The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 24

To W. E. Henley

The following refers to a volume on the elder Dumas, which Mr. Henley was at this time preparing to write, and which he proposed to dedicate to his friend.

Saranac [December 1887].

MY DEAR LAD, – I was indeed overjoyed to hear of the Dumas. In the matter of the dedication, are not cross dedications a little awkward? Lang and Rider Haggard did it, to be sure. Perpend. And if you should conclude against a dedication, there is a passage in Memories and Portraits written at you, when I was most desperate (to stir you up a bit), which might be quoted: something about Dumas still waiting his biographer. I have a decent time when the weather is fine; when it is grey, or windy or wet (as it too often is), I am merely degraded to the dirt. I get some work done every day with a devil of a heave; not extra good ever; and I regret my engagement. Whiles I have had the most deplorable business annoyances too; have been threatened with having to refund money; got over that; and found myself in the worst scrape of being a kind of unintentional swindler. These have worried me a great deal; also old age with his stealing steps seems to have clawed me in his clutch to some tune.

Do you play All Fours? We are trying it; it is still all haze to me. Can the elder hand beg more than once? The Port Admiral is at Boston mingling with millionaires. I am but a weed on Lethe wharf. The wife is only so-so. The Lord lead us all: if I can only get off the stage with clean hands, I shall sing Hosanna. “Put” is described quite differently from your version in a book I have; what are your rules? The Port Admiral is using a game of Put in a tale of his, the first copy of which was gloriously finished about a fortnight ago, and the revise gallantly begun: The Finsbury Tontine it is named, and might fill two volumes, and is quite incredibly silly, and in parts (it seems to me) pretty humorous. – Love to all from

An Old, Old Man.

I say, Taine’s Origines de la France Contemporaine is no end; it would turn the dead body of Charles Fox into a living Tory.

To Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin

[Saranac Lake, December 1887.]

MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN, – The Opal is very well; it is fed with glycerine when it seems hungry. I am very well, and get about much more than I could have hoped. My wife is not very well; there is no doubt the high level does not agree with her, and she is on the move for a holiday to New York. Lloyd is at Boston on a visit, and I hope has a good time. My mother is really first-rate; she and I, despairing of other games for two, now play All Fours out of a gamebook, and have not yet discovered its niceties, if any.

You will have heard, I dare say, that they made a great row over me here. They also offered me much money, a great deal more than my works are worth: I took some of it, and was greedy and hasty, and am now very sorry. I have done with big prices from now out. Wealth and self-respect seem, in my case, to be strangers.

We were talking the other day of how well Fleeming managed to grow rich. Ah, that is a rare art; something more intellectual than a virtue. The book has not yet made its appearance here; the Life alone, with a little preface, is to appear in the States; and the Scribners are to send you half the royalties. I should like it to do well, for Fleeming’s sake.

Will you please send me the Greek water-carrier’s song? I have a particular use for it.

Have I any more news, I wonder? – and echo wonders along with me. I am strangely disquieted on all political matters; and I do not know if it is “the signs of the times” or the sign of my own time of life. But to me the sky seems black both in France and England, and only partly clear in America. I have not seen it so dark in my time; of that I am sure.

Please let us have some news; and excuse me, for the sake of my well-known idleness; and pardon Fanny, who is really not very well, for this long silence. – Very sincerely your friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Miss Adelaide Boodle

The lady at Bournemouth (the giver of the paper-knife) to whom the following letter is addressed had been trusted to keep an eye on Stevenson’s interests in connection with his house (which had been let) and other matters, and to report thereon from time to time. In their correspondence Stevenson is generally referred to as the Squire and the lady as the Gamekeeper.

[Saranac Lake, December 1887.]

MY DEAR MISS BOODLE, – I am so much afraid our gamekeeper may weary of unacknowledged reports! Hence, in the midst of a perfect horror of detestable weathers of a quite incongruous strain, and with less desire for correspondence than – well, than – well, with no desire for correspondence, behold me dash into the breach. Do keep up your letters. They are most delightful to this exiled backwoods family; and in your next, we shall hope somehow or other to hear better news of you and yours – that in the first place – and to hear more news of our beasts and birds and kindly fruits of earth and those human tenants who are (truly) too much with us.

I am very well; better than for years: that is for good. But then my wife is no great shakes; the place does not suit her – it is my private opinion that no place does – and she is now away down to New York for a change, which (as Lloyd is in Boston) leaves my mother and me and Valentine alone in our wind-beleaguered hill-top hat-box of a house. You should hear the cows butt against the walls in the early morning while they feed; you should also see our back log when the thermometer goes (as it does go) away – away below zero, till it can be seen no more by the eye of man – not the thermometer, which is still perfectly visible, but the mercury, which curls up into the bulb like a hibernating bear; you should also see the lad who “does chores” for us, with his red stockings and his thirteen-year-old face, and his highly manly tramp into the room; and his two alternative answers to all questions about the weather: either “Cold,” or with a really lyrical movement of the voice, “Lovely– raining!”

