so what should I care?--Ever yours,

R. L. S.

TO J. A. SYMONDS

_Skerryvore, Bournemouth [Spring 1886]._

MY DEAR SYMONDS,--If we have lost touch, it is (I think) only in a material sense; a question of letters, not hearts. You will find a warm welcome at Skerryvore from both the lightkeepers; and, indeed, we never tell ourselves one of our financial fairy tales, but a run to Davos is a prime feature. I am not changeable in friendship; and I think I can promise you you have a pair of trusty well-wishers and friends in Bournemouth: whether they write or not is but a small thing; the flag may not be waved, but it is there.

_Jekyll_ is a dreadful thing, I own; but the only thing I feel dreadful about is that damned old business of the war in the members. This time it came out; I hope it will stay in, in future.

Raskolnikoff[17] is easily the greatest book I have read in ten years; I am glad you took to it. Many find it dull: Henry James could not finish it: all I can say is, it nearly finished me. It was like having an illness. James did not care for it because the character of Raskolnikoff was not objective; and at that I divined a great gulf between us, and, on further reflection, the existence of a certain impotence in many minds of to-day, which prevents them from living in a book or a character, and keeps them standing afar off, spectators of a puppet show. To such I suppose the book may seem empty in the centre; to the others it is a room, a house of life, into which they themselves enter, and are tortured and purified. The Juge d'Instruction I thought a wonderful, weird, touching, ingenious creation: the drunken father, and Sonia, and the student friend, and the uncircumscribed, protoplasmic humanity of Raskolnikoff, all upon a level that filled me with wonder: the execution also, superb in places. Another has been translated--_Humilies et Offenses_. It is even more incoherent than _Le Crime et le Chatiment_, but breathes much of the same lovely goodness, and has passages of power. Dostoieffsky is a devil of a swell, to be sure. Have you heard that he became a stout, imperialist conservative? It is interesting to know. To something of that side, the balance leans with me also in view of the incoherency and incapacity of all. The old boyish idea of the march on Paradise being now out of season, and all plans and ideas that I hear debated being built on a superb indifference to the first principles of human character, a helpless desire to acquiesce in anything of which I know the worst assails me. Fundamental errors in human nature of two sorts stand on the skyline of all this modern world of aspirations. First, that it is happiness that men want; and second, that happiness consists of anything but an internal harmony. Men do not want, and I do not think they would accept, happiness; what they live for is rivalry, effort, success--the elements our friends wish to eliminate. And, on the other hand, happiness is a question of morality--or of immorality, there is no difference--and conviction. Gordon was happy in Khartoum, in his worst hours of danger and fatigue; Marat was happy, I suppose, in his ugliest frenzy; Marcus Aurelius was happy in the detested camp; Pepys was pretty happy, and I am pretty happy on the whole, because we both somewhat crowingly accepted a _via media_, both liked to attend to our affairs, and both had some success in managing the same. It is quite an open question whether Pepys and I ought to be happy; on the other hand, there is no doubt that Marat had better be unhappy. He was right (if he said it) that he was _la misere humaine_, cureless misery--unless perhaps by the gallows. Death is a great and gentle solvent; it has never had justice done it, no, not by Whitman. As for those crockery chimney-piece ornaments, the bourgeois (_quorum pars_), and their cowardly dislike of dying and killing, it is merely one symptom of a thousand how utterly they have got out of touch of life. Their dislike of capital punishment and their treatment of their domestic servants are for me the two flaunting emblems of their hollowness.

God knows where I am driving to. But here comes my lunch.

Which interruption, happily for you, seems to have stayed the issue. I have now nothing to say, that had formerly such a pressure of twaddle. Pray don't fail to come this summer. It will be a great disappointment, now it has been spoken of, if you do,--Yours ever,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO F. W. H. MYERS

In reply to a paper of criticisms on _Jekyll and Hyde_.

_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, March 1st, 1886._

MY DEAR SIR,--I know not how to thank you: this is as handsome as it is clever. With almost every word I agree--much of it I even knew before--much of it, I must confess, would never have been, if I had been able to do what I like, and lay the thing by for the matter of a year. But the wheels of Byles the Butcher drive exceeding swiftly, and _Jekyll_ was conceived, written, re-written, re-rewritten, and printed inside ten weeks. Nothing but this white-hot haste would explain the gross error of Hyde's speech at Lanyon's. Your point about the specialised fiend is more subtle, but not less just: I had not seen it.--About the picture, I rather meant that Hyde had brought it himself; and Utterson's hypothesis of the gift (p. 42) an error.--The tidiness of the room, I thought, but I dare say my psychology is here too ingenious to be sound, was due to the dread weariness and horror of the imprisonment. Something has to be done: he would tidy the room. But I dare say it is false.

I shall keep your paper; and if ever my works come to be collected, I will put my back into these suggestions. In the meanwhile, I do truly lack words in which to express my sense of gratitude for the trouble you have taken. The receipt of such a paper is more than a reward for my labours. I have read it with pleasure, and as I say, I hope to use it with profit.--Believe me, your most obliged,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO W. H. LOW

The following letter relates to a suggestion which Mr. Gilder, as
editor of the Century Magazine, had already made in the Hyeres time
nearly three years previously, and had now lately revived, that
Stevenson and his friend Mr. W. H. Low should make a joint excursion
down the Saone and Rhone, the result to be a book written by R. L. S.
and illustrated by Mr. Low. Considerations of health caused the plan
to be promptly abandoned for the second time.

[_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, March 1886._]

MY DEAR LOW,--This is the most enchanting picture. Now understand my state: I am really an invalid, but of a mysterious order. I might be a _malade imaginaire_, but for one too tangible symptom, my tendency to bleed from the lungs. If we could go (_1st_) We must have money enough to travel with _leisure and comfort_--especially the first. (_2nd_) You must be prepared for a comrade who would go to bed some part of every day and often stay silent. (_3rd_) You would have to play the part of a thoughtful courier, sparing me fatigue, looking out that my bed was warmed, etc. (_4th_) If you are very nervous, you must recollect a bad hemorrhage is always on the cards, with its concomitants of anxiety and horror for those who are beside me.

Do you blench? If so, let us say no more about it.

If you are still unafraid, and the money were forthcoming, I believe the trip might do me good, and I feel sure that, working together, we might produce a fine book. The Rhone is the river of Angels. I adore it: have adored it since I was twelve, and first saw it from the train.

Lastly, it would depend on how I keep from now on. I have stood the winter hitherto with some credit, but the dreadful weather still continues, and I cannot holloa till I am through the wood.

Subject to these numerous and gloomy provisos, I embrace the prospect with glorious feelings.

I write this from bed, snow pouring without, and no circumstance of pleasure except your letter. That, however, counts for much. I am glad you liked the doggerel: I have already had a liberal cheque, over which I licked my fingers with a sound conscience. I had not meant to make money by these stumbling feet, but if it comes, it is only too welcome in my handsome but impecunious house.

Let me know soon what is to be expected--as far as it does not hang by that inconstant quantity, my want of health. Remember me to Madam with the best thanks and wishes; and believe me your friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

Written just before a visit to London; not, this time, as my guest at
the British Museum, but to stay with his father at an hotel in
Fitzroy Square.

[_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, March 1886._]

MY DEAR COLVIN,--I have been reading the Vth and VIth Aeneid--the latter for the first time--and am overpowered. That is one of the most astonishing pieces of literature, or rather it contains the best, I ever met with. We are all damned small fry, and Virgil is one of the tops of human achievement; I never appreciated this; you should have a certain age to feel this; it is no book for boys, who grind under the lack of enterprise and dash, and pass ignorantly over miracles of performance that leave an old hoary-headed practitioner like me stricken down with admiration. Even as a boy, the Sibyl would have bust me; but I never read the VIth till I began it two days ago; it is all fresh and wonderful; do you envy me? If only I knew any Latin! if you had a decent edition with notes--many notes--I should like well to have it; mine is a damned Didot with not the ghost of a note, type that puts my eyes out, and (I suspect) no very splendid text--but there, the carnal feelings of the man who can't construe are probably parents to the suspicion.

My dear fellow, I would tenfold rather come to the Monument; but my father is an old man, and if I go to town, it shall be (this time) for his pleasure. He has many marks of age, some of childhood; I wish this knighthood business could come off, though even the talk of it has been already something, but the change (to my eyes) is thoroughly begun; and a very beautiful, simple, honourable, high-spirited and child-like (and childish) man is now in process of deserting us piecemeal. _Si quis piorum_--God knows, not that he was pious, but he did his hand's darg or tried to do it; and if not,--well, it is a melancholy business.--Yours ever,

R. L. S.

TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN

The first letter showing Stevenson's new interest in the
technicalities of music.

[_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, March 1886._]

MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,--I try to tell myself it is good nature, but I know it is vanity that makes me write.

I have drafted the first part of Chapter VI., Fleeming and his friends, his influence on me, his views on religion and literature, his part at the Savile; it should boil down to about ten pages, and I really do think it admirably good. It has so much evoked Fleeming for myself that I found my conscience stirred just as it used to be after a serious talk with him: surely that means it is good? I had to write and tell you, being alone.

I have excellent news of Fanny, who is much better for the change. My father is still very yellow, and very old, and very weak, but yesterday he seemed happier, and smiled, and followed what was said; even laughed, I think. When he came away, he said to me, "Take care of yourself, my dearie," which had a strange sound of childish days, and will not leave my mind.