Will you take this miserable scrap for what it is worth? Will you also understand that I am the man to blame, and my wife is really almost too much out of health to write, or at least doesn’t write? – And believe me, with kind remembrances to Mrs. Boodle and your sisters, very sincerely yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Charles Baxter

The supposed Lord Warmingpan of the following was really Lord Pollexfen.

Saranac, 12th December ’87.

Give us news of all your folk. A Merry Christmas from all of us.

MY DEAR CHARLES, – Will you please send £20 to – for a Christmas gift from – ? Moreover, I cannot remember what I told you to send to – ; but as God has dealt so providentially with me this year, I now propose to make it £20.

I beg of you also to consider my strange position. I jined a club which it was said was to defend the Union; and I had a letter from the secretary, which his name I believe was Lord Warmingpan (or words to that effect), to say I am elected, and had better pay up a certain sum of money, I forget what. Now I cannae verra weel draw a blank cheque and send to —

Lord Warmingpan (or words to that effect),

London, England

And, man, if it was possible, I would be dooms glad to be out o’ this bit scrapie. Mebbe the club was ca’d “The Union,” but I wouldnae like to sweir; and mebbe it wasnae, or mebbe only words to that effec’ – but I wouldnae care just exac’ly about sweirin’. Do ye no think Henley, or Pollick, or some o’ they London fellies, micht mebbe perhaps find out for me? and just what the soom was? And that you would aiblins pay for me? For I thocht I was sae dam patriotic jinin’, and it would be a kind o’ a come-doun to be turned out again. Mebbe Lang would ken; or mebbe Rider Haggyard: they’re kind o’ Union folks. But it’s my belief his name was Warmingpan whatever. – Yours,

Thomson,

alias Robert Louis Stevenson.

Could it be Warminster?

To Miss Monroe

The play of Deacon Brodie was at this time being performed at Chicago, with Mr. E. J. Henley in the title-part.

Saranac Lake, New York [December 19, 1887].

DEAR MISS MONROE, – Many thanks for your letter and your good wishes. It was much my desire to get to Chicago: had I done – or if I yet do – so, I shall hope to see the original of my photograph, which is one of my show possessions; but the fates are rather contrary. My wife is far from well; I myself dread, worse than almost any other imaginable peril, that miraculous and really insane invention the American Railroad Car. Heaven help the man – may I add the woman – that sets foot in one! Ah, if it were only an ocean to cross, it would be a matter of small thought to me – and great pleasure. But the railroad car – every man has his weak point; and I fear the railroad car as abjectly as I do an earwig, and, on the whole, on better grounds. You do not know how bitter it is to have to make such a confession; for you have not the pretension nor the weakness of a man. If I do get to Chicago, you will hear of me: so much can be said. And do you never come east?

I was pleased to recognise a word of my poor old Deacon in your letter. It would interest me very much to hear how it went and what you thought of piece and actors; and my collaborator, who knows and respects the photograph, would be pleased too. – Still in the hope of seeing you, I am, yours very truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Henry James

Saranac Lake, Winter 1887-88.

MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, – It may please you to know how our family has been employed. In the silence of the snow the afternoon lamp has lighted an eager fireside group: my mother reading, Fanny, Lloyd, and I devoted listeners; and the work was really one of the best works I ever heard; and its author is to be praised and honoured; and what do you suppose is the name of it? and have you ever read it yourself? and (I am bound I will get to the bottom of the page before I blow the gaff, if I have to fight it out on this line all summer; for if you have not to turn a leaf, there can be no suspense, the conspectory eye being swift to pick out proper names; and without suspense, there can be little pleasure in this world, to my mind at least) – and, in short, the name of it is Roderick Hudson, if you please. My dear James, it is very spirited, and very sound, and very noble too. Hudson, Mrs. Hudson, Rowland, O, all first-rate: Rowland a very fine fellow; Hudson as good as he can stick (did you know Hudson? I suspect you did), Mrs. H. his real born mother, a thing rarely managed in fiction.

We are all keeping pretty fit and pretty hearty; but this letter is not from me to you, it is from a reader of R. H. to the author of the same, and it says nothing, and has nothing to say, but thank you.

We are going to re-read Casamassima as a proper pendant. Sir, I think these two are your best, and care not who knows it.

May I beg you, the next time Roderick is printed off, to go over the sheets of the last few chapters, and strike out “immense” and “tremendous”? You have simply dropped them there like your pocket-handkerchief; all you have to do is to pick them up and pouch them, and your room – what do I say? – your cathedral! – will be swept and garnished. – I am, dear sir, your delighted reader,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.– Perhaps it is a pang of causeless honesty, perhaps I hope it will set a value on my praise of Roderick, perhaps it’s a burst of the diabolic, but I must break out with the news that I can’t bear the Portrait of a Lady. I read it all, and I wept too; but I can’t stand your having written it; and I beg you will write no more of the like. Infra, sir; Below you: I can’t help it – it may be your favourite work, but in my eyes it’s BELOW YOU to write and me to read. I thought Roderick was going to be another such at the beginning; and I cannot describe my pleasure as I found it taking bones and blood, and looking out at me with a moved and human countenance, whose lineaments are written in my memory until my last of days.

R. L. S.

My wife begs your forgiveness; I believe for her silence.

To Sidney Colvin

Saranac Lake [December 1887].

MY DEAR COLVIN, – This goes to say that we are all fit, and the place is very bleak and wintry, and up to now has shown no such charms of climate as Davos, but is a place where men eat and where the cattarh, catarrh (cattarrh, or cattarrhh) appears to be unknown. I walk in my verandy in the snaw, sir, looking down over one of those dabbled wintry landscapes that are (to be frank) so chilly to the human bosom, and up at a grey, English – nay, mehercle, Scottish – heaven; and I think it pretty bleak; and the wind swoops at me round the corner, like a lion, and fluffs the snow in my face; and I could aspire to be elsewhere; but yet I do not catch cold, and yet, when I come in, I eat. So that hitherto Saranac, if not deliriously delectable, has not been a failure; nay, from the mere point of view of the wicked body, it has proved a success. But I wish I could still get to the woods; alas, nous n’irons plus au bois is my poor song; the paths are buried, the dingles drifted full, a little walk is grown a long one; till spring comes, I fear the burthen will hold good.

I get along with my papers for Scribner not fast, nor so far specially well; only this last, the fourth one (which makes a third part of my whole task), I do believe is pulled off after a fashion. It is a mere sermon: “Smith opens out”;²⁴ but it is true, and I find it touching and beneficial, to me at least; and I think there is some fine writing in it, some very apt and pregnant phrases. Pulvis et Umbra, I call it; I might have called it a Darwinian Sermon, if I had wanted. Its sentiments, although parsonic, will not offend even you, I believe. The other three papers, I fear, bear many traces of effort, and the ungenuine inspiration of an income at so much per essay, and the honest desire of the incomer to give good measure for his money. Well, I did my damndest anyway.

We have been reading H. James’s Roderick Hudson, which I eagerly press you to get at once: it is a book of a high order – the last volume in particular. I wish Meredith would read it. It took my breath away.

I am at the seventh book of the Æneid, and quite amazed at its merits (also very often floored by its difficulties). The Circe passage at the beginning, and the sublime business of Amata with the simile of the boy’s top – O Lord, what a happy thought! – have specially delighted me. – I am, dear sir, your respected friend,

John Gregg Gillson, J.P., M.R.I.A., etc.

To Sidney Colvin

The following narrates the beginning of the author’s labours on The Master of Ballantrae. An unfinished paper written some years later in Samoa, and intended for Scribner’s Magazine, tells how the story first took shape in his mind. See Edinburgh edition, Miscellanies, vol. iv. p. 297: reprinted in Essays on the Art of Writing.

[Saranac Lake, December 24, 1887.]

MY DEAR COLVIN, – Thank you for your explanations. I have done no more Virgil since I finished the seventh book, for I have first been eaten up with Taine, and next have fallen head over heels into a new tale, The Master of Ballantrae. No thought have I now apart from it, and I have got along up to page ninety-two of the draft with great interest. It is to me a most seizing tale: there are some fantastic elements; the most is a dead genuine human problem – human tragedy, I should say rather. It will be about as long, I imagine, as Kidnapped.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

(1) My old Lord Durrisdeer.

(2) The Master of Ballantrae, and

(3) Henry Durie, his sons.

(4) Clementina,²⁵ engaged to the first, married to the second.

(5) Ephraim Mackellar, land steward at Durrisdeer and narrator of the most of the book.

(6) Francis Burke, Chevalier de St. Louis, one of Prince Charlie’s Irishmen and narrator of the rest.