You must get Litolf's _Gavottes Celebres_: I have made another trover there: a musette of Lully's. The second part of it I have not yet got the hang of; but the first--only a few bars! The gavotte is beautiful and pretty hard, I think, and very much of the period; and at the end of it, this musette enters with the most really thrilling effect of simple beauty. O--it's first-rate. I am quite mad over it. If you find other books containing Lully, Rameau, Martini, please let me know; also you might tell me, you who know Bach, where the easiest is to be found. I write all morning, come down, and never leave the piano till about five; write letters, dine, get down again about eight, and never leave the piano till I go to bed. This is a fine life.--Yours most sincerely,

R. L. S.

If you get the musette (Lully's), please tell me if I am right, and it was probably written for strings. Anyway, it is as neat as--as neat as Bach--on the piano; or seems so to my ignorance.

I play much of the Rigadoon; but it's strange, it don't come off _quite_ so well with me!

There is the first part of the musette copied (from memory, so I hope there's nothing wrong). Is it not angelic? But it ought, of course, to have the gavotte before. The gavotte is in G, and ends on the keynote thus (if I remember):--

staccato, I think. Then you sail into the musette.

_N.B._--Where I have put an "A" is that a dominant eleventh, or what? or just a seventh on the D? and if the latter, is that allowed? It sounds very funny. Never mind all my questions; if I begin about music (which is my leading ignorance and curiosity), I have always to babble questions: all my friends know me now, and take no notice whatever. The whole piece is marked allegro; but surely could easily be played too fast? The dignity must not be lost; the periwig feeling.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

Written after his return from an excursion to Matlock with his
father, following on their visit to London. "The verses" means
_Underwoods_. The suppressed poem is that headed "To ----,"
afterwards printed in _Songs of Travel_.

[_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, April 1886._]

MY DEAR COLVIN,--This is to announce to you, what I believe should have been done sooner, that we are at Skerryvore. We were both tired, and I was fighting my second cold, so we came straight through by the west.

We have a butler! He doesn't buttle, but the point of the thing is the style. When Fanny gardens, he stands over her and looks genteel. He opens the door, and I am told waits at table. Well, what's the odds; I shall have it on my tomb--"He ran a butler."

He may have been this and that,
A drunkard or a guttler;
He may have been bald and fat--
At least he kept a butler.

He may have sprung from ill or well,
From Emperor or sutler;
He may be burning now in Hell--
On earth he kept a butler.

I want to tell you also that I have suppressed your poem. I shall send it you for yourself, and I hope you will agree with me that it was not good enough in point of view of merit, and a little too intimate as between you and me. I would not say less of you, my friend, but I scarce care to say so much in public while we live. A man may stand on his own head; it is not fair to set his friend on a pedestal.

The verses are now at press; I have written a damn fine ballad.--And I am, dear S. C., ever yours,

TOMNODDY.

TO THOMAS STEVENSON

Want of health preventing the author at this time from carrying the
adventures of David Balfour, as narrated in _Kidnapped_, through to
their issue as originally designed, it was resolved to wind them up
for the present with the discomfiture of the wicked uncle, leaving
open the possibility of a sequel, which was supplied six years later
in _Catriona_.

[_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, April 1886._]

MY DEAR FATHER,--The David problem has to-day been decided. I am to leave the door open for a sequel if the public take to it, and this will save me from butchering a lot of good material to no purpose. Your letter from Carlisle was pretty like yourself, sir, as I was pleased to see; the hand of Jekyll, not the hand of Hyde. I am for action quite unfit, and even a letter is beyond me; so pray take these scraps at a vast deal more than their intrinsic worth. I am in great spirits about David, Colvin agreeing with Henley, Fanny, and myself in thinking it far the most human of my labours hitherto. As to whether the long-eared British public may take to it, all think it more than doubtful; I wish they would, for I could do a second volume with ease and pleasure, and Colvin thinks it sin and folly to throw away David and Alan Breck upon so small a field as this one.--Ever your affectionate son,

R. L. S.

TO MISS MONROE

The next is in answer to criticisms on _Prince Otto_ received from a
lady correspondent in Chicago.

_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, May 25th, 1886._

DEAR MISS MONROE,--(I hope I have this rightly) I must lose no time in thanking you for a letter singularly pleasant to receive. It may interest you to know that I read to the signature without suspecting my correspondent was a woman; though in one point (a reference to the Countess) I might have found a hint of the truth. You are not pleased with Otto; since I judge you do not like weakness; and no more do I. And yet I have more than tolerance for Otto, whose faults are the faults of weakness, but never of ignoble weakness, and who seeks before all to be both kind and just. Seeks, not succeeds. But what is man? So much of cynicism to recognise that nobody does right is the best equipment for those who do not wish to be cynics in good earnest. Think better of Otto, if my plea can influence you; and this I mean for your own sake--not his, poor fellow, as he will never learn your opinion; but for yours, because, as men go in this world (and women too), you will not go far wrong if you light upon so fine a fellow; and to light upon one and not perceive his merits is a calamity. In the flesh, of course, I mean; in the book the fault, of course, is with my stumbling pen. Seraphina made a mistake about her Otto; it begins to swim before me dimly that you may have some traits of Seraphina?