Besides these, many instant figures, most of them dumb or nearly so: Jessie Brown the whore, Captain Crail, Captain MacCombie, our old friend Alan Breck, our old friend Riach (both only for an instant), Teach the pirate (vulgarly Blackbeard), John Paul and Macconochie, servants at Durrisdeer. The date is from 1745 to ’65 (about). The scene, near Kirkcudbright, in the States, and for a little moment in the French East Indies. I have done most of the big work, the quarrel, duel between the brothers, and announcement of the death to Clementina and my Lord – Clementina, Henry, and Mackellar (nicknamed Squaretoes) are really very fine fellows; the Master is all I know of the devil. I have known hints of him, in the world, but always cowards; he is as bold as a lion, but with the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much surprise in my two cowards. ’Tis true, I saw a hint of the same nature in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things to attend to; the Master has nothing else but his devilry. Here come my visitors – and have now gone, or the first relay of them; and I hope no more may come. For mark you, sir, this is our “day” – Saturday, as ever was; and here we sit, my mother and I, before a large wood fire and await the enemy with the most steadfast courage; and without snow and greyness: and the woman Fanny in New York for her health, which is far from good; and the lad Lloyd at the inn in the village because he has a cold; and the handmaid Valentine abroad in a sleigh upon her messages; and to-morrow Christmas and no mistake. Such is human life: la carrière humaine. I will enclose, if I remember, the required autograph.

I will do better, put it on the back of this page. Love to all, and mostly, my very dear Colvin, to yourself. For whatever I say or do, or don’t say or do, you may be very sure I am – Yours always affectionately,

R. L. S.

To Miss Adelaide Boodle

Saranac Lake, Christmas 1887.

MY DEAR MISS BOODLE, – And a very good Christmas to you all; and better fortune; and if worse, the more courage to support it – which I think is the kinder wish in all human affairs. Somewhile – I fear a good while – after this, you should receive our Christmas gift; we have no tact and no taste, only a welcome and (often) tonic brutality; and I dare say the present, even after my friend Baxter has acted on and reviewed my hints, may prove a White Elephant. That is why I dread presents. And therefore pray understand if any element of that hamper prove unwelcome, it is to be exchanged. I will not sit down under the name of a giver of White Elephants. I never had any elephant but one, and his initials were R. L. S.; and he trod on my foot at a very early age. But this is a fable, and not in the least to the point: which is that if, for once in my life, I have wished to make things nicer for anybody but the Elephant (see fable), do not suffer me to have made them ineffably more embarrassing, and exchange – ruthlessly exchange!

For my part, I am the most cockered up of any mortal being; and one of the healthiest, or thereabout, at some modest distance from the bull’s eye. I am condemned to write twelve articles in Scribner’s Magazine for the love of gain; I think I had better send you them; what is far more to the purpose, I am on the jump with a new story which has bewitched me – I doubt it may bewitch no one else. It is called The Master of Ballantrae– pronounce B[=a]ll[)a]n-tray. If it is not good, well, mine will be the fault; for I believe it is a good tale.

The greetings of the season to you, and your mother, and your sisters. My wife heartily joins. – And I am, yours very sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.– You will think me an illiterate dog: I am, for the first time, reading Robertson’s sermons. I do not know how to express how much I think of them. If by any chance you should be as illiterate as I, and not know them, it is worth while curing the defect.

R. L. S.

To Charles Baxter

The following letter invites Mr. Baxter to allow himself (under an alias) and his office in Edinburgh to figure in a preface to the new story. Such a preface was drafted accordingly, but on second thoughts suppressed; to be, on renewed consideration, reinstated in the final editions.

Saranac Lake, January ’88.

DEAR CHARLES, – You are the flower of Doers… Will my doer collaborate thus much in my new novel? In the year 1794 or 5, Mr. Ephraim Mackellar, A.M., late steward on the Durrisdeer estates, completed a set of memoranda (as long as a novel) with regard to the death of the (then) late Lord Durrisdeer, and as to that of his attainted elder brother, called by the family courtesy title the Master of Ballantrae. These he placed in the hand of John Macbrair, W.S., the family agent, on the understanding they were to be sealed until 1862, when a century would have elapsed since the affair in the wilderness (my lord’s death). You succeeded Mr. Macbrair’s firm; the Durrisdeers are extinct; and last year, in an old green box, you found these papers with Macbrair’s indorsation. It is that indorsation of which I want a copy; you may remember, when you gave me the papers, I neglected to take that, and I am sure you are a man too careful of antiquities to have let it fall aside. I shall have a little introduction descriptive of my visit to Edinburgh, arrival there, denner with yoursel’, and first reading of the papers in your smoking-room: all of which, of course, you well remember. – Ever yours affectionately,

R. L. S.

Your name is my friend Mr. Johnstone Thomson, W.S.!!!