With true ingratitude you see me pitch upon your exception; but it is easier to defend oneself gracefully than to acknowledge praise. I am truly glad that you should like my books; for I think I see from what you write that you are a reader worth convincing. Your name, if I have properly deciphered it, suggests that you may be also something of my countrywoman; for it is hard to see where Monroe came from, if not from Scotland. I seem to have here a double claim on your good nature: being myself pure Scotch and having appreciated your letter, make up two undeniable merits which, perhaps, if it should be quite without trouble, you might reward with your photograph.--Yours truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

Evidently written about the 10th of June, very soon after the
decision of Mr. Gladstone to dissolve Parliament on the defeat of the
Home Rule Bill (June 8). As to the _Travelling Companion_, see above,
p. 68.

[_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, June 1886._]

MY DEAR COLVIN,--I am in bed again--bloodie jackery and be damned to it. Lloyd is better, I think; and money matters better; only my rascal carcase, and the muddy and oily lees of what was once my immortal soul are in a poor and pitiful condition.

LITANY
Damn the political situation
" you
" me
and
" Gladstone.

I am a kind of dam home ruler, worse luck to it. I would support almost anything but that bill. How am I to vote? Great Caesar's Ghost!--Ever yours,

R. L. S.

O! the _Travelling Companion_ won't do; I am back on it entirely: it is a foul, gross, bitter, ugly daub, with lots of stuff in it, and no urbanity and no glee and no true tragedy--to the crows with it, a carrion tale! I will do no more carrion, I have done too much in this carrion epoch; I will now be clean; and by clean, I don't mean any folly about purity, but such things as a healthy man with his bowels open shall find fit to see and speak about without a pang of nausea.--I am, yours,

A REPENTANT DANKIST.

The lakeists, the drainists, the brookists, and the riverites; let me be a brookist, _faute de mieux_.

I did enjoy myself in town, and was a thousandfold the better of it.

TO MISS MONROE

[_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, June 1886._]

MY DEAR MISS MONROE,--I am ill in bed and stupid, incoherently stupid; yet I have to answer your letter, and if the answer is incomprehensible you must forgive me. You say my letter caused you pleasure; I am sure, as it fell out, not near so much as yours has brought to me. The interest taken in an author is fragile: his next book, or your next year of culture, might see the interest frosted or outgrown; and himself, in spite of all, you might probably find the most distasteful person upon earth. My case is different. I have bad health, am often condemned to silence for days together--was so once for six weeks, so that my voice was awful to hear when I first used it, like the whisper of a shadow--have outlived all my chief pleasures, which were active and adventurous, and ran in the open air: and being a person who prefers life to art, and who knows it is a far finer thing to be in love, or to risk a danger, than to paint the finest picture or write the noblest book, I begin to regard what remains to me of my life as very shadowy. From a variety of reasons, I am ashamed to confess I was much in this humour when your letter came. I had a good many troubles; was regretting a high average of sins; had been recently reminded that I had outlived some friends, and wondering if I had not outlived some friendships; and had just, while boasting of better health, been struck down again by my haunting enemy, an enemy who was exciting at first, but has now, by the iteration of his strokes, become merely annoying and inexpressibly irksome. Can you fancy that to a person drawing towards the elderly this sort of conjunction of circumstances brings a rather aching sense of the past and the future? Well, it was just then that your letter and your photograph were brought to me in bed; and there came to me at once the most agreeable sense of triumph. My books were still young; my words had their good health and could go about the world and make themselves welcome; and even (in a shadowy and distant sense) make something in the nature of friends for the sheer hulk that stays at home and bites his pen over the manuscripts. It amused me very much to remember that I had been in Chicago, not so many years ago, in my proper person; where I had failed to awaken much remark, except from the ticket collector; and to think how much more gallant and persuasive were the fellows that I now send instead of me, and how these are welcome in that quarter to the sitter of Herr Platz, while their author was not very welcome even in the villainous restaurant where he tried to eat a meal and rather failed.

And this leads me directly to a confession. The photograph which shall accompany this is not chosen as the most like, but the best-looking. Put yourself in my place, and you will call this pardonable. Even as it is, even putting forth a flattered presentment, I am a little pained; and very glad it is a photograph and not myself that has to go; for in this case, if it please you, you can tell yourself it is my image--and if it displease you, you can lay the blame on the photographer; but in that, there were no help, and the poor author might belie his labours.